Katrina recommends getting one 1.5 quart carton of ice cream, but I'd suggest two because you'll probably eat one while preparing this dish. It's surprisingly simple to make: just ice cream, flour and sprinkles. Mix them, pour the batter into a Bundt pan and bake.
If you give a kid your iPhone, she will ask you to use your camera. When you say okay, she will take dozens and dozens of pictures of other people's feet. Some will be her brother's feet.
Those feet will remind her of her feet and she will take dozens and dozens of pictures of her own feet.
Taking pictures of her own feet will remind her that she doesn't like wearing shoes and she will ask to take off her shoes. You will tell her no, but she will sit on the ground and take them off anyway. Your iPhone will be left laying in the dirt as you struggle to get the kids shoes back on.
Putting the shoes back on will remind the kid of feet and she will ask you to play with your iPhone.
Well, this is silly, but you might want to give it a try for laughs. Petswitch allows you to easily put your features on your pet's face. Or if you don't have a pet, there's a gallery of pet pictures you can select from. It helps to make sure the two pictures combined are facing the same direction, and pay attention to the tilt. Shown here are my eyes and mouth on my cat Marshmallow. Link -via b3ta
Therapists didn't think much of Jacob Barnett's future. But his mother saw him demonstrate a prodigious memory, pattern recognition skills and an intuitive grasp of astrophysics:
One day, his mom took him stargazing. A few months later, they visited a planetarium where a professor was giving a lecture. Whenever the teacher asked questions, Jacob’s little hand shot up and he began to answer questions — easily understanding complicated theories about physics and the movement of planets.
Jacob was just 3-1/2 years old.
His mom realized that Jacob might need something that the standard special education curriculum just wasn’t giving him.
So Kristine decided to take on the job herself.
Now that's good parenting.
Link -via It's Okay to Be Smart
(Image: BBC)
As much as Disco talks, it's a good thing he knows a lot of different phrases. He jumps from one pop culture reference to another, sometimes garbling them a little, just enough to make you laugh! -via Tastefully Offensive
Image: Annette
Shaff/Shutterstock
The old way of multiplying a dog's age in human years by 7 is just not cutting it anymore. To get at your dog's true age, follow this formula:
For first two years:
9 years per human year for the first two years for small dogs
10.5 years per human year for the first two years for medium sized dogs
12.5 years per human year for the first two years for large dogsFor years 3+:
Small: Dachshund (Miniature) 4.32, Border Terrier 4.47, Lhasa Apso 4.49, Shih Tzu 4.78, Whippet Medium 5.30, Chihuahua 4.87, West Highland White Terrier 4.96, Beagle 5.20, Miniature Schnauzer 5.46, Spaniel (Cocker) 5.55, Cavalier King Charles 5.77, Pug 5.95, French Bulldog 7.65
Medium: Spaniel 5.46, Retriever (Labrador) 5.74, Golden Retriever 5.74, Staffordshire Bull Terrier 5.33, Bulldog 13.42
Large: German Shepherd 7.84, Boxer 8.90
Read more about the reasoning behind the new formula over at this post by Ben Carter of the BBC News: Link
The door to this toilet stall in Vienna's Cafe Diglas is transparent. Step inside, flip a switch, and the door becomes opaque. How does it work? Can you figure it out?
-via Oddity Central | Photo: Catherine Motuz
The natural gas supplier Energy West distributes scratch-and-sniff cards to its customers so they can learn to recognize the smell of a gas leak. That backfired in Great Falls, Montana. When a batch of expired cards was discarded, they were picked up by a garbage truck that compressed them with the other trash, which released the smell to the entire town as the truck traveled its route on Wednesday.
All the cards combined to make a very strong smell, so as the garbage truck drove around downtown, it left behind the smell people think of as natural gas.
“It’s really, really potent,” said Jamie Jackson, a battalion chief for Great Falls Fire/Rescue.
The smell wafted into downtown buildings, so emergency crews responded to several reports of gas leaks Wednesday morning, and numerous buildings were evacuated.
Workers still were checking for possible gas leaks at noon “to make sure two things didn’t happen at once.” Workers followed the garbage trucks out to the dump and went through those loads of garbage after they were dumped.
“There’s no problem with contamination,” Bohr said, and the smell samples “can be buried with normal garbage.” He said 25,000 of the samples were sent out at one time.
The gas company has apologized for the situation. Link
Are you looking for the perfect outfit for your favorite little buckaroo? You need the Baby Cowboy Layette Set from the NeatoShop. This adorable 2-piece set features a soft cap shaped like a cowboy hat and cowboy themed body suit. The comfy one piece body suit will make your little whipper snapper look like they are wearing a checkered shirt, jeans, belt, and cowboy boots. Yeehaw!
Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Baby & Tot items.
ATM
fraud schemes are not uncommon, but this one perpetrated by a global network
of hackers stood out for its sheer size: thieves drained $45 million from
banks in just 10 hours, by drawing money from ATMs in 36,000 separate
transactions.
Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch, who called the theft "a massive 21st-century bank heist," announced the case Thursday in New York.
Here's how it worked:
Hackers got into bank databases, eliminated withdrawal limits on pre-paid debit cards and created access codes. Others loaded that data onto any plastic card with a magnetic stripe — an old hotel key card or an expired credit card worked fine as long as it carried the account data and correct access codes.
A network of operatives then fanned out to rapidly withdraw money in multiple cities, authorities said. The cells would take a cut of the money, then launder it through expensive purchases or ship it wholesale to the global ringleaders. Lynch didn't say where they were located.
The bad news is that cybersecurity experts say that more attacks like these are coming: Link (Photo: US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York)
Until the words emerged from my mouth, I never imagined that I would ever utter the phrase, "Is there baby poop on my face?"
Lunarbaboon smiles because he knows what's coming.
Google Earth put images from LandSat satellites together to create time-lapse images of our changing Earth. You can see how some places have changed dramatically over the past 30 years, such as the Amazon, where agricultural plots and towns are carved out of the rainforest (shown here); Las vegas as it grows; retreating glaciers; the Aral Sea drying up; and Saudi Arabia, where irrigation is making farms bloom. Link -via Boing Boing
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Our pal Walyou has compiled their favorite stuff from the NeatoShop into a neat gallery post. See which one is your favorite: 50 Cool Little Knick-Knacks To Have Around In A Geeky Home - Thanks Fede!
Ze Frank narrates the entries of a cat's diary. This is a bit like Henri, the Existential Cat, with an added dollop of Ze's craziness. Watch for the sand cat at 2:27. -via Viral Viral Videos
Marc Derepentigny has created what is possibly the coolest fan-made Transformers costume ever! The 7-foot suit comes complete with servo-actuated claws, moving LED eyes and smoke thrusters.
Our pal Yan of Geeks Are Sexy found out that he lives nearby and went over to interview him:
Marc has been building costumes as far as he can remember, even dating back to his early childhood. It first started with cardboard and hot glue, eventually evolving into styrene plastic and Crazy Glue, which is what the robot is made of. He estimates the time it took him to build it at two years, with around two hours of work per day, and a total cost of about $2000.
Read more over at Geeks Are Sexy (don't miss the video clip!): Link
The improvised campgrounds around music festivals are often covered with garbage when festival goers leave. To encourage tidiness and promote its new line of trash bags, the Glad company asked people to camp in tents made from those trash bags. When participants are ready to leave, they could pack their garbage into the tents for easy disposal.
You can watch a promotional video at the link.
Photographer Mark Laita's series "Created Equal" puts seemingly opposite people side-by-side in portraits. When you look closely, the staging shows them to have common elements that make them appear eerily similar. See twenty of the pairs at Flavorwire. Link
These construction workers in Thailand must drive a beam into the ground. They don't have a machine to do the job, so they dance on a crossbeam--with musical accompaniment--until they've pounded the beam into position.
-via The Presurfer
State governments have a lot of people on the payroll. There are legislators, judges, social workers, inspectors, police, and the educational system, from elementary school to state universities. Deadspin looked at the records and determined the highest-paid employee on each state's public payroll.
Based on data drawn from media reports and state salary databases, the ranks of the highest-paid active public employees include 27 football coaches, 13 basketball coaches, one hockey coach, and 10 dorks who aren't even in charge of a team.
Those "10 dorks" are also university employees: chancellors, presidents, or deans (and then there's Nevada). At the link, you'll find more information about where the money for the coaches comes from, and where it might otherwise go. Link -via Digg
The level of detail in this cake by Pirikos Cake Design is amazing. Even Wile E. Coyote's iconic blueprint plans are legible. Alas, I think that he will be any more successful this time.
Why don't all poison dart frogs look the same?
(Image credit: Flickr user William Wan)
Nothing says "STAY AWAY!" to a predator like a tasty-looking creature that's a little too flashy. Bright colors and crazy patterns are nature's skull and crossbones, a warning to the carnivorous to look elsewhere for meals. Toxic animals usually have uniform markings: Each member of a species looks the same. Monarch butterflies bear the same patterns; puffer fish all puff up in the same way. But there's one animal that ignores this advice completely: the poison dart frog. These deadly amphibians have developed endless combinations of shades and markings, making it a challenge for hungry birds and snakes to keep track of their patterns. If the idea of being visibly toxic is to be as obvious as possible, why would a single species of frog maintain such an extensive wardrobe? That's the question that had Mathieu Chouteau sweating in the Peruvian Amazon as fastened 1,800 clay frogs to rainforest leaves.
(Image credit: Flickr user MoleSon²)
Back in 2009, Chouteau, a biologist from the University of Montreal, became obsessed with this evolutionary puzzle. "For the longest time, I've been fascinated by the phenomenon of local adaptation," he says. But because the varieties of poison dart frog patterns are so many and, more importantly, occur so geographically close to one another, they struck Chouteau as particularly odd. He wondered whether different types of local predators were somehow responsible for the variations.
Why did Caleb Kraft build a massive version of the predatory plant from the Super Mario Bros. franchise? Because he could. A better question: why aren't we all building our own?
Kraft's plant has both indoor and outdoor variants. The outdoor version uses compressed air to shoot powdered creamer 6-10 feet into the air, then ignites the creamer. Obviously he wouldn't want to do that indoors. That's why he also has an indoor version that uses butane to shoot flames about 2-3 feet into the air.
You can watch a video of it in action at the link.
What's fat cat Maru doing these days? Here he is in the bathtub, but there's no water. He's discovered that the tub plug goes round and round, but it doesn't come out. -via HuffPo Green
DeviantART member sp00ntaneous carves these amusing forms by hand. I'm especially impressed by the snake, which must have required a lot of careful planning.
Florida criminals beware. Alligators appear to be on the side of local law enforcement.
Twenty-year-old Bryan Zuniga fled during a routine traffic stop. While attempting to elude police he was attacked by an alligator.
A few hours later, he was found at a local hospital and was being treated for puncture wounds to his face, arm, and armpit area, the sheriff's office said. He told authorities about the gator attack.
NBC6 has more: Link
Photo: Pinellas County Sheriff's Office
I'm heading down to Guatemala because that's where you can get this pizza shaped like a donut. It's on sale at the Domino's establishments in that country. Fill the hole with chicken wings? I was thinking about bourbon-flavored meringue. But that's just me.
Over on the Neatorama Twitter account, we try hard to follow people back and actually respond to Tweets, but if you're on Twitter, you know how overwhelming that can be. If you ask me, it's also overwhelming trying to figure out new people to follow and, most importantly, unfollowing people who aren't following you.
But we're tackling the chaos with a new amazing tool called ManageFlitter, which helps you handle all the issues I just mentioned. You can plug in a Twitter handle, like @neatorama, and follow all the people we follow in just a few clicks. You can also see who follows us and, of course, unfollow all the people who aren't following you - again, in a few clicks.
And by the way, if you're not following us, don't you think it's high time you did? Don't you want to be in the same company as this guy below?
If you want to discourage your teenager from texting while driving, make him or her drive a car with a manual transmission. A driver who has to work the gearshift constantly must stay focused. Seattle's NBC News affiliate describes how one local family uses this approach:
Riley's parents took notice of all those messages about the risks of using a phone while driving - too many sad stories. And while they trust their son, they're not taking any chances.
Riley has a smart phone, but when he gets in the car, it goes into a compartment. Blue Tooth? That might come later. But the car forces Riley to keep one hand on the wheel, and the other on the stick, especially in city traffic.
(Photo: cmonville)
