It's far from being the first Star Wars-branded nutcracker to come from Lucasfilm and Disney's marketing machine. But there's a good chance that even casual Star Wars fans won't mind having this screw-type nut destroyer sitting somewhere in this kitchen.

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Problem: Too many chickens don't have room to roam around and be happy. Solution: Strap virtual reality headsets onto said chickens so they think they're free-range. No seriously, an assistant professor at Iowa State University seems to think this is a good idea, but he has to be kidding. Right? RIGHT?!

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Hot, cold or just plain bad, throughout history, people have used blood as a metaphor to describe their changing moods. One aspect of blood, however, is immutable – its type. Since each blood type carries unique characteristics that can wreak havoc in the wrong body, it is vitally important to know yours and its attributes.

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First time accepted submitter registrations_suck (1075251) writes in with news about the dismantling of the HAARP project. The U.S. Air Force gave official notice to Congress Wednesday that it intends to dismantle the $300 million High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program in Gakona this summer. The shutdown of HAARP, a project created by the late Sen. Ted Stevens when he wielded great control over the U.S. defense budget, will start after a final research experiment takes place in mid-June, the Air Force said in a letter to Congress Tuesday. While the University of Alaska has expressed interest in taking over the research site, which is off the Tok Cutoff, in an area where black spruce was cleared a quarter-century ago for the Air Force Backscatter radar project that was never completed. But the school has not volunteered to pay $5 million a year to run HAARP. Responding to questions from Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski during a Senate hearing Wednesday, David Walker, deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force for Science, Technology and Engineering, said this is 'not an area that we have any need for in the future' and it would not be a good use of Air Force research funds to keep HAARP going. 'We're moving on to other ways of managing the ionosphere, which the HAARP was really designed to do,' he said. 'To inject energy into the ionosphere to be able to actually control it. But that work has been completed.' Comments of that sort have given rise to endless conspiracy theories, portraying HAARP as a super weapon capable of mind control or weather control, with enough juice to trigger hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

guises (2423402) writes "The oldest known orca has recently been spotted off western Canada at an age of 103. A female nicknamed 'granny,' photos exist of her from the 1930s, where she can be identified by her distinctive saddle patch. The news has prompted calls for another evaluation of marine mammals in captivity — orcas in captivity usually don't live beyond their 20s."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An important part of every dog’s training is learning how to wait.  Here three dogs are being taught to wait until they are told they can have their treat – a cold sausage.

The dogs patiently wait until permission is given – but what happens next will have you laughing out loud.  Little Elmo, a Staffy and Chihuahua mix isn’t happy with his allotment.

KentuckyFC (1144503) writes "There is growing evidence that the center of the Milky Way contains a mysterious object some 4 million times more massive than the Sun. Many astronomers believe that this object, called Sagittarius A*, is a supermassive black hole that was crucial in the galaxy's birth and formation. The thinking is that about 100 million years after the Big Bang, this supermassive object attracted the gas and dust that eventually became the Milky Way. But there is a problem with this theory--100 million years is not long enough for a black hole to grow so big. The alternative explanation is that Sagittarius A* is a wormhole that connects the Milky Way to another region of the universe or even a another multiverse. Cosmologists have long known that wormholes could have formed in the instants after the Big Bang and that these objects would have been preserved during inflation to appear today as supermassive objects hidden behind an event horizon, like black holes. It's easy to imagine that it would be impossible to tell these objects apart. But astronomers have now worked out that wormholes are smaller than black holes and so bend light from an object orbiting close to them, such as a plasma cloud, in a unique way that reveals their presence. They've even simulated what such a wormhole will look like. No telescope is yet capable of resolving images like these but that is set to change too. An infrared instrument called GRAVITY is currently being prepared for the Very Large Telescope Interferometer in Chile and should be in a position to spot the signature of a wormhole, if it is there, in the next few years."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sometimes, you need the tool that's best suited to the job in hand. And for George R. R. Martin, that means using an archaic word processor—WordStar 4.0, running on DOS, no less—to write Game of Thrones. He explained why to Conan last night.

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mikasoranocosplay:

WHAT THE FUCK!!

Marasmius haematocephalus

Panus fasciatus

Leratiomyces sp. / Found in Booyong Reserve, Booyong, NSW

Mycena chlorophos

Cyptotrama aspratum or Gold tuft

Schizophyllum commune

Hairy mycena

White Mycena

Mauve splitting waxcap

Marasmius sp. / Marasmius haematocephalus

panus lecomtei

To think any one of these lifeforms exists in our galaxy, let alone on our planet, simply boggles the mind. Photographer Steve Axford lives and works in the Northern Rivers area of New South Wales in Australia where he spends his time documenting the living world around him, often traveling to remote locations to seek out rare animals, plants, and even people. But it’s his work tracking down some of the world’s strangest and brilliantly diverse mushrooms and other fungi that has resulted in an audience of online followers who stalk his work on Flickr and SmugMug to see what he’s captured next.

Axford shares via email that most of the mushrooms seen here were photographed around his home and are sub-tropical fungi, but many were also taken in Victoria and Tasmania and are classified as temperate fungi. The temperate fungi are well-known and documented, but the tropical species are much less known and some may have never been photographed before. Mushrooms like the Hairy Mycena and the blue leratiomyces have most likely never been found on the Australian mainland before, and have certainly never been photographed in an artistic way as you’re seeing here.

It was painfully difficult not to include more of Axford’s photography here, so I urge you to explore further. All photos courtesy the photographer. (via Awkward Situationist)

Submitter Wumper of Carpe Jugulum on Saurfang (US-A) was taking his Baby Blizzard Bear out for his daily constitutional when they happened to pass a row of guardian druids practicing their meditation. Now, Wumper is beginning to think that his bear might have developed ambitions far above his abilities. Anyone want to tell this little guy that he doesn't have the raw physicality necessary to be a heroic tank? I'd do it, but my last time doing something like this was when I tried to tell Russell Wilson that he wasn't tall enough to be a starting NFL quarterback, and we all know how that went.

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[Photograph: Brys Stephens]

Unlike most Southern cookbooks, Brys Stephens's book, The New Southern Table, does not include a recipe for slow-cooked collard greens. Instead, he prefers to cook the hearty green more quickly with boldly flavored ingredients, or to use it as a creative substitute for other greens, like these lamb-stuffed collards. In it, blanched collard greens are treated like grape leaves and wrapped around a seasoned lamb and bulgur mixture. The wraps are baked in an easy tomato sauce and a generous pour of white wine, which penetrates and flavors the gently cooked greens.

Why I picked this recipe: Despite my affinity for all things lamb and leafy greens, I hadn't thought to combine the two in this way.

What worked: Stephens is smart to use the same skillet to sauté the lamb and build the sauce; the tomatoes will deglaze the pan and carry the caramelized bits from the lamb. The result is a cohesive and comforting dish.

What didn't: No problems here.

Suggested tweaks: You could substitute ground beef or ground dark turkey meat for the lamb if you must. Large curly kale leaves would work in place of the collards. If you need to make the dish gluten-free, you could probably use quinoa or millet instead of the bulgur.

As always with our Cook the Book feature, we have five (5) copies of The New Southern Table to give away this week.

Get the Recipe!

Imogen Foulkes has had a sneak preview of the jewels, in all kinds of shapes and colours, at Geneva's famous spring jewellery collections.

The NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory has found a strange coronal hole in the Sun, "almost square in its shape." I don't know about you, but this square phenomenon freaks me out a bit. It looks like the Sun is some kind of fake LED disco ball and one panel is failing. Here's the video.

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   Германските хеви/пауър метъл ветерани RAGE обявиха датите за юбилейното турне по повод 30-годишнината на бандата. Сред тях присъства и концерт в

Over the years, people have used the post office and related services to send some unusual things to each other. Here are some of the weirdest, including some you can still send today!

walterbyrd (182728) writes in with news about a new study from Harvard School of Public Health that links two widely used neonicotinoids to Colony Collapse Disorder. "Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), or the widespread population loss of honeybees, may have been caused by the use of neonicotinoids, according to a new study out of Harvard University. Neonicotinoids are a class of pesticides, chemically similar to nicotine. They were first developed for agricultural use in the 1980's by petroleum giant Shell. The pesticides were refined by Bayer the following decade. Two of these chemicals are now believed to be the cause of CCD, according to the new study from the School of Public Health at the university. This study replicated their own research performed in 2012."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

mdsolar (1045926) writes in about a Norwegian team who believe the have an explanation about the unique distribution of HIV in Africa. "While around the world a vast majority of AIDS victims are men, Africa has long been the glaring exception: Nearly 60 percent are women. And while there are many theories, no one has been able to prove one. In a modest public health clinic behind a gas station here in South Africa's rural KwaZulu/Natal Province, a team of Norwegian infectious disease specialists think they may have found a new explanation. It is far too soon to say whether they are right. But even skeptics say the explanation is biologically plausible. And if it is proved correct, a low-cost solution has the potential to prevent thousands of infections every year. The Norwegian team believes that African women are more vulnerable to H.I.V. because of a chronic, undiagnosed parasitic disease: genital schistosomiasis (pronounced shis-to-so-MY-a-sis), often nicknamed 'schisto.' The disease, also known as bilharzia and snail fever, is caused by parasitic worms picked up in infested river water. It is marked by fragile sores in the far reaches of the vaginal canal that may serve as entry points for H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS. Dr. Eyrun F. Kjetland, who leads the Otimati team, says that it is more common than syphilis or herpes, which can also open the way for H.I.V."

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"Idealism is what precedes experience; cynicism is what follows."

Optional captions for this picture:

Happy Mother’s Day to Me????
Fluffballs Are A Lot of Work.
My Life is Over.*
(*that’s actually what I wanted to name her but the kids thought Maggie was more appropriate)
Never Say Never.
Ok, I Admit It: She’s Adorable.

I’d write more but…well…you know, there’s a puppy somewhere chewing on something who needs some attention.

It's hard to believe how effortlessly and elegantly this crocodile goes out of the water. It looks like he's actually swimming vertically into the air, as if he weren't aware of the laws of physics and the differences of density between liquid and gas. Impressive animal (that freaks the hell out of me.)

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Let's only hope you haven't bought one of these for your mother…

"A boy can learn a lot from a dog: obedience, loyalty, and the importance of turning around three times before lying down."

New submitter InfoJunkie777 (1435969) writes "When you go to any place where 'cutting edge' scientific research is going on, strangely the computer language of choice is FORTRAN, the first computer language commonly used, invented in the 1950s. Meaning FORmula TRANslation, no language since has been able to match its speed. But three new contenders are explored here. Your thoughts?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

That stupid bird—it could be a mosquito, a fly, the hot wind, plans I don't want to follow up on, a lost remote, commercials, pop up ads, a computer fan running, whatever—that keeps bothering me when all I want to do is nothing and not move and never think is the absolute worst. These two CGI pinnipeds capture that unwavering commitment to do nothing so perfectly.

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