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Harare, Zimbabwe

According to its residents, nowhere in the world is the pothole situation worse than in Harare. Unlike potholes that just make your ride a bit bumpy, their potholes actually attempt to swallow your car.

Chicago, IL

Chicago is on par with many third world countries when it comes to road repairs.

Not only does the city have 100′s of miles of poorly maintained roads, they also lack the money/manpower/will/interest to repair them.

The city keeps telling residents that they have crews working around the clock, but try telling that to the 1000′s of people who need to buy new wheels for their car after hitting one of these monstrous holes. Chicago even has a special portion on their web site where drivers can file a claim for pothole damage.

Yes – the city of Chicago is so behind on their pothole repairs that KFC decided to fill the holes themselves, and use the whole thing for a bit of goodwill generating PR.

Colombo, Srilanka

Colombo is one of those cities where potholes morph into sinkholes. Large amounts of rain scour the ground from under the roadbed, and the result is the kind of hole that can swallow a car.

Another Colombo pot/sinkhole. Thankfully it doesn’t look like any vehicles were lost in this thing, but you can clearly see some damaged pipes and other infrastructure in the massive hole.

Jamaica

Bad combination – super relaxing island and the kind of pothole that will really put a dent in your day (and wheels). It is bad enough when you hit one of these things with your car, but popping the front wheel of your moped or bike in them is enough to turn your bike seat into an ejector seat.

New Orleans, LA

It’s not really fair to criticize New Orleans for their potholes – the city is still recovering from Katrina, but that doesn’t make this pothole less impressive. Notice the car tire on the left, showing just how deep this thing is.

Xiamen City, ChinaOuch.

The only thing worse than hitting a killer Chinese pothole, is hitting one when a photographer is standing there waiting for you to go flying, just so he can snap a great picture.

Liu Tao was criticized for not warning cyclists of the danger lying ahead of them. If you enjoy seeing people get hurt, or just want to know how the fall ends, check out the other photos at the source article.

Kiev, Ukraine

I’m not sure whether this pothole appeared out of the blue when people were coming down the road, or whether these cars were simply parked in the wrong place at the wrong time. But it sure looks like an expensive mess.

New York, NY

For the final pothole in this lineup, what better place than New York City? Seriously, when the potholes get this big, you may be better off leaving the car at home and sticking with public transport.

California still wants to keep violent video games out of the hands of anyone under 18. On Wednesday, Attorney General Jerry Brown and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reinstate a state law banning the sale or rental of such games to minors.

The law was stricken in February by the U.S. Court of Appeals. The court said the law could limit minors’ access to information under the guise of child protection.

The law was passed by California legislators in 2005 but was blocked by the video-game industry. Brown and Schwarzenegger compared the ban on violent games to banning pornography.

“I signed this important measure to ensure parents are involved in determining which video games are appropriate for their children,” Schwarzenegger said. “By prohibiting the sale of violent video games to children under the age of 18 and requiring these games to be clearly labeled, this law would allow parents to make better informed decisions for their kids.”

Michael D. Gallagher, CEO of the Entertainment Software Association, called the petition by Brown and Schwarzenegger “a complete waste of the state’s time and resources.” He said a rating system for video games lets parents supervise the games their children play.

The author of the state law, state Sen. Leland Yee, praised the action by Brown and Schwarzenegger. “California’s violent video-game law properly seeks to protect children from the harmful effects of excessively violent, interactive video games,” he wrote on his Web page.

The law defines a violent video game as one in which “the range of options available to a player includes killing, maiming, dismembering or sexually assaulting an image of a human being.”

Sprint Nextel expects strong Palm Pre sales when it debuts on June 6, so much that CEO Dan Hesse has warned investors that there may be shortages.

“We don’t intend to advertise it heavily early on because we think we are going to have shortages for a while,” Hesse said. “We won’t be able to keep up with demand for the device in the early period of time.”

Sprint will be the exclusive U.S. wireless carrier for the Palm Pre through the end of the year. The first smartphone to use Palm’s webOS is expected to help Sprint stop customer losses and let Palm wrest more of the smartphone market from Apple’s iPhone and Research in Motion’s BlackBerry.

$549 Without a Service Plan

Sprint will offer the Palm Pre for $199.99 after a mail-in rebate and with a two-year service agreement that appears less costly than AT&T’s iPhone plan. Without a service plan, the Palm Pre will cost $549. Best Buy says it will offer the Pre for $199.99 with a two-year Sprint plan without the need to mail in a rebate. Radio Shack and Wal-Mart will also carry the Pre.

Palm’s stock price fell Tuesday as some investors expressed disappointment that the $199.99 price only matches AT&T’s price for the 8GB iPhone rather than undercut it. Shares in Palm were trading around $10.70 at noon Eastern time Wednesday after rising from $3.30 in January in anticipation of the Pre’s debut.

The Palm Pre will launch just two days before Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference, where announcements are expected to include a new iPhone and a lower price for AT&T’s iPhone service, possibly from $69 to $59 a month, but with limited service.

Sprint’s rates for a two-year Palm Pre plan are similar to AT&T’s, but with text messaging included. AT&T charges extra for text.

Developers Are the Key

Ultimately,…

The biggest (and smallest) and baddest (and cutest) mammals went on display in the new “Extreme Mammals” exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.

Stretching across the globe and back 70 million years, the exhibit provides an exciting overview of the diversity of the sweaty, hairy, nursing class of animals to which humans belong.

If you’re in D.C., you can catch the exhibit through January 3, 2010. Or you can check out some of the specimens in this photo gallery of extreme mammals.

The image above is Indricotherium, the largest land mammal ever discovered. An adult could weigh 20 tons, more than a family of African elephants. It lived in the forests of central Asia about 30 million years ago, but died out as those forests turned into grassland. As you might surmise, its closest living relative is the rhinoceros.

The Proboscis monkey (Nasalis gerardis) is nature’s Pinnocchio. A male’s nose can grow to 7 inches long. This extended sniffer is believed to attract the lady monkeys.

Petaurus breviceps. While the other exhibits feature models, six real, live sugar gliders will be on display. These tiny marsupials can jump for extended distances by using their skin like a parachute.

Spectacled bear (Tremarctos ornatus). Spectacled bears weigh less than a pound when they are born, but grow into 300-pound adults. They also have pretty faces.

Tasmanian devil skeleton (Sarcophilus harrisii) You knew that Tasmanian devils were among the more badass mammals on name alone, but it turns out they have the strongest bite-force of any mammal under a foot tall.

Cynognathus skull fossil (Cynognathus crateronotus). This mammalian relative lived more than 250 million years ago. Its original scientific name meant “dog jaw” in honor of the canine way its teeth worked.

Chinese pangolin (Manis pentadactyla). The pangolin is covered with scales made from keratin, the same stuff that makes up your fingernails. If you scare them, they turn into a ball of blades while spraying you with jets of skunk-like liquid. In other words, if you see one in Asia, steer clear.

No list of strange mammals would be complete without the platypus. Not only do they look strange, but they don’t give birth to live young like other mammals — they lay eggs. Another strange fact: Platypuses produce milk but don’t have nipples, so it oozes out onto patches of their skin where the babies can access its nutrients.

This odd-looking mammal has a camel-like body and a long giraffe-like neck and a flexible elephant-like trunk. Sadly, it’s no longer around to poke fun at. The South American animal went extinct 10,000 years ago.

Glyptodont (Glyptotherium floridanum). Behold the enormous ancient relative of the armadillo. These herbivores could grow up to 10 feet long and were covered with thick armor.

Dell is previewing a new netbook specifically designed for its “connected classroom” program. The PC maker says the device is the result of close cooperation with hundreds of students, teachers, parents and administrators.

Dell’s Latitude 2100, which is expected to become available soon at prices starting at $369, has been specifically tailored for use by students in the classroom.

“This system is an extension of our efforts to support educators as they transform technology access in classrooms worldwide,” said Paul Bell, president of Dell’s global public-sector division.

Classroom Friendly

Tipping the scales at about 2.2 pounds, the basic version of the Latitude 2100 sports a 10.1-inch screen, an Intel Atom processor, a three-in-one media card reader, a VGA port, 10/100/1000 gigabit Ethernet, and a full slate of wireless communications options. The available operating systems include Windows XP Home, Vista Home Basic, and Ubuntu Linux.

Educators looking for more will be able to choose from options such as touchscreen capabilities, a webcam and a higher-capacity six-cell battery. More options include solid-state drives, an external DVD/CD writer, and even a keyboard featuring antimicrobial protection.

Unlike other portable PC offerings — which typically come with plastic or magnesium-alloy bodies — the outside shell of the Latitude 2100 is composed of a textured and rubberized casing, noted David Ruth, a Dell product manager.

“This texturized casing is a lot easier to hold onto as kids are walking to the classroom or down the hallway,” Ruth said. “And we’ve developed lock slots, so actually from a security standpoint if you want to lock the netbooks, you can.”

To help ensure that students stay focused on classroom activities, the Latitude 2100′s outside cover integrates a network activity light that flashes to alert the teacher whenever any netbook user is accessing the Internet. And when the school day is…

Bombardier beetle

The Bombardier beetle gets its name from the mixture of chemicals it can fire from its rear. The beetle has two separate chemicals, hydroquinone and hydrogen peroxide, stored in its body. Whenever the beetle feels threatened the chemicals mix with some special enzymes and that heat up the liquids. It then shoots a boiling, stinky liquid and gas from its rear, causing some serious woe for anything that happens to get sprayed with the liquid. Darwin allegedly experienced the sting and smell of the beetle’s spray after he put one in his mouth to free up a hand during a beetle collecting expedition.

Wolverines

Unlike the X-Men character, real wolverines are shy members of the weasel family. They’re seldom seen by humans, but they’re frequently smelled. Like most members of the weasel family, the wolverine has glands that it secretes fluid from to mark its territory. The musky scent is supposed to be very unpleasant, and has given the wolverine the colourful nicknames of “skunk bear” and “nasty cat”.

Musk ox

Speaking of musk, you know an animal is likely to smell when its name derives from producing a smell. The musk ox is a furry, horned mammal that inhabits the Arctic. While it’s called an ox it’s more closely related to sheep and goats than normal oxen. The “musk” of the musk ox is only produced by the males. The smell comes from the animal’s urine, which it uses to mark its territory during mating season. This is important, because during the mating season male musk oxen are particularly aggressive. Much like rams, they’ll fight with head on crashes until one submits. They’re so aggressive they’ve even been known to charge birds who alight in their territory. When the musk ox marks its territory, a lot of the smelly urine gets matted into the hairy belly of the animal. This accounts for its generally gross smell.

Stink bugs

Much like the musk ox, stink bugs have a name that’s fitting. There’s no single “stink bug”. The name applies to a variety of members of the hemiptera order. The insects produce a stinky substance in their thorax, between the first and second pairs of legs. The smelly liquid is actually very similar to pheromones in its chemical makeup, but the small changes make a world of difference. Very few bugs are going to be drawn to the stink bugs’ secretions in hope of a little nookie. Like the bombardier beetle, the stink bugs’ foul smelling liquid is a defence mechanism.

Skunk

For many people skunk would be the first thing that springs to mind when the phrase “smelly animals” is brought up. Plenty of us have been driving along quite happily, only to suddenly recoil in horror as we recognized the pervasive stench of skunk roadkill beginning to fill the car. There are 11 species of skunk, two in Asia and nine in the Americas. All of them have the ability to spray a foul smelling chemical when threatened. The famous skunk spray is a mix of sulphuric chemicals, and skunks can spray accurately up to 15 feet. The stench is so powerful almost every animal leaves it alone, the sole exception being the Great Horned Owl which has almost no sense of smell. Despite the power of their spray, skunks don’t really like to use it. They only carry about 15 cc of their smell chemicals in their body, enough for about five sprays, and it can take a week and a half to replenish their stench supply.

Tasmanian devil

While the Tasmanian devil has become a cartoon caricature for some, the creature’s stench is legendary. According to some who have encountered it in the wild its stench can never be forgotten. It’s said to reek of death which, along with its ghastly cries and vicious feeding behavior, may have given it its reputation as a fearsome creature. In reality, the devil is shy and solitary and doesn’t generally go around stinking up the joint. They aren’t even particularly prolific hunters, preferring to get together and chow down on carrion. It’s only when the devil is agitated that it starts to produce its horrible smell. Of course, for a fairly animal running into a human can be fairly agitating so that may have given rise to the idea they constantly reek of death and decay.

Striped Polecat

The striped polecat, also known as the zorilla, is a skunk-like member of the weasel family. The African mammal is almost certainly the world’s smelliest creature. Its anal glands can allegedly be smelled from a half a mile away. That’s over seven football fields. Much like the skunk, the striped polecat can shoot these smelly secretions from their anal glands to help deter predators. While the animal’s smell is amazing enough, even more amazing is the fact that some native peoples actually use the polecat’s incredibly nasty secretions as a perfume. It’s likely they use it to mask their own smell when hunting, however, rather than an affinity for the smell of a striped polecat.