A veteran of the Iraq War compares his readjustment to civilian life with that of the character Billy Pilgrim in Kurt Vonnegut's semi-autobiographical novel Slaughterhouse Five. Vonnegut wrote of becoming "unstuck in time", which is a launching point for the science fiction parts of the book, but Matt Gallagher says the feeling is real when you leap from one life to another.

I’ve walked by manholes in New York City streets and smelled the sludge river I walked along in north Baghdad in 2008. I’ve stopped dead in my tracks to watch a street hawker in Midtown, a large black man with a rolling laugh and a British accent, who looked just like my old scout platoon’s interpreter. And I’ve had every single slamming dumpster lid — every single damn one — rip off my fatalistic cloak and reveal me to be, still, a panicked young man desperate not to die because of an unseen I.E.D.

Despite these metaphysical dalliances with time travel the names on my black bracelet are, in fact, stuck in time.  Or, more accurately, stuck in memory, where they’ll fade out and disappear like distant stars before becoming shadows of the men we served with and knew.

So it goes.

Link -via Metafilter

(vimeo link)

Shelley Jones and Marko Anstice take a trip through Venice in this stop-motion video by bayougirl. I sure wish those things really worked like that! ...except for the end, of course. -via Nag on the Lake

It's time for the Name That Weird Invention! contest. Steven M. Johnson comes up with all sorts of crazy ideas in his Museum of Possibilities posts. Can you come up with a name for this one? The commenters suggesting the funniest and wittiest names will win a free T-shirt from the NeatoShop. Let your imagination run wild, and good luck!

Update: ladybuggs wins a t-shirt for coming up with the name "the Toothsayer"! Also tripleX had the second place winning name with "ayePad", but didn't specify a shirt. Honorable mentions to Andrew X for "Den-Tell" and to Trevor for "DenTell Plaque."

The following is an article from Uncle John's Giant 10th Anniversary Bathroom Reader.

Last week, we told you about the battle to end the sale of adulterated milk. Part II is the story of the fight to pasteurize the U.S. milk supply. It's an instructive tale. In spite of proof that pasteurization could save lives, Americans resisted it because it was a new idea... and because it "cost too much."

SOLID PROGRESS

During the latter part of the 19th century, improvements were made in the quality of milk sold in the United States.

Bottles: In 1884, for example, Dr. Hervey G. Thatcher patented the first practical milk bottle with a sealable top. He got the idea while standing in line in the street for his own milk a year earlier. When the little girl ahead of him dropped her filthy rag doll into the milk dealer's open milk can, the dealer just shook the doll off, handed it back to the little girl, then ladled Thatcher's milk as if nothing happened.

Thatcher's bottle wasn't a solution to all of raw milk's problems, but at least it kept impurities out of the milk after it left the dairy. Many dairies hated the bottles because they were expensive and broke relatively easily, but they caught on with the public and were soon in use all over the country.

The Lactometer: In the early 1890s, New York State began regulating the content of milk using a lactometer, a newly invented device that could measure the amount of milk solids in milk. For the first time, it was possible to compare pure milk with a test sample of a dairy's milk to see if it had been watered down or adulterated. If the milk tested didn't contain the same amount of milk solids as pure milk, the milk dealer could be fined or penalized.

BATTLING BACTERIA

But by far, the most important breakthroughs were scientific. The 1880s and 1890s were a period of great advancement in the understanding of bacteria and its role in causing disease.

In 1882, for example, A German scientist named Rupert Koch discovered that bovine tuberculosis, a form of tuberculosis found in cattle, could be spread to humans through diseased milk. This form of tuberculosis attacked the glands, intestines, and bones, frequently killing the afflicted or leaving them deformed for life.

"Children seem to be especially susceptible to bovine tuberculosis," James Cross Gilbin writes in Milk: The Fight for Purity. "[Victims] often spent years trapped into spinal frames...designed to prevent deformity while the body slowly overcame the infection."

(YouTube link)

Co-founder Jimmy Wales explains how Wikipedia came about ten years ago, how it works, and some interesting facts you might know about the website. -via Boing Boing

Almond was born in a maple tree last summer and never left. Ron Venden of Belleville. Wisconsin, says he's never sen the cat leave the tree, and there are no paw prints on the ground when snow covers his yard. And Almond doesn't need to leave the tree, since his needs are catered to.

To Venden's knowledge, Almond has no other home outside his maple. The cat was born there in June, and while the mother and the other kittens left, Almond stuck around. Venden has been feeding it ever since.

So why does Almond stay?

"I think it's because I'm treating it too good," said Venden, who at least twice a day climbs a ladder about 12 feet up to check on and feed Almond. He's also made a protected straw bed for the cat in a hollow of the tree, set up a dry cat food feeder and provides daily deliveries of fresh food, which Wednesday morning included a bowl of salami, meatloaf and milk.

"I kind of enjoy it," Venden said of caring for Almond, although he admits: "The neighbors think I'm goofy."

Vendon was scratched trying to remove the cat at first, but Almond is gentle enough when left where he belongs. http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/article_b9330ace-242a-11e0-94c6-001cc4c03286.html -via Fark

Have you ever seen an albino plant? Albino redwood trees are very rare, since they lack chlorophyll plants use to convert sunlight to nutrients. However, they can survive by sucking nutrients from neighbor trees. There are only 25 known specimens of albino redwoods alive, eight of which are in California. Read more about them at Discoblog. Link -via mental_floss

Since 1989, Mark A. Landis periodically donates art to various museums. He asks for nothing in exchange, then disappears. Sooner or later, the art museum finds that the Curran, or Signac, or Lepine works he donated are forgeries, painted by Landis himself.

Unlike most forgers, he does not seem to be in it for the money, but for a kind of satisfaction at seeing his works accepted as authentic. He takes nothing more in return for them than an occasional lunch or a few tchotchkes from the gift shop. He turns down tax write-off forms, and it’s unclear whether he has broken any laws. But his activities have nonetheless cost museums, which have had to pay for analysis of the works, for research to figure out if more of his fakes are hiding in their collections and for legal advice. (The Hilliard said it discovered the forgery within hours, using a microscope to find a printed template beneath the paint.)

In the weeks since an article in The Art Newspaper first revealed the scope of the forgeries, museums and their lawyers have been trying to locate Mr. Landis, who was never easy to find in the first place because he often provided bogus addresses and phone numbers. But now he seems to have disappeared altogether.

Landis often uses often names and sometimes poses as a priest. Link -via Metafilter

Those of you who read the comments here at Neatorama know that the remaining writers are a thick-skinned bunch. We welcome comments, both kudos and criticism, but we have a couple of rules: we will delete comments that are personal attacks on other Neatoramanauts, we will edit or delete comments with particularly bad language, and of course, we remove spam. Other than that, we encourage a lively but mannerly debate about the things we post. And if you have suggestions for making Neatorama better, we'd love to hear them!

This week, Disney theme park fan Jill Harness gave us the lowdown on one of Walt Disney World's biggest attractions with Neatorama Facts: Space Mountain.

From Uncle John's Bathroom Reader, we learned about The Fight for Safe Milk: Swill Milk. Part two of the fight for safe milk will be published Monday.

We looked into The Neural Correlate of Ignorance, courtesy of the folks at the Annals of Improbable Research.

Around the World in Religious Traditions came to us from mental_floss magazine.

In the Museum of Possibilities, Steven M. Johnson takes time to imagine Umbrella Possibilities.

At NeatoBambino, Tiffany passed along some nuggets of wisdom in Life Lessons My Dad Taught Me.

At the art blog, we welcome a new collection from UK illustrator Sam Branton. Check out his works and those of all the other artists.

At Neatorama's literature blog BitLit, you're invited to follow the tale of “How Santa Saved The World Then Lost It All” in Happily Ever Over by C. Merry starting here. The first five chapters are up; be sure to check back as more chapters are posted. Pictured here is the story's ghost Lavender Mary. And you can read the entire novel Wizard Constable by Tom Van Natta.

In the What Is It? game this week, Robert McLaughlin was the first to correctly state that the mystery object is a canary cage for a coal mine -here’s an explanation. Among many humorous guesses, The Professor wins a t-shirt for “This is the server used by Facebook to keep users’ private information secure!”

Looking for more once you've read all of Neatorama? Check out the links at the NeatoHub or the Best of Neatorama!

A pterosaur fossil found in Liaoning Province, China, yields fascinating information about the prehistoric reptiles. Scientists believe the Darwinopterus pterosaur laid the now-fossil egg after it died.

Scientists think the adult was an expectant pterosaur mother that somehow broke her left wing, causing her to fall into the lake and drown. The body sank to the bottom and eventually expelled the egg.

"During the decay process, you get a buildup of gases and pressure inside the carcass, and that tends to expel things out," said study co-author David Unwin, a paleontologist at the University of Leicester in the U.K. The egg "didn't go very far. It just came out of the body and sat there."

In addition to the associated egg, the fossil has a larger pelvis than other known Darwinopterus fossils, which is consistent with the animal being a female.

Chemical analysis of the egg suggests that, instead of laying hard-shell eggs and watching over the chicks, as most birds do, pterosaur mothers laid soft-shell eggs, which they buried in moist ground and abandoned.

The fossil gives clues as to how the eggs were formed and hatched, and since this is the first conclusively female fossil, we're finding out more about sex differences in pterosaurs. Read more at National Geographic News. Link -Thanks, Marilyn!

(Image courtesy of Lü Junchang, Institute of Geology, Beijing)

One of the great things about the internet is that designers and manufacturers can find a specialized clientele, and consumers can find specialized items that locals stores cannot afford to stock. Case in point: jewelry that reflects your interest in the geeky worlds of technology, video games, science fiction, and other hobbies. Check out some awesome jewelry items in this list at Oddee, like these circuit board earrings. Link

Kim Neill is a designer and illustrator has plenty of pantone color chips laying around, which made it easier for her to create cookies in exact pantone colors. She mixed royal icing until the colors were right, and added the color names with an edible marker once the icing was set. Instructions are included in the post. http://www.kimcreativestar.com/Portfolio/Cures_for_Boredom/Entries/2011/1/1_PANTONE_CHIP_COOKIES!.html -via J-Walk Blog

Caldwell Tanner and Kevin Corrigan rounded up internet memes to bedevil Batman and Robin in a series of comic book cover mashups. There are five in all; this one is my favorite. http://www.collegehumor.com/article:1812593 -via Gorilla Mask

(YouTube link) Stjepan Hauser and Luka Sulic perform Michael Jackson's "Smooth Criminal" on cellos. Cellos are cool! -via Buzzfeed

What you Tweet can get you into trouble! Mental_floss has the stories of four high-profile lawsuits that followed a careless Tweet. One that has yet to be settled involves fashion designer Dawn Simorangkir and some Tweets by singer Courtney Love.

After the two had worked amicably together designing custom dresses for Love, the relationship soured after some disagreements over the amount of money Simorangkir charged for the clothes. At 12:55am on the morning of March 17, 2009, Love started a series of social media posts railing against Simorangkir, starting with a lengthy post on MySpace, numerous tweets throughout the rest of the day, and even hitting the comments section of the popular handcrafted product site Etsy, where Love initially discovered Simorangkir’s work. Over the course of her day-long rant, Love accused the designer of stealing, lying, being a drug dealer and addict, being a homophobe and racist, having been arrested for prostitution, and even threatened “you will end up in a circle of scorched earth hunted til your dead.”

Simorangkir made accusations of libel and breach of contract. Love countered with freedom of speech. That trial is scheduled for next month. Read about that case and three others at mental_floss. Link