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The Hi-Fidelity Quartet performed this Barbershop song about Star Trek while acting out the roles of Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Scotty. Run time: 4.5 minutes.
Additionally, here is a recording of what they call the “Enterprise/Sulu Medley”, also about classic Trek.
Paul Mawhinney, is the owner of the World’s largest record collection with an astonishing 3 million records with some so rare they cannot be found anywhere else in the World. Appraised at an astounding $50 Million dollars worth of musical history he is only asking for a paltry $3 Million for the whole collection! However, after trying to sell the collection on eBay and getting takin’ for a ride by fake bidders he has decided to sell them to only serious buyers through other means. With deteriorating health due to diabetes as a main factor forcing him to sell his collection no one has yet stepped up to take them off his hands.
A direct quote from his site listing one of the reason for selling his collection:
As the soundtrack of our lives, a unique audio history of the 20th century, the collection is too special–too important–to be sold to just anybody. It needs to be preserved. It needs a suitable and fitting home.
It’s sad to see such a wealth of music being neglected by museums or even music artists after this man poured his heart and his passion into collecting all of it. If anything you’d think serious music aficionados who are millionaires (and there are a lot of those in the World) would buy this collection if not for the 20th century’s complete musical history then the non-copyrighted material just sitting in those waiting to be sold/spliced/re-recorded again.
Another fascinating fact about his collection:
If you started listening to the music in this collection on the day you were born, and listened every minute of every day, by the time you finished, you’d be 57 years old. That’s a lot of music. And it’s a lot of history.
More info here – “The Greatest Music Collection”
Larger video can be found here – Link
Chef Ljubomir Erovic of Serbia has published the world’s first cookbook on cooking with balls.
No, he didn’t mean that figuratively (like how to cook boldly or anything like that). He meant cooking testicles!
The Testicle Cookbook – Cooking With Balls includes author Ljubomir Erovic’s favourite dishes, like testicle pizza and battered testicles.
The e-book, available for download, comes with handy video guides showing the Serb peeling the skin off testicles and slicing them up into bite-size chunks.
The ingredients for his testicle pizza recipe include cheese, onion, pepper, bacon and bull’s testicles. "It’s Italian pizza with Serbian balls", explains Erovic. The book also contains more cordon bleu recipes, such as calf testicles in wine and testicles with bourgignon sauce.
"The tastiest testicles in my opinion probably come from bulls, stallions or ostriches, although other people have their own favourites," he said. "All testicles can be eaten – except human, of course."
Link | The e-book at Yudu | Sample pages, with embedded video clips
Here’s the free sample (with video clips): Link
Reviving an ancient organism is a story worthy of a science fiction epic. But in this case, forget Jurassic Park. Instead, think Jurassic Brewery.
Here’s the story of California Polytechnic State University scientist Raul Cano who extracted yeast that has laid dormant for 45 million years, trapped inside a Lebanese weevil covered in ancient Burmese amber:
A decade ago Raul Cano, now a scientist at the California Polytechnic State University, drilled a tiny hole into the amber and extracted more than 2,000 different kinds of microscopic creatures.
Activating the ancient yeast, Cano now brews barrels (not bottles) of pale ale and German wheat beer through the Fossil Fuels Brewing Company.
So, how does the beer taste? Suprisingly good:
The beer has received good reviews at the Russian River Beer Festival and from other reviewers. The Oakland Tribune beer critic, William Brand, says the beer has "a wierd spiciness at the finish," and The Washington Post said the beer was "smooth and spicy."
Part of that taste comes from the yeast’s unique metabolism. "The ancient yeast is restricted to a narrow band of carbohydrates, unlike more modern yeasts, which can consume just about any kind of sugar," said Cano.
Link | Fossil Fuels Brewing Company
(Photo from Microbe World)
What should people who lost their cushy jobs on Wall Street do? According to this one guy who’s been through it before, the answer is pretty simple: become a monk!
Hristo Mishkov had a successful career as a broker on the Nasdaq stock exchange in New York until he decided to give it all up to return to his native Bulgaria. His radical change of circumstances may start to look appealing to the tens of thousands of finance sector employees who face the bleak prospect of losing their jobs.
Exchanging tailored suits and expensive shoes for a cassock and sandals, Brother Nikanor, as he is now known, believes Wall Street and the City deserve all they get as the credit crunch bites deeper and the global financial system goes into meltdown. [...]
His colleagues were stunned when he decided to become a monk, but he had made up his mind to seek spiritual well-being rather than material wealth.
"Everybody can be a good broker but this does not bring much benefit for the world," he said.
"We always search for happiness in the outside world, in material things, which makes us constantly unsatisfied, angry with ourselves and the world."
Photo: Brian Skerry/National Geographic
National Geographic has a neat article about how the Right Whale (Eubalaena glacialis), the "good, or true, whale of ice" is making a comeback. Ironically, the Right Whale’s name was given by whalers who thought that their habit of swimming slowly in the shallow coastal waters make them the "right" whales to kill!
"Omigod. That one right there is the fattest young whale I have ever seen." (When judging the condition of northern rights, the scientists pay special attention to the area just behind the blowhole, where the chubbier animals develop a bulge of blubber. Its size has proved to be an accurate predictor of survival.) "We don’t even have a category for a whale with a fat roll that big."
Here’s the article by Douglas Chadwick: Link – Thanks Marilyn Terrell!
Note: Glynnis McPhee interviewed National Geographic photographer Brian Skerry about his adventure with the Right Whale:
Q: It must have been pretty nerve-racking having such a large animal swim up to you.
A: It was amazing. I mean, I have to tell you there were days when I was at the bottom at 70 feet, and here comes this bus swimming down. I’m standing on the bottom, and as it comes down, I get on my knees, lean over backwards—my scuba tank is now digging into the sand. And of course their eyes are on the side of their heads, so it had to turn and look at me. It came within inches. Here’s this softball-size whale eye looking at me. But then it stops—stops on a dime. It’s just hovering there, and literally one flick of its tail, and it would have crushed me like a bug. But it doesn’t. It was just highly curious. (Source)
The whole thing reminds me of Chris Moore‘s book "Fluke: or I know Why the Winged Whale Sings" – I’m half waiting for the whale to ask for a pastrami on rye with mustard!
The marriage (or relationship, in this case) may be over, but the custody battle has just begun. Kids? Nope … pets!
Who gets the dog, cat, horse or boa constrictor when the relationship ends?
That question has sparked some human catfights; pet custody disputes in divorce are a growing area of the law. In a 2006 survey of 1,600 members of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, a quarter said they had noticed an anecdotal uptick in pet-custody cases in the past five years.
You don’t have to be married to get mired in a pet tug-of-war. Adam Karp, an animal rights lawyer in Bellingham, Washington, says most of the calls he fields are from singles in their 20s and 30s.
Even among the unmarried set, these battles can carry high stakes and high drama. Take, for instance, a Washington state case in 2004, when Karp represented Ashley Wilson, the music director of a Seattle rock station and the owner of a boxer named Marley.
When Wilson, who was in her mid-20s, broke up with her live-in boyfriend, Todd Templeton, the couple agreed on a joint-custody arrangement for the dog. Everything was fine until Wilson met someone else. Templeton "accused her of destroying the family and retaliated by hiding Marley," Karp says.
The case went to court and, although Wilson and Templeton were technically co-owners, the judge awarded custody to Wilson.
Link – Thanks Tiffany!
(Photo: Warren and Tracey Gamley)
We covered the shadowy game of "squirt-gun assassin" before on Neatorama, but this news is rather disturbing: the game is blamed for car crashes as players try really hard to kill each other!
"They keep knocking people out and the last man standing wins the game," she said. "They were playing Assassin, it got really serious. There were squirt guns and a truck drove into someone’s house and they ended up in the hospital."
Wethersfield Police Chief James Cetran said that in all, three crashes have been associated with the game. He said his department has responded to half-a-dozen calls this week because of Assasin, and in one case a teen was attempting to get away from his water gun attacker.
"They cut in front of a poor unsuspecting motorist and two people were taken to the hospital, including a student. At least one of those accidents they drove in front of a poor unsuspecting woman and two people were taken to the hospital, including the woman," he said.
Scientists studying decades-old tissue samples from African hospital samples have found a preserved specimen of HIV that let them estimate when the virus first evolved:
Using a technique called molecular clock analysis, they were able to plot the two viral sequences’ evolutionary path back in time to determine when they diverged.
They concluded the strains evolved from a common ancestor that emerged in Africa near the beginning of the twentieth century around 80 years before the disease appeared in western populations.
Here is a 1978 film strip presentation by Pendulum Press of Episode IV of Star Wars. Run time: 20 Minutes. Via Topless Robot
When I first saw the monstrosity I thought, “My God! That thing’s huge!” Little did I know its largest was simply the housing for my undoing.
The huge cake was a hat box with frosting. After the candles were lit, Laughlin pulled off the top and revealed the real cake underneath that bore the likeness of Rick Astley! Link -via Digg
Israel has developed a new weapon that should be less harmful than the rubber bullets they use against protesters. It’s a liquid called Skunk, to be deployed from a water cannon.
Imagine the worst, most foul thing you have ever smelled. An overpowering mix of rotting meat, old socks that haven’t been washed for weeks – topped off with the pungent waft of an open sewer.
Imagine being covered in the stuff as it is liberally sprayed from a water cannon.
Then imagine not being able to get rid of the stench for at least three days, no matter how often you try to scrub yourself clean.
Skunk is made from yeast, baking soda, and some secret ingredients that are completely organic. David Ben Harosh, an Israeli police superintendent, is proud of the Skunk project.
“It’s totally harmless, you can even drink it,”
Link -via Metafilter
“This is the only place in the world where elephants freely get so close to humans,” says the 44-year-old.
“The elephants start coming through base camp in late November of each year to eat the mangoes from our trees.
“When they are ripe they come through and they stand about for four to six weeks coming back each day or second day to eat the mangoes.”
When the lodge was built, no one realized the elephants used that route. Link to story. Link to hotel website. -via Arbroath
