Yes, they’re medieval; no, they’re not instruments of torture (or dentistry). The… things at left are from Epact, “an electronic catalogue of medieval and renaissance scientific instruments from four European museums: the Museum of the History of Science, Oxford, the Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza, Florence, the British Museum, London, and the Museum Boerhaave, Leiden.” Since I don’t often get to Leiden, it’s nice to know I can look at all the gadgets and gizmos aplenty from the comfort of my desk chair. The tools pictured here are measuring rods, and it appears that not much is known about them, but you can make your own guesses:

“The square rod carries gunner’s gauge scales and was therefore intended to measure shot, but the purpose of the pointed rods and knife is not entirely clear.

The objects are neither signed nor dated, but the style of the decoration and the language used suggest that they are German and were made in the late 16th century.”

The rest of the exhibit is super-cool, too, if you have a few hours to while away.

The headless woman pictured at left is working really hard at sitting with good posture but it turns out sitting up straight is pretty stressful on your back. According to LiveScience, sitting back at a 135 degree angle is better than sitting up at 90 degrees or leaning forward.

Using a new form of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), researchers studied 22 volunteers with no back pain history. The subjects assumed three different positions: slouching; sitting up straight at 90 degrees; and sitting back with a 135-degree posture—all while their spines were scanned.  ”A 135-degree body-thigh sitting posture was demonstrated to be the best biomechanical sitting position, as opposed to a 90-degree posture, which most people consider normal,” said study author, Waseem Amir Bashir, a researcher at the University of Alberta Hospital in Canada. “

I’m finding it really hard writing this entry in the correct position. I need longer arms.

Ain’t It Cool News has the perfect gift for your local grinch and/or zombie fan:

“This is a post-apocalyptic tale where zombies and mutant hordes run rampant and the violence soon reaches the North Pole, resulting in the death of Mrs. Claus.

Santa slips into an alcoholic depression and tries to kill himself, only to find that he is immortal as long as one single child still believes in him. So, he goes out into the wastelands to kill that little #*&*$% so he can finally off himself. Twisted, no? This is a lot of fun and I wouldn’t be surprised if someone snaps up the rights to the film.”

Paging Tim Allen! Tim! … Tim?

“He knows when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake; Clocky, the alarm clock that runs away and hides to get you out of bed.” Everybody knew somebody like this in college: the guy who would hit snooze seventeen times before waking up in the morning; who finally had to put his alarm clock in the bathroom so he’d have to get out of bed to turn it off. Looks like somebody out there with some engineering smarts had this problem too, and did something about it.

Clocky works like this: if you hit snooze after its alarm goes off, it’ll jump off your nightstand and wheel around the room looking for a place to hide before it goes off again. It’ll find a slightly different place each time, so you always have to go searching for it. Devilish, no? What’s more, the alarm is an ear-splitting 80 decibels (any louder than that is considered potentially damaging to one’s hearing.) And the release of Clocky at holiday-time makes it the perfect stocking-stuffer for that insufferably lazy layabout on your list.

This is the worst lost dog notice I’ve ever read. Was the dog ever found? We don’t know. But the note was — in Union, Kentucky — and ended up in the pages of the woefully unheralded zine/website Found.

I guess the free market is one way to find out. Gerald Fraller is selling his own soul on his personal website. How much you wanna bet he tried eBay first?

You donate funds for a chance to win my soul. Each dollar donated gets one entry in the drawing. The proceeds go towards helping me change my life. I am also going to use a large portion of the money to start a foundation to try and help people that are suffering from depression. … In return for your donations and support, I offer the winner certain rights to various aspects of my life, such as entitlement to a percentage of my taxable income for the rest of my life, the option to decide the names of my kids, sharing in the profits of my endeavors and inheriting a portion of my estate.

There will be a definite winner and that winner will receive among other things:

• A percentage of my taxable income for the rest of my life with a guaranteed minimum of $500.00 per year.
• The right to choose the first name of all of my children. The name has to be gender specific and cannot contain profanity or derogatory words.
• A percentage of profit ownership of any intellectual works that I create.
• The option of planning my wedding, including selecting the date.

Everything will be spelled out in a legally binding contract.

Ah, well, at least he’s not selling his body — although apparently he does have a separate email address on his website for marriage proposals. He’s gotten 5 so far.

Nothing I like better than misused quotes in signs. And I was just turned on to a tremendous Flickr group dedicated to this very topic. Take a “look.”

Credit to Arzaga for the photo above, and to Phil from spamosphere (”the latest in junk mail trends”) for the link.

15% off the Brain Buster, which includes all 21 back issues, a mental_floss t-shirt of your choice and a mental_floss book of your choice. Just use the discount code “buster” during checkout.

Michelle Collins is pointing her readers to a site that lets you impose your text on famous images, like the Einstein-at-the-chalkboard photo we blogged about all the way back in March. I’m more amused by the fake dictionary entries (and judging by Michelle’s take, so is she):

I also like their Uncle Sam:

Hey, no one ever said we were big on subtlety.

Really. Joe Kissell at Interesting Thing of the Day says:

“During World War II, German submarines, known as U-boats, kept very busy blowing up allied ships in the Atlantic—particularly those bound for Europe with supplies from North America. The U-boats’ operations had to be planned carefully and were in part dependent on weather conditions. In order to get the best data about weather systems approaching from the west, the Nazis devised an elaborate network of 21 automated weather stations that were to be installed in secret locations all across the North Atlantic, from Norway to Greenland to Canada. …

Two of the stations were destined for Canada. One of these was station WFL-26, code-named “Kurt.” On October 22, 1943, U-537 arrived in Martin Bay, Labrador. Its crew waited for fog to set in, and then surfaced and quickly ferried 10 large canisters full of parts to shore. On a hill about 300 meters inland, they set up the equipment, which had been labeled as property of the nonexistent “Canadian Weather Service.” They even left empty American cigarette packages lying around to further divert suspicion. Less than 24 hours later, after confirming that the station was broadcasting correctly, the U-boat snuck away. … Soon after U-537 departed, however, something went wrong with Kurt. …

In 1981, [a retired engineer from Siemens named Franz Selinger who was working on a history of the German weather service] located the remains of the weather station. Although some of the equipment had disappeared, the parts remaining had clearly belonged to Kurt. The station’s career had been brief, but it succeeded in staying a secret for almost four decades.”