It’s that time of year again. Time to decorate the undead holiday tree with this Zombie Ornament Set.
There’s an undead elf, ready to nip at your nose a bit more than Jack Frost; a reindeer, with a horrible hunger for your flesh; a snowman, covered in the frozen blood of his victims; and Santa, waiting to give you a present, before ripping out your spleen. Each one is coated in blood and gore, which will make your holiday tree more festive.
Via ThinkGeek. And yep, available for purchase there.
Students of Technical University of Munich don’t have to take stairs or lift down to the ground floor of the building. Instead, they can ride a giant slide.
Every building should be set up like this. Just for the record.
Slide at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich via Buzz Hunt.
Brazilian artist João Carvalho may be only 15 years old, but the young artist can completely transform plain paper into ruled notebook sheets with 3D illusions popping out of them.
He starts by drawing blue lines on a blank sheet, but distorts them and adds intense shadows at just the right places, adding depth to his designs and creating the effect of three dimensional shapes that seem to jump off the page.
Whenever I see this style of illustration I always wish I could turn the pictures so my brain could better process the illusion.
By via Oddity Central.
Researchers with the Agricultural Research Service may have found the best way to entice consumers to eat their veggies: Surprise them.
They’re breeding carrots that come in a palette of totally unexpected colors including yellow, dark orange, bright red–even purple.
Ironic, since carrots didn’t start out orange, but were originally purple. As Wikipedia notes: “The plant appears to have been introduced into Europe via Spain by the Moors in the 8th century. and in the 10th century, in such locations in the Middle East, India and Europe, the roots were purple.”
Photo by Stephen Ausmus. Courtesy of USDA / Agricultural Research Service.
Via ScienceDaily.
Dr. Michio Kaku attempts to build a real Lightsaber from the Star Wars universe using modern technology.
Okay, now I know what I want for my birthday.
Make it so. (See what I did there?)
Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku via ScienceDump.
“If a mouth or an eye becomes damaged, one is to compensate with 12 shillings”, exhorts the Textus Roffensis, a 12th century manuscript containing the only surviving copy of the oldest law in English.
The four front teeth, meanwhile, are worth six shillings apiece, while “if one strikes off a thumb, 20 shillings”.
“The Textus Roffensis is truly a unique manuscript: it predates the Magna Carta by almost 100 years, contains the only copy of the oldest set of laws in English, and was penned by an English scribe within 60 years of the Norman conquest. That it is being made accessible to the public is worth shouting about, and is a tribute to all those involved with the project”, said Dr. Chris Monk.
The book, about the size of a hardback novel, features, said Monk, an excommunication curse with an obscenity, the only copy of William the Conqueror’s law of trial by combat used to settle disputes between Englishmen and Frenchmen, and a “pseudo-religious, magical charm for the recovery of stolen livestock sandwiched between a law on betrothal and a law on bequeathing property”.
Nice to know how much one’s teeth are worth. I should tell my dentist she’s been totally overcharging me. Hopefully she doesn’t do the math and adjust for inflation.
By some legal guys and monks in the 12th century, available digitally at John Rylands University Library Image Collections via The Guardian for the full article.
For decades, every Soyuz rocket crew packed a sidearm in their emergency kits—even after joining the International Space Station partnership. This “survival gun”, the TOZ 82, had three barrels and a swing-out machete.
[T]he official purpose of the gun — which could fire rifle bullets, shotgun shells and flares — was for survival in a harsh environment, such as the Siberian wilderness, in the event of an off-course landing.
But according to journalist James Oberg, one of the leading U.S. experts on the Russian space program: “I proposed that to guarantee the gun only be usable in an off-course landing, it be stashed in compartment accessible only from outside the Soyuz, after landing. There never was any response to my helpful suggestions”.
The practice has been unofficially suspended; by “unofficially” I mean that the weapn is included on the inventory list, but it is then removed by vote before each individual flight.
Via io9.