You come here to mental_floss for your daily dose of knowledge on a wide variety of topics. Our quizzes and entertainment posts also cover a great range of subjects. But sometimes, you like to find something so different and specific that you didn’t even realize there was enough material for a website, much less a blog. And that’s why we bring you updates about the huge variety of strange and wonderful niche blogs about extremely narrow subject matter, because if some blogger somewhere can dream it up, its there for you to enjoy on the internet.

Students at UC Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design created a Tumblr blog of cats that explains how the world’s most quirky buildings became so quirky. It’s called Furrrocious-forms. Here you see a cat putting the finishing touches on Frank Gehry’s Dancing House in Prague. The pictures get even stranger around finals week.

I’m not sure what qualifies a picture to go on the blog Hipster Babies, but the ones that do sure are cute. Evidence presented here is a photo from Mickey’s Girl. Hipster Babies also posts cute pictures of hipster pets on occasion.
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The internet has embraced the story of Brendon Grimshaw over the past couple of weeks. Grimshaw did what so many dream of doing: he bought an island. He purchased Moyenne Island in the Indian Ocean in 1964 for $20,000, quit his job in 1973 to move there, and spent the past 40 years developing it into a paradise, cultivating and protecting flora and fauna native to the Seychelles. Now 86, Grimshaw’s island is worth millions to developers, but he is determined that it remain a nature preserve after his death.

There are still many abandoned and uninhabited islands around the world. Why isn’t there anyone living on them? After all, 270 people live on Tristan de Cunha, which is 2430 kilometers from the next inhabited island! The reasons islands remain uninhabited are financial, political, environmental, or religious -or a combination of those reasons.

1. Ōkunoshima Island

Three kilometers off the coast of Japan, Ōkunoshima Island is overrun with rabbits, which are not a native species. But there are no human residents on Okunoshima Island. It was once the site of a chemical weapons plant, turning out poison gas for the Japanese Imperial Army from 1929 to 1945. The Allied Occupation Forces dismantled the plant and let laboratory animals go free (hence the rabbits). Japan did not speak of Okunoshima for many years. Then in 1988, the Ōkunoshima Poison Gas Museum was opened on the site. Tourists take the ferry to the island to interact with the friendly rabbits more than to see the museum. Photograph by Flickr user GetHiroshima.

2. Antipodes Islands

The Antipodes are a group of volcanic islands south of New Zealand. The cold climate and harsh winds make the islands too harsh a place to live. It is known for numerous shipwrecks and deaths, some from trying to survive on the islands, despite supplies being left there in castaway huts, as seen in the photograph. Two people died by shipwreck there as recently as 1999.
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Chicken nuggets and pizza, right? That’s what kids would eat if we let them decide for themselves, but we’re concerned about raising the quality, and sometimes regulating the quantity, of children’s nutrition. And of course, that leads to blogs that impress us one way or another.

Nine-year-old Martha Payne posts pictures of her meals at NeverSeconds, a school lunch blog that’s caused a stir in England. The blog was only started last month, so it doesn’t have a lot of posts yet. What the Sun doesn’t know (they discovered LOLcats just this month) is that there are quite a few blogs dedicated to school lunches.

Sarah Wu started an interesting project in January of 2010. The public school teacher decided to eat a cafeteria lunch at school every day for a year and document her thoughts and post photographs, to raise awareness about the poor quality of school lunches in the U.S. It’s all in the blog Fed Up With Lunch: The School Lunch Project and the book she wrote about it. After 2010, she continued blogging about various subjects related to school lunches and nutrition, with an occasional lunch post.

In contrast to the dissatisfaction of school lunch, Karen Le Billon, author of French Kids Eat Everything, has a blog that posts school menus from France. At French schools, there is no “kids’ food,” but school menus that adults would appreciate. Could they be as good as they sound?
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There is a select group of people who have achieved lifetime Mother’s Day credits by saving Mom’s life. However, being the kind of people they are, they will probably honor her on Sunday anyway. We hope your mother is never in the position the moms in these stories found themselves in. I’m sure your mother will appreciate flowers and a card.

First Aid

Ten-year-old John Kearney of Cumberland, Maine was hiking with his parents when his mother, April Kearney, fell 30 feet down a hill and struck her head on a rock. She suffered a seizure and was bleeding from a gash on her head. After wrapping her wound, John’s father ran over two miles to get help. Meanwhile, John put his Boy Scout skills to work, keeping pressure on the wound and preventing his mother from losing consciousness. Two hours went by before help arrived, and John was still working to help April. She was airlifted from the mountain and recovered. For his life-saving work, John was honored with the the Meritorious Action Medal from the Boy Scouts, presented to him by the governor of Maine. See a video of the award presentation.

Ten-year-old Madisyn Seyferth of Sheboygan, Wisconsin, was a big fan of Grey’s Anatomy. That came in handy last year when her mother Kandace had an unusually severe asthma attack. Madisyn directed a friend to start chest compression while she performed mouth-to-mouth breathing, which she learned from the TV show. Paramedic were there within minutes, and said that the CPR probably saved Kandace’s life.

Eleven-year-old Keith Corbett of Orangeville, Ontario was the only family member around when his mother Genene began to choke on a piece of chocolate. Keith saw that she couldn’t speak and asked her for a thumbs up if she needed the Heimlich maneuver. She gave a thumbs up and her son gave her only two thrusts before the chocolate was dislodged. Genene and her husband Dale are both advance care paramedics, and had trained both their sons in the Heimlich maneuver and other life-saving techniques -which paid off big time. Keith is now considering becoming a paramedic when he’s older. Photograph by Chris Halliday.
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When I posted 7 Fairy Tale Castles, there were quite a few castles that didn’t make the cut. Some were just too frightening to think of as part of a children’s princess-type story, but the legends behind them make great tales for telling around a campfire on a dark and spooky night.

1. Dalhousie

Dalhousie Castle was built in the 13th century on the banks of the Esk River in Scotland, not far from Edinburgh. The first resident was Simon of Ramsay, and the castle stayed with the same clan for almost 800 years until 1977. Legend has it that a Ramsay lord of the 16th century had a mistress named Lady Catherine. When his wife found out, she imprisoned Catherine in the castle and starved her to death. Her ghost is said to haunt Dalhousie Castle to this day, sometimes tapping guests on the shoulder. Dalhousie is now a luxury hotel and a popular spot for weddings. Ownership of the castle changed hands just a couple of months ago. Photograph by Flickr user John Ross.

2. Houska

Houska Castle is nicknamed The Gateway to Hell. Built in the 13th century in what is now the Czech Republic, it is said to have been constructed over a bottomless well that is a portal to hell, and therefore the structure was built to contain it instead of protecting residents from outside forces. The legend says:

When construction of the castle began, local prisoners who had been sentenced to death were invited to the site and offered a reprieve for being lowered down into the cave and then reporting there findings.

The first volunteer was lowered down, and after only a few seconds after disappearing into the darkness his screams were heard above. When unfortunate fellow was pulled to the surface his hair had gone white and he was still screaming. The prisoner was sent to an insane asylum where he died two days later from unknown causes.

The current owners have renovated the castle, and opened it to the public for the first time only in 1999. Houska Castle was the subject of the TV show Ghost Hunters International in 2009.

3. Leap

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Introduction of non-native species to a new environment is often done completely by accident. Anywhere people travel, something unseen can be traveling along, too. Planes, ships, and other methods of distant travel have taken critters to places they don’t belong, and we only discover the problems they cause much later.

1. Snakes on Guam

Sometime between 1945 and 1952, the brown tree snake (Boiga irregularis) was introduced to the island of Guam, where it had never lived before. There may have been several instances of snakes stowing away on cargo ships, as Guam is a major transit point. Snakes flourished on Guam, where there was plenty of food available in the form of birds, bats, and lizards. By 1990, almost all the native birds were gone, and plans were developed to battle the snakes with multiple weapons: poison, fumigation, barriers, trapping, habitat modification, and port detection with dogs. But the snake damage continued. Since they had eaten all the birds and most of the fruit bats, pollination of native plants and trees suffered. In 2010, a new plan began: a government conservation team stuffed the carcasses of dead mice with Tylenol and airlifted them over the forests of Guam. A brown tree snake is one of the few snake species that will eat an animal it hasn’t killed, and a small dose of acetaminophen is deadly to them. The “mice bombs” were attached to pieces of cardboard and paper streamers, so they would be caught in tree limbs where the snakes reside. The effectiveness of this plan has not yet been publicized, but scientists don’t expect it to wipe out the snakes; they just hope to control their numbers. Photograph by Flicker user Armed Forces Pest Management Board.

2. Kudzu Bugs

Kudzu is an invasive vine that was imported from Japan in the 19th century as cattle feed, to use for erosion control, and as an ornamental plant. It is native to China, where the environment controls its spread. However, in the U.S. it flourished wildly and now covers the South. In 2009, an Asian insect called Megacopta cribraria reached the U.S., possibly by plane, and thrived by eating kudzu. You would think that a biological control of the weed would be welcomed, but there are other consequences to consider. The kudzu bug spread through several southern states, and is eating soybeans and bean crops as well as kudzu, which gave the bugs the name Bean Plataspid. They also invade homes and smell really bad, which is why they are also called Globular Stink bugs. Photograph by Flickr user Charles Lam.

3. The Catalina Island Bison

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A few years ago, I wrote about some interesting rock formations in the post Nature’s Stone Giants. Then there was a followup: Rocks that Rock: 8 Stone Giant Sites. As usual, commenters had more suggestions for wonderful rock formations worth checking out. From a long list of rocks, here are eight that lie outside the United States.

1. Dore Holm

Dore Holm is a small rock island off the coast of Eshaness in the Shetland Islands of Scotland. The natural arch makes the rock look like a horse that is drinking from the water. It is thought that the name “Dore” is derived from “door,” and “holm” is a word of Scandinavian origin that means island. The 36-meter-tall island does appear to have a door right through it.

2. Peña de Bernal

Peña de Bernal in San Sebastián Bernal, Mexico is a rock almost 2,000 feet tall and provides a backdrop for the historic town. It is the third tallest rock in the world, and the second most massive (after Uluru). The volcanic rock is estimated to be about 100 million years old. Peña de Bernal is popular with hikers and climbers, but is only accessible to about half its height. The abundance of crystals (amethyst, quartz, obsidian) gave rise to many legends about Peña de Bernal’s magical qualities. Photograph by Flickr user Kelly Hart.

3. The Sleeping Giant

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The evil exterminating machines from the Doctor Who universe are extremely versatile. The simple yet very recognizable shape of a dalek lends itself to insertion into other, non-Doctor worlds. And that is just what artists all over are doing!

1. Sailor Moon

DeviantART member Dezychan put daleks into the most random mashup she could think of, the Japanese anime world of Sailor Moon.

2. Tiki

Livejournal member kproche of Twisted Image built an award-winning Tiki Dalek! Called TDK, he has been the center of attention at various science fiction, Doctor Who, and robot conventions. It talks, too! You can follow the adventures of TDK from the beginning in this series of posts. Photograph by Flickr user emilyooo.

3. Hello Kitty

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People with disabilities have the same aspirations as anyone, whether they came up with a dream before or after they became disabled. And, like those in the general population, there are a few who will do whatever it takes to make their dream come true, or to live their lives the way they want. Here are nine more stories of folks who did just that.

1. Kurt Fearnley

Australian athlete Kurt Fearnley was born without the lower portion of his spinal cord. He has legs, with feeling and some movement, but they do not support his weight. So Fearnley has always used a wheelchair. What is amazing is how he uses it. He started wheelchair sports as a teenager, and represented Australia in the Paralympic games in 2000, winning two silver medals, in 2004, winning two gold medals, and in Beijing in 2008, earning one gold, two silver, and a bronze medal. And Fearnley’s races get longer. He is now a marathon man, participating in and winning the wheelchair divisions of marathons all over the world, including the New York and Chicago marathons several times. Fearnley participated in the Boston Marathon yesterday, finishing second. Canadian Joshua Cassidy, the wheelchair athlete who beat him, set a new world record!

2. Deborah Roach

You may or may not be aware that pole dancing has become a competitive sport separate from the traditional entertainment offered at strip clubs. The International Pole Championship was held in Hong Kong last month, and Deborah Roach won the title in the disabled division. The Australian dancer has no left arm, but can maneuver and balance just fine with her right. Roach only took up pole dancing in 2006. By 2009, she was able to quit her day job to dedicate herself to dancing and she also became a personal trainer.

3. Zach Gowan

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Many years ago, my mother got a fortune cookie that said, “You got the wrong cookie!” That particular message has cropped a couple of times since then. Americans crack open so many fortune cookies that it keeps the industry busy coming up with sayings, pithy or not, to make us think, laugh, or even cringe. After collecting quite a few to show you, I wanted one that would make no sense at all as the first cookie, and I found the perfect image at My 2 Second Shelf Life.

The origin of the fortune cookie is a matter of some dispute. One story is that the first fortune cookies were made by Chinese immigrant David Jung, founder of the Hong Kong Noodle Company in Los Angeles. Jung’s first fortune cookies were supposedly made in 1918. The other origin story is that the cookie is a version of the Japanese rice cookie tsujiura sembei, which became a fortune cookie when Makoto Hagiwara, owner of the Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco, tucked thank you notes inside to serve his customers after dinner, beginning in 1914. He also made his cookie recipe sweeter for American palates. However, it turns out that cookies with paper slips inside were available in Japan even earlier.

Logic is not necessary. Don’t gamble, but here’s your numbers! This picture (and the next) is from a collection at Top Cultured. At least two companies have tried to sell fortune cookies in China, but both have failed as the concept is very strange to the intended market.
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