Students in California are probably cheering Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's plan to save $1 billion to help the state's big budget deficit by shortening
the school year by five days.
In other news, it costs $200 million a day (!) to run California's schools!
Let's give them 10 days off and save $2 billion!
Seema Mehta of the LA Times has the story: Link
Jay Cowell of River Road Middle School got a fancy haircut with a star, which he said is "for God and all the stuff he made on the earth."
But the school officials saw it differently, and declared the his haircut a "gang symbol" and suspended the eight-grader until he got it all shorn off.
Did the school do the right thing? Or are they just being a fuddy duddy? http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/weird/Boy_Suspended_Over__Gang_Symbol__Haircut_All__National_.html [Flash clip]
(Links open in a new browser window/tab)
Geophysical Survey of the World of Warcraft It turns out that WoW is really, really small: Link |
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Human Slip & Slide (It doesn't end there, folks, there's also an underwear stuffing contest!) Where do I sign up? Link |
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Double Fail at the Motorcycle Race Track |
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Shark Does a Spinning Jump Behind a Surfer Link (about time mark 0:10) |
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History of the Internet (If you like this, check out Neatorama's 10 Things You Should Know About the Internet and Wonderful World of Early Computing, Take a Stroll Down Computing Memory Lane) |
For more the web's most interesting videos, check out: VideoSift.
"What's the deal with nunchucks?" by Brandon Bird
We've written about Brandon Bird before on Neatorama, but it's a pleasure to run across another one of his tongue-in-cheek artwork floating on the Web. This one is Jerry Seinfeld/Bruce Lee Remix, found at Urban Retro Lifestyle.
Meet Mao Xinyu, a 38-year-old senior colonel in China's People's Liberation Army and blogger. He's not just any blogger - his blog, which is all about Chairman Mao, was voted most popular by the readers of People's Daily last year.
Oh, and one more thing: Xinyu is the grandson of Chairman Mao.
Mao's blog is largely dedicated to an appreciation of his grandfather, who died when he was six years old. The founder of communist China is still admired by many people here -despite the fact that millions died because of famine and conflict during his rule (an official Communist Party verdict delivered after his death ruled - with precision - that Chairman Mao was 70% right and 30% wrong).
"The greatest happiness of my life and satisfaction come from a real understanding of a great man. And he is my grandfather," grandson Mao writes.
College students (why doesn't this surprise me) Cary Silverman combined two party favorites to create a new snack: alcohol-flavored popcorn.
The popcorn, which doesn't actually have any alcohol content, comes in beer, pina colada and Irish cream flavors. Link - via Unique Daily
TheraminTrees and his brother QualiaSoup collaborated to make this interesting animation called Instruction Manual for Life. There's an unmistakeable (truthful/heavy-handed/blasphemous? Take your pick) message in there - which you don't have to agree with - but all I could think of when watching the clip was all those IKEA cabinets I built over the years!
Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - Thanks Bruce!
The Fifty United States and their Mottos (2008) by Emily Wick
Artist Emily Wick created this fabulous map of the United States out of linoleum block prints, with official state mottos carved into each of the 50 States. My favorites are New Mexico's "It grows at it goes" motto and Maryland's "Manly deeds, womanly words" motto.
Link - via Intelligent Travel, thanks Marilyn!
Can you be a Jedi? Well, here's a toy Jedi training device that trains Star Wars fans to use The Force:
The Force Trainer (expected to be priced at $90 to $100) comes with a headset that uses brain waves to allow players to manipulate a sphere within a clear 10-inch-tall training tower, analogous to Yoda and Luke Skywalker's abilities in the Star Wars films. [...]
In the Force Trainer, a wireless headset reads your brain activity, in a simplified version of EEG medical tests, and the circuitry translates it to physical action. If you focus well enough, the training sphere, which looks like a ping-pong ball, will rise in the tower.
Link
- via The Monkey Buddha, thanks Paul Micarelli!
Barend Massow Hemmes of Massow Concept Cycles along with Polar cycles of Doncaster UK created what is probably the most awesome motorcycle I've ever laid eyes on: the Jaguar "leaper" cat logo concept bike, made from stainless steel.
Just how awesome is that? Link - via Modern Urban Living
Literary Organism, a visualization of Part One of On the Road, by Jack Kerouac
Artist Stefanie Posavec took pieces from On the Road by Jack Kerouac and turned them into various maps, dissecting the literary masterpiece and converting it into a visual one:
Stefanie’s maps capture something above and beyond that of the others. Rather than mapping physical geography, her maps capture regularities and patterns within a literary space.
The pieces featured in On the Map focused on Kerouac’s On the Road. The maps visually represent the rhythm and structure of Kerouac’s literary space, creating works that are not only gorgeous from the point of view of graphic design, but also exhibit scientific rigor and precision in their formulation: meticulous scouring the surface of the text, highlighting and noting sentence length, prosody and themes, Posavec’s approach to the text is not unlike that of a surveyor. And similarly, the act is near reverential in its approach and the results are stunning graphical displays of the nature of the subject. The literary organism, rhythm textures and sentence drawings are truly gorgeous pieces.
Photo: Legohaulic [Flickr]
Flickr user Legohaulic is a big fan of Tim Burton and an avid LEGO hobbyist, so what better tribute to The Nightmare Before Christmas than to create this masterpiece: Jack Skellington made entirely of LEGO!
Link - via The Brothers Brick
AskMen has a pretty nifty post about the 5 things you didn't know about Shakespeare. Take, for instance, the word "torture" - yep, good ol' Will invented it (well, technically he made the noun "torture" which existed at the time into the verb form):
3- Shakespeare invented "torture"
Shakespeare didn't just invent "torture," but also "excitement," "addiction" and "savagery." Another of the five things you might not have known about Shakespeare is just how much he's influenced the English language. Our man Will invented about 1,700 words in the English language. A remarkable number of the phrases and words we use every day first appeared in Shakespeare's work. Shakespeare converted verbs into adjectives or nouns into verbs whenever it suited him. Amazingly, his linguistic inventions stuck, and we still use them today.
Guys, are you unlucky in love? Thanks to science, there may just be hope for you yet: a love spray!
Neurobiologist Larry Young of Emory University, Georgia, explains:
Animal testing is beginning to shed light on the complex neural and genetic components of love in the same way they have led to pharmaceutical therapies for anxiety, phobias and post-traumatic stress disorders.
The behavioural scientist Professor Larry Young, of Emory University, Georgia, writing in the journal Nature, said: "For one thing, drugs that manipulate brain systems at whim to enhance or diminish our love for another may not be far away."
Experiments have already shown a nasal squirt of the hormone oxytocin enhances trust and tunes people into others' emotions.
Flickr user Astro-Lopithecus has a photoset of an amazing birthday cake shaped like a dragon clutching a 10-sided die. I'd venture a guess that whoever was celebrating his birthday is a D&D lover ...
The Dragon Cake is made by Mike McCarey of Mike's Amazing Cakes [warning: Flash and self-starting audio]
