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If you like Dance Dance Revolution, you’ll probably also like the poor man’s online version – Flash Flash Revolution. This is a perfect fix when you can’t hop out to the arcade (or are tired of getting embarrassed by the young kids, like me). Link
Sara White, 20, of Turlock, California wanted to get out of a blind date, so she:
a) Told the truth and cancelled the date
b) Made up a lame excuse, like having to wash her hair
c) Went for gold and faked a kidnapping, which set off a massive police search and got her thrown in jail.
You can so guess which option she chose: Link
Nicole Ruhter, 13, was walking along a path taken by thousands of others at the Crater of Diamonds State Park, Arkansas, when she noticed a 2.93-carat diamond:
"We were walking through the path and I just walked and saw this little shine," said Ruhter, who has just finished the seventh-grade. "We wrapped it up in a little dollar bill and took it back and showed them."
Ruhter said both park rangers and her vacationing family got excited about the diamond, found along a service road. So far this year, visitors to the park have found 332 diamonds, three of them Tuesday alone, said Bill Henderson, assistant park superintendent.
Nicole has named it the "Pathfinder Diamond": Link
Previously on Neatorama: Digging for Diamonds: For $6, It’s Finders Keepers!
Avant-garde artist Wenda Gu displays his "tunnel of hair" artwork, made from 430 pounds of human hair, in Dartmouth College’s library – just in time for commencement ceremonies!
Dartmouth’s Baker Library is hosting a multicolored braid of hair more than 7 miles long, looped from floor to ceiling. The work creates the impression of a "tunnel of hair," says Brian Kennedy, director of the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College. The braid is divided into pieces and reconnected with tags bearing the names of every country on Earth — written backward. It’s a reference to how the world has become more divided than united over the years, Gu says. The hair came from wig factories in India and Shanghai.
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Waikanae, New Zealand, beachgoers were fascinated by this 45 feet (14-m) long tentacle-covered mass.
Was it a beached sea monster? Nay, said the authorities. It’s just barnacles:
Nightmarish sea monster or natural wonder?
A 14-metre, tentacle-covered mass has horrified and fascinated Waikanae beachgoers this week.However, Conservation Department community relations programme manager Stacy Moore said it was actually a lot of goose barnacles (Lepas anatifera), each about 30 centimetres long with a shell attached to each long pinkish tube. They were stuck to a piece of wood or rope.
Link – via Fortean Times
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The San Francisco Symphony with Michael Tilson Thomas has created a fabulous website devoted to Beethoven’s 3rd Symphony, the Eroica. The section called Explore the Score is especially valuable. The music plays as you follow the score, with the option of highlighting themes, keys, and markups, offering an excellent insight into the details of the composition.
Found at Wulfweard the White.
Good-Time Mix Machine: Scrambler Drawing is an art installation by Rosemarie Fiore, where she connected a gasoline-generator powered air compressor to buckets of paint and then attach them into the seats of a Scrambler amusement park ride.
Link (videos here) – via Boing Boing
Chained for Life (1951) [wiki] is an exploitation film featuring Siamese twins Daisy and Violet Hilton:
It features several vaudeville acts, including juggler Whitey Roberts, a man doing bicycle stunts, and a man who plays The William Tell Overture at breakneck speed on an accordion.
The movie incorporates aspects of the twins’ real life, including their singing act, a futile attempt by one sister to obtain a marriage license, and a publicity-stunt marriage.
In this clip, you get to see the twins sing in a vaudeville act: Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] – via The Human Marvel
One Sentence is a website where you can submit your story – be it an insignificant, everyday, or turning-point-in-your-life story – as long as you tell it in just one sentence.
Like these:
D
Five minutes later, she realized that she hadn’t thought about him for five minutes.Missing: Love
I’ve never been on a plane but in September I’m flying 3,000 miles to meet a guy who makes me laugh and was arrested by the Mexican police.Edie
I conduct job interviews for a living and nothing gives me a better sense of wielding karma than giving the job to the nervous kid instead of the better qualified arrogant prick.
Link – via Cliff Pickover’s Reality Carnival
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Archaeologists excavating the house George Washington lived in when he was president discovered something unusual: a hidden passageway and other ruins used by his nine slaves.
The underground passageway is just steps from the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. It was designed so Washington’s guests would not see slaves as they slipped in and out of the main house.
"As you enter the heaven of liberty, you literally have to cross the hell of slavery," said Michael Coard, a Philadelphia attorney who leads a group that worked to have slavery recognized at the site. "That’s the contrast, that’s the contradiction, that’s the hypocrisy. But that’s also the truth."
Neatorama reader Doug suggested this link on my post on the 3,000-year-old shoes in Norway. Turns out, the Fort Rock Sandals are the oldest footwear ever found by man:
Fort Rock sandals are stylistically distinct. They are twined (pairs of weft fibers twisted around warps), and have a flat, close-twined sole, usually with five rope warps. Twining proceeded from the heel to the toe, where the warps were subdivided into finer warps and turned back toward the heel. These fine warps were then open-twined (with spaces between the weft rows) to make a toe flap. Cressman surmised that a tie rope attached to one edge of the sole wrapped around the ankle and fastened to the opposite edge.
Most dated Fort Rock-style sandals are from Fort Rock Cave, but directly dated sandals of this type are also known from Cougar Mountain and Catlow Caves. Directly dated Fort Rock style sandals range in age from at least 10,500 BP to 9200 BP
Link – Thanks Doug!
Those of you who like vintage photography will love this scanned pages of the 1913 Ica catalog, at Homo Ludens Photographicus. Included are some Ica cameras, projectors, and other accessories.
Link – via Endless Parade of Excellence
See also Neatorama’s Wonderful World of Early Photography.
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Re-analysis of photos taken in 2005 on Mars may reveal the prescence of water puddles.
The report identifies specific spots that appear to have contained liquid water two years ago, when Opportunity was exploring a crater called Endurance. It is a highly controversial claim, as many scientists believe that liquid water cannot exist on the surface of Mars today because of the planet’s thin atmosphere.If confirmed, the existence of such ponds would significantly boost the odds that living organisms could survive on or near the surface of Mars, says physicist Ron Levin, the report’s lead author, who works in advanced image processing at the aerospace company Lockheed Martin in Arizona.
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Canadians are really polite, eh? Found at Torontoist Blog.
Update 6/9/07: It’s a public awareness art project put together by Mark Daye of Ontario College of Art and Design: Link – Thanks Mathew Ingram!
Astro the sea lion, who was released into the wild after being bottle-fed for most of his life, tried to return to civilization.
This time, he decided to join an elementary school walk-a-thon!
Astro was swimming in the shallow San Francisco Bay on Friday and apparently noticed children doing laps around a course at the Marin Country Day School in Corte Madera, about 15 miles north of San Francisco. He waddled ashore, completed a lap and starred in the school’s photos and videos.
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Photo Credit: Gerd Ludwig Photography
Gerd Ludwig’s captivating photo gallery "Soviet Pollution" captured the striking images of catastrophic environmental mess in the former Soviet states, and the human toll it caused.
This one above is of children playing in the inky pools of runoff from leaky oil pumps in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Lourdes Grobet has photographed the last 25 years of Lucha Libre [wiki] or Mexican pro wrestling. This is her fantastic mini-gallery at Casa de América: Link – via Table of Malcontents
