Miss Cellania has a long running (and very popular) series of articles on our pal mental_floss where she chronicles the various local characters that became famous one way or the other.

As you'd expect, there are quite a bit of eccentric and downright crazy characters, but this one really struck me:

The Blind Broom Man

The Rev. Livingston Wills began going door to door selling brooms in Omaha, Nebraska in the 50s even though he couldn’t see well enough to distinguish cash from notebook paper. He had to trust that people paid for his brooms, and for the most part, they did. Wills was also pastor at the Tabernacle Church of Christ Holiness for decades, although many of his broom customers weren’t aware of his other job for many years. People appreciated Wills’ kind words and cheerfulness, as well as his unrelenting work ethic. When word got around that Rev. Wills was sick and in financial straits, the people of Nebraska came through with donations for his care. He was 91 years old when he died in 2008. See a 2004 multimedia presentation on Wills’ life here.

The entire series is fascinating:

- How to Be a Local Character
- 7 Fascinating Local Characters
- 9 Wonderful Local Characters
- 7 More Unforgettable Local Characters

- and the final post in the series, 6 of Your Favorite Local Characters

This seals it: Steve Martin has got the best business card EVAR! This even beats out the previous titleholder of best business card that I found on Matt Cutt's blog a while ago.

http://www.thelaughtrack.com/2009/04/steve-martin-has-greatest-business-card.html - via Rue The Day!

Columnist George Will is mad. Hopping mad about denim and how America's fashion sense is going to hell in a hand basket.

He and Wall Street Journal writer Daniel Akst have joined forces in declaring jeans (and American obsession with blue pants) as "destructive" in an entertaininglylyrical prose that I imagine was quite popular when Will was a young man, i.e. back in the days of President Taft:

Long ago, when James Dean and Marlon Brando wore it, denim was, Akst says, "a symbol of youthful defiance." Today, Silicon Valley billionaires are rebels without causes beyond poses, wearing jeans when introducing new products. Akst's summa contra denim is grand as far as it goes, but it only scratches the surface of this blight on Americans' surfaces. Denim is the infantile uniform of a nation in which entertainment frequently features childlike adults ("Seinfeld," "Two and a Half Men") and cartoons for adults ("King of the Hill"). Seventy-five percent of American "gamers" -- people who play video games -- are older than 18 and nevertheless are allowed to vote. In their undifferentiated dress, children and their childish parents become undifferentiated audiences for juvenilized movies (the six -- so far -- "Batman" adventures and "Indiana Jones and the Credit-Default Swaps," coming soon to a cineplex near you). Denim is the clerical vestment for the priesthood of all believers in democracy's catechism of leveling -- thou shalt not dress better than society's most slovenly. To do so would be to commit the sin of lookism -- of believing that appearance matters. That heresy leads to denying the universal appropriateness of everything, and then to the elitist assertion that there is good and bad taste.

Link - via The Zeray Gazette

Now this is a manly man's ad. Here's an advertisement for Makita power tool by Bennie Du Plessis of Saatchi & Saatchi in South Africa - if you look closely, the "pixels" are 20,081 carefully drilled holes!

Link

What can I say. It's Sunday, so here's a cute video clip of a slow loris who loves getting tickled (see how sad it gets when the tickling stops?) Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - via Arbroath

Researchers from the Universite de la Mediterranee-CNRS-EFS in France analyzed the DNA of Neanderthal fossils and found that the species might actually be composed of several "races":

We tend to think of Neanderthals as one species of cavemen-like creatures, but now scientists say there were actually at least three different subgroups of Neanderthals.

Using computer simulations to analyze DNA sequence fragments from 12 Neanderthal fossils, researchers found that the species can be separated into three, or maybe four, distinct genetic groups.

The evidence points to a subgroup of Neanderthals in Western Europe, another in Southern Europe near the Mediterranean, a third in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, and possibly a fourth in Western Asia. These groups have been postulated before, but this is the first study analyzing DNA data to look for genetic variations differentiating the subgroups.

Link

(Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Swiss twins Harold and Michael Lengen have found the perfect loophole to get out of paying parking tickets:

Police say that in the last year alone the twins have collected 29 parking tickets on a car which they both share. But every time they refuse to pay them and tell courts that the other was driving.

And police say that as they are identical twins it is impossible to rely on visual evidence to prove who was driving the car when they got the ticket.

A police spokesman said: "It is immensely frustrating for our officers. Every time we hand one of them out a ticket we know what is going to happen next and that they will never pay it.

Link

If Twitter were human, what kind of a person would it be? And, more importantly, would you befriend such a person? Los Angeles Times columnist Meghan Daum has an opinion about what she dubbed the "Age of Oversharing":

... at the risk of unilaterally offending 14 million people, I need to say this: If Twitter were a person, it would be an emotionally unstable person. It would be that person we avoid at parties and whose calls we don't pick up. It would be the person whose willingness to confide in us at first seems intriguing and flattering but eventually makes us feel kind of gross because the friendship is unearned and the confidence is unjustified. The human incarnation of Twitter, in other words, is the person we all feel sorry for, the person we suspect might be a bit mentally ill, the tragic oversharer.

... as Twitter's popularity wobbles at the tipping point between faddish distraction and worldwide obsession, it's worth wondering how much of this "connecting" is simply hastening the erosion of our already compromised interpersonal skills. Are we tweeting because we truly want to communicate with a select group of true friends, or because typing has replaced talking and indiscretion has been stripped of all negative connotations? Are most Twitter posts merely inane, or do they carry the faint whiff of the insane?

Link

Those wily Tasmanians have hit upon a gem of an idea that lets them:

a) get rid of stuff no one wanted (i.e. wombat poo)
b) make lots of money doing it (make it into paper)
c) from people they don't like (tourists)

Creative Paper manager Darren Simpson says the manufacturing process can be rather unpleasant.

"When we are boiling it, it does smell horrific as you can imagine, but once it has been sterilised and rinsed properly there's no scent left to it. If anything it just gives you a nice organic smell," he said.

He added that it was the tourists themselves who came up with the wombat idea.

"As people were coming through and we were showing them the samples of our paper, they would throw questions at you like 'can you make it from sheep poo or can you make it from koalas?'. And the one that kept popping up more than any other was the wombat."

Link

Previously on Neatorama: Tiny Flower Turns Pig Poop into Fuel, Elephant Dung Paper

Madrid-based Industrial designer Javier Alejandre created a mix-and-match lamp unlike anything we've seen before. His lamp ChromoSoma takes inspiration from the genealogical tree, which lets the owner choose his or her own unique configuration. It's easier just to watch the clip to see what it's all about: Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - Thanks Javier!

If this isn't history's most awesome video clip of an elephant in action, then I don't know what is ... Behold the water skiing elephant which performed for the 1959 Pittsburgh Bicentennial regatta.

Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - via Canucklehead

Photo: Lance Wilson via Love Made Visible

Love beer? Here's something for you: a neat collection of vintage beer cans by Lance Wilson and Dan Becker. According to TheDieline blog, the duo have over 2000 beer cans from the past 70 years or so, and have uploaded photos of a small fraction of them onto Flickr.

Link [Flickr Photoset]

What to get your barbecue-lovin' number cruncher? How about this spreadsheet barbecue grid, designed by Roma Voroneshski of Art. Lebedev Studio? Link

This reminds me that I should update one of our favorite Neatorama posts: Top 10 Coolest BBQ Grills (And Then Some!)

Who says being a geek isn't sexy? Flickr user SA Steve has a large collection
of neat vintage computing ads from old magazines and other photos. Check it out: Link [Flickr Photoset]

Tunas at the Tsukiji Fish Market. Photo: Fisherman (Wikipedia)

Psst! Love your tuna sashimi? Well, eat up because they may not be around much longer. The World Wildlife Fund has a dire report saying that unless current fishing practices are changed, tunas will be wiped out by 2012:

The population can only be saved by a complete halt to fishing in May and June, when the fish swim to the Mediterranean to spawn, the WWF says. The call comes as the two month tuna fishing season begins.

'Bluefin tuna is collapsing as we speak and yet the fishery will kick off for business as usual,' said Sergi Tudela, of WWF. 'It is absurd and inexcusable to open a fishing season when stocks of the target species are collapsing.'

Link