World’s Strangest

Professor John I.Q. Nerdelbaum Frink, Jr. is a character on The Simpsons. He’s a socially inept scientist and inventor known to proclaiming nonsensical words when he’s nervous. On the show, he often produces inventions of questionable utility and scientific rigor. Dan at McLOL has compiled a list of some of Frink’s more absurd inventions, along [...]

Remember Travis Pitts and his awesome design, “We’ve Got Some Work To Do, Now?” Well, he’s still coming up with great ideas, mashing up different threads of pop culture in clever ways. To paraphrase Travis, I’m frankly surprised no one’s thought of this yet. Bigger image at the Flickr link. Link (via Super Punch)

Apparently years and years of medical schooling isn’t enough to make good doctors. They also need to go to … clown school! Just kidding. A charity in Northern Ireland is recruiting clowns to entertain sick children in hospitals and hospices: Clowndoctor Elaine Duncan, aka Dr Twinkle, said she loved to see the smiles on children’s faces. “The children [...]

Photo: NASA Michael Mautner of Virginia Commonwealth University says that part of the human condition we enjoy is a responsibility to ensure life continues after our home, Earth, dies. It will happen, someday. And panspermia missions now will fulfill our moral obligation to see that life on other planets gets a fair chance, even if we [...]

In The New York Times, Henry Fountain has an article exploring how the ancient technology of sailing gets very cutting edge in high-value competitions, such as America’s Cup: “You have to understand the aerodynamic principles well and how to apply them,” Mr. Drummond said. “If you have the skills to design an airplane, you have [...]

The traditional stacked sandbag emplacement of armies around the world may be on the way out. This new portable system called McCurdy’s Armor can be assembled by soldiers with no tools and provide solid protection from small arms and bombs: The armor can be set up in a variety of arrangements (U-shaped, J-shaped, etc.), and in [...]

What goes together better than neuroscience and LOLcats? It doesn’t matter, because they are together in this handy study guide, complete with a sparkly title and lots of sweet sugary cuteness along the synapses. Link -via Metafilter

In an interview at The Smithsonian, evolutionary biologist Jason Cryan explained why humans generally have predisposition to sweet foods and a disinterest in bitter foods: The evolutionary explanation for the sweet tooth revolved around that idea that we have physiologically associated a sweet taste with high-energy foods which would have helped our earliest ancestors survive better [...]

Nick and Anna Berte of Bel Air, Maryland built a giant snowman and rigged it with a flamethrower inside! Link

Becci Lomax of Plymouth, England encountered a baby duckling that was going to be put down because of a lame leg. She took the duck in and nursed it back to health. As Lomax gave the duck, now named Ming-Ming, a dose of physical therapy every day, her 4-year-old son Finlay, who was born with [...]