The following is an article from Uncle John's Curiously Compelling Bathroom Reader.

Today, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is one of the most popular memorials in the United States, but at the time it was conceived it was so controversial that it's a wonder it got built at all.

MOVING PICTURE

One evening in March 1979, Jan Scruggs went to see The Deer Hunter, a movie about a group of friends who go off to fight in the Vietnam War. Scruggs had served in Vietnam, and the movie upset him so much that he sat up all night drinking whiskey to dull the pain. But something good came from the experience, too: Scruggs decided he wanted to try and get a memorial built for Vietnam veterans, to honor their sacrifices and aid in the healing process. In April he and an attorney friend, also a Vietnam vet, founded the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund to raise money to build the monument.

LAYING THE FOUNDATION

After a slow start, the memorial fund began to make progress. More veterans joined the efffort, the money started coming in, and legislation setting aside three acres on the Mall in Washington, D.C. for the memorial sailed through both houses of Congress. Jimmy Cater signed the bill into law on July 1, 1980.

As fundraising continued, the organization announced that the design for the memorial would be chosen in a national contest. Any U.S. citizen over the age of 18 was eligible to enter. The deadline for entry was March 31, 1981; the winning design would be chosen by a jury of eight architects, sculptors, and other professionals in May. For an entry to be considered, it had to meet four criteria: 1) It had to be "reflective and contemplative" in nature; 2) It had to fit in with its surroundings on the Mall; 3) It had to contain the names of all U.S. personnel who died in the war or went missing in action; and 4) It could not make a political statement about the war.

In all, 4,241 people entered designs. The entries were identified by number only to prevent the judges from knowing who was responsible for each design. It took them four days to winnow the entries down to 232 and then to 39 and then to 1, entry number1,026. That entry had been submitted by Maya Lin, a 21-year-old Yale architecture student who created it as a class assignment. (It got a B+). Her design won by unanimous vote.

THE WALL




Lin's design was simple and stark: Two long black walls that met at a 125 degree angle. The walls were just over ten feet high where they met at the apex, and taper to just eight inches tall at the far ends.

Austin Seraphin got an iPhone. Since he is blind, the first thing he did was activate VoiceOver, which reads text out loud. Then later, he tried the Color ID app, which identifies colors picked up by the camera.

I have never experienced this before in my life. I can see some light and color, but just in blurs, and objects don’t really have a color, just light sources. When I first tried it at three o’clock in the morning, I couldn’t figure out why it just reported black. After realizing that the screen curtain also disables the camera, I turned it off, but it still have very dark colors. Then I remembered that you actually need light to see, and it probably couldn’t see much at night. I thought about light sources, and my interview I did for Get Lamp.  First, I saw one of my beautiful salt lamps in its various shades of orange, another with its pink and rose colors, and the third kind in glowing pink and red.. I felt stunned.

The next day, I went outside. I looked at the sky. I heard colors such as “Horizon,” “Outer Space,” and many shades of blue and gray. I used color queues to find my pumpkin plants, by looking for the green among the brown and stone. I spent ten minutes looking at my pumpkin plants, with their leaves of green and lemon-ginger. I then roamed my yard, and saw a blue flower. I then found the brown shed, and returned to the gray house. My mind felt blown. I watched the sun set, listening to the colors change as the sky darkened. The next night, I had a conversation with Mom about how the sky looked bluer tonight. Since I can see some light and color, I think hearing the color names can help nudge my perception, and enhance my visual experience. Amazing!

Technology is a wonderful thing. Link -via Metafilter

Groovy! This page takes recent Creative Commons photos from Flickr and turns them into kaleidoscopic images. Use the lowest button to change the image, and your mouse to change the kaleidoscopic effects. Link -via J-Walk Blog

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Talk about inspirational -Ben Davis lost 120 pounds! But that's not all he accomplished, as you'll see in this video. Davis also chronicled his progress on his blog. Link -via reddit

The old parlor trick of staring at yourself in a mirror until your face starts to change has now been studied scientifically. Giovanni Caputo led a study in which 50 people tried the trick and reported their reactions.

At the end of a 10 min session of mirror gazing, the participant was asked to write what he or she saw in the mirror. The descriptions differed greatly across individuals and included: (a) huge deformations of one’s own face (reported by 66% of the fifty participants); (b) a parent’s face with traits changed (18%), of whom 8% were still alive and 10% were deceased; (c) an unknown person (28%); (d) an archetypal face, such as that of an old woman, a child, or a portrait of an ancestor (28%); (e) an animal face such as that of a cat, pig, or lion (18%); (f ) fantastical and monstrous beings (48%).

Have you ever tried this? The effect can be really creepy, like this video example from Lasse Gjertsen (in Norwegain, but may sound NSFW). The entire article is available as a pdf, or you can read a summary at Mind Hacks. Link -via Metafilter

Etsy artist Chet Phillips has created a set of dogs and cats as famous authors. Or are they famous authors portrayed as cats and dogs? Anyway, these Literary Pets are sold as prints or sets of trading cards. Shown are H.P. Lovecat and Spaniel Defoe. Link

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You may remember Ricardo Autobahn as the creator of the awesome Golden Age of Video, or you might know him as part of the musical duo Spray, along with Jenny McLaren. Here is the video for their latest song, "Everything's Better with Muppets."-Thanks, Ricardo!

#MRVLCATS is a Twitter meme for which artists illustrate Marvel superheroes and other comic book characters as cats. Shown here is Dr. Strange by Adam Koford (who also did the artwork around this page). Agent M works for Marvel comics. He is collecting the artworks on his blog, so you can see all the best Marvel Cats in one place. Link -via Metafilter

Arrrr! Tomorrow is International Talk Like a Pirate Day! To get ready, you might want to check out these Neatorama articles about pirates: Pirate Lore: 7 Myths and Trrrrruths About Pirates! or The Last Great Buried Treasure Mystery: The Money Pit at Oak Island or Neatorama Facts: Pirates of the Caribbean. You'll also want to make sure you haven't missed any of our features from the past week.

Stacy Conradt brought us 19 Things You Didn't Know About Inception. This article contains spoilers, which are clearly labeled, so you can read the first half even if you haven't seen the movie yet.

Brush up on your retro TV knowledge with 10 Fun Facts about Bewitched.

Over at our Museum of Possibilities, Steven Johnson has some designs for Human-powered Appliances.

Mental_floss magazine brought us Ultimate Slacker Business Strategies, which will only work for a lucky few.

From Uncle John's Bathroom Reader, we got What, Me Worry? The History of Mad Magazine.

We learned how to construct Family Trees for Clones, courtesy of the Annals of Improbable Research.

Thanks for participating in this week's Mal and Chad's Fill in the Bubble Frenzy! The winning entry came from Skully, who said, Let’s do the ol’ “There’s someone on the wing!” gag.

In the What Is It? game, the object is a Fulton traffic light finder. Mike Morris got it right, and Samantha B. had the funniest incorrect answer by guessing it was a Sailor Moon wand.

This week's feature articles will eventually go into The Best of Neatorama, where you'll find years worth of great reading for your entertainment and edification. For even more fascinating links from all over the web, browse the new NeatoHub!

Zinzi is a young lioness that was rejected by her mother. Bob is a meerkat who lives at Predator World Zoo and Game Farm near Sun City, South Africa. The two are best friends and even sleep together, echoing the friendship between the characters Simba and Timon in the Disney movie The Lion King. They live with Marcell Tournier, who owns the safari attraction.

Zinzi was brought in at just one day old when Marcell realised her mother was refusing to feed her a harsh reality of nature that could have meant the end of adorable Zinzi.

But almost as soon as the lion had moved in to the home, near Sun City, South Africa, Mr Tournier quickly realised he wasn't Zinzi's only fan.

Lively two-year-old Meerkat instantly took a shine to his new playmate.

Amazingly Bob began following his much bigger friend day and night and would even snuggle in at nap time.

Link -via Arbroath

(Image credit: Barcroft Media)

Kenneth Feldman and Michelle Dortignac saw a squirrel build a nest against the outside of a window in their apartment. Through the glass, they were able to watch every move the squirrel made as she gave birth and cared for the babies. Better yet, they took photographs and video to share with the rest of us! The squirrel mother is now raising her third litter in the window. Read the story, and see lots more pictures at The Squirrel in our Window. Link -via Metafilter

You would think today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss would be easy -if you're an Apple fan. Test your Apple knowledge with ten questions about the history of the company and its products. It's not easy -I've used nothing but Apple computers for twenty-five years and I only scored 40%! I bet everyone who beats that score will leave a comment about it. Link

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OK now, how many grammar mistakes can you spot in this video? I am always on my kids' backs about running their words together or using words like "tooken." However, I've also learned that if you go on the internet and tell people they are doing something wrong (or "incorrectly," as this should be), you'd better do it perfectly or you're going to be raked over the coals! -via Geeks Are Sexy

Francesco Bonomi launched a high-altitude balloon last year which took 1144 photos and 15 minutes of video recordings. From that data, he constructed three panoramas (linked at the bottom of the post) from different altitudes. Beware the big black hole in the earth! Link -via b3ta

Police responded to a report of a man trying to break into a house in Bloomington, Illinois last weekend. It was determined that 21-year-old Christopher Kunder was trying to get into his own house to surprise his mother who didn't know he was on leave from military service in Afghanistan. The problem was that his mother was not home.

“Hey!” said Christopher, “could you call my mom, tell her there’s an emergency and she needs to come home immediately?”

Officer Martin said, no, he couldn’t do that.

He is a police officer, after all.

Instead, he asked for Christopher’s mom’s phone number and called with nothing but the truth.

“Mrs. Martha Sternickle?”

“Uh, huh.”

“This is Officer Martin of Bloomington Police. We’ve had a report of somebody trying to enter your home. It was unsuccessful but you might want to come home to make sure there’s no problem.”

When Sternickle arrived, Officer Martin led her to the police car to identify the "suspect" in the back seat. A joyful reunion followed. http://www.pantagraph.com/app/blogs/main/?p=5426

(Image credit: Officer Fred Martin/Bloomington Police)