Images: (left) steamdino/imgur (right) Paramount Pictures/Marvel Studios - via IMDB
Avengers assemble, or better yet, metamorphose into a gorgeous moth.
Imgur user steamdino found this Oleander Hawk-Moth caterpillar and noticed that its eyespots (an eye-like marking in the body of the caterpillar that make the insect look like the face of a much larger animal to scare away predators - those aren't actual eyes) made the lil' larvae look like Marvel's superhero Iron Man.
Ladybugs typically turn up this time of year, but this year, their population skyrocketed. "We have perfect weather conditions, and a large food population," said Davidson County, Tennessee, entomologist David Cook. "This is a perfect storm."
NewsChannel 5 interviewed one Tennessean whose home was overrun with ladybugs:
Diane Stroud was shocked by the number of ladybugs that suddenly congregated on her Lebanon home.
"There were probably one million of them," said Stroud. "They were all over the porch, the far side of the house, everything was covered."
The ladybugs are drawn to light-colored structures while looking for warmth and shelter. The good news is that ladybugs aren't harmful to humans or structures (though they're a bit stinky), but the bad news is that, according to Cook, the infestation wil get worse before it gets better.
Just be thankful that those are ladybugs and not spiders, guys!
The United States of America sure has a lot of states, and to most non-Americans, the details of which states is which sure can get lost. Fast.
Here's a hilarious annotation of the various states of the USA, as labeled by an Australian who doesn't know anything about its geography. The map has gone viral on Tumblr and reddit.
The bloke got Texas, Florida, Hawaii, Alaska, Washington and Missoula, er, California, correct, but the rest are borderline genius guesses. These include rectangle and wibbly rectangle states and the various versions of Virginias (there sure are a lot of them), roadkill wolf, kite, lava lamp and Washington 2 (Yes, Aussies, we have two Washingtons, just to make it confusing for you - one is a state and the other one is not a state, but it wants to be)
Did Arthur Conan Doyle created Sherlock Holmes out of thin air? Elementary, my dear Neatoramanauts, he did not. Meet the real life inspiration for Sherlock Holmes: Dr. Joseph Bell, a physician and lecturer at the medical school of the University of Edinburgh.
Conan Doyle met Bell in 1877 while he was studying to be a physician. Later, Bell would appoint Conan Doyle as his clerk, which allowed the author plenty of opportunities to learn about Bell's legendary deductive abilities (somewhat similar to playing Dr. Watson to Bell's Sherlock Holmes.)
Bell emphasized the importance of close observation when making medical diagnosis - to demonstrate this, he would often pick a stranger and deduce the man's occupation and recent activities by observation alone.
In the book Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle, author Daniel Stashower illustrated Bell's observation skills: Bell was able to tell that a man was an alcoholic by observing that he habitually carried a flask in the inside breast pocket of his coat, and that another man was a cobbler by seeing that the inside of the knee of the man's trousers was worn (that's where the man had rested the lapstone - a tool used by cobblers to condition leather). Bell was able to discern different accents to deduce a man's origin. He was also able to tell the difference between hand calluses of a carpenter from a mason, and the difference in the walking gait of a solider and a sailor.
Conan Doyle recounted this celebrated example of Bell's abilities when a patient whom Bell had never seen or talked to before came forward:
"Well, my man," Bell said, after a quick glance at the patient, "you've served in the army."
"Aye, sir," the patient replied.
"Not long discharged?"
"No, sir."
"A Highland regiment?"
"Aye, sir."
"A non-com officer?"
"Aye, sir."
"Stationed at Barbados?"
"Aye, sir."
Bell turned to his bewildered students. "You see, gentlemen," he explained, "the man was a respectful man but did not remove his hat. They do not in the army, but he would have learned civilians ways had he been long discharged. He has an air of authority and he is obviously Scottish. As to Barbados, his complaint is elephantiasis, which is West Indian and not British, and the Scottish regiments are at present in that particular island."
For Bell, observation skills are integral to become a great doctor. "In teaching the treatment of disease and accident," he said, "all careful teachers have first to show the students how to recognize accurately the case. The recognition depends in great measure on the accurate and rapid appreciation of small points in which the diseased differs from the healthy state. In fact, the student must be taught to observe."
Conan Doyle acknowledged Bell's influence in the creation of Sherlock Holmes, when he wrote a letter to his old university professor, "It is most certainly to you that I owe Sherlock Holmes ... round the centre of deduction and inference and observation which I have heard you inculcate I have tried to build up a man."
One day, Shawn Carling wanted to give his father a unique Christmas present. Earlier, Carling had found an old Farmall tractor dashboard, so he decided to turn that into an old-timey lamp for his dad - Carling thought that it's the perfect gift for his dad, who grew up in a farm.
The lamp was a big hit, and plenty of farmers, who heard about him by word of mouth, approached Carling to create custom lamps. Thus a craftsman's business was born: Carling has now sold hundreds of Machine Age Lamps.
Our new architecture and home design blog Homes & Hues has a gallery of Carling's fantastic steampunk-inspired creations. These gorgeous lamps - complete with gauges, gears, and cast iron plumbing pipes - would look great in any room. Take a look: 18 Gorgeous Steampunk Machine Age Lamps.
This one below is Carling's aviation-inspired Machine Age Lamp: it's made with a salvage airplane part!
"Sorry, someone had to do it," wrote Tommy Up of PYT on the burger joint's Facebook page, when the restaurant released, nay, unleashed, the Deep-Fried Twinkie Burger.
Well, no need to be sorry at all, guys. After all, tofu and kale ain't what got Americans (USA! USA!) to be number one in the world in heft and girth.
The Deep-Fried Twinkie Burger features a custom-blended pork belly patty, layered with melted American cheese and extra bacon, gently cushioned between two crispy creme-filled buns made from, like the name says, deep-fried Twinkies.
The gut-busting burger is the latest in a long string of bold burger creations by the Philadelphia eatery. PYT has previously featured culinary marvels such as the Korean Fried Chicken Burger, the Buffalo Shrimp Burger, Kielbasa Pretzel Burger, the Buff Mac 'N Cheese Burger, the Spaghetti Burger and plenty more.
BRB - gotta book a trip to Philly!
In the meanwhile, take a look at PYT's previous creations and weep:
You've heard of it: the new Apple campus to be built in Cupertino, California, which looks like a futuristic circular spaceship. The new Pentagon-sized campus boasts space for 13,000+ employees, 1,000-seat flying saucer-shaped auditorium, and even an on-site electric power plant.
But do you have to be a behemoth tech company to have such a cutting edge building?
Our new Homes & Hues blog discovered another place on Earth that looks just like Apple's Spaceship Campus. No, not another Silicon Valley tech company headquarters. Rather, it's a fish market in Bursa, Turkey, built in 2010.
A beautiful and idyllic landscape painting or a Norman Rockwell classic may look like finished pieces that belong on the wall to you and me, but to Robert Brandenburg, they're merely starting points for his artwork. You see, Brandenburg takes (or some say, hijacks) existing artwork and adds his own twist to create an entirely different effect.
Meet Jin Ce, a 16-year-old teenager from China's Hangzhou Xuejun Middle School, who beat 236 other contestants from 35 countries to clinch the title of World Sudoku Champion.
Sudoku - the logic puzzle where you fill a 9x9 grid with digits - has proven to be quite popular in China. The 8th World Sudoku Championship, which took place a couple of weeks ago in Beijing, was televized live. In Beijing alone, there are more than 50 schools that have introduced sudoku classes for school children.
Things just aren't the same anymore since Leonardo had a stroke - undoubtedly a a side effect of the retromutagen ooze - and Donatello suffered mid-life crisis, bought a convertible and ditched his long-suffering wife April for a gold digger and ran down to Florida. Master Splinter, may he rest in peace, would've had a conniption, had he not been dead years ago.
Philosopher Bertrand Russell once said that "Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty - a beauty cold and austere, without the gorgeous trappings of paintings or music."
But for us mere mortals, a little bit of visual help is sometimes necessary. That's where Yann Pineill and Nicolas Lefaucheux of Parachutes.tv stepped in. The duo created this Vimeo clip showing the math behind our everyday things and actions.
Walking on stars is now as easy as walking on the paved pathway, thanks to a new surfacing material called STARPATH by UK company Pro-Teq Surfacing.
Our new Homes & Hues blog profiles the new STARPATH pathway, which absorbs sunlight during the day and glows brilliantly in the dark for hours - that'll make a magnificent late night stroll!
Entries to the 2013 Nikon Small World photomicrography competition are wonderful (as always, see our previous coverage of this fantastic competition), but some of this year's submissions got us wondering: are those truly small things that scientists see when peering through the microcope, or are they actually alien lifeforms?
