Don't be selfish! You know that carpooling is bad for the economy. Carpooling means fewer people driving their own cars. That means fewer car sales, and that leads to fewer people employed by car manufacturers. That also means less gasoline consumption ... just think of how many people employed by the oil and gas industry stand to lose their jobs!

Fewer cars on the road will also make streets last longer. No more potholes? Your selfishness in driving with other people just cost the road maintenance crew their livelihood. Not to mention the car repair guys that count on you breaking your car's shock absorbers every now and then.

And don't get me started on the car wash guys - many of which are poor immigrants trying to support their family back home. These poor immigrants are also likely to be minorities. So your carpooling habit is undeniably racist.

San Francisco-based artist Brian Singer AKA someguy tells it like it is. In his 2010 art project, You are ___ for the Economy, he created a series of stickers that he affixed to various public places to plead with the public to do their part for the economy.

Are you trying to lose weight? Don't! Obesity is good for the economy. More fat people means more food and job security for restaurant workers. Do you have high self-esteem? That's terrible! It's better for everyone if you have low self-esteem and are therefore compelled to try and fit in by buying the latest in fashion. Down with crime? Who'll feed the family of all those policemen, prosecutors, judges, and prison wardens?

Take a look this art project over at Singer's website (using your newly purchased iPhone or the latest desktop cmputer, of course), then head on over to the shopping mall to do your part for the economy. Be sure to drive by yourself in your own car, mmkay?

Five quickie facts about playtpus:

1. Yes, the platypus is weird. As any grade schooler can tell you, it's one of three mammals that lay eggs (the other two are two species of echidnas. See also: 5 Fascinating Facts About Echidna)

2. Platypus is venomous. The male platypus has a venom spur in its ankles.

3. It can sense electrical fields. The platypus has electroreceptors in its bill that let it sense electrical fields that is useful to detect electrical currents generated by the muscle contractions of its prey.

4. There's no agreed plural of platypus in the English language. Is it platypuses? Platypi? Platypodes? Or just plain platypus. There's also no collective noun for platypus, and there hasn't been a need for one because platypus is a solitary animal. However, should the need arise, the Australian Platypus Conservancy - an authority on all things platypus as far as we're concerned, suggests a "paddle" of platypus.

5. A baby platypus is called a puggle (like what we call a baby echidna). And it looks ABSOLUTELY ADORABLE in fedoras! Two junior Agent Ps reporting for duty! (Yes, I know it's photoshopped ... but did you know it's a reference to this popular cartoon character?)

Behold the Mother of All Swiss Army Knives that you can actually bring to a gunfight ... and win!

The knife has 100 functions, including every types of blades imaginable. It has a serrated blade, dagger blades, shears and scissors, an auger, a corkscrew, saws, a lancet, button hook, cigar cutter, pens and pencils, mirror, and straight razor. You can even use this tool to tune a piano, as it has a piano tuner built in. Hungry? It's got a butter knife so you can butter your toast.

But that's not all: This is a knife you can actually bring to a gunfight. It has a fully functioning .22 caliber five-shot pinfire revolver. And as if that ain't enough, the tortoise shell handle covers of the knife open up to hold picks, tools, and even mini folding knives.

Powered by Caffeine T-shirt

Woohoo! Today, September 29, 2013, is National Coffee Day. It's a day where we celebrate and drink coffee ... waitaminit. That's every day. Heck, what is National Coffee Day for, then?

How about some neat-o facts about coffee from Neatorama's archives while you're sipping that hot cup of joe?

1. Caffeine is the world's most popular psychoactive drug

In the United States alone, over 90% of adults are estimated to consume caffeine every day. The alkaloid (that's the chemical classification of caffeine - a group of naturally occurring chemical compound containing nitrogen) is present not only in coffee, but also in soft drinks and energy drinks, food, and even chewing gums.

What's inside a cup of coffee? You'd be surprised.
Love caffeine so much that you want coffee that's 200% more caffeinated than normal? We've got you covered.

2. Forget civet poop coffee, here comes elephant poop coffee!

By now, everybody knows that you can drink coffee processed from civet poop. But Neatoramanauts know something even better: coffee made from elephant poop. The Black Ivory Coffee aint' cheap though. It'll set you back $50 a cup.

3. A new way to "drink" coffee ...

Image: TLC

Is through your butt! A florida couple named Mike and Trina get their caffeine fix through the wrong end of their digestive systems: via coffee enemas.

4. Coffee ring formation is surprisingly complex

University of Pennsylvania's Department of Physics and Astronomy shared this video microscopy of the Coffee Ring Effect.

Wait, why did scientists even bothered to take that video anyhow? It's because scientists drink more coffee than anyone. They also probably spilled more coffee than anyone - well, enough anyhow that they bothered to investigate the physics of spilling coffee while walking.

5. Humans have been drinking coffee since the 15th century

And as this advertisement from 1652 (yep, 1652) said about coffee, "It is known by experience to be better then any other Drying Drink for People in years, or Children that have any running humors upon them, as the Kings Evil. &c."

Bonus Fact: Caffeine is plant's natural defense mechanism: it kills insects

Image: Annie Cavanagh and David McCarthy

You wouldn't know it from this gorgeous award-winning scanning electron micrograph by Annie Cavanagh and David McCarthy, but caffeine is pretty deadly ... to insects. Caffeine acts as a natural pesticide that paralyzes and kills certain insects that feed on the plant.

Check out more Neatorama posts about coffee (we've certainly got a LOT of them!) and coffee-related items on the NeatoShop.

via Uberhumor

Hey, for just a buck, who cares if "orange" has a very different definition to Walmart?

On another note, isn't it amazing what you can get for a dollar - think about the material, labor, and transportation cost that has to go into selling that product. All for a dollar!

Meanwhile on NeatoPicto, our Lolpic blog, we have these latest posts:

Whoopi Cableberg	Tiny Hand is the Source of Psychic Power	Multitasking Champ	My Family Sticker for Jailed Dads
Web Designers Talk Shop	Two Spoons, One Mouth	Panda Garden	Net Head

There's no limit to what Gort could do. He could destroy the Earth ... or keep astronauts at the International Space Station company.

Gort, the humanoid robot from the 1951 sci-fi film The Day The Earth Stood Still is one of many secret messages and objects that you could find on the ISS today as it orbits the Earth. NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn, who returned from a 5-month stint aboard the space station in May 2013, told Nancy Atkinson of Universe Today that there are many messages, signatures, and objects left aboard the station by its builders and previous crews:

“We did a lot of maintenance during our flight and rotated out a lot of the experiment racks and we saw many signatures on the internal hull or on the inside parts of the racks. Things like ‘Greetings from the Water Recovery team!’ with everyone’s signature. That’s fairly prevalent on the inside, particularly behind the racks, but not in plain view.”

Marshburn said about lil' Gort:

“There is a four-inch version of Gort, the robot figure from the movie “The Day the Earth Stood Still” stuck on the wall where we gather in the Destiny Lab for our daily planning conferences. He sometimes gets unstuck and floats around the ISS, so whenever we find him wandering around, we stick him back up on the wall. He’s kind of ubiquitous."

He didn't say whether anyone has ever uttered "Klaatu barada nikto" to Gort.

Read more about what other secret messages ISS astronauts left for one another over at Universe Today. (Image: NASA)

ThunderCats, ho .... ld on to your hat, because Canadian character designer Phil Postma of Minion Factory (previously on Neatorama) has created these awesome illustrations re-imagining ThunderCats heroes as if they were from ancient Japan and villains as if they were from ancient Egypt.

See Lion-O guy? Whiskers!

United Bamboo's Cat Calendar - January. Photo: Noah Sheldon

Every year, fashion label United Bamboo releases a calendar featuring the most fashionable felines you'll ever see. They've just released the 2014 cat calendar, featuring gorgeous shots by uber-talented photographer Noah Sheldon (who's famous for his Cats Wearing Clothes series, amongst others - don't miss it! Oh, Sheldon also shot the 2013 United Bamboo cat calendar) and designed by Studio Lin.

Tiffany Yannetta of Racked New York "interviewed" this year's cat models Huxtable (February), Leo (August) and Uni (December):

The United Bamboo Cat Calendar is here (!), and with it comes a series of burning questions: how did these cats get into modeling? Will they pose again? Did they get to keep the clothes? Will they get out of the warm laundry basket for less than $10,000 a day?

United Bamboo's Cat Calendar - February

United Bamboo's Cat Calendar - April

United Bamboo's Cat Calendar - October

Racked New York also has the pics of all 12 cats from the photo shoot. Check 'em out!

Psychologist Richard Wiseman of Quirky Mind Stuff posted this perspective illusion in his blog and told us that the cars are the same size. Despite that, our mind stubbornly believes that the car on top are larger - much larger, maybe almost twice the size - of the car at the bottom.

How can this be?

You're looking at a great example of the Ponzo Illusion, which was first demonstrated by Italian psychologist Mario Ponzo in 1911. Ponzo suggested that the way we judge an object's size is highly dependent on its background.

Indeed, you can take a ruler and measure the heights of the three cars (or check out the crude animated GIF below that I whipped out to show the effect) - but even after you *know* that the cars are of the same size, your brain simply refuses to see it that way.

Think you're a badass? You've got nothing on Kim Wolhuter of Discovery's Man, Cheetah, Wild [self-starting video]. The Zimbabwean wildlife filmmaker was driving in the bush in Africa when he and his cameraman encountered a black rhino.

Now, you and I would probably press a little harder on the gas to get as far away from the aggressive mammal - Black rhinos are known to charge readily at pretty much anything it does not like. Oh, and you cannot outrun one, they can get up to over 50 kilometers per hour (35 mph) - but not Kim. He decided to stop the car to take a closer look.

That in itself isn't anything strange. Wolhuter, after all, is a wildlife filmmaker. But what he did afterwards surprised even his own cameraman. Watch:

In a 1999 episode of The Simpsons, Homer Simpsons accidentally created the tomacco - a tomato and tobacco hybrid.

That frankenplant was recreated in real life in 2003 by Rob Baur of Lake Oswego, Oregon). In that case, the real life tomacco was created when Baur grafted a tomato plant onto tobacco roots - the plant actually lived and even bore tomatoes, which Baur suspected to contain lethal dose of nicotine.

Well, fast forward to 2013 and here comes another tomato-based combo plant: the Tomtato, a plant that is both tomato and potato.

Michael Perry, new product manager at UK's mail order seed and plant company Thompson & Morgan, told NBC News, "It's the perfect marriage. Why wouldn't someone want to buy one?"

Photo: Thompson & Morgan

The Tomtato bears cherry tomatoes above ground and white potatoes below. According to the Thompson & Morgan website, horticulturists have tried to create a creation for 15 years but the plants have only recently been successfully produced commercially. When they're just a few weeks old, tomato plants are cut at the stem and grafted onto a potato plant. Scientifically, that works because tomatoes (as well as tobacco plants) are members of the potato family (Solanaceae).

As Darth Vader himself would have said: Impressive. Most impressive. deviantARTist Dirk Loechel has created a chart comparing the relative sizes of spaceships from across many sci-fi and video game series.

Ever wonder how a Borg cube from Star Trek compares to the Kilrathi's Dreadnought from Wing Commander? Now you can!

So far, Loechel has added starships from iconic series like Star Trek, Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica, from video games like Eve Online, Halo, Wing Commander and Star Craft, as well as from movies like District 9, Independence Day, Alien, and Wall-E. And he's still got plenty left to do!

Loechel claimed that the TARDIS is there, which at the chart's resolution of 1 pixel: 10 meter, is either invisible at 0.25 pixel or invisible because it's much, much larger than every spaceship listed combined.

See if your favorite spaceship is there: full image at deviantArt.

No, that toad is not sprouting wings. You're looking at a rare, perhaps the only, photograph of a cane toad eating a bat.

The photo was taken in the Cerros de Amotape National Park in Peru by park ranger Yufani Olaya, and posted on Phil Torres' blog.

Phil Torres (@phil_torres) of Peru Nature reported that Olaya said that the bat was flying a bit too close to the ground while trying to feed on insects when it accidentally ran into the open mouth of a cane toad. Cane toads are opportunistic feeders and have been reported feeding on practically anything it can swallow.

But did the cane toad manage to eat this bat? Olaya later reported that the toad couldn't get the remaining wings into its mouth, and spat out the bat. At first, he thought the bat - ahem, croacked - but the bat slowly recovered and managed to fly away.

Via imgur and reddit

Got tons of unruly cables? Whoopi Cableberg to the rescue!

My spidey-sense is tingling that he's not using device-agnostic responsive web design with the latest social discovery, scalable vector graphics and cloud-based hosting. And, please, don't talk web design without talking about gamification, CSS preprocessing (with built-in vendor prefixing, of course), and HTML5.