Dave of Davario blog asked fellow bloggers to draw themselves as teenagers and post the drawings on their own blogs ... the result: 400 and counting people participated!
Check it out: Link - Thanks avital!
Alex Santoso's Blog Posts
Here's something unexpected about the rising price of gasoline: old mechanical pumps were designed during the time when $4 per gallon was simply unthinkable, so the rotary dials didn't have gears to go beyond $3.99 a gallon!
Like a lot of small-scale entrepreneurs, Cathy Osborne worries that she'll go out of business if fuel prices rise above $4 a gallon. Not because she won't be able to buy gas at that price, but because she won't be able to sell it.
The old mechanical gas pumps with scrolling dials at her country store in Fauquier County lack the gears to go beyond $3.99 a gallon. State inspectors shut down her diesel pump several months ago when the fuel topped the $4 mark, so now all that's left are two pumps dispensing 87-octane gasoline, set at $3.75 -- and climbing.
Link - Thanks Phoenix Kate!
Comedian Yakov Smirnoff painted the mural "America's Heart" on the World Trade Center's ground zero.
Smirnoff was an art teacher in Odessa before he came to the United States and became known as a comedian. After 9/11, Smirnoff painted "America's Heart," a pointillist-style artwork with one brush-stroke for each victims of the attack. A giant mural of his painting was displayed on a damaged skyscraper overlooking the World Trade Center ground zero. (Source)
Noah Brier's latest project, Brand Tags, shows you a logo and asks you to write the first thing that popped into your head. The result is a brand perception, displayed in the style of a "tag cloud" we often see in blogs.
Since Noah announced Brand Tag's release on Friday, he's gotten over 77,000 tags. Though the result may hurt some egos, undoubtedly they are of value of some people in charge of branding. Either that or it's just plain ol' entertaining!
Link - via J-Walk Blog
Dear graduating students, Our pal mental_floss has a neat post about the 7 Memorable Commencement Addresses, just in case yours isn't really up to par.
For example, here's Steve Job's address to Stanford University's class of 2005:
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something—your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life. ”
* * *
“Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.”
* * *
“Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”
First it was killer bees, then Argentine ants ... Now, welcome our electronic-eating ant overlords:
It sounds like the plot of a farfetched science fiction movie. Unfortunately for the residents of Texas, it is very much a reality: billions of tiny reddish-brown ants have arrived onshore from a cargo ship and are hell-bent on eating anything electronic.
Computers, burglar alarm systems, gas and electricity meters, iPods, telephone exchanges – all are considered food by the flea-sized ants, for reasons that have left scientists baffled. [...]
Crazy is the the right word. The ants are known as “crazy rasberry ants”: crazy because they seem to move in a random scrum as opposed to marching in regimented lines, and rasberry after a pioneering exterminator, Tom Rasberry, who first identified them as a problem.
The ants – also known as paratrenicha species near pubens – have so far spread to five counties in the Houston area. Scientists are not sure from where they originate but they seem to be related to a type of ant from the Caribbean. “At this point it would be nearly impossible to eradicate the ants because they are so widely dispersed,” said Roger Gold, a Texas A&M University entomologist. He added that the only upside to the invasion was that the crazy rasberry ants ate fire ants, which sting humans during the long, hot Texas summers.
More bad news:
Worse, the ants refuse to die when sprayed with over-the-counter poison. Even killing the queen of a colony doesn’t do any good, because each colony has multiple queens.
Here's the best invention since, well, sliced bread and peanut butter: Easy PB&J Jar by Sherwood Forlee:
Peanut Butter: it's the greatest invention ever. The only downside to it, though, is the jar that it comes in. How many times have reached the bottom of the jar only to be frustrated at not being able to get those last few bits? Well, too often for me.
The Easy PB&J Jar is a jar with two lids that allows you to access all of your peanut butter easily without having to resort to breaking open the jar. As you near the end on one side, simply flip the jar over to get the rest. The straight and smooth internal walls also ensure that no peanut butter is ever left behind a nook or cranny like existing jars.
http://www.skforlee.com/independent_work/easy_pb.html
Do you remember the ads featuring the Citroën C4 car as a dancing Transformer? Well, Chevy just made fun of it in their new ad for the Aveo: Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - via DropKick Monkey
Previously on Neatorama: Transformers Sculpture
Tired of paying through the nose at the gas pump? A company called E-Fuel Corporation is offering a backyard ethanol brewer that can produce up to 35 gallons of ethanol a week that you can pump directly into your car:
To make ethanol in the EFuel100, feedstock (consisting of sugar and yeast) or discarded liquor is loaded into the device's 200-gallon (757-liter) tank. Using the LCD screen located on the front of the device (next to the pump), the operator places the EFuel100 either in ferment (for feedstock) or distillation (for liquor) mode to begin the process. The EFuel100 is hooked up to a water source—much like one's washing machine or dishwasher is—and regulates the amount of water flowing into its tank to begin the ethanol-conversion process.
Once the feedstock is fermented, the device transfers the solution to its distillation system, where it is vaporized in a vertical column tube and sent through a membrane that separates the alcohol from the water. The distilled vapor is then cooled back into liquid form and sent to the 35-gallon storage tank, from which it can be pumped into an automobile using a 50-foot (15-meter) retractable hose. The process of turning sugar into ethanol fuel takes nearly a week (although alcohol distillation can be done in a matter of hours).
The company's goal is to keep the cost of ethanol to be less than $1 per gallon (which may be impossible to do), but first you have to ante up $10K to buy the device: Link
This is why you should always get the extra insurance when renting a car to go on an African safari:
"My sister and I drove in our Golf behind them. We saw a group of elephants and started taking photos when we saw the elephant head our way. "A game ranger shouted that I must turn the car off, which I did."
Mr Beltrame then thought that the elephant would walk past them. Instead, it seemingly decided to take a closer look at the occupants of the car. "We got very scared when he stood by us and put his foot on the hood of the car," Mr Beltrame added. "We waited about five or six minutes, sitting without moving, waiting, before the elephant continued walking. "It was an unbelievable experience."
Needless to say, the roof was dented a little bit. Okay, a lot. Subhajit Banerjee of Telegraph has the story: Link (Photo: Barcroft Media)
Brazilian newspaper Gazeta Mercantil's "Understand the real value of money" print ad uses shocking images of money to tout the newspaper's analysis of the financial market, as well as political and social events
influencing the world's economy.
Whether you agree with their political point of view, the artwork is quite interesting (the small pic above just didn't do it justice). And they're really not just singling out the Big Bad US - the print ads also skewer the Japanese Yen (bleeding eyes of Yukichi Fukuzawa? Whoa!) and the Euro.
Coloribus has much larger versions of the ads: http://www.coloribus.com/paedia/prints/2008/5/13/200603/show/ - via Reddit
The Sark National Football Team, nicknamed "The Bad Lions" is the "losingest" national soccer team in history.
The Sark national football team represented the island of Sark in the International Island Games Association (Island Games 2003). The team lost every match by 15 goals or more, scored no goal, and had a total of 70 goals scored against it in just 4 matches.
The team's coach Shane Moon summed up as such:
"It was a special occasion for our lads to enter the tournament. They will probably never do this again in their lifetimes." (Source)
Non-holiday masks, are okay! Found at Russell [Flickr]
"Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody thinks of complaining."
- Jef Raskin, computer scientist (started the Macintosh project for Apple)
Ooh, this is an excellent viral video clip ad by Samsung: 10 optical illusions in 2 minutes. The dino robot alone is worth it! Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - Thanks Elijah Jones!
If you like the dino robot, you can make your own (smaller) version - Previously on Neatorama: Dragon Paper Sculpture.
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