Cops in Berlin are looking for a speeder, who was caught on videotape blazing down a steep stretch of a highway at 62 MPH (~100 km per hour), way above the speed limit ... on a skateboard!

A video of the skateboarder, broadcast on German television networks on Wednesday, showed a helmeted figure wearing a red and white protective suit building up speed by holding onto the back of a motorcycle before letting go and freewheeling.

"We put out an all-points bulletin and have received information that gives us useful clues to who the man may be," Stoeckle said. "We are particularly concerned about copycats who may imitate the stunt, putting their lives at risk."

Link - Thanks Brian!

Here's the obligatory YouTube clip:

In the 1800's and early 1900's, the practice of "calling" upon or visiting relatives and friends was a refined affair: people used calling cards as as a mean of introducing themselves, as notes of thanks, or even as a polite brush off!

Calling card, which has since fallen out of favor, is making a big comeback. In their timely article, Brett and Kate McKay of The Art of Manliness explain the ins-and-outs of calling cards.

Here's an interesting fact about calling cards I've just learned:

Generally upon a gentleman’s initial visit to a home, he would simply leave a card and then depart. If the new acquaintance wished to formally visit with him, he or she would send a card in return. If no card was sent, or the return card was sent in an envelope, this signaled that the new acquaintance did not wish for a personal visit to occur. This signal (the card in an envelope) could indeed be sent after any visit in which the visited party no longer wished to be called upon by this particular person. It was basically the well-mannered brush off.

Link - Thanks Muhammad!

Previously on Neatorama: Here's My Calling-Emailing-AIMing-Twittering Card

Here's a fun and geeky way to protect your portable computer: a "My Document" laptop sleeve!

The "My Documents" folder on your laptop's file system is the location where most of your files live. The whole "folder" metaphor was first developed by Xerox Parc for its ground-breaking Star desktop system. Those folders were designed to mimic the real-life paper-and-manilla-folders offices use to file paperwork. Now, that metaphor is carried on by all graphical user-interfaces. No matter what operating-system you've got on your laptop, you've probably got something like a "My Documents" folder.

So, we figured, why not extend that already abused metaphor by storing the device that stores your "My Documents" folder in a "My Documents" folder of its own? Behold - this neoprene laptop sleeve is big enough to snugly house your laptop, up to 15.4 inches, inside. The inner fleece lining keeps everything shiny and scratch-free. Plus, we've included the pixilated cursor-pin to ram that concept home.

ThinkGeek has it: Link - via GeekAlerts

It's actually an ad for the Belgian State Bond (huh? Really - with a gallery and video clip no less!). The costume is made by Gareth of Alien Costume - via Super Punch

Can't sleep? Here's an article from Health.com that explains everything you'd want to know about the 11 types of insomnia (Yes, there are 11! If one didn't get you, the others will.)

One of the weirdest is paradoxical insomnia, where people complain of sleeplessness, but actually slept through the night:

Paradoxical insomnia is a complaint of severe insomnia. It occurs without objective evidence of any sleep disturbance. Daytime effects vary in severity, but they tend to be far less severe than one would expect given the expressed sleep complaints.

People with this disorder often report little or no sleep for one or more nights. They also describe having an intense awareness of the external environment or internal processes consistent with being awake. This awareness suggests a state of hyperarousal. A key feature is an overestimation of the time it takes them to fall asleep. They also underestimate their total sleep time.

Another feature is that the degree of sleep deprivation reported seems improbable. Their level of daytime functioning is likely to be only moderately impaired. Objective findings of fairly normal sleep duration and quality tend to result from an overnight sleep study. These findings are much different from their perception of poor quality sleep.

Link - via One Large Prawn

What do you get when you mash up Star Wars with Pink Floyd? Here's a neat wallpaper, titled "I'll Never Join the Dark Side of the Moon" by James Lillis.

Link: Wallpaper size (1600x1200, png format, 74KB) | More of James' designs at RedBubble - Thanks James!

Thes bears aren't early for St. Patrick's Day - it got its fur stained by algae:

Three normally white polar bears at Higashiyama Zoo and Botanical Gardens in central Japan changed their color in July after swimming in a pond with an overgrowth of algae.

High temperatures in July and August and less-frequent water changes because of the zoo's conservation efforts caused an algae growth in the bear pond and safety moat, Kurobe said.

Algae that enters hollow spaces in the bears' fur is hard to rinse off, he said.

The bears are expected to return to their natural color when the algae growth subsides in November, Kurobe said.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D931R8PO0&show_article=1 - Thanks Zacharaius!

(Photo: Shuzo Shikano / Kyodo News)

Think that you can only get great gas mileage if you buy a hybrid car? Here's Jay Leno talking about the 1959 Fiat Millecento, who got a whopping 40 MPG - the same as a Prius!

This car was bought by a gentleman in Pennsylvania in 1959. In 1962 for whatever reason he put it in his living room - single guy you think? And it stayed there until he died. Sat in his living room for 48 years ...

Link [video clip] | A list of gas-sipper classics at Cars that Matter - Thanks Renderanything!

Seventeen-year-old Orangeville, Ontario, Canada high school senior Sean Waring is fearful for his safety. So much so that he has taken different routes home every day so his followers won't know where he lives.

Why? He said he's singled out because of the eye make-up he wears:

“I’m not going to stop because of this; it’s just something that’s not going to happen,” Waring says of wearing eye make-up, which he acknowledges is “kind of unusual.”
“I would say there’s only two guys in town that actually wear make-up.”

The high school senior has been expressing himself through eye make-up for about nine months now. He says he was inspired to don a design on his face by the Jrock music movement in Japan, which he describes as a combination of emo and metal.
“It’s all about emotions and what’s going on ... but they express it through a visual way,” he says.

“Commonly, when I go to school and stuff, everyone listens to the same kind of thing — Metallica and all that. I’m just not into that whole hatred kind of thing. When you listen to Jrock ... it’s more exploiting the good side of someone.”

Dirty looks, snide comments and threats are commonplace for Waring, who notes they come from a range of age groups. He says he’s even been told by a local business to either wash his face or get out. Of course, he left.

Link - Thanks Edi!

Photo: matteo86photonature [Flickr]

Birds do it, bees do it, and the blue-tailed damselflies do it with the nimbleness of acrobats! Scienceray blog has an interesting gallery of mating insects:

The incredibly elegant creature pictured above is the Ischnura elegans or the Blue-Tailed Damselfly and is found over much of the European continent. As its English name suggests, it has a large amount of blue coloring. Its eighth segment, however, is entirely blue and it is this which gives this insect its stunning look. The female has diversified in color and can come in pale green, violet and pink.

Link - Thanks Taliesyn Jones and Jon Jason!

See also Neatorama's 30 Strangest Animal Mating Habits

Marco Altini makes Cubeecraft (or also lovingly called "cubees") papercraft based on TV series characters. He has characters from 24, Alias, Dexter, Heroes, and many more TV series for you to download, print, cut, and fold for free.

http://www.tvseriescubees.com/index.htm - Thanks Marco!

The International Society of Supervillains blog has the list of the 11 lamest supervillains in comic book history. For example, here's Asbestos Man:

History:
Chemist Orson Kasloff became a criminal after years of being a respected scientist failed to pay off the way he expected. He envied his fellow scientists, who he often saw riding around in Maseratis and banging supermodels, like, every night, because that's obviously what scientists do all the time. He didn't get much respect as a criminal, though, and decided the best way to quickly gain a rep would be to defeat the Human Torch. So he challenged him to a fight in a letter and created an asbestos costume.

M.O.
The Asbestos Man created a flame-retardant asbestos suit to fight the Torch and used a fancy net to rope him in. The Torch rendered him instantly useless when he broke his net. Then he laughed at him for wearing a suit that would cause him to inhale particles of a known carcinogen. That's just stupid, kids!

Lame? With asbestos litigation costing over $250 billion in the US alone, I think Asbestos Man is the scariest supervillain ever: http://www.the-iss.com/2007/07/the_11_lamest_supervillains_in.php - Thanks EEM!

A big congrats to Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers book. It has won the Diagram prize for oddest book title of the past 30 years:

In The Bookseller's online poll to find the "Diagram of Diagrams", Derek Willan's comprehensive record of a sector of Greece's postal routes gained 13% of the public vote. Gary Leon Hill's People Who Don't Know They're Dead finished second (11% of the public vote) and John Trimmer's guide to avoiding maritime mishaps, How to Avoid Huge Ships (10%) finished third.

http://www.thebookseller.com/news/66454-diagram-victory-for-greek-postmen.html - Thanks Martin Jordan!

A complete list of the books that have won the Bookseller/Diagram Prize for Oddest Title of the Year: Link [wikipedia] (My favorite is The Joy of Chickens).

Are men today losing their DIY skills? Glenn Harlan Reynolds wrote a really interesting piece for Popular Mechanics on how Americans are losing their ability to deal with every day real-world problems:

Even the simplest of automotive tasks, changing a tire, seems to be beyond the ken of many people. According to AAA, nearly 4 million motorists requested roadside assistance last year—for flat tires.

And just look at the Popular Mechanics Boy Mechanic books to see the kinds of skills that boys and teenagers were once routinely expected to possess. These books (which PM published in the early 20th century and recently reissued) assumed that young readers would be prepared to construct a fully rigged ice boat, a toy steam engine, or—I’m not kidding—a homebuilt “Bearcat” roadster powered by a motorcycle engine.

It’s hard to imagine too many teenagers tackling projects of that magnitude these days. To be fair, young people today are likely to have skills that earlier generations never dreamed of—building Web sites, say, or editing digital movies. But manipulating pixels and working with physical materials aren’t quite the same thing.

Does this matter? And if people are becoming less mechanically handy, is that so bad?

http://www.popularmechanics.com/home_journal/how_to/4221637.html?page=1

(Illustration: Paul Blow)

In 1998, the UK government introduced a law designed to deter harassment called the Anti Social Behaviour Order or ASBO. The law has been controversial - some hailed it as a great way to deal with wayward punks whereas in other instances, something like this happens:

Daniel Cope, 13, was devastated when eight-year-old Milly disappeared from the family home.

He spent hours hunting for the pet with his parents before printing off 100 posters with tortoiseshell Milly's picture and putting them up on lamp-posts near the family home in Whitstable, Kent.

Just three days later, Daniel's mother Heather, 43, received a phone call from a community warden telling her they had to come down. [...] 'She said it came under an anti-social behaviour act and we could face an £80 penalty. I just burst into tears when she told me, I couldn't believe it.'

Link - via Arbroath