Listgasm has a neat list of the 20 most strangely named real weathermen (and weatherwomen). Take this one above for instance. His name is Storm Field, and he’s a meteorologist for WWOR New Jersey.
What? You don’t believe me that Storm Field is, indeed, a veteran weatherman? Here’s Storm Field’s IMDB entry and here’s an excerpt from another article, this time from The Morning News by Clay Risen:
2. Storm Field—WWOR (UPN), Secaucus, N.J.
When Storm Field was a little boy, he wanted to be an architect. Then one day his father took him fishing out on the lake. After a few hours of no-fish-biting, lazy-summer-afternoon boy-and-Dad bonding, Frank Field turned to his son and said, “Storm, if your mother and I’d wanted you to be an architect, we’d have named you Rem. Or Zaha. But we named you Storm for a reason. You were born to be a weatherman, son.” To which Storm said, “Dad, if you named me Storm so that I’d grow up to be a weatherman, why did you name my sister Aphrodite?”
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Neatorama reader Chris Samson wrote to us about stealthdesk, his senior project for high school for design and technology:
… essentially its a desk that i made, then i put the computer in a drawer and enclosed a 22" widescreen LCD in the middle and put the lcd on an actuator. so all i do is push a button and the computer turns on and at the same time the actuator raises the screen. i made this between january to november 2007. it was part of my final year of high school for design and technology project here in australia!
Link – Thanks Chris! See also Neatorama’s Ultimate Case Mode Page
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Czech designer Martin žampach created Tetrice, a silicone ice tray that makes ice cubes in the shape of Tetris blocks.
Link – via Fubiz, thanks Fred!
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The urge to make oneself beautiful by make up and fashion is a pretty universal one. For his book "Natural Fashion: Tribal Decoration from Africa," Hans Silvester of Rapho/Camera Press captured these stunning "haute couture" images of children of the Surma and Mursi tribes of East Africa’s Omo Valley:
Inspired by the wild trees, exotic flowers and lush vegetation of the area bordering Ethiopia, Kenya and Sudan, these tribal people have created looks that put the most outlandish creations of Western catwalk couturiers to shame.
Here, a leaf or root is transformed into an accessory. Instead of a scarf, a necklace of banana leaves is draped around a neck. In place of a hat, a tuft of grass is jauntily positioned.
A garland of flowers, a veil of seed-pods, buffalo horn, a crown of melons, feathers, stems and storks – Mother Nature has provided a fully stocked wardrobe.
Like a dressing-up chest brimming over with costumes and make-up (paint created with pigments from powdered stone), the natural environment is the source for this glorious jungle pantomime.
Link – Thanks Jon Jason!
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In his book, titled simply "Bears," Kent Rogowski took photos of stuffed bears that have been turned inside out.
While browsing his website, I ran across a list of comments that his visitors had left him. I find the ones left by school children the best of all:
"I think these photographs might mean happiness. They are made by softness and cotton."
-Nicholas, 3th grade student, PS84 New York"I think this one is funny because in a book that I read there was a monster that looked just like this one."
-Maya Lee Christianson, 7"You’re a monster. Maybe you should be turned out…"
–Anonymous
Link | Gallery | Interview with Nicole Pasulka of The Morning News – Thanks Stephanie!
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In her art series "Black Bag – American Philosophy of Composition," Italian artist Andrea Mastrovito created artwork out of … tissue paper pinned to a board!
The Foley Gallery has more: Link
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A few days ago, our pal mental_floss blog put up this epic Ill-Advised Business Names post, filled with photos of bad business names as taken by the blog’s readers.
I quite like this particular one: Stuff Mart. It’s kind of humble, don’t you think? Their tagline "We got some real good stuff" would even work for Neatorama!
Link | Flickr Photoset – Thanks Jon-Paul!
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Contrariwise Rambling blog has a scan of an excerpt of the July 1943 issue of Transportation Magazine on how to hire women, as written for male supervisors of women in the work force during WWII.
For example:
1. Pick young married women. They usually have more of a sense of responsibility than their unmarried sisters, they’re less likely to be flirtatious, they need the work or they wouldn’t be doing it, they still have the pep and interest to work hard and to deal with the public efficiently.
2. When you have to use older women, try to get ones who have worked outside the home at some time in their lives. Older women who have never contacted the public have a hard time adapting themselves and are inclined to be cantankerous and fussy. It’s always well to impress upon older women the importance of friendliness and courtesy.
3. General experience indicates that "husky" girls – those who are just a little on the heavy side – are more even tempered and efficient than their underweight sisters.
Read the rest at Contrariwise: Link – Thanks Anne M. Gill!
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If your kid can draw it, FAO Schwarz and the North American Bear Co. can make it. A custom "build-a-monster" kit is only $249 – but hey, nothing’s too good for your kid, right?
Make-My-Own-Monster Design Kit, that includes colored pencils, paper, and a detailed questionnaire. With this kit you create not only what the monster looks like, but you also create a story about the monster and describe his or her personality.
Once you’ve completed the kit and sent it in, the designers at North American Bear Co. will faithfully reproduce your design as a plush
monster, including a descriptive hang-tag that tells the story of your monster as you have described it and identifies you as the creator.
Link – Thanks Seth Cohen!
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For her friend’s birthday, Britta Peterson baked this awesome edible iPhone from modeling chocolate.
Here’s a build log on how the Edible iPhone was made: Link – Thanks Ian Dahlberg!
In other news, I’m still eating Altoids from my dorky iToid can that I made a while ago.
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This year is the 30th anniversary of the Diagram Prize for the oddest book title of the year. The finalists for the annual award have been announced by The Bookseller. They are:
I Was Tortured By the Pygmy Love Queen
How to Write a How to Write Book
Are Women Human? And Other International Dialogues
Cheese Problems Solved
If You Want Closure in Your Relationship, Start With Your Legs
People who Mattered in Southend and Beyond: From King Canute to Dr Feelgood
I’m still giggling over the description of the Pygmy Love Queen book. The titles that almost made the shortlist are also intriguing. Now the public can vote at The Bookseller site. The winner will be announced March 28th. Link -via Metafilter
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Photo: milkthebasic [Flickr]
Fogonazos blog has a very cool post about the Waitomo Glowworm Cave in New Zealand, where you can find an amazing creature called Arachnocampa luminosa, which larva glows to attract prey … the hungrier the larva, the brighter it glows.
Link – via Dark Roasted Blend
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How could I have missed this? Last week, Wired has a very neat interview with Ruth Kedar, the graphic designer who developed the now-famous Google logo.
Here’s her story (with a neat gallery of prototype logos!):
In just a few short years, Google’s logo has become as recognizable as Nike’s swoosh and NBC’s peacock. Ruth Kedar, the graphic designer who developed the now-famous logo, shows the iterations that led to the instantly recognizable primary colors and Catull typeface that define the Google brand. Kedar met Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page through a mutual friend nine years ago at Stanford University, where she was an assistant professor. Page and Brin, who were having trouble coming up with a logo for their soon-to-launch search engine, asked Kedar to come up with some prototypes. "I had no idea at the time that Google would become as ubiquitous as it is today, or that their success would be of such magnitude," Kedar says.
Previously on Neatorama: Evolution of Tech Companies’ Logos
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Nouriel Roubini, an economics professor at New York University, first predicted a US recession in July 2006 (which was a very controversial position at the time, but not today).
Now, Roubini said that there’s a greater risk to the economy, the mother of all meltdowns:
Now he states that there is “a rising probability of a ‘catastrophic’ financial and economic outcome”**. The characteristics of this scenario are, he argues: “A vicious circle where a deep recession makes the financial losses more severe and where, in turn, large and growing financial losses and a financial meltdown make the recession even more severe.”
The first step in this path is already happening:
Step one is the worst housing recession in US history. House prices will, he says, fall by 20 to 30 per cent from their peak, which would wipe out between $4,000bn and $6,000bn in household wealth. Ten million households will end up with negative equity and so with a huge incentive to put the house keys in the post and depart for greener fields. Many more home-builders will be bankrupted.
Eleven more steps toward a giant economic catastrope, as outlined by Financial Times’ columnist Martin Wolf: Link (Photo: Roubini’s website) | Roubini’s blog at RGE Monitor – via Linkfilter
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Carly Fleischmann is severely autistic and cannot speak a word to express herself … until her parents put her in front of a computer:
Two years ago, working with pictures and symbols on a computer keyboard, she started typing and spelling out words. The computer became her voice.
"All of a sudden these words started to pour out of her, and it was an exciting moment because we didn’t realize she had all these words," said speech pathologist Barbara Nash. "It was one of those moments in my career that I’ll never forget."
Then Carly began opening up, describing what it was like to have autism and why she makes odd noises or why she hits herself.
"It feels like my legs are on fire and a million ants are crawling up my arms," Carly said through the computer.
Link – via Linkbunnies
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This is amazing: more than a mile below the surface of the Antarctic waters, scientists have discovered a world of huge worms, giant jellyfish, and spiders as big as dinner plates!
"With us we had some of the world’s experts on Antarctic fish and they were completely, completely flabbergasted at the sight of some of the fish that came on board – they were unable to name them," said Dr Riddle after the census of the South Pole’s marine life.
"The fish had fins in various places. They had funny, dangly bits around their mouths.
"Many of them had very large eyes, although what they are going to use them for where this is no light I couldn’t tell you. But they are very strange-looking fish."
In some places, he said "every inch of the sea floor is covered in life".
Giantism, he said, was "very common in Antarctic waters", where his team had even found deep gouges in the sea floor, caused by icebergs scraping the coral" as they floated by.
"Some of the video footage we have collected is really stunning – it’s amazing to be able to navigate undersea mountains and valleys and actually see what the animals look like in their undisturbed state."
Link (with more pics) – via A Welsh View
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Here’s a truly bizarre story of how a single cockroach put 30 people out of work in Turkmenistan:
For the viewers of Turkmenistan’s popular nightly news programme, Vatan, it was another routine bulletin. But as the newsreader began the 9pm broadcast, viewers across the central Asian country spotted something unusual crawling across the studio table: a large brown cockroach.
The cockroach managed to complete a whole lap of the desk, apparently undetected, before disappearing. The programme, complete with cockroach, was repeated at 11pm that night. [...]
The country’s president, Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, took news of the insect so badly that he responded by firing no fewer than 30 workers from the main state TV channel, the news website Kronika Turkmenistan reported yesterday.
Previously on Neatorama: Craziest Dictator Ever: Turkmenbashi
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"The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about."
– Oscar Wilde, poet and author (1854 – 1900)
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Avid I Met a Possum readers (Hi mom and Jennifer!) already know that a few friends and I took it upon ourselves to investigate the Lizzie Borden house in Fall River, Mass., last weekend. We had such a blast that we’ve decided to return to the area in the fall (preferably October) to do a whole Haunted New England kind of thing. So I was doing a little research on what is in the area and found a handy little list of paranormal locations in the States. I was pretty surprised to see how many hospitals made the list. I guess I shouldn’t be – it’s very House on Haunted Hill (the 1999 version with Geoffrey Rush, not the 1959 Vincent Price film). Obviously some terrible things were done to patients before modern medicine intervened, so it’s not too off-base to think that some tortured spirits are still lurking about.
Below are a few of the (allegedly) haunted hospitals I found most intriguing – hopefully you will too.
Fairfield State Hospital (AKA Fairfield Hills)
photo from fairfieldstatehospital.com
Despite their best efforts, the city of Newtown, Connecticut has been unable to squelch Fairfield State Hospital’s eerie reputation. Then again, they have allowed it to be used for several decidedly spooky shoots, including Sleepers and MTV’s Fear.
The asylum has been in Newtown since 1931, but most of its buildings have been standing empty for the past 13 years. At its peak period of operations, it housed almost 4,000 patients.
Fueling the scary stories is the fact that its numerous buildings are all connected by underground tunnels. Were these simply for transporting patients during bad weather, or was it an easier way to dispose of dead bodies?
Glenn Dale Hospital
photo from The Glenn Dale Hospital Mission
Glenn Dale opened in the same era as Fairfield State – the 1930s was a popular time for mental institutes, apparently. Well, actually, Glenn Dale wasn’t originally used for that purpose – it was a tuberculosis hospital with one building for adults and one for children. Eventually the tuberculosis problem died down and Glenn Dale was repurposed. It closed in 1982 due to asbestos and structural problems, but before it closed it was (supposedly) home to the criminally insane. As with Fairfield State, the buildings are connected via underground passageways, which people have been exploring since the day Glenn Dale officially closed its doors.
Exploration might not be the best idea, though, and not just because of the asbestos (although that should be an obvious deterrent). One rumor says that when the hospital closed, the remaining patients were just turned loose. Having nowhere else to go, many of them simply broke back into the abandoned buildings and lurk there even today.
Another story goes that a police officer went to check out the buildings himself after getting a call that the buildings were being vandalized by a bunch of kids. After he went in, someone in the vicinity heard gun shots and called the police. When the police arrived, they found the first officer standing in one of the rooms, staring straight ahead at nothing. He had emptied his gun firing at something that no one ever found.
Norwich State hospital
photo from creepyconnecticut.net
Connecticut is a popular spot for haunted hospitals, I guess, because Norwich State Hospital can be found in Preston and Norwich, Conn. Oh, and guess what else? More underground tunnels. The mental hospital was built in 1904 and had 151 patients the very day it opened. By the 1960s, the hospital reached a record high of 3,186 patients.
Perhaps piggybacking off of the success of MTV’s Fear, VH1 sent contestants of the Celebrity Paranormal Project here but didn’t quite represent the place accurately: they fixed old, coverless couch cushions to the walls in a small room and told the celebrities that it was an old padded cell for the truly disturbed patients when in reality such a room never existed.
Waverly Hills Sanatorium
photo from ConspiracyofHappiness on Flickr
Waverly Hills Sanatorium in Louisville, Kentucky, has been called the most haunted place in the U.S. Some reports put the number of deaths that occurred at this tuberculosis hospital at more than 60,000. While I had some problems digging up ghost stories from some of these allegedly haunted sites, stories from the Waverly Hills Sanatorium are plentiful.
When WHS opened in 1926, it was considered the most advanced TB hospital in the world. Still, at the time, not much was known about the disease and how to treat it, so a lot of the treatments were extremely experimental – these patients were more or less guinea pigs. Lots of them exited the hospital via the “body chute”, a tunnel that led from the hospital to railroad tracks that allowed for discreet corpse disposal.
In addition to the dying tuberculosis patients, at least two nurses committed suicide at Waverly. In 1928, the 29-year-old head nurse, pregnant and unwed, hanged herself in the nurses’ station. In 1932, another nurse who worked in the same room leapt off of the balcony to her death several stories down.
Creepy stories include a chef who still walks the kitchens (you can tell he’s present when you smell freshly baked bread), apparitions of a woman with chains around her arms and legs and blood dripping from her wrists, ghostly children wandering about and eerie red glows.
Troy Taylor, a paranormal author, visited Waverly Hills with Louisville Ghost Hunter founder Keith Age and experienced plenty of paranormal activity. In Troy’s own words,
“Keith was standing in the corner, looking at the changes on the meter scale, when an empty plastic soda bottle came seemingly out of nowhere and struck him in the back. As he turned to see what had happened, an overhead fluorescent light fixture suddenly came loose from the ceiling with a loud crack. With one end of it still anchored to the ceiling, the other end swung loose and hit Keith in the side of the head. The long burned-out bulb that remained in the fixture shattered when it collided with Keith and showered him with glass. Before he even had time to react, he heard the sound of a brick scrape across the concrete floor. The noise came from the opposite corner of the room and when he looked over, he saw the brick moving across the floor towards him. With a lurch, it shot directly at him and as he scrambled to get out of the line of fire, it hit him in the small of the back. Needless to say, he quickly retreated from the room. The other investigators had not seen where the brick or the soda bottle had come from, but they had clearly heard the brick move and had seen both objects strike Keith.”
You can read more about Keith and Troy’s experiences at PrairieGhosts.com.
Athens Lunatic Asylum
Giving Waverly a run for the “Most Haunted Abandoned Hospital in the United States” title is the Athens Lunatic Asylum in Athens, Ohio. After opening its doors in 1874, many of its first patients were Civil War veterans suffering from post traumatic stress disorder.
What has proved to be one of the most enduring stories from the Asylum occurred more than 100 years after its grand opening, however: on December 1, 1978, a patient named Margaret Schilling disappeared from one of the active wards. They found her body more than a month later in the top floor of ward N. 20, which had been abandoned for years.
The official cause of death was heart failure–probably due to her exposure to the December cold in an unheated section of the hospital. Her death isn’t the weird part, though – what’s weird is that her body left a stain that you can still see today.
photo from forgottenoh.com
One of the reasons ALA makes the Most Haunted Places in the U.S. list is because of its strange location. If you draw a line from each of the five cemeteries around Athens, the shape ends up being a pentagram with Ohio University being right in the middle, which is where ALA is located. I couldn’t actually find a map that backed this theory up, though – does anyone have one?
Like I said, there are a surprisingly large number of abandoned hospitals and asylums scattered across the country. Are there any in your town? Let’s hear your stories!
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The borough of Delfshaven, Rotterdam, asked Schildersbedrijf N&F Hijnen to come up with a plan for a block of derelict buildings, which will eventually be demolished. The agreement with the neighbourhood is that the block will remain blue as long as there isn’t a new plan for the area.
This was once one of the most unseen blocks of houses in Rotterdam, and by applying a layer of only 2 micron of blue paint onto it, it became Rotterdam’s most photographed one.
Link -via Dump Trumpet
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Shepard Fairey is the founder of the "André the Giant has a Posse" urban art.
Since he started plastering stickers and stencils all over Charleston, South Carolina, 15 years ago, it has transformed into the legendary "Obey Giant" phenomenon seen all over the United States.
Dom Saldana of our pal Crave Online website interviewed Shepard about how he got started:
"Obey I think is a provocative word. There is a movie called "They Live", which star Rowdy
RowdyRoddy Piper and other wrestlers… The concept of the movie is similar to phenomenology in that people don’t realize that they’re controlled by aliens and they use authority and advertising to get the bewildered herd of blue collar workers to submit and obey…. That movie had a pretty big effect on me even though it was a silly movie just like the original "André the Giant has a Posse" sticker was silly but there’s something that had led to [something] more significant. The use of the word obey is really too get people to question their obedience and ask if they really wanted to obey."
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If you think about it, Keggy the Keg, the unofficial mascot of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, is hands down the most relevant mascot in college sports.
Keggy is perenially ranked as among Dartmouth’s finest anthropomorphic beer kegs. He came to Dartmouth in the fall of 2003, debuting at the Homecoming football game against Columbia University. [...]
Keggy was ruthlessly kidnapped from his home in the library of Sigma Nu and held hostage for several days (left), suffering one torn off eye and and a badly damaged nose. After a ransom note was sent to Keggy’s Jacko creators, Hanover Police began a town-wide manhunt for Keggy’s captors. He was eventually rescued (albeit suffering significant injuries), and after extensive physical therapy, he returned to his normal activities of cheering on Dartmouth sports teams.
Link | Keggy’s blog | Wikipedia entry – via Super Punch
Don’t forget to visit this Behind the Mascot: 8 Great Stories About Strangely Named Teams at our pal mental_floss blog.
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The next time you order at the drive-thru, don’t just say what you want … sing it!
Say No to Crack has an enjoyable list of the Top 5 Drivethru Songs:
So apparently some people have enough spare time on their hands in groups that they actually write songs and sing them.
To squawk-boxes. At drivethrus. I’m a fan of fast food and a fan of music, and have always wanted a soundtrack to my life. But I don’t think I’ve taken any of these interests to the extreme the next five people have. Here are the top 5 drivethru singers I’ve ever seen.
Link [embedded YouTube clips]
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Is the American dream still alive? Can a person lift himself up by the bootstrap out of homelessness and earn a living – nay, even prosper – in this country?
Adam Shepard put it to the test:
Alone on a dark gritty street, Adam Shepard searched for a homeless shelter. He had a gym bag, $25, and little else. A former college athlete with a bachelor’s degree, Mr. Shepard had left a comfortable life with supportive parents in Raleigh, N.C. Now he was an outsider on the wrong side of the tracks in Charleston, S.C.
But Shepard’s descent into poverty in the summer of 2006 was no accident. Shortly after graduating from Merrimack College in North Andover, Mass., he intentionally left his parents’ home to test the vivacity of the American Dream. His goal: to have a furnished apartment, a car, and $2,500 in savings within a year.
To make his quest even more challenging, he decided not to use any of his previous contacts or mention his education.
During his first 70 days in Charleston, Shepard lived in a shelter and received food stamps. He also made new friends, finding work as a day laborer, which led to a steady job with a moving company.
Ten months into the experiment, he decided to quit after learning of an illness in his family. But by then he had moved into an apartment, bought a pickup truck, and had saved close to $5,000.
Link (Photo: Nicole Hill) – via Locust & Honey
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GeekAlerts has a neat post showing the Top 10 Geek Cufflinks from Cuff ‘N’ Collars. The compass and thermometer set is both beautiful and functional!
Link | Also check out the Stormtrooper cufflinks
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Ever wonder why home prices are so high? Is it simply because of appreciation in real estate values? Well, at least in Seattle, Washington, there is another factor: government regulation.
Theo Eicher, an economics professor at the University of Washington, analyzed home prices from 1989 to 2006 and found that $200,000 was actually a direct result of government regulation:
Between 1989 and 2006, the median inflation-adjusted price of a Seattle house rose from $221,000 to $447,800. Fully $200,000 of that increase was the result of land-use regulations, says Theo Eicher — twice the financial impact that regulation has had on other major U.S. cities.
"In a nationwide study, it can be shown that Seattle is one of the most regulated cities and a city whose housing prices are profoundly influenced by regulations," he says.
A key regulation is the state’s Growth Management Act, enacted in 1990 in response to widespread public concern that sprawl could destroy the area’s unique character. To preserve it, the act promoted restrictions on where housing can be built. The result is artificial density that has driven up home prices by limiting supply, Eicher says.
If the cost of regulation in Seattle is twice that of other major cities, this still translates to an average of $100,000 in home prices due to regulations even if you don’t live in Seattle.
The Seattle Times has the story by Elizabeth Rhodes: Link – via Scribal Terror
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The National Safety Council has compiled a morbidly fascinating statistics about the odds of dying from or being killed by a specific incident such as a lighting strike, drowning in a bathtub, cataclysmic storm and so forth:
For instance:
A lifetime odds of a person dying in a bus accident is 1 in 94,242; as a pedestrian 1 in 631, as a car occupant 1 in 247. Thinking about gun violence? The chances of you dying from assault by firearm is 1 in 324 and by sharp object 1 in 1,813 (1 in 12,121 during a legal intervention involving firearm discharge).
Link (Photo: Qole Pejorian [Flickr]) – via Miss Cellania
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