If you only saw one YouTube clip today, make it this one. Here's The
Golden Age of Video by Ricardo
Autobahn, made from movie clips (which ones? David
Glover got them all figured out). We Came, We Saw, We Kicked Its
Ass. Indeed.
1,2,1,2,3,4
We accept her, one of us, we accept her, one of us!
Gooble gobble gooble gobble!
We accept her, we accept her!
We accept her, one of us, we accept her, one of us!
Gooble gobble gooble gobble!
We accept her, we accept her!
(We-we) we came, we saw, we kicked it's ass,
I was testing you - and you passed,
Dental plan! Lisa needs braces,
Be required to fart on a regular basis,
I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse,
Channel 13 - Eyewitness news!
Robocop, who is he?
Dead or alive you're coming with me.
In a hurry to be fed, beady eyes and big blue head.
I'm telling the truth Doc, you gotta believe me,
Why does everything I whip leave me?
My beautiful chocolate! Candy is dandy,
Fava beans and a nice Chianti,
You can count on Slippery Pete,
Suicide will be nice and neat!
I didn't build the Panama canal,
Open the pod bay doors please, HAL,
These aren't the droids you're looking for,
These aren't the droids we're looking for,
I am not a number I am a free man!
Rosebud.
To The Idiotmobile!
Right away Michael,
I-I-I-I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed
or numbered.
We came, we saw, we kicked it's ass,
You don't understand I coulda had class,
Round and tasty on a bun,
Ooh Zippy look what you've done!
Finally! Cast off those lines!
No, I've been nervous lots of times,
Red Rum! What's the matter honey?
Just robbed Boss Hogg all of his money!
We came, saw, we kicked it's ass,
Writing checks your body can't cash,
I was elected to lead, not read,
I feel the need - the need for speed,
Watch out for snakes, a good man's loafer,
HQ - my hat looks like a muffin - over,
My god it's full of stars,
There was no driver in the car..
In the car (repeat)
Well you see I'm in hot pursuit!
There are only two things I love in this world - everybody and
television!
#The Simpsons
#Run With Us!
Ugh - you must be shrooming,
Wait for me Moomin!
Cross live to meet the host of that show, Meat Boy,
I want to go to there.
We came, we saw, we kicked it's ass,
An oil tycoon - like a.. moustache,
Nice beaver! I just had it stuffed,
I don't give a shit, close enough,
Where's me washboard? I'll get me coat,
Y-y-y-you're gonna need a bigger boat,
What'd she say? I think she bought it,
Suck it monkeys! I'm goin' corporate!
C'mon let's take a drive! A drive?
Number 5 is alive!
It's only a laugh, no harm done,
Pickles, french fries, yum yum yum,
Bueller, Bueller, Bueller,
It's 2 degrees cooler,
The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long,
Six words in the whole song.
We-we-we accept her, one of us, we accept her, one of us!
Gooble gobble gooble gobble!
We accept her, we accept her!
You are number 6 5 4 3 2
I am not a number, I am a free man
We came, we saw, we kicked it's ass,
Give me my 20,000 in cash,
We came, we saw, we kicked it's ass,
I think you woke up the dead with that blast
We came, we saw, we kicked it's ass,
I think fast, I talk fast,
We came, we saw, we kicked it's ass,
Lois, this is not my Batman glass.
Sometimes the best ideas are the simplest. Alex Creamer, a student at the University of Central Lancashire, UK, came up with this brilliant idea of a New-York centric packaging for spaghetti:
"I created this spaghetti packaging for a university project last year. The brief was to package one of 5 difficult items i.e. eggs, a rose, custard powder, spaghetti or marbles. I chose spaghetti. The spaghetti sits on a 3d model of the chrysler building that was modelled on CAD by my friend Ben Thorpe. And then modelled out of high density foam at uni. Creating a spaghetti model of the Chrysler building!"
A REAL LIFE "OCEAN'S ELEVEN": The 2003 ANTWERP DIAMOND HEIST
If
you thought George Clooney's Ocean's Eleven character was smooth, check
out the velvet finish on criminal mastermind Leonardo
Notarbartolo. In February 2003, Notarbartolo and his gang, known as
The School of Turin, pulled off one of the stealthiest heists in history.
Daring to break into the famous World Diamond Center in Antwerp - where
more than half of the world's diamonds are traded - the group made out
with $100 million in jewels and other loot.
HOW THEY DID IT: Not ones to rush into something this
big, the Turin boys began laying the groundwork for the project three
years prior. Posing as a company owner, Notarbartolo rented an office
in the Center in 2000 and proceeded to obtain copies of master keys and
learn how the alarm system worked. Then, the group waited for the perfect
distraction - the Diamond Games tennis tournament on February 15-16, 2003.
As Venus Williams wowed throngs of spectators (many of them Diamond Center
employees and security guards), Nortarbartolo's crew used their duplicate
keys to sneak into 123 of the building's underground vaults. Simply riding
the elevator down to the basement, they deactivated a motion sensor and
taped over light detectors. Then, instead of just covering the lenses
of the CCTV (closed circuit television) security cameras, they avoided
suspicion by replacing the tapes with previously recorded footage.
Of course, the biggest hurdle was getting past the vault's 12-inch
thick doors. Knowing the doors were equipped with internal magnets that
would set off alarms if they detached, the robbers drilled through the
bolts, carefully taped the magnets together, and moved them out of the
way so that they wouldn't separate. After that, all they had to
do was break the locks to the safety deposit boxes, rake in the diamonds,
and then quietly flee the scene. To escape undetected, they memorized
the surveillance patterns of the 24-hour police patrols outside the building.
(Hey, they didn't have nicknames like “The King of Thieves”
and “The Magician with the Keys” for nothing.) Amazingly,
even though the heist took place early Sunday morning, authorities didn't
discover anything suspicious until Monday.
HOW THEY GOT CAUGHT: Here's a tip for would-be thieves:
If you leave the crime scene with a bag full of diamonds and then dispose
of the bags on the road leading out of the city, make sure you don't leave
your half-eaten sandwich in one of them. Inspectors used DNA evidence
found on the food to nab Notarbartolo, and further DNA traces in the vault
to arrest two other gang members. In 2005, he was convicted, sentenced
to 10 years in prison, and fined $1.3 million. Meanwhile, none of the
diamonds have been recovered. Some have microscopic inscriptions on them
that would reveal their identity, but only if the thieves ever decide
to sell them legally.
(Photo and a very interesting in-depth story by Joshua Davis at Wired
Magazine)
BRUTE STRENGTH AND NUMBERS: THE SECURITAS DEPOT ROBBERY
February
must be a good month for crime. In February 2006, three years after the
Antwerp diamond heist, a Securitas money depot in England was robbed by
a band of thieves who coordinated simultaneous kidnappings. They made
off with a jaw-dropping $92.5 Million (US) in cash - most of it unmarked.
Today, it's considered the largest cash robbery in British history. (Photo:
PA, via Telegraph)
HOW THEY DID IT: Picture this: You're driving along
a road in Stockbury, England, when the whirring sirens of an unmarked
police car startle you from your evening commute. You roll down your window
and chipper police officer tells you he needs to speak with you - in his
vehicle. Oops, you've just been kidnapped. That's how Colin Dixon was
unwittingly reeled into one of the biggest heists of the century. The
crooks handcuffed Dixon - a manager at the Securitas cash collection and
money transport company - and told him his family would be killed if he
didn't comply. Meanwhile, fellow gang members abducted Dixon's wife and
son, posing once again as police offices with a fake story about “an
accident involving your husband”. The manager led the thieves to
the Securitas depot in Tonbridge, where the criminals- wielding guns and
cloaked in knit caps - accosted another 14 employees and made off with
a giant trick full of loot. While the event was certainly traumatic for
all the victims, fortunately, no one was injured.
HOW THEY GOT CAUGHT: Good old-fashioned police work.
Apparently, it takes a lot of accomplices to stage multiple kidnappings.
In total, investigators have arrested about 30 people in connection with
the crime, including drivers, face police, a car dealer, a salesman, a
roofer, and a hairdresser named Kim Shackleton. Guess where she's
headed?
BRAZIL'S BIG DIG: THE TUNNEL RATS BANK ROBBERY
Sometimes
there's a light at the end of the tunnel, other times, there's $72 million
(US). Such was the case in August 2005, when a group of criminals in Fortaleza,
Brazil, used their 260-ft. long secret passageway to make off with some
serious loot. The trick: Spending three months excavating the thing and
tediously sneaking vanloads of dirt past the thousands of workers in the
busy urban area above. (Photo: AP, via SMH)
HOW THE DID IT: For the 23 or so suspected gang members
involved in this operation, the first step was posing as a company that
was renting an office building- which just happened to be located near
a bank. Cleverly enough, the crooks set up an artificial business as an
artificial turf com - called Grama Sintetica, complete with artificial
employees and fancy logo. For weeks, a group of men worked around the
clock digging a tunnel leading two city blocks over to the Central Bank
building Somehow, the process was so shrewdly executed that Grama Sintetica's
neighbors failed to notice that a van was transporting several loads of
dirt away from the building each day. And if their stealthy moves don‘t
seem impressive enough, consider the tunnel itself: In it, the gang installed
electric lighting, air conditioning, and wood-paneled walls (to make sure
the tunnel didn't collapse).
To pull off the heist, the gang managed to break through the bank's
three-and-a-half-foot-wide vault floor, using (as police later discovered)
a bolt cutter, a drill, an electric saw, and a blow torch. Over the course
of the weekend, they eventually removed five containers full of bank notes,
weighing nearly 7,700 lbs. Unbelievably, nobody discovered the theft until
that Monday. All told, the heist required experts in electrical engineering,
global positioning systems, excavation, and, of course, theft. The most
brilliant idea, though? Picking a crowded, noisy area in Brazil for the
heist, reasoning that no one would notice the sound of tools and digging
in the daily commotion.
HOW THEY GOT CAUGHT: The thieves did a good job of covering
their tracks (they used a white powder at the crime scene to hide fingerprints),
but apparently, tunneling underneath nations is a little trickier. Attempts
to transport the money out of the country using truck transports and chartered
planes failed, and the assumed mastermind behind the theft, Luis Ribeiro,
eventually turned up murdered. So far, the police have arrested a few
dozen suspected members of the gang.
NOT-SO-GOOD FELLAS: THE LUFTHANSA AIRPORT HEIST
In
1978, Lufthansa Airlines employee Louis Werner knew two important things:
First, that a Lufthansa airplane occasionally transported unmarked bills
from West Germany to New York's Kennedy Airport, where they were temporarily
held in nothing more than cardboard boxes locked inside a vault. Second,
that he owed about $20,000 in gambling debts to his bookie.
HOW THEY DID IT: The wrong way - with brute force. Even
though it became source material for the 1990 film “GoodFellas”
(plus several books and even a few copycat crimes), the Lufthansa Airport
Heist was a brutal affair. Using a few helpful tips from Werner, infamous
crime lord Jimmy Burke put together an operation that involved several
phases - breaking into the airport's cargo terminal, handcuffing employees,
and subduing guards. Once inside the vault, they found 72 boxes of cash
and jewelry totaling about $6 million (instead of the $2 million they'd
expected). As for the getaway, the gang used bloody force to make sure
no employees reported the crime until long after they'd left the airport.
The entire robbery took only 64 minutes, but it became one of the most
complex and lucrative heists in U.S. history.
HOW THEY GOT CAUGHT: Unlike the other heists, in which
some gang members fled the country to hide, the Lufthansa Airlines gangsters
stuck around. Not only that, but they made the mistake of displaying their
newfound wealth a bit too obviously. The police had a pretty good idea
who was behind the crime, and it wasn't long before snitches implicated
Werner and a few others. Many of the participants were murdered before
they could squeal, while still others became informants and joined the
Witness Protection Program. Werner, who organized but didn't participate
in the actual theft, was the only one convicted for a role in the heist.
The article above, written by John Brandon,
appeared in the Jan - Feb 2007 issue of mental_floss magazine. It is reprinted
here with permission.
Remember the bald bear we featured on Neatorama yesterday? Well here's another case of unusual baldness - this time it's a bald ... hedgehog?
A bald hedgehog abandoned by his mother in a garden in Norfolk is being treated at a wildlife rescue centre in a bid to encourage his spikes to grow.
Baldrick, named after the character from the television programme Blackadder, was brought to Foxy Lodge wildlife rescue centre, Great Yarmouth.
He is now being cared for by Tonia and John Garner in the hope he can be eventually released into the wild. Treatment includes antiseptic scrubs and baby oil massages.
I'd suggest a laser comb to stimulate those spike follicles, but what do I know?: Link
Raj Kamal of MintLife has a pretty nifty infographic about swine flu. Eye candy aside, I'm not going to take it completely at face value. For one, the graph lists graphjam.com (LOL!) and squidoo.com as source. This particular portion show above, however, looks logical enough to me ;)
Can your pet get sick from swine flu? The answer turns out to be yes. Iowa State University College of Veterinary Medicine has found a cat that contracted the H1N1 virus and got sick with swine flu:
On Wednesday, the Iowa Department of Public Health reported the first confirmed case of H1N1 in a house pet, a 13-year-old domestic shorthaired cat. The animal likely contracted the virus from its owners, veterinarians say, since two of the three family members living in the cat's household had recently suffered from influenza-like illness. Late last week, when the cat came down with flu-like symptoms — malaise, loss of appetite — its owners brought it to Iowa State University College of Veterinary Medicine for treatment. The family mentioned to the vet that they had also recently battled illness, which led to testing the pet for H1N1.
These days, it seems like everybody and their uncle are making their own wines. Even 7-Eleven (yes, that 7-Eleven). Here's "Yosemite Road," the company's brand of affordable Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon:
And, whoa, Yosemite Road is quite the bargain: Says the press release, both the Chardonnay and a Cabernet Sauvignon will sell for $3.99 a bottle. Who needs a Trader Joe's, anyway?
"We prefer to think of it as value," says 7-Eleven spokesperson Carole Davidson, when Unfair Park said of the Napa Valley-produced product, "Wow, that sure is cheap." She also laughed. "But, yes, it is inexpensive. ...
Is that an alien being disguised as furniture or is it artwork by Julian Göthe?
This wonderful piece is part of Julian Göthe's exhibition "Events during Flood" at the Galerie Buchholz in 2008 but just in case I'm mistaken let me just say I, for one, welcome our new furniture overlords: http://www.galeriebuchholz.de/content/exhibitions_detail.php?exhibitions_id=122&mode=announcement
David D'Angelo took snapshots of his trip from Denver to Singapore via Chicago, Los Angeles and Tokyo (and back) and stitched them into a mesmerizing 5 minute video clip:
The creator put a ton of effort into filming as much of his trip as possible, and included some highlights like the automatic beer machine at the Tokyo lounge (at 3 minutes 50 seconds).
Gadling has the video clip: Link [embedded Vimeo clip]
Hello everyone! As you can probably tell by the banners on the blog, we're having a Mystery Sale on Neatorama. The proceeds help support the blog and our fledgling shop (thank you!)
For those of you who don't know anything about it, the Mystery Sale offers an item you can buy for $9.95. What is it? We won't tell you - that's the whole point of the sale!
But we can tell you that it's going to be a physical product (or combination of products) worth AT LEAST $9.95. It'll be new and a fun "Neatorama" item.
You can buy more than 1 Mystery Item in a single order, in which case we'll make sure that you get different items. You can even get them gift-wrapped so you can cross Christmas shopping off your list early this year.
We're working on a new platform for Neatorama's online shop, and the new one probably won't be compatible with future Mystery Sale. I'm 99.9% sure that this will be the last Mystery Sale we'll have (if not ever, then for a very long time) so grab yours today before it's gone!
Link
Update 11/5/09 - Time's up! Thank you to everyone who participated!
Aaron Siebers, 27, had a problem. He was skateboarding one afternoon, fell, and ripped his Blockbuster-issued khakis. Worried about getting "written up," Aaron hatched a criminally (not so) brilliant plan:
Instead of just calling in sick, he stabbed himself in the leg and showed up at work claiming to have just been attacked by three Hispanic males. Siebers, who told cops he was assaulted as he walked toward the Blockbuster in Edgewater, had a deep stab wound in one leg and several other minor cuts on his face and stomach. As investigators began hunting for the assailants, they reviewed surveillance video from outside a Target store where Siebers claimed the attack occurred. The footage, however, showed no such assault. Confronted by cops, Siebers, pictured in the below mug shot, admitted that he had stabbed himself. He told investigators about the skateboarding accident, the resulting ripped pants, and how "he did not want to lose his job so he stabbed himself in the leg," according to an arrest affidavit sworn by Officer Shawna Naumann.
Alan Friedman, a greeting cards-maker by day and astronomer by night, took this amazing photo of the Sun. APOD explains why it's blue:
Our Sun may look like all soft and fluffy, but it's not. Our Sun is an extremely large ball of bubbling hot gas, mostly hydrogen gas. The above picture of our Sun was taken last month in a specific red color of light emitted by hydrogen gas called Hydrogen-alpha and then color inverted to appear blue. In this light, details of the Sun's chromosphere are particularly visible, highlighting numerous thin tubes of magnetically-confined hot gas known as spicules rising from the Sun like bristles from a shag carpet. Our Sun glows because it is hot, but it is not on fire. Fire is the rapid acquisition of oxygen, and there is very little oxygen on the Sun. The energy source of our Sun is the nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium deep within its core. No sunspots or large active regions were visible on the Sun this day, although some solar prominences are visible around the edges.
What does it take to create an American Soldier? Denver Post Photojournalist Craig F. Walker tracked Ian Fisher from his high school graduation through basic training, assignment to Colorado's Fort Carson, and deployment in Iraq:
His decision to join the Army grew out of many things. The opportunity to fight for his country. The desire to add to a family legacy. The need to point his young life in a productive direction. In the spring of 2007 and at the depths of the Iraq war s unpopularity, Ian Fisher graduated from Lakewood s Bear Creek High School and, two weeks later, shipped out to basic training. There, he began the challenging process of becoming an American soldier - and outgrowing the trappings of youth. Like many recruits, he would struggle, learn, make mistakes and rebound. His training prepared him for violent conflict in a foreign land. Nothing prepared him for the war within.
Matthew Inman of The Oatmeal has just released another web project, How to Use An Apostrophe. It's a hoot! (Notice the proper use of apostrophe in the preceding sentence).
Link (for extra goodness, see the source code) - Thanks Matthew!
Which has a larger ecological footprint, a large dog or an SUV? According to Robert and Brenda Vale, Fido has a Hummer of an eco-footprint:
In "Time to Eat the Dog? The Real Guide to Sustainable Living," authors Robert and Brenda Vale argue that resources required to feed a dog — including the amount of land needed to feed the animals that go into its food — give it about twice the eco-footprint of, say, building and fueling a Toyota Land Cruiser. Noting that a cat's pawprint was roughly equivalent to a Volkswagen Golf's, "New Scientist" asked an environmentalist at the Stockholm Environment Institute in York, U.K., to independently calculate animals' environmental impact, and reported that "his figures tallied almost exactly." The study apparently didn't take into account the emissions of either the SUV or the dogs.
