Today's Thanksgiving Day and I'd like to take a minute to celebrate this wondefully non-denominational and non-commercial (well, except for having to buy a turkey!) holiday.

I have a lot to be thankful for. I'm thankful for my family - my wonderful and loving wife Tiffany (who's very pregnant now with our second child) and my demanding but cute little daughter Maddy.

I'm thankful for having loving and supportive parents. I'm thankful that my father is recovering well from a mild stroke earlier this year. It was a scary moment for us and it reminded me of how important family and friends are. (if you have a minute, please read this: Stroke Symptoms: Knowing These May Help Save Your Life)

I'm grateful for our troops. I know that the war in Iraq is unpopular, but whatever your political beliefs, I hope you'll be able to take a moment and separate the warriors from the war and recognize their service and sacrifice.

I'm thankful for Neatorama's authors, who help me enjoy reading this blog as much as I like writing for it. And lastly, I'd like to thank you, dear reader, for visiting this blog. Watching Neatorama grow continues
to be a joy for me - I hope you'll continue to visit.

Happy Turkey Day! (And what are you thankful for?)

We've blogged about Jessica, the pet hippo of retired South African game warden Tonie Joubert and his wife Shirley. Today, I found a video clip of the hippo!

Hit play or go to Link [YouTube]

Yay! It's time for some video clips from VideoSift and today's selection is all about comedians. Enjoy!

For more the web's most interesting videos, check out: VideoSift.

Let's take a little break from LOLcats and take a look at what I think is one of the strangest scenes in exploitation film history: When Cats Attack in Sweet Sugar (1973) with Phyllis Davis.

Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - Thanks sal!

Argentinian-born artist Cesar Saez is building a giant banana, to be filled with helium and floated in a geostationary orbit over Texas:

Basically, the banana will be constructed like a blimp. Filled with helium, it will float between 30 and 50 km up in the sky. It will have a semi-rigid structure made of bamboo and a skin made with synthetic paper. Thanks to extra load in gas and a valve system, it will keep its shape at all times. The final size of the piece will be 300 meters in length. The expected launching date is August 2008 from around Baja or Sonora, north-west of Mexico. The total costs for this project is roughly estimated at one million dollars.

Link - via [flasher] and Boing Boing

Here's an excellent idea to liven up your next gala: Living Tables, designed by Julie Winterhalter, that will not only serve your guests, but entertain them as well! Link

[Update 9/2/07: Oops, a duplicate! Miss C blogged about this last March: Link

Crop circles are back - and this time, they're in 3D! Link - Thanks Susan!

Popular Science just released its annual Bottom 10 List of Worst Job in Science. Making its debut at no. 10 is this: whale poop researcher.

“Brown stain ahoy!” is not the cry most mariners long to hear, but for Rosalind Rolland, a senior researcher at the New England Aquarium in Boston, it’s a siren song. Rolland, along with a few lucky research assistants, combs Nova Scotia’s Bay of Fundy looking for endangered North Atlantic right whales. Actually, she’s not really looking for the whales—just their poo. “It surprised even me how much you can learn about a whale through its feces,” says Rolland, who recently published the most complete study of right whales ever conducted. “You can test for pregnancy, measure hormones and biotoxins, examine its genetics. You can even tell individuals apart.”

http://www.popsci.com/popsci/science/0203101256a23110vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html - via GorillaMask

Aberron of Fogonazos has an interesting article on Niagara Falls daredevils, like this one:

On October 1st 1995, Robert Overacker, a 39-year-old man from California, went over the Canadian Horseshoe Falls on a single jet ski. Entering the Niagara River near the Canadian Niagara Power Plant, he started skiing toward the Falls. At the brink, he attempted to discharge a rocket propelled parachute that was on his back. It failed to discharge. His brother and a friend witnessed the stunt. His body was recovered by a tourists ship.

Link - Thanks Aberron!

Thanks to Dan Piraro, we have another Bizarro caption contest. Funniest caption wins a Free Neatorama T-Shirt. Contest rule: one caption per comment, make it funny but please keep it civil. You can submit multiple comments.

Update 4/13/07: Wow! A lot of great stuff here, guys - Congrats to Sean Wagoner #11 who came up with the winning caption:

“On the weather forecast for the afternoon, clear, red skies with a chance of hellfire and brimstone.”

This week's collaboration with Cellar Image of the Day brings us this amazing picture of a solar eclipse in 2006:

This photo was taken last year by Miloslav Druckmuller and Peter Aniol from the Libyan desert. It is a composite of 231 photos taken with a battery of 5 cameras on a variety of telescopic lenses ranging in focal lengths from 200mm to 1680mm.

The multiple shots were necessary to catch different aspects of the eclipse that one shot could not. One camera's exposure must be set to capture the face of the moon. Another must be set for the coronal rays, one to capture stars….etc etc.

Notice how far the coronal rays flare out!!

This small picture really doesn't do it justice: to see how amazing the pic really is, go to Cellar Image of the Day: Link.

In 2003, [redacted on request] and British artist Sasha Constable teamed up on a sculpture project to turn weapons destroyed by the Cambodian government into ... furniture!

Link - Thanks Kevin!

Mizuta Tasogare and Kato Jado created some really mind-blowingly awesome pencil carvings! http://www.infofreako.com/jad/enpitsu-e.html - via Say No to Crack

See also: Pencil Art by Jennifer Maestre and Carved Crayons by Pete Goldlust.

The heart cloud is from The Cloud Appreciation Society, blogged previously on Neatorama here.

Photo: George Fetting

Australian amateur pilot and flight sim enthusiast Matthew Sheil spent 10 years and $230,000 to create a homemade flight simulator that precisely mimics the 747 cockpit down to the last dial, knob, and switch!

http://www.popsci.com/popsci/whatsnew/0c17921ff7390110vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd/2.html | Matthew's website (tons more photos, but I can only see 'em in IE, not Firefox)