(vimeo link)
Filmmaker Terje Sorgjerd (previously at Neatorama) set up cameras on El Teide, the highest mountain in Spain, from April 4th to 11th, 2011. The object was to take a time-lapse video of the Milky Way. However, a sand storm blew in from the Sahara desert. Sorgjerd assumed his project had been ruined, but was pleased with the resulting video. -via the Presurfer
Before young Wolfgang Mozart became the toast of Europe, the family promoted his older sister, Maria Anna Mozart.
Her younger brother learned to play as well and eventually joined her on tour. However, Maria, who the family called Nannerl, was taken off the concert circuit when she became old enough to marry. We'll never know what could have become of her music if she'd had the same opportunities as Wolfgang. However, Smithsonian looks at Nannerl's influence on her brother and how much she may have been responsible for his fame. Link
“Virtuosic.” “A prodigy.” “Genius.” These words were written in the 1760s about Mozart—Maria Anna Mozart. When she toured Europe as a pianist, young Maria Anna wowed audiences in Munich, Vienna, Paris, London, the Hague, Germany and Switzerland. “My little girl plays the most difficult works which we have … with incredible precision and so excellently,” her father, Leopold, wrote in a letter in 1764. “What it all amounts to is this, that my little girl, although she is only 12 years old, is one of the most skillful players in Europe.”
Her younger brother learned to play as well and eventually joined her on tour. However, Maria, who the family called Nannerl, was taken off the concert circuit when she became old enough to marry. We'll never know what could have become of her music if she'd had the same opportunities as Wolfgang. However, Smithsonian looks at Nannerl's influence on her brother and how much she may have been responsible for his fame. Link
Encyclopedia Dramatica was always a place to get in-depth information on internet culture, memes, and history, but the site was rarely linked here at Neatorama because it was NSFW and far from family-friendly. Now Encyclopedia Dramatica is no more, and a new site has risen in its place. The new Oh Internet is dedicated to the same type of information, but is not open to unlimited editing by users as ED was. Geekosystem has more on the big switch. Link to story. http://ohinternet.com/Main_Page to website.
Alexia Sloane is only ten years old, but she got the opportunity to work as an interpreter at the European Parliament in Brussels. Alexia received an exception to the age 14 minimum rule because she is fluent in English, French, Spanish, and Mandarin, and is now learning German -and she does a great job interpreting. Did I mention that Alexia is blind?
Link -via Arbroath
(Image credit: Geoff Robinson)
Alexia has been tri-lingual since birth as her mother, a teacher, is half French and half Spanish, while her father, Richard, is English.
She started talking and communicating in all three languages before she lost her sight but adapted quickly to her blindness. By the age of four, she was reading and writing in Braille.
When she was six, Alexia added Mandarin to her portfolio. She will soon be sitting a GCSE in the language having achieved an A* in French and Spanish last year. The girl is now learning German at school in Cambridge.
Alexia has wanted to be an interpreter since she was six and chose to go to the European Parliament as her prize when she won a young achiever of the year award.
Link -via Arbroath
(Image credit: Geoff Robinson)
Plaid Skirt Apron - $23.95
Mad about plaid? Check out the cool Plaid Skirt Apron over at the NeatoShop. Now you can prepare your favorite chicken dinner in chic: Link | More Apparel & Accessories | Mother's Day Gift Ideas
If you think the news about supermarket meat contaminated with drug-resistant staphylococcus was bad, hold yourself together, because there's an even more shocking news coming your way. Two words: glued meat.
Glued meat is being supplied to some of Australia's most popular eateries. It is also popular with catering companies - if you've been to a wedding lately chances are you've eaten glued meat.
An event specialist says top hotels and restaurants have been tricking customers for years.
File this one under "oops." A new stamp intended to commemorate the Statue of Liberty actually featured the Las Vegas replica instead:
You might think that the post office would have just gone with the original, the one off the tip of Lower Manhattan that for 125 years has welcomed millions of New York’s huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Instead, they accidentally used the 14-year-old statue that presides over thousands of weary gamblers a week.
The post office, which had thought the Lady Liberty “forever” stamp featured the real thing, found out otherwise when a clever stamp collector who is also what one might call a superfan of the Statue of Liberty got suspicious and contacted Linn’s Stamp News, the essential read among philatelists.
But the post office is going with it.
“We still love the stamp design and would have selected this photograph anyway,” said Roy Betts, a spokesman. Mr. Betts did say, however, that the post office regrets the error and is “re-examining our processes to prevent this situation from happening in the future.”
(Video Link)
This video, allegedly of a Chinese-made SUV in Russia, shows a driver who is either very brave or very desperate. Also a testament to Chinese design quality. I mean, even the tail lights still work just fine.
via Jalopnik
Here's one early solution to the problem of limited magazine capacity. Between 1859 and 1862, a French inventor named Jarre patented several so-called harmonica pistols. As often as the user needed a fresh round, s/he could just push the magazine laterally. The pinfire example pictured above could hold nine 9mm cartridges.
Link via The Firearm Blog (which has pictures of other early high-capacity firearms) | Image: Rock Island Auction Company
Do all languages in the world originate from a single "mother tongue"?
By studying phonemes - the consonants, vowels and tonal elements of languages, biologist Quentin D. Atkinson has claimed to discover that human languages originated in Africa:
Dr. Atkinson, an expert at applying mathematical methods to linguistics, has found a simple but striking pattern in some 500 languages spoken throughout the world: A language area uses fewer phonemes the farther that early humans had to travel from Africa to reach it.
Some of the click-using languages of Africa have more than 100 phonemes, whereas Hawaiian, toward the far end of the human migration route out of Africa, has only 13. English has about 45 phonemes.
This pattern of decreasing diversity with distance, similar to the well-established decrease in genetic diversity with distance from Africa, implies that the origin of modern human language is in the region of southwestern Africa, Dr. Atkinson says in an article published on Thursday in the journal Science.
Isabella Lovero and Enrico Bosa of en&is design studio created this gorgeous docking station to let you charge a myriad of cell phones and gadgets while hiding the mess of cables: http://enandis.com/designs/uffo.html
Randians rejoice! Turns out there's a dating site dedicated to fans and followers of Ayn Rand, where they can discuss all the fine details of Objectivism over dinner.
Claire Suddath of TIME magazine checked it out:
There are about 12,700 dating profiles on the Atlasphere, which Joshua Zader, 37, founded in 2003 after attending a few Rand-related conferences. "I realized that all the single people were using the conferences to search for another Ayn Rand fan they could fall in love with," says Zader, who modeled the site after Match.com's pay-to-view profile system. But the Atlasphere also functions as a social network (with some 22,000 nondating profiles) in which members can contribute essays and articles.
I asked Zader how someone who espouses a me-first philosophy can also maintain a loving relationship. "Ayn Rand has a great quote in The Fountainhead," he told me. "She writes that a person cannot say 'I love you' without first being able to say the I."
Graham Roberts and GOOD Magazine collaborated to create Wanderlust, an interactive graphic depicting some of the most famous travels in history and fiction: Link
(YouTube link)
It's difficult to determine exactly what is going on here, because the small amount of information that came with this video is in Polish. Zenek is the "mascot" of the Lublin University of Technology's superconductor laboratory. Isn't he cute? -via Arbroath
Just like Pop Tart Cat, these are sweet and colorful and fun, but they are also real marshmallows treats you can make at home. The instructions are at the decorated cookie. Link -via Laughing Squid
