The Tuscaloosa News informs us that arresting 55-year-old Walter White is the Tuscaloosa County Sheriff’s Office's top priority. Does this mean the end of Breaking Bad? No, just a series of coincidences. The Alabama man has the same name as the series' main character, engages in the same crime (methamphetamine manufacture), and was charged in 2008 (the same year Breaking Bad premiered). Link -via Fark
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This article will take you back to an earlier time, when computers had few images and we played text-based games. At the time, they were state-of-the-art, but this analysis will make you either laugh or cringe -or both! Get a look into the sadistic minds who developed these games at Rant Gaming. Link -Thanks, Alex Galbraith!
Historically, cults and their leaders haven't had much luck getting good publicity. Maybe it's because of their intense religious fervor or their creepy recruiting methods, but most people do their best to avoid these cliques (not to mention the punch they serve). But hey, they aren't all bad. Ancient mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras had his own cult (er, "brotherhood") and if it weren't for him, children today might not be stuck at their desks trying to understand the multiplication tables. While most of Pythagora's philosophical beliefs seem pretty normal now, his theories on mathematics, music, and astronomy truly salvaged his legacy from "total whackjob" to "the father of numbers."
LET'S TALK TURKEY
Pythagoras was born on the island of Sámos (off what is now the western coast of Turkey) around 580 B.C.E. As a child, he spent most of his time writing poetry, reciting Homer, and learning to play the lyre. So he was a little precocious, to say the least. By the time Pythagoras turned 22, he pretty much absorbed everything his primary teacher, Pherecydes, had to offer in the areas of math and astronomy, so he was promptly shoved off to Egypt to further his studies. Luckily for our young scholar, this allowed him to get the heck out of Sámos, which was fast becoming a seething pit of unrest thanks to the ruling tyrant, Polycates.
WALK LIKE AN EGYPTIAN
Pythagoras made a quick beeline for the land of the Sphinx and immediately sought out the knowledgable priests of Egypt. But temple after temple turned him away, refusing to let him study with them because he didn't have the proper training in fasting and breathing. That is, until he arrived on the steps of the temple at Diospolis. There, Pythagoras was allowed to experience this training under their guidance, and, if able to endure the "hazing," would be admitted.
After completing the rites necessary for admission (and learning the extraordinariily complicated Diospolis handshake), Pythagoras was accepted into the priesthood. He spent the next 22 years there, learning geometry and cosmology while embracing the priesthood's other traditions, such as living life without personal possessions, adhering to a vegetarian diet, and, perhaps most famously, being strictly forbidden to eat beans. Although many historians are unsure why, some have postulated that the bean ban was due to the fact that they caused flatulence (still do), which destroyed the mental peace the priesthood of Diospolis felt was necessary for meditation. Another school of thought notes that black and white beans were used for voting at the time, and remaining sans beans was the equivalent of being apolitical. But, beans or not, during Pythagoras' time as a leader in this brotherhood, he began to develop philosophical beliefs that would one day become the cornerstone of his own teachings.
A Grand Theft Auto mod lets you play the game as a horse. No good could ever come of letting a horse loose behind the wheel of a convertible, I said, and I was right. All this needs is a clip of "Oh, Wilbur!" and a whinny at the end. -via Metafilter
Nemo Gould's kinetic sculpture The Visitor depicts an alien who has landed his craft on prehistoric Earth. Watch his eyes light up, his head turn to look out the "windows," and his, um, appendages flip levers in a video at the artisy's site. It was made from:
Typewriter case, picture frame, fresnel lens, electric massager, chandelier parts, voltage meters, book clippings, aquarium plants, LEDs, motors, fiber optic cable, laboratory beaker.
And it's for sale, too. Link -via Laughing Squid
Previously: Nemo Gould's Giant Squid Robot
Blue Chimp has escaped from a primate research facility, and a hunter is after him with a tranquilizer gun! This animation by Lee Daniels contains violence and bathroom humor. It's the beginning of a webseries featuring Blue Chimp. Link -via Kuriositas
A newly-hatched cephalopod swims by its yet-to-be-hatched sibling in this amazing photograph by Simon Chandra. The picture was taken off Pramuka Island, Indonesia, and submitted to National Geographic's Your Shot gallery. Then it was selected for the Weekly Wrapper to offer as downloadable wallpaper. Link -via reddit
(Image credit: Simon Chandra)
Kristen DaCosta of Somerset, Massachusetts, was ordered to wear an ankle bracelet as a condition of her probation, but didn't realize that police could track her movements with it. Detectives say they have evidence left by her monitor that she entered a home in Somerset and stole jewelry.
"She didn't destroy the place. She did not ransack it. But she certainly left her electronic fingerprint on the place for us. This lady was on a GPS monitoring device," said Chief Jospeh Ferreira of the Somerset Police Department.
Wait, it gets better.
Police told NBC 10 DaCosta was also sneaking through other neighborhoods, suspecting of breaking into at least a dozen homes all over Southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
DaCosta is charged with at least 17 break-ins while wearing the monitor, including burglaries in New Bedford, Dartmouth, Fairhaven and Tiverton.
Yes, she wore a GPS during 17 criminal acts before the police picked her up. In fact, this particular burglary occured two months ago, and the homeowner just recently realized the jewelry was missing. It's no wonder DaCosta thought she'd get away with it. Link -via Arbroath
Instead of regulation theater seats, the Beanie Plex theater in the Sunway Pyramid mall is filled with comfy fluffy love seats! And where do we find such comfort? In Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Those who write about the Beanie Plex tend to say they hope the concept spreads to a theater near them, but there's another way to look at it: You could stay at home and sit on a comfy love seat to watch a movie. Link -via mental_floss
Seven thousand Buddhist sculptures grace the caves and a sheer rock cliff face of the Maijishan Grottoes in Gansu Province, China. The work on these carvings took hundreds of years, peaking around 500AD, but continued until the beginning of the 20th century. Some are carved out of the cliff itself, some are made of clay, and some rock sculptures have been brought in from elsewhere. See lots of photographs of this amazing landmark from various vantage points at Kuriositas. Link -via the Presurfer
(Image credit: Flickr user mke1963)
This lovely performance is from the closing ceremony of the World Shanghai Exposition in 2010. We are used to seeing dancers fly through the air on by invisible wires, but what are the musicians sitting on? -via Arbroath
You've heard people talking about a small car and saying, "I'll just fold that up and put it in my pocket." The Hiriko Fold is that tiny electric car that folds up. Developed by engineers at MIT and DennokInn, the vehicle can hold two passengers and travel about 75 miles between charges. And when folded, it can squeeze into a really small parking space! The Hiriko Fold is scheduled go on sale in 2013 for around $16,000. Link -via Boing Boing
Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website. This post was selected to commemorate Elvis Presley on the anniversary of his death, 35 years ago today.
It was the spring of 1968, and Elvis Presley was in the middle of filming another in the seemingly endless run of mediocre movies that had tarnished his career, his self-confidence, his fan base, and his morale.
Live a Little, Love a Little was typical grade-Z Elvis film fare. Nothing remarkable, special, or particularly notable about it. Probably the only good points of filming for Elvis were the relieved knowledge that it would be one of the last films he'd have to churn out and the happy company of his co-star, Celeste Yarnall, the actress he romanced in the film.
Elvis and Celeste became, according to her account, "instantaneous friends." Like almost every one of his attractiv female co-stars, Elvis and Celeste had a very close relationship. However, Celeste, unlike most of Elvis' women, will not reveal any intimate details about their relationship. "I am very private about our relationship and I want to keep it that way," she says, "But we just had a lot of love for each other and it was a very special time."
In early April, in the middle of their filming one day, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. Later, Elvis and Celeste watched the funeral of Dr. King together in his dressing room trailer during lunch. Elvis took it hard. One of his favorite recitations was King's "I Have a Dream" speech. King was shot in Memphis, a stone's throw from Elvis' home, Graceland.
In the dressing room, Elvis told Celeste the backstory of his own struggle -that he felt a tremendous brotherhood with the black community because he grew up poor and he knew what it was like to live in poverty. He was also proud that many blacks embraced him as one of their own.
"He sobbed in my arms like a baby," says Celeste. "He was just devastated and desperately would have liked to attend the funeral. We choked down our lunch and sang a little a cappella tribute of 'Amazing Grace.'"
"If I Can Dream" was a tribute song to Martin Luther King, Jr. written by Walter Earl Brown, notable for its direct quotations from Dr. King. Now that Elvis had wrapped shooting for Live a Little, Love a Little, he was recording songs for his upcoming Singer Television Special, to be broadcast on television that December. When the song was first presented to Elvis, the TV special's producer, Steve Binder, was worried and thought it would surely be rejected. He wanted to include it, but the show was ostensibly to be a Christmas special, and "If I Can Dream" was not a Christmas song.
After watching the film Prometheus and inspired by a Tweet from Dr. Phil Plait, Steve D set about making a Giger counter. That is, of course, a radiation detector in the style of Alien designer H.R. Giger. See how he did it, with plenty of pictures, at MadArtLab. Link -via Bad Astronomy
The comedy group Satire melds the awesomeness of NASA's Curiosity mission and the catchy tune of LMFAO's "I'm Sexy and I Know It." Read more about it at the Washington Post. Link -via Metafilter
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