The Daily Drift

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Today in History

1617 
The Treaty of Stolbovo ends the occupation of Northern Russia by Swedish troops.
1734
The Russians take Danzig (Gdansk) in Poland.
1788
Connecticut becomes the 5th state.
1796
Napoleon Bonaparte marries Josephine de Beauharnais in Paris, France.
1812
Swedish Pomerania is seized by Napoleon.
1820 
Congress passes the Land Act, paving the way for westward expansion.
1839 
The French Academy of Science announces the Daguerreotype photo process.
1841
The rebel slaves who seized a Spanish slave ship, the Amistad, in 1839 are freed by the Supreme Court despite Spanish demands for extradition.
1862
The first and last battle between the ironclads U.S.S. Monitor and C.S.S. Virginia ends in a draw.
1864 
General Ulysses Grant is appointed commander-in-chief of the Union forces.
1911
The funding for five new battleships is added to the British military defense budget.
1915 
The Germans take Grondno on the Eastern Front.
1916 
Mexican bandit Pancho Villa leads 1,500 horsemen on a raid of Columbus, N.M. killing 17 U.S. soldiers and citizens.
1932 
Eamon De Valera is elected president of the Irish Free State and pledges to abolish all loyalty to the British Crown.
1936 
The German press warns that all Jews who vote in the upcoming elections will be arrested.
1939
Czech President Emil Hacha ousts pro-German Joseph Tiso as the Premier of Slovakia in order to preserve Czech unity.
1940
Britain frees captured Italian coal ships on the eve of German Foreign Minister, Ribbentrop's visit to Rome.
1956
British authorities arrest and deport Archbishop Makarios from Cyprus. He is accused of supporting terrorists.
1957
Egyptian leader Nasser bars U.N. plans to share the tolls for the use of the Suez Canal.
1959
The Barbie doll is unveiled at a toy fair in New York City.
1964
The first Ford Mustang rolls off the Ford assembly line.
1967 
Svetlana Alliluyeva, Josef Stalin's daughter defects to the United States.
1968 
General William Westmoreland asks for 206,000 more troops in Vietnam.
1975 
Iraq launches an offensive against the rebellious Kurds.
1986 
Navy divers find the crew compartment of the space shuttle Challenger along with the remains of the astronauts.

'Responsible' Gun Owner Kills Iraqi Newlywed Taking Pictures Of Snow

by Susie Madrak 

If I could just take off the snark suit for a moment: You'd think, at some point, I'd get numb to these "responsible gun owner" stories. But I don't. Even more than the tragic toddler and baby shootings, though, these stories about immigrants who left their countries and came all this way for a better life -- those are the ones that really get me. Because it feels like we, as a nation -- we just failed them.

Dallas police said a man was fatally shot while he was outside taking pictures of the snow early Thursday.
Officers responded to a shooting call in the 9900 block of Walnut Street at about 12:30 a.m. Thursday and found 36-year-old Ahmed Al-Jumaili, who police said had suffered a gunshot wound.
Witnesses told police that a group of men was randomly firing a gun. Police said Al-Jumaili was in a nearby parking lot taking pictures of the snow when he was shot.
Al-Jumaili was transported to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital where he died from his injuries, according to Dallas Police Department spokeswoman Monica Cordova.
[...] Al-Jumaili's family told NBC 5 that he was a newlywed who arrived in the United States from his native Iraq 20 days before the shooting. They said he had never seen snow before.
"He just bought a car," Al-Jumaili's father-in-law Mohammed Al Taae said. "[He was] trying to find a decent job to start his life."

UPDATE: Police are investigating this now as a possible hate crime.

Tomorrowland

How Silicon Valley Shapes Our Future

by Thomas Schulz

In the Silicon Valley, a new elite is forming that wants to determine not only what we consume, but also the way we live. They want to change the world, but they don't want to accept any rules. Do they need to be reined in?  More...

Acrobatica Infinita Circus

It’s Like Cirque du Soleil for Geeks

The Acrobatica Infinita Circus is unlike any other. It’s designed to appeal to geeks by combining the wonderful world of cosplay with top-tier acrobatic performance. Each member brings unique skills that let you see Sailor Moon spin hoops and Kirk and Spock bend around each other in ways you’d never imagine. Check out this video demonstrating your favorite characters performing physical feats you’ve never seen them do on the screen.

(Video Link)

Hot Bedroom Tips for Long-Married Women

(Gemma Correll)Ladies, do you want to drive your man crazy? Mission accomplished!
Oh, you want "crazy in bed"? That's different. Sometimes. Anyway, cartoonist Gemma Correll has you covered with tips and tricks for bringing back that old spark that you had when you first got married.

From "Bad" to "Good"

Experimental drug turns ‘bad’ white fat into ‘good’ brown-like fat

An experimental drug causes loss of weight and fat in mice, a new study has found. The study results will be presented Friday at the Endocrine Society’s 97th annual meeting […]

Man Finds Hidden Message Inside His Cereal Box

Stephane Gaudette, a history teacher in Timmins, Ontario, Canada recently got more than he bargained for when he opened a box of Frosted Flakes at the breakfast table with his children. What he found inside the box on the plastic bag containing the cereal was a message written in black marker and dated December 4, 2014. It read:

"This is the very last bag of Canadian cereal for the Canadian market from Kellogg's London, Ontario Plant."

Beneath the message were the signatures of three men. The message writers were dealing with an era of their lives that had come to an end. The Kellogg's factory for which they worked was closed on December 21, 2014 after being in operation for 107 years. Mike Cascadden, the man behind one of the signatures under the message, had the idea to write it because he said the factory was "in his DNA." Cascadden told the London Free Press that his family had spent a combined 184 years of their working lives at the plant: 30 years for his grandfather, 38 years for his father, 32 years for his aunt, 20 years for his son and 24 years himself.
Gaudette didn't take Cascadden's message lightly. He recognized its significance in the history of London, Ontario. Gaudette said,  

“It’s kind of ironic it falls into the hands of a high school history teacher. It's a great history lesson.”

 See a video and read more about Gaudette's find, including the fate of both the box and the factory, at the London Free Press.

Garbage Collectors Spill Their Secrets

Trash collection is one of those luxuries many of us take for granted- we put the trash out on the specified day and let the collectors come and haul it away in their big, stinky trucks, knowing the whole process will repeat on a weekly basis.
And yet we know so little about those valiant folks who usher our waste off to its final resting place- do they hold it against us when we call them garbage men/women, and how do they feel about picking up our trash?
According to the dozens of professionals interviewed for 14 Behind-The-Scenes Secrets of Garbage Collectors calling them garbage men/women is just fine, and most truly enjoy their dirty job. So what do they hate? Poor quality trash bags and the autumn leaf-pocalypse.
Read more secrets of garbage collectors over at mental_floss

Remembering a Crime That You Didn’t Commit

Why do people remember and even testify to things that didn’t happen? We know that some confessions are coerced, and some “recovered memories” are actually implanted, but recent research shows that the power of suggestion can lead most people to truly believe false events, to the point that they fill in the details, whether those details make sense or not. In one experiment, over 70% of students participating in the study (none of whom had a criminal record) began to believe they’d committed a crime that was suggested to them.

These are troubling findings. They mimic, in the gentlest way, what can happen during police questioning: a small lie, told to shake loose the truth, rattles around in a suspect’s imagination and takes root. The psychologist Saul Kassin has studied interrogation and false confession for decades. He told me that Shaw and Porter’s experiment illustrates perfectly how social pressure can make innocent people admit to wrongdoing. “Think about the dilemma the suspect now faces: ‘I don’t have a memory for this, but the person who took care of me does. Therefore it must be true and I have to find a way to remember it.’ ”

There have been cases of people serving long sentences or even execution based on the power of suggestion. Read more about false confessions and research about it at The New Yorker.

DMCA abuser ordered to pay $25K to WordPress

Straight Pride UK, a homophobic organization, used a fraudulent copyright complaint to censor an article about them, but WordPress fought back.
When Straight Pride UK didn't bother to show up in court, the judge listened to WordPress's arguments about its DMCA abuse, and awarded them $25k (mostly for legal fees). It's not clear whether the US court's judgment will be enforceable against a crackpot British group, but the judgment will put easier-to-reach DMCA abusers on notice that they could pay tens of thousands for their fraud.

“The court finds the report correct, well-reasoned and thorough, and adopts it in every respect,” Judge Hamilton writes (pdf).
“It is Ordered and Adjudged that defendant Nick Steiner pay damages in the amount of $960.00 for Hotham’s work and time, $1,860.00 for time spent by Automattic’s employees, and $22,264.00 for Automattic’s attorney’s fees, for a total award of $25,084.00.”

WordPress Wins $25,000 From DMCA Takedown Abuser

A Little Math Quiz

 

Can you figure out what these equations are trying to say? I must admit there were a couple I couldn’t- not because I couldn’t do the math, but because I was unfamiliar with the saying it translates to. The more modern the saying, the more liable I am to slap my head when the answer is revealed. The answers are at Doghouse Diaries.

29 of the Funniest Signs Ever Seen on The Simpsons

When watching The Simpsons, pay close attention to any signs that appear in the background--even for just a second! There are many sly jokes hidden throughout the show. This is, after all, the show that hid an entire action movie in small scenes throughout several seasons. So check out this roundup of the best Simpsons signs by Imgur member GaryTheHippopotamus.

39 Words That are Often Incorrectly Used

Jeff Hader over at Inc. has compiled a list of words that are often used incorrectly, particularly in business communications. The list is full of good advice about usage of common words. For instance,

"Impact and affect (and effect)Many people (including until recently me) use impact when they should use affect. Impact doesn't mean to influence; impact means to strike, collide, or pack firmly.
Affect means to influence: "Impatient investors affected our rollout date."
And to make it more confusing, effect means to accomplish something: "The board effected a sweeping policy change."
How you correctly use effect or affect can be tricky. For example, a board can affect changes by influencing them and can effect changes by directly implementing them. Bottom line, use effect if you're making it happen, and affect if you're having an impact on something that someone else is trying to make happen.
As for nouns, effect is almost always correct: "Employee morale has had a negative effect on productivity." Affect refers to an emotional state, so unless you're a psychologist, you probably have little reason to use it.
So stop saying you'll "impact sales" or "impact the bottom line." Use affect.

Read about 38 other words that are commonly misused at Inc.

21 Abandoned Movie Sets That Everyone Can Visit

Millions of people are familiar with the view of a remote location in the Sahara desert, and some might not even be aware of it. For in Tunisia lie the remains of the planet Tatooine, the birthplace of Anakin Skywalker.
This set from the Star Wars franchise has been left intact at the request of the government of Tunisia. The location, once bustling with the excitement and fast pace of a film production crew and cast, is now abandoned and is disappearing at a rapid rate due to sand dunes swallowing the set whole. If nothing is done to stop the encroaching dunes, the days of this site being seen by fans from all over are numbered. But as of now, people still have a chance to visit the arrangement of 20 structures, located near the city of Tozeur.
This is hardly the only place in which sets from movie scenes sit abandoned. Learn about 21 other such sites here. 

The Man Who Shipped Himself to Australia

You hear occasional stories about people who have themselves delivered by the postal service, but Reg Spiers took it to the limit by shipping himself as cargo from England back home to Australia! An Olympic hopeful in the javelin throw, Spiers was stranded in England with no money and wanted to get home in time for his daughter’s birthday in 1964. Shipping a heavy package cost more than flying in a seat, but for a seat you have to buy a ticket, while cargo could be shipped COD. So he had a friend build him a box and he addressed himself to a fictional shoe company. And it wasn’t a non-stop flight.

"I got out of the box between London and Paris, dying for a leak," says Spiers. "I peed in a can and put it on top of the box. I was stretching my legs and all of a sudden, because it's a short distance, the plane began to descend. A little panicky I jumped back in the box, and the can full of pee was still sitting on top."
The French baggage handlers in Paris thought the can's unsavory contents had been left for them as an unkind joke by their counterparts in London.
"They were saying some terrible things about the English," says Spiers. "But they didn't even think of the box. So I kept on going."
The next stop on the long journey back to Australia was in Bombay, where baggage handlers parked Spiers - upside down - in the sun's glare for four hours.
"It was hot as hell in Bombay so I took off all my clothes," he says. "Wouldn't it have been funny if I'd got pinched then?"

Spiers made it home, and avoided paying for the shipment. Read how he did it, and don’t skip what happened to the athlete in later years, at BBC magazine.

Random Photos

19th century vagina sparks French lawsuit against Facebook

Paris court says it has jurisdiction to rule in a complaint over the social network's censorship policies 

by Amar Toor

A 149-year-old vagina is at the center of a legal dispute involving France, Facebook, and online censorship. As AFP reports, a Paris high court this week ruled that it has jurisdiction to decide a case brought by a French teacher whose Facebook account was suspended after he posted a photo of l'Origine du Monde — a famous 19th century painting of a woman's vagina. The man, whose name has not been disclosed, filed a complaint against Facebook in a French court, arguing that his rights to free speech had been compromised because the social network could not distinguish pornography from art. The painting in question, by Gustave Courbet, is on display at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.
In a January hearing, Facebook's lawyer argued that French courts have no jurisdiction in the case, because the man had agreed to the site's terms, which specifies that legal complaints against the company can only be heard in California courts. But Paris' high court disagreed, saying that the clause is "abusive" Thursday in a ruling that could set an important precedent for Facebook and other US tech companies. Immediately following the ruling, the plaintiff's lawyer described it as a "first victory won by David against Goliath."
"first victory won by David against Goliath."
"This decision will create jurisprudence for other social media and other internet giants who use their being headquartered abroad, mainly in the United States, to attempt to evade French law," Stephane Cottineau, the teacher's lawyer, said following the decision. The teacher is seeking €20,000 ($21,900) in damages, according to French daily Le Figaro.
Nudity and other explicit content are banned from Facebook, per the site's community standards, though the company's combination of algorithms and outsourced moderators have had trouble distinguishing art from smut in the past. "We aspire to respect people’s right to share content of personal importance," the policy states, "whether those are photos of a sculpture like Michelangelo's David or family photos of a child breastfeeding." The company tells AFP that it has noted the ruling and is considering a response.
The ruling also comes at a time when French authorities are looking to exercise greater control over social networking websites, following January's Charlie Hebdo jihadist attacks. After the attacks, French President François Hollande called for US companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter to be held accountable for hosting hate speech and other extremist content. Prime Minister Manuel Valls has also advocated for stronger surveillance of online social networks, as part of an effort to mitigate extremist propaganda.

Link Dump

15 Rules For Wearing Suits All Men Need to Know

Self-Driving Car Seems To Have Gone Rogue In SFO

Welcome aboard my little boat – Queen Mary 2

Why some iMessage texts are blue and some are green

Convey your social media reaction with a GIF image  

Better think twice before you prank a man’s prized car NSFW Language

The sequel to Adam Sandler and Bob Barker’s ‘Happy Gilmore’ brawl

Strange Ways People Have Died

A special gift for as grieving mom who lost her son

A bigger digger-upper

Design engaging images for your social media posts in under 30 seconds

Son singing to his mom with Alzheimer’s will put everything in perspective

Urine Trouble – A solution for drunken alley urinators

Postwar Rape

Were Americans As Bad as the Soviets?

by Klaus Wiegrefe

In the popular imagination, American GIs in postwar Germany were well-liked and well-behaved. But a new book claims that US soldiers raped up to 190,000 women at the end of World War II. Is there any truth to the controversial claim?  More...

Nigeria's Boko Haram pledges allegiance to Islamic State

Nigeria's militant Islamist group Boko Haram pledged allegiance on Saturday to Islamic State, which rules a self-declared caliphate in parts of Iraq and Syria, according to an audio clip posted online.

The symbolic move highlights increased coordination between jihadi movements across north Africa and the Middle East and prompted an appeal from Nigeria's government for greater international help in tackling the Boko Haram insurgency.

Boko Haram has killed thousands and kidnapped hundreds during its six-year campaign to carve out an Islamist state in northern Nigeria. In recent months it has increased cross-border raids into Cameroon, Chad and Niger.

"We announce our allegiance to the Caliph ... and will hear and obey in times of difficulty and prosperity, in hardship and ease," read an English language translation of the audio broadcast in Arabic that purported to be from the Nigerian militant group.
"We call upon Muslims everywhere to pledge allegiance to the Caliph," it read.
The pledge of allegiance was attributed to Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau.
The audio script identified the Caliph as Ibrahim ibn Awad ibn Ibrahim al-Awad al-Qurashi, who is better known as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of Islamic State and self-proclaimed caliph of the Muslim world.
‎ "(The audio) is confirming what we always thought. It's sad, it's bad," said Nigerian government spokesman Mike Omeri.
"It's why we were appealing to the international community ... Hopefully the world will wake up to the disaster unfolding here," he told Reuters.
On Saturday, four bomb blasts killed at least 50 people in the northeastern Nigerian city of Maiduguri in the worst attacks there since Boko Haram militants tried to seize the town in two major assaults earlier this year.
MIMICKING ISLAMIC STATE

Islamic State's Baghdadi has already accepted pledges of allegiance from other jihadist groups in the Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan and north Africa.

Analysts said Boko Haram's move came as no surprise.

"Boko Haram has followed a trend that only led (us) to anticipate the release of this audio, mimicking Islamic State propaganda and approach to military methods, and calling its fighters soldiers of the Caliphate," said Laith Alkhouri, director of the Middle East and North Africa research and jihadi threat intelligence at Flashpoint Partners.

"The Islamic State, unlike al Qaeda, did not seem to shun Shekau, it accepted his thuggish persona and lack of Islamic knowledge."

This month, Boko Haram released a video purporting to show it beheading two men, its first online posting using advanced graphics and editing techniques similar to footage from Islamic State.

"Boko Haram is now being elevated from a local jihadi group to an important arm of the Islamic State. With Boko Haram’s wide network in North Africa, the Islamic State’s projection of creating an Islamic Caliphate is gaining headway," said Rita Katz, director of SITE Intelligence Group.

"Furthermore, Islamic State’s infrastructure, resources and military capabilities will enable Boko Haram to expand its operations and control even faster in North Africa."

Police baffled as elderly man's home has been egged more than a hundred times in past year

An 85-year-old man's home in Euclid, Ohio, has become the target of mysterious egging attacks that began in March 2014 and haven't stopped. The continuous onslaught of eggs has baffled police, neighbors and local government officials who have tried and failed to identify the source of the attacks that have ruined the man's home and kept his family on edge. "The accuracy is phenomenal," Albert Clemens, Sr. said. "Because almost every time when it's nice weather and they launch five or six of these at a time, they almost invariably hit the front door." Clemens green two-story house sits on a corner plot. He and his wife bought the home as newlyweds about 60 years ago. Though his wife has since passed away, Clemens still lives there with his 49-year-old daughter and 51-year-old son. The house has been pelted with eggs several times a week, sometimes more than once a day, for the past year. The attacks always happen after dark and last around 10 minutes each. The family has been awoken as late as 2am by what sounds like the crack of a gunshot against the aluminum siding or front door.

Clemens and police believe the eggs are being launched from a block or two away. The siding on the front of Clemens' home is destroyed, splattered with dried egg residue that stripped off the paint. Other than a few rogue eggs that hit nearby homes, no other neighbors have been targeted. "Somebody is deeply, deeply angry at somebody in that household for some reason," Euclid Lt. Mitch Houser said. Winter offered a short respite for the family, as the egging became less frequent during the cold weather. But both Clemens and police anticipate the attacks picking back up as the snow and ice thaw. Euclid police have not taken the investigation lightly. They've spent a year doing undercover stakeouts, canvassing the neighborhood and even sending eggshells for testing. The department's entire community policing unit was dedicated to tracking down the eggers at one point. Officers respond quickly to every egging call at the home, which is less than a mile from the police station. Both Clemens and detectives are at a dead end when it comes to suspects. Clemens had suspicions about a young man across the street who confronted him a couple years ago and asked him to stop calling police about suspicious activity in the neighborhood. Clemens said that he had started calling police more often as he noticed more crime, mostly suspected drug activity.

Another neighbor Clemens suspected was ruled out when officers saw him standing outside as an attack occurred in the presence of police. Investigators have taken several different approaches to catching the eggers, including installing a surveillance camera on the house. Detectives even collected some eggshell samples and tested them in a crime lab. The eggs were traced back to a local Amish farm, but the trail ended there. Clemens says the culprits either have access to a large supply of eggs or are stealing them from businesses that throw them out when they go bad. Detectives have followed this thread, visiting local restaurants and businesses asking about missing eggs. They've also tried collecting fingerprints from eggshells, but Houser said that's an impossible task. When an egg breaks, it releases proteins that destroy DNA. Officers have gone door to door questioning neighbors and handing out fliers. Nobody has come forward with any tips. "The person or people who are doing it have remained very tight-lipped apparently," Houser said. "I would imagine it would be hard to keep a secret of something that had been done hundreds of times and for nobody to step forward to talk about it."

YouTube link.

The guilty parties don't appear to be intimidated by police interest in the case. An officer last year was taking a report when a barrage of eggs was launched at the house. One hit him in the foot. Houser said he's never seen this level of vandalism in his 20 years of police work. It's frustrated the whole department, which has dedicated hundreds of hours toward solving the egging mystery. "The man hours put into that investigation were huge and one of the reasons it's so frustrating that we don't have somebody right now that we can criminally charge," Houser said. Clemens says he used to clean up after each attack, but it became so frequent that he couldn't keep up. Police initially offered a $500 reward for information, but bumped it up to $1,000 after nobody came forward. That money is still up for grabs. "We're not going to let it go," Houser said. "We'll continue to put effort into it until we figure something out." Despite all the torment, Clemens said he'd never consider moving from his beloved home. "I like the neighborhood," Clemens said. "I like the city of Euclid. I would live and die in this house - but it's been kind of a nightmare."

Librarian charged with unlawfully entering homes said she was looking for books

A high school librarian in Grafton, North Dakota, has been charged with criminal trespass as part of an investigation into prescription drug thefts and unlawful entry into residences, according to a statement by Grafton Police on Wednesday. Kelly R. Kohler, 30, an employee of Grafton Public School, was charged with four counts of criminal trespass, a Class C felony. Each count carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and/or a $10,000 fine. She appeared in District Court in Walsh County on Tuesday and was released on a $10,000 bond.

The conditions of her release included that she not leave North Dakota and could have no contact with the victims of the crimes. Kohler admitted to police that she'd been in two homes because she wanted to locate the book "American Sniper," according to the affidavit. She said the children who lived there had allegedly stolen the book, though police found no record of the children checking out the book. No school officials were available to comment. Kohler allegedly visited three homes without permission from homeowners, according to the affidavit.
Grafton resident Evelyn Allensworth told police that on Feb. 20 that Doris Dahlgren, her cleaning lady, had spotted someone inside her home, looking through the kitchen cupboards. The woman told Dahlgren she was "looking for a library book," and after Dahlgren pushed her for more information, she left. A woman who had "similar characteristics" to Kohler was spotted again four days later at Ed Boura's residence, where she had entered the home and left just as Boura was returning, he told police. Boura saw her black Chevrolet SUV, which had a license plate beginning with "JON," parked in the driveway and said he believed it was a friend of his son's.
But once he entered the house, the vehicle left, and he noticed that his oxycodone and temazepam was missing, he told police. Resident Louis Johnson told police he'd seen Kohler in a house belonging to resident Jaci Niemann on two different occasions from Feb. 23 to 27. When Johnson confronted Kohler, she'd told him she was looking for "a book or video" and knew Niemann. Johnson said Kohler admitted she'd been in the house before and that she was a librarian, according to the affidavit. The charges resulted from a joint investigation by the police department and the Walsh County Sheriff's Office since early February. The investigation is ongoing.

Ziggy

Welcome to the Body Farm

Beyond the border of an ordinary parking lot lies the most cutting-edge graveyard in the world … and a hands-on lab for cops and forensic anthropologists.
It was Valentine's Day when the gravediggers finished. The crew stood there waiting, their long-sleeved shirts drenched from a mixture of cold rain and sweat. At their feet were the holes—four of them—dug deep into the heavy clay. Nearby, young women and men in rubber gloves and medical gowns prepared to haul the cadavers down the hill.
Picking their way through the barren woodland, they carried 10 bodies to the burial site. Into the first ditch, the widest, they placed six corpses. In the second, they arranged three more. Just one body went into the third grave. The last was left empty. Then the gravediggers picked up their shovels and filled the holes.
Nicknamed “the body farm,” the University of Tennessee’s Forensic Anthropology Center is the oldest and most established of only four such facilities in the country. Since its inception in the early ’80s, its three wooded acres have been rife with corpses: bodies stuffed inside cars, enshrouded in plastic, rotting in shallow graves. Among them, grad students dutifully clock hours combing corpses for insects, while law enforcement agents undergo crime-scene training exercises.
It’s here, using donated cadavers, that scientists have pioneered some of the most innovative techniques in forensic science, particularly practices that help investigators pinpoint time of death—that linchpin of criminal cases that so often determines whether a killer is charged or set free. “The research we do at the facility is predominantly based on decomposition,” says center director Dawnie Steadman, “but we’re expanding that tremendously.” Now, as the bodies rest in those four anonymous graves, the center is primed to undertake a cutting-edge three-year experiment that may help scientists uncover clandestine burial sites in the world’s most dangerous conflict zones. With the help of laser technology, the reach of the body farm is about to grow exponentially, and the findings will shed light on some of history’s most heinous unsolved crimes.

Netorama has more.

This Kitchen Island Has an Aquarium Inside of It

Dutch designer Robert Kolenik developed this unique kitchen island. It has an enormous aquarium right below a cooking station, which I suppose makes very fresh fish a dining possibility. If I understand it correctly, the cabinets that hold the water pipes and range have mirrored walls, creating the impression that the aquarium is even larger than it appears.

You can see more photos at Contemporist.

Cuttlefish Hypnotize Their Prey with Tripping Light Shows

From Gizmodo comes this fascinating National Geographic video about cuttlefish. These deadly predators can project light sequences over the surface of their bodies. This ability can be used for camouflage to hide from enemies, but also to capture the attention of prey. Certain light sequences hypnotize other sea creatures, giving the cuttlefish time to get close enough to snatch them with projectile tentacles.

(Video Link) 

They're like swimming techno dance clubs that hunt and kill you.

Mystery over whether snake really stole sausage straight from a barbecue

Australian snake catcher Geoff Delooze has seen some things in his time, but never a snake with a sausage.

So when a friend mentioned an eastern brown snake crashing a barbecue and stealing a sausage, he didn’t quite believe him. Then he saw the photo.
‘‘This brown snake apparently came bolting out, took the sausage in front of a group of people, and disappeared back into the bush,’’ says Geoff, from Native and Feral Pest Management. ‘‘It was like it had done it before.’’
The barbecue was held at the foot of the Blue Mountains in New South Wales, where campers might expect the odd brush with a snake. Geoff says the photo came from a friend of a friend. However, an expert from the Office of Environment has his doubts. He thinks the snake might have been dead and set up for the shot.

Ice fishermen surprised to catch a duck

A pair of Pittsburgh ice fisherman got quite a surprise on the end of their line recently.

Nicholas Colangelo, Fred Christensen, and Luke Wholey were ice fishing a couple hours north of Pittsburgh when they reeled in the red-breasted merganser duck. The pair were able to hand line the bird in, and then untangle it from the line and hook.
“My jaw hit the floor when it came out of the ice hole,” Colangelo said. Mergansers are common on Pennsylvania rivers and lakes and usually eat fish, which is what they were using as bait.

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They are diving birds and stay under the water for about five-minutes looking for food. After a quick photo, the bird was released unharmed. Colangelo says it’s the first time they have ever caught a duck while fishing.

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