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In just a blink of an eye, April is almost over. May begins on Tuesday with International Worker’s Day, which is like Labor Day for the entire world. When I was a kid, May the first meant we no longer had to wear shoes outside (Mom’s rule). This Friday is Star Wars Day (“May the Fourth be With You”). Saturday brings us the Kentucky Derby. And the rest of the month we’ll be busy with Mother’s Day, Victoria Day, Memorial Day, graduation, school vacation, garden planting, and generally enjoying the return of good weather. But before we get too excited about the future, let’s take a look back at some of the good stuff that happened at Neatorama this week.
The biggest post of the week was Married… With Children Around the World.
Eddie Deezen commemorated The Last Days of Lucille Ball on the anniversary of her death Thursday.
Joe McCarthy’s Joke was a little history lesson from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader.
A Tribute to Professor Lipscomb was an affectionate yet funny memorial from The Annals of Improbable Research.
Mental_floss magazine gave us 14 Essential Talking Points for the Constitution Enthusiast.
Our social networking guru David Israel made a video this week on how to make an Apple Puzzle that landed on NeatoBambino.
In this week’s What Is It? game, the mystery object is a lid reformer, use to repair a damaged jar lid. Honestly, I have a few of these old zinc lids, and I can just imagine a world where one would have a special tool to repair them when they get bent instead of buying new jar lids every year like we do now. You can see a picture of it in action at the What Is It? blog. No one got it right this week; it was a hard one! The funniest answer came from Cori Philips, who said, “We see this every Thanksgiving at my house – It’s a ‘Mom plays favorites’ pumpkin pie slicer. I never got the good “half.” siiigh.” That’s good for a t-shirt from the NeatoShop! The rest of the answers are worth looking through, too.
The most commented-on post of the week was One Third of Waiters Consciously Provide Poor Service to Black Customers. Coming in second was The Flight From Conversation, and our features on Joe McCarthy and Married… With Children tied for third.
Which social networking site is your favorite? Neatorama is there! Be sure to check our Google+ page and our Facebook page every day for extra content, contests, discussions, videos, and links you won’t find on our main page. Also, our Twitter feed will keep you updated on what’s going around the web in real time. And Neatorama is part of Pinterest now, too!
Jake Fleisher wants to throw his acting hat in the ring and land a role in a Hollywood movie, preferably a sci-fi flick that is worthy of his considerable thespian talents.
Watch him work his magic on this audition tape, which demonstrates why he shouldn’t rule out acting in a direct-to-TV movie made for the Syfy channel. Perhaps Sharktopus 3 is holding auditions for a leading man?
–via Nerd Bastards
Why does something called Skywalking have nothing to do with Luke or Leia, or Star Wars for that matter? Because it’s dumb, that’s why. Skywalking is not the same as Planking, so don’t even go there kiddies.
But that doesn’t stop “daredevils” from risking their lives for attention and internet acclaim by Skywalking from such great heights that I tremble at the thought of looking down from way up there.
Not that I have a phobia or anything, it just isn’t natural for people to be up that high without a net or a parachute!
–via Gizmodo
This camera doesn’t want to simply duplicate whatever you see through the viewfinder, it would rather describe the whole scene to you via text.
Created by Matt Richardson to explore the possibility of adding metadata to digital photos, it requires a team to analyze each photo, who then sends the description back via text 3 to 6 minutes later.
It’s safe to say that the descriptive camera won’t be replacing traditional photographic equipment anytime soon, but it does have the distinction of being the strangest, and arguably the most useless, bit of tech I’ve seen in quite some time.
Hit the link if you want to find out more about the ideas behind this conceptual gadget, and how the whole process really works.
Link –via DesignTAXI
Some crafty DIYer made this awesome Star Trek inspired phaser in his garage, or perhaps he attached a carefully tweaked laser pointer to a toy phaser.
Regardless of how it came into existence it pops balloons without burning a hole in the wall, it’s capable of causing massive eye damage and makes a really cool noise.
And I guarantee you’ll be looking for this guy and his phaser thingy when the balloon armies begin taking over the Earth. Set phasers to pew-pew-pop!
–via BoingBoing
This little guy is too cool for a shell, and decided to skip all that egg nonsense and hatch the old fashioned way-inside his mother after a 21 day incubation period.
He didn’t have to worry about becoming an omelette, or being used in a high school Biology class as baby training, and since his birth took his mother’s life he’s taken over the responsibility of lording over his siblings with an iron beak.
Look for him to become the ruler of all Sri Lankan chickens within the next year, and vote Stripey if you know what’s good for you!
Link –via Geekologie
Every super powered action movie has a handful of scenes in common-preparing for battle scene with dramatic music, revealing yourself to the world scene with epic music, and battle scene with bad guy with dramatically epic music.
Don’t believe me? Check out this mashup created by editor sleepyskunk and you’ll become a believer. Sleepy has also included a full list of the movies he used on the video’s YouTube page, so you can check out the original awesomeness for yourself.
–via I Watch Stuff
Getting to Oz used to be quite an ordeal (traveling by tornadoes ain’t what it used to be!), but if your travel brings you to places that made you realize you aren’t in Kansas anymore, you need this Oz Passport Pocket Notebook to keep a journal.
It’s also great as a convenient to-do list (1. Visit Emerald City, 2. Find Wizard) and the perfect gift for any Wizard of Oz fans.
Link | See all Wizard of Oz items
See also:
Wonderland Passport – Pocket Notebook
Neverland Passport – Pocket Notebook
Hell Passport – Pocket Notebook
This cardboard creation by Bartek Elsner sure brings new meaning to metered Internet! Behold the Internet EX30, which you can use to regulate how much cats versus (ahem) other things that flow into your home’s portion of the series of tubes known as the Internet: Link - via Nerdcore
You already smell like a library. Now, thanks to the coffee company Intelligensia Coffee, you can taste a librarian without getting slapped:
The Librarian’s Blend is named for that person who always told you to keep quiet when you were studying. This blend is representative of the soul of the librarian: steady, reassuring, and always there with that slight edge of eccentricity. It has a bold base with a bit of sparkle. Here’s to good reading.
Another flavored offered by the company is “Honey Badger.” It’s a bit more vigorous.
Link -via Annoyed Librarian | Image: Unshelved
I’ve kept a special place in my heart for Soundwave. He seems…well, competent. Unlike so many other Decepticons. It’s jarring that a highly advanced robot transforms into an audio cassette player. But sometimes watching Transformers requires a suspension of disbelief.
So does this excellent action figure by Airmax, which combines Soundwave’s intelligence with Cobra Commander’s ability to screech “Retreat!”
Link -via Comics Alliance | Artist’s Website
According to Ken Segall, the author of Insanely Simple: The Obsession that Drives Apple’s Success, Steve Jobs devised an outlandish scheme to promote the iMac. Jobs would dress as Willy Wonka from Charlie & The Chocolate Factory and give a lucky winner a tour of Apple’s facilities:
Steve’s idea was to do a Willy Wonka with it. Just as Wonka did in the movie, Steve wanted to put a golden certificate representing the millionth iMac inside the box of one iMac, and publicize that fact. Whoever opened the lucky iMac box would be refunded the purchase price and be flown to Cupertino, where he or she (and, presumably, the accompanying family) would be taken on a tour of the Apple campus.
Steve had already instructed his internal creative group to design a prototype golden certificate, which he shared with us. But the killer was that Steve wanted to go all out on this. He wanted to meet the lucky winner in full Willy Wonka garb. Yes, complete with top hat and tails.
Link -via Super Punch
Anyone
who speaks a second language can tell you that there are foreign words
that do not have exact translation in English (and vice versa).
Sometimes it's hard work to explain the words, but it can be fun ... especially if you use science fiction and fantasy novels to explain them, like Esther Inglis-Arkell did for io9.
Take, for example, the Sanskrit word "maya" and how it relates
to V
for Vendetta
The Meaning: This word is one that could be applied to a lot of protest movements and many political speeches. It refers to belief — the often unfortunate belief — that the symbol of a thing is the same as the thing itself. It's the, "Ceci n'est pas une pipe," of the literary world.
The Work: V for Vendetta is a work that plays with symbolism and how symbolism becomes real in the eyes of the populace. The eponymous V is armed with a mountain of symbols, from the letter and roman numeral of his name to a particular kind of rose to London buildings to the Guy Fawkes mask that he always wears. Whether this mistaken belief — that a guy playing around with cops and bombs can free a whole country — would actually lead to the kind of sweeping social change depicted in the book is up to you to decide.
Previously on Neatorama: More on untranslatable words
When street artist Filthy Luker goes to work, invisible giants deface walls, tentacled monsters burst out of buildings and trees sprout googly eyes. Luker lives in a mad world, but a fun one.
Previously: 12 Fantastic Architectural Art Installations
It boggles the mind to think about typesetting in Asian languages with the huge number of different characters! But still, the world’s first moveable type was invented in China, centuries before Gutenberg’s printing press. Master custom printer Takuma Nakagawa tells about storing and retrieving Japanese characters:
“You have to remember each place for each word – it’s about 400,000 characters, can you imagine!.. Too many. Some of them are set in alphabetical order, and then kanji characters are categorized for each kind. It’s hard to remember it.”
Read more about the moveable type process and see pictures of Japanese type sets at Dark Roasted Blend. Link
(Image credit: All Right Kou Bou)
This is a whole, uncooked egg, minus the shell. To make one of your own, soak an egg in vinegar for two days. The acetic acid in the vinegar will break down the shell while hardening the contents.
Link -via TYWKIWDBI | Photo: Flickr user gimsling
Illustrator Ben Juwono of Hardly Working Blog tells us how to draw a chihuahua. You got that, Neatoramanauts? Link - via Super Punch
Scrooge McDuck, that great genius of anatine finance, is fond of diving into his vast piles of money. No doubt all of us would like to do likewise. So how much would it cost? Matt Powers, whose qualifications include being “good at making up fake math”, crunched the numbers:
Looking at some of the best pictorial evidence of the McDuck vault, it is evident that this large pile of gold on the left appears to be five feet tall. This is deduced under the assumption that the average duck 14 inches tall, which is then used comparatively to quantify the pile (5 ft = 4.3 duck heights). With a little calculus and graph-work, the rough integral can pinpointed to y=-x2-1x+5. This equation puts every “x” and every “y” value at exactly one inch, as seen below.
When the area under the curve is calculated (from x=-3 to x=5), it yields roughly 46 square inches. The assumption will be made here that one cubic inch is roughly one ounce of gold. To convert that into a dome shape the value is simply cubed, which becomes 97,366 ounces. Given that 1 ounce of gold is roughly $5.00, it can extrapolated that each large pile of gold in the vault is worth $486,830.
Link -via Joe Carter | Image: Disney
Ah, Bohemian Rhapsody, is there anything it can't do? It works as a theme music for the ride to jail after a drinking binge, magical song by a Starship captain, and now, as the family song on the ride to school.
Check out this cute clip by YouTube southlandification, who wrote:
It has become a morning habit to sing Bohemian Rhapsody on the way to school in the morning. Depending on traffic, we can usually start the song as we pull out of the driveway, and pull into the school just as the song ends.
Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - via Yahoo! Screen
That
GPS unit on your car sure is fancy, but pigeons have got you beat: they
have GPS built right into their brain!
Researchers have spotted a group of 53 cells within pigeons' brains that respond to the direction and strength of the Earth's magnetic field.
The question of how birds navigate using - among other signals - magnetic fields is the subject of much debate.
These new "GPS neurons" seem to show how magnetic information is represented in birds' brains.
This polar bear does a handstand underwater. Why? Because he can, and the humans watching him probably can’t.
-via Marginal Revoloution
Suddenly, I understand how enzymes work! Via CubicleBot
If
you're (factually) wrong, it turns out that you'd remember the correct
information much longer if at the beginning, you're convinced that you're
right. Actually, the more convinced you are, the longer you'd remember
the correction.
That's the hypercorrection effect - so in other words, it's kind of like the wronger you are, the smarter you get.
Now, scientists have shed some lights on the brain process involved:
To understand hypercorrection, says cognitive psychologist Janet Metcalfe at Columbia University, "suppose I ask you, 'What is the capital of Canada ?' and you say 'Toronto. ' I say, 'How confident are you?' and you say, 'Very highly confident.' When I then tell you that actually the capital is Ottawa, you're very likely to remember it— not just a few minutes later but weeks later, and maybe for much longer, we think."
Scientists reason that in hypercorrection, after people discover that ideas they felt very sure about were not in fact correct, the surprise and embarrassment they feel makes them pay special attention to alternative responses about which they felt less confident . People then go on to take the corrected information to heart, learning from their errors.
"In contrast, if I asked you a question to which you gave a not-very-confident answer, like, perhaps, 'What color does amethyst turn when it is heated?' and you say, 'blue' with low confidence, when I tell you that it's actually yellow, you're not very likely to remember it," Metcalfe says.
Ice Cream Sandwich iPhone 4/4S Case – $10.79
Are you looking for a deliciously fun phone cover for your iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S? You need the Ice Cream Sandwich iPhone 4/4S Case from the NeatoShop. This sweet case is is made from impact resistant ABS plastic.
Don’t forget Mother’s Day is coming. The the Ice Cream Sandwich case makes a irresistible Mother’s Day gift for any sweet-toothed Mom.
Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more Mobile Phone & Tablet Gadgets.
off
Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch went into foreclosure a few years ago, and was sold off in pieces. But before that happened, urban explorers Scott Haefner and Jonathan Haeber sneaked in to document the amusement park in photographs for posterity. See 25 pictures from their night in Neverland at Environmental Graffiti. Link
(Image credit: Scott Haefner)
What?!
Nutella isn't healthy? Mom Athena Hohenberg claimed that she was duped
into thinking that the popular chocolate hazelnut spread was healthy for
her daughter.
So, she sued ... and won!
Have you bought a jar of Nutella in the past four years? Were you under the impression, as you slathered the creamy hazlenut spread onto your crackers or scooped large spoonfuls of it from the jar directly into your mouth, that you were indulging a health food craving? Well, you could soon find yourself at least $4 wealthier.
Yes, that's right. Ferrero, the company that manufactures the highly addictive yet apparently not terribly healthy spread, has settled a $3 million lawsuit filed in February 2011 by San Diego mom Athena Hohenberg.
Hohenberg, it seems, believed that Nutella was a great dietary choice for her four-year-old daughter. She claimed the company's advertising -- particularly giving TV-ad viewers the idea that Nutella was part of a nutritious breakfast [...] -- led to her erroneous perception.
But when she realized the spread is about as healthy as your average Snickers bar, she decided it was time to get even -- and get cash.
B3ta member Mr. Eraserhead made quick edits of the Discovery show Blue Planet to create a music video for “Cusp” by Eraserhead. Sweet! -via b3ta
This Civil War photograph was …wait, are those porta-potties in the background? And a station wagon? Yes, this photograph is less than a year old, but you can imagine someone cropping it and using it as a Civil War photo sometime in the future. Photographer Richard Barnes shoots Civil War reenactments using techniques authentic to the period, such as wet-plate photography. The picture shown here was taken at the 150th anniversary reenactment of the First Battle of Bull Run. See a gallery of Barnes’ reenactment photographs at National Geographic magazine. Link
(Image credit: Richard Barnes)
We’ve all learned to recognize the international symbols for restrooms, if nothing else, but you probably know a lot of them. But where did they come from in the first place? Rob Lammle at mental_floss takes you back to Vienna in the 1920s for the real origins of the “pictograms” we see every day. Link
Three weeks ago, we showed you a video compilation of movie and TV stars’ first film appearances called And Introducing… from Flavorwire. As always happens with these things, they got a lot of feedback and suggestions for more, which have been compiled into a sequel. Song lyrics NSFW. -Thanks, Antdude!
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