LOVE STORY (Taylor Swift) meets VIVA LA VIDA (Coldplay) - Piano Cello - by Jon Schmidt

Slow Loris -- Probably the cutest/funniest little creature on YouTube

"Name Not on Our List? Change It, China Says"

A couple highlights:

• By some estimates, 100 surnames cover 85 percent of China’s citizens. Laobaixing, or “old hundred names,” is a colloquial term for the masses. By contrast, 70,000 surnames cover 90 percent of Americans...At last count, China’s Wangs were leading with more than 92 million, followed by 91 million Lis and 86 million Zhangs. To refer to an unidentified person — the equivalent of “just anybody” in English — one Chinese saying can be loosely translated this way: “some Zhang, some Li.”
• There are nearly enough Chinese named Zhang Wei to populate the city of Pittsburgh.
  
• Nicknames are liberally bestowed in classrooms and workplaces to tell people apart. Confronting three students named Liu Fang, for example, one middle-school teacher nicknamed them Big, Little and Middle.

Read the rest of the NY Times article here.

"Who’s Buried in Cleopatra’s Tomb?"

NY Times wrote a compelling piece about ancient girl-power. Check it out here.

"From Highly Successful to Unemployed to Becoming Mr. Mom"

The NY Times covered a growing phenomenon: the stay-at-home-dad. Since the recession has hit many of the traditionally male dominated professions: financial, manufacturing, etc, more men have found themselves out of work and are creating a new role within the family. Read the rest of the article here.

Disney Templates

"Disney made one movie, and they've been tracing it ever since."

Susan Boyle on Britain's Got Talent

Make sure your sound is up.

A real break-up letter: see it here.

You will never look at Low Rida in the same way again.

Web of the future: Ubiquity

Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

"Finally, an honest Nigerian scammer"

Read the full story here.

Russian Climbing

The Future by Microsoft

"Schizophrenic Brains Not Fooled by Optical Illusion"

Does the mask become "un-hollow" for you as it spins?
Read the rest of the article here.

Inbox Detox

Check out a cool blog about how to manage your email stress and detox your inbox here.

"DNA Test Outperforms Pap Smear"

Here's a cool science story from the NY Times:

A new DNA test for the virus that causes cervical cancer does so much better than current methods that some gynecologists hope it will eventually replace the Pap smear in wealthy countries and cruder tests in poor ones.

Not only could the new test for human papillomavirus, or HPV, save lives; scientists say that women over 30 could drop annual Pap smears and instead have the DNA test just once every 3, 5 or even 10 years, depending on which expert is asked.

Their optimism is based on an eight-year study of 130,000 women in India financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and published last week in The New England Journal of Medicine. It is the first to show that a single screening with the DNA test beats all other methods at preventing advanced cancer and death...

Read the rest of the article here.

Timelapse: Franklin Street after the victory

Clare found a cool video of Franklin Street after UNC won the championship last night (ugh.).

Visual Understanding Environment

Here is a Tufts University website that allows users to download "Visual Understanding Environment" software for free. This a great way to organize your thoughts or create those dreaded affinity diagrams.