Origins of Life
Hulu, which I understand is not available to the whole world (apologies), has a great video by Gerald Calderon. It’s quite possibly the best explanation of the origin of life ever presented on film. The art direction, the narration, the whole 40 minute production really sums up the scientific record, and is full of win.
15 billion years ago the Universe just suddenly was. 5 billion years ago, the Earth and Sun formed a healthy bond. Then things started getting interesting. Single celled organisms, coral, and amazing advancements though the millenia are represented here. 600 million years ago was when transfer of genes through sex became the new fad, and diversity took over. 400 million years ago, life started flourishing on dry land.
This is seriously some of the best underwater footage we’ve ever seen. Highly recommended if you’ve ever wanted to see an octopus eat a same-sized crab.
Link, again apologies if you can’t see this. 
| Image by Steven Hobbs
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Trolls
A funny illustrated look inside the world of internet trolls, with a classification chart of different traits and different members of the troll ecosystem.
The best way to deal with trolls varies by type. To deal with the professor and critic, ignoring their rants goes a long way. They may get angrier at first, but the lack of an audience will drive them to more easily riled up communities, soon. Screamers should be gagged somehow, and are usually easy to pick out by their caps lock and swears-to-normal-words ratio.
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First Footage of Giant Stingray
[YouTube - Link]
It is one of the rarest creatures of the ocean’s deep, and it has been caught on film for the first time ever. The species, smalleye stingray, is the largest of all stingray species, and is seen off the coast of Mozambique.
– via news
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The Beatles Never Broke Up
Get ready for a strange story of a lost Beatles album found on cassette on the other side of a portal to a parallel universe. James Richards brought the cassette back and is making all the songs available. Link -via YesButNoButYes
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TSA Says No To Snow Globes
Think before you buy a souvenir snow globe on your next vacation. You probably won’t be able to take it on a plane in your carry-on luggage because of TSA regulations.
“Snow globes are not permitted to be carried through security checkpoints,” said Transportation Security Administration spokesman Dwayne Baird.The reason is that the globes contain liquids, and TSA rules say that only liquids, gels or aerosols in containers of three ounces or less are allowed through security in carry-on bags.
Even a small snow globe with less than three ounces of liquid may be confiscated because security personnel have no way of measuring it. You can pack a snow globe in your checked luggage, but be careful to pad it well, or you may end up with wet clothing by the time you reach your destination. Link -via Metafilter
(image by Flickr user revrev)
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Dirty Computer Pictures
Some people eat at their computers. Some smoke while computing. And some don’t change the filter on their heating and air system as often as they should. Many of us never open up our computers to see what’s inside, but that’s the first thing your computer repair expert will do. If your PC is anything like these computers, the next thing he/she will do is take a picture. The Register has six pages of these dirty, filthy pictures. Link -via Digg
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The Manhattan Bridge Turns 100
Often overlooked and certainly overshadowed by its more famous neighbor, the Manhattan Bridge will, this December, become a centenarian. Quite a feat, all told, as the bridge’s history has been full of issues to say the least.
Gustov Lindenthal’s first design was thrown out purely for reasons of aesthetics. He came back with another idea – incorporating two thin-profile steel towers. This idea was retained but his main plan – four cables made of immense chains of eye bars (lengths of steel at least ten foot long joined at each end by steel pins) was again rejected. Perhaps the thought of what was essentially a gargantuan bicycle chain put the chills up the spine of the city fathers.
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My Parents Were Awesome
My parents are awesome has to be one of the best tumblr accounts to date – the simply concept is it posts retro pictures of parents, who are looking awesome. Your parents were awesome, too, so why don’t you send in an awesome picture?
Before the fanny packs and Andrea Bocelli concerts, your parents (and grandparents) were once free-wheeling, fashion-forward, and super awesome.
Link – via cakeheadlovesevil
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Google's Famously Difficult Job Interview Questions
At The Business Insider, Alyson Shontell wrote about her unsuccessful job interview with Google, which has gained a reputation for asking hard and bizarre questions that test a candidate’s creativity, priorities, and critical thinking skills. She provided 15 examples from other people who’ve interviewed with Google:
How much should you charge to wash all the windows in Seattle?Why are manhole covers round?
Design an evacuation plan for San Francisco.
You have eight balls all of the same size 7 of them weigh the same, and one of them weighs slightly more. How can you find the ball that is heavier by using a balance and only two weighings?
You can read more questions and the preferred answers at the link.
Link via Gizmodo | Image: US Department of State
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"Where the Wild Things Are" Chalk Wall Art Timelapse video
[YouTube - Link]
It took over 11 hours to create these two "Where the Wild Things Are" chalk murals at Arnold DC, a Washington ad agency. Watch the timelapse video of their creation, using over 1,500 stills. Really cool.
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Oh, Meep! High School Principal Bans Nonsensical Word
Danvers High School Principal Thomas Murray was not amused – I repeat, not amused – when kids in his school started saying the word "meep." Anyone caught uttering or displaying the word of choice of Beaker, the orange-haired muppet from The Muppet Show, will be – gasp – suspended!
It’s no surprise that using bad language in school can get you into hot water. But "meep"?
Danvers High parents recently got an automated call from the principal warning them that if students say or display the word "meep" at school, they could face suspension.
Meep doesn’t mean much, unless you are Beaker — the hapless, orange-haired assistant to Dr. Bunsen Honeydew on "The Muppet Show."
While meep may be nonsense, what it represented was no laughing matter to the high school’s administration. High school Principal Thomas Murray said students were using it and other words to disrupt school in a particular part of the building on Cabot Road.
Link | Article at ABC News | Apparently, you can’t even email the word "meep" to him, but one presumes that "Bork, bork, bork" is still safe.
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Scientists Discover Coral That Eats Jellyfish
Up until now, scientists believed that coral only ate plankton and other micro-organisms, but a new discovery shows the mushroom coral can actually eat jellyfish almost its same size. Scientists were diving near the Israeli city of Eilat in the Red Sea, when they photographed the phenomenon for the first time.
“We couldn’t believe our eyes when we saw it,” Ms Alamaru, a member of the research team, says. “This is definitely unusual. As far as I know no other coral are reported to feed on jellyfish. However, some sea anemones, which are close relatives of corals, are documented feeding on other jelly species.”
Scientists have suspected that coral must eat microscopic baby jellyfishes, but this is the first time they were presented with evidence of the animal eating adult jellies.
Link Image by Omri Bronstein from the Tel Aviv University
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Oli Lemieux Cirque du Soleil Practice
Montreal acrobat and Cirque du Soleil performer Oli Lemieux amazes in this practice video. This makes me want to see another show of theirs, and soon! From Asylum~
While most of us are content to bounce up and down (and occasionally fall off and break a leg), when you put Oli on a trampoline he leaves physics behind him. The man runs up walls and bends gravity in whichever direction is appropriate to make backflipping off ledges look effortless.
YouTube Link (Note: some NSFW lyrics in the song)
The routines practiced are for the current show, Dralion.
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ESC From New York
ESC from New York – $9.95 | More Funny T-Shirts
Neatorama designer Chris "Snake" Murphy came up with this excellent design "ESC from New York." Ah, this certainly brings back memories. From the Neatorama Shop: Link
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Papercraft High Heels
Photo: Le Creative Sweatshop
Le Creative Sweatshop is a French art studio that produces (among other things) enormous papercraft art installations. The high-heeled shoes pictured above are a part of their effort to “make a paper world.” You can view more pictures of the studio’s work at the link.
Link via Gizmodo | Video about their work
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It Made My Day
Images: IMMD
It Made My Day (IMMD) is a blog of reader-submitted anecdotes about the funny experiences that made their day. On the right-side of the page, you can type in your own “moment of win” and vote on other submissions — sort of like the Neatorama Upcoming Queue.
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NASA Confirms "Significant" Water on Moon
So. Yesterday, we heard that the Pope’s astronomer conceded that there may be alien life outside of planet Earth, and today NASA said that it discovered significant water on the Moon.
"The discovery opens a new chapter in our understanding of the moon," the space agency said in a written statement shortly after the briefing began.
Michael Wargo, chief lunar scientist at NASA headquarters in Washington, said the latest discovery also could unlock the mysteries of the solar system.
He listed several options as sources for the water, including solar winds, comets, giant molecular clouds or even the moon itself through some kind of internal activity. The Earth also may have a role, Wargo said.
"If the water that was formed or deposited is billions of years old, these polar cold traps could hold a key to the history and evolution of the solar system, much as an ice core sample taken on Earth reveals ancient data," NASA said in its statement.
Coicidence? I smell a conspiracy. Where’s my tin foil hat? Next stop: microbes on Mars! Link
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Ninja Hide and Seek
[YouTube - Link]
Ok, so maybe there is a slight hint of sarcasm incorporated into the title of this video. Apparently there is a learning curve, for some, when it comes to the classic household game of hide and seek. This little "ninja" has a long way to go in terms of mastering the art of finding a stealthy hiding spot. The two images at the end of the video are priceless.
– via youtube
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After Microsoft
“Bliss” by Charles O’Rear (L), “After Microsoft” by Goldin & Senneby (R)
The default desktop image for Windows XP was called “Bliss,” and became instantly recognizable. The image was taken by a photographer named Charles O’Rear, but now it’s being phased out. The image on the right is what that hill in Sonoma Valley looks like today.
Charles O’Rear used to pass that hill almost daily between his home in Napa and his wife, Daphne, who lived in Marin County. He always carried his medium format camera.
It was hard even to slow down on highway 12/121. But one day, it must have been in January, he pulled over. After about a month of rain the sun comes up, and there is beautiful green grass. The weather during the winter can change dramatically. A break in the storm. Intense blue sky with cumulus clouds. Maybe later that day it rained.
Looking to brand XP as green, Microsoft bought the photo right around the time the soil recovered enough to replant grapes for vineyards. Link -via grow-a-brain.
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Fat? Blame it on the Bacteria!
Are you fat? It may not be your fault, blame the bacteria in your intestines instead:
Ninety percent of the bacteria fall into two major divisions, or phyla: the Firmicutes and the Bacteroidetes. Previous research had shown that obese mice had higher levels of Firmicutes, and lean ones had more Bacteroidetes.
Analyzing the genomes of the bacteria, Gordon and graduate student Peter Turnbaugh concluded that the Firmicutes were more efficient at digesting food that the body can’t.
Animals that have a higher proportion of Firmicutes convert a higher proportion of food into calories that can be absorbed by the body, making it easier to gain weight.
When the researchers transferred bacteria from obese mice into so-called gnotobiotic mice, which were raised in a sterile environment and had no bacteria in their guts, the mice gained more weight than did those receiving a similar amount of bacteria from lean mice, even though they were fed the same diet.
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Who's Afraid of Friday the 13th?
If you’re afraid of Friday the 13th (the date, not the movie), you’re in good company. There’s a certain US president who shared your paraskevidekatriaphobia:
It’s also the number that prompted FDR to alter his own travel plans on any day of the week that landed on the 13th.
"FDR would not depart on a (train) trip on the 13th," said Thomas Fernsler, a University of Delaware mathematician who has studied the number enough to earn the moniker "Dr. 13." He recounted a story that originated with FDR’s personal secretary, Grace Tully, who said the former president would order the train to leave the station before midnight on the 12th or after midnight on the morning of the 14th.
In a final act, FDR died in 1945 on April 12. Thursday, April 12.
"He avoided traveling to the beyond on the 13th," joked Bob Clark, head archivist at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum.
More about Friday the 13th phobia in this article by Don Babwin of AP: Link
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Old Bumper Cars Turned Into Real Cars
Photo: MR38 [Flickr]
Flickr user MR38 has a nifty photoset of bumper cars modded into street legal mini cars (complete with real license plates!) as seen during the annual Cruisin’ Grand festival in Escondido, California.
Does anyone know who made these bumper cars?
Link – via nowthatsnifty
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Update 11/13/09 – The creator is Tom Wright. Benchrace has a neat story about the bumper cars: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Article at CoolThings – Thanks marn!
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Tsingy de Bemaraha: Madagascar's Stone Forest
A city of limestone towers rises in western Madagascar.
Photo: Stephen Alvarez / National Geographic
Benson weaves through skin-ripping pinnacles. In Malagasy, the formations are called tsingy, meaning "where one cannot walk barefoot." The terrain resists intrusions from hunters, hungry cattle, and wildfires.
Photo: Stephen Alvarez / National Geographic
A couple of weeks ago, we featured a story of how NatGeo photographer Stephen Alvarez’s went deep underground to explore the caves in the corner of Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia.
This time, Stephen, along with Neil Shea and biologist Hery Rakotondravony and colleagues went the opposite way – they climbed Madagascar’s astonishing Tsingy de Bemaraha stone forest:
One afternoon, returning from a hot, wet slog, vines along the trail tripped me up, and my right knee landed on a small rock. Back home in New England, where rocks come in rounder forms, I would have walked away with a bruise. But this was tsingy in miniature. A barb of limestone drove in nearly to the bone. It took two days to reach a hospital, where a nurse removed dirt from the wound. "Why were you doing this?" she asked, twisting a swab deep into the hole. She looked up. I was sweating. "I think you are a little dumb," she said. The tsingy is the perfect foil to human ambition.
Links: Article | Photo Gallery
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A History of Beer
Amanda Bensen of the Smithsonian blog Food & Think attended a program at that institution on the history of beer. Her post summarizes the long history of the beverage, from prehistoric soggy bread to modern microbrewing.
But while beer’s popularity waned in the Middle East, it was gaining ground in northern Europe. People there somehow figured out brewing (perhaps via another soggy-bread epiphany) by at least 800 B.C., based on beer residues in a Celtic amphora found in modern Bavaria. Dornbusch says the Romans were the first to invent the modern brewing process—involving malting and mashing—based on the ruins of a 179 A.D. brewery discovered in a Roman settlement near what is now Regensburg, Germany.
Link | Image: US National Archives
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The Genetic Home of Speech
Why can humans talk and chimpanzees can’t? Scientists at UCLA and Emory University suspect that it comes down to a single gene designated FOXP2. There is only a slight variation in this gene between humans and chimps, as Elaine Schmidt writes in UCLA Newsroom:
“Earlier research suggests that the amino-acid composition of human FOXP2 changed rapidly around the same time that language emerged in modern humans,” said Dr. Daniel Geschwind, Gordon and Virginia MacDonald Distinguished Chair in Human Genetics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. “Ours is the first study to examine the effect of these amino-acid substitutions in FOXP2 in human cells[...]“We found that a significant number of the newly identified targets are expressed differently in human and chimpanzee brains,” Geschwind said. “This suggests that FOXP2 drives these genes to behave differently in the two species.”
The research demonstrates that mutations believed to be important to FOXP2’s evolution in humans change how the gene functions, resulting in different gene targets being switched on or off in human and chimp brains.
Link via io9 | Image: US Department of Energy
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Ninja Cat Technique Revealed
In the original Ninja Cat video, the cat only moves when you’re not looking. In this new video, the camera is stationery so we can see how he moves only when his “prey” (a feather in this incident) can’t see him. -via Arbroath
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7-Up for Baby!
This 11-month old baby isn’t even their youngest customer! The ad copy also says:
By the way, Mom, when it comes to toddlers- if they liked to be coaxed to drink their milk, try this: add 7-Up to the milk in equal parts, pouring the 7-Up gently into the milk. It’s a wholesome combination- and it works!
Click the picture at Kitchen Retro to see the full-size version of this and other vintage ads. Link -via J-Walk Blog
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The Top Ten Mesmerizing Crimes Stories of the Past Decade
Newsweek Magazine has begun a series of stories looking back at the first decade of the new millennium. In this list, the most-watched crime stories are ranked and summarized. If the complicated developments of Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme or the hunt for the D.C. Snipers were hard to follow in real time, you can catch up on the important details. Pictured is Andrea Yates, who drowned her five children in 2001. Link -via the Presurfer
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Rock Slide Caught on Tape
A road crew and a television crew were on the scene on Highway 64 in Polk County, Tennessee Tuesday when a massive rock slide covered the road. Workers were busy removing a large rock that fell Tuesday morning when the mountain gave away at about 1PM. Rock slides are not uncommon in the mountain area of East Tennessee, but they are rarely seen in progress, much less recorded. The road will be closed for at least a week. Link
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Thief Takes Van with Lion Inside
A thief in Wuppertal, Germany made off with a Mercedes Transporter owned by Circus Probst, apparently unaware that a lion was in the back. The van was recovered Wednesday morning with Caesar still inside. It is not yet known whether the presence of the lion led to vehicle being crashed and abandoned. It was found with the motor still running.
Police then towed the van away, also unaware of its feline freight and it wasn’t until midday on Wednesday that Caesar was returned to his rightful owners, more than 12 hours after his adventure began.
“Caesar is fine. We’re not worried about him,” circus spokesman Laurens Thoen said.
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