W00t! Thanks to Neatorama reader Mel Phistopheles of Black is the New Black blog who sent us a photo of himself wearing the Neatoramabot T-Shirt. It looks great, Mel!
If you get your own T-shirt from our new online store, you'll be my favorite person EVAR! :)
Ah, Internet Cafes ... it used to be just a place where you can browse the Internet and grab a cup of coffee, but competition being what it is, some Internet cafes are offering something a little more than a cup of joe:
... Hungry? How about some taco?
In Puerto Morelos, Quintana Roo, Mexico. Photo: dro!d
No? How about some Rice and Pea?
In West Yorkshire and Leeds, UK. Photo: St Stev
... Or better yet, donuts!
In Palo Alto, California. Photo: netzkobold
... For those who are pressed for time: browse the Internet and do laundry at the same time!
In the Philippines. Photo: nicknich4
See many more weird Internet cafes from around the world:
Ever smelled a new shower curtain? According to the Center for Health, Environment and Justice, a Virginia-based advocacy group, that smell is toxic:
Vinyl shower curtains release over 100 toxic chemicals into the air in people's bathrooms, including known carcinogens and reproductive toxins, according to a new report calling for the ban of Polyvinyl chloride in bath curtains and liners.
The laboratory tests of five new PVC shower curtains, released Thursday, found 108 different volatile organic compounds were released
into the air over a 28-day period, including off-gassing above the recommended level in the United States for seven days.These compounds can cause respiratory irritation, headaches, nausea and damage to the liver, kidney and the central nervous system. Some VOCs are also suspected or known to cause cancer in humans.
http://www.canada.com/topics/bodyandhealth/story.html?id=91e2a62a-fa6a-4f1a-85bb-f6d58357d713
Philadelphia has a clever new program to try to get drivers to slow down: optical illusion speed bumps!
The city is putting out high-tech plastic devices that create a 3-D image that looks like a bump in the road. Chief traffic engineer Charles Denny says in reality, the road is perfectly flat.
Denny says the goal is simple: to change the driver's mind-set to be less aggressive.
The devices will be deployed at about 100 intersections around Philadelphia. They'll give the illusion that something is sticking up out of the pavement so motorists will slow down.
I <3 Firefox (Neatorama just downloads and displays faster on Firefox than any other browser) - so it's my pleasure to try and help spread the word about Firefox 3's Download Day 2008.
In one sentence: on June 17, 2008, Firefox wants to set a new Guinness World Record for Most Software Downloaded in 24 hours.
You can help (and help yourself to the neatest browser ever!): Link
Muschi the cat and Meuschen the bear are so close that zookeepers in Berlin had to reunite them after they were separated:
The pair were split up last October when the bear was locked in a cage while her living space was enlarged.
The distraught cat soon caught the attention of zoo keepers after she remained sitting outside the bear's cage pining for her friend.
This week, keepers took the unusual step of allowing the feline into the cage with her shaggy-haired pal. 'They greeted each other and had a cuddle and now they're happy,' said Heiner Kloes, a member of the zoo's management board.
In other strange animal pairing news, a pet cat in China has adopted a rat which she nurses alongside her four kittens!
Sun, 81, says that a neighbour came to see the kittens on the day they were born and was amazed to see a rat suckling alongside them. "At the beginning, I thought I must have seen wrong. So I took a flashlight and had a clear look," said the neighbour.
The rat not only drinks cat's milk, but also plays with its kitten 'brothers and sisters', according to the Qilu Evening Post. The cat reportedly treats the rat exactly the same as her natural kittens and it has become part of her family.
Men, do you have trouble sticking to diets and budgets? Belgian researcher Bram Van Den Bergh may have identified the culprit: The Bikini Effect.
In the study, detailed in the Journal of Consumer Research, men alternately fondled t-shirts and bras (which were not being worn during the test). After touching the bras, men valued the future less and the present more, said lead researcher Bram Van Den Bergh of Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium. Viewing ads with women in bikinis had the same effect. [...]
Evolutionarily speaking, Briers hypothesized, unfulfilled sexual arousal could trigger a subconscious belief that one's reproductive status is at stake. Rendered fearful, men reach out for other "resources" — a quick payoff, fast food — to better their chances for survival. In modern, more splurge-friendly times, this may be a maladaptive tendency.
The bikini effect does vary in strength from person to person, Van Den Bergh said. While most men are vulnerable to subtle types of stimuli — like sexy ads and touching lingerie — others may need to see a woman nude before feeling impulsive. No matter, Van Den Bergh warned, "being exposed to a sexy girl may influence what stock you invest in or what candy bar you buy."
Something strange is happening in the skies over a small Texas town - and with so many people as witnesses, it's hard to dismiss it as simply a hoax: Stephenville, Texas, may have just seen UFOs!
They first saw a set of brilliant white lights heading from the east that looked like they were at the corners of something a mile long and a half-mile wide. The lights were quicker and quieter than anything Allen had ever seen.
"They came within a mile of us," said Allen, the owner of L&S Enterprises and Texas Freight, a local trucking company. "It flipped us all out."
The lights headed toward Stephenville, where they came to a stop. They reconfigured to form an arch "shaped like the top of a football," Allen said, and realigned into two vertical lines of randomly flashing lights. Then the object burst into a dirty white flame.
"It looked like something firing up, like a blowtorch," Allen said. "It simply vanished."
Ten minutes later, the group saw the lights coming from the opposite direction. Trailing them closely, Allen was certain, were two military jets, followed by two massive red orbs.
Soon after, the sleepy town found that it's the new darling of the media. Scores of reporters descended to interview people, ... and what followed may be weirder than the actual sightings:
A Japanese film crew showed up and theorized that the UFO was related to the local dairy farms, Allen said. Aliens like milk, they told him.
The town was swept into a UFO maelstrom. People sported aluminum foil alien hats at Stephenville High School basketball games. Men with belt buckles big as fists were wearing "Alien Capital of the World" T-shirts rushed into production by a local company.
The high school science club decided to capitalize on the events by selling its own T-shirts that said: "Erath County -- the New Roswell," referring to the UFO mecca in New Mexico. The shirts carried a picture of a cow being beamed up to a spaceship with the caption: "They came for the milk."
Milk: it does (an alien) body good! Denise Gellene of the Los Angeles Times has the story: Link
(Photo: Courtney Perry / LA Times)
Early last week, a pod of 26 dolphins beached themselves in Cornwall, England ... and experts are suggesting that they've committed "mass suicide":
The dolphins that died after beaching in Cornwall had ingested debris and mud, leading one of the scientists who examined them to compare
their deaths to "mass suicide".Vic Simpson, a pathologist who examined some of the 26 dead mammals, said today: "On the face of it, it looks like some sort of mass suicide - but the question is why? The dolphins had swallowed and inhaled big chunks of mud from the estuary. Their lungs and stomachs were full of it. That is very bizarre indeed."
Theories range from the dolphins being frightened by a killer whale to sonar use by the Navy: Guardian Article (Photo: Barry Batchelor/PA Wire), Telegraph article (dolphins "were scared ashore")
Mass beaching of dolphins aren't new: last year, 152 dolphins washed up in Iran - there, the authorities blamed the deaths on fishing practice.
Rapper Tupac Shakur sure stays busy even after his death. Besides releasing six posthumous albums (with 8 top 10 billboard singles), apparently the prolific rap star also managed to open this eatery, spotted by Neatorama reader Wenny in an Indonesian mall's food court! (Kaki kambing, by the way, means "goat's foot," a local delicacy) - Thanks Wenny!
Meet the Damascene goat named Qahr, the winner of the "Most Beautiful Goat" award at the Mazayen al-Maaz competition in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
And yes, it does look a little like Popeye! Link - via A Welsh View
(Photo: Fahad Shadeed/Reuters)
Previously on Neatorama: The Fainting Goats
The Aphrodite Drawers by Tadao Hoshino look like a chest of drawers that is about to topple over ... but the piece actually has a bit of clever engineering in it:
The Aphrodite is a highly original piece with cantilevered drawers, giving the illusion of instability. The name of this piece is inspired by the numerous possibilities for creating a variety of effects when drawers are opened in different ways.
Remember the crazy story about the Austrian man who kept his daughter locked in an underground dungeon?
Here's something alarmingly similar: a woman was locked in a filthy bedroom by her family and forced to live in squalor for 18 years after having a baby out of wedlock!
Police said that Maria, whom they say was suffering from psychological problems, was kept a prisoner shortly after falling pregnant with her child - now a 17-year-old student.
Her mother Anna Rosa Golino, 80, brother Prisco, 44, a farmer and sister Michelina, 54, a primary school teacher took action after she had an affair with a mystery man and got pregnant.
Captain Carmine Rosciano, of Santa Maria Capua Vetere police, said: 'We received an anonymous tip-off that a woman was being held and we raided the family home in rural land on the outskirts of the town.
'Maria was found in her locked bedroom in a confused state and surrounded with filth and excrement - she was living in squalor.'
It's not easy being a billionaire, as Facebook founder and the world's youngest self-made billionaire Mark Zuckerberg found out: he and his girlfriend Priscilla Chan are holding a "series of negotiations" to hammer out their "dating terms of engagement"!
According to Ms. Lacy, the final contract included how often Ms. Chan would get to see Mr. Zuckerberg. It states:
“One date per week, a minimum of a hundred minutes of alone time, not in his apartment and definitely not at Facebook.”
Robert Frank of the Wealth Report has a few more suggestions: Link
