In four seasons of ABC’s reality pitch show “Shark Tank,” we’ve seen some doozies. Hopefuls have pitched selling “pairs” of socks in threes (because you’re bound to lose one), a portable urinal that looks like a golf club, and flatulence-scented candles. 

With an average viewership of six million and airtime that’s worth about half a million dollars to the aspiring entrepreneurs who make it on, you’d think every pitch would be thoughtful, well-rehearsed, and airtight. But you’d be wrong. 

Andrew Figgins, a Chicago-based entrepreneur and owner of the fan site InTheSharkTank.com, says nearly half of the hundreds of pitches that have been made on the show have been awful. The most common problems? Far-fetched ideas, wacky personalities, and lack of basic business knowledge. “The people who have gone on the show and don’t know their numbers get chewed up and spit out,” says Figgins. 

Ahead of the fifth season’s premiere on Sept. 20, Figgins combs the archives to make his picks for the worst “Shark Tank” pitches of all time.

Michael J. Desanti pitches a bird feeder that zaps squirrels.

Episode 423: “Squirrel Boss”

In the most recent season, Desanti says his interactive bird feeder is the first of its kind, designed to keep pesky squirrels away. The remote-controlled feeder allows owners to “zap” critters with a harmless static shock.

Desanti demonstrates his invention by shocking Mark Cuban.

Episode 423: “Squirrel Boss”

In the demo, most of the Sharks feel the shock themselves, and more so when Desanti asks for $130,000 for a 40% stake.

The Sharks aren’t feeling electrified enough to invest.

Episode 423: “Squirrel Boss”

The Sharks are split between thinking the invention is cruel, crude, or just bad business. When they find out that the product hasn’t been patented, they pass.

The B-52 has seen several decades of active service and was about to see some more service over Syria, according to reports from ABC.

Whether strikes on Syria go forward or not, the behemoth is already immortal, with both a hair-do and a rock band named after it. 

From carrying nukes to cluster bombs, to drones, to space ships, the B-52 has a remarkable past and plays a incredible role in current military functions.

With an operational history that began in the 1950s, the bomber is slated to continue operations through 2040.

SEE ALSO: Everything You Need To Know About The Missile The US Will Likely Use To Attack Syria

The B-52 was first tested as the X-52, an effort to create an inter-continental bomber that would not have to rely on foreign governments to land and refuel.

Source: Boeing

The first B-52A flew Aug. 5, 1954. It was nicknamed BUFF — Big, Ugly, Fat Fellow.

In the years that followed, the B-52 broke a litany of aviation records.

"Bond god" Jeff Gundlach just concluded a very interesting webcast.

His presentation — titled "What If?"— examined the big stories in the global markets and economy.

He spent more time than usual talking about the problems in the emerging markets. And he singled out India as the country most vulnerable to a crisis due to heavy reliance on foreign capital.

He thinks the best way to trade India would be to short it while go long China or Russia, which are both insulated from the external capital markets.

Gundlach continues to believe interest rates will be low, and he doesn't see inflation/stagflation happening any time soon until commodity prices start to rise more.

On Federal debts and deficits, Gundlach thinks that one way to address these issues is to raise the marginal tax rate.

As usual, Gundlach supported all of his views with a brief presentation featuring his hand-picked charts. Anyone who wants to understand how the "bond god thinks" should spend a few minutes on this.

Jeff Gundlach's Presentation

Jeff Gundlach's Presentation

Jeff Gundlach's Presentation

The world's largest car show is underway in Frankfurt, and automakers from around the world are taking the stage to reveal what they've been working on.

Lamborghini has come up with something special: The fastest Gallardo, ever.

The full royal name of this latest offering is the Lamborghini Gallardo LP 570-4 Squadra Corse.

It's derived from the Blancpain Super Trofeo race car, and little has been changed.

The new Gallardo and the Blancpain have the same 5.2-liter V10 engine, which generates an enormous 570 horsepower.

But the newcomer has one huge advantage over its father figure: It's street legal.

Lamborghini has announced a €191,100 ($253,303) plus tax price tag for the Squadra Corse, and a limited production run (no word on just how many models will be built).

And although you can take it for trips to the grocery store, please head to the track before putting the more than 500 horsepower to use.

It's derived from the Blancpain Super Trofeo race car.

The 'Squadra Corse' part of the name refers to Lamborghini's motorsports department. The place does good work.

The new Gallardo and the Blancpain Super Trofeo race car have the same 5.2-liter engine — no modifications. The V10 generates 570 horsepower, and is controlled by a 'robotized e-gear six-speed transmission.'

The prospect of American intervention in Syria brings perhaps the first breaking point in a war that has stretched into its 30th month. More than 100,o00 people are dead, and more than seven million displaced.

With the President Barack Obama appealing to Congress and the nation to support a military intervention, now seems an appropriate time to look at the 2013 recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography, a gripping series of 20 photos from Rodrigo Abd, Manu Brabo, Narciso Contreras, Khalil Hamra, and Muhammed Muheisen with the Associated Press.

Relatively few journalists have covered the conflict in Syria, and among those who have, there are those who are missing or dead.

"Bringing news of this full-blown civil war to the world required repeated trips into the war zone, without government permission or protection," wrote AP's Director of Photography Santiago Lyon in his cover letter to the Pulitzer judges; "it demanded sensitive negotiations with shadowy groups of fighters. And always, there were the dangers of shelling, bombardment and errant bullets, the risk of abduction or capture."

These photographers risked everything to shed light on the situation in Syria. 

Warning: Some of the images are disturbing. 

SEE ALSO: The Biggest Myth Of The Syrian War Is That The Rebels Are Dominated By al Qaeda

A wounded woman still in shock leaves Dar El Shifa hospital in Aleppo, Syria, Sept. 20, 2012. Dozens of Syrian civilians were killed, four children among them, in artillery shelling by Syrian government forces in the northern Syrian town.

A Syrian man cries while holding the body of his son near Dar El Shifa hospital in Aleppo, Syria, Oct. 3, 2012. The boy was killed by the Syrian army.

A rebel sniper aims at a Syrian army position, as he and another rebel fighter are reflected in a mirror inside a residential building in the Jedida district of Aleppo, Syria, Oct. 29, 2012.

Other than the Starks, Lannisters and Targaryens, the dragons on "Game of Thrones" are some of the show's biggest stars.

The characters may consist of fancy animation, however it's quite an intricate process bringing Daenery's three dragons to life on the HBO series.

Mike Seymour co-founder of fxguide.com visited video effects studio Pixomondo in Frankfurt, Germany to see how they produced the realistic dragons in conjunction with Wired Magazine.

His behind-the-scenes look at how the dragons are created is fantastic.

Here's how one of the dragons on "Game of Thrones looks:

Since the series debut, they've grown to be pretty large.

It was up to the Pixomondo visual effects artists in Germany to design concepts of what they would look like.

When it opens in the spring of next year, The 9/11 Memorial Museum will honor the memory of those killed in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and the February 26, 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

The museum will feature oral histories from survivors and first responders, as well as mementos from the Twin Towers.

Reuters' photographers got an early look at the still-under-construction museum, which currently houses some of the extraordinary debris recovered in the aftermath of September 11.

Take a look below.

The two steel "tridents" recovered from the World Trade Center soar above visitors in the entry pavilion area. They originally were embedded in the bedrock at the base of the North Tower and are 70 feet high.

The last column of steel removed from the World Trade Center site in 2002 stands in the center of the museum. It's covered with mementos and messages left by recovery workers, first responders, and family members of the victims.

To provide a sense of scale, the museum will display many of the steel beams found in the rubble. This is a "Cross" intersecting steel beam (left) and a fragment of a trident column (center) that formed the exterior structure of the buildings.

A message is written on the bottom of the "Cross": "To my friends we will miss you."

Known as "Impact Steel," these beams were ripped apart when the hijacked United Flight 175 tore into the South Tower of the World Trade Center.

New York City Fire Department's Engine Company 21 fire truck will be on permanent display, as well.

Here, you can see inside the burnt-out cab of the truck. It's a testament to the danger first-responders put themselves in immediately after the attacks.

These are called the "Survivor's Stairs." The staircase was an exit from the World Trade Center Plaza to Vesey Street, providing a way for hundreds of people to escape from the towers after the attacks.

Steel from the wreckage was transformed into symbols and tokens for victims' relatives by iron workers during their breaks sifting through the rubble.

A message from a recovery worker is taped to a wall inside the museum.

Visitors can currently access the memorial pools and plaza at Ground Zero. Both will be visible from inside the 9/11 Memorial Museum when it's complete in spring 2014.

To make a reservation to visit the memorial, click here.

SEE ALSO: How My Polaroids Of The Sept. 11 Attacks Led Me Into America's Secret Court System For Terrorist Suspects

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Freshmen at colleges across the U.S. are settling into their dormitories as a new school year kicks off. But campus living is nothing new: Harvard's oldest dorm is nearly 300 years old.

Dorms have modernized over time. Today, students can expect to find wireless Internet, air conditioning, and cheerful study rooms on move-in day. But some things haven't changed much. A century ago, students still slept in single beds, hung family photos on their walls, and hung out with friends in their dorm rooms.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison's archives department recently put together a fantastic collection of photos showing how student housing has changed over the past 110 years. They kindly shared their collection with us.

This woman's dorm room from 1898 isn't much different from modern day dorms: Pennants, books, and a chair for studying.

Photographs and mementos kept things homey in this room, in 1899.

Male students raised a glass in a boarding house or fraternity in this 1909 photo.

Today is Cantor Fitzgerald's and BGC Partners' annual charity day, an event that commemorates the 658 Cantor employees lost in September 11 terrorist attacks by donating the trading day's revenues to forty different charities. 

During 9/11, Cantor Fitzgerald occupied the 101st to the 105th floors of One World Trade Center. Cantor lost more people than any other company that day.  

At the event today, actors, models, beauty queens and sports stars will be taking over the trading floor to help raise money. Diddy is down at BGC's trading floor right now. 

Since the inception of this annual event, Cantor has been able to raise over $89 million for charity.

We've included photos in the slides that follow.  Feel free to email your shots to jlaroche@businessinsider.com. 

Actor Chance Kelly

Cantor's founder, Edie Lutnick, with Cantor CEO Howard Lutnick's kids, Kyle and Casey. Howard Lutnick was taking his son Kyle to kindergarten when the attacks happened.

The Cantor Relief Fund co-founder Edie Lutnick ringing a bell at 8:46 to commemorate the time when first tower was hit.

It's been more than a year since the cruise ship Costa Concordia struck a reef off the shore of Isola del Giglio, in the Mediterranean, leading to a wreck that cost 30 passengers their lives.

Yet the enormous ship is still sitting off the Italian coast, mostly submerged, in the middle of a nationally protected marine park and coral reef.

The ingenious salvage operation—called the "Parbuckling Project"— involves building a series of underwater platforms onto which the Costa Concordia will be lifted upright (parbuckled), then floated up and towed away.

Nearly all the preparations have been completed, and the crucial phase of the plan — the parbuckling itself — is about to go down: Italian regulators have greenlighted the operation for this month.

The teams on site will have only one chance to flip the ship upright. If it goes wrong, the backup plan is to break up the ship where it lies, at a huge cost to the local environment.

Here's what's happened so far, and how the teams hope it will go.

The salvage operation is expected to cost $400 million (insurance companies are footing the bill).

After the wreck, workers raced to secure the ship. They worked around the clock, 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.

111 salvage divers worked underwater, going around the clock in 45-minute shifts.

The Syrian civil war has been going on for more than two years, but it hasn't been a fair fight.

While the Assad regime has tanks, jets, artillery — and of course, chemical weapons — the fragmented Free Syrian Army have mostly small arms and whatever they can put together or find.

We're talking slingshots, catapults, and rockets made in garages.

Both sides have backing: The Russians and Iranians give Assad cash and weapons, while the rebels get mainly humanitarian aid from the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. That humanitarian support (turning increasingly into lethal support) may turn into full blown weapons and training if Senate hawks like John McCain and Lindsey Graham have their way.

Aid or not, when you see these pictures, you'll be pretty impressed they've been able to fight the Syrian army, and continue to hold ground throughout the country.

The FSA often has to improvise, like using a shotgun to launch an improvised grenade.

Or launching homemade bombs with a catapult.

Here's another one in Aleppo.

India's high-end hotels offer a level of unparalleled service and opulence.

TripAdvisor put together a list of the best hotels in India, based on reviews from millions of travelers as part of its 2013 Travelers' Choice awards.

The Oberoi Udaivilas in Udaipur, which regularly ranks among the top hotels on "world's best hotels" lists, took the top spot.

#25 Taj Bengal Kolkata, Kolkata (Calcutta)

Click here to book this hotel >

#24 Optus Sarovar Premiere, Gurgaon

Click here to book this hotel >

#23 Trident, Udaipur

Click here to book this hotel >

Rejoice, hipster parents — there's a new way for your children to be way cooler than their peers.

DJ and NYC-resident Natalie Elizabeth Weiss has started a Baby DJ School in Brooklyn.

As Gothamist notes, the 8-week-long program is for kids ages 0 to 3 and claims it will "encourage babies to love dance music and appreciate the way it's made in a family-friendly, positive environment!"

The cost of letting your baby drool all over real recording equipment? $200.

"Why should children hear the same nursery songs underscored by the same instrument time and time again?" Weiss asks on her website. "Switch out a guitar for a sampler, a piano for a mixing board and a song about black sheep for a song about back beats, and you have an exciting new musical landscape that both young and old will enjoy."

The babies will jam/passively listen to disco, hip hop, and house music, as well as play with vinyl records, mix and match beats, and create their very own samples. Classes will be held on Wednesdays from 10:30 AM to 11:15 AM starting next week on September 18th at Cool Pony in Prospect Heights.

This isn't the first time that Weiss, who's worked with LCD Soundsystem and the Brooklyn Philharmonic, has held seminars that teach children about music. In the past few years, she's also held classes where she's taught children to build musical scores with Legos and compose music with electronics.

You can find out more information on Weiss's blog.

SEE ALSO: 11 Babies Who Will One Day Rule The World

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Video games get a bad rap. They are often portrayed as violent, addictive, and a mindless waste of hours that encourage obesity.  

But that's only part of the story. 

Computer gaming is a $20 billion industry. In 2012, 58% of Americans played video games, according to the Entertainment Software Association. 

Most virtual games can be designed to have educational and physical benefits for players. Games that use repetitive actions, such as the swinging of a bat or targeting a moving object, train the brain and muscles to perform better in real-life activities. 

Video game brain training has the same effect as reading a book or riding a bike — when the brain is learning, thousands of new connections are being formed. The addition of a reward system motivates players to continuously improve their skills.

A driving game improved memory and focus in older adults.

In a study published in the journal Nature researchers "discovered that swerving around cars while simultaneously picking out road signs in a video game can improve the short-term memory and long-term focus of older adults,"The New York Times reports.

A group of adults between the ages of 60 and 85 were were recruited to play a game called NeuroRacer for 12 hours over a month. Six months after playing the game, the older adults were better at multitasking, retained more information in a short period of time, and had stronger attention skills.

People who play action-based games make decisions 25% faster.

Fast-paced video games typically require quick thinking to avoid being killed. In real-life situations, active gamers have a better sense of what is going around them and are able to make decisions faster, according to scientists from the University of Rochester. 

In the one study, participants aged 18 to 25 were split into two groups. One group played 50 hours of the action video games "Call of Duty 2" and "Unreal Tournament," and the other group played 50 hours of the strategy game "The Sims 2." The action game players made decisions 25% faster in a task unrelated to playing video games, without sacrificing accuracy.  

"Action game players make more correct decisions per unit time. If you are a surgeon or you are in the middle of a battlefield, that can make all the difference," study researcher Daphne Bavelier said in a statement.

Video games improve vision.

Another study led by Daphne Bavelier of the University of Rochester, showed that video games improve vision by making players more sensitive to slightly different shades of color, known as contrast sensitivity.

People who played action-based video games — particularly first-person-shooter games — were 58% better at perceiving fine differences in contrast, the researchers said.

"When people play action games, they're changing the brain's pathway responsible for visual processing," Bavelier said in a statement. The training might be helping the visual system to make better use of the information it receives.

As human beings, our brains are booby-trapped with psychological barriers that stand between making smart financial decisions and making dumb ones.

The good news is that once you realize your own mental weaknesses, it's not impossible to overcome them. 

You're about to buy an engagement ring so you do some research on prices. Most people say three months' salary is the general budget, so you freak out and request a credit line increase.

What's really going on: Anchoring.

Anchoring happens when we rely too heavily on the first piece of information offered when making decisions.

After encountering the "three month" rule, you find it hard to make a logical decision based your own financial reality or your relationship. You may not have three months' worth of salary to splurge on a diamond, but you decide to spend within that range because you are anchored to that idea.

You're 27 years old, in excellent health and just got promoted. You're so high on life that you can't fathom a time when you'll no longer be young, fit, and financially stable.

What's really happening: Myopia. 

Because you are unable to picture yourself in old age, bad health, or cash-strapped, you're less likely to save for unexpected events or your retirement. Myopia can be blamed for many depleted retirement savings account in the U.S.

"Seduced by temporal myopia in their younger years, many people get around to saving seriously for their retirement far too late in their career, in their forties and fifties in many cases, which greatly reduces the amount of money they will have available for their retirement," says Shlomo Benartzi, a behavioral finance economist and author of "Save More Tomorrow." 

If you're lacking motivation, try this handy experiment: Use Merrill Edge's Face Retirement generator, which will take a photo of you as you are today and generate an image of what you'll look like in retirement. Benartzi's own research has shown that this kind of reminder can actually give people the kick in the butt they need to start saving for retirement. 

You're watching the market closely and see that a certain stock has been tanking over the last few months. You give it another month, watch it drop again and decide to sell it off before history repeats itself.

What's really going on: Gambler's fallacy. 

When investors rely on past events to predict the future, they're shooting themselves in the foot. If a stock is flying or floundering for a year, that doesn't mean it will continue to do so in the next year, or even few months to come. 

The same thing happens when you buy a lotto ticket because your buddy next door just won $10,000 in a drawing. Just because he won doesn't change the odds of you winning at all.

Keep your decision-making grounded in the real facts. Analyze your investments before making any sudden moves or following trends. 

This week marks the 12th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.

On the day of the attacks, I lived directly across the Hudson River from the twin towers, in downtown Jersey City, N.J. As the buildings burned and then collapsed, police shut down the entire Jersey City waterfront except for one small area, Morris Canal Park. The park had an unobstructed view, and I took a set of Polaroid shots of the disaster.

Later, as a senior writer for the New Jersey Law Journal, I investigated the cases of the 762 Muslim men who were randomly rounded up by the FBI after the attack, cleared of being terrorists, but secretly deported anyway to the countries of their birth. Some of them were tortured by local authorities when they arrived.

This is the story of how, after taking these Polaroids, I discovered that the U.S. set up an invisible court system outside the control of the federal judiciary to deal with Muslim immigrants post-Sept. 11.

This is a postcard of downtown Manhattan that I bought on the day of the attacks. People forget that the twin towers were more than twice as tall as the other buildings downtown.

On the day of the attack I was a freelance business journalist. The collapse of the towers brought work to a halt, so I went outside with my old-fashioned Polaroid camera to take some pictures. They're not great quality, but the Polaroid was the only camera I owned in the era before cellphones.

Thinking that there would be thousands of wounded people, I approached this police officer to ask if I could donate blood. He said there was no need: People in the buildings either died or survived. Relatively few were wounded. You can see the smoke in the background at the end of the street.

"Grand Theft Auto V" comes to stores next Tuesday.

After seeing manygame trailers, we can't wait to get our hands on Rockstar's next incarnation of the franchise.

While we're excited to play as three protagonists, explore the expansive universe, and try out multiplayer online, we want nothing more than to get in a vehicle and take in the view.

Forget the violence, forget the car chases, and guns. The visuals look like something out of a postcard.

It's been five years since "Grand Theft Auto IV" won us over with a fictionalized New York City. While it's little surprise the graphics look stellar — Rockstar reportedly spent a jaw-dropping $266 million to market and produce the game— GTA V has really nailed it with the landscapes.

This time, players will head to Los Santos, a modern-day version of Los Angeles.

Before the game's release, let's bask in the game's visuals.

The fifth installment takes place in a fictionalized, modern-day Los Angeles.

The game world will be larger than previous Rockstar games "Red Dead Redemption,""Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas," and "Grand Theft Auto IV" combined.

(Source: Game Informer)

Rockstar founder Sam Houser announced it will be the most ambitious "Grand Theft Auto" to date with a reinvention of the universe.

(Source: Computerandvideogames)

Wolfram Alpha, the geekiest site on the net, has maintained a service where you can share your Facebook data with them and they'll spit out a fantastic analysis. 

They made it an option that you can donate your data to the research group so they can study the way we interact on the social network. 

As a result of those "data donors," the Wolfram team has been able to learn a ton about the way people behave on social networks 

One fantastic thing the Wolfram team was able to do is to looked at the aggregated text people wrote on their Facebook walls.

We just saw it presented last week at the Wolfram Data Summit, and the folks behind the Wolfram Blog were kind enough to allow us to reprint it.

They were able to classify them by topic and check how its popularity varies with age and sex. So you can see how the topics you talk about vary over time.

Interest in books increases as folks get to high school and college-age and holds steady after.

People get very, very interested in work by the time they're around 25, and then interest peaks around 30.

Women talk about their family and friends much, much more then men. Interestingly enough, people talk the least about family and friends at around 24. But the most common words associated with the category was "baby," so this makes sense.

For all his ridiculous antics, Floyd Mayweather Jr. is one of the most financially successful athletes in the world.

This week he'll make a record $41.5 million for fighting Canelo Alvarez.

We'd say that Floyd has more money than he can spend ... but he is putting that idea to the test by doing some wild things with his cash.

He travels with stacks of hundreds in Ziploc bags, and that's just the tip of the iceberg.

He has a single bank account with $123 million in it. He's obsessed with cash.

Source: ESPN

He travels with Ziploc bags of hundreds, and is known for his crazy shopping sprees.

Source: ESPN

He has two fleets of luxury cars (including a $290,000 Bentley). All his cars at his Miami house are white, and the cars at his Vegas house are black.

Read more >

The world will soon have its first "invisible" skyscraper.

There's no construction date yet for the planned 1,476-foot tower, called Tower Infinity. But its architects have just been granted a construction permit to begin building outside of Seoul, South Korea near Incheon International Airport.

The visionaries behind the project, GDS Architects, will make the tower appear "invisible" using an LED facade system with optical cameras to display what's directly behind the building. When turned on, the "reflective skin" of the building will give the illusion that Tower Infinity is blending in with the skyline.

The building's projections may also be used for broadcasting special events, or for advertising purposes, according to GDS Architects.

The tower itself has an impressive profile, with a main spire flanked on either side by two separate building wings. Tower Infinity will be used primarily for entertainment and leisure purposes, and is set to include a 4D theater, restaurants, a water park, landscaped gardens, and the third-highest observation deck in the world.

"Instead of symbolizing prominence as another of the world’s tallest and best towers, our solution aims to provide the World's first invisible tower showcasing innovative Korean technology while encouraging a more Global narrative in the process," Charles Wee, AIA, GDS Design Principal said in the press release. "We look forward to providing Korea and the world with a completely new model for what it means to be an observation tower."

Take a look at some of the concept images below.

The Tower Infinity will have three major projection points that will display what's directly behind it.

Those projection points will be at three different heights, as well as on six different sides of the building.

 Here's a good way of thinking about how it will work:

And here's what it will look like without the projections turned on.

It will have the third-highest observation deck in the world.

The floorplan is open so that you can peer down multiple levels as you ascend.

It will be used primarily for entertainment and luxury purposes, and will have a 4D theater, restaurants, waterpark, and more.

But the view from the tower will be its best asset. Multiple floors at the top of the building will be used as an observation deck and as landscaped gardens.

And here's how it stacks up with other well-known towers, height-wise. Tower Infinity is 1,476 feet high.

SEE ALSO: The Tallest Skyscrapers Under Construction Right Now

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