"Apple feeder" for birds

Constructed out of a coathanger and pieces of bamboo, as explained in the comments at Peregrine's Bird Blog.  I'll have to try this, especially since rotting fruit also attracts a variety of butterflies.

Bacon candle

This looks like a good idea - pour your bacon grease into a jar, insert a wick, and enjoy a candle that emits the smell of bacon.   I've asked one knowledgeable cook about this and was told that the product would be susceptible to turning rancid if not used right away.  Does anyone have practical experience with this?  Or want to try it and report back here?

Sailing on the beach, 1900

Photo taken at Ormond, Florida, about 1900.  It's a posed photo on a stationary vehicle.  The problem of "coming about" with a "deck sweeper" boom is noted at Shorpy, where you can view a larger image.

Bookshelf

Found at Distraction, via Bookshelf Porn.

"Christmas tree" made from books

800 books.  Seven feet tall.  Lighted from the inside.  Created by Juniper Books.  Via Neatorama.

Reptilian eye ear-studs

Found at Neph's Madhouse, via Sloth Unleashed.

Webbed sports glove

Manufactured by DarkFin for swimmers (scuba, surfing, etc) and for skydiving.  Reminiscent of (?inspired by) the hands of the Creature from the Black Lagoon.  I would have loved to have had something like this when I was a kid.

Via Everlasting Blort.

Ancient Greek "dribble glass"

"...this cup, credited to Pythagoras of Samos, works fine if you fill it no higher than the dotted line. If you add more, the liquid spills over the elbow joint and a siphon effect pours the cup’s entire contents onto your lap."

Found while rummaging in the Futility Closet.

Advertisement for a hair-strengthening product

Created by the Fortune Indonesia advertising agency (unclear if it's a real product or a concept).

Via Bored Panda, which has a gallery of about a dozen more "transit handles" ads.

Here comes your Christmas present !!

The Topeka Zoo is getting a trunk full of cash thanks to its newest gift products: dolls and gifts made from elephants' poop...

Each piece of My Pet Poo sells from around $10 to $25 for custom projects. In addition, each piece is lovingly painted by a volunteer and comes with a certificate of authenticity proving the poop did come from an actual elephant...

The process is explained in this video:

And the painted results look something like this (but as the young lady above notes, they come out in all sorts of shapes "from Hershey Kisses to Frisbees" (LOL).

You can order directly from the Friends of the Topeka Zoo.

(Top photo viral on web, from source unknown)

A third-century Roman multitool

From the collections of the Fitzwilliam Museum, an "eating implement" from A.D. 200-300 that combines a "three-pronged fork, spatula, pick, spike and knife."  Such "folding spoons" were apparently well-known to historians, but I had never heard of such things.  You learn something every day.

Fitzwilliam Museum link, via Neatorama.

How to hide your Nobel Prize

When Germany invaded Denmark in World War II, the Hungarian chemist George de Hevesy dissolved the gold Nobel Prizes of the German physicists Max von Laue and James Franck in aqua regia to prevent the Nazis from confiscating them. The German government had prohibited Germans from accepting or keeping any Nobel Prize after the jailed peace activist Carl von Ossietzky had received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1935. De Hevesy placed the resulting solution on a shelf in his laboratory at the Niels Bohr Institute. It was subsequently ignored by the Nazis who thought the jar—one of perhaps hundreds on the shelving—contained common chemicals. After the war, de Hevesy returned to find the solution undisturbed and precipitated the gold out of the acid. The gold was returned to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Nobel Foundation who recast the medals and again presented them to Laue and Franck.

Tentacle pot pie

From the intriguingly named blog, Not Martha, comes this whimsical concoction.   Via Laughing Squid.

"Tuck your shirt in!"

From a booklet published in the 1940s, via Centuries of Advice and Advertisements.

How to catch plaster dust while drilling

Place a folded Post-It note beneath the hole.  Via Boing Boing.

Use onion bags to scrub dirty dishes

"I always dreaded the prospect of trying to get the gunk of sticky flour or melted cheese out of a sponge or brush until I recently discovered a solution in the form of the netting that onions and other vegetables come packaged in. By cutting up the stiff netting bags from packaging into about 6" squares you can make reusable super scrubbing tools. A few bags will produce more than you'll need. Now when you're finished scrubbing you can toss or recycle the used nettin..."

Found at Boing Boing.

A "botanical sundial"

"Banks’s early hero Carl Linnaeus had turned collecting and displaying into something approaching a European art form. At Uppsala he planted a clock garden or 'botanical sundial’, marking each hour by clumps of plants that opened only at one particular time of day (according to the strength of the sun). The time could thus be ‘read’ by the rotating patches of open petals, and even by the release of flower perfumes (such as tobacco plants in the early evening)."

--found in The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science, by Richard Holmes (Pantheon Books, 2008, p.48)

Sidewalk art sale

"On a side street today I found two little girls running an "art stand", where they were selling drawings for 75 cents. One said "we usually do lemonade stands, but wanted to see if we could make money doing what we really like". Totally worth investing a couple of dollars in :)

Posted by karmacist at Reddit, where the drawing and the concept are discussed (the name of the artist has been blurred in the image for privacy concerns).

Fiendishly tricky geometry puzzle

Start with a piece of paper 8" x 8", as shown on the left.  Make the two cuts shown.

Then shift the big lower-left piece up and to the left and move the triangle from the upper left corner to the lower right one.

The area that used to be 8x8 = 64 square inches now appears to be 9x7 = 63 square inches.  Where is the fallacy?

I pondered this for way too long, and finally had to cut some physical pieces of paper to solve the paradox.

The puzzle was originally created by or published by the famous Sam Loyd; I found it in the Futility Closet.

Cool tool

Photo from an article at the WSJ about the marine census.  This light box for examining the seafloor would be great fun even in a lake or pond; I remember as a kid having some kind of plastic tube with glass on the bottom, but no light, and even that was fun.  Does anyone know what this kind of equipment is called?  The photo comes from Woods Hole, so perhaps Doug, if you are reading this...?