HOME |
RSS | 
Raising the flag in honor of John Frum Day. Photo: Paul Raffaele
On the remote island of Tanna in the South Pacific nation of Vanuatu, February 15 is John Frum Day. Here’s why it’s interesting:
This is February 15, John Frum Day, on the remote island of Tanna in the South Pacific nation of Vanuatu. On this holiest of days, devotees have descended on the village of Lamakara from all over the island to honor a ghostly American messiah, John Frum. “John promised he’ll bring planeloads and shiploads of cargo to us from America if we pray to him,” a village elder tells me as he salutes the Stars and Stripes. “Radios, TVs, trucks, boats, watches, iceboxes, medicine, Coca-Cola and many other wonderful things.”
The island’s John Frum movement is a classic example of what anthropologists have called a “cargo cult”—many of which sprang up in villages in the South Pacific during World War II, when hundreds of thousands of American troops poured into the islands from the skies and seas. As anthropologist Kirk Huffman, who spent 17 years in Vanuatu, explains: “You get cargo cults when the outside world, with all its material wealth, suddenly descends on remote, indigenous tribes.” The locals don’t know where the foreigners’ endless supplies come from and so suspect they were summoned by magic, sent from the spirit world. To entice the Americans back after the war, islanders throughout the region constructed piers and carved airstrips from their fields. They prayed for ships and planes to once again come out of nowhere, bearing all kinds of treasures: jeeps and washing machines, radios and motorcycles, canned meat and candy.
Link | John Frum [wiki] – via Cynical-C
Sixty-nine-year-old Inga Walen’s refrigerator was top heavy and as she leaned in to open the fridge door, it fell on top of her and pinned her to the ground for four days.
She called out for help to no avail. Until, that is, a politician going door-to-door campaigning saved her:
Luckily by the fourth day, Greg Allen, a politician running for the Placer County Water Board, heard Inga’s call for help while going door-to-door campaigning. He found an unlocked door and ran in to save Inga’s life.
Inga suffered a broken collar bone, and injured both legs as a result of the accident. She says that she doesn’t care which political party Allen represents, she’s voting for him either way.
Fifteen-year-old teenager Ritchie Calvin Davis stole a bus and drove it along its route, picking up passengers and collecting fares:
"I drove that bus better than most of the LYNX drivers could," the teen told a deputy after his arrest. "There isn’t a scratch on it. I know how to start it, drive it, lower it, raise it."
Passengers and deputies noted Davis drove the bus at normal speeds and made all the appropriate stops on the route. One passenger, suspicious of the youthful looks of the driver, called 911.
Star Wars Lego Sympthony. Clever CGI animation of Darth Vader conducting the Star Wars symphony. What do you think he used for a baton?: Link – via Blue’s News
Brazilian scientists have discovered new species of glowing mushrooms!
Like a black light poster come to life, a group of bioluminescent fungi collected from Ribeira Valley Tourist State Park near São Paulo, Brazil, emanates a soft green glow when the lights go out.
Previously on Neatorama: Glow-in-the-Dark Mushroom from Japan.
This rocking chair, built for two, is made by Thomas Oliphant: Link
Comments Off
From the website:
“Hello, world!” is a real installation for the virtual globe of the software Google Earth. A Semacode measuring 160 x 160 meters was mown into a wheat field near the town of Ilmenau in the Land Thuringia. The code consists of 18 x 18 bright and dark squares producing decoded the phrase “Hello, world!”.
Comments Off 
Tired of always losing your TV remote? You won’t lose it if it weren’t so small!
Check out this super-sized TV remote from Brookstone! Link – via Coolest Gadgets
Comments Off 
With all the hoople surrounding illegal immigration, you may not know that the US Government actually *initiated* the importation of Mexican agricultural laborers into California as part of the Bracero Program [wiki] in 1942 to 1964. Congress enacted the Emergency Labor Program, due to the extreme shortage of farm labor workers due to World War II.
Link – from University of California’s Calisphere website (with over 150,000 digitized photos, documents, newspaper articles etc. relating to California history).
Comments Off 
I wonder what they sell there … Found at Engrish – Thanks Joe!
Comments Off 
Balloon Manor is a fantastic haunted house, made completely from balloons! Link – via Fazed.
Comments Off 
This fantastic ad is for Anagram Bookshop in Prague, Czech Republic. See more at BibliOdyssey.
Flickr user Rob Cruickshank made this little contraption called Lil Sparky:
Putting the "cute" in "electrocute"!
Powered by a 9v battery, it delivers just a little jolt.
Endless possibilities for fun- imagine if the one who loses at Scrabble, or doesn’t do the dishes has to go to "the chair"!
Also good for trick-or-treaters who show up without a costume.
Link [Flickr] | the schematics [Flickr] | YouTube video – via Make and Boing Boing
My wife and I made these cute owl pumpkins a few years ago (Not my idea, saw it on a magazine). I think we’ll make them again today for Halloween (just thought I’d share!)
|
The Devil’s Tramping Ground is a spooky collection of scary stories, movies, and other eerie Halloween treats. This picture is from the movie The Banshee. I also particularly enjoyed the UFO webcam. Link -via web zen |
Comments Off |
A homeowner in Los Angeles, who is an aircraft mechanic in training, set up a plane crash as a Halloween decoration! He used parts from a real Gulfstream jet. Neighbors were taken aback, police were curious, and traffic is now heavy in the neighborhood because so many want to see it. Link -via Arbroath |
Now for something truly scary, from Carl theWAREHOUSE guy: Spam-O-Lantern – Thanks Carl!
This is from Mitsubishi in 2001, a privacy enhanced computer display that shows a jumbled screen to the naked eye, but a perfectly coherent display using the special ferroelectric shutter glasses.
Link – Thanks Dougall!
Comments Off Here’s a fan-made video clip of a Star Wars lightsaber duel, acted by Ryan Wieber and Michael Scott. You gotta admit, pretty darn good! Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] – Thanks Christopher!
Photo: K. Parkinson @ Australian Museum
Quick, someone submit this to Ugly Overload! This is a fathead (genus Psychrolutes) fish found on the Norfolk Ridge, New Zealand. The photo was taken by Kerryn Parkinson of the Australiam Museum Fish Dept, who affectionately called it "Mr. Blobby."
Link – Thanks Dougall!
From Liberal Avenger – Thanks LA!
This clever tea light candle holder designed by Mathew Jackson and available from mathmos, called thaw, uses a shade made from ice. The thing is, as the ice thaws, the water goes back into the mold, ready to be frozen again!
A little pricey at $50, but what a conversation piece! Link – via Notcot
Austrian art college graduate Andreas Strauss converted those concrete drain pipes into rooms for the Dasparkhotel: Link – via Smidigt.se
The call of SpongeBob SquarePants was just too strong for 3-year-old Robert Moore. When his grandmother turned her back for a split second, the toddler squeezed through the opening of the machine and got trapped inside!
Link – via Linkfilter
See also: Boy Trapped nside Wal-Mart Toy Machine
In the mid-1960s, Williams Research developed a flying platform called the "X-Jet" using a light turbofan engine:
This machine looked something like a flying trashcan on skids, and could carry a pilot directing the machine with two grip-type controls. It was evaluated in the 1980s and noises were made about a more capable successor, but apparently its endurance was too limited and, as was the case with most of the other one-person flying machines, it was hard to understand that it offered any utility proportional to its expense and complexity.
Lee Goldberg of Main Title Heaven has compiled the main title sequences or opening credits of great and not so great TV series.
This one above [YouTube] is from the Man From U.N.C.L.E. [wiki] Season 1 Opening.
Link – via Yahoo! Picks
George Poinar from Oregon State University and colleagues discovered the world’s oldest bee, a 100-million-year-old fossil preserved in amber, found in a mine in Hukawng Valley of Myanmar.
"This is the oldest known bee we’ve ever been able to identify, and it shares some of the features of wasps," said lead author George Poinar, a researcher from Oregon State University. "But overall it’s more bee than wasp, and gives us a pretty good idea of when these two types of insects were separating on their evolutionary paths."
Nathaniel’s photos are beautifully shot. Many are thought-provoking, too – but this one is just oh, so wrong! Link – via Mira y Calla.
|
Neighboroo uses Google maps to give you statistics about your hometown. You can look up housing prices, cost of living, income, racial breakdown, commute times, crime rates, and political affiliation. For example, the median price of a home in Brooklyn is $493,000 (twice the national average) and the average household has 2.8 people with an income of $64,000. Link -via J-Walk Blog |
|
This picture shows a mountain range in Canada that resembles someone listening to an iPod. You can study this area more closely at Google Maps. Link -via The Panda’s Thumb. |
| FEATURED ITEMS FROM THE NEATOSHOP | |
 |
Mustache Bottle Opener |
 |
My Cryptozoological Family - Family Car Stickers |
 |
Zombie Hand Bottle Opener |
View more: New Items &
Best Sellers |
|
