Family Schmamily ... I'm Here For The Turkey - $9.95
This Thanksgiving, after fighting the long lines at the airport, navigating the parking lot that used to be called freeways, and defusing family tension at the dinner table, everyone could use a little humor. So wear this T-shirt and hope that your family sees the humor in it and give you an extra serving of turkey!
From the Neatorama Shop: http://shop.neatorama.com/product-info.php?family-shmamily-here-for-turkey-thanksgiving-pid628.html
An Australian computer hacker named Ashley Towns has created a virus that ... rickrolls jailbroken iPhones:
The Australian programmer who claims to have created the world’s first Apple iPhone virus as a prank has told Computerworld he does not regret writing it.
The worm, ‘Ikee’ changes iPhone owners’ wallpaper and replaces it with a photo of ‘80s pop star Rick Astley and the message “ikee is never going to give you up”.
Twenty-one-year-old Wollongong resident Ashley Towns, said he created the virus out of curiosity and boredom.
“I had just formatted my iPhone and it told me to set the password in bold, big letters and I wondered how many people have actually done that," Towns said.
“So I ran a scan on my [Optus] 3G network and there was 26 phones running the service that’s vulnerable, and out of that 26, 25 hadn’t changed their passwords.”
Stack the Bones is a classic stacking game, just like Jenga ... but more gruesome! The game, designed by Chris Collicott, includes 54 wooden "bone" pieces and 1 wooden skull piece. It's grisly fun for the whole family. From the Neatorama Shop: http://shop.neatorama.com/product-info.php?stack-the-bones-pid621.html
Lots of stuff happening in Neatoland last week. Here's a quick update:
Mystery Sale Last week, Neatorama had its last Mystery Sale. Thank you for everyone who participated! Why was it our last one? We're working on a new system for the Neatorama Shop and I have an inkling that it may be incompatible with the way Mystery Sales work. Perhaps we'll bring it back in the future, but for now, the last Mystery Sale was our very last one ;)
The warehouse is officially in overdrive mode. We'll be sending out shipments for the next week or two. Unfortunately, I don't know where a particular order is in the queue - so please be patient, your package is on its way!
Neatorama on Yahoo! Our post about Elena Desserich, the 6-year-old girl with brain cancer who hid love notes for her parents to find after her death, was featured on Yahoo! front page, which delivered about 2 million visitors (and over 2,700 comments - most of them are nice, but some are ... wow, just wow!) in a span of just a few hours (Thanks Yahoo!) Needless to say, the servers got clobbered (though the post itself had no problem as we had put it on a CDN) So if you experienced a server hiccup last week, that was the cause.
Upcoming Queue We changed the way the Upcoming Queue worked a little bit. Now you can browse Archived Posts (5,000+ submissions!) and keep up with comments on your submissions through RSS Feed.
The Archived Posts link is at the very bottom of the page, whereas the My RSS Feed is on the top right-hand navigation panel.
Matt Blum of Wired's GeekDad blog came up with a list of 10 geeky laws that should exist, but for some inexplicable reason, do not (at least, they didn't until now). For example:
1. Munroe’s Law: A person in a geeky argument who can quote xkcd to support his position automatically wins the argument. This law supersedes Godwin, so that even if the quote is about Hitler, the quoter still wins.
2. Lucas’s Law: There is no movie so beloved that a “special edition,” prequel or sequel cannot trample and forever stain its memory. [...]
Say it ain't true, Firefox. The popular browser's reputation has taken yet another hit when a new study by application security vendor Cenzic revealed that Firefox leads the field of browsers in terms of total vulnerability (yes, even besting Internet Explorer):
According to Cenzic, Firefox accounted for 44 percent of all browser vulnerabilities reported in the first half of 2009. In contrast, Apple's Safari had 35 percent of all reported browser vulnerability, Microsoft's Internet Explorer was third at 15 percent and Opera had just six percent share. [...]
As to why Firefox's numbers were so high, Cenzic has a few ideas.
"It's a combination of different things," Lars Ewe, CTO of Cenzic, told InternetNews.com. "They've gotten more traction as a browser, which is good for them and the more you get used the more exposure you have. As well a fair amount of the vulnerabilities have come by way of plug-ins."
One key area that Ewe said was responsible for a number of reported Firefox vulnerabilities is with how the browser handles plug-ins.
"The plug-in architecture that they have is a selling fact for the browser and one of the reasons why I love using it," Ewe said. "They can't control security aspects of all the plug-ins and the vulnerabilities are a side effect of that."
Sean Michael Kerner of the InternetNews explains: Link
A new website called Rent the Runway is betting that it can do for haute couture what Netflix did for movies:
“It was so easy. You just wear it and drop it back in the mail to them,” Ms. Harris said. “I don’t spend $2,000 on a dress regularly, so it’s nice to be able to wear some of the more expensive brands I wouldn’t be able to buy otherwise. And instead of just buying one or two dresses for this season, I can still have a lot of things to wear.”
Rent the Runway was founded by two recent Harvard Business School graduates, Jennifer Hyman and Jennifer Carter Fleiss. Ms. Hyman said she got the idea for the service last year after watching her younger sister agonize over whether to buy an expensive new outfit to wear to a wedding.
“Here was this young girl who loves fashion and was willing to spend a good portion of her salary on a dress that she’s only going to wear once or twice, and I thought, there has to be a solution for this,” said Ms. Hyman.
Jenna Wortham of The New York Times has the scoop: Link (Photo: Todd Heisler/NY Times)
Is Sammy Sosa pulling a Michael Jackson? The baseball star has noticeably lighter skin color, which he attributed to a "rejuvenation process":
Sosa was photographed recently during an appearance at Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino in Las Vegas.
"He is going through a rejuvenation process for his skin," Polihronis said. "Women have it all of the time. He was surprised he came out looking so white. I thought it was a body double. Part of (the photo appearance) is just the lighting.
"He is in the middle of doing a cleansing process to his skin. The picture is deceiving. He said, 'If you saw me in person, you would be surprised. When you see me in person, it is not going to seem like the picture.'
Scientists from Wake Forest University in North Carolina aroused the world's interest by successfully performing the world's first replacement of erectile tissue of the penis. And yes, it's somewhat fitting that they chose the rabbit to perform the Frankenweenie experiment:
In a previous study, the researchers engineered short segments of rabbit erectile tissue with 50% of full function.
In the latest work, they harvested smooth muscle cells and endothelial cells from the animals' erectile tissue.
These cells were multiplied in the laboratory and used to seed a three dimensional scaffold, which was implanted into the animals' penis.
Organised erectile tissue with blood vessel structures began to form as early as a month later.
The researchers believe the key was the fact that the cells were injected into the scaffolds on two separate days, enabling them to hold almost six times as many smooth muscle cells as in previous studies.
Psst! Got a smart friend? Is he brainier than the average ursine? If so, here's the perfect T-shirt: Brainier Than the Average Bear, only from the Neatorama Shop: http://shop.neatorama.com/product-info.php?smarter-than-average-bear-tshirt-pid609.html
Carl Sagan with a model of the Viking Lander. Photo via Wikipedia
I miss Carl Sagan. Sagan's enthusiasm
for science and his knack for translating difficult scientific concepts
into simple explanations that many can understand, made him a popular
figure. He was an ambassador for science, if you will, as he had inspired
many people to study science (yours truly included).
Today would've been his 75th birthday, so in honor of the great astronomer,
scientist and author, Neatorama presents 10 Neat Facts About Carl Sagan:
1. Carl Sagan's First Book About Stars
When Carl was five years old, he wondered about the stars: what were
they? Unsatisfied with the answers he got from his friends and from adults
he knew, Carl went to the library and asked for a book about stars. The
librarian handed him ... a book on celebrities! In Keay Davidson's Carl
Sagan: A Life, Carl explained how his fascination with the cosmos
began:
I gave it back to her and said, "This wasn't the kind of
stars I had in mind." She thought this was hilarious, which humiliated
me further. She then went and got the right kind of book. I took it—a
simple kid's book. I sat down on a little chair—a pint-sized chair—and
turned the pages until I came to the answer.
And the answer was stunning. It was that the Sun was a star but
really close. The stars were suns, but so far away they were just little
points of light.... And while I didn't know the [inverse] square law
of light propagation or anything like that, still, it was clear to me
that you would have to move that Sun enormously far away, further away
than Brooklyn [for the stars to appears as dots of light]....
The scale of the universe suddenly opened up to me. [It was] kind
of a religious experience. [There] was a magnificence to it, a grandeur,
a scale which has never left me. Never ever left me.
2. Sagan vs. Apple
In
1994, Apple chose the internal codename "Carl Sagan" for its
PowerMac 7100. Though it was meant as an homage to Carl (and an in-joke
that the computer would make Apple "billions and billions" of
dollars), they also used the codenames "Piltdown Man" and "Cold
Fusion" for the Power Mac 6100 and 8100, respectively. When Carl
found out that he was being put alongside scientific hoaxes, he sued Apple.
Though Apple won the suit, the codename was changed to BHA (Butt Head
Astronomer) ... which prompted yet another lawsuit from the p.o.'d astronomer!
Apple won again, but their lawyers demanded the engineers change the codename
one more time, which they did. The PowerMac 7100 was known by its final
codename LAW, which stood for "Lawyers Are Wimps."
3. Spaced Out ... On Pot!
In 1969, Carl Sagan wrote under the Pseudonym "Mr. X" about
the virtues of cannabis. Harvard Medical School Professor Emeritus of
Psychiatry Lester Grinspoon has the
article in his website Marijuana Uses:
It all began about ten years ago. I had reached a considerably
more relaxed period in my life - a time when I had come to feel that
there was more to living than science, a time of awakening of my social
consciousness and amiability, a time when I was open to new experiences.
I had become friendly with a group of people who occasionally smoked
cannabis, irregularly, but with evident pleasure. Initially I was unwilling
to partake, but the apparent euphoria that cannabis produced and the
fact that there was no physiological addiction to the plant eventually
persuaded me to try. My initial experiences were entirely disappointing;
there was no effect at all, and I began to entertain a variety of hypotheses
about cannabis being a placebo which worked by expectation and hyperventilation
rather than by chemistry. After about five or six unsuccessful attempts,
however, it happened. I was lying on my back in a friend's living room
idly examining the pattern of shadows on the ceiling cast by a potted
plant (not cannabis!). I suddenly realized that I was examining an intricately
detailed miniature Volkswagen, distinctly outlined by the shadows. I
was very skeptical at this perception, and tried to find inconsistencies
between Volkswagens and what I viewed on the ceiling. But it was all
there, down to hubcaps, license plate, chrome, and even the small handle
used for opening the trunk. When I closed my eyes, I was stunned to
find that there was a movie going on the inside of my eyelids. Flash
. . . a simple country scene with red farmhouse, a blue sky, white clouds,
yellow path meandering over green hills to the horizon. . . Flash .
. .
4. The Politics of Science
Anyone who has ever worked in a university or an academic institution
would know this, but most people assume that because science relies on
logic and careful reasoning, scientists would behave in a clinical and
dispassionate way. Nothing is farther from the truth.
Carl's popularity had backfired on him not once but twice. In 1967, he
was denied tenure at Harvard because his
colleagues bristled at "what they perceived as self-aggrandizement
and pandering to the public."
In 1992, Carl was again disappointed when his application for membership
at the prestigious National Academy of Sciences was denied. Ironically,
he received the Public Welfare Medal, the highest award of the Academy
for "distinguished contributions in the application of science to
the public welfare."
In both instances, Carl persevered and succeeded to overcome setbacks
resulting from the politics of science.
5. Billions and Billions
Carl Sagan actually never used the term "billions and billions."
His exact words on the series Cosmos were "billions upon
billions" (which, for all practical purpose, is pretty much the same
thing).
So how did "billions and billions" came to be? We can blame
Johnny Carson:
Carl was a good sport - his final book, titled Billions
& Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium,
opened with a tongue-in-cheek discussion of the catch phrase and noted
that Johnny Carson himself was an amateur astronomer.
6. The Sagan Unit
A sagan is defined as at least 4 billion (the smallest amount in "billions"
is two billion, so "billions and billions" equal 4 billion).
It is estimated that the Milky Way galaxy has 100 sagan (400,000,000,000)
stars.
Many people know that Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 spacecrafts carry metal
plaques that carry a message from mankind. But not many know that it was
Carl Sagan, together with Frank Drake (yes, the man who came up with the Drake Equation that attempts to estimate the number of alien civilization in our galaxy), that designed the plaque. The controversial
artwork, which featured a nude man and woman, was drawn by Sagan's then-wife
Linda Salzman Sagan.
After the Pioneer Program, NASA put a Golden Record aboard the two Voyager
spacecrafts, which included a greeting "Hello from the children of
planet Earth." That was recorded by then six-year-old Nick Sagan,
Carl's son.
8. Carl Sagan Memorial Station ... on Mars!
Nick Sagan grew up to become
a novelist and screenwriter. He wrote an episode of Star Trek: Enterprise
titled "Terra Prime," which included a CGI of Carl Sagan Memorial
Station plaque on Mars.
The plaque above is fictional - but the Carl Sagan Memorial Station is
real. It's the formal name of the NASA Mars Pathfinder lander, which delivered
the Sojourner rover that explored the Red Planet.
9. Sagan Asteroid
Just in case a unit of measurement and a memorial station on Mars aren't
enough, Carl had another thing named after him: a small asteroid in the
main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter was named the 2709 Sagan.
10. Sagan's Last Interview
In 1996, not long before his death, Carl Sagan was interviewed by Charlie
Rose, in which he discussed the rise of pseudoscience in the United States.
He looked gaunt in the interview, but as you can see, he remained as sharp
as ever:
[Google
Video]
Bonus: Carl Sagan A Glorious Dawn Auto-Tune
This has been on Neatorama before,
but it's so good that we just have to feature it again for those of you
who might've missed it. Behold, Carl Sagan's A Glorious Dawn auto-tuned:
I'll be the first to acknowledge that this is a woefully inadequate post
about one of the most brilliant scientists who ever lived. We didn't talk
about Cosmos (because it's so popular, I opted for the more obscure
Sagan trivia), his books and Pulitzer Prize, Carl
Sagan Day and so on. If you have a Sagan story, please share it in
the comments.
After all these years of eating chicken wings, it turns out that I've been doing it all wrong! Chef John of Food Wishes reveals the secret of eating a flat wing: Hit play or go to Link
Alan Taylor's excellent photoblog The Big Picture over at Boston.com has a really nifty collection of images of the Martian landscape:
Since 2006, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has been orbiting Mars, currently circling approximately 300 km (187 mi) above the Martian surface. On board the MRO is HiRISE, the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera, which has been photographing the planet for several years now at resolutions as fine as mere inches per pixel. Collected here is a group of images from HiRISE over the past few years, in either false color or grayscale, showing intricate details of landscapes both familiar and alien, from the surface of our neighboring planet, Mars. I invite you to take your time looking through these, imagining the settings - very cold, dry and distant, yet real.
One thing I like about living (and working) in the 'burbs is that not having to fight for cheap parking or pay through the nose for expensive spots. Not so for people in Miami. Apparently, the scarcity of parking there has created much violence, a cottage industry involving the homeless, parking mafia and even a "magical meter fairy."
Gus Garcia-Roberts from the Miami New Times explains:
In 2004, Kendall native Xavier Cortes was a 37-year-old out-of-work actor in desperate need of a gig. Opportunity came in the classified pages of this newspaper, where an advertisement sought "an extroverted, fun individual, male or female, who knows how to ride rollerblades and isn't afraid to wear a tutu."
Cortes immediately answered the ad. He was hired by the Coconut Grove Chamber of Commerce. He donned a hot-pink wig and matching tutu, carried a wand, and began each shift with $40 in dimes. For his wage of ten dollars an hour, paid each day by a different Grove business, Cortes skated through the neighborhood putting coins in meters that were about to expire. He left a calling card tucked under windshield wipers. "You've just been saved by the Coconut Grove parking-meter fairy," it read, and included a coupon to the business that had donated the dimes.
Cortes's new occupation was the counterattack strategy employed by Grove business owners who felt under siege by MPA enforcement officers scaring away customers. [...]
Cortes was catcalled by construction workers and berated by teenagers, but to the Grovites who understood his purpose, he was a hero worthy of tips, cigarettes, and free meals. Soon though, he says, a cold war developed between him and MPA officers. "They would try to intimidate me, telling me it was illegal to feed another person's meter," he recalls. "They'd try to figure out my routes and shifts. I'd see them hiding behind walls spying on me. It got ugly, and it went all the way to the top of the MPA."
How do you improve the runaway sleeper hit Paranormal Activity, which was made on a budget of $15,000 and has grossed nearly $90 million so far?
Add goats.
Yahoo's Buzz Log has the clever mash-up of the movie's ads with a few ungulates, which is a spoof trailer for The Men Who Stare At Goats: Link [embedded YouTube clip]
