Sure, you could hire a funny clown to entertain people, but why not hire an evil clown to stalk and torment someone? That's the service that Dominic Deville of Lucerne, Switzerland, according to a report in the Austria Times:

First he contacts 'victims' to tell them they're being watched.

Then he taunts them with texts, phone calls and booby trapped letters warning them that at sometime in their party he's going to smash a cake into their face.

http://austriantimes.at/news/Around_the_World/2010-04-13/22467/Evil_clown_laughs_all_the_way_to_the_bank_ via Nerdcore | Photo: Europics | Previously on Neatorama: Coulrophobia: Fear of Clowns

One of the duties of the Library of Congress (US) is to archive published works. In order to carry out this task in the Web 2.0 world, the agency will begin archiving every tweet ever publicly published on Twitter:

Twitter is donating its archives of tweets to the Library of Congress, going back to the first one posted by co-founder Jack Dorsey on March 21, 2006. It wasn't a profound moment, and Dorsey didn't come close to Twitter's 140-character limit for messages. He simply posted "Jack," according to the Library of Congress' archives.

Twitter and the Library of Congress announced their partnership Wednesday.

The Library of Congress wants to store tweets to give researchers a better way to revisit discussions of significant events, including the tweets that occurred after President Obama's election in 2008, during the protests in Iran last year and the earthquakes in Haiti and elsewhere this year.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5inSYaT03ortwhbRd165XjW0N72VAD9F367600 via DVICE | Image: Twitter

(YouTube Link)

What would Hamlet be like if it had been written by Dr. Seuss? Justin Moran wrote a one-act play summarizing Shakespeare's masterpiece in this manner. Here is a production of it by the ACME Comedy troupe.

via Popped Culture | ACME Website | Script

Have you tried Chatroulette? Do you need a unicorn chaser to wash away those images now planted in your mind? Then you might want to try KittehRoulette. It's a site that displays random videos of cute cats. Much, much safer for the eyes than Chatroulette.

http://kittehroulette.com/ via Urlesque | Photo: Kittehroulette

Previously on Neatorama:
Chatroulette Surprise
Chatroulette Piano Improv

Flickr user SiLver sKY spotted a street performer near Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles. He was wearing an outfit composed of mirrors, from head to toe. More pictures at the link.

Link via Nerdcore | Photo: flickr user SiLver sKY used under Creative Commons license

(YouTube Link)

Retro Calculators is a web museum of mechanical calculating devices, such as slide rules and adding machines. Its YouTube channel includes videos of these machines in use, including the above Faber Castell Addiator. This is a gadget that combines a slide rule with an adding and subtracting device.

Link via View from the Porch | YouTube Channel

(Video Link)

Meet Meline is an animated short film about a young girl who discovers a strange creature while at play in her grandparents' barn. Virginie Goyons and Sebastien Laban produced it independently over a two year period. Run time: 7 minutes.

via The Presurfer | Behind the Scenes Video | Official Website

(YouTube Link)

The folks at the Guy Bauer radio talk show in Chicago put together this montage video of action heroes from twenty-eight movies (and one Family Guy episode) saying "We've got company" when encountering enemies.

via Urlesque | Official Website

(YouTube Link)

Iowa teenager Elizabeth Rasmuson and her boyfriend made a prom dress and vest largely out of gum wrappers:

The high school junior says she got the idea after hearing about someone making a dress out of duct tape.

She and her boyfriend began collecting gum wrappers last August. Rasmuson says she quit counting after 200.

Since the wrappers break easily, Rasmuson finished her dress with a vinyl top coat.

Link | Previously on Neatorama: Duct Tape Prom Outfits

Students from Yangzhou University and Shanghai Jiaotong University developed a robot that can prepare more than six hundred different kinds of Chinese dishes. All that's necessary is to insert the necessary ingredients and push a few buttons. More pictures at the link.

Link via Popular Science | Photo: Xinhua/Zhao Jun

You know how it's a bad idea to get a girl's name tattooed on you? Multiply that by about a hundred. This photo of a name tattoo in many, many different typefaces has been circulating the Internet. I hope that the relationship lasts.

via The Breda Fallacy

Dutch distiller Medea Spirits came up with a clever advertising gimmick for their vodka: scrolling LED labels. You can even program them to express 6 of your own messages, each of which is up to 225 characters long. Video in the links.

Link via OhGizmo! | Video | Photo: Medea

This is a picture of what might be the world's first solar panel. It was built by a British science teacher in 1950 based on the 1946 patent by Russell Ohl. It was discovered after many years in storage, and it still functions:

The oddity, which looks like a crystal ball, had been put in a box and forgotten but is finally on show at yesterday's Antiques for Everyone show at Birmingham's NEC.

In direct sunlight the contraption can create 1.5 volts of electricity, which is enough power to run a modern day digital watch. [...]

The first basic solar technology was built in 1883 by Charles Fritts but was found to be far too inefficient and nothing like today's models.

Russian physicist Aleksandr Stoletov developed the concept further by developing the first solar cell based on the outer photoelectric effect, a more stable and reliable cell.

But it was not until Russell Ohm patented the idea of the junction semiconductor solar cell, that the modern day solar panel was born.

Link via Make | Photo: Caters News Agency

A NASA spacecraft called the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) took a picture of a previously unknown comet crashing into our sun:

This is the third comet to swing by the sun this year. Known as sun-grazing comets, the icy objects most likely come from the outer solar system, though it is unlikely that any survive their encounters with the sun. [...]

Astronomers estimate that there may be more than 1,600 comets in our solar system that swing through its heart to pass by the sun during their travels. As of 2000, the definitive count for sun-grazing comets passed the 1,000 mark.

Link via Geekologie | Official Website | Photo: NASA

Injuries to baseball players cost that industry millions of dollars every year. Northeastern University engineering students Marcus Moche, Alexandra Morgan and David Schmidt designed a shirt that measures the physical performance of pitchers. They think that their project could be used by coaches in the dugout to monitor the players' fatigue and strain, informing them when pitchers are close to injuring themselves:

"No single device for measuring the quality of pitching mechanics currently exists, so we have proposed a shirt that is lightweight and can be worn during bullpen sessions or exhibition games,” said Moche. “The shirt can be used to show when a player becomes fatigued and his mechanics worsen, through a display of real-time information on a monitor in the dugout."

Pitchers become more susceptible to injury when they lose consistency in their mechanics—the physics of how they throw the baseball, pitch after pitch.

Video at the link.

Link via Make | Photo: Northeastern University, Lauren McFalls