Regarding the previous post about Merida getting a makeover to become an official Disney Princess, Neatoramanaut ROJOMOKE points us to a comic from Dork Tower that sums up the feelings of the majority about her new look. Link -Thanks, ROJOMOKE!
(Image credit: John Kovalic)
Miss Cellania's Blog Posts
Many authors make outlines of their novels to keep the story arc in place, make sure the important parts are not missed, and to keep up with each character. They each have their own style, as well. See some handwritten outlines from James Salter, J.K. Rowling, Sylvia Plath, William Faulkner, and more at Flavorwire. The chart shown is how Joseph Heller kept up with the characters and their plot lines in Catch-22. You can click the image twice at Flavorwire to bring up the large size, but you might need to put on your glasses to read it anyway. Link
You can't select your astrological sign, but you can select your horoscope! The site Convenient Horoscope posts daily horoscopes from several sources. Just select your sign from the menu bar at the top and find the horoscope that's most convenient for you today. That's the one that's right -because it's the best! Link -via Holy Kaw!
(Image credit: Flickr user Rromir Imami)
The distance to the stars is often explained by how long it takes light to travel to us from them. That works in the other direction, too. Today's xkcd panel gives us another way to visualize those distances by showing how old our pop culture references and memes are by the time they reach those stars. You can enlarge the image at xkcd by clicking if you can't read this small print. Link -via Tastefully Offensive
Just like everyone else, you learned about how a caterpillar turns into a butterfly (or moth) inside a chrysalis (or cocoon) and you desperately tried to envision what happens inside and what it looks like. Scientists who've opened a lot of chrysalises will tell you the caterpillar turns to goop and then a butterfly, but that's not completely accurate, and the process of opening one destroys the structure anyway.
But now, two teams of scientists have started to captured intimate series of images showing the same caterpillars metamorphosing inside their pupae. Both teams used a technique called micro-CT, in which X-rays capture cross-sections of an object that can be combined into a three-dimensional virtual model.
By dissecting these models rather than the actual insects, the teams could see the structures of specific organs, like the guts or breathing tubes. They could also watch the organs change over time by repeatedly scanning the same chrysalis over many days. And since insects tolerate high doses of radiation, this procedure doesn’t seem to harm them, much less kill them.
Ed Yong explains more about this technology, and you'll more pictures of an insect going through the metamorphosis at Not Exactly Rocket Science. Link
(Image credit: Lowe et al. 2013. Interface)
Animals play the cups, too! The otters have it down, while the bunnies and cats just try to look their best while trying. -via Tastefully Offensive
Isabella Rossellini, who makes strange videos about what animals do, has a new series called Mammas. It is the third part of her Green Porno series. In the introductory video, a hamster mamma explains why they sometimes eat their babies. At the Sundance Channel, you can see other videos on spider, cuckoo, dunnock, and wasp mothers. Link -via Laughing Squid
It's not easy to portray a real person, especially a historical figure we all know. But many have done it. In a gallery at My Modern Met, you can see 18 actors and the people they portrayed in movies. Which ones look the most like the real thing? Link -via Flavorwire
Benjamin Franklin, along with advocating for the turkey at the US national symbol, writing an almanac, experimenting with electricity, inventing bifocals, and helping to found the United States, also proposed a new, simplified alphabet. Franklin came up with it in 1768, and Noah Webster published it in 1789. He dropped some letters, came up with new ones for common phonemes, and assigned only one sound for each letter.
Franklin was confident that his new alphabet would easier to learn and, once learned, would drastically reduce bad spelling. He believed any difficulty in implementing a new alphabet would ultimately be overcome by its logic and simplicity. However, biographer Walter Isaacson has written that the alphabet “took his passion for social improvement to radical extremes.” But in the heady days after the Revolution, a national language seemed like a natural development for a new country. Franklin’s proposal found little support, even with those to whom he was closest. He did, however, manage to convert Webster, the pioneer of spelling reform.
But it didn't catch on. Would you want to bother learning an entirely new alphabet and way of spelling after you'd spent years learning it the traditional way? Read about how Franklin's alphabet was constructed at Design Decoded. Link
Google has a cute little Easter egg that might suck up all your time if you let it. Just enter Atari Breakout in the Google Image Search field. You'll get results, all right, but those results turn into bricks and before you know it, you'll be playing your little heart out. Or just press the Link -via Daily of the Day
Some families with money to burn have found a nefarious way to bypass long lines at Walt Disney World in Florida: hire a disabled person to be part of your family for the day.
The “black-market Disney guides” run $130 an hour, or $1,040 for an eight-hour day.
“My daughter waited one minute to get on ‘It’s a Small World’ — the other kids had to wait 2 1/2 hours,” crowed one mom, who hired a disabled guide through Dream Tours Florida.
“You can’t go to Disney without a tour concierge,’’ she sniffed. “This is how the 1 percent does Disney.”
The woman said she hired a Dream Tours guide to escort her, her husband and their 1-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter through the park in a motorized scooter with a “handicapped” sign on it. The group was sent straight to an auxiliary entrance at the front of each attraction.
Disney allows each guest who needs a wheelchair or motorized scooter to bring up to six guests to a “more convenient entrance.”
Link -via Digg
(Image credit:Flickr user Joe Penniston)
Today's featured pet is Blaze, shown here catching a little shuteye on Mt. Hawkins in the San Gabriel mountains. The Australian shepherd was hiking with Neatoramanaut Miki Davis, who sent this great picture in. Thanks, Miki!
Your pet could be the featured pet on Lifestyles of the Cute and Cuddly, too! Sent your pics to tips@neatorama.com and check out the site every day!
GeoGuessr is a game that uses Google Street View. You'll get an image, and you try to guess where in the world it is. I jumped in and scored 4470 right off, which must be awful, because I guessed very wrong. Then I figured out you can zoom and turn just like any Street View scene, and improved in my second game to 7002, which is still awful. It turns out that no matter how much you zoom into a sign, it will not "enhance" like in TV crime dramas. It also helps to zoom into the world map to make your guess, because even if you know the answer, you'll be scored on how close you mark the spot. I finally busted 10K on my third try. This could be addictive. Link -via the Presurfer
Once an entire roll of toilet paper is wet, there's no saving it. It's gone. You may as well toss it in the garbage. An unnamed person in Tucson, Arizona, learned that lesson the hard way.
An attempt to salvage a soggy roll of toilet paper will end up costing someone several hundred dollars.
Fire crews were called Saturday afternoon to a Foothills senior living complex in the 1500 block of East River Road when a smoke alarm was triggered, Capt. Barrett Baker, spokesman for the Tucson Fire Department, said.
The apartment sustained several hundred dollars in smoke damage. Link -via Arbroath
(Image credit: Brandon Blinkenberg)
Derek Withey is 87 years old, but he still surfs the 'net. His grandson, Steven Withey, found a scan of a Royal Navy photo of the sailor during World War II on the computer and asked redditors at /r/picrequests if they could help restore it. Many did, and Withey presented his grandfather with several versions, including a framed copy of the best one. You can read the whole story and see each photograph at with-tech. Link -via Boing Boing
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