-- 2007 World Eskimo-Indian Olympics. The obvious thing to do when it's a snow storm outside and you're bored.

"What's the difference between a paper plane and a paper space plane? Altitude! About 125,000 feet to be precise:

The balloon, filled with helium gas and carrying a load of paper planes, took 2.6 hours to rise to 37,339 metres (that's at the edge of space!), where it burst and took only 40 minutes to fall back to earth. It landed in a forest just south east of Berlin, where our team had to use a very long pole to retrieve the payload from the top of a tree.

The hand-crafted paper planes with their precious cargo of Samsung SD memory cards were released at around 36,3500 metres and could land anywhere..."

-- Awesome! via www.wonderhowto.com

“Researchers in Germany have developed the world's thinnest "pico" video projector. The prototype device contains an array of carefully shaped microlenses, each with its own miniature liquid-crystal display (LCD). The device is just six millimeters thick, but it produces images that are 10 times brighter than would normally be possible with such a small device.

Handheld pico projectors can be used to display movies, maps, or presentations on nearby surfaces. But the projections can be difficult to view in direct sunlight because the light source isn't very powerful. The new lens system is small enough to be incorporated into a slim smart phone.

Increasing the brightness of a projection normally means increasing the area of the light source used, says Marcel Sieler, a researcher at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering in Germany. Sieler was involved with developing the prototype. But to increase the area in this way requires a thicker lens to focus the larger image. "As the area of the light source increases, so does the volume of the lens," says Sieler. The result is a much bigger projector…”

READ HERE

“Dumb, for lack of a better word, is bad. Dumb is wrong, dumb doesn't work. But dumb, ladies and gentlemen, is spreading. And some of the dumb are trying to make being dumb profitable.

Fountain plunging idiot Cathy Cruz Marrero is suing the mall that allowed her to fall into its fountain when she was walking while texting. She might also sue the security guards that laughed at the video of her falling into the fountain while texting, because humans in mall security uniforms shouldn't be permitted to laugh at morons.

A moron from New York City is suing a Las Vegas escort service for almost $2 million. This is the aftermath of a very dumb phone call he placed to police complaining that his illegal prostitute ripped him off by having illegal sex with him, but not staying for the full three hours for which he paid. His outrage was understandable. Sure, he got the sex, but he paid good money to watch the hooker who just blew him sit around a shitty hotel bored out of her mind and texting people about the guy with the weird dick that looks like a mini-croissant who is staring right at her. Missing out on that? No wonder he called the cops and got himself in deep shit!

The biggest payday may be coming to a man, let's call him King Moron, who happens to be living in a trailer park in Key West, Florida. He can't spell fucking anything, so he's suing WikiLeaks, and its creepoid-in-chief Julian Assange, for an assortment of grievances including: "indangered the PLAINTIFF as well as every person of the United States; and the entire planet," "suffered serious personan injury," and a "worsening" of "hyper tention." King Moron also has a "fear of being on the brink of Nucliar WAR." He's asking for 150 million "dollors" in damages…”

-- Satire. Truth. Hilarious. Sad. You decide.

READ HERE

SEE HERE

SEE HERE

-- A mere seven hundred light years from Earth, in the constellation Aquarius, a sun-like star is dying. Its last few thousand years have produced the Helix Nebula (NGC 7293), a well studied and nearby example of a Planetary Nebula, typical of this final phase of stellar evolution. A total of 10 hours of exposure time have gone in to creating this remarkably deep view of the nebula. It shows details of the Helix's brighter inner region, about 3 light-years across, but also follows fainter outer halo features that give the nebula a span of well over six light-years. The white dot at the Helix's center is this Planetary Nebula's hot, central star. A simple looking nebula at first glance, the Helix is now understood to have a surprisingly complex geometry.

-- via Current

“A stained glass window in a small church has caused a sensation in France. Unveiled in 1941, it depicts Adolf Hitler executing a saint who symbolizes the Jewish people. Local priests have praised the work as a brave act of resistance against the Nazi occupiers.

In the popular imagination, the French Resistance against the Nazi occupation of France is associated with heroic acts of guerrilla warfare, such as blowing up bridges or derailing trains. But in one small town near Paris, two artist brothers also resisted the occupation in their own quiet way -- with a politically charged stained-glass window.

Local historians in the town of Montgeron have rediscovered a stained-glass church window that criticizes the Nazi occupation by depicting Adolf Hitler as an executioner. The dictator is shown in the act of killing St. James, who was one of Jesus' 12 apostles.

Although Hitler's distinctive hairstyle can easily be recognized in the portrait, his trademark moustache has been left out. "The glassmakers hid it behind his arm, to avoid any trouble," local priest Dominique Guérin told the French newspaper Le Parisien…”

READ HERE

"289 is the world record of days without any government in a country, currently owned by Iraq. On March 30th 2011, Belgium will beat it!"

-- lerecorddumonde.be is a website dedicated solely to counting the days that Belgium has been operating without a government, a number that could soon dethrone Iraq from its "champion" position. I do not know if this is commendable that they held it together without an official government for so long, or criticized for their failure at forming one, - probably both. Either way, it is something significant. If you're interested and would like to learn more, especially about the fermenting dissatisfaction among the Belgian population, - PRI’s The World - Still No Government in Belgium

READ HERE

-- I too want a tree-cat!!!

-- Whoo! This is beyond awesome. Also check out their carbon fiber cellos! Wow Wow Wee Waa!

-- Video of a sea bed hunter who can hold his breath for up to 5 minutes at a time while descending as deep as 20 meters to the ocean floor to hunt for fish.