W00t! The good folks at The Troll Show (Real News. By Real Trolls. Real Fast!) made a special clip just for Neatorama. It's about this story of a Wal-Mart employee that went berserk ... with a price gun! Hit play or go to Link [YouTube]
You can watch the entire show (#6, as well as the rest of the Troll shows) here: Link - Thanks Raul!
If you like your web comic funny with a hip and wry edge, then head on over to Winston Rowntree's (almost certainly not his real name!) Subnormality.
I spent half the morning perusing the archive (don't miss: The Evolution of Alternative Music, If Hollywood was a Person, and The Home of Adolf Hitler, 1933: Doubt creeps in) and wholeheartedly agree with his homepage comic "The Crowd at a Rock Show" where he carefully divided a typical crowd watching a rock performance into 16 distinct subtypes!
Link - Thanks jon jason!
Charlie Chaplin once entered a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest, and lost! He didn't even make it to the finals.
In 1915, "Chaplinitis" swept across America and Charlie Chaplin look-alike contests became popular. One such contest was won by a rising young actor/comedian that became quite famous on his own right. His name was Bob Hope.
If your blog is on a WordPress platform, then you know that the new 2.5 version is out. While it's always a good idea to update the software for security reasons, upgrading always comes with a bit of anxiety. Plug-ins will invariably break, and there will be some getting used to the new admin layout. Designing a software as complex as WordPress is a big task - and overall, I'd say that Matt and the Wordpress team did a good job.
The new admin backend got a big facelift. It was re-designed from the grounds up by usability expert Jeffrey Zeldman and colleagues at Happy Cog. The look is cleaner and admin panel is supposedly designed to be easier to use by new bloggers. Except that it isn't (at least for experienced bloggers).
I'm a big fan of Zeldman (love, love, love his A List Apart website), but the new WordPress 2.5 admin backend design is a step backward in usability. It's actually harder to use the admin backend in this version as compared to the previous version of WordPress, and I'm not alone in this.
Here's why: the category as well as post author and other settings are moved from being side by side with the post editor to below it. Even with a large monitor, I'd have to scroll down to select the category on every post!
If you're not into scrolling nirvana, and would like to get the category back the way it was, Judy Becker of Persistent Illusion blog has the hack for you: she edited a few WP files so all you need is to swap these new ones with the original files and voilà! Good ol' category on the sidebar.
I find that I had to move a few options that I seldom use (like comment & ping, post authors, password protect) back to the bottom of the editor but that's just a few simple cut and paste job.
If you want to recover your admin sidebar, here's the hack: Link (Great job, Judy!)
(Lots of people complained about the re-designed widget editor, but I've never used that feature, so I really can't comment on it. Also, this hack will only work for self-hosted WordPress 2.5 - wordpress.com users, sorry - can't help you).
Florida plastic surgeon Dr. Michael Salzhauer saw an unfulfilled niche and decided to do something about it: he wrote a children's book about mommy's plastic surgery!
"My Beautiful Mommy," written by Florida-based plastic surgeon Dr. Michael Salzhauer, is billed by its author as the first book that explains plastic surgery to kids, an issue with which he says many of his patients struggle.
"More than half the women that come in for procedures bring their children with them," he said. "And most parents go into
denial about the surgery with regard to their children.""My Beautiful Mommy" focuses on a mother explaining an impending nose job and tummy tuck to her young daughter, who is scared that her mommy may look different. Mommy also undergoes a breast enhancement in the book, a fact depicted only through the illustrations so as not to get too graphic for child readers.
Link - via Miss Cellania
Takuya Sugi, Photo: Zedi [wikipedia]
Takuya Sugi is one badass Japanese Pro Wrestler. Actually, the entire Japanese Pro Wrestling scene is much better than the American counterpart (and perhaps the Mexican lucha libre - with this notable exception).
For one, the costumes are fantastic. And the moves are much more stylish. Consider this YouTube clip below, where Takuya Sugi performs his many acrobatic moves (in his many wrestling personalities):
(Warning: loud music, turn down your speaker if you don't like screeching hard rock)
Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] | See also Top 10 Moves of Takuya Sugi [YouTube] if you want to see what some of those moves are called (Blind Spaceman Moonsault! Cyclone Elbow Strike! Blazing Arrow!) - via One Large Prawn
deviantArt member DocShaner, who drew "Charles Schulz's Watchmen," has done it again! this time, he re-imagined Hank Ketcham's Dennis the Menace as the Fantastic Four: http://docshaner.deviantart.com/art/Hank-Ketcham-s-Fantastic-Four-81901614 - via Super Punch
Good news, Chim-Chim! There are now 4 trailers for the new Speed Racer movie coming this May. You can view 'em all at the movie's website: Link - via Always Watching
Now, every time I think of Speed Racer, I can't help but hum the theme song...
Savage Chicken: Trekkie
1. Yes 2. No 3. Yes!
According to Klingon lore, the first Bat'leth was forged around 625 AD by Kahless, who "dropped a lock of his hair into the lava from the Kri'stak Volcano, then plunged the fiery lock into the lake of Lursor and twisted it to form a blade. After forging the weapon, he used it to defeat the tyrant Molor, and in doing so united the Klingon Homeworld. This first bat'leth was known as 'The Sword of Kahless'" (Source)
For more Savage Chickens, visit Doug Savage's website: Link - via Locusts & Honey
A new study by scientists at Columbia University confirmed a link between pre-natal influenza infection and schizophrenia:
One percent of the world’s population suffers from its symptoms of hallucinations, psychosis and impaired cognitive ability. The disease destroys relationships and renders many of its sufferers unable to hold down a job. What could cause such frightening damage to the brain? According to a growing body of research, the culprit is surprising: the flu.
If you are skeptical, you are not alone. Being condemned to a lifetime of harsh antipsychotic drugs seems a far cry from a runny nose and fever. And yet studies have repeatedly linked schizophrenia to prenatal infections with influenza virus and other microbes, showing that the children of mothers who suffer these infections during pregnancy are more likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia later in life. In 2006 scientists at Columbia University asserted that up to one fifth of all schizophrenia cases are caused by prenatal infections.
Doctors have known for many years that microbes such as syphilis and Streptococcus can, if left untreated, lead to serious psychiatric problems. Now a growing number of scientists are proposing that microbes are to blame for several mental illnesses once thought to have neurological or psychological defects at their roots. The strongest evidence pertains to schizophrenia, but autism, bipolar disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder have also been linked to bacterial, viral or parasitic infections in utero, in childhood or in maturity. Some of these infections can directly affect the brain, whereas others might trigger immune reactions that interfere with brain development or perhaps even attack our own brain cells in an autoimmune mistake.
Link - via Scribal Terror
Hey, this is pretty spiffy if it indeed works: Greenhouse Eneplug which lets you charge your USB powered gadget directly from the AC power outlet.
Not yet available, but you can pre-order it for May: Link - via GeekAlerts
If you ever need your appendix removed in the future, there is a good chance you'll never even have a scar. That's because doctors have successfully performed the world's first appendectomy ... through the patient's mouth!
The operation, which is a major advance in the quest for scar-free surgery, was performed by doctors in San Diego, California, who used a flexible tube to thread miniature surgical instruments down the 42-year-old's throat to his stomach.
A tiny incision was then made in the stomach wall to get at the appendix - a small worm-like pouch attached to the large bowel.
The inflamed appendix was cut away, bagged and pulled back into the stomach - and out of the mouth.
Tired of having to identify new species of fish the old fashioned way - by looking at it - scientists are trying a new method of taxonomy: barcoding them!
Okay, okay - I was being cheeky. But this is actually quite cool: FISH-BOL, the global Fish Barcode of Life Initiative is an on-going effort to compile a database of DNA barcodes of all marine species in the world:
"Even though several million species of plants, animals and microbes have been identified over the past 300 years or so, we still find new species,” Collette says. “And despite advances in technology, we still have to sort organisms into piles and research every known bit of information before we can say we found a new species. Sometimes we have to go back to the basics and look at an organism in a jar for reference to make a determination.”
Scientists like Collette often go to sea and collect dozens of samples of an organism they think might be a new species. They return to the lab to sort out what they have collected before focusing in on the details to determine exactly what the organism is, sharing samples with colleagues to reach a consensus. The process takes time, and they are excited about the contributions FISH-BOL and other similar efforts around the world will make to documenting and understanding life forms on earth.
After decades of following similar taxonomic procedures often done by visual identification, DNA bar-coding offers a new and much faster, more accurate way to identify species and share information. Since nearly all biological species have distinct gene sequences, they can be identified using a short gene sequence collected from a standardized position in the genome – a DNA barcode. Bar-coding of animals relies on differences between species in a relatively short segment of mitochondrial DNA.
Link | FISH-BOL Website - via Underwater Times
Venezuelan broadcasting regulator Conatel has forced The Simpsons off the air during the morning cartoon hours, calling it a bad influence on children, and replaced it with ... Baywatch!
No. Really. Link
(The Simpsons are also causing controversy in another South American country, Argentina, when the show talked about Juan Perón)
Professor Leif Kullmann of Umeaa University, Sweden, and colleagues have discovered the world's oldest living tree: a 10,000 year-old spruce in central Sweden:
Researchers had discovered a spruce with genetic material dating back 9,550 years in the Fulu mountain in Dalarna, according to Leif Kullmann, a professor of Physical Geography at the university in northwestern Sweden.
That would mean it had taken root in roughly the year 7,542 BC.
"It was a big surprise because we thought until (now) that this kind of spruce grew much later in those regions," he said.
Scientists had previously believed the world's oldest trees were 4,000 to 5,000 year-old pine trees found in North America.
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5i-5AOEdHYY6xvxbu6tKqC52k5axA
Previously on Neatorama: 10 Most Magnificent Trees in the World
