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Some people make clock, keychain, lamp, and sculptures out of circuit boards, but it takes a true geek to cover one’s car with them!
Part of "Cool Art from Everyday Objects" post at Dark Roasted Blend – via GeekAlerts
We all know that Miss Cellania is an excellent blogger, but little did we know that she’s also a great carpenter! She built a playhouse for her kids out of spare lumber and lived to tell the tale:
After my bathroom remodel, I had a pile of discarded lumber in the backyard. The kids said, “Why don’t you build a playhouse out of it?” I thought about the old lumber, and the discarded paneling on the front porch, and the leftover vinyl siding that’s been in the basement for a few years. OK! I’ll build a playhouse!
Now if I can only convince her to come over my house and help me build a room addition or somethin’: Link
"Once again, we come to the Holiday Season, a deeply religious time that each of us observes, in his own way, by going to the mall of his choice."
– Dave Barry, comedian (1947-)
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British teacher Gillian Gibbons, 54, is in a Sudanese jail facing 40 lashes if convicted. Her crime? She let her class of 7 years old name a teddy bear Mohammed:
Ms Gibbons allowed her class of seven-year-olds at the Unity High School in Khartoum to name a teddy bear Mohammed as part of a lesson about animals’ habitats.
Mohammed is sacred to Islamic philosophy and the penalty for blasphemy is 40 lashes, a large fine or a jail term. The British Embassy in Khartoum confirmed the arrest.
Link – Thanks James Laughton!
These two kids know how to kick it around and their choreography is the best in town…
Link – and it’s got Nothing to do with Arbroath
[By Alex: actually, we've featured something by one of the guys Brandon Hardesty before!]
Do you have a Christmas wish for Santa? Tell him what to do and see if you can stump him with something that’s not on his list. Link
Here’s a really cool animation made from a flipbook. One can only imagine the time it takes to make such animation. This animator is very talented. Enjoy! Link
Previously at Neatorama: Reynaldo Ojeda and Claudia Lopez.
29-year-old Ingrid Marie Rivera won the Miss Puerto Rico beauty pageant, despite the fact that someone had applied pepper spray to her gown and makeup!
Rivera was composed while appearing before cameras and judges throughout the competition. But once backstage, she had to strip off her clothes and apply ice bags to her face and body, which swelled and broke out in hives twice.
“We thought at first it was an allergic reaction, or maybe nerves,” Rosario said. “But the second time, we knew it couldn’t have been a coincidence.”
Rivera’s clothing and makeup later tested positive for pepper spray.
Rivera was the favorite going into the competition. She was also Miss World Caribbean in 2005. Now she will represent Puerto Rico in the Miss Universe pageant. Link -via Arbroath
(Photo credit: AP)
Hundreds of Chinese youths gathered around a podium, chanting and yelling after a man on a bullhorn. Are they protesting something? No, they’re learning English Chinese-style!
Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] – via Digital Inspiration, Thanks Chris!
| The following is an article from Uncle John’s Supremely Satisfying Bathroom Reader
V.I.P. Mrs. K Rx B.O. D-Day XXX |
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The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Supremely Satisfying Bathroom Reader.
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 well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
– The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution.
For the first time in 70 years, the United States Supreme court will review the right to bear arms.
The case centers on a Washington DC ban on keeping handguns at home. In 1976, a city ordinance prohibit the ownership of handguns, except for police officers (shotguns or hunting rifles are okay). This law was challenged by 6 city residents as being unconstitutional because it denied them the right to have firearms at home for self defense.
To date, the Second Amendment is the most contested issue in the interpretation of the Constitution, mirroring gun control as one of the most controversial issue in American public policy. As the debate rages on, American society continue to deal with gun violence, including sporadic yet sensational mass shootings.
Do you think that the Second Amendment is an archaic concept that shouldn’t apply in modern times? Or that it only applied to the collective "militia" and not an individual rights to begin with? Would we be safer if guns are outlawed?
We’ve featured LEGO master builder Nathan Sawaya‘s artwork before, but this one wasn’t built out of his usual medium.
For Valentine’s Day a few years ago, Nathan built an anatomically correct human heart out of Necco heart candies!
Link – via Offbeat Homes
Image: Baby Skinz [Flickr]
Here’s a fantastic scooter mod for you: a Lambretta scooter with a VW "Kombi" van sidecar! (Either that or it’s Paul Bunyan on a giant scooter)
More photos at West Coast Drivers | Pauls [Flickr] at Volksworld 2007
I’d love to learn more about the owner/builder – does anyone know the story behind this excellent mod?
Talking ’bout Volkwagen, here’s a fantastic kit car (technically, trike) designed by Richard Oakes and powered by VW engine and drivetrain: The Blackjack Zero.
Comments Off Sandrine Ceurstemont of New Scientist Tech blog compiled a neat list of robots inspired by nature:
Whereas the focus used to be on getting robots to perform specific tasks, like packaging chocolates in a manufacturing plant, researchers are now looking at creating more complex machines that can deal with unpredictable circumstances.
So it shouldn’t be a surprise that they are turning to living creatures for inspiration. The video below shows some robots that have recently been developed: a salamander robot moves from water to land just like the real animal would, Waalbot walks on walls using an adhesive inspired by the fibers on geckos’ feet and a sophisticated Japanese robot is made of modules that can communicate with each other to tackle whatever obstacle it’s confronted with.
Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] | Article
In the Sea of Cortez at the southern Gulf of Mexico, there is a spectacular sight of … leaping Mobula rays!
It looks like a futuristic space ship skimming over the ocean’s surface. Or maybe a triangular shaped prototype aircraft launched from the depths.
In fact it is a Mobula Ray, a smaller cousin of the Manta Ray, which puts on a spectacular leaping display. Mobula Ray pictures reveal spectacular leaps [...]
They hurtle up from the depths and leap several feet into the air often turning somersaults in the process.
A fantastic gallery at Telegraph (article by Paul Eccleston, photos: Bancroft Media): Link – Thanks Emperor!
This Mountain Coat Range by d-ECO-rate uses excess wood to create a silhouette of the snow-capped mountain peaks of the Grand Tetons. The jagged edges serve as a place to hang your coat and scarves! Link – via Think.BigChief
In a clever bit of art-imitate-life, artist Celine Shenton created a bird house for urban areas that looks like the ubiquitous surveillance camera!
In the 1990s, amidst all the controversy over video game violence, Penn & Tellers decided to make a video game that is more realistic. The result is Desert Bus, a minigame where you get to drive a bus from Tucson, Arizona to Las Vegas, Nevada in real time – that’s 8 hours of continuous play (the game can’t be paused).
There’s no scenery and no other car on the road. The bus veers slightly to the right, so you can’t simply just tape down the controller’s button and go do something else. Once you get to Las Vegas, you score exactly one point, then you get to make the return trip – another 8 hours – to Tucson for another point, ad nauseum.
That may not seem like fun to you and me, but the game does have a cult following. Canadian comedy group LoadingReadyRun is having a gaming marathon to raise funds for a children charity – the more money they raise, the longer they will have to suffer… er, play:
Unlike most video game fanatics, when Canadian comedy group LoadingReadyRun sits down for a gaming marathon they do it for a good cause.
On November 23, 2007, 4 young men will sit down, and by the time they get up, they hope to have raised more than $5000 for children’s charity Child’s Play.
The game they will play is known as “Desert Bus”, a game so tedious that it never saw official release. This triumph in monotony will require the LoadingReadyRun crew to drive an eight hour stretch of featureless highway repeatedly, with no stops for rest. The event will be broadcast live online at <http://www.desertbus.org>, where viewers can pledge money to keep the marathon going. The more money donated, the longer they will play.
There’s a blog (they’ve been playing for nearly 2 days, raised over $8,000 so far), live BusCam and DriverCam feed, and even a life chat: Link – Thanks anonymous!
Deep underground in the foothill of the Alps in northern Italy is a magnificent temple so secret that even the Italian government didn’t know of its existence until just recently:
… the ‘Temples of Damanhur’ are not the great legacy of some long-lost civilisation, they are the work of a 57-year-old former insurance broker from northern Italy who, inspired by a childhood vision, began digging into the rock. [...]
Volunteers, who flocked from around the world, worked in four-hour shifts for the next 16 years with no formal plans other than Falco’s sketches and visions, funding their scheme by setting up small businesses to serve the local community.
By 1991, several of the nine chambers were almost complete with stunning murals, mosaics, statues, secret doors and stained glass windows. But time was running out on the secret.
The first time the police came it was over alleged tax evasion and still the temples lay undiscovered. But a year later the police swooped on the community demanding: "Show us these temples or we will dynamite the entire hillside."
Link – via Boing Boing, thanks Nick!
As Medgadget reports, "Several years ago, psychiatrist Andrew Levitas and geneticist Cheryl Reid made an interesting discovery:
[They] identified a 16th-century Flemish Nativity painting in which one angelic figure appears distinctly different from other individuals in the painting with an appearance of Down syndrome. . . . This may be one of the earliest European representations of Down syndrome.
The British Medical Journal elaborates:
The 1515 Flemish painting, by an unknown artist, . . . shows an angel (next to Mary) and possibly one other figure, the shepherd in the centre of the background with the syndrome.
"If our diagnosis is correct, this implies that Down’s syndrome is not a modern disease," say [Levitas and Reid] (American Journal of Medical Genetics 2003;116:399-405).
The diagnosis of Down’s syndrome in the angel was based on a number of features: a flattened mid-face, epicanthal folds, upslanted palpebral fissures, a small and upturned tip of the nose, and downward curving of the corners of the mouth. The hands, crossed over the breast, have short fingers, especially on the left.
Link to English translation. (Thanks, Lukas238!)
A documentary about an ordinary American who just happens to be a zombie. Starring comedian Ed Helms of The Daily Show.
Part 2 and Part 3 are also available.
A six-year-old cat named Baby fell from a third-storey window at her home in London and broke both her back legs. Veterinarians fitted her with metal implants to straighten the legs. But it wasn’t the first time. Baby had fallen from the same height as a kitten and already had metal implants in her front legs! Veterinary surgeon Jess Gower said,
“We were stunned to find it was the second time she had done it. Now she has metal implants in all four legs, staff decided to call her the ‘bionic cat’.
“Amazingly, she has healed extremely well and can already move around very well. We hope that in around eight weeks, when we take off the frame, she will move as normal and you’d never know what happened to her.”
This 6,500 pound heavy and 15 feet tall motorcycle, built by Greg Dunham, is the world’s tallest rideable motorcycle according to the Guinness World Records. It took Greg over three years to build it and he spent aorund $300,000 on parts.
Here’s a video clip of the amazing monster cycle:
Link – via GadgetVenue
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