Dirty junk mail Slot

Picture of a mail box where the slot for the mail happens to be the butt crack of a statue.People have been arrested for just depositing their mail here.

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Top 10 New Organisms of 2008

The world's smallest snake, a prehistoric ant and microbes that may be 120,000 years old: These are just a few of the species revealed to the world in the last 12 months.

With animals going extinct at rates unseen since the dinosaurs disappeared, it's nice to be reminded that some species haven't even been discovered.

As Smithsonian Institute ornithologist Brian Schmidt said after finding the olive-backed forest robin: "It is definitely a reminder that the world still holds surprises for us."

Left: Stiphrornis pyrrholaeumus, also known as the olive-backed forest robin, was found during a biodiversity expedition in Gabon. Scientists know little more about S. pyrrholaeumus other than it exists.

Leptotyphlops carlae was found in a patch of forest on the eastern side of Barbados. Thin as a spaghetti noodle and small enough to curl up on a quarter, it's believed to embody the evolutionary limits of snake smallness.

Only three specimens of Martialis heureka have been found, all outside the Amazon jungle city of Manaus — but that's all scientists needed to trace a direct evolutionary lineage to the last known ancestor of all living ants, a subterranean creature that lived 120 million years ago.

The first new elephant shrew in 126 years, the 18-ounce Rhynchocyon udzungwensis — also called the grey-faced sengi — is a giant in its family (which, technically, are not shrews, though they are distantly related to elephants).

Undiscovered parasites are relatively common, but Myrmeconema neotropicum does something no other parasite can: mimic fruit. The abdomens of infected ants swell and turn bright red, making them easy targets for berry-hungry birds who then spread M. neotropicum's eggs in their droppings.

Carpomys melanurus, or the greater dwarf cloud rat, was first observed 112 years ago, and never seen again. Until it was found again in the rain-forest treetops of the Philippines, scientists thought it was extinct.

Tridacna costata is the first giant clam species found in two decades, and not a moment too soon: Fossil evidence suggests it once made up 80 percent of Red Sea giant clams, and now accounts for just 1 percent.

When Philadelphia's Academy of Natural Sciences collection manager Mark Sabaj Pérez needed to name a new catfish, he thought immediately of Frank Gallagher, who managed the Academy's mail room for 37 years.

"I wanted to honor Frank for his many years of dedicated service to the global community of taxonomists and systematists in handling the shipping and receiving of countless loans of biological specimens," said Pérez. "I was impressed by Frank's dedication, his love for fellow employees, and his keen interest in the science we do. I simply thought, here is a guy who should be honored with his own catfish." The result was Rhinodoras gallagheri.


When biologists in New Zealand compared modern yellow-eyed penguins to centuries-old museum specimens, they realized that the birds were not the same species. Megadyptes waitaha is a brand-new species that's already extinct.


With only 8,000 of an estimated 3 million bacterial species identified, new bugs aren't hard to find. But unlike Chryseobacterium greenlandensis, they don't usually date from the late Pleistocene.

Thawed from ice recovered two miles below the surface of a 120,000-year-old Greenland glacier, C. greenlandensis appears unchanged by its time in deep-freeze. Its discoverers aren't sure whether it shut down or just slowed down its metabolism.

"There may be some metabolism occurring in the ice. If they have been dividing, it may be on a very low rate, on a scale we're not accustomed to — so slow, they could be dividing every 100 or 1,000 years," said Penn State biochemist Jennifer Loveland-Curtze.

Asked whether her samples may not have divided at all, and have survived in suspended animation for 120,000 years, Loveland-Curtze replied, "We don't know yet."

And there's more: 120,000 years could be the low end of C. greenlandensis' age.

"The bottom of the ice core had sediment where the glacier had rubbed against the earth," said Jean Brenchley, a Penn State microbiologist. "We don't know if the microorganisms were from snow that was deposited and became trapped, or were scooped up from the permafrost and there for millions of years."

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12 Hottest Twins Chicks In History

There comes a time in a man’s life when he’s simply too old for foursomes, and when that time comes, he ditches his three girlfriends and finds some 19-year-old twins. Yes, High Exalted Supreme Pimp Hugh Hefner is done with The Girls Next Door—Holly Madison, Bridget Marquardt and Kendra Wilkinson—and rebounding with identical twins Karissa and Kristina Shannon. In honor of his trailblazing (damn near jail-blazing) new twofer, Complex counts down the hottest twins who need to be introduced to the twins.


There’s nothing these sexy 19-year-old twins want more than Hef’s 82-year-old sexual experience.


1 000 000: COCO MILLER & KELLY MILLER Gotta start the countdown somewhere, right? Besides, these beefy WNBA twins overpowered us and forced their way in.


12: JEAN SAGAL & LIZ SAGAL Peg Bundy’s real life sisters were the old school “Doublemint Twins,” and if that weren’t enough flavor to chew on, they played twin cheerleaders in Grease 2. Grease two? Don’t mind if we do.


11: BARBARA BUSH & JENNA BUSH Who needs brains when you have Bush?


10: CARA NICOLE GOSSELIN & MADELYN KATE GOSSELIN These Jon & Kate Plus Ei8ht stars are gonna be a problem in 2018. OK, they’re a problem for some of us right now.


9: JILL HENNESSY & JACQUELINE HENNESSY We’re chasing Hennessy with Hennessy. Man up, bitches.


8: JANICE VIDAL and JILL VIDAL Jill, the more street of these HK singers, does “hardcore R&B.” We’re gonna go ahead and assume that means she’s OK with us practicing the rhythm and bust-off method.


7: MARY-KATE OLSEN & ASHLEY OLSEN Contrary to thrice fact-checked new reports, Heath Ledger actually overdosed from ingesting too much of their sexiness.


6: JESSICA ORIGLIASSO & LISA ORIGLIASSO (The Veronicas) We have only one question for these Aussie pop rockers: “G’day. Mate?”


5: TIA MOWRY & TAMERA MOWRY Half African-American and half Italian-American, these two are like the sexual tension in a Spike Lee movie. And we want to do the right thing to both of them.


4: SCARLETT JOHANSSON & HUNTER JOHANSSON One out of two ain’t bad, especially when that one has unbelievable twos!


3: NAIMA MORA & NIA MORA Naima was one of Tyra Banks’s next top models. Her sister could get on top too.


2: GISELE BUNDCHEN & PATRICIA BUNDCHEN We don’t think it’s cool that Brazil harbored Nazi war criminals, but these beauties are proof that good things can happen when Brazil gets in bed with Germany.


1: NICOLE ALBINO & NATALIE ALBINO (Nina Sky) These Puerto Rican dance artists from Queens may never do better than 44 on The Billboard 200, but around our way, they’re número uno pa’ siempre!

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World's Tallest Bungee Jumps

1. Jump From the top of Oprah’s Ego.


2. Jump From the top of the FCC’s “Do Not Call” list.


3. Jump From the top of Tom Cruise’s stack of gay porn.


4. Jump From the top of Elisabeth Hasselbeck’s stack of hate mail.


5. Jump From the top of Cher’s wig collection.

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Amazing Ice Lantern and Snow Sculpture Festival

Visitors gather outside the gate of Zhaolin park at the ice lantern festival in Harbin, China ..



Every year the Harbin ice lantern festival opens on 22 December ..



The event, recognised as home to ice and snow art in China, lasts until February ..



This year is the 35th ice lantern festival. The festival is internationally renowned for its exquisite sculptures..



This year's ice lantern festival has over 2,000 illuminated ice scultpures on display..



It began in 1985 and considers itself to be China's greatest ice artwork festival, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors..



The city's location in northeast China accounts for its arctic climate which provides abundant ice and snow..



This year, the festival is Disney sponsored and themed

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Incredible Ice Hotels and Snow Castles of Finland

There’s no natural light — all rooms are lit with multi-colored lights and bedecked with elaborate carvings. An ice bar, restaurant, walkways and lobbies have also been built in the hotel at Snowvillage near Kittila, Finland.

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Amazing man with Iron Hand

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