Woah.  Rob Matthews has printed and bound 5000 pages of Wikipedia to resemble a tradition encyclopedia. He took all of the articles from Wikipedia’s featured articles list, resulting in a volume of knowledge that’s thicker than any book I’ve ever seen and singularly improbable.  Wikipedia could exist in no other form than the internet.  [via Coudal]

This has to be one of the singular best events to happen every year and it happened on Monday.  Monday!  How did we miss that?

Anyway, the Cooper Hill’s Cheese Rolling and Wake (official name, natch), for those unsure of what it is, is an annual event wherein an eight pound round of Double Gloucester Cheese is given a one second head start, and competitors race down the hill to catch the cheese; that rarely happens because the cheese can reach a top speed of 70 mph. People tumble, stumble and rumble down the hill and usually get injured.  Hilarity ensues.

First to pass the finish line wins the wheel of cheese. There’s also a less dangerous uphill race, but no one gives a shit about that because no one gets injured or rolls down a hill.  The Big Picture has a great photo set and the official Cooper’s Hill Cheese Rolling website has results and more photos.

See that dude, that dude is a world champion.  He’s the best because, unlike you or me, David Traver spent 2.5 years growing his beard so that he could spend another 90 minutes weaving it into that awesome looking design.  And because of that dedication he was rewarded as having the best beard on the entire planet.

Stand and recognize people.  It turns out that Alaska is also like the Kenya of competitive beard growing.  If competitive beard growing were analogous to long-distance running.  Because if it’s not than my entire analogy falls apart.

From the Consumerist:

The first surprising part of this story is that the Boston Police Department has a Twitter feed. They use it to post breaking police-type information that’s useful to the public, such as roads closed due to car accidents, crime data, big arrests, etc. Sometimes they also reply to reader questions. And that is how TruTV learned that the Boston police will not hide the zombie invasion from the public.

It’s good to see at least someone in the BPD has a sense of humor.

Stories like this always make me giddy for some unknown reason.  But, Candace Eloph spent a lifetime searching for her half-brother, who was given up for adoption in 1977, with no luck. 

And then she moved into a house in Shrevesport, LA and began talking to her neighbor Jamie Wheat one day. 

“We were sitting one day, talking, and she said, ‘You know what? I had a brother born January 27, 1977, that was adopted,’” Wheat said. “I was like, I’m adopted.”

Surprised, Eloph mentioned that her mother was 16 at the time. His mother was 16, too, Wheat replied.

All the details fit, and Cottrell and Wheat decided to take a DNA test.

The results: There’s a 99.995 percent probability that the two are related.

But this is the best part. 

Added his adoptive father, Ted Wheat: “It was just surprising that they lived across the street from us for two-and-a-half years. When they told us, we said, ‘This is the greatest news it could be.’”

Surprised isn’t quite the word I would use to describe finding your long-lost sibling for the past 30 years has been living next door unbeknownst to you.  I don’t know what the word is, but I’m guessing it’s closer to “great-oogly-moogly!”

Dear internet,

What is the difference between via and h/t?  Or are they interchangeable.

As seen on the subways of New York and your lucid dreams last night.

This might be better than the red swings on the BART.  Of course, it’s slightly more scary in a druggie sense, but who’s got time for picking nits when free bouncy rides are involved.

[via MetaFilter]

I mean, not that we need empirical evidence to make this correlation, but here it is. 

Here’s the thing: your romantic success has nothing to do with your mental jewelry and everything to do with how you make the other person feel. And making someone feel a certain way is a somewhat nonlinear process that requires a different kind of mastery than that of calculus or Shakespeare.

In other words, you need to earn love (or at least lust). Sadly, no mom, dad or professor teaches us about the power of the well-placed compliment (or put-down), giving attention but not too much attention, being caring without being needy. I wrote a whole 280-page book about that, so that’s a story for a different day.

An interesting tactic, to say the least.  Instead of ticketing bicyclists who aren’t wearing helmets, the police pull them over, give them a hug and then a free helmet and send them on their way.  [via Boing Boing]

Because it’s Florida and because separation of Church and State matter little and because, um, why not?

[Via blogs.tampabay.com]

Sure, sure we all love Talk Like a Pirate Day, probably no one more than Chicago mayor Richard Daley. 

So much so, that he decided to honor The Bard today with the unofficial holiday Talk Like Shakespeare Day.  Cuz, you know, all the problems in Chicago have been fixed by his swift and confidant hand and this was the only thing left to accomplish. 

It’s assumed that today is Will’s birthday, but nobody knows for sure, anymore than they know how to talk like Shakespeare.  Though Presurfer has a few ideas.

Just in case you want to snuggle up to your deceased loved-one’s ashes. I would really like to make fun of this, but in truth I think I would rather have somebody’s ashes in a stuffed teddy bear or kitten than an ostentatious copper urn.

It’s high time we send Maury Povitch or Jerry Springer to Germany.  Enlarge to read (or just read below we’ve reprinted), but take our word, this story has more twists and turns than an episode of Lost. 

In Stuttgart, Germany, a court judge must decide on a case of honorable intentions in a situation where a man hired his neighbor to get his wife pregnant.

It seems that Demetrius Soupolos, 29, and his former beauty queen wife, Traute, wanted a child badly, but Demetrius was told by a doctor that he was sterile.

So, Soupolos, after calming his wife’s protests, hired his neighbor, Frank Maus, 34, to impregnate her. Since Maus was already married and the father of two children, plus looked very much like Soupolos to boot, the plan seemed good.

Soupolos paid Maus $2,500 for the job and for three evenings a week for the next six months, Maus tried desperately, a total of 72 different times, to impregnate Traute.

When his own wife objected, he explained, “I don’t like this any more than you. I’m simply doing it for the money. Try and understand.”

When Traute failed to get pregnant after six months, however, Soupolos was not understanding and insisted that Maus have a medical examination, which he did.

The doctor’s announcement that Maus was also sterile shocked everyone except his wife, who was forced to confess that Maus was not the real father of their two children.

Now Soupolos is suing Maus for breach of contract in an effort to get his money back, but Maus refuses to give it up because he said he did not guarantee conception, but only that he would give an honest effort.

[Thanks, Scott via Financial Mail]