(Watch on Vimeo)

What happens when you try a gumball machine's patience? WAR. That's what happens. This animation, made by Scoot Theirauf "while between projects" is cute and funny, a Pixaresque look at the secret lives of inanimate objects. I love how the red guy gives the blue machine a "Seriously??" look at 0:25.

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The worst thing about being a future parent has to be picking a name, right? Because who really wants to do that? (Insert eyeroll here.)

The new Kick to Pick app lets your unborn baby pick up the grunt work by choosing the name he or she would like to carry through life. No, really. Sort of.

The app randomly generates thousands of baby names. All parents have to do is launch the generator, place the phone on the baby bump, and wait for the little guy – or gal – to give a big kick. The app monitors the baby's movements, and any large kick detected will stop the generator and reveal what the baby has chosen.

And if you feel like you're probably throwing 99 cents down the proverbial drain, the app's creator wants you to know that this is a legitimate problem, this parents-naming-the-baby thing.

"The idea for Kick to Pick came from a discussion about baby's choices and the fact they had no influence over the name they go onto keep for the rest of their lives,” said Nathan Parks, the creator of the app, in a statement.

I would roll my eyes again, but then I remember that there are children named Pilot Inspektor and Petal Blossom Rainbow in the world. So maybe we should just sell the app to pregnant celebrities.

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Finally, the future is making good on that jetpack promise. This is video footage of Jetson, a weighted test dummy, flying in the Martin Jetpack to 1500 feet, then performing an emergency landing with a ballistic parachute. The total flight lasted around 10 minutes.

And now that this is all in order, I'd like to request my own hoverboard and robot nanny. Thank you.

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A Picadilly Circus show was canceled in Joplin, MO following the tornado that recently ravaged the city. Rather than packing up and moving out of town, the circus enlisted the help of its largest performers to help with the clean-up. A volunteer captured this clip of an elephant dragging a car closer to the street so it could be hauled away.

Via reddit

It's skeeter season (at least here in Oklahoma) and while everyone has their preferred method of avoiding malaria and dengue fever--and the general annoyance of being vampirized by flying insects--there are some really bad ideas about how to do so. DIY Life has a list of legitimate tips and debunks some common myths about mosquito control. Example:

A popular email forward from a few years back states that if you spritz yourself with a 10 to 1 mix of water to Listerine, you'll repel mosquitoes. While the menthol and eucalyptus doesn't appeal to the critters, the dilution won't be enough to make much of a difference. (And directly applying Listerine to skin will just dry you out.)

Link | Image: Wikimedia Commons

Farmers in Adelaide, Australia are having a bit of a rodent problem. The mouse population has grown to epic proportions due to recent heavy rains and booming crop yields--perfect conditions for an infestation. It's so bad that one farmer, John Gregory, has caught the mice attacking his pigs.

Since he first saw them dining out on his prized stock he has been at his wit's end about how to get rid of them, the (Adelaide) Sunday Mail reported.

Now, as a desperate last resort, he is covering his pigs at a farm property in Wynarka, 80 miles (130km) east of state capital Adelaide, in engine oil to protect them from the mice -- with the rodents apparently turned off by the taste.

"The mouse problem got really bad in April," the 50-year-old father of four said.

"We went away in the school holidays and when we came back we drove up the driveway and it looked like the ground was moving -- there were hundreds of thousands of them."

Mouse bait isn't cheap, though, so farmers are utilizing homemade methods of pest control; aside from rubbing his pigs in engine oil, Gregory mixes confectioner's sugar with cement. "The icing sugar attracts the mice, they eat it and then the cement clogs them up."

Link |Image: Wikipedia Commons

Because childbirth isn't painful and horrifying enough on its own, I guess, G.B. Blonsky, et. al. decided to provide "civilised women" with this medieval torture device birthing apparatus that applies centrifugal force to the mother, thereby allowing her a "quick and normal delivery." I shudder to think that this was ever tested on a person. Ptak Science Books has more images and information, should you be morbidly fascinated enough to look.

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This video is called "Two Cellos Solo" but a) two cellos make a duet and 2) it's more like a battle. That said, it's interesting and now we have a Michael Jackson mini-theme going today. Enjoy!

http://www.videobash.com/video_show/two-cellos-solo-smooth-criminal-11559

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Because WHY NOT. From battenkiller's YouTube page, a brief explanation of the sport:

American Freestyle canoeing is the art of paddling a canoe on flat water with perfect control of its movements. The canoe is usually leaned over to the side to help the boat turn sharply and efficiently and paddle strokes are taken on either side of the canoe depending on the individual move. Balance, paddle placement and turn initiation are a few keys to this control. Since the movements seem dance-like, some practice this art timed to music, which is the ultimate in control.

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Swedish police were called to handle a wayward beaver for the second time in recent months yesterday morning after one of the industrious rodents made its way into a homeowner's garage.

Whether the beaver took a wrong turn somewhere remains a mystery, but the curious animal's journey nevertheless ended in a garage on Grindstugevägen in Nässjö in central Sweden.

Police have since contacted local hunters and animal consultants who plan to "return the beaver to freedom" later on Monday.

Back in April, police near Köping in central Sweden were called after an ambulance reported seeing a beaver lumbering down Glasgatan, the local Arboga Tidning newspaper reported.

Rather than put the animal in the back of the patrol car, however, police decided instead to simply point the beaver in the right direction.

http://www.thelocal.se/34064/20110530/#

[caption id="attachment_46990" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="(C) Antti Kemppainen"][/caption]

Sometimes nature is more amazing than whatever we can dream up. Though the photo above looks like some sort of special-effects shot from a movie about alien invasion on the Fourth of July, it's really just a beach in Perth, Australia.

That's where photographer Antti Kemppainen took this photo, back in January 2007. It was Australia Day and people gathered on the beach to see the fireworks show over the harbor. Meanwhile, lightning was exploding far away, over the ocean. And in the middle of it all, so bright that it would be seen despite the flashes of light, there was Comet McNaught.

Antti just took three photographs and composed them together in a single panorama, so you could see the 180-degree scene that the people sitting there were seeing that day.

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On paper, it looks a lot like something from a video game. In actuality, it looks even more so. David Brown, a cameraman, editor and producer, has won a PopSci 2011 Invention Award for his BodyGuard design--an armored glove with a built-in stun gun, laser pointer, video camera and flashlight. Not only is the design lightweight and adaptable, it's also fully endorsed by Kevin Costner, a friend of Brown's who invested in BodyGuard (get it?). Get more details (and a video of Costner and Brown) on PopSci.

http://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2011-05/2011-invention-awards-stunning-development

[caption id="attachment_46949" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Because clowns aren't scary enough already."][/caption]

What the Internet has taught me: People do strange things, and sometimes these strange things involve a car, and in this instance, sometimes the strange thing done to the car renders said car unrecognizable. Also, people really like tanks. Check out the gallery on CrunchPost for more weird auto-mods, hand-built by people with loads of free time.

http://crunchpost.com/weirdest-cars-modification-by-home-engineers/

Hacker group The Lulz Boat pirated PBS.org and posted an article claiming Tupac Shakur--who was shot four times and died in September, 1996--is alive and well and living in New Zealand.  They also claim rapper Biggie Smalls (Notorious B.I.G.) was housed in the same resort for a time after his death.

LulzBoat created a new page within PBS.org and posted the passwords of PBS journalists, login information and "sensitive information" about PBS stations.

According to CNN:

The Lulz Boat claims it was "less than impressed" after watching the network's program "WikiSecrets" and "decided to sail our Lulz Boat over the PBS servers for further... perusing."

The "WikiSecrets" documentary, which aired last week on the PBS show "Frontline," talked to U.S. Army Pfc. Bradley Manning's father and close friends.

Manning, a military intelligence analyst, is suspected of leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents that ended up on the WikiLeaks website -- one of the largest leaks of classified material in U.S. history.

Whether PBS has gotten their security issues under control is debatable, but the article and any LulzBoat references have been removed from the site.

Link | Image credit: Kurt Strazdins/NewsCom

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This short video is thought to be the last footage of comedians Laurel and Hardy; it was shot in 1956 at the home of Stan Laurel’s daughter, Lois. Also featured in the clip: Stan Laurel's wife Ida Kitaeva Raphael Laurel, Hardy's wife Virginia Lucille Jones, Andy Wade (who shot the film), Laurel’s daughter Lois, her husband Rand Brooks and their children, Randy and Laurie.

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