(Video Link)

A wry look at art appreciation from Howcast, taking the form of a step-by-step guide on how to bluff your way through an art gallery conversation. Run time: 2 minutes.

Via Juxtapoz

Today is indeed a high holy day: National Doughnut Day. Its origins lie in the distribution of free doughnuts to American soldiers during the First World War, and then acquired greater fame with the sponsorship of the Salvation Army in 1938. Now it's mostly a marketing gimmick, but do we really need a reason to celebrate? Get thee to a bakery.

Link via J-Walk Blog

(YouTube Link)
This promotional video from the European Research Commission uses a dance party to explain how basic chemical compounds are formed.

Via The Presurfer

A pseudonymous (presumably) student named Kat Atreides responded to her school's ban on a large number of books by forming a secret library in her locker, and then loaning out banned books to students:

I go to a private school that is rather strict. Recently, the principal and school teacher council released a (very long) list of books we're not allowed to read. I was absolutely appalled, because a large number of the books were classics and others that are my favorites. One of my personal favorites, The Catcher in the Rye, was on the list, so I decided to bring it to school to see if I would really get in trouble. Well... I did but not too much. Then (surprise!) a boy in my English class asked if he could borrow the book, because he heard it was very good AND it was banned!

I hope that the school administrators were actually trying to trick students into reading, and weren't so foolish as to imagine that banning books would lead to teenagers not reading them.

Link via Jessamyn West

image by flickr user florian.b used under creative commons license

In addition to being Memorial Day in the United States, today is Towel Day — a day to honor Douglas Adams and the importance of carrying a towel around with you, as advised by The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitch hiker can have. Partly it has great practical value - you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you - daft as a bush, but very, very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough

Link

Isabel Samaras is a San Francisco-based artist who juxtaposes pop culture icons from the 1960s with major works of Western art. Above is "The Birth of Ginger", a synthesis of Gilligan's Island and Sandro Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus".

http://astrocat.com/samaras/index.html (Official website)

Link (Interview of the artist)

I hesitate to mention this lest it inspire another one of Alex's dress code edicts here at Neatorama's corporate offices. But: Brief Jerky -- underpants made from beef jerky. Wearing them, the seller says "will release their natural pheremones once your body heat and moisture kicks in!" I guess my co-workers will find out if soon enough if this is true.

Link via Geekologie

This 2GB USB memory stick transforms into the Decepticon Ravage. At the link, there's also a laser mouse that transforms into the Autobot Grimlock and a USB hub that transforms into the Autobot Blaster.

Link via Geekologie

Frank Warren, the artist behind Post Secret, recently delivered the commencement address at St. Mary's College in Maryland. In preparation for it, he asked members of the graduating class to write a one-sentence response to the question "What do my classmates, and I, need to hear on Graduation Day?" Here are a few of his responses:

Be wise enough not to be reckless, but brave enough to take great risks.

It’s okay to fail – learn from it and you will succeed.

It’s better to be pissed-off than pissed-on.

If you were to asked to deliver a commencement speech that was only one sentence long, what would it be?

http://postsecret.blogspot.com/2009/05/sunday-secrets_17.html

Surely some daring Neatoramanaut can beat this record:

ARLINGTON, Texas, May 11 (UPI) -- A Texas body modification enthusiast said he broke a Guinness World Record by receiving 1,197 piercings in a single day.

Jeremy Stroud said Arlington body modification artist Tyson Turk spent about five hours May 2 inserting 800 needles into his back, 300 in his right arm, 50 in his leg and about 20 in his left arm, the Fort Worth (Texas) Star-Telegram reported Monday.

Link via Double Plus Undead

Image by flickr user sean dreilinger used via Creative Commons license

Update 5/13/09 by Alex: if you can stand the loud music, here's the video clip: Link [YouTube]

Gamers at MIT have built a self-contained life pod in which to play World of Warcraft. It features a built-in toilet, three days worth of food rations, fresh water, and a small cookstove. Thanks to these Prometheuses among us, it is no longer necessary to go outside or interact with people face-to-face. Truly, we live in an age of marvels.

Link via Geekologie

It looks like an ordinary baseball cap. But slip steel inserts into the Sap Cap, and you have a weapon. "Beat on muggers like you are The Skipper and they are Gilligan."

Link via Hell in a Handbasket

Michael Westmoreland-White sees the Star Trek universe as a liberal or progressive vision of the future, featuring things such as racial and gender equality, free universal health care, and an absence of imperalism. I'm neither liberal or progressive, but I think that he's right.

But I do think that Star Trek is a fairly progressive/liberal science fiction franchise. It’s a basically hopeful vision of the future. It offers up a future earth that has survived war, terrorism, and ecological disasters and forged a global government of representative democracy (we are never told this, but it must be some form of federalist system to avoid tyranny). Hunger and poverty have been overcome. Most diseases have been conquered and high quality universal healthcare is available for all. Education is free and the world is highly literate with most people going beyond secondary education. It’s a clean energy society that is eco-friendly. (In Star Trek IV, the Enterprise crew in their stolen Klingon ship actually go back in time to the 20th C. to keep whales from going extinct–and in the process save the earth of their future.) There is finally global racial harmony. And, despite the micro-mini-skirted uniforms that reflected the fact that the original series was made in the ’60s, we finally have gender equality, too.

Link

Image by Flickr user Tim Williams used under Creative Commons license

Blogger Signaltheorist decided to evaluate the efficiency of the Roomba by tracking its movements:

I set up a photo camera in my room, turned out all the lights and took a long-exposure shot of my roomba doing it's thing for about 30 minutes. The result is a picture that shows the path of the roomba through it's cleaning cycle, it looks like a flight map or something. It really hits every spot!

http://signaltheorist.com/?p=91 via J-Walk Blog

Just in time for Mothers' Day! It's the Zombie Stomper Heel, which the seller describes as "Perfect for stompin’ on zombies..and men’s hearts."

Link via Double Plus Undead