How far would you go to feed your children? For the mother worm Boulengerula taitanus, the answer is: pretty darn far – they would let the baby worm eat their flesh!

The mothers of Boulengerula taitanus create a nutrient-rich fatty outer layer of skin after laying their eggs. When their offspring hatch, the babies scrape this layer off with specialized teeth. …

The researchers brought the burrowing animal into the lab to investigate, videoing 21 mothers with broods of between two and nine young. In the week after their babies hatched, mothers lost about one-seventh of their bodyweight – which showed up as skin cells in the stomachs of young. …

As to why the mothers let themselves be flayed, Wilkinson suggests that making a fatty layer of skin may be cheaper for the mother than giving her eggs a large yolk. And if a baby dies, he notes, the mother’s investment in the egg is wasted – but she might be able to save her skin and use it again.

Link

Weird and wacky tales from the April 18, 1906 San Francisco earthquake:

One man, long paralyzed from the neck down before the earthquake, regained the ability to move when a looter tried stealing his bags from beside him in a park, where he was placed by friends after rescue. Enraged, the man’s first act of mobility was to crack the criminal over the head with a plank of wood.

As San Francisco threatened to descend into lawless mayhem, Mayor E.E. Schmitz enforced a shoot-to-kill policy against looters. Taking the orders too far, one officer shot a thirsty horse who was “looting” water leaking from a broken hydrant.

Forty-six workers at the U.S. Post Office defied orders to evacuate and battled the fire that threatened their building with mail sacks soaked in water. Incredibly, not a single piece of mail was lost in the blaze, although many of the addresses to which they were destined no longer existed.

Despite being packed with one of nature’s fuels, another building to survive the quake and fire unscathed was A.P. Hotaling’s whiskey warehouse. The odd miracle prompted a local poet to create this famous ditty:

If, as some say, God spanked the town,
For being frisky,
Why did He burn the churches down
And save Hotaling’s Whiskey?

Read the entire list: Link

Art Not Oil: A True Portrait of an Oil Company has some thought-provoking artworks on -what else – oil and car companies, and war.

Don’t miss the works of an anonymous "subvertiser" who subversively changed the outdoor ads of various companies, George Osodi’s Fuel Explosion photo (graphic), Stig’s Shell Skull, and more.

Link to Gallery

Would you believe that there were over 400 submissions to this year’s Pioneer Press Marshmallow Peeps Diorama contest?

Contestants expressed pathetic thanks to the Pioneer Press for enabling their Peeps obsession and begged us to continue the contest under future new ownership.

Some created blogs devoted to documenting diorama construction and held in-house diorama competitions in their workplaces.

And they confessed their membership to the cult of Peeps without shame.

Link (via Miss Cellania)

What do you see living inside of Good? Found at Optical Illusions Etc. (Thanks Walt!)

Angels Flight: The Shortest Railway in the World

Built in 1901, Angels Flight is known as the world’s shortest railway: just 320 feet. This line was closed in the 1960s due to disuse and was re-opened in 1996 only to close again in 2001 due to an accident. Supposedly, it’ll re-open again in late 2006.

Angels Flight is on 4th and Hills Streets in Downtown Los Angeles. See also: LA Area Funiculars

Rare Ferrari That Crashed in Malibu

Weirdness and mystery abound in the story of the $1 million Ferrari Enzo that crashed in Malibu on Feb 21, 2006.

The car’s owner (later disputed) Stefan Eriksson, claimed that a man he knew only as "Dietrich", was driving at the time – and when the cops were questioning him, men from Homeland Security came for him. Stefan himself turned out to be a "deputy" of a private police department ran by a local transit bus company.

As if that’s not enough, it turns out that Stefan’s old company Gizmondo was ran into the ground and that Stefan was actually a convicted criminal – he was busted for running a counterfeiting ring in Sweden.

And now, he’s busted here, too.

Read it for yourself: SF Chronicle | LA Times

Police Chases

On average, 15 people in try to drive away from the cops in LA on any given day – much more than any other parts of the country!

Indeed, car chases (remember OJ’s famous slow speed chase?) are a part of LA – they are often televised ("breaking news") and they consistently garner high ratings.

Jaywalking Ticket for Walking Too Slow

Mayvis Coyle became a celebrity when an LAPD officer gave her a $114 ticket for jaywalking for walking too slow across the street.

Editorial writers from Sacramento to Scotland have rushed to Coyle’s defense. Strangers in distant lands are rising to support her. Camera crews show up at her Sunland trailer unannounced, wanting Coyle to repeat the story once again.

And she doesn’t even have a phone.

As Coyle tells it, she was doing her best to shuffle across Foothill Boulevard, with her cane in one hand, groceries in the other, when the light changed from "Walk" to "Don’t Walk".

Enter an LAPD motorcycle officer, who gave her the ticket, which she is challenging in court.

Hollywood Sign.

Not many people know that this famous sign was first put up in 1923 to advertise a housing development in Hollywood.

The sign has seen many pranks, promotions, and even a suicide (in 1932, aspiring actress Peg Entwistle, jumped off the H to her death).

Dork Street

Yes, that’s a real street name in Pico Rivera!

Officials say there is no record at City Hall explaining how the street got its distinctive moniker, but residents believe it was named after someone called Dork. It first appeared on a Los Angeles County tract map in 1936.

Angelyne Billboard. Angelyne, a model and sometimes actress, is famous for purchasing billboards advertising herself and for riding around in her pink corvette.

She also ran (unsuccessfully) for California governor during the 2003 recall election.

Hollywood Walk of Fame.

The Walk of Fame is actually a sidewalk along Hollywood Blvd and Vine St. It has about 2,000 stars with names of celebs.

By the way, Winnie the Pooh just got his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and CNN had this perfect headline: " Star wears red shirt, no pants to Walk of Fame ceremony"

Museum of Jurrasic Technology

This one is Hagop Sandaldjian’s The Eye of the Needle exhibit at the Culver City museum:

Born of obsessive devotion, an individual figure could take as many as fourteen months to finish. Each sculpted micron represented not only endless hours of toil, but exacting travail fraught with peril, as his work could so easily be destroyed or lost. An unexpected sneeze or misdirected breath could blow away a microminiature with hurricane force, while a casual movement could sabotage the work of months. Since even a pulse in his fingers could cause an accident, Sandaldjian ultimately learned to apply his decisive strokes only between heartbeats.

The Banana Museum

The Banana Museum in Altadena, ran by Ken "Top Banana" Bannister, has over 17,000 banana-related items!

Museum of Neon Art (MONA).

This offbeat museum on West Olympic Blvd. is dedicated to neon light artworks.

This one on the left is by Jen Elek, titled "$laves" – it’s about "corporate targetting of American youths".

The Bunny Museum.

On Valentine’s Day in 1993, Candace Frazee and Steve Lubanski gave each other bunnies (and bunny-related items) and this turned out to be a daily ritual.

Now, their home, or the Bunny Museum, in Pasadena has over 20,000 bunny items – a world record.

Farmers Market

The Farmers Market at 3rd and Fairfax is home to 70 mom-n-pop eateries and shops. FAQ from the website:

13. The original merchants at the Market – the farmers who sold produce from the back of their trucks – paid 50 cents a day in rent.

14. When she saw the farmers vending produce at 3rd & Fairfax, Blanche Magee thought they might get hungry, so she began selling sandwiches. 68 years later, Magee’s is still serving Market patrons.

48. Liberace once pulled his convertible up to the front door of a Market shop, purchased every set of cuff links and most of the robes in the shop, had the goods gift wrapped, tossed it all in the back seat drove away.

65. Before the Market offered evening hours (we’re now open 9 to 9 Monday-Friday, 9 to 8 on Saturdays, 10 to 7 on Sundays), it was once taken over for a fundraising event at which, among other Hollywood stars, Shirley Temple “worked” as a counter girl. Her stall was so popular and the crowd so large that, out of concern for her safety, the fire department was called and extracted Ms. Temple from her booth by cutting a hole in the roof.

Tail o’ the Pup.

The iconic restaurant was designed by architect Milton J. Black in 1938 and built in 1945. It first opened at its original Beverly Boulevard location in 1946.

Tail o’ the Pup is an excellent example of Programmatic Architecture, where the building is designed to resemble the product sold inside. It is also one of a dwindling number of such structures in the Los Angeles area.

Unfortunately, the famous hot dog stand Tail O’ the Pup on San Vicente closed earlier in 2006 when it lost its lease. Rumor has it, the popular hot dog stand will reopen in Westwood Village.

Randy’s Donuts

Another example of kitsch architecture is the famous Randy’s Donuts in Inglewood, near the LAX airport.

The 22-foot wide donut was built as part of a Big DoNut chain, which has now gone out of business (Randy’s it the only remaining example).

This famous donut has also been featured in many movies, like Earth Girls are Easy, Mars Attack! (one of my favs), Coming to America, and so on.

Galco’s Soda Pop Stop

If you like weird drinks, you’ll love Galco’s Soda Pop Stop. This unique market on York Blvd. in Los Angeles has about 400 hard-to-find sodas. Far from LA? They ship sodas worldwide.

Watts Towers

Simon Rodia, an Italian immigrant construction worker, built the Watts Towers (formally Nuestra Pueblo), from 1921 to 1954 from scraps and found objects.

The towers are a collection of 17 interconnected structures, with the highest tower as tall as 99 feet.

During World War II, rumors swept the neighborhood that the Towers were transmission stations used to send classified information to the enemy Japanese and, later, to pass secrets to the Communists. Rodia was becoming increasingly solitary, isolating himself from his neighbors, angry at the world and what he saw as its disintegrating values. … Local children, gleaning from their parents that he was a crazy old man, tossed rocks and climbed over the walls to smoke and drink; treasure hunters unearthed sections and smashed the crockery, certain there was a fortune buried underneath; debris and trash accumulated. Finally, Rodia had had enough.

In 1954, Rodia packed up his few belongings, deeded his property to his neighbor, Louis H. Saucedo, and walked away, never to return. (from History of the Towers)

Giant Binoculars at the Chiat/Day Building

The gigantic binocular makes Chiat/Day building in Venice one of Frank Gehry’s most memorable architecture.

The entry to the parking structure is through the centrally placed binoculars, conceived and created in collaboration with Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. The binoculars contain space for private conferencing and research and are tied into the main client conference room. Each cylinder is topped by one skylight oculus.

Grandma Prisbrey’s Bottle Village

In 1956, at the age of 60, Tressa "Grandma" Prisbrey began building houses and structures from tens of thousands of bottles she recovered from her daily visits to the dump and from her husband’s own bad habit.

Appearances aside, Bottle Village began as two purely practical needs for a cheap building material to build a structure to store her pencil collection, which eventually numbered 17,000 and a bottle wall to keep away the smell and dust of the adjacent turkey farm. However, it was her own ability to have fun and infuse her wit and whimsy into what she made which over time became the essence of Bottle Village. Practicality alone would not explain The Leaning Tower of Bottle Village, the Dolls Head Shrine, car – headlight – bird – baths, and the intravenous – feeding – tube – firescreen, a few examples of her delightfully idiosyncratic creations.

Walt Disney Concert Hall

When the Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles opened in 2003, people complained that the shiny steel exterior was too shiny – so much so that workers had to sand the metal to dull the gloss!

See also: You are Here’s large list of buildings in LA.

Great Wall of LA

A mural titled Great Wall of LA in Valley Glen portrays the history of California from pre-history to today. At 2,754 ft, it is the longest mural in the world, built by SPARC (Social and Public Art Resource Center)

The Great Wall of Los Angeles is one of Los Angeles’ true cultural landmarks and one of the country’s most respected and largest monuments to inter-racial harmony. SPARC’s first public art project and its true signature piece, the Great Wall is a landmark pictorial representation of the history of ethnic peoples of California from prehistoric times to the 1950’s, conceived by SPARC’S artistic director and founder Judith F. Baca. Begun in 1974 and completed over five summers, the Great Wall employed over 400 youth and their families from diverse social and economic backgrounds working with artists, oral historians, ethnologists, scholars, and hundreds of community members.

See also Rich Puchalsky’s comprehensive List of LA Murals.

Corporate Head for Business

In Los Angeles, developers must allocate 1% of new buildings cost to fund public works of art – this is how the Poet’s Walk on Figueroa and 7th was funded.

One particularly interesting sculpture is "Corporate Head for Business" by Terry Allen and Philip Levine.

The plaque near the statue reads:

They said
I had a head
for business.
The said
to get ahead
I had to lose
my head.
They said
be concrete
& I became
concrete.
They said
go, my son,
multiply,
divide, conquer.
I did my best.

Walk on LA

Carl Cheng’s "Walk on LA" is a giant concrete stamp on the beach in Santa Monica that makes cool impressions on the sand.

Art on the Outside

The City of West Hollywood’s Art on the Outside past art installations included several gems like Laura Haddad and Thomas Drugan’s Starchief (Garden Car) and Blue McRight’s Lawn Chair.

From the website:

This tiny device laser-projects a keyboard on any flat surface… you can then type away accompanied by simulated key click sounds. It really is true future magic at its best. You’ll be turning heads the moment you pull this baby from your pocket and use it to compose an e-mail on your bluetooth enabled PDA or Cell Phone. With 63 keys and and full size QWERTY layout the Laser Virtual Keyboard can approach typing speeds of a standard keyboard… in a size a little larger than a matchbook.

Link (Thanks David R!)

For more of Krista’s paintings, see: Link (Thanks Rob Nelson!)

In 1951, British explorer Eric Shipton took this photo of Yeti footprint in the Himalayas.

The prints were 13 inches long and 8 inches wide. Shipton said that the prints were too large to be a bear’s and too fresh to have been enlarged or distorted by melting.
Shipton was quoted as saying: "What really made my flesh creep… was that where we had to jump crevasses you could see clearly where the creature had dug its toes in."

Link (Thanks Tim Mosley!)

This is the latest art installation of the infamous British guerilla artist Banksy. Link (via Collision Detection).

Previously on Neatorama: Banksy’s Banksus Militus Ratus | Grafitti Art

Why settle for a boring computer mouse when you can surft in style with Road Mice, a cool wireless computer mouse that looks just like the car of your dreams?

Road Mice is available in various Chevy, Chrysler, Dodge, and Ford models including the popular Black Mustang with White Stripes shown to the left.

It's the perfect gift for the auto-enthusiast in your life!

Dubbed "the world’s coolest marathon", this 26.2-mile race took place in the chilly (-23 °C!!!) North Pole. Who won?

In the men’s division, Collins and Carsten Kolle (Germany) forced the pace at the outset, crunching through the hushed indomitable surroundings and matching each other stride for stride over the initial 10km. A polar bear was spotted but fortunately it was one of the other competitors donning a costume. Despite the scare, Collins was relentless in his efforts and went on to win by a comfortable margin in a time of 4.28.35 on the toughest ever terrain for the race.

Meanwhile, in a perfectly judged effort, Marcel Kasumovich (Canada) overhauled the German for second place with France’s Philippe Moreau and Herve Taquet finishing together in 4th position.

The women’s race saw Alison Hamlett (England) set a new world record for the event, finishing ahead of 2006 Antarctic Ice Marathon winner, Wendy MacKinnon (Scotland), with Ireland’s Caitriona Strain in third place. Hamlett’s time of 5.52.56 was good enough for sixth place overall.

Link (via Information Junk)

Check out these cute sculptures made with Oreo by elementary school kids: Link (Thanks Yayo!)

From Earth Picture of the Day archive:

This nearly circular rainbow was observed from atop of Wendelstein Mountain (1.835 m or 6,020 ft) in Germany in March of 2000. Because we’re used to seeing rainbows as graceful arcs and not circular structures, we’re tricked into believing that they end when they appear to come in contact with the horizon. However, as viewed from aloft, especially from an airplane, rainbows are indeed circular structures. In the 1600s, Rene Descartes demonstrated that the rainbow is a complete circle with a radius of approximately 42 degrees, centered about the antisolar point (point in the sky opposite the Sun). The dome of the Wendelstein Observatory is seen as lower left.

Link

See more of Gil’s fantastic photos at: Link

Using cormorant to fish is an ancient practice in Japan and China. In Japan, cormorant fishermen puts a tethered steel ring around the bird’s neck (to prevent them from swallowing the fish). One fisherman usually handles ten to twelve birds at a time.

In China, the cormorants are more like beloved pets to the fisherman – he would train the bird to catch the fish and release it to him instead of swallowing it.

See other funny cartoons at Daryl Cagle’s Professional Cartoonists Index.

Toad with Lizard Tail. This toad with a 16-inch lizard-like tail was caught in Kampung Bekoh, Malaysia.

Chiew Ah Chan said she was cleaning the house at about 8.30am yesterday when she saw the unusual toad trying to hop out from a drain.

She quickly told an Indonesian worker nearby to catch it. …

The family will release the toad into the jungle in the next few days.

Some people believe that the strange toad has the power to bring them luck at the lotteries:

Several of them who “got a number from the toad” for numbers betting on Monday won consolation prices totalling RM40,000 the following day.

A villager Seah Boon Thong said although the number 3071 only won them consolation prizes, the toad had brought them luck. He however did not say how many villagers had won.

The villagers went to Chiew Ah Chan’s house where the toad was found on April 11 and “got” the number by placing numbers in a box and shaking it near the toad until four numbers fell out.

The Star Article 1 | Article 2

As if that’s not enough, another weird animal was captured in Malaysia: a two-tailed lizard:

Farmer Ahmad Mustafa caught the unusual green lizard with a split tail near his house last month in the northern state of Penang, the New Straits Times said in a report accompanied by a photograph of the strange reptile.

Fed a diet of worms, the lizard is now 5.9 inches long "and it has found a special place in Ahmad’s heart," the Times said.

Link

A fantastic resource for those who are looking to (or are forced to) use the power of the sun to cook their food. From the website:

Where are solar ovens being used the most?

There are reliable reports that there are over 100,000 cookers in use in both India and China. We are aware of solar cooking projects in most of the countries of the world. Solar Cookers International has recently had a breakthrough in Kenya using the CooKit panel cooker. More than 5000 families are now solar cooking there.

Link (Thanks Tim Mosley!)

Molly, the cat who was trapped for 2 weeks inside a 19th century building in New York, was finally found and freed!

Rescuers finally drilled a hole in the wall of the 157-year-old landmarked building on Hudson Street where the elusive feline was trapped. Earlier Friday, the Landmarks Preservation Commission gave rescuers permission to do whatever necessary to free the cat, despite the building’s 157-year-old history.

More than 40 Animal Care and Control workers spent days trying to lure the little black kitten out of her hiding spot using everything from fresh fish to new age music, while dozens of camera crews from all over the country looked on. Molly had sought refuge from a dog in the wall 14 days before.

Link

Why be buried in a boring coffin, when you can get handmade coffins that look like a Mercedes Benz, lobster, onion, shoe, beer bottle, even a cigarette?

From the website:

For the Ga tribe in coastal Ghana, funerals are a time of mourning, but also of celebration. The Ga people believe that when their loved ones die, they move on into another life — and the Ga make sure they do so in style. They honor their dead with brightly colored coffins that celebrate the way they lived.

The coffins are designed to represent an aspect of the dead person’s life — such as a car if they were a driver, a fish if their livelihood was the sea — or a sewing machine for a seamstress. They might also symbolize a vice — such as a bottle of beer or a cigarette.

Link | WaPo article: Death in Ghana | A Coffin for All Events (via Death, the Last Taboo – Thanks Tim Mosley!)

From the website:

There’s little doubt that this car is one of a kind. Nickel got the idea to build a wooden car from an article in a 1955 issue of Hot Rod magazine. Once Nickel retired from the waste collection business, he began making his dream come true. He decided to use two 500-cubic-inch Cadillac V-8 engines because someone told him it wouldn’t work. One engine and transaxle, from an Eldorado, drives the front wheels. The other engine, from a Deville, drives the rear wheels. Although the engines aren’t synchronized, Nickel said they work fine together.

It took Nickel more than four years to form the body by laminating 1-inch strips of mahogany. He used 1,000 board-feet feet of wood cut into 4,183 individual pieces, five gallons of glue, 60 pounds of drywall screws and four gallons of varnish.

Link (via TechEBlog, Thanks Steve!)

Why settle for a boring computer mouse when you can surft in style with Road Mice, a wireless cool computer mouse that looks just like the car of your dreams?

Road Mice is available in various Chevy, Chrysler, Dodge, and Ford models including the popular Corvette shown to the left.

It's the perfect gift for the auto-enthusiast in your life!

Les Stewart from Mudjimba, Australia, holds the world’s record of typing all numbers from one to one million in words (not numbers). He began in 1982 and finished with the entry "one million" on November 25, 1998.

Seven manual typewriters, 1000 ink ribbons, 19,890 pages, 16 years and seven months later, he finished with the lines

nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine.
one million.

When asked why he has undertaken this time consuming and repetitious task, Les says that he has little else to do now that he has been classed as an invalid, and can no longer work. Besides that, Les enjoys typing and used to be a police typing instructor before his sickness which meant his withdrawal from the force. Typing an average three pages a day with one finger since April 1982, Les said his secret was to type for 20 minutes on the hour, every hour

Link (via the Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society)

Kevin "Cannonball" Alderton, 34, a former soldier who lost his sight when he was attacked in the street, has set a new world record for downhill speed skiing: 100.94 mph!

He was guided on the slope via radio speakers in his helmet.

Afterwards he said: "I feel absolutely amazing. It shows disability is no barrier to achievement."

Mr Alderton had his eyes gouged when he tried to stop a gang attacking a woman.

Link (Thanks David R!)

See more of Jeremy’s artworks here: Link (via Superhelga)

Ipfini, Inc. has created a unique liquid container called the Choice-Enabled Packaging.

This container has "buttons" on the side of the container’s surface that release additives (flavors, colorants, etc) into the liquid.

These additive buttons let the consumer choose different versions right at the point of consumption. A programmable cola bottle with buttons for lemon, lime, vanilla, and cherry flavors as well as a caffeine button allows for 32 possible choices of soda.

Link (Thanks Dorky Rooster!)

Can you spot the face? For more illusions, checkout Vurdlak’s blog: Link (Thanks Vurdlak!)

Connie Cheng and Leonardo Bonanni of the MIT Media Lab made this "smart" spoon:

The spoon is equipped with sensors that measure temperature, acidity, salinity, and viscosity, and is connected to a computer via a cable. The sensors evaluate the different properties of the food, and send them to the computer for further processing. Apart from consolidating measurements that are normally done by an array of equipments into a single spoon, the information obtained can be used to advise the users what their next step should be; for example, it tells the user if there is not enough salt in the brine prepared to make pickles.

Link (Thanks Yayo!)

This is the story about YouTube – the Internet’s TV-killer.

A year ago, co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen were in between jobs, a pair of twentysomething geeks running up big credit card debts as they tooled around a garage trying to develop an easy way for people to share homemade videos on the web.

As April began, Hurley said people were posting about 35,000 new videos daily at YouTube.com, luring even more viewers to an audience that’s already watching more than 35 million videos per day, most lasting 30 seconds to 2 1/2 minutes.

Just four months ago, YouTube’s visitors were posting about 8000 videos a day while viewers were seeing 3 million videos daily.

The growth has been infectious, depending largely on referrals from users who alert their friends and family to a favorite video. Many of the viewers who discovered the site then decided to share their own videos, a factor that continually deepens YouTube’s pool of content.

Congrats to those guys! YouTube rocks – although, like Neatorama, it can be slow at times…

Link (via digg)

Not to be outdone by the World’s Most Expensive Sandwich, Chef Tom Bridge is making the World’s Most Expensive Cheese Toast (£345 or $604 a slice!):

He will use L’Aquila White Umbrian truffles at £1,400 per kilo, and Matsutake Chinese mushrooms, which are £250 a pound and are harvested under armed guard.

Link (via A Welsh View)

Gotta admire the creativity of these students. Link (via error101)