Geek Rug Mimics Circuit Board

This latch hook rug was obviously made by a computer nerd. On the page is an image of the circuit board it is based on -it’s amazingly well-replicated.

Link Via CraftZine

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Felted Jabba The Hut

Never before has Jabba looked so sensitive with his deep brown eyes and sweet little stuffed bunny. He’s part of the Star Wars Exhibit previously mentioned on Neatorama.

Link Via CraftZine

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Stunning Papercraft Castle

This stunning castle was created by Japanese art student Wataru Itou. It took four years of dedication to bring to fruition. It is complete with electric lights and a working train. The exhibit is called “A Castle On The Ocean” and is on display in Tokyo.

Link Via BoingBoing

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Mickey Mouse Gas Mask

It’s important to keep kids feeling comfortable and happy, even when they need to watch out for poisonous gas clouds -or at least, that must be the theory behind this Mickey Mouse gas mask sold in WWII. Paranoia and consumerism sure make for an interesting combination.

Link Via Consumerist

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What Supersonic Looks Like

It’s been over six decades since Chuck Yaeger broke the sound barrier, but photos of fighter jets hitting Mach 1 has always fascinated us. Here’s a new photo of an Air Force F-22 Raptor  aircraft breaking the sound barrier while performing aerial maneuvers in the Gulf of Alaska:

The phenomenon is not well studied. Scientists refer to it as a vapor cone, shock collar, or shock egg, and it’s thought to be created by what’s called a Prandtl-Glauert singularity.

Here’s what scientists think happens:

A layer of water droplets gets trapped between two high-pressure surfaces of air. In humid conditions, condensation can gather in the trough between two crests of the sound waves produced by the jet. This effect does not necessarily coincide with the breaking of the sound barrier, although it can.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Geekazoid.

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Who’s the Biggest Musical Icon of the Past Century?

With the passing of musical legend Michael Jackson, the game of comparative history can begin: who do you think is the biggest musical icon of the past century - Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, or Frank Sinatra?

Asylum blog has the low down comparing The King, The King of Pop, and the Chairman: Link

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Pen Spinning Club in Thailand and Other Amazing Video Clips

We’ve featured pen spinning before on Neatorama, but this activity is virtually a popular sport in Asia. There’s even a club of pen spinners [warning: self-starting audio] in Thailand made up of (all young males, as far as I can tell) pen spinning enthusiasts.

Urlesque blog has a selection of some of the neatest pen spinning tricks ever posted to YouTube. And to think that all I can do to my pen now is chew its end! Link

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Moveable Feasts

Independence Day in the United States is always July 4th. Most people just call it the Fourth of July, so moving it is out of the question. Other commemorations occur on different days in different years. Today’s Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss will test your knowledge of 13 such holidays and events. I scored 85%, since I had to guess on two of them, and got them backward. Link

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DIY Science Experiments

Popular Mechanics bought eight science kits for kids, reviewed them, and found instructions on the ‘net for replicating the same experiments with materials many people have on hand.

…homemade experiments can be just as complex and educational (while costing up to $100 less), so we found alternatives to each of the boxed kits that teach similar lessons just as well. Bottom line: Whether preassembled or drawn from kitchen cupboards, science kits can be educational and fun.

Link -via Geek Like Me

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LOLrio Kart

Developed by MITERS, a group at MIT who build things, this souped-up shopping cart can achieve speeds of up to 45 mph! I don’t know, it doesn’t look all that safe to me. Link

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Sewer Creatures

(YouTube link)
This sewer-cam video from Raleigh, North Carolina has been inspiring nausea all over the web. Deep Sea News contacted experts to find out what kind of creature this could be.

They are clumps of annelid worms, almost certainly tubificids (Naididae, probably genus Tubifex). Normally these occur in soil and sediment, especially at the bottom and edges of polluted streams. In the photo they have apparently entered a pipeline somehow, and in the absence of soil they are coiling around each other.

Read more about annelid worms and see more videos, if you have the stomach for it. Link -via a comment at Digg

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Hippo Stuck in Water Tower

A hippopotamus in Alkmaar, South Africa was desperate for a dip to escape the heat, and climbed over ten foot walls to bathe in a water tower! Once in, he couldn’t get out on his own. A farm worker spotted him -or rather, spotted two big nostrils poking out of the water.

Equipped with a hydraulic crane and a cage, hippo hunter Chris Hobkirk and his team from the Mpumalanga Tourism and Parks Association set to work. In a four-hour operation, they drained the tank and used poles to gently nudge the hippo into the 3m-long (10ft) steel cage before winching it to safety.

Mr Hobkirk – who has rescued more than 180 stranded hippos in the past six years – said it was a tricky procedure but he was glad with the outcome.

‘Maybe we got lucky with this one. In the past, I have removed hippos from small dams. In those cases, the water levels have always been much lower so this was different.’

Link -via Arbroath

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Cardiovascular Paper: Printed Anatomy by Laurent Champoussin

No, not a tattoo though undoubtedly it would make an excellent anatomically-minded example that would rival this famous skull face tattoo we had before on Neatorama. The gruesome painting is actually printed paper by Paris-based photographer Laurent Champoussin.

Vanessa Ruiz of Street Anatomy asked Laurent what inspired his art series titled Cardiovascular Paper:

I’ve always been interested by the écorché model. I was inspired by the classical representations of Andréas Vesalius, Charles Estienne or Adrian Van Den Spieghel. My idea was to play with the partial, the uncovered (open/discover) of an essential part of ourselves. I also wanted to work on the propagation, the invasion. My will was to design the model, to file down it like a texture and I hope, somewhere like a poetry.

More at Street Anatomy Blog: Link | Laurent’s website and blog - via Cakehead Loves Evil

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Fancy Fast Food

Fancy fast food takes regular old fast food and turns it into gourmet (looking) food. I’m sure it doesn’t taste as good as real four star cuisine, but it sure does look delicious. Best of all, there’s plenty of recipes so you can duplicate the efforts.

Link

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The Dark Side of Disney

Disney isn’t always the Happiest Place on Earth. The parks sometimes harbor deep, dark secrets – and we’re not talking the Haunted Mansion or the Tower of Terror. Below are a few sinister secrets Mickey doesn’t want you to know about.

Deaths

We’ve all heard the rumors that no one has ever died at a Disney park because Disney has paid officials to refrain from declaring injured or ill people dead until they hit a hospital outside of Disney property. But it’s not true. There are several incidents where the victims were reported to have died at the scene.

In 2007, a Spanish teenager died while she was riding the Rock ‘N’ Roller Coaster at Disneyland Paris. Her friends noticed she was unconscious when the ride stopped, according to the BBC, and park medics immediately rushed to the scene. There was nothing they could do, though, and she was pronounced dead by the time an ambulance could get there. Photo from DLPInfo.

In June of both 1973 and 1983, 18-year-old boys drowned in the Rivers of America. Both had stayed in the area when they weren’t supposed to - the incident in ‘73 occurred when a boy and his brother decided to stay in the park after closing and the ‘83 incident happened when a boy capsized a rubber emergency raft he had stolen from a cast-only section of the park.

In 1984, Dollie Young was riding the Matterhorn Bobsleds at Disneyland when her seatbelt became unbuckled. To this day, it’s not known how Dollie fell out of her car, but she did. She fell to the track and was hit by another car, then caught under its wheels and dragged for a bit before the ride came to a stop. She was pronounced dead at the scene due to massive head and chest injuries.

And, of course, there was the infamous “America Sings” death of 1974. An employee named Debbi Stone was working as the hostess to the show one evening when her fellow cast members were alerted to the fact that she was missing. Some reports say they noticed at some point during the evening; other reports say a guest heard Debbi’s screams and immediately told cast members. Either way, by the time she was found, Debbi had been crushed to death between a rotating theater wall and a permanent theater wall; she definitely didn’t make it to a hospital first. Photo from Yesterland.

Ashes

Even when people aren’t dying at Disney, they want their mortal remains to be forever interred at the Happiest Place on Earth. Disney doesn’t like to talk about it, obviously, but sometimes cast members spill the beans to inquiring reporters. David Koenig, author of Mouse Tales: A Behind-the-Ears Look at Disneyland, says that the Haunted Mansion has definitely been the site of a quickie memorial service at least once. A cast member told him that she had been working the ride when a group requested extra time on the ride to say a quick goodbye to a little boy who had died and loved the Haunted Mansion. She agreed, but then spotted one of the guests emptying grey ash out onto the ride. The ride was shut down so it could be cleaned up.

In 2007, a guest alerted cast members at the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction that she had seen another woman sprinkling some sort of a powdery substance into the water, and the Los Angeles Times reports that the ride was shut down the same year when a group of people managed to leave a pile of ashes in the Captain’s Quarters section of the ride.

Hidden Messages

I’ve done it, and I bet a lot of you have done it as well: pausing and rewinding and going frame-by-frame to catch hidden messages or images in certain Disney films. Some of them are really there and some of them are just products of our active imaginations. Here’s the lowdown:

Aladdin does not tell children to take off their clothes in Aladdin. It’s a scene where “Prince Ali” is trying to get up to Princess Jasmine’s room to talk to her when he comes across her tiger, Rajah. The tiger growls at him menacingly, and Aladdin says, “C’mon… good kitty. Take off and go!” while shooing the feline away with his turban. The captioning supports this argument. However, the line is whispered and not enunciated well, and in addition, it seems to be edited poorly. Snopes http://www.snopes.com/disney/films/aladdin.asp says that the same bit of dialogue seems to have been inserted twice, so the whispered line is doubly garbled. Because it was so close on the heels of The Little Mermaid controversy, people heard what they wanted to.

Speaking of which, The Little Mermaid did not contain any sexual images on purpose. There were two issues that concerned the public: first, that artwork for the movie contained a phallic images as part of a castle in the background, and second, that the priest officiating over the wedding scene near the end of the movie seems to get an erection right in the middle of the ceremony. Neither is true, according to Snopes. The phallic image was unintentional and was not drawn in by a disgruntled employee who had recently gotten laid off (the artist didn’t even work for Disney) and the “erection” is actually the priest’s knees.

So what is true? Well, there’s definitely an image of a topless woman in the 1977 movie The Rescuers. And Disney fully admits it. In fact, the image – which is a photograph, not an animated bit, and was clearly intentionally placed in the movie – was basically pointed out to the public by Disney themselves. The image occurs so fast in two single, non-consecutive frames, that a viewer would have to know exactly where to pause the movie in order to even see it. The movie was recalled in 1999 after Disney discovered the image was there; they claimed it must have been inserted in post-production. Photo from Snopes.

One that’s maybe true: Jessica Rabbit going commando in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. There’s a scene in the movie where Jessica and Eddie Valiant are thrown from a car, causing her dress to flip up very briefly. It goes fast, but people who have slowed the movie to frame-by-frame say that the way the coloring was done suggests that mischievous animators may have drawn Jessica without any undergarments. However, the coloring, which is darker than the rest of Jessica’s skin, may also suggest underwear.

And here’s a not-so-hidden image you can check out for yourself the next time you’re at Disney World – there’s a Nazi “hidden” in plain sight in a mural at the Grand Floridian resort. In the book Sabotage in the American Workplace, the artist who painted the piece says that Disney hired him to create a Great Gatsby-esque mural for the ballroom in the upscale hotel. He decided to paint a Nazi in the background of the mural to “comment on what was happening in the rest of the world while the Great Gatsbys where whittling away their hours with cocktails.” Photo from Snopes.
There are definitely more dark Disney tales – in fact, we could probably turn this into a series! What weird and/or disturbing rumors have you heard about the House of Mouse? Share in the comments, and maybe we’ll investigate for future posts.

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Dog Adopts Wolf Cub

Ulrock the rottweiler adopted this eight week old wolf cub and the pair is quickly becoming best friends. If you’ve ever wondered how well wolf cubs could get along with a domesticated dog, here’s your answer. They sleep together and even howl at the moon in unison. Little Beldaran the wolf was abandoned by his parents at only four days old.

Preserve director Heather Grierson, 49, said: ‘It’s a true love story that has touched the hearts of everyone who visits the preserve.

‘You just can’t be in a bad mood when these two are around. It’s impossible to look at them and not feel good.’

Link

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Five Fascinating Flapper Facts

Americans, including myself, seem to be obsessed with flappers -as evidenced with the plethora of flapper costumes seen every Halloween. They were amazingly revolutionary for the time of course and we even learn about them in school. But we don’t learn much about these women in school, here are five fascinating facts about the flappers of the 1920s.

Flappers Completely Changed Social Standards For Women

While many feminists deplore flappers for throwing away all the progress made by the suffragettes, they made quite a bit of progress for women in other aspects. While most people know they were the first women to actually show off their legs, cut off their hair and even wear shorts, they did much more than that. In the Victorian era, it was unheard of for a woman to go to a bar, to drink or to smoke. Bars were places for men to escape their wives.

That all changed in the twenties – and not only because of prohibition. These young women also dated around, something that was unheard of in the past. Lastly, they were some of the first women to drive cars. (Source)

Where Flappers Got Their Name

The name was widely popularized after the release of the 1920’s movie The Flapper, but there are a whole lot of differing stories about where the word came from. My favorite story is also one of the more popular tales of the time, it claims the term came from groups of girls walking around in unbuckled galoshes that flapped around as they walked. For a humorous read on Flapper footwear, you may want to read the 1922 article by The New York Times, “Flappers Flaunt Fads in Footwear.” (Source)

Like F. Scott Fitzgerald? You May Actually Like His Wife’s Writing

While F. Scott Fitzgerald was a great writer, he was not entirely original. In fact, large portions of his books were actually stolen directly from his wife’s diary. In fact, the conclusion of This Side of Paradise has a soliloquy by the protagonist Amory Blaine that is taken word for word from Zelda Fitzgerald’s journal. After their marriage, many things that Zelda said or wrote continued to find their way into Scott’s books, particularly in the Great Gatsby. In a review of The Beautiful and The Damned, she wrote:

“It seems to me that on one page I recognized a portion of an old diary of mine which mysteriously disappeared shortly after my marriage, and also scraps of letters which, though considerably edited, sound to me vaguely familiar. In fact, Mr. Fitzgerald—I believe that is how he spells his name—seems to believe that plagiarism begins at home.”

Source

Coco Chanel Single-Handedly Made Tans Fashionable
Before Coco Chanel stayed out too long one day while on vacation, fair, paper-white skin was the ideal shade for women. But she was so popular and stylish that after she accidentally received a tan on a 1923 cruise to Cannes, everyone else wanted one too. (Source)

They Weren’t Just American

French flappers outside a cafe Via Vintage Lulu [Flickr]

While commonly considered an American phenomenon, due in part to the rebellion against prohibition, flappers were more of a response to the increased independence gained by women during the first World War. As a result, many countries had flappers, including Japan, Germany, England and France. Obviously these women had far different social norms to rebel against, but the effect was much the same -short skirts, increased independence and a modernized view on sexuality. (Source)

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Hello Kitty Castle

Welcome to the Hello Kitty Castle in Taiwan. It can help take care of all of your cute needs. The gallery has some amazingly cute things in it, including food garnished with a Hello Kitty chocolate dusting.

Link Via Cute Overload

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Cats In Costumes

Whether you consider it a form of animal cruelty or just a little harmless fun, it’s hard to deny that cats look pretty cute in costumes. The gallery on Now That’s Nifty has a few fantastic feline frocks for your viewing pleasure. Click and enjoy.

Link

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Gimme A Hug

Gimme A Hug is a documentary from the Protect the Sharks Foundation.

Sharks are one of the most important top-predators in our oceans and there is still a lot we don’t understand, or even know, about this fascinating animal.

This short documentary shows one of the most mysterious phenomena in the animal world; amazing animals, showing a totally different behaviour then most people would expect.

The DVD is available for purchase with subtitles available in several languages. See the trailer at the Protect the Sharks Foundation website. Link -via the Presurfer

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How to Start and Drive a Model T

(YouTube link)
If you are ever lucky enough to get the chance to drive a Ford Model T {wiki}, keep in mind that they were a bit different from modern cars. Who knew it had three pedals, none of which was an accelerator? Henry Ford Estate volunteer Ed Hebb takes you through the process. -via Metafilter

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Playboy Bunnies Close to Extinction

Sylvilagus palustris hefneri is a now-endangered species of rabbit named in honor of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner. University of Central Florida graduate teaching assistant Rosanna Tursi is studying the genetic diversity of the species in the Florida Everglades, of which there may be only 300 rabbits remaining.

Hefneri is the most recently recognized subspecies of the marsh rabbit. It’s small with short, dark brown fur and a grayish-white belly. Discovered in 1984, the subspecies was named in honor of Hefner after his organization donated money to support fieldwork on the rabbits. Good for Hef!

His namesake bunnies live in an island environment and are dependent on specific grasses and plants for feeding, nesting and shelter. Population growth and development in their area has led to the death of the bunnies at the hands of vehicles or domestic animals. Their natural habitat also is being destroyed.

Link -via Digg

(image credit: Rosanna Tursi)

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Nails Have Feelings Too -Nail Art

It’s easy to fall in love with this photo series from Vlad Artazov. With only bent nails and some basic sets, he is able to convey a whole spectrum of human emotions. The result is beautiful and surprisingly, sadly touching. View the whole gallery to get the full effect.

Link

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Smart-Kit: Seriously Fun Online Jigsaw Puzzle Website

I *love* jigsaw puzzles but haven’t had the time to put one together since I have kids. Who has the time? (Plus, I’m sure that if I even try now pieces would be eaten forthwith by said kids). So, when Smart-Kit asked me to do a review of their online puzzles, I jumped at the opportunity.

First of all, there are limitations to a Flash-based online jigsaw puzzle: the workspace is limited and the pieces are already rightside up. But the benefits far outweigh the limitations for a casual gamer like me. For one, you’d never lose a piece! Pieces virtually snap together when you get the right ones next to each other - and no rotating necessary (so I guess that rightside up pieces is actually a benefit after all).

You can select how complicated you’d like the puzzle dimensions to be: 4×3, 8×6 (the one above), 12×9 or if you like a challenge, 16×12. See the pic above? It took me about 8 minutes to complete - just the right amount of time for a little fun break at work.

We’ve covered Smart-Kit before on Neatorama (they also have many more non-jigsaw puzzles - like the SwizzlePop! and the Hidden Object Puzzle: Find the Bear, for instance), so for a quick online fun, give ‘em a try!

Link | Smart-Kit’s Jigsaw Puzzles

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Movie Trivia: Raiders of the Lost Ark

Did you guys hear that Indiana Jones 5 is apparently in the works? Are you all as horrified as I am? If you’re like me and hated Kingdom of the Crystal Skull with a passion, then you prefer to dwell on the classics - Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Last Crusade, and yes, even Temple of Doom. Here’s some trivia to remind you of the good times.

Picture from FanPop.

The movie was filmed during the summer of 1980.

You’ve probably heard the rumors, and yes, they’re true – Indiana Jones was named after George Lucas’ dog, Indiana. He was the prototype for Chewbacca as well, so his old malamute had a pretty big impact on Lucas’ two biggest series.

“Indiana Smith?” Yep, almost, until Steven Spielberg told Lucas it just didn’t sound right. The equally-generic “Jones” was suggested and flowed much better.

According to George Lucas, almost every studio in town turned down the movie, feeling that it would cost too much money to make.

Tim Matheson and Tom Selleck both tested for Indiana Jones; Karen Allen actually screentested with Tim Matheson. Tom Selleck did very well and was the frontrunner, but had to bow out due to Magnum P.I. Harrison Ford was brought up early in the casting discussion, but George Lucas wanted to avoid casting him since he had already become so closely associated with Star Wars.

The role of Sallah was offered to Danny DeVito - he was Spielberg’s first choice - but was unable to do it because of Taxi. The job went to John Rhys-Davies instead. Picture from BlogCDN.

Indy’s leather jacket looks old and beat up, but in reality, it was brand new - and there were 10 of them. The costume director “aged” each jacket with a metal brush and Harrison Ford’s own pocket knife.

The famous hat is from Savile Row in London, a place called Herbert Johnson. The hat had a very wide brim and the crown was quite high, apparently the fashion Down Under since it was their Australian model. After a couple of fittings, it was declared the Indiana Jones fedora. When the customized hat arrived at the studio, the costume designer rolled it up and crushed it, then various members of the cast (including Harrison) took turns sitting on it to make it look like a very worn-in, well-loved hat.

Someone was actually sent out to find a mountain that specifically looked like the Paramount Studios logo mountain so they could create the opening shot of the movie. I suppose these days Lucas would have just made a CGI mountain…

There was a complication during the scene where Alfred Molina is covered in spiders – they didn’t want to move. They just sat stagnant on him, making the excitement of the scene rather… well, not exciting. They discovered that all of the spiders were male, so a female spider was put on Molina’s chest. It did the trick – the male spiders were immediately more active and started to crawl in the direction of the female.

The golden idol was based on an Incan fertility statue. Photo from FanPop.

The movie was filmed in Tunisia because it was a lot cheaper to shoot there than Egypt, and since the script never called for shots of the Sphinx or the pyramids, so they were able to get away with it. In fact, one of the scenes was shot in the exact same canyon where R2-D2 was stolen by Jawas in Star Wars.

The part where Indy watches a swordsman go through a very elaborate routine with his scimitar only to shoot him at the end of it happened because Harrison Ford really had to go to the bathroom. Indy was supposed to have a huge fight scene using his whip, but a bout of dysentery had left him weak and desperately needing the john. Because of this, someone - reports vary on whose idea it was - suggested that Indy just dispatch the dude like anyone who had a gun in his arsenal would.

Harrison wasn’t the only one who got sick – a majority of the cast and crew found themselves incapacitated at some point during filming in Tunisia. Steven Spielberg didn’t get sick because he ate only canned food from the U.K. Everyone else who ate food in the restaurants or at the hotel got horribly sick at least once during filming.

The giant boulder was Spielberg’s idea and was supposedly based on an old Scrooge McDuck cartoon called “The Seven Cities of Cibola,” where the exact same thing happens: when an idol is lifted off of its pedestal, a giant rock descends and almost kills the thief. The rock in Raiders was only made of fiberglass, but it was still very heavy and great precautions had to be taken to ensure that it could be stopped in case Harrison Ford or a stunt double tripped while the scene was being shot. Photo from Boxwish.com.

During the scene where Indy fights while the plane is rolling around, Harrison Ford actually sustained an injury when the wheels of the plane got too close and rolled right up onto his leg. It tore his ACL, but rather than submit to Tunisian hospitals, Ford wrapped it in ice and continued to shoot. He also bruised his ribs during the scene where he is dragged behind the truck.

Unlike his character counterpart, Harrison Ford isn’t afraid of snakes and had no problem working with them during the Well of Souls scene. Precautions were taken anyway - if you look closely, a reflection gives away the fact that a sheet of glass was placed between Ford and the cobra. It was a good thing, too – at one point the cobra actually sprayed venom onto the glass.

Some of the sound effects weren’t fancy at all: the sound of snakes slithering was really just the sound designer squishing his fingers through a cheese casserole, the sound of people getting punched was really a pile of leather coats being hit with a baseball bat, and the lid sliding off of the Ark was a toilet lid being slid off the back of a toilet. The sound designer was having trouble coming up with just the right sound for the rolling boulder at the beginning of the movie and ended up using the sound of a Honda Civic coasting down a gravel hill.

Marion was the writer’s grandmother-in-law’s name, and he had been mulling over a surname for a while when he came across a streetname called “Ravenwood” and loved the way the two names fit together. Photo from TheShadyCat.

The boat was actually the submarine model from Das Boot.

Although most shots were done in four takes or less because Lucas and Spielberg wanted a “quick and dirty” feel to the movie – nothing too perfect – there was one shot that took more than 50 takes. It was the scene where the monkey salutes with a “Heil Hitler” gesture. A grape was attached to fishing line and held just out of reach of the camera shot to achieve the salute, but it took a while to get it just right. It ended up being one of Steven Spielberg’s favorite moments in the movie.

The movie originally received an “R” rating because of the gruesome deaths that happen when the Ark is opened, specifically when Belloq’s head explodes. To lessen the effect, flames were superimposed over his exploding head. This earned the film a “PG” rating instead. Photo from LegalMovieDownloads.com.

Those of us who like little movie secrets know that George Lucas likes to include a reference to “1138” in all of his movies in homage to his first movie, THX 1138. You’ll find it in Raiders during the Nazi harbor scene if you listen to the numbers being read over the loudspeaker. It’s subtle, though, because the numbers are read in German – “Ein, ein, drei, acht.”

Another Star Wars nod: there’s a little hieroglyph of R2D2 visible if you don’t blink, but this is the only screenshot I can find of it. Photoshop job? What do you think? Photo from BlameItOnTheVoices.

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Video Games In Legos

This is a really creative stop motion video using Legos to play out our arcade favorites. Only 8 bit could look this good in block form.

Link Via Off World

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An Incomplete Evolution of the Cartoon Political Map

Maps have always been good visual aids for political cartoons, since there’s no question about who is referred to. BibliOdyssey takes a look at political cartoon maps of Britain and Europe through history. Twelve maps are featured, including this 1793 map by Robert Dighton (portrait artist, caricaturist, and thief). Portraying Britain as a person, often riding a fish, is a recurring theme in such maps. Link -Thanks, peacay!

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A Zoo’s Message About Pollution

Artists Christoph Steinbrener and Rainer Dempf created this art installation in the Schönbrunn Zoo in Vienna to show the potential effects our negative actions take on the evironment.

According to the artists, these scenes of ecological nightmares are “experimental set-up[s]” in which “the viewer is forced to reconsider traditional modes of animal presentation and simultaneously to question the authenticity of concepts which are restaging ‘natural’ environments while they are increasingly endangered.”

Link

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Outlet Wall Helps You Manage Cables

If you’re like me, you have a major problem with cables taking over your home life. Here’s a great, visually interesting way to overkill the solution -a whole wall of outlets.

Link

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The DM of the Rings

The DM of the Rings is a webcomic by Shamus Young which imagines the characters of The Lord of the Rings movies as players in a Dungeons and Dragons campaign who consistently refuse to stay in-character.

Link via John Meunier

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