SPOILER ALERT!

Here are the rumored Top 36 contestants who made it to the next round of eliminations, out of the initial 50 who made it to Hollywood:

Adam Lambert
Allison Iraheta
Angela Martin
Ann Marie Boskovich
Anoop Desai
Aubrey Logan
Brent Keith Smith
Cody Sheldon
Daniel “Danny” Gokey
Deanna Brown
Felicia Barton
Jackie Midkiff
Jacklyn “Jackie” Tohn
Jakob McKay
Jasmine Murray
Jennifer (Jenesis) Samoranos
Jesse McCullagh
Junot Joyner
Julissa Veloz
Justin Williams
Kendall Beard
Kristen McNamara
Lanesha Young
Lil Rounds
Michael Bartul
Nate Marshall
Otto Malone
Perrie Cataldo
Phoebe Holiday
Reggi Beasley
Ryan P.A. Johnson
Scott Douglas MacIntyre
Stephen Fowler
Taylor Vaifanua
Terrence T.K. Hash
Von Lee Smith

Watch American Idol every Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays on FOX 8/7c

Rafael Nadal beat Fernado Verdasco 6-7 (4/7), 6-4, 7-6 (7/2), 6-7 (1/7), 6-4 over a record five hours and 14 minutes to set up an Australian Open final with Roger Federer on February 1. Here are pics of Rafael Nadal via Yahoo! Pictures

Roger Federer beat Andy Roddick 6-2, 7-5, 7-5 to reach the Australian Open 2009 final. Here are pics of Andy Roddick via Yahoo! Pictures

Bungee jumping is very popular among thrill-seekers. Wikipedia defines it as "an activity that involves jumping from a tall structure while connected to a large elastic cord."

However, in Russia, the fad among youngsters is rope-jumping which is very similar to bungee jumping. The catch? there is no harness, no safety gear, no elastic cord! These brave Russians just tie their ankles by means of ropes to the roofs of houses and jump. What if the rope doesn't work? Ouch!

These gas stations in Dagestan, Russia, "Shelf" and "BG (Best Gasoline)" may be poor imitations of the popular petroleum refining brands, "Shell" and "BP (British Petroleum)", but at least they sell real gas.

Well, it's not actually a G.I. Joe movie, but a stop-motion animation short film featuring G.I. Joe toys. This is a music video made by Simon Gesrel and Xavier Ehretsmann for Zombie Zombie, a French duo composed of Etienne Jaumet and Cosmic Neman. Here is the clip:

This video won the Best Photography Award at the 2nd G.I. Joe stop motion film festival, Denver, Colorado, USA in 2008. It has also won for the Audience Award & Best Technical Quality Award in Protoclip at the 4th Sevres' international independent video clip festival held in France that same year.

Clues:
1. He was born in New York City on June 3, 1967.
2. His mother is American artist, actress, heiress and socialite Gloria Vanderbilt.
3. From age 10 to 13, he modeled with Ford models for Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein and Macy's.
4. He hosts a popular television news show, which for its title, has his name and a number equivalent to the circumference of a circle.
5. He has blonde hair and looks very dapper everytime you see him onscreen.


Answer: Anderson Cooper

Yes, this is a picture of a very young Anderson Cooper, who was just around 1 year old when this was taken. It was shot by popular American photographer Diane Arbus. This picture of the popular CNN Anchor ran in Harper's Bazaar and is one of the crowd-stopping pictures at the Met.

In a phone interview, Cooper says that he still has this picture in his bedroom.

This is a sign placed in front of a building in Viterbo, an old city located in central Italy. It looks like most signages posted by the Viterbo City Council on the facades of buildings with special architectural significance. However, there's something peculiar about this particular signage. Here's the English translation of the Italian Text:

"This building was ddesigned by an unkown architect in an irrelevant epoch and never belonged to an important person. The complex does not show any original architectural solutions, nor does it conserve any important works of art within. No memory is kept of any significant historical events occurring on this site. No known personality was born, lived or died here, nor is any excellent artist or sublime poet still workin here."

This sign has sparked differing responses from onlookers and Viterbo townsfolk.

More than two years after being away from the pool, Ian Thorpe seems to have been expanding sideways. The 26-year old Australian Olympic gold medalist retired from swimming in November 2006 after being forced to withdraw from competing in that year's Commonwealth Games due to an illness.

Following his retirement, the Thorpedo stopped his daily training sessions which led to his dramatically-altered physique. This is how he looks today... (click on the thumbnail for larger view of the picture)

This was taken in Dolans Bay in Sydney while he was spending the last few days of his summer vacation. He goes back to Macquarie University next week to continue his degree in psychology and linguistics.

This is a part of the image shot by David Bergman using a GigaPan Imager. As explained by the photographer in his blog, a GigaPan is a robotic camera mount that allows one to capture multiple images and stitch them together, creating a massive image file.

The finished product of the process resulted to an image with a resolution of 59,783 x 24,658 pixels or 1,474 megapixels equivalent to a 2GigaByte TIF File. It took the GigaPan software over six and a half hours to put the image together in the photographer's MacBook Pro.

You can see the minutest details during the inauguration and Bergman noted that he even saw Yo-Yo Ma taking a picture of the festivities using his iPhone.

Check out the full resolution picture in David Bergman's blog by clicking on this link

Just recently, a Filipina duo named "Rin on the Rox" was given an invite by Ellen DeGeneres to appear on her show, The Ellen DeGeneres Show. The duo, composed of Erin Paula and Roxanne sing their own versions of tunes popularized by Beyonce, Brandy, Mariah Carrey, the Pussycat Dolls, among others, in their bathroom and upload them on the popular video sharing site, YouTube.

20-year old Erin Paula or "Rin" is pure Filipino while 21-year old Roxanne or "Rox" is half-Filipino and half-white. The Bay Area California-based girls will make their first live performance on US National Television once they heed Ellen DeGeneres' call to show up on her TV program.

The airing of the TV guesting of "Rin on the Rox" is still unknown as of press time. For the meantime, enjoy these songs from them:

"If I Were A Boy" popularized by Beyonce

"Take A Bow" popularized by Rihanna

NBC recently refused to air the following PETA.org ad during Super Bowl Sunday due to the fact that it featured scantily-clad women doing very suggestive things to vegetables. Take a look at the video:

In defense of itself, NBC said that it would run the ad provided 8 edits are made in the 30-second commercial. Well, that leaves almost nothing for us to watch.

"History of the internet" is an animated documentary explaining the inventions from time-sharing to filesharing, from Arpanet to Internet.

The history is told using the PICOL icons on picol.org , which are available for download soon. On blog.picol.org you can get news about this project.

Voice-over provided by Steve Taylor (from voice-pool)

A stainless steel soap is a piece of stainless steel, usually in the shape of a soap bar. Its purpose is to neutralize or reduce strong odours from the hands, present from handling odorous ingredients such as garlic, onion or fish. The shape of a soap bar is purely decorative and any piece of stainless steel, such as a spoon, can be used for the same purpose.

There are similar applications, such as stainless steel disks in shoes and dishwashers, that are used to absorb odors.

In the absence of plausible chemical explanations of why this may work, or experiments using controls, it is unknown whether the stainless steel soap is actually effective. Stainless steel soaps are often advertised for use with water; so it is likely that sulfurous compounds either dissolve directly in the water or are catalyzed by the steel, if indeed the odour removal is measurably greater with stainless steel than any other substance.

Stainless steel consists of mainly iron and chromium, and contains a thin layer of chromium (III) oxide on its surface. Metal oxides are Lewis acids and readily catalyze oxidations. Iron and chromium oxides can be used as oxidation catalysts, effective for industrial-scale oxidation of odorous reduced sulfur compounds at a temperature of 180 C. Another plausible explanation is that a thin layer of grease, containing the odorous compounds, is rubbed off mechanically onto the steel surface. Chromium(III) may also act as an adsorbent.

From: Wikipedia

Sperm on My Valentine is a 21" long plush pink sperm that has 4 hearts on it. Each one is handmade, signed and numbered. The Limited Edition of 100 pieces should retail around $25.

Available at DKE Toys