You've probably read more than once about how your favorite authors drank -and how to recreate their favorite beverages. But what about their favorite meals? Flavorwire has a literary collection of recipes such as Ernest Hemingway’s pan fried trout, Vladimir Nabokov’s Eggs à la Nabocoque, and Allen Ginsberg’s Cold Summer Borscht. There are ten authors and their recipes in the list. Eating these won't turn you into a writer, but they might make you feel a little closer to greatness. Or at least full! Link -via mental_floss
Music producer and remix artist Pogo (Nick Bertke) remixed some of the sounds heard in the film The Wizard of Oz. Then he put himself in the video! -via Laughing Squid
Ole Kirk Kristiansen established a business on August 10, 1932 that eventually became the LEGO company. But it didn't start out with building bricks and minifigs. He sold ladders, some furniture, and wooden toys. Eventually, of course, the toys really took off.
The shop was called LEg GOdt, or “play well” in Danish. Later, it would come to light that the phrase also means “I put together” in Latin.
The business started small, manufacturing small wooden toys. World War II kept Godfred home in the shop rather than traveling to Germany for school as he had originally planned. By 1949, the Kristiansens had hired 50 people and released the first LEGO forerunner, the “Automatic Binding Bricks,” sold exclusively in Denmark with four or eight studs, in four different colors.
Read more about the history of the LEGO company at Smithsonian. Link
The theme of the wedding must have been "Resistance is Futile." It's a good thing pictures of the cake were taken, as it was quickly assimilated by Star Trek fans at the reception. This awesome Borg cake was made by a baker at The Sugarplum Cake Shoppe in Colorado Springs, who has a nephew on reddit. Link -via Geeks Are Sexy
A newly-discovered species of goblin spider has been named in honor of British TV naturalist David Attenborough, and is now classified as Prethopalpus attenboroughi. The informal name will be Attenborough's goblin spider.
In an acceptance speech in Perth, Western Australia, Sir David said about his new namesake: "I take it that it is careful in its judgement, merciless, certainly beautiful and I will treasure it and I thank you very much indeed for this.
"Naming a species is the biggest of compliments that you could ask from any scientific community and I truly thank you very much indeed for this one."
The spider is commonly known as a goblin spider, so the scientists behind the find said that made it Attenborough's goblin spider.
It was not the first such honor for Attenborough: a fossil fish was named Materpiscis attenboroughi previously. Link -via Not Exactly Rocket Science
Okay, who's got the best "In Soviet Russia" joke for this? It may look like a badass noodling expedition, but that's not what happened. He caught this fish with a line, but could not pull it through the ice without breaking the line and losing the catch, so he retrieved it manually. And you can pronounce that manly. -via reddit
Maymo is the dog you loved in the video Beagle vs. Lemon. Now he's after a cabbage, which may make you uncomfortable if you've ever dealt with dog farts after your beloved pet ate cabbage. Maymo is too cute to care! -Thanks, Jay Finch!
Over a year ago, entomologist Shaun Winterton spotted a previously unknown species of a lacewing insect as he was browsing Flickr. He really didn't know what it was at the time, but he knew he'd never seen anything like it. He contacted the photgrapher, Guek Hock Ping, who shot the picture in Malaysia. No, he didn't have a specimen, just a picture.
A full year later, Winterton received an email from the photographer; Guek had returned to the region of the original sighting and found another lacewing with the same wing pattern.
"He told me, 'I've got one in a container on my kitchen table — what should I do with it?' " Winterton says.
The specimen was sent to Steve Brooks, an entomologist at the Natural History Museum in London. Brooks confirmed that the lacewing was new to science. He also found a matching specimen that had been sitting in the museum's collection, unclassified, for decades.
The new species was dubbed Semachrysa jade — not after its pale green color, but after Winterton's daughter. It was introduced to the world in the latest issue of ZooKeys, a scientific journal focused on biodiversity. In keeping with the digital nature of their discovery, Winterton, Guek and Brooks wrote the paper from three different continents using a Google document.
And that's a fine example of how the internet not only brings us closer together, but makes global research easier and faster. Link -via reddit
Joel Runyon was working on his computer at a coffee shop when he met an elderly man. As they were chatting, the man said people should do things that have never been done before. The next part of the conversation took Runyon by surprise.
“In fact, I’ve done lots of things that haven’t been done before”, he said half-smiling.
Oh really? Like what types of things?, All the while, half-thinking he was going to make up something fairly non-impressive.
I invented the first computer.
Um, Excuse me?
I created the world’s first internally programmable computer. It used to take up a space about as big as this whole room and my wife and I used to walk into it to program it.
What’s your name?”. I asked, thinking that this guy is either another crazy homeless person in Portland or legitimately who he said he was.
“Russell Kirsch”
And it was, indeed, Russell Kirsch. The meeting left Runyon behind in his work, but glad that he took the opportunity to listen to a stranger in a coffee shop. Read the story of how a chance encounter turned into a chance of a lifetime at the Blog of Impossible Things. Link -via Ed Yong
Runyon received a lot of feedback on his story about meeting Kirsch, so he did a followup article called 7 Things I Learned From My Encounter With Russell Kirsch. Link
On the TV show Inside the Actors Studio, host James Lipton asks those same questions of every guest, and many give the same answers. It's almost as if they've seen the show! This remix by Jordan Laws makes them all quick, to the point, and downright easy to dance to. -via Nag on the Lake
In the science fiction love story Six Months, Three Days, the first line sets up the scenario: "The man who can see the future has a date with the woman who can see many possible futures." But can two people who recall the future the way the rest of us recall the past ever find happiness together?
Once they’ve broken the taboo on talking about the future in general, Doug suddenly feels free to talk about their future, specifically. They’re having a romantic dinner at one of those restaurant/bars, with high-end American food and weird pseudo-Soviet iconography everywhere. Doug is on his second beer when he says, “So, I guess in a couple of weeks, you and I have that ginormous fight about whether I should meet your parents. And about a week after that, I manage to offend Marva. Honestly, without meaning to. But then again, in a month and a half’s time, we have that really nice day together on the boat.”
“Please don’t,” Judy says, but she already knows it’s too late to stop it.
“And then after that, there’s the Conversation. I am not looking forward to the Conversation.”
“We both know about this stuff,” Judy says. “It’ll happen if and when it happens, why worry about it until then?”
“Sorry, it’s just part of how I deal with things. It helps me to brace myself.”
Read the entire tale by Charlie Jane Anders at Tor.com. Link -via Metafilter
It's green vs. tan as the little plastic army men defend their position on the desktop! Youtube user Slipshot Films says, "This video is dedicated to the men who died defending little desktop." The use of O Fortuna is a nice touch. -via Everlasting Blort
This will be the last opportunity for the Neatobot to wear his London Olympics t-shirt. The closing ceremonies are tomorrow evening, and we'll see the official handoff of the Summer Games to Rio for 2016. Then maybe things will settle down a bit. I'm talking about more than just the Olympics. My kids started back to school last week, and the first thing they did was take a four-day weekend for a local festival. Meanwhile, I've been trying to get used to the new site here at Neatorama. The more I use it, the easier it is, and I'm lovingthe new functionality. Plus, I'm up to my elbows in tomatoes and beans and canning jars. So a little return to normalcy is a good thing! We had some great feature article this weeK:
Neatorama is rolling out our photo gallery feature with some interesting sets of photos that are easy to look through. First we had Bacon Demon, featuring scary meat sculptures. Rock And Roll! had David Israel's pictures of the largest boulder ever transported in modern times. In Virtual Nanoscopy: The Ridiculously Zoomable Cell, we saw the inside of a zebrafish embryo, cell by cell. The Whimsical Art of Joana Vasconcelos was quite easy to se in gallery form. There are others, but those will get you used to the new feature.
In the What Is It? game, the mystery object is a 35mm film leader retriever, used to retrieve film that has been accidentally wound into the cassette. Berhard was the first with the correct answer, so he wins a t-shirt from the NeatoShop! The funniest answer came from The Professor, who said "This is a nitpicker, designed to extract tiny slivers of controversy from the finest cracks in logic." That's an answer that deserves a t-shirt! Thanks for playing, everyone. You can see the answers to all the mystery items of the week at the What Is It? blog.
The post with the most comments this week was Amtrak's $16 Burger. No other post came close (except the giveaways). We get complaints about posting political articles on Neatorama, but that seems to be the only ones we get comments on! Hey, why don't you all try out the new comment system, and show us what kind of items you really like to see on Neatorama. You can sign up for a Neatorama account if you haven't already, leave comments, reply to other commenters, and vote for your favorite posts with the little heart at the top of each one. That way, we'll know what you really want to see more of! You'll find complete instructions here.
There are more new features that we will be introducing gradually at the new Neatorama, so check back often, and jump in and play with us!
