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Disneyland in Anahein, California will close down the It’s A Small World ride for a year beginning in January to retool and refurbish. The reason? Bigger passengers.
The problem, quite simply, is that the flume that the boats ride in, and the boats themselves, were designed and built in 1963 on the assumption that the male adult riders would average 175 pounds and the women about 135, which they pretty much did at the time. Alas, those figures are as outdated today as the Rocket to the Moon ride.
Oh, the irony. Link -via Metafilter
Third grader Shea O’Gorman loves her iPod Nano, so when her class started learning about writing a letter, she decided to write Steve Jobs. In her letter, Shea wrote about her ideas to improve the gadget.
Three months later, she heard back … from the big meanies at Apple’s legal department telling her to shove off!
That’s right, apple’s legal department, telling a nine year old that apple does not accept unsolicited ideas. Apple’s legal department told her not send them her suggestions, and if she wants to know why, she could read their legal policy on the Internet.
"We were stunned, we just were stunned, is the best word to say. It just wasn’t the appropriate type letter to send to a third grader who had the initiative to write to them," said Shea’s mom.
"It kind of seemed like they were saying well we don’t want your idea like it’s not good or anything," said Shea.
And her mom thinks it’s even worse coming from apple. "They are a company who tries to promote itself as an educator of children. That was really, it was unacceptable. They know better than that," said Shea’s mom.
CBS13 has the story: Link (with video) – via reddit
Every year, Forbes posts printable versions of celebrity Halloween masks. This year, the scary celebrities featured are Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, OJ Simpson, Larry Craig, Britney Spears, Phil Spector, Michael Vick, and the 2008 presidential candidates. You can also access masks from previous years. Link -via J-Walk Blog
TIME magazine has compiled the top 25 horror films of all time. Coming in at number 20 is the 1942 disney classic Bambi.
“Kids were so frightened by these films that they wet themselves in terror. Bambi has a primal shock that still haunts oldsters who saw it 40, 50, 65 years ago.”
Did Bambi scare you as a kid?
The BBC reports:
A clam dredged up off the coast of Iceland is thought to have been the longest-lived animal discovered.
Scientists said the mollusc, an ocean quahog clam, was aged between 405 and 410 years and could offer insights into the secrets of longevity.
Researchers from Bangor University in north Wales said they calculated its age by counting rings on its shell.
The clam has been named Ming. Twenty extra points to anyone who knows how to pronounce quahog.
In her book "My Last Supper," Melanie Dunea asked 50 chefs: if they could have anything for their last supper, what would they eat?
TIME has a photo gallery and excerpt of their answers. This one above is Gary Danko, owner of a San Francisco restaurant that bears his name. He said:
This final feast, to be eaten by hand like at a Roman or Greek banquet, would comprise the finest foods from around the world, including caviar, spit-roasted suckling pigs, black truffles wrapped in salt pork and a roasted Bleu Bresse chicken.
Link – via Nag on the Lake
Now what would your last supper be?
Want an inspiration for your jack-o’-lantern this Halloween? Look no further than Extreme Pumpkins, who definitely has one of the neatest galleries of jack-o’-lanterns on the Web.
Link – via Pharyngula
Susan is an ex-mortician and a taxidermist who makes some fantastically creepy dolls and one-of-a-kind collectibles.
Her creations range from the macabre dolls to the truly bizarre, like the Burt Reynolds crab shown to the left. Check it out here: Link (Gallery starts here) – via Quiddity
In 2000, Mahlon Smith embarked on a scientific endeavor: he took a plate of raw meat and left them to rot in his neighbor’s yard. Well, he was interested in finding out the answer to a few scientific questions, like:
- Where do maggots come from?
- What’s that smell?
- How long can a plate of rotting meat sit in a neighbor’s yard without him noticing and calling the police?
Well, now the greatest scientific experiment ever conducted has returned: two college students at Tufts are trying to replicate the project … in their dorm!
I slid away a small corner tile, which gave me enough space to fit my hand and my camera over the plate. I blindly snapped about six shots, each one so off-center that only half of the plate was actually in the photo. At one point I accidentally brushed my left hand against the cat food, which imparted upon me an unpleasant coat of tender beef and liver gravy. After much effort, I finally got a decent picture.
The meat has been planted!!! The Tufts Stinkymeat Project has begun! Only time will tell how stinky our meat will get. Only time will tell how long it will take before they begin searching for the plate. Only time will tell if we’ll get brutally murdered, should they ever discover it was us…
You can watch the day by day update here: Link – via Joel’s Blog
Flickr user absinthetic created "Chronotheric Fluxing Capacitron," an awesome steampunk clock + flux capacitor for as an prop to his Halloween costume of a 19th century time traveler.
Link [Flickr photoset] – via Boing Boing
The Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, Germany has been recognized by the Guinness Book of Records for creating the “strongest artificially generated tornado in the world”. The 34.4 meter high (37.2 yards) vortex has been designed to channel smoke out of the building in the event of a fire.
Head over to Autoblog for images and a video clip.
Link – via Gizmodo UK
Look at This has posted a comprehensive look at Halloween, including the origins of the holiday, the many ways different countries celebrate, Halloween trivia, and a huge list of links to more holiday fun and information. Link
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Beckham Creek Cave Haven near Parthenon, Arkansas boasts all the amenities of a regular hotel, but it’s built inside a cave!
Set on the 530 acre estate, the Cave House was built with the philosophy that the ongoing preservation of natural beauty is paramount. With its perfect blend of magnificent craftsmanship and technology, it took nearly four years to complete. Everywhere one looks, the superior design and attention to detail is obvious.
Putting you directly in touch with nature, the house boasts natural living cave walls and ceilings. By maximizing window areas along the wall facing outside, and maintaining large, open living spaces, natural sunlight floods the living area, pool room, and kitchen, bringing the outdoors inside the cave.
Link -via Grow-A-Brain
Previously at Neatorama: A cave hotel in Turkey.
Maybe you remember the Super Mario inspired Jack-o’-lantern. As a follow-up, here you can learn how to create your own Super Mario Brothers 1-up LED powered pumpkin.
Link [Metacafe] – via Boing Boing
Reko and Bobby made iPhone costumes complete with video display and music!
LOL People on digg think we stole these displays from apple lol. But we didnt its just an LCD tv hooked into a video ipod. We edited the display video and cut out all the zoom out shots we dont work for apple or anything.
Push play or read more at the YouTube page. -via Viral Video Chart
| The following is an article from Bathroom Readers’ Institute 13th edition Uncle John’s All-Purpose Extra Strength Bathroom Reader.
They say art imitates life, but sometimes the facts get screwed up. And in Hollywood, truth inevitably takes a back seat to drama. Here are a few examples. The Bridge on the River Kwai
The real story: The POWs actually built two bridges. And they used Japanese know-how, not British. The Japanese weren’t all cruel. In fact, the real British commander, Lt. Col. Toosey, testified on behalf of Japanese commander Major Saito at his war crimes trial, saving him from a death sentence. The bridges were destroyed two years later, by the RAF, not saboteurs. The English Patient
The real story: The real Count Almasy was a puny man with bad teeth. He was gay. He was in love with a German Army officer. He wasn’t burned and did not die at the end of WWII. Actually, after the war, he worked as a Soviet spy. The Sting
The real story: There really was a Gondorf (but no Hooker). He and his brother really did work this scam. But they did it for money, not for justice. The real “sting” was pulled on an Englishman in 1914 who was cheated out of $10,000. He went to the real police and Gondorf went to a real prison. Saturday Night Fever The movie plot: Bored with his day-to-day life, Tony Manero, a Brooklyn teenager (played by John Travolta) becomes the local Disco king. The real story: The movie was based on an article in New York magazine by writer Nik Cohn, who supposedly met, and interviewed the real Tony Manero. But it turned out to be a lie – there was no real Tony Manero. In 1997 Cohn admitted he had made the character up. Raiders of the Lost Ark
The real story: Jones’ character is based on the 18th century inventor (and circus performer)-turned-archeologist, Giovanni Belzoni, who discovered several lost tombs in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings. He battled French Egyptologists, not Nazis. And he didn’t live happily ever after – he died from dysentery at the age of 55 while searching for the lost city of Timbuktu. |
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The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s All-Purpose Extra Strength Bathroom Reader.
The 13th book in the series by the Bathroom Reader’s Institute has 504-all new pages crammed with fun facts, including articles on the biggest movie bombs ever, the origin and unintended use of I.Q. test, 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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Here’s an early Christmas shopping idea for your favorite Trekker (or Trekkie, take your pick) golfer: the NCC-1701 Enterprise Putter from Golfsmith!
The design concept was simple enough, a flat putter head that was balanced to the rear by two off-set cylindrical weights. Once it was produced, it bore an uncanny resemblence to the Enterprise, thus inspiring its all-out redress as a licensed Star Trek item that is so cool, it may inspire Trek fans to take up golf!
Link – via Scribal Terror
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Ooh, this is the perfect gadget for those who are frustrated with the teeny tiny keys on their regular calculator.
Check out the Takumi Keypad Calculator, which is designed with big, easy to hit keys just like the ones on a computer keyboard.
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Here’s a neat (but gruesome) Extreme Hangman game from ArmorGames, complete with stick figure violence and gore – that is, if you fail to guess the word within the alloted time.
Just in case the fate of a poor innocent stick figure isn’t stressful enough, the game adds a ticking time bomb as a timer.
Link [Flash]
Flickr user Balakov recreated Charles Ebbet’s famous photo Lunch Atop a Skyscraper, c. 1932 with LEGO minifigs! Link [Flickr] – via Super Punch
Previously on Neatorama: Fine Arts Lego
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An artist Matthew James Taylor uses a lot of pencils, so naturally he’d be an expert in the art of sharpening pencils.
What caught our attention, however, was not the methods of pencil sharpening (which he described in details I couldn’t fathom possible, but he did it) – instead, it was his favorite pencil sharpener: a "Living Dead Dolls" Sadie Pencil Sharpener!
Link – via onelargeprawn
Uprising of Sausages and Hot Dogs by Sergey Tyukanov (2006)
Drawn in the classic style of Hieronymous Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights, here is a fantastically detailed artwork about the uprisings of … sausages
and hot dogs!
Drawn by Sergey Tyukanov, who has a number of other excellent artwork:
Link [Flash, with background music] – via Miniature Brainwave
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Attention kids: print this out and show it to your mom! It turns out that playing certain Nintendo DS games every day can make our smarter.
The 30 children from St Columba’s primary school – all aged nine and 10 played Dr Kawashima’s More Brain Training game on a Nintendo DS console every morning before lessons for about 15 minutes.
The "game" is a collection of mini-games, such as number challenges, reading tests, problem-solving exercises and memory puzzles designed to exercise the brain by increasing blood flow to the pre-frontal cortex. [...]
The children played the game every day for 10 weeks with "dramatic" results.
Just the perfect excuse to get yourself a sweet console, all in the name of learning, of course! Link – via Spluch
Here’s the reason why you shouldn’t order a custom cake from Wal-Mart, from the GinBlog:
Some people that work here had a going away party the other day for a woman that is leaving.
One of the supervisors called a Walmart and ordered the cake. he told them to write: “best wishes Suzanne” and underneath that write “we will miss you”. here’s the cake that was delivered.
Link – via digg and Super Punch
Most people saw this small plot of land in southeast London and thought it was too small for anything but a broom closet, but not Monty Ravenscroft. After buying the land, he built an amazing house with a retractable roof and tons of space-saving tricks:
Monty’s particular ideas and vision are found all over the house. It is full of unusual touches. A bathroom sink concealed in a drawer. An open-plan ensuite shower. A translucent glass toilet wall that adjoins the lounge: ‘When it’s backlit you get silhouettes – which is more of a problem for men than women.’
Possibly the quirkiest feature can be found in the bedroom, where you’ll find a bed that can be slid sideways to reveal a bath. ‘I don’t have time for baths,’ Monty explains. ‘Most houses have baths because it’s what you’re supposed to have – they take up lots of space but are never used. People have showers in baths, which is fine but tedious. With this bath, bathing is a special occasion, a theatrical thing.’
Monty is proud of all these details. How every wall ‘floats’ without touching ceiling, floor or another wall. The hidden stair rail fixings. The space-saving pigeon steps to the two mezzanine bedrooms that not only float but also gently spring as you ascend them – ‘People find them more disconcerting than I thought.’
Link – via Apartment Therapy, Thanks Becky !
This is the sort of thing you thought only happens in the movies: a crane was demolishing a building with a wrecking ball when its cable snapped, sending the 1,500 pound (680 kg) ball tumbling downhill into town!
As it gained momentum, the wrecking ball rumbled from the campus along North Main Street, pinballing back and forth across the street, hitting nine parked cars and damaging curbs with each impact.
The ball came to a stop when it hit a car:
Alex Habay was in his Ford Taurus, stopped at a traffic light in downtown Meadville, Crawford County, yesterday morning, thinking about nothing, idly listening to a radio commercial while on his way to his summer job at the YMCA.
That’s when a 1,500-pound wrecking ball smashed into the rear of his car.
"I was in complete bewilderment," said Mr. Habay, 20, of Hampton, a junior at Allegheny College. "At first I thought it was a car, but when I turned around there was no car.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has the scoop (story by Steve Levin, Photo by Jim Stefanucci/The Meadville Tribune): Link – via JWZ
Behold the Tetris quilt, lovingly made by Amy of Rabbit Style News blog. Now, if I were a crafty guy, I’d totally make something from my favorite game of all time: Dig Dug
Ah, this is what the Intarweb is for: a strange yet very funny Flash animation and song about a cow rebellion fighting for bovine freedom.
Song by Dana Lyons, animated by Bjørn-Magne Stuesøl.
Definitely don’t miss this, it’s an oldie but goodie: Link [embedded YouTube] | large screen Flash version – Thanks wade7!
WallStreetFighter blog has a post about Money Pubs, bars with wallpapers made out of … money!
Everyone wants to open a bar. Financially it is one of the worst investments you could ever make, but the cool factor is off the charts. If you really want to make money in the saloon industry I suggest the "money on the wall" theme. The money on the wall theme is to have every patron in the bar write something stupid on a dollar bill and tack it on the wall. After several years you can build up 10′s of thousands of dollars of assets and the theft rate is unbelievable low.
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The movie plot: British POWs in WWII Burma are forced to build a railway bridge for their cruel Japanese captors. Using superior British know-how, they succeed. British commander, Col. Nicholson takes such pride in the construction that at first he defends it against saboteurs, but then comes to his senses and blows it up himself.
The movie plot: French-Canadian nurse cares for dashing Count Laszlo Almasy (Ralph Fiennes), a burn victim, in a Tuscan villa at the end of WWII. Using flashbacks, the film recounts Almasy’s illicit love affair with a friend’s wife (Kristin Scott Thomas), his devotion to her and her tragic death. As he lays dying, his last thoughts are of her.
The movie plot: Two con artists, Gondorf (Newman) and Hooker (Redford) set up an elaborate betting parlor scam on an Irish racketeer to avenge the murder of a fellow grifter. The sting works and the lovable con-man get away with it.
The movie plot: Swash-buckling, whip-wielding archeologist Indiana Jones battles the Nazis to locate the mythical Ark of the Covenant, which contains the original Ten Commandments. Good triumphs over evil, and Indie returns to his job as a college professor awaiting his next adventure.
