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You’ve heard of the gryphon, the dragon, and the basilisk, but they’re nothing compared to the bonnacon:
The bonnacon is a beast with a head like a bull, but with horns that
curl in towards each other. Because these horns are useless for
defense, the bonnacon has another weapon. When pursued, the beast
expels its dung which travels a great distance (as much as two acres),
and burns anything it touches. — The Medieval Bestiary
Here’s a webpage where you can learn what is the largest island, the largest lake, the largest lake on an island, the largest island in a lake, the largest island in a lake on an island, the largest lake on an island in a lake, the largest lake on an island in a lake on an island, the largest island in a lake on an island in a lake, and the largest island in a lake on an island in a lake on an island. Which is Vulcan point in Crater Lake on Vulcano Island in Lake Taal on Luzon. Link -via Fark
Note: According to this wikipedia entry on Iver Johnson, President William McKinley and Senator Robert F. Kennedy were killed by with Iver Johnson revolvers.
This vintage ad ran in Harper’s Weekly (1904). Found at LiveJournal.
This "house" is an art installation called "Precarious home" (2007) by Giancarlo Norese. Found at Core77 – via Tinselman
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A middle-aged Chinese woman named Chen Yan was discovered on local TV show for being a spitting image of Chairman Mao – she’s now trying to make a living by being a Mao impersonator. Link
Japanese company take-g creates some wonderful wooden toys look like robots and spacecrafts. Link [in Japanese] – via IZ Reloaded
I love modern art, I really do … but I’m perplexed at this installation by Tilman Peschel, titled Kreisatmung / Circuit Respiration. Maybe you can explain it to me?
Photo: Chris White
Today’s collaboration with Cellar Image of the Day brings us this gem of a photo from Earth Science Picture of the Day. The two streaks are Iridium flares, which happen when sunlight reflects off low-orbit Iridium satellites [wiki].
Link – Definitely check out Cellar IotD for more excellent photos (their 6 year’s worth of archives is amazing!)
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Play Scrabble with other Scrabble fans online at Scrabulous! Choose from different Scrabble variations, member rooms, or play against a computer. Registration is required to compete against other members, but you can try Scrabble Solitaire first. Link -via Omega Mom
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Comments Off 603 words per minute, 10 times faster than the average person.
Also make sure to check out The World’s Fastest Secretary entry.
Link [YouTube] – via Videofeber
The official McFLY 2015 project was launched in April of 2007 by the Maloof brothers (Michael and Charles) with the help of designers and writers. The team’s comprised of just over 10 crazy Canadians. The McFLY 2015 sneakers were made exclusively for the 1989 film Back to the future 2. Michael J. Fox wore them in the movie, they were never released to the public. Every kid who watched the movie back in 1989 wanted these shoes (including us!). The McFLY 2015′s are considered by sneaker nerds as the Holy Grails of all sneakers. So here’s the contest! If you want to win official McFLY 2015 stickers, visit the website of the McFLY 2015 project and tell us what the moon says (yeah, it’s a talking moon). Send your answer to: info@mcfly2015.com Contest is open to everyone worldwide (we can ship to everyone as long as you’ve got a valid postal mailing address). 10 lucky winners will be announced on July 1st, 2007 (yeah, that’s our gift to you on Canada day)! McFLY 2015, the official home of the best grassroots movement ever. The post above was brought to you by the official McFLY 2015 project.
You can be our friend on MySpace.
And you can check us out on Virb too.
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Len of Monster by Mail created this scarylicious (what is that a word?) Neatorama Zombie [Flickr]. (I wonder if he got the idea from this Neatorama post).
You too can get your very own custom zombie at Len’s website: Link – Thanks Len!
By the way, Len is one busy guy. He created the zombie alphabet and even got time to host Jawbone Radio, a weekly podcast.
| The following is reprinted from Uncle John’s Curiously Compelling Bathroom Reader.
After the USSR broke up in 1991, the Soviet Republic of Turkmenistan became an independent nation but had no identity of its own. Enter Turkmenbashi. BACKGROUND Turkmenistan had been under the control of Russia for more than a quarter century when it was declared part of the Soviet Union in 1924. In 1991, after the fall of Communism and the USSR, the country found itself independent for the first time in a hundred years. The new president, Saparmurat Niyazov, was the obvious successor – he’d been the Communist Party’s puppet governor since 1985. But easing a country of five million people into a new era of self-sufficiency and autonomy was not the highest item on Niyazov’s agenda. He was more concerned that decades of Soviet control had left Turkmenistan with no national identity. So, in 1993, Niyazov took it upon himself to create the country in a new image: his own. First, he took the name Turkmenbashi (Leader of All Ethnic Turkmen) and declared himself President for Life. Since then, he’s undertaken scores of self-aggrandizing – and bizarre – measures to make Turkmenistan a very unique place: › The airport in the capital city of Asgabat was renamed … Turkmenbashi. › Dozens of streets and schools across the country are now called … Turkmenbashi. › In 1998 a 670-pound meteorite landed in Turkmenistan. Scientist named it … Turkmenbashi. › The name of the large port city Krasnovodsk was changed to … Turkmenbashi. › The New president also renamed the months. January is now called … Turkmenbashi. April is called Gurbansoltan edzhe, after his mother. (Bread, once called chorek, is now also called gurbansoltan edzhe.)
› The image of Turkmenbashi’s face is used as the logo of all three state-run TV stations, and is legally required to appear on every clock and watch face as well as on every bottle of Turkmenbashi brand vodka.
› In 2001 Turkmenbashi wrote a book – a combination of poetry, revisionist history, and moral guidelines – called Ruhnama (Persian for “Book of the Soul”). It is now required to be prominently displayed in all bookstores and government offices, and next to the Koran in mosques. Memorization of the book is required to graduate from school and to get a state job or even a driver’s license. Schoolchildren spend one entire day every week reading it. Since all Soviet-era book have been banned, most Turkmen libraries have only the Ruhnama and other books written by Turkmenbashi. In 2006 Turkmenbashi made reading the Ruhnama a requirement for entry into heaven.
› There’s a 30-foot Ruhnama in Ashgabat, not far from a 50-foot solid-gold statue of Turkmenbashi.
› Not surprisingly, Turkmenbashi recently “won” the Magtymguly International Prize, honoring the best pro-Turkmen poetry, which is awarded by … Turkmenbashi himself. MORE STRANGE ACTS OF TURKMENBASHI › In 2004 Turkmenbashi banned newscasters from wearing make-up. Why? He said he couldn’t tell the male and female news readers apart and that made him uncomfortable. › After he quit smoking in 1997, he banned smoking for everybody else, too (but only in public places). › In 2006, to mark Turkmenistan’s independence day, Turkmenbashi gave each female resident a gift of 200,000 manat (about $38).
› He banned gold tooth caps and gold teeth, and suggested that tooth preservation could be more easily accomplished by chewing on bones. › In 2000 he ordered that a giant lake be created in the desert along with a huge forest of cedar trees, which, he said, would help to moderate Turkmenistan’s climate. › In 2004, he ordered that a giant ice palace be build in the middle of the same desert, the Karakum – the hottest location in central Asia. It will include a zoo with penguins.
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The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Curiously Compelling Bathroom Reader, a fantastic book by the Bathroom Readers’ Institute.
The 19th book in this fan-favorite series contain such gems like The Greatest Plane that Never Was, Forgotten Robot Milestones, Ancient Beauty Secrets, and more. Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!
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A lot of people commented on a recent Neatorama post Fast Food: Ads vs. Reality. Apparently, there are "food stylists" whose job is to make food look attractive for ads.
And they’ve got special "techniques" to do just that:
Besides choosing and arranging food, they sometimes use special effects techniques. They include:
* using tobacco smoke to give the appearance of steam
* spraying food with hairspray to hold it in place
* arranging mashed potatoes to look like ice cream
* painting cooked meat
* cereal can be photographed with white glue instead of milk, because the cereal does not get soggy quickly and the flakes stay where they are placed
* vegetables that appear to be cooked are raw and touched with a blowtorch and coated with glycerin to make them appear cooked
* ice cubes are hand-carved acrylic
* alcoholic beverage shots have water added to them to make them more transparent so the backlighting will work better
Oh, and the Dagwood-worthy sandwich pictured above? Matt Armendariz of MattBites can tell you the secret: Link
From wikipedia section on the medical uses of leeches [wiki]:
The leech has long been used in medicine, although today its use is mainly limited to limb reattachment procedures instead of the wide-ranging medical use in the past. Leeches have proven highly effective at preventing venous congestion after the surgical re-attachment of fingers, toes, ears and other parts of the body. The word leech either comes directly from or was influenced by the Old English word for "physician", l[ae]ce, which is related to Old High German lahhi and Old Irish liaig.
And where would you keep your leeches? In a pretty pink jar, of course.
Found at Medical Antiques (fantastic site of old medical equipments – worth a look-see) – via Scribal Terror
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Nuns just wanna have (habit-forming) fun – here’s a cute calendar by Maureen Kelly and Jeffrey Stone. Link – via Miss Cellania.
Rani of Indirani blog decided to make something different – cheese from human breast milk. This, however, turned out to be impossible:
It turned out that breast milk can not curdle, because the protein content is lower, and because the protein in breast milk is more easily digested compared to cow’s milk. That’s why, unmodified cow’s milk is unsuitable for babies. And on the other hand, adding acid to further ‘digest’ breastmilk protein won’t curdle the milk.
So, the moral of the story, YOU CANNOT MAKE CHEESE OUT OF BREASTMILK. Don’t even try.
But not all hope is lost – there are plenty of other possibilities:
I suppose, making breast milk yogurt / human yogurt would be possible, although I don’t think it would be as creamy as cow’s milk yogurt. I suppose breast milk yogurt would be really runny. And I think breast milk butter / human yogurt would be possible but you’d need liters and liters of fresh breast milk to start off. Definitely you could make cream soup out of breast milk, and perhaps milk shake and smoothies too. Or as pancake. Many things !
Link – via Random Good Stuff and Boing Boing
They’re reading lights. Get it? Link – via Smidigt
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Apparently, on a hot day, cranking up the air conditioning in your car doesn’t work if you’re wearing body armor. Enter CoolCop: a special tube device that attaches to the car’s A/C and directs cool air to where it’s needed the most!
Very similar, by the way, to the way this Russian server cooling system works.
Link – via Say No to Crack
