Wow! We had a great turnout for this month's Tokyoflash Treasure Hunt game. The answers are: negative, yonder, and rogue (wasn't that easy?) and here's the answer page.
One lucky commenter was picked at random (using the random integer generator at random.org).
Congratulations to Cesareldorado who won a sweet black Oberon from the good folks at Tokyoflash! For the rest of you - better luck next time!
What do you get when you mix typographic creativity, social awareness, and a little bit of vandalism? Here's Tag a Dummer, a website where you can upload photos of "tagged" Hummers in protest of the gas-guzzling vehicles: http://tagadummer.com/ [Flash] | The Gallery
Our pal Muhammad Saleem (and web 2.0/social media maven) has just launched a new website called Tip'd. The digg-like website focuses on financial news, which is a timely topic in today's struggling economy.
If you follow digg, you'll know that Mu is one of their top users - so it'll be interesting to see how Tip'd will turn out. Knowing Mu personally (he's a nice guy!), I'll bet that it'll be a success.
I'm having a crappy day today - Neatorama's servers crashed (again) - but this little video clip cheered me up a little: a chimp doing sit ups ... and a dog helping it! From the wacky entertainment that is Japanese TV (where else?)
Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - via i heart tripods
Korean artist U-Ram Choe who specialized in making wonderful, mechanical sculptures that look like futuristic biological organisms. Choe likes to incorporate scientific nomenclature into his artwork, and the art display reminds one of a prehistoric display at a natural history museum!
Here is Opertus Lunula Umbra (Hidden Shadow of Moon), as part of the Liverpool Biennial International 08 Exhibition:
Photo: Liverpool Biennial [Flickr]
Varietal Urbanus Female (2007), made from etched stainless steel, LED, circuit motors, CPU board, custom software and cable:
Photo: Ho Sing Yuan/Taichi Photography
Lumina Virgo (2005), made from metal, touch sensor, light bulb, and magnet:
Photo: Lee Seong-Gon
Check out more of U-Ram Choe's artwork at his website: Link
Long before Prince Charles proved that love is blind by cheating on his beautiful wife with Camilla Parker-Bowles, blue bloods had already proudly renounced monogamy. Over the centuries, they've coveted their neighbors' wives countless times, sure, but what about their neighbors' livestock? It's time to separate the perverted facts from the perverted fiction about royal sex lives. 1. Catherine the Great (1729 - 1796)The reign of Catherine II, the German-born czarina of Russia, began when she overthrew her alcoholic, incompetent, and purportedly impotent husband, Frederick (the not so Great), in 1762. If there was one thing Catherine the Great would not stand for, it was impotence. Although grossly overweight, Catherine loved men - a great many of them, in fact - over the course of her 34-year reign. And then, it was rumored, she died during a botched attempt to make love (if it can be called such a thing) to a horse. The rumor may have been spread by Catherine's Polish enemies, who resented her for annexing much of Poland. (On the list of European royalty's leisure activities, "overrunning Poland" has historically been a close second to "Sex.") At any rate, Catherine never had sex with a horse, and one wonders why anyone felt compelled to make up such a story, since her actual death was plenty humiliating. While straining on the toilet, she had a stroke. 2. The Tale of Two GeorgesIn what seems to be an outlandish coincidence, England's king George II (1683 - 1760) also died of a stroke while on the commode. Some sources say that although he was quite happily married to his wife, Queen Caroline, George took mistresses as to maintain his reputation. After all, a mistressless king could be seen as weak or worse still, impotent. His son, George III, however, broke that streak of monarchial infidelity when he married the notoriously homely Princess Sophia Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz in 1761. Seeing her for the first time on their wedding day, George is said to have winced in disgust, but the two came to love one another immensely (and frequently - they had 15 kids), and George III was never unfaithful. 3. Another Royal HorseThe Roman emperor Caligula (12 - 41 CE) redefined sexual debauchery during his reign. Aside from fancying himself a god and having an altogether creepy sexual fascination with his sister Drusilla, Caligula supposedly engaged in many orgies (which inspired a famous adult film). Plus, he had a suspiciously intimate relationship with his favorite horse, Incitatus. Some Roman historians claimed that Caligula intended to make his horse consul, but that appears to have been kind of a Roman urban legend. Roman historians despised Caligula so intensely that it's difficult to sort out the actual facts of his reign. And while Caligula did like his horse (he apparently built Incitatus a house), there's no reason to believe he "liked him" liked him. 4. Jahangir (1569 - 1627)Though there are plenty of excellent candidates for most sexually insatiable king ever, including Hal the Horny (the oft-married Henry VIII of England), our vote has to go to Jahangir, the fourth Mughal emperor of India. Jahangir had little to do with the day-to-day running of the empire - that work was accomplished by his favorite wife, Nur Jahan. (The Taj Mahal was built for Jahan's niece, Mumtaz Mahal.) While Jahan became one of the most powerful women of the 17th century, Jahangir busied himself with loving. He supposedly had 300 wives (296 more than allowed by the religion, Islam, he supposedly followed), 5,000 female concubines, and 1,000 male concubines. Jahangir also kept a massive herd of 12,000 elephants, but we won't speculate. 5. And, of Course, Prince Charles! (1948 - )Of all the recent sex rumors about the British royal family, none had kept quite so quiet as that of Prince Charles's supposed bisexual affair. For weeks in the late 2003, the British press printed banner headlines about a royal sex scandal but, conscious of Britain's strict libel laws, never came out and openly revealed the accusations. Instead, they engaged in all manner of hints and innuendo. This led to the strange phenomenon of the royal family issuing a statement denying allegations that had never publicly been made. The rumor: Prince Charles had a love affair with his advisor Michael Fawcett. Scandalous, sure, but unlikely - it seems the prince only has eyes for Camilla. After decades of courtship, they finally wed in 2005. |
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From mental_floss' book Forbidden Knowledge: A Wickedly Smart Guide to History's Naughtiest Bits, published in Neatorama with permission. Be sure to visit mental_floss' extremely entertaining website and blog! |
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Philantrophist Eli Broad had an idea on how to improve school children's test scores: bribe 'em with money!
Here's a controversial pilot educational program called Spark, where children are rewarded with cold hard cash if they do well on tests:
Seventh-graders can earn up to $50 a test -- for 10 assessment tests throughout the year. There's a similar program for fourth-graders. The money goes into a bank account that only the student can access. The better you do, the more money you earn, up to $500 a year for seventh-graders. The idea is to make school tangible for disadvantaged kids -- short-term rewards that are in their long-term best interest.
Is it working? That depends on whom you ask.
Pundits and some in the media say Spark is bribing kids; they should love learning for learning's sake. But if you talk with those actually participating in the pilot program -- the students, administrators and teachers -- you hear something different.
[Eight-grader Soledad Moya] said she wasn't a "studying kind of" person before the awards. Now she and her friends like to look in the dictionary and memorize words and their definitions, and they ask their teachers for more practice tests. Even though she's not eligible for the awards now that she's in eighth grade, she's still studying harder before tests, she said. "Once you get started with something, you keep doing it."
The changes she saw in students like Moya caused Lisa Cullen -- a literacy and social studies teacher at the school -- to go from skeptic to supporter: "I saw how it takes away the uphill battle you have trying to get students to study for tests." She saw a definite increase in students' excitement, enthusiasm and effort.
Who's responsible for the current credit crunch? According to Peter Hayes of the University of Sunderland, it's the pirates!
Dr Hayes says: “Pirates elected their captain, voted on major decisions and distributed their booty in roughly equal shares, and there is something in the idea that a pirate ship is the equivalent of a modern corporation.
“In the 17th and 18th century privateers were backed by financiers, much like modern multi-national PLCs. The way that privateering was operating back in the golden age of buccaneering, is that a group of individuals come together, and agree to kit out a ship to sail the seven seas to see if they can pull in some gold. It was a global gamble for enormous rewards. These predatory voyages are the roots of modern venture capitalism, with these modern multi-national corporations out to get all they can get. That’s the sort privateering that led to the Credit Crunch.”
Dr Hayes argues that this raises troubling questions about whether rights in modern democratic states can truly be said to be human rights, as opposed to the rights held only by a select few corporations.
Dr Hayes says: “Pirates had a democratic structure, and relative equality, but they were doing all of this to violate the rights of other people. The idea of a social contract is that it protects human rights. But what if you create a social contact to say that we’ll observe rights towards each other, but we won’t observe rights for outsiders?”
A 19-year-old teen formerly known as Jennifer Thornburg has legally changed her name to Cutout Dissection.com to protest animal dissection assignments in school:
Cutout, now a vegan, said that after she finished the assignment the images of bone and skin stuck with her. "I remembered what I saw during the dissection and I thought, 'this is wrong.' "
Those images are what compelled her to stand up for a change -- a name change. Jennifer Thornburg is now Cutout Dissection.com, as even her driver's license notes. [...]
No matter her steadfastness in sticking to principles, this newsmaker raises the question: What do Mom and Dad think?
Cutout said that her father's initial reaction was shock, but he recently said how proud he was of her for standing up for what she believes in.
Link | Story at PETA | Oh, and yes, CutoutDissection.com
Previously on Neatorama: Man Changes Name to KentuckyFriedCruelty.com
Brian Hubbard, a 72-year-old man from Herefordshire, England, got into trouble with his city's council because ... his garden is too tidy!
A dedicated gardener has been banned from trimming the grass outside his house - because it is TOO tidy.
Brian Hubbard, 72, has been mowing, weeding and edging the verge outside his home for the past eight years.
But now Herefordshire Council have ordered him to stop because he is encroaching on council-owned grass. The letter ordered the removal of garden tools and furnishings, path and bed covering material, and all vegetation not in keeping with the surrounding area. It warned if there was still a problem after that period, works would be carried out and re-charged to him.
Mr Hubbard branded the council's warning as absurd. 'The council said it sent me this letter after noticing that my grass verge was tidier than the other ones on the street' he said.
Photo: Caters News Agency Ltd
Maryland sex offenders got something in the mail this week: a scarlet letter in the form of a bright orange pumpkin:
That is the symbol on a sign they are required to post on their doors with a warning, in capital letters, to trick-or-treaters: "No candy at this residence." [...]
In addition to posting the sign, the offenders must stay at home, turn off outside lights and not answer the door, according to the letter obtained by The Washington Times.
"Because Halloween is a holiday in which large numbers of children interact with strangers, the concern among parents and other community members about sexual offenders in their neighborhoods is naturally intensified during this time of year," Patrick McGee, interim director of the state's Division of Parole and Probation, wrote in the Oct. 1 letter.
Photo: SWNS
A £3000 "graffiti wall" installed in Cornwall, England, so youths could practice their graffiti art without vandalizing the neighborhood, got its first graffiti: a disgruntled taxpayer who sneaked behind a security fence to vandalize the wall (wait, can you technically vandalize a graffiti wall?), writing "I paid my tax and all I got was this lousy wall!!"
If that's not ironic, I don't know what is: Link
A promising study has shown that electromagnetic stimulation of the brain could "wake up" a person from coma:
JOSH VILLA was 26 and driving home after a drink with a friend on 28 August 2005 when his car mounted the kerb and flipped over. Villa was thrown through the windscreen, suffered massive head injuries and fell into a coma. Almost a year later, there was little sign of improvement. [...]
Usually there is little more that can be done for people in this condition. Villa was to be sent home to Rockford, Illinois, where his mother, Laurie McAndrews, had volunteered to care for him.
But Pape had a different suggestion. She enrolled him in a six-week study in which an electromagnetic coil was held over the front of his head to stimulate the underlying brain tissue. Such transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) has been investigated as a way of treating migraine, stroke, Parkinson's disease and depression, with some promising results, but this is the first time it has been used as a potential therapy for someone in a coma-like state.
The rapidly changing magnetic fields that the coil creates can be used either to excite or inhibit brain cells - making it easier or harder for them to communicate with one another. In Villa's case, the coil was used to excite brain cells in the right prefrontal dorsolateral cortex. This area has strong connections to the brainstem, which sends out pulses to the rest of the brain that tell it to pay attention. "It's like an 'OK, I'm awake' pulse," says Pape.
At first, there was little change in Villa's condition, but after around 15 sessions something happened. "You started talking to him and he would turn his head and look at you," says McAndrews. "That was huge."
The economy may be tanking and you may have lost your shirt in the stock market ... but you don't have to wear the "bankruptcy barrel" (ah, the dependable cartoon trope - interestingly, the practice seemed to have started in old England where drunks were forced to wear a booze barrel AKA "drunkard's cloak".)
We have several new economy-themed T-shirts for you, all priced starting at the non-bank-busting $9.95 (+s/h).
The $700 Billion T-Shirt - $9.95 (with the added benefit of really showing how many zeros there are in 700 billion bucks)
The Sinking US Economy - $9.95 | I Call This "The Dow" - $9.95 | Got 401(k)? - $9.95 |
And of course, this one we've seen before on Neatorama (but it's so apropos to the current crazy swings of the stock market that we just have to feature it again):
Stock Market, The Ride - $9.95
For his 4-year-old son's birthday, Geoff M. of tag-a-lishus decided that he'd make an almost-life-size Yoda cake to go along with the Star Wars-themed party.
Here's the build gallery: Link - via cinematical
(Just be thankful that the birthday boy didn't ask for a life-size hulk cake!)
