It's once again time for our collaboration with the always amusing What Is It? Blog, and this one is special: it's our 200th such contest! Can you guess what this item is? Can you make up something interesting?
Place your guess in the comment section below. One guess per comment, please, though you can enter as many as you'd like. Post no URLs or weblinks, as doing so will forfeit your entry. Two winners: the first correct guess and the funniest (albeit ultimately wrong) guess will win T-shirt from the NeatoShop.
Please write your T-shirt selection alongside your guess. If you don't include a selection, you forfeit the prize, okay? May we suggest the Science T-Shirt, Funny T-Shirt and Artist-Designed T-Shirts?
For another picture, check out the What Is It? Blog. Good luck!
Update: no one knew what the mystery item was (although quite a few came somewhat close). It's a saw oiler. Pulling the trigger released some oil to lubricate the saw. You can see the patent application sketch at the What Is It? blog. The funniest answer submitted was one of those close-but-no-cigar answers, from Randall.
It is a saw handle, useful for handling saws. Before its invention, using saws was very dangerous to the fingers, so people used trained beavers. This little invention put hundreds of beaver trainers out of work, and they congregated in Wisconson, drinking from dusk to midnight, then going out on 'Beaver-runs,' causing untold destruction. Finally, the Wisconson National Guard was called out and the hooliganism ended. Wisconsin is now known for its calmness and cheese.
So Randall wins a t-shirt from the NeatoShop!
Comments (51)
When Life Gives you Mold, Make Penicillin
Ladies fit T-Shirt size small, please.
t-shirt size XXL please.
This isn't the life I ordered size M
you can see the figure of an alien depicted at the section of the artefact that seems to be a kind of andle or grip.. The alien has two eyes no nose a mouth and a telekinetic organ in the middle of the forehead (and therefore needs no hands.)
The L-shaped ornament points to the home planet (or to the position of the orbiting mother ship), and the spaceship ornament on the left upper sind indicates the alien's spaceship withe the aureola of the alien spaceship pilot...
The only aspect still under examination is the alien spaceship registration number "105" at the radome of the spaceship ornament..
Or it is just Ford Prefect's "electronic thumb" from the "hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy"...
I want to believe ... alien version 2XL.. Ladies fit
So the quagga is extinct - we humans live on and have improved living conditions since the late 19th century. Why do we need a zebra subspecies?
Just thinking outloud.
Now, if it was a giant woolly mammoth, THAT'll be different! :)
I like the fact that humans are genuinely trying to bring back something that humans made extinct through their own ignorance. It gives me hope that we haven't thoroughly mired ourselves in exactly that thought of "Oh well, that's just the way it goes, it's dead and gone but WE must go on, etc."
And frankly, it's better research than engineering a subcutaneous bra... ;-)
--TwoDragons