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10Holiday Light And Energy Use Chances are, the last people you’d expect to enjoy your beautiful display of holiday lights are NASA scientists. But they’re not only enjoying them, they’re making good use out of them, too. For the last few years, scientists at NASA have been using satellite imagery to create a worldwide picture of who’s celebrating what holiday—and it’s not for the reason you might think. During the holidays, people are deviating from their usual behavior patterns....

The widespread security issues continue to undermine the protection of privacy. They need constant control and surveillance of what happens in this world. Given the many benefits of technology, privacy is often overlooked despite its significance. Here, we look at ten ways technology has destroyed privacy. 10 The Untold Side of Biometric Scanners Thanks to technology, you can now use your eyes, fingers, or face for identification. Biometric scanners are undoubtedly fast, convenient, and almost secure....

10 The First ‘Pet’ Cat The unearthing of a 9,500-year-old cat at a Neolithic burial site in Cyprus has quite possibly pushed back the anthro-felinic timeline by thousands of years. You see, cats are not native to the region and must have been brought there by ancient settlers. It was first thought that humans transmogrified wild cats to house cats around 4,000 years ago in Egypt. However, more recent finds credit cat domestication to the Chinese 1,000 years earlier....

In July 1973, George Lucas was an unknown director working on a low budget 1960s nostalgia film called “American Graffiti”. He approached Universal studios to see if they were interested in a film called, “Star Wars”. Universal turned him down in one of the biggest mistakes ever made by a studio. While Lucas was influenced by the huge number of “Buck Rogers” reruns he watched while developing Star Wars, a much bigger influence comes from work of Akira Kurosawa....

Numbers 31:32 These were the spoils which remained of the plunder taken by the fighting men: 675,000 sheep, 72,000 cattle, 61,000 donkeys, and as for persons, 32,000 young women who had had no intercourse with a man. Genesis 16:8 And he said “Hagar, Sarai’s slave girl, where have you come from and where are you going?” She answered, “I’m running away from Sarai, my mistress.” The angel of the Lord said to her, “Go back to your mistress and submit to ill treatment at her hands....

In Mars Attacks, no dialogue was written for the Martians so Frank Welker made up his own language for them. Fact: The Martian Girl dress had no zipper or buttons (to make it as smooth as possible), so Lisa Marie had to be sewn into it every day. Paul Rudd and Seth Rogan played off each other brilliantly in this scene, however, a different version than the one in the video was used for the real movie....

SEE ALSO: 10 Holidays With Twisted, Dark, And Unusual Histories 15. Mother’s Day 2nd Sunday in May Different countries celebrate Mother’s Day on various days of the year because the day has a number of different origins. One school of thought claims this day emerged from a custom of mother worship in ancient Greece. Mother worship — which kept a festival to Cybele, a great mother of Greek gods, the wife of Cronus; was held around the Vernal Equinox around Asia Minor and eventually in Rome itself from the Ides of March (15 March) to 18 March....

We start this list off with one of this year’s snubs – Albert Brooks, one of America’s underrated comedians, plays a mobster who leads a getaway driver in a cat-and-mouse game over a $300,000 heist. It’s one of Brooks’ best, but Drive was snubbed at the Oscars. Considering that Brooks was one of two favorites to win, this snub screams egregious. In The English Patient, Colin Firth plays the husband of Kristin Scott Thomas....

Joke 1 Q: With the current market turmoil, what’s the easiest way to make a small fortune? A: Start off with a large one. Joke 2 Q: What’s the difference between an investment banker and a large pizza? A: A large pizza can feed a family of four. Joke 3 A rich, dying man, laid on his deathbed, requested to be joined at his bedside by his vicar, his bank manager and his lawyer....

This patent from 1968 is designed to help people who, for some unknown reason, might need to place a lock upon their toilet seat. I have spent a considerable amount of time trying to work out who might use this device – and, frankly, the only thing I can come up with is that perhaps it could be used to punish men who forget to put the toilet seat down....

Phonagnosia is a very rare disorder characterized by the inability to recognize people through their voices. People with this disorder can engage in face-to-face conversation, but they have difficulty in communicating over the phone, because they cannot identify who they are speaking to, even if it’s someone they know. Most of the documented cases of phonagnosia were recorded in people with brain lesions following a brain injury or a stroke, but the January 2009 issue of the journal, Neuropsychologia, featured a case study of a woman who was said to be born with the disorder....

Taste Buds Different tastes can be detected on all parts of the tongue, contrary to the popular belief that specific tastes correspond to specific sites on the tongue. The original “tongue map” was based on a mistranslation by a Harvard psychologist of a German paper that was written in 1901. Sensitivity to all tastes occurs across the whole tongue and indeed in other regions of the mouth where there are taste buds (epiglottis, soft palate)....

First Prize First prize is an 8GB iPod Touch (whichever model is the latest available in January 2010) valued at $199.00 Second Prize Second prize is an 8GB iPod Nano (whichever model is the latest available in January 2010) valued at $149.00 in any color of your choosing. Third Prize Third prize is a 4GB iPod Shuffle (whichever model is the latest available in January 2010) valued at $79.00 in any color of your choosing....

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With hundreds of vacant spaces and acres of isolated shelter, these ghost malls have become meccas for criminals, the homeless, and allegedly even paranormal entities. Time is only making things worse; every year, these monuments to obsolescence decay further and play host to more shady activity. Abandoned malls are just plain creepy, and this list gathers together ten of the creepiest. 10 The Acropolis, Mexico City The Acropolis was a shopping center in a suburb of Mexico City called Naucalpan de Juárez....

10 Virginia Christian On the morning of August 16, 1912, Virginia Christian was sent to the electric chair for the murder of her employer, Ida Belote, after being accused of stealing a gold locket. Christian, the 16-year-old servant, would become the first and last woman to be executed in the state of Virginia. It was during this time that Jim Crow legislation and racial purity laws were in effect, further creating antiblack sentiment....

It wasn’t always like this, though. The rest of the civilized world owes a great debt to the United States for showing them the path in the dark, even when they didn’t mean to. Their inventive ways of killing each other and turning a quick buck are truly an inspiration to all those people who live in the lands they haven’t yet colonized with airbases, bombed into oblivion, or exploited the natural resources of to the point of total environmental collapse....

Costco is the largest membership warehouse club chain in the world based on sales volume, headquartered in Issaquah, Washington, United States and founded in Kirkland, Washington, with its flagship warehouse in nearby Seattle. Costco’s Canadian operations are based in Ottawa, Ontario. It is the fourth biggest general retailer in the United States. As of January 28, 2006, Kmart operated a total of 1,416 Kmart stores across 49 states, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U....

Other than those animals, there are some that either had eyes at one point in their evolutionary history, and lost them over time, or they evolved eyes that were later rendered incapable of seeing. Whatever their evolutionary niche, these ten interesting animals lost their ability to see the world around them but found innovative ways of surviving. 10 Interesting Theories Of Evolution You Have Never Heard About 10 Blind Legless Lizard – Dibamus Dalaiensis A new species of legless lizard was discovered in 2011, and as the name suggests, it’s completely blind....

This list rounds up some of the more bizarre awards out there, ranging from photography and fashion to phalluses and pseudo-science. Like the Razzies, some of these awards are mocking, and it might be more accurate to call the recipients losers rather than winners. Others are genuine awards, but for bizarre and interesting things. 10 The Turnip Prize If you look at most modern art and think a five-year-old could create it, then you’ll like this award....