(Image: Bill Watterson/GoComics)

How much damage can a 6-year old do? A lot! But "a lot" is a vague quantity. What was the financial value of Calvin's damage? Matt J. Michel published an article on that subject in the Proceedings of Natural Institute of Science, a humorous scholarly journal.

It's a noble application of statistics to practical needs. Michel acquired the entire print run of the comic strip and concluded that Calvin cost his parents almost $16,000. He explains:

In total, Calvin caused an estimated $15,955.50 worth of damage over the duration of the comic strip (Figure 1). Damage ranged from a broken glass jar^[6] ($2 from amazon.com) to a flooded house^[7] ($4,798.83 from homewyse.com). Taking into account Watterson’s sabbaticals (see Figure 1) and the November start to the comics, Calvin caused $1,850.55 of damage per year. For context, the USDA estimates that middle-income families spend an estimated $1,750 per year on child care and education for 6 year-olds. In fact, the amount of damage caused by Calvin would rank 4th out of the USDA’s categories in annual expenditures, behind Housing, Food, and Transportation, and ahead of Education, Miscellaneous, Health Care, and Clothing. However, it should be reiterated that Calvin is presented as a worst-case scenario. If you believe your child does more than $1,850.55 in damage annually, then you may want to consider professional help, alternative forms of punishment, or, at the very least, take away their stuffed tiger.

-via 22 Words

California Donuts in Los Angeles makes a lot more than just glazed donuts. The shop is filled with pastry wonders that will make you slobber all over your computer monitor, such as this donut with a whole Snickers candy bar baked inside. Other donuts feature popular kids' cereals as toppings.

Maple bacon peanut butter and jelly

Fruit Loops

Do you need an escape chute from your life? We all do at some point, but it can be hard to install one at home, work, or in a relationship. Perhaps, though, emerging technologies offer us options. The design blog Core77 rounded up photos and videos of 4 advanced escape chutes that help people get out of dangerous situations, such as burning skyscrapers.

Pictured above is a Viking Escape Chute, which is designed to get workers off oil rigs quickly. It automatically deploys a long, multi-leveled escape chute that ends in an automatically deploying inflatable life raft. The video below shows a test of the system in a shipyard in Okpo, South Korea.

(Video Link)

(Photo: Gavin Ashworth, Brooklyn Museum)

The Brooklyn Museum contains many antiquities from ancient Egypt, including this small bronze coffin. It's about 22 inches long and is decorated with an image of the Egyptian god Atum, who was commonly depicted with the body of a snake. The curators of the Brooklyn Museum think that it dates back to between 664 and 30 B.C. The coffin is now empty, but was it probably crafted to hold the body of a mummified snake.

-via Ka-ching!

While doing research for my post about Russia's naval fleet on the vanishing Aral Sea, I encountered evidence that Uzbekistan has at least two active warships.

This is remarkable. Although a few landlocked nations maintain navies, Uzbekistan is not only landlocked, but doubly landlocked. That means that Uzbekistan is completely surrounded by landlocked nations. It and Liechtenstein are the only two such nations in the world.

RusNavy, a website about Russian naval affairs, offers what it claims is an English translation of a Russian military journal article about the Uzbek acquisition of two Ukrainian-built armored patrol boats. The US paid for the purchase of these two boats, a claim supported by this State Department website. The Gurza-class patrol boats are typically armed with 7.62 and 30 mm machine guns and a grenade launcher. The boats will patrol Uzbekistan's rivers, such as the Amu-Darya, which forms the border between that nation and Afghanistan.

Pictured above is a photo of what internet rumor alleges is one of the Uzbek warships.

Image: New York State Library Special Collections

(Photo: Brian Neilson)

USA! USA! USA!

This was, after all, an eating competition. Did the Canadians seriously think that they could beat us at our national sport?

(Photo: Smoke's Poutinerie)

Our champion is Matt Stonie, a competitive eater from San Jose, California. He won by eating almost 15 pounds in less than 10 minutes. Smoke's Poutinerie hosted the event in Toronto on Saturday. 

(Photo: cupcakedawnie)

Stonie proudly carried off one of these beautiful poutine-themed trophies.

-via Dave Barry

(Video Link)

Bonnie Eisenman, an engineer, recently took a course on electronic music. She felt inspired to make a unique instrument. The result of her efforts is the Illumaphone, a light-controlled electronic instrument.

It consists of 6 coffee cups with light sensors inside. Each one plays a different pitch. As she moves her hands over the cups, the differing light levels measured by the sensors adjust the volume and vibrato.

-via Hack A Day

You'll cry with joy when you click on this misleading headline that suggests a counter-intuitive contrarian view that is actually quite normal or disingenuous. Go ahead and bite into Dave Coverly's Speed Bump cartoons.

The Wheel of Time is a series of 14 fantasy novels. Robert Jordan began the series. After he died in 2007, Brandon Sanderson finished the last 3 books in it.

In the series, the greatest swordsmen are known as Blademasters. Those who achieve this high level of fencing excellence may carry swords marked with the image of a heron. Thus heron-marked swords are the public symbols of the finest swordsmen.

Brendan Olszowy, a swordsmith in Western Australia, forged this heron-marked sword. It is specifically the sword of al'Land Mandragoran, a great hero in the series. The sword weighs 2 pounds, 14 ounces and the blade is 32.2 inches long. It is inscribed with words from the Old Tongue that translate as "True Blood of Manatheren" and "For the glory of the Red Eagle."

This is one of many fantasy-inspired swords that Olszowy has made, including others from The Lord of the Rings, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, and Conan the Barbarian.

Designer Saad Alayyoubi calls his iPhone accessory "Omniscent Siri." It's not a case, though it does slip around an iPhone. It's designed to block access to the screen so that you can't type in commands. You have to deal with Siri, Apple's interactive digital assistant. It's the only interface that you have to use to access the online world. Siri knows everything--at least that you're allowed to know.

-via Super Punch

(Narcolepsy)

Taken 3 will come out at the beginning of next year. Taken 4, er, I mean, T4ken, should start development immediately.

Taken 5 should be a romantic comedy just for a change of pace.

-via Daily of the Day

(Video Link)

Jack Lattimer is a musician and performer who consistently offers surprises in his funny YouTube videos. For this one, he plays John Lennon's iconic song "Imagine." Lattime begins by spinning a plate on what appears to be a plastic straw, inserting that straw into his ukulele, then playing the ukulele with his hands and working a slide whistle with his mouth.

-via Nothing to Do with Aborath

(Photo: Dr. Anthony Atala, Director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, via Winston Tech Salem)

The loss of the penis through physical trauma, such as a battlefield injury, or the malformation of it as the result of a birth defect, can be a brutally debilitating event in a man’s life. But a solution may be on the way.

The Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina has developed a technique to grow human penises in laboratory environments. The process involves taking cells from a man’s own penis, then growing those cells on a collagen scaffold. The reformed penis then grows over the scaffold.

The Institute has already produced rabbit penises successfully using this method. Soon, it will attempt the process on human patients. It is uncertain whether these penises will be capable of erections.

-via Stuff

Previously on Neatorama: Doctors Successfully Implant Laboratory-Grown Human Vaginas

Lately, I have been watching the original Star Trek series--something I have not regularly done since about 1988. I'm watching the show from start to finish. I noticed that on one early episode titled "Mudd's Women," Dr. Leonard McCoy wears on his left pinky finger a gold ring with a blue stone.

It struck me as an unusual costuming choice, so I did some googling. Terry Lee Rioux's From Sawdust to Stardust: The Biography of DeForest Kelley, Star Trek's Dr. McCoy explains why Kelley wears a pinky ring.

DeForest Kelly dearly loved his mother, Clora Kelley. Clora owned a ring that her brother had won in a card game while he was in France. When Clora died of cancer in 1957, her son was consumed with grief. But he was private about the depth of his feelings. He asked for only one item from her possessions: the ring. He wore it from then on in remembrance of her.

When Kelley was recruited for Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry was firm: the actors would not wear jewelry. But Kelley was firmer: if he wasn't allowed to wear his ring, he wouldn't be on the show. Roddenberry conceded. You can see Kelley's ring throughout the series, though the stone is often turned into the palm to make it less noticeable.

In the movie Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, Sybok forces McCoy to relive his euthanasia of his own father. DeForest Kelley's ring gleams in the faint light during the scene of mourning and loss. It is a fitting accent to a story of the loss of parents. Kelley would continue to wear it until his own death in 1999.

When Star Trek was rebooted in 2009, Karl Urban took up the role of Dr. McCoy. As you can see in this screenshot, he wears a ring on the pinkie finger of his left hand. According to an internet rumor, he did so to honor his predecessor, DeForest Kelley.