They say it's the little things in life that count and the little things that truly make us happy, but I'm pretty sure they didn't mean the word "things" to be taken literally.
However, the little thing in this animated short Little Thing presented by DUST made me happy for some strange reason, and it definitely wanted its existence to count even though the world seemed unaware of its existence. Anyway, enjoy this strange little sci-fi show!
The following article is from the book Uncle John’s Uncanny Bathroom Reader.
Before they became big stars, many musicians had to pay their dues and find their styles by playing with a wide variety of musicians. Here are some band pairings that might surprise you.
1. Jimi Hendrix and the Isley Brothers
In 1964, the Isley Brothers recruited a 21-year-old guitarist named Jimmy James to join their backing band. James, who later became famous using his real name -Jimi Hendrix- played on the group’s novelty single “Testify,” in which each of the Isleys take turns imitating soul legends like Ray Charles, James Brown, and Stevie Wonder.
2. Rick James, Neil Young, and Goldy McJohn
The Atacama Mummy is not an alien, as it was once purported to be, but it's not a fake, either. The tiny skin-covered skeleton is only 6 inches long. It was discovered in a small deserted town in the Atacama Desert in Chile in 2003. Experts who studied the mummy found it to be human, but were confused by test results. The bone density is that of a 6-year-old child, but how could a 6-inch body survive that long? Gene sequencing had now yielded some results.
According to the new analysis, Ata was a human girl of Chilean descent. And indeed, she was very likely still a developing fetus when she died, even though she exhibited the bone composition of a six-year old child. The reason for this, claim the researchers, is that Ata suffered from a rare bone-aging disorder. In total, the researchers identified mutations in at least seven genes that, either separately or in tandem, contributed to Ata’s odd physical characteristics, including facial malformations, bone deformities, and apparent dwarfism (known as skeletal dysplasia). Some of the genes analyzed in the study were already known to cause disease, but this is the first time that some of the mutations were linked to abnormal bone growth or other developmental problems.
Scientists were astonished at how many different genes in the mummy showed mutations. The implications for medicine may mean that health issues could be caused by more than one gene anomaly. Read more about the Atacama Mummy at Gizmodo.
(Image credit: Dr. Emery Smith)
The Face Licker is a custom-made lollipop made to look like your face -or the face of someone you'd like to lick. Firebox offers to use a photograph that you send them and create a life-size replica by hand in delicious tutti-frutti hard candy. It's $57, but if you've got that kind of money, it would make a great gift. You won't get one in time for Easter, however. If you're going to buy a Face Licker for me, send them a picture of Robert Redford, circa 1970. -via Mashable
In 1912, Norma Pfeiffer, a graduate student at the University of Chicago, discovered a new species of plant growing in the wetlands near Chicago's Lake Calumet. It spent most of its life living off underground fungi. Nothing like it existed anywhere else in the United States, but there were similar species in the tropics. Pfeiffer named it Thismia americana, and wrote her doctoral dissertation on it.
Pfeiffer was excited to uncover much more about her mystifying botanical outlier. In her thesis, she expressed hope that she could grow the plant in laboratory settings.
"Up to date, the few attempts at germinating the tiny seeds have been fruitless. It is to be hoped that a larger harvest may give a better opportunity for positive results," she wrote.But two years later, T. americana vanished, a disappearance that coincided with the building of a barn in the vicinity. It has not been spotted since.
Pfeiffer's plant has never been spotted in the wild again, but it left many mysteries behind. With only tropical relatives, how did it ever come to be in Chicago? How long had it been there? What made that particular wetland a good environment for it? And why did it go extinct in 1914? You also have to wonder about how many other species evolve and then go extinct before we ever find a trace of them. Read about the mysterious T. americana at Real Clear Science.
(Image credit: Norma E. Pfeiffer/Botanical Gazette via JSTOR)
Barnaby Dixon (previously at Neatorama) can make a puppet out of anything. He does just that in this video, fashioning a dancer out of a fluorescent silicon furry ball, and has another puppet narrate the process.
The dancing puffball look neat, but the narrator, called Dabchick, is the real star of the show. -via Digg
Bullet Bill ain't necessarily a bad bloke, but like all bullets he was made to kill, maim and destroy- so love will remain forever out of reach of his stubbly little arms.
So Bill launches himself into his work, flying back and forth across the level in hopes of making a connection and feeling that certain spark that will lead to explosive revelation.
But, as this Shmorlock Comics strip shows, Bill will never find true love, nor will he ever discover his true reason for being, because he's just an extra in a video game about Mario's life.
-Via Geeks Are Sexy
If you have a Marvel superhero movie you've looked forward to but haven't seen yet, this video might spoil some really great scenes for you. But if you are caught up on them, and have a firm control of your suspension of disbelief, it's cool to see what went on before the special effects were added.
A huge part of what you see in theaters was created by people working on computers. This look behind the scenes from Looper gives us a new respect for the actors who had to deliver lines with a straight face when everything going on around them wasn't really going on around them. -via Tastefully Offensive
When you think about classic TV and movie cowboys do you think Clint Eastwood, John Wayne and Charles Bronson instead of Bob Dylan, Bob Denver and Sammy Davis Jr.?
Yeah, so does everybody else, but both Bobs and Sammy were in old school westerns too, they're just not as well known for their portrayals of cowpokes as those gritty Western icons.
Sammy Davis Jr. was absolutely great as the gunslinger Tip Corey in the 1962 episode of The Gunslinger entitled Two Ounces Of Tin, playing a character with personality, depth and true grit.
Bob Dylan made in appearance in the 1973 film Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid as Alias, a badass stranger who helps Billy escape from three thugs. Dylan also composed the score for the film, which earned him a Grammy nomination.
But of the three, Bob Denver got to play cowboy the longest, since he starred alongside Forrest Tucker in the Sherwood and Elroy Schwartz series Dusty's Trail for 26 episodes back in 1973-74.
See The Unlikely Dozen: 12 Stars You Forgot Were Cast As Cowboys In TV And Movies here
Don't run with scissors by Anna-Maria Jung
Their movies depict them as dangerous fellows who use the claws on their hands to slice, slash and kill their foes, but nobody knows how often their hand claws land them in the ER because that doesn't make for good movies. The truth is Freddy, Logan and Edward spend at least a few days a week being patched up by ER docs after they accidentally slash themselves while getting dressed, cut themselves while shaving, or trip and fall on their claws while running around. It's like they've never heard the old warning about running around with scissors!
Add a shirt with geeky humor that's a cut above the rest to your wardrobe by bringing home this Don't Run With Scissors t-shirt by Anna-Maria Jung, it's one bloody funny design!
Visit Anna-Maria Jung's Facebook fan page, official website and Twitter, then head on over to her NeatoShop for more delightful designs:
| Morning Shave | Neverending | Glutes Intolerant | Extraordinary Novelists |
View more designs by Anna-Maria Jung | More Funny T-shirts | New T-Shirts
Are you a professional illustrator or T-shirt designer? Let's chat! Sell your designs on the NeatoShop and get featured in front of tons of potential new fans on Neatorama!
In 1844, John W. Jones escaped a plantation in Virginia and walked to New York, dodging slave catchers, with four other men. He settled in Elmira, traded work for an education, and became a sexton caring for his church's cemetery. Jones worked with the Underground Railroad, helping around 800 enslaved people escape to Canada. During the waning days of the Civil War, Elmira sprouted a prison camp for captured Confederate soldiers.
Elmira was never supposed to have a prison camp; it was a training depot for Union soldiers. But when the Confederacy began refusing to exchange African-American soldiers—who it considered captive slaves, not prisoners of war—the Union stopped participating in prisoner exchanges. “Both sides started scrambling for places to expand, and that’s how Elmira got caught up in the web,” says Terri Olszowy, a Board Member for the Friends of the Elmira Civil War Prison Camp.
The rollout was ill-planned, Olszowy explains. When it opened in July 1864, the camp had no hospital or medical staff. The first prisoners were already in rough shape and deteriorated quickly. Latrines were placed uphill from a small body of water called Foster’s Pond, which quickly became a cesspool. A shelter shortage meant that hundreds of soldiers were still living in tents by Christmas. During spring, the Chemung River flooded the grounds. Rats crawled everywhere. When authorities released a dog to catch them, the prisoners ate the dog.
Thousands of Confederate prisoners died at the camp, and the duty to bury them was handed to the town's sexton: John W. Jones. Read about Jones' journey from slavery to life as a wealthy landowner with voting rights at Mental Floss.
(Image credit: Chemung County Historical Society, Elmira, NY)
Have you ever watched a video online and wondered "why the f%$k did somebody make this f$%king video? LIKE SERIOUSLY WTF?!?!?!" Yeah, of course you have.
We've all come across a video at one time or another which has left us completely puzzled and wondering why someone would make such a thing, let alone upload it to YouTube, and most of these videos are presented without explanation.
But this bizarre and disgusting video by Joe Philippus was actually created with a purpose in mind- to gross out his buddy:
One of my best friends has a completely irrational fear of mayonnaise. I was bored one afternoon while my wife was at work, so I decided to make him a tribute video.
You filmed it for your buddy, eh Joe? Yeah right, YOU KNOW YOU LIKED IT!
-Via Reddit
There have only been around 600 people who have traveled to space. Of the currently-active astronauts, most are scientists and the rest are highly educated. Do these folks, who have touched the vastness of outer space, believe in life on other planets? Their answers are open-minded, because while they know a lot compared to most of us, they are very aware of how little we actually know about space.
"We've basically proven that every star has planets," said Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, who has spent 4,000 hours in space. "Then you start doing the math."
The math isn't easy. How many stars are in the universe? Well, that depends on the size of the universe. We're able to observe the cosmic microwave background (CMB), radiation formed around 400,000 years after the Big Bang. It tells us the observable universe goes back around 14 billion years. But there could be something beyond the CMB, or even other universes contained in a massive "multiverse."
Within the constraints of the observable universe, there could be 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (or septillion) stars, according to astronomer David Kornreich. (He conceded to Space.com that the number could be a gross underestimate.)If every one of those stars has at least one planet, then, well, it seems inconceivable that life wouldn't exist elsewhere.
Astronauts also know that "life" doesn't equate to the aliens we see in movies. Read more from Hadfield and astronauts Mae Jemison and Jeff Hoffman on the subject of extraterrestrial life at Mashable.
It's cute to watch kids try to bust some sick moves with their first pair of nunchucks, that is, until they smack themselves in the face with 'em, but it's somehow even cuter to watch this dad mess around with nunchakus like a big kid.
He keeps trying to do some fancy move where he kicks the 'chucks up into his hands so he can be ready for battle without bending over, and once he manages to pull off the move he unleashes nunchaku fury like a Ninja Turtle on steroids.
-Via Digg
(Image credit: Kitty Kay Sera)
The Pink Ladies were a gang in the musical Grease, and a Pink Lady is a drink, but Kitten Kay Sera is THE Pink Lady. The Pink Lady of Hollywood has lived a pink life for 40 years. Everything in her home is pink, her hair is pink, she dresses in pink, and her dog Miss Kisses is pink, too, a result of beet juice dye. Sera was recently given the title of "World's Pinkest Person" by Ripley's Believe It Or Not.
‘I consider myself proudly to be a pink flamingo in a world of pigeons,’ she says, adding: ”I am the world’s pinkest person and my life is devoted to that color. Some people think I am weird but frankly, I am fierce and fabulous.’
Read about Kitty Kay Sera and see more pictures at Do You Remember. She's also got plenty of pink pictures at Instagram. -via Fark
