Here's your next rock star: Meet Sara, a 13-year-old kid who kicks butt playing Rush's YYZ on the drums, complete with stick twirling theatrics and such.
VideoSift has the clip: Link [embedded YouTube] | Sara's website (in Japanese)
If you like that, here's Sara (11yo), playing Rush's Freewill on the drums and singing too!
Amazon's Mechanical Turk is a web service that lets you assign tasks to human workers in exchange for payments. It is named after The Turk, a chess playing automaton made by Wolfgang von Kempelen in the late 1700s (it turned out that a chess master was hiding inside the machine).
Andy Baio of Waxy was curious to see what exactly the Amazon Mechanical Turk looks like, so naturally he started a new Turk experiment to answer two questions: what do these people look like, and how much does it cost for someone to reveal their face?
Here are his answers, #1:
And #2: about $0.50
What happens when Bollywood combines Harry potter and Home Alone? Here's Hari Puttar - A Comedy of Terrors, directed by Lucky Kohli.
The movie is about a ten year old Indian boy named Hari Prasad Dhoonda, nicknamed Hari Puttar (Puttar means "son" in Punjabi), who was left home when his parents go on vacation. Just like Home Alone, Hari soon has to face burglars who wanted to steal his father's secret formula.
Given the similarity to its movies, Warner Bros. decided to sue but the case was thrown out by Indian courts on the grounds that the public would be able to tell the difference and Warner had waited too long to file their case.
Hari Puttar's official website | Trailer of the movie at Clipser: Link
Between 1983 and 1991, Australia held an annual ultra-marathon of 544 miles (875 km). World's most elite racers ran from Sydney to Melbourne in 5 days - these athletes trained specially for this event, which was considered one of the world's most grueling races.
One day, a 61-year-old Australian potato farmer named Cliff Young entered the race ...
In 1983, a man named Cliff Young showed up at the start of this race. Cliff was 61 years old and wore overalls and work boots. To everyone's shock, Cliff wasn't a spectator. He picked up his race number and joined the other runners.
The press and other athletes became curious and questioned Cliff. They told him, "You're crazy, there's no way you can finish this race." To which he replied, "Yes I can. See, I grew up on a farm where we couldn't afford horses or tractors, and the whole time I was growing up, whenever the storms would roll in, I'd have to go out and round up the sheep. We had 2,000 sheep on 2,000 acres. Sometimes I would have to run those sheep for two or three days. It took a long time, but I'd always catch them. I believe I can run this race." [...]
All of the professional athletes knew that it took about 5 days to finish the race. In order to compete, one had to run about 18 hours a day and sleep the remaining 6 hours. The thing is, Cliff Young didn't know that!
When the morning of the second day came, everyone was in for another surprise. Not only was Cliff still in the race, he had continued jogging all night.
Eventually Cliff was asked about his tactics for the rest of the race. To everyone's disbelief, he claimed he would run straight through to the finish without sleeping.
Cliff Young won the race, and became a legend: Link - Thanks Ali!
Remember the New Jersey man who tried to pay his traffic ticket with pennies? Well, in a courageous display of one-upmanship, here's what one British guy did: he paid his parking ticket with a check written on a toilet paper!
It was a very British protest - cocking a snook at overbearing authorities while staying within the law. But Dick Roper's glow of pleasure at using two sheets of toilet paper to write a cheque for a parking ticket was short lived.
Although Her Majesty's Court Service said they would accept the £30 cheque, they demanded an extra £15 to cover the fee for cashing it.
When the 63-year-old grandfather refused, he was dragged to court for non-payment of a fine. He took advantage of his day in court by reading out a letter he sent to the Court Service in which he described the police community support officer who slapped a ticket on his car as a 'snake'. Everyone, including the judge, was laughing as he described the man 'slithering' home at the end of the day 'to digest the evil he had done'.
The judge in Mr. Roper's case had a sense of humor:
When the district judge asked what he would have done if a customer had paid with a cheque written on toilet paper, he replied: 'I would pay the cheque in and send them a receipt on toilet paper.'
Link - via Blue's News
The young boy in the picture is Albert Einstein, who grew up to be perhaps the most famous scientist of all times. But what about the little girl? That, dear readers, was Maja Einstein, Albert's sister and only friend during his childhood:
On November 18 in 1881 Albert Einstein’s (1879–1955) sister Maria – called Maja – was born in Munich. Her Jewish parents, Hermann Einstein and Pauline Einstein, nee Koch, had moved from Ulm to Munich in June 1880 with their two-year-old son Albert. There Hermann Einstein and his brother Jakob had founded the electrical engineering company Einstein & Cie. When little Albert saw his sister for the first time he thought she were a kind of toy and asked: “Yes, but where does it have its small wheels?” Maja and her brother Albert got along very well all their life. (Source)
Link [wikipedia] - via Cliff Pickover's Reality Carnival
Previously on Neatorama:
Aviary artist Meowza Katz, here are various Mona Lisas, as drawn by artists like Roy Lichtenstein, Matt Groening (the creator of The Simpsons and Futurama), Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol ... and even Jackson Pollock: Link - via AQFL
By the way, Aviary is a free suite of online image editors, created by the people who also founded Worth1000 and Plime
Photo: Cyril Byrne/The Irish Times
Tomorrow is the winter solstice, the instant where the Sun is at its southernmost point. It is also the shortest day (or longest night, depending how you look at it) of the year. Ancient astronomers knew the significance of this event, and constructed the tomb of Newgrange to mark the arrival of winter solstice. APOD has the story:
Newgrange dates to 5,000 years ago, much older than Stonehenge, but also with accurate alignments to the solstice Sun. In this view from within the burial mound's inner chamber, the first rays of the solstice sunrise are passing through a box constructed above the entrance and shine down an 18 meter long tunnel to illuminate the floor at the foot of a decorated stone. The actual stone itself would have been directly illuminated by the solstice Sun 5,000 years ago. The long time exposure also captures the ghostly figure of a more modern astronomer in motion.
Link | You can watch a webcast of the solstice sunrise from Newgrange here
Previously on Neatorama: 10 Most Fascinating Tombs in the World
Images: British Museum Prints Database
Day of the Dead was about a month and a half ago, but I've just discovered a neat post by BibliOdyssey about papel picado (perforated paper) papercuts in the theme of the festival:
"In Mexico, papel picado (perforated paper), refers to the traditional art of decorative cut paper banners. Papel picado are usually cut with sharp fierritos (small chisels) from as many as fifty layers of colored tissue paper at a time. Designs may incorporate lattice-work, images of human and animal figures, flowers, and lettering. Many papel picado are made especially for the Mexican festival of the Days of the Dead and include skeletal figures engaged in the everyday activities of the living." (Source)
Previously on Neatorama:
Did you know that if you buy yellow margarine in Missouri you're commiting a crime? A 19th century state law banned the sale of yellow margarine, though "it's been years since any violator was ordered to spread 'em."
Most of Missouri's restrictions on imitation butter date to 1895, and they were last amended in 1939. Although the state no longer enforces them, the penalties could still make dealers in contraband dairy product toast: up to a month in jail and a $100 fine for first-time offenders and six months in jail and a $500 fine for repeat offenders.
Enforcement of the law falls to the state Agriculture Department, and officials there didn't know when someone was last prosecuted under it. Case records from the late 19th and early 20th century show that Missouri courts upheld the constitutionality of the restrictions in several appeals.
Agriculture Department spokeswoman Misti Preston said it's likely that the Legislature restricted margarine and other imitation butter products to protect Missouri's dairy industry, which was a key business for the state in the early 20th century.
Link (yep, I got the the funny title from there) - via Bits & Pieces
Just because you're driving in your car, it doesn't mean that you can't take your hi-fi music with you. Here's a Chrysler innovation: a phonograph for your car.
In 1956 they teamed with CBS to create the “Highway Hi-Fi” – an under-dash phonograph that played vinyl records at a super-slow 16-2/3 revolutions per minute. The slow speed allowed a small disc to pack up to an hour of entertainment on each side. Special mechanical engineering reduced the number of times and distance the needle would skip across the disc as the car drove over bumps in the road.
With innovations like these, we simply can't believe the how the company got into the economic trouble they're in right now!
Link - via Sunshine Supercars, Thanks Jo. A. Borras!
Previously on Neatorama: 10 Things You Didn't Know about General Motors
Decorating your house for Christmas doesn't necessarily mean giving up on the bachelor-chic theme for your macho home. Just take a look at these Manly Christmas Decor
ideas from AskMen.
This one to the left is the Frontgate 33" Summit Wreath, which unfortunately doesn't come with the deer head, though at $199 apiece you'd think it would.
It's less than a week to go to Christmas, so it's time to trot out last year's fruitcake (hey, it's still good! Fruitcakes last forever) and this Neatorama's post: World's Most Unusual Christmas Trees.
Are you ready for Christmas? What are you doing this year that's different from last year?
Trying to be a good Samaritan (at least in California)? Beware: you could be sued for rendering "non-medical" help, instead.
Carol J. Williams of the Los Angeles Times has the interesting legal development:
The California Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a young woman who pulled a co-worker from a crashed vehicle isn't immune from civil liability because the care she rendered wasn't medical.
The divided high court appeared to signal that rescue efforts are the responsibility of trained professionals. It was also thought to be the first ruling by the court that someone who intervened in an accident in good faith could be sued.
Lisa Torti of Northridge allegedly worsened the injuries suffered by Alexandra Van Horn by yanking her "like a rag doll" from the wrecked car on Topanga Canyon Boulevard.
Torti now faces possible liability for injuries suffered by Van Horn, a fellow department store cosmetician who was rendered a paraplegic in the accident that ended a night of Halloween revelry in 2004.
But in a sharp dissent, three of the seven justices said that by making a distinction between medical care and emergency response, the court was placing "an arbitrary and unreasonable limitation" on protections for those trying to help.
Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar just got a new addition to their (already very, very large) family: their 18th child! And keeping with traditions (they name all their children starting with the letters J), here's Jordyn-Grace Makiya Duggar who came in at 7 pounds, 3 ounces:
"The ultimate Christmas gift from God," said Jim Bob Duggar, the father of the 18 children. "She's just absolutely beautiful, like her mom and her sisters."
Now, are 18 kids enough? Here's what Jim Bob has to say about it:
"We both would love to have more," he said.
Link | The Duggar Family Official Website (Now, do they change the name of their The Learning Channel reality show "18 Kids & Counting"?)
(Photo: Beth Hall/AP)
Previously on Neatorama: The Duggars are Expecting Their 18th Baby
