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Archive for August 25th, 2009

Flintstones Wedding

Two couples from Norfolk, England got married in a double wedding dressed as characters from the TV show The Flintstones!

Andrea and Simon Bean, aka Fred and Wilma Flinstone, and Richard and Jill Noble, aka Barney and Betty Rubble, celebrated their double wedding at Weston Park Golf Club on Saturday by taking a quick trip to the next door dinosaur park for some spectacular wedding photographs sure to raise eyebrows on any mantelpiece.

With 165 guests dressed as cavemen and women, two best men dressed as dinosaurs, and a spectacular tiered wedding rock cake, both Wilma and Betty entered the ceremony to the traditional organ sound of Wagner’s Bridal March.

However, this was quickly replaced by an organ version of The Flintstones theme tune.

All of the participants had been married before and felt no need for a tradition wedding. In lieu of gifts, the couples received donations for the Children’s Liver Disease Foundation. Link -via Arbroath

(image credit: James Bass)

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Making Babies in Space May Be Difficult

Some animals have been bred in space, but not mammals. Japanese researchers are looking into the possibility, and doing experiments with mice on earth that mimic lower gravity space conditions.

To test these effects, the researchers artificially fertilized mouse eggs with sperm that had been stored inside a three-dimensional clinostat, a machine that mimics weightlessness by rotating objects in such a way that the effects of gravity are spread in every direction.

Fertilization took place normally, suggesting that microgravity hadn’t harmed the sperm. But as the embryos continued to develop inside the clinostat, many developed problems. Their cells had trouble dividing and maturing.

There were some baby mice produced after the embryos were implanted, but not many survived compared to a control group. Link -via Digg

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Chainmail Chess Set

David Austin made a chainmail chessboard in 2001, and a few years later completed the chess pieces to go with it, also out of chainmail. The result is a game fit for a medieval king! Link -via Unique Daily

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The 6 Most Horrific Bosses of All Time

You may think you have a difficult, greedy, egotistical boss, but you haven’t met anyone like the boss who locked his employees inside a factory, or the boss who paid in script only redeemable at his stores, or the one who made his employees analyze animal poop. Then there was Bryant and May who decided to save money on the material they made matches from.

They had a better idea. They had been making their matches with the extremely flammable but otherwise safe red phosphorous. But there was this other kind, white phosphorous, that was way cheaper. And there was absolutely no downside.

Oh, except it would literally eat your face off when you handled it.

The description of what happened to the employees may make you queasy. Read about all six horrific bosses at Cracked. Link

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The Poo Trap: An Alternative to Scooping Up After Your Dog

I’m afraid that this product is exactly what it looks like: a bracket that holds a stringed plastic bag while attached to your dog’s tail. At the expense of your dog’s sense of dignity, you get to avoid scooping up after him:

People invented many useful technologies to make people’s life easier. All these inventions (car is among one of them) are to make people’s life more convenient. With our “PooTrap”, no need to worry that dogs will cause environment pollution, and as dogs owners may know, actually it’s difficult to pick up poop.

Link via CrunchGear (where there is a video)

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Wood-Faced Clock and Speakers

A company called Evergreen sells wood-faced LED-lit alarm clock radios with speakers. There are two versions available, with either one or two speakers. It sells for about $25, but so far, only in Japan. More info at the link (if you speak Japanese).

Link via CrunchGear

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The World's Largest Chocolate Fountain

Photo: John Locher

In 2005, pastry chef Jean-Philippe Maury created this enormous 25-tiered chocolate fountain for the Bellagio hotel and casino in Las Vegas. It’s 27 feet tall and circulates 120 quarts of chocolate per minute:

It wasn’t, you see, quite as simple as constructing a waterfall.

“Water doesn’t change,” Maury said. “Chocolate is complicated.”

It must be at the proper temperature to flow properly, for starters. Then there’s the issue of the chocolate’s viscosity, which affects the flow. And the viscosity of chocolate changes with every little bit of moisture in the air.

“The envy of chocolate is humidity,” Maury said. With an increase in the humidity, cocoa butter and coconut oil must be added to the 2,100 pounds of chocolate in the tank. Maury takes viscosity readings every two or three days.

The 25 glass vessels from which the chocolate flows are each unique, and each handmade in Montreal. Maury and Oliver tested the system there for seven months.

Link via Gizmodo (where there are videos of the fountain)

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Cockney ATM

Photo: Times of London

Bank Machine, an ATM operator in Britain, now has five cash machines in London that offer users the opportunity to conduct their business in the cockney dialect. It’s a promotional gimmick designed to amuse customers:

“Readin’ your bladder of lard”, read the message on the screen. It asked for his “Huckleberry Finn”. Then more bewildering questions: did he wanted to see his balance on the Charlie Sheen? Did he wish to change his Huckleberry Finn or did he simply require sausage and mash, with or without a receipt?

Link via DVICE

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Time Travel Propaganda Posters

826LA is a non-profit organization in southern California that teaches kids how to engage in creative writing. It’s known for innovative workshops and clever marketing. We previously featured their time travel store on Neatorama. 826LA has applied that same theme to traditional propaganda posters, producing ten, including the above poster warning time travelers about the dangers of the Butterfly Effect.

Link via io9

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Keyboard Cat Papercraft

Now you can make your own keyboard cat that plays his own little papercraft keyboard when you crank the handle! TubbyPaws has a pattern and a cute video tutorial. Link -via Metafilter

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Filter Heroes

Have you ever wondered where comic books writers get their ideas for super heroes? In this t-shirt by Chop Shop, they are named after Photoshop effects! The results are at least as believable as anything DC or Marvel has. Link -via Laughing Squid

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Placebos Are Becoming More Effective

The percentage of new pharmaceutical products that fail their effectiveness trials is growing. The culprit is the placebo effect, which appears to be stronger than in years past. If a drug cannot provide relief significantly better than a sugar pill, it won’t go on the market.

The upshot is fewer new medicines available to ailing patients and more financial woes for the beleaguered pharmaceutical industry. Last November, a new type of gene therapy for Parkinson’s disease, championed by the Michael J. Fox Foundation, was abruptly withdrawn from Phase II trials after unexpectedly tanking against placebo. A stem-cell startup called Osiris Therapeutics got a drubbing on Wall Street in March, when it suspended trials of its pill for Crohn’s disease, an intestinal ailment, citing an “unusually high” response to placebo. Two days later, Eli Lilly broke off testing of a much-touted new drug for schizophrenia when volunteers showed double the expected level of placebo response.

It’s not only trials of new drugs that are crossing the futility boundary. Some products that have been on the market for decades, like Prozac, are faltering in more recent follow-up tests.

Wired takes a look at how the placebo effect works, and the various reasons newer drugs don’t compete as well with the mind’s ability to affect our bodies. Link -via Boing Boing

Previously at Neatorama: Prozac: No Better Than Placebo?

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Rainbow Cake

Kaitlin at Whisk Kid made this cake as a treat for the eye as well as the palate! The recipe is posted with the warning that you will need more frosting than you think. Link -via Digg

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Caption Monkey 63: Swimming Pigs of the Caribbean

Photo: Vince Lauro

Pigs may never fly, but they certainly can swim! Vince Lauro won National Geographic Traveler’s Great Outdoors Photo Contest with this awesome photo of the Caribbean swimming pig. From the Intelligent Travel blog:

As the first mate on a 118-foot motor yacht, Vince Lauro has the opportunity to continuously travel across the Caribbean. This photograph was taken near a small key famous for the "swimming pigs." A colony of pigs lives on the key, and they often swim near visiting boats. To capture this clear image Lauro said, "I had to lure this pig into an undisturbed area with its favorite food: fresh watermelon."

Link – Thanks Marilyn!

Now, on to the Neatorama and Hobotopia’s Caption Monkey part of the post: funniest caption will win a custom black and white Monkey drawing by our favorite artist, Adam "Ape Lad" Koford.

Contest rules are simple: place your caption in the comment section. One caption per comment, please. You can enter as many as you can think of – just make ‘em funny! Be sure to visit Adam’s blog for inspiration. Good luck!

Update 8/26/09 – Adam has picked the winner! Congrats to Lisa G. who came up with this (very punny) gem: Oinkers aweigh!

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There Be Giants: The Biggest Dogs in The World

A list of the biggest dog breeds in the world, including the usual suspects and such marvels as the Deerhound, the Neapolitan Mastiff and the Leonberger.  Strange how the bigger the dog, generally the softer and dafter that they get.  Out of this entire collection there is only one who would be good as a guard dog.

The English Mastiff, in terms of mass is the big daddy of all dogs and its dimensions particularly that of the male are something to be believed. Every inch of this dog gives off strength and power – if the planet Krypton had a dog then this would probably be it. The world record holding breed for weight, this dog can weigh up to two hundred and fifty pounds for a male and around fifty pounds less than a female.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by taliesyn30.

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