Archive for February, 2008
Do Microbes Make Snow?
Microbiologists Brent Christner at Louisiana State University and his colleagues sampled snow from various parts of the world and found this microbe, Pseudomonas syringae, over and over again.
What’s interesting is that P. syringae has proteins in their cell wall that bind water, and can catalyze the formation of ice lattice:
Microbes may be responsible for snow—and rain for that matter. They are certainly involved in much of the man-made snow that ski resorts use to cover for Mother Nature’s winter lapses. Microorganisms, particularly bacteria, produce proteins in their cell walls that bind water—even if they are dead. In fact, they bind water in such an orderly fashion that water droplets freezing around a microbe almost mirror the natural lattice formation of ice. As a result, bacteria can help snow form at warmer temperatures than would otherwise be the case, which explains why some ski resorts add dead microbes to the mix in their snowmaking machines. And now scientists have discovered such biological precipitation catalysts in natural snows—in such far-flung locations as Montana and Antarctica.
The fun speculation is that microbes like P. syringae are actually nature’s way of making snow: Link
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Christopher Berg's Maze Art
I’m awed by Christopher Berg’s ability of turning ordinary pictures into ah-maze-ing piece of art. Here is a giant maze shaped like The Colosseum.
Many more at his website: Link
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Rescued "Bird Boy" Can't Talk, Only Chirps
Recently, Russian social workers rescued a 7-year-old boy who has been raised as a pet bird by his mother. The boy was found in a tiny two-bedroom apartment filled with cages of birds.
He’s called "bird boy" by Russian media, and here’s why:
Social worker Galina Volskaya, who helped rescue the "bird-boy" from his home in Kirovsky, Volgograd, told Russian newspaper Pravda that he was treated like another pet by his 31-year-old mother.
Because she never spoke to him, Ms Volskaya explained, the boy’s only communication was with the birds he was surrounded by. "When you start talking to him," she said, "he chirps."
Russian authorities say the child was not physically harmed but is suffering from "Mowgli syndrome", named after the Jungle Book character raised by wild animals, and cannot engage in any normal human communication.
Pravda reported: "(His mother) had her own domestic birds and fed wild ones. (She) neither beat him nor left him without food. She just never talked to him. It was all the birds that communicated with the boy and taught him birds’ language.
"He just chirps and when realising that he is not understood, starts to wave hands in the way birds winnow wings."
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Fish Woos Mate with Electricity
Photo: Dmitriy Krichevskiy
Birds do it, bees do it, but this Amazon basin fish do it with ‘lectricity! The nocturnal (and toothless) gymnotiform fish attract the opposite sex and intimidate rivals by amping up their electric field:
One weakly electric fish is the nocturnal gymnotiform fish (Brachyhypopomus pinnicaudatus), a toothless fish native to the Amazon basin. At night, males of the species give off big, long electric hums, almost like serenades. [...]
Salazar discovered the male fish invested as much as 11 percent to 22 percent of their body’s energy in their nocturnal electric displays. Females hardly exerted themselves electrically, just expending 3 percent of their energy.
"If these displays are expensive to generate, one can presume that individuals paying attention to these signals can infer a better quality male is generating them," Salazar told LiveScience.
When Salazar looked at how fit the males were, she found the fattest and healthiest males often broadcast the biggest electric signals. As such, they were essentially advertising their bodies.
See also: 30 Strangest Animal Mating Habits
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Tooth Implant Restored Man's Vision
Rob McNichol lost his sight in a work-place accident, when liquid aluminum exploded in his face several years ago. But now, thanks to his son’s tooth, he can see again. Here’s the story of a strange medical procedure called the Osteo Odonto Kerato Prosthesis:
The surgery, Osteo Odonto Kerato Prosthesis (OOKP), involved fitting a living canine tooth with an optical cylinder and transplanting it into the eye cavity. [...]
"It doesn’t look that great to be honest. People think I look like the Terminator but I don’t care. The looks end of it are cosmetic and they don’t matter.
"What is incredible is that I have come out of darkness into light again. I can watch television. I can walk down the street on my own. I can play darts and pool. I can see my wife and kids. It is just unbelievable".
Link – Thanks Rob!
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The Cart Whisperer
Liberty Fillmore is dedicating his life to ending the plight of abandoned shopping carts. Yes, indeed, he is the car whisperer …
See him in action here: Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] | official website: No More Abandoned Carts – Thanks Erin P!
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Tongue Piercing, Sponsored by Coke Zero
Old and Busted: paying for piercing as an outlet of expression of individuality, art, and protest against the man!
The New Hotness: getting free piercing in exchange of turning one’s tongue into a billboard for big corporations. ¡Viva La Multinacional Corporación!
Coke Zero’s throwing weight behind tongue-piercing parlors in Brazil. Seriously.
Shops in Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Porto Alegre and Salvador are giving free piercings to people that agree to take a picture with a fresh new Coke Zero stud. Coke’s calling the concept advertasting.
Link | Gallery (Photo: Lingua Patrocinada [Picasa]) – Thanks MrManson!
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Six Houses Guaranteed to Make Yours Look Puny
I’ve been roaming across the States the past few weeks – spent a few days in Boston/Providence and a few days in L.A. Although they’re on opposite coasts, the two locations do have one thing in common: residences that make me feel like I live in a shack. A hovel, really. Don’t get me wrong, I really do love my house, but how can you compare that with mansions built by the Vanderbilts and the Winchesters?
Let’s start with the first house that made me feel inadequate.
The Breakers, Newport, R.I.
photo from Stacy Conradt
Believe it or not, this incredible manse is merely a summer home for the Vanderbilts. Cornelius Vanderbilt II commissioned the quaint little cottage in 1893. It cost more than $7 million to build, which is pretty astronomical when you account for inflation – it would be more than $150 million today.
The mansion that had previously occupied that spot burned down the year before Vanderbilt had the Breakers constructed, so one of his building criteria was that the building should be as fireproof as possible, including using steel instead of wood wherever possible. The furnace is even located under the street instead of actually inside of the house.
If the outside of the house isn’t opulent enough for you, venture inside to see vast halls made out of marble from Italy and Africa. The Gold Room was actually build in France, then disassembled and shipped in airtight cases to be rebuilt once it arrived in Newport.
When Cornelius died in 1899, he left the house to his wife, Alice Gwynne Vanderbilt. When she died, the house was given to her youngest daughter Gladys because Gladys didn’t have any American real estate.
In turn, Countess Gladys left the house to her daughter, Countess Sylvia. Countess Sylvia lived there until she died in 1998, but her children, Gladys and Paul Szapary, still summer there. They stay on the third floor, where the 300,000 tourists the Breakers gets every year are not allowed to visit.
The Mansion, Los Angeles, Calif.
photo from Beverlyhills.org
If you’ve seen There Will Be Blood, you’ll recognize Greystone Mansion (aka Doheny Mansion) as the place where Daniel Day-Lewis uttered the now-famous words, “I. Drink. Your. Milkshake. I DRINK IT UP.” And if you haven’t seen There Will Be Blood, then you’ve undoubtedly seen Batman, the Big Lebowski, the Bodyguard, Death Becomes Her, Entourage, Ghostbusters, Indecent Proposal, X-Men or National Treasure. Oh, and the music video for Meatloaf’s I’d do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That). All of those movies (and more) were filmed on location at Greystone.
The mansion actually has the most in common with There Will Be Blood, though – the house was a gift from oil tycoon Edward Doheny to his son, Ned Doheny. It was built in 1928 and cost more than $3 million, making it the most expensive house in California at the time. Ned didn’t get much time to enjoy the house, though – just four months after he, his wife and their five children moved in, he was found dead in his bedroom along with his secretary, Hugh Plunkett. It was apparently a murder-suicide orchestrated by Plunkett.
The Winchester Mystery House, San Jose, Calif.
photo from WinchesterMysteryHouse.com
I’ve always wanted to visit this house. Sarah Winchester, widow of gun magnate William Wirt Winchester, built this house continuously from 1884 to 1922. That’s 38 years that workers were constantly sawing, hammering and building, twenty-hour hours a day. The house stood at seven stories, but the 1906 earthquake claimed three of those stories and today it stands just four stories tall. There are 17 chimneys, 40 bedrooms, two basements, 467 doorways, at least five kitchens, two ballrooms and approximately 52 skylights. Why such a large, distorted house? Sarah believed that the ghosts of all of the people killed by the guns bearing her husband’s name were out for revenge. She believed very deeply in the spirit world, so when a medium told her that she needed to build a house to contain herself and all of the restless spirits, she took it seriously. The medium told her that if construction ever stopped on the house, the spirits would claim her. When she died in 1922, construction stopped immediately – nails half-pounded into the wall can be found in the house to this day.
There are some odd features in this maze of a house, including doors that lead to nowhere, stairs that lead straight into a ceiling, closets with no floors and numerous secret passageways.
Fair Lane, Dearborn, Mich.
photo from wikipedia.com
Now that we’ve visited both coasts, let’s check out what’s in between. Fair Lane was the home of Henry and Clara Ford and was named for an area in Ireland where Henry’s grandfather was born.
Ford isn’t the only luminary to be involved with the house, though. Frank Lloyd Wright helped draw up the original design for the house before leaving for Europe. And Thomas Edison himself laid the cornerstone of the estate’s powerhouse. The top floor of the powerhouse was reserved for Ford’s Experimental Laboratory – the place he would go to tinker around with new ideas.
Despite Ford’s great wealth, the house really wasn’t considered that extravagant by the standards of the day, even though it did have an indoor poor and a bowling alley. That’s not to say that Fair Lane didn’t have it’s share of strange extravagances, though. As an avid bird watcher, Ford had a steam-heated birdbath installed to entice birds to make the estate their permanent dwelling as well.
Oh, and if Fair Lane sounds familiar, it should – the Fairlane Ford cars were named after the mansion.
Bannerman’s Castle, Pollepal Island, N.Y.
photo from Bannerman Castle Trust
Drive just 50 miles away from the sleek, modern skyscrapers of New York City and you’ll find yourself at Bannerman’s Castle – about as opposite from “sleek and modern” as you can get.
Francis Bannerman VI bought the island in 1900 to use as an arsenal. Bannerman bought 90 percent of the U.S. army’s leftover supplies from the Spanish-American War and thought that the island would be an ideal place to keep them. He even advertised that fact by having “Bannerman’s Island Arsenal” engraved into a wall that faced the eastern bank of the Hudson River. In 1920, the arsenal backfired – literally. Two hundred pounds of shells and gunpowder exploded, destroying a good chunk of the castle and its surrounding buildings. New York State bought the island and all of its buildings in 1967, but after a fire consumed the grounds in 1969, the castle and the island were pretty much abandoned by all. In recent years, tours have been conducted by Bannerman’s Castle Trust, but only if tourees consent to wear a hard hat.
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Stuff White People Like, the Blog
Now this is the blog that tells it like it is. If you need insight on what white people like, that is. For example:
#71 Being the only white person around
In most situations, white people are very comforted by seeing their own kind. However, when they are eating at a new ethnic restaurant or traveling to a foreign nation, nothing spoils their fun more than seeing another white person.
Many white people will look into the window of an ethnic restaurant to see if there are other white people in there. It is determined to be an acceptable restaurant if the white people in there are accompanied by ethnic friends. But if there is a table occupied entirely by white people, it is deemed unacceptable.
The arrival of the “other white people” to either restaurants or vacation spots instantly means that lines will grow, authenticity will be lost, and the euphoria of being a cultural pioneer will be over.
Link – via Dave Copeland
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The Pneumatic Subway
The first subway in America was not a train, but a pneumatic people mover! Opening for business in 1870, the subway worked on the same principle as the pneumatic tubes we use at a drive-through bank. Giant fans at either end provided pressure to blow a carriage through Manhattan.
For a fare of two bits per passenger– all of which was donated to a charity for soldiers’ orphans– twenty guests at a time could take a ride on the pneumatic carriage. The custom-built, fifty-ton blower was situated in an adjacent chamber, separated from the waiting area by a long corridor. The Æolor blower was twenty-one feet high, sixteen feet long, and thirteen feet wide, and it contained two colossal lengthwise paddles which rotated to draw air in one side and out the other. The magnificent blower was outfitted with a special set of adjustable baffles which allowed her to switch from suck to blow without reversing rotation. By tapping a telegraph wire, the conductor signaled the boiler engineer to engage the 100 horsepower steam engine. Atmospheric pressure increased by “a few grains per inch,” pressing the carriage into the tunnel as the air rushed to escape through the vent at the far end.
Financial problems led to the closing of the carrier in the 1870s. The tunnel was sealed until 1912, when it was reopened for the installation of an electric subway line. Link
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Stop Junk Mail? That’ll cost you!
The Consumerist reports that a customer who requested Comcast cable to stop sending direct mailers found a $1.99 “change of service” fee on his bill.
I had in fact called Comcast a few weeks earlier and asked them to stop sending me anything except a monthly bill. They were happy to do so, but had not told me that they would try and stick me for $2.
Fortunately, he was able to get this charge removed via an online chat with customer service. But how many people would never notice the extra fee? Link – via J-Walk Blog
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Pulling Down a Palm Tree
(Live Leak link)
Maybe they just didn’t have enough cable. Or an axe. Or sense. -via Arbroath
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House in the Clouds
The House in the Clouds was originally a water tower! The house was built around a water tank in 1923 to make it look less ugly. It served the Suffolk neighborhood until 1977, and the tank was removed in 1979. It’s now a 5 bedroom, 3 bath house that you can rent for a minimum two night stay. Link
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Trivia: Snooze!
More than a third of American adults hit the snooze button every morning an average of 3X.
The "snooziest" group is the 25 to 34-year-olds: 57% of them hit the snooze button. Compare this to seniors: only 10% of Americans over 65-years-old regularly hit the snooze button (Source).
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16 Year Old Girl Want to Leave Home for Lover, What Should Loving Parents Do?
Daughter: I’m sixteen and I can do what I want. I’m leaving home with my 36-year-old lover.
Do the parents:
A) Tell her "no, you’re only sixteen" then call the cops on the guy.
B) Kick the ungrateful teenager out and then call the cops on the guy.
C) Invite the boyfriend to live with them so they don’t "risk losing [their] precious child."
Guess which answer the parents choose.
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The Color of #C0FFEE
This is probably something only web geeks can appreciate: what are the colors of coffee in l33tspeak when applied to hex values in photoshop? Andrew Huff of Me3dia Blog did the work to find out (too bad #C0FFEE isn’t brown!): Link
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1 in 100 American Adults is Behind Bars
It’s finally here. For the first time in history, 1 in 100 American adults is behind bars:
Nationwide, the prison population grew by 25,000 last year, bringing it to almost 1.6 million. Another 723,000 people are in local jails. The number of American adults is about 230 million, meaning that one in every 99.1 adults is behind bars.
Incarceration rates are even higher for some groups. One in 36 Hispanic adults is behind bars, based on Justice Department figures for 2006. One in 15 black adults is, too, as is one in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34.
The report, from the Pew Center on the States, also found that only one in 355 white women between the ages of 35 and 39 are behind bars but that one in 100 black women are.
The report’s methodology differed from that used by the Justice Department, which calculates the incarceration rate by using the total population rather than the adult population as the denominator. Using the department’s methodology, about one in 130 Americans is behind bars.
Either way, said Susan Urahn, the center’s managing director, “we aren’t really getting the return in public safety from this level of incarceration.”
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Capgras Delusion and Other Strange Phenomena of the Mind
The List Universe has a neat countdown of the top 10 strange phenomena of the mind. For example:
3. Capgras Delusion
Capgras delusion is the phenomenon in which a person believes that a close friend or family member has been replaced by an identical looking impostor. This could be tied in to the old belief that babies were stolen and replaced by changelings in medieval folklore, as well as the modern idea of aliens taking over the bodies of people on earth to live amongst us for reasons unknown. This delusion is most common in people with schizophrenia but it can occur in other disorders.
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Tree Jewelry
I can’t decide whether this is serious or just cheeky fun, but here goes:
When was the last time your favorite tree demanded anything from you? Attention? Conversation? Compliments?
Surprise that oak, that maple, that honey locust. Drape a gleaming stainless
steel necklace around your precious. Fitted on indestructible marine line,
finished with marine hardware. Lasts forever.
Yup, it’s jewelry. For trees. Link
Just to show that magnificent trees look fine all by their natural selves, here is Neatorama’s 10 Most Magnificent Trees in the World
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America's Most Sinful Cities
Forbes has posted their list of America’s Most Sinful Cities, organized by the categories of the seven deadly sins.
For instance, take sloth. Here’s America’s Most Sedentary City:
Memphis, Tenn.
Rank: 1This southern city on the banks of the Mississippi lands first on our list after ranking in the top 10 of each of our categories. Though efforts are underway to improve parks and outdoor recreation areas, the whole of Memphis hasn’t quite caught up with the area’s new vision. Slightly behind the national rate of 66%, about 65% of the city’s population is obese or overweight, and residents average 41 hours of television watching per week. It also ranked close to the top where physical inactivity was concerned: when asked, 30% of its inhabitants hadn’t exercised regularly.
Memphis also ranked first for gluttony: it’s also America’s Most Obese City.
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The Bacon Cup
After seeing the bacon mat, this idea was so obvious that I was surprised it didn’t come about sooner. Behold, the bacon cup!
Megan Reardon of Not Martha blog has the recipe: Link – via metafilter
//I don’t know why she even bothers with the lettuce …
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Clarence Thomas, the Quiet Supreme Court Justice
Arguing before the Supreme Court usually means answering pointed questions from the justices, but nervous lawyers would never have to worry about questions from Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
It has been two years and 142 cases since he last asked a question:
The questions may be helpful to the others, Thomas said, but not to him.
"One thing I’ve demonstrated often in 16 years is you can do this job without asking a single question," he told an adoring crowd at the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group.
The book tour showed that the topic comes up even among friendly audiences. Indeed, Thomas’ comment was provoked by this question: Why do your colleagues ask so many questions?
His response: "I did not plant that question. That’s a fine question. When you figure out the answer, you let me know," he said.
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Quote: Mark Twain on Anger
"When angry, count to four. When very angry, swear."
– Mark Twain, humorist and author (1835 – 1910)
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Throne of the Third Heaven: Masterpiece Folk Art Made From Junk
In 1950, a quiet janitor named James Hampton rented an unheated dump of a garage in Washington DC because he was "working on something" and needed a larger space than his room in a nearby boarding house.
Every night after finishing his job, the small, soft-spoken man would work in the garage for five or six hours. Hampton believed that God visited him there regularly to guide him in his project, The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations’ Millenium General Assembly. Adding to the sheer wow factor of the 180 glittering object was how Hampton did it:
An ingenious selection and use of materials and an innate feeling for design characterize Hampton’s radiant work. A poor man, he applied his imagination to the transformation of discarded materials. Merchants in the used-furniture district near the garage remember that Hampton would browse, inquire about prices, and sometimes return with a child’s wagon to carry away his purchases. All of the objects are covered with different grades of gold and aluminum foils removed from store displays, bottles, cigarette boxes, and rolls of kitchen foil. Hampton paid neighborhood indigents for the foil on their wine bottles, and he walked the streets with a croker sack in which to carry his finds. He also gathered used light bulbs, cardboard, insulation board, construction paper, desk blotters, and sheets of transparent plastic, probably from the trash of the government buildings where he worked.
Hampton’s masterpiece is now on display in the Smithsonian: Link – via Officially Awesome, thanks Kellie Bartlett (that was definitely, *officially* awesome!)
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Under the Tusken Sun
Under the Tusken Sun is a 2006 Star Wars fan-made video clip, directed by Steven Hudson and shot on the sand dunes of Oregon. In it, we see the softer side of the sand people, the Tusken Raiders of Tatooine.
Link [YouTube]
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Hawaiian Axe Made with Shark Teeth and Other Fearsome Weapons of Yore
Trifter has a pretty neat post about some gruesome weapons from the past. I like this one, the Hawaiian Throwing Axe, made with … shark teeth!
This Hawaiian Throwing Axe was a deadly hand held weapon that could be used at both short and long range. This weapon was made out of wood and shark teeth had the power to take men’s limbs off. This weapon was mainly used when opposing Hawaiian armies closed upon each other. They were then thrown at the opposing troops to help soften enemy ranks before close combat. They could also be used in hand to hand combat and had the muscle to rip open skin as if it was butter. This was a very dangerous weapon and is not something you would want to go up against.
Link – Thanks jon jason!
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The Asylum: Psychiatric Clinic for Abused Cuddly Toys (Flash Game)
The Asylum: Psychiatric Clinic for Abused Cuddly Toys is a cute 2004 Flash game (well, more like a point and click narrative) that lets you play therapist to troubled cuddly toys.
It’s fun and easy, with cute characters and funny skits: Link – via Jay is Games, thanks Emily!
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How to Draw an Impossible Triangle
This impossible triangle is also called a Penrose triangle {wiki} or tribar. These step-by-step instructions will help you impress and baffle your kids. Link -via the Presurfer
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Wii Curtain Control
(YouTube link)
This guy rigged up his Wiimote to control his curtains! Then he posted how he did it. Link -via Cynical-C
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Deadly Cactus
A cactus has been found growing in Australia with spines tough enough to penetrate tires! It’s been known to kill koalas, who develop infections because the spines are so difficult to remove.
Once spines of the hudson pear cactus penetrate the skin, they often require pliers to pull them out. It is potentially the worst cactus species to spread in Australia since prickly pear in the 1920s.
Primary Industries Department Biosecurity Queensland land protection officer Jodie Sippel said yesterday there was anecdotal evidence the cactus had caused a fatality at Lightning Ridge in NSW when a person fell into a clump of pear and had a heart attack.
The Hudson pear cactus is an invasive species native to Mexico. Link -via J-Walk Blog
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Your purchase helps support the blog - Thank you!
 had numerous supernatural experience there when they recorded Vol. 3: (The Subliminal Verses). Singer Corey Taylor took pictures that appeared to show two hovering orbs and drummer Joey Jordison had a strange experience in the basement that he won’t talk about.</p>
<p><strong>Greystone Mansion, Beverly Hills, Calif.</strong><br />
<a href='http://www.neatorama.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/greystone.jpg' title='Greystone'><img src='http://www.neatorama.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/greystone.jpg' alt='Greystone' /></a><br />
<em>photo from <a href=){kind=link}
