Isabel Samaras is a San Francisco-based artist who juxtaposes pop culture icons from the 1960s with major works of Western art. Above is "The Birth of Ginger", a synthesis of Gilligan's Island and Sandro Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus".

http://astrocat.com/samaras/index.html (Official website)

Link (Interview of the artist)

I hesitate to mention this lest it inspire another one of Alex's dress code edicts here at Neatorama's corporate offices. But: Brief Jerky -- underpants made from beef jerky. Wearing them, the seller says "will release their natural pheremones once your body heat and moisture kicks in!" I guess my co-workers will find out if soon enough if this is true.

Link via Geekologie

This 2GB USB memory stick transforms into the Decepticon Ravage. At the link, there's also a laser mouse that transforms into the Autobot Grimlock and a USB hub that transforms into the Autobot Blaster.

Link via Geekologie

Frank Warren, the artist behind Post Secret, recently delivered the commencement address at St. Mary's College in Maryland. In preparation for it, he asked members of the graduating class to write a one-sentence response to the question "What do my classmates, and I, need to hear on Graduation Day?" Here are a few of his responses:

Be wise enough not to be reckless, but brave enough to take great risks.

It’s okay to fail – learn from it and you will succeed.

It’s better to be pissed-off than pissed-on.

If you were to asked to deliver a commencement speech that was only one sentence long, what would it be?

http://postsecret.blogspot.com/2009/05/sunday-secrets_17.html

Surely some daring Neatoramanaut can beat this record:

ARLINGTON, Texas, May 11 (UPI) -- A Texas body modification enthusiast said he broke a Guinness World Record by receiving 1,197 piercings in a single day.

Jeremy Stroud said Arlington body modification artist Tyson Turk spent about five hours May 2 inserting 800 needles into his back, 300 in his right arm, 50 in his leg and about 20 in his left arm, the Fort Worth (Texas) Star-Telegram reported Monday.

Link via Double Plus Undead

Image by flickr user sean dreilinger used via Creative Commons license

Update 5/13/09 by Alex: if you can stand the loud music, here's the video clip: Link [YouTube]

Gamers at MIT have built a self-contained life pod in which to play World of Warcraft. It features a built-in toilet, three days worth of food rations, fresh water, and a small cookstove. Thanks to these Prometheuses among us, it is no longer necessary to go outside or interact with people face-to-face. Truly, we live in an age of marvels.

Link via Geekologie

It looks like an ordinary baseball cap. But slip steel inserts into the Sap Cap, and you have a weapon. "Beat on muggers like you are The Skipper and they are Gilligan."

Link via Hell in a Handbasket

Michael Westmoreland-White sees the Star Trek universe as a liberal or progressive vision of the future, featuring things such as racial and gender equality, free universal health care, and an absence of imperalism. I'm neither liberal or progressive, but I think that he's right.

But I do think that Star Trek is a fairly progressive/liberal science fiction franchise. It’s a basically hopeful vision of the future. It offers up a future earth that has survived war, terrorism, and ecological disasters and forged a global government of representative democracy (we are never told this, but it must be some form of federalist system to avoid tyranny). Hunger and poverty have been overcome. Most diseases have been conquered and high quality universal healthcare is available for all. Education is free and the world is highly literate with most people going beyond secondary education. It’s a clean energy society that is eco-friendly. (In Star Trek IV, the Enterprise crew in their stolen Klingon ship actually go back in time to the 20th C. to keep whales from going extinct–and in the process save the earth of their future.) There is finally global racial harmony. And, despite the micro-mini-skirted uniforms that reflected the fact that the original series was made in the ’60s, we finally have gender equality, too.

Link

Image by Flickr user Tim Williams used under Creative Commons license

Blogger Signaltheorist decided to evaluate the efficiency of the Roomba by tracking its movements:

I set up a photo camera in my room, turned out all the lights and took a long-exposure shot of my roomba doing it's thing for about 30 minutes. The result is a picture that shows the path of the roomba through it's cleaning cycle, it looks like a flight map or something. It really hits every spot!

http://signaltheorist.com/?p=91 via J-Walk Blog

Just in time for Mothers' Day! It's the Zombie Stomper Heel, which the seller describes as "Perfect for stompin’ on zombies..and men’s hearts."

Link via Double Plus Undead

Leptotyphlops carlae was discovered by biologist Blair Hedges in a jungle on Barbados last year. It's only four inches long as an adult and as thin as a strand of spaghetti.

Link

A cafe in Knoxville, Tennessee is offering a new caffeinated delight.  It's coffee made from beans that have been, shall we say, processed through the digestive tract of a small Southeast Asian mammal prior to brewing:

Kopi luwak is named after the animal that gives the coffee its … uh … full body. The bright-red coffee cherries are eaten by the luwak, which is a cat-like relative of the mongoose in Southeast Asia.

After a few hours of digestion, the beans come out the other end. They’re picked up off the forest floor, cleaned and roasted. Because of this “all natural” processing, the coffee is said to have a rich and heavy flavor, with hints of caramel or chocolate.

“It’s delicious, amazing,” said the coffee shop owner Sharif Harb. “There’s no other coffee like it — rich, almost syrupy.”

Link via Instapundit

In 1914, Austrian watchmaker Georg Grabner created the Kolibri -- the "Hummingbird" pistol. The smallest autoloading pistol ever made, it fires a .11 caliber bullet. He marketed it as a self-defense firearm for women to carry in their purses. More pictures and history at the link.

http://www.hellinahandbasket.net/2007/01/float-like-a-hummingbird-sting.htm

In 1988, artist James Sanborn was commissioned to create an outdoor sculpture to adorn the CIA's facility in Langley, Virginia. So he created Kryptos, a 10-foot high scroll of copper filled with letters. Its 865 characters contain, the artist asserts, a coded message. But even the best CIA cryptologists have been unable to crack all of it. One of the four sections remains a complete mystery. At the link, you can read about Sanborn's extensive study of cryptology while planning the sculpture and the passion that it has inspired among devoted codebreakers.

Link via Instapundit

From Bloomberg News:

Half a glass of wine a day may add five years to your life, a new study suggests. Drink beer, and you’ll live only 2 1/2 years longer.

Dutch researchers followed 1,373 men for more than four decades, noting their eating and drinking habits. Men who had about 20 grams of alcohol daily — equivalent to a half a glass of wine — had 2 1/2 years added to their life expectancy at age 50, compared with men who didn’t drink at all, according to the research published today in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. Men who consumed only wine had twice as much added longevity.

Link via Alphecca

Your assignment: in the comments, devise rules for a Neatorama-themed drinking game.

Image via flickr user rpeschetz