What is it? Game 87
Our weekly collaboration with the What is it? Blog brings us this mysterious object - can you guess what it is for?
Place your guess in the comment section. No prize this week, so you’re playing for fame and glory only. Please don’t post any URL - let others play.
For more clues, check out the What is it? Blog.
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Jaguar Motorcycle by Barend Hemmes
Barend Massow Hemmes of Massow Concept Cycles along with Polar cycles of Doncaster UK created what is probably the most awesome motorcycle I’ve ever laid eyes on: the Jaguar "leaper" cat logo concept bike, made from stainless steel.
Just how awesome is that? Link - via Modern Urban Living
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Kerouac’s On the Road Visual Maps by Stefanie Posavec
Literary Organism, a visualization of Part One of On the Road, by Jack Kerouac
Artist Stefanie Posavec took pieces from On the Road by Jack Kerouac and turned them into various maps, dissecting the literary masterpiece and converting it into a visual one:
Stefanie’s maps capture something above and beyond that of the others. Rather than mapping physical geography, her maps capture regularities and patterns within a literary space.
The pieces featured in On the Map focused on Kerouac’s On the Road. The maps visually represent the rhythm and structure of Kerouac’s literary space, creating works that are not only gorgeous from the point of view of graphic design, but also exhibit scientific rigor and precision in their formulation: meticulous scouring the surface of the text, highlighting and noting sentence length, prosody and themes, Posavec’s approach to the text is not unlike that of a surveyor. And similarly, the act is near reverential in its approach and the results are stunning graphical displays of the nature of the subject. The literary organism, rhythm textures and sentence drawings are truly gorgeous pieces.
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Jack Skellington in LEGO
Photo: Legohaulic [Flickr]
Flickr user Legohaulic is a big fan of Tim Burton and an avid LEGO hobbyist, so what better tribute to The Nightmare Before Christmas than to create this masterpiece: Jack Skellington made entirely of LEGO!
Link - via The Brothers Brick
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5 Things About Shakespeare You Didn’t Know
AskMen has a pretty nifty post about the 5 things you didn’t know about Shakespeare. Take, for instance, the word "torture" - yep, good ol’ Will invented it (well, technically he made the noun "torture" which existed at the time into the verb form):
3- Shakespeare invented "torture"
Shakespeare didn’t just invent "torture," but also "excitement," "addiction" and "savagery." Another of the five things you might not have known about Shakespeare is just how much he’s influenced the English language. Our man Will invented about 1,700 words in the English language. A remarkable number of the phrases and words we use every day first appeared in Shakespeare’s work. Shakespeare converted verbs into adjectives or nouns into verbs whenever it suited him. Amazingly, his linguistic inventions stuck, and we still use them today.
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Can Science Make a Love Spray?
Guys, are you unlucky in love? Thanks to science, there may just be hope for you yet: a love spray!
Neurobiologist Larry Young of Emory University, Georgia, explains:
Animal testing is beginning to shed light on the complex neural and genetic components of love in the same way they have led to pharmaceutical therapies for anxiety, phobias and post-traumatic stress disorders.
The behavioural scientist Professor Larry Young, of Emory University, Georgia, writing in the journal Nature, said: "For one thing, drugs that manipulate brain systems at whim to enhance or diminish our love for another may not be far away."
Experiments have already shown a nasal squirt of the hormone oxytocin enhances trust and tunes people into others’ emotions.
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Dragon Cake
Flickr user Astro-Lopithecus has a photoset of an amazing birthday cake shaped like a dragon clutching a 10-sided die. I’d venture a guess that whoever was celebrating his birthday is a D&D lover …
The Dragon Cake is made by Mike McCarey of Mike’s Amazing Cakes [warning: Flash and self-starting audio]
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For People Who Like to Make Lists
I’m a compulsive list-maker. If you look in my purse at any given time, you can usually find three different mini notebooks filled with random scribblings, lists and ideas. You don’t even know how delighted I was to come across Listography. It’s a place to keep online lists of anything your little heart desires. And you can look at random people’s lists too, which is sort of like crack for me. I see a fun list that someone has made and think that I need to make one too. It’s endless. There are very practical lists such as groceries, to-do and how to pay down debt. But it’s the very silly lists that I’m hooked on - Fictional Characters I’d Like to Date, Embarrassing Songs That I Really Love, Food I Have to Have for My Last Meal. There are even some very sweet ones - Things I Will Do With My Kids got to me a little bit.
Anyway. Have fun.
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Star Wars Matryoshka Dolls
These little dolls are adorable and clever. I want a set! There are plenty more images and close ups on artist Matt Brown’s site.
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Where are they now? Ferris Bueller & friends
Who among us hasn’t asked themselves at least once “whatever happened to the cast of Ferris Bueller’s day off”?
Well now you can find out! The link includes fascinating “then and now” pics. (I certainly think Jennifer Grey is very beautiful now post-nosejob, but wasn’t she even more beautiful before? Anyone?)
[Thanks, Gail!]
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Things You Probably Don’t Need #7
Hey, I like Abraham Lincoln as much as the next guy. Not only was he one of our greatest presidents ever, he was a fascinating man. But let’s be honest… you probably don’t need this. No one really needs this. It’s beyond creepy. Then again, it might be a great companion piece for Napoleon’s hand.
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World’s Largest Sand Carpet
This Persian rug is made of colored sand and is located beside the Straight of Hormuz. Life In The Fast Lane has some great images of the “carpet” being assembled as well as some largest sand carpets of the past and some neat sand sculptures.
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Fantastic Global Street Art
Good Magazine has a fantastic gallery of some of the best street art in the world. Some are sculptures and some are murals. The site paired up with Wooster Collective, a street art blog that has some great stuff and some just ok sauce.
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The Customer is Not Always Right
As a former retail employee, I wholeheartedly agree with that statement. And so do the people at NotAlwaysRight. I only wish I knew of this site when I actually worked retail - I could have contributed so many good stories. But there are some really funny ones even without my additions. Here’s one - it was online chat assistance, which is going to be relevant later in the story:
Customer: “Your site won’t let me get through!”
Me: “I’m sorry to hear that. Could you tell me what part of the site you were having an issue with?”
Customer: “It keeps telling me that I have the wrong password. I have my password!”
(I look up her password and use it on the site to make sure it
works.)Me: “I have tested your password and it appears to be working. Would you like me to send you an e-mail with a copy of your password?”
Customer: “NO! I have my password! It says it right here on the screen, and I typed it just like it says.”
Me: *slightly confused as to why the customer’s password would be displayed* “What password do you see on the screen?”
Customer: “cAsE sEnsitIve! I typed it the exact way that it says here! ‘Your password is cAsE sEnsitIve’!”
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Yama: 3D Pinhole Camera Made From Human Skull
Wayne Martin Belger of Boy of Blue Industries created this pinhole camera, named Yama, out of a human skull! Yama is the Tibetan God of Death:
Yama’s eyes are cast from bronze and silver with a brass pinhole in each. A divider runs down the middle of the skull creating
two separate cameras. A finished contact print mounted on copper is inserted in to the back of the camera to view what Yama saw in 3D.Yama is made from Aluminium, Titanium, Copper, Brass, Bronze Steel, Silver, Gold, Mercury with 4 Sapphires, 3 Rubies (The one at Yama’s third eye was $5000.00), Asian and American Turquoise, Sand, Blood, and 9 Opals inlayed in the Skull. The film loading system is pneumatic. A 300psi air tank in the middle of the camera powers 2 pneumatic pistons to move the film holder forward and lock it into place. The switch to open and close the film chamber is located under the jaw.
Previously on Neatorama: The Wonderful World of Early Photography
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Einstein Word Portrait
John’s post on the script of The Godfather turned into a visual art reminded me of this Einstein Word Portrait by Jeff Clark of Neoformix: Link
Previously on Neatorama: 10 Strange Facts About Einstein
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6 Year Old Boy Missed the School Bus, Took Mom’s Car Instead
Who says that video games aren’t educational? Here’s the story of one 6-year-old Virginia boy who took the family’s sedan because he missed the school bus:
The boy, whose name wasn’t released, missed the bus, took the keys to his family’s 2005 Ford Taurus and drove nearly six miles toward school while his mother was asleep, police said.
He made at least two 90-degree turns, passed several cars and ran off the rural two-lane road several times before hitting an embankment and utility pole about a mile and a half from school.
The boy told police he learned to drive playing Grand Theft Auto and Monster Truck Jam video games.
"He was very intent on getting to school," said Northumberland County Sheriff Chuck Wilkins. "When he got out of the car, he started walking to school. He did not want to miss breakfast and PE."
That boy sure is motivated to go to school! Link
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Living Calendar by Maksim Biriukov: Calendar/Clock Combo
What do you get if you combine a year’s calendar with a clock? Behold the Living Calendar by Maksim Biriukov. It displays the time, day (all 365), as well as public holidays in the year, all at once. The long hand points to the day and the short hand points to the present week and hour.
Link | Original website [in Russian]
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Really Specific Business Hours
Photo: explosive laughter [Flickr]
Flickr user explosive laughter snapped this pic of a mighty specific business hour of a "conspiracy theory headquarters" in Toronto, Canada. In that light, 9:11 makes sense, but what about the rest? Perhaps they just like Charlotte Gainsbourg’s 5:55 music album …
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Mr. Bond, Meet Mr. President
In today’s Lunchtime Quiz from mental_floss, try to match up the titles of nine 007 films with the nine men who held the office of U.S. president when those movies were initially released. This is not easy! Since I didn’t know the answers, I tried to line them up by how old they seemed, and scored only 22%. The average score so far is 49%. Good luck! Link
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New Schools Built From Cardboard Tubes
Last year’s earthquake in Sichuan province, China killed 69,000 people and flattened thousands of buildings, including schools. A team led by Japanese architect Shigeru Ban is constructing new temporary but strong school buildings using plywood and cardboard tubes.
Recycled paper tubes aren’t just useful for holding architectural blueprints. They can be molded into load-bearing columns, bent into trusses and rapidly assembled, and can be made waterproof and fire resistant. Because paper tubes are available in various thickness and diameters, they can be added to a structure to support more weight as necessary. Ban has said he hopes to build structures a few stories high.
The work is being done by Japanese and Chinese students working together. See pictures of the process, and a completed school at Treehugger. Link -Thanks, Chris Tackett!
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Elephant and Dog
(YouTube link)
A lovely story about an elephant and a dog who found each other at the Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tennessee. -via Arbroath
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Skier Suffers Exposure
A ski lift mishap at Blue Sky Basin resort in Vail, Colorado left a 48-year-old man hanging upside down without his pants on New Years Day.
It appears that the chairlift’s fold-down seat was somehow not in the lowered position, which caused the man to partially fall through the resulting gap. His right ski got jammed in the ascending chairlift, and that kept him upended since his boot never dislodged from its binding. As seen in the photos on the following pages (which were snapped by fellow skiers), the Skyline Express lift was stopped shortly after the pair’s botched boarding resulted in the man dangling from the lift. The exposed skier was stuck for about 15 minutes before Vail personnel backed the lift up and successfully dislodged the unidentified man from the four-seat chair.
Link -via YesButNoButYes
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Repainted Action Figures
Topless Robot lists The 10 Best Repainted Action Figures of All Time.
They’re the bane of many an action figure collector’s existence–repaints. That’s when a manufacturer takes an existing action figure, paints it in all-new colors and tries to pass it off as a new figure, such as “Arctic Batman.” This allows the company to squeeze a little more profit out of the expensive mold they created for the original figure. Collectors hate them, kids are indifferent to them and the figures warm the pegs. But once in a while, a figure is repainted (along with a few minor tweaks) and is passed off not as just a new figure, but a brand-new character. The results are often laughable but, once in a while, kinda cool.
Pictured is TC14, who resembles another robot we all know and love, but couldn’t be the same, because he is silver! Link -Thanks, Keith!
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Deer Visits Target
This video from Yahoo! of a deer (just a little guy) crashing through the window of an elementary school reminded me of when a deer wandered through the automatic doors at our Target in West Des Moines a couple of years ago. Such a thing would never happen now - all of the wooded area near that particular Target has been replaced with retail and apartments. But at the time, it was pretty plausible (obviously). I feel sorry for the poor thing - it can’t get any traction on those slick floors!
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Extra Giblets in Your Chicken? I Smell a Lawsuit!
Usually, consumers are mad if things are missing in the product they buy, but this class action lawsuit is about something extra:
We were reminded of that scheming today when we read about what Courthouse News Service reports may be the first federal class action based on concealment of chicken giblets. In the complaint, Perdue Farms is accused of disposing of “an enormous quantity of extra giblet parts” by a “secret practice” of stuffing extra hearts, gizzards and necks into its whole chickens, thereby “dispos(ing) of its extra giblets” and tricking customers into paying the regular per-pound price for them.[...]
But aren’t gizzards the best part? Clearly these people have never tasted a good chicken giblet gravy. Indeed, when reached for comment, Julie DeYoung, a Perdue spokeswoman, told the Law Blog: “While it is company practice not to comment on pending litigation, I can tell you the majority of our giblets complaints are about MISSING giblets. We just received the lawsuit and will review it in more detail, but we anticipate a vigorous defense.”
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GPS Tracking Watch for Kids: Is it Spying or Good Parenting?
It’s 10 PM. Do you know where your children are? Well, with this GPS tracking watch, you definitely do. Here’s the Nu.M8 digital watch that lets parents track their children’s whereabouts through a secure website (it’ll even overlay the location on Google Maps).
And to answer the obvious question: an alarm will be triggered if the watch is forcibly removed.
Is it too much or just being a prudent parent in today’s environment?
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