Archive for February, 2009
Remotes for Grandma
Yes! This would make my half-dozen remote controls much easier to use! Come to think of it, we may have just discovered why I don’t watch much TV anymore. From the book Designing Interactions by Bill Moggridge. Link -via Divine Caroline
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The Stories Behind 10 Weird College Mascots
1. Cy the Cardinal, Iowa State University Cyclones. I have to put this one in here, ‘cause I’m an ISU alum and still like to tailgate it up during football season. So why is a cardinal the mascot of a team named after a force of nature? Because it’s kind of hard to make a mascot out of a tornado, Cy the Cardinal was chosen by students in 1954 to represent the school colors of cardinal and gold. The “Cyclones” moniker came in 1895, when the ISU football team trounced Northwestern and a reporter noted, “”Northwestern might as well have tried to play football with an Iowa cyclone as with the Iowa team it met yesterday.” Photo: ISU Alumni Association
2. Sammy the Banana Slug, University of California Santa Cruz. When the University decided to get into the NCAA game in 1980, it was decided that the school’s mascot would be the venerable sea lion. But students at UC Santa Cruz had grown attached to the colorful slugs that populated the redwoods on campus and had sort of adopted them as an unofficial mascot, so when the university announced their sea lion decision, students rallied together to lobby for the hermaphroditic Ariolimax columbianus. They won, and Sammy has been one of the most recognizable college mascots ever since.
3. The Boilermaker Special, Purdue University. Some background: the first reference to the Boilermaker name came in an 1890s newspaper article that called the Purdue team “Burly Boiler Makers,” which was a nod to their engineering roots. Even so, the university had no official mascot until 1937, when a student suggested a “mechanical man” or something similar as a mascot. The idea snowballed into building a train that could be driven like a car, which showed off the school’s prowess in the engineering realm while giving them a meaningful mascot at the same time. The train would then carry fans to other cities for games, and became known as Boilermaker Specials. Today, Purdue is on Boilermaker Special V and the X-Tra Special VI, a mini version that can go indoors. Purdue also has Purdue Pete, a human Boilermaker who carries around a hammer. Photo from Purdue Reamer Club.
4. Gladys the Fighting Squirrel, Mary Baldwin College in Virginia. The school’s mascot is the squirrel because Mary Baldwin had a squirrel in her family crest. I can’t find a single thing on why they named her Gladys. Any Neatoramanauts know the story? My research did turn up another interesting fact, though: Tallulah Bankhead was a Mary Baldwin grad.
5. Artie the Fighting Artichoke – Scottsdale Community College. The school needed a new mascot in the 1970s, but at the time, the student government was mad at the administration for steering funding toward athletics instead of academics. So they picked three unorthodox mascots and let the students vote. The choices? The Artichokes, the Rutabagas or the Scoundrels. Former college president Art DeCabooter says the artichoke won out because it’s got heart. Ha. Photo from JamesStephanieKayley
6. Boll Weevil, University of Arkansas Monticello. This name comes courtesy of former school President Frank Horsfall, who noted in 1925 that “the only gosh-darned thing that ever licked the South was the boll weevil.”
7. John Poet – Whittier College, California. This one is pretty easy – the school is named after poet and abolitionist John Whittier. The town the college is in is also called Whittier. Richard Nixon is probably Whittier’s most famous Poet (although it has lots of notable alumni, including the actress who played Kimmie Gibler on Full House) – he was an accomplished football, basketball and track runner for Whittier. Photo from Whittier.
8. Speedy the Geoduck, Evergreen State College, Washington. Surely an inspired mascot if I’ve ever heard one. The geoduck (gooey-duck) isn’t a waterfowl, as you might suspect, but a mollusk. It’s native to the Pacific Northwest, which explains why the college chose it as a mascot. Sort of. Also notable: Matt Groening was an Evergreen State Geoduck. Here’s Speedy doing his thing:
9. The Anchormen, Rhode Island College. I’m not even going to lie – I was totally picturing a mascot that looked similar to Ron Burgandy. It turns out by “Anchormen,” they mean “sailors.” Dang. As for the inspiration – one of the nicknames for Rhode Island is the Ocean State, so it really does make sense when you think about it. But I still prefer to think of a mascot running around in a suit and big hair, carrying a microphone and talking about his “guns.”
10. The Student Princes, Heidelberg University, Ohio. Prior to 1926, the team was known as the Cardinals. But then the university’s alumni director saw a movie called The Student Prince, which was about a prince who went to the Heidelberg University in Germany. He was inspired to start calling his students the same thing, and it caught on. At first it was just an unofficial, on-campus thing, but quickly grew to sports writers and the media.
Others that I was interested in but couldn’t find a good backstory on? The Long Beach Dirtbags (baseball only) and the Columbia College Claim Jumpers. What are your favorite weird mascots? I have a friend who was a Fighting Pretzel in high school.
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Gobekli Tepe: Is it the Garden of Eden?
On a summer day in 1994, a Kurdish shepherd stumbled upon a strange stone in the rolling plains of Gobekli Tepe in Turkey. Little did he know then that he had just made what could be the greatest archaeological discovery ever: the possible site of the Garden of Eden.
Carbon-dating shows that the complex is at least 12,000 years old, maybe even 13,000 years old. That means it was built around 10,000BC. By comparison, Stonehenge was built in 3,000 BC and the pyramids of Giza in 2,500 BC.
Gobekli is thus the oldest such site in the world, by a mind-numbing margin. It is so old that it predates settled human life. It is pre-pottery, pre-writing, pre-everything. Gobekli hails from a part of human history that is unimaginably distant, right back in our hunter-gatherer past. [...]
Over glasses of black tea, served in tents right next to the megaliths, Klaus Schmidt told me that, in his opinion, this very spot was once the site of the biblical Garden of Eden. More specifically, as he put it: ‘Gobekli Tepe is a temple in Eden.’
Tom Cox of the Mail Online has more on this fascinating story: Link
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Unscientific Yet Totally Accurate Look at Digg and Reddit Users
If you’re interested in joining an online community yet don’t know which one is right for you, Brainz has done the legwork. Here is a completely unscientific (yet surprisingly accurate) look at social networking and media sites, including digg, reddit, MySpace, Facebook and Twitter: Link – via The Presurfer
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Mystery of the Belly Button Fluff Solved by Science
Cancer may still be a mystery, but after years of research, science has finally solved the mystery of the belly button fluff:
After three years of research, Georg Steinhauser, a chemist, has discovered a type of body hair that traps stray pieces of lint and draws them into the navel.
Dr Steinhauser made his discovery after studying 503 pieces of fluff from his own belly button.
Chemical analysis revealed the pieces of fluff were not made up of only cotton from clothing. Wrapped up in the lint were also flecks of dead skin, fat, sweat and dust.
Dr Steinhauser’s observations showed that ’small pieces of fluff first form in the hair and then end up in the navel at the end of the day’. [...]
"The hair’s scales act like a kind of barbed hooks," he said. "Abdominal hair often seems to grow in concentric circles around the navel."
And the secret to a navel fluff-less belly button?
Dr Steinhauser established that shaving one’s belly will result in a fluff-free navel – but only until the hairs grow back.
Photo: Graham Barker’s Navel Fluff Collection, see also: 25 Strangest Collections on the Web
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Warren Buffett's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Year
If the economic crisis is getting you down, take heart: even the Oracle of Omaha and arguably one of the smartest businessman alive today is also having a tough year:
Berkshire Hathaway reported today that its net worth fell in 2008 by $11.5 billion, a decline reducing its per-share book value by 9.6%. That was Berkshire’s worst result in the 44 years that Chairman Warren Buffett has run the company and, in fact, only the second decline in that period. The other drop was 6.2% in 2001, a year hurt by 9/11 and other problems in Berkshire’s insurance operations. [...]
In his chairman’s letter, Buffett states that 2008 had good points mixed in with the bad. But in an unusual admission for the opening pages of the letter (a point easily recognizable by this writer because she has edited Buffett’s letter for 32 years) he says bluntly, "During 2008 I did some dumb things in investments."
The dumbest, he said, was buying a large amount of Conoco Phillips stock when oil prices were near their peak and in no way anticipating the dramatic drop in prices that subsequently occurred. Buffett said he still thinks the odds are good that oil will sell in the future at much higher prices than the $40 to $50 per barrel now prevailing. But even if prices should rise, he said, "the terrible timing" of the Conoco purchase has cost Berkshire several billion dollars.
Unlike you or me, however, Warren Buffett can drown his sorrow by counting his remaining bazillion dollars. Carol Loomis of Fortune has more: Link
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Topless Coffee Shop Has Fantastic ... Business!
When the times get tough, the tough goes … naked? Here’s a story of one Donald Crabtree of Vassalboro, Maine, who combined coffee and nudity for his recipe for success:
On Monday, Donald Crabtree opened Grand View Topless Coffee Shop in Vassalboro, Maine, where the waiters and waitresses serve their customers topless.
In a town with fewer than 4,500 residents, the topless coffee shop is booming with business. Paul Crabtree, the owner’s brother, describes business so far as "fantastic."
"It’s just been crowds mobbing in," he said.
Laurie Segall of CNN has the story: Link (Photo: WGME)
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Octopus Caused Flooding in California Aquarium
Octopus have been famous for their curiosity and intelligence. One California aquarium recently experienced flooding. The culprit? A female two-spotted octopus!
Staff at the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium in California say the trickster who flooded their offices with sea water was armed. Eight-armed, to be exact.
They blame the soaking they discovered Tuesday morning on the aquarium’s resident two-spotted octopus, a tiny female known for being curious and gregarious with visitors. The octopus apparently tugged on a valve and that allowed hundreds of gallons of water to overflow its tank.
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Enhancing the Virtual Reality experience
[YouTube - Link]
University of Tsukuba researchers in Japan have developed a device that is designed to enhance the Virtual Reality experience by simulating motion in a static environment:
"One of the big problems facing VR is the issue of mobility — how do you allow users unrestricted movement in virtual reality, while keeping them relatively static in real reality?
Omni-directional treadmills have been tried in the past, and now researchers at the University of Tsukuba in Japan have developed something called CirculaFloor. The system uses four robotic tiles that constantly shift position, ensuring that there’s always a tile in the direction you’re headed.
Additionally, the entire assembly moves slowly backwards, giving one the impression of movement while they’re actually standing relatively still. The tiles also incorporate lifts, for simulating staircases and the like."
– via engadget
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Dancing With Salmon
[YouTube - Link]
A bear could easily catch a dead salmon in this pool, but most bears don’t like to get their ears wet. An underwater camera reveals a clever ursine trick.
– via bangocibumbumpuluj
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Chinese Woman Put Her Life Online
Beijing resident Chen Xiao was tired of making plans for her life and having them ruined by natural, economic and personal disasters. So she decided to hand over her personal decision-making to China’s hundreds of millions of Internet users.
"I figured if other people came up with things for me to do, I might stumble upon something new and better."
Web users, known in China as netizens, have been finding plenty of things for Chen to do, from delivering pet food, to caring for stray cats, to taking a hot lunch to a homeless man, to attending the birth of a child. And she’s been able to make money at it, charging about $3 an hour.
Chen won’t do anything illegal, immoral or violent, although she’s been asked.
“When people stop needing me, I’ll go back to my original life. But I don’t know when that will come.”
– Chen Xiao
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Photos Of Strangers
Inspired by a similar idea in Atlanta early last year, a writer left two disposable cameras on park benches in Brooklyn and Manhattan. With just a note telling people to take any photo they like and her hope that someone wouldn’t run away with the cameras she left them for the day.
On returning she found the cameras exactly as she’s left them, with no exposures left. The developed photographs are an interesting slice of city life across one day.
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Saving Lascaux Cave
A black fungus is spreading across the prehistoric murals in the Lascaux cave in France, and scientists aren’t sure what to do about it. At the moment, the cave is completely sealed in the hopes that the cave "will heal itself," said Marc Gaulthier, head of the Lascaux Caves International Scientific Committtee. The fungus problem is exacerbated by rising temperatures that prevent air from circulating inside the caverns, Gaulthier said.
The paintings are estimated to be between 15,000 and 17,500 years old.
Link – via nagonthelake
(image credit: AP/Pierre Andrieu)
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Fat Cats Need Love Too
How you know your kitty needs to go on a diet.
Link Via GiggleSugar
Update 2/28/09: Let’s not forget our article on this very subject: Top 15 Amazingly Fat Cats
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The Inboxes of 15 Fictional Villains
Cracked.com held a reader contest to see who could come up with the most appropriate villain inbox. This one wasn’t the winner, but it was my favorite.
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One Heck of a Giant Stingray
A stingray weighing close to 900 pounds? This 6.6-ft.-wide giant stingray was caught, measured and released in Thailand this week, part of a National Geographic scientific expedition to search for giant fish. It may well be the largest known freshwater fish in the world.
University of Nevada biologist Zeb Hogan, a National Geographic Emerging Explorer, was pleased to discover healthy populations of giant stingray in Thailand, where once the fish were considered critically endangered.
Freshwater giant stingrays are among the largest of the approximately 200 species of rays. They are found in just a few rivers in Southeast Asia and northern Australia.
More about the Megafishes Project here.
(image credit: Zeb Hogan)
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How a TV Sound System Works
(YouTube link)
This ad from Loewe made me giggle! -via Geeks Are Sexy
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Bug, the Model Rat
The cutest rat you’ve ever seen is named Bug, and she’s quite the internet darling. Bug is owned by 18-year-old photographer Jessica Florence. 3-year-old Bug doesn’t mind posing with a variety of props.
‘Actually,’ says Jessica, ‘it’s easier to get her in the right position than you’d think. I just wait until it’s late at night and she’s really sleepy so can’t be bothered to scurry away. Then I just follow her round with my camera until I get a good shot.’
Link to story. Link to Bug’s Flickr set. -via Unique Daily
(image credit: Jessica Florence)
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Funny Science T-Shirts
Support Bacteria! It’s The Only Culture Some People Have T-Shirt – $9.95
Slave to Science T-Shirt – $9.95 (should’ve made this while I was a grad student!)
It’s been a while since we put up the best-selling I Survived The Large Hadron Collider T-shirt on Neatorama Online Store, but the wait is worth it.
Check out the new fun Science and Tech T-Shirt designs, including some timeless classics: Link
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Scientists Do It ... T-Shirts
Polymer Chemists Do It In Chains T-Shirt – $9.95
And if you like the science shirts above, don’t miss this new category of Scientists Do It … T-Shirts on Neatorama’s Online Store: Link
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45-cent Kindle Stand
John from J-Walk Blog was frustrated because his Kindle electronic reader needed to be propped up so he could read while eating. He could’ve spend $27.95 for a Kindle stand, but his wife handed him a 45-cent metal bookend. With a little bending, he fashioned the perfect stand to hold his Kindle. He also notes that metal bookends now cost almost a dollar. Link
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A Good CEO For A Change
In a world filled with headlines about CEO’s and executives running their companies to the ground, and holding lavish parties and getaways on taxpayer funded bailouts, here is a refreshingly touching story of one very different individual.
Leonard Abess Jr., CEO of City National Bank in Florida, sold 83% of his stake in the bank to a Spanish company, and then used the proceeds to reward his very own employees.
At a time when bankers are being pilloried on Capitol Hill as heartless and greedy, Leonard Abess Jr. stands apart.
After selling his bank for a fortune last fall, he quietly handed out $60 million in bonuses from his own pocket — and not just to top executives. In all, 471 employees and retirees, including tellers, clerks and secretaries, were rewarded, receiving an average of about $127,000 each.
“I think everybody was surprised. But knowing Leonard, the type of person he is, I can believe him giving it away,” said retiree William Perry, who spent 43 years at City National Bank of Florida, rising from janitor to vice president. Perry, 78, got $50,000, which he is using to help his son pay for law school.
For his generosity and humility, Abess was singled out for praise by President Barack Obama in his congressional address Tuesday. Abess attended as Obama’s guest.
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Caboodle Ranch
(YouTube link)
Craig Grant spent $100,000 to provide a good home on 30 acres for nearly 500 cats! Caboodle Ranch is 50 miles from Tallahassee, Florida, and features shelters fashioned after small town buildings, nature trails, and underground dens. Grant even retired from his job to devote his time to the cats. Link to story. Link to website. -via Metafilter
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Bars of Black and White
In this fun click-through game from Gregory Weir, they’re out to get you. They’re always watching. And they’ve always been there. But maybe, just maybe, you can find a way to escape them…
Link via JayIsGames
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Handmade Coraline Doll
I figured it was only a matter of time before little Coralines started popping up on the craft sites. Craftster purplekappa made this one for her daughter, and I must say, it’s pretty perfect. She even comes with Wybie’s cat and her very own button key.
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LEGO Minifigs: The Best Business Cards Ever!
For someone that works at LEGO, this is a functional business card that also happens to be an iconic toy! Moreover, they even try to match the look of the minifig (gender, hair, and glasses) to the person.
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The Impeachment and Trial of John F. Kennedy
I’m a big fan of the genre of fiction known as alternate history. That’s why I’m excited about a new novel by Harry Turtledove and Bryce Zabel called Winter of Our Discontent: The Impeachment and Trial of John F. Kennedy.
The point of divergence is that a Secret Service agent spotted the glint off of Oswald’s rifle seconds before he fired. Kennedy survived November 22, 1963. Whether or not he would survive scandals that would rock his administration would not be so certain.
You can read the first chapter of the novel here, and the articles of impeachment here.
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Your Butt is Killing the Rainforest
Here’s something for you to ponder the next time you’re in the bathroom: American’s love for soft toilet paper is ecologically hard on forests!
… fluffiness comes at a price: millions of trees harvested in North America and in Latin American countries, including some percentage of trees from rare old-growth forests in Canada. Although toilet tissue can be made at similar cost from recycled material, it is the fiber taken from standing trees that help give it that plush feel, and most large manufacturers rely on them.
Customers “demand soft and comfortable,” said James Malone, a spokesman for Georgia Pacific, the maker of Quilted Northern. “Recycled fiber cannot do it.” [...]
Though most of the pulp comes from tree farms, but not all:
Although brands differ, 25 percent to 50 percent of the pulp used to make toilet paper in this country comes from tree farms in South America and the United States. The rest, environmental groups say, comes mostly from old, second-growth forests that serve as important absorbers of carbon dioxide, the main heat-trapping gas linked to global warming. In addition, some of the pulp comes from the last virgin North American forests, which are an irreplaceable habitat for a variety of endangered species, environmental groups say.
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Good Samaritan Saved People From Being Hit By A Car, Got Jaywalking Ticket
Remember the adage "no good deed goes unpunished?" Well, Jim Moffett was helping two elderly women and a man cross a busy Denver street in a snowstorm when a pickup went straight at them – Jim pushed the three out of the way, but got struck himself.
His reward for being a Good Samaritan? A jaywalking ticket:
Family members said 58-year-old bus driver Jim Moffett and another man were helping two elderly women cross a busy Denver street in a snowstorm when he was hit Friday night.
Moffett suffered bleeding in the brain, broken bones, a dislocated shoulder and a possible ruptured spleen. He was in serious but stable condition Wednesday.
The Colorado State Patrol issued the citation. Trooper Ryan Sullivan said that despite Moffett’s intentions, jaywalking contributed to the accident.
Previously on Neatorama: Suing a Good Samaritan
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The Oldest Words in the English Language
Mark Pagel, evolutionary biologist at the University of Reading, and colleagues have identified some of the oldest words in the English language using computer analyses:
Reading University researchers claim "I", "we", "two" and "three" are among the most ancient, dating back tens of thousands of years. [...]
At the root of the Reading University effort is a lexicon of 200 words that is not specific to culture or technology, and is therefore likely to represent concepts that have not changed across nations or millennia.
"We have lists of words that linguists have produced for us that tell us if two words in related languages actually derive from a common ancestral word," said Professor Pagel. [...]
For example, the words "I" and "who" are among the oldest, along with the words "two", "three", and "five". The word "one" is only slightly younger.
William the Conqueror (Getty)
Time-travellers would find a few sounds familiar in William’s wordsThe word "four" experienced a linguistic evolutionary leap that makes it significantly younger in English and different from other Indo-European languages.
Meanwhile, the fastest-changing words are projected to die out and be replaced by other words much sooner.
For example, "dirty" is a rapidly changing word; currently there are 46 different ways of saying it in the Indo-European languages, all words that are unrelated to each other. As a result, it is likely to die out soon in English, along with "stick" and "guts".
Verbs also tend to change quite quickly, so "push", "turn", "wipe" and "stab" appear to be heading for the lexicographer’s chopping block.
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