This brought back memories for me. I'd circle all of the stuff I wanted in the tissue-thin mailers, shove them in my backpack so I could take them home to discuss with my mom, and then find them wadded up at the bottom of the pack three weeks after they had been due. There's a wide assortment of companies represented in the linked post - you're sure to find one that brings a little nostalgia to your day.

Link via GoFugYourself.

What is your biggest regret about? A study by Kellogg professor of marketing Neal Roese plotted the results from a telephone survey of 370 American adults and graphed them for our edification. The link has further information on the study besides what's in this graph. Link -via The Daily What

(YouTube link)

Joe Raciti (previously at Neatorama) took the Double Rainbow Song and adapted it for a choir. Then musician YouTube users collaborated long distance for an "Audio Quilt" version. The result is as lovely as ...a double rainbow! Lyrics, credits, and an iTunes link are available at the YouTube page. -Thanks, Joe!

I wonder if he's any relation to Peter Cetera? This Twaggie illustrates a Tweet from  @elibraden. Like all Twaggies, it can be preserved for posterity in a print or t-shirt. Link

(vimeo link)

Collection curator Emma Hawkins shows us some items made from animals long ago with functions beyond display. On one hand, using animal remains to make consumer products is green in that the items are organic, biodegradable, and an example of recycling. Compare these items to the same things made of plastic or fiberglass. On the other hand, it's morbid and may have contributed to the decline of certain species. What do you think? Is it OK to value a fur or something made of ivory as long as the animal died a hundred years ago? Link -via Nag on the Lake

Hey, wherever you pick up lifesaving information is OK with me! Would you believe a woman's life was saved by her poor performance on the British talent show The X Factor?

In 2007, 46-year-old Jacqui Gray was one of many contestants in the fourth season of The X Factor. Like most talent show contestants, she had little in the way of actual talent. After smirking throughout her entire performance, Cowell asked Gray the patronizing question, "You have a very weird sounding voice, are you aware of that?" Both he and fellow judge Sharon Osborne suggested that she see a throat specialist, saying that it sounded like "somebody else is in there".

Displaying what has to be the world's least attuned sarcasm detector, Gray decided to take the advice of the judges and see a throat specialist.

What the doctor found was quite surprising. As are the other stories in this list at Cracked. Link

Now, this is the perfect family portrait. You see, everyone is smiling naturally, as if they are really enjoying themselves. Continue to see how this feat was accomplished.

Complex made an chart of where the bad guys in video games come from. They used a sampling of 20 games from the last 10 years to determine which countries have the most bad guys (according to video game developers, anyway). Topping the list? Russia.

With Homefront out this week predicting how a unified Korea might just turn the U.S. into an occupied nation, it became clear to us how international relations can affect the gaming industry. Gone are the days of all FPSes being either World War II or sci-fi; in the new milennium, developers are on the hunt for enemies that are speculative but still plausible. Either they're rooted in real-life global hotspots (this spring's SOCOM 4 takes place around the shipping lanes of Southeast Asia), or they bring favorite punching bags into the future. Whether it's mercenaries, guerillas, or just insane despots, gamers find themselves fighting against enemies the world over—so we rounded up 20 shooters from the past 10 years and plotted who exactly developers are singling out. Say hi to the bad guy!

Link -via Geekologie

It's the Name That Weird Invention! contest. Steven M. Johnson comes up with all sorts of crazy ideas for the Museum of Possibilities. Can you come up with a name for this one? Commenters suggesting the funniest and cleverest names will win a free T-shirt from the NeatoShop.

Contest rules: one entry per comment, though you can enter as many as you like. Please make a selection of the T-shirt you want (may we suggest the Science T-shirt, Funny T-shirt, and Artist-designed T-shirt categories?) alongside your entry. If you don't select a shirt, then you forfeit the prize. Good luck!

Update: We have winners! First place goes to amanderpanderer, who called it "Petal Stool...you know, for putting women up on." Ha! Second place to Mysfyt for "The Sit and Stay-Man. (Petal Powered)." Both win t-shirts from the NeatoShop!

The following is an article from Uncle John's Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader. The subject matter may be disturbing for some readers.

"Big Nose" George Parrot got his nickname for the fact that he had a very large proboscis, but his real claim to fame comes from something much stranger than a prodigious schnoz.



THE (NOT SO) GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY

In the late 1870s, a band of Wyoming outlaws called the Sim Jan gang decided to try their hand at robbing Union Pacific trains. Most banking was done by cash in the 19th century, and much of the cash moved by rail. This made trains very tempting targets for criminals looking for big scores.

Some gangs, the James-Younger and Hole-in-the-Wall gangs among them, became quite adept at train robbery. Sim Jan and his gang never did: When, for example, they tried to derail a train out of Medicine Bow, Wyoming, by loosening a length of rail, a railroad crew on a handcart came by and discovered the damage to the track. After repairing the track, the crew sped off to report the incident to the sheriff, all in plain sight of the gang, who were hiding in the bushes nearby. The next day the gang shot it out with the two lawmen sent to find them, Deputy Sheriff Robert Widdowfield and railroad detective Henry Vincent, killing them both. They were the first Wyoming lawmen killed in the line of duty.

FRONTIER JUSTICE

Frank Tole was the first member of the gang to pay for his crime; he was killed a few weeks later while trying to rob a stagecoach. Then came "Dutch"  Charlie Buress, who was arrested for the murders and put on a train bound for Rawlins, Wyoming, where he would have gone on trial had he lived long enough to see a trial. He didn't: when his train made a stop in the town of Carbon, which was deputy Widdowfield's hometown, an angry mob pulled him from the train and hanged him from a telegraph pole.

"Big Nose" George Parrot

Next up for justice: "Big Nose" George Parrot. His turn might never have come at all, had he not gotten drunk in Montana two years after the killings and been overheard boasting of his involvement in the crimes. He, too, was arrested and put on a train bound for Rawlins; when the train pulled into Carbon, history seemed about to repeat itself, because once again a lynch mob was waiting. But Big Nose managed to talk the mob out of the hanging by admitting his guilt and promising to tell all if they let him live long enough to face trial. Had he known what fate awaited him, he probably would have preferred being lynched.

DOPE ON A ROPE

Big Nose George lived long enough to be sentenced to death by hanging, to be carried out in 3 and 1/2 month's time. But he didn't live long enough to see the sentence carried out, because when he nearly killed a guard trying to escape from jail, the lynch mob decided that a speedier, unofficial hanging would do just fine. On March 22nd, 1881, a crowd of about 200 people dragged Big Nose George from the jail and hanged him from the crossarm of a telegraph pole.

Twice.

The mob had to hang him twice because the first rope broke. After a sturdier rope was found, Big Nose George, still very much alive, was hanged again. By now, however, George had managed to untie his hands from behind his back without anyone noticing. Then, when he was strung up the second time, he swung himself -by the noose around his neck- over to the telegraph pole, wrapped his flailing arms around it, and held on for dear life.

In opposite to the World's Oldest Optical Illusion? that was posted here at Neatorama around Christmas last year, here is one of the most recent optical illusions out there. It's a piece of text that seems to grow and curve, especially when you look at the corners of the image.

Link - via Reddit

I loved Stand By Me - I even did a movie trivia post about it. It's hard to believe it came out 25 years ago, but since Wil Wheaton (Gordie) just recorded commentary for a special edition Blu-Ray release, I guess it must be true. He met with director Rob Reiner and co-stars Jerry O'Connell and Corey Feldman to do the commentary, and of course, there was an obvious absence in the room:

There were five chairs set up for us in a semi circle. Our names were on pieces of paper so we knew where to sit. I was between Rob and Corey, and Jerry and Richard sat to Corey’s left. When we all sat down, Rob looked down the row of seats and softly said to me, “it feels like there should be an empty seat here for River.”

People ask me about River all the time. He and I were close during filming, and for about a year or so after filming, but the sad truth is that he got sucked into a lifestyle that I just don’t have room in my life for, and we drifted apart. When he died, I was shocked and horrified, but I wasn’t completely surprised. I didn’t feel a real sense of loss at the time -- the River I knew and loved had been gone for a long time at that point -- but I felt sad for his family, and angry at the people around him who didn’t do more to help him help himself. Since he died, when I've talked about him, I've felt like I’m talking about the idea of him, instead of the person I knew, if that makes sense.

But when Rob said that to me, with such sadness in his eyes, it was like I’d been punched in the stomach by eighteen years of suppressed grief. I knew that if I tried to say anything, all I would do was cry, and I didn’t know if I’d be able to stop. I took a deep breath, swallowed hard, and nodded. “Yeah,” I whispered.

Link

Bullsh*t / Meeting Ambigram Mug - $9.95

Hate meetings? Well, if you're like most of us, then you best be passive aggressive in displaying your hatred of boring meetings. Thanks to this fantastic rotational ambigram by Bastian Pinnenberg of unterart, you now can have the perfect coffee mug to attend all those important meetings in style: Link

More fun and unusual drinkware from the NeatoShop

What better game than Monopoly to teach the young uns about the wonderful world of capitalism? Well, you'd be surprised to learn that the board game was actually created to teach people the evils of capitalism!

The earliest recognizable version of what we know as Monopoly was patented by Lizzie Magie in 1904. The Landlord’s Game, as she called it, featured a board with the familiar circuit of increasingly pricey neighborhoods interspersed with railroads and utilities. At three of the corners were Go to Jail, Public Park (the ancestral version of Free Parking), and the Jail itself.

The fourth corner, however, wasn’t labeled “Go” but instead bore a drawing of the globe encircled by the lofty words “Labor Upon Mother Earth Produces Wages.” Translation: you got a hundred bucks. Nonetheless you realize: someone here has an agenda.

The story goes that Magie intended her game to be a teaching tool about the injustices of capitalism. She was a fan of the theories of political economist Henry George, who thought landlords were parasites and advocated a "single tax" on them to replace all other taxes.

The incomparable Cecil Adams explains: Link - via GeekPress

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DirectTV is pulling an Old Spice with a new series of ads featuring a creepy Russian billionaire who favors opulence and ... OMG! What is that? Petite Lap Giraffe! I so want one! What are we talking about again?