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50 Facts About the 50 United States

Posted by Stacy in Neatorama Only on November 16, 2009 at 9:30 am

Sure, the boring facts about states have been drilled into you by teachers and history books over the years. You might even remember all of the state capitals. But here are 50 trivia tidbits that you probably didn’t learn in second grade.

1. Alabama. New Orleans might be the hot spot for Mardi Gras these days, but it was actually started as a sedate tradition in what is now modern-day Mobile, Alabama.

2. Alaska. The Alaskan flag was created by a 13-year-old-boy in 1926. For his efforts, Benny Benson received $1,000 and an engraved watch. Picture from Alaska.edu.

3. Arizona. London Bridge – yes, the London Bridge – was shipped stone by stone and reassembled in Lake Havasu City. It was meant to be a tourist attraction in the retirement community and was rebuilt over land, not water.

4. Arkansas. Sam Walton started a little store in Bentonville, Arkansas – today, it’s known as Walmart. However, Bentonville is also home to the headquarters of a lesser-known company: The Whistler Group, a company that makes radar detectors.

5. California. We all know Cali is known for its wine and grapes – but it’s also home to the self-proclaimed Avocado Capital of the World (Fallbrook), the Raisin Capital of the World (Fresno) and the Artichoke Capital of the World (Castroville). In fact, Marilyn Monroe was the first Artichoke Queen in 1947.

6. Colorado. Although the cheeseburger wasn’t invented in Colorado, a Denverite held the copyright to the word for a while. In 1935, Louis Ballast, owner of the Humpty Dumpty Drive-In, applied for and received the copyright to a food he didn’t invent. That distinction goes to Lionel Sternberger of Pasadena, California.

7. Connecticut. PEZ is made in Orange, Connecticut.

8. Delaware. There’s no National Park System unit of any kind in Delaware – no park, no historic site, no battlefield, no memorial or monument. It’s the only state that doesn’t have something denoted by the National Park System (you can check out other National Park units here, though).

9. Florida. The first ATM designed just for rollerbladers resides in Miami. Of course.

10. Georgia. The sweetest onion in the world, the Vidalia, can only be grown in specifc Vidalia and Glennville areas of Georgia – only 20 counties in total. The Vidalia Onion is Georgia’s state vegetable.

11. Hawaii. Back in 1874, the village of Kalaupapa on the Island of Molokai was once a leper colony. The act naming the village such wasn’t repealed until 1969.

12. Idaho is the only state that might have been named because of a hoax. A lobbyist suggested the name in the 1860s, claiming that it was an old Shoshone word meaning “the sun comes from the mountains” or “gem of the mountains.” After the name was adopted, the lobbyist admitted he made the word up.

13. Illinois was once home to the largest city in the United States – no, not Chicago. Up until about 1800, Cahokia, Illinois, had more than 40,000 residents in the area thanks to its strategic spot near the Mississippi, Missouri and Illinois Rivers. Philadelphia outgrew it sometime near the turn of the century.

14. Indiana. Santa Claus, Indiana, gets more than half a million letters from kids during the holidays. “Santa’s Elves,” a group of local volunteers, makes sure that each letter gets a reply from the man himself.

15. Iowa is the only state whose east and west borders are totally formed by water – the Mississippi on the east and the Missouri on the west. It’s also the only state whose name begins with two vowels.

16. Kansas. Amelia Earhart was from Atchison, Kansas.

17. Kentucky. The song “Happy Birthday to You” was written by sisters Patty and Mildred Hill, Louisville residents. The women were kindergarten teachers who wrote the song as a ditty called “Good Morning to All” that would be easy for young kids to remember and sing.

18. Louisiana. There used to be more to Louisiana. Prior to 1856, there was an island southwest of New Orleans called Last Island. On August 11, 1856, it was completely and utterly destroyed by a category four hurricane. It was hit with such force that the island was split into five smaller islands. Everything on the island – which had been a popular resort destination – was gone. When the water levels went down five days later, the only evidence that there had been human life on the island was a wrecked steamer sent to save the people on the island at the time. More than 200 people died.

19. Maine. Up until a couple of years ago, a vast majority (90 percent) of the toothpicks used in the United States were made in Maine.

20. Maryland. Residents of Saint Michaels found out that the British were going to attack in 1813, so they strategically placed lit lanterns at the tops of ships and on high tree branches and cut all sources of light from the usual places on the ground. It confused the British and they overshot the town, hitting just one single house.

21. Massachusetts is home to the first U.S. zip code ever – 01001 in Agawam.

22. Michigan makes cars, yeah, you already knew that. But it also manufactures the most magic supplies in the world. The little town of Colon (population: 1200) was where magician Harry Blackstone made his home, including his headquarters and magic workshop. He invited other magicians to his abode, and the town eventually sprouted Abbott’s Magic Company, the world’s biggest producer of handmade illusions, and Abbott’s Magic Get-Together, an annual four-day convention. The high school nickname is “The Magi” and their mascot is a rabbit (rabbit out of the hat, get it?).

23. Minnesota. Minneapolis has 52 blocks of skyway – more than five miles – so people who work downtown in the frigid Minnesota winter can get around without getting frostbite.

24. Mississippi was the last state to end prohibition. Even though nationwide prohibition had ended more than 30 years earlier, Mississippi didn’t repeal it at a state level until 1966.

25. Missouri. With more than 200 fountains, Kansas City claims to have the most fountains of any city in the world, with a single exception: Rome.

26. Montana. The Montana Yogo Sapphire is the only North American gemstone to be included in the the royal Crown Jewels.

27. Nebraska. Kool-Aid was invented in Hastings, Nebraska. It was made in inventor Edwin Perkins’ mother’s kitchen and originated as a liquid called “Fruit Smack.” When he needed a cheaper way to ship it, Perkins figured out how to remove the liquid and leave only a powder, creating Kool-Aid.

28. Nevada. The first casino to open on the Las Vegas Strip (before it was the Strip) was called the Pair-O-Dice Club. It opened its doors in 1931.

29. New Hampshire has its own Stonehenge. “America’s Stonehenge” has had charcoal pits carbon dated to 2000 BC to 173 BC, potentially making the site 4,000 years old. It allegedly inspired H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Dunwich Horror.”

30. New Jersey has the most diners in the world – and the most shopping malls in one area (seven major malls in a 25 square mile radius).

31. New Mexico. The cub that became known as Smokey the Bear, the National Fire Safety Symbol, was found trapped in a tree in New Mexico’s Lincoln National Forest when it caught on fire in 1950. The black bear was chosen to be the official state animal in the little guy’s honor 13 years later.

32. New York isn’t home to Dorothy Gale – that’s Kansas, of course – but it does call her creator, L. Frank Baum, a native. In Chittenango, his hometown, yellow brick sidewalks lead to Oz-themed businesses, and you can go to the yearly Oz-Stravaganza every June.

33. North Carolina can boast that they had the first child born in America to English parents. Her name was Virginia Dare and she was born in Roanoke.

34. North Dakota is a great state to drive through if you can manage to make the Enchanted Highway part of your route. It’s a 32-mile stretch of highway with giant sculptures. This one, called “Theodore Roosevelt Rides Again,” is 51 feet tall and weighs more than 9,000 pounds. Photo from EnchantedHighway.net.

35. Ohio, so far, has been the home state of seven U.S. presidents, making it the state that has produced the second-most Commander in Chiefs (Virginia wins that title with eight). In case you’re wondering, they are: Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, William Howard Taft and Warren G. Harding.

36. Oklahoma is where the first-ever parking meter was installed. Oklahoma City was the first to start charging for prime parking real estate in 1935.

37. Oregon has the most ghost towns of any U.S. state, with 18 spots officially designated as such.

38. Pennsylvania is where you’ll find the Mutter Museum, a museum dedicated to medical oddities (for educational purposes, of course). Exhibits include a woman whose corpse turned to soap, famous Siamese twins Chang and Eng Bunker, and the tumor removed from Grover Cleveland’s hard palate in a top-secret operation the world didn’t know about until years later.

39. Rhode Island claims the oldest, still-operating tavern in the U.S. The White Horse Tavern was built in 1673.

40. South Carolina. In case you’re interested in the first boll weevil ever found in South Carolina, don’t worry – you can still see it. The insect is on display at the Pendleton District Agricultural Museum.

41. South Dakota has the world’s only Corn Palace, a building entirely decorated in different varieties of corn kernels and cobs. Exterior murals on the palace are redesigned every year.

42. Tennessee has the largest underground lake in the United States (and the second-largest in the world). It’s part of Craighead Caverns in Sweetwater and is known as The Lost Sea.

43. Texas has the only hotel in North America entirely built over water. The Flagship Hotel in Galveston juts out 1,000 feet over the Gulf of Mexico.

44. Utah has a hotspot known as “Little Hollywood” – Kanab earned the nickname because so many movies and T.V. series have been filmed in the area. Which ones, you ask? To name a few: Gunsmoke, Planet of the Apes, The Outlaw Josey Wales, The Lone Ranger and Stagecoach

45. Vermont’s capital, Montpelier, is the only state capital that lacks a McDonalds.

46. Virginia is where you’ll find a couple of Presidents’ mansions, including Jefferson’s Monticello, which is on the back of the $2 bill. Incidentally, the gift shop at Monticello is probably one of the only establishments in the country to routinely give $2 bills as change.

47. Washington is the only state named after a president.

48. West Virginia had a hand in the invention of billboards and outdoor advertising. A tobacco company there started painting barns and bridges with their slogan, “Treat Yourself to the Best, Chew Mail Pouch.”

49. Wisconsin. Love mustard? Then you’ll love Mount Horeb, which is where you’ll find the world’s largest collection of prepared mustards at the Mustard Museum. It is run by Barry Levenson, who used to be the Assistant Attorney General for the state.

50. Wyoming was the first state that gave women the right to vote.

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Furry Logic: Don't Worry by Jane Seabrook and Ashleigh Brilliant

Posted by Alex in Arts & Crafts, Book & Lit, Neatorama Only on November 12, 2009 at 9:09 pm

I’m a big fan of Ashleigh Brilliant’s witty Pot-Shot series of epigrams, so I’m pleasantly surprised to learn that New Zealand artist Jane Seabrook of Furry Logic Books (published by Ten Speed Press) has created the perfect art for his words in book form.

The book Furry Logic: Don’t Worry is Jane’s sixth and Ashleigh’s first as a co-author in the series. Like all of the Furry Logic books, this one combines beautiful animal pictures with Ashleigh’s razor-sharp wit.

The colorful animal pictures aren’t just exquisitely drawn – they’re educational, too! Jane accurately depicted the red-eyed tree frog, the meerkat, the blue-footed booby and the flame angel (what’s that? You’ve got to read the book). There are 30 animals in all, each accompanied with Ashleigh’s epigrams. This book will make a perfect gift, inspirational book, or reading material to enjoy with your kids.

Links: Furry Logic: Don’t Worry at Amazon | Order from Ashleigh himself (you can even get it autographed)

Note: My review copy is graciously provided by Ashleigh Brilliant. I am not financially or otherwise compensated for this review.

Previously on Neatorama: Ashleigh Brilliant’s Pot-Shots | I May Not Be Totally Perfect But Parts of Me Are Excellent | Ashleigh Brilliant-inspired T-Shirts at the Neatorama Shop

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Neatorama Update - November 2009

Posted by Alex in Neatorama Only on November 10, 2009 at 4:39 pm

Lots of stuff happening in Neatoland last week. Here’s a quick update:

Mystery Sale
Last week, Neatorama had its last Mystery Sale. Thank you for everyone who participated! Why was it our last one? We’re working on a new system for the Neatorama Shop and I have an inkling that it may be incompatible with the way Mystery Sales work. Perhaps we’ll bring it back in the future, but for now, the last Mystery Sale was our very last one

The warehouse is officially in overdrive mode. We’ll be sending out shipments for the next week or two. Unfortunately, I don’t know where a particular order is in the queue – so please be patient, your package is on its way!

Neatorama on Yahoo!
Our post about Elena Desserich, the 6-year-old girl with brain cancer who hid love notes for her parents to find after her death, was featured on Yahoo! front page, which delivered about 2 million visitors (and over 2,700 comments – most of them are nice, but some are … wow, just wow!) in a span of just a few hours (Thanks Yahoo!) Needless to say, the servers got clobbered (though the post itself had no problem as we had put it on a CDN) So if you experienced a server hiccup last week, that was the cause.

Upcoming Queue
We changed the way the Upcoming Queue worked a little bit. Now you can browse Archived Posts (5,000+ submissions!) and keep up with comments on your submissions through RSS Feed.

The Archived Posts link is at the very bottom of the page, whereas the My RSS Feed is on the top right-hand navigation panel.

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Brainier Than The Average Bear

Posted by Alex in Fashion, Funny, Neatorama Only, Science & Tech on November 9, 2009 at 3:47 am

Brainier Than The Average Bear – $11.95

Psst! Got a smart friend? Is he brainier than the average ursine? If so, here’s the perfect T-shirt: Brainier Than the Average Bear, only from the Neatorama Shop: Link

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10 Neat Facts About Carl Sagan

Posted by Alex in Neatorama Only, Science & Tech on November 9, 2009 at 2:00 am

Carl Sagan with a model of the Viking Lander. Photo via Wikipedia

I miss Carl Sagan. Sagan's enthusiasm for science and his knack for translating difficult scientific concepts into simple explanations that many can understand, made him a popular figure. He was an ambassador for science, if you will, as he had inspired many people to study science (yours truly included).

Today would've been his 75th birthday, so in honor of the great astronomer, scientist and author, Neatorama presents 10 Neat Facts About Carl Sagan:

1. Carl Sagan's First Book About Stars

When Carl was five years old, he wondered about the stars: what were they? Unsatisfied with the answers he got from his friends and from adults he knew, Carl went to the library and asked for a book about stars. The librarian handed him ... a book on celebrities! In Keay Davidson's Carl Sagan: A Life, Carl explained how his fascination with the cosmos began:

I gave it back to her and said, "This wasn't the kind of stars I had in mind." She thought this was hilarious, which humiliated me further. She then went and got the right kind of book. I took it—a simple kid's book. I sat down on a little chair—a pint-sized chair—and turned the pages until I came to the answer.

And the answer was stunning. It was that the Sun was a star but really close. The stars were suns, but so far away they were just little points of light.... And while I didn't know the [inverse] square law of light propagation or anything like that, still, it was clear to me that you would have to move that Sun enormously far away, further away than Brooklyn [for the stars to appears as dots of light]....

The scale of the universe suddenly opened up to me. [It was] kind of a religious experience. [There] was a magnificence to it, a grandeur, a scale which has never left me. Never ever left me.

2. Sagan vs. Apple

In 1994, Apple chose the internal codename "Carl Sagan" for its PowerMac 7100. Though it was meant as an homage to Carl (and an in-joke that the computer would make Apple "billions and billions" of dollars), they also used the codenames "Piltdown Man" and "Cold Fusion" for the Power Mac 6100 and 8100, respectively. When Carl found out that he was being put alongside scientific hoaxes, he sued Apple. Though Apple won the suit, the codename was changed to BHA (Butt Head Astronomer) ... which prompted yet another lawsuit from the p.o.'d astronomer! Apple won again, but their lawyers demanded the engineers change the codename one more time, which they did. The PowerMac 7100 was known by its final codename LAW, which stood for "Lawyers Are Wimps."

3. Spaced Out ... On Pot!

In 1969, Carl Sagan wrote under the Pseudonym "Mr. X" about the virtues of cannabis. Harvard Medical School Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry Lester Grinspoon has the article in his website Marijuana Uses:

It all began about ten years ago. I had reached a considerably more relaxed period in my life - a time when I had come to feel that there was more to living than science, a time of awakening of my social consciousness and amiability, a time when I was open to new experiences. I had become friendly with a group of people who occasionally smoked cannabis, irregularly, but with evident pleasure. Initially I was unwilling to partake, but the apparent euphoria that cannabis produced and the fact that there was no physiological addiction to the plant eventually persuaded me to try. My initial experiences were entirely disappointing; there was no effect at all, and I began to entertain a variety of hypotheses about cannabis being a placebo which worked by expectation and hyperventilation rather than by chemistry. After about five or six unsuccessful attempts, however, it happened. I was lying on my back in a friend's living room idly examining the pattern of shadows on the ceiling cast by a potted plant (not cannabis!). I suddenly realized that I was examining an intricately detailed miniature Volkswagen, distinctly outlined by the shadows. I was very skeptical at this perception, and tried to find inconsistencies between Volkswagens and what I viewed on the ceiling. But it was all there, down to hubcaps, license plate, chrome, and even the small handle used for opening the trunk. When I closed my eyes, I was stunned to find that there was a movie going on the inside of my eyelids. Flash . . . a simple country scene with red farmhouse, a blue sky, white clouds, yellow path meandering over green hills to the horizon. . . Flash . . .

4. The Politics of Science

Anyone who has ever worked in a university or an academic institution would know this, but most people assume that because science relies on logic and careful reasoning, scientists would behave in a clinical and dispassionate way. Nothing is farther from the truth.

Carl's popularity had backfired on him not once but twice. In 1967, he was denied tenure at Harvard because his colleagues bristled at "what they perceived as self-aggrandizement and pandering to the public."

In 1992, Carl was again disappointed when his application for membership at the prestigious National Academy of Sciences was denied. Ironically, he received the Public Welfare Medal, the highest award of the Academy for "distinguished contributions in the application of science to the public welfare."

In both instances, Carl persevered and succeeded to overcome setbacks resulting from the politics of science.

5. Billions and Billions

Carl Sagan actually never used the term "billions and billions." His exact words on the series Cosmos were "billions upon billions" (which, for all practical purpose, is pretty much the same thing).

So how did "billions and billions" came to be? We can blame Johnny Carson:

Carl was a good sport - his final book, titled Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium, opened with a tongue-in-cheek discussion of the catch phrase and noted that Johnny Carson himself was an amateur astronomer.

6. The Sagan Unit

A sagan is defined as at least 4 billion (the smallest amount in "billions" is two billion, so "billions and billions" equal 4 billion). It is estimated that the Milky Way galaxy has 100 sagan (400,000,000,000) stars.

Previously on Neatorama: Fun and Unusual Units of Measurements

7. Pioneer Plaques

Many people know that Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 spacecrafts carry metal plaques that carry a message from mankind. But not many know that it was Carl Sagan, together with Frank Drake (yes, the man who came up with the Drake Equation that attempts to estimate the number of alien civilization in our galaxy), that designed the plaque. The controversial artwork, which featured a nude man and woman, was drawn by Sagan's then-wife Linda Salzman Sagan.

After the Pioneer Program, NASA put a Golden Record aboard the two Voyager spacecrafts, which included a greeting "Hello from the children of planet Earth." That was recorded by then six-year-old Nick Sagan, Carl's son.

8. Carl Sagan Memorial Station ... on Mars!

Nick Sagan grew up to become a novelist and screenwriter. He wrote an episode of Star Trek: Enterprise titled "Terra Prime," which included a CGI of Carl Sagan Memorial Station plaque on Mars.

Image via Memory Alpha, the Star Trek Wiki

The plaque above is fictional - but the Carl Sagan Memorial Station is real. It's the formal name of the NASA Mars Pathfinder lander, which delivered the Sojourner rover that explored the Red Planet.

9. Sagan Asteroid

Just in case a unit of measurement and a memorial station on Mars aren't enough, Carl had another thing named after him: a small asteroid in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter was named the 2709 Sagan.

10. Sagan's Last Interview

In 1996, not long before his death, Carl Sagan was interviewed by Charlie Rose, in which he discussed the rise of pseudoscience in the United States. He looked gaunt in the interview, but as you can see, he remained as sharp as ever:

[Google Video]

Bonus: Carl Sagan A Glorious Dawn Auto-Tune

This has been on Neatorama before, but it's so good that we just have to feature it again for those of you who might've missed it. Behold, Carl Sagan's A Glorious Dawn auto-tuned:

__________

I'll be the first to acknowledge that this is a woefully inadequate post about one of the most brilliant scientists who ever lived. We didn't talk about Cosmos (because it's so popular, I opted for the more obscure Sagan trivia), his books and Pulitzer Prize, Carl Sagan Day and so on. If you have a Sagan story, please share it in the comments.

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Neatorama's Last Mystery Sale

Posted by Alex in Neatorama Only on November 4, 2009 at 1:38 pm

Hello everyone! As you can probably tell by the banners on the blog, we’re having a Mystery Sale on Neatorama. The proceeds help support the blog and our fledgling shop (thank you!)

For those of you who don’t know anything about it, the Mystery Sale offers an item you can buy for $9.95. What is it? We won’t tell you – that’s the whole point of the sale!

But we can tell you that it’s going to be a physical product (or combination of products) worth AT LEAST $9.95. It’ll be new and a fun "Neatorama" item.

You can buy more than 1 Mystery Item in a single order, in which case we’ll make sure that you get different items. You can even get them gift-wrapped so you can cross Christmas shopping off your list early this year.

We’re working on a new platform for Neatorama’s online shop, and the new one probably won’t be compatible with future Mystery Sale. I’m 99.9% sure that this will be the last Mystery Sale we’ll have (if not ever, then for a very long time) so grab yours today before it’s gone!

~~Link~~

Update 11/5/09 – Time’s up! Thank you to everyone who participated!

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13 Examples of Literature in Song

Posted by Johnny Cat in Book & Lit, Music, Neatorama Only on November 4, 2009 at 2:20 am

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It’s no real surprise that Wikipedia has a thorough list of these, but it’s interesting to parse through the many, and find a neat collection of songs and albums that were based on, or influenced by books. Led Zeppelin has a scatological lyric library referencing JRR Tolkien, but let’s see what else is out there.

13. Alan Parson’s Project – The album is called Tales of Mystery and Imagination, and includes interpretations of Edgar Allen Poe’s best, like “The Raven”, “Dr. Tar and Professor Feather”, and “The Cask of Amontillado.” Here’s the awesome “Dream Within A Dream” video. Also by Parsons: “I, Robot” (Isaac Asimov).

12. Rivendell (Rush) – A quiet, thematic representation of the Elf version of a Bed & Breakfast. (Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, of course.)

11. 2112 (Rush) - Side one* is loosely based on Anthem by Ayn Rand.

10. For Whom the Bell Tolls (Metallica) - Based on the classic by Ernest Hemingway.

9. The Thing That Should Not Be and The Call of Cthulu (Metallica) - These guys really let good classic fiction influence their songwriting. We get not one, but two songs in honor of H.P. Lovecraft’s best character. Also by Metallica: “One”, based on the book Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo.

8. The Small Print (Muse) - “clearly alluding to Goethe’s Faust, being sung from the point of view of the Devil to someone selling their soul to him in exchange for, presumably, musical prowess and fame…” source

7. Anthrax Loves Stephen King - As do a lot of bands like Pennywise (It). But Anthrax named one of their best albums Among the Living after King’s character Randall Flagg in The Stand. They also penned a song called “Skeleton in the Closet” based on King’s “Apt Pupil”.

6. Tom Sawyer (Rush) - Wow, Rush. Even “Red Barchetta” is based on a vague book called A Nice Morning Drive by Richard S. Foster. At least Tom Sawyer is pretty well known both as a song and a book. Who can resist the urge to sing along when Geddy Lee croons, “The River!”

5. Tales of Brave Ulysses (Cream) - Psychedelically sums up all you need to know about all the ins and outs of Homer’s The Odyssey. And I quote, “Tiny purple fishes run laughing through your fingers…” (This was actually a lyric inspired by lyricist Martin Sharp’s travels in Ibiza.) But the Sirens are there, so that’s cool.

4. The Ghost of Tom Joad (Bruce Springsteen) - Based on The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. Henry Fonda and Bruce Springsteen would have had some cool conversations, I bet.

3. White Rabbit (Jefferson Airplane) -Based on Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Here’s a nice rendition of that song.

YouTube Link

2. Animals (Pink Floyd) - It never actually occurred to me before, but an argument can be made that the Animals album, with it’s corrupt pigs (be they on the wing, or three different ones), dogs and sheep, political overtones… Yeah, it’s definitely based on George Orwell’s Animal Farm.

1. Iron Maiden (Pretty much every song of theirs, ever) - At least a heavy handful. These Brit bad boys of metal must have had some scratched up library cards. Their adaptations include:

Seventh Son, by Orson Scott Card (on the 7th Son of a 7th Son album, including all songs)
Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
Flight of Icarus (Mythology)
The Lord of the Flies (William Golding)
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (Alan Sillitoe)
Stranger in a Strange Land (Robert A. Heinlen)
To Tame a Land (Dune, Frank Herbert)
The Trooper (The Charge of the Light Brigade, Alfred Tennyson)
Rime of the Ancient Mariner (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)
Murders in the Rue Morgue (Edgar Allen Poe)

On second thought, an honorable mention should be made for Led Zeppelin’s “The Battle of Evermore”, as it pretty much describes the Battle of Pellennor Fields in The Return of the King.

(Iron Maiden illustration by Ado Cedric & Tio Julio.)
*For help with determining what this means, ask a grownup.

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Top 10 Mad Science-Worthy Chemistry Experiments

Posted by Alex in Neatorama Only, Science & Tech, Video Clips on November 4, 2009 at 12:10 am

Chemistry is a fascinating science, but it's often taught poorly in today's boring schools. Here's how chemistry should be taught: by mad scientists! Here's Neatorama's list of the Top 10 Mad Science-Worthy Chemistry Experiments:

1. Briggs-Rauscher Reaction

The Briggs-Rauscher reaction is a well known example of oscillating chemical reactions, also known as chemical clocks because the periodicity can be used to tell time. What's going on in the beaker is actually quite a complex set of chemical reactions. Here's how to do it: Link

2. Gummy Bear and Molten Potassium Chlorate

Who'da thunk that Gummy Bear can be so ... violent? Here's what happen if you drop a Gummy Bear (which is mostly sugar), to a tube of molten potassium chlorate:

3. Diet Coke and Mentos

Mentos in various carbonated liquids. From left to right: carbonated water (Perrier), Classic Coke, Sprite, and Diet Coke. By K. Shimada [Wikipedia]

You've all seen this before. The Diet Coke and Mentos experiment by Fritz Grobe and Stephen Voltz of EepyBird was the stuff of Internet legend back in 2007. But what exactly happens when you drop a Mentos into a solution of Diet Coke?

MythBusters explain:

According to Hyneman (he's the mustachioed MythBuster), it's a process called "nucleation," in which the particular chemistry of the Mentos candy interacts with the chemistry of the carbonated Diet Coke, causing the carbon dioxide gas, or CO2, to suddenly come out of suspension in the liquid and make a break for freedom. [...]

Hyneman says, "There's a cascade that happens with -- it's a little esoteric -- an ion exchange. Basically the Mentos start to dissolve, and it's like tripping a switch. It's not what you would call a chain reaction, because that's something else in chemistry terms, but it's a cascade whereon all of a sudden, all of the CO2 that was contained in the liquid is suddenly not as attracted to the liquid as it was before, because of this slight change in the chemistry that occurs."

Whatever you do, don't eat a mentos then chug a mouthful of diet soda, mmkay?

4. Elephant Toothpaste

Yes, even elephants need to maintain good dental hygiene, but what kind of toothpaste do they use? Here's a favorite chemistry demo called Elephant Toothpaste (no, elephants don't actually use this as a toothpaste, silly - it's only called that because it looks like the kind and quantity of toothpaste an elephant would use).

This one's easy to do, all you need is dish soap, hydrogen peroxide, and potassium iodide: Link

5. Grape Plasma

What happens if you put a grape and nuke it in a microwave? You get something very cool ... and dangerous at the same time, because it *will* ruin your microwave, release poisonous gases, and you *can* burn down your house - so don't do it, mmkay? Watch:

What just happened? Here's the explanation, according to The Plasma Universe:

It is relatively easy to generate a plasmoid using a microwave and a medium that will initiate the formation of a plasmoid, this can be caused by the carbon microparticles in the smoke from a naked flame or match, which ignites and moves about as plasmoids, and some biological cells are known to produce plasma under microwave conditions, such as grapes (electrons try to move through highly resistive grape-skin, and plasmoids may form) This is due to the fact that microwaves, being high frequency electromagnetic radiation in the GHz range, are capable of exciting electrodeless gas discharges in air, similar to the process used in Sulfur lamps.

Got that?

6. Burning Salts

Quick: what color is fire? Orangey red? Obviously you haven't seen alcohol, barium chloride, boron, strontium, calcium, lithium, sodium, copper, and potassium salts set aflame ...

7. Magnesium in Dry Ice

You've probably heard that fire needs oxygen to burn (indeed, the principle behind CO₂ fire extinguisher is to use the heavier carbon dioxide to displace the oxygen needed by the flame).

But does a fire really need oxygen? Not burning magnesium! It'll burn even when encased in dry ice (solid CO₂). Note: magnesium shavings are used - not powder, which will explode if you try to set it on fire.

8. Ferrofluid

Ferrofluid, a colloidal mixture of nanoscale magnetic particles in a solvent, reacts to magnetic field in an awesomely bizarre way. Sachiko Kodama uses ferrofluid to create dynamic sculptures called Morpho Towers:

9. Mercury Beating Heart

A drop of mercury in a solution of potassium chromate and sulfuric acid, set so it's almost touching an iron nail, will start to beat like a heart. Journal of Chemical Education explains why: Link

10. The World of Chemistry

John Farrier posted this back in May, 2009 but it's too good not to post again here. Behold, the World of Chemistry, a video from the Europe Research Commission using a dance party to explain basic chemical reactions.

__________

Don't miss these other fun science articles from Neatorama:


Fun with Low Temperatures	The Math Book: Milestones in the History of Math	The Wonderful World of Big Science


10 Things About the Large Hadron Collider You Wanted to Know but Were Afraid to Ask	5 Scientific Laws and the Scientists Behind Them	5 Really Weird Things About Water

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Neatorama Penny Pyramid

Posted by Alex in Money & Finance, Neatorama Only on November 3, 2009 at 6:12 pm

Remember the record-breaking Penny Pyramid built by Marcelo Bezos? Well, Marcelo had built a "glow in the dark" pyramid featuring Neatorama:

Marcelo's selling the Penny Pyramid, along with the house it comes in:

How do you get a record 3,500 lb. Penny Pyramid out of a house before you sell it ?........ YOU DON”T, you list it as one of the many upgrades and amenities that comes along with it!

Welcome to the current home of the World’s Largest Penny Pyramid! The penny pyramid which was originally built in 2006 to raise awareness for colorectal cancer and the screening process will be auctioned off along with the house it was built in this winter to raise funds in support of the Penny Pyramid Project. Mr. Bezos, the creator and holder of the record is also the founder of the Penny Pyramid Project, a non-profit child philanthropy educational program that uses its signature world record penny pyramid in fundraisers used to support other charitable organizations in the greater Miami area. The Penny Pyramid Project was founded in 2007, it ran its first annual fundraiser that same year raising over 1,200 dollars in pennies alone. Unfortunately, the fledgling program was temporarily forced to go dormant during the 2008 school year. Mr. Bezos, “it is my hope that this unique approach to the sale of the house will generate enough local and national interest that will generate the necessary funding in order to bring back this really neat educational program for our school children.”

and…. if it does not sell?, well then each coin used in the pyramid will be encased in an aluminum outer shell, a lost art only a few companies in the US now can reproduce. In its hay day from 1900-1970, millions of these encased pennies were used to commemorate or used as a premiums to help advertise a company’s product. Mr. Bezos, This type of coining is just a really cool way to showcase what now is the Worlds Largest “Glow” in the dark penny pyramid!”

The current Pyramid has grown to just over 525,000 pennies. The accompanying video series has also been a viral sensation around the world receiving over 3,300,000 views and counting!

The latest work has caused the outer coins to glow in the dark turning the current structure into the Worlds Largest “Glow” In The Dark Penny Pyramid!

Link - Thanks Marcelo!

Update 11/3/09: Marcelo gave us further info on the Neatorama Penny Pyramid statistics:

The letters are made up of the following number of piles and coins
All pennies are uncirculated 2009 D Professional Series.

N= 57 piles 570 pennies
E= 63 piles 630 pennies
A= 64 piles 640 pennies
T= 61 piles 610 pennies
O= 40 piles 410 pennies
R= 56 piles 560 pennies
A= 64 piles 640 pennies
M= 65 piles 650 pennies
A= 64 piles 640 pennies

1. takes about 1min 30 to process each pile so it glows, (secrete process, last about 600 hours when subjected to continous UV light)

2. took about 5 hours to insert in pyramid

ok, that’s a total of 534 piles or 5340 pennies

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Neatorama Shop » Toy & Games » Action Figures

Cryptozoological Play Set	Glow in the Dark Zombies Play Set	Evolving Darwin Play Set
See more Action Figures »

Neatorama Mystery Sale - November 2009

Posted by Alex in Neatorama Only on November 3, 2009 at 3:18 pm

Neatorama’s Mystery Sale – $9.95

It’s time for Neatorama’s highly anticipated Mystery Sale. What mysterious item will you get for $9.95? Well, we wont’ tell you: that’s the whole point of the Mystery Sale!

But what we can we can tell you is this: you’ll get something (or a combination of things) worth *at least* $9.95. It will be a physical item, new, fun and worthy of Neatorama. And if you buy more than one thing, you’ll get different items.

Do your Christmas shopping early. It’s simple: just get a few Mystery Sale items (you can even get them gift-wrapped) and cross Christmas shopping off your to-do list!

What will this Mystery Sale bring you? Don’t you want to find out? And remember, like the last Mystery Sale, this one is also for a very limited time. When it’s gone, it’s gone, so get yours today: ~~Link~~

Update 11/5/09 – time’s up!

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10 Neat Facts About Google

Posted by Alex in Blog & Internet, Neatorama Only on November 3, 2009 at 3:44 am

Google in 1998 (notice the exclamation mark)

Sure, everybody knows that Google was created by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin who became gazillionaires. But did you know that Google's first storage device was cobbled together with LEGO? Or that Google's first investor wrote a $100,000 check even before the company officially existed? Or that it has its own "official" Google dog?

Neatorama presents the Top 10 Neat Facts About Google:

1. Before Google, There Was BackRub

In 1996, graduate students Larry Page and Sergey Brin worked on a research project to understand the link structure of the World Wide Web. They're particularly interested in determining the importance of a given web page based on its backlinks or how many other web pages link to it (which later became the concept behind Google's "PageRank" algorithm).

The project was named BackRub (yes, a play on the word "backlink"). You can see an archived page of BackRub in the Wayback Machine:

8) Your logo is upside down: Why is the light source obviously below the image? It looks quite unnatural...

The logo is simply a scan of my hand, from a flatbed scanner converted to black and white. The "back" in the picture is the scanner cover, and the shadows are from the scanner light.

2. The Original Google Computer Storage

Photo: Stanford Infolab's Computer History Exhibits Photo

Larry and Sergey needed large amount of disk space to test their PageRank algo, but the largest hard disks available at the time were only 4 GB. So they assembled 10 of these drives together.

While he was an undergrad at Michigan University, Larry had built a programmable plotter out of LEGO, so it's only natural that he used the colorful bricks to create Google's first computer storage!

3. Google's First Investor

Sun Microsystem co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim knew a good thing when he saw it. After talking to Larry and Sergey about Google for 30 minutes, he whipped out his checkbook and wrote a check for $100,000, made out to "Google, Inc." Problem was, Google, Inc. hasn't existed yet!

Oh, by the way, the Sun in Sun Microsystem stands for "Stanford University Network."

4. Google Garage

Talk about getting lucky tenants. In 1998, Susan Wojcicki rented her garage to two Stanford students - you know who they are - for $1,700 a month to help out with the mortgage. That turned out to be a life-changing decision for Susan - it got her a key early job at Google which translated to a top executive position later on, introduced a future husband to her younger sister Anne, and created a mini cottage industry for the rest of her family. (Photo: Jack Gruber/USA Today)

In 2006, Google bought the house which had become a tourist attraction (the busloads of people who show up to take pictures were so annoying that Google decided not to publish the address - though ironically, you can still Google Map it.)

5. Google's First Dog

Despite the Internet's obsession with cats, dogs rule Google. In 1999, a Leonberger breed named Yoshka came to work with Google's first VP of Engineering Urs Hölzle and became the company's "first" dog. (Photo: Google Timeline)

If you must know, Leonbergers are big dogs with lionesque mane that look really majestic. They are, however, useless as guard dogs because they're much too kind and gentle.

6. Just How Many Servers Does Google Have?

A sign near the Googleville data center. Photo: ahockley [Flickr]

The real Googleville. Photo: Melanie Conner/NY Times

Good question. Nobody outside the company knows, and Google ain't talkin'. The company's famously secretive when it comes to its data centers (Heck, no one even knows for sure how many data centers the company has!)

For example, The Dalles or "Googleville" data center in a small ~~Washington~~ Oregon town, was cloaked in secrecy:

"No one says the 'G' word," said Diane Sherwood, executive director of the Port of Klickitat, Wash., directly across the river from The Dalles, who is not bound by such agreements. "It's a little bit like He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named in Harry Potter."

Recently, Google Fellow Jeff Dean gave a revealing talk on large-scale computing systems in which he discussed technical details of a new storage and computation system called Spanner, which is designed for up to 10 million servers. Skynet, anyone?

7. "Green" Search

All those hardware must use a lot of electricity (indeed, Googleville data center is calculated to require about 103 megawatts of electricity - enough to power 82,000 homes or a city the size of Tacoma, Washington), but just how much energy do you use when you perform a Google search?

Google calculated that it uses about 1 kJ (0.0003 kWh) of energy to answer the average search query. It's so efficient that your PC will likely use more energy in the time it takes to do a Google search.

Photo: Google Solar Panel Project

To offset its electricity consumption, Google even installed 1.6MW solar panels on the rooftops of the Googleplex. A total of 9,212 solar panels generate 4,475 kWh daily, the equivalent of about the amount of electricity used by 1,000 California homes.

8. Google Trike

I'm sure you're all familiar with Google Street View and the camera-topped Google Car, but what about all of the interesting places inaccessible to cars? Enter the Google Trike, which started as a project by Daniel Ratner, a Senior Mechanical Engineer on the Street View team:

"I began thinking about building a bicycle-based Street View system after realizing how many interesting places around the world - ranging from historic landmarks to beautiful trails to shopping districts - aren't accessible by car," says Dan. "When I'm riding the trike, so many people come up to me and ask where it's off to next or how they can get imagery of their favorite spot, so I can't wait to see what our users come up with."

Previously on Neatorama: Google Car Pulled Over by the Cops - Now in Google Street View!

9. I'm Feeling Lucky Costs Google $110 Million a Year

The "I'm Feeling Lucky" button on Google's homepage takes you straight to the first web page result. Because it bypasses Google's own search result page, where users are shown ads, the button actually costs Google around $110 million a year.

Why keep it? Google Vice President of Search Product and User Experience Marisa Mayer said:

You know Larry and Sergey had the view, and I certainly share it, that it's possible just to become too dry, too corporate, too much about making money. And you know what I think is really delightful about Google and about the "I'm Feeling Lucky," is that they remind you that the people here have personality and that they have interests and that there is real people.

10. Googlebot, Revealed At Last!

Image: Ben Rathbone

In 2005, Ben Rathbone (then at Google's Hardware Operations) gave us a glimpse of humanity's future. I, for one, welcome our new Googlebot overlord:

Then I pondered the question: what does Google do? The grossly simplified answer that I came up with is Google connects the world with the Internet.

It all snapped into place: the idea of a robot, connecting a world with the Internet, with wires, that connect to big cabinets of computers. It was not hard then to make the leap to representing the internet as a world, or globe, made up of pages.

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Alphabet of Computing

Posted by Alex in Neatorama Only, Science & Tech on October 30, 2009 at 2:42 am

Every geek knows that "A" is for Apple, but I bet not many know that Apple had a "third founder" who gave up his stake for $800 (it would've been worth at least $17 billion today). Or that Cisco was named for San Francisco. Or that Twitter used to be called twttr? Let's take a stroll through the A to Z of computing trivia, Neatorama style!

If you think that Apple was founded by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, think again: there was a "third founder" of Apple. In 1976, Ronald Wayne gave up his 10% stake of the fledgling company for $800 because he was worried that the company would fold and that he would be liable for debts incurred by the other partners (at the time Apple wasn't a corporation yet). Of course Apple became the big company, and Wayne's stake could've been worth as much as $17 billion today.

Originally, Research in Motion wanted its wireless messaging device to have the word "e-mail" in its name. When RIM hired Lexicon Branding to do a little research, they found out that people associate "e-mail" with work and therefore can raise blood pressure. Someone said that the buttons look like small berries, so they decided to name it BlackBerry.

Evolution of Cisco logo, by Design Maven via Speak Up

Cisco System was named after the city San Francisco (the founders of the company worked for Stanford University, which is just a couple of town over). Indeed, first Cisco System's logo was the Golden Gate Bridge. (See also: Evolution of Tech Logos)

Ben Curtis, in his very first Dell commercial

In 2003, after three years of playing the Dell Dude, actor Ben Curtis was arrested while attempting to buy a bag of marijuana. People immediately parodied his tag line "Dude, you're getting a Dell" to "Dude, you're getting a cell." Though charges were dropped, Dell canceled the Dell Dude commercials. Curtis was working as a waiter in 2007 but he's making a come back with a (supposedly) upcoming play "Dude! I'm Going to Hell"

In 1977, the US Postal Service recognized that email would pose a serious challenge to its monopoly on delivering mail. At first, it wanted to ban emails (like it did mails delivered by underground pneumatic tubes), but the FCC objected and the Postal Rate Commission refused. So it created an experimental email service called E-COM ("Electronic Computer-Originated Mail"). The idea was simple: You send the emails, which the post office would then print out and deliver as physical letters at the price of 26¢ each (it was said that it actually cost the USPS $5 to deliver the message). Oh, and the service was one-way. If something went wrong, you'd get an error message delivered two days later ... in form of a letter! Needless to say, E-COM failed.

John Backus, the inventor of FORTRAN programming language, said this about his invention: "Much of my work has come from being lazy. I didn't like writing programs, and so, when I was working on the IBM 701 (an early computer), writing programs for computing missile trajectories, I started work on a programming system to make it easier to write programs."

When Paul Buchheit started the Gmail project at Google, he named it "Project Caribou" after a Dilbert cartoon strip.

HP could've easily have been PH. In 1939, when Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard formed HP in a Palo Alto garage, they flipped a coin to decide the name of the company. Packard actually won the toss, but decided to name it Hewlett-Packard instead of Packard-Hewlett.

In 1999, Al Gore was asked by Wolf Blitzer what distinguished him from other contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination, and he famously said: "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet." Gore was immediately ridiculed for claiming to have invented the Internet. Not to be outdone, Dan Quayle said "If Al Gore invented the Internet, I invented spell check."

JPEG stands for the Joint Photographic Experts Group, who created the method of compression for photo images. Like all image processing algo, JPEG was tested on the standard test image of "Lenna", a cropped photo of a 1972 Playboy magazine centerfold Lena Soderberg.

Knuth reward check, photo via Upto11.net

Legendary computer scientist Donald Knuth offers to pay a reward of $2.56 for the first finder of errors in his books. Why $2.56? Because 256 pennies is one hexadecimal dollar, which is sort of a joke that only a programmer can appreciate. But that's okay since that's Knuth's target audience anyhow. Indeed, Knuth reward checks are "among computerdom's most prized trophies," according to MIT's Technology Review. If the name Don Knuth sounds familiar, that's because we've featured his Potrzebie System of Weights and Measure before on Neatorama. (see also: Fun and Unusual Units of Measurements)

At first, Linus Torvalds wanted to name his new operating system Freax, a portmanteau of "freak," "free," and "x" (for Unix). A co-worker thought that it was a horrible name and renamed it Linux without telling him.

In 1996, Monty Widenius and David Axmark created MySQL, a relational database management system that would later become one of the most widely used software in the world, powering many of the web's largest sites (WordPress, Neatorama's blogging engine, uses it). What most people don't know is that the "My" in MySQL doesn't refer to "me" - it's actually the name of Monty's daughter My.

The term newbie or noob, originally thought to be from British public-school and military slang "new boy," was first spotted in the Usenet newsgroup talk.bizarre as an insult to a clueless newcomer. (N is for Newbie Onesies/Kids T-Shirt at the Neatorama Shop)

In 1977, Larry Ellison, Bob Miner and Ed Oates were working on a CIA-funded project codenamed Oracle (because the CIA believed that it would give them answers to all questions). The project failed, but Larry and friends took the idea and used it to create a company that would later become the Oracle Corporation.

The most common passwords in the world are:

1. password
2. 123456
3. qwerty
4. abc123
5. letmein
6. monkey
7. myspace1
8. password1
9. link182
10. (your first name)

And you thought you were clever to do a derivative of Blink-182 as your password!

The keyboard you're using now is most likely set in a QWERTY layout (named for the first 6 characters of the top row of letters). This layout was invented by Christopher Sholes in 1874 because people were typing too fast on typewriters back then, thus causing the machine to jam. Sholes did frequency analysis on letter-pairs and separated pairs of letters that tend to cause mechanical jams when typed in quick successions like TH. Sholes' new layout was designed to slow down typists (technically, he aimed to improve typing speed by reducing jams - and indeed, that's exactly what happened.)

ROT13: Jung qbrf Whyvhf Pnrfne unir nalguvat gb qb jvgu zbqrea qnl Vagrearg? Pnrfne vairagrq n fvzcyr rapelcgvba zrgubq gung orpnzr dhvgr cbchyne va Hfrarg arjftebhcf nf n zrna gb uvqr fcbvyref, chapuyvarf naq chmmyr fbyhgvbaf. Gur vqrn vf fvzcyr: ercynpr n cvrpr bs grkg jvgu yrggref 13 cynprf shegure nybat va gur nycunorg ("ebgngr ol 13 cynprf" be EBG13). Gur travhf bs gur zrgubq vf gung orpnhfr gurer ner 26 yrggref va gur Ratyvfu nycunorg, gur fnzr rapelcgvba zrgubq jvyy qrpelcg n ebgngrq grkg!

Before Digg, there was Slashdot. The technology-related news website was so huge that getting linked from it meant a massive increase of traffic that would cripple smaller web servers. Webmasters call this the Slashdot effect, which is the granddaddy of similar terms Digg effect, Farked, or Drudged.

The very first Twitter message was sent by its co-creator Jack Dorsey on March 21, 2006: "just setting up my twttr." That's not a typo - twttr was the original codename for the project (inspired by Flickr). At least twttr was better than one of the first names they were considering for it: twitch.

I'm including USB (Universal Serial Bus) here so I can play this awesome "Intel Star" commercial starring Ajay Bhatt, the co-inventor of the USB. Watch it and weep:

Before the World Wide Web, there was Gopher (note: it's gopher://, not http:// - you'd need Firefox to see it) and Veronica was its search engine. Why Veronica? It's because the first search engine of the Internet, a tool that indexes FTP archives, is called Archie. Officially, Veronica is an acronym for "Very Easy Rodent-Oriented Net-wide Index to Computer Archives."

Call it user-generated content, Bubble 2.0, millionth-word in the English language or whatever you want, but know this: Web 2.0 is trademarked by CMP Media (who partnered with O'Reilly in producing the Web 2.0 conference) in 2004. In 2006, they sent a cease-and-desist nastygram to the Irish non-profit organization IT@Cork for using the word in the name of their conference and sparked a kerfuffle over the ownership of "Web 2.0"

What's the company that invented the personal computer, graphical user interface, the computer mouse, but didn't bother to market them because it couldn't see their commercial potentials? Yep, Xerox. In 1979, Steve Jobs of Apple visited Xerox Palo Alto Research Center and saw the Xerox Alto workstation. Several years later, Jobs brought the Apple Macintosh to market.

When YouTube was sold to Google for $1.7 billion, the spotlight was on Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. But did you know that there was a third YouTube founder? That's right: Jawed Karim left the company to become a graduate student at Stanford University. He did, however, fare better than Ronald Wayne - Jawed got about $64 million worth in stock. Jawed also uploaded the very first video on YouTube on April 23, 2005:

If you own a PC in the late 80s/early 90s, then you're savvy about the ZIP file format. Back then, disk space was at a premium (a regular 3-1/2" HD floppy disk can only hold 1.44 MB worth of data) so compression was a big thing. In 1986, Phil Katz created PKZIP (Yep, PK is his initials) and released it as a shareware. He chose the name "zip" to imply that his software was faster than other compression formats available at the time. Sadly, Phil, the alcoholic computer genius, died alone in a cheap hotel cradling an empty bottle of peppermint schnapps.

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10 Neat Facts About Ferrari

Posted by Alex in Car & Vehicle, Neatorama Only on October 28, 2009 at 2:54 am

Quick: what comes to your mind when I say "Ferrari"? A line of gorgeous (and exorbitantly priced) supercars? Formula One racing? How about mule-shoeing, World War I flying ace, and the H1N1 virus?

Let's take a look at Neatorama's Top 10 Neat Facts About Ferrari:

1. A Ten-Year-Old Boy's Love of Racing

Enzo Ferrari, racing for Alfa Romeo (Image: Ferrari)

In 1908, Enzo Ferrari's father took him and his older brother to a race in Bologna. There, he became smitten with racing and wanted to become a race car driver. Ferrari's dream became reality in 1919, when he made his racing debut at the age of 21.

2. Enzo Ferrari was a Mule Shoer

During World War I, Enzo was a blacksmith and mule-shoer for the Italian army.

3. The H1N1 Connection

If you think that the current H1N1/Swine Flu is a new thing, think again: the Influenza virus H1N1 that you hear about all over the news today is the descendant of the virus responsible for the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic that killed as many as 100 million people worldwide.

In 1916, Enzo's father and brother died during an Italian flu outbreak, and in 1918, Enzo himself was stricken with the disease and almost died. Enzo was discharged from the Italian army but upon returning to his home in Modena, he discovered that his family's metal engineering firm had collapsed.

Enzo had to look for a job. When Fiat turned him down, he found a job as a test-driver for a small carmaker called CMN. A year later, his friend got him a job at Alfa Romeo as a race car driver. About ten years later, he started his own racing team, Scuderia ("stable") Ferrari.

4. Enzo was a Bad Ass

In 1919, while driving through the mountains of southern Italy to go to a race, Enzo Ferrari and fellow racer Ugo Sivocci were trapped by deep snow. They were going to be attacked by a pack of wolves but Enzo scared them off with a revolver that he kept with him at all times. They made the race. (Source)

5. Origin of Prancing Horse Logo

Francesco Baracca (c. June 1918)

The black prancing horse in the famous Ferrari logo was originally the symbol of Count Francesco Baracca, a flying ace in the Italian air force during World War I.

In 1923, Enzo Ferrari met Baracca's mother, Countess Paolina, who asked that he use the horse on his cars for good luck. It must've worked for Ferrari though Baracca didn't fare so well: his plane was shot down and he was killed in action at the age of 30.

6. How Ferrari Got the Nickname "Il Commendatore"

How did Enzo Ferrari got his nickname "Il Commendatore"? Was it because he's famously prickly and tyrannical? (Ferrari's longtime chief engineer Mauro Forghieri once remarked "As a businessman, he is excellent. As a human being, he is a zero" about him)

Actually, he was given the title Commendatore (literally Knight Commander) in 1927 for his racing accomplishments by the King of Italy Vittorio Emmanuel III. When Italy became a Republic in 1946, all honorary titles were canceled. So, technically, Il Commendatore became just a nickname for Enzo.

7. The Very First Ferrari

Ferrari 125 S (Photo: Daisuke Ido)

The very first car* produced and built under the Ferrari name is the Ferrari 125 S (125 after the engine displacement and S for Sport). I think it's one of the most beautiful cars - if not the most beautiful - Ferrari has ever made (though the 166 MM Barchetta ain't bad).

*Enzo Ferrari did make cars for Alfa Romeo before he started making Ferraris. One of the weirdest cars he ever made was the Alfa Romeo Bimotore, a car with two engines. One in front and another in the back of the driver.

8. The Most Expensive ... Brochure?!

You all know that Ferraris are expensive, but would you believe that even their brochures are pricey? In 1985, a brochure for the 1960's Ferrari 250 Le Mans fetched £1,070 at a Christie's auction in Monaco. A world record till today.

9. Most expensive Ferrari

1957 Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa (Photo: 4WheelsNews)

The most expensive Ferrari ever sold was 1957 Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa (lit. "red head" - named that way because its red valve covers). It got 9.02 million euros in a recent auction. In addition to their legendary performance as race cars (the 250 TR won 10 international championships from 1958 to 1961), this model is also ultra rare: only 22 were ever constructed. (Source)

10. Wrecking a $1 Million Car.

You'd expect that when Ferrari made a car to honor its founder, it'd be good. And you'd be right: in 2002 Ferrari introduced the Enzo Ferrari, a sports car built using Formula One technology.

Only 400 cars were ever made ... and so far, 6 14 Enzos have been totaled. At a million bucks EACH!

One strange tale involving a crashed Ferrari Enzo led to the capture of a high-flying Swedish criminal named Stefan "Fat Steve" Eriksson, head of the Uppsala mafia who bilked investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars by creating a failed handheld game unit Gizmondo. It's a fascinating story - if you haven't heard about it, Randall Sullivan of Wired wrote an article explaining the whole thing.

Bonus: Ferrari Factory

Photo: Laurence Yap / Canadian Driver

Want to see the inside of a Ferrari factory? Laurence Yap took a peek inside the Maranello facility and wrote this article for Canadian Driver:

Walk through the Ferrari factory towards the end of the working day – its hours are like regular office hours, Monday through Friday – and it can seem almost like you’re in Willy Wonka’s candy factory. On the line where they make V8-engined F430s, young workers in full Ferrari-red regalia circle around their work stations, smiles on their faces, and a tune whistling from their lips.

Most of the people working on the factory floor are in their 20s and 30s, as a whole chunk of older workers – hired in the sixties – retired recently, all at the same time. So as if building Ferraris wasn’t enough, the whole place buzzes with a lot more energy than your typical car factory. Workers have decorated their stations with Ferrari stickers, Schumacher posters, and other automotive memorabilia; they’re free to wear what they want, but they’re all wearing something red.

Link

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Neatorama Update October 2009: Huffington Post and Interview with Technorati

Posted by Alex in Neatorama Only on October 27, 2009 at 1:58 am

Just a couple of updates:

10 Neatest NY Inventions Over at HuffPo
I wrote an article titled 10 Neatest New York Inventions Ever that got frontpaged at the Huffington Post. For example, whoddathunk that Jell-O (OK, OK, gelatin desert) was invented in New York?

Not satisfied with having built the first American locomotive and running for president (for the Greenback Party ticket), industrialist Peter Cooper decided to try his hand in desserts. In 1845, he patented the formula for powdered gelatin.

You may not know the name "Peter Cooper," but I bet you’ve heard of what his invention later became known as. That’s right. Jell-O.

Link – Thanks David!

Technorati State of the Blogosphere Interview
In addition to a completely new article-based front page and a new way to calculate the ranking of Technorati Top 100 Blogs, Technorati has just finished releasing their annual State of the Blogosphere 2009 report. Tucked in between all the interesting statistics and interviews with Internet heavyweights like Arianna Huffington, Seth Godin, Mathew Ingram, Simon Mackie, Andrew Breitbart, and Dean Takahashi, is little ol’ me.

Many thanks to Eric Olsen who conducted the interview and tolerated me being a rambling doofus and butchering the English language (and is that how I sound like? OMG!). We talked about the Neatorama Shop, how Neatorama grew, the blog’s counter-intuitive strategy of reducing pageviews, Neatorama’s statistics and so on and so on for about 23 minutes: Link

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Your Neatorama Guide To The Hitchhiker's Guide

Posted by Jill Harness in Book & Lit, Neatorama Only on October 27, 2009 at 12:22 am

Technically, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy should probably be The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe, as the book most certainly explores multiple galaxies, regardless of semantics though, the story is undoubtedly a worldwide phenomenon. As a book, it has been translated into 30 languages and was voted the fourth most loved book in all of Britain.

In honor of the book’s 30^th anniversary, which took place earlier this month, Neatorama is presenting you a collection of facts related to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy. Whether you’ve read the book, heard the radio broadcasts, seen the movie or seen the TV show, there’s certainly something here you don’t know yet.

What’s In A Name?

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Fans often abbreviate The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy as HHGTTG, but Adams uses the abbreviation of H2G2, which is also used on the official BBC online guide. Other nicknames can include “The Hitchhiker’s Guide,” “The Guide” or “Hitchhiker’s.” To make matters more confusing, when people use the full name, they are sometimes referring to the series and sometimes referring to the fictional book the series was named after. Just to ensure you’re entirely confused I plan to use all of the names in this article.

Image Via Nicholas “Lord Gordon” [Flickr]

It’s As Multimedia As You Can Get

Fans of the series might know that the Guide started as a radio series (which technically makes H2G2 31 years old, since the first broadcast was 1978), which quickly spawned a series of 5 books, a TV show and a movie, but you may not know there were also a number of stage shows, a comic book adaptation and a computer game based on Hitchhiker’s. There was even a series of towels released with towel part of the first novel, which some fans consider to be the “official version” of the book (if you aren’t familiar with the works, then you may not know how important towels can be).

In other works, these adaptations would end up being watered-down, mediocre versions of the original that don’t reflect the artist’s actual vision. Fortunately, most of the adaptations involved with the HHGTTG were done by Douglas Adams himself.

Time To Celebrate

JentT

The H2G2 has even spawned its own holiday. May 25 in Towel Day. Towels are, after all, one of the most important things an interstellar traveler can have with them at any time. If you’re wondering how to celebrate Towel Day – why, just bring a towel with you all day, of course! There are even two sites dedicated to Towel Day, the countdown site, IsItTowelDay.com, and the informational site, TowelDay.org. Here at Neatorama, we’ve even covered towel day twice before.

Image Via JenT [Flickr]

In The Beginning, There Was Destruction

Adam Foster Codefor As mentioned above, the first incarnations of the Guide were in radio form. The first series actually was originally going to be called “The Ends of the Earth,” which was to be a six-part radio series. In each of the episodes, the story would end when the world ended – each time in a different way.

When Adams started writing the first episode, he realized he needed an alien there to provide context and the alien needed a reason to be on Earth. In coming up with this reason, he finally decided to have the alien be a researcher for a “wholly remarkable book,” which would be known as The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Eventually, the story ended up focusing on the book, which started up the whole crazy phenomenon.

Later on, Adams claimed that he had already came up with the idea of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” while hitchhiking through Europe in his youth.

Image Via Adam Foster Codefor [Flickr]

Sounds Good To Me

The series is notable for being the first BBC radio program to be produced in stereo and later in Dolby surround sound. Adams claimed he wanted the program’s production to be comparable to that of a rock album, and as a result, a lot of the program’s budget went towards sound effects.

Speaking of rock music, the tune used on the radio, television, LP and film versions was “Journey of the Sorcerer,” an instrumental Eagles’ song from the album One of These Nights.

The World’s Most Inaccurate Trilogy Series

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The novels were originally released as a trilogy, but then Adams came out with So Long, And Thanks for All The Fish, making the books “a trilogy in four parts.” Then he released Mostly Harmless and the series became “a trilogy in five parts,” the cover of which advertised itself as “The fifth book in the increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhiker’s Trilogy.” The blurb on the book went on to say, “the book that gives a whole new meaning to the word ‘trilogy.’”

At this point, fans continued to be hopeful that the series would eventually become “a trilogy in six parts,” but Adams died of a heart attack in 2001 before a sixth book was finished. Before he passed though, he had hinted that the newest novel he was working on, The Salmon of Doubt, may have been this sixth book. He said in an interview that Mostly Harmless was “very bleak” and that he would love to finish the “trilogy” on a “slightly more upbeat note.”

Image Via Jenbooks [Flickr]

Inspired Inspirations

It’s only natural that any phenomenon as big as the Guide would have inspired some other works – of course, these works are particularly off-the-wall, just like the work that inspired them. Monty Python member Terry Jones actually wrote a novel, Douglas Adams’s Starship Titanic, based on Adam’s computer game, “Starship Titanic,” which was based on an idea in Life, the Universe and Everything.

In 2005, Michael Hanlon published The Science of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To the Galaxy, which covered important topics such as the Babel fish, parallel universes and space tourism.

Remember Your Memorabilia

ZoeARP

There was tons of merchandise made for Hitchhiker’s over the years. Some of the favorite memorabilia items, as mentioned above, were towels with the Guide’s entry for towels. Then there were the singles released by Stephen Moore sung in the character of Marvin, the Paranoid Android, “Marvin,” Metal Man,” Reasons To Be Miserable,” and “Marvin I Love You.” My favorite though, was the “Beeblebear,” a teddy bear with an extra arm and head like Zaphod Beeblebox.

Image Via ZoeARP [Flickr]

Sources #1, #2, #3

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10 Neat Facts About SpongeBob SquarePants

Posted by Stacy in Cartoon & Comic, Neatorama Only on October 26, 2009 at 12:19 am

Are ya ready kids?
Aye, aye captain!
I can’t heeeeaaaar yoooouuu!
AYE, AYE CAPTAIN!

Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?
Sponge Bob Square Pants!
Absorbent and yellow and porous is he.
Sponge Bob Square Pants!
If nautical nonsense be somethin’ ya wish …

… then read on ahead for Neatorama’s 10 Neat Facts About SpongeBob SquarePants!

1. We can thank Jacques Cousteau for the invention of SpongeBob. Sort of. After finding inspiration in Cousteau films, SpongeBob creator Stephen Hillenburg got a degree in natural resource-planning with an emphasis in marine resources specifically. He taught marine biology at the Orange County Marine Institute for several years before pursuing his second love: animation. You wouldn’t think that marine biology and animation necessarily go together, but Hillenburg married his two careers and came up with the squishy yellow guy that made him famous. Hillenburg knows the combination is a strange one … in 2002, he said, “When you set out to do a show about a sponge, you don’t expect the kind of appeal that he’s had.” Another Hillenburg/SpongeBob similarity: Hillenburg was also a cook at a quick-service restaurant (seafood, actually). Picture from MyMommaMadeMeDoThis.

2. SpongeBob’s name was originally supposed to be SpongeBoy, but bizarrely, the name was already copyrighted … for a mop. I think it’s safe to assume that SpongeBoy hasn’t reached the household-name status that SpongeBob has. Hillenburg wanted to make sure that the word “Sponge” was retained in Mr. SquarePants’ name so children wouldn’t mistake him for a large chunk of cheese living under the sea.

3. If the theme song has ever planted itself firmly in your brain for days on end, you’re not alone. The catchy tune has been covered many a time, presumably by musicians who decided the only way to get their song out of their skulls was to create a more grown-up version. Based on an old sea shanty called “Blow the Man Down” the song you hear in the cartoon’s intro is sung by Painty the Pirate (AKA Patrick Pinney in real life, who has also provided voices for Mighty Mouse, The Fraggles and Robot Chicken). But Avril Lavigne did a punk-pop version for The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, and the Violent Femmes tried their hand at the ditty for a commercial. Although they haven’t covered the theme song specifically, musicians who have appeared on the show or have loaned their music to a Spongy Soundtrack or two include Twisted Sister, Wilco, The Shins, Pantera, The Flaming Lips, and Motorhead. Seriously.

4. Similarly, celebrities are clamoring to do guest spots on the show. To date, stars who have done a stint under the sea include Alec Baldwin (he played a hitman), Alton Brown, Amy Poehler, Christopher Guest, David Bowie, David Hasselhoff, Davy Jones (Davy Jones’ locker, duh), Gene Simmons, Johnny Depp, Mark Hamill, Pat Morita, Scarlett Johansson, and Ray Liotta. Picture from Yahoo Movies.

5. Another famous fan? President Obama. He told T.V. Guide in 2007 that his favorite cartoon character is”SpongeBob SquarePants, because SpongeBob is the show I watch with my daughters.” Hillenburg was shocked and please to hear that, telling the Washington Post, “That leaves me kind of speechless. There have been some administrations I wouldn’t have been happy to hear that from.”

6. So why in the heck does SpongeBob live in a pineapple, of all places? If you pay attention to the show, not only do nautical and sailing motifs come up on a regular basis, Polynesian references are often thrown into the mix as well (surely you’ve noticed Squidward’s Easter Island Head home). Pineapples are used commonly in tropical decor, but Stephen Hillenburg also imagines that SpongeBob would just like the way living in a pineapple would smell. Picture from TinyPineapple.

7. That laugh. You know the one I’m talking about. If you think it’s grating, imagine having to make that sound as part of your job. Tom Kenny, the voice of Mr. Squarepants, says he makes the distinctive laugh by saying “Ahhhhh” in SpongeBob’s voice while hitting himself in the throat repeatedly. Ouch. Kenny says it’s supposed to make viewers think of a dolphin with a touch of seagull shriek thrown in for good measure.

8. If you’ve ever paid close attention, you have probably noticed that Squidward lacks the proper number of tentacles to be a squid or an octopus (the show has referred to him as both over the years). The animators believed that giving Squidward more than six legs would just weigh him down too much visually, so they chose to go with inaccuracy over bad aesthetics. But that makes sense – SpongeBob is clearly a kitchen sponge, not a sea sponge. This was also done for aesthetic reasons – Hillenburg said his drawings of sea sponges looked like nothing more than blobs, and when he substituted a kitchen sponge, it just clicked. Plus, it’s funny.

9. SpongeBong HempPants? Yup. Several years ago, a company called Camp Chaos made a cartoon based on SpongeBob and his oceanic friends, except they were all based on drugs and drug paraphernalia. It was never actually released (you know, advocating drug use and all), but the cartoons did turn up on YouTube (doesn’t everything?)

10. SpongeBob is not gay. According to Entertainment Weekly, SpongeBob seems to have a loyal following in the gay community because of his “flamboyant attitude and tolerant attitude.” Hillenburg has denied that SpongeBob (or any) of the characters on the show are gay. SpongeBob came under fire when two Christian activist groups singled him out for holding hands with his best friend, Patrick, and for appearing in a video promoting diversity and tolerance. Evangelist James Dobson claimed the video was a “pro-homosexual” video. “I always think of [the characters] as being somewhat asexual,” he said, adding, ”I do think that the attitude of the show is about tolerance. Everybody is different, and the show embraces that,” he says. ”No one is shut out.”

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Tales from The Muppet Show

Posted by Stacy in Neatorama Only on October 21, 2009 at 1:33 am

If you’re of a certain age, you’re no doubt familiar with Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, Gonzo the Great, the terrible jokes of Fozzie Bear and the dry humor of Statler and Waldorf. But are you familiar with what went on behind the scenes of The Muppet Show? Check out these tales from backstage (and a few others) for a few facts you may be less familiar with.

the muppet show

It’s Good to be the Guest Host

Although The Muppet Show had well over 100 guest hosts (and no host ever appeared twice), at first it looked like even turning up a single star to kick off the season. Eventually, all of the producers started to call in personal favors from friends in the industry, begging them to come cavort with puppets for a mere half hour. That all changed in the second season when ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev appeared. The Muppet Show was, well, kind of a strange form of entertainment at the time, so when people like Vincent Price and Florence Henderson and Phyllis Diller appeared, it sort of made sense. Rudolf Nureyev opened up the guest hosting spot to celebrities from all walks – once someone of his prominence hosted, everyone wanted to host.

Many times, guest stars would request scenes with their favorite Muppet. Not surprisingly, Miss Piggy was the highest in demand (not that she would expect anything less) with Animal coming in second.

Sometimes The Muppet Show did theme episodes that usually revolved around the talents or interests of the guest host for the week. For example, the theme of the Vincent Price episode was Monsters and Ghosts; the Muppets busted out their Western wear for Roy Rogers and Dale Evans; and the theme of the Paul Simon episode, was, appropriately, Paul Simon songs.

For the first few episodes, guest hosts were presented with a likeness of themselves as Muppets during the closing scenes. That’s dancer and actress Juliet Prowse with her mini me to the left. However, this ended up being too costly to do for each show, especially while the show was struggling during the first season. The practice stopped after the second episode, which Connie Stevens hosted. However, guest hosts did sometimes still receive a Muppet likeness when it was relevant to a sketch – for instance, Paul Williams sang “Old Fashioned Love Song” with a couple of his Muppet clones later in the first season. Picture from Muppet Central.

Kermit the Frog and Waldorf are the only two Muppets to appear in every single Muppet Show – 120 episode. Statler – Waldorf’s cohort – appeared in 119 episodes. He did not appear in episode 13, season four – but Waldorf’s wife Astoria does. Strangely, she looks exactly like Statler (that’s her in the picture). Fozzie Bear was in 115 episodes, Miss Piggy claimed 111 and Gonzo was in 106. Picture from MuppetWiki.

Show Details

If you prefer to read your Muppet Show instead of watch it, you can do that. The Muppet Show Book chronicles the best parts from the first two seasons of the show. The scenes are illustrated and the dialogue looks like a script.

One of the pilot episodes of the show was called The Muppet Show: Sex and Violence, and it aired on ABC on March 19, 1975. Kermit and Co. spent the half-hour show making fun of all of the sex and violence on T.V. at the time by performing skits such as “The Seven Deadly Sins Pageant” and “The Wrestling Match.” The other pilot episode was called “The Muppets Valentine Show” and aired more than a year earlier, featuring guest host Mia Farrow.

Dr. Bunsen Honeydew used to have Muppet Labs all to himself – at least, until the second season. That’s when the red-headed, nonsense-speaking Beaker showed up to assist him with his experiments and inventions. Some of those inventions have included a gorilla detector, a banana sharpener, edible paper clips and exploding clothes.

A Muppet Memorial

Not directly related to The Muppet Show, but an interesting story nonetheless. If you’ve seen the movie Love Actually no doubt you remember the wedding scene where various members of the audience burst into “All You Need is Love,” complete with instruments. The movie’s director, Richard Curtis, got the inspiration for this scene from his attendance at Jim Henson’s memorial service. This is what he says about it:

“This was, in fact, inspired by Jim Henson’s funeral, which was the most moving thing I’ve ever been to, and at the end of it, one of the … Frank Oz was talking and he suddenly lifted up Kermit’s puppet and started to sing this song called “One Voice” ["Just One Person"], and it turned out that all the guys in the, in the memorial service, had brought their puppets with them, and they lifted them up, and when you turned around and looked backwards, there were fifty puppets all singing, and Big Bird walked down the aisle of St. Paul’s Cathedral. They all came forward, and just this massive chorus of puppets all singing.”

The Harry Belafonte episode of The Muppet Show was one of the most critically-acclaimed episodes in the show’s entire run, thanks largely in part to the segment where he sings “Turn the World Around” with Muppets decked out in African tribal masks. It was reportedly one of Jim Henson’s favorite Muppet moments ever, so it’s fitting that Belafonte sang the song at one of Henson’s memorial services (he had two – New York in addition to London). You can still see The Muppet Show performance of “Turn the World Around” in its entirety:

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7 Highly Successful High School Dropouts

Posted by Jill Harness in Everything Else, Neatorama Only on October 13, 2009 at 4:21 pm

Jeremy Farmer Photography It’s a common belief in America these days that without a high school diploma, you have no future. This opinion may be true to some extent, but it’s certainly not a hard and fast rule. There are a lot of highly successful people in this world who never even completed high school.

One of these successful people is Flava Flav, who dropped out of school when he was only 13, although, admittedly, it shows. He’s now planning to return to school to get his G.E.D., and the ordeal may even become a reality show on VH1. He’s not the only celebrity that dropped out of high school and still did well though. In fact, some high school dropouts are actually pretty brilliant.

Image Via Jeremy Farmer Photography [Flickr]

Dave Thomas

The founder of Wendy’s, Dave Thomas started working in the restaurant industry at only 12 years old. His family was constantly on the move and at age 15, he refused to keep moving with his parents. He was working part time at the Hobby House restaurant in Fort Wayne and dropped out of high school to start working at the business full time.

After working as a mess sergeant during the Korean War, he began working for KFC, where he was able to help turn several of their failing franchises around. In 1969, he sold of the KFC franchises he owned and opened his own restaurant in Columbus, Ohio. He named the restaurant after his daughter, who was actually called Melinda, but was nicknamed Wendy. These days, Wendy’s is the third largest burger chain in America.

In 1993, Dave decided that he didn’t want to set a bad example for any youngsters out there, so he enrolled at Coconut Creek High School and earned his GED.

George Bernard Shaw

George_bernard_shaw

Famed Irish Playwright George Bernard Shaw held an outright animosity towards schooling that he maintained throughout his life. He was quoted as saying, “schools and schoolmasters, as we have them today, are not popular as places of education and teachers, but rather prisons and turnkeys in which children are kept to prevent them disturbing and chaperoning their parent.” Not surprisingly, the writer never completed his own education, having dropped out of the Dublin English Scientific and Commercial Day School.

His main complaints about schooling was the standardization of the curriculum, which he believed deadened the spirit and stifled the intellect. He also deplored the corporal punishment being used in schools, although most modern teachers and parents would agree with him on this issue.

Source Public Domain Image Via Wikipedia

George Eastman

443px-GeorgeEastman2

Creator of the Kodak Camera Company, George Eastman, was forced to drop out of school due to financial circumstances. At only 14, his father died and the only way George could keep his two sisters and mother alive was to quit school and begin working as an office boy full time. By the age of 26, Eastman found his true calling and began working to improve the emulsion process involved in photography. He thought the liquid emulsions proved quite a problem as they were excessively sticky and had to be used quickly before they dried. In only three years, Eastman had perfected his dry emulsion plates and he started his own photographic business in 1880.

Source Public Domain Image Via U.S. Library Of Congress

Quentin Tarantino

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While a lot of famous directors hone their skills during college, Quentin Tarantino built up his film knowledge by working in a video rental store in Manhattan Beach, California.

He not only never went to college, but he quit going to Narbonne High School in Harbor City, California in his freshman year. He started learning the acting craft in acting school at the James Best Theatre Company in Toluca Lake, but it really wasn’t until he started working at Video Archives with Roger Avery, also a director these days, that he really began sharpening his future skills. Some people complain about Tarantino’s movies having too much focus on the dialogue, but for a high school dropout, I’d say that’s not such a bad thing.

Source Image Via pinguino [Flickr]

Richard Pryor

487px-Richard_Pryor_(1986)_(cropped) If comedy really is born from tragedy, then it is only logical that Richard Pryor became one of the top comedians of the seventies. Pryor had anything but an easy life.

He was raised in his grandmother’s brothel, where his mother “worked” and his father served as her pimp. At only ten, his mother abandoned him and his strict grandmother took over his care, beating him whenever she thought he was acting “eccentric.” With a home life like this, it’s not all to surprising that he ended up being expelled from high school at 14.

In the end, Pryor ended up proving the adage that “whatever doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger” and his comedy career was one of the longest lasting and most successful of the last fifty years.

Source Image Via Alan Light [Flickr]

Peter Jennings

Peter Jennings started broadcasting when he was only nine years old. He followed the footsteps of his father, a respected radio broadcaster for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and operated as the host of a CBC children’s program called “Peter’s People.” Surprisingly, his father was out on assignment when Jennings was chosen for the gig and he was furious at the network for hiring his son solely because he was the son of a broadcaster.

When it came to schooling, Jennings was a great athlete, but a terrible student, which he said was due to “pure boredom.” He failed to pass the 10th grade and dropped out as a result. He tried to attend Carleton University, but “lasted about 10 minutes” before he dropped out there.

After school, he started working at The Royal Bank of Canada, but he dreamed of being a professional broadcaster. I’d say did pretty well at meeting those goals, wouldn’t you?

Peter Jackson

PeterJacksonCCJuly09

Before he directed the Lord of The Rings, or even his cult classics like Meet The Feebles, Peter Jackson was just a film-obsessed kid. He was trying to make his own film by age of nine, complete with the special effects he loved to see in shows like “Thunderbirds.” After he saw the original King Kong, he started trying to mimic the stop-motion from the film. He spent his entire childhood and all of his teenage years making short films and developing his own special effect techniques, which even included making his own minuscule models.

When he was 16, he dropped out of high school and started working as an apprentice engraver in a newspaper photography department. He kept living with his parents so he could save money for film-making supplies, which he soon used to begin production on what would become his first full-length film, Bad Taste. When you know that your future is film you don’t have a real need for the three Rs of “reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmetic.”

Source Image Via Natasha Baucas [Flickr]

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Post Secret: New Book Interview with Frank Warren

Posted by Alex in Blog & Internet, Book & Lit, Neatorama Only on October 12, 2009 at 2:41 pm

Forget the CIA, Frank Warren is probably the world's best keeper of secrets.

In 2004, Frank started a project called PostSecret, in which he printed 3,000 blank postcards inviting people to mail him their secrets anonymously. He handed out the postcards to strangers, left them between book pages in bookstores and libraries, and even left some on park benches. He got 100 back and posted the secrets on his blog.

Apparently, that struck a nerve: PostSecret went viral and since he started it, Frank has received nearly half a million postcards in his mailbox and over a quarter billion visitor to www.postsecret.com. The website spawned various exhibitions, events and PostSecret books, as well as various parodies (a true measure of one's popularity in today's world, I'm afraid).

The latest book, PostSecret: Confessions on Life, Death, and God was inspired by a collection of more than 300 postcards that were part of the "All Faiths Beautiful" exhibit at the American Visionary Art Museum. The book contains never-before-seen secrets that, as Frank so eloquently wrote, "expose the common landscape of our private lives - from our embarrassing desires to our hidden acts of kindness; from the private prayers of atheists to the voiceless doubt of believers."

Frank, a Neatoramanaut himself (that's him wearing one of our T-shirts), has kindly agreed to sit down for a virtual interview with us. You are invited to submit comments and questions for Frank - we'll pick 5 of the best comments/questions to get a free autographed PostSecret: Confessions on Life, Death, and God book.

Neatorama: Congratulations on the new book (it's fantastic, by the way, I was engrossed reading it for a couple of hours) - did you ever think that PostSecret would be as popular as it is today when you started it?

Frank Warren: No, I have been shocked. In addition to the five PostSecret books, the website has had over 250,000,000 hits.

I knew that if I could earn people's trust and build a collection of creative and authentic secrets it would be very special for me. It's great to know so many others appreciate these extraordinary confessions too.

Neatorama: Why do you think it has been so successful?

Frank: I think people find some of the funny and sexual postcards amusing but eventually you come across a secret that you might recognize as one of your own. One you might be hiding from yourself. I think it is those moments of epiphany and empathy that have allowed the PostSecret community to grow.

Neatorama: Your latest book focuses on life, death, and God. Can you tell us a little bit about the reasoning behind the topic?

Frank: PostSecret started as a lark, maybe even a prank, but over the years the secrets have become more meaningful to me. This new book, like all the books have never-before-seen secrets that touch on sexual taboos and some outlandish humor, but more than the other books, the new book has postcards that share some our deepest and most private feelings about the greatest mysteries of life. The parts that are always there beneath the surface but we sometimes forget about during our everyday lives.

Neatorama: What are some of your favorite PostSecret secrets?

Neatorama: It's been five years since you started PostSecret - how has it changed your life?

Frank: Knowing all these secret stories that are happening in so many of our lives makes life, people, and riding the subway more interesting.

Neatorama: What's next for you and PostSecret?

Frank: My favorite part of the project now is traveling to college campuses and sharing the stories behind the secrets at live events where audience members can share their own secrets - without anonymity, but sometimes with great emotion.

__________

Frank's message on YouTube

__________

From PostSecret Confessions on Life, Death and God:

Frank has kindly offered 5 free autographed copies of the book for a giveaway. Got any questions for Frank? 5 lucky commenters with the most interesting questions and/or comments will win a copy of the book (I'll post Frank's replies as an update).

Links: Post Secret Book official website (with bonus secrets) | Post Secret website | Post Secret Community | Post Secret Book on Amazon (affiliate link, here's the clean non-affiliate link if you'd like)

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The Mysterious Disappearance of Four Comic Book Characters

Posted by Stacy in Cartoon & Comic, Neatorama Only on October 9, 2009 at 2:12 am

Comic strips – they’re usually happy, fun, lighthearted places (unless you prefer the likes of Rex Morgan. But behind the smiles sometimes lie sinister
secrets – the mysterious and questionable disappearance of characters! OK, I’m being a bit dramatic – just consider me in the Halloween spirit, and enjoy these four characters whose faces you might spot on a comic strip milk carton.

Charlotte Braun

charlotte Who knew Charles Schulz had a Charles Addams sense of humor? He may not have exhibited it often, but it definitely came out when he killed off one of his Peanuts characters – literally.

Charlotte Braun was Charlie Brown’s counterpart in the early days and was kind of a mix in personality of Charlie’s little sister, Sally, and his nemesis, Lucy. She only made about 10 appearances in Peanuts before Schulz decided to get rid of her undeveloped character, but when a young Miss Elizabeth Swaim wrote him suggesting that he erase Charlotte from the comic, he decided to have a little fun with her. He responded and agreed to do it, but said, “Remember… that you and your friends will have the death of an innocent child on your conscience. Are you prepared to accept such responsibility?” He finished it off with a drawing of Charlotte Braun with an ax in her head. Comic from Jim Hill Media.

Lyman

lyman For about five years from the late ‘70s to the early ‘80s, Jon Arbuckle had a roommate by the name of Lyman. In fact, Lyman was the original owner of slobbery mutt Odie. Before Garfield evolved into the companion he is portrayed as today, Lyman was there so Jon consistently had someone to have conversations with that would escalate the storyline. As Garfield grew up and he and Jon seemed to sort of understand each other, Lyman wasn’t really needed anymore. Instead of writing him out of the comic strip and giving him some sort of send off, Jim Davis just simply stopped drawing Lyman in the cartoons and offered no explanation. He showed up a couple more times – once in the 10th anniversary strip in the title panel, and once in a flashback.

Eagle-eyed fans also spotted him in Garfield’s Halloween games Scary Scavenger Hunt and Scary Scavenger Hunt 2 – in the first one, Lyman can be found chained to a wall in the basement and in the sequel his head turns up in an oven. Jim Davis hinted at Lyman’s untimely demise once – when asked what happened to Jon’s roommate, Davis replied, “Don’t look in Jon’s basement.” He later said he was kidding and that Lyman’s official plot line, even if it didn’t appear in the cartoon, is that he joined the Peace Corps and was never heard from again. Comic from Garfield Et Cie Blog.

Uncle Max

Remember Calvin’s Uncle Max? You know, from Calvin and Hobbes? No? Well, you’re in good company. He was only around for about a week’s worth of comic strips, just long enough for a visit to Calvin’s house.

Apparently Calvin and his uncle had never met before (or perhaps they met when Calvin was an infant) because Calvin couldn’t recall meeting him and speculated that he had most likely been serving time in jail. Uncle Max ended his visit by telling Calvin that he was welcome to visit anytime he wanted, but we never saw or heard from Uncle Max again.

Why the permanent departure? Bill Watterson later explained that because Calvin’s parents were never given any names other than “Mom” and “Dad,” it was getting increasingly difficult for Uncle Max to have conversations with his brother and his sister-in-law. He had to go – so, he went. Comic from Calvin and Hobbes Info.

Denise

denise Denise was the girlfriend of Peter Fox from FoxTrot. If you’re a fan, you undoubtedly remember her – she was one of the only blind characters in comic strips at the time (not that there are that many today). Peter started dating Denise in the strip’s very first year – 1988 – and they only broke up once in 13-14 years (that’s real time, not comic strip-time).

For some reason, though, Denise disappeared from Peter’s life in the early ‘00s with no explanation at all. Maybe Bill Amend just wanted Peter to be free to play the field. Comic from The Unofficial FoxTrot Site.

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Famous Dogs Adopted From Shelters or The Streets

Posted by Jill Harness in Animal, Everything Else, Neatorama Only on October 6, 2009 at 10:32 am

October is Adopt A Shelter Dog month and since I can’t adopt a new pup (my loving ex-shelter dog is sitting right beside me as I write this) I opted to do the next best thing and help promote the celebration. What better way to bring attention to the great qualities of shelter pets than to share some famous dogs who were either adopted from the shelter or saved from the streets?

Higgins A.K.A. Benji

Higgins_the_Dog Los Angeles trainer Frank Inn was a true animal lover who was always taking in animals from shelters to save them from euthanasia. When he couldn’t train them, he would work to find them a home with his friends or fans. He found Higgins in the Burbank Animal Shelter. Higgins was only a puppy at the time, but Inn saw a world of potential in the little critter.

His first role was in “Petticoat Junction,” where he appeared in six of the show’s seven total seasons. During that time, he also made guest appearances on “Green Acres” and “The Beverly Hillbillies.” Directors and co-stars quickly noticed his ability to convey broad range of facial expressions and his aptitude at learning new tricks on a regular basis. Inn said he was the most talented dog he ever worked with and that Higgins could learn a new routine every week. Some of his tricks included climbing ladders, opening mailboxes, and yawning and sneezing on cue. He was such a capable animal actor that he was featured on the cover of TV Guide and won the Picture Animal Top Star of they Year (Patsy) award in 1967.

In 1971, he starred in “Mooch Goes to Hollywood” with Zsa Zsa Gabor and Vincent Price. He retired after this movie, but he came back at age of 14 to star in “Benji,” his best known role. His daughter, also trained by Inn, continued his legacy in the following “Benji” films.

Source Image Via Wikipedia

Pabst The (Current) World’s Ugliest Dog

It may not be the most distinguished of titles, but Pabst, the current holder of the “World’s Ugliest Dog” title was also once a shelter dog. Notably, he was the first mixed breed winner of the competition in the last seven years –most of the past winners have been pedigree Chinese crested hairless dogs. Some of his stunningly ugly features include a prominent under-bite, a scrunched face and floppy ears.

Before winning $1,600 in prize money for his owner, Pabst was rescued from a shelter in Citrus Heights, California. He was also awarded a modeling contract with House of Dog –not bad for an ugly shelter mutt.

Source Image Via AP Photo/Noah Berger

Spike A.K.A. Old Yeller

Animal trainer Frank Weatherwax found Spike in a Van Nuys, California shelter. He was very young at the time and soon became Weatherwax’s star pupil. His first big role was also the one he was most famous for –”Old Yeller.” After that, he starred in “A Dog of Flanders” and he periodically played in the TV show “The Westerner.”

Jake The 9-11 Rescue Dog

Jake_and_mary_flood

Jake was adopted when he was only 10 months old. His owner, Mary Flood, found him abandoned on the streets with multiple injuries, including a broken leg and dislocated hip. After he recovered from these injuries in 1995, Mary trained him to rescue humans and he ended up being one of the most famous search and rescue dogs from both September 11 attacks and Hurricane Katrina. He served as a rescue dog for almost 10 years when he had to retire due to cancer in 2006.

Source Image Via FEMA

Chanel The World’s Oldest Dog

Chanel was only around 6 weeks old in 1988 when she was adopted from a Newport News, Virginia shelter by Denice Shaughnessy, a soldier in the U.S. Army. In her older years, Chanel had to be transported in a stroller because he had difficulty walking around and she also had to wear special goggles for her cataracts.

In 2009, Denice’s husband noticed there was no Guinness Book of World Records listing for the World’s Oldest Dog, so he sent in records verifying Chanel’s age to the organization. The dog was awarded a certificate announcing her official title at her 21st birthday bash in Manhattan. In the next few months, she because a major celebrity and appeared on The Today Show and Live! With Regis and Kelly. She died a few months ago on August 29.

Mr. Winkle

Mr. Winkle’s unique, teddy-bearish appearance has made him a minor celebrity. No one really knows what his mix is, but some claim he seems to be a Pomeranian and Chihuahua cross. Before he started appearing in newspapers, magazines and TV shows like Sex and the City, he was living on the streets.

Fortunately, magazine photographer Lara Jo Regan found him as a stray and adopted him. She immediately fell in love with his quirky look and began photographing him in various costumes, settings and poses. It wasn’t long before she started publishing calendars and books with Mr. Winkle and soon enough, he was scouted out for a wide array of media appearances.

Wheely Willy

wheely_willy When Willy was only a puppy, he was found abandoned in a cardboard box, suffering from severe spinal injuries and a cut throat. He was rescued and treated for his injuries, but he was rendered a paraplegic and was left unadopted for over a year. Eventually, pet groomer Deborah Turner heard that Willy would soon be euthanized if no one adopted him, so she took him home.

At first, Deborah had to carry Willy everywhere, but she was determined to find a way to help him move on his own. One of her attempts included attaching helium-filled balloons to his rear end and then placing him on a skateboard. Her efforts were met with little success until she read an advertisement for K-9 Carts, a wheelchair designed specially for dogs. Willy took to his chair immediately, and the curiosity he attracted by those who saw him eventually led to news coverage, then appearances on Animal Planet. Eventually, he became the subject of two bestselling children’s books, where he was nicknamed Wheely Willy.

Wheely Willy now makes frequent public appearances and Turner works with him to promote disability awareness. He often attends hospitals, where he serves as an inspiration to patients and staff alike.

Source Image Via Wheelywilly.com

The Real Rin Tin Tin

The original Rin Tin Tin was discovered by a soldier in WWI, who insisted his battalion check out a kennel that was bombed in Lorraine, France. Inside, Corporal Lee Duncan and the rest of the troops found the only survivors of the bomb were a mother German Shepard and her litter of five puppies. All of the dogs were brought back to camp, but Duncan chose a boy and girl pup to call his own. He named them for the French puppets given to soldiers at the time for good luck, Rintintin and Nenette. He then began training the dogs to perform the tricks he had seen the German war dogs perform.

Upon his return home to Los Angeles, Nenette died and the boy pup ended up being the only dog from the French kennel to have survived. Duncan continued to work with Rin Tin Tin and ended up bringing him to a dog show where the dog wowed the audience by jumping over 11 feet and 9 inches. After the show, a movie maker asked Duncan if he could shoot the dog in action. At that moment, the young soldier realized there might be a future for his dog in the film industry. At the peak of his career, Rin Tin Tin received up to 10,000 fan letters a week and was one of Warner Brother’s top stars. Some credit him with saving the movie studio from bankruptcy. The Rin Tin Tin legacy was continued through the years by generation after generation of his heirs.

Faith

You may have seen videos of Faith walking on her hind legs before. She’s become quite famous for her successful adaptation to only having rear legs. When Faith was born with only two rear legs and one deformed front leg, her mother attempted to smother her to death. A boy saved her from the mother and brought her home to his family. When Faith was seven months old, she had to have the deformed front leg removed all together as it began to atrophy. A lot of people, including veterinarians, urged owner Jude Stringfellow to euthanize the puppy, but Stringfellow instead taught Faith to hop by using a spoon with peanut butter as an incentive. Faith soon surprised everyone by developing a unique walk on just her hind legs.

Since then, she has appeared on the “Oprah Winfrey Show,” “The Montel Williams Show,” “Animal Attractions Television” and “Ripley’s Believe it or Not.” She also has been the subject of a book, With A Little Faith. She now even has her own website and MySpace.

Maui A.K.A. Murray from Mad About You

Sitcom fans might recall the lovable, slow and bratty dog Murray that was a central character in “Mad About You.” The dog that made the show was really named Maui and was rescued from an animal shelter in Castaic, California by animal trainer Boone Narr, he was also co-trained by Betty Linn. Before his role in “Mad About You,” he acted in commercials and as a stand in for the lead dog in the movie “Bingo.”

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Neatorama Update - October 2009

Posted by Alex in Neatorama Only on October 3, 2009 at 2:01 am

Cake Wrecks Book

A couple of weeks ago, we featured Jen Yates’ new book Cake Wrecks: When Professional Cakes Go Hilariously Wrong, and promised to send a free book to a Neatoramanaut whose question got answered by Jen. Here’s her pick (and answer):

From Avid Cake Wreck Reader Rebecca: "I read on your site that you had taken cake decorating classes with your husband. I wondered if you ever posted one of your cakes as a wreck?"

And the answer is: Yes! You’d have to check the comment section to know this, but the infamous Epcot (aka Spaceship Earth) cake was made by me and John. That’s part of why it was so funny when so many commenters told me I was wrong to call it a Spaceship Earth cake. Yep, we got a *huge* kick out of that – and still do when readers make a "I think that’s Epcot" crack on a new post. Heh.

Thank you Jen and congratulations, Rebecca! See more at Jen’s blog Cake Wrecks

Neatorama Mystery Sale

It’s done! After two solid weeks of shipping, all shipments finally went out. Thank you to everyone who participated in the Mystery Sale!

If you haven’t gotten yours yet, please be patient: it may be in the last batch, which means that you should get it either by next week or early the following week (USA) or add a week for customs clearance for international destinations.

New at the Neatorama Shop

M-Cups, the measuring cups shaped like matryoshkas or Russian nesting dolls are HOT – we’ve sold out of the current batch and are waiting for our next shipment … if you order them today, we’ll add a little extra "mystery" bonus to your order.

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The Manga Guide to Molecular Biology

Posted by Alex in Cartoon & Comic, Medicine, Neatorama Only, Science & Tech on September 30, 2009 at 7:43 pm

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. Written by Dr. Masaharu Takemura, a lecturer of biology, molecular biology, and life sciences at the Tokyo University of Science, the book uses manga-style cartoons drawn by Sakura and produced by Becom Co., Ltd. It is released in the United States by No Starch Press (a publishing company that aims to be "the finest in geek entertainment").

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:

8+ Scientifically-Minded Musicians

Posted by Jill Harness in Music, Neatorama Only, Science & Tech on September 28, 2009 at 12:29 pm

Modern musicians are frequently believed to be stupid airheads who couldn’t hold down any “real” job. But in reality, there are a lot of intelligent rock stars. Some musicians are even geniuses – and not just when it comes to music composition. These musicians are not only intelligent, they have also used their knowledge to get college degrees or in their secondary professions.

Brian May: Queen

Brian May of Queen isn’t your average rock and roll supernova. He was named the 39th Greatest Guitarist of All Time by Rolling Stone, but he’s also great at something else – astrophysics. May graduated from the Imperial College of London with an honors degree in physics and Mathematics. He then went on to obtain a doctorate in both departments, when Queen exploded into rock and roll stardom. While he gave up his schooling for the band, he did not stop working with physics and published a few academic papers while in the group.

More recently, he printed a book entitled Bang! – The Complete History of the Universe in 2006. In October of 2007, he completed his Ph.D. in astrophysics. His thesis was titled A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud. The month after, he was appointed Chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University.

Greg Graffin: Bad Religion

The Toad Greg Graffin was an anthropology and geology double-major from UCLA. He went on to obtain a master’s degree in geology from the school and then earned a Ph.D. in zoology from Cornell University. Throughout this entire time, he was singing and touring with Bad Religion, a band he helped form when he was only 15.

Although he’s still playing with Bad Religion, Graffin also teaches Life Sciences at UCLA. He has also written two books, one a series of correspondences between himself and historian Preston Jones titled Is Belief in God Good, Bad or Irrelevant? A Professor and Punk Rocker Discuss Science, Religion, Naturalism & Christianity, the other is being released in 2010 and is titled Anarchy Evolution. According to a recent Twitter post, he is also be involved with an upcoming television series, called “Punk Professor.”

Source Image Via The Toad [Flickr]

Milo Aukerman: Descendents

Anyone familiar with the punk band The Descendents knows of the nerdy caricature that has come to serve as the band’s logo. That drawing is based on the band’s lead singer, Milo Aukerman. Fans may also recognize the name of the group’s first album, ‘Milo Goes to College.’ The album was named because Milo was actually going to college at UCSD at the time.

His affection for learning caused the band to go on a number of temporary hiatuses while he returned to school. Eventually, Aukerman earned a Ph.D in biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Even after graduation, the band continued the cycle of reuniting and separating as Milo kept returning to the band and then his career in biochemistry. The group is currently dormant, but with their history, most fans still hold out hope that Milo will come back soon.

Sources #1, #2

Tom Scholz: Boston

Tom Scholz is the founder and guitarist for a little band called Boston. But before he ever even started the group, he received a master’s degree at MIT in the field of mechanical engineering. He was working as a senior product design engineer for Polaroid when he decided to try his hand at rock.

After Boston took off, Tom created his own music technology company, Scholz Research & Development in 1980. In 1995, he sold the company to Dunlop Manufacturing, who continued to produce the company’s most famous product, the Rockman guitar amp. The amp was designed by Sholz himself and still is manufactured with his signature on each unit.

Dexter Holland & James Lilja: The Offspring

rockmusicreview The lead singer and co-founder of the Offspring, Dexter Holland graduated as valedictorian of his high school before he moved on to college. He then moved on to USC where he obtained a Bachelor’s degree in biology and Master’s degree in molecular biology. When the Offspring took off, he actually left his doctoral program in Molecular Biology at USC in order to focus on the band. Unrelated, but also interesting, Holland is also a licensed pilot and hot sauce entrepreneur. His hot sauce, Gringo Bandito, has even been picked up by Albertsons.

Dexter isn’t the only smart guy who’s played in the band though. James Lilja played drums with the band for a few years before returning to his medical calling – in gynecology. If you thought it was strange to have a punk rock professor in LA, just imagine visiting a rock star gynecologist in San Jose.

Sources #1, #2, Image of Dexter Via Jack Shepler, Rock Music Review [Flickr]

Philip Taylor Kramer: Iron Butterfly

After leaving Iron Butterfly, bassist Philip Taylor Kramer obtained a degree in aerospace engineering. He then began working on the MX missile guidance system for a US Department of Defense contractor. After that, he began working on facial recognition systems, advanced communications and fractal compression systems for CDs. In 1990, he opened a business, Total Multimedia, with Micheal Jackson’s brother, Randy, where they specialized on data compression techniques for CDs. Kramer also worked on a project started by his father that would discredit Einstein’s theories. Part of his research involved a transmission project that could result in communications that went faster than the speed of light.

His disappearance in 1995 sent conspiracy theorists aflutter and remained a complete mystery for four years. It started when he drove to the LA airport to pick up an investor who never showed up. Kramer then made a number of phone calls from his cell phone, including one to the police where he said, “I’m going to kill myself. And I want everyone to know O.J. Simpson is innocent. They did it.” He was never heard from after this and the mystery ended up appearing on Oprah, America’s Most Wanted, Unsolved Mysteries and a Skeptic magazine article depicted the number of conspiracy theories surrounding his disappearance.

His body was finally uncovered in 1999, when photographers looking to shoot old car wrecks at the bottom of Decker Canyon in Malibu discovered his minivan with his remains inside. The death was officially ruled a suicide based on his phone calls made that day, but conspiracy theories still rage on.

Jeff “Skunk” Baxter: Steely Dan and The Doobie Brothers

nasa The guitarist for such classic bands as Steely Dan and The Doobie Brothers is also a self-taught expert on weaponry systems. After a lengthy studying period at home, Jeff “Skunk” Baxter decided to demonstrate his knowledge on the subject by writing a five-page paper that proposed the ship-based anti-aircraft Aegis missile be converted into a missile defense system. After he gave the paper to California congressman Dana Rohrabacher, Baxter’s career as a defense consultant began.

In 1995, he was elected chairman of the Civilian Advisory Board for Ballistic Missile Defense, a position he still holds. Through work with that project, he was awarded consulting contracts with the Missile Defense Agency, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, U.S. Department of Defense, Science Applications International Corporation, Northrop Grumman Corp. and General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. He has also joined the NASA Exploration Systems Advisory Committee.

Baxter believes his unique way of looking at terrorism is what has allowed him to do so well in the industry, “We thought turntables were for playing records until rappers began to use them as instruments, and we thought airplanes were for carrying passengers until terrorists realized they could be used as missiles. My big thing is to look at existing technologies and try to see other ways they can be used, which happens in music all the time and happens to be what terrorists are incredibly good at.” Next time you’re wondering if the country is doing everything it can to keep you safe, remember that someone nicknamed “Skunk” is on top of it. It may not help comfort you, but at least you might giggle about it.

Source Image Via NASA (yes, that NASA)

A few other educated musicians of note:

-Lionel Richie has a degree in economics from Tuskegee.

-Art Garfunkel has a Masters from Columbia in both history and math.

-Tracy Chapman has degrees in anthropology and African studies from Tufts University, where she was also awarded an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts.

-Tom Morello of Rage Against The Machine and Audioslave has a degree in social studies from Harvard. After leaving the music world, he settled down and began teaching history.

Source #1, #2

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7 Most Amazing One-Take Video Clips

Posted by Alex in Advertising, Car & Vehicle, Music, Neatorama Only, Video Clips on September 28, 2009 at 1:44 am

What is it about one-take video clips that capture our imaginations? Perhaps it's because we've become so cynical about video editings that the pure, raw form of a single, uninterrupted shot truly stands out.

Well, whatever the reason, one-take video clips sure take the Interweb by storm. Here is Neatorama's list of the 7 Most Amazing One-Take Video Clips:

1. I Gotta Feeling Lip Dub

Let's start with one that's making the rounds on the Internet: a lip dub by the students of the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). In this video clip, co-directed by Luc-Olivier Cloutier and Marie-Eve Hebert, 172 communications students lib-synched the song I Gotta Feeling by the Black Eyed Peas. The whole thing was shot in a little more than 2 hours.

In an interview with Canada AM, Cloutier gave a little background:

Cloutier says it was difficult to coordinate 172 students in one take. "The problem was we didn't know before how many people should be there for the dub so we cannot plan," he said.

Cloutier said the video was eventually shot in two takes. Despite some minor glitches, the pair is proud of the final product. "We decided to keep this take because (of) the vibe," said Cloutier.

2. Flagpole Sitta Lip Dub

[Vimeo Clip]

If you like that, here's a clip done after work one day by the people of Connected Ventures (they're the bunch of geniuses behind College Humor, Busted Tees and Vimeo). Looks like a fun place to work! Oh, the song is Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger.

3. Nyle's Let The Beat Build

[Vimeo Clip]

A lot of these one-take videos are music videos - and for good reason: one-take videos are hard to shoot, so those synchronized with music has got to be made by people with mad skillz.

This music video Let The Beat Build by rapper Nyle, directed by Chadd Harbold and produced by Last Pictures and 194 Recordings, even did one better: they recorded the audio simultaneously with the film. Mind = blown.

4. Daft Hands - Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

[CollegeHumor Video Clip]

Austin Hall of Frecklestudios probably has the most watched hands ever. Since its debut two years ago, his YouTube clip Daft Hands has been watched over 33 million times!

In that video, Hall played Daft Punk's Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger entirely with his two hands. Maybe it's easier for you to watch the clip above than for me to explain in words how he did t. (Previously on Neatorama here)

Since then, the song has spawned countless imitations, including Daft Bodies and the Daft Parodies (Erhm, the last one is kind of rude. You've been warned).

5. Forrest Gump in One Minute, in One Take

Let's take a break from music video clips. Last February, Joe Burgess, Rocco Sulkin and Will Tribble from the University Of York Filmmaking Society got friends to act out Forrest Gump in one minute, filming the whole thing in one take. (Previously on Neatorama here.)

From an interview with NewTeeVee Station:

The one-take angle would make you assume that there was a lot of rehearsal and coordination involved, but that wasn’t the case — according to Tribble, most of it was ab-libbed. “I didn’t know until the last minute that I was going to be in [Gump],” Tribble said, “but then they said, ‘OK, you’re Lieutenant Dan’ and there I was.”

Since then, the trio have sweded other films including Kill Bill, Star Wars, and their latest, 28 Days Later.

6. Here It Goes Again by OK Go

[CollegeHumor Video]

What's even better than a one-take music video? How about a one-take music video with treadmills! Here's the astounding clip Here It Goes Again from Ok Go, directed by Trish Sie of BigBadTrish.

7. Cog

[YouTube Video]

Last on the list is the grand-daddy of all one-take videos. Titled Cog, the two-minute long Rube Goldbergian commercial for Honda Accord was produced by the London office of Wieden+Kennedy advertising agency and directed by Antoine Bardou-Jacquet of Partizan back in 2003. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that this may just be the best commercial of all time.

To the horrors of Honda engineers, Bardou-Jacquet took apart the seventh-generation Honda Accord, of which there were only 5 hand-assembled models in the world (at that time), and made an astonishing commercial out of its parts.

It took 606 takes to shoot Cog and when it was completed, the video clip was shown to the bigwigs at Honda who remarked that it was a very nice computer generated imagery. When they were told everything was real, they were floored - and if you see it, you would be, too.

More about Cog at Wikipedia

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Neatorama Shop Story: I Once Had a Chum from Nantucket

Posted by Alex in Food & Drinks, Neatorama Only on September 25, 2009 at 4:30 pm

The following is a Neatorama Shop Story, a narrative starring the products carried in this blog’s very own online store.

I Once Had a Chum from Nantucket

Summer, 1975. Quint, Dreyfuss and I had just boarded the Queequeg, a bigger boat sailing out of Nantucket. As the lithe, long torsoed teen temptresses and the shoreline that was their spawning ground grew smaller, the salty sea spread herself avast before us, forcing us to feel the magnitude of our own smallness whilst we succumbed to her every swell. Three sailors bobbing alone at sea, chummy in demeanor and aroma, comparing conquests, cutoffs and scars.

As per our manly agreement, we each brought one piece of personal swag. Ever the practical one, I had stowed the largest and most atmospheric jug of rum my summer sundries stipend could secure. Quint’s contribution was a family-sized stick of Old Spice for our mutual use upon disembarkation. As the sun set on the darkened sea, Dreyfuss, whose method, it is widely known today, requires that he never break character from “creepy annoying guy who smells even worse than you’d think,” finally revealed his trade secret, a strict diet of Chum Bucket: green candies, the color of sea sickness itself. Wafting up from the hinged tin came a bouquet of the gutted remains of the day’s catch sloshed overboard and washed ashore, decaying in tide pools for a fortnight until the slurry has congealed into a concentrated algae-crusted outcropping that just might make you sick if you lick it, captured in an after-dinner mint. If you have ever wondered what a gentleman from Nantucket tastes like, but due to geographic limitations have been unable to sample one, now is your chance. (Disclaimer: unlike in an actual close encounter with Dreyfuss or Quint, crabs are not included).

Chum Bucket is canned with artificial seafood flavor, so it just might be safe for vegans. Probably better not to take the risk, since the charming graphics on the tin imply that pureed pirate may be the actual source of the synthesized swill seasoning and octopussy scent. These candies cast the distinct smell and aftertaste of canine glucosamine supplements (waste not, want not), so if you savor the aroma of seaspray-dampened elderly arthritic Portuguese Water Dog, then this is the perfect people treat for you. It is an appropriate gift for fishermen, briny sea hags, and anyone who has ever wished for a candy that looks, smells and tastes like sweetened sea scum. It is the must-have goodie bag item for your next pirate party.

________

The story above is written by the dynamic duo Drs. Ernest and Convalescence Bidet-Wellville (hey, I didn’t name ‘em) of the University of Self-Conscious Consumerism in Olde Busytowne, Connecticut. I suspect they write cover stories for the CIA, so if I’m inexplicably missing the next few days, you know what happened.

Available from the Neatorama Shop: Chum Bucket Candy | See also our vast selection of other Offbeat Mints and Candies

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Neatoramabot Papercraft by Yumiko Matsui

Posted by Alex in Arts & Crafts, Neatorama Only, Pictures on September 25, 2009 at 3:23 pm

I’m a big fan of papercraft artist Yumiko Matsui (featured before on Neatorama here) – so it was a pleasant surprise to hear from her about this Neatoramabot papercraft sculpture. Ain’t he cute?

If you haven’t seen Yumiko’s artwork before, you owe it to yourself to check it out: she sculpts fantastic and colorful dioramas as well as miniature characters out of paper. The level of details is simply superb (for example, in her Summer Festival series, check out the Japanese pancake stand)

Best of all, I hear she’s coming to the United States! Here’s Yumiko’s online art gallery: Link

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HOME by Yann Arthus-Bertrand

Posted by Alex in Neatorama Only, Pictures, Travel & Places on September 25, 2009 at 2:23 pm

A few months ago, photographer and environmentalist Yann Arthus-Bertrand and his non-profit organization GoodPlanet released the movie HOME, a documentary about life on Earth and the current environmental challenges of our planet (Arthus-Bertrand is famous for his aerial photography, and the movie is quite wonderfully shot - if you haven't seen it before, it's worth a look: HOME is available in full, free on YouTube).

As a companion to the movie, Arthus-Bertrand released a companion book HOME: A Hymn to the Planet and Humanity. The book is composed of nearly 200 short segments on the various environmental, political, and sociological aspects of the problems facing the world. From poverty to pollution, coal to carbon dioxide, the book is full of (alarming) facts that Arthus-Bertrand hope will inspire people to act.

It was hard to pick just a few segments from the book to excerpt - the whole book is interesting. And yes, undoubtedly there are many oversimplifications that is inherent in presenting complex problems in short vignettes - but Home: A Hymn to the Planet and Humanity is a good starting point for many of us in understanding the environmental problems of today.

Here are 5 short segments from the book, published on Neatorama with permission:

SIX BILLION SOULS

Blocks of flats on Seoul's south bank, South Korea

The world’s population quadrupled over the course of the 20th century and now stands at 6.7 billion. Since 2000 it has increased by 700 million, which is equivalent to the entire population rise in the 19th century. In the 18th century, it rose by a mere 200 million. As their numbers have grown, human beings have gravitated increasingly toward cities, which have also grown as a result. Since 2007, more than one in two of us live in a town or city.

There are more people in some of the bigger cities – such as Tokyo, with its population of 35 million – than in some countries as a whole. In developing countries, urban growth can occur at a rate that is simply mind-boggling. Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, had a population of 300,000 in 1950, whereas today the figure stands at more than 15 million: a fiftyfold increase in fifty years. Boom towns such as Dhaka face immense problems in terms of infrastructure including electricity, drinking water, and waste disposal.

Nevertheless, this demographic explosion and the urbanization linked to it seem also to hold part of the solution. Birth rates have been shown to be decreasing over a great many parts of the globe, particularly in urban areas. The current average stands at 2.6, with significant regional disparities. In many Western countries, it has even fallen below 2.1, the threshold for population increase. The world population is shrinking and ageing. Whereas earlier projections for the coming decades envisaged a global population of 12 billion, the estimate has fallen and it is now thought that the population should stabilize at around 9 billion by 2050.

This seems to be due to the fact that city-dwellers generally have better access to education. For many women, in particular, this signifies access to information and to methods of contraception. It also means that these women are often able to work in addition to having a family. Having children becomes a choice, to be balanced against a career, for example. Urban life, moreover, changes people’s behavior and living requirements: couples have fewer children than those living in the country since they no longer need help in the fields. This reduction in the birth rate responds to one of the major challenges of the century: that of population control as a means of successfully feeding the world and saving the planet.

THE END OF OIL

Oil fields near Bakersfield, California, USA

Oil will not run out suddenly. It will be a slow, agonizing decline. As oil becomes scarcer its price will rise, and what used to be very cheap will become expensive. Society will be wholly transformed.

The reason for this is simple: a finite planet has finite resources. Once we have consumed all of our oil and other primary materials, there will be nothing left. Oil is not a renewable resource on any timescale comparable to its rate of consumption. The chemical reactions which led to its formation occurred over millions of years.

There are, undoubtedly, oil deposits that remain to be discovered. But the easiest have already been found and exploited. Each year, we consume more oil than we find. This is clearly going to cause problems.

It is not only a question of when oil will run out, but how society will change as it does. A world in which oil is much rarer – and therefore costlier – will be different from our own. The modern petrochemical industry will have to change dramatically: everything from lipsticks to fertilizers and plastics of all types will either be made differently or not at all. Transport will obviously become more expensive. This will spell the end of the West’s huge retail and supermarket networks, since these rely on road transportation and economies of scale. The price of imported products will rise, and international tourism will return to what it used to be in previous centuries: a luxury for the privileged few. Competition for access to the last remaining oil deposits will increase, and may lead to conflict.

These developments are inevitable, and will only be temporarily delayed by the current recession which is slowing down the global economy. Developing renewable forms of energy and reducing consumption are the two most basic measures we can take to prepare ourselves.

FISHERIES: AN OVEREXPLOITED RESOURCE

What is the current state of world fisheries?

How important is fish to the average diet?

WATER SCARCITY

Moshav (co-operative village) farm at Nahalal, Jezrael plain, Israel

Today a third of humanity is suffering from water scarcity. Specialists use the term “water stress” when the demand for water exceeds the available freshwater supply by 10%. Although 10% of renewable resource may not seem like much, we should not forget that before mankind’s invention, 100% of this water was used by ecosystems. This extra demand is enough to dry a water course, drain a spring, or prevent the replenishment of groundwater.

While the population of Canada and the Amazon or Congo basin have a plentiful water supply, the people of the Mediterranean basin, Central Asia and Mexico are at greater risk of scarcity. The particular problem with water is that it is difficult to transport in large quantities over great distances.

One solution is to use the same water several times. An increasing number of industries are reusing water, retreating it up to 30 times in some cases. Domestic washwater, known as “greywater,” can be reused to water a garden or flush a toilet, reserving drinkable water for human consumption, cooking, or washing. In countries where water is scarce, wastewater from cities is retreated for use in agriculture. In Israel, for example, where the average rainfall is 1 inch (25 mm) a year, 70% of wastewater is recycled, allowing 49,000 acres (20,000 hectares) of land to be watered.

There are many other ways of saving water, especially by being aware of how much of it we consume. Some of this water is invisible: it is used to make a product, but is not present in the product itself. This is called virtual water. One pound of grain means hundreds of gallons of irrigation water; a pair of cotton jeans require 2,860 gallons (10,850 liters) of water; a cup of coffee 9 gallons (35 liters); a sheet of paper 2.5 gallons (10 liters). A single tomato contains 3.5 gallons (13 liters) of virtual water, which is more than many people use in a day. Paradoxically, some countries that face water scarcity are actually exporting some of their limited water resources in the form of agricultural or manufactured products.

THE COLLAPSE OF SOCIETIES

Volcano of Rano Kau, Easter Island, Chile

Sooner or later, societies disappear and are replaced by new ones. As our own society enters a critical phase, what lessons can be learned from those that preceded us? One example that has been extensively studied is Easter Island in the Pacific Ocean. The island was once home to a flourishing civilization, which reached its peak in around 1500, but it subsequently experienced a rapid decline, losing four fifths of its population in just one century. According to the American expert Jared Diamond, the explanation lies principally in the fact that the people deforested their entire land. Without trees, they were no longer able to build fishing boats, and crucially the soil was eroded. As the situation worsened, the people began fighting among themselves, and developed bizarre religious practices. In an effort to erect increasingly gigantic statutes, they cut down more and more trees, accelerating their demise.

Diamond also studied a number of other civilizations that vanished largely as a result of environmental factors, such as the Maya and Babylonians, who exhausted their land, and the Greenland Vikings, who could not adapt to the cooler climate. While these societies did not vanish because of environmental damage alone, it certainly weakened their economic and social structures and created vicious cycles that ultimately proved fatal. The same pattern could easily be applied to modern society.

In Diamond’s analysis, the factors leading to a society’s collapse seem to be quite clearly set out every time. But for political, religious, or social reasons, the society is incapable of reacting and taking adequate measures to ensure its survival. What would the Easter Islander who cut down the last tree have been thinking? Another expert in the history of civilizations, the British historian Arnold Toynbee, wrote that “civilizations die from suicide, not by murder” – in other words, from their inability to resolve their internal crises.

Today most people agree that we are facing an environmental catastrophe. We need to change the course in which our society is heading, and remove the obstacles to that change. It is too late to bury our heads in the sand. It is also too late to be pessimistic.

Yann Arthus-Bertrand published more than 40 books, including the multimillion-copy international bestseller Earth from Above. Home, released in conjunction with a film of the same name, is a stunning visual odyssey across 50 countries combining Arthus-Bertrand's images and text by the editorial team of Good Planet.

Links: HOME official website | Watch the movie at YouTube | The book at Amazon

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The cake that started it all

Cake Wrecks: Interview with Jen Yates

Posted by Alex in Blog & Internet, Book & Lit, Food & Drinks, Neatorama Only, Pictures on September 24, 2009 at 11:45 pm

Take cakes that are so bad they're good, mix in a great sense of humor and what do you get? A madly popular blog phenomenon, and now, a book as well! Jen Yates, the founder of Cake Wrecks, one of my all time favorite blogs, has graciously agreed to do an interview about cakes, the universe and everything.

But first: the book. As I'm sure you all probably already know or can guess, Cake Wrecks: When Professional Cakes Go Hilariously Wrong is obviously about cake carnage. It chronicles some of the weirdest, silliest, creepiest and downright fugliest cakes ever made professionally (in order to be featured in the book and blog, each cake has to be made by a professional baker). There are over 150 cake wrecks included (3/4 of them never-before-seen material).

But there's something very subtle about the book that made me appreciate Jen and Cake Wrecks even more. This is something I came to realize only after I read the advance copy of the book (I know, I know, the perks of being a famous blogger). Cake Wrecks is actually the celebration of having a bad cake. It's an homage to Murphy's Law asserting itself over flour, sugar, egg and shortening mixed together
and popped in the oven.

Think about it: how many birthday parties have you gone to and not remember a whit of what happened? Now, if you had one where the cake was horribly wrong (but still very yummy) - wouldn't that stick in your memory forever? (I can imagine the conversation - Q: "Hey, remember that party with the foot cake?" A: "Yeah ... good times!")

'Nuff said. Let's get on with the interview:

Neatorama: Before we talk about cakes, I'm curious about what you wrote for the "About the Author" portion of Cake Wrecks, and I quote "Jen has been a clown, a cash office accountant, a Jungle Cruise skipper, a business owner, a children's book inventory expeditor, and a house painter."

Now, if you don't mind - a clown? Really? What's that like? Did you come up with your own Jungle Cruise skipper jokes? And just what the heck is a children's book inventory expeditor? Sounds like a smuggling ops.

Jen Yates: Hah! Yes, I do have some interesting "work" experience. Ok, let's see...being a clown? That can be surprisingly difficult, on account of your not being allowed to retaliate while being kicked in the shins by a horde of candy-seeking 9-year-olds. Heheh. Other than that it was a blast, though. I learned to juggle, make balloon animals, and perform funny skits. This was during my teens, so that's also where I first learned public speaking skills, believe it or not. We visited hospitals, shelters, expos, churches, you name it.

Jungle Cruise was also fabulous, and yes, we got to ad lib a bit. That's where my love of puns truly blossomed. There's this crashed plane on the ride, and I made a game of fitting as many plane puns as possible into the few seconds we had before it passed out of sight. (I think I got up to 8 or 9.) I wasn't happy until the whole boat was groaning in agony.

My other jobs were less glamorous. The expeditor gig? That was me in a cubicle calling various national warehouses to see if their shipment had arrived yet. Lots of spreadsheets. :)

Neatorama: What's the very first cake that got you thinking of creating Cake Wrecks - the cake that started it all?

Jen: Yes, that cake really and truly DID start it all. My friend Abby e-mailed it to me, and the idea for Cake Wrecks just hit me. I think I started the blog that very night, just for fun.

Neatorama: What's your favorite cake wrecks?

Jen: My favorites are usually the ones with the communication breakdowns. The literal stuff like the Under Neat that cake, and then the garbled phone order ones.

Cake submitted by Elizabeth R.

Remember the flash drive cake? That's the one where the customer wanted a photo cake, and so brought in the picture they wanted on a portable thumb drive for the bakery to print out. Instead, the bakery drew an exact replica of the flash drive on the cake! Heh, I LOVE stories like that.

Neatorama: Let's see some geek cred - what are the geekiest cake wrecks you've ever gotten?

Jen: Game console cakes are really popular, especially for grooms cakes, and I've seen some doosies:

Cake submitted by Monique B.

Cake submitted by Diane B.

Here are a few more geeky Wrecks:

Cake submitted by Maggie G.

Cake submitted by Kelly J.

Cake submitted by Gretchen W. (That's supposed to be Luigi, believe it or not)

And this one's not a Wreck, but I thought it was funny:

Cake submitted by Amy L.

I *think* that says happy birthday in binary. Am I right?

__________

Jen has kind enough to offer a free copy of the book for a giveaway - got any question for Jen? A lucky commenter with the most interesting question will win the book (I'll post Jen's reply as an update).

More wrecktastic blogger interviews with Jen Yates about her new book:

Blogher with Julie Godar
Serious Eats with Erin Zimmer
The Pioneer Woman with Ree Drummond
Geek Dad with Doug Cornelius

Links: Cake Wrecks | The Book at Amazon: Cake Wrecks: When Professional Cakes Go Hilariously Wrong

Update 10/3/09 – Jen has picked the question to answer. Find out more here: Link

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