As Picasso once supposedly said, "All children are born artists. The problem is to remain artist as we grow up."
Storyteller Angel Yau of Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre created this touching and funny animation about her journey of not becoming an artist. Well, sort of. She's still an artist in all of our hearts.
Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - Thanks Angel!
My kids love to come to the NeatoHQ (for one, they get to roam the NeatoShop warehouse, which is filled with toys), but they'd probably still get jealous of five-year-old Malalai who practically grew up in her mom's workplace: the Afghan air force's helicopter!
Here's what Col. Latifa Nabizada, the first female pilot in the Afghan air force, said:
There was a need for us to fly and we flew a lot of missions during our pregnancies. Despite that, I managed to bring Malalai into the world well enough. [...]
Unfortunately, there was nobody to take care of my daughter at home and there is no kindergarten in the military. So most of the time I took Malalai with me in the helicopter. She has grown up in a helicopter - sometimes I think she's not my daughter, but the helicopter's daughter!
She was almost two months' old when we first flew together.
BBC's Outlook has the story: Link
Tis more serious than the fashion police! Fashion designers Dolce and Gabbana have just been found guilty of tax evasion by an Italian court and sentenced to more than a year in jail:
Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana were accused of having transferred control of their brands to a shell company in Luxembourg in 2004 and 2005 to avoid paying Italian taxes.
Prosecutors had argued that setting up the Luxembourg company Gado -- an acronym of the surnames of the two designers -- while the company was operating out of Italy was a bid to defraud the state.
In her closing speech, prosecutor Laura Pedio said there was "rock-solid proof" that the duo had committed "sophisticated tax fraud".
Well, perhaps they'll come up with a new and chic line of prisonwear: Link
Chances are, you've ran across one of George Zimmer's famous Men's Warehouse commercial on TV. Well, not anymore: the founder and spokesman for the men's suit company has just got fired.
The company announced the termination in a blunt statement ... and explained, "The board expects to discuss with Mr. Zimmer the extent, if any, and terms of his ongoing relationship with the company."
Sounds like a pretty nasty breakup.
Intrepid local heroes. Battles from long forgotten wars. The Great Squirrel Stampede of 1822.
These are all historical events that deserve commemorating, and that's exactly what Hamilton County, Indiana, is going to do:
Dave Heighway knows all about [Indiana's Squirrel Stampede].
"There is one paragraph that talks about a great squirrel migration in 1822," he said.
As the Hamilton County historian, he's been educating all who would listen about the 1822 and 1845 stampedes where migratory squirrels destroyed cornfields as they trekked across Indiana.
"I read that. I thought that's crazy. I actually thought, that's nuts," he said.
He told the Hamilton County Leadership Academy and members secured a grant to start work on a mockup for a fiberglass squirrel. In fact, the group would like to see a half dozen of these in all eight Hamilton County communities.
Kevin Rader of WTHR chased down the story: Link
That's no star! Wait, wasn't that how the quote goes? Well, anyhow - let Starlight by T-shirt designer yanmostees, hailing all the way from Thessaloniki, Greece - guide you.
Visit Yanmostees' official website and Twitter then head on over to his NeatoShop page for more awesome T-shirts: Link
Thanks for taking a look! Your purchase helps support indie artists as well as this blog.
View more designs by yanmostees | More Funny T-shirts
Are you a professional illustrator or T-shirt designer? Let's chat! Sell your designs on the NeatoShop, earn generous royalties, and get featured in front of tons of potential new fans on Neatorama!
Be Vewy, Vewy Quiet ... I'm Hunting Zombies by Warbucks Design
After fwicasseeing the wabbit, the Hunter Fudd is on to wawger game: zombies! Warbucks Design warns us to be vewy, vewy quiet and wear this shirt to avoid being disintegwated by unhip fashion.
Visit Warbucks Design's Facebook Page for more neat designs, then head on over to his NeatoShop page for more T-shirts: Link. Your purchase helps support indie artists as well as this blog - thank you!
View more designs by Warbucks Design | More Funny T-shirts
Are you a professional illustrator or T-shirt designer? Let's chat! Sell your designs on the NeatoShop, earn generous royalties, and get featured in front of tons of potential new fans on Neatorama!
Kirk's Trouble with Tribbles and Spock's Trouble with Tribbles - by Mike Jacobsen
Quick, transport the whole kit 'n caboodle of these cute Trouble with Tribbles T-shirt design by Mike Jacobsen into your wardrobe cabinet. Just be sure you don't happen to store some quadrotriticale there, lest these shirts start to multiply ...
Visit Mike's official website and Facebook (give 'im a Like, wontcha), then visit his NeatoShop page to get the neat-o shirts: Link
View more designs by Mike Jacobsen | More Funny T-shirts
Are you a professional illustrator or T-shirt designer? Let's chat! Sell your designs on the NeatoShop, earn generous royalties, and get featured in front of tons of potential new fans on Neatorama!
Monkey Evolution by Baznet
Ah, the perfect carrot-eatin' T-shirt for raddish farmers! Baznet's Monkey Evolution T-shirt design is most definitely over NINE THOUSAAAAAND!! Link
Visit Baznet at his Tumblr for more super cool T-shirt designs, then buy one for yourself or loved one over at his NeatoShop page. Your purchase helps support indie artists as well as this blog!
View more designs by Baznet | More Funny T-shirts
Are you a professional illustrator or T-shirt designer? Let's chat! Sell your designs on the NeatoShop, earn generous royalties, and get featured in front of tons of potential new fans on Neatorama!
The creators of Sesame Street have always kept up with modern issues facing today's children. They've tackled hunger, divorce, military deployment, and even loss of a friend. Now, the lesson turns to incarceration.
Meet Alex, the muppet whose dad is in jail:
According to a Pew Charitable Trusts report, one in 28 children in the United States now has a parent behind bars -- more than the number of kids with a parent who is deployed -- so it’s a real issue, but it’s talked about far less because of the stigma.
That’s why the Sesame Workshop says it created the “Little Children, Big Challenges: Incarceration” initiative, an online tool kit intended to help kids with a parent in prison find support and comfort, and provide families with strategies and tips to talk to their children about incarceration.
Alex is blue-haired and green-nosed and he wears a hoodie – you might think he’s just another carefree inhabitant of Sesame Street. But there’s sorrow in Alex’s voice when he talks about his father.
“I just miss him so much,” he tells a friend. “I usually don’t want people to know about my Dad.”
It’s easier for kids to hear such things from a Muppet than an adult, creators of the initiative noted.
A. Pawlowski of TODAY has more: Link
Forget speeding cars! Pedestrians in London have a new danger to look out for: exploding sidewalk.
The Health and Safety Executive in the UK announced that sidewalks in London have been exploding at an alarming rate. There were 8 blasts in 2010 and 29 last year. So far, they've seen 12 blasts this year.
UK Power Networks, the firm responsible for many of the under-pavement electricity boxes at the heart of the problem say that the explosions should be placed in context. There are over 100,000 of the boxes under London's streets and with just a handful of explosions reported these represent 'relatively few cases when our equipment has faltered' say UPN.
The Youtube clip above, taken in April 2013, shows a gas explosion on Pimlico Road: Link
No words to explain this we have.
Ren Netherland of Animal Photography took these photos below and many other excellent examples of creative dog grooming. He travels thousands of miles each year criss-crossing America to document our country's most extreme grooming competitions.
The Force is clearly with this Yoda dog (who da dog? Yoda dog!):
All of the dogs have been sheared and coloured to achieve the final look. Contestants at the grooming competitions visited by Mr Netherland included a dog dressed as the characters of Sesame Street, one dressed as Yoda from Star Wars and another dressed as different Disney characters.
Other dogs were dressed as tigers, elephants, robots, lions, dragons, and exotic birds. It takes two intense hours for the groomers to produce their masterpieces before facing judges.
Mr Netherland said: 'The owners have to grow out their dog's hair in preparation for the show - so that it's long enough for them to make something. 'They train and rehearse throughout the year in preparation for the competition, whittling their creation down to a fine art.
'The best thing for spectators is that when the poodles fist come onto the stage, they just look like normal poodles. Suddenly they are transformed before your eyes into something colourful and completely different. The dogs seem to enjoy the pampering and all the attention.'
View more over at the Daily Mail, which also has a neat Barcroft TV interview with Netherland: Link | Gallery at USA Today's For The Win
How much did you pay for your last sneakers? Probably not as much as these sneaker afficionados did. Sneakerheads, as they're called, collect and trade rare sneakers that can run up to the thousands of dollars:
Two teenage boys eye rows upon rows of sneakers, sizing each up for rarity and signs of use. One of the boys points to a pair of limited-edition Nike Yeezys and said he is buying them for a friend.
"How much is he paying for it?" asks the seller, 15-year-old Alex Asfar.
"16," the boy responds.
When they say "16," they mean $1,600.
"16, there you go," Alex said, counting the wad of cash and handing over the shoes.
Darren Rovell and Brandon Baur of ABC Nightline report: Link
Neatoramanaut Anton Hecht shares with us this nifty animation of the Angel of the North, printed across the palms of 350 participants, to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the giant sculpture.
The Angel of the North, a sculpture by Antony Gormley in Gateshead, England, is a gigantic 66-ft tall steel sculpture with wingspan of 177 ft. Why an angel? Gormley replied:
"People are always asking, why an angel? The only response I can give is that no-one has ever seen one and we need to keep imagining them. The angel has three functions - firstly a historic one to remind us that below this site coal miners worked in the dark for two hundred years, secondly to grasp hold of the future, expressing our transition from the industrial to the information age, and lastly to be a focus for our hopes and fears - a sculpture is an evolving thing."
Image:
David Wilson Clarke/Wikimedia
Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - Thanks Anton!
Temperatures at the dark craters of the north pole of Mercury can
dip to
as low as 370 degrees below zero.
Image: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab/Carnegie Institution
of Washington
There's Ice in Mercury
Of all the planets in the Solar System, Mercury is the closest to the sun. You'd naturally think that it's also the hottest, but it's not (that distinction belongs to Venus). Oh, no doubt Mercury can get quite hot - its surface temperature can reach up to 800 °F, but at the poles, its temperature never gets above freezing. That's where NASA's Messenger Spacecraft found a large volume of water ice - estimated to be 100 billion to 1 trillion tons of ice, actually.
Maat Mons, the highest volcano on Venus. Image: NASA/JPL
It Snows Metal on Venus
Snowcapped mountains on Earth are majestic, but they're by no means unique in our Solar System. Venus has its own snowcapped mountains, but instead of water, the "snow" is made of heavy metals like lead sulfide (galena) and bismuth sulfide (bismuthinite).
Olympus Mons on Mars. Image: NASA/JPL
Mars has the Tallest Mountain in the Entire Solar System
Let's skip Earth for now and head on over to Mars. If you think our Mount Everest is tall, check out the Olympus Mons on the Red Planet. At about 14 miles (22 km) tall, it's three times as tall as Mount Everest's height above sea level. It's pretty big, too. Olympus Mons is approximately the size of Arizona.
