Over in the NeatoShop, we sell an umbrella that has a handle similar to those found on Japanese samurai swords. One college student in Atlanta owns one (although he didn't get it from us), and when police heard that a student in a dorm had a sword, they surrounded the building and evacuated it. The owner's girlfriend reports:

The officer then asked me to describe him, so I proceeded to describe his hair color, height, eye color, and build. The officer interrupted, "Did this person have a weapon?" Through my nervousness I perceived what the situation was about.

I replied, "He had an umbrella that looked like a weapon. It looks like a samurai sword."

The officers looked at each other. One of them said, "An umbrella?" to which I replied affirmatively. I then helpfully volunteered, "I can call him to come right back over."

Link via Gizmodo

Tian offers the blog Hanzi Smatter as a public service to people who have Chinese characters tattooed on their bodies, but aren't sure what they mean. Email him a picture, and he'll translate it for you. The picture on the left was sent along with this note:

Hello,

I just stumbled across your blog and thought that you could assist me in verifying the meaning of my tattoo. I did them myself late one night a couple years back while apprenticing at a tattoo parlor.

Thanks

J. S.

Tian says that the characters mean "bitter idiot".

Link via The Agitator

Previously: Never use Google Translate to Generate the Text of Your Tattoo

Artist Matt Jones made "Bertrand" -- a model of a whale created from garbage bags:

We breathed life into Bertrand, but sadly, he didn't take flight. He tragically insisted upon beaching himself, and we ended up putting him out of his misery.

The idea was for him to be a solar hot air balloon, the air inside heating up and lifting him. I'm confident the main problem is too much mass of plastic in the pectoral fins, and tapered tail relative to how much volume of air those areas hold.

Link via Super Punch

Yasuhiro Suzuki built a boat that looks like a zipper pull. When piloted through the water, the resulting wake resembles an opening fly. The boat was on display at this year's Setouchi International Art Festival. You can view a video at the link.

Link via DudeCraft | Photo: InventorSpot

Mathematician Jon McLoone calculated the most difficult word to guess in the game of Hangman. It's "jazz". Here's how he arrived at that result:

Jon McLoone built a computer game -- with a series of algorithms -- to figure out that exact question. It rests on a key assumption: the guesser will pick common letters (e.g. vowels) measurably and proportionally more often than exceptionally rare ones (Q, X, Z, J). McLoone then simulated fifty Hangman runs for every single word in the dictionary. That's 90,000 words, totaling nearly 5 million games on Hangman.

Some words were easily guessed, typically requiring fewer than five incorrect letters offered. For example, the word "difficult" proved easy -- in its 50 trials, the simulator guessed, on average, only 3.3 incorrect letters. Allowing for eight incorrect ones before our stick figure meets an untimely death, the word "difficult" only caused one stick-death. Allowing for ten? Mr. Stick had a 100% survival rate.

Having gathered all this data on 90,000 words, McLoone selected the 1,000 most promising, and then ran the game 3,000 times using just those thousand. All said and done, McLoone "played" nearly 8 million games of Hangman in order to determine that the hardest Hangman word to guess -- regardless of whether the guesser has 8, 9, 10, or even up to 13 guesses, is "jazz."

Link via reddit | Photo by Flickr user quinn.anya used under Creative Commons license

I ask because it's for sale on eBay. The toilet was removed from the late author's New Hampshire home by the new owners in the 1980s. It hasn't been cleaned yet, so it's super-authentic. You can bid for it or buy it immediately for $1,000,000.

eBay Listing and Article via Geekosystem | Image: eBay

(Video Link)

YouTube user KleinerLudewig jumped out of an airplane at 4,300 meters while sitting in a small rubber boat and solved a Rubik's Cube in 31.5 seconds. He finished at 2,500 meters and then deployed his parachute.

via Nerdcore | Previously: Man Solves Rubik's Cube Puzzle in 11.1 Seconds

Artist Jude Buffum created pixelated video game screenshots for Ghostbusters, Gremlins, and The Goonies. They'll be on display at the upcoming 3G Show, starting September 3rd at Studio 1988 in Los Angeles.

http://www.theautumnsociety.com/2010/08/3g-show.html via Super Punch | Museum Website

Previously by Jude Buffum:
Rainbow Brite: Finish Her!
Housewives Tarot

Ferrari engineers designed the electric motor for this hair dryer. It's a fairly normal dryer, but the product specs make it sound like a high-performance vehicle:

FERRARI DESIGNED AC V12 engine
Powerful 2200W
Very long life up to 2000 hours
Airspeed 130km/hr
Airflow 95m3/hr
TURBO-shot instant boost airflow increases airflow pressure up to 15%
Intense air pressure 6.2 bar
Tri-port Ionic generator

It's available in black as well as the traditional Ferrari red.

Product Page via OhGizmo!

Would you like to be harassed by photographers pushing into your personal life and publishing all the salacious details? There's a company that lets customers in Austin, New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco rent paparazzi to follow them around. I found this on a list at Woman's Day of ten strange things that it's possible to rent. You can also rent wives, car parts, and bras.

http://www.womansday.com/Articles/Family-Lifestyle/10-Weird-Things-You-Can-Rent.html via The Presurfer | Photo by Flickr user nordicdesign used under Creative Commons license

Angus Hines cut plywood into jigsaw puzzles pieces, coated them with polyurethane, and made them the floor of his Carrollton, Virginia home. The Flickr set at the link shows the progression of his work.

Link via Make | Artist's Website | Photo: Angus Hines

Lynn Rosenthal, a college professor of English, is a stickler for correct grammar. She doesn't approve of Starbucks' word usage, and after an argument with a barista, she was forcibly removed from a Starbucks location in New York City:

"I just wanted a multigrain bagel," Rosenthal told The Post. "I refused to say 'without butter or cheese.' When you go to Burger King, you don't have to list the six things you don't want.

"Linguistically, it's stupid, and I'm a stickler for correct English."

Rosenthal admitted she had run into trouble before for refusing to employ the chain's stilted lexicon -- balking at ordering a "tall" or a "venti" from the menu or specifying "no whip."

Instead, she insists on making a pest of herself by ordering a "small" or "large" cup of joe.

Link via Geekosystem | Photo by Flickr user tristanf used under Creative Commons license

Matt Might, a professor of Computer Science at the University of Utah, created a set of circular diagrams to explain the significance and impact of a doctoral degree. He uses them to explain to incoming doctoral students what they're pursuing. The first, a circle, represents the sum of all human knowledge. Click on the link to view the sequence.

Link

Copenhagen-based artist Jacob Dahlstrup makes sailing vessels out of bananas, such as the above work entitled "Banana Schooner". They were recently on display at the Shoreditch Town Hall in London. You can view several other examples at the link.

http://www.jacobdahlstrup.com/gallery_334418.html via Super Punch | Shoreditch Town Hall | Photo: Jacob Dahlstrup

At 27 years old, Matthew Partridge has decided to take up a great challenge. He will walk the length of Britain, from Land's End to John O'Groats. And Partridge has chosen a uniquely challenging form of travel -- clicking through Google Street View:

He said: "I can't be bothered with all the training, planning and hardships of actually doing the walk. That's why I've come up with this alternative."[...]

He's even limbered up with a bit of training — building up to two-hour stints in the evenings. He said: "You can cover 400 yards in about ten seconds."

And yet they say that young people these days have no ambition.

Link via reddit | Photo of Land's End by Flickr user Tanenhaus used under Creative Commons license