Here's one gruesome way of avoiding a tribal warfare adopted by two villages in Papua New Guinea: kill every male babies born!

By virtually wiping out the 'male stock', tribal women hope they can avoid deadly bow-and-arrow wars between the villages in the future.

'Babies grow into men and men turn into warriors,' said Rona Luke, a village wife who is attending a special 'peace and reconciliation' meeting in the mountain village of Goroka.

'It's because of the terrible fights that have brought death and destruction to our villages for the past 20 years that all the womenfolk have agreed to have all new-born male babies killed,' said Mrs Luke.

'The women have had enough of men engaging in tribal conflicts and bringing misery to them.'

Link

Here's a tip for all you graffiti "artists": when tagging public buildings, do not - I repeat - do not sign it with your online identity!

Here's a story of one Melanie Brockway, who used her MySpace profile in her graffiti:

The 23-year old single mother was tracked down by police through stickers mentioning her online identity – Devient Art – which she left by the side of her pieces.

Melanie Brockway’s page on the social networking website details her age, location and what school she attended, allowing officers to piece together her identity. [...]

Since her arrest the unemployed mother-of-two's MySpace page has been accessed, and now bears the banner heading: "Devient Art does not promote illegal graffiti in anyway. It is illegal you will get arrested, and its wrong... i again do do not promote illegal graffiti in anyway."

Her mood has also been set to “p----- off”.

Link

Forget the turducken, here's the turgooduccochiqua by Wil Shipley of Call Me Fishmeal blog. It's a quail inside a cornish game hen inside a duck inside a chicken inside a turkey inside a goose. Oh, and with bacon between the layers.

Photo: wjsdelicous [Flickr]

Can you identify which bird is which by looking at the fowl strata?

Photo: wjsdelicious [Flickr]

The entire Flickr photoset: Link | CNN video calling it a "hoax" (Oops!) - via reddit.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Photo: Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York (c. 1932) via Swapatorium

design:related blog has a neat post about some fabulous vintage photos of past Macy's Thanksgiving Day parades. For photos of the very first balloons that appear in the parade (back in 1927), go here: http://www.designrelated.com/inspiration/view/Karen/entry/2823 - via BuzzFeed

Here's why you can never trust gay penguins ...

Keepers have segregated the couple after they caught them trying to trick straight birds into parting with their offspring by placing round stones at their feet and then running off with an egg.

Experts at the Polarland Park in Harbin, north east China, say that despite being gay the three year old male birds are still driven by an urge to be dads.

Link

Previously on Neatorama: Gay Penguins Say No Thanks to Females

Christophe Szpajdel isn't just any ol' logo designer - he's the self-proclaimed dark lord of black-metal logos. The Belgian designer has drawn over 7,000 black- and death-metal bands from all over the world.

Strangely, Christophe is also a forestry engineer and works in retail to support his artistry: http://www.viceland.com/int/v15n11/htdocs/dark-lord-of-logos-302.php

Photo: Chang W. Lee for The New York Times

I saw that "chalk shadow art" is making the round on the Net, without attribution or explanation (sigh). So, with a little Googling, I found the back story to the phenomenon:

Earlier this year, Mr. Gallagher was mugged on his way home from a shift at Bar Tabac on Smith Street, where he worked as a waiter. "I turn around and this guy's got a two-foot machete in my face," he said.

Mr. Gallagher was unhurt and the mugger was later caught by the police, but one night soon after the mugging, with the image of his attacker's dark silhouette still burned into his memory, Mr. Gallagher was mesmerized by a shadow on the sidewalk. He reached into his pocket and felt the chalk he had used to write the outdoor menu at Bar Tabac, and he dropped to his knees to outline it.

Shadow art was born.

Now Mr. Gallagher heads out on foot or on his bike with a backpack full of chalk, looking for shadows to trace. When he tells you that "everything is fair game," he means it. He has traced everything from hydrants to whole city blocks.

Conrad Mulcahy of The New York Times has the story: Link

I see Jill Harness' crocheted pie hats post and raise her this crocheted body suit by Chinese artist Ming Yi Sung. Believe it or not, the white bunny suit above isn't actually the weirdest thing she has ever crocheted and knitted ... Be prepared to be amazed: Link

Photo: Curious Expedition [Flickr]

Curious Expeditions visited Castelul Peles (Peles Castle) in Sinaia, Romania. The castle was built by a multi-cultural "labor force" (forced labor?) and has an interesting history:

Castelul Peles rises out of the ancient Romanian forest like an fairy tale . Located in Sinaia, Transylvania it is arguably the most beautiful castle in Romania and possibly all of Eastern Europe. [...] As in its design, so too was its construction a mishmash of Europe, as Queen Elisabeth of Romania described the merry scene in her journal, “Italians were masons, Romanians were building terraces, the Gypsies were coolies. Albanians and Greeks worked in stone, Germans and Hungarians were carpenters. Turks were burning brick. Engineers were Polish and the stone carvers were Czech. The Frenchmen were drawing, the Englishmen were measuring, and so was then when you could see hundreds of national costumes and fourteen languages in which they spoke, sang, cursed and quarreled on all dialects and tones, a joyful mix of men, horses, cart oxen and domestic buffaloes.”

I'm quite fond of this photo above. It's of the Grand Armory, or The Arsenal where 1,600 of the castle's weaponry and armor from the 14th to 16th century are displayed.

Link | Don't miss the Flickr set - it's wonderful!

Remember the melamine contamination problem in China that killed at least 3 babies and made 50,000 others sick?

Well, after that happened, the FDA quietly tested US-made formula and found trace contaminations of melamine. The US government didn't disclose the tests, until The Associated Press filed a Freedom of Information Act request:

Traces of the industrial chemical melamine have been detected in samples of top-selling U.S. infant formula, but federal regulators insist the products are safe. The Food and Drug Administration said last month it was unable to identify any melamine exposure level as safe for infants, but a top official said it would be a "dangerous overreaction" for parents to stop feeding infant formula to babies who depend on it.

"The levels that we are detecting are extremely low," said Dr. Stephen Sundlof, director of the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. "They should not be changing the diet. If they've been feeding a particular product, they should continue to feed that product. That's in the best interest of the baby."

Bad idea: thievin'
Really bad idea: getting photographed while thievin'
Neatorama-worthy: getting photographed while thievin' from a billboard company, that is now plastering the city with billboard ads with your face on them!

Rule number one of burglary is 'don't get yourself photographed'. Probably coming in somewhere around rule number 437, meanwhile, is 'don't make an enemy of someone who owns billboards all around your city'.

Unfortunately for one New Zealand thief, he just broke both those rules.

The thief was caught on camera stealing expensive equipment, but he'd picked the wrong target - because now the billboard company he was stealing from has plastered his image around Wellington, New Zealand's largest city, seeking his capture.

Link

Addictionary is a wonderful website for those who love weird, obscure, and well, made-up words. It's kind of like Urban Dictionary, but less gritty and dirty feeling when you visit.

One of my favorite section is the There Oughta Be a Word, where you submit your own made-up words to describe a situation in the challenge.

http://www.addictionary.org/ - via popurls

Steve of Straight Up Chess makes chess boards that are so good that you'd want to hang 'em up in a picture frame. The wall-mounted chess boards are made from gorgeous cherry, walnut, and maple hardwoods and better yet: they're playable! You don't need a table to play chess anymore:

These boards are designed for a casual game of chess. You make your move and mark it as 'Last Move'. Later your opponent passes by, makes their move, marks it as 'Last Move' and the game continues. In our busy office we play 1 to 2 games a week.

Link - via Rocky Rook

If you've ever lost a bag, then you know how distressing it can be. All that stuff - gone! But take heart, at least you didn't lose a tool bag - in space - like Endeavour astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper did about last week.

The tool bag and its content are worth about $100K, and of course NASA got it on tape! I'm a little late on this news, but for those of you who haven't seen it, here's the clip:

[YouTube Link]

AskMen asked over 75,000 men about what it means to be a "modern man" and got a very interesting set of answers (Some answers are as expected, but quite a few are surprising).

Who and what is "the modern man"? Arriving at a definition tends to involve making a lot of assumptions, and descriptions of the modern man are varied and plenty: there's the player, the family man, the workaholic, the dandy (to name just a few). Determining whether or not any of these portrayals are factual largely boils down to a single question: Is there any real data to back them up?

Here's the result of the Great Male Survey of 2008: http://static.askmen.com/specials/2008_great_male_survey/index.html