HOME |
RSS | 
Whaaaat? Did Mary Poppins lie 40 years ago? Robert Krulwich of ABC World News with Charles Gibson’s webcast investigates in this hard hitting piece:
[The mystery] involves the world’s most beloved nanny, Marry Poppins, and you may recall in the movie … that Mary teaches the worlds to say Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. Forward and backward. But did she really?
I smell a Peabody Award: Link – Thanks Zach!
Garfield minus Garfield is a surprisingly funny fan-mod of the popular comic strip, where Garfield the cat is erased from every panel, leaving a flustered and somewhat crazy-looking Jon Arbuckle:
Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolor disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life?
Bug Battle Combat by FineFin Games fulfills my two criteria for a fun Flash game: 1) it’s easy to play 2) it’s mindless fun!
In this game you’re a square swat paddle that squishes bugs on contact. You’ve got to protect your base from the swarm. If you think it’s easy, just wait till there’s a LOT of bugs comin’ at you.
Link (on Neatorama) – via ArcadeTown
Comments Off
ZOMG! This sock zombie plushie by Etsy seller underroos is SO cute! This one is the Blue and Brown Toehorn Zombie:
You know what you need? A zombie made out of socks. It’s better than an ACTUAL zombie in so many ways! I mean, can you put an actual zombie in your backpack? Sure, but just that one time.
14-inches tall at his highest nubbin, the Toe Horned Zombie is perhaps my crowning zombie achievement. Machine and hand stitched from one new crew sock (body), and one new toe sock (horns and nubbins). So soft and cuddly you’ll think it was made from a polyester bunny rabbit. Button eyes, glittery puff paint blood drool. Keep an eye on your pets. Or… on your other socks.
And why would you need a zombie sock?
"Throwing a zombie at your enemy is just like throwing an apple, except that your enemy’s brains get eaten. And you don’t waste an apple."
Link – Thanks Annie Fischer!
Via Pink Tentacle. According to Wikipedia, cloud streets are
rows of cumulus or cumulus-type clouds aligned parallel to the low-level wind. The most favorable conditions for their formation occur when the lowermost layer of air is unstable, but is capped by an inversion -by a stable layer of air. This often occurs when upper air is subsiding, such as under anticyclonic conditions, and is also frequently found when radiation fog has formed overnight. Convection occurs below the inversion , with air rising in thermals below the clouds and sinking in the air between the streets.
Enturbulation.org (a website dedicated to expose Scientology) user dr3k just uploaded some scans of a 1934 German book "Scientologie" that appeared to be the inspiration of L. Ron Hubbard’s Church of Scientology.
Link – via Boing Boing
Scientists had uncovered a 150-million-year-old fossil "treasure trove" in an Arctic island chain of Svalbard.
Among the find is an immense sea creature 50 ft (15 m) long, a new species of pliosaur aptly nicknamed "The Monster":
"These animals were awesomely powerful predators," said plesiosaur palaeontologist Richard Forrest.
"If you compare the skull of a large pliosaur to a crocodile, it is very clear it is much better built for biting… by comparison with a crocodile, you have something like three or four times the cross-sectional space for muscles. So you have much bigger, more powerful muscles and huge, robust jaws.
"A large pliosaur was big enough to pick up a small car in its jaws and bite it in half."
Link (Photo: Tor Sponga, BT) – Thanks Justin!
Previously on Neatorama: Strangest Dinosaur Names
Photo: Omar Yaghi and Rahul Banerjee/UCLA
Researchers had developed a new nanoscale crystal called ZIF (zeolitic imidazolate framerwork) that can trap 80x its volume of carbon dioxide:
This particular crystal has excited proponents of carbon-capturetechnology for its ability to absorb CO2 and nothing else, but the process that head researcher Omar Yahgi and his lab used to develop the compound is potentially much more significant.
Yahgi’s lab employs automation techniques frequently found in the biotech and pharmaceutical industry to rapidly test crystal samples on a scale not previously possible, which has led to an avalanche of new discoveries. At one point, the technique was yielding so many potentially useful compounds that Yahgi had to ask his students to stop so they could publish their findings. Possible uses for crystals that can selectively absorb specific molecules are numerous, including military applications and hydrogen-fuel storage for green vehicles.
Link – Thanks Dave Bullock!
This is a intriguing yet creepy idea for a screensaver:
SurveillanceSaver is a screensaver which shows live images of over 400 network surveillance cameras worldwide. Yep, when your computer is idle you’ll get to see a live feed of what’s going on in other parts of the world. It’s quite fascinating because of the voyeuristic element involved but also surreal because it compresses time-space.
Something is happening right at the moment elsewhere and you are a witness to it. It is real but since it’s only an image, you tend to question its verity a little more than what you see with your eyes. Sometimes I can’t bear to look away from the screen because I’m always expecting something to happen just that moment, maybe a car accident or a cute girl would enter into the frame.
Available for OS X and Windows version (but not Vista, supposedly): Link – Thanks Jon Jason!
Oooh, Pizza Hut USA so got nothin’ on this! Behold the whole shrimp cheese bite pizza, created by the pizza chain’s counterpart in Japan and south Korea:
For the pizza lover who also craves shrimp and cheese wrapped in dough, Pizza Hut has created the Whole Shrimp Cheese Bite. Because nothing gets the stomach juices flowing quite as well as a ring of shrimp with tails dangling in the air and heads swaddled in tubes of cheese-stuffed dough.
Just one of 10 crazy Asian Pizza Crusts, compiled lovingly over at Slice blog: Link – Thanks raphael!
WARNING: IF THE IMAGE BELOW MAKES YOU DIZZY, LEAVE THIS PAGE, SCROLL DOWN OR JUST LOOK AWAY.
The Purple Nurple Optical Illusion by Walter Anthony
Neatorama reader Walt Anthony shares with us his blog, geared to educate kids about optical illusions. Walt did a good job in explaining the illusions in the post:
Anomalous Motion Optical Illusion aka Peripheral Drift Optical Illusion is characterized by anomalous motion that can be observed in peripheral vision. [...]
Keep in mind that this is a static image. It is not animated in any way. but as your vision moves back and forth the center area seems to be moving toward the center (contracting) and the outer edges seem to be moving away (expanding) from the center. Also worth noting is that if you fixate on a point in the center and don’t move your eyes this anomalous motion will stop.
I also applaud him for giving credit where credits are due – most optical illusion blogs rip off images without giving any clue as of the artist.
Link to more examples of Anomalous Motion Optical Illusion | Optical Illusion 4 Kids – Thanks Walt!
Now this is something that tickled my inner geek (not that my outer geek is any less geeky): a dance competition for scientists called Dance Your Ph.D. contest.
Organized by Ph.D. studnet Nilay Yapici at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology in Vienna, the contest was all about how to showcase students’ thesis … in form of interpretive dance:
No one was surprised when he scooped the prize. For one thing, Stewart wore nothing but a shimmering, translucent loin cloth. (That’s worth a few bonus points in my book.) But the judges told me afterward that his dance stood out because it accomplished two things at once. Most importantly, "he connected with the audience," said Pastorini. "That is the purpose of dance: to create emotions." A big help was his choice of music—a jazz interpretation of African Pygmy tribal music by Herbie Hancock—which created an atmosphere of funky ancientness.
But like all the dancers, Stewart had a second job: to somehow convey his Ph.D. thesis. Before the show, each dancer had about 60 seconds to describe their research to the judges. So this was more than just a dance contest. Folded in was the ability to summarize your work succinctly. In Stewart’s case, that work is titled "Refitting repasts: a spatial exploration of food processing, sharing, cooking, and disposal at the Dunefield Midden campsite, South Africa." His highly stylized chase of an antelope—played by fellow University of Oxford archaeologist Giulia Saltini-Semerari—followed by processing and sharing of the goods, was elegant. "What I most looked for was that scientific ideas came across," said Gschmeidler. "He did this perfectly."
Link (with videos) – Thanks Richard!
Nubrella, the hands free umbrella, looks like a giant transparent Pac-Man chomping down on your head. The company hailed it as "the umbrella of the 21st century" and "the ultimate weather protector."
The umbrella is worn with adjustable shoulder strap and can stops rain, wind, and snow while keeping your arms free to shoo away curious people.
Link – Thanks MH!
If you weren’t lucky enough to see the spectacular lunar eclipse last week, Regina Rickert of At Close Range Photography has a neat collage of the event.
Link – Thanks Regina and sorry I was a bit late in posting it (I’ve been sick)
More eclipse pictures at Flickr.
Over at Cartoon Brew, there is a YouTube clip of a 1930′s wartime Japanese cartoon, featuring characters ganked straight out of Disney.
Watch the brave Japanese warrior doing battle with "Mickey Mouse" army:
David Gerstein and Cole Johnson found this delightfully primitive 1934 Japanese cartoon about a war in 1936(?). Clearly inspired by Hollywood cartoons of the era, one can read plenty into the fact that the brave Japanese warriors are doing battle with a “mickey mouse” army. Says Gerstein:
Maybe it’s a “Nutcracker Suite”-inspired thing? Dunno if the “Nutcracker” was known in Japan in the 1930s, and this uses pre-”Nutcracker” classical themes, but it does have a mouse kingdom trying to take over a toyland-like world. What’s great, though, is that the mice are obvious Mickey clones, and at about 1:45 a cat lead briefly mutates into Felix. The music over the main and end titles sounds like it belongs with a 1930 Terrytoon or Van Beuren, doesn’t it?
Link (with historical account of the cartoon in the blog’s comment) – Thanks Widgett Walls!
We’ve posted about sorting books by color before (here and here), but it’s nice to see it done on a more manageable scale: here’s Neatorama reader Chad’s chromatic arrangement of his son’s Dr. Seuss collection. Astute readers will notice that it’s arranged in ROYGBIV order, with white on the side.
William Hakvaag, the director of a war museum in Norway, said that he had found drawings of Disney character drawn by Hitler!
He found coloured cartoons of the characters Bashful and Doc from the 1937 Disney film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which were signed A.H., and an unsigned sketch of Pinocchio as he appeared in the 1940 Disney film.
Hitler tried to make a living as an artist before his rise to power. While there was no independent confirmation yesterday that the drawings were the work of the Nazi leader, Hitler is known to have owned a copy of Snow White, the classic animated adaptation of a German fairy tale, and to have viewed it in his private cinema.
Mr Hakvaag, who said he had performed tests on the paintings which suggested that they dated from 1940, said: "I am 100 per cent sure that these are drawings by Hitler. If one wanted to make a forgery, one would never hide it in the back of a picture, where it might never be discovered."
The initials on the sketches, and the signature on the painting, matched other copies of Hitler’s handwriting, he claimed.
From the Feb 1934 issue of Modern Mechanix, here’s the locomotive French popcorn and peanut stand:
All locomotive parts above the wheels are ingeniously made from sheet metal. A small boiler supplies steam for the locomotive whistle, but this whistle has the characteristic squeaky note of the popcorn wagon.
I say bring back this Locomotive Popcorn Stand! Link
WebUrbanist has a pretty neat post about "transformer" furniture: things that unfold/unpack into beds, tables, chairs, and sofas. This one above, mobile furniture called casulo, is a complete bedroom set in a box.
Some 40 million people worldwide take the antidepressant drug Prozac. But according to a new study, it’s actually no better than placebo.
What’s even more damning is that the scientists got the data from studies that the pharmaceutical companies chose not to publish, through the Freedom of Information Act:
The review breaks new ground because Kirsch and his colleagues have obtained for the first time what they believe is a full set of trial data for four antidepressants.
They requested the full data under freedom of information rules from the Food and Drug Administration, which licenses medicines in the US and requires all data when it makes a decision.
The pattern they saw from the trial results of fluoxetine (Prozac), paroxetine (Seroxat), venlafaxine (Effexor) and nefazodone (Serzone) was consistent. "Using complete data sets (including unpublished data) and a substantially larger data set of this type than has been previously reported, we find the overall effect of new-generation antidepressant medication is below recommended criteria for clinical significance," they write.
Link – via Blue’s News
Regardless of whether Prozac works for humans, it seems that it works very well for parrots: Owners Give Prozac to Depressed Pets – via Look at This
Neil Harbisson is a color-blind artist who can now paint – in color – thanks to a cybernetic device called the Eyeborg which converts 360 colors into different sounds:
As an art student at Dartington College of Arts in Devon, he painted only in black and white because that is all he saw. But three years ago he met Adam Montandon, a cybernetics expert who came to give a lecture at the college.
After the talk, Montandon was told of Harbisson’s condition and he took up the challenge of solving the problem, enabling Harbisson to paint in colour. The artist suffers from achromatopsia – or complete congenital colour blindness.
Montandon decided to harness the way in which different colours reflect light at different frequencies, with light vibrating fastest from violet and slowest from red.
The first device fitted to Harbisson’s head was fairly primitive, letting him “hear” only six colours. His current model is far more sophisticated, giving him access to 360 colours.
Montandon created the Eyeborg system, manufactured by HMC Interactive, the design company in Plymouth that he co-founded. It is a head-mounted digital camera that reads the colours directly in front of it. The camera is connected to a laptop computer, carried in a backpack, which slows down the frequency of light waves to the frequency of sound waves. The computer then sends the “sound” of each colour to an earpiece worn by Harbisson. Montandon expects the system eventually to be as small as an MP3 player.
Previously on Neatorama: The Blind Painter
Scientists have known for some time that fish can tell big shoals from small ones, but now they’ve discovered that they do so by counting:
‘We have provided the first evidence that fish exhibit rudimentary mathematical abilities,’ says experimental psychologist Christian Agrillo of the University of Padova in Italy, who made the discovery while studying a group mosquitofish (Gambusia holbrooki). [...]
His team first conducted a series of experiments to see whether a lone mosquitofish would prefer to join a shoal of between two and four others. Females preferred to join shoals that were larger by just one fish significantly more often; consistently preferring shoals of four fish rather than three fish, and consistently preferring shoals of three fish over those containing just two. This means the fish were clearly able to count up to four and demonstrates that fish have a rudimentary mathematical ability to visually count how many items are present if the number is small.
A second series of experiments revealed the fish’s ability to process larger numbers. The fish were not able to directly count over four, but they were able to distinguish between larger numbers if they differed by a ratio of 2:1. For example, the fish could distinguish between a shoal of 16, compared to a shoal of eight others. But they could not tell the difference between a shoal of 12 compared to a shoal of eight, a ratio of 3:2. This demonstrates that fish are able to visually estimate larger numbers – but not very accurately.
Although it doesn’t sound much, it is actually on a par with the numerical abilities of monkeys and human infants between six and 12 months old, who are both able to visually count small numbers and less accurately estimate larger ones.
Michael Jack is a recording engineer and music producer by day and an avid collector of transistor radios by night!
His collection of vintage transistor radios, especially those made in Japan, are astounding and he’s kindly shared with us by uploading his collections onto Flickr and Squirl:
The first Japanese transistor radio was produced by Sony, the legendary TR-55. It was released in August of 1955 in Japan. Only 50 units made it into Canada, no other country in the world had access to these radios.
Soon other Japanese manufacturers like Toshiba, Sanyo, Sharp, NEC, Standard, Hitachi, Aiwa, Realtone, Kobe Kogyo, Koyo and Mitsubishi joined in and cracked the North American and worldwide market. Their radio designs were colorful, full of chrome and were inspired by Western pop culture. Automotive motifs, outer space and googie angles appealed to the emerging youth culture who could now afford their own radios.
Between 1957 and 1963 (refered to as the golden age of transistor radios) Japanese companies changed the electronic landscape forever. Most American companies couldn’t compete with the lower prices and visually stunning radios, thus closed up shop and moved their manufacturing to the South Pacific.
Link [Flickr] – via growabrain
