When he was a boy, John Weber, 70, was given an old cup by his grandfather. He assumed that it was just a worthless piece of brass and occasionally used it for target practice with his air rifle. Eventually, Weber decided to have it appraised, and experts concluded that it was a 2,300-year old Persian gold cup of enormous value. It sold at auction for £50,000 in 2008.
http://bulletin.accurateshooter.com/2011/04/worlds-most-expensive-plinking-target-million-dollar-gold-cup/ via Say Uncle | Photo: Duke's Auctions
Mother's Day is right around the corner. Is your Mom old school with new school moves? Get her the Joystick-It iPad Arcade Stick from the NeatoShop. With this little joystick she will be able to play all her old favorites on her favorite new toy.
What's that giant quarter doing in the Canal Street subway station? Actually, the entire diorama is a realistic miniature urban sculpture by Alan Wolfson. It took him 18 months from start to finish, but the result is simply amazing.
Check out the rest of his fantastic miniature sculptures here: Link - via Nerdcore
Ah, Paris, the City of Lights. Every year, more than 45 million people visit the city but roughly about 1 million of those starry-eyed tourists (mostly Japanese) fall sick with what has been dubbed the Paris Syndrome - what could cause such a strange effect?
Dan Lewis of Now I Know (That's Half the Battle!) explains:
Paris Syndrome is marked by a psychiatric breakdown suffered by the visitor, often including physiological side effects such as dizziness, an increased heart rate, and otherwise unexplained sweat. Extreme cases come with increased anxiety, a sense of persecution, and even hallucinations. Most of those affected are Japanese, but on occasion, a non-Japanese tourist will fall prey to the syndrome.
The cause? Most likely, it's a mix of a few factors: jet lag from the long trip; elation (similar to Stendhal syndrome) from taking a once-in-a-lifetime vacation; the language barrier; and, most critically, culture shock. As the BBC noted in its discussion of Paris Syndrome, "[m]any of the visitors come with a deeply romantic vision of Paris [but the] reality can come as a shock. An encounter with a rude taxi driver, or a Parisian waiter who shouts at customers who cannot speak fluent French, might be laughed off by those from other Western cultures. But for the Japanese - used to a more polite and helpful society in which voices are rarely raised in anger - the experience of their dream city turning into a nightmare can simply be too much." And, also according to the BBC, the Japanese embassy there takes culture shock seriously, staffing a 24-hour hotline for citizens and expats who suffer culture shock while in La Ville-Lumière.
It may sound paradoxical for you, but smoking may actually benefit society by causing smokers to die younger, before they cost the health care system more:
Preventing obesity and smoking can save lives, but it does not save money, according to a new report.
It costs more to care for healthy people who live years longer, according to a Dutch study that counters the common perception that preventing obesity would save governments millions of dollars.
"It was a small surprise," said Pieter van Baal, an economist at the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment in the Netherlands, who led the study. "But it also makes sense. If you live longer, then you cost the health system more."
In a paper published online Monday in the Public Library of Science Medicine journal, Dutch researchers found that the health costs of thin and healthy people in adulthood are more expensive than those of either fat people or smokers.
What do you get when you combine Tetris with Rubik's Cube? I can only imagine how long this clever YouTube clip by BananaNeil must've taken him to make!
Lance Cardinal painstakingly re-created the Muppet Theater in a custom built playset from scratch. Take a look at the extensive photo gallery at his blog: Link | Back Stage | Making Of - via Make
Think you're bad ass? Take a look at this 1960 video clip of herpetologist Ross Allen and his son Tom wrestle a 20-foot anaconda underwater, and get back to us, mmkay?
Do you use Gmail or other email cloud service? Then you'd be surprised to learn that according to the law, the government can get your email without a warrant if it's older than 180 days. David Kravets of Wired's Threat Level explains:
As the law stands now, the authorities may obtain cloud e-mail without a warrant if it is older than 180 days, thanks to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act adopted in 1986. At that time, e-mail left on a third-party server for six months was considered to be abandoned, and thus enjoyed less privacy protection. However, the law demands warrants for the authorities to seize e-mail from a person’s hard drive.
A coalition of internet service providers and other groups, known as Digital Due Process, has lobbied for an update to the law to treat both cloud- and home-stored e-mail the same, and thus require a probable-cause warrant for access. The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on that topic Tuesday.
The companies — including Google, AOL and AT&T — maintain that the law should be changed to reflect that consumers increasingly access their e-mail on servers, instead of downloading it to their hard drives, as a matter of course.
But the Obama administration testified that imposing constitutional safeguards on e-mail stored in the cloud would be an unnecessary burden on the government. Probable-cause warrants would only get in the government’s way.
Shopaholics rejoice! Don't let my wife reads this, but turns out that shopping - frequent shopping no less - is good for your health!
Those who shopped daily were 27% less likely to die, with male daily shoppers 28% less likely to die, compared with female shoppers who were 23% less likely to die.
The authors acknowledge that shopping could be a surrogate for good health to begin with, but suggest that shopping itself may improve health, by ensuring a good supply of food, to maintain a healthy diet, for example.
Frequent shopping among the elderly may not always be about buying things, but about seeking companionship or taking exercise, which is easier to do than more formal exercise that usually requires motivation, they say.
So, let me spin it this way to you: Go shop at the NeatoShop and live longer! Yay! Link
Alcohol, drugs, nicotine, caffeine ... You can get addicted to a lot of stuff, but how about "tanorexic's" addiction to tanning, addiction to nasal spray and even an addiction to reading?
Clinical psychologist Jeff Gardere of Healthguru lists some of the world's most unusual addictions: Link [embedded video]
Austin Kleon, who calls himself "a writer who draws", leaves wet tea bags on sheets of paper and draws cartoons using the shapes that they make. He explained his creation process in an interview by saying:
“Not-knowing what image will show up is part of the game,” said Kleon. “You get to let your subconscious take over. It’s like a Rorschach inkblot test. You could show the tea stain to 100 different people, and they’d see 100 different images.”
The Denny's restaurant chain understands that everything can be improved upon with the proper application of bacon. That's why its chefs are now offering maple syrup sundaes with bacon bits sprinkled on top and between the layers:
Bacon makes a classic ice cream sundae even more awesome. We start with maple-flavored syrup, and a scoop of rich, creamy vanilla ice cream and then a generous sprinkle of our diced hickory-smoked bacon. Add another sweet layer of syrup and vanilla ice cream topped with even more bacon and a drizzle of syrup.
Be sure to look for other bacon-y goodies in our Bacon Store. Question: do you think that "Bacon" would make a good baby name?
Ever wonder what some of Hollywood's hottest starlets would look like if they had Steve Buscemi's eyes? No? Well, thanks to the amazing Photoshop work of Chicks with Steve Buscemeyes, now you won't be able to stop wondering. Is it just me, or does Taylor Swift with Steve Buscemeyes look a lot like Heather Graham?
Leo Babauta over at the Zen Habits blog has posted what he calls "The Simplest Cure for Insomnia" - an effective alternative to counting sheep when you're having a hard time falling asleep. I've tried it and it has worked great.
The simplest cure for insomnia: get comfortable and close your eyes, and then replay your day in your head, in every detail possible, from the moment you woke up.
Link (and for those Neatorama readers living is Sweden - as I do - here's a Swedish translation of that powerful insomnia cure: Den enklaste kuren mot sömnlöshet)
