Star Ball, Ball of Whacks (Multicolor and Red) by Roger Von Oech

Here's a neat way to exercise your brain: the Ball of Whacks and the Star Ball by Roger Von Oech. Assemble these magnetic toys into hundreds of shapes to spur your creativity.

Now on sale at the NeatoShop! Save 20% while supplies last: Link | More Sale items

Susan Morgan with Lord Greystone, a miniature llama, at her farm in Hastings, Minn.
Photo: Caroline Yang/The New York Times | More at NY Times gallery

Forget dogs! Here comes the new hip pet: llama.

As Jennifer A. Kingson wrote in this entertaining article over at The New York Times, llamas are like the "potato chips" of pets. You can't have just one:

People who keep llamas as pets will readily offer you any number of reasons: llamas are quiet, they’re gentle and affectionate, they don’t take a lot of work to maintain and, for outdoor animals, they don’t smell bad.

But it’s more than that. Look at a llama and it’ll gaze back sympathetically with those huge, beguiling eyes, ears perked up, looking for all the world like it understands you and really cares about your problems.

Most people start with two or three, since llamas are sociable and don’t like to live alone. But as Katrina Capasso, a llama owner in Ballston Spa, N.Y., discovered, “They’re like potato chips.” It’s hard to stop at just a few. Ms. Capasso, 49, received her first llama as a wedding gift from her husband, Gary, in 1990. Now she has 55.

Oh, and they hum. Yes, they hum:

Llamas are generally quiet, but that doesn’t mean they don’t make any noise. When a male is interested in a female, or mating, he makes a noise that sounds a bit like gargling. (Llama people call this an orgle.) Female llamas make clicking sounds. And all llamas hum; in particular, mothers hum to their babies, which hum back.

It’s part of the bonding process, said Susan Morgan, 54, a home-care nurse in Hastings, Minn., who breeds miniature llamas with her husband, George, 56, an engineer. “They recognize each other by the hum,” she said. Two months after one of her females gave birth, Ms. Morgan said, they were still humming at each other.

Her husband said he gets a lot of questions about it. “People come up to me and ask, ‘Why are the llamas humming?’ ” he said. “And I’ll say, ‘Because they don’t know the words.’ ”

Read the rest over at the New York Times: Link

Here's a YouTube clip of a llama humming:

Warton, Lancashire, England, may be celebrating the Fourth of July with the former colonies, but not this Spitfire Coffee shop in New Orleans, Louisiana, as snapped by redditor BoxcarBartlet. It is sympathizing with Britain for the loss of its American colonies.

On another note, it seems that Mayor McCheese is in the lead over Prince in tips garnered. Which goes to show that you can't beat burgers in America. Not even Prince.

Got fast reflexes? Think that the classic Atari game Breakout was too easy? Then check this out: BRICK[bricksmash]SMASH by Alan Hazelden of Draknek. It's 16 Breakout games inside a Breakout game.

Hazelden told Evan Narcisse of Kotaku:

Hazelden said that he started it for a game jam with the theme "game within a game." "This was the first idea that came to mind that didn't involve me having to actually implement more than one different game," he told me. You're timed on how quickly you can clear the whole board and the game keeps track of how many balls come into play. Hazelden told me that he's seen clear times of 0:46 and counts as high as 317 balls. That's an insane amount of reflexes.

Kotaku has the video clip, or you can play it over at Draknek: Link

Last year, Leslie James Pickering, a bookstore owner and activist in Buffalo, New York, noticed something unusual in his mail, a confidential note reminding postal employees to copy all of his mail before delivering them.

The note was accidentally slipped into his mail deliveries and Pickering has just stumbled upon a little known postal spying program:

As the world focuses on the high-tech spying of the National Security Agency, the misplaced card offers a rare glimpse inside the seemingly low-tech but prevalent snooping of the United States Postal Service.

Mr. Pickering was targeted by a longtime surveillance system called mail covers, a forerunner of a vastly more expansive effort, the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program, in which Postal Service computers photograph the exterior of every piece of paper mail that is processed in the United States — about 160 billion pieces last year. It is not known how long the government saves the images.

Ron Nixon of The New York Times reports: Link

First they kicked Pluto out of the solar system planetary family, then they ignored the will of the Interweb. Oh, what will the International Astronomical Union do next?

Earlier this year, we told you that astronomers asked the public to name two newly discovered moons orbiting Pluto. Vulcan, which was suggested by William Shatner, was clearly in the lead, but that name was nixed:

Vulcan was also deemed potentially difficult because it was the name of a planet thought to exist in an orbit closer to our Sun than Mercury's. Such a world never existed, but the IAU still reckoned it was too confusing.

“Although this planet was found not to exist, the term ‘vulcanoid’ remains attached to any asteroid existing inside the orbit of Mercury, and the name Vulcan could not be accepted for one of Pluto’s satellites,” it said.

So, what did they choose as the names of the two moons? Kerberos and Styx. Kerberos (or Cerberus) is the three-headed dog that guards the gates of the Underworld in Roman mythology. Styx is the mythological river that separates the Earth and the Underworld.

But fans of Star Trek didn't come away empty-handed. Astronomers are proposing that craters on Pluto be named after Star Trek characters:

After NASA's New Horizons spacecraft gets the first up-close views of Pluto in 2015, craters, mountains and other features spotted on the dwarf planet's surface could bear the names of famous "Star Trek" characters, researchers said.

"We might have craters called Sulu and Spock and Kirk and McCoy and so on," Mark Showalter of the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute in Mountain View, Calif., said during a Google+ Hangout today (July 2).

Shattner, however, wasn't impressed:

“What? That’s impossible! I’m going to lead a revolt,” Shatner said, when Wired told him of the outcome. “Pluto is so big and cold that it deserved to have a hot little rock running around it, named Vulcan — for fire.”

... and tweeted:

We can only imagined that Shatner cried out "Khaaaaaaann you believe it? They didn't name Pluto's new moons after Vulcan."

Just in time for the Fourth of July, punster-in-chief Hanksy (Instagram) set up four panels in the streets of New York City featuring America's most iconic "bald beauties." Thanks Benjamin!

Yes, Sir Patrick Stewart technically isn't American, but Hanksy said that since he's Captain Picard, he gets a free pass.

View all Zombie Wars Posters by Matt Busch

These are the Star Wars zombie posters you've been looking for! Matt Busch, the "Rock Star of Illustration," has created a nifty series of zombified versions of iconic Star Wars posters.

Best of all, they're currently on sale over at the NeatoShop! Save up to 40% off regular price while supplies last: Link

View all zombie posters by Matt Busch | Sale Items on the NeatoShop

Intervention by Naolito

He's on the 'shrooms again. His friends, tired of being pummeled during one of his episodes ("levels" as he calls it), are now staging an intervention and T-shirt designer extraordinaire Naolito is there to capture the moment.

Check out Naolito's official website and FB page, then visit his NeatoShop page to buy some of the neatest shirts you'll ever see! Link

View more designs by Naolito | 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!

There's no need to get your shoes wet and dirty crossing the flooded street. Why don't you, y'know, take off your shoes?

Here's why: Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - via Arbroath

A while back, we told you of that officials were mulling about a proposed amendment to China's elderly rights law that would require children to visit their parents more often. Well, that proposition is now law:

Grown children in China must visit their parents or potentially face fines or jail, a new law that came into effect on Monday says.

China's new "Elderly Rights Law" deals with the growing problem of lonely elderly people by ordering adult children to visit their ageing parents.

The law says adults should care about their parents "spiritual needs" and "never neglect or snub elderly people".

Link

The tradition of burying loved ones with grave flowers turns out to be quite an old one. Archaeologists Daniel Nadel and colleagues discovered the oldest example in a grave in Israel's Mount Carmel, dating back 12,000 years ago:

Ancient mourners lined four graves with the flowers, most notably one that holds the bodies of two people.

The pair—an adult male and an adolescent of undetermined sex—belonged to the primitive Natufian culture, which flourished between 15,000 and 11,600 years ago in an area that is now Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria.

The Natufian society was one of the first—possibly the first—to transition from a roaming hunter-gatherer lifestyle to permanent settlements, and was also the first to establish true graveyards, said study leader Daniel Nadel, an archaeologist at the University of Haifa in Israel. [...]

The new discovery indicates that the Natufians were also among the first to use flowers to honor their dead.

Link

Moby Dick Postertext - See All Postertext posters

Your hunt for that white whale in home decorating is over: The Moby Dick Postertext lets you hang Herman Melville's iconic novel on your wall.

Postertext is a neat series of posters that use the text from your favorite books in a clever way: the negative space from the text is designed to recreate an iconic moment from the book. It's a great conversation piece for book lovers and a neat room decoration to boot.

Now, we're offering a whale of a deal on all Postertexts on the NeatoShop: Save up to 40% on Postertext posters while supplies last! Your purchase helps support indie writers and artists of the blog: Link | More Neat Sale Items

Photos: AJ Pilkington/Manicks Productions Ltd.

The eight and final season of Dexter will premiere on FOX in the United Kingdom, and to commemorate that event, Miss Cakehead and Annabel de Vetten of Conjurer's Kitchen teamed up to create a life-sized Dexter Morgan out of cake ... then proceeded to cut and eat him up:

Inspired by the name of Dexter’s boat – A Slice of Life – the cake was 5ft 10” long, the same height as Michael C. Hall, the actor who has played Dexter for the past eight years. The entire cake took over 100 hours to make and weighed over 105 kilograms.  24 eggs, 25 kilograms of flour, 16 kilograms of buttercream, 18 kilograms of sugar, 20 kilograms of sugar paste and marzipan, and 15 kilograms of buttercream were used in the creation of the edible masterpiece. 20 blood oranges were also used, the cake flavour inspired by the iconic titles of the series.

A Dexter ‘kill room’ was created for the cutting of the cake, the kitchen walls covered in plastic sheeting. Replicating Dexter’s kill technique, the cake was initially cut by a knife being plunged into the chest area before being sliced up. The cake was also ‘dressed’ in clothes to give an authentic appearance, with hours spent on adding fine attention to detail such as stubble.

Photo: HeyItsWilliam/Flickr

French sculptor Auguste Rodin casted The Thinker in 1902, so it's time to update the iconic sculpture to reflect modern society's more ... um, bountiful image. Meet the Fat Thinker, for the Shanghai Sculpture Space exhibition in China.

I wonder what it's thinking about ...

Photo: HeyItsWilliam/Flickr