(Photo: unknown)
According to Jim Henson: The Biography by Brian Jay Jones, George Lucas offered Muppets creator Jim Henson the role of Yoda. Henson declined, suspecting that he wouldn't have enough time for a project as ambitious as Star Wars. Puppeteer Frank Oz got the job instead. But Henson still consulted with the Star Wars crew in building the Yoda puppet. You can see more photos of him working on The Empire Strikes Back at The Making of Star Wars.
-via Landa Calrissian
(Photo: DBU Baseball)
Much of Texas has been drenched with rain for the past few weeks. That poses a problem at the Horner Ballpark of Dallas Baptist University. The field is too wet to be useful for regular play. So on Friday, the university hired a helicopter and pilot to dry the field by blowing on it with its wings. You can see a video of the helicopter at work here.
The efforts were successful. The park was dry enough for a game on Sunday.
-via Marginal Revolution
Like it or not the summer season is upon us, and that means it's time to get outside, soak up some rays and enjoy days that seem to last forever.
Summer is a great time to do stuff away from home, but make sure you're wearing the proper attire before you leave the house by throwing on an awesome NeatoShop t-shirt!
(Make your way to the bottom of this post for your chance to win a NeatoShop t-shirt, just in time for summer!)
Summer is an outdoor enthusiast's favorite time of year
Toto-Beach by Theduc
A time when the sun is out and the surf is up
Alien Roller Coaster Ride by Tinkerpen
And you can come out and play with your pals
Etsy seller Iga Grygiel makes felt bags, purses, and backpacks in the shapes of animals and supernatural monsters. I especially like this one that looks like a Venus flytrap and this one that looks like Cthulhu.
But if you want sharp fashion, then place your personal items in the maw of this shark purse. At 28 inches long, it has plenty of room to swallow everything you care about and should be its own deterrent against thieves.
-via Fashionably Geek
(Photo: Camille)
The Battle of Verdun consumed most of 1916. Over 10 months, 300,000 Frenchmen and Germans died. Another 750,000 were wounded. There was a constant monsoon of artillery shells. It permanently changed the landforms of the area. After the war, it was dangerous to live there because of the vast amounts of unexploded ordnance, including poison gas shells. Stepping on the wrong spot or plowing a furrow in the wrong field meant death.
So France closed off much of the area, which became known as the Zone Rouge or "Red Zone." It gradually shrank over the years, but approximately 65 square miles remains off-limits to most human activity. Vegetation has filled in many of the craters. Wild animals, especially boars, are common. Last year, National Geographic explored this forbidden zone that remains scarred by war a century later. It quotes historian Christina Holstein:
Holstein believes the Zone Rouge will never be fully cleared of its unexploded ordnance.
“They reckon that they have 300 years work ahead of them before they have cleared the whole battlefield,” she says. “And they never will.” […]
“I suspect that what might happen is that certain areas are cleared a bit more and perhaps you get a 'discovery trail' or something like that so that people can walk around some of the main sites and get some information,” she says.
Holstein also thinks that the Zone Rouge’s light human footprint over the last 100 years might actually be one of its greatest assets.
“Because it has been abandoned and covered with trees, it is a microcosm of something that happened a hundred years ago,” Holstein says. “It is a bit like Sleeping Beauty. Things have just gotten frozen in time.”
-via VA Viper
(Image: 9News)
Rebekah Aversano says, "This is the face I grew up with."
(Photo: AP)
In 1997, Richard Norris's face was blown off in a terrible accident. Five years later, plastic surgeons attempted a revolutionary new type of treatment: a full face transplant. Surgeons have performed this operation since 2005. 23 of the 27 transplants have been successful. In this happily successful surgery, the donor was 21-year old Joshua Aversano, who died in a car accident.
Recently, the Australian news program 60 Minutes introduced Norris to Aversano's family. He met his donor's sister, Rebekah.
The Witcher is back, and this time he's got a whole new look! Taking a cue from those games about grand theft and miami, Geralt's new look has lots of bright, neon colors and futuristic flash. He's already ostracized and forced to live on the fringes of society for being a mutant, so why should a Witcher care about his colors giving him away? In fact, Geralt has found the colorful new look to be quite effective for drawing monsters out of hiding, making the slaying that much easier...
Add some eye catching color to your geeky wardrobe with this Neon Witcher t-shirt by Berserk7, it's bold and bright just like the magic used by the Witcher in a fight!
Visit 10tacles's NeatoShop for more mighty cool designs:
| Game Over | Hunters | Taco Ghost | Summoning |
View more designs by 10tacles | More Video Game T-shirts | New T-Shirts
Are you a professional illustrator or T-shirt designer? Let's chat! Sell your designs on the NeatoShop and get featured in front of tons of potential new fans on Neatorama!
Chair
Particularly now that the public strongly favors a minimalist, sleek and modern design aesthetic, designers and manufacturers are fully invested in blending the best of function with avant garde form. As always, in the end there are products that aren't practical in terms of function, and are rather ineffective beauties. Such products eventually fall by the wayside in terms of sales; the market soon sorts out such design failures. Consumers love a good marriage of form and function, but they won't tolerate or support an ineffective product for long. On occasion, though, if an item has a look that consumers love, designers can make modifications to bring its usefulness in line with its appearance.
The editors at Design Bump have assembled another group of interesting new products/industrial designs. Have a look at all 30 designs and see if anything catches your eye.
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
Writer Tom Gardiner at Gizmodo breaks down systems of technology and advancement of both Star Wars and Star Trek, setting categories alongside each other, in order to come to a conclusion about which is more technologically advanced. Categories considered include transportation, energy generation, communication, manufacturing, construction, military, medical technology, robotics and computing, field manipulation and social technology. As you can imagine, once the writer gives his opinion, the debate continues from readers in the comment section. Check out the comparison here.
Royalty by Wooded Illustrations
You've been walking around with the blood of the royals pumping through your veins all this time and yet you haven't had a t-shirt that reflects your regal heritage. Well, all that's about to change when you slip on this Royalty t-shirt by Wooded Illustrations and make your life a fantasy wonderland!
This mysterious and majestic shirt invites viewers to take a trip to another time, when stone castles towered above the landscape and life wasn't complicated by technology. And with such a fantastically unique design on your shirt you're sure to wow the masses wherever you go!
Visit Wooded Illustrations's Facebook fan page, then head on over to his NeatoShop for more wondrous designs:
| Lost In A Book | Congo | Stranger In A Strange Land | Drag |
View more designs by Wooded Illustrations | More Sci-Fi T-shirts | New T-Shirts
Are you a professional illustrator or T-shirt designer? Let's chat! Sell your designs on the NeatoShop and get featured in front of tons of potential new fans on Neatorama!
Image: Athina Garza
With the warmer months upon us, some people are still taking steps to trim off weight that may have crept on over the winter. Summer activities like pool parties, boating, surfing and water skiing are good inspiration.
For those who are looking for weight loss tips, sometimes the best come from people who have recently fought or are still fighting the battle.
Barb Sullivan Photography Via bsiznks.500px.com | BE Photography / Via bephotos.smugmug.com
For instance, Olivia Sullivan, shown in the photos above (before and after she lost 100 pounds in one year), got candid about cardio. Whereas many people start walking, power walking or jogging when they embark on a weight loss program, that type of exercise is not for everyone, particularly in the initial months.
“The biggest revelation I’ve had is that cardio sucks. Cardio REALLY sucks when you are 275 pounds; it makes you feel really bad about yourself. A friend introduced me to strength training and I fell in love with it. It was doable at my heaviest weight and I realized I was kind of strong. I would do cardio a few times a week but it was lifting that kept me coming back to the gym. Then in October, about halfway through the year, I found boxing. I had built up just enough endurance and strength that it was really fun.I box three days a week and strength train the other three … Cardio is much easier now at 175 pounds and I’m hoping to do my first 5K this summer!”
Hear more advice on weight loss from others who have recently lost fifty pounds or more here.
How do you become a great artist? Or even just a good one? With practice. Lots and lots of practice.
That's a problem for tattoo artists. Not many people want to be an inker's sketchbook. That's why Tattoo Art Magazine invented the SkinBook. It's a book filled with sheets of a synthetic product that behaves like human skin. The pages are photographs of human body parts that are commonly tattooed. This permits artists to get a sense of what a design will look like when applied to an actual human body.
You once tried to eat a hamburger, but it got away from you. It never forgot you. But that's all in the past, of course. Water under the bridge and all that. Now it just wants to be your friend. The hamburger nightlight will watch over you as you sleep. Its bright, shining teeth and unearthly eyes faintly illuminate the room. It looks at you. It remembers.
Designer Jun Takahashi unveiled the Hamburger Lamp in 2002. Now, High Snobriety warns, it's back.
-via Home Crux
Redditor Loocylooo works for a county government in the southwestern United States. The county animal shelter has a facility in the front lobby of her office building: a cat library. Employees who work in the building can check out a cat for up to an hour at a time. They can also adopt a cat from the cage, which has led to so far over 100 adoptions.
This is brilliant! And regular libraries could do this, too! Most library management systems have reserve modules, so it's just a matter of barcoding the cats, adding them to the circulating reserves collection, then making them available to library patrons. When the lending period is over, patrons could return the cats at the book/cat drop or the circulation desk.
Standard reserve requirements would stand: no interlibrary loan or in-system transfer. Heavy fines would apply for late returns.
-via Tastefully Offensive
The Ring, Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th, Everett
In this heavy atmosphere of Hollywood remakes, popular seventies and eighties horror movies are a logical place for the rebooters-that-be to mine for potential ticket sales. Depending on their general attitudes toward remakes, some horror fans may already be skeptical or even dreading the "new and improved" versions of their seminal favorites.
In this article, three writers evaluate a dozen remakes of modern horror classics and give their take on how the films measure up in terms of quality. Check out their opinions and feel free to weigh in with your own.
