Archive for July 2nd, 2008
Mirror Tic Tac Toe
Shahar Peleg designed this Tic Tac Toe game played on a a mirror. The Xs and Os are only half a letter, but seem whole when placed on the mirror board. It makes a way-too-simple game seem almost cool! Link -via Unique Daily
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Lenin Lollipops
The lollipops are shaped like the head of communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, and they taste like cola! He would be rolling in his grave if he were in a grave instead of on display in Moscow. Link -via Ectoplasmosis
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Simple and Fun Flash Game: Last Egg Standing
This is a maddeningly fun Flash game: Last Egg Standing by Mateusz Skutnik of Pastel Games. The object is dead simple: catch as many eggs as you can before they splatter against the floor.
When you lose (and you WILL lose), see how you stack up against other people (I score a measly 710).
You can play it on Neatorama, courtesy of ArcadeTown: Link [Flash game] – Thanks Joseph Lieberman!
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Translucent Ocean Creatures
A photographer’s strobe gives a violet sheen to this translucent juvenile roundbelly cowfish off the coast of Kona, Hawaii. Also known as the transparent boxfish, the roundbelly cowfish has two short horns in front of its eyes. This. Is. So. Very. Cool! Just the kind of things you expect from the good folks at NatGeo … here’s a very neat photo gallery of translucent sea creatures by Chris Newbert of Minden Pictures at the National Geographic’s website: Link – Thanks Zella!
Juvenile Cowfish. Photo: Chris Newbert/Minden Pictures
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Nike's New "Air McFly" Sneakers
Last year, Neatorama teamed up with the Michael and Charles Maloof of The Official McFly 2015 Project to, um, … nudge Nike to make the sneakers worn by Michael J. Fox in the 1989 film Back to the Future.
It seemed that the grassroots campaign worked … maybe … Nike is not using the words "McFly" or "Back to the Future" for these shoes, but the similarities are uncanny:
Well, almost 20 years after the movie hit the screen, Nike will be releasing their new Hyperdunk in a teal version to make it look like the “Air McFlys.”
Purists, however, aren’t convinced:
… the guys that run the McFly 2015 Project, a grassroots movement that has been trying to drum up support for Nike to make this shoe aren’t satisfied.
“The Nike Hyperdunks might be inspired by the McFly 2015’s, but the Nike Hyperdunks are not the McFly 2015’s” said Michael Maloof, who with his brother Charles launched a Web site last year in order to push for the futuristic sneakers. “We strongly encourage each and everyone who wants the ‘real’ McFly 2015’s to sign up on the official McFly 2015 project Web site.”
Link – Thanks Mickey!
Previously on Neatorama: The McFly 2015 Patents
Update 7/3/08: While we’re in the subject of these shoes, here are a couple more links:
- Fan-made McFly 2015 prop shoes replica on eBay
- Unboxing of the Nike new “Air McFly” above at Gizmodo
- and how Kobe Bryant arrived in style (in a Dolorean!) to buy them shoes
Thanks Mickey!
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Cargo Scooter Concept by Elliot Ortiz
The problem with scooters, thought designer Elliot Ortiz, is that they have no cargo space – so he went on to design one with a "trunk." (Seems that he forgot to put in the engine, though!)
Tuvie has some renderings of Elliot’s cargo scooter concept: Link – Thanks Lowell Goss!
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Regional Hot Dogs Styles Across America
Sonorans Hot Dog. Photo: Mr Frosted [Flickr]
Jenn Sit of Serious Eats’ Eating Out Blog posted a very interesting article about the various regional styles of American hot dogs. This one above is the "Sonorans" from Tucson and Phoenix, Arizona:
Bacon-wrapped hot dogs are grilled, then nestled in steamed bolillo rolls and topped with pinto beans, chopped tomatoes, onions, mustard, mayo, and jalapeños. Other variations could include any of the following: shredded cheddar, queso fresco, cotija cheese, salsa verde, and guacamole.
I say anything wrapped in bacon is a plus! Is your hometown’s dog listed? Link – Thanks raphael!
Previously on Neatorama: Hot Dogs Around the World
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Polygamist Sect Opens Online Clothing Store
The Texas polygamist sect Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) is back on the news … this time in a more positive light: they’ve launched a clothing line for children that "meets the FLDS standards for modesty and neatness."
Links: FLDSDress (down when I tried it) | Article at USATODAY’s On Deadline blog – Thanks Yinan Chen and Levi!
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CT Scan Suggests that Wood Density is Responsible for the Unique Sound of Stradivarius Violin
A CT scan of a Stradivarius suggests that its critical difference from other violins is the density of its wood:
Using an adaptation of a computer program developed to calculate lung densities in people with emphysema, they were able to analyze the physical properties of violins without risking damage to instruments worth millions of dollars.
They found no significant differences between the median densities of the modern and the antique violins but did discover far less variation between wood grains of early and late growth in the old ones.
Link (Photo: Brendan McDermid of Reuters)
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Tokyoflash Treasure Hunt #3
W00t! It’s time for Tokyoflash Treasure Hunt on Neatorama!
For those of you who are new at this, it’s a game where you can win a free watch at Tokyoflash.com. Here’s how to play:
We’ll give out 3 questions, for example:
1. What color is the circle of the "O" in Neatorama’s logo?
2. How many posts are on Neatorama’s homepage?
3. What’s the first insulting word on Neatorama’s article 10 Insulting Words You Should Know?
The answers (black, 30, and frenchify) make a URL on the website. If you string ‘em together you get: http://www.neatorama.com/black-30-frenchify (go on, cut and paste this URL in your browser).
Then, all you need to do is enter your name and Tokyoflash watch preference (don’t forget what color) in the comment. The winner will be picked at random.
Got that? Okay, here are the questions:
1. What is the name of the Tokyoflash watch pictured above? Hint: It’s their latest and greatest!
2. What is the last word uttered by the Cowardly Lion in one of Mike Jacobsen’s awesome T-Shirts available on Neatorama’s Online Store? (If you like it – please buy one and help support the blog!)
3. What is the word above the 6 hour bar (6 LEDs) in a watch labeled as "Stranger than your mother-in-law" at Tokyoflash?
Find out the answers at TokyoFlash and Neatorama’s Online Store, then string ‘em together to make the URL (all words are lower case). Good luck!
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WebUrbanist's Guide to Guerilla Marketing
WebUrbanist blog has a neat round-up of their series of 8 posts about guerilla marketing: its history, evolution and acceptance (or exploitation) by major corporations – this is the article for you.
Here’s something interesting that I’ve just learned, the difference between guerilla marketing and viral marketing:
There’s a subtle difference between viral marketing and guerrilla marketing. Guerrilla marketing ambushes the viewer and grabs their attention when they least expect it. Viral marketing is advertising that you voluntarily pass around because it’s cool, not necessarily because you want to help build publicity. There is some noticeable overlap where a guerrilla ad that doesn’t quite look like an ad is so great that you to tell other people about it. But viral campaigns can’t be engineered in the way that other types of advertising can – they depend solely on the user to deem them worthy of passing them along.
It doesn’t take a marketing genius to figure out that people accept suggestions from their friends better than from some nameless marketer. It’s also apparent that campaigns which engage usually enjoy more success than campaigns that educate. So logic would follow that engaging, ground-level marketing campaigns are one of the best ways to present an idea.
Link – Thanks Kurt!
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Classics, with an Extra Duck
Misty of Momentary Lapses of Insanity blog has a large collection of classic paintings … with an extra duck in them!
This one above is originally Escher’s Hand with Reflecting Sphere. I think this one above should be called Hand with Reflecting Sphere and Shoulder with Duck.
Link [Flickr Photoset] – Thanks Jon Jason!
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Guy Bought Rare Schwinn Bike for $350, Found Out It's Worth $100,000 - and Now He Wants to Give it Away!
Tom Mault bought this bike for $350 and later found out that it was a wise purchase: the bike is a 1963 Schwinn Sting-Ray bike, one of the first of its kind off the line.
And Schwinn collectors have offered him up to $100,000 for the "rare piece of American history" – Tom, however, had another idea:
Bike collectors from London to Japan "flipped out," Mault says. By 6 p.m. Thursday, his online posting had been viewed almost 1,900 times, and people had offered him between $2,000 and $100,000 for the bike.
The catch, he says: It’s not for sale.
Mault, who owns roofing company Tidewater Exteriors in Hampton, says he would rather donate the Sting-Ray — one of the hottest American icons of the 1960s and ’70s — to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.
Link – Thanks Mowog!
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Replate: Share Your Leftovers with the Homeless
"Replate" is an idea out of San Francisco (where else?) about how people should put their unwanted leftover doggie bag on top of trash cans so the homeless can eat them.
Do you think it’s a good idea to share with the less fortunate? Or do you think it will just encourage more homeless to come to San Francisco?
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Good Things About Sky High Gas Prices
Every cloud has a silver lining – or so Amanda Ripley thinks when she wrote this interesting article for TIME Magazine about the sky-rocketing price of gas.
Here’s one of the 10 Good Things About $4 Gas:
Fewer Traffic Deaths
Every year, about 40,000 people die in traffic accidents in the U.S. If you are age 5 through 34, you are more likely to die this way than any other way. Ordinary things we do — or don’t do — have extraordinary consequences. We know that higher gas prices cause many of us to slow down and drive less — which means fewer people die. Early research into 2006 accident data suggests that many lives have already been spared. If gas remains at $4 per gal. for a year or more, expect as many as 1,000 fewer fatalities a month, according to professor Michael Morrisey at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and associate professor David Grabowski at Harvard Medical School, who calculated that estimate for TIME. That means annual deaths could be cut by almost one-third — a public-health triumph.
(Photo: Nycotyne [Flickr])
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The Fourth
The USA’s Independence Day holiday is Friday, but most people refer to it as The Fourth of July, or just The Fourth. None of the questions on today’s Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss have to do with the holiday, but they all have to do with something that is the fourth. I scored 50% because I knew half the answers, but all my wild guesses were wrong. Link
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Slaughterhouse 1945
Kurt Vonnegut’s new book Armageddon in Retrospect is about war and peace. Included is a letter he wrote to his family in 1945 explaining the late author’s stint as a POW in Dresden. His experiences became the basis of the book Slaughterhouse Five.
On about February 14th the Americans came over, followed by the R.A.F. Their combined labors killed 250,000 people in twenty-four hours and destroyed all of Dresden—possibly the world’s most beautiful city. But not me.
After that we were put to work carrying corpses from Air-Raid shelters; women, children, old men; dead from concussion, fire or suffocation. Civilians cursed us and threw rocks as we carried bodies to huge funeral pyres in the city.
When General Patton took Leipzig we were evacuated on foot to Hellexisdorf on the Saxony-Czechoslovakian border. There we remained until the war ended. Our guards deserted us. On that happy day the Russians were intent on mopping up isolated outlaw resistance in our sector. Their planes (P39’s) strafed and bombed us, killing fourteen. But not me.
Read the entire letter at Newsweek. Link -via Grow-A-Brain
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The Pit of Life and Death
Years of copper mining left behind a toxic waste pit near Butte, Montana that is so massive the EPA’s Superfund is relying on containment instead of cleanup. It was thought that nothing could live in that water -even migrating birds on a short stopover died by the hundreds! But in 1995, a chemist spotted clumps of green slime growing in the pit.
After examining the slime under a microscope, the researchers identified it as Euglena mutabilis, a protozoan which has the remarkable ability of being able to survive in the toxic waters of the Berkeley Pit by altering its local environment to something more hospitable. Through photosynthesis, it increases the oxygen level in the water, which causes dissolved metals to oxidize and precipitate out. In addition, it pulls iron out of the water and sequesters it inside of itself. This makes it a classic example of an extremophile. Extremophiles are organisms that can tolerate and even thrive in environments that will destroy most other living things. Some can even repair their own damaged DNA, a trait which makes them extremely interesting to cancer researchers.
Eventually, over 160 species of extremophiles were found in the pit -many never seen anywhere else before! These microbes may be able to clean up toxic waste and possibly even cure cancer. Read the story at Damn Interesting. Link
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Roshambo
(YouTube link)
The latest from filmmaker Lasse Gjertsen (featured many times on Neatorama) is a short animation featuring a friendly game of Rock, Paper, Scissors… and other things. Contains brief cartoon nudity.
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The World is Actually Getting Happier
Every year for 17 years, researchers asked hundreds of thousands of people in 52 countries the same two questions:
"Taking all things together, would you say you are very happy, rather happy, not very happy, not at all happy" and " All things considered, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole these days?"
And despite the current tough economic outlook, they found that happiness is actually on the rise around the world:
"It’s a surprising finding," said University of Michigan political scientist Ronald Inglehart, who headed up the survey. "It’s widely believed that it’s almost impossible to raise an entire country’s happiness level."
Denmark is the happiest nation and Zimbabwe the the most glum, he found. (Zimbabwe’s longtime ruler Robert Mugabe was sworn in as president for a sixth term Sunday after a widely discredited runoff in which he was the only candidate. Observers said the runoff was marred by violence and intimidation.)
The United States ranks 16th.
Link – Thanks Geekazoid!
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Hellboy: Inside the Actors Studio Interview
What – just what – happened when Hell Boy got interviewed by James "Booyah" Lipton of Inside the Actors Studio? Find out here: Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] – via The Fire Wire
Here are some more Hellboy Interview clips: Link – Thanks Levi!
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Alice Chess Set
Inspired by Lewis Carroll’s book "Through the Looking Glass," Yasmin Sethi created this Alice chess set where the pieces are opaque until they are put on the board – then they magically turn transparent to reveal their identities.
Link – via DVICE, thanks Sheldon Price!
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Great Moments in History as Told by Etch-A-Sketch
Great Moments in History is a tumblr blog dedicated to (re)documenting important historical events … on the Etch-A-Sketch! This one is, if you haven’t guessed already, is their take on the Hindenburg disaster.
Previously on Neatorama: Master of the Etch-A-Sketch
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Earth's Cries as Heard from Space
Scientists knew that Earth is crying since the 1970s, but they’ve just recently been able to listen to it.
The "cry" is actually a series of chirp and whistles created by solar wind particles colliding with the Earth’s magnetic field high above the planet, and is called the Auroral Kilometric Radiation (AKR):
The Auroral Kilometric Radiation (AKR), as it is called, is beamed out in a narrow plane, as if someone had put a mask over a torch and left a slit for the radiation to escape.
This flat beam could be detected by aliens who’ve figured this process out, the researchers say. The knowledge could also be used by Earth’s astronomers to detect planets around other stars, if they can build a new radio telescope big enough for the search. They could also learn more about Jupiter and Saturn by studying AKR, which should emit from the auroral activity on those worlds, too.
Link | Listen to the sound – Thanks Geekazoid!
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