We've seen a Star Wars quiet book and a Star Trek quiet book, but what is the parent of a little Whovian to do? The crafty Bantam 33 has solved that problem with a long set of adventures launched from a felt TARDIS. View the rest of her pages at the link.
Link -via Nerd Approved
Tyler Cowen is a professor of economics at George Mason University and general Renaissance man (seriously, read his blog--he's interested in everything). Alex Tabarrok, also a professor at GMU, shares this fascinating story:
Tyler [Cowen] once walked into class the day of the final exam and he said. “Here is the exam. Write your own questions. Write your own answers. Harder questions and better answers get more points.” Then he walked out.
Would you like to have an exam like this?
Link -via Kottke | Photo: Mercatus Center
This woman isn't a superhero with a low budget. She's a swimmer in China, the epicenter of this latest fashion craze. The face-kini is basically a ski mask made of light fabric that protects a person from the sun:
Often paired with a long-sleeved shirt, the face-kini reportedly costs from $2.40 to $4; many residents simply make their own, out of old clothes. But observers could be forgiven for thinking they've stumbled onto a vacation community for superheroes in Qingdao, a city across the East China Sea from South Korea. [...]
In many cultures, a tan doesn't imply health and leisure, as it often does in Western advertising. Instead, it's seen as a connection to outdoor work, and the peasantry. Preserving one's pale skin, the thinking goes, implies that you lead a pampered, successful life.
Link -via Dave Barry | Photo: AFP/Getty
Tito loves his ball. I think it's a little too big for him, but he doesn't.
-via The Mary Sue
To make the cruise ship experience even more fun, some ships' housekeeping staffs fold guest towels into the shapes of different animals. This is a scorpion that one Carnival cruisegoer found on her bed. At the link, you can see other towel animals, including swans, elephants, monkeys and pigs.
It should go without saying that Jill of Kitchen Fun with My 3 Sons is a culinary genius. But now she has really outdone herself. With pancakes, chocolate chips, marshmallows, eggs and grapes she has brought George and the Man with the Yellow Hat to the breakfast table.
Joe Rinaudo owns a photoplayer from 1926. What's a photoplayer? I'm glad you asked. It's a machine that allows a performer to play many instruments simultaneously. During the days of silent movies, theaters would use them to play background music. Mr. Rinaudo spent years restoring and mastering his. Now I want one.
The Golden Ratio is 1.618. Since the ancient Greeks conceived of it, it has been found in nature and used by artists to depict idealized beauty. According to Dr. Jasper Verguts University Hospital Leuven in Belgium, it's also found in the dimensions of the healthiest uteri:
Over the last few months he has measured the uteruses of 5,000 women using ultrasound and drawn up a table of the average ratio of a uterus's length to its width for different age bands.
The data shows that this ratio is about 2 at birth and then it steadily decreases through a woman's life to 1.46 when she is in old age.
Dr Verguts was thrilled to discover that when women are at their most fertile, between the ages of 16 and 20, the ratio of length to width of a uterus is 1.6 – a very good approximation to the golden ratio.
Link -via The Hairpin | Image: National Cancer Institute
Although slightly derivative of the 1978 movie Buffalo Rider, the Possum Posse's Guy on a Buffalo has the potential to make the leap to regular television and catapult its filmmakers to fame.
Watch the first episode as the main character, Guy on a Buffalo, faces down attacks by a bear and a Native American.
Do you have a paternity testing emergency? Well, then, good news! There's a mobile clinic in New York City that offers DNA matching tests:
In what may be a first anywhere, a “Who’s Your Daddy” truck is cruising New York City selling DNA tests to people who want to confirm their child’s paternity or even whether their parents are biologically related to them.
The brown and white RV, which is bedecked in eye catching signs advertising its services, is more than just a moving billboard, according to driver and operator Jared Rosenthal. “The RV is set up to be a drug testing clinic and a DNA testing clinic,” he told ABC News. “It’s essentially a mobile office so while we’re working people will walk up and ask questions and sometimes even take a test right on board.”
Watch a video at the link.
Link -via Marginal Revolution | Photo WABC
I once promised that if someone ever made a Fluttershy Mosin-Nagant rifle, I would post it at Neatorama. This is not it, but it's awfully close: a Fluttershy SKS. The SKS was the Soviet Union's semi-automatic replacement for the bolt action Mosin-Nagant.
It appears to lack the standard folding bayonet, but it does have Fluttershy's cutie mark which will probably have the same effect on an enemy.
What would it be like if H.R. Giger had worked on Star Wars instead of Alien? Imperial forces would have been even more frightening, as Thomas Spanos's Darth Vader helmet illustrates.
Link -via Super Punch
Greg Allen found this old coloring and activity book that dates back to the first movie in 1979. Can you spot all of the things wrong with this picture? You can find the answers after the jump
