We’ve shown you Canine Musical Freestyle competitions and Bunny Show Jumping competitions, and now we have Feline Agility Competitions, too! In this video, a 5-week old Tonkinese kitten named Jumpin Jack Flash starts his training. He’s already got a blue ribbon in “adorable.” Find out more about these competitions from the Cat Fanciers Association. Link -via Buzzfeed

Edgar Allan Poe Foundation of Boston and the Boston Art Commission plan to erect a statue honoring Edgar Allan Poe, and they’ve narrowed down the design submissions to three finalists.

The finalists were selected from a pool of 265 artists from 42 states and 13 countries who submitted their qualifications for consideration. Working with the Edgar Allan Poe Foundation of Boston, the Boston Art Commission will oversee the installation of the public artwork in Edgar Allan Poe Square, the city-owned plaza located at the southeast corner of Boylston Street and Charles Street South between Park Square and Boston Common.

The artists are Jennifer Bonner and her teammate architect Christian Stayner, both of Los Angeles; Ann Hirsch of Cambridge and her teammate Boston architect Robert Olson; and Stefanie Rocknak of Oneonta, New York. Their design proposals were first presented by the artists on Monday, Jan. 9, 2012, at the Campus Center of Emerson College (150 Boylston St., four doors east of Poe Square). The proposed concepts will be presented once again at the Boston Public Library in Copley Square by project manager Jean Mineo on Thursday, January 19, 2012, the 203rd birthday of the Boston-born Poe.

The design shown is by sculptor Stefanie Rocknak. See them all and read the artist’s statements at the project site. Or, if you’re in Boston, see them at the library today! Link -Thanks, J.W. Ocker!

The Cleveland AAF (American Advertising Federation) challenged ad agencies to a competition to make a castle of canned goods. The object was to draw attention to the needs of local food banks. The canned goods used would later go to the Cleveland Foodbank, along with a donation from the Cleveland AAF. Melamed Riley used nearly 400 cans and built a facsimile of their local White Castle hamburger outlet and named it “Crave-A-Lot.” It has lights and even a drive-through! Their castle won first place. Link -Thanks, Rachel!

For the third year, the Dance Your PhD competition has gathered videos of graduate students interpreting their doctoral dissertations in dance form. All 53 entries for 2011 are posted at ScienceNOW. The video shown here, by Anderson Mills, is called “Human-Based Percussion and Self-Similarity Detection in Electroacoustic Music.” The dissertation is about teaching a computer (representated here by a “robot”) to recognize rhythm in human music. Link -via Boing Boing

Everyone likes dogs, right? How about surfing? What about surfing dogs? In the most adorable mash-up ever of two seemingly unrelated things people like, a recent competition pitted man’s best friend against some totally righteous waves.

Five competitors piled on a surfboard during Sunday’s Surf Dog Surf-A-Thon in Del Mar, Calif. The event welcomed 4,000 spectators, 80 pooches, and raised more than $100,000 for orphaned animals. Canine surf competitions have recently grown in popularity, and a number are held in Southern California each year.

Check out the slideshow of hang-ten pups on The Week. Link

Image: REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

The puns, the insulting, giggly tones, and the over-used euphemisms for fat that were scattered throughout the campaign’s solicitation began to crystalize an opinion in my mind. How offensive the campaign was. How it spoke to plus-sized women like they were starry-eyed 16 year olds from Kansas whose dream, obviously, was to hop a bus to L.A. to make it big in fashion. How apparently there were no words in existence to accurately describe the way American Apparel felt about a sexy, large woman, and so phrases like “booty-ful” and “XLent” would need to be invented for us—not only to fill this void in American vocabulary, but also make the company seem like a relatable, sassy friend to fat chicks.

Upton submitted a set of photographs of herself (mostly with food) taken by her friend Shannon Skloss. After the photos were approved for the contest and posted, Upton received more votes from the public than any of the other entrants! Upton writes about her feelings on winning the contest at The Daily Beast. Link -via Metafiter

More pictures and links about the project can be found at Upton’s blog (some are NSFW): Link

(Image credit: Shannon Skloss)

In this student film by Ting Tey, four animals impede each other’s progress in crossing a bridge. Cooperation only comes by the threat of what could happen if they don’t! -via the Presurfer

National Geographic Traveler magazine has announced the winners of their 2011 photo contest! First place went to the photo shown here, taken by Ben Canales at Crater Lake National Park. Read the story behind the picture, and see ten other amazing winning photos at NatGeo (do not miss the Viewer’s Choice winner). Link -Thanks, Marilyn Terrell!

(Image credit: Ben Canales)

Two Chinese beekeepers competed against each other yesterday in an attempt to break the world record of bee wearing (who knew?). Wearing only shorts, goggles and nose plugs, each of the men wore Queen Bees on their bodies to see who could attract the most bees in an hour. In case you’re wondering, the answer is no – each individual bee isn’t counted by someone. The number of bees is estimated by weight. Beekeeper Lc Kongjiang attracted 22.9 kilograms of bees (a little over 50 pounds) and his competition, Wang Dalin, wore about 57 pounds of bees. Unfortunately, their efforts went unrewarded: the record, held by American Mark Biancaniello, is a little more than 87 pounds.

Link via Flavorwire
Photo by ImagineChina

Photojournalist Prakash Hatvalne of Bhopal, India took this shot that won the Grand Prize in the 8th annual Smithsonian Photo Contest. You can see the winners in all the different categories, and find out how you can enter the 9th annual contest at Smithsonian. Link

A creation called Chilean CoPeepapo Mine Rescue won the grand prize at the annual Peeps diorama competition from The Washington Post. A video at the site looks at the details of the winning entry. You can see all the entries in this year’s contest in a slide show. Link to video. Link to slide show.

How was he caught?

Chitwood said two of his officers happened to be eating lunch in  Verona Pizza on West Chester  when Galiatsatos, 47, entered the business carrying a bag and then asked to use the bathroom.

When the owner of the shop inspected the bathroom, he found footprints on the toilet. The owner checked it out and discovered a bag stashed in the ceiling of the bathroom.

Link

Cooke and all the other mental athletes I met kept insisting that anyone could do what they do. It was simply a matter of learning to “think in more memorable ways,” using a set of mnemonic techniques almost all of which were invented in ancient Greece. These techniques existed not to memorize useless information like decks of playing cards but to etch into the brain foundational texts and ideas.

It was an attractive fantasy. If only I could learn to remember like Cooke, I figured, I would be able to commit reams of poetry to heart and really absorb it. I imagined being one of those admirable (if sometimes insufferable) individuals who always has an apposite quotation to drop into conversation. How many worthwhile ideas have gone unthought and connections unmade because of my memory’s shortcomings?

At the time, I didn’t quite believe Cooke’s bold claims about the latent mnemonic potential in all of us. But they seemed worth investigating. Cooke offered to serve as my coach and trainer. Memorizing would become a part of my daily routine. Like flossing. Except that I would actually remember to do it.

Foer did his research on memory (which he shares) and then began to train his own. As his memorization skills improved, he decided to enter the U.S.A. Memory Championship himself. And then he won it. Link

(Image credit: Marco Grob for The New York Times)

You may have participated in local or regional science fairs where you had to be in the same physical space to compete with kids in your area. Now any student with an idea can participate from anywhere, and share their idea with the world. You build and submit your project—either by yourself or in a team of up to three—entirely online. Students in India (or Israel or Ireland) will be able to compete with students in Canada (or Cambodia or Costa Rica) for prizes including once-in-a-lifetime experiences (like a trip to the Galapagos Islands with a National Geographic Explorer), scholarships and real-life work opportunities (like a five-day trip to CERN in Switzerland). And if you’re entering a science fair locally, please feel free to post that project online with Google Science Fair, too!

You can enter up until April 4th. Find links to the rules, prizes, and particulars at the Official Google Blog. Link -via Discoblog

The Krewe of the Grateful Gluttons will hold their 4th annual Gingerbread Trailer Park competition this Saturday night in Atlanta. The entries are judged on their creativity and “Christmas-iness”. Gingerbread is not required, but entries must be made of at least 90% edible materials. Looking through the photos of last year’s competition, I see that includes broccoli, snack cakes, pretzels, Jell-o, and donuts. Link -via a comment at mental_floss

It’s time for another edition of Name That Weird Invention! -this time with a decidedly Halloween theme. Steven M. Johnson comes up with all sorts of wacky inventions in his weekly Museum of Possibilities posts. Can you come up with a name for this one? The commenter suggesting the funniest and wittiest name win a free T-shirt from the NeatoShop.

Contest rules: one entry per comment, though you can enter as many as you’d like. Please make a selection of the T-shirt you want (may we suggest the Science T-shirt, Funny T-shirt, and Artist-designed T-shirt categories?) alongside your entry. If you don’t select a shirt, then you forfeit the prize. Good luck!

Update: Congratulations to our winners! T-shirts from the NeatoShop go to Barking Bud, who called it a Mortalcycle, and John P, who came up with the name Moto-Crossbones by Bone-Daddy Bikes (which comes in “his and hearse models”). Honorable mentions: Elizabeth
(Bone Chopper), Hannah (Tyred of Life), Saudia (Nutcracker), Heather B (Dirt Nap Bike), deathbyawesomeness (diecycle), Sasha (BMXoskelton), and ladybuggs (The Grim Chopper).

Steven M. Johnson comes up with all sorts of wacky inventions in his weekly Museum of Possibilities posts, but something’s missing from his strange gadgets: names. Can you come up with a name for this one? The commenter suggesting the funniest and wittiest name win a free T-shirt from the NeatoShop.

Contest rules: one entry per comment, though you can enter as many as you’d like. Please make a selection of the T-shirt you want (may we suggest the Science T-shirt, Funny T-shirt, and Artist-designed T-shirt categories?) alongside your entry. If you don’t select a shirt, then you forfeit the prize. Good luck!

Update: Congratulations to winner NathanBBlu, who named the invention “Stalaglites,” and explained why. And also to winner lolamouse, who came up with “Light in the Loafers” (used to tell interested observers which way you go). Both win t-shirts from the NeatoShop!

Mothers, you’ve certainly noticed that some parents look at child rearing as a competition. There are those who strive for perfection in every aspect of their kids’ lives (according to the latest parenthood buzz, which may change tomorrow), and have no problem crowing about it to any other parent who doesn’t measure up in their eyes. You’ll enjoy this exchange at NeatoBambino. Link

1. Chris Stevens of New Richmond, Wisconsin grew a pumpkin this year that weighed in at 1,810.5 pounds -considerably bigger than the previous world-record pumpkin that weighed 1,725 pounds. The big pumpkin was weighed at the Stillwater Harvest Fest in Stillwater, Wisconsin Minnesota last weekend. How did he grow a pumpkin that big? Stevens has a 10,000-square-foot pumpkin patch, in which he grows only one pumpkin per vine. He shades the fruit from the sun, and feeds the vines cow manure, fish emulsion and seaweed.

2. Competitive pumpkin growing really began with William Warnock of Ontario. He grew the Rennie’s Mammoth variety of pumpkins, which were billed as capable of growing to over a hundred pounds. However, Warnock’s pumpkins were much bigger. In 1900 and 1904 he produced fruits that weighed over 400 pounds! His 403 pound world record set in 1904 stood for 76 years. See Warnock’s pumpkins here.

3. The most common variety of pumpkin grown for world-record competitions is the Atlantic Giant, which produces the largest fruit of any plant in the world. The variety was first cultivated by Nova Scotia farmer Howard Dill in 1976. It was Dill who finally broke Warnock’s big pumpkin record in 1979, and grew record-setting pumpkins for several consecutive years afterward. The Dill family still sells the record-breaking seeds.

4. During the last few years of the 20th century, the competitive pumpkin community was rocked by cheating, scandals, and infighting -enough to power a soap opera. The main governing body of the competitions was the World Pumpkin Confederation. A split in the membership led to the creation of the Great Pumpkin Commonwealth, which now oversees official weigh-ins.

5. The first pumpkin that weighed over a thousand pounds was grown in 1996 by Paula and Nathan Zehr of Lowville, New York. Their record-breaking pumpkin weighed an astounding 1,061 pounds, which won the couple a $50,000 prize for reaching the 1,000-pound milestone. Since then, half-ton pumpkins have become “common”. The world record for large pumpkins has been broken every year this decade, except for 2008.

Steven M. Johnson comes up with all sorts of wacky inventions in his weekly Museum of Possibilities posts, but something’s missing from his strange gadgets: names. Can you come up with a name for this one? The commenter suggesting the funniest and wittiest name win a free T-shirt from the NeatoShop.

Contest rules: one entry per comment, though you can enter as many as you’d like. Please make a selection of the T-shirt you want (may we suggest the Science T-shirt, Funny T-shirt, and Artist-designed T-shirt categories?) alongside your entry. If you don’t select a shirt, then you forfeit the prize. Good luck!

Update: We have winners! First place goes to Craig, who suggested the name “Glockets”, and the second place name is “The Smitten”, suggested by Abby. Both win t-shirts from the NeatoShop!

It’s time for another Fill in the Bubble Frenzy with boy genius Mal and his talking dog Chad! Fill in the empty speech bubble and win any T-shirt available in the NeatoShop -take a look around, pick one out and tell us what shirt you’d like with your submission in the comments. If you don’t specify a t-shirt with your entry, you forfeit the prize. Enter as many times as you like (text only, please), but leave only one entry per comment. For inspiration, check out Mal and Chad’s comic strip adventures by Stephen McCranie at malandchad.com. Good luck!

Update: Congratulations go out to Kay Truman, who filled in the bubble with “Okay, so this wasn’t the best way to find my contact…” She wins a t-shirt from the NeatoShop!

Hardcore homemade robots will go head-to-head in a fight to the finish at Combots Cup V, the annual championship for combat robots. On October 23rd and 24th in San Mateo, California, robots from one to 220 pounds will compete for a total of $3500 in prize money and champion bragging rights!

SEE heavyweight fighting robot behemoths like Last Rites and Sewer Snake wipe the walls with each other inside our custom built bulletproof arena!

THRILL to all the good parts of a NASCAR crash without all that pesky danger to human life! All the excitement of monster trucks, but up close and extremely personal!

FLAME THROWERS! SPINNING BLADES OF DOOM! HYPER-PSI STEEL FLIPPERS OF NASTINESS!

Also, it’s educational for the kids, but you don’t have to tell them that. You’ll also be able to speak with the people who design and build the robots -and you have a combat robot, you’ll want to enter! Link -Thanks, Simone!

(Image courtesy of Combots.net)

Steven M. Johnson comes up with all sorts of wacky inventions in his weekly Museum of Possibilities posts, but something’s missing from his strange gadgets: names. Can you come up with a name for this one? The commenter suggesting the funniest and wittiest name (along with proposed use of such strange object – the weirder the better) will win a free copy of Steve’s autographed first edition book What The World Needs Now. Two runner-ups win free T-shirts from the NeatoShop.

Contest rules: one entry per comment, though you can enter as many as you’d like. Please make a selection of the T-shirt you want (may we suggest the Science T-shirt, Funny T-shirt, and Artist-designed T-shirt categories?) alongside your entry. If you don’t select a shirt, then you forfeit the prize. Good luck!

Update 10/9: Congratulations to first place winner redfi5e who suggested we call this invention “Flures.” Second place winners are Carolyn Bahm (“Dive-Thrus”) and ernest (“Flap-jerks”). Carolyn was the only one who followed stated a t-shirt preference as per the contest rules, so she gets a t-shirt from the NeatoShop!

The artist, Steven Johnson, said, “I was blown away by the cleverness of many of the names. I also noticed that a well-conceived name made my art seem funnier!” So he wanted to recognize these entries as Honorable Mentions: The Flopcatch, Masterbaiters, Toe Tacklers, Self Contained Underwater Baiting Apparatus (SCUBA), Flipplures, Trollfins, FlipperDippers, SCUBait, Flip-o-bait, Flip Service, Kickbait, Flipping Hookers, Toe-Bait-O’s, and Stuck in pro-bait.

It’s the Fill in the Bubble Frenzy with boy genius Mal and his talking dog Chad! What is he saying in this empty speech bubble? Tell us and you might win any T-shirt available in the NeatoShop -take a look around, pick one out and tell us what shirt you’d like with your submission in the comments. If you don’t specify a t-shirt with your entry, you forfeit the prize. Enter as many times as you like (text only, please), but leave only one entry per comment. For inspiration, check out Mal and Chad’s comic strip adventures by Stephen McCranie at malandchad.com. Good luck!

Update: We have a winner! Congratulations to Skully, who said, Let’s do the ol’ “There’s someone on the wing!” gag. Skully did not select a t-shirt, however.

Do you have some nice vacation pictures? Can you take some? National Geographic Traveler is sponsoring the World in Focus Photo Contest with both amateur and professional divisions. Get this- the grand prize in the amateur division is a 10-day expedition to the Galapagos islands! There are lesser prizes as well, like a trip to Hawaii and cameras and stuff. Even if you don’t enter, you can see the entries and vote for the “people’s choice” award (which is separate from the contest judging). The deadline for entries is August 23rd. Link -Thanks, Marilyn Terrell!

(Image source: National Geographic Expeditions)

Neatorama is proud to be a co-sponsor of the new How Did You Know? contest at mental_floss. You could win prizes from the Neato Shop, mental_floss, Motionbox, or Roku. The contest runs for the rest of the week, but your chances of winning a prize are better if you play every day. The format for this contest is a little different from the previous game, so jump over to mental_floss for all the details, and start playing! Link

You’d be amazed at how much fun it is to watch a grown man come apart like a $9 sweater. A Belarusian started out sane, just sitting there. Every 30 seconds a pitiless stream of water came out from a ceiling shower in the center of the sauna and splashed on the molten-hot rocks, creating a 100% humidity level in the room that would melt gold. About two minutes in our man started rocking a little. At three his eyes started blinking oddly. At four he began twitching. At five his eyes got huge. At six he started swallowing each breath like a gulp of scorching soup. Then he started glancing around wildly, as if to say to the others, Are you mad? Don’t you see what’s happening? They’ve locked us in a Crock-Pot! He started wiping his eyes and mouth. He moved his hands out toward his thighs to rub them, then realized that’s not allowed and did so anyway, crazily, as though he were covered in lice. The judges flagged him once, then twice. Then he lurched for the door, and he was out.

And that was only the first heat. Link -via mental_floss

(Image credit: Heini Hiltunen)

This cardboard sculpture by Koukichi Sugihara of the Meiji Institute for Advanced Study of Mathematical Sciences in Japan won the first prize at the 2010 Illusion of the Year competition. This one is all the more remarkable in that it is a solid object when most entries were computer-generated. See the top ten finalists from the competition, and marvel at what your brain will make you see. Link -via The Loom

The 7th Annual Asana Yoga Competition was recently held in New York. New York Magazine has a glimpse at the extreme poses competitors used to impress the judges. Link -via Buzzfeed

“He loved growing his sunflowers,” said his mother, Cathleen Wilke. “Every year we talked about coming into La Porte for the Sunflower Fair, but we never got around to it. Wyatt really wanted to be part of the contest.”

That’s what they had planned — a day at the fair, to enter his sunflower. He was a healthy, constantly laughing boy — he loved school, where he was in the second grade, he loved horses, he loved his big brother John, with whom he shared a bedroom. The Wilkes lived in the tiny town of Hamlet, about 15 minutes from La Porte; Wyatt would look out the back window, watching for blue jays and cardinals.

“He planted his sunflowers in our garden,” Cathleen Wilke said. “He was so careful with them. A few weeks before the fair, there was a heavy windstorm that knocked his biggest sunflower over. He called to me: ‘Mom, it’s on the ground — my flower, it’s down.’ He was afraid it was ruined. But he managed to save it.”

But a bacterial infection struck Wyatt and he died in just a few days. His stunned parents realized the fair had started the same day he died and took Wyatt’s sunflower to the competition, just as he had planned. They had never been to the Sunflower Fair before.

They waited together as all the categories were judged. No one around them had any idea.

And then, through the loudspeaker system at the fair, the winner of his category was announced:

“First place. . .Wyatt Wilke.”

There is more to the story, but you’d better have your handkerchief ready if you go read it. Link -via Fark

This series of photographs by Howard Schatz won a second place prize in the Sports Stories category of the World Press Photo Contest. He took pictures of boxers before and after fights. It hurts just to look! Also be sure to check out other contest winners. Link -via J-Walk Blog

Photo credit: T. Nathan Mundhenk (personal website)

4chan has animated gifs of a certain kind but the ones on Wikimedia are of a completely different ilk aka education. This amazing gif shows the transformation of the cicada from its pupa to the adult form. Although the whole process took over two hours there is a gap in the middle of about thirty minutes while the cicada took a rest from the strenuous activity of becoming an adult. Other than that gap the shots are at intervals of thirty seconds and this builds up beautifully in to a record of one insect’s emergence.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by taliesyn30.

With his beard stylist, Ledjha Carson, Traver months ago started brainstorming a beard shape that was “out of the box,” he said. They considered eagle wings, moose antlers and a sled dog team before settling on the snowshoe. It took Carson 90 minutes to weave it the day of the competition.

“She wanted it right. She was very meticulous,” he said. “But my neck is still stiff.”

Traver, who is 43 and works as a driver for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, got into facial hair competition locally about 10 years ago with the Mr. Fur Face competition during Fur Rendezvous. After that, he got involved with the South Central Alaska Beard and Moustache Club, which bid to bring the international championships to Anchorage this year — beating out Liechtenstein. He dedicated his win to his father, David Traver, who died in September

Traver is willing to shave off his award-winning beard to raise money for his favorite charity, Covenant House. Link -via Arbroath

(image credit: ACVB / Rebecca Coolidge)