Overnight, a huge mechanical spider appeared on the side of an office building set to be demolished in Liverpool, England:
The 37-tonne beast heralds the start of a five-day piece of street theatre as part of the Capital of Culture year. It has been built by French company La Machine, which in 2006 brought the streets of London to a standstill with the Sultan's Elephant.
The spider is believed to be "waking up" on Friday.
It will descend from its current position on the side of Concourse House on Thursday to be moved to the city's new arena, before coming to life on Friday. The creature will then begin exploring the city later that evening.
We read to kids, so why not let the kids read to to ... cats?! Here's the story of the Austin Humane Society's reading-to-cats program:
"It's just a fun, positive experience for the kids and great socialization for the cats," said Lisa Starr, the Austin Humane Society's director of marketing. She says Austin has the only reading-to-cats program there is (where else could be goofy enough?).
So how do the cats like being read to by kids?
"Some of them just look at 'em," Lisa said. "Some of them run away. Certainly each cat is going to have a different reaction. But the goal for the cat is that they'll have increased exposure to children. It's to help them to be more social and for them to be more adoptable."
When I was out there, Matt Leighty, 9, was reading a book called "So What's It Like to Be a Cat?" to a group of cats. So how'd that go, son? "They started fighting each other," Matt said. "Big tails and hissing. They don't appear to be doing it right now. I think they like this book better: 'Monkey for Sale.' "
For today's Neatorama and Hobotopia's Caption Monkey game, you get to caption this cute photo of Lisa and Robb's cat Linguine:
Lisa and I have been having a chuckle over the thought that this picture of our dear little Linguine is, unbeknown to us, an internet meme – a fad, which becomes almost inexplicably popular on the web.
This picture was taken about two years ago. I remember at the time, it was a major achievement for me to stand and balance well enough to take a picture while holding a camera in one hand and a bamboo-skewered strawberry in another and convince a cat we like to call "Fidget" to cooperate.
Funniest caption wins an original Laugh-Out-Loud Cats cartoon by Adam "Ape Lad" Koford. Contest rules are simple: place your caption in the comment section. One caption per comment, please, but you can enter as many as you can think of.
For inspiration, don't forget to check out Adam's blog! Good luck!
Update 9/4/08 - Well, though not exactly a caption, Adam really likes this one by Catsvillage "Strawberry Felines Forever." Since he's da man, whatever he says goes! Congrats to Catsvillage for winning this week's Caption Monkey contest!
The medical discipline of plastic surgery (a reconstructive surgery, not to be confused with cosmetic surgery) has its origins in the horrors of World War I. The massive use of heavy artilleries in the war resulted not only in greater number of deaths, but also of horrific facial injuries.
Artist Paddy Hartley of Project Façade uses photos and surgical notes from The Gillies Archive to create an art exhibition about the birth of plastic surgery, detailing the work of Sir Harold in putting back the lives of the injured servicemen by reconstructing their faces:
The First World War was a war dominated by high explosives and heavy artillery. Battlefield casualties included an unprecedented number with horrific facial injuries - injuries so severe the men were commonly unrecognizable to loved ones and friends. Often unable to see, hear, speak eat or drink, they struggled to re-assimilate back into civilian life. This secondary tragedy - the living unable to "live" - catalyzed Surgeon Sir Harold Gillies to transform the fledgling discipline of plastic surgery based on his unrivalled observation of the profoundly wounded and his ability to push the parameters of the profession beyond all known techniques.
Link: Project Façade | Article on Telegraph - via Look at This (BTW, Happy Birthday to webmaster ILuvNUFC)
Photo: In 1917, gunnery warrant officer Walter Yeo was presumably the first patient treated by Sir Harold Gillies, the "father of plastic surgery," to undergo a new skin graft procedure called a tubed pedicle. More on him here: http://www.projectfacade.com/index.php?/case/C125/
How a Dog Drinks
Ever wonder how exactly a dog drinks? Do you think that
the dog's tongue splashes water into its mouth?
Jeff Lieberman of Discovery Channel's Time Warp uses a slow-motion
camera to find out the surprising answer: Link
BLEVE: The Science Behind Massive Explosions
What happens when a tanker containing 30,000 gallons of boiling
liquid propane catches on fire? Here's a clip explaining the science
behind a BLEVE
(pronounced "blevvy") or "Boiling Liquid Expanding
Vapor Explosion": Link
YouTube in 1985
What did YouTube look like way before the Interweb? Here's what
it looks like in 1985 ...
ReWalk Exoskeleton Enables Paralyzed People to Walk Again
For the first time in 20 year, a 41-year-old paraplegic Radi Kaiof
can walk again, thanks to ReWalk, an exoskeleton invented by Dr.
Amit Goffer of Argo Medical Technologies.
Most Entertaining Boxer in History
OK, enough tech stuff. Now something different: here's the most
entertaining boxer in history, Emanuel
"YA" Augustus and his showboatin' ways!
That's a full-size and driveable replica of Luke Skywalker's Landspeeder from Star Wars, built by Daniel Deutsch in his own garage:
We built this fiberglass replica landspeeder last spring from the ground up on a custom aluminum chassis. The electric drive system is capable of a top speed around 25 mph. The speeder is the same size as the original, and can travel several miles on a single battery charge.
Check out the "damaged" paint job on the Landspeeder. Excellent! http://web.mac.com/danieldeutsch/landspeeder/Landspeeder.html - Thanks Richard Young!
Update 8/29/08 - Daniel Deutsch wrote to us about the Landspeeder:
The speeder was a collaborative effort. The body mold and windshield were produced in California, and then shipped here to Orlando. We then did the bodywork, chassis, and electronics. The side grills were waterjet cut from PVC, then spaced and stacked.
It has lighting effects in the engine pods that change with the sound during acceleration. I added a short video clip to my web gallery of the speeder being driven, there's also one of the engine pod lights. A few folks posted that they thought the pics were photoshopped, however it's most likely the fact that I use a fill-flash when taking outdoor shots. I am attaching an additional couple photos of the body mold, etc., for you to this email.
The entire speeder was built in six weeks, and was first revealed in Los Angeles at the Star Wars Celebration IV event (30th anniv.) in May 2007.
Rising food prices in Cambodia has a particularly strange consequence: it makes rat meat more popular as inflation has put the price of other meat out of the reach of poor people!
Spicy field rat dishes with garlic thrown in have become particularly popular at a time when beef costs 20,000 riel a kg.
Officials said rats were fleeing to higher ground from flooded areas of the lower Mekong Delta, making it easier for villagers to catch them.
"Many children are happy making some money from selling the animals to the markets, but they keep some for their family," Ly Marong, an agriculture official, said by telephone from the Koh Thom district on the border with Vietnam.
That's Neatorama's resident rock star, drummer Rober Birming of Eskobar (who also blogs at GeekAlerts) and his dubious cat Prosit (that's Swedish for "bless you," he told me). For today's Neatorama and Hobotopia's Caption Monkey game, funniest caption will win the O RLY shirt from our Online Store (all shirts on sale now! Hurry and get your own!)
Contest rules are darned simple: place your caption in the comment section. One caption per comment, please, but you can submit as many as you'd like.
By the way, Eskobar released their 5th album Death in Athens earlier this year (covered here on Neatorama). For inspiration and Laugh-Out-Loud cat shenanigans, check out Adam "Ape Lad" Koford's Hobotopia.
Good luck and have fun!
Update 8/28/08 - Robert Birming himself chose the winner this time. Congratulations to "em" who won with this classic: Psh, I remember those halcyon days before the ORLY owl…days when the LOLCat was king…
Today's collaboration with the What is it? blog brings us this strange object. Is it a weapon? Or simply a tool? Can you guess what it is for?
Place your guess in the comment section - no prize this week, so you're playing for fame and glory only. But please post no URL - let others play.
For more clues, check out the What is it? Blog. Good luck, guys!
Update 8/29/08 - the answer is: A corn havester, for cutting corn stalks at the base without bending over, patent number 471,889, a modern version is still sold today. Congratulations to Roscoe who got it right first!
Update 9/5/08 - the answer: A steak tenderizer, patent number 525,595, the plates pivot so that they can be cleaned, they can also be removed to sharpen the teeth. No one got it right!
Like I often said, there's everything for everyone on the web. Like those who happen to like "the perfect portrait." This blog, with a tongue-in-cheek name of Sexy People, is dedicated to finding and displaying portraits of some strange ...
If you haven't discovered it yet, National Geographic magazine's Our Shot is one of the best daily photo gallery sites on the web. Their photos are always fantastic and cover a wide berth breadth of subjects.
Case in point, this photo of an aqueduct built by King Herod during the first century B.C. to carry water from a lake across 17 miles of desert into the ancient city of Caesarea (present day Israel). Michael Melford took this fantastic shot by moonlight.
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart put up this cheeky billboard to welcome those "rich, white oligarchs" attending the Republican National Convention in the Twin Cities! Found at east-lake.net
What body parts do artists of various music genre most often sing about? As part of their Fleshmap art project, Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg looked at the data from rock to jazz to hip-hop to find what body parts are most often mentioned.
Link [Tiny NSFW images]- via Buzzfeed (no surprise there, a lot of booty in hip-hop!)
A black bear at Woburn Safari Park in Bedforshire, UK, has a knack for stealing hubcaps. But when the bear saw that Azra Noonari's car had its hubcaps stolen some weeks ago, it offered her its hubcap!
"I saw it take a hubcap off the car then start walking towards us. I locked all the doors quickly, we didn't know what it would do.
"It put the hubcap down and then banged on the window, as if it was trying to get my attention. It was almost like it wanted to give me the wheel cap."
Mrs Noonari said the strange situation came only weeks after all four of her own hubcaps were taken. She added: "Maybe the bear thought I needed the hubcap.
