Nancy Brinker, founder of the Susan G. Komen Foundation, defended the defunding of Planned Parenthood by saying the charity “would never bow to pressure.” That was just before they reversed course under pressure from all sides.
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A new theme park in Ilsan, just outside Seoul, South Korea features interactive adventures using Kinect technology. That’s way cheaper than building rides, exhibits, and a fantasy world.
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Comedian GloZell takes the cinnamon challenge with a spoon that’s too big. It’s not so much that she fails, but how spectacularly she fails.
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Catwoman Pepper Sprays Fake Ozzy Osbourne On Hollywood Boulevard. Other strange characters backed up Catwoman’s side of the story.
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A Sulcata tortoise enjoys a salad, which probably took hours in real time. With time-lapse photography and a dramatic soundtrack, he’s an unstoppable eating machine.
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Iceland’s Historic Turf Houses: The Eco-Homes of the Future? There’s no warmer, greener, or cheaper building material than Mother Earth.
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As the police department suffers cutbacks, citizens of Detroit are resigned to defending themselves by any means necessary. Justifiable homicide is up 79% over last year, and it was already higher than the rest of the nation.
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OK Go’s new video for the song “Needing/Getting” took four months of planning and four days to shoot before debuting at the Super Bowl. The car plays the music, but the real trick was singing and driving.
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Why we’ll never find another planet like Earth. It has something very unique and important, and it’s not people.
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Periodic Tableware. This was my very first post on mental_floss, published five years ago today!

There’s Hello Kitty restaurants, hotels, hospitals, and more, so why not a dentist office? For those that just can’t stand the sterile environment of the standard dentist clinic, the Hello Kitty dentist office is a welcome alternative…even if it means having to travel to Japan just for a teeth cleaning.

Link

Hill Valley of the future is such a wonderful place to live, or at least it is when created by Lego artist Alex Jones. He has even more cool movie sets on his Flickr page for the viewing enjoyment of any Lego enthusiast.

Link Via Geekologie

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There’s something so wrong about combining the the mythos of Skyrim with that of Star Wars that it just has to be right. While there’s a lot of talking before you get to the good part, the bottom line is yes, you can get a lightsaber in Skyrim.

Via Kotaku

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What more could an amorous porcupine ask for than a heart-shaped box of corn and a bouquet of red roses? It’s all just so romantic.

Via BoingBoing

Here’s one of those studies you probably didn’t need science to tell you: guys show off to impress women.

In the experiment, a group of men and women (on the younger side, with an average age of 21) were given the opportunity to donate money to a fund, knowing they would get nothing in return other than the pride of their selflessness. Whether they were watched or not, women donated at the same rate. But men, when watched by women, donated at higher rates. They didn’t donate at higher rates when men watched.

I don’t know about you guys, but I’m sure flabbergasted by this one. Who would have guessed?

Link Via The Jane Dough

A portfolio of the winning entries to the 2012 Eustace Tilley Contest, an invitation to redefine The New Yorker’s presiding dandy.The New Yorker

A central motif in contemporary hip-hop is rapping about drug dealing by artists who may not actually sell narcotics. Among others, Jay-Z, Clipse, and Young Jeezy have rhymed about a past or present involvement in the trade on the street. It’s typically impossible to determine whether . . .Sasha Frere-Jones

God took Dallas Wiens’s face from him on a clear November morning four years ago. If you ask Wiens, he will say that it was neither an accident nor a punishment; it was simply what had to happen. At the time, he was trying to paint the roof . . . (Subscription required.)Raffi Khatchadourian

I first met Mr. Morton Feather in the spring of 1997, just after his discharge from a weeklong stay at Cedars-Sinai, where they were treating him for cancer of the bones. Though he was at the time unknown to me even by reputation, I soon learned that my own . . . (Subscription required.)Michael Chabon

Spy novels embrace clichés—the double agent, the bomb-rigged briefcase—and “Assassin of Secrets,” published last fall, made a virtue of this tendency, piling one trope onto another to create a story that rang with wry knowingness. The book is set in the . . . (Subscription required.)Lizzie Widdicombe

The older I get, the more I’m convinced that a fiction writer’s oeuvre is a mirror of the writer’s character. It may well be a defect of my own character that my literary tastes are so deeply intertwined with my responses, as a person . . . (Subscription required.)Jonathan Franzen

John Osborne’s rowdy, shocking anger—first broadcast in his play “Look Back in Anger,” which is now in revival at the Roundabout Theatre Company’s Laura Pels—was his trademark, his gift, and his epitaph. “When the bell rings, I not only . . . (Subscription required.)John Lahr

I gave myself excuses. This is for my pain— and this, and this. Terrible things. Pain. My pain. All so I might twice a month get on a train to witness yours . . . (Subscription required.)John Freeman

Mitt Romney, in his struggle to wrap up the 2012 Republican nomination for the Presidency, has presented himself as an outsider. During an exchange with Newt Gingrich, the former Speaker of the House, at a recent Republican debate, Romney declared that “to get this country out of the mess . . .Jane Mayer

Five years ago, Research in Motion, maker of the BlackBerry, was one of the most acclaimed technology companies in the world. The BlackBerry dominated the smartphone market, was a staple of the business world, and had helped make texting a mainstream practice. Terrifically profitable, the phone became a cultural touchstone . . .James Surowiecki

8220;We’ve got to stop the debates! Enough with the debates!” That was John McCain’s plea on “Meet the Press” the Sunday before his favored candidate (Mitt Romney) pulped his unfavored one (Newt Gingrich) like an overripe orange in the Florida Republican primary . . .Hendrik Hertzberg

 . . . (Subscription required.)Richard McGuire

PageBreak -->OPENINGS AND PREVIEWS Please call the phone number listed with the theatre for timetables and ticket information. AND GOD CREATED GREAT WHALES Rinde Eckert wrote and stars in this musical, about a composer with mental illness who tries to write an opera based on &#8220 . . .(author unknown)

goatTitle-->“SELECTED SHORTS” Jerry Stiller, Anne Meara, and Stephen Lang join the New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast for an evening based on her new book, “What I Hate from A to Z.” (Symphony Space, Broadway at 95th St. 212-864-5400. Feb. 8 at 7.) &#8220 . . .(author unknown)