Ah, the irony:

Chimfex Flame and Fire Suppressant combat chimney fires! Smother flames quickly, safely, NO water damage.

Due to a fire at the Factory the Chimfex product is no longer available.

Link - via J-Walk

A couple of days ago, first female space tourist Anousheh Ansari, Russian cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov and U.S. astronaut Jeffrey Williams returned safely from the International Space Station.

Ansari had become an inspiration and an Internet superstar, due to her blog from space:

In her native Iran, Ansari has become an inspiration to many women who chafe at the country’s male-dominated rule. Scores of women went to an observatory near Tehran last week to watch the space station streak across the sky at dawn. (Full story)

In a blog about her space experiences, Ansari suggested that life aboard the crowded space station could be a model for reducing tensions among people and nations on the planet. (More from her blog)

"It’s sort of like on Earth, if you think about it," she wrote. "We are all connected to each other by living on the only habitable planet in the solar system; we have no place else to go, at least not for a while, so if we don’t get along and blow up everything and create a mess of our home, well guess what? We have to live with it."

CNN Article | NASA Photos | Ansari’s Blog - via Boing Boing, previously on Neatorama: First Woman Space Tourist Blogs

The remote control farting teddy bear, perfect for mischievous pranksters everywhere, is now available for just $12.85: Link - via Coolest Gadgets

Neatorama reader Lewis Jaffe has a quirky blog about collecting bookplates or ex libris [wiki] (a printed piece of paper pasted on the inside front cover to show the ownership).

Lewis’ collection is fantastic: he has images of ex libris from Walt Disney, Samuel Colt, and even one for Rockefeller as drawn by Pablo Picasso!

Check it out: Link - Thanks Lewis!

From the website:

Was there a greater character in history than Vincent Van Gogh? A man who chopped off his ear in the name of love. With the Vincent Van Gogh Action Figure, you can see him in both ways; before the incident and bandage afterwards. Place the Vincent Van Gogh Action Figure in front of easel with interchangeable versions of his mini masterpieces. Celebrate one of the world’s favorite artists, maybe even use him as an inspirational tool.

Link - Thanks Yayo!

Related: Did Van Gogh Trace His Drawings?

Save time and exercise while you work with Geek-a-Cycle! Link - via Cynical-C.

From Grand Illusions toy shop:

The Polyorama originally dates from the mid 18th century, and consists of a series of illustrated cards which combine to form an ‘endless landscape’ - you can place the cards in any order, and the pictures will still fit together to create a landscape.

16 cards means that there are factorial 16 possibilities, i.e. 20,922,789,888,000 different pictures that can be made.

I guess this passes for "fun" in the 18th century! Link

Poor little mosquitoes [wiki]. One minute they’re just minding their own business, stopping to quench their thirst, and then whap! Suddenly their lives come to a screeching halt. Well, don’t feel too sorry for the suckers. Here are five reasons to keep on swatting.

1. Malaria

Malaria [wiki] occurs in more than 100 countries and territories and causes more than 1 million deaths each year. This disease comes from four species of Plasmodium parasites and is transmitted through, you guessed it, mosquito bites.

In each case the mosquito picks up the invader when it bites an infected individual. The parasite than uses the mosquito as a reproduction center and food source (eww). After about a week, enough plasmodium to do some damage accumulates, and a little bit is passed along with the mosquito’s saliva when it bites someone new.

After multiplying in that person’s liver, the parasite causes red blood cells to burst and releases toxins into the blood, making the person feel lousy. Hurray for citronella candles!

2. Dengue Fever and Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever.

These sister diseases [wiki] are caused by four related flaviviruses that use the Aedes aegypti [wiki] mosquito as a flying hypodermic needle.

Although the name flavivirus may sound yummy, a disease that causes you to hemorrhage probably isn’t good dinner conversation. While infection sometimes result in only flulike symptoms, there are 50 - 100 million cases and more than 15,000 deaths from the diseases each year.

The first reported epidemics occurred in Asia, Africa, and North America from 1779 to 1780; however, a current pandemic in Southeast Asia has brought the disease back to the forefront.

The good news is that not all people hemorrhage and many immune systems can fight off the disease. The bad news is that the aegypti mosquito is currently in Texas and the southeastern United States, air travel makes disease movement easier, and there is no vaccine.

Dengue virus

Aedes aegypti

3. West Nile Virus

West Nile virus [wiki] used to be found only in Africa, Eastern Europe, West Asia, and the Middle East. However, in 1999 cases were documented in the northeastern United States. That means that our generation is witnessing this disease’s territory expand.

Culex mosquitoes [wiki] transmit the virus, and birds act as virus reservoirs, where the virus can multiply so more mosquitoes can pick it up. People are known as dead-end hosts because while we do get sick, we don’t pass on the germs.

Short-term symptoms of West Nile fever resemble the flu, and this form of the disease is more common because a healthy immune system can usually fight off the virus. And while West Nile encephalitis affect less than 1% of infected people, it is much more serious. In this form the membranes around the brain became inflamed, which can result in neurological damage or death.

4. St. Louis Encephalitis

If encephalitis is an inflammation of the brain, then St. Louis encephalitis [wiki] refers to big-headed people from the Midwest, right? Actually, the disease is caused by another arbovirus - a virus transmitted by mosquitoes.

The St. Louis part came, presumably, because of cases identified in that city. Symptoms range from fever and headaches to more severe infections resulting in stiffness, stupor, and spastic paralysis.

There was a major epidemic of the disease during 1974 - 1977, but since then outbreaks have been sporadic and small. Like West Nile virus, the virus causing St. Louis encephalitis is a flavivirus passed through birds, which act as growth chambers, and transmitted by the Culex species of mosquitoes. Even though there are only about 128 cases per year, it still sounds like a good excuse for mosquito netting.

Yellow fever virus

Aedes aegypti

5. Yellow Fever

Yellow fever [wiki] is perhaps the strongest advertisement for insect repellent - those infected can go from healthy to dead in three days.

The symptoms include a progression from fever to extremity pain to "black vomit" (vomiting blood clots) to jaundice (making the skin yellow) to death. While not everyone dies, who wants to take that chance?

Before we knew that only mosquitoes transmitted the virus (not human contact), yellow fever caused enforcement of strict quarantines. In 1973 1793 yellow fever practically emptied Philadelphia. During the epidemic 5,000 Philadelphians died in three months, and many people - including notables like George Washington - fled the city in terror.

The development of a vaccine against the disease has reduced the number of cases, but it still occurs widely in Africa and South America.

___________

From mental_floss’ book Condensed Knowledge: A deliciously Irreverent Guide to Feeling Smart Again, published in Neatorama with permission.

[Update 3/15/07: Original article written by Karen Bernd, Ph.D., professor of biology at Davidson College in Davidson, NC.]

Be sure to visit mental_floss‘ fun website and blog!

Beckysweb has a neat sudoku game, where instead of numbers, you use photos from Flickr (you can even select your own tag!). This one is the hamster sudoku: Link

Karly Manley does some truly awesome beadworks, see more of her creations at: Born of Beads

David Gallaugher, Kevin James, and Jacob Jebailey of the Dalhousie School of Architecture decided that the world will be a better place if you can walk on grass - even in the urban concrete jungle - so they created this grass-lined wheel!

Found at Inhabitat

Helen Evans and Heiko Hansen, who made the design group He He, made this very cool light system called Light Brix. Each light are touch-sensitive and will brighten and dim in response to your touch!

Link (don’t miss the video!)

Photo: ycvisual.net

Racegreathouselabs is a cadre of inventors and robot enthusiasts Lance and Jim Greathouse, Scott Brown and Richard Friedberg. They’ve made numerous robots and machines for the Fire Arts Festival and Robot Wars.

See Racegreathouselab’s fire breathing and other strange robots and machines: Link | Flickr photoset (don’t miss the Golf Ball Cannon!)- Thanks Lance!

A fantastic ad for Travelers, inspired by Katamari Damacy. Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - via A Welsh View

See also: Katamari-like Giant Ball of Jeans

Brazilian artist Icaro Doria uses a country’s flag to poke fun, … er, raise some interesting viewpoint about certain characteristics of that country, for this advertisement for Grande Reportagem magazine. See more: Link - via reddit

Illegal tiger skin trade in Tibet is so bad that when investigators from UK-based Environmental Investigation Agency and India’s Wildlife Protection Society found a tent made up of 108 tiger skins!

Link

Jean-Jerome Casalonga has a neat list of some of the world’s oddest watches: Link - Thanks Yayo!

In 1912, while working for Parke-Davis pharmaceutical, chemist Wilbur Scoville devised a test to measure the piquancy (that’s "hotness") of various chili peppers.

This one is the Naga Jolokia pepper [wiki], the hottest pepper in the world at 850,000 to 1 million units on the Scoville scale. In comparison Jalapeño is just 5,000 to 15,000 units and habanero is about 100,000 to 500,000 units in the Scoville scale.

See the list of the Hottest Chili Peppers and Hot Sauces in the World - Thanks Mike Stanton!

Designed by Scott Franklin, this underwater lamp is strange, mesmerizing, with a hint of danger:

The WET Lamp is an elegant and playful series of glass lamps with an alluring water-submerged light bulb at its center. Putting an exposed light bulb in water certainly raises some eyebrows, but it also creates an intriguingly simple dimmer switch. When a thin silver rod is slid into the water, the WET Lamp turns on and becomes progressively brighter as the rod is submerged.

Despite its precarious concept, the Wet lamp is a completely safe and isolated system of low voltage power.

Link - via Didn’t You Hear

German artist Bettina Kaminski’s "Mini the Pooh," at just 5 mm tall, is the world’s smallest Teddy Bear!

Link [in Russian] | Bettina’s other miniature dolls [in German] - Thanks Spluch!

Why bother with sit-in protest when it’s miserable and rainy outside when your avatar can do a virtual sit-in?

From EastSouthWestNorth blog:

In Taipei, there is the real-life A Million People Sit-In To Dump A-Bian campaign under miserable rainy conditions. If you don’t want to get wet, you can stay home and participate in the virtual online version of One Million People Sit In Quietly Doing Nothing

A-Bian is Taiwan’s President Chen Shui-bian, by the way.

See a larger screen capture at ESWN (can you find the cat woman with an axe?): Link

So simple it’s genius: Gambia’s voting system uses marbles and bells to prevent people from voting more than once:

Voters enter a booth and pop a clear glass marble into one of three drums representing the candidates, instead of a putting a ballot paper into a box.

As the marble falls into the drum, it hits a bell so officials can tell if anyone votes more than once.

It’s a unique system introduced in 1965 because of Gambia’s high illiteracy," Gambia’s chief electoral officer Kawsu Ceesay told the BBC.

The bell resembles a bicycle bell so bicycles are banned from around polling stations to avoid any confusion.

Link

From Pink Tentacle, an excellent blog about all things Japanese:

According to the Yume-Neko Smile homepage, the cuddly robot makes a suitable alternative for anyone unable to keep a real cat. Five sensors at different locations on Yume-Neko’s body allow you and the cat to engage in tactile communication. Pet Yume-Neko Smile on the head and it starts purring and flicking its tail around. Stroke its back and it starts to get sleepy. Yume-Neko also likes it when you touch its cheek, and it apparently enjoys being flipped over on its back to have its chest stroked. The cat gets mad when you touch its tail, though, so be careful!

Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] | Pink Tentacle’s Article | Yume-Neko Smile website [in Japanese]

Artist Dominic Wilcox put a lightbulb in a bag of polystyrene balls and discovered that it looked like light passing through a cloud, so the Nimbus cloud ceiling light was born: Link

This H.P. Lovecraft-inspired Flash game is based on a simple premise: shoot the zombies before they kill you. Link [Flash] - Thanks Tim Mosley!

The Joby Gorillapod goes where no tripod has gone before: on tree branches, rocks, uneven surfaces … anything!

Link - Thanks Audi Meyer!

US Biotech company Allerca has created the world’s first hypoallergenic cat for allergy sufferers:

US biotech firm Allerca says it has managed to selectively breed them by reducing a certain type of protein that triggers allergic reactions.

The company says the animals will not cause the red eyes, sneezing and even asthma triggered by cat allergy, except in the most acute cases.

Despite costing $3,950 (£2,104), there is already a waiting list to get one.

Link

Confucius was a famous Chinese thinker and philosopher whose teachings deeply influenced the East Asian life and thought.

But what does he look like? Now we know:

The China Confucius Foundation (CCF) on Saturday unveiled a standard portrait of ancient philosopher and educator Confucius in order to give him a single, recognizable identity around the world.

The draft sculpture was based on the painting of Confucius by Wu Daozi of the Tang Dynasty (618 - 907), together with advice from Confucian scholars, historians, artists and his descendants.

Link

What’s so special about this dirt bike?

More power of a Honda CRF150, weighs 100 pounds LESS, but silent. This bike is extremely powerful. This is not a toy!

It begins with a 19+ horsepower (14,400 watt) electric vehicle motor and programmable controller. The power is stored in a special quick-change power pack that can deliver up to 600 amps. Then it’s wrapped in the lightest handcrafted aluminum frame made in the USA. The design is so revolutionary, that we are patent pending on 3 patents.

Ride anywhere with no gas, no pollution, no engine to wear out and it costs less than a penny a mile to ride.

Link

Urban Fiction is Xing Danwen’s ongoing art project, where she takes photographs of architectural models of buildings in China:

The architectural structures that I photographed are all maquettes made to promote real-estate developments that are being planned in China today. Some of the buildings already exist, and others will soon begin construction. When you face these models showing such a variety of different spaces and think about the life-styles associated with them, you start to wonder: is this the picture of life today? Do we really live in this kind of space and environment?

Link - via digg