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The picture above, showing Saturn’s moon Dione with the gas giant in the background, was the runner-up in NASA’s recently completed Cassini photo contest. For frequent readers of Neatorama, the winning picture should look familiar. You can see all the pictures, with captions, here [nasa].
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Flickr user Runawaykitty found this Scream Cake on a travel to Oslo, the city where Edvard Munch grew up. Link
Poutine photo from: mandyf [Flickr]
Here’s a "neat" Québécois dish: Poutine [wiki] (pronounced poo-teen). It’s basically french fries, cheese curds, and hot gravy.
Supposedly, poutine was invented in 1957, when a customer of Fernand Lachance asked for french fries while waiting for his order of cheese curds. Lachance remarked, ça va faire une maudite poutine ("it will make a hell of a mess"), and the dish was born!
Heck, even Superman, er Super Frank wants Poutine! Thanks AC!
Neatorama reader Nic McGinnis wrote:
I’m trying to put together something I call the ’internet choir project’. The idea is to create a choir sample using submissions of people singing over the internet. All I need is multiple .WAV files of people holding a middle C for a few seconds!
More details here: Link – Thanks Nic!
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Korean artist Sook Jin Jo’s installation called "Color of Life" (1999) in Socrates Sculpture Park, New York, is composed of 70 metal barrels that allows people to crawl right through (maybe like a giant game of Connect Four [wiki]?)
Link – Thanks Sook Jin!
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Tube Crisis is a surprisingly fun viral games from Sony – the object of this Flash game is to extricate yourself from the crush of subway rush, by finding a way to get rid of your fellow passengers (like to get started, click on the guy with the big backpack to get rid of the old guy with the boombox).
Now, if anyone can help me – I’m stuck and can’t get rid of the tall guy and the leery fat guy.
Link – Thanks Joseph!
Who’da thunk that the evil Decepticon leaders Convoy and Megatron now transform into … footwear! The shoes are 1/2 scale Nike, and each set will set you back $59. Link – via Gizmodo, Thanks Henry @ Brohans!
January 26 is Australia Day! Best wishes for a great celebration to all Aussies wherever you are. For everyone else, see some of Oz in this video. From the official website:
On Australia Day we come together as a nation to celebrate what’s great about Australia and being Australian. It’s the day to reflect on what we have achieved and what we can be proud of in our great nation.
It’s the day for us to re-commit to making Australia an even better place for the future.
I think Dave Walker of The Cartoon Blog nailed it perfectly with this one about procrastination! Link – via aboutMiche
Here comes the Didik Long Ranger, a hybrid "sports car" vehicle, according to its builder Frank Didik:
Link – via American Digest
Turns out there is a group called "Parents Against Goth" with a website called (really) GodHatesGoth.com, where they rail against the Goth subculture [wiki] and provide tips on how to "degoth" your children.
And of course, this being the internet, a counter website has sprung up, creatively called, GothsLaughingAtGodHatesGoth.com
Can’t we all just get along? Link – Thanks Andrew!
See also: Blue Spring Youth Outreach Unit combatting the goth problem with government money in Government Fund the Darnedest Things.
This is a weird one from The Museum of Retro Technology: cutlery/gun combo!
The knife, fork and spoon shown in the picture all have built-in flintlock pistols.
Note that the barrels point backwards, towards the user, so they’re not designed for plugging your host if he makes impertinent remarks about your table manners. It is difficult to imagine a social gathering where it is appropriate to shoot off your own elbows.
The fork follows the pattern of the time; it looks pretty lethal on its own account.
Are you a blogophile? Then you absolutely need this shirt (if you don’t know what this means, look here).
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The Telegraph reports on advances in scent analysis:
A scent is made up of traces of chemicals that evaporate off the body in what scientists call the "thermal plume". These chemicals can be left behind in sweat and other bodily fluids. The research team has found a way to collect samples that are as free of contamination as possible and analyse them using an "electronic nose" that breaks the scent down into its component chemicals. In studies funded by the US Army Research Office, scientists found they could identify individuals by looking at the differing combinations of 44 chemical compounds secreted by the body. They examined body odour samples of about 200 adults from Carinthia, a village in the Austrian Alps, chosen because no one from outside had settled there for many generations and the residents were mainly members of big families and genetically similar. Despite this, analysis showed each individual had a unique scent signature. "Scent allows us to learn about an individual’s gender, their lifestyle, if they smoke, what they ate last night and whether they are stressed," Prof Brereton said.
I am glad he’s advertising on “organic milk”
Five single dairy farmers are advertising on Calon Wen milk with the slogan Fancy a Farmer to mark St Dwynwen’s Day, the Welsh St Valentine.
The idea came from Calon Wen director and single farmer Iwan Jones, from Groes, near Denbigh – one of five farmers whose picture is featured.
Read the full story here [ - via Arbroath]
This week’s What is It? game, brought to you by the fantastic What is It? blog is … a hammer – but what kind of hammer? (i.e. what is it used for? It has a specific function). Can you guess what it is?
No prize this week, so you’re playing for bragging rights. For more guessing fun, check out What is It? blog …
Update 1/26/07 – The answer is: “Drill sharpening hammer, for reshaping points on the large star drills used for making blasting holes in mines, it’s held against the bit and struck with a sledge hammer.” Congrats to Chris Worsley (#12)!
Must meditate before I read the next post… Found at CuteOverload.
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What you’re about to read is so gross that I’ve decided to sandwich it between two cute posts. I’m not sure that’s even enough, so I’m sorry in advance.
Here it is – this is what you’ll get if you don’t brush your teeth regularly: black hairy tongue!
According to the Mayo Clinic, hairy tongue (lingua villosa) is a temporary (thank God!) and harmless problem resulting from an overgrowth of bacteria and yeast in the mouth. These organisms accumulate on the tiny projections of the tongue (called papillae) and cause the discoloration, which can be black, brown, white, green, pink or other colors (like after using colored mouthwashes and breath mints)
The main cause of the condition is poor oral hygiene, so brush your teeth regularly. Please.
Must. Forget. About. Black. Tongue. ("Hindentee", by the way, is found at YTMD)
From VideoSift, the grandpappy of video aggregators, is this YouTube clip – a tribute to Ron Fricke [wiki] who filmed Koyaanisqatsi [wiki] with composer Philip Glass. The clip is a spectacular time lapse of the sky of Edinburgh from morning to night, that took two years to make. (The rainbow, moon and stars scenes are absolutely stunning!)
Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] – via VideoSift
At first, I wasn’t sure what to make of this link suggestion – I almost chucked it before I realized that it’s a huge library of sound effects that you can demo.
Check out the footstep library, or for low-brow humor, their huge collection of farts and burps (you know you want to). Link – Thanks Tim!
Here are some fantastic body paintings by Guido Daniele (on Neatorama before a while ago, actually): Link – via Make,
Thanks Henry @ Brohans!
Scot at Bluestar blog put together a list of electronic music videos from YouTube – some are quite famous and enjoyable, others are just plain weird – like this one from The Avalanches [wiki] called Frontier Psychiatrist ("That Boy Needs Therapy!")
Check out the list: Link – Thanks Scot!
If you had fun with the bar bet on how to win free beer with geometry, posted by Miss Cellania previouly on Neatorama, here’s another one:
Switching water and whiskey in two shot glasses, without using a third glass, straw, or mouth. Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] – via reddit.
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A 29-year-old sex offender managed to pass himself as a 12-year-old boy, and attended 7th grade for several months before anyone realized.
Neil Havens Rodreick II enrolled at Mingus Springs Charter School in Arizona under the name of ‘Casey Price’. …
He also spent several months going to another school in Arizona, Rosefiled Charter School. He was eventually expelled from that school in November – for poor attendance.
A spokeswoman for that school said: ‘He was quiet. He turned in his homework. There were no discipline issues. He was never sent to the principal’s office. By most accounts he was aloof and kept to himself.’
As if that’s not weird enough, turns out that he also duped two older men he was living with (who enroll him in school):
Rodreick initially met Stiffler and Robert James Snow, 43, on the internet. He reportedly kept up the pretence that he was a young teenage boy while living with them by shaving his body hair and wearing makeup.
Susan Quayle, spokeswoman for Yavapai County sheriff’s office, said that Stiffler and Snow were ‘very upset when the detectives told them they had been having a sexual relationship with a 29-year-old man, and not a pre-teen boy.’
Japanese fishermen spotted this rare frilled shark (Chlamydoseachus Chlamydoselachus anguineus) near the sea surface. Shortly after the fish was captured by marine park officials, however, it died:
The frilled shark is typically found at a depth of around 600 meters (2,000 feet). Its slender body grows to about 160 cm long, and unlike most sharks, which typically have 5 sets of gills, the frilled shark has 6 sets. It is known as a “living fossil” for its resemblance to extinct, Paleozoic sharks.
Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] | More at Pink Tentacle
