Photo: Delta Niner [Flickr]
Now that's a cool cop car (though I'm not sure how much respect he'll get driving that thing around!)
Alex Santoso's Blog Posts
Think that the economy is bad? Be thankful that we're not in Zimbabwe, where $100 billion note buys you ... three eggs!
After the collapse of the agriculture sector in Zimbabwe in 2000, the inflation in that country skyrocketed to 231 million percent a year! Just think about it - 231 000 000%! Unemployment went up to 80% and a third of country’s population left it.
Let`s now have a look at the photos that you may not be able to see anywhere else in the world.
Squirrels are overrunning the countryside of Devon, England, so Chef Ed Chester decided to do something about those pesky critters: he's making squirrel kebab!
Cook Ed Chester reckons squirrel meat is delicious and is also selling pates and fricassees made from the rodents.
He believes the spread of grey squirrels has damaged the countryside and it is a good idea to eat them to control their numbers.
The squirrel dishes have become an instant hit with adventurous diners at the restaurant at Otterton Mill, near Budleigh Salterton, Devon.
Here's one from the archives of toys-that-never-made-it-big. Can you see why Baby Laugh-A-Lot from Remco isn't a big seller?
I think I've heard that laugh in some horror movie somewhere ... Link (embedded YouTube)
Let's see: an 8-year-old boy shootin' an Uzi submachine gun at a gun show while his dad reached for a camera. What could go wrong?
Here's a tragic story about how a boy fatally shot himself in the head while trying out a weapon of war:
The machine gun shoot drew hundreds of people from as far away as Maine and Virginia. An advertisement said it would include machine gun demonstrations and rentals and free handgun lessons.
"It's all legal & fun — No permits or licenses required!!!!" reads the ad, posted on the club's Web site. "You will be accompanied to the firing line with a Certified Instructor to guide you. But You Are In Control — "FULL AUTO ROCK & ROLL," the ad said. [...]
Christopher, a third-grader, was attending the show with his father and sixth-grade brother, Colin. Christopher had fired handguns and rifles before, but Sunday was his first time firing an automatic weapon, said his father, Charles Bizilj.
Bizilj told the Boston Globe he was about 10 feet behind his son and reaching for his camera when the weapon fired. He said his family avoided the larger weapons, but he let his son try the Uzi because it's a small weapon with little recoil.
"This accident was truly a mystery to me," said Bizilj, director of emergency medicine at Johnson Memorial Hospital in Stafford, Conn. "This is a horrible event, a horrible travesty, and I really don't know why it happened."
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/sns-ap-boy-shoots-himself,0,7568246.story
Researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder discovered the secret of making yourself more attractive to other people: give them a hot cup of coffee!
Looking to improve your romantic odds? Get your date a steaming cup of coffee.
That's the implication of a new study by researchers who wanted to see if there was any connection between physical and emotional heat. To their surprise, they found that people who held a cup of hot coffee for 10 to 25 seconds warmed to a perfect stranger. Holding a cup of iced coffee had the opposite effect.
If you want to make a good impression, advised study author Lawrence E. Williams, a University of Colorado at Boulder assistant professor of marketing, a fresh cup of coffee "may bias the situation in your favor."
Look At This blog has a mega-post about all things Halloween. A few fun facts from the site:
Black cats were originally believed to protect witches' powers from negative forces.
A pumpkin is really a squash, and comes from the same family as the cucumber.
About 99% of pumpkins sold are used as Jack O' Lanterns at Halloween.
The biggest pumpkin in the world tipped the scales at a whopping 1,446 pounds. This gigantic gourd was weighed in October 2004 at a pumpkin festival in Port Elgin, Ontario, Canada.
The record for the fastest pumpkin carver in the world is Jerry Ayers of Baltimore, Ohio. He carved a pumpkin in just 37 seconds!
The very first jack o' lantern was made out of hollowed out turnips.
Tired of people soliciting prostitutes, the city of Lynwood, California has installed cameras in hopes of deterring crimes:
The cameras can zoom in on individuals soliciting prostitutes and take a picture of them or videotape the incident.
The images could be used to prosecute those in question, according to sheriff's Lt. Ely Vera.
The city hopes to install nine more cameras by early December.
Just five months ago, hundreds of residents marched down Long Beach Blvd. -- a notorious area for prostitution -- amongst used condoms on the street, demanding the city take action.
Link (with video clip)
Ever wonder how your telephone company relates to other telecommunication companies? Think that AT&T's monopoly was successfully broken up by the Feds back in the 80s? And do you know what Sprint was originally named after?
Here's a look at the (convoluted) family tree of telephone companies. You'd be surprised at finding out who actually owns whom: Link (large pic)
Turns out, Viking are getting a bum rap over that whole plundering and pillaging thing. Dr. Elizabeth Rowe, a Viking expert and lecturer at Cambridge University, wanted the world to know that Vikings are a peaceful race that prefer grooming to pillaging:
They say that the Norse explorers, far from being obsessed with fighting and drinking, were a largely-peaceful race who were even criticised for being too hygienic.
The university's department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic has published a guide revealing how much of the Vikings' history has been misrepresented. They did not, in fact, wear horned or winged helmets. And they appear to have been a vain race who were concerned about their appearance.
"It seems that the Vikings may not have been as hairy and dirty as is commonly imagined," the guide says. "A medieval chronicler, John of Wallingford, talking about the eleventh century, complained that the Danes were too clean - they combed their hair every day, washed every Saturday, and changed their clothes regularly."
In today's economic turmoil, won't someone please think of all the Wall Street wives?
There's a little (okay a lot) of schadenfreude going on about Wall Street, but I still find this article by Geraldine Baum for the Los Angeles Times about dashed dreams of Wall Street wives very interesting:
Fran Alvarez rarely spent lavishly, as she describes it, during the five years her husband, Carlos, 43, was making $250,000 writing software programs for Credit Suisse. He will be earning half that in his new job away from Wall Street. It was either that or sell the house with its $3,000 monthly mortgage.
At 41, Fran is the caretaker of their daughters, Gabriella, 6, and Isabella, 4. In the last five months she has gone back to her daughter-of-a-mechanic mentality. She canceled magazine subscriptions and expensive cable -- and stopped buying soft toilet paper.
"Growing up, my mom used to buy the scratchiest toilet paper, and when we complained she would say, "When you get your own job, you buy the expensive type,' " Fran says. "Well, we're back to the scratchy stuff."
(Photo: Carolyn Cole / LA Times)
Some people get a limo ride to their wedding, but not Manuel Uribe. The world's heaviest man (who once weighed in at 1,230 lb or 560 kg) went to his wedding in a specially decorated bed on top of a flatbed truck:
Mexican Manuel Uribe, 43, wore a white satin shirt and had a sheet wrapped round his legs as he wed his longtime girlfriend, Claudia Solis, in front of 400 guests in a civil ceremony in Monterrey, northern Mexico. The bed - which Uribe hasn't left in six years - was decorated with a canopy, flowers and gold-trimmed bows.
Two police patrol cars escorted him ahead of a long line of traffic.
Uribe tipped the scales in 2006 at 1,230 pounds (560 kilograms), earning him the Guinness Book of World Records' title for the world's heaviest man. He has since shed about 550 pounds (250 kilograms) with the help of Claudia, whom he met four years ago.
Congrats to the happy couple! Link
Previously on Neatorama: Heaviest Man in the World | World's Fattest Man Lost Half of Body Weight on Low Carb Diet | World's Heaviest Man Goes on a Trip, Thanks to Forklift and Flatbed Truck
Tom Leppard, AKA Leopard Man, whose entire body is covered in leopard-spot tattoos, is calling it quits: he's going to move into a retirement home!
The Leopard Man, who spent £5,500 on tattoos, used to have to canoe three miles for his weekly shopping, but he has now moved from his remote stretch of shoreline near Kyleakin after admitting he's getting too old at 73.
Mr Leppard, an ex-special forces soldier, told the Daily Telegraph: "I was perfectly happy in the bothy but I'm like everyone else - I'm getting too old for that kind of life.
"I had to canoe to Kyle once a week for shopping and it was getting too hard for me - I was one big wave away from disaster. It's a pretty nasty stretch of water.
"About six weeks ago a friend with a boat offered to take me off and I just decided there and then to go."
Negative political campaigns and mudslinging aren't anything new - in fact, the practice harks back to medieval time. In his excellent blog, God Medieval, Carl Pyrdum explains how politicians campaigned back then:
Back in 2000, workers restoring the wall of a medieval public fountain in the town discovered a mural hidden under years of grime. At first blush, it was a pretty tame find.
Just a big tree with a group of women in medieval garb clustered beneath it, presumably the sort of women who would have frequented the fountain in its heyday, right? Oh, how wrong you are, my naive readers. As the layers of grime came off, it became apparent that the tree's branches were inhabited--by over two dozen detached penises (see inset - ed.)
At first, it was thought that the mural was meant as some sort of fertility display. But more recently, George Ferzoco, director of the Centre for Tuscan Studies at the University of Leicester, published a book that argues the mural was meant as political propaganda. During the time when the fresco was likely painted, Massa Marittima was controlled by the Guelphs,* who had recently expelled their rivals the Ghibellines. The black eagles flying about underneath the tree were the symbol of the ousted Ghibelline faction. Taken together with other details in the mural, Ferzoco says that it is meant to send a clear message to the people of Massa Marittima: "if the Ghibellines are allowed power they will bring with them heresy, sexual perversion, civic strife and witchcraft."
Link - via eternallycool
For being such a young blog, WebEcoist (the sister blog of WebUrbanist blog) certainly has a lot of neat articles.
Here's a blog post round-up of amazing natural wonders and epic disasters around the world, showing both the most beautiful and terrifying sides of Mother Nature: 82 Epic Elemental Phenomena and Natural Disasters - Thanks Mu!
(The photo above is the 2007 sinkhole in Guatemala City, covered previously on Neatorama here: http://www.neatorama.com/2007/02/24/giant-sinkhole-swallowed-dozen-homes-in-guatemala-city/)
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