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For some reason the creepiest mode of transportation is the van. It evokes images of kidnappings and unlawful activity. That’s why SuspiciousVan.com has cataloged dozens of photos of unseemly vans in various states of suspicion.
Have you checked on your kids lately? That 72? Astro with boarded windows has been camped out in the back of the school parking lot for three weeks now. It’s a suspicious van, and this a website dedicated to finding them, documenting them, and in an odd way, cherishing them–before they show up on Nancy Grace. To do this, we must understand…
A useful tip for taking family photographs: make sure the background looks good. -via b3ta
When you get your photo for your driver’s license taken you are not allowed to wear a hat or head covering unless it is for religious or medical reasons. One Austrian follower of the satirical Church of The Flying Spaghetti Monster won the right to wear a pasta strainer on his head on religious grounds for his driver’s license.
Pastafarian Niko Alm, follower of the One True Flying Spaghetti Monster, won the right to appear in his driving-license photo with a pasta strainer on his head after it was formally recognized by Austrian authorities as “religious headgear.”
Caity Weaver at The Hairpin took a really close look at all the US state flags to find out what was unique about each of them. And turned those things into snark.
1. Sometimes state flags run out of red marker before they’re finished. (Tennessee)
Check out what she said about your state. Link -via Metafilter
Yes, the rules are pretty basic, but 78 of them are hard to keep track of if you’re a beginner …or a complete idiot. Latvian photographer Ivars Gravlejs put them all in one place because he’s seen every one of these rules broken too many times. Link -via the Presurfer
Vaudeville makes a modern comeback! Tuesday’s game between Clemson and Davidson was delayed by rain, so the players jumped into the gap to keep the fans amused. -via Metafilter
This animation was produced by Qais Sarhan for his graduation project on child labor at the University of Leeds. -via Nag on the Lake
We know that a piece of toast, if dropped, will fall butter-side down. We also know that a cat, if dropped, will land on its feet. What happens when you strap a piece of buttered toast to a cat’s back and drop them both is called the Buttered Cat Paradox, and there’s an extensive amount of research on the internet devoted to just this conundrum. Find out more about it at mental_floss, including possible uses for the energy produced from such a venture, and ways it could go wrong. Link
The White House prepared a movie trailer for president Barack Obama’s routine last night at the annual White House Correspondents Dinner. It’s a sequel to The King’s Speech.
Psst! Ever heard about the professor who tries to explain every joke ever told?
No, that’s actually not a joke. Joel Warner of Wired explains how Peter McGraw attemps to explain what makes things funny.
A lanky 41-year-old professor of marketing and psychology at the University of Colorado Boulder, McGraw thinks he has found the answer, and it starts with a tickle. “Who here doesn’t like to be tickled?”
A good number of hands shot up. “Yet you laugh,” he said, flashing a goofy grin. “You experience some pleasurable reaction even as you resist and say you don’t like it.”
If you really stop to think about it, McGraw continued, it’s a complex and fascinating phenomenon. If someone touches you in certain places in a certain way, it prompts an involuntary but pleasurable physiological response. Except, of course, when it doesn’t. “When does tickling cease to be funny?” McGraw asked. “When you try to tickle yourself … Or if some stranger in a trench coat tickles you.” The audience cracked up. He was working the room like a stand-up comic.
Many would assert that this tickling conundrum is the perfect evidence that humor is utterly relative. There may be many types of humor, maybe as many kinds as there are variations in laughter, guffaws, hoots, and chortles. But McGraw doesn’t think so. He has devised a simple, Grand Unified Theory of humor—in his words, “a parsimonious account of what makes things funny.” McGraw calls it the benign violation theory, and he insists that it can explain the function of every imaginable type of humor. And not just what makes things funny, but why certain things aren’t funny. “My theory also explains nervous laughter, racist or sexist jokes, and toilet humor,” he told his fellow humor researchers.
Link (Photo: Andrew Hetherington)
Ever wondered what bears consider worth their hard-earned money? You probably could have guessed this one, but Pleated Jeans has also charted how bats, cats, kangaroos, snails, rabbits, bluejays, anteaters, and more animals are spending their tax refunds. Link to part one. Link to part two.
Even the Wicked Witch is no match for the Scarecrow!
Amazon sells the Contech Electronics CRO101 Scarecrow Motion-Activated Sprinkler. The normal purpose of such a device is to scare pets and wildlife (and maybe kids) away from your lawn or garden. However, many folks have their own ideas of how it should be used, as you’ll see in the seven pages of customer-submitted images. Link -via b3ta
As someone who works from home, I can vouch for the accuracy of these nuggets of wisdom posted at Buzzfeed. This one in particular, which is a concept I struggle with. You might laugh, but when you work on your own schedule, there is a constant tug-of-war between better quality and getting anything finished at all. Amirite? Link
Whether you prefer apples or oranges, this tongue-in-cheek infographic is one worth reading. I especially like this “pie chart” which is, of course, a bar chart. And you might see a little bias in the author’s stats. Link -via Buzzfeed
Some of you might remember the TRONified Films entry that was posted here at Neatorama last year. One of those video clips was inspired by “The Big Lebowski”, the popular Coen brothers comedy from 1998. Here’s a new video, were they have taken this mashup concept one step further.
via Pusha
Comments Off
Big Legal Brain offers a review of the Swingline 747 Business Stapler as it performs the tasks it is actually used for in offices all over the world.
For added functionality, I tried hammering a nail into the wall using the butt end of the Swingline 747. Unlike the Stanley Bostich desktop stapler we tested in the past, the Swingline held up well to the hammering. A rubber non-skid membrane on the bottom, however, took a little bit of damage from the nail. Otherwise, a few swift hits and the nail went in smoothly.
For shooting staples across the room, the Swingline really has limited utility and pales in comparison to more powerful staplers, such as the Stanley Sharpshooter Heavy Duty Staple Gun, which packs some real punch. To test the Swingline, Amy and Ninja Dog ran across the room quickly while I tried to hit them with staples shot from the stapler. I managed to hit them only 30 percent of the time, far less than the 78 percent accuracy rate we registered with the Stanley staple gun we tested last winter. But if your practice does not involve shooting staples at your colleagues or support staff, the Swingline should work just fine.
Link -via Breakfast Links
A recent post about a newscaster’s gaffe prompted me to seek out this classic clip. It was first posted on YouTube almost five years ago, but is worth viewing as an example of the importance of punctuation – specifically, that a period should signify a full stop.
The text as it was written for the newscaster:
“Good evening, I’m Ken Bastida; Dana is off tonight.
He was murdered and set on fire while celebrating his birthday. The body of Jimmy Frezshi was found by firefighters on Monroe Street…”
The result as it was read off the teleprompter:
“Good evening, I’m Ken Bastida. Dana is off tonight; he was murdered and set on fire while celebrating his birthday.
The body of Jimmy Frezshi was found by firefighters on Monroe Street…”
This Lego Star Wars animation tells a version of the original trilogy in which Jar-Jar Binks messes everything up. -via Boing Boing
Christoph Neimann illustrated the laws of physics as they apply to our daily lives. I can really relate to this one.
But back to Newton: he discovered that any two objects in the universe attract each other, and that this force is proportional to their mass.
The Earth is heavier than the Moon, and therefore attracts our bodies with a much greater force.
This explains why an empty refrigerator administrates a much smaller gravitational pull than, say, one that’s stacked with 50 pounds of delicious leftovers.
He also explains physics as it relates to waking up, subway crowding, and hair loss. Link -via The Daily What
This video won the 2010 Vimeo award for “Best Experimental Film.” Creator Chris Beckman’s explains:
Somewhere between a visual mixtape and a postmodern virtual travelogue, “oops” – a ten-minute art video composed entirely of appropriated YouTube videos, seamlessly stitched together via a motif of camera drops… This abstractly voyeuristic portrayal of an ever-filming generation (who won’t let the transcendence of being in A Moment inhibit their document-everything impulse) presages a future where every moment of our existence, from the mundane to the sublime, is preserved and catalogued for all to see.
Vimeo link. Vimeo award winners.
The performance here is by the Portsmouth Sinfonia – students in Portsmouth, England, directed by English composer Gavin Bryars.
The Sinfonia had an unusual entrance requirement, in that players had to either be non-musicians, or if a musician, play an instrument that was entirely new to them… The only rules were that everyone had to come for rehearsals and that people should try their best to get it right and not intentionally try to play badly… The early repertoire of the Sinfonia was drawn from standard classical repertoire so that most orchestra members had a rough idea of what the piece, or at least famous parts of it, should sound like; even if they could not play their chosen instrument accurately, they would at least have an idea that they should be going higher at one part then lower at another, and so on. The end result was the musical ensemble producing not only the correct note but several notes nearby, ‘clouds of sound’ that gave an average impression of the piece.
The group has not performed since 1979, but those who enjoy the video above can hear renditions of In the Hall of the Mountain King, The Hallelulah Chorus, The William Tell Overture, The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, and other classic favorites at this YouTube link.
Link.
If you want something done right, you should do it yourself. The last thing you want to do is give it to David Thorne, especially if it has anything to do with a cat. Shannon asked him to make a poster about her lost cat. What she got was not exactly what she had in mind.
Having worked with designers for a few years now, I would have assumed you understood, despite our vague suggestions otherwise, we do not welcome constructive criticism. I don’t come downstairs and tell you how to send text messages, log onto Facebook and look out of the window. I am willing to overlook this faux pas due to you no doubt being preoccupied with thoughts of Missy attempting to make her way home across busy intersections or being trapped in a drain as it slowly fills with water. I spent three days down a well once but that was just for fun.
There are several other drafts of the poster in this email exchange. Link -via Buzzfeed
This is just about the only time in life when FAIL makes me really, really happy. Maybe part of the reason why Los Angeles is having such a fiscal crisis is that these FAIL meters are becoming a pretty regular occurrence around town. Oh, well. As the old saying goes: Don’t look a broken parking meter in the, er, hand that feeds, well… whatever.
This CLIO award winning commercial shows an interesting and hilarious perspective on sibling rivalry.
– via clioawards
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by djinny.
This dust bunny is one of the many household creatures that bedevil Christoph Niemann in this funny photo essay. You’ve probably seen some of them in your home, too! Link -via Boing Boing
Jeff Wysaski made pie charts to explain how much time wild animals devote to their daily activities. Besides the jellyfish, you can explore the charts of a lion, elephant, spider, and panda. Link -Thanks, Amanda!
Humorist and new father, Jacob Lambert discovers the ugly truth behind the classic childrens books we thought we loved and wonders what they are really teaching our kids.
Take, for example, Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina:
Caps For Sale tells the story of a Russian peddler whose entire stock of pageboy caps is stolen by a troop of insouciant monkeys. The man shakes his fists, making impotent demands (“You must give me back my caps!”) as the thieves grin down from their tree, taunting his frantic need. (“Tsz, tsz, tsz!”) They seem to know that they control him, can gut him as cleanly as Maggiorani in The Bicycle Thief. Ultimately, however, they lose their nerve and fling down the caps—and while this brings the incident to a close, it’s where the real trouble begins. The peddler balances his wares upon his head and returns to town, eager to unload caps that were just worn by monkeys. The steady spread of head lice and untold ape-mites throughout his drab little village seems a given: once again, craven business interests trump the health of unwitting consumers. He may have reclaimed his caps, but the peddler has lost his integrity—with his own neighbors paying a tragic price.
Interestingly, it’s now widely believed that Outbreak, the 1995 Dustin Hoffman Ebola thriller, was at least partially inspired by Caps For Sale.
Link – via schoollibraryjournal
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by timcanny.
Check out some clever words to describe the way kids exasperate their parents. My kids have outgrown most of these phases, but I remember them well! Link
Comments Off A video clip showing Louis Armstrong performing the song “What a Wonderful World” by Bob Thiele and George David Weiss, but with vocals by The Markness.
Arrangement, instruments and recording by Andy Rehfeldt. Editing by Stephanie Wooten.
This is just one of 5 Science Fair Projects for the Internet, brought to you by College Humor. Other subjects are Facebook, Google search, comment thread eruptions, and how to build a great website. Link -via Digg
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