Jill Harness

Jill Harness

@whysteriastar

Jill Harness is a freelance writer, amateur chef, and a sucker for animals. She writes for a number of websites, including Rue The Day, InventorSpot and Oddee, and in her free time, she likes to write dumb jokes and weird short stories. While not typing on her computer, Jill spends her time playing video games, going to the zoo, playing with her dog and visiting Disneyland and the San Diego zoo.
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Dangerous Things Kids Should Do

With today's paranoia of terrorists, child molesters and more, kids are missing more and more opportunities to go out, have fun and well...be kids.  To fight this, a new parenting mentality has started to arise, arguing that kids should go outside to play rough, even if it means getting a few scrapes and bruises along the way. The free-range parenting movement has been getting a lot of steam lately and the idea has been a hot topic of debate. A recent book called Fifty Dangerous Things (You Should Let... READ ON

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Recyle Your Phones to Help Haiti

Want to help the Red Cross' Haiti earthquake fund, but can't afford to donate money? Then consider donating your used or broken old cell phones to Phones for Haiti. Even if you don't have any old cell phones, but have a phone battery, charger or accessory, these can all be donated to the program. Just get a free shipping label from the website and send them your phone or phone accessories. The program will then send the working phones with phone charges to Haiti so earthquake victims can call their... READ ON

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The Secret Life of Everyday Things

If you've ever considered whether the items in your fridge have parties after you close the door on them, then you'll love Terry Border's book Bent Objects: The Secret Life of Everyday Things or the author's blog of the same name. The concept is simple, yet brilliant; add wire legs and arms to inanimate objects and then depict their lives when humans aren't looking. While some of the concepts behind the images are pretty cute and simple, like the kiwi fruit shaving its back in a mirror, a few have... READ ON

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Cab Driver Returns $21,000 Left in Cab

If you found $21,000, would you keep the cash? Few people in this world are as honest or kind as Mukul Asadujjaman, a New York taxicab driver who is working his way through medical school. Asadujjaman not only decided to track down the rightful owners of the cash, jewels and passports that were left in a bag in his car and return them, but he also drove over 50 miles to do so. As if that weren't enough, he then refused to accept an award for his good deed, saying his devout Muslim beliefs would not... READ ON

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Disgustingly Helpful Medical Advances

Did you know parasitic gut worms may help prevent you from developing allergies? Or that the fluid excreted from maggots might actually be helpful in keeping your wounds clean? Were you aware that an even healthier version of human breast milk can be produced by mice spliced with human genes? The real question, of course, isn't how helpful these discoveries may be, it's how willing will people be to apply these treatments to themselves and their loved ones? WebEcoist has a great collection of strange... READ ON

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Wedding Ring Discovered in Dog Food

Two dogs in Tennessee had a mighty prize waiting at the bottom of their dog food bag the other day. The dog's owner, Krista Berg, found a wedding ring in the folds of the dog food bag, and rather than hitting the pawn shops, she did the right thing and hit the phone. First Krista called the manufacturing plant, but she had no luck there, then she tried the store that sold her the food. That's where she found the rightful owner, Mike Stoddard, an employee at the store. "Most people would just keep... READ ON

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Pit Bull Breaks Into House to Play

Pit bulls have one of the worst reputations of all breeds, but as many advocates will tell you, it's not the breed that makes some of the animals rotten, it's how the dog is raised. A recent news story shows the delightfully sweet side of these misunderstood pups. A loose pit bull broke into a home to play with two pups while their owner was away at work. Fortunately, the wild pooch didn't want to attack the chihuahua and yorkie, it wanted to play with them. The pit bull and its new friends played for... READ ON

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Photo Realistic Works of Art

In a world where digital cameras can be cheaper than a fancy dinner, a lot of people take realistic art for granted. Fortunately though, a select handful of artists are still keeping the spirit of accuracy alive, as evidenced in this Web Urbanist post featuring 43 super realistic artworks. It's always interesting to see how different artists get across their mediums and these works are no different. Take, for example, the drawing on the top left by Juan Francisco Casas. The blue-hue of this image is not... READ ON

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The Neuroscience of Mona Lisa

The magic of the Mona Lisa is the fact that everyone sees something different in her smile. Last fall, BoingBoing reported that researchers at the Institute of Neuroscience in Alicante, Spain, believe this is due to a trick caused by the mind struggling to understand different types of visual information, such as size, clarity, brightness and the location of an object. Luis Martinez Otero, a neuroscientist at the institute, says Leonardo Da Vinci fully intended to create this type of reaction from Mona... READ ON

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What Do Blind People See?

Boing Boing's Science Question From a Toddler series is fascinating because it provides surprisingly detailed answers to seemingly obvious questions. In this week's installment, Maggie Koerth-Baker explains what blind people actually see. While most people assume that the blind see the same semi-darkness that we see when we close our eyes, this level of sight loss is actually very uncommon. In most cases, blind people can see some shapeless bits of light, and very few see in color. The reason behind... READ ON

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