Ever wonder just how much that meeting will cost your employer? By entering the estimated average salary of everyone in the meeting, the number of employees and when the meeting started, you get to watch just how much money is wasted on these pointless get togethers. I can't wait until this becomes an iPhone app you can stealthy bring to the meeting with you.
Movie fans everywhere should appreciate this once in a life time eBay opportunity -the chance to buy the original Ecto-1 ambulance from the Ghostbusters films. The auction's over now, but how many of you actually had $45,000 anyway? Personally, I wish I did.
An animal rescue helped save three baby bunnies that were attacked by a dog and orphaned. The clinic workers noticed that a one-legged homing pigeon that also resided at the clinic began watching the babies through their cage and even sleeping just outside the cage door.
”Then suddenly, there were only two bunnies in the cage. To everyone’s surprise there was the tiny bunny under Noah’s wing sound asleep! That little bunny rabbit had crawled through the cage, preferring a featherbed!”
Now Noah, the pigeon looks after the bunnies and makes sure they are warm and well-cuddled.
While the horseshoe crab orgy is just a fun and cute animal affair, the turtles from Jamaica Bay are a different story. A group of 78 swinging diamondback terrapins held up one of the most busy runways at JFK on Wednesday. It took authorities half an hour to get the turtles off the runway.
He said that the turtles were perhaps attracted to the sand along one side of the runway, which juts into the water. "They tend to look for sand while they are mating," he said. "Presumably, all these turtles were feeling amorous." It is unclear whether the turtles pair off, or if the numbers indicated it was a group activity, he said.
Some of the delays lasted up to an hour and a half -but hey, at least the turtles got their sexy on, which is a much better excuse for a delayed flight than most of the ones we hear.
If you've ever lost your wallet, you know what a pain it is to cancel all your cards and get them reordered. You know how annoying it is to go to the DMV and get a new driver's license. You probably also know how much of a bummer it can be to lose important phone numbers, photos, tickets stubs and cash you had in there too.
Fortunately, scientists have come up with a great way to increase your likelihood of getting your wallet back -put cute kids pictures in it. Adorable images of children trigger a person's empathy and their "compassionate instinct towards vulnerable infants that people have evolved to ensure the survival of future generations."
Wallets with a cute baby pic were sent back 90% of the time, whereas those with no images only had a one out of seven chance of reuniting with their previous owner.
Long has the platypus been referred to as a “freak” or a “joke by God.” But darn it, these critters are awesome, interesting and unique. If anything, they’re really super animals and everyone else is just jealous. After all, they take a little bit of all kinds of good animals and make one excellent and one-of-a-kind family of animals.
The Platypus Is Not A Fake Many of you have likely never seen a platypus in your local zoo. In fact, because most zoos only like to take animal species that are 1)native, 2)endangered or 3)can be successfully bred in captivity, few zoos actually have these weird critters. Platypuses are only native to a small area of the world, are completely not endangered and only a few platypus babies have been born under human-induced conditions. Given its sparse appearance in zoos and its truly bizarre appearance and features, it’s not entirely uncommon to hear people jokingly refer to the platypus as an imaginary creature.
Now just imagine you’re living back in 1798, when Europeans first discovered the creature. The first things they sent to the UK to prove its existence were merely a pelt and a sketch of the animal. Is it any surprised that most British scientists believed the creature was fake? Scottish zoologist Robert Knox was so certain that the dead animal was a fake that he actually took scissors to its skin to look for stitches.
It’s Named For Its Flat Feet and Bird Snout This is one critter that is very adequately named. Most of us know the platypus by its common name, which is Greek for “flat foot.” This title was the original name of the creature, but couldn’t be used for its genus name because it turned out that the ambrosia beetle already had the title in its Latin name.
In 1800, physiologist Johann Blumenbach described the platypus as Ornithorhynchus paradoxus, meaning “paradoxical bird snout.” His name later developed into the official title for the animal, Ornithorhynchus anatinus, or “duck-like.” This is why you so often hear the term “duck-billed platypus,” even though there is only one species of the animal.
Plural Problems You may have noticed this article has so far only mentioned the animal in its singular form. That’s no accident, pluralizing the creature has proven to be quite a problem not for just laymen, but even to scientists. There is still no universally accepted plural to the word. Most people believe the plural form should be “platypi,” but the real Greek plural would be “platypodes.” Scientists stay away from both of those terms and prefer to use “platypuses” or just “platypus” no matter how many in question.
If you ever get in a heated debate with someone about the subject, just remember –you’ll probably be right no matter what you say.
Watch Out, They’re Poisonous Yes, on top of being one of only five mammals to lay eggs, the platypus also had to distinguish itself by being one of the few mammals to be venomous as well.
While both male and females are born with spurs on their rear ankle, the female's will fall off within her first year. The males will begin to produce a venom mix in a kidney shaped-area behind their spur. This venom contains three proteins that are only found in the platypus and is powerful enough to kill small animals, including dogs. The venom is not lethal to humans, but may cause severe pain that lasts for weeks.
Because the males are the only ones with venom and the poison production rises during breeding season, it is believed that the main function of the venom is to help the animals assert dominance over one another.
Platypus Women Are All Funky The males have poisonous barbs. That doesn’t make the female any less strange than the males. The platypus females are lacking teats of any kind and though they have two ovaries, only the left one is functional. In order to feed their young without any nipples, the female platypus secretes its milk through pores in its skin that are collected in grooves on her abdomen, where the babies lap it up.
How their chromosomes choose the animals sex in the first place is also strange. Whereas most mammals have only two sex chromosomes, platypuses have ten! While they are mammals in most ways, these chromosomes seem much closer to the sex chromosomes of birds. Scientists still don’t know how their sex determination system works.
It’s Electric! Ok, that’s a little misleading. The platypus isn’t electric, but it does hunt using electric fields generated by the muscular contractions of its prey. These animals and echinadas are known as monotremes and are the only mammals known to hunt by electric current.
The platypus has electroreceptors in the skin of its bill that can be used to help it search for fish while underwater. When they are hunting, they close their eyes, ears and nose completely and dig in the bottom of a stream with their bill. They then load up their cheeks with food until they get back to the surface. Unlike many other semi-aquatic mammals, platypuses cannot hold their breath very long –only about 30 seconds or so.
They’re Quite Popular in the Media The general public didn’t really know much about platypuses until 1939, when National Geographic published an article about the challenge facing scientists who were trying to raise the animal in captivity.
Since then, many people have fallen in love with the creature and its become a popular mascot for a variety of different things, including Mac OS X, the Brisbane Expo ’88 and the 2000 Sydney Olympics. It also is featured on the back side of the Australian twenty cent coin. Green Day and Mr. Bungle have songs about the animal and it is also a popular characters on children’s TV shows including Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.
I've always been obsessed with tree houses, probably because I never had one. That being said, I couldn't stop looking at these bizarre structures at the very tippy-top of the trees. For more cool tree houses, check out the rest of those on the Now That's Nifty post of Amazing and Awesome Tree Houses.
I love Mark Velasquez's portrayal of Little Red Riding Hood in this photo. His gallery has a variety of other amazing images. Stop by and enjoy them all.
Netherlands residents now have a place to watch their fish when they go on vacation. It's the world's only fish-resort. My question is how can they stop the fish from fighting each other?
A family in Bristol has decided to take an unusual approach to getting their lost dog back -by spraying their urine around their neighborhood. An animal behaviorist gave them the idea.
Of course, my first suggestion might be putting up lost dog posters and checking the local shelter, but I'm no animal behavior expert.
Ever wonder what the internal workings of a gingerbread man would look like? Artist Jason Freeny has you covered, detailing the full anatomy of one of our gingerbread man friends.
Did you know frozen peaches and peas can actually be healthier for you than fresh ones? Were you aware that Chicken McNuggets actually contain beef extract?
There's a whole lot most of us don't know about the foods we eat every day and HowStuffWorks is here to fill us in on some of that info. Of course, I don't recommend reading this if you've just ate -particularly if you just ate canned mushrooms.
For many people, even the word "Detroit" brings to mind images of crime, cars and poverty. But no city can really be that black and white. The things you don't know about Detroit might just entertain you. Elovethiscity has a fun collection of 10 Detroit Facts You Should Know. For example, did you know the city hosts the only floating post office in America (shown above):
The J. W. Westcott II docks just South of The Ambassador Bridge along the western shore of the Detroit River. She is America’s only floating ZIP Code [48222]. Delivering over 100 years of “mail-by-the-pail”, the J.W. Westcott Company was originally formed in 1874 by Captain J.W. Westcott to inform passing vessels of changes in orders.
Today the 45-foot vessel’s duties include U.S. mail delivery; freight delivery, storage, forwarding; message service; passenger service to and from vessels and pilot boat services for the Port of Detroit. The Westcott also sells nautical charts, postcards, books, and has been known to deliver the occasional mid-river pizza.
If you, for some weird reason or another, have any interest in signing up to WalMart's Twitter feed, be prepared to agree to a 3,379 word long (lord only knows how many characters) Terms of Use.
Personally, I'm not a big fan of Twitter myself, but I do understand that the main attraction is the simplicity of limiting things to 140 characters or less. It kind of defeats the purpose when you have a TOS this long.
David Bowie is a great musician with a wide variety of musical talent. He also has a heck of an interesting life story, with far more interesting details than I could actually include in this post.
David Bowie at the O'Keefe Center in Toronto, Canada (1976) Photo: jlacpo [Flickr]
“Bowie” is Loaded with Alter Egos Although he was born David Robert Hayward-Jones in 1947, he had already decided to change his name to “Davie Jones” by the sixties. Unfortunately, this caused confusion with Davy Jones of The Monkeys, so he changed it to “David Bowie” in 1966. The inspiration for the last name came from the hero of the Alamo, Jim Bowie.
By 1972, he already became someone else, taking on the androgynous personality of Ziggy Stardust. This character helped Bowie get a foothold into stardom with the revolutionary themed album, Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars.
After Ziggy’s retirement, a new persona took over, known as “The Thin White Duke.” This character was based on the character Bowie played in The Man Who Fell to Earth. Unfortunately, The Thin White Duke was a rather negative character and, when mixed with excessive cocaine use, he caused quite a bit of a stir by saying and doing things to support fascism and Nazism. Since the Thin White Duke’s retirement, Bowie has had to work rather hard to distance himself from his statements of the time, and even donated $10,000 to the NAACP.
He’s Big on Collaborations David Bowie has worked with some of the most cutting edge artists in the music industry, as well as some of the most highly-regarded musicians in modern history. One of his closest friends since the beginning was Iggy Pop, who Bowie helped get through some of the tougher times by recording the songs they co-wrote together once he was a household name. The two also toured together on multiple occasions and even lived together in West Berlin throughout a period of the eighties.
Some of the other big names he’s worked with include John Lennon, Lou Reed, Bing Crosby, Pete Townshend, Queen, Tina Turner, Mick Jagger, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Peter Frampton, Trent Reznor, Toni Basil, Annie Lennox and actress-turned-singer Scarlett Johansson.
Bowie is a British National Treasure
David has been named number 29 out of 100 Greatest Britons. He is one of the ten best-selling musicians in UK pop history. He was previously offered the chance to be named as Commander of the British Empire in 2000 and a Knight in 2003, but he declined the opportunities. In 2003, the Sunday Express named Bowie as the second richest entertainer in the UK with over £510 million, but in 2005, the Sunday Times Rich List said he actually only had £100 million.
His Eye is Permanently Dilated
At the age of 15, Bowie and his friend George Underwood fought over a girl. George was wearing a ring and hit David in the eye, which resulted in David having to stay out of school for eight months so he could get multiple operations to protect his eyesight. He almost went blind from the incident and the pupil stayed permanently dilated, resulting in David’s having faulty depth perception. People commonly think his eyes are two different colors, but it only an illusion due to the extra blackness of the injured eye.
Even after the fight, David and George stayed friends and Bowie even hired Underwood to do the artwork on some of his early albums.
He Might be Bad Luck
David appeared on a show hosted by his friend Marc Bolan of T Rex in 1977. Shortly afterward, Bolan died in a car crash. For Christmas that year, he joined Bing Crosby in a rendition of “Little Drummer Boy.” Only one month after the record was complete, Crosby died. After that, Bowie was quoted as saying he was hesitant to be a guest artist anymore because, “everyone I was going on with was kicking it.”
He Really Gets His Kicks Acting
Aside from pretending to be other people in his concerts, he actually has always showed a big interest and aptitude in acting. His first major role was in the 1976 film, The Man Who Fell to Earth. Following the critical acclaim of that role, he expanded his acting resume by playing in the 1979 movie; Just a Gigolo; the 1980 Broadway production of The Elephant Man; the 1980 BBC’s adaptation of Baal; the 1986 film, Absolute Beginners; and his most famous role as the Goblin King in the Labyrinth. He’s since played in a number of movies including: The Last Temptation of Christ; The Linguini Incident; Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me; Basquiat; Gunslinger’s Revenge; Mr. Rice’s Secret; and The Prestige. He even received a Hollywood Walk of Fame star in 1997.
He’s Got A Revolving Door On His Closet
A common question people ask about David Bowie is “Is he gay or bi or not?” Unfortunately, this answer isn’t so clear. He seems to shed his sexuality as much as he changes his egos around.
In 1972, David outed himself in an interview with Melody Maker newspaper. Around this time, he also frequently fed on rumors that he and Iggy Pop were fooling around together. He repeated these rumors in a 1976 interview with Playboy, saying, “It’s true –I am a bisexual…I suppose it’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”
But then, he changed his tune. In a 1983 interview with Rolling Stone, he said, it was “the biggest mistake I ever made.” By 1993, he decided that he was always a “closet heterosexual” and that “it wasn’t something I was comfortable with at all.”
By 2002, he seemed to decide that being bisexual had more to do with where he was trying to sell records, saying “I don’t think it was a mistake in Europe, but it was a lot tougher in America. I had no problem with people knowing I was bisexual…I felt that [bisexuality] became my headline over here for so long. America is a very puritanical place, and I think it stood in the way of so much I wanted to do.”
The Life Aquatic With David Bowie
The soundtrack for The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou featured cast member Seu Jorge singing a number of David Bowie songs with tracks slightly altered lyrics to fit the movie’s plot. Bowie later remarked, “Had Seu Jorge not recorded my songs acoustically in Portuguese I would never have heard this new level of beauty which he has imbued them with"
