I made this shot from a trampoline over 60 feet away from the hoop I was shooting on. The shot starts off with a ball in my hands and another in between my legs. I then back flip releasing the ball in my hands towards the hoop, then go immediately into a front flip while exchanging the ball from my legs to my hands, then wait to rotate around a bit and shoot the second shot at the hoop while still in my front flip. Each shot reaches the hoop at the exact same time colliding inside the net for a double swish.
The Oregon Zoo is undergoing some improvements. While the construction is going on, the zoo put a fence around it and posted exhibition signs to explain what zoo visitors were looking at. It’s good that they designed the enclosure to be as close as possible to these creatures’ natural habitat. You can enlarge the pictures enough to read the information at imgur. -via reddit
Lilo the Husky lives with two other huskies and a few cats (and some humans). The family took in a weak and lethargic three-week-old foster kitten, and Lilo became her surrogate mother! Rosie the kitten thrived under Lilo’s affection and regained her health. The dog and cat are bonded now, and Rosie has been made a permanent member of the family.
Rosie has taken on some canine habits, and considers herself a member of the husky pack. Read the story of Lilo and Rosie at HuffPo, and see plenty of pictures and video of their adorable lives at lilothehusky on Instagram.
Sneaky Zebra made a music video featuring the cosplayers of San Diego Comic Con, many of them re-enacting scenes as their characters. You’ll feel like you were right there with them! The accompanying song is "Mug Shot" by MAX. -Thanks, Yan!
One way to become a successful collector is to build your collection using things other serious collectors do not want. Harley J. Spiller is successful collector of coins and currency because he specializes in money that is mangled or defaced. Most numismatists are not interested in such things, but every piece Spiller finds has a story behind it. Spiller’s first book has been published, called Keep the Change: A Collector's Tales of Lucky Pennies, Counterfeit C-Notes, and Other Curious Currency. He says,
“By looking at coins and bills through the cockeyed lens of mutilation,” Spiller says, “I had the area to myself. Nobody wanted it. It was a way to have my own Picasso collection, if you will.”
The “Picassos” in Spiller’s currency collection include munched quarters, verdigrised pennies, and dollar bills worn almost to the point of illegibility. What caught my eye, though, in Keep the Change was the chapter on currency that has been transformed into pocket-size works of art.
Look at this car. It’s a nice-looking car, isn’t it? This is a 1954 Ferrari 375 Plus with a 330 hp V12 engine. There were only five made that year, and only four exist now. Quite a rare and valuable vehicle, indeed. The last time it was sold, it went for $16.5 million dollars. And this car is now at the center of a multi-party fight. Karl Kleve purchased it in 1958 for a mere $2,500 because it was in awful shape at the time.
Karl purchased the broken vehicle from Jim Kimberly back then, but made no effort to restore the vehicle. It would then sit on a trailer outside Karl’s home in Ohio for 30-years in complete disarray. This is where things start to get confusing. According to official documents, the Ferrari was then stolen sometime between the years of 1985 and 1989, and the crime was never solved. It would then show up later in Antwerp, Belgium as a Belgian trader imported the vehicle from Atlanta, Georgia. The police would quickly impound the vehicle, as Karl did report it as stolen. Unfortunately, for unknown reasons, the police sided with the Belgian import company and gave them the vehicle.
Things went downhill from there. The car was sold and restored, then Kleve made another claim, and this back and forth went on past Kleve’s death, as well as that of the buyer. Read the claims of the many people who still want the rare Ferrari at Worthly.
In a new video series called 100 Wonders, our well-traveled friend Dylan of Atlas Obscura tells us about some of his favorite places. This episode is about Ball’s Pyramid, the home of the world’s rarest insect, Dryococelus australis.
Dylan tells us the insect’s story and the efforts to bring it back from what was thought to be extinction. Even creepy-crawlies can be the hero of a story once in a while!
It's Thursday, so you know what it means, Neatoramanauts: it's time for the What Is It? Game, brought to you by the always amusing What Is It? Blog. What is the object in the picture above? Your guess can win you a free T-shirt of your choice from the NeatoShop. Here's how to play:
Place your guess in the comment section below. One guess per comment, but you can enter as many guesses as you'd like in separate comments.
You might know the correct answer, but if you want to win a t-shirt, you'll have to use your imagination, because we are going to select two winners who give us the funniest incorrect guesses. If you guess right, then good for ya - but you don't win anything, see? So, it's up to you, funny people: you have twice the chance of winning that T-shirt now.
Please write your T-shirt selection alongside your guess. If you don't include a selection, you forfeit the prize. We highly suggest you take a look at the NeatoShop's new selection of Funny T-shirts and Science T-Shirts.
Update: This is truly a mystery item, obviously a tool, but we still don’t know what it’s for. We had some good suggestions, though. A T-shirt from the NeatoShop goes to Edward for this answer:
It was left behind at Comic-Con by someone coplaying a mashup of Thor and Cupid (Thtupid?)
The name “Thtupid” clinched that one for him. Another shirt goes to Berhard, who went into detail about the tool’s alternative versions:
This is without doubt Thor's fisching hammer, "Troutnir" ... a very light version for nordic god trout fisching...
It throws like a hammer, hits like a harpoon and returns like a boomerang...
slightly less romantic than trout fisching in "A river runs through it" but way more effective..
Thor also has a "sharknir", a "tunir" and a "merlinir" for offshore-fisching...
The only reason it only has a limited success at market resides in that you have to be a nordic god to be able to properly operate this supreme fisching gear...
Congratulations to both! This just goes to show that you guys are pun factories when you have the slightest bit of inspiration. We’ll do it again next week, with another What Is It? game from the What Is It? blog and Neatorama.
Research into how we keep track of time in our heads is quite complex, considering the many ways timing enables us to negotiate everyday life. And those things appear to be controlled by different parts of the brain, all somehow working together.
New findings hint that the brain has legions of assorted clocks, all tick-tocking at different rates. Some parts of the brain handle milliseconds and others keep track of decades. Some neural timers handle body movements; others monitor information streaming in from the senses. Some brain departments make timing predictions for the future, while timing of memories is handled elsewhere.
This diversity has led some scientists to focus on figuring out how the brain stitches together the results from its many clocks to reflect the outside world accurately. A deeper understanding of how the brain’s timekeepers work might also shed light on something much more profound: how the brain constructs its own reality. The brain sometimes squishes, expands or warps time, some studies suggest. Subtle timing slips have been linked to emotions, attention, drugs and disorders such as schizophrenia. Those tweaks hint at how the brain normally counts seconds and milliseconds.
ScienceNews give us an overview of brain timing research that varies from playing visual music to rat brain cells to comparing the way people with schizophrenia and those without judge the passage of time. The research itself is like a brain: how do you combine the legion of asorted findings together to create an understanding of our brains? -via Digg
We’ve all been taught that there are two sides to every story. It’s true, and judges and parents know this better than anyone. Yet somehow that adage has been corrupted by many to mean that the two sides are equivalent, or that opposing opinions have equal validity. That was never part of the conventional wisdom, as sometimes one side is clearly insane. This is the latest from Pie Comic by John McNamee.
We have little cameras attached to everything: to cars and helmets as a defense, to animals for LOLs, to public places for security, to microscopes and probes for research purposes, and to inanimate objects for all sorts of reasons. What else coul we equip with a GoPro to produce an interesting POV?
Bill Parker attached a GoPro camera to a Jedi Knight to record his point of view as he goes about his day wielding a light saber, using the Force, fighting Storm Troopers and other Imperial enemies, and restoring justice to the galaxy. You know, normal everyday stuff that the Jedi do. -via Viral Viral Videos
Between 1943 and 1945, captured German soldiers were often sent to POW camps in the U.S. because, well, Britain and most of Europe was pretty torn up and not equipped to feed or house them. Many ended up in Texas, where they were offered the chance to work outside the camps and generally lived better than they would have elsewhere.
Camp Huntsville was the first to be set up in Texas. Construction across 837 acres took place for nearly a year, and its 400 buildings were ready for occupancy by the spring of 1943. Texas would eventually see twice as many camps (with a total of 78,000 occupants) as any other state, and for a simple reason: the Geneva Convention of 1929 specified that POWs must be placed in a similar climate as the one they were captured in. Because so many Germans surrendered in North Africa and lacked clothing or supplies for colder weather, many were sent to Texas.
The curiosity of locals quickly gave way to resentment. Even though these men had orders to kill brothers, fathers, and friends, accommodations in Huntsville and other camps were surprisingly comfortable. Prisoners were allowed to sunbathe, play soccer, and stretch out in 40 square feet of personal space with sheets and blankets. (Officers got 120 square feet.) Food was fresh and showers were warm. College credits earned would count at universities back in Germany. They even got bottles of beer.
It certainly beat getting killed in battle or being captured by the Soviets. Some of those prisoners worked hard to become American citizens after the war. Read about the World War II POW camps in Texas at mental_floss.
Henn-na Hotel in Sasebo, Japan, will open to the public on Friday. Henn-na Hotel translates to English as “Strange Hotel,” which is apt because it is staffed with robots! The management insists that the robots are there for maximum efficiency and to cut labor costs, but we know publicity from the novel idea won’t hurt business a bit.
Upon check-in, guests will be greeted by multi-lingual humanoid and dinosaur receptionists. Other robots in the lobby greet visitors, serve coffee and act as concierge. Robots bring the guests' luggage to their rooms, which, by the way, are opened by face-recognition technology.
Earth’s most furious mountains are also the most rewarding to visit.
Have you hugged a volcano lately? You should. Although we commonly perceive them as lava-spewing cones of doom, humans probably wouldn’t be here without them. Roughly 2.5 billion years ago, underwater volcanoes breached the ocean’s surface and began emitting gases like steam, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen into the air: These became the building blocks of a life-supporting atmosphere. When all that carbon dioxide dissolved into the oceans, simple cyanobacteria— which possibly evolved thanks to underwater volcanoes called black smokers—gobbled it up and released an important by-product: oxygen. So, it seems humanity owes volcanoes a debt of gratitude.
And in a way, we’ve already thanked them. Ancient cultures turned these mountains into gods and goddesses, like Vulcan, Hephaestus, and Pele. We still worship them today, but mainly by vacationing in their shadows. About 1,500 potentially active volcanoes dot the globe, each one a unique source of wonder.
Ash billows daily from Japan’s Sakurajima, which is so active that authorities prohibit anyone from climbing it. Sakurajima’s activity often causes “dirty thunderstorms.” When the mountain throws a tantrum, lava and rock fragments spew into the air, colliding and creating electric charges. The result? Lightning bolts streaking over an erupting cone.
Ecuador’s second highest peak hasn’t erupted for decades. That’s made Cotopaxi popular with a diverse set of adventurers, namely climbers, skiiers, and... bird-watchers. That’s partially the fault of the Ecuadorian Hillstar, a rugged species of hummingbird, that likes hanging out there.
