This is no teddy bear! Brad Josephs, a nature guide, left his GoPro camera out where a bear could find it. The bear wasn't able to eat it, but his attempt lets you see the inside of his mouth. Watch the video, then change your underwear.
-via Dave Barry
Cryptids are rarely seen, but when they are, their legends grow and grow with each retelling. That's because cryptids don't exist, except in legends. It's a good thing, too, because the Aloo has a ten-foot wingspan, the Kongamato robs human graves, and the Popobawa sodomizes its victims. Read about ten flying creatures of your nightmares at Environmental Graffiti. Link
(Image credit: Ramon FVelasquez)
Because there's no such thing as too much Nutella, Lisa Douglas invented the Nutella cocktail. First, soften Nutella in a microwave oven and dribble it along the inside of a glass. Then add 1.5 shots of Frangelico liqueur, 1 shot of Godiva chocolate liqueur and 4-5 shots of chocolate milk. Drink immediately and repeat the process as long as necessary.
Link -via Tasteologie
YouTube user Flippycat laughs at your puny attempt at domino. Watch this clip of him knocking down giant dominoes made from 30,000 individual domino bricks: Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - via FAIL Blog
But, in the Latin alphabet, Jehovah begins with--wait, no, that's not going to help us. And how do I type a tau on this keyboard?
Indiana Jones will never make it past Josh Mecouch's test.
Link -via Nerd Approved
AsapSCIENCE gives us a song with all the elements in order, including the recently-added ones. Those go pretty fast, so try to keep up! The tune is "Infernal Gallop" by Jacques Offenbach, which most folks call "the Can Can Song." -via Blame It On The Voices
The Twilight Pendant from the NeatoShop is a striking necklace. This piece is handcrafted in England and features bats flying around a glistening full moon. Nine Swarovski crystal stars light their way. It makes a wonderful gift for any vampire bat fan.
Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more unusual Jewelry.
Forget ball drops and champagnes. Thai people really know how to ring in the new year: with a water fight! During the Songkran festival (the last one was April 13 to 15, 2013), Thai people roamed the street with water buckets and water guns filled with ice cold water to drench friends and foes alike.
Ex-pat Willy Thuan of Phuket 101 has great photos of the festivities, including this one above where the policeman seemed to enjoy being the target, for once:
Everybody will join the Songkran festivities, kids, teens mostly, but also adults and tourists, divided in two camps: the 'Strategically Ambushed' by the road side with plenty of water ammunition, and the 'Mobile Units' in the back of pick up trucks. Shops and supermarket make fortunes selling all kinds of colorful and humongous water guns. But the best weapon remains the good old plastic bowl and a big tank of icy cold water!
Cops doing traffic and security on the road are always the favourite targets for everyone, but they are used to this and keep a smile all day or even play along.
Who is the young fan in this 1935 photograph? You might be surprised to see 15-year-old Ray Bradbury. Seems he was quite a fan of movie stars when his family moved to California. Read about it at Dangerous Minds. Link
Last week, NASA astronomers monitoring the Moon saw an explosion larger than anything they've seen before. On March 17, 2013, an object about the size of a small boulder hit the lunar surface in the Mare Imbrium area at an astounding speed of 56,000 mph. The resulting explosion packed as much energy as 5 tons of TNT and left a crater that could be as wide as 65 feet.
NASA astronomer Bill Cooke said:
"On the night of March 17, NASA and University of Western Ontario all-sky cameras picked up an unusual number of deep-penetrating meteors right here on Earth," he says. "These fireballs were traveling along nearly identical orbits between Earth and the asteroid belt."
This means Earth and the Moon were pelted by meteoroids at about the same time.
“My working hypothesis is that the two events are related, and that this constitutes a short duration cluster of material encountered by the Earth-Moon system," says Cooke.
Why, NeatoShop artist Wirdou has the perfect T-shirt for you to commemorate this event:
The Bodyguard
| View more Funny
T-shirts over at the NeatoShop
Copper Beech Farm in Greenwich, Connecticut (already known as a very expensive neighborhood) is for sale for $190 million dollars. But if you know how real estate works, you might be able to talk them down a million or so.
Copper Beech Farm spans 50 prized acres that boast roughly a mile of water frontage on the Long Island Sound, thanks in part to two offshore islands included in the offering. The main house, a French-renaissance mansion, boasts 13,519 square feet of living space including 12 bedrooms, seven full baths and two half baths, a wood-paneled library, an ornate dining room with a tracery ceiling and oak columns, a solarium, a wine cellar, a third-floor staff wing, and a three-story, wood-paneled entry foyer. The original kitchen, equipped with a dumb waiter, sits in the basement, originally part of the staff quarters. Fireplaces adorn most rooms in the Victorian manse and sleeping porches, once used during summer months before the advent of air conditioning, extend off of bedrooms.
Oh, there's also several other buildings on the property, two pools and a spa, an orchard, gardens, and a big forest. See more pictures at Forbes. Link -via Digg
(Image credit: David Ogilvy & Associates, Christie's International Real Estate)
You're on the Net reading this, so you're familiar with email spammers who fill your inbox with junk. But have you heard of the song spammer? They infest streaming sites like Spotify. The Echo Nest senior software engineer Aaron Mandel explains the various categories of musical spammers:
The very best type of music spammers — the ones whose music elicits the best mix of hysterical laughter and retributive threats when you play them for friends — are the cloners. These groups record their own versions of popular songs, replicating the originals as closely as possible with whatever time and talent they have. (Spoiler: Often, that’s not very closely.)
These cloned songs are credited to “artists” such as The Hit Crew, Hip Hop’s Finest, #1 Hits Now, DJ New Release — names that could, and often do, pass for compilation titles. They might be named after the very song they’re cloning (“Call Me Maybe,” “Thrift Shop”) or a lyric from it (“Here’s My Number,” “Party Rock Is In The House Tonight”). The name doesn’t matter, so long as it’s close enough to fool people into clicking on the track without thinking twice. [...]
The most amazing one that I’ve found to date is Charts Hits 2013’s clone of Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop.” It features a vocalist who makes no attempt to sound like Macklemore, and even so, he’s in way over his head. Clearly, the guy is reading from a lyric sheet. He says “mezzanine” like it rhymes with “nine” and says that he’s draped in a “Leonard mink.” The horn riff is also agonizingly squared off, with every note played at exactly the same volume.
This “Thrift Shop” clone is on the Spotify playlist of musical spam we mentioned above, but really, it’s way too good to miss, so here’s a YouTube link too.
Everyone has that one toy, right? You know what I'm talking about: the toy you've had since childhood that you just can't throw away, give away, or sell on eBay. For me, it's the above pictured Cat in the Hat talking doll. Mattel put a couple of these out in the '70s. They were different sizes and had different records in them with different voices that spoke slightly different catchphrases.
Mine was famous for saying more often than not: "Does your mother know I'm here?"
In the video below, I pull the string a bunch of times and you can hear all the phrases. And while the turntable speed is clearly off, I don't recall it ever sounding great. Even as a kid this cat always sounded a bit creepy.
How about you, Neatoramanauts? What's the one toy YOU can't get rid of? Let us know in the comments below...
An unnamed 16-year-old boy was sentenced to a juvenile curfew for conspiracy to commit burglary in Gloucester, England. He was fitted with an electronic ankle bracelet so his movements could be monitored. But when the security company set up with monitor -over the phone- he had an idea to get around the business of staying in his home.
The teenager was asked over the phone by an official from G4S to walk around the perimeter of his home so they could map the curfew zone they had to monitor.
But the quick-thinking lad decided to give himself a lot more freedom – by running as fast as he could down the road and back.
His speedy dash meant that the G4S official inadvertently gave him a much bigger area to roam around during his curfew hours.
Normally a criminal who is electronically tagged has to stay indoors or in the immediate garden area of his home during curfew hours.
The 16 year-old's ploy meant he could still venture down the road without triggering the tag.
The scheme was only uncovered about five weeks later, when the delinquent's landlady reported him not in the home. The security company had not received any alarms from the anklet bracelet, so they investigated and found out what he'd done to increase his restricted area. Link -via Geekosystem
(Image credit: Rex Features)
The train might move in a different direction each time you look at it. Stare long enough and you can make the train change directions. There is no correct answer, because this .gif is only four frames long; the optical illusion is in your brain. However, there is that one guy who recognized the subway station and just knew which direction the train comes there. -via Geeks Are Sexy
An animal control officer in Anderson, South Carolina, responded to a call about a barking dog. When Michelle Smith went to investigate, she found a tiny Shih Tzu mix barking in a ravine. Smith climbed down the embankment, which she says the dog could have easily climbed out of herself, and found out why the dog was there. She was nursing a tiny kitten!
"I didn’t know what to think," she said. "I was shocked and surprised and then of course, awww."
The dog and kitten received the same reaction when Smith took them to the animal shelter. Volunteers marveled at the way the dog, which is at least 5 years old, looks out for the 5-week-old kitten.
Jessica Cwynar, director of the shelter, says such behavior is natural for mammals.
"It would be like one of us seeing a neglected or abandoned child and taking it under our wing," she said.
Neither the dog nor the kitten has a known name, so shelter volunteers call them "Girl."
Cwynar said the 5-year-old dog likely started producing milk because of a surge of hormones when she found the kitten. The dog is obviously a pet, and the shelter is hoping the owner will come forward and take the kitten, too. Link -via Arbroath, where you can see a video.
Zero to 60 in three seconds! The "features" of a cheetah are presented in this video in the manner of new model of sports car. Everything that makes a cheetah different from other cats is about the acceleration. One fact that floored me: one stride of a cheetah can be 25 feet long. Imagine tracking a cat like that -you'd never know which way to look for the next paw print! -via Viral Viral Videos
Mole Miner Key Ring (sold individually)
Do you have trouble finding that itty bitty key hole on your door? Enlist the help of the adorable Mole Miner Key Ring from the NeatoShop. This little mammal is used to finding his way around in the dark.
The Mole Miner Key Ring features a little mole dressed like a miner. When you press his tail hie miner's helmet light goes on.
Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Keychain and Key Covers.
The Ancients made this mysterious device and redditor getoffmypropartay painstakingly reassembled it. There's no Dial Home Device, so we must manually dial an address. To which world should we travel first?
The following is an article from Uncle John's Unstoppable Bathroom Reader.
(Image credit: Flickr user Ed Schipul)
What would Porter the Wonder Dog have eaten 200 years ago, before there was Alpo or Dog Chow? Here's the history of the multi-billion-dollar dog food industry.
CHOW DOWN
* More than 2,000 years ago, Roman poet and philosopher Marcus Terentius Varro wrote the first farming manual. In it he advised giving farm dogs barley bread soaked in milk, and bones from dead sheep.
* During the Middle Ages, it was common for European royalty to have kennels for their hounds. Kennel cooks would make huge stews, mostly grains and vegetables with some meat or meat byproducts -the hearts, livers, and lungs of various livestock.
* Dogs in common households had meager diets. They were fed only what their owners could spare. A normal domesticated dog's diet consisted of crusts of bread, bare bones, potatoes, cabbage, or whatever else they could scrounge on their own.
* In the 18th century, farm dogs, which had to be fairly healthy to do their jobs, were regularly fed mixes of grains and lard. In cities, you could make a living by searching the streets for dead horses, cutting them up, and selling the meat to wealthy dog owners.
* There were exceptions: The very wealthy, throughout history, have fed their pet dogs fare that was much better than what most humans ate. In the 1800s Empress Tzu Hsi of China was known to feed her Pekingese shark fins, quail breasts, and antelope milk. European nobility fed their dogs roast duck, cakes, candies, and even liquor.
LUXURY FOOD
The in the mid-1800s, the Industrial Revolution created a growing middle class with more luxury and more leisure time, pets began to be regarded as "luxury items" by everyday folk. Result: pet food became more closely scrutinized.
Artist Gris Grimly of Mad Creator Productions lived up to his name when he created the spookiest Mickey you've ever seen. Behold, Mickey the Conjurer, as inspired by the Sorcerer's Apprentice from Fantasia. Via Geektyrant.
In Croatia, unexploded mines dot the landscape and still kill people who find them. But a new animal is being trained to locate them for us: honeybees.
Nikola Kezic, an expert on the behavior of honeybees, sat quietly together with a group of young researchers on a recent day in a large net tent filled with the buzzing insects on a grass field lined with acacia trees. The professor at Zagreb University outlined the idea for the experiment: Bees have a perfect sense of smell that can quickly detect the scent of the explosives. They are being trained to identify their food with the scent of TNT.
“Our basic conclusion is that the bees can clearly detect this target, and we are very satisfied,” said Kezic, who leads a part of a larger multimillion-euro program, called “Tiramisu,” sponsored by the EU to detect land mines on the continent.
Several feeding points were set up on the ground around the tent, but only a few have TNT particles in them. The method of training the bees by authenticating the scent of explosives with the food they eat appears to work: bees gather mainly at the pots containing a sugar solution mixed with TNT, and not the ones that have a different smell.
It may be quite some time before the experiment reaches actual land mines. Training a few bees is completely different from training an entire colony. Link
Svolværgeita, a 490-foot pinnacle of Fløyfjellet mountain in Norway, was first climbed in 1910. You might think that's pretty late, but the summit is a near vertical ascent.
Because of its shape, the top is called the Goat's Horns. Climbers who reach the top sometimes try to leap between the two horns. Would you do it?
(Photo: NFK)
This musical interlude was produced from the sounds made in a laboratory during chemistry experiments. There are links to the individual experiments at the YouTube page, in case any of them intrigues you. -via Everlasting Blort
This graph makes a lot of sense. You can spot the exact point in which puberty begins. This graph was created in a hurry by redditor rstarr13. The age axis is a little wonky, but in reality, the first ten years of your life take up a lot more brain space than the last several decades. Link -via Pleated Jeans
It's got to be the beard. Or perhaps the stovepipe hat (which may actually be a fake). Or his poetry. Or his vampire-fighting prowess. But there's no argument that Lincoln is hot (much to the consternation of the Lincoln haters), as this Bizarro comic from Dan Piraro illustrated.
Previously on Neatorama: A Few Things You Might Not Have Known About Abraham Lincoln
If you discovered a new species of prehistoric arthropod fossil with scissor-like appendages, what you you name it? Name it Kooteninchela deppi, in honor of the actor who played Edward Scissorhands!
“When I first saw the pair of isolated claws in the fossil records of this species I could not help but think of Edward Scissorhands,” says researcher David Legg, who conducted the research into the fossil as part of his PhD at Imperial College London, in a statement. “Even the genus name, Kootenichela, includes the reference to this film as ‘chela’ is Latin for claws or scissors. In truth, I am also a bit of a Depp fan and so what better way to honour the man than to immortalise him as an ancient creature that once roamed the sea?”
Kooteninchela deppi scoured the sea floor for other animals to eat. It is thought to be an ancestor of modern scorpions, centipedes, and crabs. Link
(Image credit: Imperial College London)
