A really big congratulations to Miss Cellania, who just bought a house! US housing crisis be damned - that's a really sweet dig, Miss C!
Also, Miss C is celebrating her 3rd Blogiversary. Go and say hello! Link
Alex Santoso's Blog Posts
Psst! Got an overdue library book? Didn't think that they could do anything about it? Well, think again - Heidi Dalibor of Grafton, Wisconsin, just got arrested for failing to return books she checked out from a library:
Heidi Dalibor was arrested after she failed to return the books, "Angels and Demons" and "White Oleander", last year.
“I said, what could they possibly do? They can’t arrest me for this… I was wrong,” Dalibor said.
Dalibor did not respond to four notices from the library, two phone calls and two letters. The library forwarded the case to police, who issued a citation for Dalibor's failure to return the materials or pay the fine. The citation included a court date, which Dalibor admits she ignored.
With arrest warrant in hand, police showed up at Dalibor’s door and led her away in handcuffs.
And find out why she's still not returning the books: Link - Thanks Tiffany!
What do you get when you combine Yoda and a cat? Apparently, this strange four-eared kitty: Link - Thanks Denita!
Neatorama reader kinomozg sent us this excellent mashup of Home Alone with Will Smith's I Am Legend. The two movies surprisingly fit together well! Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - Thanks kinomozg!
Jake Parker of Agent44 Blog didn't just wonder about what Lightning McQueen, the hero of the 2006 movie Cars by Disney and Pixar would looke like on a dissection table ... he actually drew one out!
http://agent44.com/blog2/?p=46 - thanks kinomozg!
Previously on Neatorama: Hyungkoo Lee's Cartoon Skeleton | Skeletal Systems of Cartoon Characters
My old college roommate had a firm belief that if you wait long enough, science will solve all your problems for you. And he may be right: scientists have discovered factors that may help your body turn fat straight into muscles!
Although we all wish we had a little less of it, fat is essential for managing our energy balance and helping to regulate body temperature.
But there are two distinct types of fat tissue: white 'bad' fat acts as an energy store whereas brown 'good' fat, which largely disappears by adulthood, also helps in burning calories to generate body heat, which is crucial to keep babies warm.
Now one team has shown how to promote the manufacture of "good" brown fat, so we can burn more calories, while a second team, also working nearby on the US east coast in Boston, has shown how brown fat and muscle are linked, suggesting ways to interconvert the two. Both offer a new strategy to fight flab.
What are you doing for your next vacation? If you're loaded, may I suggest the $1 million vacation travel package (and that you take a great traveling companion with you. Who? Oh, say, someone like me!):
Here's some of what you get with the Emirates Palace Abu Dhabi's Million Dollar Package:
• Chauffeur driven Maybach at your disposal daily during your stay in Abu Dhabi
• Daily spa treatment in the Anantara Spa
• Day trip in private jet to Iran to create your own Persian carpet from the most exclusive and well-renowned hand-maker
• Day trip in private jet to the Dead Sea Jordan to experience the famous sea and an afternoon Anantara spa treatment in the Kempinski Hotel Ishtar
• Day trip to Bahrain in private jet for a pearl deep sea experience. Your pearl will then be hand designed with jewellery settings
More on Wall Street Journal's The Wealth Report
Like many 16-year old teenagers, Blake Peebles dreams of being a professional video game player. That's not unusual. What's different here is that Blake's parents actually let him quit school (he's still homeschooled) to focus on a career as a pro gamer.
Matt Ehlers of The News & Observer has the story:
Inside his upstairs bedroom, Blake's environment is set up specifically to make him a better gamer. There is a PlayStation 2, a Nintendo Wii and an Xbox 360. He also has a stack of plastic guitars, but no real ones. Blake doesn't play an actual guitar, a skill that doesn't really transfer to playing the virtual kind, anyway.
The frame for his bed is on the back porch, with the box springs and mattress on the bedroom floor. That puts his bed at a more comfortable level for sitting to play "Guitar Hero III" for extended periods. At the moment, he plays just a few hours a day, but that number will increase as the California competition nears.
Blake seems happy with his home school arrangement, as you would expect from a teenager who is allowed to stay up into the wee hours to play video games. Sometimes, when Mike heads to the gym before 5 a.m., his son is still playing video games. Blake calls it working "the late shift."
He didn't enjoy school, he says, and especially didn't like the rules associated with attending the Christian academy. Shaggy hair is more his style.
He's good at video games. "I wasn't really good at anything else that I liked."
http://www.newsobserver.com/print/sunday/sunday_journal/story/1155589.html - via Wired's Geekdad, Thanks Marilyn!
(Photo: Corey Lowenstein)
For those who wanted to get that rugged house painter kind of look but don't want to be bothered with actually painting anything, here are the perfect jeans for you: Behold the Painted Selvedge Jean by J.Crew!
Otto of Ottodestruct blog said it best:
That’s right kiddies, JCrew sells pre-paint stained jeans. For those people too lazy to paint a house, now you can look like you’ve actually been working too, but without all that pain in the ass “labor”.
I understood the patched jeans fad. The scuffed torn thing, I got. The wrong size thing was weird to me, and god help me I even understand stone-washed. But this is simply too far out there for me. Not because of the look, although they look terrible, but because of the price.
Those jeans cost $285.
That’s right. Take one $60-$80 pair of jeans, add $1 worth of white paint, and charge $285 for it.
And there was my wife, badgering me to get rid of my paint-splattered pants. Don't you see I'm hip now, honey? Link
A high-rise condo project in Los Angeles has a unique marketing pitch to attract wealthy (and presumably famous) buyers: a paparazzi-free home!
The Carlyle Residences, a 24-story tower under construction on Wilshire Boulevard, bills itself as the first building specifically designed to thwart prying lenses.
Promotional materials for the property, which is set to open next year, promise round-the-clock patrols by "Israeli-trained VIP" security guards, private elevators that open directly into apartments, and high hedges that shield the swimming pool and yoga lawn from shutterbugs. Even the shape of the tower, a crescent, is advertised as an anti-paparazzi device. According to the developer, it minimizes views into the Carlyle from neighboring buildings.
Paparazzis, on the other hand, don't seem to be too deterred:
Among those who make their living by chasing the rich and famous, news of the building's paparazzi-free design brought either laughter or eye-rolling.
"A waste of advertising," said Giles Harrison, a paparazzo who has worked in Los Angeles for 14 years. "Paparazzi don't go into buildings to get shots. They wait until people go out and about. I have yet to see a paparazzi shot that came from the inside of a private residence."
Christian Zimmerman, a tabloid photographer for five years, said colleagues would simply park on the street and wait until celebrities left the building.
"Then they will follow their cars and it will be like any other day in the field," he said.
Harriet Ryan and Joanna Lin of the Los Angeles Times have the story: Link | The Carlyle Residences official website [warning: Flash with auto-starting music] - Thanks Tiffany!
(Photo: Elad Properties West)
Photo: Nicky.lew [Flickr]
Environmental Graffiti blog has a really nice round up of some of the world's most colorful lakes - turquoise and blue lakes, green and yellow lakes, purple and red lakes and so on.
This one above is the Red Lake, a large salt lake in Uyuni, Bolivia (the red color is caused by microscopic organisms living in the water).
Link - Thanks Linda!
Remember the kaleidoscope that you used to play with as a kid? Well, Douglas P. Hill's blog Patterns of Reflection is kind of like a kaleidoscope ... only in a web form.
Douglas is also offering some awesome (and free!) tiling patterns you can use for your arts and craft project: Link
Meet Brenden Adams, a 12-year-old boy who already is 7 feet tall (2.1 m) and couldn't stop growing:
And though friends say Brenden is just a regular kid, he's obviously not like anybody else. He has to duck through most doorways and sit sideways at his school desk because his knees don't fit under it.
In his mom's sport utility vehicle, he has to fold down the second row of seats, sit in the third row and stretch his legs out over the middle row in order to sit comfortably. His shoe size? 18 and still growing.
The cause? Doctors think that it's a chromosomal abnormality:
For years, doctors continued to search for the source and an answer to Brenden's unstoppable growth. He went through multiple tests and X-rays as medical experts tried to determine what was going on inside Brenden's body.
Then, finally, a breakthrough -- when Brenden was eight years old and already the size of an adult.
"I have to say that the hematologists and oncologists here actually helped us figure it out," admits Parisi. "He has a very unusual rearrangement of his genetic material. It's what's called an inversion of chromosome-12 and it affects every single cell in his body."
Angel Pantoja Medina has an unusual last wish. The 24-year-old Puerto Rican man wanted to remain standing, even in death:
A funeral home used a special embalming treatment to keep the corpse of 24-year-old Angel Pantoja Medina standing upright for his three-day wake.
Dressed in a Yankees baseball cap and sunglasses, Pantoja was mourned by relatives while propped upright in his mother's living room.
His brother Carlos told the El Nuevo Dia newspaper the victim had long said he wanted to be upright for his own wake: "He wanted to be happy, standing."
(Photo: Juan Alicea Marcado / El Nuevo Dia)
Scientists at Brock University, Ontario, Canada, has discovered a link between aggression and men's facial structure: men with round faces tend to be more aggressive!
The male sex hormone testosterone makes faces more circular and now scientists have studied whether this characteristic is also linked to behaviour.
A Canadian team studied 90 ice hockey players and found the rounder the face, the more aggressive the players.
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