Cartoonist James Chapman is composing a book illustrating over 100 proverbs from around the world. There's a lot of wisdom in them, although they can come across a bit oddly when translated into English. Now clean your mustache and read more of them here.
John Farrier's Blog Posts
It was his unlucky and lucky day.
The bad news is that an unsecured mattress fell out of a truck and hit a motorcyclist. The good news is that of all things to be hit by, he was hit by a mattress. It cushioned his fall.
According to internet rumors that I cannot verify, the motorcyclist escaped injury.
(Photo: Ogilvy & Mather)
KFC claims that its chicken is "finger lickin' good." Now you can take that way too literally with its line of nail polish that is as edible as the rest of the items on its menu (for what that's worth). It teamed up with the spice company McCormick to create polishes that taste like the Original and Hot & Spicy flavors. They're debuting in Hong Kong. Adweek reports:
"The recipe for our edible nail polish is unique and was specifically designed to hold the flavor, but to also dry with a glossy coat similar to normal nail polish," says Ogilvy creative director John Koay. "This campaign is designed to be intriguing and fun to increase excitement around the KFC brand in Hong Kong."
-via Geekologie
Rob Lopez began getting his 2-year old son Sebastian ready for Star Wars Day last Friday (it's a holiday that requires a lot of prep work). Lopez woke up the boy while dressed as Darth Vader and menacing him with a lightsaber.
Sebastian, a fine padawan, responded with admirable courage. At 1:43, he demonstrates that he knows exactly what he should do if Darth Vader visits him.
My favorite part of the video is when Lopez thoughtfully gets his wife's written permission to play this prank on their toddler. He's smart!
-via Tastefully Offensive
"Metamorphosis" is a stunningly beautiful new series by body painters Leonie Gené and Jörg Düesterwald and photographers Uwe Schmida and Laila Pregizer. In it, the elements of nature appear to awaken from slumber and rise into human form. It is an animistic presentation of the natural world in all its beauty.
Content warning: artistic nudity.
-via Visual News
Rex the dog has come a long way.
He was a stray who lived a hard life of fighting other dogs and killing cats on the streets. Then Ed Gernon of Whittier, California rescued him.
Having been rescued, Rex pushed on the cycle of kindness. He brought Gernon's attention to a sick hummingbird, lying on the ground and covered with ants.
The pair nursed the bird, whom they named Hummer, back to health. Now Hummer lives with Gernon and Rex. She's Rex's constant companion. You can read more about them at CBS News Los Angeles (auto-start video).
-via Incredible Things
Makeup artist Promise Tamang looks like she's stepping out of a virtual world! She painted perfectly arranged and shaded squares on her face, neck, and chest to make her look like a pixelated being. You can see her makeup tutorial here and learn how to do this for yourself.
-via Laughing Squid
To commemorate the life of the musician Prince, beard artist James Myrick (whose work we've featured extensively at Neatorama) grew his beard into the shape of Prince's unpronounceable love symbol. The purple background inspired by Prince's Purple Rain is a nice accent.
(Photo: Globkrajono)
I'd long suspected that disposable ballpoint pens had holes in the caps so that they'd dry out faster. It's planned obsolescence.
But that was incorrect. It's actually to save lives.
Every year, about 100 people in the USA choke to death on pen caps. The purpose of the hole is to provide an air passage in the event that the pen cap becomes lodged in an airway. Science Alert explains:
By simply adding a larger hole to the top of the lid, pen company BIC increased air flow and the chance that people would still be able to breathe even if that happens - a design feature that, quite literally, saves lives.
"In addition to help prevent the pen from leaking, all our BIC caps comply with international safety standards that attempt to minimise the risk of children accidentally inhaling pen caps," the company writes on its website. "Some of these vented caps, like that used for the BIC Cristal, has a little hole in the top to comply with the existing safety standards."
-via Glenn Reynolds
(Photo: Michael Newton)
That person who lives in your house--the one that you've known all of his life--what's his name? Precision is difficult, so just run through the roster and see what sticks.
We've all done this before: call one family member by another relative's name. You may even address your husband or child with your dog's name.
But not your cat's name.
Why? Futurity summarizes research from a Duke University doctoral student named Sparky Samantha Deffler. She explains that it's because dog names have greater significance in families:
In addition to mixing up sibling for sibling and daughter for son, study participants frequently called other family members by the name of the family pet—but only when the pet was a dog. Owners of cats or other pets didn’t commit such slips of the tongue.
Deffler says she was surprised how consistent that finding was, and how often it happened.
“I’ll preface this by saying I have cats and I love them,” Deffler says. “But our study does seem to add to evidence about the special relationship between people and dogs.
“Also, dogs will respond to their names much more than cats, so those names are used more often. Perhaps because of that, the dog’s name seems to become more integrated with people’s conceptions of their families.”
-via Althouse
(Photo: Surefire)
It's time for you to stop waxing your chest. The newest, hottest fashion in manscaping is for men to grow out their natural carpets. The New York Times reports that this is how urban men are reconnecting with their primal masculinity:
“We’re seeing a return to ’70s fashion,” said Tim Bess, an analyst at the trend forecasting agency the Doneger Group. “The late ’60s and early ’70s were about freedom, the hippie movement, having lots of hair.” [...]
Christopher Oldstone-Moore, the author of the 2015 book “Of Beards and Men” and a senior lecturer at Wright State University, in Ohio, believes that an increasingly urban and digitized life has left some men “disconnected from their masculinity.”
“There are different ways to connect to your organic masculinity,” Dr. Oldstone-Moore said. “Hair is one way to do it.”
The obvious next step for enhanced masculine display would be to put glitter in your chest hair.
-via Althouse
(Unrelated photo by James Jones)
16 and Pregnant? Not anymore. Or, at least, less of it. The number of teenage mothers in the USA peaked in 1991, when it was considered a major public health crisis. But since 2006, the teen birthrate has plummeted, especially among Black and Hispanic populations.
Why? Scholars says that improved sex education and access to contraception has helped. But teens are also having sex less. The Washington Post explains:
“There has been a change in social norms that has happened in the past 20 years, and the idea of not having sex or delaying sex is now something that can be okay,” said Bill Albert, chief program officer for the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.
Veronica Gomez-Lobo, director of pediatric gynecology at Children’s National Medical Center, said the trend of abstinence has been mostly among younger teens rather than older ones. While there’s not good data on why this is happening, she thinks of it as a “contagion” factor: So many teens are waiting to have sex, she suggests, that the peer pressure goes opposite to the way that it might have in the past.
“We think this is a very healthy trend,” Gomez-Lobo said.
We would, of course, need hard data to confirm this impression.
-via Marginal Revolution
(Image: BFMTV)
You think that you've got it rought? Just listen to the nightmarish life of Frédéric Desnard, formerly a manager at a perfume company in France:
“I was ashamed of being paid for doing nothing,” he said.
There was simply nothing for him to do for his 4 years at the Interparfums company:
The 44-year-old said his “descent into hell” was similar to a burnout, but less interesting. […]
Desnard complained that between 2010 and 2014 he was mise en placard, or put in the cupboard by his then employer Interparfums, a French phrase that involves giving employees little or no work, or menial tasks.
He told Agence France-Presse he was relegated to doing tasks that had nothing to do with his job and deprived of his original responsibilities. This, he alleges, left him “destroyed” and with “serious depression”.
So, The Guardian reports, Desnard is seeking compensation and damages from Interparfums for approximately $414,000:
In what is believed to be the first case of its kind in France, Desnard is seeking €360,000 (£282,000) in compensation and damages – including holiday pay, he says, is due.
It's the least they can do for him.
(Photo of Mark Zuckerberg by Robert Scoble)
Can you find a security flaw in one of Facebook's social media platforms? If so, the company will give you at $10,000 reward.
The youngest person to ever claim that prize is a 10-year old boy in Finland named Jani. He found a hole in Instagram, which is owned by Facebook. The company handed over the cash reward to Jani's parents. The Washington Post reports:
This reward puts Jani in the upper tier of hackers Facebook has paid for finding bugs. Since the company launched its bounty program in 2011, Facebook says it has paid out about $4.3 million to more than 800 researchers.
Melanie Ensign, a security representative at Facebook, told The Washington Post by phone early Wednesday that most of those payouts are much smaller amounts. The reported $1,780 average reward skews high, she said, with a cluster of very large payouts obscuring the typical sum.
“We base our bounties on the scope of the risk, rather than the novelty or sophistication,” Ensign said. The flaw that Jani found “would have impacted everybody on Instagram.”
Jani hopes to spend some of that reward money on a bike, soccer equipment, and new computers.
-via Marilyn Terrell
The worldwide film phenomenon known as Bollywood began with this 1913 silent film Raja Harishchandra. Govind Phalke, who is sometimes known as the "father of Indian cinema," produced this, the first Indian feature film.
It tells the story of Harishchandra, a legendary Indian king. The Public Domain Review describes him as well as the film made in his memory:
The story centres around the hero Harishchandra, a noble king, who, to honour his promise to the sage Vishwamitra, sacrifices his kingdom, his wife, and eventually also his children. By the end, however, having pleased the Gods with his actions, Harishchandra’s former glory is restored.
Phalke was apparently inspired to make films after watching the French film The Life of Christ (1902), twice in one day. He quit his job at a printing press and went to London to learn the technical ins and outs of making a film. Returning to India, he pledged in his life-assurance policies and his wife sold her jewellery to raise the capital needed.
Embedded above is an 11-minute synopsis. You can watch the full 40 minutes that survive at the Public Domain Review.
-via Nag on the Lake
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