Space Station Toilet Out of Order

There is only one toilet aboard the International Space Station, and it’s not working. The one toilet for the three-person crew is on the Russian-built Zvezda module. They have been using the toilet aboard the docked Soyuz space capsule. NASA flew a new pump from Russia to Florida, and will send it via the space shuttle Discovery when it launches on Saturday.

Girl Swallows Magnetic Toy Pieces

The parents of eight-year-old Haley Lents couldn’t figure out what was causing the girl so much pain -until they saw the x-ray. She had been swallowing pieces of her favorite Magnetix toys. The tiny magnets are attracted to each other, and when ingested, can rip through intestines. Haley had eight tears in her intestines.
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“She’s only been in America three years, and while she was in Russia, which is where she is from, in the orphanage … they told us she ate everything she could get her hands on,” Jason Lents said.

Tobacco Store Dilemma

Old Morris Tobacconists is a heritage building in Victoria, British Columbia that has been open since 1892. As such, it cannot be altered or shop owner Rick Arora will be fined by the city. However, the Vancouver Island Health Authority says he must cover the signs to comply with a law that states tobacco advertising cannot be seen by minors.

“Absolutely ridiculous,” is how Arora describes the impasse, and he’s right. Two arms of government are ready to strangle a business owner caught between their conflicting agendas.

Shark Attack in Bedroom

14-year-old Sam Hawthorne was bitten by a shark in his bedroom, hundreds of miles from the ocean! He was sleepwalking one night and walked right into a trophy shark’s head that was hanging on his bedroom wall. His mother found him bleeding from a wound on the cheek, and the shark still imbedded in his face.

How Not to Cook Sausages

Two men cooking sausages on a balcony in Germany were unhappy with the performance of the lighter fluid, so they dumped a glass of gasoline on the barbecue. The resulting flame caused the man to drop the glass, which also ignited. Then the other man dropped the gas container, which spilled onto three cars below them and ignited as well.

“The fire was put out by the fire brigade. The total damage amounted to around €30,000 ($46,000). Whether the people involved will ever barbecue again in their lives is unclear,” police said in the statement.

Man Backs Over Squad Car After Ticketing

70-year-old Henry Raskin was pulled over and given a ticket for speeding in Buffalo Grove, Illinois. When the incident was over, Raskin backed his car up over the police vehicle! It is thought that he intended to leave in a hurry, but didn’t realize the car was still in reverse gear. Raskin was not injured, but was taken to a hospital afterward as a precaution. Police are investigating to see if he can be charged with another offense.

Childhood Toy is Ancient Gold Relic

John Webber’s grandfather, a scrap dealer in London, gave him a cup to play with back in 1945. He always assumed it was brass or bronze. Last year, he decided to have it appraised. The cup turns out to be made of solid gold! It was also identified as a Persian relic from the third or fourth century BC. It goes to auction on June 5th, with an estimated price of 500,000 pounds, or almost a million US dollars.

I was playing around with some Word Ladders recently, and noticed that it was possible to change “TWO” into “SIX” in four steps… which seems rather appropriate. Can you figure out a way to do it, changing only a single letter at a time?

See the answer here.

Comic actor Harvey Korman died yesterday after a long and distinguished career in TV and movies. Here are some clips of his work.
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Seven Famous Sets of Conjoined Twins. Such twins would find it difficult to not be famous.
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50 Mostly Immature and Hurtful Ways to Leave Your Lover. What goes around, comes around, so choose wisely.
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Ten Clever Furniture Designs from Recycled Materials. Chic, environmentally-friendly, and no doubt very expensive.
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A new study says Stonehenge was a cemetery hundred of years before the stones were erected. 5,000 years later, it’s still the fanciest graveyard ever.
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How to dice an onion. If you have a big sharp knife and a nice cutting board.
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Updating the ‘Divine Comedy’. This vision of a skateboard punk Dante wandering through a Hell, Purgatory and Heaven is at once funny, fascinating and retains enough of the original story’s gravitas to work as literature, as well.

Sharing your thoughts and interests online is becoming a societal norm. But before you jump on WordPress to start your own blog, check out these cautionary tales of a few writers who shared too much.

Heather Armstrong, Dooce.com

Arguably the first person fired for blogging and probably the most successful, Heather B. Armstrong began her hilarious blog Dooce in 2001 while “making a lot of money as a web designer in Los Angeles.” Dooce contained quirky narratives as well as regular features such as “How to Charm Me” and “How to Annoy Me.” [Personal favorite: August 8, 2001.] The latter is what caused problems. Highlighting amusing, albeit thinly veiled, references to her office and specific co-workers, Armstrong regularly posted until late February 2002, when she was approached by her bosses and told that an anonymous coworker had emailed every VP in her company to complain about the unsavory remarks on Dooce. She was fired. Six years later, Armstrong is still blogging on Dooce and it’s become the sole source of income for her family. The site has won numerous awards, including a Bloggie in 2008 for Best Weblog in the United States, and was named one of the World’s 50 Most Powerful Blogs by the Guardian. Not too shabby for a blog that started with a poem about Carnation milk.
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As school winds down and temperatures range from the 60s to the high 80s (at least in Maryland), we could probably all benefit from “The Sweet Siesta of a Summer Day.” This 1891 painting by John William Godward is exemplary of the style and subject matter of his extensive body of work. Due to various factors, not much is known about this English Victorian classicist, but I’ve done my best to track down the most interesting Godward information.

1. John William Godward’s first foray into the working world was a job at his father’s prosperous insurance firm. He then received architecture training from William Hoff Wonter, but ultimately pursued a career in painting.

2. The Godward family disapproved of John’s decision to become an artist; when he moved to Italy in 1912 with one of his models, the family cut all ties with him. They even went so far as to cut him out of all the family pictures. Today, no known images of Godward exist.

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Today’s list thingamajig is about words that are used as placeholders when you can’t think of (or don’t know) the real name of the thing/person/whatchamacallit. We probably know the U.S. versions, like thingy, dealybob, doohickey, John Doe, Jane Doe, Joe Schmoe, John Q. Public and so on, but do you know what they call John Doe in other countries? Hopefully whatshisname… you know, the mental_floss guy… is cool with this list.

10 Placeholder Names You Probably Didn’t Know

1. Uncle Tom Cobley and All. This phrase is used in British English when you’re talking about a long list of people and don’t want to name them all – kind of like, “Everyone and their dog reads mental_floss.” It comes from a folk song called Widecombe Fair – the chorus ends with a long list of people that goes like this: “For I want for to go to Widecombe Fair, With Bill Brewer, Jan Stewer, Peter Gurney, Peter Davy, Dan’l Whiddon, Harry Hawke, Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all.” Sometimes it is spelled “Cobleigh”.

2. Joe Bloggs. Another British English phrase, this is pretty much the same thing as John Doe or Joe Blow – an unidentified male.

3. Fred Nerk or Fred Nerks. Same as the above, except it’s Australian lingo. Sometimes just plain old “Fred” works, too.

4. Auchterturra. Auchterturra is used as a name for a generic Scottish town, like Anytown, U.S.A. It’s a fake village made up by a comedy troupe called Scotland the What? Apparently it caught on.

5. Waikikamukau. Say “Why kick a moo-cow” and you’ve got the pronunciation correct. It’s the same thing as Auchterturra, except it’s used in New Zealand (I know we have some readers from NZ on here – can anyone confirm?).

6. Wop-wops. Let’s stay in New Zealand for a minute – wop-wops is similar to the boondocks or the boonies, as in, “I’m so not looking forward to visiting my grandma… she lives way out in the wop-wops.”

7. Sparrow’s Fart. This is apparently an Australian term for really early in the morning, AKA the Crack of Dawn. “I have to get up at Sparrow’s Fart tomorrow!” I’m so going to start using this one.

8. Juan Perez. Juan Perez is the John Doe of Bolivia and Mexico, among other places.

9. Schmilblick. That’s the French placeholder name for an object based on a radio call-in game from the 60s. The comic strip les Schtroumpfs took its name from schmilblick, and when the strip was remade in English it was called the Smurfs.

10. La mama dracului. If you’re talking about an obscure or remote place in Romania, this is the phrase you would use – it means “where the devil’s mother dwells”.

Joshua Klein is interested in synanthropic species: those animals that have specifically adapted to live within human ecologies, like large cities. Example species are rats and cockroaches, which survive well in human habitats. But Klein is most interested in crows: they don’t just survive, they thrive in human environments, even using human technology to feed themselves.

Klein discusses crows creating and using tools, using human fishing gear, using cars to open nuts, and much more. Okay, so Klein demonstrates that crows are smart. But what can we do with this information? Watch his ten-minute talk to learn how Klein used Skinnerian training to create a “Crow Vending Machine” in which crows exchange lost coins for peanuts.

Read more about Klein’s crow vending machine at his website. No word yet on whether he’s rich from all that spare change.

A lumber-based storm is gathering over Major League Baseball, and it’s all about how the bats are made. Popular maple bats have the advantage of being denser than bats made of the other wood of choice, ash, and players feel this quality helps them hit for more power. On the other hand, the maple bats tend to have fat barrels for striking the ball and thin handles and are prone to shattering. When one breaks, pieces of its barrel turn into flying knives ready to impale anyone in their path. Players and coaches are starting to worry about ending up with a sharpened hunk of maple hanging out of their bodies, so the wonder-bats may not stick around much longer. In their honor, though, lets look at a few more sports equipment innovations that didn’t quite take.

1. FoxTrax
Better known as the “glow puck,” “techno puck,” and “thing that was going to make every American love hockey,” FoxTrax was an innovation Fox debuted for its coverage of the 1996 NHL All-Star Game. Market research showed that the average novice hockey viewer had trouble finding and following the puck on the ice. Fox execs, ever innovative, decided the solution was making a puck that glowed blue so fans always knew exactly where it was.

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Vigilantism has grown softer since the days of Bernard Goetz — infamous for perforating a group of would-be muggers on a Manhattan subway train in 1984 — but the stick it carries is bigger than ever, and the crimes it punishes, much smaller. Given the choice between catching a bullet in the lung or being publicly shamed and harassed on the internet for years, well — I’d probably still take the latter, but I’d have to think about it for a second. And stories like these are the reason why:

Dog Poop Girl

The last place you want to offend a lot of people in public is South Korea. That’s a lesson that dog poop girl had to learn the hard way. In 2005, when her tiny lapdog decided to use the floor of a subway car to go number poo, fellow passengers demanded she clean up the mess. Someone even whipped out a tissue to make the job easier for her. When she refused, someone whipped out a camera phone. The ensuing fracas, in which she reportedly became belligerent, was caught on camera and distributed on the internet, and quickly became something of a national sensation. She was recognized within days, her identity was revealed, and every shred of personal information that could be gleaned about her was dissected online, in an extremely public sort of shaming. Thus branded with a digital scarlet letter, she quit her university, and has since published an apology. (more…)

The first version of this quiz was a hit, so we’re bringing it back. We’ve selected ten pairs; it’s up to you to figure out which wikipedia article has the larger word count. Word counts don’t include links, invitations to edit the article, references or photo captions. And, of course, no editing the articles to boost your scores.

Take the quiz.