HOME |
RSS | 
So. What do you think libertarians do? Me neither! Via Accordion Guy
Previously on Neatorama: 24 Types of Libertarians vs. 24 Types of Authotarians
You’ve seen time-lapse videos of the night sky here before, but this one is particularly beautiful, awe-inspiring, and soothing. It’s even more impressive in full-screen mode. Randy Halverson shot the scenes in South Dakota, Utah, Colorado, and Wisconsin. You have to get way out beyond the light pollution to see the stars this way! The music was specially composed for the project by Bear McCreary, who does the music for the TV shows The Walking Dead, Battlestar Galactica, and more. You can learn more about the video at Halverson’s website. Link -via Geeks Are Sexy
See also: Bad Astronomy’s post about the astronomical events in the video. Link
The following is an article from the book Uncle John’s Fast-Acting Long-Lasting Bathroom Reader.
Born into bondage, Robert Smalls rose from slavery to the Halls of Congress. In between, he helped the Union win the Civil War by doing what no black American had ever done before -he commanded a naval vessel.
AT HOME ON THE WATER
Robert Smalls was born a slave on April 5, 1839, in the coastal town of Beaufort, South Carolina. His first taste of a sailor’s life came at 12 years old when his master hired him out to work at a shipyard in Charleston Harbor. Smalls took to it, displaying a natural talent for seamanship. By 19, he had risen to the highest sea rank available to a slave: a ship’s pilot. Although Smalls could neither read nor write, his photographic memory recalled every bar, shoal, and current in Charleston Harbor.
In 1858 Smalls married another slave, Hannah Jones, and two years later they had a son, Robert, Jr. Being a respected sea pilot, Smalls life was better than that of most slaves …but he was still a slave. Longing to be his own master, he set out to buy his family’s freedom. And he almost did it -Smalls had saved $700 of the $800 purchasing price when the Civil War broke out in 1861. Then everybody’s life was put on hold.
STEALING A SHIP
The Confederate army immediately put the 22-year-old Smalls to work doing what he did best: piloting a vessel. He was given the wheel of the CSS Planter (formerly the USS Planter), a 147-foot-long steamboat. With Smalls at the helm taking order from Captain Charles Relyea, the ship hauled ordnance and supplies to the rebel forts guarding Charleston. A few miles offshore lay a fleet of blockading Union ships, and Smalls knew that freedom awaited him in that blockade. He formed a plan.
more …
It might be a little late now, but these great Valentines cards by Ben Kling are simply fantastic, not to mention punny as all heck.
Link Via Geekosystem
Bonnie & Clyde, Napoleon & Josephine and Louis XV & Madame de Pompadour…they’re all great love stories -on paper at least. But when you actually learn the whole story for all of these romances, they’re a lot less sweet.
Artists Jody Barton and Luke Pommersheim teamed up and hit the Danish city streets with a different kind of street art-surreal mystery flyers. Each flyer contains a different version of strange, from the discovery of a tiny door to an invitation to a sugar party just to name a few, and if a passerby happens to take the mysterious author Jens up on his offer, the address is real, and KL. 14 means the meeting time is 2 p.m.
According to various comments, the listed address often has people gathered around outside, hanging about and drinking water of all things! Will these mini street mysteries ever be solved? Not until the next batch of flyers are ready to go up…
–via Booooooom! — Jody Barton LINK
This blogger is trying to find the town of Tecuci, Romania, under the snow! For some reason, the Google translation renders the town’s name as Tecumseh. There are more pictures of the huge snowfall at the site Criserb. Link -via Buzzfeed
History is full of stories of grand gestures or sacrifices people made for love. And sometimes it worked out just fine; other stories are tragic. But they still inspire us, sometimes hundreds of years later. For example, President William McKinley’s wife, Ida, suffered from seizures and general ill health.
But when McKinley took office in 1897, he didn’t hide Ida from view. Instead, defying the protocol of the day, he insisted that his wife be seated beside him at state dinners, so he could help if a seizure struck, or cover her face with a hankerchief to ward off an impending attack.
And when President McKinley was fatally shot in 1901, his thoughts were of fragile Ida, whispering to his secretary: “My wife—be careful…how you tell her.”
Read all ten of these stories at Smithsonian magazine. Link
Can’t see it? Neither can I! Under all that foliage is St. Andrew’s Church in Bircham Tofts, England. It was abandoned in the 19th century when parishes were consolidated, but you can still get in, if you know how. There are photos of the interior stonework as well as more exterior shots at Urban Ghosts. Link
(Image credit: Flickr user Gary Troughton)
Whether or not you’re in a relationship, it’s still pretty easy to get swept away in the romantic spirit of Valentine’s Day. In honor of the holiday, let’s take a look at some of the most romantic world records ever achieved.
I don’t know about you guys, but I would need a serious Chap Stick infusion after kissing someone for 46 and a half hours. The couple, Ekkachai and Laksana Tiranarat, was part of a contest held in Thailand in 2011, which led to seven couples breaking the existing record of 32 hours that was set back in 2009.
It takes two people who can both hold their breath for a long while to break this record, which is why it is so impressive that Italians Michele Fucarino and Elisa Lazzarini were able to hold their breath while kissing for 3 minutes and 24 seconds.
While the Italian couple may have set the record for longest underwater kiss without breathing, Antonio de la Rosa Suarez holds a different but equally impressive record for kissing underwater. In his case, two women took turns kissing him while passing air to him. He stayed down there for 7 minutes, which seems like a relatively short record given that he was allowed to breathe during the process. Maybe one of you guys could take a crack at this one.
Love Sharon Stone? Not as much as Joni Rimm apparently. Rimm actually shelled out $50,000 for one kiss with the actress, who offered up a lick-smacking session as part of a charity auction supporting Project Angel Foods, a charity dedicated to providing free meals for people with HIV and AIDS.
As if having a giant wedding ceremony wasn’t romantic enough, the fact that 34 couples opted to exchange wedding vows underwater on Valentine’s Day makes this one sweet occasion, even if kissing the bride 33 feet underwater isn’t exactly an easy proposition.
It seems strange, but the world’s longest hug was actually almost a full day shorter than the world’s longest kiss. At only 24 hours and 33 minutes, it seems that this record, held by Ron O’Neil and Theresa Kerr, is just begging to be broken –so if you want to get in the book, better start locking arms now.
The world according to Americas
Europe according to Germans
This ain't your grandfather's maps! In the series Mapping Stereotypes, Designer Yanko Tsvetkov of Alpha Designer created maps that lays bare the racists and stereotypical views of a number of nations (us Yanks included): Link
Can
french fries be objects of art? That's debatable, but they sure can be
objects of lawsuits!
Here's what happened when a gallery lost a pair of french fries that "were the basis of an artwork":
The artwork comprised a cross made of two golden chips, alongside two normal fries, deep-fried and not gold-leafed.
The catalogue for the original 1990 exhibition “Pommes d’Or,” described the work of artist Stefan Bohnenberger as “the metamorphosis of a profane everyday object into a sacred artwork.”
But the gallery’s reverence for the chips declined in the intervening decades, because when Bohnenberger asked for the two normal fries back last year, the Munich gallery Mosel and Tschechow could no longer find them. An incensed Bohnenberger promptly demanded damages, which the gallery refused to pay.
According to a report in news magazine Der Spiegel the court ruled that the gallery must now hand Bohnenberger €2,000 plus five percent interest from May 2010. On top of that, the gallery is being forced to pay 90 percent of the court fees.
The judge found that the gallery had neglected its duty to keep the chips safe.
What were they thinking? This could've been solved for $0.99 with a quick trip to the local McDonald's: Link - via Arbroath
Lots
of children love Disney princesses, but most of them kind of grow out
of it. But not Annfaye Kao, 27, of Taichung, Taiwan.
Annfaye loves Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs so much that she got the entire cast tattooed on her back.
'As a child I used to imagine I was Snow White in a fairytale so it seemed like a good thing to have tattooed on my back.
'Snow White is a part of my childhood and therefore me, so I’m happy I will have it on me forever - it reminds me of my princess dream.'
The Daily Mail has more photos (some NSFW): Link
What Disney movie would you have tattooed on your back? Sadly, I think only Dumbo would have enough heft to fill my backside.
You don’t often think of a garbage can as an art medium, but some artists do. And how nice is it to disguise an ugly-but-necessary object as something delightful? My favorite of the collection at WebUrbanist is this graffiti-embellish can by Job Willemsen and Tom v.d. Hurk in the Netherlands. Link
(Image source: Wooster Collective)
If Thomas Edison were alive today, he would be celebrating his 165th birthday. Jeremiah Warren made this quick overview of his life and work, so you’ll know more than just “Edison invented the light bulb.” -Thanks, Jeremiah!
It happens every time some new technology threatens to put people out of work: a public campaign to save jobs. One example was in the 1920s and ’30s, when synchronized sound was added to movies, which meant that theaters no longer had to pay live musicians to accompany the films. The Music Defense League sprang into action, with a $500,000 advertising budget to rally the public against soundtracks recorded by just “300 musicians in Hollywood.” Read about the battle against canned music in theaters at Paleofuture. Link
In 1956, 12-year old Jim Berger wanted to build a house for his dog. So he asked the Frank Lloyd Wright to design one.
In Berger’s favor, Wright had designed his family’s house. So he knew Berger and was on good terms with the kids’ family. The famous architect composed a complete set of plans for a dog house that would fit the same style. Berger never built it, but his family did in 1963. The family dogs, however, disapproved of its organic style and refused to live in it.
Link -via Flavorwire | Photo: Architects + Artisans
So.
Do you carry reusable bags to shop at the grocery store? Do you sort empty
plastic containers into the correct recycling bin? Did you trade-in your
gas guzzler for a well-worn pair of sneakers?
Do you think that all those enviro-goody-two-shoes things you did matter? Think again.
No hate mail, please! That's what economist Gernot Wagner at the Environmental Defense Fund said. He argued that in order to save the planet, we need much more than environmentalists. Instead, we need smart economic policies.
Here's an interesting interview at Co.Exist:
Co.Exist:What does the average environmentalist get wrong?
Wagner: Environmentalists, all too often, think that the best way to go about solving the problem is to get everyone to do as they--we, I included--do. I don’t eat meat. I don’t drive. But individual do-gooderism won’t solve global warming.
And it may actually be counter-productive, for two reasons. First, there’s a well-documented psychological phenomenon called “single-action bias.” You do one thing, and you move on. You carry your groceries home by foot, in a cotton canvas bag, and you think that single act of environmental kindness makes up for other sins.
Second, you spend all your energy thinking about these tiny things. Should you buy the local apples that have been stored for months in a cool house somewhere, or should you buy the fresh apple flown in from across the world? Or should you not buy apples at all when they are not in season and risk not getting enough vitamins?
You’d go positively crazy trying to figure out what to do, and you’d miss the big picture: That, at the end of the day, none of that really matters.
So what should we do? Read on at Co.Exist: Link
When we heard of the death of Florence Green, the final surviving veteran of World War I, many people stopped and thought about the old people who are our living links to history. Robert Krulwich at NPR has a list of people and stories that span a lot of years, like the guy he met in 1973 who recalled living near Rasputin, the mad monk of Imperial Russia.
How could somebody talking to me in a diner on 7th Avenue have also talked to somebody that ancient? It just didn’t seem possible. Yet the old guy said, “Rasputin and my dad were friends. He used to come over for tea.”
I thought about it. Rasputin was assassinated in 1916. A 70-year-old man in 1973 would have been 13 when Rasputin was alive. It was not inconceivable that this guy had actually met Rasputin.
Other stories involve an eyewitness to the Lincoln assassination who appeared on television, Civil War widows who saw the 21st century, and the man who met both President John Quincy Adams and President John Kennedy. Link -via Breakfast Links
Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website.
Abraham Lincoln, our 16th U.S. president, was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865. He died the next day. Okay, what is this, a history class? Everybody knows that! But who shot Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth? Well, let’s find out by looking into the life of one of the strangest, little-known men who had a part in United States history. Let’s look at the strange life of Boston Corbett.
Thomas Corbett was born in England in 1832. He immigrated to Boston where he became a born-again Christian. He adopted the city’s name in honor of his conversion. But Corbett wasn’t your normal convert. His religious zeal knew no bounds.
Fearing temptation by prostitutes, he used a pair of scissor to castrate himself. After which, he casually attended a prayer meeting (he did receive medical attention afterwards). Corbett had been married earlier, but his wife died in childbirth.
During the Civil war, Corbett became a Cavalry sergeant. After the 1865 assassination of President Lincoln, his unit took part in the search for John Wilkes Booth. On April 26th, his unit surrounded the barn where Booth was hiding and set it on fire. Corbett saw Booth through a crack in the barn and fired a single shot, mortally wounding him.
“Providence guided my hand,” Corbett told his commanding officer. By an odd coincidence, Corbett’s bullet had struck Booth in the same spot Booth’s shot had hit president Lincoln. When told of this, Corbett said, “What a fearful God we serve.”
His reward money for killing Booth was $1,653.84, the exact same amount as every other man in his unit.
Corbett instantly became famous as “Lincoln’s Avenger.” He was flooded by requests for autographs and cheered when he walked the streets. But fame, once hot and heavy, gradually died down.
Boston Corbett started suffering from severe delusions. He imagined John Wilkes Booth’s men were stalking him and thought he was in grave danger. He fled to Kansas.
In 1887, he was given
a job as doorman to the Kansas House of Representatives. One day he showed up waving a gun, declaring the House adjourned. Corbett was declared insane and sent to an asylum. The following year he escaped, and no one ever heard of Boston Corbett again.
He is thought to have settled and spent the final part of his life in the forests of Hinckley, Minnesota. There is no conclusive proof of this, but the Great Hinckley Fire of September 1894 lists a “Thomas Corbett” on the list of the dead or missing.
Corbett was a hatter by trade. The mercury used to cure beaver pelts is thought to have contributed to his madness.
Visit guest author Eddie Deezen at his website.
What could be cooler than a compilation of nuclear cooling towers undergoing demolition? Those towers imploding with surprised faces drawn on them! It’s an ad from Ecotricity, a wind-power advocacy group. -via Geekosystem
It’s common for colleges to name buildings after wealthy donors. But what does that leave for smaller donors who would like to be recognized? Some colleges are tapping into that market by naming bathrooms, or even individual stalls, after donors:
For $2,000, a Dixie State College of Utah donor could have been the namesake of a porcelain castle complete with a locking door, a generous supply of off-brand toilet paper and an occasional copy of yesterday’s sports section.
In a brazen effort to raise funds, Dixie State offered naming rights to individual bathroom stalls in a musical theater company’s planned building. The college wanted to help the troupe, which had moved on campus after being evicted from its previous stage, raise money for a new home somewhere else.
Dixie State’s fundraising plan didn’t work and the theater company shut down. But other colleges, including Harvard University, the University of Colorado at Boulder, and the University of Pennsylvania have named bathrooms for donors. It’s a mark of pride:
A University of Pennsylvania donor funded a bathroom renovation (subscription required) in the campus library. His philanthropy had one catch — that the walls be lined with plaques reading, “The relief you are now experiencing is made possible by a gift from Michael Zinman.”
If you’re a college student right now, look around a bathroom on your campus and dream of your future. Someday, this is what you could be known for.
Link -via @BrainPicker | Photo: Inside Higher Ed
Elderly bloggers and internet junkies in the year 2062 reminisce about the good old days of social media and social networking. I’m not sure how they get the idea of “hipsters” out of these folks. This video was produced to promote Social Media Week 2012. Link -Thanks, Lauren O’Neil!
This blog has the tagline “an illustrated introduction to criminal law and procedure.” It’s part webcomic and part law class, and all interesting. Author Nathaniel Burney breaks down criminal culpability into small pieces so we can understand some of the many facets of crime and the justice system. In the latest post, there are quite a few people who hate “you,” but they have different intents and take different actions. Which ones are guilty of attempted murder? The concepts are laid out in logical order from the beginning of the blog, but it’s not totally necessary to read them in order. Link -Thanks, Wiseayse!
A mysterious box appeared in a parking at Erie Community College campus in Amherst, New York, Friday afternoon. The state police bomb squad responded and took an x-ray of the sealed box, which showed a cat inside! Police turned the cat over to the local SPCA. Gina Browning of the Tonawanda SPCA says the cat is okay.
“The cat was not malnourished, not dehydrated, didn’t need any kind of veterinary care. So, it had a happy ending. What concerns me is the people capable of doing this might be capable of doing something worse,” Browning said.
Just who would put a cat in a taped up box and leave it in a parking lot remains a mystery at this point.
Capt. Camilleri said, “Right now it doesn’t appear there’s really much to follow up on. It didn’t have any identification on the box or anything like that.”
The upside to this is that the cat, named “Truffle,” is fine, healthy and back with her owner. Tracking down the person responsible is unlikely, if not impossible.
If found, the persons responsible could be charged with animal cruelty. Even Erwin Schrödinger never wanted to try his famous thought experiment on a real cat. Link -via Arbroath
These Victorian style portraits of Star Wars characters by Terry Fan lead one to believe that C3PO is powered by steam, and that droids actually enjoy wearing three piece suits. Everyone knows that these things are untrue, of course, but it’s a romantic version of the Space Opera that hasn’t been fully explored yet, so let’s just go with it.
In this series you get Darth Vader looking quite dapper, Yoda with a top hat that somehow makes his head look even smaller (and his ears even bigger), C3apo as a gentleman about town and Boba Fett fresh from overseas service in the military. These portraits look like they were taken a long long time ago, in a place that’s not so far away after all…
Link –via Rampaged Reality
This beautiful AR-15 by Guns & Gardens looks like the stars of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic just barfed all over it. So it’s just right for the little girl or Brony in your life. The rifle comes with a handy chainsaw bayonet for any undead issues that s/he may encounter while walking around the neighborhood.
Video Link and Official Website -via Geekosystem
A junior police officer in Sussex, UK observed through a CCTV camera a man behaving strangely. He called a plain clothes officer working in the area and asked that he investigate. The cop did so for twenty minutes before another officer in the CCTV control room realized that the suspicious man in question was the cop himself:
But he failed to realise that it was actually the plain-clothed officer he was watching on the screen, according to details leaked to an industry magazine.
The operator directed the officer, who was on foot patrol, as he followed the “suspect” on camera last month, telling his colleague on the ground that he was “hot on his heels”.
The officer spent around 20 minutes giving chase before a sergeant came into the CCTV control room, recognised the “suspect” and laughed hysterically at the mistake.
Link | Photo (unrelated) via Flickr user Smabs Sputzer
Image: Irina Silvestrova/Shutterstock
Intelligent beings captured and forced to live in tiny space, then made to perform daily to entertain the masses. Sounds like slavery? PETA thinks so and they're suing ... on behalf of killer whales against SeaWorld:
LinkIt is reportedly the first time a US court has heard legal arguments over whether animals should enjoy the same constitutional protections as humans.
SeaWorld's legal team said the case was a waste of time and resources.
The marine park's lawyer, Theodore Shaw, told the court in San Diego: "Neither orcas nor any other animal were included in the 'We the people'... when the Constitution was adopted."
He said that if the case were successful, it could have implications not just on how other marine parks or zoos operate, but even on the police use of sniffer dogs to detect bombs and drugs.
Peta says the killer whales are treated like slaves for being forced to live in tanks and perform daily at the SeaWorld parks in California and Florida.
In the past year, we brought you the obituaries of Frank Buckles, the last U.S. veteran of World War I and Claude Choules, the last surviving combat veteran of that war. Yesterday, the very last member of the military from the War to End All Wars passed away.
Florence Green was only 17 years old when she signed up for the Women’s Royal Air Force in 1918. She worked at the military airfields in Norfolk.
Mrs Green spent her war days working ”all hours” serving officers breakfast, lunch and dinner and would often spend time wandering the base simply ”admiring the pilots”.
Before her death she said: ”I enjoyed my time in the WRAF. There were plenty of people at the airfields where I worked and they were all very good company.
”I would work every hour God sent but I had dozens of friends on the base and we had a great deal of fun in our spare time. In many ways I had the time of my life.
”I met dozens of pilots and would go on dates. I had the opportunity to go up in one of the planes but I was scared of flying.
”It was a lovely experience and I’m very proud.”
Mrs. Green was a couple weeks short of 111 years old. Link -via reddit
