Jenny's Noodle

Dancing with the Stars Season 11 cast. Photo credit: ABC

Today felt like a second Monday, so I thought I'd post this cheerful dancing movie montage; the 3-day weekend just seems so far away. According to "producer" Mart138, clips from 40 films were used in the video and set to Kenny Loggins' Footloose ("Everybody cut, everybody cut..."). Watch the video and see how many movies you can pick out, then scroll down underneath the player to see how well you did.

And on a related note—in case you missed it, the newly announced cast list for Dancing with the Stars Season 11 is here.


Film titles include: Dirty Dancing, Flashdance, White Nights, Perfect, Saturday Night Fever, Blue Skies, Pulp Fiction, High Fidelity, Clerks 2, American Pie, Billy Elliot, Footloose, True Lies, Grease, Honey, Phantom of the Opera, Step up, Step up 2, Moonwalker, West Side Story, Moulin Rouge, Mary Poppins, 7 Brides for 7 Brothers, Rocky Horror Picture Show, Strictly Ballroom, Happy Feet, Singing in the Rain, Fame, Fame 2009, Save the Last Dance, Mamma Mia, Mask of Zorro, Coyote Ugly, Wild Hogs, Get Smart, Airplane, A Knights Tale, Austin Powers, and High School Musical.

Image credit: Postertext

Postertext creates art from literature. Each poster depicts a memorable literary scene using text from the corresponding book. According to the website, the text is printed in a large enough font size to be legible "for someone with normal eyesight to read the text without visual aid." Hanging one of these would be a great way to decorate any home office or library.

Peter Pan Poster shown above ($30) | Buy it here

Photo credit: Think Geek

Light a campfire, grab a stick, a bar of chocolate, some marshmallows and a box of graham crackers—August 30 is National Toasted Marshmallow Day!

And if you really want to kick it old school, buy yourself a box of Stay Puft Marshmallows! Yes, that's right—"Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together..." and now, officially-licensed Stay Puft Marshmallows! The handmade treats are based on the pudgy Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from the Ghostbusters movie and are the world's first caffeinated marshmallows.

What you gonna eat?

Stay Puft Caffeinated Gourmet Marshmallows ($19.99/box of 24) | Buy it here

Here's the solution to last week's NPR Sunday Puzzle (August 22):

Answer: Mali/Malta (Li=Lithium/Ti=Tantalum), Algeria/Nigeria (Al=Aluminium/Ni=Nickel), Iceland/Ireland (Ce=Cerium/Re=Rhenium).

NPR Sunday Puzzle for August 29: Take the word "bookman." Change one letter and rearrange the others to name a famous writer. Who is it?

Submit your answer to NPR for a chance to be on next week's broadcast and be sure to visit Jenny's Noodle next Sunday to see the correct answer!

Image credit: CollegeHumor

Wendy's cheesy training videos from the 80's include songs with such timeless lyrical instructions as:

I tend to think this method of training was particularly effective. I don't much like fast food but I could watch this video over and over again. I've also gained a whole new respect for Dave Thomas as a hip-hop visionary.

[via Urlesque]

Necklace constructed from the English Dictionary For Everyday Use. Photo credit: Littlefly

Littlefly designs are a lovely mashup of jewelry and pages from books. From the website:

"Paper is many things: a carrier of text, illustration, history and emotion.

Jeremy May has captured the beauty of paper via a unique laminating process. Littlefly jewelery is made by laminating hundreds sheets of paper together, then carefully finishing to a high gloss. The paper is selected and carefully removed from a book, and the jewelery re-inserted in the excavated space.

Each piece is impossible to replicate, and is unique to the wearer. The beauty of the jewels extends within the piece: text and images pass all the way though the object, only exposed at the surfaces – giving a tantalising glimpse of the book within."

Littlefly also takes commissions so you can have your favorite literary work made into a ring, bracelet or necklace.

[via Swiss Miss]

Photo credit: Carlashes.com

Eyelashes and crystal eyeliner for car headlights are the latest craze in automobile cosmetics. I haven't seen this product driving down the road yet, but it's a cute, feminine way to trick out your ride. According to the manufacturer, Carlashes attach with 3M double sided automotive trim tape so they can be easily removed without any paint damage. Plus, they pretty much guarantee that the men in your life will never borrow your car again!

Carlashes ($24.99) and/or Crystal Eyeliner ($19.99) | Buy it here

May 14, 2010: Space shuttle Atlantis lifts off on the STS-132 mission. Photo credit: NASA

"Wake me up before you go-go..." What sort of alarm wakes you up in the morning? An annoying beeping sound or one of your favorite songs? Since the days of the Apollo missions, NASA has selected dozens of songs to wake up the astronauts on space missions—and now it's your turn to choose.

NASA is inviting the public to select from a list of Top 40 songs, played as wake-up songs by the Mission Control Center in the past. The winning songs will be played during the final two missions of the Space Shuttle Program—STS-133 and 134 are scheduled for launch on November 1, 2010 and February 26, 2011, respectively. More than one million votes have already been cast and the current standings for the Top 5 songs are:

Cast your vote here

Image via Flavorwire

Whaddya know. It's just that simple.

Image credit: time.com

From "the big hitters to the unknowns," TIME Magazine has released their annual list of the 50 Best Websites of 2010. The list is broken into 10 categories: Music & Video, Sports, Family & Kids, News & Info, Financial & Productivity, Shopping & Travel, Health & Fitness, Social Media, Games and Education.

Some of the picks are sites I visit frequently—Vimeo, Serious Eats, Foodspotting, LinkedIn and The Onion; others aren't really my thing; and still others are new to me—which is surprising for a webby gal like myself. TIME did, however, make one HUUUGE oversite—Jenny's Noodle! (Hey, I can dream.) Do you agree with this year's list? What omissions/additions would you suggest?

Image credit: Dialhouse

Just when I thought JetBlue Flight 1052 was so 2½ weeks ago.

[via HuffPo]

Photo credit: Jasper Juinen/Getty Images

On August 25, more than 45,000 people from all over the world chucked tomatoes at each other in the name of tradition. The event was part of the 65th annual Tomatina festival, which takes place on the last Wednesday in August. Hosted by the village of Bunol, near Valencia, Spain, Tomatina honors the town's patron saints, St. Louis Bertrand and the Mare de Déu dels Desemparats. This year's squishy war set the world record for the largest tomato fight ever, with a total of 220,462 pounds of tomatoes having been used. What a mess!

[Source: World Records Academy]

Photo credit: Cynthia Rowley

Designer Cynthia Rowley has teamed up with BAND-AID brand to create a series of fashionable limited-edition bandages. Sequins, gold chains, lace, and jewels adorn the chic bandages in this new line—a much more interesting statement than the ordinary nude color we're all used to wearing. $1 from each sale will be donated to Design Ignites Change, which mentors high school students.

Dress-Up BAND-AIDS ($10/box of 20) | Buy it here

Photo credit: 9gag

Are you one of the thousands of unemployed currently searching for a job? Stephen Colbert of Comedy Central's The Colbert Report has some useful tips on how to effectively use social media to find your perfect new career.

Some best practices:


Happy hunting!

Image via Reddit

Image via Likecool

Stick a colorful Tapi tap squeeze drink fountain onto any straight spout faucet, and presto — instant water fountain! No need to waste time cleaning a glass or shoving your head into the sink like an animal!

Tapi ($4.99) | Buy it here

Photo credit: Gund

Typical contents packed in a traveling businessman's suitcase: clothing, a razor, a computer, a cuddly teddy bear...

Wait, what?

It's true. According to a new study by British hotel chain Travelodge:

"25 percent of men reported they take their teddy bear away with them when going away on business. The stuffed animal supposedly reminds them of home and - some say - helps fill a cuddle-void left by distant partners."

A "cuddle-void"? Seriously? Guys, you're staying in a hotel room - order a pay-per-view movie and call it a night!  

[via ABC]

The best part about going back to school was getting all new school supplies. Remember cracking open a new box of 24 Crayola crayons, perfectly sharpened and arranged in rainbow order, that brand new crayon smell wafting from the colorful rows? And if you got the box of 120 crayons, it was a really special treat.

How well do you remember the colors in that giant box of crayons? See if you can match the names like Jazzberry Jam, Wisteria and Inchworm with their respective colors in The Color Test quiz over at Mentalfloss. It's not as easy as you may think!

Since August 14, vehicles continue to jam up along the Beijing-Tibet expressway in China. Photo credit: AFP

After a weekend dealing with the Woodward Nightmare Dream Cruise congestion, followed by Monday morning traffic jams, I felt a bit aggravated during this evening's slow commute. But none of those bottlenecks can compare to what drivers are facing today in China.

Heavy traffic, road work and breakdowns in China have caused a nine day traffic jam. The queue stretches for 62 miles along the Beijing-Tibet Expressway, connecting Beijing to Zhangjiakou, and is expected to last at least another month. Drivers have been passing the time by playing chess or cards, and vendors are capitalizing on the delays by setting up temporary stalls selling food and drinks to the car owners.

[via Sky News]

Photo via Buzzfeed

Photo credit: SFWater.org

Forget buying magic diet pills or finding that one meal plan you can stick to. According to researchers at Virginia Tech, the secret to losing weight is to drink two 8-ounce glasses of water before every meal.

Drinking water has always been part of facilitating weight loss, but there has been surprisingly little scientific information on the topic. This recent study, funded by the Institute for Public Health and Water Research, was the first randomized, controlled clinical trial comparing weight loss among dieters who drink water before meals with those who do not.

Over the course of 12 weeks, dieters who drank water before meals, three times per day, lost about 5 pounds more than dieters who did not increase their water intake.

"The study included 48 adults aged 55-75 years, divided into two groups. One group drank 2 cups of water prior to their meals and the other did not. All of the subjects ate a low-calorie diet during the study. Over the course of 12 weeks, water drinkers lost about 15.5 pounds, while the non-water drinkers lost about 11 pounds."

So pour yourself a couple of glasses of cool water with your next meal - it'll fill you up and help you get back into those skinny jeans.

[via EurekAlert!]

Photo credit: Phillyburbs.com

Robert Richardson won a Nobel prize in 1996 for his work on superfluidity in helium. He now fears the chemical element with an atomic number of 2 is being wasted at a rate that will soon have detrimental consequences on the world supply.

Richardson explained:

"There is no chemical means to make helium. The supplies we have on Earth come from radioactive alpha decay in rocks. Right now it's not commercially viable to recover helium from the air, so we have to rely on extracting it from rocks. But if we do run out altogether, we will have to recover helium from the air and it will cost 10,000 times what it does today."

A helium shortage would raise the price of party balloons from $3 to $100, says the scientist.

"Maybe in Europe there has been a conversation, but not in the US - and the US supplies nearly 80 per cent of the helium used in the world. The problem is that these supplies will run out in a mere 25 years, and the US government has a policy of selling helium at a ridiculously low price."

Other effects will include having to find alternative means of imitating Alvin, Simon and Theodore.

[via New Scientist]

Photo credit: ecosalon

August 22 is Eat a Peach Day! There are over 2,000 varieties of peaches to choose from, and all of them are a good source of Vitamin C. Although peaches are third most popular fruit grown in America, they actually originated in China where they're thought to be a symbol of longevity and immortality.

Peaches were originally planted in St. Augustine, Florida and, in 1571, were introduced by Franciscan monks to St. Simons and Cumberland islands along Georgia's coast. By the mid-1700's peaches and plums were cultivated by the Cherokee Indians. Georgia designated the peach as the official state fruit in 1995.

Grab a sweet, juicy peach and enjoy!
_____
For even more peachy fun, try:

• Paula Deen's Peach Cobbler - get the recipe
• Mixing up a Peach Schnapps cocktail - browse recipes
• James and the Giant Peach - buy the DVD or buy the book

Here's the answer to last week's NPR Sunday Puzzle (August 15):

Answer: (Preferred) Caroline and Cornelia; (will accept) Clara and Carla. (The answer I submitted was Claire and Carlie. Wonder if it would have been accepted?)

Break out your globe and a periodic table! This week's puzzle is a bit of a challenge because you have to come up with two different answers...

NPR Sunday Puzzle for August 22: Take a country whose name contains a symbol for a chemical element, and change it to a different chemical element to get another country. For example, if Aruba were an independent country, you could take the "AR," which is the chemical symbol for argon, and change it to "C," which is the chemical symbol for carbon, to come up with Cuba. There are two answers to this puzzle, and both must be found.

Submit your answer to NPR for a chance to be on next week's broadcast and be sure to visit Jenny's Noodle next Sunday to see the correct answer!

Image created via Hangman.no

The winning strategy for the paper and pencil guessing game Hangman has been solved. Well, sort of. Now that the ultimate maneuver has hit the internet, you only have a small window of time to play the game and stump your friends with it before the world catches on.

So what's the hardest word to choose as the solution to a game of Hangman? Drum roll please...

Jazz! Ba-dum-bum-psh.

Prompted by a question from his six-year-old daughter, a researcher named Jon McLoone built a computer game that used a series of algorithms to solve 15 million Hangman games.

"Having gathered all this data on 90,000 words, McLoone selected the 1,000 most promising, and then ran the game 3,000 times using just those thousand. All said and done, McLoone 'played' nearly 8 million games of Hangman in order to determine that the hardest Hangman word to guess - regardless of whether the guesser has 8, 9, 10, or even up to 13 guesses, is 'jazz.'"

The conclusion seems logical - nobody ever guesses "J" or "Z". Except maybe this guy.

[via Now I Know]

Photo credit: New York Daily News

A candidate named Brian Biggie is running for State Assembly in New York's 144th District.

And the East Coast-West Coast rivalry rages on.

Photo credit: Supernomnom/Flickr

Mario mushroom cakes, Bob-omb truffles, brickwiches, warp tube sugar cookies and Princess Peach Schnapps—it's a Super Mario Bros. picnic!

More SMB picnic photos here

[via Neatorama]

Simon's Cat in Cat-man-do:


More Simon's Cat films are here

Photo credit: Mighty Sweet

The New York Pizza Burger: Four quarter-pound patties, slices of pepperoni and mozzarella cheese, with marinara and Tuscan sauce on a 9 1/2-inch wide sesame seed bun. The $12.99 pizza burger will be available at Burger King's Time Square Whopper Bar in September. "Don't fall asleep before The King"...or he'll force-feed you all six slices.

[Source: BK]

Photo credit: LadyLikes

"Design Everyday: Everyday, everyone and everything are great places to find good design."
So went this year's slogan at Manila Design Week (August 7-13). The annual event's purpose is to promote the Philippines as a center of graphic design and creativity. One of the popular art installations in the show was constructed from 13,500 lollipops. In fact, the 5' x 6' mural was such a treat that it only took the crowd 15 minutes to completely devour. Here's a sweet video of the piece being created:


[via That's Nerdalicious]

Photo credit: World Records Academy

Colonel Harland Sanders debuted Kentucky Fried Chicken's secret Original Recipe of 11 herbs and spices back in 1940. Only a select few know the exact formula, however most Americans are well aware that "he puts an addictive chemical in his chicken that makes you crave it fortnightly, smart ass!”

On Tuesday, an 8-foot-tall by 9-foot-wide bucket of fried chicken was served up to the citizens of Louisville to celebrate the Original Recipe's 70th anniversary. Exactly 2,493.35 pounds of KFC was passed out to visitors, setting the world record for the largest serving of fried chicken ever. The "ambassador for the World Chicken Festival"—a Colonel Sanders look-alike—was also in attendance.

[via World Records Academy]

On December 11, 2008, the United Nations General Assembly decided:

"...to designate 19 August as World Humanitarian Day in order to contribute to increasing public awareness about humanitarian assistance activities worldwide and the importance of international cooperation in this regard, as well as to honour all humanitarian and United Nations and associated personnel who have worked in the promotion of the humanitarian cause and those who have lost their lives in the cause of duty, and invites all Member States and the entities of the United Nations system, within existing resources, as well as other international organizations and non-governmental organizations, to observe it annually in an appropriate manner."

Over fifty humanitarian workers and freelance filmmakers, from over forty countries around the globe, collaborated on the 2010 World Humanitarian Day project. The film was shot in under 9 weeks on a very small budget with the goal of "showing the enormous diversity of places, faces and endeavors of humanitarian aid workers in 2010."


Please share this video with your friends and family. For more information about World Humanitarian Day, visit ochaonline.un.org/whd.

Photo credit: OOOMS

Puzzles and food—both are very dear to my heart and the Puzzleboard from the Dutch design studio OOOMS combines the two. The multi-purpose Puzzleboard is a unique personal tray for guests at any party, and it's especially convenient that any wine glass can be fitted right into the blank spot. Finally, an invention that lets one hand be free at standing room only gatherings. Multiple Puzzleboards can be interlocked to create an instant extra long cutting board for slicing long baguettes.

The Puzzleboard ($26) | Buy it here

[via Lost at E Minor]

Photo credit: Jsome1 via Flickr

The photo above seems to be a set created for the filming of The Flintstones movie, but it's actually a real house constructed to look like it's straight out of the Stone Age. The "prehistoric" home was built between two giant stones on the hillside of the Fafe Mountains in Portugal.

I'm convinced that if I were to knock on the door, Fred would open it and yell, "Yabba Dabba Doo!"

Check out more photos of this unique house here.

[via Like Cool]

The all new Dry-Erase Write-on Fridge is the smart solution for those stumbling drunk roommates who tend to knock over your property, e.g. your Dry-Erase board, containing vital information like the phone number of that random guy/gal who was in your dorm room last night. The fridge incorporates a freezer, space for a 2-liter soda, a wire shelf, and adjustable thermostat. Dry-erase markers and an eraser are also included. Where was this appliance when I lived in the dorms?!

Haier Dry-Erase Write-on Fridge ($99) | Buy it here


[via The Awesomer]