Physically brave to the point of recklessness, this leader has courage beyond any doubt. But sometimes, this hero, revered by many, makes poor decisions, largely because of the belief that the best solution to any problem is a direct, frontal attack. 

Yes, I'm taking about Rainbow Dash from My Little Pony. But I'm also referring to Confederate Lt. Gen. John Bell Hood.

The Elements of Harmony were absent from America during the terrible years of 1861 to 1865. But there were plenty of heroes, clods, fools and geniuses among the general officers of both armies. You can find similar people--er, ponies-- on My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic today. Let's link together ponies and their military counterparts during the American Civil War.

Like Twilight Sparkle, U.S. Maj. Gen. Henry Jackson Hunt did not seek fame, but he also did not avoid great responsibility. He was an intellectual who bent his logical mind to solving complex problems. I suspect that if Twilight Sparkle had been in command of Federal artillery at Gettysburg, she would have devastated Pickett's Charge as well as Hunt did.

Pinkie Pie is an outside of the box thinker noted for her bold and original solutions. The one-man band that she made during "Swarm of the Century" confused her friends, but terminated the parasprite menace. Confederate Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart had a similar disposition, well-demonstrated during his terror-inducing circumnavigation of the Army of the Potomac during the Peninsula Campaign.

When 30-year-old Stephen got married, he wanted a wedding cake based on old school games. Australian cake maker Nicole stepped up to the console and delivered! Check it out: Link - via Technabob

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A Soyuz capsule brought Commander Chris Hadfield and Flight Engineers Tom Marshburn and Roman Romanenko back from the ISS last night, landing in Kazakhstan. It was Hadfield's first Soyuz landing, as his previous space flights were on the shuttle. The three men of Expedition 35 had been in space for almost five months.

Bob McDonald, the host of CBC Radio's Quirks & Quarks, said the capsule and its crew go through a rapid deceleration as they hurtle back to Earth.

"When they hit the air, they're like a stone hitting water. They're travelling more than 20,000 kilometres an hour.…They have to get rid of all that speed, and they do that just with friction of the air and parachutes."

When the capsule was about 10.7 kilometres high, its parachutes deployed, NASA mission control said. About one second prior to touchdown, two sets of three small engines on the bottom of the Soyuz capsule fired to slow its rate of descent and soften the landing.

After the touchdown, ground crew helped Hadfield and his colleagues out of the Soyuz and put them in chairs so they can begin to re-adapt to gravity.

"[Hadfield's] head is going to feel like a cannonball, his arms are going to feel like logs," McDonald said. "Every time he turns his head the world is going to seem to turn sideways, he's going to get dizzy."

The news story has a much longer video on the landing. Link

Safely home - back on Earth, happily readapting to the heavy pull of gravity. Wonderful to smell and feel Spring.

— Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) May 14, 2013

Pop Chart Lab offers this chart of cocktails featured in your favorite stories as a fine art print. There are 49 recipes in all, as drunk by James Bond, Hunter S. Thompson, Ebenezer Scrooge, Rocky Balboa, Zaphod Beeblebrox, Jay Gatsy, and more.

Browse the whole thing in full size size at the site. Link -via Nag on the Lake

The anime fight scene photo meme is SO last month. The new hotness in Japan's anime-based photo meme is pretending to to be a giant toying with puny humans. The forced perspective photography trick meme is based on the manga Attack on Titan, which tells the story of a city being attacked by human-eating giants.

Brian Ashcraft of Kotaku has the scoop: Link

The mark the 40th anniversary of the release of Cup Noodles's curry flavors, Nissin is releasing a set of little curry-themed model Gundams armed with tea kettles:

The three kits included in the promotion are 1/380 scale, so we're looking at maybe 2.5-3" in height. Included in three different flavors are the RX-78-2 Gundam, Char's Gelgoog and the classic Zaku II. Each of the kits are done in clear plastic and their weapon of choice is a tea kettle. As much as heating water with a beam saber makes sense, the kits will have tea kettles. 

Link -via Mecha Melissa

(Images: Cup Noodle)

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A case of sour grapes? Since we can't do it, it must be no good! But when you hear the reasons that time travel can be problematic even if it were possible, you'll see that the speed and direction of time is just fine the way it is. -via UpRoxx

Where have all the jobs gone? Computer scientist, and many people say, visionary, Jaron Lanier (he supposedly coined the term "virtual reality" when he helped pioneer the field), has found the culprit: the Internet.

In his new book Who Owns the Future? Jaron explains why the Internet is destroying the middle class by killing jobs, wealth (except for the lucky few) and even - gasp - democracy itself:

“Here’s a current example of the challenge we face,” he writes in the book’s prelude: “At the height of its power, the photography company Kodak employed more than 14,000 people and was worth $28 billion. They even invented the first digital camera. But today Kodak is bankrupt, and the new face of digital photography has become Instagram. When Instagram was sold to Facebook for a billion dollars in 2012, it employed only 13 people. Where did all those jobs disappear? And what happened to the wealth that all those middle-class jobs created?” [...]

So Kodak has 140,000 really good middle-class employees, and Instagram has 13 employees, period. You have this intense concentration of the formal benefits, and that winner-take-all feeling is not just for the people who are on the computers but also from the people who are using them. So there’s this tiny token number of people who will get by from using YouTube or Kickstarter, and everybody else lives on hope. There’s not a middle-class hump. It’s an all-or-nothing society.

Read more in this interview with Scott Timberg of Salon: Link (Image: My Dream is to cut all ties with civilization but still be on the Internet)

Seulbi Kim, a student at the Rhode Island School of Design, offers this one-handed solution to transporting food from your local burger joint. She writes:

The carrier will reduce the volume by about 50% compared to that today because I tried to simplify the design and minimize the amount of paper used with a hook for French fries, a sleeve for a burger, and a hole for soda drink, which causes people to carry it easier, and more materials saving. It is one-handed, convenient, practical, and compact, so your hands can be more free by holding all in one.

Link -via Foodbeast | Designer's Website

Spider-Man Collapsible Water Bottle

Are your spider instincts telling you that you need to get hydrated? Let the Spider-Man Collapsible Water Bottle from the NeatoShop leap into action. This 12 oz. plastic water bottle is collapsible so that you can fold it up and slip it into your spider suit when you are all done.

The Spider-Man Collapsible Water Bottle is BPA free, lightweight, and durable. It features a convenient keychain hook. 

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Water Bottles and fantastic Spider-Man items. 

Link

In 1968, Howard Johnsons produced a children's menu and a comic book in conjunction with the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. The comic explains the movie to Debbie and Robin, who are attending the premiere. It would have been nice if there had been a Howard Johnsons where I lived, because I couldn't make heads or tails out of the most of the movie. At the end of the comic, the children are acting like they don't want to give away the ending, but they are actually hiding the fact that they didn't understand a bit of it. Read the whole comic at Dreams of Space. Link -via Metafilter

The following is an excerpt from The Resurrectionist: The Lost Work of Dr. Spencer Black
by E.B. Hudspeth

Philadelphia, the late 1870s. Doctor Spencer Black, a son of a grave robber and a gifted surgeon, had a revelation: what if mythological creatures like mermaids, minotaurs, and satyrs were, in fact, evolutionary ancestors of humankind? The good doctor dedicated his life studying the anatomy of such beasts, until he mysteriously disappeared years later, leaving only a body of work called The Codex Extinct Animalia, detailing the anatomical structures of mythological beasts.

In the first half of the sci-fi/fantasy book The Resurrectionist, author and illustrator E.B. Hudspeth, retold the fictional biography of Dr. Spencer Black - beginning from his humble childhood, medical training, travel with the carnivals, and his mysterious disappearance. In the later half, Hudspeth included the meticulous anatomical drawings of mythological creatures.

If you love Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and the gorgeous anatomical drawings of Gray's Anatomy, The Resurrectionist is the book for you.

Publisher Quirk Books has graciously supplied a sample of the marvelous illustrations you'll see in book:

Many details regarding the heraldry of the sphinx are still unknown. These creatures varied widely throughout the African continent. In Egypt, there are great statues of this animal - the sphinx sol, the protector and scourge of Ra, the sun god. Sphinxes are shown bearing a ram's head (a criosphinx) or a goat's head. These species are typically depicted without wings; I suspect that, like many flightless birds, the sphinx lost its need for flight because of geographical isolation. This evolution likely occurred before the animal's arrival in Egypt or Africa; however, I cannot determine whence it originated.

The famed sphinx of Thebes appears strikingly similar to the specimen in my record. Though few in number, the species had a developed human mind with an advanced intellect; they were more than likely fierce and successful predators.

Disney has crowned Merida, the heroine of the 2012 Disney/Pixar movie Brave, as the 11th official "Disney Princess" In the process, Merida has undergone an image makeover to better fit in with the group. Her dress has been upgraded, her waist thinned, she now wears makeup, and her hair looks less wild and more, um, "expensive." Brenda Chapman, the creator and co-director of Brave, does not like the makeover one bit.

Chapman fumed. "When little girls say they like it because it's more sparkly, that's all fine and good but, subconsciously, they are soaking in the sexy 'come hither' look and the skinny aspect of the new version. It's horrible! Merida was created to break that mold — to give young girls a better, stronger role model, a more attainable role model, something of substance, not just a pretty face that waits around for romance."

Chapman, the first woman to win an Academy Award for an animated feature, said she has added her name to a petition with more than 50,000 signatures that has gone viral on the female empowerment website "A Mighty Girl," joining other mothers outraged by Disney's sexualization of her headstrong young Scottish heroine, an expert archer with a head of wild, curly red hair and a mind of her own.

Chapman had modeled the character after her 13-year-old daughter Emma, intending her as a strong independent role model for little girls. Link -via reddit

So this is what it feels like to be able to control the rain. The Rain Room, an art installation by rAndom International, is a large room where it rains indoor. The trick is that cameras detect the visitors' positions to turn off the individual rain strems directly overhead. The result is quite magical: you can walk through pouring rain without getting wet, no umbrellas required.

The art installation, which made its splash at the Barbican in London, is now coming to the MoMA in New York. If you can't make it, check out the video clip below:

America doesn't have many roundabouts because even if you understand how one works, you have to worry about other drivers who don't. But they are a fact of life in Britain. The ultimate roundabout is this one in Swindon that is actually a cluster of roundabouts in one intersection.  

The Magic Roundabout in Swindon, England, constructed in 1972, is the most brilliant and at the same time, the most confusing roundabout ever built. The roundabout, named after the popular children's television series by the same name, is located near the County Ground and consists of five mini-roundabouts arranged in a circle. At first sight, it might appear to confuse or amuse new visitors and certainly baffle tourists but once you understand how the roundabout works you will realize how revolutionary the idea is.

Other pictures and diagrams at Amusing Planet may help you parse out what is supposed to happen. Keep in mind that driving on the  left side of the road is the correct thing to do in this location. Link -via the Presurfer

(Image credit: Google Earth)

Redditor mystery_smelly_feet spent $2,000 and 2 months of work building this magnificent arcade cabinet that looks like a classic Nintendo Entertainment System. It has a PC inside with emulators that permit him to play the old games.

Link -via Technabob

This bird is Nyctibius griseus, or the common Potoo. The nocturnal bird of Central and South America is a master of camouflage, but you'd never know it by looking at those crazy eyes. See more pictures of this funny-looking bird at imgur. Link -via reddit

(Image credit: Carlos Gussoni)

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It's not enough to just spoon in their cereal. The stars of Star Wars have to stay in character while eating. Here's a funny video by Teddie Films, maker of Star Wars parodies of Rebecca Black's "Friday" and Gotye's "The Star Wars I Used to Know."

-via Foodiggity

Storm Neon Candy Trooper by DarkChoocoolat

w00t! We'd like to welcome a new T-shirt artist to the NeatoShop. Check out the nifty Tees by French designer Florent Rousseau AKA DarkChoocoolat (why, my favorite kind of snack!), visit his Facebook page, then head on over to the NeatoShop to get the t-shirts: Link

Storm Candy Trooper	Octosushi	Keep Calm Dharma	Banana Trap

View more T-shirt designs by DarkChoocoolat | Funny T-shirts

P.S. Are you a T-shirt designer? Get your tees listed on the NeatoShop and get featured here - we've got a great profit sharing program for professional artists and illustrators. Email us to find out how!

In today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss, you'll find out how much you really recall about your favorite sitcoms of the past. Sure, you know who Mr. Belvedere was, but do you know in what town the show was set? You'll have to know that for 15 different shows to ace this quiz! I only scored 47%, but I knew all the right settings of the shows I actually watched. Link

Hello Kitty Metal Studded Handbag

Attention Hello Kitty fans! Are you on the prowl for the purr-fect handbag? You need the Hello Kitty Metal Studded Handbag from the NeatoShop this edgy, faux patent leather bag is in the shape of Hello Kitty's Head. The purse features a metal studded front and bow. A chain and faux patent leather handle finish off the look.  

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more fantastic Hello Kitty items and fun Bags & Totes. 

Link

It has taken more than two years of work, but Detroit, the city in which the movie RoboCop takes place, will finally get a statue of its favorite son:

The 10-foot tall statue that pays homage to a crime-fighting cyborg from a 1980s action film based in Detroit has been put together and is ready to head to back to the Motor City. [...]

The fundraising effort to build the monument raised $67,436 through 2,718 backers about two years ago. So far, that funding has been enough to cover the cost of the monument's construction, though organizers have not ruled out the need for an additional round of fundraising or a corporate partnership as the project moves further along.

The effort to build a Robocop statue in Detroit began in 2011 when a Massachusetts resident posted a Twitter message to Detroit Mayor Dave Bing, saying that "Philadelphia has a statue of Rocky & Robocop would kick Rocky's butt. He's a GREAT ambassador for Detroit."

Mayor Bing responded to the Tweet by saying, "There are not any plans to erect a statue to Robocop. Thank you for the suggestion."

Link -via Jalopnik

(Photo: Imagination Station Detroit)

When I was a kid, my introduction to classical music was via Bugs Bunny cartoons. That's where I first experienced composers like Wagner ("Kill the Rabbit!") and Rossini ("Although your face looks like it might have gone through a machine..."). And who can forget Michigan J. Frog's rendition of Rossini's "Largo al Factotum?" ("La, la-la-la-la-la-la LA la!")

For better or worse, kids aren't watching the old WB cartoons like they used to. Maybe they're not PC enough or look too faded next to the awesomeness of The Clone Wars. But kids still need to be exposed to classical music in a way that's accessible. That's why I recently took my son to an evening of John Williams's music, conducted by the maestro himself.

Wow!

Besides the fun atmosphere (like a mini-Comic-Con, people were all decked out in Star Wars, Indiana Jones and Superman garb), my son really enjoyed watching and listening to the big orchestra play all his favorites: "Princess Leia's Theme,"  "The Imperial March," "Luke's Theme," and also the theme from E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.

Having studied classical music in college, I was able to give him special insight and explain which instruments he should watch as different sections of the orchestra brought forth different parts of the themes. If a similar concert comes to your town, I strongly recommend it as a great intro to the symphony orchestra.

Two great things have happened since the concert:

First, I notice when I'm driving him to school in the morning and have the local classical station on the radio, he'll call out which instruments he hears playing. And while not always correct, at least we're not listening to The Backyardigans and Yo Gabba Gabba every day now.

But even better, once, on the way to school, the radio was playing "Habanera" from Georges Bizet's opera Carmen and my son called out: "Hey dad! It's the song from Up!" Indeed it was! If you remember the good folks at Pixar used it extremely effectively when Mr. Fredricksen was coming down the stairlift to get to the main floor of the house.

It doesn't get much better than that! Pixar will be his WB.

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Would you sing on TV for a free tank of gas? You would if you were as good as this couple who jumped at the offer! In other news, there was something worth watching on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. -via Uproxx

Continue reading to see part two.

All three of Patrick Connan's movie posters that use chess pieces to tell Tolkien's story are excellent, but I especially like the arrangement for Fellowship. Who would have thought that a mere pawn would bear the One Ring and ensure its destruction?

Link -via Geek Art

In nations that were under Hitler's thumb during World War II, it was often difficult to know anyone's actual allegiance. There were those who truly believed in the Nazi cause, others who knew which way the wind blew, and some who put on a Nazi face while secretly fighting for the Allied cause. In the week between Hitler's death and VE Day, these different allegiances turned on each other as Allied forces swept in. The Last Battle is the story of one fight in World War II that you won't find in history textbooks.

Here are the basic facts: on 5 May 1945—five days after Hitler’s suicide—three Sherman tanks from the 23rd Tank Battalion of the U.S. 12th Armored Division under the command of Capt. John C. ‘Jack’ Lee Jr., liberated an Austrian castle called Schloss Itter in the Tyrol, a special prison that housed various French VIPs, including the ex-prime ministers Paul Reynaud and Eduard Daladier and former commanders-in-chief Generals Maxime Weygand and Paul Gamelin, amongst several others. Yet when the units of the veteran 17th Waffen-SS Panzer Grenadier Division arrived to recapture the castle and execute the prisoners, Lee’s beleaguered and outnumbered men were joined by anti-Nazi German soldiers of the Wehrmacht, as well as some of the extremely feisty wives and girlfriends of the (needless-to-say hitherto bickering) French VIPs, and together they fought off some of the best crack troops of the Third Reich. Steven Spielberg, how did you miss this story?

You can read the story in an article at The Daily Beast, as excerpted from Stephen Harding's new book The Last Battle: When U.S. and German Soldiers Joined Forces in the Waning Hours of World War II in Europe. Link

(Image credit: Svíčková)

This hardened criminal was apprehended on Oct. 17, 1893. The nefarious François Bertillon, aged 23 months, was nabbed for "gluttony, nibbling all the pears from a basket."

Parents of toddlers: you know how to use this photo. Keep it handy.

Link -via The Oddment Emporium

(Photo: Metropolitan Museum of Art)

The following is an article from Uncle John's Giant 10th Anniversary Bathroom Reader.

This article by Lisa Bannon, which appeared in the Wall Street Journal on October 24, 1995, tells the story of how a significant rumor was born. It's one of the best investigative pieces we've ever seen on the spread of an urban legend.

Anna Runge, a mother of eight, was so enamored of Walt Disney Co. that she owned stacks of its animated home videos, a Beauty and the Beast blanket and a Disney diaper bag. ''Disney was almost a member of the family,'' she said.

Until, that is, an acquaintance tipped her off to a startling rumor: The Magic Kingdom was sending obscene subliminal messages through some of its animated family films, including Aladdin, in which the handsome, young title character supposedly murmurs, sotto voce, ''All good teen-agers take off your clothes.''

''I felt as if I had entrusted my kids to pedophiles,'' says the Carthage, New York, homemaker, who promptly threw the videos into the garbage. ''It's like a toddler introduction to porn.''

A PERSISTANT RUMOR

By now, just about everyone has heard the rumors that so shocked Runge. Indeed, Disney catapulted into the headlines a few weeks ago on reports that there are subliminal sexual messages in three popular Disney videos: The Lion King and The Little Mermaid, as well as Aladdin. The charges were reported around the world; TV news shows broadcast the offending snippets in slow motion, among them a scene from The Lion King in which dust supposedly spells out the word ''sex.''

Disney denies inserting any subliminal messages. And the three allegedly obscene sequences are hardly crystal clear; even using the pause button on a videocassette recorder, viewers may debate whether they exist. Yet those sequences have quickly become the stuff of suburban myth, like the ''Paul is dead'' rumor from the heyday of the Beatles or the persistent allegations that Procter & Gamble Co.'s moon-and-stars logo symbolizes devil worship.

As the rumors spread, though, so did a common refrain: Where does this stuff come from?

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Yes, there is a problem in the Falcon's presentation in this mod. Don't call attention to it, but don't look like you're trying to avoid attention.

Aaraarrrgh?

I don't know. Fly casual.

Link -via Kotaku

Image: STRUCTUREmag

I would've guessed "they ran out of stones," but structural engineer Peter James arrived at a very different answer when pondering why ancient Egyptians stopped building pyramids. Turns out, these pyramids were too perfect and that's the ironic basis for their structural instability:

So what was causing the crumbling? James presents a new explanation: thermal movement -- that is to say the expansion and contraction of the limestone with temperature fluctuations -- has ground down the rocks and shifted their positions.

He estimates that the motion can amount to 1¼ inches per 328 feet. As the stones move, dust and sand would fall from the stones and fill in the spaces between them. The spaces into which they could contract at night would shrink, and over time they would be pushed out of position. "Multiply this endless movement by the number of days that the pyramid has been erected and you have the reason why all the outer casing has moved to the extremities, where it has buckled or displaced against blocks moving in the opposite direction and then fallen off," James writes. "It may then have been picked up by opportunists and removed from the site.?"

Problem was, as ancient Egyptians became better at constructing pyramids, the voids between the stones disappeared and the structure were less able to withstand the thermal expansion and contraction of the limestone.

Rebecca J. Rosen of The Atlantic explains: Link