Don’t throw away that used subway ticket! You could be holding a potential starfighter in your hands.
Artist Hubert de Lartigue was playing with his Paris Métro ticket between stops, folding it this way and that, wondering how he could give it a cool shape. He did this for six months, and discovered that with a scalpel and a folding tool, but no glue, he could transform two subway tickets into an X-wing fighter.
Lartigue says:
“I’m very proud of how it turned out and I feel like I am the author of a little masterpiece. I got to the point where I asked myself whether the Parisian metro tickets hadn’t actually been designed to enable me to one day use it as a canvas for this ‘work.’ Their proportions and even the patterns and drawings on them take part in the whole of the work. I’m not kidding, I find that there is a great underlying mystery here…”
He gives step-by-step directions for making an X-wing starfighter here.
More about Paris subway tickets and the history of the Paris Métro here.
Photo by Hubert de Lartigue
One hundred years ago today, the Prince of Abyssinia visited the British Navy battleship H.M.S. Dreadnought. The prince and his retinue took a tour of the vessel and were accorded diplomatic honors as fitting for visiting royalty. The guests spoke a language the sailors did not understand, but they figured “Bunga Bunga” was a polite greeting because the royal group used it a lot. But this wasn’t the prince of Abyssinia! The Navy learned about the hoax when it hit the newspapers.
The next day the Navy was mortified to learn that the party they had escorted around the warship had not been Abyssinian dignitaries at all. Instead it had been a group of young, upper class pranksters who had blackened their faces, donned elaborate theatrical costumes, and then forged an official telegram in order to gain access to the ship. Their ringleader was a man named Horace de Vere Cole, but the entourage also included a young woman called Virginia Stephen who would later be better known as the writer Virginia Woolf.
By February 12 the British newspapers were full of the story of the stunt. “Bunga Bungle!” the Western Daily Mercury trumpeted. For a few days the Navy was the laughingstock of Britain. Sailors were greeted with cries of “Bunga, Bunga” wherever they went. One newspaper suggested that the Dreadnought change its name to the Abyssinian.
Link -via Metafilter
See a larger photograph of the event. Link
Craftster member teriyakimoto made this knitted gas mask for a friend who thought it would be a cool way to stay warm while riding his bike in winter. It is attached to his knit cap by Velcro straps. Link -via Unique Daily
During the Cold War, Stalin and his successors built dozens of secret cities in the Soviet Union where thousands of people lived and worked, but did not exist on any map or gazetteer. One such town was Skrunda-1 in Latvia, which had originally been built to support radar installations. After Latvia became independent, the Russian government insisted on maintaining control of the town until 1998, when its last residents left, leaving it vacant. Now it’s been sold to a Russian investor for $3.1 million:
The town formerly known as Skrunda-1 housed about 5,000 people during the Cold War. It was abandoned over a decade ago after the Russian military withdrew from Latvia following the Soviet collapse.[...]
It was not immediately clear what plans the buyer had for the 110-acre property, which is located in western Latvia about 95 miles from Riga. The town contains about 70 dilapidated buildings, including apartment blocks, a school, barracks, and an officers’ club.
Built in the 1980s, Skrunda-1 was a secret settlement not marked on Soviet maps because of the two enormous radar installations that listened to objects in space and monitored the skies for a US nuclear missile attack.
Like all clandestine towns in the Soviet Union, it was kept off maps and given a code name, which usually consisted of a number and the name of a nearby city.
Link via Hell in a Handbasket | Information about the Secret Cities Program | Photo: adevarul
AbeBooks asked their booksellers to reveal what items they have found inside the books that pass through their hands. They reported many instances of discovering credit cards and banknotes, including this heartbreaker:
“A wealthy, elderly woman in my town died a few years ago and left a large book collection with many fine books, much of which wound up in my inventory. The remaining books went to a local thrift shop, including a microwave cookbook which, as it turned out, contained 40 $1000 bills. The book was purchased by someone from out of town who was idling away the time waiting for her ride. She took the money to a local bank to verify its authenticity and that was how we heard about it. She didn’t give a cent back to the thrift shop, either. A deeply frustrating experience for many, I can assure you.”
Other items have both monetary and historic value:
“Inside a volume, one of eight bought at a local garage sale, I found a charming child’s Christmas card with the inscription “Merry Christmas to Harry from …..(fairly illegible). About two years later while trying to decipher the signature, the name suddenly revealed itself….”from Frank Baum.”
Other dealers have found items such as a Mickey Mantle rookie baseball card, a golf scorecard signed by Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax, a diamond ring, and a variety of other odd and unusual items, including the inevitable… strip of bacon.
Perhaps most impressive is this report from Bookride:
Eight relief hand-coloured etchings [by William Blake] discovered by a book collector between the pages of an international rail timetable bought in the late seventies from a ‘North London book dealer’, and recently acquired by the Tate for £441,000. Apparently, the reason suggested as to why the dealer hadn’t bothered to check through the huge timetable before putting it out for sale was because it was so ‘ boring’.
What have you found? Or what have you lost? Do you use something odd as a bookmark?
Links to AbeBooks’ list and the Bookride report.
Louise Hill of Love to Cake is a London-based graphic designer and visual effects artist. That is her trade, but her passion is making fancy cakes. This sea turtle cake won her the gold medal at Britain’s 2009 Cake Show.
flickr photostream via reddit | Artist’s Website
This video is from the scene of a highway accident in Chile three weeks ago. A recovery crew managed to flip the overturned tractor trailer back upright, but didn’t think about what would happen to the truck afterward.
via reddit
Is it true that most people are introduced to gargoyles through a certain Disney film these days? If so, then perhaps a trip through the various types of gargoyle may not go amiss. Each one has a message to deliver and while that may be getting mislaid over the course of the centuries, the truth is still out there (as it were).
Gargoyles – they can be strange, bizarre, unpleasant or just plain ugly. They have been hovering around our towns and cities for centuries, for so long that it can be forgotten that they have meaning and purpose. Take a tour of the weird world of the gargoyle.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by 
An Armenian story in Russian with English subtitles. Starring the wildest animated wizard you’ve ever seen! (via Metafilter)
In the storage facilities of the Walker Art Center the process is facilitated by labeling the art as such: “Do Not Open! Box Is Art.”
One presumes that the trash is not labeled.
Check the ingredients of your food. How many times have you seen the coloring agent "carmine red"? That famous red dye that the British Red Coats used actually comes from a small aphid-like insect called the Cochineal. They live on cactus pad, drinking the sap and growing fatter until ready to harvest. It takes over 70-thousands of these little insects to produce one pound of the red dye.
The insect as a defense against predation produces carminic acid which is the substance extracted and mixed with either aluminum or calcium salts to produce “cochineal” (carmine dye.) Carmine is still used today for food coloring and in some cosmetics although other sources have replaced its use. Because of sensitive skin and allergic reaction concerns to some modern and synthetic ingredients in cosmetics and food coloring, research is reexamining the use of insect-derived carmine as a potential non-allergic non-irritant colorant again. In the past, other uses of the crimson dye were for coloring fibers (yucca, woolen and other animal fibre, etc.) that would later be woven into rugs, made into other textiles, and for painting and decoration of household items like pottery.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by 
In the 50s and 60s, scientists were already thinking about what a space station in Earth orbit might need, what it might look like. Surprisingly, many of the concepts were not that far off from reality, including a design concept that was made back in 1869. This was an Earth-based research/fantasy concept called "BRICK MOON" which was designed to be a self-contained habitat that featured many of the same requirements of a space station. Pictured is MOL, just one of nine space station concepts in this article.
This is a concept depiction of a orbiting space station that the USAF (United States Air Force) was considering in the 1960s. The intent was that a two-person crew would spend a month aboard the station before being rotated out and brought back to Earth. The orbiting station was to be called “MOL”, the Manned Orbiting Laboratory.was on the mind of men decades ago, with some surprising similarities to today’s space platforms these visionaries seemed to predict the future. A future that they could not an have possibly understood or fathomed. Ultimately, we will need a new fleet of space shuttles to get there.”
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by
Why is customer service in Paris so horribly rude? It may have roots in the French Revolution (they really do take the égalité part of the national motto "Liberté, égalité, fraternité" seriously).
Emma Jane Kirby of BBC News discovers first-hand that the customer isn’t always right in Paris:
The fact is Parisians employed in any service industry simply do not buy into the Anglo Saxon maxim, "He who pays the piper calls the tune."
The revolution of 1789 has burned the notion of equality deep into the French psyche and a proud Parisian finds it abhorrently degrading to act subserviently.
This Sunday, a Parisian friend of mine waited in line at the fruit and vegetable stall of his local market. When it was his turn to be served, he asked the seller for a kilo of leeks. "They’re at the other end of the stall," snapped the vendor waspishly. "Take a bit of exercise and get them yourself."
There is no mistaking the undertone, "I’m not your slave."
Link (Photo: AFP)
Here’s a study that will surely pour more gasoline into the debate of dog vs cat: turns out that cat owners are more likely to have college degrees than dog owners.
A poll of 2,524 households found that 47.2% of those with a cat had at least one person educated to degree level, compared with 38.4% of homes with dogs.
The study said longer hours, possibly associated with better qualified jobs, may make owning a dog impractical.
Believe what you will, but the study authors made one big error: cats don’t have owners. They have staff 
Photo: Lauren Besser
Urban artist Specter created a series of hand painted billboards that lampoons the gentrification of Brooklyn. The art is very tongue-in-cheek (don’t miss the "Ghetto Fabulous Condos"), but let me ask you this: what is wrong with gentrification? What’s so bad with cleaning up the neighborhood and raising property values?
Link – via Wooster Collective
Psst – wanna lose weight while eating all you want and doing no exercise? No, it’s not a spammy Internet ad – it’s real science! All you have to do is live a while at high altitude:
Overweight, sedentary people who spent a week at an elevation of 8,700 feet lost weight while eating as much as they wanted and doing no exercise. A month after they came back down, they had kept two-thirds of those pounds off. The results appear in the Feb. 4 Obesity. [...]
The scientists ferried 20 overweight, middle-aged men by train and cable car to a research station perched 1,000 feet below the peak of Germany’s highest mountain, Zugspitze. During the week-long stay, the men could eat and drink as much as they liked and were forbidden from any exercise other than leisurely strolls. The team measured the men’s weight, metabolic rate, levels of hunger and satiety hormones before, during, and after their mountain retreat.
After a week up high, the subjects lost an average of 3 pounds. A month later, they were still 2 pounds lighter. The sceintists’ data showed this was likely because they ate about 730 calories less at high altitudes than they did at normal elevations. They may have felt less hungry, in part, because levels of leptin, the satiety hormone, surged during the stay, while grehlin, the hunger hormone, remained unchanged. Their metabolic rate also spiked, meaning they burned more calories than they usually did.
A high-altitude weight loss strategy could be viable, though studies have shown peoples’ appetites bounce back after about six months at high elevation, Leissner said. “If you could do intermittent periods for one week, then go down, and then go back up, this might actually be helpful.”
Link (Photo Stephan A [Flickr])
Photo: VVORK
This Steven Shearer’s art piece, titled Geometric Healing Cell for Youth – Model III (2007) reminds me of two things: first, a Borg space ship, if a Borg space ship were made from copper plumbing.
And second, the Redneck Pool Heater, a BBQ grill modded by Todd Harrison and his daughter Veronica Harrison into a DIY pool heater. More BBQ stuff: Top 10 Coolest BBQ Grills (And Then Some!)
This. Is. Awesome! Behold, the Gear Ring by Glen Liberman of Kinekt Design. It’s available in a few standard ring sizes and in limited quantities:
The Gear Ring is made from high quality matte stainless steel. It features six micro-precision gears that turn in unison when the outer rims are spun (as can be seen in the video).
Hit play or go to the company’s website: Link
Found at Cliff Pickover’s always excellent Reality Carnival. It took me a while to get it!
Previously on Neatorama: The Math Book: Milestones in the History of Math
Italian designer and architect Duilio Forte designed and built his own house: a suspended folly, made in wood, that floats over the periphery of Milan. As other artists and architects before him, Forte overlaps life and creative work, generating a visionary and fascinating set of works, which are slowly and progressively morphing, adapting themselves to time and change. As Forte stated his house is “more similar to a bird’s nest than a cold concrete box.”
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by 
Eugene Hsu, who holds a Ph.D. in computer science from MIT, is looking for a job. So to impress prospective employers, he made his curriculum vitae with Microsoft Paint. Hsu also talks about his friend’s overly-affectionate dog, his love for all drinks that are orange (except for carrot juice) and that he is a robot from the 2478 sent back in time to kill you. It’s a trippy and fanciful work of job-hunting throughout.
Scientists have built a clock that is 100,000 times more accurate than the atomic clock currently used for establishing the official time around the world. It was developed by a team led by Chin-wen Chou of the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado:
The quantum-logic clock, which detects the energy state of a single aluminum ion, keeps time to within a second every 3.7 billion years. The new timekeeper could one day improve GPS or detect the slowing of time predicted by Einstein’s theory of general relativity.[...]
Chou’s team is one of several racing to build an atomic clock that can replace the current international standard, the cesium fountain clock. The cesium clock loses one second every 100 million years. Chou’s is not the first quantum-logic clock, but his uses aluminum and magnesium ions, which makes it twice as precise as its predecessors that used aluminum and beryllium.
To keep time, quantum-logic clocks measure the vibration frequency of UV lasers. Unfortunately, the best lasers we can build veer off their normal frequency by about one tick every hour, Chou said. To keep the laser’s timekeeping precise, its vibration must be anchored to something much more stable.
Pictured above is Chou with his quantum logic clock.
Link | Photo: J. Burrus/NIST
We’re collaborating with our pals over at ViewBug to create what may be the easiest contest you’ll ever win ($100 for a selected photo, $25 for tweeting photos):
Take a photo through your window. Show your city through your house, office or car window in a creative and artistic way. One $100 Winner will be selected by ViewBug member’s votes and our judges.
For all of you tweeters:
1. Tweet the name of your favorite photo in the contest. In your tweet, include this link, http://www.viewbug.com/photo-contest/812. Thats it! Judges will pick out a tweeted photo and award the tweeter and owner of the photo $25 each.
Link – Thanks Ori!
The game Record Tripping uses only your mouse, and mostly just the scroll wheel. Figure out your goal as you go along, which gets more difficult in the upper levels. The graphics are nice, but you might want to turn the sound down if you find it as distracting as I did. Link -via b3ta
File under feel-good law enforcement post of the day- these fantastic high heeled shoes. Design by Tim Cooper, also available in Lamborghini for fun chase scenes.
Having solved all serious crimes, New York City Department of Education focused its might to quash the scourge of doodling in today’s school.
Here’s what doodling on a school desk with erasable marker will get you: a perp walk in cuffs!
Alexa Gonzalez was scribbling a few words on her desk Monday while waiting for her Spanish teacher to pass out homework at Junior High School 190 in Forest Hills, she said.
"I love my friends Abby and Faith," the girl wrote, adding the phrases "Lex was here. 2/1/10" and a smiley face.
But instead of simply cleaning off the doodles after class, Alexa landed in some adult-sized trouble for using her lime-green magic marker.
She was led out of school in cuffs and walked to the precinct across the street, where she was detained for several hours, she and her mother said.
Another hardened criminal off the street! Good job, New York. Good job. Link
Sport Pong is an experimental game in which a pong board is projected onto a flat surface. Players use their hands and feet to move virtual pieces around the playing space, trying to score a goal against the opposing team’s wall.
via DudeCraft | Official Website | Previously on Neatorama: Pong Prom
Sumedicina is a short story by Jana Lange and Kim Asendorf told with the modern medium of infographics. It’s about a scientist who works for a biotech firm called Sumedicina, which secretly creates and unleashes viruses on the world — and then sells the only cures. The caption for the above infographic reads:
John has worked for 17 years at Sumedicina. His salary rose steadily. But with the increasing responsibility, his hair became measurably less.
The easiest way to read the story is to go to the link, which is the flickr set for the story, and view the slides sequentially.
Link via Fast Company | Official Website
From the blog Today I Found Out, here’s something I bet you didn’t know about 7-11’s Double Big Gulp:
Today I found out that the 7-11 Double Big Gulp holds about twice the amount of fluid than the average adult human’s stomach. The average adult human’s stomach can hold reasonably comfortably approximately 32 ounces at any given time. The Double Big Gulp holds about 64 ounces of soda or Slurpee.
Getting drugs sure got a whole lot easier for Belleville, Washington Illinois residents. The police there place signs to let everybody know exactly where to buy them!
The police have only two signs, and when they use them at a location, it’ll likely only be for a day, and only during daytime hours. However, the sign will be up again on West H Street today because police used
it for only part of Wednesday. The signs are heavily weighted, which police expect will deter people from stealing them.When asked whether he thinks the signs will advertise where people can buy drugs, Sax said that those buying the drugs probably already knew to get them there in the first place.
Got
a neat story? Share it with the world by writing your very own Neatorama
blog post with the Upcoming
Queue. Who knows, you might just win something ... 
