I, for one, welcome our new Cat Ba leopard gecko overlord. That fantastically sinister-looking leopard gecko (with the equally cool species name of Goniurosaurus catbaensis) is one of the 162 new species found in the Mekong River region of Southeast Asia:
Among the stars in the new list is a fanged frog in eastern Thailand. Given the scientific name Limnonectes megastomias, the frog lies in wait along streams for prey including birds and insects. Scientists believe it uses its fangs during combat with other males.
Another unusual discovery was the Cat Ba leopard gecko found on Cat Ba Island in northern Vietnam. Named Goniurosaurus catbaensis, it has large, orange-brown catlike eyes and leopard spots down the length of its yellowish brown body.
Lee Grismer, of La Sierra University in California, said he found a tiger-stripped [sic] pit viper in Vietnam described in the report while he was attempting to capture a second gecko species.
"We were engrossed in trying to catch a new species of gecko when my son pointed out that my hand was on a rock mere inches away from the head of a pit viper," Grismer said in a statement. "We caught the snake and the gecko and they both proved to be new species."
Whatever you do, don't look into the Cat Ba leopard gecko's eyes ... Link
First, it was Paris Hilton and now, Barack Obama. Eric Spiegelman noticed that when President Obama hosted a reception at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he held the exact same smile in every photograph:
Ladies and gentlemen, your President is a robot. Or a wax sculpture. Maybe a cardboard cutout. All I know is no human being has a photo smile this amazingly consistent.
On Wednesday, the Obamas hosted a reception at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, during which they stood for 130 photographs with visiting foreign dignitaries in town for the UN meeting. The President has exactly the same smile in every single shot. See for yourself — the pictures are up on the State Department’s flickr (link below). And, of course, compressed into 20 seconds for your viewing pleasure.
There can only be on explanation: it was the Obamabot stand-in. The real President Obama was probably too busy dealing with the Russian Dead Hand in an underground bunker to be bothered by this museum stuff!
The
following is a Neatorama
Shop Story, a narrative starring the products carried in this blog’s
very own online store.
I Once Had a Chum from Nantucket
Summer, 1975. Quint, Dreyfuss and I had just boarded the Queequeg, a
bigger boat sailing out of Nantucket. As the lithe, long torsoed teen
temptresses and the shoreline that was their spawning ground grew smaller,
the salty sea spread herself avast before us, forcing us to feel the magnitude
of our own smallness whilst we succumbed to her every swell. Three sailors
bobbing alone at sea, chummy in demeanor and aroma, comparing conquests,
cutoffs and scars.
As per our manly agreement, we each brought one piece of personal swag.
Ever the practical one, I had stowed the largest and most atmospheric
jug of rum my summer sundries stipend could secure. Quint’s contribution
was a family-sized stick of Old Spice for our mutual use upon disembarkation.
As the sun set on the darkened sea, Dreyfuss, whose method, it is widely
known today, requires that he never break character from “creepy
annoying guy who smells even worse than you’d think,” finally
revealed his trade secret, a strict diet of Chum
Bucket: green candies, the color of sea sickness itself. Wafting up
from the hinged tin came a bouquet of the gutted remains of the day’s
catch sloshed overboard and washed ashore, decaying in tide pools for
a fortnight until the slurry has congealed into a concentrated algae-crusted
outcropping that just might make you sick if you lick it, captured in
an after-dinner mint. If you have ever wondered what a gentleman from
Nantucket tastes like, but due to geographic limitations have been unable
to sample one, now is your chance. (Disclaimer: unlike in an actual close
encounter with Dreyfuss or Quint, crabs are not included).
Chum Bucket is canned with artificial seafood flavor, so it just might
be safe for vegans. Probably better not to take the risk, since the charming
graphics on the tin imply that pureed pirate may be the actual source
of the synthesized swill seasoning and octopussy scent. These candies
cast the distinct smell and aftertaste of canine glucosamine supplements
(waste not, want not), so if you savor the aroma of seaspray-dampened
elderly arthritic Portuguese Water Dog, then this is the perfect people
treat for you. It is an appropriate gift for fishermen, briny sea hags,
and anyone who has ever wished for a candy that looks, smells and tastes
like sweetened sea scum. It is the must-have goodie bag item for your
next pirate party.
________
The story above is written by the dynamic duo Drs. Ernest and Convalescence
Bidet-Wellville (hey, I didn’t name ‘em) of the University
of Self-Conscious Consumerism in Olde Busytowne, Connecticut. I suspect
they write cover stories for the CIA, so if I’m inexplicably missing
the next few days, you know what happened.
Available from the Neatorama Shop: Chum
Bucket Candy | See also our vast selection of other Offbeat
Mints and Candies
I'm a big fan of papercraft artist Yumiko Matsui (featured before on Neatorama here) - so it was a pleasant surprise to hear from her about this Neatoramabot papercraft sculpture. Ain't he cute?
If you haven't seen Yumiko's artwork before, you owe it to yourself to check it out: she sculpts fantastic and colorful dioramas as well as miniature characters out of paper. The level of details is simply superb (for example, in her Summer Festival series, check out the Japanese pancake stand)
Best of all, I hear she's coming to the United States! Here's Yumiko's online art gallery: http://web.mac.com/incolingo/iWeb/amayadori/work.html
Lunchbreath's Infotoons are one of my favorite things about the web. They're simply brilliant. This one above uese a Gantt chart to illustrate the various stages of a doomed relationship.
Check out Tobias Lunchbreath's Flickr sets today and be prepared to lose hours: Link
Los Angeles Times' Your Scene gallery user pablo uploaded this photo of a "lost in translation" sign (yes, made popular by Engrish.com) warning us that playing and jumping are dangerous. A quick Googlin' pinpoints the sign near Powell St. and Sacramento St. in San Francisco's Chinatown.
Whoever those two people are, they look like they had fun playing and jumping around before taking the photo. Check out more user-submitted Weird Warnings gallery over at the LA Times: http://yourscene.latimes.com/mycapture/photos/Album.aspx?EventID=503684&CategoryID=30888
A few months ago, photographer and environmentalist Yann Arthus-Bertrand
and his non-profit organization GoodPlanet
released the movie HOME,
a documentary about life on Earth and the current environmental challenges
of our planet (Arthus-Bertrand is famous for his aerial photography, and
the movie is quite wonderfully shot - if you haven't seen it before, it's
worth a look: HOME is available in
full, free on YouTube).
As a companion to the movie, Arthus-Bertrand released a companion book
HOME:
A Hymn to the Planet and Humanity.
The book is composed of nearly 200 short segments on the various environmental,
political, and sociological aspects of the problems facing the world.
From poverty to pollution, coal to carbon dioxide, the book is full of
(alarming) facts that Arthus-Bertrand hope will inspire people to act.
It was hard to pick just a few segments from the book to excerpt - the
whole book is interesting. And yes, undoubtedly there are many oversimplifications
that is inherent in presenting complex problems in short vignettes - but
Home: A Hymn to the Planet and Humanity is a good starting point
for many of us in understanding the environmental problems of today.
Here are 5 short segments from the book, published on Neatorama with
permission:
SIX BILLION SOULS
Blocks of flats on Seoul's south bank, South Korea
The world’s population quadrupled over the course of the 20th century
and now stands at 6.7 billion. Since 2000 it has increased by 700 million,
which is equivalent to the entire population rise in the 19th century.
In the 18th century, it rose by a mere 200 million. As their numbers have
grown, human beings have gravitated increasingly toward cities, which
have also grown as a result. Since 2007, more than one in two of us live
in a town or city.
There are more people in some of the bigger cities – such as Tokyo,
with its population of 35 million – than in some countries as a
whole. In developing countries, urban growth can occur at a rate that
is simply mind-boggling. Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, had a population
of 300,000 in 1950, whereas today the figure stands at more than 15 million:
a fiftyfold increase in fifty years. Boom towns such as Dhaka face immense
problems in terms of infrastructure including electricity, drinking water,
and waste disposal.
Nevertheless, this demographic explosion and the urbanization linked
to it seem also to hold part of the solution. Birth rates have been shown
to be decreasing over a great many parts of the globe, particularly in
urban areas. The current average stands at 2.6, with significant regional
disparities. In many Western countries, it has even fallen below 2.1,
the threshold for population increase. The world population is shrinking
and ageing. Whereas earlier projections for the coming decades envisaged
a global population of 12 billion, the estimate has fallen and it is now
thought that the population should stabilize at around 9 billion by 2050.
This seems to be due to the fact that city-dwellers generally have better
access to education. For many women, in particular, this signifies access
to information and to methods of contraception. It also means that these
women are often able to work in addition to having a family. Having children
becomes a choice, to be balanced against a career, for example. Urban
life, moreover, changes people’s behavior and living requirements:
couples have fewer children than those living in the country since they
no longer need help in the fields. This reduction in the birth rate responds
to one of the major challenges of the century: that of population control
as a means of successfully feeding the world and saving the planet.
THE END OF OIL
Oil fields near Bakersfield, California, USA
Oil will not run out suddenly. It will be a slow, agonizing decline.
As oil becomes scarcer its price will rise, and what used to be very cheap
will become expensive. Society will be wholly transformed.
The reason for this is simple: a finite planet has finite resources.
Once we have consumed all of our oil and other primary materials, there
will be nothing left. Oil is not a renewable resource on any timescale
comparable to its rate of consumption. The chemical reactions which led
to its formation occurred over millions of years.
There are, undoubtedly, oil deposits that remain to be discovered. But
the easiest have already been found and exploited. Each year, we consume
more oil than we find. This is clearly going to cause problems.
It is not only a question of when oil will run out, but how society will
change as it does. A world in which oil is much rarer – and therefore
costlier – will be different from our own. The modern petrochemical
industry will have to change dramatically: everything from lipsticks to
fertilizers and plastics of all types will either be made differently
or not at all. Transport will obviously become more expensive. This will
spell the end of the West’s huge retail and supermarket networks,
since these rely on road transportation and economies of scale. The price
of imported products will rise, and international tourism will return
to what it used to be in previous centuries: a luxury for the privileged
few. Competition for access to the last remaining oil deposits will increase,
and may lead to conflict.
These developments are inevitable, and will only be temporarily delayed
by the current recession which is slowing down the global economy. Developing
renewable forms of energy and reducing consumption are the two most basic
measures we can take to prepare ourselves.
FISHERIES: AN OVEREXPLOITED RESOURCE
What is the current state of world fisheries?
How important is fish to the average diet?
WATER SCARCITY
Moshav (co-operative village) farm at Nahalal, Jezrael plain, Israel
Today a third of humanity is suffering from water scarcity. Specialists
use the term “water stress” when the demand for water exceeds
the available freshwater supply by 10%. Although 10% of renewable resource
may not seem like much, we should not forget that before mankind’s
invention, 100% of this water was used by ecosystems. This extra demand
is enough to dry a water course, drain a spring, or prevent the replenishment
of groundwater.
While the population of Canada and the Amazon or Congo basin have a plentiful
water supply, the people of the Mediterranean basin, Central Asia and
Mexico are at greater risk of scarcity. The particular problem with water
is that it is difficult to transport in large quantities over great distances.
One solution is to use the same water several times. An increasing number
of industries are reusing water, retreating it up to 30 times in some
cases. Domestic washwater, known as “greywater,” can be reused
to water a garden or flush a toilet, reserving drinkable water for human
consumption, cooking, or washing. In countries where water is scarce,
wastewater from cities is retreated for use in agriculture. In Israel,
for example, where the average rainfall is 1 inch (25 mm) a year, 70%
of wastewater is recycled, allowing 49,000 acres (20,000 hectares) of
land to be watered.
There are many other ways of saving water, especially by being aware
of how much of it we consume. Some of this water is invisible: it is used
to make a product, but is not present in the product itself. This is called
virtual water. One pound of grain means hundreds of gallons of irrigation
water; a pair of cotton jeans require 2,860 gallons (10,850 liters) of
water; a cup of coffee 9 gallons (35 liters); a sheet of paper 2.5 gallons
(10 liters). A single tomato contains 3.5 gallons (13 liters) of virtual
water, which is more than many people use in a day. Paradoxically, some
countries that face water scarcity are actually exporting some of their
limited water resources in the form of agricultural or manufactured products.
THE COLLAPSE OF SOCIETIES
Volcano of Rano Kau, Easter Island, Chile
Sooner or later, societies disappear and are replaced by new ones. As
our own society enters a critical phase, what lessons can be learned from
those that preceded us? One example that has been extensively studied
is Easter Island in the Pacific Ocean. The island was once home to a flourishing
civilization, which reached its peak in around 1500, but it subsequently
experienced a rapid decline, losing four fifths of its population in just
one century. According to the American expert Jared Diamond, the explanation
lies principally in the fact that the people deforested their entire land.
Without trees, they were no longer able to build fishing boats, and crucially
the soil was eroded. As the situation worsened, the people began fighting
among themselves, and developed bizarre religious practices. In an effort
to erect increasingly gigantic statutes, they cut down more and more trees,
accelerating their demise.
Diamond also studied a number of other civilizations that vanished largely
as a result of environmental factors, such as the Maya and Babylonians,
who exhausted their land, and the Greenland Vikings, who could not adapt
to the cooler climate. While these societies did not vanish because of
environmental damage alone, it certainly weakened their economic and social
structures and created vicious cycles that ultimately proved fatal. The
same pattern could easily be applied to modern society.
In Diamond’s analysis, the factors leading to a society’s
collapse seem to be quite clearly set out every time. But for political,
religious, or social reasons, the society is incapable of reacting and
taking adequate measures to ensure its survival. What would the Easter
Islander who cut down the last tree have been thinking? Another expert
in the history of civilizations, the British historian Arnold Toynbee,
wrote that “civilizations die from suicide, not by murder”
– in other words, from their inability to resolve their internal
crises.
Today most people agree that we are facing an environmental catastrophe.
We need to change the course in which our society is heading, and remove
the obstacles to that change. It is too late to bury our heads in the
sand. It is also too late to be pessimistic.
Yann
Arthus-Bertrand published more than 40 books, including the multimillion-copy
international bestseller Earth from Above. Home, released in
conjunction with a film of the same name, is a stunning visual odyssey
across 50 countries combining Arthus-Bertrand's images and text by the
editorial team of Good Planet.
Take cakes that are so bad they're good, mix in a great sense of humor
and what do you get? A madly popular blog phenomenon, and now, a book
as well! Jen Yates, the founder of Cake
Wrecks, one of my all time favorite blogs, has graciously agreed to
do an interview about cakes, the universe and everything.
But first: the book. As I'm sure you all probably already know or can
guess, Cake Wrecks: When Professional Cakes Go Hilariously Wrong is obviously about cake carnage. It chronicles some of the weirdest,
silliest, creepiest and downright fugliest cakes ever made professionally
(in order to be featured in the book and blog, each cake has to be made
by a professional baker). There are over 150 cake wrecks included (3/4
of them never-before-seen material).
But there's something very subtle about the book that made me appreciate
Jen and Cake Wrecks even more. This is something I came to realize only
after I read the advance copy of the book (I know, I know, the perks of
being a famous blogger). Cake Wrecks is actually the celebration
of having a bad cake. It's an homage to Murphy's Law asserting itself
over flour, sugar, egg and shortening mixed together
and popped in the oven.
Think about it: how many birthday parties have you gone to and not remember
a whit of what happened? Now, if you had one where the cake was horribly
wrong (but still very yummy) - wouldn't that stick in your memory forever?
(I can imagine the conversation - Q: "Hey, remember that party with
the
foot cake?" A: "Yeah ... good times!")
'Nuff said. Let's get on with the interview:
Neatorama: Before we talk about cakes, I'm curious about
what you wrote for the "About the Author" portion of Cake Wrecks,
and I quote "Jen has been a clown, a cash office accountant,
a Jungle Cruise skipper, a business owner, a children's book inventory
expeditor, and a house painter."
Now, if you don't mind - a clown? Really? What's that like? Did you come
up with your own Jungle Cruise skipper jokes? And just what the heck is
a children's book inventory expeditor? Sounds like a smuggling ops.
Jen Yates: Hah! Yes, I do have some interesting "work"
experience. Ok, let's see...being a clown? That can be surprisingly difficult,
on account of your not being allowed to retaliate while being kicked in
the shins by a horde of candy-seeking 9-year-olds. Heheh. Other than that
it was a blast, though. I learned to juggle, make balloon animals, and
perform funny skits. This was during my teens, so that's also where I
first learned public speaking skills, believe it or not. We visited hospitals,
shelters, expos, churches, you name it.
Jungle Cruise was also fabulous, and yes, we got to ad lib a bit. That's
where my love of puns truly blossomed. There's this crashed plane on the
ride, and I made a game of fitting as many plane puns as possible into
the few seconds we had before it passed out of sight. (I think I got up
to 8 or 9.) I wasn't happy until the whole boat was groaning in agony.
My other jobs were less glamorous. The expeditor gig? That was me in
a cubicle calling various national warehouses to see if their shipment
had arrived yet. Lots of spreadsheets. :)
Neatorama: What's the very first cake that got you thinking
of creating Cake Wrecks - the cake that started it all?
Jen: Yes, that cake really and truly DID start it all.
My friend Abby e-mailed it to me, and the idea for Cake Wrecks just hit
me. I think I started the blog that very night, just for fun.
Neatorama: What's your favorite cake wrecks?
Jen: My favorites are usually the ones with the communication
breakdowns. The literal stuff like the Under Neat that cake, and then
the garbled phone order ones.
Cake submitted by Elizabeth R.
Remember the flash
drive cake? That's the one where the customer wanted a photo cake,
and so brought in the picture they wanted on a portable thumb drive for
the bakery to print out. Instead, the bakery drew an exact replica of
the flash drive on the cake! Heh, I LOVE stories like that.
Neatorama: Let's see some geek cred - what are the geekiest
cake wrecks you've ever gotten?
Jen: Game console cakes are really popular, especially
for grooms cakes, and I've seen some doosies:
Cake submitted by Monique B.
Cake submitted by Diane B.
Here are a few more geeky Wrecks:
Cake submitted by Maggie G.
Cake submitted by Kelly J.
Cake
submitted by Gretchen W. (That's supposed to be Luigi, believe it or not)
And this one's not a Wreck, but I thought it was funny:
Cake submitted by Amy L.
I *think* that says happy birthday in binary. Am I right?
__________
Jen has kind enough to offer a free copy of the book for a giveaway -
got any question for Jen? A lucky commenter with the most interesting
question will win the book (I'll post Jen's reply as an update).
More wrecktastic blogger interviews with Jen Yates about her new book:
The track and field events of 100 m dash, long jump, high jump, and shot put can get kind of boring after a while. But how should they be improved?
How about with a sumo suit? The people behind the Sumo Suit Athletics World Championships (motto: "slower, lower, weaker!") aim to liberate these events from elitist pro athletes so the (flabby) masses can join in on the fun!
Can't compete with Usain Bolt over 100m? Not able to leap tall buildings in a single bound? Well have no fear, in a Sumo Suit no one can!
This coming winter, ditch the slanket and get yourself warm the good ol' fashioned geeky way: with USB hand/foot/eye(!) warmers and blanket. GeekAlerts blog has got your (chilly) backside covered with this article: 10 USB Gadgets to Help You Through the Winter
Link (Previously on Neatorama if you're wondering, but I like the monkey gloves)
Meet the Ophryotrocha craigsmithi, a newly discovered species of bristleworm that eats only dead whale bones. But there's a plus side to eating a carcass of an animal that large: a single whale can provide food for 20 years, to be eaten by generations of worms!
Once flesh-eaters like hagfish and sharks have picked clean a whale's skeleton, the 0.8-inch-long (2-centimeter-long) worms go to work, said zoologist Helena Wiklund, a member of the University of Gothenburg team behind the study.
Generations of worms "could be there for maybe 20 years depending on how big the whale was," Wiklund added. "Bones from a big whale last really long on the seafloor."
But when the whale is finally disposed of, the bacteria-munching worms must find another whale carcass, and that could be many miles away.
How the tiny creatures hop from dead whale to dead whale remains a mystery. Some bristle worm species, though, have microscopic larvae that ride ocean currents, Wiklund said.
Mother Nature wastes nothing at all, doesn't she? Link (Photo: Helena Wiklund, University of Gothenburg)
Lenore over at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories blog created this bra-ket bookends perfect for your quantum mechanics textbooks. Dirac would've been proud though Heisenberg would've warned about the uncertainty of having objects heavier than books that may fall out of the shelf.
This one is fantastic: take a look at this very cool computer graphic animation of self-playing musical instruments, titled Resonant Chamber by Animusic.
Link [embedded YouTube clip] - by the way, The Presurfer is 9 years old today. Happy Blogiversary, Gerard!
If you like that, here's another one called Pipe Dreams over at Miss Cellania: Link
We've blogged about Howie Woo of WooWork before on Neatorama, but the genius goofball of crochet is back with this awesome Sat-Track Surveillance Watch (complete with Remote Bug):
The name is Woo. Howie Woo. As a dashing international spy, I enjoy good martinis, good suits, and good gadgets. My newest spy gadget is codenamed The Sat-Track Surveillance Watch
