Girl, 9, Throws Out First Pitch at Tampa Bay Rays Game and Gets Surprise of Her Life

Jeff Cormier — Sun, 19 May 2013 01:43:48 +0000

Alayna Adams, 9, was picked to throw out the first pitch at the Tampa Bay Rays game on Thursday, which she did.

Then, and you may want to grab some Kleenex, something truly awesome happened.

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Scientists tell us that the asparagus-urine link all comes down to one chemical: asparagusic acid. Asparagusic acid, as the name implies, is (to our knowledge) only found in asparagus. When our bodies digest the vegetable, they break down this chemical into a group of related sulfur-containing compounds with long, complicated names (including dimethyl sulfide, dimethyl disulfide, dimethyl sulfoxide and dimethyl sulfone). As with many other substances that include sulfur—such as garlic, skunk spray and odorized natural gas—these sulfur-containing molecules convey a powerful, typically unpleasant scent.

Of course, the whole asparagus-urine scent issue is complicated by an entire separate issue: Some people simply don’t smell anything different when urinate after they eat asparagus. Scientists have long been divided into two camps in explaining this issue. Some believe that, for physiological reasons, these people (which constitute anywhere from 20 to 40 percent of the population) don’t produce the aroma in their urine when they digest asparagus, while others think that they produce the exact same scent, but somehow lack the ability to smell it.

I love asparagus and I smell something very different after I eat asparagus.

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What’s your body doing in as little as 30 seconds?

BuzzFeed answers just that and more, including: how many times you breathe, how many times your heart beats, and how many times you blink in the span of 30 seconds.

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Celebrity Chef Beaten to Death by Unsatisfied Customers:

Miki Nozawa, whose sought after Japanese-Italian fusion dishes have been served to the likes of Mikhail Gorbachev and Denzel Washington, had reportedly suffered a cerebral hemorrhage at the hands of two German patrons of his popular eponymous restaurant in the resort island of Sylt.

The altercation allegedly started after the two men, aged 36 and 50, ordered a beef, vegetable and fried noodle dish, but refused to pay, finding the meal not to their liking.

Later that evening, Nozawa ran into the duo again at a stripclub, and asked them to pay the €20 they owed him for the food.

Refusing for a second time, the inebriated men and Nozawa again began to quarrel and the heated verbal exchange eventually turned physical.

A simple critique on the restaurant’s comment cards would have been a better reaction.

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Three minutes beer-opening insanity.

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Why do ATMs return cards so slowly?:

It’s intentional: not slow, but jittery. The jitter is to reduce the probability of simple ATM skimming.

What jitter does is foil the process of reading the magstripe data. ATM skimming devices typically prefer ejection to insertion as the card is machine-rolled out (as opposed to hand-fed in) and so, smoothly, evenly passed through the slot.

This stop-start motion distorts any data read from the magnetic stripe on the card, making the copied information unusable.

It’s not fool-proof as the author points out, but it’s the best deterrent we’ve got at the moment.

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Find yourself matching the wrong shirts with the wrong ties, time and time again?

Fret no more, men’s designer footwear company Beckett Simonon has created the ultimate guide to matching shirts and ties so you can leave looking like a doofus in the past.

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Florida Man Shoots Himself While Bowling:

“The guy just stepped up to bowl,” fellow-bowler Jim Miller told WPBF . “I think he hit his leg on his back swing.”

The man shot himself around 7:30 last night while bowling at Jupiter Lanes. Another bowler reported that “The ball hit him in the leg, which triggered the revolver.”

Witnesses originally thought the gunshot was a firecracker, but after watching the bowler limp back to his seat, holding his leg, they knew it was a gun.

I’m not a great bowler, but I do know you shouldn’t hit your own leg with the ball if you hope to get a strike.

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Shelter Dogs, Cats Now Colorado’s Official State Pet:

Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, accompanied by his own rescue dog, Sky, signed into law a bill making shelter dogs and cats the state’s official pet, The Denver Post reports. The bill, “Concerning the designation of dogs and cats that are adopted from Colorado Animal Shelters and rescues as the state pets,” was proposed by schoolchildren and signed into law at the Denver Animal Shelter.

Other states have chosen a specific dog breed to honor as state pet, but Colorado is honoring any dog or cat adopted from a shelter! How awesome is that?

Very awesome.

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Using a GoPro camera in Alaska, Biologist Brad Josesphs captured some incredibly awesome, and scary, footage of a grizzly bear for a BBC nature show.

[With Leather]

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