I don’t even know. No, I serious this time! It’s teh best game ever with lots of boss defeats. Joo Win! Next Mission, please!
The. Best. Flash. Game. Ever. Srsly. Link
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This past weekend was the anniversary of the death of a beloved Hollywood star. Yep – it was August 10, 1932, that Rin-Tin-Tin met his maker. So, in old Rinty’s honor, I thought we would revisit some of the world’s most adored canines – starting with the man (err… dog) himself, of course.
Rin Tin Tin was found in a bombed dog kennel by a soldier in World War I. Rinty and his sister were rescued by Corporal Lee Duncan; he named Rin Tin Tin and Nannette after French puppets that were given to soliders for good luck at the time. Nannette got distemper and didn’t make the journey back to California. Tin Tin, however, was filmed at a dog show jumping almost 12 feet. A movie company paid $350 for the footage, and Corporal Duncan knew a star was born. He ended up making 26 movies before he died in 1932 and received 10,000 fan letters a week at the height of his popularity. His bloodline was retained – a lady in Texas purchased some of Rin Tin Tin’s descendants from Lee Duncan and her family has continued to breed them for years.
I first came across Bummer and Lazarus in a Christopher Moore book and assumed they were products of his crazy imagination, but two stray dogs by the same name really did exist in San Francisco in the 1860s. Bummer, who was at least part Newfoundland, sort of adopted Lazarus, who was apparently wounded. After that, the two became inseparable. The town took notice of this unusual pairing; newspapers even reported on their whereabouts and escapades. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors even voted to let them roam the town as they wished at a time when all dogs were required by law to have a leash and/or a muzzle when our in public.
It was a very sad affair when Lazarus died in 1863; the town and Bummer mourned him. Bummer followed a couple of years later when he was kicked by a drunk. Mark Twain, a reporter for the Virginia City Enterprise, wrote an obituary for him.
Fala was Franklin D. Roosevelt’s beloved Scottie Dog. FDR actually named him Murry the Outlaw of Falahill, a Scottish ancestor, but I suppose that got too long to call out. Can you imagine? “Murray the Outlaw of Falahill!! Stop that right now!!”
Fala was totally spoiled – he got a bone every morning on FDR’s breakfast tray and he was made a private in the Army for setting an example by contributing $1 to the war effort every day one year. His likeness sits beside the FDR statue in Washington, D.C., and is the only White House pet to have his own official statue. He outlived FDR by about seven years but was buried next to him upon his death in 1952.
The epitome of loyal, Bobby is said to have spent 14 years guarding his owner’s grave in Edinburgh, Scotland, until his own death. His master, a policeman with the Edinburgh City Police, died of tuberculosis in 1858. In 1867, when someone pointed out that a dog with no owner was supposed to be “destroyed” by law, the Lord Provost of Edinburgh renewed Bobby’s license himself. He died in 1872 and was buried not far from the man he was so loyal to. Greyfriars Bobby has lots of fans – he has been featured in numerous children’s books, the Dog Aid Society of Scotland installed a gravestone for him, and a statue of him stands in front of the Greyfriars Bobby pub in Edinburgh. It makes me think of that Futurama episode where Fry’s dog waits for him outside of the pizza joint he worked at, not realizing that he is never coming back. It gets me all choked up every time.
Owney became famous when workers at the Albany, N.Y. post office discovered him snoozing on some mail bags in 1888. At the time, the mail was being carried by the Railway Mail Service, and Owney liked to ride around in the trains with the bags. No train he stowed away on was ever in a wreck, so post office workers were happy to have him. In 1895, he even made a trip around the world – from Tacoma, Washington, to Asia and across Europe and back to his Albany post office home. Post office employees would put tags and stickers on his collar when he showed up at their stop; Owney eventually collected 1,017 stags. Owney died in 1897, but both he and his thousand-plus tags can still be seen at the Smithsonian National Postal Museum.
Toto’s got nothing on Smoky. Smoky was found in an abandoned foxhole in 1944 by an American soldier. Fully grown, she was a Yorkie that only weighed four pounds and stood about seven inches tall. She stayed with Corporal William Wynne while he continued to serve the next two years in the Pacific – she shared his C-rations, sat in his soldier’s pack and flew 12 rescue and photo reconnaissance missions.
When the war was over, Smoky came back to Cleveland to live with Wynne. She became a much-demanded entertainer at veterans’ hospitals until she died in 1957. “World War II’s littlest soldier” has been honored by two statues in the Cleveland area.
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Clive Thompson of Wired’s Games Without Frontiers blog was wondering why Weight Watchers very well work for some people who want to lose weight and came up with this conclusion: Weight Watchers is not a normal diet … it’s an RPG!
Why did Weight Watchers work so well? For a really fascinating reason: because it isn’t a normal diet. It’s something more. Something fun.
It’s an RPG.
The Weight Watchers program is designed precisely like a role-playing dungeon crawler. That’s why people love it, stick to it and have success with it. And it points to the way that we could use game design to make life’s drudgery more bearable. [...]
Think about it. As with an RPG, you roll a virtual character, manage your inventory and resources, and try to achieve a goal. Weight Watchers’ points function precisely like hit points; each bite of food does damage until you’ve used up your daily amount, so you sleep and start all over again. Play well and you level up — by losing weight! And the more you play it, the more you discover interesting combinations of the rules that aren’t apparent at first. Hey, if I eat a fruit-granola breakfast and an egg-and-romaine lunch, I’ll have enough points to survive a greasy hamburger dinner for a treat!
Even the Weight Watchers web tool is amazingly gamelike. It has the poke-around-and-see-what-happens elegance you see in really good RPG game screens. Accidentally snack on a candy bar and ruin your meal plan for the day? No worries: Just go into the database and see what spells — whoops, I mean foods — you can still use with your remaining points.
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There are trucks and then there are monster trucks. The same principle applies to other modes of transportation, like the Segway, for instance.
Behold, the Monster Segway! Link [embedded YouTube cli]
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What to get your beloved Apple fanboi who already has everything? How about a Steve Jobs bobblehead iPhone charger? Link – via Gizmodo
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If you wear a gold ring on your finger, write with a gold-tipped fountain pen, or have gold in your portfolio, then chances are you’re connected
to child labor in Africa.
Here’s a disturbing article by Rukmini Callimachi and Bradley S. Kalpper of the Associated Press:
These hardscrabble miners include many thousands of children. They work long hours at often dangerous jobs in hundreds of primitive mines scattered through the West African bush. Some are as young as 4 years old. [...]
Wait – but surely you didn’t buy any gold from Africa, right? Wrong.
Precisely which products contain child-mined gold, no one can say for sure. Unlike a diamond, gold does not keep its identity on its tortuous journey from mine to market. It passes through 10 or more hands. And when it is melted, usually several times, and mixed with gold from other sources, its address is effectively erased.
Jewelers and retailers that buy gold through UBS include Compagnie Financiere Richemont SA, the firm that makes Montblanc pens, Piaget’s luxury watches and the jewelry of Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels. Gold processed by Metalor has been used by these brands as well as in discount jewelry sold at Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and luxury jewelry sold by Tiffany & Co.
These companies expressed concern about child labor and frustration that they can’t certify their products are free of it. Because bush mines, where child labor is ubiquitous, supply a fifth of the world’s gold, the companies realize their supply lines may well be compromised.
(Photo: Rukmini Callimachi / AP)
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Photo: Marianne Mancusi
WebUrbanist has a really neat post about 15 of the world’s strangest themed restaurants. This one above is a photo from the Vampire Cafe in Tokyo:
Continuing the creepy, otherwordly themes is the Vampire Café in the Ginza section of Tokyo, where the interior is almost entirely blood red. Guests are ushered down a long hallway with red blood cells superimposed on the floor. Inside, the décor includes heavy velvet drapes, black coffins dripping with red candle wax, skulls and crosses. Many of the meals are vampire-themed, and diners drink red cocktails from martini glasses.
Check out the rest of the list: Link
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The Yokohama Ice Cream Expo concluded yesterday in Japan. Organiser Manabu Matsumoto considers the event a success.
“We have ice cream from all over Japan – from Hokkaido in the north to Okinawa in the south – but beef tongue has been the one that people keep coming back for,” he said.
The majority of the ice creams were clearly acquired tastes, including the beer version, which failed to recreate either the taste or texture of beer.
“We like strange-tasting food,” said Keiko Hashiya, 27, who had driven for nearly two hours to sample the ice creams. “I think Japanese people always want to try new things and ice cream is always very popular when it is this hot in the summer.”
More than 125 flavors were showcased at the expo, including cheese, octopus, and garlic. Link -via Arbroath
(image credit: foxypar4)
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In his blog Springfield Punx, artist Dean T. Fraser draws superheroes and other comic characters in the style of The Simpsons cartoons. So far, he’s done some characters from Batman, Spider-man, Star Trek TOS, etc.
Check it out: Link – via Super Punch
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Darned scientists and the things they do in the name of science! Can’t they leave a poor copepod doin’ its bidnis alone?
The marine biologists on the Galathea expedition intruded on the privacy of this copepod – all in the name of science, mind you – as it … went poo! Link [embedded YouTube clip]
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Somewhere on the I-80 Highway between Iowa City and Davenport is the World’s Largest Truckstop, which comes complete with a dentist’s office, a movie theater, and more. Lots more.
Our own StacyBee (she also writes for our pal mental_floss blog) investigates:
The I-80 truck stop didn’t start as such a behemoth, though. It opened in 1964, when I-80 was still in its infancy, or at least in its toddler stages. It was just a tiny white building stuck smack in the middle of a cornfield – two diesel pumps and a restaurant.
It grew as I-80 grew and now employs 450 people. [...]
Here are just a few of the delights that this wonder offers:
• Several full-sized vehicles. I counted at least five –
one semi with a mural painted on it, one semi cab, one old-timey car in the restaurant, one truck and another old-timey car hanging from the ceiling. There may have been more.
• A dentist’s office.
• A movie theater.
• A chiropractic clinic.
• A barber shop.
• A custom shop, so you can trick out your truck with embroidery, custom vinyl and laser engraving.
• 24 private showers.
• A restaurant that serves about a million cups of coffee and 90 tons of meat every year.
• A car wash for semis (so, technically a semi wash?) that even cleans the engine. A 15-minute wash will set truckers back about $50.
• 75,000 unique items to bring home to your loved ones.
Links: Article at mental_floss | More pics at Stacy’s I Met a Possum blog (and what’s up with that creepy doll pic at the end?)
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Hah! This concept is so obvious that I’m surprised it hasn’t been done before. Behold the R2-D2 projection alarm clock from Wesco Ltd. (So far it’s only going to be available in the UK starting in October – Boo! Wesco, boo!)
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Now this is darned neat: a performance by Pilobolus "shadow art" dance group for Late Night with Conan O’Brien: Link (embedded YouTube)
(Note: yep, they’re the same guys that did the Hyundai Santa Fe ad and the 2007 Oscar performance, previously on Neatorama here)
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The Human Marvel blog has an interesting post about Annie Jones (better known as the Esau Woman), who traveled with P.T. Barnum’s circus as the bearded lady:
When she was little more than a year in age, Annie was brought to New York City to be featured in Barnum’s museum as ‘The Infant Esau’. The name ‘Esau’ was often applied to hirsute wonders and was in reference to the biblical grandson of Abraham, brother of Jacob. Esau’s name in Hebrew means ‘hairy’, and, according to Genesis 25:25, it is a reference to his hairiness at birth.
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No, I won’t tell you the story behind this strange photo to the left – that’s
for you to find out when you follow the link – but I will tell you that the guy isn’t dead. Nope, he’s very much alive. Too much, if you ask me.
The next time you men see a bench in the park, you’ll think of this story, I promise.
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The following is an article from Uncle John's Supremely Satisfying Bathroom Reader
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The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John's Supremely Satisfying 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!
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Got
a neat story? Share it with the world by writing your very own Neatorama
blog post with the Upcoming
Queue. Who knows, you might just win something ... 
William
O. "Wild Bill" Douglas (1898 - 1980) was the longest-serving
justice in the history of the U.S. Supreme Court. Here's what he has to
say about free speech, freedom, and the government:
