Rhino rescues a zebra foal entrapped in a mudhole

The rhino bull, after being rebuffed by the cows numerous times, made his way down to the water and near to the muddy patch the foal was stuck in. The rhino started to prod the zebra with his horn out of curiosity. After a while he grew impatient and lifted the body out. The foal, still being alive but very weak, could only lift its head out of the mud. The rhino lifted the foal so quickly that it had no time to react. The rhino then dropped the foal and moved off.

More details about the encounter and its unfortunate outcome at Africa Geographic.

Treasure found in waist-deep water close to shore

I am so jealous...

Bartlett and the 1715 Fleet Queens Jewels Salvage Crew counted more than 300 gold coins valued at four point five million dollars. The larger coins-- called Royals-- tell an important story of the past. Royals were specifically made for King Phillip V and are  incredibly rare.  There were only 20 or so known to exist in the world before the crew found these 9.

The photo is a screencap from the video at the link, which I've posted to show how close the treasure was to shore and that it was within walking distance of hotels further down the shore in Vero Beach.

In other news, a metal detectorist in Germany has found a hoard of Nazi-era gold valued at €45,000.

And... two men claim to have found one of the legendary Nazi treasure trains.   "...the train might hold up to 300 tons of gold... (but)...There are reasons to doubt the existence of this mythical gold filled Nazi train..."  And if it does exist, there is a high probability that it is protected with land mines.

This man is not committing suicide with a hair dryer

He's using a Nasal Ranger.  I didn't know there were such devices, discussed here, but it makes sense.

Photo credit Mark Peterson/Redux, via Politico.

Rube Goldberg machine

YouTube link.

The best part is the eruption of the Post-It Notes at the end.

Fossil of a four-legged snake

Found... in a museum!

Fossil-hunters have found several extinct snakes with stunted hind legs, and modern boas and pythons still have a pair of little spurs. “But no snake has ever been found with four legs. This is a once-in-a-lifetime discovery.”

Martill called the creature Tetrapodophis: four-legged snake. “This little animal is the Archaeopteryx of the squamate world,” he says. (Squamates are the snakes and lizards.)

This finding has substantial implications regarding the evolution of snakes.  More details at Ed Yong's incomparable Not Exactly Rocket Science blog at National Geographic.

Ride the bus for free if you read a book

As reported by The Independent:

Those who can’t resist reading a good book on public transport have been rewarded by a city in Romania, which offered a free bus ride to anyone who read a book during their journey...

Miron said that he wanted to “encourage more people to read on public transportation”...

“I believe that it’s better to promote reading by rewarding those who read, instead of criticising the ones who don’t,” said Miron...

More details at the link.

"The truth isn't what you want to see"

YouTube link.

Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman perform The Music of the Night from The Phantom of the Opera.

Phantom began previews at Her Majesty's Theatre in London's West End on 27 September 1986 under the direction of Hal Prince, then opened on 9 October...  Michael Crawford starred in the title role with Sarah Brightman as Christine and Steve Barton as Raoul. The production, still playing at Her Majesty's, celebrated its 10,000th performance on 23 October 2010, with Lloyd Webber and the original Phantom, Michael Crawford, in attendance. It is the second longest-running musical in West End (and world) history behind Les Misérables, and third overall behind The Mousetrap.

"Rock picker"

YouTube link.

Very cool.  My maternal grandfather would have been awestruck to be able to use a piece of equipment like this in his cornfield (instead he had my aunts and uncles fan out through the field each spring to "pick potatoes.")

When I was growing up I never quite figured out why every year rocks would emerge at the surface of the fields.  It wasn't until as a an adult when Michael Waters' Principles of Geoarchaeology that I finally understood how the dramatic freeze-thaw cycles of the Upper Midwest result in cryoturbation and "granular convection."

If you visit any old farm in Minnesota and Wisconsin and walk the fields, you will almost certainly see a pile of rocks off at the side - often under shade trees - where generations of a family have picked rocks and tossed them away from the tilled areas.

"Mental abacus"

YouTube link.

The video above was posted at Neatorama several weeks ago.  Today I found some explanatory text at Wikipedia:

The abacus system of mental calculation is a system where users mentally visualize an abacus to do calculations.  No physical abacus is used; only the answers are written down. Calculations can be made at great speed in this way. For example, in the Flash Anzan event at the All Japan Soroban Championship, champion Takeo Sasano was able to add fifteen three-digit numbers in just 1.7 seconds.

This system is being propagated in China, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, Japan and India. Mental calculation is said to improve mental capability, increases speed of response, memory power, and concentration power.

Many veteran and prolific abacus users in China, Japan, South Korea, and others who use the abacus daily, naturally tend to not use the abacus anymore but perform calculations by visualizing the abacus. This was verified when the right brain measured heightened EEG activity when calculating and compared with non-veterans who were using the abacus to perform calculations. 

The technique demonstrated in the video seems to be quite different from the "finger math" using a mental abacus for counting.

Fractal crab claw

Cropped for emphasis from the original at imgur, via Reddit.

Can you explain this vertical "beam of light" ?

The image was created when lightning struck while a photograph was taken during a storm.

It's not Photoshopped and hasn't undergone any post-imaging processing.  There is a perfectly logical explanation - detailed and illustrated at Metabunk.

Spare me "stylish"

... if that style consists of a lacy petticoat-like peplum cropped above the crotch.

Today I learn that a peplum has a long and respectable history in women's fashion:

Overskirts may serve various purposes, ranging from protecting the underlying clothing from mud and dirt, to being purely a decorative feature.

Overskirts first came into fashion during the Victorian Era in 1867, after the pre-hoop and hoop periods of multiple petticoats and crinoline, and before the bustle period...  Early skirts were often looped up for walking, showing a pretty petticoat underneath, which led to the introduction of the overskirt.

The term "peplum" originates with the ancient Greek peplos, a women's garment that had the same decorative detail as an overskirt.

A Google Image search shows a variety of attractive peplums, but also yielded this example of "flirty femininity" -

I'll defer any further comments...

Top photo cropped for size (credit Instagram/natashazinko) from the original at a Telegraph gallery of stylish fashions.

Use peanut butter to save a dog caught in a glue trap

Glue board traps are trays coated with an extremely sticky adhesive. They are often used for rat traps. Any animal that touches one of these traps is immediately caught and immobilised, and physically stuck to the board...

When the EAMTs arrived, Abby had already succumbed to exhaustion and was collapsed face down in the glue and was struggling to breathe, with glue lodged in her nasal passage and eyes...

Knowing that simply peeling the trap off of the small dog's face would cause severe pain and could even rip out her fur and/or skin in the process, Gallo tried a more humane and creative approach. He lathered the little dog’s face with peanut butter and the peanut oil loosened the glue's grip.  

More details here, via the incomparable Nothing to do with Arbroath.

Is Nefertiti entombed behind Tutankhamn's burial chamber?

As published in the Amarna Royal Tombs Project:

Abstract:

Recently published, high-resolution scans of the walls of room J (the Burial Chamber) of Valley of the Kings tomb KV 62 (Tutankhamun) reveal, beneath the plastered surfaces of the painted scenes, distinct linear traces. These are here mapped, discussed, and tentatively identified as the "ghosts" of two hitherto unrecognized doorways. It is argued that these doorways give access to: (1) a still unexplored storage chamber on the west of room J, seemingly contemporary with the stocking of Tutankhamun's burial; and (2) a pre-Tutankhamun continuation of KV 62 towards the north, containing the undisturbed burial of the tomb's original owner -- Nefertiti.

From the text:

It begins to look as if Egyptology's traditional reading of KV 62 as a small, private tomb subsequently enlarged to four chambers for Tutankhamun's exclusive use has been very much in error. Rather, the indications are that what we now know as KV 62 represents merely the outermost portion of an extended, corridor-style "tomb-within-a-tomb" -- a considerably larger entity than previously understood, containing sequential burials of (1) an earlier queen who, by her employment of a nest of large sepulchral shrines had achieved full pharaonic status, and (2) a later male king, Tutankhamun himself, each interred within her (innermost) and his (outermost) dedicated burial apartments.

Much more at the quite interesting original publication, including images of the suspicious walls.

"Now, about the tomb of Nefertiti," [Omm Sety] continued, sounding a bit hesitant. "I did once ask His Majesty where it was, and he told me. He said, "Why do you want to know?" I said I would like to have it excavated, and he said, "No, you must not. We don't want anything more of this family known." But he did tell me where it was, and I can tell you this much. It's in the Valley of the Kings, and it's quite near to the Tutankhamun tomb. But it's in a place where nobody would ever think of looking for it," she laughed. "And apparently it is still intact..." -- el Zeini and Dees 2007, 265-266

Perhaps there's a mirror and the middle lady is a vampire?

Unfortunately, there's a simpler explanation.