Teachers reveal funniest exam answers EVER

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Happy Leap Day !

Frank Scherschel—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images 

Rudy the Dachshund shows off his bed-jumping form in 1946 

 February 29 is one of those dates, like November 11, or Friday the 13th, or the summer solstice, that seems more freighted with possibilities, both good and bad, than other days of the year. And because the 29th day of the second month only comes around every four years — an attempt by humans to make up for the fact that a year is not, strictly speaking, comprised of 365 days, but 365 and a quarter days (it’s math, look it up) — Leap Day can sometimes feel like a gift. An extra day added to the calendar. A full 24 hours that we didn’t have last year and that we won’t have next year,
 in which we might do … anything.
 

Guitar Lessons

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Dophins use whistles to say hello to each other

Photo: Terry Whittaker/ Solent 

Using hydrophones, the researchers made recordings of dolphins swimming in St. Andrews Bay, off the northeastern coast of Scotland, in the summers of 2003 and 2004. When groups of dolphins met up, they swapped whistles that outwardly sounded the same. But forensic analysis showed the whistles were in fact individual signatures, for they were never matched or copied by other dolphins. "Signature whistle exchanges are a significant part of a greeting sequence that allows dolphins to identify conspecifics [members of the same species] when encountering them in the wild,"
  says the study.

Gioachino Rossini's 220th birthday marked with Google doodle

Rossini, who was born on February 29, 1792 in the Papal States in Italy, composed William Tell as well as the comic operas The Barber of Seville and Cinderella. The son of a trumpeter, Rossini became a conductor when he was no longer able to sing after his voice broke. He learned the violin, horn and harpsichord by the aged of 15 and wrote his first opera, The Bill of Marriage, in 1810 at the age of 18. Rossini visited London in 1823 where he met King George IV and conducted concerts. Back in Paris, he composed a cantata – The Journey to Reims – for the coronation of Charles X.
 He died in the city aged 76.
 

T-Rex's bite was 'three times greater than shark'

The Tyrannosaurus Rex had the most powerful bite of any creature ever to roam the Earth - up to three-and-a-half times greater than the Great White Shark, according to new research.

What is a Leap Year?

Angelina Jolie's attention-seeking Oscar pose goes viral

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Yesterday Performed by Ana Vidovic

If I wrote a book

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Nursing

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President Kennedy’s 1960 speech on religious freedom makes Rick Santorum “throw up.”

"“What kind of country do we live in that says only people of nonfaith can come into the public square and make their case?” Santorum says. It’s a central part of his campaign strategy to distort such things as a Kennedy speech, or an Obama speech, to whip up outrage at the supposed war on religious people in America. Here’s what Kennedy said: I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute; where no Catholic prelate would tell the President—should he be Catholic—how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference, and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him, or the people who might elect him… I believe in a President whose religious views are his own private affair."
 By George Packer continue reading
 

Ötzi the ice mummy's secrets found in DNA

Ötzi the ice mummy may have met his death in the Alps some 5300 years ago, but his descendants live on – on the Mediterranean islands of Corsica and Sardinia. The finding comes from an analysis of Ötzi's DNA, which also reveals he had brown eyes and hair, and was lactose intolerant. The ice mummy was found in 1991 on an Alpine glacier between Austria and Italy, where he met a violent end in the Neolithic. Albert Zink of the Institute for Mummies and the Iceman in Bolzano, Italy, and colleagues have now analysed DNA extracted from Ötzi's pelvis to find out more about his life.

Cyanide & Happiness

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Meet the Sloths

The quirky and cute sloths are about to star in their own documentary. 

Taxidermy class teaches students how to stuff dead mice and pose them up 'as if they were humans'

 "It's not a hobby for the faint of heart.

But Susan Jeiven's class on anthropomorphic taxidermy has been sold out since December.

The one-day workshop, which teaches students how to stuff dead mice and pose them up as if they were humans, is becoming a popular pastime in New York.

White-haired mice styled in tutus and polka dot hair bows; their spindly paws strumming miniature guitars - even reading the New York Times - were photographed in Ms Jeiven's class last Tuesday. "
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Bravery of young mother who stayed by her horse's side for three hours after getting trapped in mud 'like quicksand'

"Exhausted and mud-splattered, Nicole Graham clung to her trapped horse Astro for three hours keeping his head high in a race against the tide.

The 78-stone show horse had sunk into quagmire-like mud and was facing the prospect of drowning as the water rose around them."
via Mail Online /more

First Croatian Food and Wine Festival

"The first Croatian Food and Wine Festival, which will bring together food and wine producers, olive oil producers, representatives of the best Croatian restaurants and hotels, will take place in Zagreb's Arena centre from 2 to 4 March. Visitors to the event will be able to see and taste numerous delights such as prosciuttos, kulens, cheeses, oils, rakijas, wines and other products from all the regions of Croatia. The programme includes exhibition areas, cooking show on two stages, wine tastings and workshops in their own, dedicated space, as well as product sales - at festival prices. Aside from that an amusement programme for the entire family is planned, together with special workshops and playrooms for children." read more
 

Who Does Cosplay Better: Cats Or Dogs?

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Get your own space!

This stunning picture shows five galaxies packed together. Four of the five - which bear a yellow hue - are part of an interacting group that often crash violently into each other. The blue galaxy is more than 200 million light-years from the others.
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These shoes weren't made for walking

Manuel Bordera spent his life making shoes in Alicante, Spain, and decided to scale down his workload on his retirement and turn to designing high heels in the smallest sizes he could manage. 'It's my passion for shoes that spurs me on,' said the inspirational artist.
 

I was searching planets... close enough.

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Google … they're coming for your data.

"Age: Began with the first online browser – Tim Berners-Lee's WorldWideWeb – in 1991.

 Appearance: The internet.

 What's browsing? That's the technical term for visiting websites. OK.
So what's your "browsing history"? That's a list of every website you have ever visited. Including the naughty ones.
 You mean the gossip sites? Yep. Red-hot gossip sites. Teenage gossip sites. Japanese animated gossip sites. That sort of thing. You know me so well. Those were just hypotheticals. Right. Duh. Good thing I delete my history. Clearly. Unfortunately, deleting your history only hides it from the people on your end. There are people on the other end?
 Yep. Millions of them, actually. But right now the ones you should be worrying about are Google. As of 1 March, the company will be gathering data on you from every one of its services – including e-mail and YouTube – and collecting them in a big digital box with your name on it.
 Is that bad? Well, let's say you search the term "elf gossip" a few times and that goes into the Google database. You delete your history, so no one at home will find out, but Google still knows. A few days later, a friend visits YouTube on your computer and an ad pops up for "loose-lipped elves".
Get the picture?"
  via The Guardian / continue reading

Oscars 2012

 "In the end, it was a moral victory for The Artist, the French silent film that has seemingly reignited the film industry's love of its own happy-go-lucky origins. Although the statistics will say that it earned the same amount of Academy Awards – five – as its main Hollywood rival, the 3D kids fantasy adventure Hugo, the fact that The Artist earned three of the top awards, including best picture, meant that it earned a place as the Oscars' favourite film of 2012."
via guardian.co.uk /continue reading

Johnny Cash's 80th Birthday

"Johnny Cash was born to farmers in Kingsland, Ark. on Feb. 26, 1932. As the fourth of five children, he recalled in a 1969 TIME article that although his family was dirt poor, “I was never hungry a day in my life….at breakfast it was just fatback and biscuits—but that was plenty.” After high school, Cash worked at an auto plant in Pontiac, Mich. (where, as far as we know, he did not actually construct a car from stolen parts, as he later pretended to in his 1976 song “One Piece at a Time”). He joined the Air Force for a few years, and then in 1954 he married Vivian Liberto and the couple moved to Memphis. Cash had always been musical—as a child he sang at the Dyess Central Baptist Church and he reportedly learned to play the guitar while in the Air Force —so when he moved to Memphis, he hooked up with two musicians, Luther Perkins and Marshall Grant, and auditioned for Sam Phillips at Sun Records. He recorded “Hey, Porter” and “Cry Cry Cry” for Phillips, the latter of which became his first hit, peaking at No. 14 on the Billboard’s Top 20 in 1955. He followed it up with “Folsom Prison Blues” and “I Walk the Line,” which shot up to No. 1 and stayed there for 43 weeks. It would sell over two million copies. (Cash’s stint at Sun Records was relatively shortlived; he switched to Columbia in 1958 because the Phillips wouldn’t let him record gospel music). Cash then embarked the grueling journey that all newly-successful musicians must endure: days and weeks and months of endless touring. By 1957, he was giving more than 200 shows a year (by some accounts, he may have played closer to 300). His marriage was faltering. He drank too much. He became addicted to amphetamines. He accidentally started a forest fire in California. He was arrested for smuggling pills into the U.S. from Mexico. In 1966, his wife filed for divorce. And yet still he released hit song after hit song: “Ring of Fire,” “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town,” “I Got Stripes.” Johnny Cash was troubled man, but not so troubled that he couldn’t turn his haunted words into song. Cash toured with the Carter Family in the 1960s—and of course he would ultimately marry June Carter in 1968, after she helped him overcome his addiction and find his faith. The couple’s live recordings at Folsom Prison and San Quentin, in 1968 and 1969 respectively, are still two of the best concert albums ever released. They were married for 35 years, until her death in May 2003 from complications from heart surgery. Cash made it only four more months before joining her in September of the same year. But this glossed over retelling of dates and events isn’t what’s important about Johnny Cash. The reason we remember him so fondly—and why we’re celebrating his birthday nine years after he passed—is the gift he had for music and the way he made us feel. Cash’s world-weary bass-baritone voice expressed a forlorn pain that, until we heard his songs, we didn’t even know we had. He gave a voice to the working man, the luckless, the outlaw, the convict—and to those of us who weren’t any of those things but who sometimes identified with them anyway."
 Rare and Unpublished Photos of the Country Music Icon - LightBox /more

"I think we dream so we don't have to be apart so long. If we're in each other's dreams, we can play together all night." ~Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes