Dutch artist and inventor Joost Conijn refitted his Citroën with wooden panels and installed a wood-burning boiler for propulsion. He then traveled around Eastern Europe, documenting people's reactions to his odd car.

I'm just a bit skeptical because the engine in the video doesn't sound like steam engine and the car moves at a pretty phenomenal rate of speed for a steam engine. But I have read that during World War II, some cars in Sweden were converted to wood-burning engines due to a scarcity of oil, so a functional steam engine modern car should be hypothetically possible.

What do you think? Is this real or a hoax?

http://www.divus.cz/umelec/en/pages/umelec.php?id=196&roc=2002&cis=2 via Make | YouTube Video | Artist's Website (Google Translator Version)

Here at Neatorama, we're always looking for ways to make our site more entertaining, which is why I found this recent comment by giltwist useful:

Neatorama's biggest strength and biggest weakness is that there is no specialization to the stories. I think you might attract more users if there was something, anything that was a Neatorama staple that made me check back looking for particular weekly columns. The closest to that you have right now are those bathroom reader things, and those are pretty hit-or-miss for me. What ever became of Miss Celania's video blogging? I remember the raisin milkshake then nothing.

We aim to please, which is why Alex has graciously allowed me to experiment with this post: a weekly tour of interesting tidbits in geek culture. Do you like it? Would you like to see more? Share your feedback in the comments.

1. Star Wars With a Laugh Track


(YouTube Link)

YouTube user CaptainChirac added a laugh track to the Luke/Vader confrontation scene in The Empire Strikes Back to turn this dramatic epic into a comedy. (via Topless Robot)

2. Star Trek Cross-Stitch



Craftster user coincollect408 made this amazing cross-stitch that looks as precise as a low-resolution photograph. (Link via Geek Crafts)

3. Buffy/Twilight Mashup


(YouTube Link)

Buffy thinks of Edward as a creepy stalker rather than as a sultry, romatic figure. (via Jockeystreet)

4. Giant Welded 12-Sided Die



Paul Edward Carson made this huge, welded d12 for those occasions when he needs "to generate a random number between 1 and 12 while destroying my house...." (Link via Make)

5. Superheroes/Dr. Seuss Mashups



Artist Ryan Dunlavey offers these mashups of superhero comics and Dr. Seuss book covers. (http://forbiddenplanet.co.uk/blog/2009/dr-seuss-gets-mashed-up/ via io9)

Is this something that you would like to see more of? Let us know -- we take your feedback very seriously.

(Video Link)

German percussionist Michael Vorfeld creates sound installations by turning different light bulbs on and off. The popping bulbs and flashing lights create a uniquely rhythmic experience for his live audiences. The above video is from a performance last February in Brussels.

Official Website via Urlesque

This isn't quite how I remember the Battle of Yorktown, but presumably artist Joseph Griffith did careful research for this painting marking the 225th anniversary of that battle. This image is part of a post full of Kool-Aid Man references in pop culture at Jeremy Barker's Popped Culture.

Link

No, it can't. Microwaves work by speeding up atoms in an object, thus generating heat. "Microwaves can only speed up atoms, not slow them down," writes Sandeep Ravindran of Popular Science. But Ravindran was curious about whether it would be possible to build a reverse microwave -- a device that can instantly chill an object:

Scientists do have a high-tech method for slowing atoms, however: lasers. Shoot a moving atom with a laser, and it will absorb the laser’s photons and re-emit them every which way, causing the atom to hold nearly still. Placing an atom at the junction of multiple beams can slow its momentum in all directions, decreasing its energy and cooling it.

This drops an atom’s temperature a couple hundred degrees Fahrenheit—much colder than anything you’d want to put in your mouth—in less than a second. But because it works most efficiently on low-density gases of atoms of a single element, physicist Mark Raizen of the University of Texas doesn’t think it will be useful for cooling food anytime soon: “Not unless you can subsist on a thousand sodium atoms.”

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2009-12/can-microwave-technology-be-used-make-food-cold | Photo: NASA

(YouTube Link)

Matthias Wandel used LEGO Technic parts to build a machine that distributes dominoes in rows. His website is filled with other similar gadgets, most of which are made out of wood.

Link via Make | Wandel's Wooden Machines

(Video Link)

Parkour is a sport consisting of running, climbing, crawling, and jumping over any obstacle in a path through an urban environment. Vimeo user saggyarmpit, a graphics design student in Singapore, created this amazing flip book animation video showing a parkourist in action.

via CrunchGear

The wedding planner blog Wedding ABC has pictures and information about fifteen weddings that were designed around unusual themes, such as a Halo wedding, a Nazi reenactors' wedding, and one in which attenders were dressed in nothing but bodypaint (so, somewhat NSFW). Pictured above is a mysterious wedding in which participants wore gas masks.

Link via The Presurfer

The Kellogg Company, producer of Eggo Waffles, released a limited line of Star Trek-themed waffles. They include 25 different images, icons, and phrases from the science fiction franchise. You can view more pictures at the link.



Link via Geekologie

The Economist has an article about how languages can be said to be, comparatively speaking, more or less complex. The grand prize for most complex language goes to one in the Amazon:

With all that in mind, which is the hardest language? On balance The Economist would go for Tuyuca, of the eastern Amazon. It has a sound system with simple consonants and a few nasal vowels, so is not as hard to speak as Ubykh or !Xóõ. Like Turkish, it is heavily agglutinating, so that one word, hóabãsiriga means “I do not know how to write.” Like Kwaio, it has two words for “we”, inclusive and exclusive. The noun classes (genders) in Tuyuca’s language family (including close relatives) have been estimated at between 50 and 140. Some are rare, such as “bark that does not cling closely to a tree”, which can be extended to things such as baggy trousers, or wet plywood that has begun to peel apart.

Most fascinating is a feature that would make any journalist tremble. Tuyuca requires verb-endings on statements to show how the speaker knows something. Diga ape-wi means that “the boy played soccer (I know because I saw him)”, while diga ape-hiyi means “the boy played soccer (I assume)”. English can provide such information, but for Tuyuca that is an obligatory ending on the verb. Evidential languages force speakers to think hard about how they learned what they say they know.

Link via Marginal Revolution | Image: NASA

An ingenious solution to a common problem:

The 35-year-old Sicilian first showed up at a police station on Thursday (local time) asking to be arrested because he preferred spending the night in prison rather than with his family, but was rebuffed because he had not committed a crime, the Agi news agency said on Friday.

The man immediately went to a tobacco shop next door, where he threatened the owner with a boxcutter as he grabbed a few sweets and a packet of gum.

He then waited until police arrived to arrest him for robbery.

Link via The Agitator | Image: FBI

Too lazy to come up with New Year's resolutions, let alone keep them? This web tool by graphic designer Monica Verlarde will take away all of that hard work and provide you with a resolution -- often a very simple one.

Do you have a New Year's resolution? What is it? Share in the comments.

Link via Technabob

(YouTube Link)

The OmniTread robot was built by engineering students at the University of Michigan. Its body consists of seven segments connected by pneumatic bellows. Treads on all four sides of the segments give it traction against surfaces, and the connecting bellows can inflate or deflate to provide stiffness or flexibility as needed. The robot can squeeze through a four-inch hole or ascend a vertical tube.

http://www.engin.umich.edu/research/mrl/00MoRob_6.html via CrunchGear

The US Navy has the frigate Constitution, launched in 1797. The British Royal Navy has the Victory, which dates even further back -- to 1765. But both of these vessels are museum ships, rather than truly active vessels.

The oldest naval vessel in active service is the VMF Kommuna, a Russian Navy salvage ship built in 1915. James Dunnigan writes for Strategy Page:

This 2,500 ton catamaran was built in the Netherlands and entered service in 1915. Kommuna began service in the Czar's navy, spent most of its career in the Soviet (communist) Navy, and now serves in the fleet of a democratic Russia. Originally designed to recover submarines that had sunk in shallow coastal waters, Kommuna remains in service to handle smaller submersibles, does it well and has been maintained over the decades to the point where it cheaper to keep the old girl operational, than to try and design and build a replacement.

http://www.strategypage.com/dls/articles/Why-A-Czarist-Warship-Remains-In-Service-12-30-2009.asp via Hell in a Handbasket | More Pictures | Image: Warfare.ru

(YouTube Link)

Rachelle Brown of Houston, Texas, decorates the interior of her car with Christmas lights and fake snow. It looks so much like a snow globe that one might be inclined to pick up her car and shake vigorously. The video is from the NBC affiliate in Houston.

via Urlesque