Live Long and Prosper Star Trek Photo Frame
Father's Day is right around the corner. Are you looking for the perfect gift for your Star Trek loving Dad? Get Dad the Live Long and Prosper Star Trek Photo Frame from the NeatoShop. This fantastic frame features Spock and the U.S.S. Enterprise. The opening is in the shape of the Sarfleet insignia. The frame holds a 4 x 6 photo.
Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Star Trek items.
M.C. Escher's tessellated lizards will look great on your floor! The tiles for the bathroom floor pictured were custom-designed, but you can contact the company Arbore about making some for you. Link -via Boing Boing
Eventually, someone will break your heart. Don't wait until s/he has ripped it out of your chest and stomped on it before developing a contingency plan. Be prepared with Melanie Chernock's first aid kit. It contains chocolate, vodka, tissues, bubble bath, a candle and a music CD with appropriate songs.
Maru, the internet's favorite cat, turned six years old yesterday. As is her custom, mugumogu posted a retrospective of Maru's best moments from the past year in a birthday video. Link -via Cute Overload
w00t! If you love Uncle John's Bathroom Reader series on Neatorama, you'd love this: they're having an awesome Father's Day Sale, where the entire Uncle John's store is 30% off from May 20th to July 16th, 2013. They must be off their rockers! Thanks for letting us know, Mana!
Check out the latest Uncle John's Bathroom Readers article on Neatorama:
View all Bathroom Reader articles on Neatorama | Don't forget to check out the official Uncle John's Bathroom Reader website
(Image generated at Word Cloud for Kids)
What do the following words have in common? It's not really that difficult if you chip away at them for a while.
Sheath
Pirate
Ashamed
Brandy
Continue reading for the answer.
Guys, she doesn't want you to solve her problems or even just suggest possible solutions. Just listen and empathize as best you can. In this hilarious short film, Jason Headley offers great relationship advice.
-via American Digest
What happened after the movie ended? Old Red Jalopy collaborated with Next Movie to envision what would logically happen after the credits rolled.
As you can see above, Willy Wonka's chocolate factory would've been closed by the authorities for sure. Willy himself is probably hiding somewhere in Loompaland to avoid lawsuits.
Take a look at the rest: Link - Thanks Andie!
To celebrate YouTube's eighth anniversary, Dane Boe put together a retrospective of viral videos to the tune of Billy Joel's song "We Didn't Start the Fire." You might recognize all the clips, most of them were posted here at Neatorama over the past eight years. -via Viral Viral Videos
No ordinary plate will do. The photography duo Nicky & Max photographed food presented in the elegant Bauhaus style. Their simple shapes, colors and forms result in lovely images of fine food. You can see more photos from their series at the link.
Link -via Foodiggity | Artists' Website
Etckt had great success with their Periodic Table of Star Wars (the Original Trilogy), so, just like Lucas did, they followed that up with the prequels. And just like the prequels, this new periodic table has more special effects.
Each element cell is now a cube (rendered as hexagons), with all the pertinent information, and elements/characters categorized as Jedi, Sith, royalty, politicians, droids, etc. Of course, Anakin Skywalker heads the table, along with Qui-Gon Jin. You can see more details and the full-size version by clicking the image at Etckt. Link -Thanks, Matthew Gallagher!
Aragorn & Arwen Salt & Pepper Shakers
Celebrate a love worth becoming mortal for with the Aragorn & Arwen Salt & Pepper Shakers from the NeatoShop. This beautiful set is made of glazed ceramic and feature hand painted details. Magnets hold the two shakers together.
Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Salt & Pepper Shakers and fantastic The Lord of the Rings items.
At the age of 80, Japanese mountain climber and adventurer Yuichiro Miura reached the summit of Mount Everest on Thursday. But he may not hold that title for long:
There are reports that Nepalese climber Min Bahadur Sherchan, 81, is planning an assault on the world’s highest peak next week, despite some recent intestinal problems.
Sherchan frustrated Miura’s record-setting ambitions once before when, in May 2008, Miura conquered the mountain at the age of 75, only to arrive a day after Sherchan's ascent at age 76 years and 340 days.
This is Miura’s third ascent of the 29,028-foot peak. He also earned the oldest climber title in 2003, at age 70, a milestone broken four years later when fellow Japanese climber Katsusuke Yanagisawa ascended at age 71.
But at least for now, Miura is expressing nothing but satisfaction at his accomplishment.
"This is the best feeling in the world,” an entry said on his Facebook page. “How could I have come so far at the world's oldest age of 80, I’ve never felt like this in my life. But I've never been more exhausted than this." [...]
The veteran adventurer also hit the spotlight in 1970 when he became the first person to ski down Everest with help from a parachute, a feat documented in the 1975 Academy Award-winning documentary "The Man Who Skied Down Everest."
(Photo: AFP)
This video from RTÉ Radio 1 shows a cat in County Offaly, Ireland, suckling ducklings along with her own kittens. Isn't that amazing? Well, from what I can see, the ducklings are not nursing, although they may give it a try after seeing the kittens do it. After all, ducks don't suck. But they sure are craving some snuggling from the mama cat! What really is amazing is that a video from a radio network has no audio. -via Daily Picks and Flicks
"Sorry for trying to enslave Eternia."
"Water under the bridge, man. Water under the bridge."
In an alternate universe depicted by Matthew Skiff, He-Man and Skeletor just talked out their differences.
Link -via Nerd Bastards
Remember that time you gave that long and tearful toast at your brother's wedding, only to find out later that you had a huge chunk of spinach stuck in your teeth? Or the time you stole that basketball and shot that brilliant last-second 3-pointer into the other team's basket? Or what about when you built that giant highway bridge for the city and it suddenly collapsed one day? On second thought, that last one is its own special kind of embarrassing. And one for which you'd probably trade a million spinach-toothed moments. So take comfort in knowing that, if nothing else, your bad hair day didn't put anyone in danger or make the nightly news.
Tacoma, Washington, 1940
While buildings and bridges are made to bend in the wind, the engineers behind the Tacoma Narrows Bridge might have benefited from heeding a different aphorism: everything in moderation. Stretching 2,800 feet above the riverbed, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge was (at the time) the third-longest suspension bridge in the world, behind the Golden Gate in San Francisco and the George Washington in New York City. Its sleek design incorporated a roadbed only 39 feet wide, making the bridge far more slender and light than its contemporaries. But it was also a lot more flexible.
The simple fact is that any structure built without enough "give" is more likely to break in a strong wind. There's no shortage of mathematical formulas for calculating how flexible a structure should be. Yet, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge was only one-third as stiff as common engineering rules dictated. Even in modest winds, the roadway oscillated up and down several feet, quickly earning it the nickname Galloping Gertie.
While drivers found the undulations unsettling, the bridge seemed steady enough from the outset—at least to everyone except University of Washington engineering professor Bert Farquharson. Worried that it was far too flexible, Farquharson began studying the bridge in an attempt to uncover what sort of retrofits might improve its stability. As part of his investigation, he showed up at Tacoma Narrows on the morning of November 7, 1940, to film the movement of the bridge. His timing was eerily coincidental. As he was shooting, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge began heaving, and soon collapsed.
The Moral: It's o.k. to be a stiff. Materials like wood, metal, and concrete vibrate when they're struck—whether it's your fork hitting a wine glass (causing it to ring) or wind pushing across the roadbed of a bridge. If sustained, the vibrations can build to dangerous levels. It's like pushing someone on a swing; when they reach the back-most point in the oscillation, the same light push over and over will make the swing go higher and higher. You don't have to push harder each time; you just have to push repeatedly at the right moment. Similarly, if wind pushes a roadbed steadily for long enough, it can oscillate higher and higher, creating what's known as resonance.
Rhiannon's cake is delicious, right down to the core. She made it for her sister, a teacher, who wanted to show her students how the Earth is structured. The baking challenge was to bake a hemisphere within a hemisphere within a hemisphere. At the link, you can read about how Rhiannon did it.
Image: MBARI
Meet the Lyre Sponge, a large harp- (or lyre-) shaped carnivorous sponge in the deep waters of the northeast Pacific Ocean off the coast of California. The vertical branches, capped with a balloon-like ball, maximize the surface area of the sponge for capturing planktons.
See that and 9 other neat new species discovered just last year over at LiveScience's Top 10 New Species of 2013 (don't miss the monkey with the blue butt!): Link | Image Gallery
Jason Marlin of ars technica was struck by a bolt of lightning. He was apparently okay enough to write about it right away.
Yesterday, I was sitting in my studio office—basically a converted garage—while a thunderstorm brewed outside. After wrapping up a conference call with some of Ars' finest, I was getting ready to dive back into work when the storm really picked up. "Ahhhh," I thought as I leaned back in my chair to stare out at the strange greenish light against a purple-clouded backdrop. "So beautiful!"
At that moment—and this part is a little foggy—a bright arc of electricity shot through the window and directly into my chest. I'm not sure whether the arc originated from the sky or the ground, but it knocked me out of my chair. I hit the concrete floor and bounced back up to my feet, which were shuffling at top speed into a bookshelf. I remember thinking, "OK, going to die now. Do not fall down. Do not pass out."
I've read that being struck by lightning is akin to a being hit by a huge defibrillator. I'm not sure about that—but it did feel magnitudes worse than the time I touched an electric fence as a kid.
The paramedics urged him to go to a hospital for tests, but he declined. Read the rest of his first-hand account and the aftermath. Link -via Digg
His hands are full, but this hero is ready for anything. Question: what happens if his Hulk legs get angry while his Tony Stark head wants to kick back and relax?
-via Fashionably Geek
(Photo: unknown)
When activated, this zoetrope at the Phillip Island Chocolate Factory in Melbourne, Australia shows ducks jumping in and out of the water. Note: for display purposes only; do not eat.
Father's Day is coming? Are you looking for the perfect gift for your golf loving Dad? Get him the BBQ Golf Tool Set from the NeatoShop. The tools in this fantastic 5 piece set feature golf club shaped handles. The set also comes with a golf club shaped carrying bag for keeping those tools neatly organized.
Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Kitchen Stuff.
Forget the Force! The world's coolest Star Wars creation uses LEGO bricks and lots of it. The LEGO X-Wing is built with over 5 million bricks. It's the largest LEGO model ever built:
The model of the classic Star Wars fighter being unveiled in Times Square has a wingspan of 44 feet and comes complete with R2-D2 and a full range of sound effects. It’s a super-duper-sized version ofStar Wars Lego starfighter set #9493 and was made with 5,335,200 Lego bricks. That, according to Lego, makes it the largest model ever built, eclipsing the Lego robot at the Mall of America by some 2 million bricks. This replica of the Rebel Alliance dogfighter is 42 times the size of the Lego version we’ve all built and a bit bigger than a real X-Wing. (Yes, yes, we know they’re not real. Just go with it.) The X-Wing Luke Skywalker and his fellow rebels flew was about 41 feet long, 2 feet shorter than this Lego masterpiece.
The X-Wing was built at the Lego Model Shop at the company’s facility in Kladno, Czech Republic. It took 32 “master builders” (Note: This is a real job, and we’re preparing our resumés.) 17,336 man-hours to construct the X-Wing.
Angela Watercutter of Wired has the story: Link
PS: CoolThings has an awesome gallery of the LEGO X-Wing: Link - Thanks Sunny!
A busy woman needs the tools of her work accessible. This was a challenge when fashions did not include many pockets. The chatelaine was a popular solution in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries:
Like a customized Swiss Army knife, a chatelaine provided its wearer with exactly the tools she needed closest at hand. For an avid seamstress, that might include a needle case, thimble, and tape measure, while for an active nurse it might mean a thermometer and safety pins. Inspired by the complex key rings carried by “la chatelaine,” the female head of a grand French estate, these beautiful little contraptions were as fashionable as they were practical. In fact, their design was sometimes so trendy that style trumped usefulness.
(Images: Genevieve Cummins)
This is what you get when a linguist's children reach middle school. Linguist James Harbeck gives us the phonetic analysis of the things teenagers say WAY too much, mainly to annoy parents, teachers, and even their best friends. A sample:
1. Breathy-voiced long low back unrounded vowel with advanced tongue root
This is usually spelled something like auuggghhh. It's the classic teenage sound of utter exasperation. The eyes are usually angled upwards, sometimes in contrast with a downward movement of the shoulders. "Breathy-voice" means that the vocal folds are wide apart, giving a very "chesty" sound. "Advanced tongue root" means that the back of the tongue is moved forward to make a larger resonating cavity behind it. "Low back" means the tongue doesn't rise anywhere in the mouth (compare this with "eee," which is high front). "Unrounded" means the lips aren't rounded.
If that makes no sense to you, it will when you hear him reproduce this and all the analyzed sounds in the accompanying video at The Week. Link -via Metafilter
This is the cover of Action Comics #1, the first comic book to feature Superman. Jalopnik author Jason Torchinsky asks a question I've never considered before: what kind of car is Superman lifting? Torchinsky and various Jalopnik commenters think that it's either a 1937 DeSoto, Plymouth or Ford. You can read their analyses at the link.
Caffeine isn't just in coffees, teas, and sodas anymore - it's in energy drinks, food, and even chewing gums. But what's the cumulative impact of all that stimulant?
Caffeine is, according to New Scientist, the planet's most popular "psychoactive drug." In the United States alone, more than 90% of adults are estimated to use it every day.
But now even the US - home of Coca-Cola, Starbucks and the 5-Hour Energy shot - is questioning the wisdom of adding it to everyday foodstuffs like waffles, sunflower seeds, trail mix and jelly beans.
In a statement, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) highlighted the "unfortunate example" of Wrigley chewing gum producing packs of eight sticks which each contained as much caffeine as half a cup of coffee. Subsequently, Wrigley said it would "pause" production of the product.
The agency is also looking at highly-caffeinated energy drinks, and said it was concerned about the "cumulative impact" of adding stimulants to products.
According to the US Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the number of people seeking emergency treatment after ingesting energy drinks doubled to more than 20,000 in 2011.
Jon Kelly of BBC News Magazine has the post that'll go perfect with that cup of coffee: Link
Image: Powered by Caffeine from the NeatoShop
Some quotes are attributed to the wrong person. Some get their words garbled a little. And others were just made up and we don't know where they really came from. However, many of these misquotes are versions that I've never heard. Does anyone really think it's "Bubble, Bubble, toil and trouble"? After all, the next line uses "bubble" as the rhyme. Who are all these people getting quotes so very wrong? John Green sets the record straight for mental_floss.
Photo: Nthach/Wikimedia
Remember the brouhaha over the CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch public dissin' of fat women? Well, it seems that they don't like disabled people, either. A judge in Colorado is considering forcing Hollister, a clothing company owned by Abercrombie, to make their stores more accessible to the disabled:
Lawyer Amy Robertson, who represents the disabled in the lawsuit, compared the case with the fight against racial segregation in the 1960s.
She said that in one case, Julie Farrar, who is confined to a wheelchair, had trouble when she tried to go with her daughter through a side door of one the Colorado stores because there was no access to the front door. She and several other disabled patrons filed a lawsuit in 2009. [...]
The stores put signs on the sides of the doors, one for "Dudes" and the other for "Bettys," and argued that they were complying with federal regulations because the side doors were accessible to the able-bodied and disabled alike, Robertson said.
"In the Jim Crow era, you had a white entrance and a colored entrance off to the side. These stores put up signs for Dudes and Bettys and called it integrated," she said Wednesday.
Abercrombie's lawyers argue that changing the elevated entrance to the stores would cause "immense ... loss in sales and revenue" and "permanent damage to the Hollister brand."
