Though she’s only 16 years old, Rosalee Ramer of Watsonville, California is already a successful monster truck driver. She’s very smart, having scored in the 99% percentile of the math portion of the SAT. Rosalee uses her considerable brains to design, build, maintain and drive these custom-built car-crushers.
She’s been at it since the age of 3, when she first held a flashlight to help her father build an engine at night. Now Rosalee is designing the first electronic fuel injection system for a monster truck.
But she’s more than an engineer. Rosalee also drives Detour, her family’s truck, in competitions. She often jumps it 30 feet into the air. It’s a joyful experience:
"Just being in a truck that loud, feeling it under you, stepping on the throttle," Rosalee said, "it almost doesn't feel real. You feel like you're in a different world. You're taking something that weighs 10,000 pounds and with a tiny touch of the throttle, you can just roast the tires."
Dutch artist Vincent Vermeij, also known as Chungkong (previously at Neatorama) created a series of posters that put Star Wars characters into the classic Andy Warhol soup can art theme. Of course, they are called Star Warhols. There are eight posters in the series; each one is for sale individually as a print or a greeting card. -via Daily of the Day
Poutine is a Québécois dish consisting of gravy and cheese curd over French fries. It’s popular in Canada, where it’s eaten as fast food and a comfort food. McDonald’s restaurants in Quebec sell it. But now the company plans to make poutine available in all McDonald’s outlets throughout Canada. A serving will cost $3.99
I’ve had poutine once. It’s not available in restaurants in my part of Texas, so I had to make it myself. That wasn’t easy, as I could find cheese curd at only one specialty food store. It was delicious! I promised my wife that I would save half of it for her, but…well….
In this fictional place, it's windy -very windy! People have learned to cope with it in strange and funny ways in their everyday lives. This video is Robert Löbel's graduation project at the HAW Hamburg Design Department. -via Laughing Squid
Preparing a holiday meal is a pain in the neck, and often results in the cook(s) being reduced to a frazzled, grumpy mess. But is it worth all the hassle and bad vibes? Wouldn’t you love to simply crack open a tin full of holiday meal and dig right in? Well, your prayers have been answered, the Christmas Tinner is here!
Packed full of layers of goodness, this colorful ready to eat can of Christmas cheer will make meal preparation a snap, and there’s something for everyone so your friends and family members will have their ferocious holiday hungers sated the easy way.
Don't pack your fabulous gifts in ordinary holiday boxes. This holiday season hide those perfect purchases in the GameMaxx Prank Box from the NeatoShop. This fabulous box makes it looks like you are giving someone a ridiculous product created by a clueless company. It is a great way to share the gift of laughter with everyone you love.
We've already featured a few cool cakes from the Bake Christmas Wish Fundraiser for the Make A Wish Foundation (like the Hogswatch and Frozen ones), but when they are all so fantastic looking, it's hard not to keep posting them. This particularly lovely gingerbread Hogwarts Castle from Harry Potter was created by Mimicafe Union in New York and it looks just about as magical as the one in the films.
This second photo shows just how impressive the detailing is on the castle.
Ted and Mary in Manitoba made a video to show us what it's like blowing bubbles at -45°. When it's all said and done, that's the least impressive part of the video. What's really impressive is: Goodness, that woman isn't wearing gloves in this weather! What? The guy doesn't even have a coat on! And -oops- he gets water on his shirt. At -45°. And doesn't even react except to laugh at himself! They are altogether delightful. "Just keep blown' those bubbles, Honey." -via Viral Viral Videos
A stop-motion animated Doctor Who directed by Tim Burton? I want to see that! Alas, it's just a dream right now. But perhaps these sketches could inspire Mr. Burton and the BBC to make a deal.
Michael Kenny, a 15-year old artist from Australia, has (so far) drawn the Sixth through Eleventh Doctors. Continue reading to view the rest.
Some fishermen in Britain caught a huge edible crab and decided to give it to a sick friend. The friend didn't have a pot large enough to cook the crab and stuck it in the refrigerator. Five days later, the family checked on the crab only to find it still alive! They didn't have the heart to eat such a survivor (or the pot), so they called the Bristol Aquarium. David Waines of the aquarium said,
“When she told me it had been in there for five days I couldn’t believe it was still alive.
“I told them to wrap it in a wet towel and bring it along to the aquarium as quickly as possible.
“Although the crab was very weak when it arrived the fact that it was kept refrigerated meant it was in a kind of suspended animation.
“We placed it into a special tank in our quarantine area and began pumping oxygen-rich seawater over it and it immediately started to show signs of recovery.
Dan Lunt is a climate scientist at Bristol University in Bristol, UK. He created a computer model of the climate of Middle-earth from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Writing under the name Radagast the Brown, Dr. Lunt published an article about it. In order to make the article accessible readers in Middle-earth who don’t know English, he published it Elflish and Dwarfish as well as English. Science magazine reports:
Using supercomputers and a model originally developed by the U.K. Met Office, his study compares Middle-earth’s climate with those of our (modern) and the dinosaur’s (Late Cretaceous) worlds. The Middle-earth model (pictured, showing predicted ground coverage: with grass in light green, trees in darker green, desert in yellow, and ice in white) reveals that the Shire—home to the Hobbits—would enjoy weather much like England’s East Midlands, with an average temperature of 7°C and about 61 cm of rainfall each year. An epic journey to Mount Doom, however, would see a shift in climate, with the subtropical Mordor region being more like Los Angeles or western Texas. The study—released today on the University of Bristol’s website and available in English, Elvish, and Dwarvish—also shows that the elves probably sailed from the Grey Havens because of that region’s prevailing easterly winds, while the dry climate east of the Misty Mountains is formed by a rain shadow.
It’s a fun idea for publishing and a sure way to get public attention. But Radagast’s work is also a serious attempt at understanding climate modeling. A press release from Bristol University explained:
Among other findings, he explains why the elves set sail from the Grey Havens (the prevailing winds were favourable for their journey to the West), and the existence of a dry climate east of the Misty Mountains (the mountains cast a rain-shadow over the region). Radagast also discusses the strengths and weaknesses of contemporary climate models, and shows how they can be used to understand and predict future climate. […]
Dr Dan Lunt added: “This work is a bit of fun, but it does have a serious side. A core part of our work here in Bristol involves using state-of-the-art climate models to simulate and understand the past climate of our Earth. By comparing our results to evidence of past climate change, for example from tree rings, ice cores, and ancient fossils of plants and animals, we can validate the climate models, and gain confidence in the accuracy of their predictions of future climate.”
The Team Fortress video game franchise is full of quirky characters trying their darndest to blow each other to bits in ferocious multiplayer combat, and the in-game characters don’t come much quirkier than the Pyro.
This fiery madman always seems to have his head in the clouds while he racks up team kills with his flamethrower and trusty fire axe, but the question remains- what is the Pyro thinking about while he eliminates the competition?
The animated short entitled Crackpot tries to answer that question, while reminding us that if we were able to see everything that goes on inside this guy's head we’d all end up stark raving mad!
It's been just over a week since Thanksgiving, and I'm surprised that all those leftovers are gone. The only thing that's left is the portion of turkey I put away in the freezer. Most of the family loves leftover turkey sandwiches. You can tell it's true: we normally take months to go through a jar of Miracle Whip, but went through an entire jar in one week after Thanksgiving. Now the kitchen has room for me to try out the recipes for Christmas candy, cakes, and cookies we post here! Is it cold where you live? You might want to stay inside this weekend and catch up with whatever you may have missed this week at Neatorama.
We had plenty of puzzles, riddles, and games this week. The Conceptis puzzle was Chain Sudoku. The Pzzlr was called Sprint. And the Whodunit was The Haunted Tree House.
The mystery object in the What Is It? game this week is an automobile valve spring compressor, according to the What Is It? blog. Y'all had much funnier answers, and two of them won t-shirts. MEM said "It's a pogo-stick for fence-sitters. It's for those times when you just don't want to overcome your ambivalence." Ha! And Steven Vredenburgh had a great answer:
This is an example of the "I've got your nose" device. 1340's Germany tradition held that the nose of a ginger child could cure the black plague. The "I've got your nose" device, pictured above, was used to gather the noses of these unfortunate children. Though the practice of harvesting noses soon died out, the idea lingered in the "I've got your nose" game that adults still play with children as a reminder of the horrors of the black plague.
We had a few polls. We asked how you ate Oreo cookies, and the biggest number of folks just eat them like any other cookie. Dunking them in milk was the second most popular method. You really do not want to see John grow a mustache that looks like a cat. And Jill wanted to know when was a good time for a snail facial, but neglected to offer the option of "none of the above." The most popular answer was at a christening.
The comment of the week was from Patty O'Heater in the Obituary for the Letter E: "If a company cannot vn b bothrd to spll thir products or srvics corrctly, I don't trust thm and I will not us thm."
The biggest post of the week on social media was A Nutella Bar Exists, which topped all our other posts for the most Facebook likes, Tweets, and Google+ shares. By a long shot.
Alex is having another weekend sale at the NeatoShop. He's in the habit lately of slashing prices for this and that in order to get you to see what clever and creative Christmas gifts and decorations you can impress everyone with! The NeatoShop has such a large and varied selection that you have to check in every once in a while just to keep up!
If that isn't enough Neatorama for you, we have extra content and fun at our Facebook page, Twitter, and Pinterest. And mobile users: Flipboard makes it easy to keep up with Neatorama.
This Christmas, don't just get presents for your loved ones that make them go "wow". Get them some things that make them say "Whaaaaa!!?" instead! Make it a Christmas to remember - anyone can get cute and pretty gifts, but you can stand out with these 50 Weirdest Christmas Gifts from the NeatoShop. Best of all, they're all under $15!
This weekend only: Save 25% on 800+ items from the NeatoShop in our Weekend Super Sale. Avoid the long lines at the mall and get your Christmas shopping done early!
USA orders $75 and above get free shipping. International orders get 20% shipping discount.
Here are some of our most favorite weirdest NeatoShop items that you can get your loved ones for Christmas:
Meg Favreau came into possession of a vintage recipe booklet that was actually an advertising scheme for Lydia E Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound. Sprinkled among the candy recipes were graphic -and sometimes terrifying- testimonials about how the tonic cured various maladies of the female reproductive system. There are excerpts: three recipes and one testimonial. And we get the story of Lydia E Pinkham and her famous compound. It turns out that the candy booklet was only one of many such publications that advertised the product and passed along important information.
Despite the good the company did with these (wildly successful) marketing efforts, 1906 also was the year of another setback for the Vegetable Compound. That was the year that the Pure Food and Drug Act was passed, requiring the company to be more transparent about its ingredients. The original Vegetable Compound included black cohosh, life root, unicorn root, pleurisy root, and fenugreek seed. (Black cohosh is still used today to help relieve the symptoms of menopause — studies have shown that it might have some short-term helpful effects). That’s all gravy, but the company was forced to reveal that these herbs were attached to a base of almost 20% alcohol — which shocked the non-drinkers who used the tonic and likely explained why many people thought the stuff worked so well. I notice my cramps less when I’m drunk too.
(Photo: John Owen 92, Gerald Owen 67, Steven Owen 40, Chris Owen 21, Connah Owen 6 months)
My family has a treasured photograph of my eldest daughter's hand, my wife's hand, her mother's hand and her grandmother's hand--four generations of women holding hands.
Julian Germain, a British photographer, has published a similar project. He took photos of families that stretch across 4 to 5 living generations. In an interview with ASX, he explained how a previous project about the span of human life led into this one:
They are a progression from the Face of a Century series I made in 1999. That’s a chronological sequence of 101 portraits beginning with someone who is a hundred years old and ending with my daughter when she was just a few days old. At that particular time I was acutely aware of both life and death experiences and this is one of the ways I dealt with them. You see all kinds of people, all the stages of life; it’s mapped out from the end to the beginning, one individual after another—most of whom I just stopped briefly in the street. It’s a simple piece but it really makes me think about how incredible life is. The Gnerations pictures develop the theme, focusing more on where we all come from as individuals. In the text for Face of the Century, Martin Herron refers to us all being at the apex of a pyramid with our genetic inheritance spreading back behind us generation after generation. I wanted to investigate that.
What time is it? Hmm... what would Freud think about you asking that question.
This holiday season get your favorite Freudian the Freud Watch from the NeatoShop. This stylish watch features a thought bubble with rotating thoughts. Thoughts include: Mom, Dad, ID, Sex, and more.
Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Watches.
Jeff Wysaski at Pleated-Jeans has so many reasons to stay inside and not go anywhere that he made an advent calendar of them. Personally, I don't need any excuses along the lines of "There's something I have to do," because I always have too many things to do. But I have plenty of other excuses as well, like I'm antisocial and I can pull the "Mama ain't happy" card and send other people to do my errands. It's cold out there! -via Daily of the Day
Sometimes in large bodies of water, wave systems cross each other. When they hit each other, these systems will form crests twice as high and troughs twice as deep. It can be difficult to sail in such waters. In the above case at the Île de Ré, an island off the Atlantic coast of France, the wave systems appear to meet at a right angle.
I don't know anything about this. The entire description at YouTube is this:
"BRWABLGABLWRABRABLA" ~boat.
But I know that my cheeks are hurting from laughing. Something that does that needs to be shared. And then someone had to go and improve it. -via reddit
Mike Mendez, an artist and custom toymaker, altered an 8-inch plastic Transformers figure. He gave it a look inspired by the traditional arts of Polynesia. TikiPrime Warrior, as he calls it, will be on display at the Transformer Show at Toy Tokyo in New York City on Saturday.
Those darn Brits can make anything sound good, with their sophisticated pronunciations of words and smarmy attitudes as they sit there speaking proper English.
The latest pop culture obsession from across the pond is Benedict Cumberbatch, star of the hit BBC series Sherlock and bad boy Khan in the film Star Trek Into Darkness. Benedict is a big star, and not just because of his cool name. Here he is reading lyrics to the R. Kelly song “Genius” on Jimmy Kimmel Live, try not to swoon and hurt yourself as he reads the incredibly sexy lyrics aloud in that classy British way.
If you've ever eaten at a serve-yourself buffet, you're probably glad to see a transparent sneeze guard between other people's faces and your food. Surprisingly, the sneeze guard isn't all that old. While smorgasbord restaurants became popular in America in the late 1930s, the sneeze guard was patented in 1959! It was the invention of restauranteur Johnny Garneau.
“Being the germaphobe that he was, he couldn’t stand people going down the Smorgasbords smelling things and having their noses too close to the food,” Barbara Kelley, one of five of Garneau’s children says. “He said to his engineers, ‘We have to devise something—I don’t want these people sneezing on the food.”
It's a comforting thought to know that the guy who owns the restaurant in which you are eating is a germaphobe. But while the sneeze guard was Garneau's most famous innovation, it wasn't his only one. On one of his restaurants, he delivered drinks to patrons at the other end of the bar by model train! Read about Garneau and how he developed the sneeze guard at Smithsonian's Food and Think blog.
(Image courtesy of Barbara Garneau Kelley)
We dish up more neat food posts at the Neatolicious blog
Ylvis is the Norwegian music and comedy group most famous for their song “What Does the Fox Say?” Its members pulled this delicious prank at an Ikea store. There was a mock house in that store. Ylvis altered it so that the entrance and exit disappeared. A couple entered to explore the furnishings. But then they couldn’t get out!
It gets even better: one of the pranksters slipped in through a concealed entrance. The couple followed her around, hoping that she knew how to escape.
When the good ol’ boys from hit “reality” TV shows like Finding Bigfoot go out Squatch huntin’ they'd better watch their backs, 'cause there might be a new breed of Squatch lurking in them thar woods. His name is Megafoot, and he’s hungry for two things- motor oil and human flesh!
The mashup nobody could have ever seen coming is at last a reality- the cyborg bigfoot movie Megafoot is in production! So polish up your MST3K routines, get a group of friends with some booze and a sense of humor together, and bask in the glory of godawfulness known as Megafoot. You won't be disappointed, unless you were hoping to watch a really good movie.
Not just the best movies of 2013 -all of them! Sleepy Skunk used 258 movie trailers from 2013 to make this year-end trailer mashup. I didn't know there were that many movies in one year! you'll find a list of the movies used here. The editing is lovely, but the overall effect is that this video highlights how very much all movie trailers tend to follow the same formula. Maybe that's why I didn't know there were that many different films this year. -via Blame It On The Voices
Disney’s newest animated smash hit Frozen has inspired artists from all over the world to try their hand at making something shaped like one of the stars of the film. The favorite subjects so far are, of course, Olaf the Snowman and Sven the reindeer, mostly because both characters are just so darn cute!
UK cake wizard Laura Miller liked the characters so much that she decided to immortalize them in batter and sweet fondant for the Bake a Christmas Wish fundraiser, and they look good enough not to eat! She even included a process photoset so you can get an idea of what goes into making a cake look this adorable.
Are you looking for a sweet holiday treat for your sweet? Give her the Minnie Polka Dot Crossbody Bag from the NeatoShop. The printed faux leather bag is embossed with Mickey ears and features a red with white polka dot lining. This adorable bag is cute and classy, just like Minnie Mouse herself.
Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Bags & Totes.
Web cartoonist Lar deSouza drew a festive scene that we might encounter in December in any shopping mall on Tatooine or Naboo or wherever Vader hangs out when he's not hunting rebels. Now, you remember what happens when he says, "I find your lack of faith disturbing"? Things could get messy at the mall! -Thanks, Craig L!
You've seen people cross scary canyons by zipline, but have you ever seen a car travel this way? In Siberia, there's a spot where vehicles need to cross the Chuya River, but the nearest bridge is 200 miles away. They've come up with a solution, but I think I'd just give up before doing this. Or maybe you can send the car, and I'll zip over on my own in a little bit. -via Daily Picks and Flicks
(Photo: Leah Millis, The Chronicle)
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