(snotr link)

Some would argue that the best part of the TV series Police Squad! was the end credits, in which the common freeze-frame method was parodied. This video has the ending credits to all six episodes, including the one with the chimpanzee who didn't know how to hold a freeze-frame. -via reddit

Freeloader Fork - $9.45

Are you looking for new and inventive ways to cut your food bills?  You need the Freeloader Fork from the NeatoShop. The telescoping metal fork makes stealing food from unsuspecting family and friends a snap. This fork provides you with 21" of stealing goodness!

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more inventive Utensils!

The Shortlist has a pretty nifty gallery of 12 Back to the Future posters as interpreted by indie artists - my favorite two are shown above, the one to the left is created by Phantom City Creative in collaboration with Twitch Film and the TIFF Bell Lightbox and the one to the right is in Saul Bass-style by Dave Will (don't miss his BTTF2 poster as well): http://www.shortlist.com/entertainment/article/1200/12-back-to-the-future-posters - Thanks Benjamin!

See also: Back to the Future 2 DeLorean Time Machine | Bleak is the Future

This is an x-ray image of a Heliotrygon gomesi, one of two new species of freshwater "pancake" stingrays discovered in the Amazon rain forest. See more pictures at Amazing Planet. Link -via Boing Boing

(Image credit: Ken Jones)

A good day of angling is sometimes described as fish jumping into the boat. The real life experience can be frightening. Texas fisherman Jason Kresse and two companions were about 50 miles out in the Gulf of Mexico looking for red snapper on Monday, throwing chum into the water when an 8-foot mako shark appeared- on board!

"All of a sudden something hit the side of the boat," Kresse told The Associated Press on Tuesday. "He ends up landing on the back of the boat."

The mako shark had apparently been in a rush to feed. It began thrashing around, and Kresse said he and his crew couldn't get close to the 375-pound fish to toss it back in the water. It damaged the boat before dying several hours later.

Kresse, who has been fishing since he was a child, said the unplanned catch was a shock. Just unloading it was a challenge because it was so heavy.

"We had to use a forklift to get it off the boat when we got to the dock," Kresse said.

Fish and Wildlife officials will not cite Kresse for catching the shark without a permit, because the catch was the shark's doing. Link -via Arbroath

(YouTube link)

It's now called the "special flip" because "Special Greg" Powell was the one who accomplished it. This performance of Nitro Circus was recorded in Gosford, Australia. -via reddit

Today, Neatorama's literature blog Bitlit is proud to introduce a new book: The Cube by Nat Karody.

Were you disappointed by the ending to the series Lost? What follows is a story with as intricate a mythology as Lost’s but with an important difference: in the end it is all explained mechanistically, without resort to mysticism or religion. In the end the following summary of the core mystery, taken from the opening chapter, will be perfectly sensible:

The Oopsah told a story, a majestic, exalted, beatific story of the coming of the end times and the rise of the Controller. He learned how the world would end, who would destroy it, and how he, Zranga, could prevent it. He learned that he had been appointed by destiny – by the Controller himself – to carry out this mission. But above all he learned of the existence of a perfect being, the demigod Celeste, trapped beyond time in a cycle of eternal death. Only Zranga could rescue her, and to do this he had to place a giant door on the bottom of the Silent Sea, and kill the Great Man.

Read on to found out how far Ivy Morven will go to stop Tobor Zranga from realizing his destiny, and how this alternative universe is bizarrely structured so that the most rational acts are the most extreme.

Start now with chapter one, and keep up with all the chapter of The Cube as they are posted with this http://www.neatorama.com/bitlit/category/the-cube/.

Card catalogues were once vital components of libraries; most were beautifully crafted of durable materials.  Now some enterprising librarians are finding ways to repurpose card catalogues as storage sites and charging stations for e-book readers.

It turns out that the drawers were just the right size for most of the common eReaders. All the case needed was a few holes drilled in the back, and then running some power cables.

The Bloomington Junior High School Media Center offers a brief how-to photoessay

Link, via.

It's time for our collaboration with the always amusing What Is It? Blog. Can you guess what the pictured item is? Great guesses win prizes!

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 more clues, check out the What Is It? Blog. Good luck!

Update: The first correct answer came from Blake. This is a truth window {wiki}, built into a wall of a house to show what the wall is made of (straw, in this case). Read more about them at the What Is It? blog. The funniest answer came from Iago, who said it was Rumpelstilskin's personal wall safe. Ha! Both winners get t-shirts from the NeatoShop. But you really should read all the comments because we had a ton of funny answers!

(Image credit: Image credit: Flickr user francesca!!)

Got milk? Well, you wouldn't if it weren't for these world-churning events.

MILK

You can't spell "milk production" without g-o-a-t-s. Well, technically you could, ..but not historically. Goats were most likely the first dairy animals ever domesticated. Archeological evidence suggests that ancient peoples in what is now Iran and Iraq were selectively breeding these four-legged eating machines as far back as 8,000-9,000 B.C.E. And, while they may not look like much to us modern Americans, the logic behind goat keeping is impeccable. Small, sturdy, and able to eat just about anything you put in front of them, they're easier creatures to keep healthy, happy, and milk-producing (particularly in cool, mountainous climates) than their larger relatives like cows and sheep. Several breeds have hair that can be shorn and used for clothing. And, like all milk animals, they're an excellence nutritional value for what you have to put in.

Ruminants, the class of animals from which humans get all their dairy products, have a gigantic four-chambered stomach that allows them to happily digest dry stalks, fibrous vines, and leaves that other animals (humans included) write off as inedible. Their secret: lots and lots of chewing, in addition to partial digestion and regurgitation, then more chewing, followed by a healthy dose of specialized tummy bacteria. Unlike, say, pigs, which eat basically the same food as people and are only useful as meat, ruminants don't compete with their owners for sustenance. Further, the milk they produce over several years provides far more nutrition than the meat a single animal could ever hope to put out. In fact, it only takes a couple of goats to keep a whole family of people fed for a year.


The extinct auroch.

As the concept of domesticating and milking animals spread from the Middle East, farmers adopted local beasts as their milk-giving ruminant of choice. Depending on things like climate, geography, and population, various regions favored yaks, buffalo, cows, and sheep. All have their own special adaptations that make them better for certain environments and needs. Cows, for instance, were domesticated from long-horned wild aurochs around the same time and place as goats. Since at least 3,000 B.C.E. they've been bred primarily for their milk, which is richer than goats' and due to their size, more abundant. However, as heavy eaters with a grass diet, cows really work best in temperate climates. Modern European cows are much smaller than their auroch ancestors, primarily because in captivity, the winter food supply was far less abundant. There is one notable exception to the ruminant rule, however: the camel. The only milkable domesticated animal that isn't a ruminant, camels were particularly adapted to arid, desert regions, and as such, their milk has been a staple food in parts of Africa since 2500 B.C.E.

Swiss street artist Jinks Kunst came up with a rather clever (and a bit disgusting) way to immortalize one of his favorite musician in his artwork:

Kunst is known as a graffiti and stencil artist, but he adopted a new medium in order to create this portrait of French musician Serge Gainsbourg. Kunst is a big fan of the singer, so he spent three years collecting used cigarette filters to create this amazing – and kind of disgusting – portrait of Gainsbourg.

Overall, there are 20,394 cigarette filters making up the legendary singer’s face. He was famously fond of smoking and drinking, making the choice of unusual medium completely logical. But besides fitting the subject, the medium is an ingenious way to clean up the streets in a small way. A cigarette butt portrait would be perfect for an environmentally-themed piece of art.

WebEcoist has the pics: Link | More at Oddity Central

In a labyrinth of tunnels beneath the Egyptian desert lies a truly remarkable catacomb containing the mummified remains of dogs and jackals.

Now, since this is Egypt, mummies aren't exactly unusual - what made the Dog Catacomb so different is that it contains an immense amount of mummified puppies:

They estimate the catacombs contain the remains of 8 million animals. Given the sheer numbers of animals, it is likely they were bred by the thousands in puppy farms around the ancient Egyptian capital of Memphis, according to the researchers. The Dog Catacombs are located at Saqqara, the burial ground for the ancient capital Memphis.

"Our findings indicate a rather different view of the relationship between people and the animals they worshipped than that normally associated with the ancient Egyptians, since many animals were killed and mummified when only a matter of hours or days old," Nicholson said. "These animals were not strictly 'sacrificial.' Rather, the dedication of an animal mummy was regarded as a pious act, with the animal acting as intermediary between the donor and the gods."

Link (Photo: Scott Williams/Cardiff University) | More at the Daily Mail

Photo: qubitsu [Flickr]

Resistance is futile, so when Zeph and Sara LaFassett wanted a Jean-Luc Picard as wedding cake, baker Aaron Jue simply made it so. If you think the cake's a bit creepy, consider this: the couple saved Jean-Luc's head to eat on their first anniversary.

Via The Presurfer and Boing Boing

Gold Bar Coin Bank -  $9.95

If you can't afford a real gold bar, don't be sad? Simply get yourself the Gold Bar Coin Bank from the NeatoShop instead.  If you fill it with enough silver you will eventually be able to buy yourself some gold.

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more crazy Money Banks & Storage solutions!

Usually, car crashes are bad for one's health - but as you can see in this peculiar case, the crash itself was a lifesaver for a Pennsylvania trucker:

Richard M. Paylor, 55, Fairless Hills, Bucks County, told city police he was driving the rig west about 9 when he started to choke on a piece of apple and blacked out, investigators said. The next thing he knew, his truck had smashed through the concrete barrier near Lancaster Avenue, he told police.

"This accident saved his life," police Lt. Madison Winchester said. "Witnesses said that he was slumped over the wheel before the truck crashed. It appears that the apple chunk was dislodged when he hit the concrete barrier and his body hit the steering wheel."

Jason A. Kahl of Reading Eagle has the full story: Link