Alex Santoso's Blog Posts

Winking Sarah Palin in LEGO

I just wanted you to know that I've tried hard to avoid the temptation of posting a lot of political stuff on Neatorama because some of you get all worked up in the comment section, but I couldn't resist this one: the winking Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin in LEGO by ochre jelly.

Link - via The Brothers Brick

Please keep the comment section civil, mmkay?

Dreaming in Black and White

Do you dream in color? Or black and white? It turns out that the color of your dreams is determined by what TV you watched growing up:

While almost all under 25s dream in colour, thousands of over 55s, all of whom were brought up with black and white sets, often dream in monchrome - even now.

Link


The Miller-Urey Experiment Revisited

Almost six decades ago, when Stanley Miller was just a 22-year-old PhD student, he and his professor Harold Urey did an experiment that became legendary in science: Miller mixed basic chemicals that were present in primordial earth and added electric sparks to stimulate a thunderstorm. The result? Miller found traces of amino acids - the building blocks of proteins.

After Miller died last year, his former student found a (scientific) treasure trove: the vials containing dried samples from his groundbreaking 1950s experiment. And when they tested the samples using today's more sophisticated equipments, they found a lot more stuff:

"We found not only did these make more of certain amino acids than in the classic experiment, but they made a greater diversity of amino acids."

Miller, using the old methods, had found five amino acids; Jeffrey Bada and his teams tracked down 22. What is more, the overall chemical yields were often higher than in the first set of experiments - the mixture appeared to be more fertile.

Professor Bada points out that today, almost all volcanic eruptions are accompanied by violent electric storms. The same could have been true on the young Earth. "What we suggest is that volcanoes belched out gases just like the ones Stanley had used, and were immediately subjected to intense volcanic lightning.

"And so each one of those volcanoes could have been a little, local prebiotic factory. And so all of that went into making the material that we refer to as the prebiotic soup."

Link


The Banana Diet Fad

There's a new diet fad sweeping through Japan: the Morning Banana Diet, where you eat only bananas for breakfast, then anything you want for lunch and dinner ... and it's making bananas a scarce commodity!

Keiko Akai is very annoyed. The attractive 21-year-old university student has been planning to do a banana diet for some time now, but she can't get started — and not for lack of trying. "I keep going to OK Store, my local supermarket every single day," she says. "In fact, I've just been there. There are no bananas on the shelves, and it's been like that for a month."

Akai has never weighed more than 100 pounds, and is so slim that her waist is swimming in Zara's smallest size XS skirt. She doesn't need to lose any weight. But Japanese girls obsessed with diets tend to jump at any trendy new ones, so, when Akai heard about a popular actress who'd lost 26 pounds through the Morning Banana Diet, she had to try it. And the dearth of bananas as her local supermarket, and many others, is testimony to the popularity of the new dieting fad.

Link

(Photo: Eriko Sugita / Reuters)


Sugar Cubes Shaped Like Cinder Blocks

If you like stacking up sugar cubes, then you'll probably dig this: the cinder block-shaped sugarblocks by Audrey Hasen Russell and John Truex of Spiceship studio.

Link


Tokyoflash Treasure Hunt #5: Winner!

Wow! We had a great turnout for this month's Tokyoflash Treasure Hunt game. The answers are: negative, yonder, and rogue (wasn't that easy?) and here's the answer page.

One lucky commenter was picked at random (using the random integer generator at random.org).

Congratulations to Cesareldorado who won a sweet black Oberon from the good folks at Tokyoflash! For the rest of you - better luck next time!


Tag a Dummer

What do you get when you mix typographic creativity, social awareness, and a little bit of vandalism? Here's Tag a Dummer, a website where you can upload photos of "tagged" Hummers in protest of the gas-guzzling vehicles: http://tagadummer.com/ [Flash] | The Gallery


Tip'd: Community for Financial News

Our pal Muhammad Saleem (and web 2.0/social media maven) has just launched a new website called Tip'd. The digg-like website focuses on financial news, which is a timely topic in today's struggling economy.

If you follow digg, you'll know that Mu is one of their top users - so it'll be interesting to see how Tip'd will turn out. Knowing Mu personally (he's a nice guy!), I'll bet that it'll be a success.

Link


Chimp Working Out With Dog

I'm having a crappy day today - Neatorama's servers crashed (again) - but this little video clip cheered me up a little: a chimp doing sit ups ... and a dog helping it! From the wacky entertainment that is Japanese TV (where else?)

Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - via i heart tripods


U-Ram Choe's Futuristic Bio-Mechanical Sculptures

Korean artist U-Ram Choe who specialized in making wonderful, mechanical sculptures that look like futuristic biological organisms. Choe likes to incorporate scientific nomenclature into his artwork, and the art display reminds one of a prehistoric display at a natural history museum!

Here is Opertus Lunula Umbra (Hidden Shadow of Moon), as part of the Liverpool Biennial International 08 Exhibition:


Photo: Liverpool Biennial [Flickr]

Varietal Urbanus Female (2007), made from etched stainless steel, LED, circuit motors, CPU board, custom software and cable:


Photo: Ho Sing Yuan/Taichi Photography

Lumina Virgo (2005), made from metal, touch sensor, light bulb, and magnet:


Photo: Lee Seong-Gon

Check out more of U-Ram Choe's artwork at his website: Link


A Pain in the Royal Horse: 5 Sex Rumors About Royalty

Long before Prince Charles proved that love is blind by cheating on his beautiful wife with Camilla Parker-Bowles, blue bloods had already proudly renounced monogamy. Over the centuries, they've coveted their neighbors' wives countless times, sure, but what about their neighbors' livestock? It's time to separate the perverted facts from the perverted fiction about royal sex lives.

1. Catherine the Great (1729 - 1796)

The reign of Catherine II, the German-born czarina of Russia, began when she overthrew her alcoholic, incompetent, and purportedly impotent husband, Frederick (the not so Great), in 1762. If there was one thing Catherine the Great would not stand for, it was impotence.

Although grossly overweight, Catherine loved men - a great many of them, in fact - over the course of her 34-year reign. And then, it was rumored, she died during a botched attempt to make love (if it can be called such a thing) to a horse. The rumor may have been spread by Catherine's Polish enemies, who resented her for annexing much of Poland. (On the list of European royalty's leisure activities, "overrunning Poland" has historically been a close second to "Sex.")

At any rate, Catherine never had sex with a horse, and one wonders why anyone felt compelled to make up such a story, since her actual death was plenty humiliating. While straining on the toilet, she had a stroke.

2. The Tale of Two Georges

In what seems to be an outlandish coincidence, England's king George II (1683 - 1760) also died of a stroke while on the commode. Some sources say that although he was quite happily married to his wife, Queen Caroline, George took mistresses as to maintain his reputation. After all, a mistressless king could be seen as weak or worse still, impotent.

His son, George III, however, broke that streak of monarchial infidelity when he married the notoriously homely Princess Sophia Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz in 1761. Seeing her for the first time on their wedding day, George is said to have winced in disgust, but the two came to love one another immensely (and frequently - they had 15 kids), and George III was never unfaithful.

3. Another Royal Horse

The Roman emperor Caligula (12 - 41 CE) redefined sexual debauchery during his reign. Aside from fancying himself a god and having an altogether creepy sexual fascination with his sister Drusilla, Caligula supposedly engaged in many orgies (which inspired a famous adult film). Plus, he had a suspiciously intimate relationship with his favorite horse, Incitatus.

Some Roman historians claimed that Caligula intended to make his horse consul, but that appears to have been kind of a Roman urban legend. Roman historians despised Caligula so intensely that it's difficult to sort out the actual facts of his reign. And while Caligula did like his horse (he apparently built Incitatus a house), there's no reason to believe he "liked him" liked him.

4. Jahangir (1569 - 1627)

Though there are plenty of excellent candidates for most sexually insatiable king ever, including Hal the Horny (the oft-married Henry VIII of England), our vote has to go to Jahangir, the fourth Mughal emperor of India.

Jahangir had little to do with the day-to-day running of the empire - that work was accomplished by his favorite wife, Nur Jahan. (The Taj Mahal was built for Jahan's niece, Mumtaz Mahal.)

While Jahan became one of the most powerful women of the 17th century, Jahangir busied himself with loving. He supposedly had 300 wives (296 more than allowed by the religion, Islam, he supposedly followed), 5,000 female concubines, and 1,000 male concubines. Jahangir also kept a massive herd of 12,000 elephants, but we won't speculate.

5. And, of Course, Prince Charles! (1948 - )

Of all the recent sex rumors about the British royal family, none had kept quite so quiet as that of Prince Charles's supposed bisexual affair. For weeks in the late 2003, the British press printed banner headlines about a royal sex scandal but, conscious of Britain's strict libel laws, never came out and openly revealed the accusations.

Instead, they engaged in all manner of hints and innuendo. This led to the strange phenomenon of the royal family issuing a statement denying allegations that had never publicly been made. The rumor: Prince Charles had a love affair with his advisor Michael Fawcett.

Scandalous, sure, but unlikely - it seems the prince only has eyes for Camilla. After decades of courtship, they finally wed in 2005.

From mental_floss' book Forbidden Knowledge: A Wickedly Smart Guide to History's Naughtiest Bits, published in Neatorama with permission.

Be sure to visit mental_floss' extremely entertaining website and blog!


Bribing Kids to Study Actually Works!

Philantrophist Eli Broad had an idea on how to improve school children's test scores: bribe 'em with money!

Here's a controversial pilot educational program called Spark, where children are rewarded with cold hard cash if they do well on tests:

Seventh-graders can earn up to $50 a test -- for 10 assessment tests throughout the year. There's a similar program for fourth-graders. The money goes into a bank account that only the student can access. The better you do, the more money you earn, up to $500 a year for seventh-graders. The idea is to make school tangible for disadvantaged kids -- short-term rewards that are in their long-term best interest.

Is it working? That depends on whom you ask.

Pundits and some in the media say Spark is bribing kids; they should love learning for learning's sake. But if you talk with those actually participating in the pilot program -- the students, administrators and teachers -- you hear something different.

[Eight-grader Soledad Moya] said she wasn't a "studying kind of" person before the awards. Now she and her friends like to look in the dictionary and memorize words and their definitions, and they ask their teachers for more practice tests. Even though she's not eligible for the awards now that she's in eighth grade, she's still studying harder before tests, she said. "Once you get started with something, you keep doing it."

The changes she saw in students like Moya caused Lisa Cullen -- a literacy and social studies teacher at the school -- to go from skeptic to supporter: "I saw how it takes away the uphill battle you have trying to get students to study for tests." She saw a definite increase in students' excitement, enthusiasm and effort.

Link


Who's To Blame For The Credit Crunch? Pirates!

Who's responsible for the current credit crunch? According to Peter Hayes of the University of Sunderland, it's the pirates!

Dr Hayes says: “Pirates elected their captain, voted on major decisions and distributed their booty in roughly equal shares, and there is something in the idea that a pirate ship is the equivalent of a modern corporation.

“In the 17th and 18th century privateers were backed by financiers, much like modern multi-national PLCs. The way that privateering was operating back in the golden age of buccaneering, is that a group of individuals come together, and agree to kit out a ship to sail the seven seas to see if they can pull in some gold. It was a global gamble for enormous rewards. These predatory voyages are the roots of modern venture capitalism, with these modern multi-national corporations out to get all they can get. That’s the sort privateering that led to the Credit Crunch.”

Dr Hayes argues that this raises troubling questions about whether rights in modern democratic states can truly be said to be human rights, as opposed to the rights held only by a select few corporations.

Dr Hayes says: “Pirates had a democratic structure, and relative equality, but they were doing all of this to violate the rights of other people. The idea of a social contract is that it protects human rights. But what if you create a social contact to say that we’ll observe rights towards each other, but we won’t observe rights for outsiders?”

Link


Teen Changed Her Name to Cutout Dissection.com

A 19-year-old teen formerly known as Jennifer Thornburg has legally changed her name to Cutout Dissection.com to protest animal dissection assignments in school:

Cutout, now a vegan, said that after she finished the assignment the images of bone and skin stuck with her. "I remembered what I saw during the dissection and I thought, 'this is wrong.' "

Those images are what compelled her to stand up for a change -- a name change. Jennifer Thornburg is now Cutout Dissection.com, as even her driver's license notes. [...]

No matter her steadfastness in sticking to principles, this newsmaker raises the question: What do Mom and Dad think?

Cutout said that her father's initial reaction was shock, but he recently said how proud he was of her for standing up for what she believes in.

Link | Story at PETA | Oh, and yes, CutoutDissection.com

Previously on Neatorama: Man Changes Name to KentuckyFriedCruelty.com


City Council Reprimands Man for Being Too Tidy a Gardener

Brian Hubbard, a 72-year-old man from Herefordshire, England, got into trouble with his city's council because ... his garden is too tidy!

A dedicated gardener has been banned from trimming the grass outside his house - because it is TOO tidy.

Brian Hubbard, 72, has been mowing, weeding and edging the verge outside his home for the past eight years.

But now Herefordshire Council have ordered him to stop because he is encroaching on council-owned grass. The letter ordered the removal of garden tools and furnishings, path and bed covering material, and all vegetation not in keeping with the surrounding area. It warned if there was still a problem after that period, works would be carried out and re-charged to him.

Mr Hubbard branded the council's warning as absurd. 'The council said it sent me this letter after noticing that my grass verge was tidier than the other ones on the street' he said.

Link

Photo: Caters News Agency Ltd


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Profile for Alex Santoso

  • Member Since 2012/07/17


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