There's nothing better than a good math pun, especially when you don't have to thoroughly understand the math to get it. The Fourier Transform is named that in honor of French mathematician and physicist Joseph Fourier. If that's not a case of nominative determinism, I don't know what is! From Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. Link -via 22 Words
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A flat nachos chip doesn't hold enough toppings or dip. Sure, you can buy chips that are scoop-shaped, but homemade nachos not only taste great, but impress party guests. Here's how to make the perfect scoop-shaped nachos in a mini muffin pan.
Next step: custom chip. Chips are, of course, made from corn tortilas. So making your own chip is really not that big a deal: You just fry a corn tortila. No problem. Getting the tortilla into the muffin divot: a little bit more of a problem. You can't just cram the thing, because it will just crumple up, consuming all the space that is reserved for cheese. Never forget: This is about cheese.
In order to make a chip that fit in the tray perfectly, we enlisted the help of staff writer Jamie Condliffe, who also happens to have a Phd in engineering. We got the dimensions of the muffin divots—top diameter, internal diameter, and height of the sides—and then used CAD to figure out a shape that would fold perfectly into the muffin tin.
The rather geeky instructions for making your own scoop-shaped chips to hold and contain the perfect amount of cheese, salsa, sour cream, and other delicious additions are at Gizmodo. Link -via Nag on the Lake
What is this strange and fierce creature? It's redditor gweebah's dog, sticking his head out the car window. In case you are wondering (and of course you are), this is what the dog looks like at zero speed. Link -via Dangerous Minds
Explaining the Super Bowl to a youngster who is unfamilar with it can be an opportunity for a world-class explanation -or world-class trolling, depending on your point of view. Just change the teams, and this video from 2006 is still fully functional. (via Daily Picks and Flicks)
Videogum hits the highlights of a timeline of nerds in pop culture, from the Dr. Seuss creature to the new game show King of the Nerds. Yes, Eddie Deezen is there, making an early appearance in nerd history. Notice how the popularity of the stereotypical character moves up and down, but gradually up since we all got on the internet. The penultimate entry:
2013: In the newest season of Portlandia, one episode opens with a sketch where a real nerd (clearly not an actor) pleads for people to stop saying they’re nerds when they’re not. Sure, it could have used a female nerd in there somewhere (instead of reinforcing the idea that fake nerds = girls and real nerds = boys), but more to the point, it’s the crowning jewel of the growing backlash against “fake nerds”. You know you’re mainstream when you start trying to exclude people for not being enough like you.
The suggested soundtrack for this article: "Hip to be Square" by Huey Lewis. Link
It's midsummer in Australia, and a koala can get mighty thirsty. One of them followed a woman around for an hour because she had bottles of water! Woo-Hyang Sun and her husband were out for her morning walk in Athelstone, a suburb of Adelaide, when they saw a koala in a tree. They snapped its picture, and Sun gave the animal a drink of water from the palm of her hand. The koala wanted more, and started following the couple. The koala ended up drinking all three bottles that Sun carried! They eventually led her back to the original tree, and had to relinquish the final bottle before the koala was satisfied. Link -via Arbroath
My cats would have pounced immediately and made a real mess of this. Shammy is fascinated! Okay, be honest -were you watching the cat or the toy? This video is from domino artist Flippycat, whose work we have featured a few times. -via the Presurfer
Mitch O'Connell collect vintage ephemera from comic books, advertising, and other sources. He has assembled Valentines day cards of yore with outdated, badly punned, or unintelligible messages that make you go "Huh?"
Subject matter includes anger issues, from punching, stabbing, shooting your loved one to running them over with your car. "A woman's place is in the home" themes with pots 'n pans, brooms and dust pans expressing how your heart beats for them. "Find the hidden penis" is a M.O'C Blog Valentine favorite with suggestively placed rulers, logs, bananas, balloons, rocket ships, and hot dogs showing how you really, REALLY feel!
Yeah, a few of these are intentional. And you have to wonder how many were slipped in to see what the artist could get away with. Link -via Boing Boing
One of my favorite websites is Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual. As entertaining as the stories are, it is a tremendous time sink for a busy person (but a great way to spend a rainy day). Now, Thrilling Tales presents the Pulp-O-Mizer, with which you can generate your own vintage pulp magazine cover! There are many ways to customize yours -these were done in no time at all! Link -via Metafilter
Today is the day, the annual day of prognostication celebrated as Groundhog Day. On the calendar, February 2nd is halfway between the winter solstice and the vernal equinox, and that means midwinter. But hope spring eternal, so we depend on a rodent to tell us what the weather might be for the next few weeks. Where I live, we are expecting several inches of snow today, so maybe the local groundhog won't see his shadow. With my luck, he won't come out of the ground at all! And tomorrow is Super Bowl Sunday, a day set aside in America to eat lots of fattening, spicy snacks, critique expensive TV ads, and oh yeah, watch football. I hope you have a marvelous weekend! Maybe you'll have time to catch up on what you may have missed on Neatorama while you were working through the week.
To get you ready for this important holiday, we posted The Groundhog Oscillation: Evidence of Global Change, from The Annals of Improbable Research.
Uncle John's Bathroom Reader brought us the story of Happy Days.
Mothers Superior: Not Your Everyday Nuns came from mental_floss magazine.
Over at the Spotlight Blog, where we can post bigger pictures for your viewing pleasure, Alex gave us Spot the Hidden LEGO: Gorgeous In Pieces Artwork by Dean West and Nathan Sawaya.
Then there were a couple of "shorties" from the Bathroom Reader series: Kalashnikov Pat & the Helicopter Jailbreaks and Star Trek Wisdom.
Contests! Boy, did we have contests this week. First off, we had a contest to Win a Personalized Robot Portrait by artist Ben Rollman. Congratulations to Jorg Weese who won with this comment: "If I were a robot, I'd 1000010101111010100111010110101100000101100011111…"
Then we had a sudden contest to let you Win Funny T-Shirts from the NeatoShop! It was a sneaky way to let everyone know about the updated and expanded line of T-shirts available at the NeatoShop. Congratulations to the winners, April Wade, Muzition, and M.S.K. Brown.
In this week's What Is It game, the object is a saw toothed fireplace trammel for hanging pots over a fireplace from various heights. Read more about it at the What Is It? blog. The first to guess correctly was Edward Krakowiak, who wins a t-shirt from the NeatoShop! The funniest answer was from stephensmg, who said: "While scissors may not have been the best choice for Edward, The Inventor’s first choice was much worse." That's also good for a t-shirt!
Also, congratulation to the winners of the Tokyoflash Treasure Hunt #23, triquetriquerolima. nirendollen, weneki, and Jay L.
The most popular post of the week was Surf Forever in Kelly Slater's Donut Pool followed by The Whale Photobomb.
The post with the most comments this week (besides the contests) was Game Theory and Leaving the Toilet Seat Down followed by 46 Reasons My Three Year Old Might be Freaking Out. The comment of the week came from Blake Helms. In the post about Zimbabwe having only a couple dollars left in their national treasury, he said, "That's what Zimbabwe gets for replying back to Nigeria's emails."
Go to the NeatoShop and pick out something unique and memorable for your Valentine! We collaborate with independent artists Zach Manchester of Odd Art Fabrications, Mike Jacobsen, Adam Koford and more of your favorite artists to bring you exclusive items you'll only find there. And we have a special section of lover's gifts for the holiday.
I found this picture labeled "Alanis irony or actual irony?" at the Neatoramanauts Facebook page. You need to check that out regularly to see gems like this! Tell your friends to follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest, too! And mobile users: Flipboard makes it easy to keep up with Neatorama.
Usability tip of the week: Did you know you can add pictures and videos to your comments now? When you click on the comment field, look to the upper right for buttons that will enable you to upload an image or enter a video address. A picture may take a minute or two to appear after you save, then reloading should make it appear (if it doesn't appear immediately). I love seeing other people's contributions to a post!
W're always open for suggestions, requests, kudos, complaints, and questions. Let us know how we can make coming to Neatorama a more enlightening and enjoyable experience for you!
Budweiser's ad for the 2013 Super Bowl is cute and sweet and has nice music and may make you cry. And yes, it's a beer ad. -via Tastefully Offensive
A new skit from the Muppets of Sesame Street spoof the TV show Downton Abbey. Steak and kidney pie, anyone? -via Tastefully Offensive
Film director Roman Polanski married movie star Sharon Tate in London on January 20, 1968. Sharon Tate would be murdered by the Manson Family a year and a half later. Polanski was arrested for statutory rape in 1977. He fled to Europe to avoid sentencing and hasn't been back to the U.S. since. Just for a moment though, let's put all that unpleasantness aside and marvel at the fact that we now know exactly who the character Austin Powers was based upon. -via Everlasting Blort
These are the droids, er, shoes you're looking for! They aren't for sale, but you can make your own.
The wide heel of these shoes was removed and replaced with a steel bolt to provide strength and support, but at a fraction of the size. An R2D2 toy covers the heel bolt, and the toes have been decorated with lenses, blue accents, and a blinking red LED to let everyone know just how this droid rolls.
Instructables member mikeasaurus (previously at Neatorama) has step-by-step instructions. Link -via Geeks Are Sexy
Medical diagnoses from history usually reflect the best medical science could do at that time, but sometimes are found to be incorrect in light of later discoveries. Could that have been the case with President Franklin Roosevelt and the "infantile paralysis" that left him in a wheelchair?
Despite trying his best to hide his handicap during his lifetime, it's now common knowledge that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was in a wheelchair because he was paralyzed by the polio virus. But a new study suggests that the president may have actually been paralyzed by Guillain-Barre Syndrome. If true, it would make his polio diagnosis one of the most famous misdiagnoses in history.
Read the story of how Roosevelt's original diagnosis and the modern suspicions surrounding it at mental_floss. Link
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