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The 2,100 citizens of North Pole, Alaska take Christmas very seriously. Since 1954, they’ve volunteered for Operation Santa, a program of the US Postal Service which answers letters to Santa Claus. The program has volunteers all over the country, and many letters are routed through Alaska to get the special North Pole postmark. However, the USPS is discontinuing the practice of sending letters to the town of North Pole.
Anchorage-based agency spokeswoman Pamela Moody said dealing with the tighter restrictions is not feasible in Alaska.
“It’s always been a good program, but we’re in different times and concerned for the privacy of the information,” she said.
Moody stressed that kids around the world can still send letters to Santa Claus. The Postal Service still runs the giant Operation Santa Program in which children around the world can have their letters to Santa answered, and the restrictions do not affect private organizations running their own letter efforts.
But what will change are the generically addressed letters to “Santa Claus, North Pole” that for years have been forwarded to volunteers in the Alaska town. That program will stop, unless changes are made before Christmas.
North Pole residents are upset over the changes, and also unhappy that North Pole cancellations will now be stamped in Anchorage instead of Fairbanks, which is only 15 miles from North Pole. Link -via Consumerist
(image credit: AP/Sam Harrel)
“Monster Manual” is a song by the band Mixel Pixel. It tells the tale of a role-player’s struggle with a particularly brutal Dungeon Master, who is throwing just about every creature in the Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual at him. The video is animated by Dan Meth, whose work has been featured extensively on Neatorama.
via Popped Culture | Mixel Pixel | Dan Meth
“Ears” something unfortunate for bank robber David Holyoak of Manchester, England: his distinctive feature made it really easy for the police to identify and locate him!
As Holyoak, of Whitefield, Manchester, began a three-and-a-half year jail sentence for robbery yesterday, one officer said: ‘This man only needs to look at himself in the mirror to realise crime is not for him.
‘With his big ears and rotund features he stands out a mile, and the officers have no trouble spotting him. He must be a total liability when he is part of a gang.
‘He has already been dubbed Shrek and must be one of the ugliest robbers in the country.’
The winners of the 2009 Olympus BioScapes Photo Digital Imaging Competition were just announced yesterday. Here are some of the wonderful winning and honorable mention images:
1st Place Winner:
Water flea Daphnia atkinsoni. This specimen has a "crown of thorns," a defensive trait induced in offspring only when the parents sense chemical cues released by one of their main predators, the tadpole shrimp Triops cancriformis. The water flea´s exoskeleton (exterior structure, green) and subcellular details within the organism (nuclei – tiny blue dots) are both visible – Dr. Jan Michels, Christian Albrecht University of Kiel, Germany.
5th Place Winner:
Unicellular alga Penium, treated with the microtubule poison oryzalin – by David Domozych, Skidmore College.
Ma. Ivy Clemente of Pulilan, Philippines, got an honorable mention in this year’s competition, but I think her entry is the most stunning. Behold, the cancer alphabet:
Spelling out the diagnosis: Glandular structures from fibroadenoma and nodular prostatic hyperplasia cases – by Ma. Ivy Clemente, Pulilan, Philippines
Fetal cat coronal section – by Mike Peres, Rochester Institute of Technology, New York.
Squid embryo – by Rachel Fink, Mount Holyoke College, Massachussetts
Link: Winners Gallery of the 2009 Olympus BioScapes
Filmmaker Tim Burton’s visual art will be on display starting on Sunday, Nov. 22, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. His media include watercolors, line drawings, pastels, and sculptures. The exhibit features not only film concept work, but his independent, stand-alone projects.
News Story and Gallery via io9 | Image: Tim Burton
Cinematical has a list of ideas for making movies based on classic 20th century TV shows. A couple of these I’d never seen, but I definitely remember tuning in to see Martin Landau and company fight to survive each week on Moonbase Alpha (Space:1999, pictured).
The list includes Earth 2, The Six Million Dollar Man, and others with video clips of their opening sequences. Here’s author Kevin Kelley’s take on Buck Rogers in the 25th Century:
We just want to see Buck back on the big screen, where he has never really been (the original TV pilot was edited into a theatrical release). Toss some up and coming young star with good looks and a strong chin in this, and revamp everything. Just keep the cool laser pistols in it, and for god’s sake don’t let Buck disco.
An impressive fan-made intro to that show… Link to Cinematical.
Apple executive Jeff Dauber has a backyard deck that will not, despite initial impressions, suck you into a wormhole and then throw you back in time. He had architect Thom Flauders design the piece to create an optical illusion of curves where there are only flat surfaces:
“I wanted someone to barf when they look at it,” says Dauber, a senior executive at Apple. “The deck looks like it is sloping away from you.” Dauber is not your standard-issue Silicon Valley techie; he’s covered in tattoos and owns an impressive, challenging collection of contemporary art (including a mosque made out of gun parts, by the sculptor Al Farrow). Five years ago, he hired Faulders to transform his Potrero Hill residence into a bachelor-pad-cum-art-gallery (see “Puzzle Master,” June 2006). The architect gave the space visual interest while still preserving it as a backdrop for Dauber’s art. Notably, the ceiling and walls, which appear to undulate, are made of a smooth pattern of interlocking CNC-milled MDF panels.
Link via Fast Company
California-based artist Mike Stilkey paints images on the bindings of books. From an interview with the webzine Fecal Face:
Why did you choose to paint on books? It seems like it would have been a challenge to go from working on paper to painting on something so dimensional. What was that transition like?
It was sort of an accident. I was painting on book pages for forever, and actually published a book in 2005 titled “100 Portraits” in which I drew one hundred portraits on old book pages. At the time, I was drawing on books, records or anything else I could find at a thrift store. Eventually, I started drawing on the books themselves. I was going to do a project where I just drew on the covers of the books, and as I finished them I would stack them against the wall. It dawned on me that it might be a good idea to paint down the spines of the books instead of just on the covers. The first one I did I didn’t really think much of, but I brought it down to BLK/MRKT, and I remember Jana going crazy over it. We showed it at the second Artists’ Annual group show where it got quite a bit of attention, including attention from Kim Davenport, the director of Rice Gallery in Houston
You can read the full interview and see large images of his work at the link.
Link via io9 | Artist’s Website
This recipe for turkey stuffing calls for “18 White Castle hamburgers (no pickles), chopped into 1-inch pieces,” (or you can substitute bread, but it won’t be the same). I suppose if you live in the southern part of the US, you could substitute Krystals. Both brands are commonly called sliders. The recipe is a part of Thanksgiving for Chicago chefs Chris and Jill Barron, who share their Thanksgiving cooking schedule. Link to story. Link to recipe. -via Boing Boing
(image credit: Flickr user DaddyPlus5)
To many wealthy Lithuanians, it was just a fancy horseback riding academy. But horses aren’t the only things kept in the barn: the CIA had built a secret prison there, where they interrogated (or tortured, your choice of word) suspected al-Qaeda terrorists.
ABC News has the story:
The CIA constructed the prison over the next several months, apparently flying in prefabricated elements from outside Lithuania. The prison opened in Sept. 2004.
According to sources who saw the facility, the riding academy originally consisted of an indoor riding area with a red metallic roof, a stable and a cafe. The CIA built a thick concrete wall inside the riding area. Behind the wall, it built what one Lithuanian source called a "building within a building."
On a series of thick concrete pads, it installed what a source called "prefabricated pods" to house prisoners, each separated from the other by five or six feet. Each pod included a shower, a bed and a toilet. Separate cells were constructed for interrogations.
College students Leslie Pope and John Wagner and four of their friends went to the Lehigh Pub in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The bill came to $73, which they paid, but they refused to pay the mandatory $16.35 tip, because they said the service was lousy. So they were arrested.
They had to find their own napkins and cutlery while their waitress caught a smoke, had to ask the bar for soda refills, and had to wait over an hour for salad and wings, they told NBC10.
The pub, which was very busy that night, took the $73, but then called the cops, who treated the matter as a theft.
The menu clearly states, “18 percent gratuity added to check of parties of 6 of more,” and a similar message is printed on receipts, a pub employee said this morning.
The students will be in court over the matter next month. What do you think? A mandatory tip for groups of six or more is common in the US restaurant industry in order to keep waiters from being stiffed when they can’t serve enough other tables to make up for it. However in this case, the policy seems to be a license to give poor service. Link -via reddit
(image credit: Flickr user me and the sysop)
NASA needs lots of help sorting through the hundreds of thousands of images they’ve collected from the surface of Mars. What do do? Make it into a game! Be A Martian combines the work of analyzing those images online with the competition of gaming. In this way, NASA hopes to enlist citizens to help with the huge project.
Nasa hopes the mix of real data and fun will also inspire the planetary scientists of tomorrow.
“We really need the next generation of explorers,” says Michelle Viotti, from the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which oversees Mars missions.
“And we’re also accomplishing something important for Nasa. There’s so much data coming back from Mars. Having a wider crowd look at the data, classify it and help understand its meaning is very important.”
Link to story. Link to game. -via Metafilter
The History Bluff (motto: "Making a mess of history") brings us another headscratcher with the sad news that the first monkey to ever walk on the moon has passed away.
On June 3, 1981 Harlan the Monkey became the first primate to ever walk on the moon. Harlan died on November 18, 2009 of an apparent Tang overdose.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by geezyreezy.
Mark Setteducati and Ken Knowlton have invented a unique puzzle marketed in Japan as "Jingazo." The puzzle includes 300 jigsaw pieces that can be arranged to form a picture of anybody’s face. The puzzle works in conjunction with an online interface. Users upload an image and recieve instructions on how to arrange the shaded puzzle pieces. You can create pictures of yourself, your friends or even your pets. Currently, The Jingazo Puzzle is only available in Japan but a U.S. release is planned for the near future.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by rubin.
Today’s collaboration with the What is it? Blog brings us this …. alligator?! Actually, this object has a specific function. Do you know what it is?
Place your guess in the comment section. The first correct guess, as well as the funniest (but ultimately wrong) guess will win a T-shirt from the Neatorama Shop. Please let others play and post no URLs or web links. Doing so will forfeit your entry.
For more clues, check out the What is it? Blog. Good luck!
Update 11/20/09 – the answer is A cast iron alligator match safe, text on its back says “Monon Route”, on its legs “Cincinnati, Louisville, Indianapolis, and Atlanta”, on its head “Chicago” and on the tail “Florida”. It advertised the Chicago, Indianapolis & Louisville Railway, which later changed its name to The Monon Route, it served the previously mentioned locations.
Congratulations to Edward who got it right first (again) and to pwscott who made me chuckle with “steampunk pez.”
(Links open in a new browser window/tab)
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Amazing Male Group Gymnastics Routine This is not gymnastics as you’re used to seeing it. I wish this was in the Olympics. Link |
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Tornado inside a soap bubble A soap bubble wizard creates a mini-tornado vortex inside a giant soap bubble. Link |
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The pop-up book of phobias This is an amazing pop-up book with scary images that may enhance the phobias they describe. Link |
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What if Earth Had Rings like Saturn? Through computer simulation and CGI we get to see what it would like from Earth, if we had rings around our planet like Saturn. Link |
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Box Beard With Functioning Beard Door Finally, this has to be seen to be believed (or not). It’s the winner of a free-style beard contest. Real? You make the call. Link |
Photo by Carsten Peter
Perched above the lighted city of Catania, Italy, Mount Etna hurls a fountain of fire skyward as rivers of lava spill down its flanks. In spite of its dazzling displays, Mount Etna is a relatively safe volcano with rare, compact eruptions and slow-flowing lava that gives people a chance to escape. – National Geographic – {More Pics here!}
Lots of people live near a volcano. As for me, I live a relatively safe distance from Mt. St. Helens, but this region was severely affected by the eruption in 1980. I recently returned there, and it while it seems safe now, the devastation still shows. But The Geography Site cites four good reasons why society loves a lava-spewing mountain in their backyard.
Geothermal energy, minerals, fertile soil, and tourism. That last one is interesting, and many tourist attractions involve volcanic activity. And about that geothermal energy?
Countries such as Iceland make extensive use of geothermal power, with approximately two thirds of Iceland’s electricity coming from steam powered turbines. New Zealand and to a lesser extent, Japan, also make effective use of geothermal energy.
It makes sense that we’d be so close to that which can give us something powerful, while risking so much at the same time. Volcanoes rock.
