Category: Oddities

That is one rare bird: Black penguin suffers from ‘one in a zillion mutation’

Posted by Nexus – 10/03/2010

[via dailymail.co.uk]

Some birds just like to stand out from the crowd.

And this all-black penguin on the South Atlantic island of Fortuna Bay is a ‘one in a zillion’ rarity experts say.

The bird on the South Georgian island, about 860 miles off the Falklands, is thought to suffer from a condition known as melanism, a mutation that turned it black.

After being shown the pictures by National Geographic magazine, Dr Allan Baker, of the University of Toronto, described them as ‘astonishing’.

Dark: The black penguin stands out from the crowd and has been hailed as 'astonishing'

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Wall-E Case Mod (56k warning)

Posted by Nexus – 05/03/2010

[via picsroll.com]

Warning: many pictures.

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Vox Populi

Posted by Nexus – 01/03/2010

[via futilitycloset.com]

In 1938, a group of freshmen at the University of Michigan circulated a petition asking that a psychology lecture be rescheduled to avoid a conflict with a football game. The upperclassmen who signed it read the full text in the undergraduate newspaper the following day:

We, the undersigned, hereby petition that the lecture in Psychology 2 be changed from Saturday to Wednesday afternoon. By signing this document without reading it we cheerfully disqualify ourselves as candidates for any degree conferred by this university. We furthermore declare that the freshmen are our superiors in wit and wisdom, and that our stupidity is surpassed only by the mental lethargy of the underpaid faculty that teaches us.

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Barren

Posted by Nexus – 21/02/2010

[via futilitycloset.com]

Trinity College provost John Pentland Mahaffy was arguing with a women’s rights advocate when she asked him, “What is the difference between man and woman?”

He considered and said, “Madam, I can’t conceive.”

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In a Word

Posted by Nexus – 21/02/2010

[via futilitycloset.com]

kerdomeletia
n. an excessive desire for material wealth

lucrifaction
n. the process of becoming wealthy

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Hubble Detects Mysterious Spaceship-Shaped Object Traveling at 11,000MPH

Posted by Nexus – 03/02/2010

[via gizmodo.com]

Click on image for full-size picture (2835x1923)

Hubble has discovered a mysterious X-shaped object travelling at 11,000mph. NASA says that P/2010-A2 may be a comet, product of the collision between two asteroids. Or a Klingon Bird of Prey. Either way, UCLA investigator David Jewitt is excited:

“This is quite different from the smooth dust envelopes of normal comets. The filaments are made of dust and gravel, presumably recently thrown out of the nucleus. Some are swept back by radiation pressure from sunlight to create straight dust streaks. Embedded in the filaments are co-moving blobs of dust that likely originated from tiny unseen parent bodies.”

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No Pants Day 2010

Posted by Nexus – 21/01/2010

[via disinfo.com]

A frosty winter weekend offered a perfect chance for DC Metro riders to observe what has become an annual ritual of shedding their pants on the subway. No Pants Day began as a prank by a few riders in 2002 and has developed a following of thousands of people in over 40 cities worldwide.

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There’s A “Dark Disk of Material” Hovering Out In Space

Posted by Nexus – 21/01/2010

io9.com]

Image by Nico Camargo and courtesy www.citizensky.org. Used under Creative Commons license.

Some kind of obstruction is blocking our view of Epsilon Aurigae, a star in the constellation Auriga. Its exact nature is unknown — but astronomers say that if you’ve got a telescope, you could help them figure it out.

Epsilon Aurigae is a binary system, or a star locked in a pattern of mutual orbit with a second body. It lies in the constellation Auriga, about two thousand light-years away from Earth. We like this star, because it gives us the chance to shout out to some old-school Green Day.

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Volt Meter Clock

Posted by Nexus – 20/01/2010

[via hackedgadgets.com]

I was shocked when I saw this Volt Meter Style Clock, it is close to a design that is sitting on my bench right now! My design should be done in 2 or 3 weeks. I love the minimal parts count of this project, since it is battery powered there is no power regulation section and that helps keep the circuit nice and simple. If you want to make your own code and schematics are available.

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Floor collapses at Weight Watchers meeting

Posted by Nexus – 15/01/2010

[via timesonline.co.uk]

A floor collapsed beneath a group of about 20 members of Weight Watchers as they gathered to compare how many pounds they had shed over Christmas.

Members of the weight-loss club were lining up to compare readings on the scales when they heard a bang as the floor came away from the walls of their meeting room in Växjö in southern Sweden.

“We suddenly heard a huge thud – we almost thought it was an earthquake and everything flew up in the air. The floor collapsed in one corner of the room and along the walls,” one of the those present told the Smålandsposten newspaper.

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