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Yes, there is a problem in the Falcon's presentation in this mod. Don't call attention to it, but don't look like you're trying to avoid attention.

Aaraarrrgh?

I don't know. Fly casual.

Link -via Kotaku

Image: STRUCTUREmag

I would've guessed "they ran out of stones," but structural engineer Peter James arrived at a very different answer when pondering why ancient Egyptians stopped building pyramids. Turns out, these pyramids were too perfect and that's the ironic basis for their structural instability:

So what was causing the crumbling? James presents a new explanation: thermal movement -- that is to say the expansion and contraction of the limestone with temperature fluctuations -- has ground down the rocks and shifted their positions.

He estimates that the motion can amount to 1¼ inches per 328 feet. As the stones move, dust and sand would fall from the stones and fill in the spaces between them. The spaces into which they could contract at night would shrink, and over time they would be pushed out of position. "Multiply this endless movement by the number of days that the pyramid has been erected and you have the reason why all the outer casing has moved to the extremities, where it has buckled or displaced against blocks moving in the opposite direction and then fallen off," James writes. "It may then have been picked up by opportunists and removed from the site.?"

Problem was, as ancient Egyptians became better at constructing pyramids, the voids between the stones disappeared and the structure were less able to withstand the thermal expansion and contraction of the limestone.

Rebecca J. Rosen of The Atlantic explains: Link

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The premise is one that we've all discussed at one time or another: you can make anything exciting if you have the proper dramatic music and a narration by Mike Rowe. To put this trope to the test, Rowe has started a series called Mike Rowe My Life. In the first episode, Janice McMillan's video of a family reunion group photo session is judged to be exceedingly dull to anyone who wasn't there. Can Rowe make it exciting? Watch and see. Find out more about how it's done in a making-of video. -via Viral Viral Videos

Starfish Hair Clip

Are you looking for a fun and easy way to release your inner mermaid? You need the Starfish Hair Clip from the NeatoShop. This fantastic hair accessory is designed to look like an actual sea star. 

The Starfish Hair Clip is handmade by local artisans. It is made out of lightweight resin and features beautiful hand-painted details. No two are exactly alike. 

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Apparel & Accessories. 

Link

Before they went to college, the Disney princesses went to their high school proms. DeviantART member spicysteweddemon was on the scene to take pictures of the couples. You can view them all at the link.

Link | Artist's Gallery

Nothing like a good incentive to keep an eye on your children! The caption at Shorpy reads, "Yes, Billy was lost. But he was also plump and juicy!" This photo was taken at the National Zoo in Washington in 1943. Well, it was wartime, and Llion Chow was probably in short supply. Link -via TYWKIWDBI

Allegedly, this photo was shot in an Uwajimaya, an Asian grocery store chain in Seattle. I think I'll try something safer, such as the chicken.

Link

(Photo: unknown)

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Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield is leaving the ISS Monday after five months of sending us wonderful videos, photographs, and Tweets from space. His farewell musical performance is a custom version of "Space Oddity." -Thanks, Mike G!

Never misplace your lunch again! Wear it instead. Tumbler blogger Jaya blogged about how her friend made a stylish jacket out of Ziploc bags. Best of all, the jacket still functions to carry food in an airtight seal! Link - via Geekologie

The brother and sister cooking duo Bob and Carlene Deutscher prepared a luxurious Mother's Day breakfast. Their crêpe batter contains cocoa and apple cider and the filling has strawberries and heavy cream. This is how breakfast should be on every day of the week!

Link -via Tasteologie

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Here be dragons, but the kitten doesn't know what they are about. He learned a little lesson, though: while you are focusing on the moving animal, be aware that there may also be one that's not moving …yet. -via Arbroath

Lilly Allen, 10, was playing hopscotch outside her home in Kent, England, when she was approached by police officers that her chalk drawings on the public pavement was criminal:

[Lilly's father Allen] told the tabloid newspaper: “Two policemen in a car drove up to her and said it was illegal to draw on the floor as it was criminal damage. "I am absolutely seething they have done this."

After the public blowback, the coppers are in retreat:

A Kent Police spokesman said in a statement: "We are trying to trace the officers, who are reported to have made this comment. "From the circumstances described, it would not appear to have been necessary to advise the young girl that chalking a hopscotch grid may be criminal damage and illegal."

Link

The Feel Seating System Deluxe is the ultimate office chair. It's a sheet of 120 fabric balls linked with elastic strands. Buckles on the edges let the user reconfigure the shape. When your co-workers see you in this chair, they'll look at you in a new way--especially after you tell them that it cost you $7,950.

Link -via Core77

Psst! Don't panic, but you've got sleeper agents inside of you: viruses that have integrated their genome into human DNA. No big deal, you say, so what if we've got a few hitchhiking genes in our genome? Actually, there's quite a bit of them:

Scientists have identified 100,000 pieces of retrovirus DNA in our genes, making up eight percent of the human genome. That’s a huge portion of our DNA when you consider that protein coding genes make up just over one percent of the genome.

Carl Zimmer of The Loom blog over at National Geographic explains how one such viral gene could be awaken (by infection by HIV, for example) after lying dormant for six million years in our DNA:

Markovitz and his colleagues analyzed the sequence of the virus genes they found in the patients with HIV. The genes belonged to a family of endogenous retroviruses called HERV-K, but they were not quite like any known HERV-K virus previously found.

The Michigan scientists wondered if this new HERV-K virus was hidden in the human genome. They checked the most complete draft of the human genome and couldn’t find a match. They knew that the human genome sequence was only about 95% finished, so they turned instead to the chimpanzee genome, on the off chance that the virus had infected the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees over six million years ago. Bingo: a single copy of the virus turned up in the chimp genome. They dubbed it K111.

Having found this match, the scientists decided to return to the human genome and search for K111. They isolated DNA from their HIV patients, as well as from healthy people. They then split apart the two strands of the DNA and added a short piece of DNA that would bind to K111, should it be lurking there. In all 189 of their subjects, the scientists found the virus’s DNA.

Gollum & Samwise Salt & Pepper Shakers

Are you on a quest to find for a truly precious salt and pepper shaker set for your kitchen table? Stop fretting! Come forth and witness the Gollum & Samwise Salt & Pepper Shaker set from the NeatoShop. This amazing glazed ceramic set features Gollum and Samwise from the Lord of the Rings. Magnets hold the two shakers together.   

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Salt & Pepper Shakers and fantastic Lord of the Rings items. 

Link

A guy forgot two pizzas in the oven and didn't open the appliance again for two weeks. What resulted might supply penicillin for an entire small country. I can't help but believe alcohol or marijuana may have been involved. The questions raised:

1. Who puts two pizzas in an oven at once?

2. Why didn't he remove the pizzas from the oven when he turned the oven off? Lack of potholders?

3. Why does one even have an oven if you aren't going to use it any more often than once in two weeks?

Link -via Boing Boing

Amirite, moms?

Happy Mother's Day to all the wonderful Mothers, Grandmothers, Aunts, and Mother Figures. May your Mother's Day be filled with love, laughter,

wonderful handmade cards,

and gifts.

May you also be lucky enough to have some sweet, sweet person clean all the goo off the inside of your minivan.   

A special thank you goes out to all the hardworking preschool and elementary school teachers who help make Mother's Day so special for us Moms. I applaud your creativity, patience, and follow-through. Without you my scrapbook would be empty. 

A new course to be offered this fall at New College Nottingham in England will lead students to a two-year degree in Heavy Metal. The school says it was developed in response to student demand.

Students will learn how to compose and perform heavy metal songs.

The course, which is due to start in September, will also include modules on the music business, the history of heavy metal and its role in films and video games.

In the students' second year, they will perform on tour at venues around the country.
A female student in a heavy metal band. The college says the degree will be academically rigorous

"It's a degree, so it will be academically rigorous," said Mr Maloy.

"In the past, heavy metal has not been taken seriously and is seen as lacking academic credibility when compared with other genres such as jazz and classical music. But that's just a cultural construction."

Upon completion of the foundation degree, students can opt to continue their studies in music for a third year at the college and get a full degree awarded by Nottingham Trent University, which has accredited the course.

Though some say the degree is a waste of time, others point out that employers tend to cull stacks of job applicants by rejecting anyone without a college degree of some sort. Link -via Arbroath

Is it hard to play a piano? I think I could do a good job on Björn Perborg's variant. It has just five keys and one pedal. Now let's try to play "Galope-Marche."

Link -via Yababoon

Via Like Cool and Holy Kaw

Nurse, cut these truffle intestines out and serve them up to those hungry partiers, STAT!

Annabel de Vetten of Conjurer's Kitchen (previously on Neatorama) created this creepy abdominal surgery cake, which is adorned with real surgical tools like hemostats and scalpels to add to the realism.

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For Mothers Day, HooplaHa put together a sweet compilation of people finding out that they're going to be grandparents. -via Jezebel

According to several redditors, this photo shows how many people in India queue: very close together. Redditor iwsfutcmd shares a story:

This was a problem when I was travelling in India.

I'm very understanding of other cultures' ideas about personal space and whatnot, but there's a logistical problem:

I'm standing in line for a train ticket, wearing my huge traveller's backpack that's about 3/4 my size. I'm pressed up against the man in front of me (as custom dictates). Man behind me is pressed up against my backpack (again, as custom dictates). I turn sideways to look at something, man behind me moves forward to close the gap made by my backpack vacating precious line space (as custom dictates).

I turn back to how I was, accidentally smashing man behind me with 25 kilos of pain.

"Oh my god, jesus, I'm sorry!"

I turn to help him up, and as I do so, men in line fill gap left by my backpack.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

A 2010 New York Times article describes queuing practice in India:

There is a feline quality to standing in Indian lines. Certain parts of the man behind you — you don’t know which — brush against you in a kind of public square spooning, the better to repel cutters. (Women do less touching.) Still, this is no deterrent to cutters. They hover near the line’s middle, holding papers, looking lost in a practiced way, then slip in somewhere close to the front. When confronted, their refrain is predictable: “Oh, I didn’t see the line.”

But in a churning India, the line has new resilience. Businesses are becoming vigilant about enforcing queues, and a growing middle class, more well-off and less survivalist, is often less eager to cut. In this way, India’s experience seems to feed into a tradition of seeing line etiquette as a marker of modernity, of graduating from chaos to order, whims to rules, brutality to gentility, scarcity to abundance.

What queuing customs have you encountered?

Link -via reddit

(Photo: unknown)

Teen Raymond Walter doesn't expect to live long because he has Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, a genetic disease that causes muscles to waste away. That's why, he said, that he's been on an accelerated course to accomplish as much as he can with his life. Starting with graduating from college with 3 degrees at 18 years of age:

“I don’t anticipate living as long as usual,” Raymond said. “In some respects, there is a lot of pressure to get as much done as I can. I don’t waste time. I skipped three years of grade school and to some extent I’ve continued my acceleration since I reached the university level. I finished my undergraduate economics course work in my freshman year. So as a sophomore I began to take graduate courses.”

Raymond is continuing his studies by pursuing two separate doctoral degrees in math and physics. Simultaneously, of course.

University of Arkansas Newswire has the full story: Link - via io9