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Kamariah Ali, a 57-year-old former teacher in Malaysia was arrested under the strict Islamic Sharia law and jailed for joining a "heretical" Sky Kingdom cult.
Two fascinating things about this report at Telegraph:
1) A Muslim born in Malaysia can’t switch religion
2) The Sky Kingdom cult worshiped a giant teapot, which had since been demolished.
Link – Thanks Emperor! (More Info: Malaysiakini.com)
Bobby S. of Kitsune Noir blog wrote to us about his new Desktop Wallpaper Project:
Basically what I’ve done is contact all of my favorite artists and designers to see if they’d create desktop background which I’ll be giving away to the readers of my blog. I really liked this idea because it’s not only cool to have a desktop wallpaper by your favorite artists, but that it’s also free and accessible by anyone with a computer.
So far there are over 60 contributors with names big and small, but all of them are amazing talented. This week to start the project off I’ve got Tim Biskup, fine art painter and Gama-Go mastermind, Mcbess, an amazing French illustrator who’s going to be very big very soon, and IMAKETHINGS, a British designer with a knack for awesome monsters and colorful environments.
Link – Thanks Bobby! (This one to the top is from Tim Biskup)
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ZOMG! This is the funniest newspaper advice column I’ve read in a while. It’s from the 15 June 2005 installment of "Ask Leslie," an advice column written by librarian Leslie Potter for the Hays Daily News in Northwest Kansas.
The concerned reader sent in this question:
"I hope you can help me with a problem I have with my godson. … I found an unfinished correspondence to a chum of his in his hometown. In it he says he [is] going to to our local pool to "scout out some camel toads." … I’m concerned he is doing drugs.
I tried to look for camel toads in a drug book, and I didn’t find them, but I found references to some type of frog or toads that people in another country lick to hallucinate."
Snopes had a little more about the authenticity of the column (whether it was a real question or whether Potter made it up):
"There were several staff members at the library’s front desk the morning the "camel toads" letter arrived. When I opened and read it, I was thoroughly puzzled, as I had never heard of either camel toads or camel toes. But when I read it aloud to the staff, they practically started rolling on the floor. And their explanation is almost word-for-word what I used in my answer. I kept the original letter as a memento – and to show people who didn’t believe it could be real!"
Contrariwise blog has the larger scan: Link – Thanks Contrariwise!
More than 300,000 gallons of water per second was released from the Glen Canyon Dam into the Grand Canyon today.
This man-made flood is made to simulate natural ones that used to nourish the Grand Canyon’s ecosystem:
"This gives you a glimpse of what nature has been doing for millions of years, cutting through and creating this magnificent canyon," Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne said after he pulled the lever releasing the water from the Glen Canyon Dam.
More than 300,000 gallons of water per second were being released from Lake Powell above the dam near the Arizona-Utah border, enough water to fill the Empire State Building in 20 minutes, Kempthorne said.
Link – Thanks kyax!
That’s Israeli fisherman Novon Mashiah, who thought that it would be a good idea to pose with a 12-foot crocodile. Here’s what happened:
The crocodile had swum towards the boat hoping to be fed fish. "I was shocked, the animal clearly wanted to kill me," said 27-year-old Mr Mashiah.
"One minute I was leaning over the boat teasing it for a picture. The next minute it burst out of the water with incredible speed.
"I jumped back and the croc landed on the boat and then slapped into the water. I was shaking."
Mr Mashiah’s friend Doron Aviguy, 22, took the photograph from a bigger boat nearby. The two Israelis are working as fishermen on the South Alligator River in the Northern Territory of Australia.
Mr Mashiah said: "They come near the boat all the time, probably because we are fishing. I was laughing, but it wasn’t funny in the end. I didn’t realise that crocs were so aggressive."
Link (with much better, bigger pics)
That ugly fish has an air bladder (swim bladder or fish maw) worth its weight in gold (because it is used in Chinese medicine.)
Meet the Chinese Bahaba fish (Bahaba flavolabiata), which hasn’t been seen in the coast of Zhejiang province for 50 years:
"It is dark brown all over, 1.2-meter long and 15-kg in weight," said the veteran fisherman Li who has already frozen the fish. "It’s my first time to see this kind of fish."
A fellow 60-year-old fisherman who came with others to Li to get a glance of the fish told him in great surprise that it is Bahaba flavolabiata (Chinese bahaba) which have disappeared from the site for at least 50 years.
Due to its extreme scarcity, the air bladder of Chinese bahaba is said to be as expensive as gold in weight. More than a decade ago, another fisherman of the same county caught a Chinese bahaba of less than 3.5 kg but fetched for more than 100,000. Therefore, fishermen on the scene urged Li to ask for at least 1 million for his.
Link – Thanks Rob!
Jodie Carey created this fearsome looking "bone" wedding cake out of plaster, steel, wire, and sugarpaste icing. Link | Her homepage – via Who Killed Bambi?
One theory is that the word "testify" was derived from the ancient Roman custom of men holding their testicles with their right hands before giving testimony in court.
And why did the Romans have to hold their balls before they could testify in court? It was so that eunuchs and women were excluded.
We should say that etymologists aren’t unified on this: some say that the origin of testify came from the latin "testis" which means "third person standing by" or "witness." But that’s boring. (Source: American Heirtage Dictionary of the English Language)
Martin Wattenberg and Marek Walczak’s Thinking Machine 4 is not your usual computer chess. When you move your piece, the computer’s thought process is then sketched on the screen as it ponders its move:
A map is created from the traces of literally thousands of possible futures as the program tries to decide its best move. Those traces become a key to the invisible lines of force in the game as well as a window into the spirit of a thinking machine.
The orange lines are potential moves by black (computer) and the green is white (player).
Go ahead, just give it a try and watch the computer think: Link – via Cliff Pickover’s Reality Carnival
The Force is strong with Sandra of Socake blog. Here’s how she made the Yoda birthday cake:
I wrote the birthday message on the cake board the way Yoda would speek…."30 you are" but If I had more room I would have written "Happy Birthday you must have" (I forgot to take a photo after I added the writing)
Link (with a build log, of course) – via Star Wars Blog
We’ve all been told that we should "keep all our options open," but is that really the right thing to do? Not according to Dan Ariely, professor of behavioral economics at the MIT:
In a series of experiments, hundreds of students could not bear to let their options vanish, even though it was obviously a dumb strategy (and they weren’t even asked to burn anything).
The experiments involved a game that eliminated the excuses we usually have for refusing to let go. In the real world, we can always tell ourselves that it’s good to keep options open.
And the scientists learned something new about human behavior: it’s not about keeping the doors open. It’s about avoiding the pain of watching one close:
Apparently they did not care so much about maintaining flexibility in the future. What really motivated them was the desire to avoid the immediate pain of watching a door close.
“Closing a door on an option is experienced as a loss, and people are willing to pay a price to avoid the emotion of loss,” Dr. Ariely says. In the experiment, the price was easy to measure in lost cash. In life, the costs are less obvious — wasted time, missed opportunities. If you are afraid to drop any project at the office, you pay for it at home.
The experiment is kind of tricky, and would take a long time to explain here, so just read about it at this The New York Times report by John Tierney: Link (Photo: Viktor Koen) – via swissmiss
I’m loving this ad of a skeleton made from helmets and Craftsman socket wrenches and spanners! It was made by Y&R Chicago advertising agency, directed by Ken Erke and photographed by Mark La Favor.
Ads of the World has two more: organ and muscles – via Street Anatomy
"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy."
– Ernest Benn, British publisher (1875 – 1954)
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101-year-old Buster Martin is set to compete in the London Marathon on April 13th.
Working plumber Buster Martin ran Sunday’s Roding Valley half marathon in Essex in five hours 13 minutes, and is now focusing on London’s 26-mile event.
On finishing the run, the first words of the ex-member of rock band The Zimmers were: “Where’s my beer?”
Mr Martin, who has 17 children, started work at Pimlico Plumbers in London three years ago because he was bored.
The Zimmers were featured previously on Neatorama. Mr. Martin doesn’t look 101, does he? Link -via Arbroath
If you were a kid at any time during the 80s and 90s and had cable television, chances are that you’re pretty familiar with Clarissa Darling and the Bar None Dude Ranch. Although a shocking (…or not) number of these child actors seemed to call it quits on their television careers not long after their stint on Nickelodeon, some of them went on to bigger and better things. Like what? You know you’re dying to know.
Salute Your Shorts
photo from sydlexia.com
Salute Your Shorts was about kids at a summer camp called Camp Anawanna. It’s relatively obscure, considering it only aired two seasons. But some surprising talent participated in those two seasons, including Blake Sennett (then going by Blake Soper) who is now better known for being the lead guitarist in Rilo Kiley (and possibly dating Winona Ryder). Coincidentally (or not) the Rilo Kiley’s lead singer is Jenny Lewis, who was also a former child star. There’s a hidden song on the Rilo Kiley album “Take Offs and Landings” called “Salute My Shorts” in reference to Blake’s brief stint as Ronnie Pinsky. Also notable is Christine Cavanaugh (Mona the Mail Lady), who later became the voice of Chuckie Finster on Rugrats, Babe the pig and Dexter of Dexter’s Laboratory.
This is pretty much the only fan page I could find for Salute Your Shorts and I’m proud to say it’s from Iowa State University. Maybe we’re the only weirdos who liked this show.
Are You Afraid of the Dark
photo from fewl.net
This was the era of R.L. Stine and Christopher Pike, so I was of course a huge fan of Are You Afraid of the Dark. It was the highlight of my SNICK (Saturday Night Nickelodeon, of course) lineup. I was particularly haunted by the clown doll in the opening credits. Anyway, Dark was about a group of kids (The Midnight Society) who (presumably) snuck out of their houses late at night to meet around a campfire and tell spooky stories. The episode always began with the storyteller saying, “Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, I call this story –”, followed by the title of the story and a dramatic flourish of powder which caused the fire to flare up. I’m sad to report that most of the 15 kids involved in the show over its seven-year run don’t seem to be doing much now, with a few exceptions:
Clarissa Explains It All
photo from www.thur.de
Before Melissa Joan Hart was Sabrina Spellman, she was Clarissa Darling. She battled horrors like her brother Ferguson (Ferg-wad), zits and surviving before getting her driver’s license. It was an interesting show because it broke the barrier between viewer and character by having Clarissa address the viewer Ferris Bueller-style.
I have to admit I was mildly in love with Clarissa’s best friend Sam, but unfortunately it doesn’t look like he’s done much acting since. It might surprise you to know that Elizabeth Hess, who played Clarissa’s mom, is now teaching acting at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. At least, I was surprised. Irritating genius Ferg-wad ended up going to Notre Dame in real life.
Hey Dude
photo from Amazon.com
As far as I can tell, Hey Dude was Christine Taylor’s big start. It was the story of a city slicker, who, sick of stressful life in New York, bought a dude ranch in Arizona. He wasn’t quite as talented at running a ranch as crunching numbers, though, so we are constantly entertained by his bumbling ways and how his teenage staff is constantly coming to his rescue. The series was filmed on location at Tanque Verde Guest Ranch near Tucson and apparently some of it is still standing (although in bad shape). We all know Christine Taylor was Marcia, Marcia, Marcia, and married Ben Stiller, but what about the rest of them? Well, Jonathan Galkin, who played Mr. Ernst’s nephew, Jake, is the co-founder of DFA Records. DFA has produced and remixed artists such as Nine Inch Nails, Gorillaz, The Chemical Brothers and Le Tigre. Who know cousin Jake would turn out to be so cool??
So, tell me – am I the only one who watched these shows? Did I miss one of your favorites? Do tell.
If y’all remember the ill-fated Arby’s self-service touchscreen ordering, here’s something like it, but for expensive wine.
Andrew Blum of Wired Magazine writes about a trip to Adour, a restaurant at New York’s St. Regis Hotel where ordering a glass of wine is like something out of Minority Report:
Choose a type and a bottle — hand and finger movements reveal its details (grape, origin, tasting notes, cost). The info unfolds with an animated flourish out of a flower icon; think Minority Report meets Sideways. Behind the alcohol-enabling magic is a lot of technology: Cameras and object-recognition software track your hand gestures — and ignore stuff like glassware — following the motion with a trail of projected white pixel dust. And all that vino data stays safe on a dedicated Web server.
Link – via AndrewBlum.net
Photo: NATO Exercise Cooperative Osprey 1996, Camp Lejeune, North Carolina
Bryan Finoki of Subtopia blog has an interesting post about "mysterious simulacrums of urban space":
… ghostly MOUT (Military Operation on Urban Terrain) training facilities where entire pseudo landscapes and quasi architectures are designed solely for the purposes of being conquered and reconquered, over and over again to help prepare the armed forces for counter-insurgency warfare in cities abroad–life inside a simulative architectural loop; landscape as militaristic prop.
The article goes on to talk about the "Mecca" of military urban training: a mysterious camp called CAMOUT being built deep in the middle of nowhere, USA:
So, what will a quarter of a billion dollars get you? Well, reading on we learn CAMOUT, if completed as planned, will include 1,560 buildings (some as high as five stories) in seven separate districts: the urban core (as previously described), east and west stadium districts, a hospital district, an ‘old town’ which will actually be modeled on Sadr City (a suburb of Baghdad), and finally an industrial district as well as a diplomatic district. “A city like no one has ever seen,” it will be “bisected by a river, already in place, that’s up to 80 feet wide in some spots,” even though in reality we are told it will contain absolutely no water. “Some areas will have buildings that have been reduced to rubble and there will be shanty towns around the city” …
This is a familiar experience for most of us: getting stuck in a traffic jam only to find out later that there is no obvious cause (like accident, construction work or bottleneck).
Well, Japanese scientist Yuki Sugiyama of Nagoya University has finally found the answer: the traffic jam is caused by … too many cars!
In the New Journal of Physics a study by his group explains why we’re occasionally caught in jams for no obvious reason.
The real origin of the snarl up often has nothing to do with obvious obstructions such as accidents or construction work but is simply the result of there being too many cars.
The team discovered the importance of traffic density by applying techniques to model the movements of lots of particles to real-life moving traffic. The research shows that even tiny fluctuations in car-road density cause a chain reaction which can lead to a jam.
The team also studied cars driving around a circular track with a circumference of 230m. They put 22 cars on the road and asked the drivers to go steadily at 30km/h (19mph) around the track. While the flow was initially free, the effect of a driver altering his speed reverberated around the track and led to brief standstills.
Prof Sugiyama says, "Although the emerging jam in our experiment is small, its behaviour is not different from large ones on highways. When a large number of vehicles, beyond the road capacity, are successively injected into the road, the density exceeds the critical value and the free flow state becomes unstable."
Update 3/22/08 – Here’s a video clip that illustrates what happened:
That’s the Space Odyssey room in FantaSuite Hotel in Burnsville, Minnesota. It’s a recreation of a Gemini Space Capsule, with a custom 10-sided bed and a "moon crater" tiled whirlpool.
The FantaSuite Hotel, as its name implies, specializes in themed hotel rooms, like Castle, Cave, Pharaoh’s Chamber, Sherwood Forest for adults to … um, act out their fantasies. Yeah. That’s it.
Link – via Blog Like You Give a Damn
In Michel Gondry’s film Be Kind Rewind, Jack Black accidentally erased the videotapes at his friend’s (played by Mos Def) VHS store. To make up for it, they "sweded" or remade classic movies into funny short films starring themselves
David Chen of Always Watching blog has compiled the top 10 fan-made "sweded’ homemade films – from Predator to Star Wars to Lord of the Rings.
Some of them are better than the original movies! Link – Thanks David! More fan-made sweded videos here: Link
Update 3/21/08: More at SwededFilms.com – Thanks Nick Underwood!
We posted a tip on how to lose weight by eating breakfast before on Neatorama, but I think it’s safe to say that if you eat this, then all bets are off.
Behold the Lady’s Brunch Burger by none other than Paula Deen of Paula’s Home Cooking at the Food Network TV channel. And yes, that’s a meat patty, egg, and bacon in between glazed donuts.
Link | Recipe – Thanks raphael!
Are you unhappy at your job? Ever wonder what it’s like to have the job of your dreams? Here’s VocationVacation, a service that match people with established mentors to let them "test drive" their dream jobs, from winemaking to TV producing:
In 2003, Kurth’s VocationVacations opened with a small stable of mentors that’s now 300 strong. Mentorships last a few days and cost
anywhere from $600 (animal therapist, brewmaster) to $2,000 (music producer, race car pit crew member).The most popular? Brewmaster, cheesemaker, sports announcer and comedian. Mentors pocket a small fee — and may even meet their next hire: A few adult interns have left the stint with a job offer.
"To answer that nagging ‘What if?’ without losing the time and cash that switching careers usually takes is huge," says Kurth, whose book, "Test-Drive Your Dream Job," encourages readers to answer that question. For a relatively small investment, he says, "people walk away with peace of mind."
Some people find out that the dream jobs they’ve always wanted are as good as they thought they would be. But some find out that the jobs are actually nightmares:
Henry Yamamoto, who’d spent days at his software job daydreaming about running a canine daycare, needed that reality check. "I’d been thinking, ‘I’ll get to spend all day around a bunch of dogs,’" he says.
After a VocationVacations mentorship at Seattle’s Dog Day Out, he realized "it’s like running a preschool: 25 dogs from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., all getting revved up and tired at different times … and they all poop."
Link – Thanks Tiffany! (Photo: mio_pls [Flickr])
