Vespa's South African division had this stretch scooter made as a promotional gimmick. They refer to it as a family-sized vehicle:

According to Vespa, here's a list of uses for the stretched scooter: it's a sensible family car on two wheels and kids will look forward to going to school on it. You can be the designated driver and still park outside the front door of the party. When you make new buddies, you can take them home with you - and you save money on fuel.

It's a custom job, so don't rush down to a dealership expecting to find one.

Link via CrunchGear

Christmas is all about awkward moments at family gatherings. Le Trung, inventor of the robotic woman substitute Aiko, took that principle to a whole new level when he decided that he should celebrate Christmas with both his parents and his fembot:

The science genius enjoyed a festive dinner with his mum, dad and his £30,000 fembot which he designed and built by hand.

Le, 34, from Brampton, Ontario, Canada, even bought gifts for his dream girl, who is so lifelike she speaks fluent English and Japanese, helped cook the turkey and hang up decorations.

'Aiko is like any woman, she enjoys getting new clothes,' he said.

'I loved buying them for her too.'

Link via Nerdcore | Photo: Bancroft Media | Previously on Neatorama: Man Weds Virtual Girlfriend

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AdFreak has a list of the thirty strangest commercials of 2009. The above video is a Swedish commercial for McDonald's featuring children who express their impatience with a long car trip in a particularly creepy way.

Link via TigerHawk

Jeremy Barker of The Ampersand gives us the run-down on saints, demons, and other mythical figures associated with Christmas throughout Western history. Pictured above is "The Lord of Misrule":

In medieval England a low-ranking servant was appointed Master of Ceremonies for the midwinter revelries. This tradition originates in the Roman festival of Saturnalia, where the social order was turned on its head for a week.

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/theampersand/archive/2009/12/24/christmas-folklore-saints-and-demons.aspx | Image: Dean Tweed

A simple, but unusual and elegant design: a bridge in the city of Leeuwarden in the Netherlands uses two arms to swing a section of road in and out of place. It's called the "Slauerhoffbrug" and was built in 2000.

Image Gallery and Aerial View via The Presurfer | Photo: Frozenly

In the Star Trek universe, synthehol is a substance that simulates the taste of alcohol without its inebriating effects. Three and a half years ago, Alex mentioned that a British pharmacologist named David Nutt claimed that such a substance was hypothetically possible. Now Nutt is leading a research team at Imperial College London to develop this drug:

Prof Nutt and his team are concentrating their efforts on benzodiazepines, of which diazepam, the chief ingredient of Valium is one.

Thousands of candidate benzos are already known to science. He said it is just a matter of identifying the closest match and then, if necessary, tailoring it to fit society’s needs.[...]

“I’ve been in experiments where I’ve taken benzos,” said Professor Nutt. “One minute I was sedated and nearly asleep, five minutes later I was giving a lecture.

“No one’s ever tried targeting this before, possibly because it will be so hard to get it past the regulators.

“Most of the benzos are controlled under the Medicines Act. The law gives a privileged position to alcohol, which has been around for 3,000 years. But why not use advances in pharmacology to find something safer and better?”

Link via io9 | Image: Paramount

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In this variation on Dr. Seuss' classic How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Rorschach from Watchmen punishes the people of New York City for their Christmas cheer. I'm not sure who the author is, but I've seen it vaguely referenced to the posters at 4chan -- and I'm not about to go searching that site to find out for sure.

via Popped Culture

Apparently, there's rising demand in the UK for monocles. In The Express, Adam Edwards writes:

The optician Vision Express has announced it is to re-introduce the single eye-glass following a sudden surge of interest among customers. “To our surprise we have had dozens of requests in the last few months so we thought we’d bring back the monocle on a trial basis,” says Bryan Magrath, the chief executive of Vision Express. “We’re as puzzled as anyone by the interest.”[...]

“It is always thought of an affectation,” says His Honour Judge Quentin Edwards who has used the glass most of his adult life. “But it is quite simply a clever device to help read small print or study something in detail. It is a quick and easy alternative to reading glasses and it is far more practical than carrying a pair of spectacles. I pull out my monocle to read the telephone directory, look at a menu or when I need to glance quickly at a document in court.

“You put it in your strong eye in the same way you use your strong eye to look through a microscope or fire a rifle.It is something you put in the eye when there is a need to magnify something. It is only in fiction that anybody wears a monocle all the time.

Link via Ace of Spades HQ | Photo: The Express

Jin Zhang, a professor at the University of Western Ontario, is developing contact lenses that change color with the user's blood sugar level. This could allow diabetics to monitor themselves without frequent blood samples. The technology:

...uses extremely small nanoparticles embedded into the hydrogel lenses. These engineered nanoparticles react with glucose molecules found in tears, causing a chemical reaction that changes their colour.

http://www.nano.org.uk/news/index.php?article=319 via io9 | Image: NASA

The Danish design firm Diffus created a dress equipped with LED lights and a carbon dioxide detector that glows as the CO₂ level rises. It's called the Climate Dress:

The embroidery becomes functional conveying electricity and computer information and thereby give "power to the dress". The dress senses the CO2 concentration in the air, then accordingly creates diverse light patterns varying from slow, regular light pulsations to short and hectic.[...]

The Climate Dress also contributes to the necessity of creating more awareness about environmental issues trough an esthetical representation of environmental data. Different light patterns are thereby staged as dramatic “micro events” embedded into clothes. They diligently and without concession tell us disturbing stories wrapped into a comfortable and reassuring cocoon de luxe.

http://www.diffus.dk/pollutiondress/intro.htm via Technabob | Image: Diffus

This picture by reddit user license plate is jam-packed with Internet memes. Can you identify them all? Click on the link to view a larger size.

Link via Ace of Spades HQ

UPDATE 12/23/09: Altered to give credit to the artist. Thanks Reechard!

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Today, Darth Vader rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange. He was accompanied by stormtroopers as R2-D2 worked the floor.

via io9

The design blog Dornob has a post describing flooring made from recycled leather belts, including rugs and floor tiles. They're pricey, at about $70 per square foot. So Dornob suggests that you could make your own:

If you are looking for a cheaper alternative approach, however, local vintage clothing stores may sell a belt for a few dollars. After finding a few choice samples, it is just a matter of figuring out the best way to put them together. For the do-it-yourself craft-oriented individual, part of the fun lies in the creative process – choosing the right hues of faded black, brown, red and orange like in the first (wonderfully muted-but-colorful) example.

Link via DudeCraft

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Engineer Carl Morgan's son complained that a certain hill was too hard to climb on his bicycle. Could his dad invent a machine to help him power over these inclines? The answer came in "Joules", an electrically-powered robot that rides in the back seat of a tandem bicycle:

Morgan spent months modeling how to transform a motor’s spin into pedal-pushing legs. The motor inside Joules’s torso turns a series of linked belts and chains that transfer power from one area of the robot to the next. Each upper leg pivots at the hip, raising and lowering its knee and forcing the lower legs to turn the pedals. He also added “bones” (rods on the outside) for needed stiffness.

Morgan was nervous when he climbed in front for the final test, but Joules easily cruised to the top of the hill. The bike could probably do more, even hit 30 mph, but Morgan says he doesn’t plan to find out: “Abject cowardice on my part means we’ll never know for sure.”

http://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2009-12/robot-buddy-your-bicycle-built-two | Official Website

The artblog A Journey Around My Skull has a compilation of unusual and surreal illustrations from children's books of the Soviet Union. This image is from the 1989 book Hello, I'm A Robot Stanislav Zigunenko and illustrated by E. Benyaminson. At the link, you'll see the first post in a series about such illustrations.

Link via Gizmodo