Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories has quite a few neat things you can do with magnets. Some are really artful, some are great for teaching purposes, and here's one I'll definitely use sometime:

Find studs in your walls

Move a magnet over the wall until it finds a screw or nail head under the paint. You don't even need to mark the wall-- you can just leave the magnet there until you've drilled your holes.

Link

This guest post is from North Carolina author and sculptor Joel Haas (featured previously at Neatorama), who is traveling in Taiwan and taking plenty of pictures. Whatever they are, a night market is NOISE and COLOR!!

Part flea market, part carnival, part food court, part social nexus, a "night market" is where vendors set temporary booths along a street and sell from about 5:30 PM until about 2 AM. All Taiwanese towns and cities have night markets. The most famous and largest is Taipei's Shilin Night Market. Imagine the NC State Fairgrounds, arenas and all, turned into a giant flea market and then doubled or tripled in size. Pack it with people and illegal vendors setting up shop in the middle of the aisles. Until I was nearly run over, I had forgotten it is okay to ride a bike or motor scooter through the night market aisles. The only thing stopping traffic in some areas is the utter crush of people. Most places in the night market resemble the midway at the state fair on a record day. The smell of "stinky tofu" (fermented tofu) fills the air so you know you're in a true Taiwanese market. You can buy everything to eat from steaks to jellyfish to candied tomatos to tea jelly; cotton candy to squid; tripe to exotic fruit. Shop for clothes, luggage, underwear (remember the people who needed waistband amplifiers?) or books. Power tools or bok choy, a night market's got it all and probably more. Grannies shoot baskets at one of the numerous arcades.

"Buddha Head" fruit on sale--Joy's and my favorite. Called "custard Apple" in English. It is unknown in the States as it doesn't ship well.

I couldn't resist buying a package of this stuff. It's very thin and dry. Quite tasty, actually.

The NCAAA basketball tournament starts this week! The 64 teams are scheduled, but how familiar are you with the schools? Today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss asks you to identify the state in which certain colleges (the ones that aren't obvious from the name) are located. I scored 67%, which is below average for this quiz. http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/23616

Emilio Marcos Palma made history, and the Guiness Book of World Records, in 1978 just by being born! His father was in charge of the Argentine army's Esperanza Base near the tip of the Antarctic peninsula. As a political ploy, the government of Argentina airlifted his mother to the base to give birth. Parts of the territory in which Esperanza Base is located are claimed by Argentina, Chile, and the UK. The Guinness Book lists him as the only person identified to have been the first born on any continent. He is also the southernmost human birth known, although two other people have since been born in Antarctic territory. Link -via Grow-A-Brain

Esperanza Base (pictured) is now inhabited by 55 people, including ten families and two schoolteachers! Link

(image credit: © Samuel Blanc)

A recently identified portrait of William Shakespeare, if genuine, would be the only true likeness we have of The Bard. The popular face of Shakespeare that we know was taken from a woodcut by Martin Droeshout that was published after the playwright's death. The newly-identified portrait was painted around 1610, when Shakespeare was 46 years old. The painting has been in the hands of the Cobbe family for centuries. Current owner Alec Cobbe saw another portrait that supposedly depicted Shakespeare and saw a resemblance. He then asked Stanley Wells of Birmingham University to help authenticate it.

The two men arranged to have the Cobbe painting subjected to a battery of scientific tests — tree-ring-dating to determine the age of the wood panel, X-ray examination at the Hamilton-Kerr Institute at Cambridge University and infrared reflectography. The tests produced convincing evidence that the panel dated from around 1610 and was the source for the Folger painting, among others. Wells is now sure of it. "I don't think anyone who sees [the Cobbe painting] would doubt this is the original," he says. "It's a much livelier painting, a much more alert face, a more intelligent and sympathetic face."

Link -via Metafilter

Just the other day, I thought about how neato my basement would look with a laboratory set up like Dr. Frankenstein, with beakers and burners and electrical gadgets. Now Wired has a how-to video on just that!

They don't make chemistry sets like they used to -- no more uranium or explosives. What's an aspiring mad scientist to do? Go DIY. In your own smoking, bubbling lair, you can make everything from bouncy balls to rocket motors. Here's a catalyst to get you started.

Link

You thought a boy named Sue would have to grow up strong and tough? Try overcoming life's obstacles as a girl named Marijuana Pepsi Jackson! Ms. Sawyer (her married name) is a schoolteacher who had parents with a sense of humor.

Sawyer's aunt, Mayetta Jackson of Chicago, clearly remembers when the name was picked in 1972. The newborn's mother and father were products of the post-Woodstock era when reefer was rampant.

"And they would cool off with a Pepsi," she said, which makes you think it's lucky for Sawyer that it wasn't Coke instead. "I thought it was crazy," her aunt said about the name, "but they were such fun-loving people that it suited them."

Ms. Sawyer's story does have some elements of the Johnny Cash song.

She gives a surprising amount of credit to her mother for making her resilient and resourceful. "She instilled in me that fighting attitude - never take no, you can do anything," Sawyer said.

By high school, her name was cool to many. "They were like, 'Oh yeah. Man, I wish I had your name. I love that. I'm going to name my kid after you.' I hear that so much and I go, Lord, please don't do that to that child."

http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/40874017.html -via Fark

(image credit: Jeffrey Phelps)

In a story reminiscent of the Great Boston Molasses Flood, 10,000 gallons of cattle feed, consisting mostly of molasses, spilled out of a tank owned by Performance Plus, a business in Twin Falls, Idaho.

The molasses substance seeped into an auto repair business and an adjoining trailer park after leaking from a storage tank.

General manager of Performance Plus Matt Beed says the company has hired a backhoe contractor to clean up the molasses. Clean up could take up to two weeks.

Link -via Fark

If you remember (or still play) the board game Clue, you know there are nine possible crime scenes. Today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss challenges you to name them all in under two minutes. No fair pulling the game out! I didn't even try, since I've never played the game. http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/21643

Can you think logically? Take the armchair logic test! There are only 15 questions, and it doesn't take very long -if you are logical! I scored only 87%, which disappoints me. Link -via the Presurfer

(image credit: Flickr user loquenoves)

Logos are everywhere. Because of this, only a few can rise among the noise -- and often it's the more unique logos that are most memorable. Sometimes to be unique, you've also got to be weird. In this post, we showcase twenty lovably strange logos that work.

The pictured logo is for Rehabilitation Hospital Corporation of America. Makes sense to me! Link -via the Presurfer

(YouTube link)
Uncle Jay wraps up the entire year to the tunes of your favorite Christmas carols. -Thanks, Duke!

Even Dick Tracy would be amazed at a normal-sized watch that can record eight hours of color video with sound! Just plug your watch into your computer via USB and download your recordings. On sale for only $199.95. Link -Thanks, =RaZ34=- Ron!

(YouTube link)
Milan Simon Tuttle is five years old and has been playing basketball for a year and a half. She's short, skilled, and adorable! -Thanks, Laura!

What's a holiday without a little fun! Mushy Gushy lets you personalize free ecards with your face. Link -Thanks, Javier Perez!