Mountain Dew can dissolve a mouse!?

(WARNING: The following story will absolutely destroy any desire you had, have, or will have, to drink Mountain Dew. Just sayin.)

A man in Illinois is suing the Pepsi Company, claiming he found a dead mouse in one of his cans of Mountain Dew, and sending the 'remains' as evidence to the company.

However, Pepsi have denied that this could be true, because the 'remains were too intact.'

"...Pepsi's lawyers also found experts to testify, based on the state of the remains sent to them that, "the mouse would have dissolved in the soda had it been in the can from the time of its bottling until the day the plaintiff drank it," according to the Record...It would have become a "jelly-like substance," according to Pepsi..."

Mountain Dew is acidic enough to dissolve a body. In other news, serial killers and mobsters now have a new interest in the factories of Mountain Dew...

via Yahoo News

New trailer for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey!

Well it's been a while since I last posted. But coincidentally, it's also been a while since Peter Jackson re-introduced us to Middle Earth in cinemas! But fear no longer, my hairy-footed friends. The first trailer for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey has just been released!

Featuring stunning scenery, concerned looking wizards and a riddling bi-polar schizophrenic, you can check it out just below.

The film will be out in just under a year, on the 14th of December. Much too far away, precious....

Two times Tokyo?

Because Japanese legislators have been watching waaaay to much Evangelion, they're considering building a second Tokyo, in case the first one is destroyed. By Angels.

It's not that crazy an idea to be honest, during WW1 France built a second Paris to confuse German bombers, and China is building a number of towns reminiscent of traditional Germany and Austria.

According to World Architecture News, "the new city, code named IRTBBC, or Integrated Resort, Tourism, Business and Backup City, will stand in for the capital in the event of it being hit by a disabling earthquake. A possible location has already been earmarked 300 miles to the west of Tokyo on the 1236 acre site of the largely superseded Itami Airport."

The legislative backers of the proposal want 14 million Yen (approximately AU$175,087) to research as to whether this 'emergency city' will actually work. The city is proposed to house 50,000 residents, 200,000 daytime workers, an emergency seat of government, casinos, and the tallest tower in the world (at approximately 2,139 feet).

Although considering practically every disaster movie is set in either New York or Tokyo, this may be a good investment.

via inhabitat

The secret to Viking Navigation is a crystal!

Ancient Vikings were very good mariners. They crossed wide seas with none of the navigational equipment we have today, instead relying on their knowledge of the sun and the stars. But a question that has always plagued archaeologists, is how did they accomplish this on the Atlantic, which can often be a pretty soggy, foggy, and altogether nasty place?

According to Viking legend, they used a 'sunstone,' a magical device that allowed their navigators to read the celestial positions even in deep fog. And now, archaeologists think they've found what it was.

Researchers at the University of Rennes in France have put together all the evidence they've found, and have wound up with something quite plausible. While not magical, the device was a transparent calcite crystal, known as an 'Iceland Spar,' that ancient navigators would've used to depolarise light - meaning that the crystal was able to split light along two different axes.

In practice, that means that a sailor simply had to put a dot on top of the crystal, and then look at it from below. The incoming light would hit the dot, and create the illusion that it was duplicated. This optical effect was apparently all ye olde sailors needed to be able to locate the sun, even when it wasn't even visible. 

In case you didn't get that, (I sure didn't), lead researcher Guy Ropars has a less technical version:

"Then you rotate the crystal until the two points have exactly the same intensity or darkness. At that angle, the upward-facing surface indicates the direction of the Sun. A precision of a few degrees can be reached even under dark twilight conditions...Vikings would have been able to determine with precision the direction of the hidden Sun." 

These precursors to the compass were also used later on, being considered more reliable than the newer compass due to the fact that the presence of metal didn't affect it.

I'm still saying it's magic.

via i09, with the original report here.

Strawberries now cure alcohol poisoning?

Strawberries are delicious. In fact, they're second only to the great mango in terms of tastiness. But now they're not just delicious - they can cure the effects of alcohol poisoning!

Heavy drinking can bring serious problems. And not the 'I-got-drunk-last-night' kind of drinking, but the 'I-got-drunk-every-week-this-month' kind of drinking. It can cause long-term damage to the mucous membrane of your stomach that can give rise to all manner of gastrointestinal disorders, including ulcers, colorectal cancer, and inflammatory bowel disease. Not cool.

Now a European team has found that strawberries, or more accurately the anthocyanins and antioxidants found in strawberries, can help mitigate these effects and even improve treatment of stomach ulcers.

Sara Tulipani, University of Barcelona researcher and co-author of the study, explains that "the positive effects of strawberries are not only linked to their antioxidant capacity and high content of phenolic compounds, but also to the fact that they activate the antioxidant defenses and enzymes of the body."

TC;DR: Gastrointestinal diseases like stomach ulcers caused by heavy drinking are caused by 'free radical' atoms and molecules that are highly unstable and cause chain reactions in trying to gain stability. That's why the damage accumulates over time. Antioxidants in strawberries activate the 'defense systems' of the body, and reduce the production of these free radicals in the first place.

Life lesson here: If you plan on doing some heavy drinking during the holidays, minimise damage by loading up with strawberries in the days beforehand. It won't stop the damage, but it'll help reduce it.

via i09, while the original research paper can be found here.

Shoot first, re-focus later - New Lytro Camera!

Now this is actually pretty cool. Lytro have unveiled a new camera that's completely different to anything else out there on the market at the moment. The key? You can focus and re-focus your images after you've taken the shot.

The Lytro camera, named after the company, is about 11cm long, and 4cm square, and has a lens on one end, and an LCD touch screen display at the other. Along the sides are the shutter button, USB port, and a strip that controls the zoom function - 8x. It's a pretty different design to your standard camera, which is generally loaded with more buttons than you actually know how to use. (true story).

On the inside, is where it's really different. Conventional digital cameras use lenses to focus a subject so it's sharp on the image sensor, then it takes the picture. That means that for an in-focus part of the image, light from only one direction reaches the sensor. In the Lytro though, light from multiple directions hits each patch of the sensor; the camera records this directional information, and after-the-shot computing converts it into something a human eye can understand. This means that the focal point of the image can be re-adjusted multiple times on the computer, even after the image has been taken.

This means that you can whip it out, take a photo of a scene before it changes (a bird flying away, someone's smile, a fast-paced scene) and then fix it up later. In addition, this kind of photographic technology (known as light-field photography) allows the images taken to be shown in 3D - because you have an image with potential multiple depths-of-field.

There are three models - the $399 cameras with 'electric blue' and 'graphite' exteriors whose 8GB of built-in memory is enough for about 350 shots and the 'red hot,' 16GB camera that can record 750 shots. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like you can expand the storage space once it's purchased.
US residents can apparently order one online now, according to Chief Executive Ren Ng, and they'll be shipped in the first quarter of 2012. No word yet on a international release, but you could probably just import one if you wanted to.

via Cnet

Want to float in the clouds? "Niiiiimbus!"

I've always liked clouds. They look like a great big jumping castle in the sky. Seriously, imagine if they were bouncy? That's be awesome. Tiago Barros also likes clouds, but in a more sedate, float-amongst-them kind of way.

His 'Passing Cloud' concept allows people to float in the sky amongst the clouds, wherever the wind takes them, sitting on top of the zeppelin-like, nylon-covered and steel-skeletoned structure. It's environmentally friendly, and is completely reliant on wind-power.  

According to Barros, "nowadays, traveling is achieved with this idea of having a fixed destination and an estimated time of arrival. Passing Cloud completely inverts this system. A floating device is introduced that travels around the entire USA territory according to current predominant winds. It has no fixed time of arrival or place for arrival. The journey becomes the essence. Imagine traveling at wind speeds in a totally sustainable object that leaves no Human trace behind."

This actually looks pretty awesome. The idea of just travelling wherever, without any fixed plan or destination sounds pretty relaxing... and it reminds me of Flying Nimbus from Dragonball. Which is awesome. Although personally, I'd like to see some simple shelters on the structure, basic cabins or even tents, so that you weren't always exposed to the open air and weather.

via Dezeen