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
Miss Cellania's Blog Posts
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
This seems like a pretty low-key promotion for students, until you realize it was produced 17 years ago! From the YouTube page:
This Public Service Announcement (PSA) was produced in 1995 by the 5th grade students at Ray Bjork school in Helena Montana. The production equipment was made available by the Myrna Loy Center. Cindy Gaffney mentored the students in all phases of production and she also wrote the script. All the Internet possibilities mentioned in the script are today a reality. The production won a local ADDY Award in 1996 for Best PSA.
But then again, these kids grew up to BE the internet generation. A 10-year-old in 1995 would be 20 years old in 2005. Maybe we've just found out who is responsible for LOLcats. -via Dangerous Minds
This interactive map of the U.S. was constructed using Google's autocomplete feature. For each state, the search form was filled in with “Why is [insert state] so “ and the autocomplete results were noted, analysed, sorted, and assigned. At the site, mouseover a state to see what autocomplete terms came up most often. The accompanying post also shows some of the stereotypes generated compared with actual data maps. Link
-via Metafilter, where commenters contributed autocompletes for cities, Canadian provinces, and countries around the world.
Have you ever considered socks as an art medium? The anonymous author of a Tumblr blog called Famous album covers recreated with my socks has, and apparently has quite a selection of socks to use! There are two pages of album covers now, and we hope there will be more to come. Link -via Wil Wheaton
Email This Post to a Friend