The title character in Doctor Who has gone through eleven incarnations during the nearly half century the series has endured. All of them have been male. But apparently a female doctor was considered by the BBC in the 1980s:

Sydney Newman, who devised the long-running science-fiction show when he was head of BBC drama in the 1960s, was asked to help after the show suffered a slump in ratings in the 1980s and was taken off air temporarily.

He told Michael Grade, then the controller of BBC One, that the ailing series could only be saved by regenerating the Time Lord into a Time Lady.

Mr Newman criticised the direction the show had taken, but insisted that it could be revived by turning the lead character into a heroine.

Had the advice been accepted, actresses who could have been considered for the role include Frances de la Tour, Joanna Lumley and Dawn French.

What actress do you think would make a good Doctor?

Link via blastr | Image: BBC

Previously on Neatorama: Doctor Who

The good people of Teh Internet are writing funny travel reviews for Mount Everest. Here's my favorite so far:

No valet service and the sherpas barely spoke any English.

At the link, click on "reviews" to see them all.

Link via reddit

Mark Nixon, a professor at the University of Southampton (UK), believes that the unique shape of each person's ears may provide a way of identifying dangerous people in airport security processes:

Professor Nixon and his team tested 252 images of different ears and found the system was able to match each ear to a separate image held in its database with 99 per cent accuracy.[...]

"Fingerprints are one of the best ways we have of identifying an individual at the moment," said Professor Nixon. "But on some people, even they are not so effective. Bakers and brick layers tend not to have obvious fingerprints as the distinctive whirls rub off.

"It is harder to do that with your ears, but there is one thing that can get in the way of the ears and that is hair. In reality, I expect there won't be a single approach, but in fact a combination of different biometrics that can be taken simultaneously to identify an individual."

Link via GearFuse | Photo by Flickr user AdamSelwood used under Creative Commons license

Previously: The REAL Reason Behind Silly Airport Rules

American psychologist Joseph Jastrow published the optical illusion on the right in 1899. He used it to express how unconscious preferences help create a constructed reality. It's either a rabbit or a duck, depending on your point of view. The image on the left is going around the Internet today, and appears to be a sculpture inspired by Jastrow's illusion.

Link via Geekosystem

This man won the Marvel comics cosplay competition at the New York Comic Con. Speaking of which, here's an interesting line: "Steampunk is when goths discover brown." (via) Do you agree?

Link via DVICE | Photo: Judy Stephens

Fashion designer Kobi Levi makes amusing shoes that look like other objects, such as heels that look like sneakers with gum stuck to the bottom. Others look like dogs, slingshots, or bananas.

Link via Gizmodo | Photo by the artist

Combination guns are (usually) long guns chambered for two different calibers. For example, one can purchase a gun chambered with a .410 gauge shotgun barrel on top and a .22 LR rifle barrel on the bottom. Such guns allow a hunter to shoot a variety of animals, or the same prey in different situations.

There are also hunting rifles called "drillings" which feature three barrels, each with a different caliber. James R. Rummel has a post about these unique firearms. He proposes getting one a .22 LR barrel for small game, a .357 magnum for deer hunting, and .375 magnum for large, dangerous game.

http://hellinahandbasket.net/?p=4981 | Photo: Centerline Firearms

Pictured above is an artist's conception of what the Bus Roots project will look like upon completion. The team behind this venture hopes to plant gardens on the roofs of buses in New York City:

A public transit bus has a surface of 340 ft2. The MTA fleet has around 4,500 buses.

If we grew a garden on the roof of every one of the 4,500 buses in the MTA bus fleet, we would have 35 acres of new rolling green space in the city.

Link via The Presurfer | Flickr Photostream | Photo: Shane Rankinsoon Photography

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This time-lapse video captured footage in Paris from January 2007 through September 2010. It shows the deconstruction of one building and the erection of another in its place. Videographer Ramon added pop-up graphics that reveal what's going on as time progresses.

via Gizmodo

Eric Robinson, a farmer in Crosby Garrett, UK, earned approximately $3.7 million when a helmet that was found in his field was auctioned:

The grandad, who works 70 hours a week on his farm at Crosby Garrett, Cumbria, said: "My legs went to jelly. When you've been farming for years and made no real money, it's a big amount.

"To think it has been in the ground all those years."

The sale was a disappointment to Cumbrian museum Tulie House, which hoped to land the helmet - described as "an extraordinary example of Roman metalwork at its zenith" - for £1million.

Link via The Agitator | Photo (unrelated) by Flickr user Rennett Stowe used under Creative Commons license

Phillip Warren's hobby for the past 62 years has been building models of warships out of matchsticks. So far, he's used 650,000 matches to build 400 ship models:

The master modeller, from Brandford, Dorset, has created every ship built in the Royal Navy since 1945, as well as 60 other ships from the US navy and other impressive floating fortresses from 18 other nations. One of the largest ships in his collection is the famous USS Nimitz, the largest aircraft carrier in the world.

Throghout his career as a ship model builder, Phillip Waren created over 400 individual ships, as well as 1,200 airplane models that make his aircraft carriers look more real. The average ship in his collection is made using around 1,500 matchsticks and takes about a month to complete, but for his larger creations he used over 5,000 matchsticks and 200 wooden boxes. These took him about a year to complete. All in all, Phillip Waren used around 650,000 matchsticks, to create his entire fleet.

Article Link and Gallery Link via Ace of Spades HQ | Photo: ModelWarships.com

J.W. Rinzler, the author of the book The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, notes that George Lucas wasn't sure how the character Yoda could be portrayed on screen. One idea was to put a monkey in a Yoda costume:

At the time, animatronic technology wasn't thought to be advanced enough to pull off Yoda.

So, in a solution that would make Karl Pilkington proud, they decided to try putting a trained monkey in a Yoda costume, including a full Yoda face mask. Rinzler showed a picture of the monkey on set, but he explained this idea was quickly abandoned when one of the people who worked on the primate scenes in 2001: A Space Odyssey pointed out "Look, the monkey's just going to pull off the mask over and over again. It's never going to work."

You would have thought one wouldn't need first-hand experience to know that, but the creative team decided to junk the idea and enlist Muppet mastermind Jim Henson to create the world's first animatronic muppet. To show the extent of the character's Muppet origins, Rinzler showed a photo of Yoda hanging out with Kermit and Miss Piggy in the swamps of Dagobah.

Link | Image: Lucasfilm

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Airplane! -- the 1980 Zucker brothers comedy about a midair jetliner disaster -- is a remake of the 1957 thriller Zero Hour! Simon Hollington and Kypros Kyprianou ripped all of the jokes and gags out of Airplane! and turned it back into a drama.

via Ace of Spades HQ | Editors' Website

In 1936, Ria van Dijk of Tilburg, the Netherlands, visited a shooting gallery. She was sixteen years old. When she hit a target, the impact tripped a camera which snapped her picture. Ria thoroughly enjoyed the experience and went back every year, except during World War II. She's collected the pictures and published them in a book. At the link, you can view them in chronological order and see the progression of her life from the perspective of the shooting gallery camera.

Link via J-Walk Blog | Photo: KesselsKramer Publishing

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Joe Romano, a doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania, modified a robot to sense objects and pick them up without either crushing or dropping them:

This information has already been used to allow the robot to quickly stop after contact before damaging itself or the environment, naturally pass objects to a person, or detect when an object has been set down on a tabletop.

The goal of this work was to allow the robot to understand the sensory information that arises from contact with the environment, intelligently reason about what is happening in the world, and decide what the appropriate robot response should be. Using this tactile approach, the PR2 can delicately grasp a wide range of unknown objects, such as raw fruit, eggs, and heavy liquid-filled containers, all without crushing or dropping them. The PR2 can also quickly detect contacts between its arms and objects in the world, as well as contact between hand-held objects and the world.

Link via GearFuse