Lorax Bookcase
The Lorax speaks for the trees and now writes for them, too. DeviantART member Inciatus made this bookcase inspired by Dr. Seuss's classic children's book The Lorax. He gave it to his cousin, an elementary school teacher.
Adela Tells It Like It Is
When this zinger came up during a video shoot, Mom and Dad decided this short clip was the perfect way to announce the big news to family and friends. -via Daily Picks and Flicks
A Linguistic Dissection of 7 Annoying Teenage Sounds
This is what you get when a linguist's children reach middle school. Linguist James Harbeck gives us the phonetic analysis of the things teenagers say WAY too much, mainly to annoy parents, teachers, and even their best friends. A sample:
1. Breathy-voiced long low back unrounded vowel with advanced tongue root
This is usually spelled something like auuggghhh. It's the classic teenage sound of utter exasperation. The eyes are usually angled upwards, sometimes in contrast with a downward movement of the shoulders. "Breathy-voice" means that the vocal folds are wide apart, giving a very "chesty" sound. "Advanced tongue root" means that the back of the tongue is moved forward to make a larger resonating cavity behind it. "Low back" means the tongue doesn't rise anywhere in the mouth (compare this with "eee," which is high front). "Unrounded" means the lips aren't rounded.
If that makes no sense to you, it will when you hear him reproduce this and all the analyzed sounds in the accompanying video at The Week. Link -via Metafilter
The Princess
Matt Clarke has started a YouTube series called Convos With My 2 Year Old. In it, he recreates conversations with his daughter Coco. I'm sure the words were exactly the same, but common sense tells me that the original wasn't nearly as creepy as it seems when Matt plays the part. Look at that adorable little girl -who wouldn't want to play the princess for her? -via Viral Viral Videos
The Toy You Can't Throw Out
Everyone has that one toy, right? You know what I'm talking about: the toy you've had since childhood that you just can't throw away, give away, or sell on eBay. For me, it's the above pictured Cat in the Hat talking doll. Mattel put a couple of these out in the '70s. They were different sizes and had different records in them with different voices that spoke slightly different catchphrases.
Mine was famous for saying more often than not: "Does your mother know I'm here?"
In the video below, I pull the string a bunch of times and you can hear all the phrases. And while the turntable speed is clearly off, I don't recall it ever sounding great. Even as a kid this cat always sounded a bit creepy.
How about you, Neatoramanauts? What's the one toy YOU can't get rid of? Let us know in the comments below...
A Fact of Life
This graph makes a lot of sense. You can spot the exact point in which puberty begins. This graph was created in a hurry by redditor rstarr13. The age axis is a little wonky, but in reality, the first ten years of your life take up a lot more brain space than the last several decades. Link -via Pleated Jeans
Yuck: A 4th Grader's Short Documentary About School Lunch
A child's personal project turned into a documentary Yuck: A 4th Grader's Short Documentary About School Lunch. The film is 19 minutes long and has won several film festival awards. The trailers here are just short clips, but you can find a schedule of screenings at the film site.
In the fall of 2011, fourth grader Zachary Maxwell began asking his parents if he could start packing and bringing his own lunch to school. Unfortunately, they kept insisting that he take advantage of the hot lunch being served at the school. After all, the online menu sounded delicious and the NYC Department of Education (DOE) website assured parents that the meals were nutritious. Zachary wanted to convince his parents that the online menu did not accurately represent what was really being served at his school.
In an effort to prove his point, Zachary started sneaking a small HD camera into the lunchroom to show his parents the truth. Over the next six months, Zachary would continue to gather "inside" footage and research the claims being made by the DOE and the media about the City's public school lunch program.
To the surprise of no one besides his parents, the published menus differed quite a bit from the actual lunches served in schools. To be fair, all the lunches at his elementary school are free, and I've seen much worse. But Zachary Maxwell has a wonderful career ahead of him in filmmaking, journalism, or whatever he decides to do.
The film has a website. Link -via Boing Boing
By the way, Zachary now gets to bring lunch from home. Read more about his experience at the New York Times. Link
Most Popular Baby Names of 2012
Image: Igor Kolos/Shutterstock
For the fourteenth year in a row, Jacob is America's most popular baby boy name - but there are new entries in the list as compiled by the U.S. Social Security Administration. Here are the most popular baby names in 2012:
| Boys: | Girls: |
|
|
As we mentioned above, Jacob has been champ for 14 years since 1999 ("Michael" held that title from 1959 to 1998). This is the second year Sophia came at number one for girl names. Liam cracked the top 10 for the first time, perhaps because of recent movies starring Liam Neeson.
The US Social Security Administration also released the names that underwent the greatest change in popularity from 2011 to 2012:
From Social Security's press release:
Many pop-culture naming trends appear in a popular feature of Social Security’s baby names website--the “change in popularity” page. This year’s winners for biggest jump in popularity in the Top 500 are Major and Arya.
The fastest riser on the girls’ list may have been influenced by the popular cable TV series “Game of Thrones.” Arya is the daughter of a leader of one of the Seven Kingdoms. She also is an expert sword fighter, so doubt her influence on the popular names list at your own risk.
For the boys, parents may associate Major with the military title. Acting Commissioner Colvin added “I have no doubt Major’s rising popularity as a boy’s name is in tribute to the brave members of the U.S. military, and maybe we’ll see more boys named General in the future.” You also might trace Major’s increase in popularity to a cable TV show. “Home by Novogratz” is a popular home design show featuring Major Novogratz, the youngest son of designers Robert and Cortney.
The second fastest riser for boys was Gael, and for girls, Perla. Both names most likely are on the rise due to the increase in the Spanish-speaking population in the United States. Perla is the Latinized version of Pearl and is popular among Hispanic-Americans. Gael’s popularity could be tied to Mexican actor Gael Garcia Bernal.
Teen Woken By Snake Bite
Teens can sleep through anything. Well, almost anything. While a sleepy Napa, California teen was reaching for her alarm clock she was bitten on the hand by a large boa constrictor. The really strange part, neither she, nor her family, own a boa constrictor.
The teen had crossed paths with a cold-blooded killer: a three-foot long boa constrictor. Somehow the reptile slithered into the Ojeda’s apartment on the 300 block of Collier Boulevard and made itself at home. It was a specimen so large, Ojeda said that Napa County Animal Control was shocked.
“When they saw it, they were like ‘Oh crap it’s big,’ so they went and got a cage for it,” Ojeda said.
Emelyn Ojeda did have to seek medical treatment for the bite, but the incident isn't causing her to lose any sleep. Apparently she is still sleeping just fine.
KPIX5 has more: Link
Visiting the Autry and Learning about the American West
My husband thinks I have never met a museum I didn't like, and he's probably right. I admit it, I am a little bit of a museum junky. I blame it on my parents who never saw something rusty or old that they didn't want to stop and look at. I would probably collect old and rusty things too, but they freak my husband out. Where I see history, he sees tetanus. So instead of hanging around swapmeets, I settle for going to museums.
As a California native, I have spent years driving past The Autry National Center located in the Griffith Park area of Los Angeles. The museum is directly across the street from the Los Angeles Zoo and you can see the striking campus from the freeway. I have always wanted to go, but for one reason or another I was never able to make it inside. All that changed a few Saturdays ago.
The Autry National Center is a museum dedicated to the diverse people of the American West. It has over 500,000 pieces of art and artifacts. The museum is a great way for kids to learn more about California and the Wild West.
Of course the museum has plenty of things behind glass for the whole family to look at, but there are plenty of hands on activities for little kids as well. Outside is small garden with waterfall and an area where children can try their hand at panning for gold.
Inside, there is a Family Discovery Gallery in the museum where children can touch, play, and learn about a Chinese American family from the 1930s. The gallery is based on the real See Family and is broken up into several small sections representing the family's home, antique store, and restaurant. The kids can try on costumes, play with toys, make a meal in the homes kitchen, or run the mock restaurant.
If you have an hour to spare, I highly recommend attending a docent-lead tour. The docents are incredibly nice and knowledgable. They also have the keys to the touch carts.
Each touch cart is themed and houses several items for the kids to hold and try on. On our tour, the kids learned about Mountain Men, Native American Indians, and Cowboys. They were able to touch animal pelts, view artifacts up-close, and try on a few pieces of clothing.
Museum outings like this can be pricey, so many of you will be happy to know that the museum offers free Tuesday every second Tuesday of the month. They also offer admission discounts to various credit card holders and bank users, so don't be afraid to ask.
It is worth noting that The Autry website boasts a series of special family events on Sundays. The events are themed and include additional kidcentric activities.
Happy Museum going!
Not Just A Girl
When Austin photographer Jaime Moore's daughter Emma turned five years old, she wanted to commemorate the event with a photo shoot. But rather than dressing her up as a Disney Princess, the mother-daughter duo tried something else: dressing her up as influential women throughout history.
Take a look at the marvelous project, titled Not Just A Girl: Link - via F Stop Lounge
How to Introduce Your Child to the Symphony Orchestra
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.
Mugshot of a Toddler
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)
