Sunday smörgåsbord

There's always more bloggable stuff than there is time, so there will always need to be linkdumps. Herewith a selection of tasty items that I just couldn't take time to make into full articles...

Have you ever wondered why ice cubes in your freezer have little spikes sticking up from them? This article from Caltech discusses the phenomenon.

Some farmers in Russia are providing brassieres for their cows. The primary source even has a (boring) video.

A clever set of five photos entitled "Change you might regret."

British Airways can put you on a plane and promise you will experience a plane crash. The plane is a simulator which is rented by corporations for "team-bonding purposes." Sounds like bulltwaddle to me.

A newlywed young woman starts writing a blog about her new life. She and her husband buy a handgun and a shotgun and have practice drills in case an intruder enters their apartment. They go to a practice range and learn gun safety. Shortly after her last blog entry she is killed by a blast from her shotgun, which went off while her husband was cleaning it. Her father concludes this happened because "God has a plan." The link goes to the Reddit thread; the blog link is at the top of the page.

Lots of stuff in recent weeks about Vitamin D, including a report in the BBC that it may be linked to multiple sclerosis, especially in Northern Europeans who don't get enough exposure to sunlight.

Don't try to remove earwax from your ears. The rule of thumb is not to put anything smaller than your elbow in your ear.

A man has been killed by an exploding mobile phone, fragments of which apparently severed his carotid artery.

The price of "carbon credits" is crashing. With world economies in a nosedive, many companies don't need their credits because they've shut down their plants. So they are all trying to sell the credits, and the polluters are able to buy them "dirt cheap," so to speak...

An ice storm has devastated the state of Kentucky, with millions of people stranded without power in the middle of winter. Some are turning for assistance to their Amish neighbors, who are able to provide well water, warm food from wood stoves, fresh milk from cows, kerosene lanterns for lights, and other essentials and amenities, resulting in a renewed appreciation for the simple life.

After the splashdown of flight 1549 in the Hudson, Salon ran an article about the techniques used by airports to chase away birds. Some major airports (JFK, Logan) were built near wetlands because in the 60s and 70s such land was viewed as unsuitable for other development.

A meatpacking plant in Iowa has been accused of exploiting mentally disabled men as cheap labor. It's not a pleasant read.

The word "dappled" (speckled, spotted) literally means "d'appled" (of the apple, apple-like) because the skin of apples often has that speckled appearance. And the word "pied" comes from the magpie, a black-and-white bird, which may be the etymology of the word for the food, since "pies" originally had a combination of fillings (Shepherd's pie, for example), while "pastries" had single fillings. Photo and further discussion at Scribal Terror.

Legislators are worried that students may not pass 11th grade math tests. This past spring, only 1/3 of juniors were proficient on a similar test. So the legislature may change the rules and let students graduate if they take a remediation course and try the test two more times - essentially giving them a diploma for just staying around. Forcryinoutloud...

Credit to "pom" who wrote in the comments section about another physics-based flash game: Gravity Master.

Image credit here.