Archive for August 1st, 2008
Girl with a Pearl Earring, Drawn with Lisa Simpson
Neatorama reader David Nakamura saw our post of the pop culture Mona Leia painting and sent us a photo of this drawing made by his art school friend: a rendering of Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring with Lisa Simpson! Thanks David!
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Neatorama: Oh My God, It's Full of Tables!
Smashing Magazine, the uber-web design blog on the blogosphere, did a really nice study of the 50 most popular blogs (as ranked by Technorati) in terms of their design, information architecture, functionality, and so on.
Neatorama’s mentioned in the article (thanks guys!) and the blog even won an award of sorts. It won an award for having one of the most markup validation errors! Actually, all of the blog surveyed have errors save one (A List Apart, but then you’d expect it of the web design experts). In reality, this sort of stuff is meaningless: even yahoo.com and google.com failed validations.
Anyways, Neatorama is old school – it’s built with tables (why? Because tables are better than positional CSS, of course!) and that, my friend, is why it has so many validation errors.
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Rock 'n' Roll Cheese Has Van Halen's Lyrics on Label
When Advertising Age employee Matt Kinsey went shopping in New York, he ran across this curiously labeled "rock ‘n’ roll" assorted cheese: it has Van Halen’s "Aint Talkin’ ‘Bout Love" on the label!
Link – via YBNBY, Thanks Baierman!
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Goats on the Roof
Neatorama reader Bruno and friends went camping at Lake Rabun, Georgia, and ran across this charming little country souvenir store/grocery called "Goats on the Roof." As you can guess, the store got its name from the actual goats that live on the roof. (Yes, the roof has grass, bridges, a few goats, a huge bunny and a rooster) – Thanks Bruno!
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Really, Really Fat Dogs
When their owners handed over two fox terriers named Bert and Ernie because they could no longer care for them, the SPCA was astonished to see the fat dogs: Bert (pictured above) weighed 32 kg (71 lb) and Ernie weighed 44 kg (lb)!
SPCA operations manager Tracy Dunn said the team were speechless when they saw how overweight the dogs were. She said the SPCA often sees malnourished and underweight dogs and cats, so it was unusual to have two very overweight dogs handed in at once.
Dunn said animal obesity is becoming a major problem in New Zealand. "The nation’s overweight people are in turn overfeeding and supersizing their pets."
Link – Thanks Greg Furtado!
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Breakfast Hot Dog Wrapped in Bacon Goodness
Hot dogs aren’t health food – in fact, most of them will slowly kill you with their high levels of fat and other yummy yet deadly ingredients. But some dogs will kill you faster than others.
Al Dente blog has a run down of 5 cardiac arrest-inducing hot dogs that look good enough to die for!
Start the morning right with the Breakfast Hot Dog from Crif Dog’s in New York. Wrapped in bacon and deep-fried, this dog is accompanied with a fried egg and American cheese. All it’s missing is a layer of hash browns and sausage gravy. Hey, when you think about it that way, this breakfast dog is bush-league! Time to step it up, Crif’s. Read more about this hot dog here.
Now is that yummy or gross? Link – Thanks Jill Harness!
(Photo: amusingbouche [Flickr])
Previously on Neatorama: French Fry Coated Hot Dog | Hot Dogs Around the World
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World's Largest Cup of Coffee: 952 Gallons of Java!
Now that is a large cup of coffee! Vinacafe Bien Hoa, Vietnam’s largest coffee producer, has just been awarded a new Guinness World Record for the largest coffee cup:
The stainless steel structure was constructed by more than 100 people and is 1.53 meters tall, with a diameter of 2.33 meters.
Weighing in at 1,197 kilos, the cup contained 3,604 litres of coffee made with 801 kilos of instant coffee powder and 4,000 litres of boiled water. [that's 952 gallons of coffee, folks!]
Link – Thanks David E
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DJ Turntable Cake by Ashley Holt
Yup, that CD on top spins!
Neatorama reader Ashley Holt made this giant turntable cake for a farewell party for her friend Preston Craig, DJ and founder of the Decatur Social Club (A great accomplishment, considering that Preston is a paraplegic. Oh, and apparently he’s quite famous for throwing awesome parties in Atlanta).
Ashley made the cake in her mom’s kitchen (and completely destroyed it in the process, she said) – she’s now going to Sullivan University to study cake decorating, and is pursuing a side business makin’ awesome cakes (Email her if you’re in Georgia or Kentucky and would like a cake made: CakedUpByAshley AT yahoo DOT com) – Thanks Ashley!
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How Do You Do?
Photo: Ian Nichols
A team of National Geographic photographers went to the Bioko Island in Equitorial Guinea for two weeks to record the island’s diverse (and threatened) wildlife. Along the way, they encountered this friendly chameleon!
Here’s a neat photo gallery of the flora and fauna: Link – Thanks Marilyn Terrell!
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Inside the Minds of Internet Trolls
The New York Times has a very interesting article by Mattathias Schwartz about Internet trolls: what they’ve done and what made ‘em tick:
“Lulz” is how trolls keep score. A corruption of “LOL” or “laugh out loud,” “lulz” means the joy of disrupting another’s emotional equilibrium. “Lulz is watching someone lose their mind at their computer 2,000 miles away while you chat with friends and laugh,” said one ex-troll who, like many people I contacted, refused to disclose his legal identity.
Another troll explained the lulz as a quasi-thermodynamic exchange between the sensitive and the cruel: “You look for someone who is full of it, a real blowhard. Then you exploit their insecurities to get an insane amount of drama, laughs and lulz. Rules would be simple: 1. Do whatever it takes to get lulz. 2. Make sure the lulz is widely distributed. This will allow for more lulz to be made. 3. The game is never over until all the lulz have been had.”
In life, there’s always been mean people and the Web is no exception: Link – via Metafilter | Weev’s response in LiveJournal
Photo: Jason Fortuny (of the Lori Drew "Megan Had It Coming" hoax fame), by Robbie Cooper for The New York Times
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The Raven
(YouTube link)
Edgar Allen Poe animated by Jim Clark. See other poets at his poetryanimations YouTube channel. Link -via Digg
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Michelangelo in Cross Stitch
Joanna Lopianowski-Roberts recreated Michelangelo’s painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in cross-stitch! Ten years of labor are now committed to a 40×80 cloth containing over 600,000 stitches. The results, and patterns you can use to do it yourself, are in a self-published book. There is a Yahoogroup of cross-stitchers who are working on their own versions, using Lopianowski-Roberts’ patterns. Link -via Nag on the Lake
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Presto
The new cartoon short from Pixar is about a hungry bunny and the revenge he takes on a stingy magician. Presto can be seen in high definition at Gamaniak. Link -via Andy’s Blog
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Kaiser
Debbie Herot arrived at the veterinary clinic she managed last week to find a dog and a note on the doorstep.
“Dear Drs., please forgive me for this horrible transgression. I have no where else to turn so I ask you to mercifully, gently and lovingly please help him sleep. His name is Kaiser and he’s 16-and-a half years old. He’s been my friend, my teacher, my pupil, my lifelong loving and loyal companion,” the letter said.
On the envelope, the author of the letter said that he thought Kaiser had two strokes the night before.
“Be good to him as you would your own child, for he’s been mine for a loving lifetime,” the envelope read.
The note continued, describing the life Kaiser led with the homeless disabled veteran who wrote the letter, and how close they were. Herot could not euthanize this dog. The rest of Kaiser’s story involves a deceased clinic worker, veterinary staff, a Los Angeles newspaper and TV station, and Bob Mikolasko, who was reunited with Kaiser. Link (with video) -via Simply Left Behind
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Despots to Dangerous Authors: Jail Is Mightier Than the Pen
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Writers agree that pens are mightier than swords. And apparently, tyrants and despots agree that jails are mightier than pens. The following are a few of the writers, poets, and playwrights who ended up behind bars just when their writing started to get interesting. 1. Ovid
But Augustus was a bit of a prude, and (alas for Ovid) the most powerful person in the world. He also had been a friend and supporter of Ovid's, in the days when Ovid was writing the Metamorphoses and other works based on myth and more "moral" stuff. So, this is the story not just of a political punishment but also of the breakdown of a friendship. In fact, we're not even sure why he was banished, but banished Ovid was - to the town of Tomi on the Black Sea. Ovid desperately tried to change his ways, tried to produce poetry that was less, er, racy, but in fact, he never saw Rome again. 2. John Milton (1608-1674)
Milton was a convinced, aggressive Puritan. And the Puritans weren't exactly fond of the Church of England or the king. With Milton as one of their main firebrands in print, they fomented a revolution that led to the beheading of Charles I in 1649. When the Puritans took power, Milton was appointed Latin secretary to the ruling Council of State. But the rule of the Puritans lasted a scant decade. When their government collapsed in 1659, so did Milton's fortunes. He was imprisoned between October and December 1660, and his works burned in public bonfires. After his release, he lived under modified house arrest for the rest of his life. What to do? He kept himself occupied by penning Paradise Lost (1667), Paradise Regained (1671), and Samson Agonistes (1671). 3. The Marquis de Sade (1740 - 1814)
His mother-in-law didn't like that, and she had him imprisoned. So he spent 14 years in jail, including being condemned to death in the town of Aix for his sexual practices. yet somehow he got out of that one. Then he was again imprisoned in 1777, and again for six years at the Bastille in Paris in 1784. Imprisonment gave him lots of time to keep churning out the vigorous pornography that made him famous. In fact, the marquis spent his last 12 years in the insane asylum at Charenton, where he wrote and directed plays starring the staff and inmates. 4. Václav Havel (1936 - )
Set free in May, he helped stoke a peaceful resistance movement known as the Velvet Revolution. Havel became the focal point of a largely peaceful revolution, where large crowds of nonviolent demonstrators showed their disapproval of the ruling communists. Havel addressed crowds that sometimes numbered almost a million. By the end of the year, the communist government was out and Havel had been elected president. He served as president of Czechoslovakia - and later, when the country split in to, of the Czech Republic - for 13 years, retiring in 2003. The tally? Poetry 1, communism 0! 5. Salman Rushdie (1947 - )
In 1989 Indian novelist Salman Rushdie published a novel titled The Satanic Verses. On October 14, 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini, theocratic ruler of Iran, published a hukm against Rushdie for his novel because some parts were considered blasphemous against certain tenets of Islam. The text of the hukm was pretty serious: "I call on all zealous Muslims to execute [Rushdie and all those involved in publishing the book] quickly, wherever they may be found, so that no one else will dare to insult the Muslim sanctities." Rushdie was forced to go into hiding for several years, but he continued to publish. The bounty on his head was raised to more than $5 million. With the death of Khomeini and comparative relaxation of Iranian politics, however, Rushdie's begun to make public appearances again. 6. María Elena Cruz Varela (1953 - )
In May 1991, however, she and nine other writers wrote a letter to Fidel Castro, calling for greater openness in Cuba, direct elections, and the release of political prisoners. State-run newspapers attacked these writers as agents of the CIA. Then a state security brigade broke into her apartment, where she lived with her husband, daughter, and son. She was dragged by her hair into the street and made to eat some of her published work. Then she was thrown in jail, beaten, and starved. She was released in 1994 and went into exile in Puerto Rico. (Photo: Liberal International) |
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From mental_floss' book Condensed Knowledge: A deliciously Irreverent Guide to Feeling Smart Again, published in Neatorama with permission. Original article written by John Timpane. Be sure to visit mental_floss' extremely entertaining website and blog!
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In
8 BCE the Roman poet Publius Ovidius Naso, better known to us as Ovid,
was banished from Rome by the emperor Augustus. Why? Tradition says the
cause was the immorality of his verses. That might be, since Ovid was
a very accomplished erotic poet - although his erotic poems are seldom
if ever pornographic. 
It's
hard to imagine that the author of Paradise Lost was ever anything
but saintly and studious. But in fact, he had a tumultuous life. 
How
great would it be to have sadism named after you? Of course, you'd have
to go certain lengths, as this fellow did. His family married him off
to a woman for the money, and he immediately began to busy himself (quite
publicly) with prostitutes and with a sister-in-law. 
This
brave poet and playwright was jailed repeated in the 1970s for works critical
of the communist government in then-Czechoslovakia. With civil unrest
rising, he was jailed in February 1989 but kept turning out influential
plays, poems, and essays, and even winning literary awards. 
A
lot of people think that literature is just, well, a particularly brainy
sort of fun, not dangerous at all. But woe to those who step out of line.
A
Cuban poet, Varela was self-taught, a true flower of the countryside.
She won Cuba's National Award for Poetry in 1989. 
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Bizarro: Roman Chariot Bumper Sticker
It’s Friday and so it’s time for our weekly Bizarro feature – for those who are going to college soon, congrats! (And to their parents, our sympathies). And yes, it should’ve been Roma, but why be picky?
For more Bizarro, check out Dan Piraro’s website and blog.
Previously on Neatorama: Latin You Should Know
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