Undead Astronauts

It’s spreading!

Police said the incident occurred near a bus station in Ouhai District at 2pm on Tuesday when a man surnamed Dong rushed onto the road and blocked the vehicle of a female driver surnamed Du, Wenzhou City News reported.

The man then climbed on the car’s hood and started hitting the windshield while Du screamed inside, police said.

Several minutes later, Du got out of the car to flee, but the man jumped on her and started gnawing on her face once they were on the ground, police said.

Passers-by said Du’s face was covered in blood. They said they tried to pull Dong off the woman, but he seemed so “crazy” that they couldn’t stop him.

Police stopped the man. Doctors at a nearby hospital said Du will need plastic surgery to repair the damage from the bites on her nose and lips.

(Source: Shanghaiist)

Take this test and see what your color identification skills are. I got a 3, but I might have done better without all the afternoon glare on my screen. A perfect score is 0.

Trulia, a housing search site has maps that overlay schools, crime and amenities has just gotten better. It now provides commute times. Although interesting, the estimator for my city overestimates commutes significantly. YMMV, obviously.

(Source: FlowingData)

Google has a new project whose aim is to catalog the world’s endangered languages before they’re extinguished. The stated purpose is to keep cultures and ideas from disappearing for good, and it’s a noble one. But despite how interesting any particular endangered culture might be, any original ideas they had were either co-opted by larger society or were simply unimportant in the larger scheme of things. Memes go through a Darwinist selection process to stay relevant and spread, and if they’re not better than the next meme, they’re discarded. It’s regrettable when oral/cultural histories are lost, but generally there’s no loss in quality of life for the general population. Indeed, those unlucky enough to still speak only these dying languages are probably condemned to a subpar quality of life because of the isolation it forces upon them. Another way to look at it is that these languages are dying precisely because they’re unimportant and possibly even detrimental to the speaker.

Despite the above issues, the project is still interesting in that is shows how diverse humanity is and where that diversity lies. Ethnically homogeneous East Asia has few endangered languages, but the geographically isolated areas of the Himalayas have an abundance of languages near extinction.

Buy it on Amazon. This weekend only.

It’s important to use headphones on this one.

(Source: Peer Rev Neurons)

LOL. Apparently, science is all pink, lipgloss and sunglasses. Who knew?

(Source: CV)

Speaking of sustainability and food… The Economist has an amazing graph.

(Source: Info Proc)