No, not a tattoo though undoubtedly it would make an excellent anatomically-minded example that would rival this famous skull face tattoo we had before on Neatorama. The gruesome painting is actually printed paper by Paris-based photographer Laurent Champoussin.
Vanessa Ruiz of Street Anatomy asked Laurent what inspired his art series titled Cardiovascular Paper:
I’ve always been interested by the écorché model. I was inspired by the classical representations of Andréas Vesalius, Charles Estienne or Adrian Van Den Spieghel. My idea was to play with the partial, the uncovered (open/discover) of an essential part of ourselves. I also wanted to work on the propagation, the invasion. My will was to design the model, to file down it like a texture and I hope, somewhere like a poetry.
What could be better than the Internet? How about the Interweb, the musical? Here's Web Side Story (but of course), a musical by College Humor about all the good things on the Net in the style of West Side Story. Leonard Bernstein is probably spinning in his grave.
Web Side Story, written and directed by Sam Reich, produced by Eva Wong.
Hit play or go to http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1913584 [College Humor Video] - Thanks Stephanie!
The following is an article from Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Golden Plunger Awards By most estimates, the English language includes about one million words, yet native speakers regularly use only about 5,000. And they don't always get the ones they do use correct. Like all languages, English is constantly changing - new words are added, old words are phased out, and new word combinations are formed all the time. But the following examples of language changes cause trouble for people who like to use their words correctly because these words and phrases have pretty much lost their original meanings.
Beg The Question
If an event or happening raises a question for someone it's almost certain he or she will say, "This begs the question ..." But it doesn't. Begging the question is a verbal trick speakers use to avoid a question, not bring one up. The original definition of begging the question meant to assume that what is being questioned had already been proven to be true, so the answer sidestepped the thing in question. Say you were asked a question that just required a simple yes or no answer. But instead of saying yes, you answer with a statement that assumes the thing in question is already true. That's begging the question. For example, if the question is, "Senator, will this new crime bill be effective?" and he or she answers with a statement that doesn't answer it - "I've been fighting crime my entire career, and this crime bill is the latest example of that" - then the speaker has begged the question. It's a common practice in formal debate, and it's especially prevalent in politics. In the example above, the speaker is acting as though the crime bill is definitely effective, even though he or she never answered the basic question with a yes or no. Assuming the question is true is not evidence that it is. From that, beg the question evolved in the language to mean that the statement invites another obvious question. Anytime you run verbal circles around the question without answering it can be called begging the question in this sense (although strict grammarians frown upon it; they like to keep the original meaning).
Decimate
It's hard to believe that such a simple word hides such a horrific history. The original definition of "decimate" was "to kill one in ten." The brutal practice was used by the Roman army beginning around the 5th century B.C. and was implemented as a way to inspire fear and loyalty. Lots were drawn, and one out of every 10 soldiers would be killed - by their own comrades. If one member of a squad acted up, anybody could pay the ultimate price. Captured armies often fell victim to this practice as well. Today, "decimate" has lost that meaning, but some grammarians still like to preserve it ... at least in the sense of "to reduce by 10 percent." The "dec" prefix means "ten" - it's the same Latin root that gives us decade, for example. So to use "decimate" to mean just "destroy" contradicts the meaning of that prefix. (Note: Language snobs really get up in arms when someone says "totally decimate." Totally reduce by ten? We don't get it, either.)
Could Care Less
This is an easy mistake to make. The correct phrase, of course, is "couldn't care less" - as in, "I don't care at all, so it wouldn't be possible for me to care any less about this." But over the years, that's morphed into a new phrase (with the same meaning), and even though the Harper Dictionary of Contemporary Usage criticized the change in 1975, saying it was "an ignorant debasement of language," "could care less" seems to be around to stay. Language historian say "couldn't care less" was originally a British phrase that became popular in the Untied States in the 1950s. "Could care less" appeared about a decade later. No one knows exactly why the incorrect form came into being, since it doesn't make sense. But the phrase has stuck, and a lot of grammarians care very much that it's not being used correctly. (Regular people, of course, couldn't care less.)
Card Sharp
No, that's not a misspelling. Sure it sounds weird to the ear, but people who know the term's history and meaning prefer the original. "Card sharp" first appeared in the 1880s and meant a card player who tricked or scammed others. "Card shark" appeared much later, in the 1940s. Many people assume that the mix-up simply comes from speakers who either thought "shark" sounded better or misheard the word originally. But that may not be the case. Linguists have traced the history of both "sharp" and "shark" to their original usages, and though it doesn't appear that either word derived from the other, there are a lot of similarities in meaning. "Shark" comes from a 17th-century German word schurke, which meant "someone who cheats." "Sharping" came about around the same time and meant "swindling or cheating." The words "loan shark" and "sharp practice" come from these words as well. So technically, "card shark" could be correct. But because "card sharp" appeared first, many linguists want to preserve it. Whether they'll succeed is anyone's guess, but it's a sharp point of contention for many.
Spit and Image
If you think you're the spitting image of your parents, you're forgiven. People have been messing this one up for decades. "Spit and image" was the original term, used from about 1825 on. The Oxford English Dictionary defined it as "the very spit of, the exact image, likeness, or counterpart of." "Spitting image" came about some 80 years later and was followed by a few other variations, including "spitten image" and "splitting image" (neither of which really caught on). In this case, "spitting image" has overtaken the use of "spit and image" for most English speakers. But when you're spitting out this phrase, take a moment to remember its original use and think about the image you're trying to project.
Ironic
Few words cause as much confusion or are used incorrectly as often as "ironic." Not that it's hard to understand why - the definition is not simple: "a pretense of ignorance and of willingness to learn from another assumed in order to make the other's false conceptions conspicuous by adroit questioning ... the use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning." What? In 1996, Alanis Morissette wrote an entire song titled "Ironic," which consistently used the word incorrectly. And even the people who are supposed to know what it means get it wrong. The American Heritage Dictionary gave the word "irony" to its distinguished panel of experts (the ones who help ensure the accuracy of all the words the dictionary defines) and asked them if either of the following sentences used the word correctly:
1. "In 1969, Susie moved from Ithaca to California, where she met her husband-to-be, who, ironically, also came from upstate New York." Seventy-eight percent of the panel's members agreed that this was an incorrect use of the word. 2. "Ironically, even as the government was fulminating against American policy, American jeans and videocassettes were the hottest items in the stalls of the market." In contrast, though, 73 percent agreed that this sentence used it properly.
How "ironic" came to be defined as "coincidence" is anybody's guess, but for our purposes, we like to refer to the following quote from the 1994 film Reality Bites. When Ethan Hawke's character is asked to define "ironic," he says, "It's when the actual meaning is the complete opposite of the literal meaning." Thank goodness for Hollywood.
The article above was reprinted with permission from Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Golden Plunger Awards Forget the Oscars and the Grammys - the awards committee at the Bathroom Readers' Institute is handing out its own honors... the highly coveted Golden Plungers. We've scoured the globe to bring you the people, places, and events most worthy of throne-room recognition. Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. If you like Neatorama, you'll love the Bathroom Reader Institute's books - go ahead and check 'em out!
As Kip "Kipkay" Kedersha of Make Magazine said in the clip, everyone has seen a potato gun ... but what about a potato gatling gun? The DeRose family decided to build a rapid-fire revolving potato cannon for a weekend project.
Sander van Heukelom combines typographic design, graffiti and sculpting into unique pieces of 3D graffiti (He uses styrofoam, plexiglass, synthetic resin and wood).
This one above, Quod dubitas, ne feceris - Latin for "when you doubt, do not act" - is probably a concept most graffiti artists do not recognize.
Check out the rest of Sander's artwork here: Link [Flash] - via Rue The Day!
If you get separated from your cat, that's the end of that. But not dogs, no siree. Some dogs will hunt you down for miles through desert, across state lines, over the ocean, and even across a war zone!
Miss Cellania wrote a fantastic article about 8 Mysterious Tales of Traveling Dogs over at our pal mental_floss - take for instance, the story of Nubs:
Major Brian Dennis adopted an abused mixed-breed dog in Anbar Province, Iraq. He named the dog Nubs because his ears had been cut off. Dennis nursed Nubs back to health over four months, but then he was ordered to move his squadron 70 miles away. Two days later, Nubs rejoined Dennis! The dog had tracked him down despite subfreezing temperatures and rough terrain. But the major received orders to get rid of the dog within four days or he would be shot. Dennis started an email campaign to save Nubs that raised $3,500 within a couple of days, and battled bureaucratic difficulties to get the dog out of Iraq across the Jordanian border. Nubs was flown to the US the next week, where he was met by friends and a veterinarian in Chicago, then by a dog trainer at his final destination in San Diego. Major Dennis was reunited with Nubs after his tour was up a month later.
Everybody knows that Billy Mays is TV pitchman for OxiClean
("powered by the air we breathe!) and Kaboom ("tough on grime,
easy on you") ... but wait, there's more! Did you know that the loud,
bearded uber-salesman also pitched strange products like the Grater Plater
and the Hercules Hook? (There's also the Green Now, a spray paint to paint
your dead lawn green, but I couldn't find the video for it.)
In memory of Billy Mays, the king of infomercial, here are 5 of the strangest
product he ever pitched:
What do you get when you combine a cheese grater and a plate? The plate
that grates, of course, here's The
Grater Plater. (The name alone is golden: Grater. Plater. Grater plater.
Gotta love it!)
While my wife likes OxiClean, The Gopher is actually my favorite item
Billy Mays had ever pitched (in the words of another late-night infomercial,
"I'm not only a blogger, I'm also an infomercial customer!").
It just works well - many years later, I still use mine to grab things
too high to reach (saves me from getting the step stool out).
Tool Band-It
The Tool Band-It is another in Billy May's long line of making a product
out of two existing ones. This time, it's magnet + armband, to give you
a magnetic arm band. Genius!
I distrust a $20 drill, but the idea behind the AwesomeAuger is pretty
solid (I have a similar device - the drill bit alone cost me $20. It works
well for boring holes in hard ground for small plants). The only thing
that works better is The Garden
Weasel's Garden Claw.
The Hercules Hook is in a class by itself: here, Billy Mays used his
infomercial prowess to sell you a bent pin for hanging stuff on your wall.
I myself am a nail-and-hammer kind of guy, but the Hercules Hook does
work well (if you don't damage the drywall while you're pushing it in)
though I wouldn't use it to hang shelves or anything like that ...
First it was David Carradine, then Ed McMahon, Farah Fawcett and Michael Jackson. Now, infomercial king Billy Mays is dead. Celebrities are dying left and right!
The 50-year-old known for his shouting OxiClean ads was pronounced dead at 7:45 a.m. The Hillborough County medical examiner will perform an autopsy, Tampa police Lt. Brian Dugan said.
Mays was on the US Airways flight from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Tampa on Saturday that had a hard landing at Tampa International Airport when the plane's front tire blew out. There were no reported injuries on Flight 1241, US Airways told CNN.
According to a local Tampa TV station, Mays said: "All of a sudden as we hit you know it was just the hardest hit, all the things from the ceiling started dropping. It hit me on the head, but I got a hard head."
No words whether the a bump in the head, which caused the death of actress Natasha Richardson a couple of months ago, is also responsible for Billy May's death. CNN has the news: Link
All of you Neatoramanauts know that we love tpyos here at Neatorama, but even we know how to spell Susan Boyle, MySpace and Swine Flu - those are just three of the most commonly misspelled (or perhaps mistyped) searches in Yahoo!
Vera H-C Chan of Yahoo! Buzz' The Buzz Log has the list:
Recent Orthographic Abuses of the English Language on Yahoo!, Past 30 Days
* Swan Flu (for Swine Flu) * Susan Boil (for "Britain's Got Talent" contender Susan Boyle) * Brack Obama (for U.S. President Barack Obama) * Sonia Sotomeyer (for Supreme Court justice nominee Sonia Sotomayor) * Rachel Ray (for Food Network host Rachael Ray) * Paperview boxing (for cable programming pay-per-view boxing) * Amtrack (for train system Amtrak) * Wallmart (for retailer Wal-Mart) * Farrah Faucet (for actress Farrah Fawcett) * Rod Steward (for singer Rod Stewart) * Arlene Specter (for Senator Arlen Specter) * “Dancing With the Starts” (for ABC reality competition Dancing With the Stars) * Bea Author” (for the late comedian Bea Arthur) * Brittany Spears (for singer Britney Spears) * Chris Allen (for “American Idol” winner Kris Allen) * Configure worm (for computer virus Conficker worm) * Mysapce (for MySpace)
The economy is so bad that even prostitutes are desperate! Oklahoma City resident Lahuma Sue Smith, 36, pled no contest to prostitution charges that she traded sex for ... a box of Frito-Lay chips:
According to the police report, undercover officers noticed Smith "trying to catch a date” by flashing her headlights at SE 33 and Robinson. Officers said they followed Smith’s car and found her with her blouse open and found a man in the passenger seat pulling his pants up.
The man told police he was having marital problems and knew he could pick up a prostitute there.
Smith told police the man told her he was looking for company but he didn’t have any money, so she agreed to be paid with a $30 case of Frito-Lay chips he had in the back of his car.
The World's Ugliest dog contest has been decided ... and the result ain't pretty! Congrats to Pabst, a boxer-mix shelter dog who won the 21st annual World's Ugliest Dog Contest at the Sonoma-Marin Fair in Petaluma, California.
From the official website:
As the crowd chanted “Pabst, Pabst,” the celebrity judges deliberated between the so-named boxer-mix shelter dog and Rascal, a former world champion Chinese Crested to determine who would be the 2009 World’s Ugliest Dog Champion tonight at the Sonoma-Marin Fair. First timer Miles Egstad from Citrus Heights, California was stunned at Pabst’s win. “ I don’t think he’s that ugly!” he said of his boxer mix whose under bite was his most compelling physical feature. His sweet personality made him an audience favorite.
The Chinese Crested breed has dominated the contest for more than seven years and in this year’s contest represented more than 50% of the 2009 entries in the pedigree class. But Pabst, who was given his name because he had a “ bitter beer face”, according to his owner quickly won the crowd and the judges soon followed. Egstad, 25, first saw the contest on television and his friends urged him to enter his dog.
http://www.sonoma-marinfair.org/uglydogcontest.shtml (Photo: Grace Chon / Shine Pet Photos)
This chef's knife is so awesome it's criminal! Behold the Evidence Chef's Knife, complete with fired-on, food-safe "blood" design and evidence tag! At just $14.95, it's a steal (though we definitely don't recommend that you use it to commit any crime): http://shop.neatorama.com/product-info.php?bloody-evidence-chef-knife-pid479.html
Also check out these other fun kitchen stuff at the Neatorama Online Store:
A survey of women by hair color products maker Clairol has pinpointed the age of maximum happiness for women:
A spokesman for home hair colour brand Clairol Perfect 10, which carried out the study of 4,000 women, said: "Everything in life hits its peak at some point, and nearly reaching your thirties isn't so bad now.
"The age of 28 has been pinpointed as the time in a woman's life their hair looks the best, body shape is at its peak and confidence is at an all-time high.
"The security of your job, having a steady income, being in a relationship and having strong friendships all help create the perfect point in our lives when everything comes together. Reaching and surpassing your twenties no longer triggers the downward spiral of your looks and self-confidence.
Being paralyzed shouldn't stop someone from engaging in a sport lovingly described by Mark Twain as "a good walk, ruined," thanks to the Paragolfer machine by Parabasetec.
Check out the paragolfer in action (yes, it's a promo video, but it's amazing nonetheless): Hit play or go to Link [YouTube]. If you want one, be prepared to shell out upwards of $26K.
Psst, want a £119,000 job? (That's US$197,000 for us Yanks) The job of "Director of Organisation Development" in Yorkshire can be yours ... if only you can decipher the want ad:
Huddersfield-based Kirklees Council's job description mangled the language with phrases like "cross functional experience" and "people effective".
The council advertised the position as "a key leadership role that will help make a complex organisation increasingly confident, energetic and focused as it delivers the outcomes that the Kirklees communities require".
It said the successful candidate would be "a leader with presence, passion and panache" who would "play a key role in ensuring the effective integration of national, regional and local drivers".
Another impenetrable passage warns that the new director will face the challenge of making sure "that the diversity of Kirklees is understood by all in the organisation; is valued as a strength but a strength that challenges us to respond to its complex implications; and is reflected in the career structures within the organisation".
