HOME |
RSS | 
Been awhile since I posted a Threadless t-shirt design. This one is by Nathaniel Troubador. You can vote for (or against) the design by clicking on the handy voting widget:
You can see some other clever t-shirt designs like America’s greatest presidents as the Fantastic Four here. Or click here to see Charlie Brown’s suitably pathetic Christmas tree.
To help celebrate sandwich shop Erbert and Gerbert celebrate their 20 year of making "subs worth discovering," Dustin Black and friends built this amazing contraption: Candle Cannon, the world’s most powerful air vortex cannon. Why? To blow the birthday candles, of course!
Check it out: Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] | CandleCannon website – Thanks Adam and Dustin!
Null Hypothesis: The Journal of Unlikely Science has a neat compilation of 10 of the most unscientific urban legends. Like this one of when Alabama tried to redefine the value of pi, for example:
The story goes that state of Alabama tried to redefine the value of pi to be exactly three – a far more precise and biblical number. You can’t have constants, such as pi, running around with infinite numbers of decimals after all – it’s far too untidy.
According to the Bible, King Solomon made a bowl that was 10 cubits from rim to rim and 30 cubits in circumference, which would seem to indicate that the value of pi is in fact exactly three. Surely the Bible knows what it’s talking about? Although we should probably ignore the fact that this biblical item was not a pure mathematical shape but a solid object with a thick rim to confuse calculations. Anyway the important thing is that in Alabama, the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter has now been returned to its proper value.
Well, no not really. But it was a rather funny report from Mark Boslough on April Fool’s day 1998. The story later mutated and spread across the Internet. Part of its appeal might be the element of truth – in 1897 the Indiana House of Representatives unanimously passed a bill stating that ‘a circular area is to the square on a line equal to the quadrant of the circumference, as the area of an equilateral rectangle is to the square of one side’; fortunately the Senate decided to postpone the act indefinitely (probably because it made absolutely no sense – Ed). Thus pi to this day remains an extremely irritating and untidy number.
Check out the whole list: Link – Thanks Jon Jason!
New Scientist has a very interesting article on Dr. James Barry, a pioneering military surgeon and Inspector General of Military Hospitals in Canada in the early 1800s. Barry was medical reformer who fought for better food, sanitation, and proper medical care for soldiers, civilians, prisoners and lepers (He once won a duel to get a leper colony built.)
Funny thing was: there was no such man as Dr. James Barry – "he" was actually a "she" and her name was Margaret Ann Bulkley:
The flaw in the scheme was that no British medical school admitted women. If Margaret was to qualify as a doctor, she would have to masquerade as a boy for three whole years.
The disappearance of Margaret Bulkley and the appearance of a young medical student called James Barry was carefully orchestrated. The Bulkleys were unknown in Scotland, so they planned to establish themselves there as aunt and nephew. Du Preez discovered that they traveled to Edinburgh by sea, rather than stagecoach. Newly enrolled at university, the freshly minted "James Barry" wrote to Reardon: "It was very usefull for Mrs Bulkley (my aunt) to have a Gentleman to take care of her on Board Ship and to have one in a strange country." This indicates precisely when the metamorphosis of Margaret took place, says du Preez. She must have had to board the ship already dressed as a boy, or risk shipboard rumours following them to Edinburgh.
To protect Margaret’s secret, the pair cut themselves off from friends and family. Only the conspirators knew who they were and where they were. From now on, Margaret kept herself to herself, always wore an overcoat and lied about her age to avoid questions about her smooth chin and high voice.
Scott McLeod of Dangerously Irrelevant blog wrote to us about his post, titled "Out of Control K-12 Classrooms," secretly (or not so-secretly) taped by student cell phone cameras.
Scott asks:
Do we want students bringing to public attention these types of classroom incidents? Should students be punished or applauded for filming and posting these?
//In the first clip on the post, I can’t help but actually symphatize with the teacher. The YouTube clip was titled "Classroom Hot Head," but I think the teacher handled the situation very well. Seems like kids today have very little respect for their teachers.
That’s an old shoe-fitting x-ray machine, which was a popular gimmick in shoe stores in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The machine went the way of the dodo bird when it was discovered that the hazards from x-ray radiation weren’t worth the proper fit of shoes:
The primary component of a shoe-fitting x-ray unit was the fluoroscope which consisted essentially of an x-ray tube mounted near the floor and wholly or partially enclosed in a shielded box and a fluorescent screen. The x-rays penetrated the shoes and feet and then struck the fluorescent light. This resulted in an image of the feet within the shoes. The fluorescent image was reflected to three viewing ports at the top of the cabinet, where the customer, the salesperson, and a third person (your mother?) could view the image at the same time.
The radiation hazards associated with shoe fitting x-ray units were recognized as early as 1950. The machines were often out of adjustment and were constructed so radiation leaked into the surrounding area.
This particular unit, however, was in operation in a shoe store in West Virginia as late as 1981: Link – Thanks choggie!
Movie monsters are getting bigger and tougher over time, and it may take new technologies to defeat them. Danger Room takes a look at the new and improved monsters, and the weapons the military should use to defend humanity.
It’s difficult to make accurate assumptions about 500 foot-tall fictional monsters whose very existence violates the laws of physics. But it’s liable to have skin, scales or other outer with protective blubber or equivalent covering several feet thick. This will absorb anything except apart from an armor-piercing round. Flesh, like water, can stop virtually any projectile within a few feet – that’s why you need something very exotic like a supercavitating round if you want to go through a lot of it. Those supercavitating Russian APS underwater assault rifles might be handy here… but you’d need a lot of rounds to have any effect.
Link to part one, link to part two. -via Metafilter
Does your computer or entertainment system look like a chaotic spaghetti factory? Then read the Top 10 Ways to Get Cables Under Control. Each tip has a link to instructions. I know from experience that “just getting them out of the way” is an open invitation to herds of dust bunnies. Link
Eve, a hen in Worcestershire, had a leg amputated 18 months ago due to cancer. Now she has undergone surgery to remove a tumor from her remaining leg, at a cost of over £1,000. Owner Elaine Denney said money is not an issue.
“I wouldn’t put Eve through it if I didn’t think she still would have quality of life and if I thought she would suffer too much during the treatment.”
Link -via Arbroath, who has the video report.
When Scot Simpson bought his circa 1953 house in Charlottte NC, little did he know that he would find an 8-by-12-foot bunker buried beneath his lawn mower shed.
“The bomb shelter was built about 1960 or 1961″, said Earle Heath, who still lives next door. Heath was 12 or 13 back then. “The owner of the house was in the construction business”, he said, “and sent workers over to dig the hole and pour the concrete”.
That would have been just before the Cuban missile crisis, when many Americans feared nuclear Armageddon.
Simpson would like to get rid of the poured concrete and steel bunker, but doesn’t know what’s involved in getting rid of it.
Source: Charlotte Observer
Today’s collaboration with What is it? blog brings us this gruesome looking object. If you can guess what it is, there’s a free Neatorama T-shirt in it for you.
Contest rules are easy as pie: place your guess in the comment section, one guess per comment, please. You can submit as many as you’d like. Please post no URL – let others play. The first correct guess will win the T-shirt (old design), but if no one guessed right, then the funniest one will win instead.
Good luck! For more clues and pics, check out What is it? blog.
Update 3/7/08 – great guesses, guys! Here’s the answer:
These were placed onto the head of a calf when they wanted it to stop nursing on the cow, the cow would get poked by the spikes and push the calf away, patent number 1,882,232. An easier solution would be to put them in separate pens, but apparently that wasn’t always an option.
Congrats to kusito #11 who got it right!
| The following is reprinted from Uncle John’s Unstoppable Bathroom Reader book.
In the 1960s, some miners put a phone booth in the middle of the Mojave Desert. Long after they left, the booth remained … waiting for someone to call. HELLO? ANYBODY THERE? Miles from the nearest town, the old phone booth stood at the junction of two dirt roads. Its windows were shot out; the overhead light was gone. Yet the phone lines on the endless rows of poles still popped and clicked in anticipation – just as they’d been doing for nearly 30 years. Finally, in 1997, it rang.
A guy named Deuce had read about the booth and called the number … and continued to call until a desert dweller named Lorene answered. Deuce wrote a story about his call to nowhere, posted it on his website … and the word spread through cyberspace. Someone else called. Then another person, and another – just to see if someone would answer. And quite often someone did. Only accessible by four wheel drive, the lonely phone booth soon became a destination. Travelers drove for hours just to answer the phone. One Texas man camped there for 32 days … and answered more than 500 calls. REACH OUT AND TOUCH SOMEONE Someone posted a call log in the booth to record where people were calling from: as close as Los Angeles and as far away as New Zealand and Kosovo. Why’d they call? Some liked the idea of two people who’ve never met – and probably never will – talking to each other. Just sending a call out into the Great Void and having someone answer was reward enough for most. Unfortunately, in 2000 the National Park Service and Pacific Bell tore down the famous Mojave phone booth. Reason? It was getting too many calls. The traffic (20 to 30 visitors a day) was starting to have a negative impact on the fragile desert environment. The old stop sign at the cattle grate still swings in the wind. And the phone lines still pop and click in anticipation. But all that’s left of the loneliest phone on Earth is a ghost ring. So if the urge strikes you to dial (760) 733-9969, be prepared to wait a very, very long time for someone to answer. |
|
 |
The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Unstoppable Bathroom Reader.
Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!
|
Here’s Brian, the dog from Family Guy, singing the world’s most famous tune (Come on, admit it, it’s a catchy tune!) Hit play or go to Link [YouTube]
It’s long been known that girls develop superior language abilities earlier than boys, but until now, no one has any scientific proof.
Now, researchers at Northwestern University and the University of Haifa got the biological proof:
… areas of the brain associated with language work harder in girls than in boys during language tasks, and that boys and girls rely on different parts of the brain when performing these tasks.
"Our findings — which suggest that language processing is more sensory in boys and more abstract in girls — could have major implications for teaching children and even provide support for advocates of single sex classrooms," said Douglas D. Burman, research associate in Northwestern’s Roxelyn and Richard Pepper Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders.
Previously on Neatorama: Is Single-Sex Education Better Than Coeducation?
Ladies and gentlemen, meet your ancestor – in fact the ancestor of all animal life on Earth – the comb jelly.
Biologist Casey Dunn of Brown University and colleagues used DNA data from various species to determine that the comb jelly (Ctenophore), which emerged some 600 million years ago, is our true ancient ancestor:
Textbook knowledge says that sponges were the first cab off the rank when multicellular life began to diversify. Our study shows comb jellies, which have well-developed tissues and a nervous system, branched off from other animals even before the lowly sponge (which don’t have any tissues or nerve cells). This radically changes our understanding of one of the most fundamental steps on the path to modern animals."
If comb jellies branch first, as the new tree shows, then either sponges aren’t as primitively simple they seemed (new hypothesis: they could have simplified later) or else comb jellies evolved a complex body plan separately from the rest of us.’
Don’t mess with Joe Weston-Webb’s business! He’s devised what is probably the ultimate anti-burglar system after being targeted by vandalism, break-ins, and even arson:
Every night Joe Weston-Webb loads chicken droppings into a 30ft catapult and primes a cannon that used to fire his wife with a railway sleeper, all in the name of security.
The police aren’t amused:
… police have told him he will be prosecuted if he unleashes the wrath of the 30ft-tall Roman catapult – filled with chicken poo collected from a nearby farm – on any yobs he catches on his property.
The businessman has even put up a sign outside his property reading: "WARNING. These premises are protected by Smart Poo and railway sleeper projectiles."
Mr Weston-Webb vowed to ignore the warning – and said his battle highlighted the plight of worried home-owners across the country.
Neuroscientists from UC Berkeley have developed a rudimentary brain scanner that can "read your mind" to tell you what you’re looking at:
The scientists used a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine — a real-time brain scanner — to record the mental activity of a person looking at thousands of random pictures: people, animals, landscapes, objects, the stuff of everyday visual life. With those recordings the researchers built a computational model for predicting the mental patterns elicited by looking at any other photograph. When tested with neurological readouts generated by a different set of pictures, the decoder passed with flying colors, identifying the images seen with unprecedented accuracy.
Suicide is non-existent among the Tiv of Nigeria, the Andaman Islanders, and the Yahgans of Tierra del Fuego.
Suicide is present but very rare among black American females, Irish Catholics, Mexicans, and Muslims in Egypt; Suicides are common in Hungary, Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Japan, and Finland. (Source: Comprehensive Textbook of Suicidology)
Elizabeth Barrett looks like any other 17-month-old babies, with one exception: she can read!
Her mother Katy, a speech pathologist who is married to Michael, another speech pathologist, said that most people don’t believe their infant is a reader.
"The joke is that since we see kids with language problems, we think anybody with normal language skills is a genius. But as time goes on, it’s harder to deny that she’s exceptional," said Katy. [...]
Elizabeth talks like she’s 1, but she reads like she’s 7.
So what does her doctor think? Dr. Steve Stripling, Elizabeth’s pediatrician, says at 14 months he saw her sight read the word avocado. "I was floored", he said.
Link (with video) – via Arbroath
