Dan Dan the giant panda gave birth to a teeny tiny hairless cub at the Oji Zoo in Kobe, Japan. The birth was captured on camera. The BBC has the clip: Link - Thanks Amanda!
Sadly, the cub died 3 days afterwards either from "excessively strong hugging from its mother or enfeeblement from not drinking milk."
Photo: coroflot
Artist and furniture maker Sara Huston created this table with an indented space for magazines for those who to display reading materials on their coffee table but keep it neat at the same time. I suppose she takes the "everything has its place" mantra seriously! Link - via Rodrigo Barba
There's a crisis of sort in Australia: because of a "man drought," today's Australian women are hard pressed to find mates.
Where have all the men gone? Turns out they're hiding in the boonies:
There's a "man drought" on the Australian coast, and a "man dam" in the country’s remote bush. Though the nation was flush with men some 30 years ago, due to immigration policies that favored males, today's Australian women have it harder than their baby boomer sisters did 30 years ago.
Demographer Bernard Salt's book "Man Drought," which was released this week, reveals that love is really where you look for it in Australia, and that it pays to go the distance. [...]
At the age of 25, women have the best odds of finding a partner as there are 23 percent more single men than women. But the odds shorten after 30, and by 34 there are more single women than unattached men.
By age 40, single women outnumber single men by 9 percent and that divide lifts to 17 percent by age 50. At 80, it's a dramatic 66 percent, Salt said.
Salt's solution: move to a place like Nar Nar Goon town in Victoria state, where its population of 600 has 12 single men in their 30s and one single woman. “It's a man dam there. A reservoir of men,” he said. “You find this right across Australia, little reservoirs of untapped men.”
Link - Thanks McKenzie Kerman!
In a twist of irony, the mayor of the remote Australian mining town of Mount Isa, implored "ugly duckling" women to come out to reverse the shortage of eligible women there: Link
Every parent wants their children to be smart, but how exactly should one raise a smart kid?
Carol S. Dweck wrote an interesting (though a little long) article for the Scientific American on the secret of raising smart kids: don't tell them how smart they are! Effort, not intelligence or ability, is the key to success in school and life:
In studies involving several hundred fifth graders published in 1998, for example, Columbia psychologist Claudia M. Mueller and I gave children questions from a nonverbal IQ test. After the first 10 problems,
on which most children did fairly well, we praised them. We praised some of them for their intelligence: “Wow … that’s a really good score. You must be smart at this.” We commended others for their effort: “Wow … that’s a really good score. You must have worked really hard.”We found that intelligence praise encouraged a fixed mind-set more often than did pats on the back for effort. Those congratulated for their intelligence, for example, shied away from a challenging assignment—they wanted an easy one instead—far more often than the kids applauded for their effort. (Most of those lauded for their hard work wanted the difficult problem set from which they would learn.) When we gave everyone hard problems anyway, those praised for being smart became discouraged, doubting their ability. And their scores, even on an easier problem set we gave them afterward, declined as compared with their previous results on equivalent problems. In contrast, students praised for their effort did not lose confidence when faced with the harder questions, and their performance improved markedly on the easier problems that followed.
Link - via I Knew That
Photo: Emily Lang
Behold The Golden Mean, a "snail car" created by blacksmith John Sarriugarte and his wife Krysten Mate of Form & Reform shop from a 1966 Volkswagen Bug:
"I woke up and said, 'We have to build this giant snail,'" she said. "It totally wasn't planned. This whole project has been weird coincidences and math."
The visually stunning vehicle takes its name from the golden ratio, a mathematical proportion that's said to produce aesthetically pleasing art and architecture. The spiral in the snail's shell is shockingly close to the ratio. Other inspirations for the project include the giant pink snail from Doctor Dolittle, giant mechanical elephant puppets by Royal de Luxe and Jules Verne's imaginative creations.
Emily Lang of Wired has the neat story: http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008/08/math-strange-dr.html
The Zodiac Killer terrorized the San Francisco Bay Area in the 60's and 70's and was never caught. Some 5 decades later, his identity may be coming to light:
"The identity of the Zodiac Killer is Jack Tarrance. He's my stepfather," says Dennis Kaufman. [...]
Jack Tarrance died in 2006. Dennis claims that while going through Tarrance's belongings, there were disturbing findings including a knife still covered with what could possibly be dried blood. "It could be a knife he barbecued with or a knife he murdered someone with," says Kaufman.
Jack also left behind rolls of undeveloped film. Dennis plans to hand over the film to the FBI. On one of the rolls Dennis did develop, there were numerous gruesome images. "Appeared to be people who were murdered," explains Dennis.
Link - via digg
What do Christian Bale and Kermit the Frog have in common? Surprisingly, a lot more than you'd realize! Link - Thanks DB!
There are money sitting out on the streets for the takin'. Or so thought 34-year-old Maurice Mizrahi, a desperate drug addict who got money for his fix by stealing ... parking meter!
Mizrahi has been seen wandering Brooklyn streets, smacking meters to hear how much change they contained. When he found one full of quarters, he would knock off the head by grabbing it and spinning it away from its base. Then he'd run home for a shopping cart to carry it away.
It was the same crime that Paul Newman's character went to prison for in the 1967 film "Cool Hand Luke."
"We have to figure out how the hell he did it," a Department of Transportation source said. "This is crazy. He was doing some major work." A full meter can hold up to $70 in change, and they cost up to $700 to replace.
Kerry Burke, et al. of The Daily News has the story: Link
(Photo: Showalter / Daily News)
Yearbook Yourself is a pretty neat Flash website that lets you see what you'd look like if you were part of another year's class. Oh, say, what would you look like if you had Buddy Holly's do from the 1950s. Or, as a flower child of the 60s.
Anyways, see if you can guess who this celebrity is (scroll to the bottom of the post to find out).
Previously on Neatorama: 10 Neat Facts About ... Rick Astley!
Photo: A Little Lam [Flickr]
Neatorama reader Alex (great name!) sent us this photo of his "Bacon Burger" birthday cake, made by his wonderful sister. The bacon was made from fruit leather, the sesame seeds from Rice Krispies, the burger patty was oreo and chocolate cake and the bun was vanilla cake with caramel frosting.
Looks yummy and Happy Birthday! Link - Thanks Alex!
Hah! Our 8-month-old Ziggy looks just like Number 1. And yes, he did wake me up at 5:30 AM today ...
For more Bizarro, check out Dan Piraro's blog and website.
You all know what happen if you combine mentos and diet coke on Earth, but what happens if you do it in zero gravity?
Robert "Trebor the Mad Overlord" Woodhead did the experiment aboard the Space Adventure's G-Force One: Link - via MAKE, thanks Adam Fuhrer!
Ooh! That looks like fun! That's Jake Bronstein of Zoomdoggle playing around with the Laser Finger Beams. You can even make your own "light sculpture" photo by using the Shutter-lag setting on your camera: Link - Thanks Kristina Hoge!
Once you get the hold of that, try making this one: Lightmark
We've have many posts about treehouses before on Neatorama, but never one this cool. Here's an extraordinary treehouse in Udaipur, India, built by K.P. Singh. Allan Wu of Honda's Drive Every Drop interviews the man:
The house is supported by a mango tree, and was conceived by Mr. Singh on a bet that he could maintain property value of a certain terrain without the need for chopping its fruit trees.
Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] | Photo gallery - Thanks YO!
