Image: Conrad Brown and Bob Kronbauer
Biking to work is already healthy for you and better for the environment, but thanks to this contraption by Canadian designer Greg Papove, it's can also be much more fun! Papove added a series of ramps called "Whoopdeedoo" onto pre-existing bike paths in Vancouver, BC, Canada. They seem to be a hit with bikers!
Link - via designboom
The following is a Whodunit by Hy Conrad featuring Sherman Oliver Holmes, a mysterious crime solver and great-great-grandson of Sherlock Holmes. Can you solve the crime?
Photo: Christopher Dodge/Shutterstock
Sherman Holmes was out for a drive on a lonely country road. He saw the police car and the sign for the labyrinth maze at almost the same moment. "A labyrinth puzzle plus a crime," he chuckled, stepping on the brakes. "How lovely." He switched on his turn signal and pulled off into the parking lot.
The roadside attraction, "Queen Victoria's Maze," consisted of a ticket booth, a small, shabby office, and the maze itself, a seven-foot-high square of ill-kept hedges. Curious motorists were lured into paying three dollars a piece to get lost in the confusing pathways inside the hedges.
Sherman bypassed the empty ticket booth and wandered up a gravel path and into the maze itself. Two right turns brought him to a dead end - a dead end complete with a corpse. A highway patrolman was standing over the corpse of a casually dressed man, a knife stuck between his ribs. Three men and a woman faced the officer.
"My husband Kyle and I came into a maze and split up just for fun," the woman said between sobs. "After several minutes of wandering, I wound up outside at another entrance. I was going to try again. I called Kyle, to see how he was doing. That's when I heard it - some scuffling - like a fight. Then Kyle screamed."
"I heard the scream, too," said the tallest man. "I was on a bench at the center of the maze. I didn't hear any scuffling, probably because the fountain there drowned it out. I'm Bill McQuire. I hurried out of the maze and found Mrs. Turner. The two of us went back in and discovered the body together."
"I'm the owner," said a short, disheveled man. "Paul Moran. These people were the only three customers in there. After taking the Turners' money at the ticket booth, I went into the office. Abe, my electrician, was rewiring the system. I switched off the main fuse box for him. Then I walked around picking up trash. Abe was still working when I heard a man's scream."
Abe, the electrician, was the last to speak. "What Paul said is true. I was in a crawl space under the office the whole time, doing the wiring. I didn't see anything or hear anyone until the scream."
The officer bent down to examine the body. "No wallet. Maybe it was a botched robbery. But we'll have to wait for the experts."
"I'm an expert," came a voice from behind. They turned around to find a short, owlish man with a briar pipe between his teeth. "Sherman Holmes, at your service. The solution is elementary, if you'd care to listen."
WHO KILLED KYLE TURNER?
HOW DID SHERMAN DEDUCE THE TRUTH?
You've heard of Murphy's Law, no doubt. But how about Sturgeon's Law? How about Skitt's Law? No? Then you have to read this nifty article by Chris Higgins over at mental_floss about 11 wacky "laws" named after people. For example:
1. STURGEON'S LAW
The law: "90% of everything is crap." (In some versions, "crap" is replaced with "crud.")
The story: Science fiction author Theodore Sturgeon wrote a defense of sci-fi in the March 1958 issue of the sci-fi magazine Venture. He wrote, in part (emphasis added):
I repeat Sturgeon’s Revelation, which was wrung out of me after twenty years of wearying defense of science fiction against attacks of people who used the worst examples of the field for ammunition, and whose conclusion was that ninety percent of SF is crud. Using the same standards that categorize 90% of science fiction as trash, crud, or crap, it can be argued that 90% of film, literature, consumer goods, etc. are crap. In other words, the claim (or fact) that 90% of science fiction is crap is ultimately uninformative, because science fiction conforms to the same trends of quality as all other art forms.
Two trivia notes on this one. First, as you can see above, Sturgeon himself termed this "Sturgeon's Revelation," however, accidents of history (and the OED) turned it into Sturgeon's Law. There actually is a "Sturgeon's Law," and it is: "Nothing is always absolutely so." Second note — Sturgeon is the basis for Kurt Vonnegut's recurring character Kilgore Trout.
3. SKITT'S LAW
The law: "Any post correcting an error in another post will contain at least one error itself."
The story: Skitt's Law is just one of many internet-themed corollaries of Muphry's Law, which itself states: "If you write anything criticizing editing or proofreading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written." So horribly, horribly true. (And yes, "Muphry" is an intentional misspelling referencing Murphy's Law.) Apparently the law was first coined by G. Bryan Lord, referring to a Usenet user named Skitt.
Read the rest over at mental_floss: Link
Photo: Dan
Ackerman
Go ahead and laugh, ladies. The tables are turned in the dude-fest known as WWDC yesterday as this photo by CNET editor Dan Ackerman showed a long line for the men's room and no line at all for the ladies' room.
'Tis a fodder for the websites like A Line at the Ladies Room, which noted:
We have built the backbone of our economy, healthcare, and security systems on software so you would expect that industry to be a high-growth area for young professionals. And it is… for men. Did you know:
Megan Garber of The Atlantic has more examples of ridiculously long lines at men's room at tech conferences around the country: Link
Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona
A rolling stone in Mars gathers no moss, because there's no moss in Mars, silly! But there are boulders that roll down the slopes of Mars, as this HiRISE camera on board NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show.
Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy wrote:
What started it up? A Marsquake, a nearby impact, the erosion of its underpinning due to the relentless Martian winds?
You can see the boulder at the bottom of the image, its shadow stretching off to the upper right. The rock is not quite large enough to clearly see any shape or features on it; it’s probably only a few of meters across.
Link | Larger pic over at HiRISE's Beautiful Mars Tumblr
Does your dog chase its tail or lick its paws over and over again? Maybe it has the dog-equivalent of OCD, a condition called CCD or canine compulsive disorder.
Now, researchers have discovered that MRI brain scans of 8 CCD-affected Doberman pinschers show similar brain characteristics with humans with OCD:
For the study, Ogata and colleagues recruited eight Doberman pinschers with CCD and a control group of eight Dobermans without CCD. The team chose Dobermans because they are the first breed to show a genetic basis for CCD and because the breed has a high prevalence of CCD—about 28 percent of U.S. Dobermans, said Ogata, whose study was published online in April in the journal Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology & Biological Psychiatry.
After obtaining MRI scans for each group, the team discovered that the CCD dogs had higher total brain and gray matter volumes and lower gray matter densities in certain parts of the brain—similar to the structures of people brains' with OCD. Gray matter is a brownish-gray tissue inside the brain and spinal cord that contains mostly nerve cells.
Christine Dell'Amore of National Geographic reports: Link
Mother of Dragons by DarkChoocoolat
No one will dare take your dragons, once you wear this Mother of Dragons T-shirt by French designer DarkChoocoolat. Check out his official website and Facebook page, then visit his NeatoShop's page to buy: Link. Your purchase helps support indie artists as well as this blog!
View more shirts by DarkChoocoolat | 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!
Running is not an option, but watching TV always is! Check out The Watching Dead T-shirt by T-shirt design powerhouse duo Di.Jay over at the NeatoShop. Check out their Facebook page (give 'em a like, wontcha?), then head on over to their NeatoShop page for more: Link
Thank you in advance for taking a look! Your purchase helps support indie artists and this blog.
View more T-shirts by Di.Jay | More Funny T-shirts | Zombie items
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!
No need to see your identification, but this is the T-shirt you're looking for. Yanmostees created the yummiest Stormtrooper ice cream ever! Check out this and other neat T-shirt designs over at Yanmostees' official website then head on over to his NeatoShop page for more: Link
Thanks for checking it out! Your purchase helps support indie artists as well as this blog!
View more Yanmostees T-shirts | 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 city of Surprise, Arizona, has an unwelcome surprise for 64-year-old retired firefighter Jessie Thornton: its police officers can tell whether a person is drunk simply by looking in his eyes, breathalyzer test be damned!
Christopher Sign of ABC15 has the scoop:
"He (the officer) walked up and he said 'I can tell you're driving DUI by looking in your eyes,'" said Thornton. [...]
According to documents provided to ABC15 from the City of Surprise, Thornton was taken to police headquarters where he took a breathalyzer test.The test, according to the police documents came back with a blood alcohol level of 0.000.
"Yes, I do the breathalyzer and it comes back zero, zero, zero," said Thornton.
While in custody, a "DRE" or drug recognition expert is called to test Thornton.
"After he did all the tests, he says, 'I would never have arrested you, you show no signs of impairment,'" said Thornton.
No, it's not a get-rich-quick scam. It's quite real.
Apparently the secret to a lucrative payoff is to work as a public employee for the Bay Area Rapid Transit, the San Francisco bay area's rapid transit sytem:
With a gross salary of more than $333,000, BART's highest-paid employee last year wasn't its general manager, police chief or a worker who racked up gobs of overtime scrubbing grime from filthy train seats.
It was someone who did no work at all for BART in 2012: Dorothy Dugger, the agency's former general manager who resigned under pressure more than two years ago.
Under a lucrative retirement scheme, Dugger, 57, quietly stayed on the books, burning off nearly 80 weeks of unused vacation time, drawing paychecks and full benefits for more than 19 months after she agreed to quit in May 2011, according to an analysis by this newspaper. By remaining on BART's payroll, she accrued almost two extra months of vacation, while sitting at home drawing a six-figure salary for unused time off.
Thomas Peele and Daniel J. Willis of Bay Area News Group reports in this Mercury News article: Link (Photo: Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)
Photo:
Marisol Amador/UF/IFAS
I, for one, welcome our new mosquito overlords. Meet the monster mosquito Psorophora ciliata or gallinippers, which weigh 20 times the size of a typical mosquito and seems even more aggressive.
According to the TV station, the quarter-sized insects were first spotted in Seminole County late last week. The aggressive blood suckers “can bite right through your clothing and give you a good pinch, more painful than an ordinary mosquito bite,” University of Florida natural resources agent Ken Gioeli told West Palm Beach-based WPTV back in March.
University of Florida entomologists warned in March that psorophora ciliata — or gallinippers as they’re sometimes called — might appear this summer, weighing in at up to 20 times the size of a typical mosquito and even more aggressive. The catalyst? Heavy rains from Tropical Storms Debbie and Andrea, which probably hatched the monster mosquito eggs that can lay dormant for years. As the university quipped in March: “If mosquitos were motorcycles, this species would be a Harley Davidson — big, bold, American-made and likely to be abundant in Florida this summer.”
It's time to escape Florida: Link
We're out of our element (and we want our undies back)! NeatoShop artist Darin Shock has created a mixed media sculpture worthy of Walter Sobchak of The Big Lebowski. Check it out: Link - Thanks Darin!
What's better than seeing a movie with your friends? Seeing a movie with your friends nearly naked, of course!
You can do that at the Hot Tub Cinema, a pop-up event in London and around the UK where you can rent an entire tub to share with friends, or buy individual tickets to get close and cozy with scantily clad strangers. Either way, it's an adventure! Link - via Cool Things
Unless you're living under a surveillance-proof rock, I'm sure you've heard by now that Big Brother is always with us. But how do you tell your kids about it? With children's book, of course!
Twitter user @darth asked followers to create #NSAKidsBooks for your enjoyment, as seen in this gallery over at The Guardian: Link - via Boing Boing
