A homeless young man sits on the side of a road trying to make a living - but he's not panhandling. In fact, he refuses to beg. Instead, he's selling books.
Meet Philani Dladla, the Pavement Bookworm of Johannesburg, South Africa. Philani carries with him a stack of books (that he has read) wherever he goes. On request, he will review the book, the author, the publisher - and if you like it, he will sell you the book in order to raise money.
South African cinematographer Tebogo Malope interviewed man, whose story has gone viral. "He has read all the books in his collection and is always seeking for more to read," Malope said to SA People News, "He then sells some of his books as a way to raise money for himself and some of his homeless friends. I’m appealing to anyone that can contribute somehow into his life."
"He’s a great role model on the power of reading and can be an amazing ambassador for our young people."
Take a look at the fascinating story of the Pavement Bookworm:
You know you have a bad neighborhood when you're victimized while doing a live report on site. In front of a police headquarters, no less!
KTVU reporter Heather Holmes was in Oakland, California, to report on a violent mugging that left a young woman hurt. According to people who live in the area, crime has become such a huge problem that they regularly witness car being broken into. "Three to four times a day we're seeing people casing cars and breaking in," witnesses said. "We're calling it in to the police every time and they are stretched very thin and so they often aren't able to show up for at least half an hour."
And to underscore how crime-ridden the area has become, Holmes discovered that while she was taping the live segment, her purse was stolen out of the news van ... which was parked right outside the Oakland Police Headquarters!
Holmes tweeted about the event:
Young woman beaten & robbed in broad daylight on Shattuck & 48th in #Oakland. Just talked to a witness who tried to stop the attack. #KTVU
This is the reason we should never go to war with the Russians. Meet the Cat Captain of the Russian battlecruiser Pyotr Velikij, the fourth Kirov-class battlecruiser and flagship of the country's Northern Fleet? (well, okay, that's not exactly believable ... but who am I to argue against the Cat Captain?) Via Cheezburger and reddit.
(L) In front of artwork by Ellsworth Kelly (M) In front of artwork by Helen Frankenthaller (R) In front of artwork by Christopher Wool. Photo via Saatchi Art's Facebook page
In his art series Museum Camouflage (1998 - 2001), artist Harvey Opgenorth made custom clothes for blending in front of modern artwork.
Opgenorth's artwork reminded us of the camouflage art series by Chinese artist Liu Bolin, which we blogged about way back in 2008, but unlike Liu who used paint, Opgenorth sewed custom clothes.
A bonfire where many of the victims of an ancient epidemic in the ancient city of Thebes in Egypt were ultimately incinerated. Photo: N. Cijan / Associazione Culturale per lo Studio dell’Egitto e del Sudan ONLUS.
It's like a plot straight out of the movies: archaeologists in Egypt have discovered the remains of an epidemic so terrifying that it was called the "end of the world" plague.
Between 250 to 271 AD, the Roman empire was afflicted by the Plague of Cyprian - named after the bishop of Carthage St. Cyprian, an early Christian writer who described the horror of the disease, which at its height killed 5,000 people a day in Rome:
This trial, that now the bowels, relaxed into a constant flux, discharge the bodily strength; that a fire originated in the marrow ferments into wounds of the fauces [mouth]; that the intestines are shaken with a continual vomiting; that the eyes are on fire with the injected blood; that in some cases the feet or some parts of the limbs are taken off by the contagion of diseased putrefaction ...
Fast forward to today, when a team of archaeologists working at the Funerary Complex of Harwa and Akhimenru in modern-day Luxor (then Thebes), have uncovered bodies covered with a thick layer of lime (which the Romans used as disinfectant), kilsn where the lime was produced, as well as a giant bonfire where plague victims were incinerated.
A lime kiln built to produce enough lime disinfectant to cover the human remains of victims from the epidemic in the ancient city of Thebes. Photo: N. Cijan / Associazione Culturale per lo Studio dell’Egitto e del Sudan ONLUS.
Francesco Tiradritti, director of the Italian Archaeological Mission to Luxor, told LiveScience that his team found evidence of corpses burned or buried inside the lime without receiving any religious rites. "They had to dispose of them without losing any time."
Usually, these kinds of stories ended up with scientists attempting to extract plague DNA from the corpses (what could possibly go wrong with that?), but Tiradritti noted, "In a climate like Egypt, the DNA is completely destroyed."
Read more about the archeological findings over at LiveScience.
This diagram illustrates the rough boundaries of “no man’s land,” a temperature region where supercooled water is difficult to study because of rapid ice formation. Using SLAC’s Linac Coherent Light Source, scientists dipped down to minus 51 degrees Fahrenheit and made the first structural measurements of liquid water in this mysterious region, where water’s unusual properties are amplified. (Greg Stewart/SLAC, Ultrafast Chemical Physics Group/University of Glasgow, Scotland)
Quick, how many phases of water are there? If you answer three - liquid, solid, and gas - you'd be wrong. There are at least 5 distinct phases of liquid water and 15 distinct phases of ice that scientists know about, as we've told you before in our post 5 Really Weird Things About Water.
Now, thanks to some fancy X-ray technology, scientists at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have probed the structure of liquid water in a certain region of temperature and pressure where things really get weird.
According to SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory:
Despite its simple molecular structure, water has many weird traits: Its solid form is less dense than its liquid form, which is why ice floats; it can absorb a large amount of heat, which is carried long distances by ocean currents and has a profound impact on climate; and its peculiar density profile prevents oceans and lakes from freezing solid all the way to the bottom, allowing fish to survive the winter.
These traits are amplified when purified water is supercooled. When water is very pure, with nothing to seed the formation of ice crystals, it can remain liquid at much lower temperatures than normal. The temperature range of water from about minus 42 to minus 172 degrees (see diagram) has been dubbed no man’s land. For decades scientists have sought to better explore what happens to water molecules at temperatures below minus 42 degrees, but they had to rely largely on theory and modeling.
Now the LCLS, with X-ray laser pulses just quadrillionths of a second long, allows researchers to capture rapid-fire snapshots showing the detailed molecular structure of water in this mysterious zone the instant before it freezes. The research showed that water's molecular structure transforms continuously as it enters this realm, and with further cooling the structural changes accelerate more dramatically than theoretical models had predicted.
Now THAT is a jumbo Cheetos! If you thought that something like that is uniquely American, think again: redditor Imploder's buddy's sister went to Tijuana, Mexico* to bring the largest bag of Cheetos we'd ever seen.
The industrial (for lack fo a better word) bag contains 3 kg or 6.6 lb of Cheetos.
But the title of the world largest Cheeto still belongs to the good ol' US of A. The golf ball-sized Cheeto currently reside in Algona, Iowa. (Photo: Tom Kupfer)
*If you must know, Mexico's obesity rate is now 32.8%, which is slightly higher than the 31.8% obesity rate in the United States. Mexico has overtaken the United States as the fattest country in the world.
Stressed out? A relaxing massage could help calm you down, but what if you're a fish? Turns out, the same thing applies.
Marta Soares of the ISPA University Institute in Lisbon, Portugal, and colleagues, noticed that in addition to removing parasites and dead skins, bluestreak cleaner wrasses often give their "clients" pelvic and pectoral fin massages - just think of them as the equivalent of human backrubs.
"We know that fish experience pain," Soares told NewScientist, "maybe fish have pleasure, too." To check whether those massages are beneficial, Soares put stressed out surgeonfish in two tanks with a model cleaner fish - one tank has a stationary model and the other a model that moves back and forth to provide physical stimulation. All surgeonfish approached the model, but only those in the tank with the moving model could get the physical fin massage.
When Soares and colleagues tested the level of the stress hormone cortisol of the two groups, the scientists found that only the surgeonfish that have contact with the moving model have lowered stress level.
It's obvious how cleaner wrasses benefit from the relationship - they get to feed on debris they remove from their clients, but what do the clients get in return? Why would the clients return to the wrasses and even "wait in line" to be cleaned?
"The discovery of a positive effect of physical contact in a reef fish ... resolves a long-standing paradox described in cleaning mutualism involving cleaner wrasses and their clients," said co-author Alexandra Grutter to Cosmos.
Chen, a billionaire who made his money in recycling, who happens to have the world's most interesting business card (below), is quite famous for his quixotic adventures.
First, he introduced his own line of canned fresh air to combat China's notorious air pollution. Now, he's making good on the claim of "Most Charismatic Philanthropist of China" as claimed by his business card, by inviting 1,000 destitute Americans living in New York to lunch via an ad placed in the New York Times earlier this week.
According to South China Morning Post, Chen wanted to "spread the message in the US that there are good philanthropists in China and not all are crazy spenders on luxury goods."
"At the same time, there are many wealthy Chinese billionaires but most of them gained their wealth from market speculation and colluding with government officials while destroying the environment," Chen added. "I can’t bear the sight of it, because all they do is splurge on luxury goods, gambling and prostitution and very few of them sincerely live up their social responsibility"
Prom dress made out of duct tape? That's been done ... but what about prom dress made out of potato sack? Now that's a fashion statement!
Courtney Barich said no to fancy prom dress and yes to making one out of burlap - basically a glorified potato sack - in order to raise money for charity. The 18-year-old teen from Surrey, British Columbia, Canada, got inspired when looking for a prom dress and saw that the one she liked was $700.
"We were driving in the car and I felt kind of selfish for how much it cost," Barich said to TODAY, "My mom said, 'You would look good in anything, even a garbage bag or a potato sack.' And the idea kind of grew from there."
In her website, Barich posted a challenge: "I will give up the glitz and glam of a beautiful grad dress and I will wear a Burlap dress to grad instead, if I can get $10,000 in much needed donations to help [St. Martin De Porres Orphanage in the Philippines]".
Barich and her classmates had visited the orphanage on a summer's trip, and the experience had touched her. "It was definitely an eye-opener to see all the poverty, from the houses they live in to what they eat. All the kids were walking around with no shoes," she said. "It was very sad. I came back grateful."
It was a double win for Barich: she reached her goal to raise the money for charity, and thanks to a collaboration with Suman Faulkner of Lata Design, the dress came out gorgeous:
Photo: Courtney Barich
Read more about the teenager who went to prom in a burlap dress over at TODAY.
Note: Don't forget to check out Twaggie's new (and very funny) video: Just Kid-ing
Forget car alarms, here comes cat alarm! Redditor ArdousErials introduced us to this particularly menacing automobile guardian. Woe is the unsuspecting car thief who dares to break into its domain! Via Cheezburger.
Ever wonder what your favorite song would look like as a building? Wonder no more, thanks to these posters by Italian architect and illustrator Federico Babina.
In his Archimusic series, Babina took songs from various singers and composers and imagine them as whimsical architectures. "The parallels between architecture and music are diverse and extraordinary," Babina told Deezen, "they have a common mathematical order which regulates the forms and rhythm."
"The idea was to tell a story starting from the soundtrack, listen to the music and imagine the shapes hidden behind it," he added.
So What by Miles Davis
Babina started with So What, a track in the 1959 Kind of Blue album by Miles Davis. The building's balconies and chimney evoke the form of a giant trumpet, befitting of the legendary jazz trumpeter.
"His music moves in a perfect balance between harmonic simplicity and an ingenious difficulty," Babina told Deezen. "It was the perfect example to transform the rhythm of notes into a sequence of colours and shapes."
Take a look at the rest of Babina's fantastic Archimusic series:
Now THIS is what 3D printing is made for! For their Man Made series, Israeli designers Dov Ganchrow and the late Ami Drach (previously on Neatorama) recreated stone age tools with a decidedly modern twist.
According to designboom, prehistoric flint tools were three-dimensionally scanned at the Hebrew University's Institute of Archaeology. Then, specialized extensions and handles were printed by 3-D printing firm Stratasys out of polymer.
What better way to commemorate the National Jerky Day than to recreate Mount Rushmore with meat jerky?
Beef jerky manufacturer Jack Link's commissioned a team of artists led by art director Alex Valhouli to recreate the iconic granite sculpture of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln* in jerky. The team spent 1,400 man-hour "meatsculpting" a scaled replica of Mount Rushmore with 1,600 pound of jerky.
Everyone wants to go to Brazil to watch the World Cup. Even Terry Crews of the famous Old Spice commercial (we're glad that he's back - that Mom Song one is *creepy*). So, how would someone as spectaculawesofantastic as Crews go to Brazil? You wouldn't expect him to hop on an airplane and fly there, would you? Nope. This is how he travels:
I'd high five my fellow Neatoramanauts, but sadly there'd be no pineapple produced.
