Vader, of course, is the sophisticated airborne radar system developed to track the Taliban in Afghanistan and now used along the US border with Mexico.

Vader, which stands for Vehicle Dismount and Exploitation Radar (what? What did you think it was named after?), recently showed that US Border Patrol agents caught fewer than half of people sneaking into the United States illegally:

According to internal reports, Border Patrol agents used the airborne radar to help find and detain 1,874 people in the Sonora Desert between Oct. 1 and Jan. 17. But the radar system spotted an additional 1,962 people in the same area who evaded arrest and disappeared into the United States. [...]

The radar is sharp enough to detect and track individuals on foot from a Predator five miles overhead. It uses a synthetic aperture radar to collect high-contrast black-and-white images and to follow scores of moving targets in real time. The processed signals are transmitted from the drone to a ground station, where the figures are displayed as moving dots on a detailed map.

"It's a match made in heaven for border security," said a former U.S. law enforcement official.

He said the radar had helped Border Patrol agents watch migrants and smugglers gathering on the Mexican side of the border before they start trekking north. But not all of the agents are happy to get a precise head count for the first time of how many people they are missing.

"The rank-and-file guys are afraid it will make them look bad," the official said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because details of the program are not public.

Force choking would probably improve morale! Brian Bennett of the Los Angeles Times reports: Link

Earlier this week, we had a Choose Your Own Doctor Who giveaway, open exclusively to NeatoMail subscribers. The winners have been picked using the random number generator over at random.org. They get some really neat Doctor Who items from the NeatoShop for free!

Congratulations to LisaL (a long-time Neatoramanaut! Yay!), who won the TARDIS Ceramic Cookie Jar (a popular choice!), Morgenstern who won the Wind-Up Dalek, and Jospeh Cuffe who won the Doctor Who TARDIS Mini Bobble Head. They have all been notified via private message, and need to reply within 3 days to claim the prizes.

Remember to subscribe to NeatoMail to catch the next exclusive contests and giveaways! If you haven't subscribed because you don't want spam, don't worry: we won't rent/sell/disclose your emails to third party. NeatoMail is low-frequency, so your inbox won't be inundated. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Oh, English. The language we all know and love, the lingua franca of a large part of the world, is filled with many beloved idiosyncracies. Judith Herman of mental_floss dug up 14 of English words that are their own opposites.

For example:

1. Sanction (via French, from Latin sanctio(n-), from sancire ‘ratify,’) can mean ‘give official permission or approval for (an action)’ or conversely, ‘impose a penalty on.’

2. Oversight is the noun form of two verbs with contrary meanings, “oversee” and “overlook.” “Oversee,” from Old English oferseon ‘look at from above,’ means ‘supervise’ (medieval Latin for the same thing: super- ‘over’ + videre ‘to see.’) “Overlook” usually means the opposite: ‘to fail to see or observe; to pass over without noticing; to disregard, ignore.’

3. Left can mean either remaining or departed. If the gentlemen have withdrawn to the drawing room for after-dinner cigars, who’s left? (The gentlemen have left and the ladies are left.)

4. Dust, along with the next two words, is a noun turned into a verb meaning either to add or to remove the thing in question. Only the context will tell you which it is. When you dust are you applying dust or removing it? It depends whether you’re dusting the crops or the furniture.

5. Seed can also go either way. If you seed the lawn you add seeds, but if you seed a tomato you remove them.

Read more over at mental_floss: Link

New survey in the UK shows that the traditional social class categories of working, middle, and upper class are outdated - there are actually 7 social classes:

The new classes are defined as:

Elite - the most privileged group in the UK, distinct from the other six classes through its wealth. This group has the highest levels of all three capitals

Established middle class - the second wealthiest, scoring highly on all three capitals. The largest and most gregarious group, scoring second highest for cultural capital

Technical middle class - a small, distinctive new class group which is prosperous but scores low for social and cultural capital. Distinguished by its social isolation and cultural apathy

New affluent workers - a young class group which is socially and culturally active, with middling levels of economic capital

Traditional working class - scores low on all forms of capital, but is not completely deprived. Its members have reasonably high house values, explained by this group having the oldest average age at 66

Emergent service workers - a new, young, urban group which is relatively poor but has high social and cultural capital

Precariat, or precarious proletariat - the poorest, most deprived class, scoring low for social and cultural capital

The BBC has more: Link (image: Pyramid of Capitalist System)

That's slime from the hagfish. Take a good look, because you may be wearing it one day. Anna Rothschild of PRI's The World files this report over at the BBC about how hagfish slime may just be the fabric of the future:

The slime is composed of thread-like fibers.

“When you stretch the fibers in water and then dry them out they take on properties that are very silk-like,” says Douglas Fudge, who heads this research project at the University of Guelph.

Hagfish fibers are incredibly thin and extremely strong, and that gave Fudge and his colleagues an idea.

For years, scientists have been looking for natural alternatives to synthetic fiber like nylon and spandex that are made from oil, which is a nonrenewable resource. [...]

No one has made a spool of hagfish thread yet, but Fudge and his team see a future where hagfish slime or similar proteins could be turned into high-performance, eco-friendly clothing. The fibers might be used for stockings or breathable athletic wear or even bullet-proof vests.

Link - via BBC

The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein is the best children's book ever, but it's probably been a while since we all read it, so thankfully Dan Piraro of Bizarro reminded us:

It’s a terrific book and one I used to read to my daughters when they were little. It’s all about a tree that loves a little boy so much that it lets him play in her branches. When he is a little older, she gives him her apples to sell for money. Some years later, she gives him her branches and limbs so he can build a house for his family. Once his family is gone and he’s an old man, she gives him her trunk to make into a boat so he can sail away. As he sails out to sea, she intentionally sinks and drowns him for being such a selfish jackass his whole life. In the final scene, the lonely tree stump is chuckling to itself, then blows it’s own brains out.

I may not be remembering that entirely correctly, but you get the point.

Just like the way I remembered it! Link

If you have a website, then you're probably familiar with Google Analytics, the free and incredibly useful web analytics service offered by Google.

Well, our friends over at Visual.ly has created a really nifty service that slices and dices your website's Google Analytics traffic data and email you everything you need to know on a weekly basis, in form of this pretty infographic. (Yes, that's Neatorama's real traffic data).

Best of all, you can sign up for free over at their site: Link - Thanks Tal!

Photographer Marko Popadic took this marvelous photo of a butterfly inside the eye socket of a human skull. Titled Oko ("eye" in Croatian), the butterfly's wing looks eerily like an eye staring out of the lifeless void. Link - via Mighty Optical Illusions

Balki Bartokomous doing the weather? Well, of course not, don't be ridiculous.

Well, actually, we'll take that back. When meteorologist with the grown up haircut Jeff Jumper of WPMT Fox 43 in Central Pennsylvania was taping his morning weathercast, he got a neat little surprise when Bronson Pinchot, the actor who played the lovable Myposian in the '80s sitcom Perfect Strangers, decided to jump in.

Inexplicably, the Dance of Joy wasn't performed. Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] Wow!

You're probably familiar with the Snellen Eye Chart at your eye doctor's office. I once memorized it, thinking that would stop the optometrist from prescribing me some badly needed but oh, so dorky glasses.

It didn't work - he wasn't fooled and I have to wear glasses since fourth grade. But enough about me, feast your eyes on these strange eye charts, courtesy of Dark Roasted Blend: Link - Thanks Avi!

Photo: L. Sanchis et al

The rings you see above don't exactly make the small ball inside invisible to the eye, but it does make it undetectable to sonar:

José Sánchez-Dehesa, an electrical engineer at the Polytechnic Institute of Valencia in Spain, and his colleagues pursued a different method: Instead of preventing sound waves from hitting an object — in this case an 8-centimeter plastic sphere — they built a cloak to eliminate the scattered waves left in the sphere’s wake.

Using computer algorithms, the researchers came up with a design made up of 60 rings of various sizes that form a cagelike structure around the sphere. Simulations indicated that sound waves scattering off the sphere and the ringed cloak would interfere with each other and cancel out. (Noise-cancelling headphones exploit this phenomenon by emitting sound waves that minimize ambient sounds in a room.)

Because the cloak did not need to steer sound waves in complicated ways, Sánchez-Dehesa and his team built it out of plastic with the help of a 3-D printer. They hung their creation from the ceiling of an echo-free chamber, pointed a speaker at it and played a range of sound frequencies. For most frequencies, the sphere scattered an easily detectable amount of sound. But at 8.55 kilohertz — an audible high pitch — the cloaked sphere became imperceptible to the sensors behind it.

Link - via PopSci

Open to NeatoMail subscribers only: Choose your own Doctor Who prize by leaving a comment below. Let us know what Doctor Who item you'd like to win. You can choose anything in stock, $50 or less.

Three lucky Neatoramanauts picked at random will win Doctor Who stuff of their choice.

Contest rules are simple: One entry per person (duplicate entries will forfeit the prize). If you don't have a Neatorama account, you'd need to register one in order to leave a comment. Only confirmed accounts are eligible to win.

Check out NeatoShop's selection of Doctor Who items and pick one that you'd like to win! Good luck!

Update 4/3/13: Giveaway is now closed. See the Winners Announcement Page

This awesome absinthe skeletal spoon comes from Crazy Pig Design features the slogan "Absinthe Perd Nos Fils" (or "Absinthe kills our sons"). It's a special order item but it's a perfect match for the Skellington Skull and Crossbones Decanter and Glass from the NeatoShop, don't you think?

If you like that, check out more absinthe posters and accessories over at Dark Roasted Blend: Link - Thanks Avi!

Proposing to your love to marry you is a romantic moment, but to make it magical you'd need Harry Potter. That's exactly what Rachel Allison did to ask Jaquie Richards to be her fiancé:

It didn’t take long for Rachel Allison to catch her Golden Snitch. A few years into college, Rachel moved to a new living area and quickly became friends with Jaquie Richards, a Harry Potter-loving muggle. As a Minneapolis area expert, Rachel started taking Jaquie around to Twin Cities hotspots during which the two fell in love, without the help of love potion from Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes.

Jaquie soon exposed Rachel to her love of Harry Potter, sending the two into the throws of amazing movie marathons. Knowing how much the series meant to her girlfriend, Rachel sought a unique way to propose when the time came. As we all know, every good love story starts with a Quaffle, a Bludger and a flying broomstick, so naturally Rachel envisioned giving Jaquie a Quidditch set complete with a Golden Snitch that opened to reveal an amazing engagement ring (which was also CustomMade!).

The Quidditch set, including the Bludgers, Quaffle, Beater's Bats and the Golden Snitch, was made by Anthony Albano.

Photo: Sebastian Saarloos

It was 10 degrees below zero, with 30 mph winds in the Alaskan wild, where the nearest town was 50 miles away, but Sebastian Saarloos came out alive and with this gorgeous souvenir: a magnificent photograph of a moondog.

In this image, the first quarter moon is flanked on both sides of a halo by "mock moons," also known as paraselenae or "moondogs." The apparitions are formed when moonlight is refracted through thin, plate-shaped ice crystals in cirrus clouds. They are easy to spot at an angle of 22 degrees from the moon when it is low in the sky.

SPACE.com has the story: Link