Bookish people may not be known for their social skills, but a crop of social-networking Web sites aimed at bibliophiles are allowing readers to connect with the page — and with each other — in a brand new “virtual” environment.

A 4-ton elephant goes AWOL during a polo match in Sri Lanka. Local trainers decide to calm it down…by throwing rocks at it. Another incident after the jump.
 

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Instead of using a traditional 2-dimensional display surface, Shade Pixel renders information using a deformable skin surface which provides a 3-dimensional texture to its output.

The U.S. atomic bomb was such a secret, scientists and engineers sometimes talked in code. It was the Manhattan Project, not “The Atomic Bomb Project.” Plutonium was referred to as “copper,” and the bomb itself as “the gadget.”
But at the same time, scientists and engineers were furiously filing secret patent applications that described many [...]

Toronto man has been the first to get an eyeball tattoo. Basically, he has turned the whites of his eyes blue.

 
You won’t be able to fully understand this post until you get past the jump.  The worm bridge is an amazing piece of photography.

In this day of MP3s, turntables have been given a modern update to keep up with the times while retaining that aura from the past. The Vestax Guber CM-02 USB Turntable is drop dead gorgeous, allowing you to convert all your old favorites from vinyl into MP3 format if you haven’t yet done so already. [...]

The kid at the spelling bee had never heard of the word, but neither had I. It is pretty funny! Try to use “sardoodledom” in a sentence sometime this week.

Young people who continue to smoke after a heart attack are three times more likely to have future heart problems than survivors who kick the habit, Greek researchers said on Saturday.
People who are 35 or younger who keep smoking are far more prone to die from a heart-related event, have a repeat heart attack or [...]

When we hear the phrase “How Web standards and proper design can affect the ranking and conversion of pages on your site,” we always think of another phrase, “funky fresh beat.” This is because we are woefully out of touch with modern hip-hop.
 

The NY Times has an article about how a younger generation of news readers now focus on sharing the news, rather than just consuming it. Mathew Ingram highlights the key sentence in the article, from a college student: “If the news is that important, it will find me.” Very few mainstream publications have grasped [...]

 
If an elevator stretching from Earth into space could ever be built, it could slash the cost of space travel. But a controversial new study suggests that building and maintaining one would be an even bigger challenge than previously thought, because it would need to include built-in thrusters to stabilize itself against dangerous vibrations.
Photos and [...]

This strange looking contraption is a battery powered vehicle. It putters around a New York art gallery looking like…art. What’s interesting about it is the driver or drivers. It’s course is directed and steered entirely by flies. The plastic bubble is filled with large houseflies, and the food and water that nourishes them. [...]

An MIT and Columbia University team has successfully tested a novel reactor that could chart a new path toward nuclear fusion, which could become a safe, reliable and nearly limitless source of energy.

The TreePee
Do you like camping but can’t stand wallowing in the dirt with all those bugs and worms? Then the Treepee is just for you. Hang it from the nearest sturdy tree, stake it down on all four corners, and suddenly you have yourself a floating paradise in the wilderness.
Other designs after the [...]

Regarded as one of the world’s leading cartoonists, Tex Avery crafts this brilliantly scripted cartoon about the future of television in 1953.
 

Researchers have made sheets of high-performance silicon circuits that can bend, fold, and even stretch around complex shapes.

Hackers took over an Indonesian government website for several hours to protest against a new law banning online pornography, the information ministry said.
The protesters posted a message on the ministry of information website challenging it to “prove that the law was not drafted to cover the government’s stupidity.”

Proposals from Belgian government officials would give teenagers the right to assisted suicide and parents of terminally ill children the right to have their children euthanized. The plans by members of Belgium’s coalition government call for the extension of rules allowing physicians to perform euthanasia on terminally ill people suffering “constant [...]

A recent poll of about 12,000 US business decision-makers by market researcher CoreBrand found that Microsoft’s brand power has taken a dive over the past four years. According to the study, Microsoft dropped from number 12 in the ranking of the most powerful US company brands in 2004 to number 59 last year. In 1996, [...]

3-D Billboard Whiskey Ad Campaign
Ad campaigns give us an interesting glimpse into our culture, a way of taking the temperature of our creative spirit. The following ads clearly show us that the imaginations of people at the ad agencies work without any real limits.
 

 
The Russian-Built SKU
At first this looks like an impressive vehicle, but you can see some of the obvious deficiencies after the jump.
 

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This is a short clip from “The Job,” a comedy filmed by Screaming Frog Productions.

The German government has had to bail out state-owned banks with taxpayers’ money after their managements recklessly gambled away billions on subprime investments. But if a state-owned bank were to go under, the consequences could be disastrous for the whole economy.

See more funny videos at CollegeHumor
In case you were wondering what kind of distortions your face goes through when someone slaps you, well, you’re in luck.