These adorable treats are Croatian Easter bread dolls. Each is a loaf of breaded bread similar to challah and topped with an Easter egg. You can find Tábata's recipe at the link.

Link (Translation) -via Tasteologie

We learn as children that there is no land at the North Pole -it's the Arctic Ocean. But most of the time, it's covered with ice and polar bears. That was once upon a time, because the ice is melting and the Arctic Ocean is opening up, diminishing the polar bears' habitat, and worrying environmentalists. But some are looking at that ocean as an opportunity, as the Arctic Ocean has riches of oil and natural gas beneath it. So who has the rights to those resources? Russia claims all the area north of Siberia to the North Pole. China is investing in Canada, which has natural access to the Arctic. And the U.S. wants to keep rights to shipping lanes as a shortcut between continents. Read about the controversies to come at Smithsonian. Link

(Image credit: Keith Negley)

Via imgur

I wonder where you'd end up if you stand on top of the teleport manhole cover ...

The Quad Micro Bar is Joe Warren's sleek and clever bar design. If you don't have room for a bar set in your home all the time, you could just keep this one in storage for when you need it. Rain Noe of Core77 writes, "I could see a bunch of these rolling off of a catering truck for on-site events."

Link -via Core77

(YouTube link)

One Minute Galactica took the audio of the Jurassic Park trailer and synched it with video from Star Wars, which makes more sense than it should.  -via Viral Viral Videos

A prudently anonymous Jalopnik reader writes:

Sometimes, traffic gets so [deleted] bad you just have to punch and pull so hard on your work truck steering wheel... that the [deleted] just breaks.

That'll be hard to explain to the boss.

Also: he has a strobe light (right). I want a strobe light. Alex, if you ever give me a company truck, make sure that mine has a strobe light.

Link

Ted McCagg of Questionable Skills graphs what friendship means in the age of social media. It's a good thing we still have family, although while I'm on the computer on a Friday night, my oldest is dressing up her website and the youngest is playing games on her iPod. Link  -via Geeks Are Sexy 

A woman at an airport in China tried to get through security with a bottle of a liquid. Officials told her that she'd have to drink it immediately or throw it away. She drank it, but wouldn't swallow:

The airport said the woman, a foreigner, was found to have a bottle of liquid in her luggage at Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport's security checkpoint and she was told she would have to immediately drink or discard the liquid, the Guangdong Southern Media Network reported Wednesday.

The woman poured the liquid into her mouth and security workers became suspicious when she refused to swallow.

The workers instructed the woman to spit out the liquid and they discovered she had been concealing tadpoles in the water.

Link -via Dave Barry | Photo: Dan Century

Brace yourself, the Brace Yourself meme has made it to Polish newspaper. Ned Stark sure knows how to keep his head in forecasting the weather ... Via reddit

See also: Winter is Coming T-Shirt from the NeatoShop

Cottontail Rabbit Baby Coat

Hippity. Hoppity. Spring is here. Keep your little honey bunny comfy and warm in the Cottontail Rabbit Baby Coat from the NeatoShop. This super soft pink coat features ribbon bows, floppy ears, and a cute little bunny tail. 

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Baby & Tot items. 

Link

The fight for @laura_ellenxx's affections is on. @oreo your move #haveabreaktwitpic.com/cb1g84

— Kit Kat (@KITKAT) March 13, 2013

It all began when Twitter user @laura_ellenxx professed her love for both Kit Kat bars and Oreo cookies. Kit Kat, through its Twitter feed, challenged Oreo to a duel for Laura's affections. You can read the whole exchange at the link.

Link

(YouTube link)

High school drummers Nigel, Dylan, Matt, Elias, and Jordan won a school talent show with this routine. I don't doubt it a bit! They supposedly put the routine together in less than a week. -via Everlasting Blort 

Talk about a garage sale find! A New York family picked up a Chinese bowl at a garage sale for $3 and found out that it's actually a 1,000-year-old treasure worth $2.2 million:

The bowl — ceramic, 5 inches in diameter and with a saw-tooth pattern etched around the outside — went to a London dealer, Giuseppe Eskenazi, at Sotheby’s auction house in New York on Tuesday.

Sotheby’s said the bowl was from the Northern Song Dynasty, which ruled China from 960 to 1127 and is known for its cultural and artistic advances.

The auction house said the only other known bowl of similar size and design has been in the collection of the British Museum for more than 60 years.

I know what I'll be doing this weekend: bowl huntin'! NBC News has the story: Link [Warning: auto-starting video]

(Image credit: Flickr user oxum)

A man goes to a party, drinks some punch, and then leaves. Everyone else at the party who drinks the punch dies of poison. Why didn't the man die?

Once you've decided on your answer, continue reading to see if you are right.


Highlight this space for the answer: The poison was in the ice cubes. When the man drank the punch, the ice was fully frozen, but as it melted, it poisoned the punch.

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The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John's Great Big Bathroom Reader. The book is a compendium of entertaining information chock-full of facts on a plethora of topics. Highly recommended!

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

Check out their website here: Bathroom Reader Institute

Food artist Annabel de Vetten of Conjurer's Kitchen (previously on Neatorama) created this animal skull-themed wedding cake for the Eclectic Wedding Extravaganza in Birmingham, England.

From Cakehead:

It features solid chocolate skulls of 16 carrion crows, 12 domestic kittens, 3 Vervet monkeys, and 4 barn owls, all of which the artist sculpted by hand. Made from White Chocolate Mudcake, the cake took her over 100 hours to complete in total. There are two options of toppers: a chocolate conjoined kitten skull, or dried flowers from an actual wedding bouquet

Link - Thanks Emma!

U.S.News & World Report gives us a list of the most overpaid jobs -which aren't necessarily jobs that pay the most. It's a subjective list in which a person is well-paid for work that's not all that difficult, involves little stress, and provides little benefit in the end. Even some of the people in these occupations agree. Here's a sampling:

Consulting software engineer (median mid-career salary: $123,000). These high-end programmers design and maintain sophisticated computer networks for big companies and other large organizations. But the work can be dry and many such engineers question the value of what they do. Other types of programmers and software engineers rank high on the overpaid list as well.

Brand strategist ($90,700). These advertising or marketing specialists work to improve the image and reputation of companies and their offerings--whether deserved or not. Brand strategists rate the importance of their own work poorly compared with other professionals.

Patent attorney ($170,000). We tend to think of patents as the breakthrough insights of revolutionary inventors, but they're increasingly a form of warfare among corporations seeking to prevent each other from gaining a technology edge. The lawyers who fight those battles are among the highest-paid professionals PayScale surveys.

Read the rest of the list, which is ranked in no particular order. Link  -via BroBible

(YouTube link)

A shelter dog gets a new home in this parody of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air theme, starring Fido as the shelter dog, and including a celebrity cameo at the end. The lyrics are at the YouTube page. -via Stuff I Stole from the Internet

Cormac O'Reilly's beautiful model bike is inspired by Harley-Davidson bikes of the knucklehead engine era of the 1930s and 40s. He writes:

My interpretation of a Harley Davidson Knucklehead motorbike. It is made almost exclusively from used guinness cans and their ringpulls.

Link

Life as a cosmonaut in the early days of the Soviet space program was difficult. The crew of the Voskhod 2 mission in 1965 had to not only perform a difficult space mission (featuring the world's first EVA), but then landed off course and had to survive subzero temperatures and wild animals in the Siberian wilderness!

According to the spacecraft’s orientation system they landed deep in the Siberian forest almost 1,250 miles from their target. The crew needed to assess their situation to figure out how long it might take recovery crews to find them. The full seriousness of the situation hit them when they wrestled the hatch opened to find themselves nearly chin deep in snow.

Snowbanks six and a half feet tall surrounded them as did thick birch trees. The sun was hidden behind the clouds. It started to snow, forcing the men back into their spacecraft.

Neither man was too concerned. Belyayev’s childhood dream had been to become a hunter while Leonov had sought the beautiful isolation of the forest as an artistic outlet. It was the wildlife that worried them. The forest, they knew, was home to bears and wolves, unusually aggressive in the spring mating season. Between themselves the cosmonauts had one pistol but ample ammunition.

Rescue crews found them relatively quickly, but getting to the cosmonauts and getting them out was a time-consuming task, made more difficult by the space suits they were wearing. Read the rest of the story at Discovery News. Link  -via Greg Laden

Paper Flying Dragons

They believe that the first paper gliders originated in ancient China around 500 BC. This was the time when paper manufacturing became more widespread. While we have no doubt that those original paper gliders were impressive we doubt that they were as cool or as easy to create as the Paper Flying Dragons from the NeatoShop. 

The Paper Flying Dragons book allows you to deisgn and build your own fantastic flyers. The book comes with 12 full-color ready to assemble dragons and a detailed instruction booklet. It is a great way to let your imagination take flight.   

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more Arts & Crafts fun!

Link

(YouTube link)

Fire is a fascinating thing -at a safe distance. These are "alcohol rocket bottles," meaning a bottle with alcohol burning inside, lit by a laser. They are beautiful, but I wouldn't recommend trying this at home. Not unless you really know what you're doing. -via Viral Viral Videos

If there is a collective unconscious which is the source of our dreams, we'll no longer be able to access it through Google Reader after July 1. Caldwell Tanner illustrated updated versions of classic nightmares. You can read four more at the link.

Link

The Easter Bunny is a beloved springtime character, but look deeper and you’ll realize nobody gives away that much chocolate unless they’re hiding something.

He Can’t Even Cover the Whole World!

Say what you will about Santa Claus, but at least he’s delivering presents the world over. The shiftless Easter Bunny outsources egg and candy distribution in various parts of the globe. Swiss children have to make do with a cuckoo, rendering Easter no more special than a common clock. In various other cultures, kids have to be content with an Easter stork, fox, or rooster.

He’s a German Sleeper Agent!

The sneakiest spies lie low and work themselves into the fabric of a community before striking. By that standard, the Easter Bunny may well be the most successful German spy of all time. The suspicious bunny traces his roots back to a 16th-century German character named Osterhase. When German immigrants came to North America en masse in the 18th century, they brought their buddy Osterhase with them. Sure, he’s been here for hundreds of years now, but can we really trust him?

He Might Not Be a Rabbit!

(Image source: Flickr user Allison Marchant)

He calls himself “the Easter Bunny,” but that name is at least half wrong. Osterhase translates into English as “the Easter Hare.” Despite what the puns in Bugs Bunny cartoons would have you believe, hares and rabbits aren’t the same thing. Hares are larger, haven’t been domesticated, and live in nests rather than underground. So this “Easter Bunny” changed his name upon arriving in this country? Sounds suspicious if you ask us.

He’s Not Laying Any Eggs!

(Image credit: Flickr user LeCornichon)

Hare, rabbit … it doesn’t matter. Neither of these furry creatures lays eggs. How did this floppy-eared huckster experience such a Machiavellian rise to the top of the egg-delivery business? By relying on a combination of charm and virility. Rabbits and hares have been symbols of rebirth for centuries. Same with eggs. So when Germans started hiding Easter eggs for children in the 16th century, where better to stash them than in hares’ nests?

He Has Enemies in Australia!

Think bunnies are cute? Australians don’t. Rabbits aren’t native to the continent, but hunting enthusiasts introduced 24 imported specimens as quarry in the 1850s. Unfortunately, the rabbits procreated like, well, rabbits. By the turn of the 20th century, the adorable bunnies had become crop-destroying thorns in farmers’ sides. The situation became so dire that the province of Western Australia tried to enclose itself in a giant fence to stall illegal rabbit immigration. So, in the 1990s, Australians found a viable replacement: the bilby.

(Image credit: Flickr user Shana McDanold)

Bilbies are endangered marsupials that share the Easter Bunny’s long ears and have the added bonus of respecting the nation’s valuable crops. Today, Australian kids celebrate Easter by munching on chocolate bilbies.

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The article above, written by Ethan Trex, is reprinted with permission from the March-April 2012 issue of mental_floss magazine.

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