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People see faces when they look at the fronts of cars. What they see can influence what they buy. A consulting group arranged a research study to find out what personality traits cars appear to have, and which ones people would prefer on the car they drive.
Study participants assessed cars based on a system known as geometric morphometrics (GM), which allowed the men and women to rate certain traits on a sliding scale (such as “infancy” to “adulthood”). The traits represented maturity, sex, attitudes, emotions, and personality — all things that people infer from human faces at a single glance.
After rating car traits, participants then answered the question of whether they saw a human face, animal face or no face at all on the cars. They drew facial features such as eyes, nose and mouth on the car images whenever they did see faces.
Lastly, the study participants answered whether they liked a car or not. The study restricted car choices to passenger cars, because hulking SUVs would have skewed the results.
People overwhelmingly preferred cars that rated highest on “power” traits.” High “power” cars like the BMW 5 Series tended to be lower or wider, and have slit-like or angled headlights with a wider air intake.
Link -Thanks, Geekazoid!
Yankee Pot Roast, a blog of literary satire, has a great spoof on poet William Carlos Williams, assuming that the famous modernist poet is your really bad roommate. Not as bad as the nudist obsessive-compulsive insomniac roommate that I had in college, but pretty bad. Here’s a sample:
I have eaten
the soy ice cream
that was in
the ice box
and which
you expressly asked
me
not to touch
Forgive me
it was so gross
I threw half of
it away
Link via Grow-A-Brain
Photo: monkeybar73 [Flickr]
When Terri Irving got married, her friend suggested that she make a cake topper based on one of her favorite video games, Katamari Damacy, with the bride and groom stuck to the Katamari. Later, Terri said that the whole thing was sort of like a metaphor of the marriage process.
Link – via Super Punch
Miss Cellania has an oldie but goodie list of literary rules (the sort of thing that circulated on Usenet). Here are a few:
* Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
* And don’t start a sentence with a conjunction.
* Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
* Do not be redundant; do not use more words than necessary; it’s highly superfluous.
*One should NEVER generalize.
There are a lot of fun USB flash drives, but most of them don’t look quite fashionable enough for that black tie event. What’s a fashion conscious geek (is that an oxymoron?) to do?
GeekAlerts blog has compiled 13 of the most fashionable USB Flash Drives that will fit in just fine with the rest of your bling-blings: Link
Kansas City-based artist Dylan Mortimer combined a telephone booth and a prayer station into this art piece titled Public Prayer Booth. If you ever came across one, you can pull down the kneeler and pray on the spot. Link – via Locust & Honey
Instructable user PandaMania wrote a pretty nifty (and looks pretty easy to do) instruction on how to make your own Space Invader belt buckle from LEGO bricks.
The good folks and our pals over at mental_floss are coming out with a new book: The Mental Floss History of the World: An Irreverent Romp Through Civilization’s Best Bits.
The book is coming out October 28th, but if you pre-order one at Amazon, mental_floss will throw in a 6-month subscription to their magazine free!
I have all of the mental_floss books (and magazines, actually) and I can tell you that they’re awesome. It’s like Neatorama. Except in book form. Oh, and better:
Links: Pre-order the book at Amazon | Post at mental_floss blog about the offer – Thanks Will!
Tech Cult blog has lovingly compiled 150 of the best Flash games available on the Web. If you have, oh, say a week off, then you can probably play all of the games listed here:
Link – Thanks Daniel Scocco!
The game on the left is insanely addictive Desktop Tower Defense, which is probably the most popular Flash game ever (previously discussed on Neatorama here, before it got famous, of course! | Desktop Defense Strategy)
We’ve covered Etienne Meneau’s unique wine decanter before on Neatorama, so when she he emailed us her his newest work, I knew it’s going to be good. And Etienne doesn’t disappoint: here’s Petit Coeur or Little Heart drinking glass.
I know that red wine is supposed to be good for your heart, but at €1,500, my ticker skipped a beat! Link – Thanks Etienne!
Lately, the stock market feels a lot like a roller coaster ride. So if you’re jittery about the market, this is the shirt for you at Neatorama’s Online Store: Link (Plus, at only $9.95, it won’t break the bank!)
In the midst of the global banking crisis, a small Japanese city has a secret weapon to boost its economy: Tama the cat!
Tortoiseshell Tama is the "stationmaster" of the unmanned Kishi train station where she was born and raised on the provincial Kishigawa Line.
But it is not her labours on the platform which have seen the cash rolling in.
It is rather Tama’s irresistible charm which has brought tourists flocking in their thousands to the western city of Kinokawa to see the feline worker patrolling in the uniform of her office – a Wakayama Electric Railway cap.
With 55,000 more people having used the Kishigawa Line than would normally be expected, Tama’s contribution to the local economy is calculated to have reached as much as Y1.1 billion ($A13.5 million) [US10.9 - Ed.] in 2007 alone, according to a study announced last week.
When fredmiranda.com forum user sbv20 found himself with a broken Canon 17-85 mm zoom lens after the aperture became stuck he decided to have a little bit of fun: he took it apart!
And thankfully, he documented his disassembly of the zoom lens for all of us to see: Link – via Gizmodo
When Jean Kelly’s cat Cadbury stopped meowing, the vet diagnozed a paralysed larynx which was blocking its throat. So what did the pet lover do?
After a stint in intensive care, six days in an oxygen tent, four months nursing care and regular check-ups, the 13-year-old Moggy had run up a bill of £10,000. [...]
Cadbury is back at home and on the road to recovery in Olney, Buckinghamshire – sitting in his favourite spot in the conservatory and miaowing in delight. “It was never about me – it was about Cadbury and his quality of life. I know he’s not a young cat but I wanted to give him a fighting chance,” she told a Sunday newspaper.
(Photo: Steve Nicholson)
Ted Hunter of Roarockit Skateboard Co. made this flower sculpture with skateboards as petals titled "Reach for Light":
It’s a good example of free hand vacuum veneer bending. The flower petal designs are actually printed using photo’s of real tulip petals. The inside is printed griptape (sticky back sandpaper) and the outside is printed styrene. The internal core is Canadian maple veneer. The shape of the decks are our Roarockit classic pintail skateboard shape that is included in our longboard deck kits.
Previously on Neatorama: The Skateboard Stairs
Here are some speakers that any music worshippers need: the Midnight Mexico Minigod speakers by vinyl toy maker Marka27. Now the only things you need are a volcano speaker and a virgin (Barbie, maybe?) to throw down into the boiling lava: Link – via BB Gadgets
Cleaning the cage of a really hungry 12-foot, 126-lb tiger python. What could go wrong? Here’s the story of one Renate Klosse, zoo owner, who just had an intimate tour of a python’s mouth:
‘The jaws of the snake opened so wide that, with one lunge, she was able to completely cover the woman’s face,’ said a police spokeswoman. ‘She feared that with a few more gulps her head would be inside.’
Renate instinctively stuck her thumbs into the jawbone of the snake to try to get it to relieve its pressure. Colleagues then sprayed water hoses on to it and it finally slithered off.
What happened next?
Renate needed hospital treatment for bites and shock. Antonia had to settle for a supper of live white rats instead.
Despite the ballyhooed $700 billion (actually, with pork it’s closer to $852 billion) bailout deal, for the first time in four years, the Dow falls below 10,000:
Investors around the world have come to the sobering realization that the Bush administration’s $700 billion rescue plan won’t work quickly to unfreeze the credit markets. Global banks, hobbled by wrong-way bets on mortgage securities, still remain starved for cash as credit has dried up.
That’s caused stocks to plunge in the U.S., Europe and Asia, and drove investors to sink money into the relative safety of U.S. government debt. Fears about a global recession also caused oil to drop below $90 a barrel; and the benchmark index that gauges fear in the market jumped to the highest level in its 18-year history.
So. What do you think? Did we just spend $700 billion on nothing? Link
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Consumer Reports has a checklist of seven things people do that compromise your online security. Are you guilty of any of these?
1. Assuming your security software is protecting you
2. Accessing an account through an e-mail link
3. Using a single password for all online accounts
4. Downloading free software
5. Thinking your Mac shields you from all risks
6. Clicking on a pop-up ad that says your PC is insecure
7. Shopping online the same way you do in stores
They have more details on each, and steps you can take to keep your identity secure. Link -via Consumerist
(image credit: David Flaherty)
Yesterday when I was watching the great film Juno, one of the characters mentioned Tony Little. Don’t ask me how, but somehow I had managed to forget about this crazy TV fitness guy, so I just had to take a look at YouTube. This was one of the better clips I came across.
Link [YouTube]
