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I’m a compulsive list-maker. If you look in my purse at any given time, you can usually find three different mini notebooks filled with random scribblings, lists and ideas. You don’t even know how delighted I was to come across Listography. It’s a place to keep online lists of anything your little heart desires. And you can look at random people’s lists too, which is sort of like crack for me. I see a fun list that someone has made and think that I need to make one too. It’s endless. There are very practical lists such as groceries, to-do and how to pay down debt. But it’s the very silly lists that I’m hooked on – Fictional Characters I’d Like to Date, Embarrassing Songs That I Really Love, Food I Have to Have for My Last Meal. There are even some very sweet ones – Things I Will Do With My Kids got to me a little bit.
Anyway. Have fun.
These little dolls are adorable and clever. I want a set! There are plenty more images and close ups on artist Matt Brown’s site.
Well now you can find out! The link includes fascinating “then and now” pics. (I certainly think Jennifer Grey is very beautiful now post-nosejob, but wasn’t she even more beautiful before? Anyone?)
[Thanks, Gail!]
Hey, I like Abraham Lincoln as much as the next person. Not only was he one of our greatest presidents ever, he was a fascinating man. But let’s be honest… you probably don’t need this. No one really needs this. It’s beyond creepy. Then again, it might be a great companion piece for Napoleon’s hand.
This Persian rug is made of colored sand and is located beside the Straight of Hormuz. Life In The Fast Lane has some great images of the “carpet” being assembled as well as some largest sand carpets of the past and some neat sand sculptures.
Good Magazine has a fantastic gallery of some of the best street art in the world. Some are sculptures and some are murals. The site paired up with Wooster Collective, a street art blog that has some great stuff and some just ok sauce.
Customer: “Your site won’t let me get through!”
Me: “I’m sorry to hear that. Could you tell me what part of the site you were having an issue with?”
Customer: “It keeps telling me that I have the wrong password. I have my password!”
(I look up her password and use it on the site to make sure it
works.)Me: “I have tested your password and it appears to be working. Would you like me to send you an e-mail with a copy of your password?”
Customer: “NO! I have my password! It says it right here on the screen, and I typed it just like it says.”
Me: *slightly confused as to why the customer’s password would be displayed* “What password do you see on the screen?”
Customer: “cAsE sEnsitIve! I typed it the exact way that it says here! ‘Your password is cAsE sEnsitIve’!”
Link [Edit 1/11/09 - delinked because of possible virus in the website. If you still want to visit, it's notalwaysright.com. You've been warned]
Wayne Martin Belger of Boy of Blue Industries created this pinhole camera, named Yama, out of a human skull! Yama is the Tibetan God of Death:
Yama’s eyes are cast from bronze and silver with a brass pinhole in each. A divider runs down the middle of the skull creating
two separate cameras. A finished contact print mounted on copper is inserted in to the back of the camera to view what Yama saw in 3D.Yama is made from Aluminium, Titanium, Copper, Brass, Bronze Steel, Silver, Gold, Mercury with 4 Sapphires, 3 Rubies (The one at Yama’s third eye was $5000.00), Asian and American Turquoise, Sand, Blood, and 9 Opals inlayed in the Skull. The film loading system is pneumatic. A 300psi air tank in the middle of the camera powers 2 pneumatic pistons to move the film holder forward and lock it into place. The switch to open and close the film chamber is located under the jaw.
Previously on Neatorama: The Wonderful World of Early Photography
John’s post on the script of The Godfather turned into a visual art reminded me of this Einstein Word Portrait by Jeff Clark of Neoformix: Link
Previously on Neatorama: 10 Strange Facts About Einstein
Who says that video games aren’t educational? Here’s the story of one 6-year-old Virginia boy who took the family’s sedan because he missed the school bus:
The boy, whose name wasn’t released, missed the bus, took the keys to his family’s 2005 Ford Taurus and drove nearly six miles toward school while his mother was asleep, police said.
He made at least two 90-degree turns, passed several cars and ran off the rural two-lane road several times before hitting an embankment and utility pole about a mile and a half from school.
The boy told police he learned to drive playing Grand Theft Auto and Monster Truck Jam video games.
"He was very intent on getting to school," said Northumberland County Sheriff Chuck Wilkins. "When he got out of the car, he started walking to school. He did not want to miss breakfast and PE."
That boy sure is motivated to go to school! Link
What do you get if you combine a year’s calendar with a clock? Behold the Living Calendar by Maksim Biriukov. It displays the time, day (all 365), as well as public holidays in the year, all at once. The long hand points to the day and the short hand points to the present week and hour.
Link | Original website [in Russian]
Photo: explosive laughter [Flickr]
Flickr user explosive laughter snapped this pic of a mighty specific business hour of a "conspiracy theory headquarters" in Toronto, Canada. In that light, 9:11 makes sense, but what about the rest? Perhaps they just like Charlotte Gainsbourg’s 5:55 music album …
Recycled paper tubes aren’t just useful for holding architectural blueprints. They can be molded into load-bearing columns, bent into trusses and rapidly assembled, and can be made waterproof and fire resistant. Because paper tubes are available in various thickness and diameters, they can be added to a structure to support more weight as necessary. Ban has said he hopes to build structures a few stories high.
The work is being done by Japanese and Chinese students working together. See pictures of the process, and a completed school at Treehugger. Link -Thanks, Chris Tackett!
A ski lift mishap at Blue Sky Basin resort in Vail, Colorado left a 48-year-old man hanging upside down without his pants on New Years Day.
It appears that the chairlift’s fold-down seat was somehow not in the lowered position, which caused the man to partially fall through the resulting gap. His right ski got jammed in the ascending chairlift, and that kept him upended since his boot never dislodged from its binding. As seen in the photos on the following pages (which were snapped by fellow skiers), the Skyline Express lift was stopped shortly after the pair’s botched boarding resulted in the man dangling from the lift. The exposed skier was stuck for about 15 minutes before Vail personnel backed the lift up and successfully dislodged the unidentified man from the four-seat chair.
Link -via YesButNoButYes
Topless Robot lists The 10 Best Repainted Action Figures of All Time.
They’re the bane of many an action figure collector’s existence–repaints. That’s when a manufacturer takes an existing action figure, paints it in all-new colors and tries to pass it off as a new figure, such as “Arctic Batman.” This allows the company to squeeze a little more profit out of the expensive mold they created for the original figure. Collectors hate them, kids are indifferent to them and the figures warm the pegs. But once in a while, a figure is repainted (along with a few minor tweaks) and is passed off not as just a new figure, but a brand-new character. The results are often laughable but, once in a while, kinda cool.
Pictured is TC14, who resembles another robot we all know and love, but couldn’t be the same, because he is silver! Link -Thanks, Keith!
This video from Yahoo! of a deer (just a little guy) crashing through the window of an elementary school reminded me of when a deer wandered through the automatic doors at our Target in West Des Moines a couple of years ago. Such a thing would never happen now – all of the wooded area near that particular Target has been replaced with retail and apartments. But at the time, it was pretty plausible (obviously). I feel sorry for the poor thing – it can’t get any traction on those slick floors!
Usually, consumers are mad if things are missing in the product they buy, but this class action lawsuit is about something extra:
We were reminded of that scheming today when we read about what Courthouse News Service reports may be the first federal class action based on concealment of chicken giblets. In the complaint, Perdue Farms is accused of disposing of “an enormous quantity of extra giblet parts” by a “secret practice” of stuffing extra hearts, gizzards and necks into its whole chickens, thereby “dispos(ing) of its extra giblets” and tricking customers into paying the regular per-pound price for them.[...]
But aren’t gizzards the best part? Clearly these people have never tasted a good chicken giblet gravy. Indeed, when reached for comment, Julie DeYoung, a Perdue spokeswoman, told the Law Blog: “While it is company practice not to comment on pending litigation, I can tell you the majority of our giblets complaints are about MISSING giblets. We just received the lawsuit and will review it in more detail, but we anticipate a vigorous defense.”
It’s 10 PM. Do you know where your children are? Well, with this GPS tracking watch, you definitely do. Here’s the Nu.M8 digital watch that lets parents track their children’s whereabouts through a secure website (it’ll even overlay the location on Google Maps).
And to answer the obvious question: an alarm will be triggered if the watch is forcibly removed.
Is it too much or just being a prudent parent in today’s environment?
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Add this to long things of things that prove the adage: a new law taking effect February 10th requires all children’s clothing and toys to be tested for lead and phthalates. Any product not tested by that day will be considered hazardious waste, regardless whether they contain lead.
Because testing costs thousands of dollars, many small manufacturers and even stores will be forced to close:
Barring a reprieve, regulations set to take effect next month could force thousands of clothing retailers and thrift stores to throw away trunkloads of children’s clothing.
The law, aimed at keeping lead-filled merchandise away from children, mandates that all products sold for those age 12 and younger — including clothing — be tested for lead and phthalates, which are chemicals used to make plastics more pliable. Those that haven’t been tested will be considered hazardous, regardless of whether they actually contain lead.
"They’ll all have to go to the landfill," said Adele Meyer, executive director of the National Assn. of Resale and Thrift Shops.
Moral of the story? Buy your kids clothes before February 10th – you may not be able to find ‘em in many stores and probably won’t find them in second-hand stores, either: Link | Find out more at the Handmade Toy Alliance
Uh oh, here comes another study that will surely add confusion to how exactly one should go about losing weight: exercise won’t make you slim.
Researchers from Loyola University Health System and other centers compared African American women in metropolitan Chicago with women in rural Nigeria. On average, the Chicago women weighed 184 pounds and the Nigerian women weighed 127 pounds.
Researchers had expected to find that the slimmer Nigerian women would be more physically active. To their surprise, they found no significant difference between the two groups in the amount of calories burned during physical activity.
"Decreased physical activity may not be the primary driver of the obesity epidemic," said Loyola nutritionist Amy Luke, a member of the study team. [...]
Diet is a more likely explanation than physical activity expenditure for why Chicago women weigh more than Nigerian women, Luke said. She noted the Nigerian diet is high in fiber and carbohydrates and low in fat and animal protein. By contrast, the Chicago diet is 40 percent to 45 percent fat and high in processed foods.
Sarah Needleman of The Wall Street Journal wrote an interesting article about a new CareerCast.com study from Les Krantz, author of Jobs Rated Almanac, about the best and worst jobs in the U.S.
The study evaluated 200 jobs according to environment, income, employment outlook, physical demand and stress. The data are from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau, amongst others:
According to the study, mathematicians fared best in part because they typically work in favorable conditions — indoors and in places free of toxic fumes or noise — unlike those toward the bottom of the list like sewage-plant operator, painter and bricklayer. They also aren’t expected to do any heavy lifting, crawling or crouching — attributes associated with occupations such as firefighter, auto mechanic and plumber.
The study also considers pay, which was determined by measuring each job’s median income and growth potential. Mathematicians’ annual income was pegged at $94,160, but Ms. Courter, 38, says her salary exceeds that amount.
Neatorama, of course, already know that Math rocks. Check out our I Love Math T-shirt.
Jon Lajoie – everyday normal guy & ladies’ man – is back on YouTube, this time spitting ill rhymes with his whole everyday normal crew! If you like everyday normal rappers from CANADA, then you must check this out.
[Attention hip-hop parents out there: the everyday normal crew's lyrics are unambiguously laced with profanity.] – YouTube.
