Monday, June 15, 2009

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What Can A Maple Seed Teach A Helicopter About Flying? The skies of New England are filled with millions of flying maple seeds right now. If I were an aeronautical engineer I would definitely want to study them. Under favorable circumstances, a maple seed's unique design could enable it to effortlessly travel hundreds of miles from its point of origin. InventorSpot

In a move designed to keep the US Navy off balance, Somali pirates are now attempting to hijack airplanes. Impact Lab

Penis art in Bhutan (Video). For well over a century, the Bhutanese have painted penises all over the country to ward off evil spirits. Current

"Female or Shemale. Can you tell? Look at each image. Click the circles to select female or shemale."

Incredible Animal Prosthetics - Moolf

Are Oil ETFs Showing Us How Natural Gas ETFs Will Trade? "There are striking similarities between the stock charts of the US ETF for natural gas (UNG) now and where the stock chart for the US ETF for oil (USO) was in December-February. The two charts tell us that despite all the bearish fundamentals for natural gas in North America (and there are lots!), the time to buy UNG is very near." Keith Schaefer on Seeking Alpha

A 'time bomb' for the world wheat crop. The Ug99 fungus, called stem rust, could wipe out more than 80% of the world's wheat as it spreads from Africa, scientists fear. The race is on to breed resistant plants before it reaches the U.S. Los Angeles Times

Graffiti from Pompeii. I.2.20 (Bar/Brothel of Innulus and Papilio); 3932: "Weep, you girls. My penis has given you up. Now it penetrates men’s behinds. Goodbye, wondrous femininity!" Pompeiana.org

Three different species of frogs have been discovered living in the dung of the Asian elephant in southeastern Sri Lanka. Mongabay.com

A (somewhat simplistic) visual guide to the world's resources. Mint.com

On the Streets of China, Electric Bikes Are Swarming. Last year, Chinese bought 21 million e-bikes, compared with 9.4 million autos. TIME

The periodic table gets a new element. BBC News

A trick to get free access to protected sites. It might take an hour of work to get your Firefox browser set up to do this, but it could be worth the trouble. Techmindz Blog

It's masked federal agents vs. municipal police in Mexican drug war. TheStar.com

$2.5 billion spent but no alternative cures found. Government-funded studies show that most herbal remedies work no better than placebos. msnbc

Texas teen with IQ of 47 gets 100 years in sex abuse case. msnbc

Ms Average has a sexier body than a Playboy bunny, Australian study finds. LIVENEWS.com.au

Poll: Should Letterman apologize to women for his joke about Sarah Palin's daughter? FOX Forum

Google as an Unemployment Predictor. Nikolaos Askitas and Klaus Zimmermann used internet search data to make some pretty good predictions of what the German employment report would say two weeks before it was released. Now if they could correctly predict how the markets will react to a particular employment report, they might really have something!

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