The effect of the Twilight movies lives on, as "Bella" was the top name for dogs in 2012. It came in second for cats -you have one guess as to what was first. Other movies had some influence, as "Katniss" from The Hunger Games gained in popularity, but did not break the top ten.
Top Dog Names:
1 Bella
2 Max
3 Buddy
4 Daisy
5 Bailey
6 Coco
7 Lucy
8 Charlie
9 Molly
10 Rocky
Top Cat Names:
1 Kitty
2 Bella
3 Tiger
4 Max
5 Smokey
6 Shadow
7 Tigger
8 Lucy
9 Chloe
10 Charlie
Romeo and Kieran found a keyboard they can really get down on! -via Daily PIcks and Flicks
Popular characters as action figures make plenty of sense. Obscure action figures are often works of art, have meaning to someone, or are awesome in their very obscurity. Then there are mass-produced action figures that serve only to expand a series and sell to collectors who are obsessed with a complete set, depicting characters that no one cares about or are impossible to play with. For example, the action figure of Dennis Nedry. Who?
Nedry is the shlubby guy who agrees to steal some embryos from Jurassic Park and sell them to Biosyn, only to wind up getting killed by a seemingly harmless Dilophosaurus. He's played by Wayne Knight, aka Newman from Seinfeld. Of all the characters from the first Jurassic Park movie, he seems like the worst candidate for an action figure — and apparently, the makers of these figures agreed with that, because they chose to make the toys look nothing like Wayne Knight or Dennis Nedry. The Nedry figures are well-built, square jawed and rugged-looking, with a nice shoulder holster and (in one case) cool sunglasses. It's like they're advertising the fact that they had no reason to make an action figure of this guy.
Read about nine more of these at io9. Link
A farmer in Cambridgeshire, England, discovered a massive 44-foot-long oak log in a peat bog last February. The wood had been perfectly preserved for 5,000 years! Cabinet makers Adamson and Low specialize in processing bog wood, and recognized that this one is special, and made special plans for it.
Besides, bog oak is beautiful and historical, but it’s first and foremost a carpentry wood, prized for centuries as England’s only native black timber. (The tannins in the oak react to iron in the subsoil to turn the wood dark brown or black.) Because the giant oaks were so much larger than they are today, bog oak wood has medullary rays far wider than in modern oak. That makes for a thick stripe grain that looks particularly gorgeous on quarter-sawn boards. Traditional drying methods couldn’t preserve it in thick pieces, so its main use was as inlay wood or in the making of smaller decorative or furniture items. It’s only in the past 20 years that drying technology has advanced enough to allow the preservation of substantial hunks of ancient wood.Hamish Low had the ambitious idea to preserve the majesty of this trunk while still tying it into the hundreds of years of British carpentry tradition. He could go ahead and plank the trunk, but instead of dividing the planks into more easily dried boards, they would be kept in their 44-foot lengths. Once dried the planks would shrink, but they’d still be massive and could be used to make a giant table. That huge tabletop could then be exhibited as an example of and tribute to the arboreal giants that once dominated the English landscape. There isn’t a single piece of bog oak as such on public display in the UK. Here was the perfect opportunity to rectify that oversight.
The log became known as the Fenland Black Oak as the plans fell into place. A special kiln was built big enough to dry the wood, and the log was removed from its peat bog in September. The table is expected to be ready in the summer of 2013. Its final destination is undetermined, but it will be available for the public to see. Link | Project blog -via TYWKIWDBI
Mehdi Sadaghdar very helpfully explains how professionals test electronic products for resistance to damage from electrostatic discharge (ESD). I learned a lot from this video. See more at ElectroBOOM! Link -via Viral Viral Videos
There's a tendency for people to think that sometime after the holidays, everything goes "back to normal." That may be the case as far as your workplace goes, but here at Neatorama, there is never really a "normal" to go back to, because we are constantly working on ways to make your internet experience more enjoyable. I heard Alex say something about "making his plans for the year," which may refer to his diabolical scheme to take over the world, but more likely means there are new and exciting enhancements coming to Neatorama. I have no idea yet whether these will be quantum leaps, paradigm shifts, or just more and better stuff, but I'm sure it will be great for you and everyone who stops by to read Neatorama every day! Right now I want to help you catch up on what you might have missed over the New Year holiday this past week.
Jill Harness introduced us to 11 Seriously Weird Chocolate-Coated Foods. These are the kinds of things you'll see more of in our food blog Neatolicious.
Eddie Deezen gave us two interesting articles: The Record Company That Rejected The Beatles and 10 Facts You May Not Know About James Bond.
Short Story: The Mini told us all about the famous British car, courtesy of Uncle John's Bathroom Reader.
And mental_floss magazine brought us The Haka.
Congratulations to the winners of the Predict Life in the Year 2013 contest! Neatoramanauts The Professor, Craig L, and Azog all won fabulous prizes from the NeatoShop. You'll get a kick out of reading the crazy predictions everyone made for this year!
In the What Is It? game this week, we had a set of National Cash Register grocery store price stamps from the 1920s. The first with the correct answer was mowog, who wins a t-shirt from the NeatoShop! The funniest (yet wrong) answer came from moddycurl, who said, "This was the prototype for the 64 box of crayons, back when the world was all black and white." Yep, that wins a t-shirt, too! See the answers to all this week's What Is It? items at the What Is It? blog.
The most-viewed-or-shared post this week was An Apt Description, followed by Happy New Year 2013, Neatoramanauts! and coming in third was the Boba Fett Star Wars Hooded Bathrobe.
The non-contest post with the most comments was 11 Seriously Weird Chocolate-Coated Foods, with Baby's First Handshake coming in second, and then in third place was Kinder Surprise Egg Marriage Proposal.
When you get caught up on what's here at Neatorama, go see what's happening at our Pinterest board, Facebook page, and Twitter feed, where we put extra stuff for those who care to follow. And mobile users: Flipboard makes it easy to keep up with Neatorama. Oh yeah -look for Neatorama in Instagram, too!
Genius. Be sure to show this stunt to someone who hasn't yet seen the video. I won't tell if you won't tell! -via Geekosystem
A mashup of movie monsters by Eclectic Method. I think I've seen every one of these films! The music is a remix of the Godzilla vs. Mothra theme music. -via The Daily What
It doesn't matter that you know the punch lines to most of these, you can't think of them before he spits them out! And there's always a chance that one or two jokes will take you by surprise. -via Tastefully Offensive
Here's another map featuring data from the U.S. Census, this time broken down into neighborhoods (actually census tracts). You can look up how much money households in your surrounding area make, as well as any neighborhood in the nation. For example, the median household income in my county is $17,898, which is about half of what is required to be considered middle class in my state. However, each census tract is calculated individually, and I see I live in one of the better neighborhoods of that county, where the median household income is $22,818. With this map, you can use the color-coding to see how income distributes over a city or state. Often, the dividing line is quite jarring. Keep in mind that the percentage of retired people and the number of college students in a small area can drastically affect median income. Link -via Metafilter
She's only 18 months old, but she has wonderful taste in music! She gets that from her parents. -via Buzzfeed
ASAPScience crammed as many amazing facts into one presentation as they could to blow your mind. There's something in here that will! -via Holy Kaw!
See also: Amazing Facts to Blow Your Mind Part One
That's exactly it. We made those jokes about seeing our house from the ISS, and now that it's time to take the Christmas lights down, we've managed to remove about two strings a day. At this rate, they will all be down by, uh, April or so. A comic from Shoebox Blog. Link -via Geeks Are Sexy
Even great minds have teen angst. The more intelligent teenagers just know how to hide them better! Which is a good ting, because when you become famous, someone will want to dig up that dirt, even 300 years later.
In 1662, a 19-year-old Isaac Newton started carrying a leather-bound journal, which he used to track finances and work out math problems. But he also used it to hide something secret. On two pages, Newton scribbled a cryptic code, a code that went unsolved for over 300 years. In 1964, historians finally solved the script. They discovered a list of sins: 57 of Newton’s wrongdoings. The journal—today called the Fitzwilliam notebook—paints the Enlightenment icon as a mood-swinging, sweet-toothed, spiritually confused teenager. Here are some of Newton’s sinful gems.
The list of sins reads like a confessional, and you can see some of them at mental_floss. Link
