Stop oppressive gardening!

Garden gnomes, according to folklore, help tend gardens at night, when they awaken from their ceramic state and touch the gardens with their magic, causing flowers to grow. Gnome Liberationists are people who advocate the "freedom" of garden gnomes, often by stealing them and moving them to new locations. They've been featured in movies, tv, and local news stories. The garden gnome prank is known as gnoming or gnome hunting. One variation is the travelling gnome prank where kidnapped gnomes are sent on trips around the world. The travelling gnome became the basis for Travelocity's advertising. The first Garden Gnome Liberation Front began in France in 1997 during which over the course of the year, stole over 150 gnomes. Organizations formed for the stated purpose of "freeing the ceramic creatures from forced labor in gardens." They argue that gnomes are captured, sold, and kept as slaves, ripped from their Northern Woodland homes, stripped of their freedoms, and forced to tend to the gardens where they are set. A couple of demonstrations performed by the front include repainting "freed" gnomes to make them unrecognizable, and a "mass suicide" in 1998 where 11 gnomes were hung from a bridge with nooses around their necks and a note reading "when you read these few words we will no longer be part of your selfish world, where we serve merely as pretty decorations." It's unknown where and when the prank first started but now it's a worldwide phenomenon.

Heart, inverted.

Situs inversus is a congenital condition where the major visceral organs are reversed or mirrored from their normal positions, making it so the heart is on the right side of the thorax rather than the left. The condition includes not only the heart but the stomach, spleen, liver, gall bladder and intestines, as well as all of their respective nerves and blood vessels. It occurs in less than 1 in 10,000 people. The condition was first seen and drawn by Leonardo da Vinci in the 15th or 16th century, but wasn't described until the 18th. The condition generally doesn't affect the health of people who have it any more than that of those who don't. Most people are unaware they even have opposite organs until they seek medical attention for an unrelated problem. This can sometimes cause confusion when signs and symptoms are on the wrong side. Organ transplantation can be complicated being that situs inversus not only means the organs are on the other side, but they're mirrored, and the orientation of what needs to be attached doesn't fit as easily. The condition can often be found in one of a set of identical twins, who knew?

Warrior Dash!

A grueling 3-4 mile marathon, Warrior Dash is an event held in locations all over the country where participants not only run the distance, but have a number of obstacles to overcome along the way. Costumes are encouraged, there's no time limit because it's not a race, and the prize? Not cash, but a beer and music to celebrate completing the feat!

The amputee rock climber

Aron Ralston is a 35 year old mountaineer and adventurer. In May 2003, on a solo hiking trip in Utah, was forced to amputate his lower right arm in order to survive when a boulder fell and trapped him. He was working as a mechanical engineer for Intel in 2002 when he left his job to climb all of Colorado's "fourteeners", or peaks above 14,000 feet. He spent five days trying to break or dislodge the boulder when on the fifth day, dehydrated and delirious, he prepared to amputate his own arm with just a camping multi-tool. After he freed himself from his trapped and dead arm, he was still 17 miles from his truck, to get to which first he had to rappel down a 65 foot sheer. Hiking through a canyon, he met a Swiss family on vacation who alerted the authorities to send a helicopter rescue team.
Now with a prosthetic arm, he climbs more than ever, finishing his "fourteeners" as well as Denali, Kilimanjaro, and an expedition through the Grand Canyon. He intends to summit Everest one day, but for now is the subject of Danny Boyle's latest film, 127 Hours, about the true story of his 2003 accident.

Pipe Dream

Kent Jenkins is a college freshman at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, who built himself a musical instrument out of pvc pipes, modeled after one used by Blue Man Group. Here's a video of him playing it :)

Arsenic-eating bacteria?!

Arsenic, until recently, has been known as a universal poison to all types of life. But an organism found in California's Mono Lake can live and grow entirely off of this deadly chemical. The common element bacteria takes to survive is phosphorus, making it unheard of that this one thrives from such a toxic one. Until now, it wasn't believed that any such creatures could survive without phosphorus, being that it is one of the six essential components for the survival of all life. The reason this is of such interest to scientists is because it proves that life exists in harsher environments than we ever imagined. This is especially a big boost of hope for all those in search of intelligent life on other planets. Conditions that used to mean life was impossible...is now possible.

Enoshima's Christmas display

For the last five years, an aquarium in Kamakura, Tokyo, has powered a 6'6" tall Christmas tree by electric eel power. Inside the eel's tank is a pair of aluminum plates that act as electrodes to power the lights of the tree every time the eel moves.
This year, they've added another display along with the tree that uses human power to work this time. Visitors stomp on a pad to make a Santa Claus robot sing and dance. The display's creator, Kazuhiko Minawa, imagines what the light produced by a Christmas tree powered by all the electric eels in the world would look like. But if you were to do that, why just power a Christmas tree?