Archive for June, 2008
The Particle Zoo
Adorable subatomic particles you can cuddle up with! The Particle Zoo is made up of quarks, neutrinos, gluons, and others that each have their own personality. Meet the muon, who lives fast and dies young, the up quark and the down quark, who are best friends, and Higgs boson, who everyone wants to meet. Pictured is the strange quark and the gluon. Link -via Metafilter
Comment (9)
email
this 
+digg 
+del.icio.us 
+reddit 
+SUSitcom Settings
Today’s Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss will find out how well you know the places where televisions sitcoms took place. I scored 67%, which surprised me because there were a lot of shows in this quiz I have never seen. Link
The End of Summer
Best surfing movies:
1. Endless Summer
2. Riding Giants
3. North Shore
Worst:
1. Blue Crush (I walked out on it)
You can vote for (or against) this Threadless t-shirt design by clicking on the voting widget.
Thing That Change After College
Hah - Miss Cellania posted a list of the 24 things that changed since college. A sneak peek:
17. You’re the one calling the police because those damn kids next door won’t turn down the music.
18. You get out of bed in the morning even if it’s raining.
19. Older relatives feel comfortable telling sex jokes around you.
20. You always know where you are when you wake up.
21. Your car insurance goes down and your car payments go up.
How many of them do you agree with? Link
Hope, the Bionic Dog: We Can Rebuild Her, We Have the Technology
Hope the Maltese puppy was born without front legs, so orthotist David Turnbill made her a wheeled-device (out of airplane model parts) that lets her skate through life!
Emily Bregel of the Times Free Press has the story: Link - via Scribal Terror
(Photo: Tim Barber)
Sometimes the Headline Just Writes Itself …
I bet you dollar to donuts that Bryn Mickle of The Flint Journal had a lot of fun writing that headline and lede 
Link - via Super Punch
Apparently sagging jeans is the new menace - last year, authorities in Mansfield, Louisiana, also .. er, cracked down, on the fashion phenomenon.
Anyone here understand why people wear jeans down their butt? It sure looks silly to me, but what do I know, I’m a fuddy-duddy.
Snakebot!
(Evil mad?) Scientists at the Hirose Fukushima lab in Japan have created our next robotic overlord: the ACM-R5 snakebot that can slither on land and swim gracefully in the water:
The control system of ACM-R5 is an advanced one. Each joint unit has CPU, battery, motors, so they can operate independently. Through communication lines each unit exchanges signals and automatically recognizes its number from the head, and how many units join the system. Thanks to this system operators can remove, add, and exchange units freely and they can operate ACM-R5 flexibly according to situations.
GeekAlerts has the video: Link (awesome!) | Hirose Fukushima Lab website
Doctor Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog Webisodes
Joss Whedon, the creator of Buffy The Vampire Slayer , Angel, and Firefly series, is bringing his next project straight to the web.
The 3 10-minute webisode (perfect for the Net’s short-attention-spanitis) "Doctor Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog" is "the story of a low-rent super-villain, the hero who keeps beating him up, and the cute girl from the laundromat he’s too shy to talk to."
The series, starring Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion, and Felicia Day, is set to be released in a the next month or so (can’t wait!)
Always Watching has the trailer: Link | Joss Whedon’s blog
The Neatorama Show
(Dayrobber link)
Neatorama and Dayrobber present episode #2 of The Neatorama Show. I learned a lot from making the first video! Thanks for your feedback and keep those suggestions coming in.
Featured links:
Bitstrips
Example comic
Previously:
Episode one
A Bra’s Tale
Betty Jenkins was once an adventurous young woman with a flat chest. Her mother gave her an inflatable bra to attract men. But what happens when you wear a partially-inflated bra in a plane flying over the Andes Mountains?
It turned out the cabin was not pressurized, and the bra was expanding.
“As the thing got bigger, I tried to stand up,” Jenkins said, “and I couldn’t see my feet.”
The instructions said that the bra’s pads could be inflated up to a size 48.
“I thought, ‘What would happen if it goes beyond 48?’” Jenkins recalled.
Big trouble in South America, that’s what. Link -via YesButNoButYes
Things that Look Like Pac-Man
Games Radar has collected pictures of 65 Things that Look Like Pac-Man. And a few things that look like the ghosts, too! Link -via Gorilla Mask
Gallery of vintage cereal boxes
WFMU discovered a big gallery of vintage cereal boxes posted by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel that are so bizarre they might as well be plucked from an edition of Photoshop Phriday. Anyone ever enjoyed a box of Mr. T?
*Previously: Best Cereal Commercials Ever.
Not Inviting 2 Classmates to Birthday Party Led to Complaint to Swedish Parliament
Bad: Not invited to a birthday party
Really bad: Everybody else in school got invited
Neatorama-worthy: The school saw this, and confiscated all of the invitation cards because of discrimination … which led the father to complain to the Swedish parliament because his "child’s rights has been violated."
Here’s what happened:
The school, in Lund, southern Sweden, argues that if invitations are handed out on school premises then it must ensure there is no discrimination. [...]
He says the two children were left out because one did not invite his son to his own party and he had fallen out with the other one.
The boy handed out his birthday invitations during class-time and when the teacher spotted that two children had not received one the invitations were confiscated.
"My son has taken it pretty hard," the boy’s father told the newspaper Sydsvenskan. "No one has the right to confiscate someone’s property in this way, it’s like taking someone’s post," he added.
Do Children Make Us Happy?
Most parents believe that their "bundle of joy" makes their life happy (I certainly do) but is it true that having kids make you happy?
According to the latest research, those parents may actually be - gasp - wrong:
The most recent comprehensive study on the emotional state of those with kids shows us that the term "bundle of joy" may not be the most accurate way to describe our offspring. "Parents experience lower levels of emotional well-being, less frequent positive emotions and more frequent negative emotions than their childless peers," says Florida State University’s Robin Simon, a sociology professor who’s conducted several recent parenting studies, the most thorough of which came out in 2005 and looked at data gathered from 13,000 Americans by the National Survey of Families and Households. "In fact, no group of parents—married, single, step or even empty nest—reported significantly greater emotional well-being than people who never had children. It’s such a counterintuitive finding because we have these cultural beliefs that children are the key to happiness and a healthy life, and they’re not."
Here’s an interesting article by Lorraine Ali for NEWSWEEK: Link
$30 Cardboard Bicycle
Phil Bridge, a 21-year-old university student in the UK, has designed a cardboard bicycle that cost around $30 to make:
Supporting anyone up to 168 pounds, the frame, which costs around $6 to make, is made from the cardboard used in industrial packaging, whilst the wheels and chain are standard bike issue, and will cost around $24.
Phil Bridge, who is studying Industrial Design, came up with the idea as he was researching reasons why people don’t use pedal power to get around town. "A typical round town bike can cost several hundred pounds," says Mr Bridge. "That’s a large investment for people who aren’t sure whether they will use it. The idea of cardboard is to completely devalue the bike".
Kingman Reef
Ecologist Enric Sala found a 500-year-old gigantic lobe coral in the Kingman Reef that looks like a flying saucer (the species is likely to be new to science). In the Pacific atolls and islands, there is a 30-mile triangle of coral in a lagoon the size of Manhattan Island called the Kingman Reef. Because of its remoteness, the reef is pristine, "a glittering city of staghorn, mushroom, pillar, and plate corals packed so tightly together there is hardly a patch of bare sand." Small fish and large predators are abound, making it a true underwater Eden. But the image of a fluorishing and healthy ecosystem may be just a mirage. According to ecologist Enric Sala, Kingman Reef may actually be in big trouble and the culprit is overfishing and pollution: If predator-dominated Kingman represents the gold standard for coral reefs, how does the removal of large carnivores through fishing affect coral communities elsewhere, such as in Kiritimati? As the report from the Line Islands shows, overfishing can unleash a population boom of smaller fish. The reef might appear luxuriant for a time, but in a matter of decades its ecosystem can unravel from a wonderland of marine diversity into a sediment-choked ecological desert. "Eliminating the top predators speeds the turnover rate of the entire reef community," Sala says. Through mechanisms not yet fully understood, this acceleration ultimately produces an explosion of microbes, some of which may cause coral death. Fishing out the large herbivores contributes to reef degradation. In the absence of grazers, large algae flourish, and their photosynthetic activity increases the availability of dissolved organic carbon in the system, boosting the growth of bacteria. Links: Article by Kennedy Warne | Photo Gallery (lots of wonderful photos, and you can also buy prints there) by Brian Skerry
Photo: Brian Skerry / National Geographic
Poiser, a Fun Physics Stacking Game
Ryan from Smartkit told us about their new Flash game "Poiser," a hand-drawn physics puzzle game that looks simple … but it’s maddeningly hard (and a lot of fun!)
The concept is simple: stack the boxes until they reach the line … how high can you go?
Link - Thanks Ryan!
Graffiti by Geeks
In his latest series called "IT Everywhere" Paul The Wine Guy photoshopped pictures of graffiti as if they were done by geeks: Link [Flickr set]j - Thanks Jon Jason and Luciano!
Previously on Neatorama: Understanding Art for Geeks, also by Paul The Wine Guy
Remote Buddy Holds and Finds Your Remotes
How many remotes do you have? Are you always looking for them? Then here’s something for you: the Remote Buddy, a vertical remote holder that not only serves as a home for your remotes, but will help you locate them when they wander out of the room … Link - via OhGizmo!
Prostitute fashion show in Madrid
Ladies of Madrid’s long and hot evenings strut their stuff on the runway in an attempt to improve their status in their neighborhood. The fashion show appears to have been quite well attended. YouTube.
Our Wonderful Nature
(video source link)
This delightful animation by Tomer Eshed looks at the mating habits of the water shrew in a way you’ve never seen before. Link -via Metafilter
100 Films in Under 2 Minutes
Montage-maker Paul Proulx’s work has been featured on Neatorama before, but I just couldn’t resist myself again: Proulx has recently put together a 2-minute clip that features moments from his 100 favorite films. At first I didn’t feel like this clip was particularly creative but as I watched it more, I realized that aside from the juxtaposition of similar beats/events/lines here, there’s a rhythm to the way these moments are edited together…and I like it. What do you think?
Also, can you name all the films?
Google Earth Helps UK Teens’ Summertime Craze: Pool Crashing
Ah, Google Earth. It’s an amazing technology and service from Google … which inadvertently helped launch UK’s summertime craze: pool crashing!
Teens begin by surfing Google Earth’s satellite images to find houses with swimming pools — or at least paddling pools. Once a target has been identified, sweaty swimmers then use Facebook to arrange an organised, but uninvited, pool-crash. [...]
Owners of several plush poolside properties have already returned home to find teenagers taking a dip in their man-made lakes or their spoor: beer cans, dog-ends and vomit floating atop their once crystal-clear pools.
Random Inspection of Your Laptop’s Content at U.S. Border
I’ve travelled quite a bit in the past, but I didn’t even know about this: US Customs and Border Protection agents can "randomly" seize your laptop, camera, cell phone and other electronic devices at the border for inspection - meaning they’ll take a peek at what you’ve got stored in your machine:
Bill Hogan was returning home to the U.S. from Germany in February when a customs agent at Dulles International Airport pulled him aside. He could reenter the country, she told him. But his laptop couldn’t.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents said he had been chosen for "random inspection of electronic media," and kept his computer for about two weeks, recalled Hogan, 55, a freelance journalist from Falls Church, Va.
But don’t they need a warrant to do that? Nope - no, they don’t:
Authorities need a search warrant to get at a computer in a person’s home and reasonable suspicion of illegal activity to search a laptop in other places. But the rules change at border crossings.
Courts consistently have ruled that there’s no need for warrants or suspicions when a person is seeking to enter the country — agents can search belongings, including computer gear, for any reason.
Assault with Chicken
Bad: Assaulting your mom
Really bad: Stabbing your mom with a fork
Neatorama-worthy: While you’re at it, beating another woman with a frozen chicken!
Meet Frederick McKaney, 40, of Ypsilanti, Michigan, who was arraigned in Jackson county courtroom with two felony assaults, one of which is "assault with chicken":
"He stabbed his mother in the back of the neck when she refused to give him money, and then, an hour later, he attacked a neighbor woman with a chicken," Jackson County Chief Assistant Prosecutor Mark Blumer told the Ann Arbor news.
A short time later, he encountered two other women talking on the sidewalk on Woodbridge Street. The woman said he said something nasty to them and hit one of them over the head with 10 pounds of frozen chicken.
Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds Barbie Doll
It’s coming! It’s coming! (Get it?) Mattel is coming out with a new Barbie doll from Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 horror film The Birds!
It’s not yet available, but boy, when it comes out, it’ll be an instant classic: Link - via Presurfer
Scientist Turns Own Face Into Remote Control
Pretty soon you can ditch that remote control and change the channel with just winking at the TV or something, thanks to Jacob Whitehill.
Jacob, a computer science Ph.D. student from UC San Diego built a technology for detecting facial expression that turns his face into a remote control that speeds and slows video playback:
In a recent pilot study, Whitehill and colleagues demonstrated that information within the facial expressions people make while watching recorded video lectures can be used to predict a person’s preferred viewing speed of the video and how difficult a person perceives the lecture at each moment in time.
This new work is at the intersection of facial expression recognition research and automated tutoring systems.
"If I am a student dealing with a robot teacher and I am completely puzzled and yet the robot keeps presenting new material, that’s not going to be very useful to me. If, instead, the robot stops and says, ‘Oh, maybe you’re confused,’ and I say, ‘Yes, thank you for stopping,’ that’s really good," said Whitehill, the computer science Ph.D. student leading the project.
Giant Sand Artwork by Jim Denevan
We’ve all grabbed a stick and drawn a figure in the sand on the beach, but Jim Denevan took this artform to the extreme: he created some of the largest human-made art on Earth!
Dark Roasted Blend has a neat feature on Jim’s artwork (including one 3-mile across made on a dry lake in Nevada! It took 100 miles of walking to draw that pattern)
Jail Escapee Left Behind a Toilet Paper Flower
An inmate escaped from an Arkansas county jail … and left behind a toilet paper flower because he felt bad for escaping! Luis Camacho-Mendoza was recaptured later hiding in a closet with a pillowcase over his head.
Link - via Blue’s News
The photo to the left is a toilet paper flower you can make yourself at eHow.
Meet Comrade Vinni (the) Puh!
Our friends at Boing Boing had recently posted up this footage of an interesting cartoon. During the Soviet Era the Russians decided they would create their own version of the childrens cartoon “Winne the Pooh” called “Vinni Puh”. However, despite the close resemblance in name and a few key characters from the show Vinni and Winnie’s behavior were drastically different from one another (as well as the obvious difference in fur color!).
Vinni, apparently had many an adventure that didn’t necessarily result in him getting stuck in trees or holes in the ground and saying,”Oh, bother,” like Winnie…of course I could be wrong. Despite not being able to understand Vinni (or Russian for that matter) I can understand his appeal to folks who seem to recall this cartoon with nostalgia as I read through comments from both Boing Boing and YouTube. I can’t find any translations for this episode nor for any others so if anyone does understand what’s being said I would love to know about it in the comments! You can also find further more episodes of Vinni Puh by clicking the YouTube link below.
*Update: TV Oldies and Tristan did an awesome job translating parts of this episode! So if you want to see what is being said check out the comments. Thanks TV Oldies and Tristan! 
BoingBoing - [Link]
YouTube - [Link]
