French photographer Michel Watson, along with other photographers, tried to shoot penguins on South Georgia Island in the Falklands, but a photobombing elephant seal wanted to be the star of the show.
Mr Watson, 64, from Alsace said: 'I was about to take a picture of the penguins when suddenly from the other side of the dune appeared a young elephant seal.
'It stood for about six seconds just staring at us before going back down and disappearing.
'A few seconds later he was standing again and he did this at least 15 times. The whole thing was very bizarre and lasted a good five minutes.
'Soon everyone was trying to get the timing right to get good pictures of the seal rather than the penguins.'
See more pictures at the Daily Mail. Link -via Fark
Sid Russell, the Jack Russell terrier, plays fetch with himself. This is cute because he can do it, but sad because no one is playing with him. -via The Daily What
Sam Shuster Emeritus Professor, University of Newcastle Upon Tyne Newcastle Upon Tyne, U.K.
Whether you enjoy classical sculpture or just pass it by when visiting stately homes and gardens, you must have noticed that there are many broken-off pieces. You may have further noticed that, if you exclude the commonplace loss of limbs and fingers, the penis fronts the list of lost sculptural properties (see example in Figure 1A and close-up in Figure1B). We all know the penile organ often goes astray socially, but why does its stone version go missing?
As a clinical researcher, I’ve spent a life wondering, a habit too strong to be undone by retirement; and this particular item of sculptural pathology has long idled listlessly on my list of wonderments. Then last year, during a touristic gawp at classical Rome, the enormity of the city’s sculpture population and that population’s inescapable depenilation gave me no option (I felt) but to study the problem. This is the curious story of how that happened.
Penises In, or Not In, The Vatican My first, simplistic explanation of the missing penises was their deliberate removal, presumably because of distaste for the public showing of a private organ. That would explain the great frequency of their loss from both classical and later pieces on display in public places throughout Europe, where their removal could be executed in silence.
But what about Vatican City? There, surely, sculptures are less likely to be struck by vandalism in the gardens, or for concealment of sexual embarrassment in the great Vatican halls. After all, they were commissioned for their naked appearance, and the many paintings close by are just as revealing. Of course the oldest sculptures would have been exposed before reaching the safety of the Vatican, but the more contemporary pieces were always in safe hands. So my first experimental question about sculptural penis loss (SPL) was whether it was less in Vatican City than elsewhere.
Photographer Senen Llanos took portraits of cosplayers attending New York's Comic-Con this weekend. He highlighted the subject by separating the character from the "busy background" that you're familiar with in convention photos. See 39 cosplay portraits at his site. http://www.senencito.com/my-blog/2011/10/15/faces-of-new-york-comic-con-2011-saturday.html
The latest in unhealthy food innovations is available at the Bank of America 500 Nascar Sprint Cup in Charlotte, North Carolina. A "funnel bacakonator" is a funnel cake with chocolate and strawberry sauces topped with a generous topping of crumbled bacon. Link -via Breakfast Links
There are 22 different Beatles songs in this medley. Can you catch them all? And even more remarkable, they are all performed by one guy -Grant Woolard, who brought us the National Anthem Mashup last month. -Thanks, Grant!
The pronghorn (Antilocapra americana) is an American animal that is often called a pronghorn antelope, but it not an antelope. In fact, the pronghorn is as more closely related to giraffes than it is to antelopes! The taxonomy of the pronghorn classifies it as the only member of the family Antilocapridae. Oh, there used to be several species in the family, but that was way back before humans arrived in the New World. Read more about this unique species at The Ark in Space. Link
Neatorama is experimenting with a new kind of post where your participation leads to constructive (and often fun) debates. Adrienne Crezo rounds up current controversial topics, with links to news stories and opinions from others around the web. And we want your viewpoint! Subjects we've tackled this week include taking school attendance by fingerprints, the definition of a sandwich, teens having plastic surgery as a defense against bullying, and whether ancient krakens were intelligent enough to create art.
Another new feature at Neatorama helps you to find the current active discussions. Check the right sidebar, just below the NeatoBambino posts, for the Most Commented list. They're hot! Then we have plenty of exclusive articles from the past week you'll want to catch up on.
Head on Brain in Brain came to us from The Annals of Improbable Research. It will start to make sense when you read it. Or maybe not.
In this week's What Is It? game, the mystery item is, indeed, a boat anchor. Maybe the background image of a ship helped! From the What Is It? blog: “A killick type anchor that was used on a small river freight boat in the 1800s, rocks were placed in the center of it to weigh it down.” David Kirkpatrick had the correct answer before many other people did. Sarah Reede had an intriguing funny-but-wrong answer: “It’s a 17th Century tic-tac-toe placer. (Fits in the X’s and the O’s!) Used for sanitary purposes.” Both win t-shirts from the NeatoShop!
You'll find extra content and discussions at our Facebook page, and make sure you are following Neatorama on Twitter, too, because you never know when you'll see something like this!
If you grew up playing the game Oregon Trail, you know how easy it is to die along the way, from dysentery, cholera, diphtheria, typhoid, or the measles. Hey, at least you learned about the diseases, right? Mental_floss takes a look at how bad those diseases really were at the time the West was being settled, and how far we've come in the treatment, prevention, and eradication of them today. Isn't medical science great? Link
A post at reddit asked a hypothetical question: could a modern US Marine infantry battalion defeat the legionnaires of the Roman Empire if they traveled back in time? Member Prufrock451 offered a scenario covering a week of such a story in a series of well-received comments. Here's a sample:
DAY 1 The 35th MEU is on the ground at Kabul, preparing to deploy to southern Afghanistan. Suddenly, it vanishes.
The section of Bagram where the 35th was gathered suddenly reappears in a field outside Rome, on the west bank of the Tiber River. Without substantially prepared ground under it, the concrete begins sinking into the marshy ground and cracking. Colonel Miles Nelson orders his men to regroup near the vehicle depot - nearly all of the MEU's vehicles are still stripped for air transport. He orders all helicopters airborne, believing the MEU is trapped in an earthquake.
Nelson's men soon report a complete loss of all communications, including GPS and satellite radio. Nelson now believes something more terrible has occurred - a nuclear war and EMP which has left his unit completely isolated. Only a few men have realized that the rest of Bagram has vanished, but that will soon become apparent as the transport helos begin circling the 35th's location.
Within an hour, the 2,200 Marines have regrouped, stunned. They are not the only moderns transported to Rome. With them are about 150 Air Force maintenance and repair specialists. There are about 60 Afghan Army soldiers, mostly the MEU's interpreters and liaisons. There are also 15 U.S. civilian contractors and one man, Frank Delacroix, who has spoken to no one but Colonel Nelson.
OK, here's where it gets interesting. Adam Kolbrenner from Madhouse Entertainment read the story on reddit and contacted the author, James Erwin, about developing the idea. Warner Brothers bought the story, now called Rome, Sweet Rome, and is making plans to film it. Link -via reddit
Watch Paul Alexander Thornton draw flowers with ballpoint pens, watercolors, and ink. This piece took three weeks, but that's condensed into three minutes and change in the video. Thornton also wrote and performed the music!
Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cub has been inching towards capitalism -mostly in the form of tourism. Can Havana once again become "the Latin Las Vegas"?
Communist countries aren't known for being vacation hot spots, and for good reason. To have a thriving tourist sector, you need luxuries to offer and visitors willing to spend money on them. That's the stuff of capitalism. And yet, Cuba attracts about 2 million sightseers every year, mostly from Europe and Canada. That number is especially remarkable considering that two decades ago, Cuba's tourism industry was not only nonexistent, it was outlawed.
FROZEN DAIQUIRIS
Cuban tourism was banned in 1960 as part of the Communist Revolution. Shortly after Fidel Castro came to power, his regime closed the island's internationally renowned hotels. He also cracked down on prostitution, gambling, and illicit drugs -trades that had made the country a den of hedonism. As Castro saw it, tourism was a form of capitalist exploitation in which the rich pleasured themselves on the backs of the poor. He felt that Americans used the island as a playground with little concern for the welfare of those who lived there. In his new country, Cuban citizens would be equal; no one would stay at luxury hotels until everyone could stay at luxury hotels.
Cuba got by without tourism for nearly 30 years, mostly by exporting sugar to its top trading partner, the Soviet Union. But after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, billions of dollars disappeared from Cuba's coffers overnight. To keep the country from going bankrupt, Castro announced a five-year era of austerity, which he dubbed the "special period." Never in the history of politics has the word "special" been used more euphemistically. Castro cut mass transit and food rations by 80 percent -moves so drastic that they caused the average Cuban to lose 20 pounds. But cutting costs alone wouldn't make the country solvent again; Cuba needed new trading partners and new industries. So, very reluctantly, Castro re-opened the tourism sector.
Many of these places have been mapped, but now we get the big picture, from Dan Meth. I had no idea Oz was so close to Middle Earth! Frodo would have made sure Dorothy got home safely. Link -via Geeks Are Sexy
If you feel bad about your hamster's efforts to run in the hamster wheel without getting anywhere, you might want to get him a car. It can run in place, on the floor, or on a track, and the wheel is detachable, in case the car is just not his style. Link -via Breakfast Links
