In 2001, the Homer Simpson expression “Doh!” was entered into The Oxford English Dictionary. Jeff Wysaski of guyism proposes that ten invented words from The Simpsons should be likewise formally incorporated into the English language. Example:
Embiggen: To make bigger or grow in size; a perfectly cromulent word
This graceful word can be attributed to town founder Jebediah Springfield. As the town motto goes, “A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man.” The word is used repeatedly throughout the 7th season episode in which all of Springfield comes down with a major case of Jebeditis (another excellent candidate for this list) during the town’s bicentennial celebration. Adding credibility to the word is the fact that it has appeared in numerous scientific publications since the episode aired.
Simpsons fans can’t think of “embiggen” without thinking of the other fake word used to describe it: cromulent. Clearly, this word should be included on this list as well – if it weren’t for the fact that the Webster’s American dictionary added it to their “New Millenium” edition a few years ago. The official definition: fine, acceptable.
Comment (1)
Permalink
Please share:  email
this 
|
It seems that some people go around with a little dark cloud hanging over them. These are the unlucky ones. Here are ten of the unluckiest people ever!
This poor man went from the lucky co-incidence of winning a $ 16.44 million lottery in Pennsylvania, to being $ 1 million under debt in just one year. His lucky turned incredibly sour as he was sued by his ex-girlfriend for a share of his lottery money, when his siblings pressured him to make joint business investments that brought no money back and also when his own brother hired a hit man to have him killed so that he could have his share of his brother’s win. His troubles, however, were still not over; after shooting at a bill collector he got himself entangled in another long legal process.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by 
|
Comment (6)
Permalink
Please share: email
this
|
You may need to click/enlarge the image to see the subtlety of the optical illusion. Then the question to ponder will be whether this is the result of image editing, or whether it was created by clever woodcrafting with veneer.
Photo from Erik Minnema’s photostream, via.
|
Comment (8)
Permalink
Please share: email
this
|
Who says that old people can’t dance? Here’s The Awesome Threesome performing at Leisure World (a retirement community) in Florida.
Check ‘em bust a move (without busting a hip, thankfully) to Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean: Link [embedded YouTube]
|
Comment (3)
Permalink
Please share: email
this
|
We are often told we must learn from history, and that we should learn from the experiences of others, but how often do we learn about forms of government from scientific experiments? MIT economist Benjamin Olken got the chance to run a field study on direct democracy in three Indonesian districts: one predominantly Muslim, one predominantly Christian, and one with a mixed population.
In fieldwork involving 49 Indonesian villages, Olken arranged to have major decisions on public-works projects in some settlements decided by plebiscite — in which all citizens get a vote — rather than by the traditional small councils of village leaders. Unexpectedly, the types of projects selected by majority vote were nearly identical to those picked by village elites; the voting public did not try to redistribute wealth to themselves. And yet when people were allowed to vote, they expressed greater contentment with the results than when decisions were simply handed down by the elites. The conclusion was that even if democracy doesn’t make a material difference in people’s lives, it creates greater civic cohesion.
Of course, this experiment only compared direct voting to village councils, in which the leaders are close to the citizens. Whether the results of this study can be extrapolated to a comparison with larger governments is unclear. Link -via Digg
(image credit: Benjamin A. Olken)
|
Comment (4)
Permalink
Please share: email
this
|
A patent has been issued for this device, which would conserve space in burial grounds. The inventor even envisions a transparent variety:
“A clear plastic Easy Inter Burial Container, where the body is additionally encased in clear resin and is standing erect for all to view during installation, creates a very impressive image.”
The screwing-into-the-ground would be performed either by humans or by an adaptation on a tractor backhoe.
|
Comment (16)
Permalink
Please share: email
this
|
Don’t throw away that used subway ticket! You could be holding a potential starfighter in your hands.
Artist Hubert de Lartigue was playing with his Paris Métro ticket between stops, folding it this way and that, wondering how he could give it a cool shape. He did this for six months, and discovered that with a scalpel and a folding tool, but no glue, he could transform two subway tickets into an X-wing fighter.
Lartigue says:
“I’m very proud of how it turned out and I feel like I am the author of a little masterpiece. I got to the point where I asked myself whether the Parisian metro tickets hadn’t actually been designed to enable me to one day use it as a canvas for this ‘work.’ Their proportions and even the patterns and drawings on them take part in the whole of the work. I’m not kidding, I find that there is a great underlying mystery here…”
He gives step-by-step directions for making an X-wing starfighter here.
More about Paris subway tickets and the history of the Paris Métro here.
Photo by Hubert de Lartigue
|
Comment (4)
Permalink
Please share: email
this
|
In the storage facilities of the Walker Art Center the process is facilitated by labeling the art as such: “Do Not Open! Box Is Art.”
One presumes that the trash is not labeled.
|
Comment (24)
Permalink
Please share: email
this
|
We’re collaborating with our pals over at ViewBug to create what may be the easiest contest you’ll ever win ($100 for a selected photo, $25 for tweeting photos):
Take a photo through your window. Show your city through your house, office or car window in a creative and artistic way. One $100 Winner will be selected by ViewBug member’s votes and our judges.
For all of you tweeters:
1. Tweet the name of your favorite photo in the contest. In your tweet, include this link, http://www.viewbug.com/photo-contest/812. Thats it! Judges will pick out a tweeted photo and award the tweeter and owner of the photo $25 each.
Link – Thanks Ori!
|
Comment (0)
Permalink
Please share: email
this
|
Over 700 paired species of fig trees and wasps have symbiotic relationships. The fig tree host wasp eggs, and the wasps pollinate the fig trees in return. But according to a new study, if the wasps don’t pollinate the host plants, the fig trees retaliate:
If the wasps don’t do their duty, the trees respond by enacting a sanction — aborting their fruit, killing off the teeming mass of baby wasps. A new study of this killer tree phenomenon, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B comes from Cornell University and The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, shows that negative reinforcement may be an important part of symbiotic relationships.
Pollination by wasp comes in two varieties: passive and active. With passive pollination the wasps carry pollen that happens to stick to their bodies; where with active pollination they collect pollen in special pouches to deliver to the flowers.
With the passive pairings, the fig trees abort their fruit far less often than with active pairs. In the actively pollinating groups, the tree species that tend to enforce sanctions less often have a higher occurrence of freeloader wasps, who take advantage of the figs without doing any of the work. Inversely, by using the sanction option more frequently, some fig species have a lower incidence of non-pollinating insects.
Link | Scientific Paper | Photo: University of British Columbia
|
Comment (4)
Permalink
Please share: email
this
|
Whether myth or a historical fact, the spear masters evolved from one man’s secret to make things happen.
The Spear Masters of the Dinka Tribe of the upper Nile are a hereditary priesthood, and according to mythology, their presence is reinforced by political and religious ideals.
There are several legends of the origins of these spear using masters, one in which includes a lion and a man dancing. The lion demands a bracelet that the man is wearing and he refuses. In return, the lion bits off his thumb in order to claim what he thinks belongs to him and the man dies during the confrontation. The man leaves behind a wife and daughter with no son. The daughter weeps at the river and the spirits ask her why she cries.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by 
|
Comment (1)
Permalink
Please share: email
this
|
It’s a terrifying scenario you may have dreamed about: falling to earth from a high altitude. A very few people have survived such an event. Popular Mechanics has a survival guide that will take you longer to read than the six mile fall would take.
Things are bad. But now’s the time to focus on the good news. (Yes, it goes beyond surviving the destruction of your aircraft.) Although gravity is against you, another force is working in your favor: time. Believe it or not, you’re better off up here than if you’d slipped from the balcony of your high-rise hotel room after one too many drinks last night.
Or at least you will be. Oxygen is scarce at these heights. By now, hypoxia is starting to set in. You’ll be unconscious soon, and you’ll cannonball at least a mile before waking up again. When that happens, remember what you are about to read. The ground, after all, is your next destination.
This post is not for the faint of heart. Link -via Metafilter
|
Comment (3)
Permalink
Please share: email
this
|
The Museum of Unintended Use chronicles the way people use things for purposes other than what they were designed for. Some uses are silly, some are stretching the definition of common sense, and some are downright clever, such as this trick to keep cats from bothering houseplants. Link -via the Presurfer
(image credit: Flickr user Anne-Sophie Leens)
|
Comment (0)
Permalink
Please share: email
this
|
What happens when the bison at the Museum of Natural History get dusty? Photographer Richard Barnes has traveled the U.S. photographing museum dioramas undergoing repair and maintenance, and his photos have been made into a book, Animal Logic, that was published last fall.
Do his photos, which emphasize the distinction between nature and artifice, increase or diminish your appreciation for museum dioramas, many of which were constructed in the 1920s and ’30s? In a recent issue of The Smart Set, Jesse Smith notes this detached perspective towards dioramas isn’t new– The American Museum of Natural History In New York has a section of its website devoted to their “renowned” and “beloved” dioramas, and the Museum’s chairman describes them as “amazing technical feats of illusion.” But once you admit they’re illusions, Smith argues, the dioramas are no longer viable as scientific learning tools. And perhaps we lose something as a result.
Smith admits that he prefers the approach of Philadelphia’s Academy of Natural Sciences. “It’s not willing to throw in the towel, as the American Museum of Natural History has done. On its site, the Academy budges very little: ‘Although their magic has diminished somewhat with the advent of television and the internet, dioramas still provide an opportunity to experience these magnificent animals up close.’ I don’t know if the Academy really believes this, or it just wants me to. It honestly doesn’t matter. I prefer to be the one stepping back to judge these on their own terms, and the Academy lets me do that.”
(image credit: Richard Barnes)
|
Comment (1)
Permalink
Please share: email
this
|
I know how much Neato readers appreciate good captions, so here’s a site I just discovered via Ellen Maguire on Twitter. It’s called Unhappy Hipsters and it gives funny captions to photos that have appeared in Dwell magazine. Here’s an example:
“Still recovering from broken trust, neither wanted to be the first to try the eggs.”
Photo: Mark Mahaney, Dwell, November 2009
Link: Unhappy Hipsters
I like this one too:
“You can come out when you can properly explain the differences between Modernist architecture and postmodern ornamentation.”
Photo: Craig Cutler, Dwell, February/March 2006
Link: Unhappy Hipsters
There are lots more where those came from.
|
Comment (12)
Permalink
Please share: email
this
|
The authors of an article in Focus magazine, a BBC publication, took a look at statistics in 35 countries to rank those nations according to their tendency towards the seven deadly sins. Australia was found to be the most “sin-prone” nation, with the US coming in second. Canada, Finland, and Spain rounded out the most “sin-prone” rankings.
Topping each of the sin categories were South Korea (lust), the US (gluttony), Mexico (greed), Iceland (sloth and pride), South Africa (wrath) and Australia (envy).
Of course, some question the research methods and the results. Link -via Simply Left Behind
|
Comment (4)
Permalink
Please share: email
this
|
When we last left the Google Street View Guys, the pair had the simple task of photographing every address on every road on earth. Their new assignment is for Google Earth: to photograph everything on earth from every angle and every altitude. Animation by Dan Meth. Content warning: NSFW language.
|
Comment (0)
Permalink
Please share: email
this
|
On January 27, 1888, a group of 165 prominent men in Washington, DC incorporated a club called the National Geographic Society.
Its first president, lawyer Gardiner Green Hubbard, was the father-in-law and early financier of inventor Alexander Graham Bell, another founding member. Hubbard was also the first president of the Bell Telephone company, known today as AT&T.
The society’s publication, National Geographic magazine, began printing just 10 months after that founding meeting. It was initially a drab-looking scholarly journal sent to 165 charter members. Now its hallmark photography and more mainstream writing reach the hands of more than 40 million people per month.
Wired takes a look at the history of the Society and how it grew from its humble beginnings into a multi-faceted organization that includes the magazine and its various spinoffs, a TV channel, research grants, educational programs, and a vast website. Link
(image credit: Steve McCurry/National Geographic)
|
Comment (0)
Permalink
Please share: email
this
|
It was an accident. Gye Gardner of the Northern Territory of Australia keeps his phone headset in his ear all day. Recently the truck driver hit his head against the boom of his truck and broke the earpiece. Gardner repaired it with superglue. Then his boss called him. Without thinking, Gardner put the piece in his ear to answer the call and drove about five minutes before he realized what he had done. The glue had dried, and the headset was firmly glued to his ear.
“Usually it’s in my ear all day anyway – friends suggested to leave it in there and just plug my ear into the powerpoint at night to charge it. But I did get a little worried and thought ‘This is not good, this is really not good at all’.”
Mr Gardner told the Northern Territory News it crossed his mind to use his pocket knife to remove the unwanted gear from his ear.
“I realised I didn’t want to see myself going to a doctor to put my ear back on after I chopped it off.
“So I used a spoon.”
Some skin came off along with the earpiece. Link -via Arbroath
|
Comment (13)
Permalink
Please share: email
this
|
Jeff Wong and Erin Martin are about to get married, but sending out regular save the date notices won’t work for this couple. No siree!
So they opted for this instead: the Epic Wedding Trailer.
Watch and weep: Link [embedded YouTube]
|
Comment (4)
Permalink
Please share: email
this
|
Does
flattery work in helping you get what you want, dear talented and awesome
reader, who will surely tell their friends and loved ones about Neatorama?
Apparently so.
A new study by Elaine Chan and Jaideep Sengupta at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology revealed that flattery does work - even if the flatteree (is that a word?) knows that the compliment is insincere:
What, however, of situations in which the flattery is clearly "bogus" - in that the recipient knows fully well that the flatterer is offering an insincere compliment, presumably driven by an ulterior motive? Instances of insincere flattery abound in marketing context - such as the salesperson who offers prospective customers profuse compliments on how an expensive outfit makes them look, or mass mailings in which hundreds of consumers are informed that they are receiving the mail because they (and they alone) possess unique attributes - such as an impeccable dress sense - which allows them to appreciate the virtues of the services or store being advertised.
In cases such as these, where the prospective consumer is aware of a clear ulterior motive underlying the compliment, both research (e.g. Campbell and Kirmani 2000; Vonk 1998) and intuition suggest that recipients will discount the flattering comments and correct their otherwise favorable reactions. While in agreement with this premise, the current investigation suggests that despite such correction, a positive impact of flattery may still be observed. Specifically, we draw on recent perspectives in dual attitutes theory to predict that even after the recipient consciously discount an insincere compliment, the original positive reaction (the implicit attitude) co-exists with, rather than being replaced by, the discounted evaluation (the explicit attitude).
The experiment was simple: they asked subjects to rate the appeal of a hypothetical new store after looking at a promotional leaflet. Subjects that were given leaflets that praised their sense of fashion, and were fully aware that such praise were bogus, still rated the store more positively and said that they were more likely to shop there.
|
Comment (5)
Permalink
Please share: email
this
|
It’s almost a shame to eat something as beautiful as the mushrooms on the most beautiful list… of course, most of them are probably poisonous, so you probably wouldn’t want to anyway.
|
Comment (3)
Permalink
Please share: email
this
|
Did your ex got your favorite tea kettle and plush Egyptian cotton towels in the divorce? Not to worry, now you can head down to Debenhams department store and register for some more. Go ahead and add lots of stuff to your divorce gift registry. Hopefully all those family members who said it wouldn’t last will be willing to chip in and buy you a little, “I told you so gift.”
CNN has the story: Link
|
Comment (4)
Permalink
Please share: email
this
|
If you have a serious phobia of frogs, rats, bees or snakes, you probably shouldn’t read WebEcoist’s article on the most invasive species in the world. On the other hand, if you don’t have any phobias, it’s fascinating to know just how devastating a pair of bunnies ended up being to Australia and how Florida and other areas of the South are being taken over by released and escaped Burmese pythons.
|
Comment (6)
Permalink
Please share: email
this
|
Hair ice, also called silk frost, is a type of ice formation that looks like silk and seems to only appear on woody, barkless materials on the ground. The ice structures tend to grow out of a small pore in the wood, sort of like hairs on the human head. Dr. James Carter has more on the phenomenon (and more photos too) on his site.
|
Comment (4)
Permalink
Please share: email
this
|
Can you imagine telepathically sending messages to those around you, seeing out of a tooth or discovering a volcanic crater filled with all types of new species never before seen by man? Scientists can and while many of the new discoveries listed on this WebEcoist article have been featured on Neatorama before, they are all fascinating enough to deserve a second look.
What’s your favorite recent discovery? I personally like the volcanic crater the best because I’m a sucker for animals.
|
Comment (1)
Permalink
Please share: email
this
|
Every once in a while, people encounter things on their radio, TV, or interstellar wave detectors that no one can explain. Is it a secret military message? A prankster hacking just to see if it can be done? Aliens trying to contact us? Cracked has five cases that still haven’t been settled. Take, for example, the case of UVB-76.
It is an irritating, electronic noise, not unlike the sound of a truck horn played through a cheese grater. It is broadcast over a certain frequency, constantly, and has been since at least 1982. But the weird part isn’t the tone, but what happens when it stops.
In its 20-something year run, the sound has been interrupted only three times, the earliest known time being Christmas Eve in 1997. Each time a voice comes on and lists several Russian names and numbers before returning to the foghorn. The most recent occurrence was 2006, a mere three years before the time of this writing. It is clearly becoming more active after remaining quiet during the Cold War.
|
Comment (15)
Permalink
Please share: email
this
|
Image: Samuel Arbesman
Sure, anyone could consult an atlas of the Milky Way Galaxy to see what’s all there, but if you think like Samuel Arbesman, that won’t do. He has created a handy station and route map of spiral galaxy as a way of making the immense more accessible. Introducing the Milky Way Transit Authority.
This map is an attempt to approach our galaxy with a bit more familiarity than usual and get people thinking about long-term possibilities in outer space. Hopefully it can provide as a useful shorthand for our place in the Milky Way, the ‘important’ sights, and make inconceivable distances a bit less daunting. And while convenient interstellar travel is nothing more than a murky dream, and might always be that way, there is power in creating tools for beginning to wrap our minds around the interconnections of our galactic neighborhood.
Let’s see, I need to get to The Hamptons… I’ll take the shuttle from Sol to Eagle Nebula station, then to Carina where I swap out on a express ride to Norma. From there, the long ride past Crab Nebula & Pal2 to New Outer Junction, where I swap again and take the Omega Centauri suburban line into Canis Major. Whew, it’s going to be a long ride!
Bigger image at Link.
|
Comment (1)
Permalink
Please share: email
this
|
Missouri University School of Journalism, original photo by Mollie Sterling that went viral some years ago- via Losing Context
We’ve posted about the (purported) obsolescence of cursive handwriting on Neatorama before, but should all forms of handwriting be dead? Yes, according to Anne Trubek. The Oberlin College associate professor argues that handwriting is a technology that’s just too slow modern times (and even for our minds) that we should just do away with it:
Nevertheless, people seem to think that school kids should be spending more time honing their mastery of the capital G. A 2007 U.S. Department of Education study found that 90 percent of teachers spend 10 minutes a day on handwriting. Zaner-Bloser, the most popular handwriting curriculum used today, deems that too little and is encouraging schools to up that amount to at least 15 minutes a day.
But typing in school has a democratizing effect, as did the typewriter. It levels the look of prose to allow expression of ideas, not the rendering of letters, to take center stage.
Trubek went on to explain the evils of handwriting, at least in grade school:
Does having good handwriting signal intelligence? No, not any more than it reveals one’s religiosity. But many teachers make this correlation: It is called the "handwriting effect." Steve Graham, a professor at Vanderbilt University who studies handwriting acquisition, says that "teachers form judgments, positive or negative, about the literary merit of text based on its overall legibility." Graham’s studies show that "[w]hen teachers rate multiple versions of the same paper differing only in terms of legibility, they assign higher grades to neatly written versions of the paper than the same versions with poorer penmanship." This is particularly problematic for boys, whose fine-motor skills develop later than do girls. Yet all children are taught at the same time — usually printing in first grade and cursive in third. If you don’t have cursive down by the end of third grade, you may never become proficient at it.
While we once judged handwriting as religiously tinted, now secular, we transpose our prejudices to intelligence. The new SAT Writing Exam, instituted in 2006, requires test takers to write their essays in No. 2 pencil. Not only will those with messy handwriting be graded lower than ones written more legibly, but those who write in cursive — 15 percent of test takers in 2006 — received higher scores than those who printed.
Link – Thanks Janice Sinclaire!
So, what do you think? Should we just get rid of handwriting altogether?
|
Comment (46)
Permalink
Please share: email
this
|
Based on the Argentinian Political Advertisement, “The Truth” by RECREAR, “Lost Generation” was made by metroamv as an entry in AARP’s U@50 contest. It won second place.
|
Comment (5)
Permalink
Please share: email
this
|
Got
a neat story? Share it with the world by writing your very own Neatorama
blog post with the Upcoming
Queue. Who knows, you might just win something ... 
