That's toothpick artist extraordinaire Steven Backman, who has been creating toothpick sculptures for over 30 years. He's holding his toothpick radio-controlled yacht, which is actually seaworthy (okay, pool-worthy). That little beauty is made from 10,000 toothpicks.
http://www.woodezine.com/02_2005/0205_toothpick.html - For more unusual art from ordinary objects, check out this neat WebUrbanist article.
This is the camera I've always imagined Blinky, the three-eyed fish from The Simpsons, would use:
Behold the 120 Tri-lens from Chinese camera manufacturer 3D World. I won't even pretend that I understand how it works (like why it needs the 3rd lens to capture a stereo photo - aren't two lenses enough? I have 2 eyes and I see in 3D ... )
Links: Impact Lab has the spec | Like Cool has more pics | Original website [down when I tried it] - via The Bad Rant
Chalk up another benefit to teh Interweb: ordering online can relieve you of the doldrums of white toilet papers! For instance, take the Sudoku puzzle toilet paper to the left. It'll surely help you while away the time ...
Here's a neat article at our pal mental_floss: Innovations in Toilet Paper - via Miss Cellania
The world is full of mundane and uninspired Flash games, so Neatorama editors searched high and low to bring you the best Flash games around.
We look for the right combination of game play, control, and graphic complexity. Out of hundreds of games, we have selected Quest for the Crown, the best Flash game ever made.
Check it out: Original Link [Updated] [Flash Game] - via reddit, thanks for the update vup!
And if that's not satisfying, here's the runner up (it was a close decision): http://www.mazapan.se/games/BurnTheRope.php - Thanks Brett!
It's long been known that monkeys can get addicted to various opiates just like humans can. A new research showed that social standing matters in the "monkey addiction problem" (if there's such a thing).
It turns out that having a lower social standing increases the likelihood that a monkey to choose cocaine over food when stressed:
... [Robert Warren Gould and colleagues] looked at the effect of the stressful situation on the likelihood that monkeys would use cocaine. After the 40 minutes in the unfamiliar cage surrounded by other monkeys, each monkey could choose between pressing a lever that they knew delivered cocaine or one that they knew delivered a food reward. The subordinate monkey was more likely to choose cocaine while the dominant monkey was less likely to choose cocaine after this encounter, compared to their respective typical choices during the days preceding this encounter.
These differences in both brain activity and the likelihood of using cocaine between animals of different social rank offer clues to the social context of drug use and addiction in humans, say the researchers. Nader said, "We believe this type of research can be used to identify better treatment strategies, including providing environmental enrichment, that may affect the likelihood of abusing drugs."
Link - Thanks Casey! (Photo: Random Factor [Flickr], of a monkey indulging in a lesser vice, I suppose)
This has got to be one of the strangest crimes ever: an assault with ... (poor) hedgehog!
Police said William Singalargh, 27, had hurled the hedgehog about 5m (16ft) at a 15-year-old boy.
"It hit the victim in the leg, causing a large, red welt and several puncture marks," said Senior Sgt Bruce Jenkins, in the North Island town of Whakatane.
It was unclear whether the hedgehog was still alive when it was thrown, though it was dead when collected as evidence.
The police spokesman said the suspect was arrested "for assault with a weapon, namely the hedgehog."
Link (photo: a West European Hedgehog, by TygerTyger [Wikipedia]) - Thanks Paul Cooper and Edward!
That's a photo of Dutchess, a "darling Bichon Frise puppy dog" that is guaranteed not to poop or pee anywhere, bark annoyingly, or tear out your couch or anything bad like that.
And that's because Dutchess isn't real: she's a creation of Mary Holstad, who specializes in making realistic dog dolls out of mohair. rom Dutchess' eBay auction:
She is 11.5 inches long not counting her tail. When standing on all fours, she measures 11 inches tall from the floor to the top of her head. She is a "ONE OF A KIND" , as there is so much detail work involved in each dog no two would ever come out the same. I made her from Schulte mohair with a hand-embroidered lacquered nose, and premium glass eyes. Dutchess's face and feet have been meticulously hand-trimmed and she has hand-embroidered claws and painted toes. She is fully 5 way jointed, has sturdy armatures for posing and is stuffed with polyfill and plastic pellets for a nice weight.
Link - via Officially Awesome, thanks Kellie Bartlett!
Usually, when you bit into a nut in a candy bar, it's of the peanut or seed varieties of some sort. But not this Abba Zaba candy! Neatorama reader Micah Taylor wrote:
Today I was going to try an Abba-Zaba bar for the very first time, but found some inedible materials within it. Do they usually come with nuts & bolts?
Link [Flickr] - Thanks Micah!
A while ago, we wrote about Justin Gignac, who sold New York City garbage as "art." Now, the guy is back, and this time he's selling something else (but also in the name of art):
He recently teamed up with his girlfriend and "creative director," Christine Santora, on another novel project. They create paintings of items they would like to have — a piece of pizza, a dinner at a nice restaurant, financial security — and sell them for the actual price of the item depicted.
"We definitely are very selective about the things that we paint," Gignac says. "It makes you stop and think, 'Do I want this video game that badly that I'm going to spend a couple days painting it?'"
They created a Web site, wantsforsale.com, to sell the paintings.
Gignac says he enjoys experimenting with what people are willing to pay.
"People have this kind of preconceived notion of certain things and how much they should be, whether it's art or how much garbage shouldn't cost," he says. "I think it'd be great if we have a gallery show at some point to do like a 6-foot-by-8-foot painting of a taco and still charge $1.99 for it, because that's how much a taco costs."
A painting of "Financial Security" is currently available for $1 million. So far, no takers. Here's an NPR story by Brad Linder about it: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89237219 (Photo: Nick Zafonte) | Justin's website - Thanks Brad!
Marcus Eriksen and colleagues from the Algalita Marine Research Foundation are concerned debris polluting our oceans. So they are building a raft, aptly named "Junk" out of plastic bottles with a cabin made from an old Cessna fuselage:
The raft, named "Junk," seems destined to live up to its name, with its 30- by 20-foot hull consisting of 20,000 plastic bottles - kept together with fishing net.
The fuselage will be overhauled, made waterproof, and used to provide shelter for a two-man crew - Eriksen and photographer Joel Paschal - and navigational equipment for a planned six-week odyssey to Hawaii, in an effort to raise awareness of the trash that lands in the ocean by careless, consumer-oriented societies, according to Algalita.
They will sail to Hawaii on May 25: Link | Junkraft Blog - Thanks Sustainable Dave!
We've posted about cute Japanese bento boxes (their version of lunch boxes - who says Japanese people aren't creative?) before on Neatorama, but these two are too cute to pass!
Behold, the Super Mario Bento Box - via Technabob, thanks Jimmy!
And the Homer Simpson Bento Box at Kasumin Yorosiku's Blog:
Here's the newest from Tesla Downunder, the designer of the Tesla coil "Eye of Sauron" anti-automobile theft device we featured previously on Neatorama: the Hi Volt Antivirus to "protect" your laptop!
Link - Thanks Tesla Downunder!
Swedish Vodka maker Absolut is stirring up a little nationalistic pride in Mexico with their new ad depicting what Mexico would look like in an "Absolute World". But it is stirring a few feathers in El Norte, that's for sure:
The U.S.-Mexico border lies where it was before the Mexican-American war of 1848 when California, as we now know it, was Mexican territory and known as Alta California.
Following the war, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo saw the Mexican territories of Alta California and Santa Fé de Nuevo México ceded to the United States to become modern-day California, Texas, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado and Arizona. (Texas actually split from Mexico several years earlier to form a breakaway republic, and was voluntarily annexed by the United States in 1846.)
The campaign taps into the national pride of Mexicans, according to Favio Ucedo, creative director of leading Latino advertising agency Grupo Gallegos in the U.S. Ucedo, who is from Argentina, said: “Mexicans talk about how the Americans stole their land, so this is their way of reclaiming it. It’s very relevant and the Mexicans will love the idea.”
But he said that were the campaign to run in the United States, it might fall flat. “Many people aren’t going to understand it here. Americans in the East and the North or in the center of the county -- I don’t know if they know much about the history. “Probably Americans in Texas and California understand perfectly and I don’t know how they’d take it.”
Link - via AdPulp (who said "Lou Dobbs is now totally switching to Grey Goose.")
That's the life-sized skeleton car Collindonthus by Indian artist Jitish Kallat, on display at Artkrush. See more of his skeleton art at The Saatchi Gallery - via who killed bambi?
