Hey look! It's time for our collaboration with the ever-entertaining What Is It? Blog! Do you know what the object in this picture is? Guess and win a t-shirt from the NeatoShop! But first, read the rules:

Place your guess in the comment section below. One guess per comment, please, though you can enter as many as you'd like. Post no URLs or weblinks, as doing so will forfeit your entry. Two winners: the first correct guess and the funniest (albeit ultimately wrong) guess will each win a T-shirt from the NeatoShop.

Please write your T-shirt selection alongside your guess. If you don't include a selection, you forfeit the prize, okay? May we suggest the Science T-Shirt, Funny T-Shirt and Artist-Designed T-Shirts?

There are more mystery items at the What Is It? Blog. Good luck!

Update: these are are tusk covers for Indian battle elephants. They look pretty dangerous, too. Paul D got it right with the first comment, so he wins a t-shirt from the NeatoShop! Among many funny answers, the prize for the funniest gives to Samantha Simons, who said, "It's Captain Hooks tooth pick! All he has to do is have Shmee take off the hook and put on the tooth pick. Even pirates can have good dental hygiene!" That's good for a t-shirt, too! Thanks to everyone who played, and thanks to the What Is It blog, too!  

This bride has the most tolerant and cooperative family and friends ever -including the groom. Eight bridesmaid were dressed as various Disney Princesses. The bride, impersonating Ariel (The Little Mermaid) was accompanied down the aside by King Triton, escorted by flower girl Tinkerbell, and was presented to her groom, dressed as Prince Eric. The officiant wore Mickey Mouse ears. See more pictures at Buzzfeed. Link

(Image credit: Shari Photography)

Many sled dog races that are qualifiers for the annual Iditarod have been cancelled or postponed this winter due to lack of snow.

The John Beargrease sled dog race, a trek of some 400 miles in northern Minnesota, postponed its start to March 10 from Jan. 27. In Alaska, the Don Bowers Memorial 200/300, the Sheep Mountain Lodge 150 and the Knik 200 have been canceled. The Copper Basin 300 in Glennallen, Alaska, had to cut its trail for several teams by 25 miles because there was not enough snow at the finish line; the mushers finished the race with their hats and gloves off and jackets unzipped.

“That was crazy with the warm weather,” said Zack Steer, one of the race’s organizers. “It was such a drastic change from last year, but the trail at the end was dirt. It wasn’t safe.”  

Blake Freking, a musher who trains Siberian huskies on the north shore of Lake Superior in Minnesota, said he planned to compete in the Beargrease race in January. “With global warming, it’s hard to deny that there are some big changes going on right now,” he said. “We’re in it. It isn’t looking good.”

During last year’s snow season, defined as July 1, 2011, to June 30, 2012, Anchorage had 134.5 inches of snow, according to Jake Crouch, a climate scientist with the National Climatic Data Center. This season’s tally in Anchorage was 39.2 inches through Wednesday. North of Fairbanks, another area where mushers train, snowpack is 21 percent of average.

The cancelled qualifiers are especially hard on new mushers, who must have a certain number of race miles before tackling the Iditarod. Link -via Digg

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Yesterday's high school outcasts are today's super heroes! Yeah, in your dreams. The audio from The Breakfast Club mashed up with the video from The Avengers works strangely well. -via Buzzfeed

The Spanish art studio Betfutura created this movie poster which has everything: a title, a tagline, the stars, the awards, and the crew.

'The Title’ is a project that is born from our experience and passion for cinema. This piece summarizes in a parodic way the most representative elements that make up the movie poster.

‘The Title’ is a movie directed by a director and starring some actors. Produced by a production company and distributed by a distribution company.

Link -via mental_floss

See the trailer as well. Link

The Ahmed Baba Institute of Higher Learning and Islamic Research in Timbuktu, Mali, holds a collection of 30,000 of the world's most precious ancient manuscripts. Or it did until recently. On January 23rd, al-Qaida-linked extremists, who invaded Timbuktu almost a year ago, ransacked the library and set it on fire. The fire raged for eight days straight. What the extremists did not know was that only about 2,000 of the hand-written documents had been moved to the new library building.

However, they didn't bother searching the old building, where an elderly man named Abba Alhadi has spent 40 of his 72 years on earth taking care of rare manuscripts. The illiterate old man, who walks with a cane and looks like a character from the Bible, was the perfect foil for the Islamists. They wrongly assumed that the city's European-educated elite would be the ones trying to save the manuscripts, he said.

So last August, Alhadi began stuffing the thousands of books into empty rice and millet sacks.

At night, he loaded the millet sacks onto the type of trolley used to cart boxes of vegetables to the market. He pushed them across town and piled them into a lorry and onto the backs of motorcycles, which drove them to the banks of the Niger River.

From there, they floated down to the central Malian town of Mopti in a pinasse, a narrow, canoe-like boat. Then cars drove them from Mopti, the first government-controlled town, to Mali's capital, Bamako, over 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) from here.

"I have spent my life protecting these manuscripts. This has been my life's work. And I had to come to terms with the fact that I could no longer protect them here," said Alhadi. "It hurt me deeply to see them go, but I took strength knowing that they were being sent to a safe place."

It took two weeks in all to spirit out the bulk of the collection, around 28,000 texts housed in the old building covering the subjects of theology, astronomy, geography and more.

The 2,000 documents that were in the new library were digitized, so the information survives even if the parchment does not. Link -via Metafilter

(Image credit: AP/Harouna Traore)

Ever heard of a "vinegar valentine"? They are the opposite of sweet, and they were sent, often anonymously, to tell someone off. It could be someone whose behavior you disliked, or just to for an insult. Collector's Weekly spoke with Annebella Pollen, a lecturer in art and design history at University of Brighton, about her research into vinegar valentines.

Collectors Weekly: Specifically, what you would categorize as a Vinegar Valentine?

Pollen: I’d say it would be a cheaply made card, with a printed satirical image that mocks the recipient and has a little doggerel verse underneath, usually four- or six-lined, describing some aspect of their personality and dismissing it. I like the term “vinegar” because it describes the opposite of the sweet sentiment of nice Valentines. They can vary from being a little bit tough to being absolutely bitter at their most extreme.

There were lots of different types produced; some of them would be on black backgrounds with quite colorful images printed on them. Some would be very basic wood cuts, a bit like very early street literature, where the image is coarsely rendered. There’s a whole range of British and American examples from the 1840s to 1940s. The aesthetic changes, but really, what remains the same all the way through is the sentiment—or lack of it. For example, the women who are pilloried in them over the course of 100 years are wearing different outfits, but they’re still mocked for how they look, whether they’re wearing a crinoline and a bustle or a skin-tight dress.   

See lots more of these awful valentines from yesteryear at Collector's Weekly. Link

A shoe shop in Exeter, England had a rack of ladies' shoes and children's snow boots splayed on the sidewalk outside the store. Some time Monday night or Tuesday morning, someone stole the entire rack! They won't be able to use or sell the shoes, however, because only one shoe -the right one- of each pair was on the rack.

A spokesperson for Devon and Cornwall Police said, “The stolen footwear will be of little use to anyone without the matching shoe.

“The opportunist thief who stole them probably didn’t realise they were not in pairs. As they are useless, we appeal for them to be returned to the store”

Anyone with information is asked to contact the local Crimestoppers unit. Link -via Ed Yong

(Unrelated image credit: Flickr user Thomas Hawk)

Oh, isn't that romantic! A great math pickup line made into a valentine. This one is for sale from the Etsy shop Inspiration Move Me Brightly. Geeks Are Sexy has a lot more in a roundup of geeky valentines gleaned from various Etsy shops. Which do you like best? Link

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Journey's 1983 song "Faithfully" gets a lyrical update for the internet age. Funny, but a bit disturbing if you start to think… is this what I'm turning into? I hope not!  -via Viral Viral Videos

The Hamburglar was a classy guy, all right ...in his own way! This Twaggie was illustrated by Josh at Formal Sweatpants from a Tweet by @RorynotRoy. Check out all the new illustrated Tweets at Twaggies! Link

The following is an article from The Annals of Imrpobable research.

by Sally Shelton, Collections Officer, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution

"In a word, you must possess Promethean boldness, and bring down fire, and animation as it were, into your preserved specimen." --Charles Waterton, from his essay on taxidermy

"...has not the whole of history been a search for false monsters?" --Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines

Figure 1. A portrait of Charles Waterton. The painter was Percy Fitzgerald.

Charles Waterton (1782-1865) is frequently cited as the type specimen[1] of the British eccentric naturalist. His Wanderings in South America (1825) blended accurate observations of New World wildlife in the field (including the first good account of the behavior of sloths) with notes on politics, taxidermy, and the evils of the Hanoverian monarchy. From this sojourn, Waterton brought back the first curare for scientific and medicinal use in Europe, after witnessing its effective use in the field.

Waterton, known to all as the Squire of Walton Hall, was a dedicated ascetic and an even more dedicated climber: One famous story recounts his ascent of the dome of St. Peter's in Rome, where he left his gloves on top of the lightning conductor. In later life, "[h]e had no idea that he was doing anything out of the general course of things if he asked a visitor to accompany him to the top of a lofty tree to look at a hawk's nest..."[2] A. generation of British schoolchildren grew up fascinated by his account in Wanderings of riding a large and violently unimpressed cayman[3] for several minutes, and awed by his description of his failure to be bitten by vampire bats in Guiana, though he left his toe deliberately exposed from his hammock for just this purpose night after night.[4,5]

Savory Dislikes

Waterton was a field naturalist par excellence and one of the first to convert land to the sole purpose of a wildlife sanctuary. He abhorred scientific nomenclature, John James Audubon (whom he called a charlatan), Protestants, Hanoverians, Hanoverian Protestants, rats (the presence of which in England he blamed on the Hanoverian Protestants), and, late in life, Charles Darwin; he loved the natural world, birds, taxidermy, and practical jokes.

The Nondescript

Hava (@realbridges) describes this chart as "A testament to my complicated love affair with spicy condiments." Any hot sauce lover can relate! It's much easier to read full-size at Twitpic. Link

Some things in life should go without saying, but there's always the occasional genius who needs to be told not to use a vacuum cleaner to pick up something that's on fire.

On a bottle of dog shampoo: "Contents should not be fed to fish."

On a baking pan: "Ovenware will get hot when used in oven."

On a blanket: "Not to be used as protection from a tornado."

On a fishing lure with a three-printed hook: "Harmful if swallowed."

On a 12-inch CD rack: "Do not use as a ladder."

On a carpenter's drill: "Not intended for use as a dental drill."

On a knife set: "Never try to catch a falling knife."

On a package of earplugs: "These earplugs are non-toxic, but may interfere with breathing if caught in windpipe."

On a Japanese food processor: "Not to be used for the other use."

On a cocktail napkin with a mini-map of Hilton Head, South Carolina: "Not to be used for navigation."

On an insect spray: "This product not tested on animals."

On a box of birthday candles: "DO NOT use soft wax as ear plugs or for any other function that involves insertion into a body cavity."

On a child's scooter: "This product moves when used."

Inside a six-inch plastic bag: "Do not climb inside this bag and zip it up. Doing so will cause injury or death."

On a paint remover that heats up to 1,000°: "Do not use heat gun as a hair dryer."

On a shower cap: "Fits one head."

On a can of pepper spray: "May irritate eyes."

On a toilet: "Recycled flush water unsafe for drinking."

Title image by Warning Label Generator.

The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John's Curiously Compelling Bathroom Reader, a fantastic book by the Bathroom Readers' Institute. The 19th book in this fan-favorite series contain such gems like The Greatest Plane that Never Was, Forgotten Robot Milestones, Ancient Beauty Secrets, and more.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. If you like Neatorama, you'll love the Bathroom Reader Institute's books - go ahead and check 'em out!

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Simon Tofield takes altogether too long to feed his cat in the latest Simon's Cat cartoon. -via Laughing Squid