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McLeod Mirror Series 1: See Yourself in Others are not actually made of mirrored glass, but an LCD screen housed in a wooden case with a web cam attached to the top. The camera records the viewer and creates a collage of the person’s image along with images of everyone else who has stood before the mirror. The image allows the viewer to “see themselves reflected in others†in a new way. The mirrors bring a timeless bathroom product into the digital age, creating a twist on the staple that is more interesting and dynamic than the original, while perhaps pointlessly complex. The images are not recorded or archived, so the digital artwork created on the spot will never be seen again.
Only 100 mirrors have been produced. You can get one for $6,000.00. Link to video (scroll to the right). Link to description. -via Shiny Shiny
In 1810, U.S. Senator Philip Reed of Maryland proposed the above amendment to the U.S. Constitution, essentially stating that anyone accepting a title of nobility would be stripped of their citizenship. Under such an amendment, individuals like Sir Rudy Giuliani, or possibly even lawyers adopting the title ‘esquire’, could lose their status as U.S. citizens.
At the time, 13 states were needed to ratify the amendment, but only 12 are known to have done so prior to the war of 1812. Controversy arises because most government records were lost when the British burned down Washington DC in 1814. Some people now believe that the amendment was actually ratified, as did many states and government agencies throughout the 1800′s. Even the U.S. President, James Madison, was apparently unsure of the amendment’s status and sent delegates to undecided states in 1817 to determine if they had voted to have it ratified.
Officially, the amendment was never ratified, but remains open for ratification if enough states vote to do so. However, many state and federal printings of the Constitution included the amendment until around the Civil War, lending credibility to the theory that it was ratified and later swept under the table once the new 13th amendment abolishing slavery was added.
Was it a conspiracy? Or just a case of misunderstood constitutional law and bad record keeping? Read the whole story at Daily Kos or on Wikipedia and decide for yourself.
We’ve seen the 7-11 To Convert Stores to Kwik-E-Mart for Simpsons Movie Release story and the Real Life Kwik-E-Mart (photos). Let’s wrap it up with a couple of videos:
This ad from a 1924 Popular Mechanics touted that "no matter how thin your hair may be, this remarkable new scientific invention is absolutely guaranteed to give you a brand new growth of hair in 30 days." Plus it looks like a cool fez!
Link – via Boing Boing
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i-am-bored has a neat collection of several ambigram pictures that work upside down or right side up!
Link | More Upside Down Pictures at Amazing Art
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Here’s something to file away for future reference: if you make your own hovercraft (how awesome is that?), remember: it won’t work over sewer grates.
Link [embedded Break Video]
The always neat mental_floss blog has an article on everything you’d want to know about the Oregon Trail [wiki]:
1. Awesome hairstyles were par for the course. The photos (well, daguerreotypes) in many exhibits showed dudes with out-of-control hairstyles. See the image at right for some examples (see also: “Father of Oregon” Dr. John McLoughlin and the same as an image macro). (Pictured above right: Sam Barlow and Joel Palmer — later, Palmer’s neck beard got vastly more protuberant.)
Puhlman has a very sleek nixie clock by Frank Clewits for sale. At €250, it’s kind of steep, but that’s the price of nixie coolness. Or you can just gawk at the photos for free!
Link | Video of the clock in action at Luxury Launches- via Gizmodo
Here’s a compilation of death scenes and game overs from some classic Nintendo games. I was a sucky game player so unfortunately, I’m very familiar with them.
Link [embedded YouTube] – via Blue’s News
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From Oddee: a list of presidential palaces from around the world. This modern one to the left is the Palácio do Planalto in Brazil
Link – via eBaumsworld
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Neatorama reader Chip Bryant saw the Chevy V8 Grilll we posted before and sent in his own creation, the oil pan grill. Excellent little hibachi, dude! Thanks Chip!
More BBQ grill shenanigans at Neatorama’s Top 10 Coolest BBQ Grills (And Then Some!)
This is a really nicely done ad with a neat ending (I won’t give it away, if you just play it here). This ad for Epuron GmbH, created by the Nordpol+ Hamburg agency, won the Golden Lion for best advertising spot at the International Advertising Festival in Cannes.
Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] – Thanks Jimik!
Can you tell the difference between real and computer graphics? Here’s a challenge by AutoDesk:
You never know what might turn up when you’re digging around the British Museum. Last Thursday, Professor Michael Jursa found a cuneiform receipt from a person named in chapter 39 of the book of Jeremiah, as the Telegraph reports::
Searching for Babylonian financial accounts among the [cuneiform] tablets, Prof Jursa suddenly came across a name he half remembered – Nabu-sharrussu-ukin, described there in a hand 2,500 years old, as "the Prof Jursa, an Assyriologist, checked the Old Testament and there in chapter 39 of the Book of Jeremiah, he found, spelled differently, the same name – Nebo-Sarsekim. Nebo-Sarsekim, according to Jeremiah, was Nebuchadnezzar II’s "chief officer" and was with him at the siege of Jerusalem in 587 BC, when the Babylonians overran the city. The small tablet, the size of "a packet of 10 cigarettes" according to Irving Finkel, a British Museum expert, is a bill of receipt acknowledging Nabu-sharrussu-ukin’s payment of 0.75 kg of gold to a temple in Babylon. The tablet is dated to the 10th year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II, 595BC, 12 years before the siege of Jerusalem.
chief eunuch" of Nebuchadnezzar II, king of Babylon.
4. Because you wouldn’t want your children to know THE TRUTH about how you spent your younger years (knitting and sipping tea? Come ON!) With Photoshop, your history is yours for the making! Goodbye boring momma, hello fab new me!
Includes a link to a Photoshop tutorial. Link -via Look at This
This much is true: there are large badgers in Basra. Local farmers have caught and killed some of the animals {video}. But the rumor is that they were introduced by British forces. Local vetrinarians are trying to assure the public that badgers have been around for decades. Link -via Fark, where badger jokes are running rampant.
Scientists are in a race against time to study a giant squid that appeared on a remote Australian beach. State parks officials have identified the carcass as an Architeuthis, {wiki} which can grow up to 33 feet long. The main body of the squid measure 6.5 feet. The tentacles are damaged, so the overall length will have to be estimated. Link
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(Yes, this was on Neatorama before)
Yay! I’m happy to announce a new collaboration with Ape Lad’s Hobotopia: a weekly caption contest where the funniest caption wins a free monkey drawing!
Contest rule is simple: one caption per comment, make it funny but please keep it civil. You can submit as many comments as you’d like.
Funniest caption will receive a free monkey drawing – you name the monkey, and Ape Lad will draw you one (for example: the Neatorama Monkey and the whole Monkey! set at Flickr). If you don’t win, but still want a monkey, you can buy one directly from him (it’s worth it!)
Update 7/16/07: Congratulations to Jani #113 for the winning entry:
Never wear steel cap shoes in a battle against a monk, who is wearing an assmagnet.
Terry Border of Bent Objects blog makes simple yet humorous sculptures out of wires (hence the title of his blog) and everyday objects.
I particularly like this comb, who "came by the house looking for work, and quickly realized there’s not much he could do…."
Check out more of Terry’s fantastic work: Link | Terry’s website | or if you really want to visit raunchier site, here’s Really Bent [yes, crude humor, you've been warned] – Thanks Hojimoto!
Genarians is a website dedicated to listing the world’s oldest people:
This website highlights living people in their 90′s (nonagenarians) and 100′s (centenarians) who were noted in some field during their lifetimes, i.e., the arts, sports, science, politics, business, etc., and then grew old. While some of the 762 names may be familiar to you – Walter Cronkite or Kirk Douglas, for instance – most probably won’t be. Please take a moment to look through the pages and discover some of the lesser known, but equally interesting entries such as Leila Denmark (1898), Kazuo Ohno (1906), and Frances Oldham Kelsey (1914).
Link – Thanks Algonkin!
Meet Spencer Elden, who just turned 16 last month. He was the baby model who appeared in Nirvana’s iconic album Nevermind. I remember the album and I feel old.
Link (Image from Paxtonland) | Spencer Elden [Wikipedia] – Thanks Jim!
The most expensive residential house in the US has just gone up for sale:
A Beverly Hills mansion has been advertised for sale at $165m (£81.4m), making it the most expensive residential property listing in the US.
The former home of US newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst has 29 bedrooms, three swimming pools, tennis courts, its own cinema and a nightclub.
Lawyer and investor Leonard Ross, who bought it in 1976, wants a "lifestyle change", his estate agent said.
Apparently, there is no housing slump for the uber-rich: Link – Thanks David R!
Steve White’s new website AmericanGreen.tv aims to aggregate user-created short video clips about "green living."
So far, in just the one clip on the homepage, I’ve learned about how much coal it takes to power a regular incandescent bulb versus one of those new fangled fluorescent ones.
Looking forward to more clips: Link – Thanks Steve!
