This Twaggie is an illustration of a Tweet from @NoogsCorner. It made my little toe hurt. It also marks the 500th Twaggie, any of which can be made into a t-shirt. Link

Today I learned that John Farrier once made a peanut butter and hair sandwich because his mom said hair was made of protein. That's just one more reason you should be perusing NeatoBambino every day. All he was doing was highlighting a post about an artist who illustrates children's misconceptions, but I don't think I'm ever going to let him live that one down. If you have a childhood story to top that, we'd love to hear it! Link

(Image credit: Flickr user Messiah Divine)

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This sounds like a documentary from the 1970s, but after looking around, I believe it's a comedy skit taken out of context. And I have yet to find the context. But these sisters have the moves! -via reddit

Previously: The real Karate Nuns.

Cats doing invisible things are funny enough, but if you know someone who just doesn't get it, plenty of folks are willing to explain it by Photoshopping the missing props into the pics. The results are not only unnecessary, but pleasingly odd. Link -via Rue The Day

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At this point, you have to be pretty young to not know what happens in the Star Wars saga. That said, this contains spoilers. Faris is four years old, and here he sees The Empire Strikes Back for the first time. The camera captures his surprise at the twist. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Flicker user "The Wanderer's Eye")

by Alice Shirrell Kaswell, AIR staff

Which came first — the chicken or the egg?

The question has a reputation for being difficult, perhaps even impossible, to answer. Philosophers treat it as a conundrum. But in the hands of an experimental scientist, the question is simple and straightforward, and the answer is easily obtained.

I doubt that I am the first to solve the chicken-and-egg problem, but a search of the scientific literature turned up surprisingly few accounts — none, in fact — of previous work. Here, then, is an account of my work on what turns out to be a trivial question.

[caption id="attachment_53871" align="aligncenter" width="308" caption="Figure 2. The 2003 USPS regulations for mailing chickens."][/caption]

How the Problem was Solved

Which came first — the chicken of the egg? I tackled the question experimentally, using a chicken, an egg, and the United States Postal Service (USPS).

I mailed the chicken and the egg, each in its own separate packaging, and kept careful track of when each shipment was sent from a post office in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and when it subsequently arrived at its intended destination in New York City.

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According to a rough Babelfish translation from the Russian description, Alexander Ishutin bought a motorcycle and installed a drum set on it so he and his friends could do this. In Soviet Russia, concert drives to you! -via reddit

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Phillip and Jenny have four beehives in their backyard in St. John's, Newfoundland. You'll find plenty of beekeeping videos and information on their blog, Mudsongs. In this video, we see what they do with honey when its harvested. http://mudsongs.org/ -via Bits and Pieces

We've posted art from more than one person who takes everyday paintings or iconic images and adds fantastic monsters to them. It's neat, but it's not new. Back in the 1970s, Yokopro in Japan published postcards that did the exact same thing. The monsters are called pachimon kaiju. See a collection of them at How To Be a Retronaut. http://www.howtobearetronaut.com/2011/09/pachimon-postcards-1970s/ -via Everlasting Blort

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Watch scientists, researchers, and assorted geeks get down! McGill University in Montreal gathered scientists, students, and volunteers to make this dance and lipdub video. Their sponsor, Medicom, is making a donation to the Goodman Cancer Research Centre for each view the video gets. -via Geeks Are Sexy

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In honor of 92-year-old Andy Rooney's final commentary on the CBS news show 60 Minutes tomorrow night, Holy Taco put together some of his best lines, whether they make any sense or not. -via Buzzfeed

Monday, one of two Austrian climbers on El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, California took a fall. He didn't fall to the ground, but his safety rope snapped off his right thumb. The thumb landed on the ledge that the climber's partner was on, so he saved the severed digit. The climbers had a phone with them, and called for help. YOSAR (Yosemite Search and Rescue) made a difficult and dramatic retrieval of the injured man from the cliff face, as you'll see in an account from climber and photographer Tom Evans.

I couldn’t believe it… they were going to send up Rangers Jeff Webb, and Dave Pope, on the end of a 100ft line hanging from the bottom of the NPS Fire chopper, and somehow have the climbers pull them into the belay!  I have never seen such a mission on an EC rescue as the chopper would be awfully close to the face and it isn’t that easy to pull people hanging on a rope 30 or so feet into a stance.  The late afternoon light was fading fast so they send the chopper, flown brilliantly by Richard Shatto, up to take a look and judge if the wind conditions were within limits.

After the initial flight the Rangers were attached to the long line and the mission was on.  The chopper lifted up and the men were soon riding the rocket to the face of ElCap!  Impressive to say the least!

Evans took plenty of breathtaking photographs of the rescue operation. Oh yeah, the thumb was surgically reattached. Link -via Metafilter

Every once in a while, to avoid doing something productive, I go snooping around Neatorama's statistics and analytics. I'm no expert on such things, but there's some interesting tidbits buried in the numbers. For instance, some of the search terms people use and find themselves at Neatorama are things we posted months or even years ago, like "bbq grill" or "pikachu cat" or "snorlax beanbag chair." That kind of thing makes me feel a certain responsibility to make each post as good as it can be. You never know what might end up being important to someone someday!  Let's take a look at our exclusive features from this past week, just in case you may have missed something that ends up being important.

For National Comic Book Day last weekend, Jill Harness explained The History Behind Comic Books and Comic Book Censorship.

She also gave us The Origins of 7 Common Superstitions.

Eddie Deezen wrote about 12 Books That Have (Ironically) Been Banned in the U.S. for Banned Books Week.

Neatorama's Spotlight blog featured a fantastic photo collection called Lives Within a Drop of Water. It's a sneak peek at some of the awesome images from Nikon's Small World microphotography competition. We'll have more next week, too!

If you missed it, you need to read A Day in Palindromia. This silly story from Uncle John's Bathroom Reader contains 52 different palindromes.

The burning question is How Many Beans Make Soup? Improbable Research crunches the numbers.

Speaking of soup, mental_floss magazine brought us How Cooked Food Made Us Human. I don't know about you, but I always feel more human after a well-cooked meal.

We have a Tokyo Flash Treasure Hunt going on. Put the clues together to win a watch from Tokyo Flash and some neat stuff from the NeatoShop!

The What Is It? game ran extra long this week. Update: The What Is It? blog tells us the mystery objects are mortsafes, used in the 1800s to protect the dead from graverobbers who would sell them to medical schools, although according to urban legends they were designed to keep vampires and zombies from escaping their graves. Congratulations to Alan Ball, who was the first of several with the correct answer. However, he did not select a t-shirt. The funniest answer this week comes from theonewhoistheone13, who said, "Well we have to put those evil garden gnomes somewhere now don't we?" For that, she wins a t-shirt from the NeatoShop!

Over at our Facebook page, you can catch extra content you won't find at Neatorama, like this picture that I couldn't resist snagging and sharing. Join the Facebook community of Neatoramanauts, and follow us on Twitter as well!

And there's a ton of new Halloween costumes, supplies, and party items at the NeatoShop that I bet you haven't even seen! Check them all out and then order something that will surely impress your friends and neighbors for Halloween.

The Alnwick Poison Gardens in Alnwick, England was established in 2005 by the Duchess of Northumberland. The grounds contain nearly 100 deadly plants that produce poisons or hallucinogens. Some are so dangerous, they are displayed only behind glass. And yes, there are opium poppies, cannabis, and magic mushrooms as well, but you can't get close to them. Read about the poison gardens and other strange gardens that are (or once were) open to the public around the world in a list called Gardens of Death and Other Horticultural Marvels at Atlas Obscura. Link

(Image credit: Flickr user Jax60)

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One of the dogs got into the trash. Was it Jed, Xena, or Tank? I think they are all guilty, but one was not smart enough to get rid of the evidence! -via Arbroath