One family mourned the death of a daughter. Another family welcomed a new daughter. A few years later, Mary Lurancy Vennum "became" the deceased Mary Roth! Was it a case of multiple personality, reincarnation, a haunting, or just wishful thinking?
Mary Roff had died in July 1865 at the age of 18, having suffered from fits throughout her life. It now seemed to Roff that his daughter had returned from the grave and taken over Lurancy’s body. Indeed, Lurancy was giving every sign of being Mary Roff and was constantly pleading to be allowed to go home to her parents.
On February 11 “Mary Roff” moved to the Roff household. For three months she behave exactly as if she were the dead daughter of the Roffs’ immediately recognizing friends, relatives, clothes, and belongings. She also remembered scores of events from her past, many of which had occurred up to 25 years before. When the Vennums visited, “Mary Roff” behaved as if Lurancy reemerged.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by 
Mei Lan the panda is on her way to Chengdu, China. She was born at Zoo Atlanta in 2006 under an agreement that all pandas in American zoos belong to China. Today she is being shipped to Washington DC, where she will join Tai Shan, the panda born at the National Zoo. The two will be the only cargo aboard a FedEx 14-hour non-stop flight to China.
After a caravan to the airport and a ride past dozens of waiting photographers, Mei Lan was lifted into the 777 Freighter emblazoned with panda logos. Shortly after 8 a.m., the door was closed, the plane taxied and the flight took off.
Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed agreed it was fine to be “reflective, or even wistful” about Mei Lan’s departure, but important, too, to remember that she’s a healthy member of an endangered species, and by moving to China, she can help her kind survive. (Reeds advice to her: “be fruitful and multiply.”) Scientists estimate there are about 1,600 Giant Pandas in the wild. About 300 live in captivity, mostly in China.
Three giant pandas remain at the Atlanta Zoo, Mei Lan’s parents and an infant. Link -via Metafilter
More on Mei Lan.
More on Tai Shan.
Photographer Nikki Graziano takes pictures and then creates graphs of mathematical functions which map nicely to elements of the image. It’s a very neat and beautiful way of combining math, nature, and art together into a single image.
Most of us can’t tell our secant from our cotangent. But the forms are everywhere, and Nikki Graziano wants to help us see them. Graziano, a math and photography student at Rochester Institute of Technology, overlays graphs and their corresponding equations onto her carefully composed photos. “I wanted to create something that could communicate how awesome math is, to everyone,” she says.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by 
The Do Hit Chair by Marijn van der Poll turns you into a (very aggressive) designer, letting you (literally) bang out your own chair design. You get a metal box and a hammer, and how it ends it depends on your strong arms and imagination!
Link – via incrediblethings
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by 
Well, whaddyaknow, it’s time for our weekly collaboaration with the always awesome What is it? Blog. Today’s mystery item is shown to the left: can you guess what it is used for?
Place your guess in the comment section. One guess per comment, please. You can enter as many as you’d like. Let others play, so post no URL or web links – doing so will forfeit your entry.
Two prizes as usual: a free T-shirt from the Neatorama Shop for the first person who guessed right and for the funniest albeit incorrect guess. You have until the correct answer is revealed at the What is it? Blog.
For more clues, check out the What is it? Blog. Good luck!
Update 2/5/10 – The answer is: A probe from a policeman’s Taser. Congratulations to chameloon who guessed right first and to pismonque who guessed “A sea monkey’s harpoon, used when they go shrimpin’.“
That, my friends, is the Gizmo Skirt by Brian Lichtenberg. The skirt is in grey tweed and features "ear-pockets" with swarovski crystal eyes. It’ll set you back $2,100 but that’s the price of mogwai haute couture these days.
Whatever you do, don’t spill food on it after midnight: Link – Thanks Mike!
Joe Peacock (previously on Neatorama) has been collecting Akira cells and production art since he was 14 years old, and now he has collaborated with ToonSeum to show the entire world why Akira is the pinnacle of Japanese anime:
No other film has ever looked like Akira, before or since. It’s stunningly fluid and detailed animation often required as many as nine separate cel layers. The 125 minute feature was comprised of over 160,000 cels and almost as many backgrounds, each one completely hand–drawn and hand-painted. Purists recognize Akira as the last completely hand-created animated feature, as cel animation quickly gave way to cheaper digital production and CGI technology.
Filmmakers, animators, art students and anime fans have largely missed out on in-depth looks at how original, cel-based animation was created – and what better example than the magnum opus that is Akira? No other animation in history – from Japan, the United States or otherwise – focused so much attention to detail in every single aspect, on every single frame and background. Each piece is a study in color theory, layout, motion dynamics and technical artistry. And it is my mission, along with ToonSeum, to expose as many people as possible to the brilliance inherent in this collection.
Links: Art of Akira – via The Journal of Joe The Peacock. Yay.
Urban art comes in all kinds of flavor, but this may be my favorite: "A Love Letter For You," a project by Stephen Powers where he paints various murals with lovey-dovey messages around Philadelphia (yes, the City of Brotherly Love – how appropriate!)
Just in time for Valentine’s Day, too! Link – via 30gms
SuperSeventies has a nice index of the top ten songs of each year in the decade I discovered music. That was mostly via radio, and that decade saw quite a shift in popular styles, as you can see at the link. Each song is linked to an informative bio, with links to other information.
I was surprised to learn that John Denver’s hit “Sunshine on My Shoulders” was conceived for a made-for-TV movie.
The feature was called Sunshine, and was a character study based on a real-life journal excerpted in the Los Angeles Times. It told the story of a terminal cancer case: a nonestablishment couple and the doctor who tried to save the young woman. CBS drew high ratings when they aired the film on November 9, 1973.
The soundtrack version was re-recorded in time for Denver’s greatest hits album, and became his first number one hit. For my money, his best song will always be “Rocky Mountain High.”
The context of the photo is explained at the White House’s Flickr photostream:
June 6, 2009
“After his speech in Normandy, a crush of people tried to get close to the President to shake his hand. I noticed this guy waiting patiently and then literally being pushed back into the crowd. I felt bad for him, and mentioned the incident to the President’s trip director, Marvin Nicholson. Marvin pulled the guy out of the crowd, found him a wheel chair, and brought him over to meet the President. He was a French veteran. The man’s face shows his emotion.”
Official White House photo by Pete Souza, via Reddit.
Murray Hill Incorporated has just announced its intention to run for Congress in Maryland’s 8th Congressional District.
Murray Hill Inc. is believed to be the first “corporate person” to exercise its constitutional right to run for office. As Supreme Court observer Lyle Denniston wrote in his SCOTUSblog, “If anything, the decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission conferred new dignity on corporate “persons,” treating them — under the First Amendment free-speech clause — as the equal of human beings.”
Murray Hill Inc. plans on spending “top dollar” to protect its investment. “It’s our democracy,” Murray Hill Inc. says, “We bought it, we paid for it, and we’re going to keep it.”
The campaign’s designated human, Eric Hensal, will help the corporation conform to antiquated “human only” procedures and sign the necessary voter registration and candidacy paperwork.
To emphasize its point, this liberal public relations firm will file to run in the Republican primary.
Link, via Reddit. The company’s press release.
Magic Frog to Prince – $3.95
Here’s a kitschy gift idea for Valentine’s Day: a frog in a cup that magically transforms into a prince after you add a little bit of water!
Or, if you want to give the guy in your life a gift he’ll never forget, give ‘em this: the Arrogant Bastard and Double Bastard beer bottle tumblers.
Our very own John Farrier of The Zeray Gazette has a neat round up of the various permutations of Abbot and Costello’s classic "Who’s on First?" comedy bit.
While I’m sure many of you would like the Jar-Jar Binks and Yoda version, I’m more tickled by the Shakespearean version. Awesome? Indubitably. Link
Three years ago, Neatoramanaut Chris Garvey drew a punny doodle on a piece of sticky note and posted it on a co-worker’s desk to cheer her up. He continued to draw one note a day and today has a collection of over 1,000 drawings.
Take a look at the cartoons – some are cute, some are crude, but even the groaners are quite funny – over at Chris’ blog Sticky Moments.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by 
If democracy is rule by the people (from the Greek words “demos” for people and “kratos” for power), and theocracy is rule by religious body, then what about pornocracy? Yes it’s real and no, it’s not what you’re thinking of.
In the tenth century, the papacy of the Roman Catholic Church fell under the influence of harlots in an era termed Pornocracy.
Pornocracy or the Rule of the Prostitutes/Rules of the Harlots or the more polite Saeculum obscurum (latin for the Dark Age) began in 904 AD with the installation of Pope Sergius III. The Pope was completely under the control of Theodora, the beautiful wife of Roman consul Theophylactus, who used sex to wield power.
Theodora’s 15-year-old daughter Morazia became the concubine of Pope Sergius III. Their son later became Pope John XI – the only illegitimate son of a Pope that later became Pope himself.
The era of Pornocracy ended with Pope John XII (the grandson of Marozia) in 963. He was so immoral that the Basilica of Rome was said to be converted into a brothel under his rule.
What do you get when you cross Star Wars with disco and canned tuna? This ad for Hagoromo sea chicken tuna from Japan screams "crazy" in so many ways in just 30 seconds.
Too strange too miss. The Zeray Gazette has the YouTube video clip: Link | And if you like that, check out Star Wars Medley by Meco (1979). Now that’s music!
I’m a little late in posting this, but it’s too awesome to pass: Shaun Usher’s Letters of Note has a copy of a 1905 letter sent by Mark Twain to a patent medicine salesman who tried to sell bogus medicine. Twain was furious to have received the pitch as he was recently widowed after his wife suffered heart failure:
Dear Sir,
Your letter is an insoluble puzzle to me. The handwriting is good and exhibits considerable character, and there are even traces of intelligence in what you say, yet the letter and the accompanying advertisements profess to be the work of the same hand. The person who wrote the advertisements is without doubt the most ignorant person now alive on the planet; also without doubt he is an idiot, an idiot of the 33rd degree, and scion of an ancestral procession of idiots stretching back to the Missing Link.
Read the rest: Link – via The Litter Box
In his monthly neologism challenges before he retired in 2004, Washington Post columnist Bob Levey famously asked his readers to send in new words made by taking existing words and adding, substracting, or changing one letter to yield a new definition.
A list of some of the funniest wordplays has since been circulating around the Net for years. For those of you who haven’t seen in before, Miss Cellania has quite a few:
1. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period.
2. Ignoranus: A person who’s both stupid and an asshole.
3. Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with. [...]
5. Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future. [...]
7. Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.
Link (Giraffiti by artist Nick Walker, photo by Luna Park)
More Bob Levey’s Neologism Competition at Fun With Words: Link
I learned something new … and disturbing about our neighbors to the North. It turns out that you can buy milk in plastic bags in Canada.
How do you drink from plastic bags? Sheryl from Pinc Stuff explains in this short YouTube video clip over at TYWKIWDBI: Link
Crazy, eh?
Previously on Neatorama: Beer in a bag
Over 700 paired species of fig trees and wasps have symbiotic relationships. The fig tree host wasp eggs, and the wasps pollinate the fig trees in return. But according to a new study, if the wasps don’t pollinate the host plants, the fig trees retaliate:
If the wasps don’t do their duty, the trees respond by enacting a sanction — aborting their fruit, killing off the teeming mass of baby wasps. A new study of this killer tree phenomenon, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B comes from Cornell University and The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, shows that negative reinforcement may be an important part of symbiotic relationships.
Pollination by wasp comes in two varieties: passive and active. With passive pollination the wasps carry pollen that happens to stick to their bodies; where with active pollination they collect pollen in special pouches to deliver to the flowers.
With the passive pairings, the fig trees abort their fruit far less often than with active pairs. In the actively pollinating groups, the tree species that tend to enforce sanctions less often have a higher occurrence of freeloader wasps, who take advantage of the figs without doing any of the work. Inversely, by using the sanction option more frequently, some fig species have a lower incidence of non-pollinating insects.
Link | Scientific Paper | Photo: University of British Columbia
The man behind the blog Kitty Hell (“one man’s life with cute overload”) has brought to our attention this marvelous/disgusting instrument of household utility. He writes:
While Hello Kitty fanatics may see something like this as cute (you have to seriously feel for the lumberjack significant other that has to carry this around at work), for the rest of us it pretty much exemplifies what any horror movie villain (or the evil feline herself) would undoubtedly use to dismember victims. In fact, The Hello Kitty Chainsaw Massacre is probably already in production and is guaranteed to be the most horrifying movie that you have ever seen.
Parents, be careful what you name your children. A case in point is Pakistan’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia, whose name is, shall we say, boastful of his manhood. The Saudi government found the gentleman’s name unacceptable for public mention, and rejected his credentials. This is his second appointment, as his previous posting to Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates was deemed unacceptable to those governments, and for the same reason.
Link via Ace of Spades HQ | Photo: HandMade Films
Nuit Blanche from Spy Films on Vimeo.
Arev Manoukian of Spy Films delivers a knockout with this short, elegantly rendered in 1940s style black and white, and stunning visual effects. Love at first sight never looked so good. Be sure to also see the Making Of video.
Last year, Chesley Sullenberger saved the day when he landed a crippled passenger jet on the frigid Hudson River. This year we have Frank Vogt, a traffic reporter’s pilot whose Cessna lost oil pressure 1200 feet off the ground. In the early dawn darkness, that ground looked like one big mass of black void… except the turnpike.
“I knew it was wide enough, I knew it was straight enough. There wasn’t any wires, and I didn’t see many overpasses,” Vogt tells Asylum. He reasoned that since the traffic was still light, there would be enough space between the cars that they could slow down and let him in.
His hastily concocted plan worked perfectly. He even managed to pull his Cessna to the side of the road, although the inevitable rubbernecking — completely justified in this case — still blocked traffic a mile-and-a-half in both directions.
Link with video from CBS (which is also responsible for the photo.)
A man is accused of a crime. Is he guilty? Stick his hand in a pot of boiling water. If he is unharmed, God has proclaimed his innocence and protected him. If the suspect is burned, he’s guilty and can be punished (further). This is the basic premise of the legal tradition of trial by ordeal, discredited since the Enlightenment. But was it an effective determinant of guilt? University of Chicago economist Peter T. Leeson says “yes”:
How might these trials have worked, without divine intervention? The key insight is that ordeals weren’t just widely practiced. They were widely believed in. It’s this belief – literally, the fear of God – that could have allowed the ordeals to function effectively.
First, consider the reasoning of the defendants. Guilty believers expected God to reveal their guilt by harming them in the ordeal. They anticipated being boiled and convicted. Innocent believers, meanwhile, expected God to protect them in the ordeal. They anticipated escaping unscathed, and being exonerated.
The only defendants who would have been willing to go through with the ordeal were therefore the innocent ones. Guilty defendants would have preferred to avoid the ordeal – by confessing their crimes, settling with their accusers, or fleeing the realm.
The next thing to understand is that clerics administrated ordeals and adjudged their outcomes – and did so under elaborate sets of rules that gave them wide latitude to manipulate the process. Priests knew that only innocent defendants would be willing to plunge their hands in boiling water. So priests could simply rig trials to exonerate defendants who were willing to go through with the ordeal. The rituals around the ordeals gave them plenty of cover to ensure the water wasn’t boiling, or the iron wasn’t burning, and so on. If rigging failed, a priest could interpret the ordeal’s outcome to exculpate the defendant nonetheless (“His arm is healing well!”).
Link via Volokh Conspiracy | Journal Article | Photo: Sony Pictures
Natalie Dee of the webcomic Married to the Sea organized and categorized elemental smells into a periodic table. Sure, you can probably think of other smells, but they’re really just compounds of these, right?
Link via Geekologie | Natalie Dee’s Website
Today’s Astronomy Picture of the Day shows the aftermath of powerful collision between two asteroids in the belt between Mars and Jupiter. They estimate the speed of the impact at “15,000 kilometers per hour — five times the speed of a rifle bullet — and liberated energy in excess of a nuclear bomb.”
What Hubble saw indicates that P/2010 A2 is unlike any object ever seen before. At first glance, the object appears to have the tail of a comet. Close inspection, however, shows a 140-meter nucleus offset from the tail center, very unusual structure near the nucleus, and no discernable gas in the tail.
Link Photo: NASA/ESA/D. Jewitt (UCLA)
At one time or another, almost everyone dreams about receiving an unexpected inheritance. Maybe you share DNA with a rich person you didn’t know about. Maybe an ex has forgiven you for whatever reason you broke up. Maybe a relative has more money to leave than you know of. Or maybe some rich person will pick your name from a phone book and make you a beneficiary. Yeah, right, but… all those things have happened! Shown is former waitress Cara Wood, who received a half-million dollars when a regular customer died. Link -via Look at This
This article at Discover Magazine has nothing to do with the science fiction stories we are so familiar with. Author Sean Carroll looks at time travel as a physicist. He says if time travel were possible (and it might be), there would be no paradox, because we cannot change what has already happened. Ever. Then it gets weird.
Imagine that we have been appointed Guardian of the Gate, and our job is to keep vigilant watch over who passes through. One day, as we are standing off to the side, we see a person walk out of the rear side of the gate, emerging from one day in the future. That’s no surprise; it just means that you will see that person enter the front side of the gate tomorrow. But as you keep watch, you notice that he simply loiters around for one day, and when precisely 24 hours have passed, the traveler walks calmly through the front of the gate. Nobody ever approached from elsewhere. That 24-hour period constitutes the entire life span of this time traveler. He experiences the same thing over and over again, although he doesn’t realize it himself, since he does not accumulate new memories along the way. Every trip through the gate is precisely the same to him. That may strike you as weird or unlikely, but there is nothing paradoxical or logically inconsistent about it.
(image credit: Biwa Studios)
Each post in this blog pairs a screenshot from a TV show with a literary quote. The pairings are astonishingly apt, at least for the shows I recognize, and there are a lot of them to go through. Link -via Metafilter
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