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This is a Reuters video report on a Japanese restaurant owner that has introduced a whale burger. According to the report, young customers like the whale burger.
Question #1 > Any readers have opinions on the taste of whale meat?
Question #2 > Does anyone remember Shamu?
Click Play or go to Link [YouTube].
Found at Japan Probe.
The ’180 Things I Hate About You’ exhibition is a collection of screen printed dartboards that feature artists’ most loathed things. This is Miles Donovan’s contribution to the show.
For more info click here.
Foreign Policy has an interesting photo essay by Jonathan Olley about cleaning up the plethora of bombs and live munitions in Iraq:
Iraq is virtually littered with bombs. After two decades of war and fighting, there are more than a million tons of live munitions lying under foot. When it comes time to clean up the country, these are the men who are called to carry away the most dangerous debris.
This one above is captioned:
A looter, known locally as "Ali Baba" wields a sledgehammer to split open artillery shells. Once opened, the propellant is sold to other Iraqis as cooking fuel.
Link – via Mira y Calla
We’ve seen a popcorn pop in slow-motion before on Neatorama – here’s a collection of a whole bunch of things in slo-mo: a gallery of movies taken with Phantom high-speed cameras by Vision Research: Link – via 30gms
Amongs the many weird and wonderful inventions in the collection of The Smith College Museum of Ancient Inventions is this coin-operated holy water dispensing machine:
Designed by the Greek inventor Heron, this coin-operated holy water dispenser was used in Egyptian temples to dispense water for ritual washings. Worshippers would place a coin into the machine and receive holy water to bathe themselves with before entering the temple. At the end of the day, the slot machine would be emptied of its coins and refilled with holy water for the next day’s worshippers. Dropping a coin into the slot machine initiates a chain reaction: the weight of the coin depresses a metal pan, which in turn results in the opening of a valve, which in turn allows the water to flow out for the worshipper.
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For ants, limbo is a way of life:
Desert ants generally scurry around at high speeds whilst foraging to limit their exposure to the life threatening conditions of their habitat. Climbing over or crawling beneath obstacles means that ants do not have to make large detours to go around them.
"We found that the ants visually assessed the height of the barrier and learned how to lower their body enough to crawl under without stopping", explains Tobias Seidl, "When the barrier was made invisible to them, they had to use their antennae to examine it".
Comments Off Everywhere in parks and on the river banks of Osaka rivers, one sees blue tents or barracks covered with blue plastic tarps, at times scattered throughout park areas, sometimes lined up in rows, or united to form small communities. The term homelessness only insufficiently describes the situation of these ‘nojyukusha’, the campers in the rough. These squatters are the daily inhabitants of public space. But just as Japanese society has traditionally little known nor appreciated public space as a public forum, likewise are squatters and homeless people, who live in these spaces, disrespected.
The video essay Public Blue was produced in collaboration with Nojyukusha and supporters in Osaka. Public Blue follows their political action and sketches impressions of the Japanese understanding of the public and the political. Used now as a tool during the struggle against evictions of tents in Osaka, the documentary also becomes a vehicle of articulation for those who are living on the outside of Japanese society.
Click Play or go to Link [YouTube].
Found at PingMag.
Comments Off It’s Valentine’s Day [wiki], enjoy this music video!
Click Play or go to Link [YouTube].
…’nuff said.
Unlike the Road of Death in the Yungas region of Bolivia, the Guoliang Tunnel Road in China doesn’t claim hundreds of lives per year. This certainly doesn’t mean it’s a safe or easy drive, just that it is so remote that few people travel it.
Part of the reason for the unique openings and uneven walls is that the 3/4 mile long tunnel was actually built by hand in the 1970s to connect the village to the outside world. More fascinating pictures can be found at Dark Roasted Blend
The heart cloud is from The Cloud Appreciation Society, blogged previously on Neatorama here.
Miss C wrote about some unusual candies for Valentine’s Day, like this anatomically correct gummy heart candy – see the whole list at mentalfloss and more fun stuff about Valentine’s at MissCellania.
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Chris Jordan depicts the famous artwork by Seurat [wiki] using digital images of 106,000 aluminum cans – the number used in the US every thirty seconds! Link – via Militant Platypus
Comments Off From The Black Heart Gang comes this fantastic animated clip called the Tale of How. Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] | The Black Heart Gang’s Website (with larger QuickTime clip)
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Captured in mid leap by Flickr user Ele M: Link
Scientists discovered that ancient chimpanzees used stone tools to crack nuts 4,300 years ago.
The excavated stones showed the hallmarks of use as tools for smashing nuts when compared with ancient human or modern chimpanzee stone tools.
The use of stone tools may have a deep evolutionary origin
Also, several types of starch grains were found on the stones, which the researchers say is residue derived from cracking local nuts.
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Rush me my POLARIS NUCLEAR SUB. I can use it for 10 days and If I am not delighted return it for full purchase price refund.
As seen on the Reas International Blog.
This explains a lot of things:
When high-ranking monkeys are shown images of other monkeys glancing one way or the other, they more readily follow the gaze of other high-ranking monkeys, Duke University Medical Center neurobiologists have discovered. By contrast, they tend to ignore glance cues from low-status monkeys; while low-status monkeys assiduously follow the gaze of all other monkeys.
The discovery represents more than a confirmation of what most people believe about their bosses, said the researchers. The findings reveal that gaze-following is more than a reflex action; that it also involves lightning-fast social perception.
Next time your boss ignores your suggestion, and does something stupid just like other executives, he’s just acting like a monkey. Literally: Link
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Goldilocks and the Three Bears [wiki] is a notable children’s bedtime story. Often considered an anonymous folk story, even one of the stories collected by the Brothers Grimm, it actually first saw print in 1837 as a prose story composed by the poet Robert Southey and collected in his book The Doctor. Possibly based on an even older story (though this is by no means certain), the story became widely known after being published by Southey, and was so often retold, that it has lost connection to its author.
Found here.
This unique house, designed by 24H-architecture in Rotterdam, the Netherlands doesn’t only look fluid – it actually can retract its room (the one with the window) back into its "shell" like a turtle!
Link [Flash]
If your cats are the true masters of the home, you can formalize that fact by installing lots of KatWallks – basically perches and corner balconies that you hang on the wall, so your cat can walk, not only all over you, but all over the walls too! Link
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Photo: Qld Parks and Wildlife
The cute animal with ears that rival those of a chocolate Easter Bunny is the Australian Bilby. They used to roam the continent, but hunting and environmental changes had decimated their population.
With huge rabbit ears and soft grey fur it’s easy to see the resemblance to rabbits, but that’s where it ends.
"They look like they’ve been stuck together by a committee," says bilby conservationist, Tony Friend, "Huge ears that belong to a rabbit, soft grey fur, a tail that’s stuck out the back like a tufted pencil and they gallop around like a rocking horse. They’re so different to any other animals."
Read more about ‘em: Link
Ever wonder what web 2.0 is all about? This clip by Michael Wesch, an Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University explains it all in under 5 minutes!
Hit play or go to Link [YouTube]
As they attack their prey, giant deep sea squids use an unusual weapon: blinding bright lights to disorient their victims.
The footage reveals the creatures emitting short flashes from light-producing organs, called photophores, on their arms.
Writing in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the team said: "[The bioluminescence] might act as a blinding flash for prey."
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