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Artist Amy Rawson (previously at Neatorama) has created a cute-as-can-be needle felted zombie bunny for Halloween. Or at least, it’s cute on the side its eyeball isn’t falling out of! See more pictures at eBay. Link
There’s a lot of fascinating things about molecular biology (I should know, I have a PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology) – but a lot of students get discouraged from learning it because it is taught poorly in school. To be fair, the topic is rather complex – if you don’t get the basics right, it’s easy to get confused and lost later on – and many of the textbooks of biochemistry, cell biology and molecular bio are b-o-r-i-n-g. Heck, I’ve read phone books more interesting than some of ‘em.
Enter The Manga Guide to Molecular Biology
The book is ostensibly about the adventures of Rin and Ami, two students that have been skipping their molecular biology class. They were summoned by Professor Moro for a special summer school on his private island (complete with a virtual reality machine, a hunky TA … and a terrible secret. What is it? Oh, I’m not going to tell you). But amidst all that fun, there’s actual learning.
Take, for instance, the explanation about how the liver enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase works in breaking down alcohol:
Read more after the jump: more …
Bicycle maker Gyrobike has invented the “Gyrowheel” — a wheel with a motor-driven gyroscope inside that helps keep it upright. The manufacturer hopes to market it as a replacement for traditional training wheels on kids’ bicycles. Nathan Barry of GeekDad writes:
It aims to replace traditional training wheels or stabilizers and to eradicate the bad habits that they teach kids when learning to ride a bike – leaning away from a turn and constantly putting a foot down at the first sign of a wobble when they’re eventually taken off. The Gyrowheel uses the “gyroscopic precession” of the independently spinning disk inside it to stabilize the bike. The force created when the disk is turned – via a rechargeable battery – is powerful enough to hold a wheel upright at very low speeds (i.e. virtually stopped), and can actually make a bike look like it has a “Ghost Rider” as the videos below show (and there are plenty more on the Gyrobike site).
Product Page via GeekDad (where there’s an additional video)
We go on vacation to unwind, and relieve stress. Well, at least that used to be the case. I hear and see this phenomenon more and more often, although I’m relatively good at avoiding it. PHD Comics has a great assortment of funnies, for the cubicle minded.
Ryan North of the webcomic Dinosaur Comics asked his friend Ben Tippett to write a formal paper explaining the coherency of Superman’s amazing powers. It’s a very math and physics-heavy article, so I won’t try to understand, let alone summarize the whole thing. Here, however, is the conclusion:
We conjecture that all of Superman’s powers come from His ability to alter the inertial mass of objects in His immediate vicinity or with which He is in personal contact; although the mechanism is unknown.
Image: flickr user chanchan222, used under Creative Commons license.
Photo: Bettyboop4 [Flickr]
National Geographic Traveler’s Intelligent Travel (and now Neatorama) blogger Marilyn Terrell just came back from a trip to the Yukon Territory in Canada. Naturally, she’s got lots of stories about her adventure, the fascinating ecology of the Yukon and so on and so forth.
But since I’m stuck here in the ‘burbs, my jealous brain wouldn’t allow me to properly process all her stories save this tiny but golden nugget of trivia that will forever be with me till the day I die: Bear poop can be pink.
A woman in Texas was so angry at her former common-law husband that she decided to fry and eat his pet goldfish. The not-so-lucky 7 gold fish were bought by the couple during happier days. Police say it’s a civil not a criminal matter and left the couple to work out the issue. I guess revenge is a dish best served fried!
Panasonic subsidiary Activelink is developing the “Dual Arm Amplification Robot” — an exoskeleton that allows the user to lift heavy weights. It hopes to have to have a working model by 2015, which can then be used for disaster relief or industrial assembly. It is equipped with direct force feedback, which allows the user to feel the impact of its movements, and thus better control the machine.
Link via Popular Science
Farmer Richard Johnson in Humberside, England, has an effective solution for chilly piglets who can’t grab a spot next to mom … Hit play or go to Link [YouTube]
120 little people live in a village near Kunming, China. The village was set up to protect the dwarves from discrimination. You can’t live there if you are over 4 feet 3 inches tall.
Now the group has turned itself into a tourist attraction by building mushroom houses and living and dressing like fairy tale characters.
“As small people we are used to being pushed around and exploited by big people. But here there aren’t any big people and everything we do is for us,” said spokesman Fu Tien.
You have to wonder if there are exceptions to the community rules for normal sized children of the current residents when they pass the height limit. Link
Zach Gage says that he created the free video game Lose/Lose to make people question their ethical assumptions. The game is similar to Space Invaders, but every time you kill an alien, the game deletes a randomly-selected file from your hard drive:
Lose/Lose is a video-game with real life consequences. Each alien in the game is created based on a random file on the players computer. If the player kills the alien, the file it is based on is deleted. If the players ship is destroyed, the application itself is deleted. Although touching aliens will cause the player to lose the game, and killing aliens awards points, the aliens will never actually fire at the player. This calls into question the player’s mission, which is never explicitly stated, only hinted at through classic game mechanics. Is the player supposed to be an aggressor? Or merely an observer, traversing through a dangerous land? Why do we assume that because we are given a weapon an awarded for using it, that doing so is right?
Clicking on the link below will not download the game onto your computer and begin deleting your files. But it will give you the option to do so.
Link via Geekologie
After he “left for the great data bank in the sky,” Alan was memorialized by his family in the most dignified manner possible: inside a 1990s-era SPARCstation CPU case inscribed with his name, the years of his life, and the phrase “Beam me up Scotty, I’m done here.” Those who attended the funeral said goodbye to Alan in a way fitting for the cubicle lifestyle:
His friends and family were able to leave their final good-byes on post-notes. Anyone who wanted to keep their words private could just slip their note into the case through the floppy slot. All notes will be sealed in plastic and placed within the case. There has been one complication. His daughters like the look of it so much they aren’t now sure if they want to bury him.
Link via Gizmodo | Image: flickr user sam 3.14
A skunk named Mr. Bumble was turned over to the RSPCA when his owners could no longer handle him. The skunk, who loves bacon sandwiches, weighed in at 14 pounds! Mr. Bumble is now at Tropiquaria Animal Park in Watchet, England and is on a weight-loss regimen.
Park owner Chris Noisier told the BBC: “We’re now working on dieting him down to what he should be and clearly bacon butties are not a normal part of a skunk’s diet in the wild.
“We’re putting him on the vegetarian option at the moment. It’s very much like a human weight watching issue.
“He is getting to meet lots of new people so there’s lots going on in his life and I suspect it’s making up for the lack of his old favourite food.”
The Breakfast Machine is an art installation by Yuri Suzuki and Masa Kimura that makes a full breakfast for users through an elaborate series of Rube Goldberg-like devices. Pictured above is the section that prepares orange juice from scratch. It was featured at the Dutch Design Double design fair in Amsterdam. Video (in Dutch) at the link.
Link via GearFuse | Yuri Suzuki’s Website
“Parting Seas” by Adam Lau
If you’re going to be in the San Diego area between now and November 1st, be sure to stop by the Lyceum Theater Gallery and see the winners of this year’s global contest. From My Modern Met’s Alice:
The competition was judged by Charlotte Cotton, the Curator and Head of the Photography Department at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). Now in its fifth year, Ms. Cotton narrowed down the exhibition to 111 stunning images from over 16,000 photographs she received (from 57 countries).
Link to site with slideshow. Credits of slideshow
See also 10 Stunning Photos From The Art Of Photography Show on MyModernMet
When you pay a visit to your county or state fair, or when a carnival comes to town, you may get a chance to ride on one of Michael Jackson’s amusement park rides. The rides were sold to amusement companies around the country and have been refurbished and put back into use.
“It was a blast!” said Benny Vasquez, a Visalia, Calif., welder who was regaining his bearings after a dizzying turn on the Spider, an arachnid-shaped contraption with blazing green bulbs lining its black legs. “It’s exciting for people to be able to sit on something that he owned.”
Over the years, Jackson acquired about 18 rides for his 2,600-acre ranch in Santa Barbara County. Some gradually were swapped out for newer models and hit the carnival circuit without fanfare. But most stayed in place even after Jackson, acquitted on child molestation charges in 2005, left Neverland for good.
Several big amusement companies purchased what remained in 2008, repainting and sprucing up rides run down by weather and lack of use.
(image credit: Tomas Ovalle/LA Times)
See inside Godzilla, Gamera, and a couple of other movie monsters in poster form. If I could only read Japanese to find out where their weak spots are, then I, too, could save the world! Link -via Digg
Upodate: These are from the book An Anatomical Guide to Monsters by Shoji Otomo with illustrations by Shogo Endo, from 1967. More information can be found at Pink Tentacle, including partial translations. -Thanks, algomeysa!
Creative electric transformer boxes like this one – decorated with Ultraman [Wikipedia] monster silhouette paintings – can now be seen on the streets of Sukagawa City in Japan.
For 11 years, Mike Bowes has been working as a 911 dispatcher for the Quincy Police Department in Massachusetts. He’s heard of everything from baby deliveries to deaths, but this call was probably the most shocking to him: it was someone reporting that his own house was on fire!
My neighbor’s house just blew up, the caller said.
"What’s the address?" Mike Bowes asked patiently, just as he did with every emergency call for the past 11 years with the Quincy Police Department.
The caller frantically relayed the address, Bowes’ home address for 20 years.
"It was shocking," Mike Bowes said. "I thought she was kidding. It’s a long shot. I mean, what’s the chances it will be your house?"
Link (Photo: WHDH)
A brand new animated short by Simon Tofield.
More videos of Simon’s Cat featured here on Neatorama: Fly Guy, TV Dinner, Let Me In!, and Wake Up!
Sacrebleu! French politicians are campaigning for a new law that will result in government health warnings on pictures that have been enhanced by photoshop:
Campaigning MP Valerie Boyer, of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s UMP party, said the wording should read:"Retouched photograph aimed at changing a person’s physical appearance".
Mrs Boyer, who has also written a government report on anorexia and obesity, added: "We want to combat the stereotypical image that all women are young and slim.
"These photos can lead people to believe in a reality that does not actually exist, and have a detrimental effect on adolescents. "Many young people, particularly girls, do not know the difference between the virtual and reality, and can develop complexes from a very young age.
"In some cases this leads to anorexia or bulimia and very serious health problems.
"It’s not just a question of public health, but also a way of protecting the consumer."
– Thanks Tiffany!
(Photo: Takashi Itoh)
Here comes October, which means it’s close to pumpkin carving time. But if you’re reluctant to let go of summer, head on over to Takashi Itoh’s and check out some wonderful watermelon carvings. Takashi says it only took him three weeks to become skilled at it.
Allee Willis is a fantastic and accomplished songwriter by day (she wrote the Friends theme song I’ll Be There For You, for example) and a kitsch collector by night.
Thanks to the Interweb, we can now marvel at her extensive collection of kitsch. As a bacon afficionado, it’s my sworn duty to bring you these Bacon Shoes:
Nothin’ tastier in the morning then to slip on a nice pair of bacon shoes and go about your day. As someone who loves the meaty stuff, this is the perfect way to avoid all that grease and and keep your feet looking crisp and scrumptious all day. I have bacon bandages, bacon scarves, designer bacon everything, but the printing is so cheap on most of it it just looks like pink and red wavy stripes. But on these Keds it actually looks like the real thing.
Link | More at Kitsch O’The Day and her new website, The Allee Willis Museum of Kitsch
Related – from the Neatorama Shop: Bacon Store
I don’t have time to watch one TV, much less several all at once! HBO Imagine is a new website that aims to tell a story through interconnecting short clips as opposed to the linear format of today’s TV show as well as different angles. And I mean that literally – you can change the camera angle of the clip and see "hidden" parts of the story. The more clips you watch, the more you unlock clips and clues.
It’s a new way of watching a show – kind of edgy, I suppose. Maybe too edgy for old fuddy duddy like me, and therefore perfect for today’s teens with short attention span, but very entertaining nonetheless: Link – Thanks Nathalie!
*Be sure to "spin" the first clip, titled The Affair, to see what’s hiding behind the door…
If you think about it, an elephant’s tusk is a big tooth. And like any tooth, a tusk can break or otherwise get damaged and the elephant would then need to see a dentist (shudder!). That’s exactly what happened in the North Carolina Zoo.
But how exactly does one operate on an elephant’s tusk? Dainty dental equipments surely aren’t enough… Enter Dr. Gary Spodnick and his power tools!
Disclaimer: This version of the video, although no blood is spilled, may be disturbing to some viewers, since the power tools are shown in use on the animal.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by CommentKiller.
The next time you break a bone, your doctor may just reach for the sandcastle worm. Actually, not the actual worm itself but a bone glue made by the animal:
The worm creates a complex water-based mortar to create a home from grains of sand and bits of shell. The adhesive can stick to wet surfaces and doesn’t dissolve at certain pH levels, making it ideal for medical applications. Once it has done its job, it can become water-soluble and dissolve.
The traditional method of healing broken bones by using metal nails, pins and screws is difficult with smaller bones, says Russel Stewart, one of the creators of the synthetic sandcastle worm glue, and scientists have been looking for a suitable adhesive substitute for decades.
The beautiful Casio Databank 2888JA over at Tokyoflash – pre-order at $112.28; (R) The cheaper yet still geeky chic Cal-Q-Tek 2000 Calculator Watch at the Neatorama Shop – $14.95
I have a soft spot in my heart for geeky wristwatches. Maybe it’s all those childhood conditioning (Dick Tracy’s wrist phone, anyone?) but when Tokyoflash came out with their limited time offer of the Casio Databank 2888JA, I’m all over it. It’s a bit pricey, so for the budget-conscious geek, may I suggest our retro-fun Cal-Q-Tek 2000 wrist watch over at the Neatorama Shop?
Links: Casio Databank 2888JA – Thanks Paul! | Cal-Q-Tek 2000 Calculator Watch
Does your bathroom scale flinch whenever you walk by? Maybe you need a replacement that is a bit more accepting of your body image issues. These handmade scales by Marilyn Wann offer compliments such as ‘sexy’, ‘ravishing’, and ‘perfect’ instead of numerical weight measurements.
Product Page | Link via Foolish Gadgets
Remember Muto, the "animated" or time-lapse graffiti by Blu that took the InterWeb by storm? Well, here’s the sequel: a collaboration by Blu and David Ellis called COMBO (with music by Roberto Lange)
It was produced by Studio Cromie and released at the Fame Festival 2009
What would He-Man and the rest of the Masters of the Universe look like if they were into fashion? No need to imagine, as artist Adrian Riemann had re-drawn them as if they were Hipsters of the Universe:
What would He-Man look like if he was really into fashion and indie rock? What if Skeletor was an American Apparel model living in Williamsburg, Brooklyn? What if She-Ra was an art school dropout that spent her time bar-hopping in the Lower East Side?
For the past few months artists Adrian Riemann has been creating a master work that answers these questions. Essentially, Riemann has remixed the characters of the popular 1980s "Masters of the Universe" cartoon series as highfalutin, Justice and Kid Cudi listening, circa 2009 hipsters. On top of that, he styled the characters in designer clothing as if this was a fashion spread in a magazine.
By the way, He-Man wears Dior Homme Jacket, April 77 Jeans, and Pierre Hardy shoes; Skeletor was no slouch himself with Loopwheeler Hoody, Cheap Monday Jeans, and YSL Shoes. I can safely say I’ve never even heard of such brands …
Link | More at Adrian’s portfolio on Behance
