These scans of an old safety booklet for children called It's Great to be Alive! are full of gruesome injuries that befall careless bicycle riders, pedestrians, and kids at play.
In fairness, adults didn't have a lot of options in those days, so using abject fear was a common parenting tool. There were no reflective bicycle helmets or knee-pads for skateboarders, no designated bicycle lanes, many fewer supervised activities, and we didn't even have seat belts in cars until the mid-1960s. When accidents happened, they were usually pretty grim.
See more mayhem in this article from Gene Gable. Link -via TYWKIWDBI
The new movie The Expendables opens this Friday, starring every action star Hollywood could round up. Sylvester Stallone tried to do an interview on YouTube, but he didn't get to say much before everything went south. Link -via The Litter Box
It's the game that brings the internet into the real world!
This is the best thing since BUMP for the iPhone which allowed you to instantly add friends to Facebook – it’s Social Media Monopoly. Pete Cashmore, Kevin Rose, Tom, Amber MacArthur, Crystal Gibson and Ariana Huffington are fighting for social media dominance. Race around the board picking up smartphones and computers but make sure you don’t get sent to MySpace or you’ll risk losing everything, including your reputation.
Print out the full-size version plus the Mashable and Technorati cards and use your regular Monopoly game money, and you're good to go. Link -via Nag on the Lake
The following article is reprinted from Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Treasury.
They're not mad! It's the world that's mad!! Bwa hah hah hah hah!!! Look at it from the mad scientist's point of view. All he wants to do is reanimate the dead, or invent a transporter, or maybe just drink a mind-altering potion in the privacy of his own home. But the rest of the world seems to think that's wrong! What do they know?!? They didn't spend years digging up cadavers, mixing toxic chemicals, or exploring the eighth dimension! They probably didn't have any advanced degrees! Foolish mortals! See? From the scientist's point of view, it makes perfect sense. here are ten films to prove they're not mad-just misunderstood.
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension!
Yes, the exclamation point is part of the title. The mad scientist is Dr. Emilio Lizardo (John Lithgow), who went looking for trouble in the eighth dimension and found it when some goopy-looking alien took over his skull. Now he needs to get back where he once belonged, and the only thing stopping him is Buckaroo Banzai: scientist, rock'n'roll star, and cultural icon. A true cult favorite among the brainy and socially maladapted. (They want to be Buckaroo Banzai, but they smell like Dr. Lizardo.) While it is a little obscure for some, it starts making twisted sense after the fifth or sixth viewing. Stick with it.
Coma
Here's a flick to make you nervous the next time you go in for a tummy tuck. Genevieve Bujold plays a doctor who is investigating a friend's death during minor surgery. One thing leads to another, and the next thing she knows, she's wandering through a big room filled with people hanging from tubes, their organs just waiting to be harvested! Apparently people forget you could just check the "donor" box on your driver's license application. Michael Douglas plays her love interest and Richard Widmark is the doctor who keeps slipping the patients a little too much gas. So remember, the next time you're in, ask for a local.
Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde
Long before Anthony Hopkins got an Oscar for playing a doctor gone bad in Silence of the Lambs, Frederick March copped one in 1932 for this baby. You know how it works: Mild mannered doctor by day goes drinking and then becomes an evil criminal jerk by night. Yes, it sounds no different than what happens at any convention-but in this case, Dr. Jeckyll isn't tossing back frilly drinks with umbrellas in them. This one's been remade a few times (including as a stoner comedy in the early 80s, for which karmic punishment will certainly apply), but the Frederick March version is still the best.
Since his death in 1977, Elvis's popularity has grown. Once he was just a singer. Now he's an icon with his own church (The Church of Elvis), and his own holy site (Graceland), It's an amazing phenomenon-but it hasn't been entirely accidental. Behind the scenes, a handful of people have orchestrated Elvis's return from the dead for their own benefit. Here's part of the inside story. For a more complete story, we recommend Elvis, Inc. by Sean O'Neal. It's entertaining bathroom reading.
BACK FROM THE DEAD
Ironically, the tale of Elvis's resurrection begins with the story of a vampire.
In 1960 Universal Studios dusted off a number of its classic horror films and released them for TV broadcast. It was the first time baby boom kids had ever seen the original Frankenstein (starring Boris Karloff), The Wolfman (starring Lon Chaney), or Dracula (starring Bela Lugosi)-and the films were phenomenally popular. In fact, a huge "monster" fad swept America... and Universal cashed in by licensing its characters for t-shirts, posters, lunch boxes, etc. One of the most popular images was Bela Lugosi in his Count Dracula costume.
Courting Universal
When Lugosi's widow and son found out about the merchandising deals, they filed suit to block them. Their argument: Lugosi's name and likeness should be passed on to his family, as his worldly assets had been. At the very least, they had a right to share in the profits.
The Lugosis won their lawsuit. But Universal appealed the decision.The second time around, the appellate judges reasoned that if the name and likeness of famous people could be inherited, the relative of all public figures-past and present-could sue for royalties. Even George Washington's descendants could charge the federal government for the right to use his image on the $1 bill. The judges ruled in favor of Universal.
Laurel and Hardy
In 1975, after Laurel and Hardy's old films became popular on TV, the heirs of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy filed a similar lawsuit against Hal Roach Studios. This time, the heirs won, throwing the entire issue of posthumous "intellectual property" into chaos.
Based on legal decisions, it was impossible to tell who owned the rights to a dead celebrity's image-the public... or the celebrity's family.
ELVIS PRESLEY
That was the situation when Elvis died from a drug overdose on August 16, 1977. His death was announced at 3:30 that afternoon; within a few hours, newspapers were speculating about his estate's value.
The media figured the King had to be worth a bundle: in his more than 20 years as a performer, he'd recorded 144 Top 40 songs, starred in more than 30 films, (at one point he was the highest-paid actor in Hollywood), performed in hundreds of sold-out concerts, and sold more than 600 million records. No other recording artist had ever even come close to his accomplishments.
Estimates of Elvis Presley's fortune were as high as $150 million. (When John Lennon was assassinated three years later, he left an estate valued at more than $200 million). But they were way off.
I have four teenagers who each have various small rechargeable gadgets. The chargers are hooked up all over the house, which means cords go everywhere. This little project might make things easier for parents and dogs who tend to trip over cords. It's a pocket to hold your device as it's recharging -made out of a shampoo bottle! Find the instruction at Make. Link -via Unique Daily
This vehicle is called Leach's Garbage Getter, a state-of-the-art sanitation truck built between 1932 and 1949. You can see many garbage truck designs from different eras and different parts of the world in a roundup at Dark Roasted Blend. Link
Paleontologist Philip Gingerich looks for sea monsters in the Egyptian desert. He assembles fossils of ancient whales that died there when it was covered by an ocean. One such whale is the Basilosaurus, which had small hind legs.
"Complete specimens like that Basilosaurus are Rosetta stones," Gingerich told me as we drove back to his field camp. "They tell us vastly more about how the animal lived than fragmentary remains."
Wadi Hitan—literally "valley of whales"—has proved phenomenally rich in such Rosetta stones. Over the past 27 years Gingerich and his colleagues have located the remains of more than a thousand whales here, and countless more are left to be discovered.
Researchers hope that whale fossils can help them understand how a land mammal evolved into an aquatic form that became our modern whales. Link
(Image credit: Richard Barnes/National Geographic)
Unfortunately, in this case it isn't Neatorama. Kristjan asked The Daily What to post his proposal to Alexandra on the form of a meme comic. Only a portion of it is shown here. Commenters are waiting not-so-patiently to hear her answer. Link
Brian Fugere had already run the Boston Marathon once when he was stricken with a cancer called synovial sarcoma in 2005. He had part of lung removed and began chemotherapy at Kaiser Walnut Creek Hospital in California. He didn't like being confined to a hospital and wanted to stay in shape.
"So, I started moving," Fugere said. "I did one, then two, then three, then four, then five laps. Then I started measuring the distance of a lap around the cancer ward and figured out it would take 144 laps to do a marathon.
"So then I figured, why not?"
Fugere called his hallway odyssey the "Box of Chocolates Marathon," borrowing a line from Forrest Gump. ("Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get.")
"I want to show other chemo patients that you don't have to accept the notion of lying in bed all day getting liquid Drano pumped into you," Fugere said the week of the marathon. "Well, you do need to get the liquid Drano -- you just don't need to take it lying down."
Fugere had to drag his IV pole along with him as he began his marathon. Read the entire story at CNN. Link
(Image credit: Kat Wade/San Francisco Chronicle/Corbis)
In their tribute to Shark Week, BroBible compiled a list of sharks that appeared in literature, films, and TV shows, ranked from the ridiculous to the nightmare-inducing. If you can identify the shark pictured here from memory, you can probably guess where it ranked. http://www.brobible.com/story/13160309/20-most-intimidating-fictional-sharks-all-time
At the Neatorama Art Blog, we welcomed new galleries from illustrator Bob Staake and cartoonist Nethery Engblom.
The ultimate winner in the How Did You Know? contest at mental floss was Leslie Jenkins, who won a mental_floss t-shirt and Tea Cupcakes from the NeatoShop. Congratulations to Leslie and to the daily winners as well!
Last night, author Jami Attenberg returned to the place where she locked her bike and found it gone.
I didn’t cry but I jutted my lower lip out the entire way home. It was a genuine sad face. I tried to stop the sad face but I could not. I really love my yellow bike, and it is summer and riding your bike is the best, and also it is my main form of transportation around town. I didn’t know how I was going to be able to afford a new one, and seriously, I was super bummed. It is a material object, yes, and it can be replaced, but it’s MY BIKE AND I LOVE IT.
I sad-faced myself to sleep.
This morning I woke up around 9 AM and checked Craigslist to see if there were any reasonably priced bikes on there and lo and behold, there was a picture of my bike for sale for $75. They even had a picture of the scratches.
The story gets exciting from that point. Her friend did some detective work, and the police set up a sting operation. Then she had to meet the guy who had her bike. It sounds like a television show that wraps up in an hour, and it all happened just today. Link -via Buzzfeed
Steef de Prouw built an entire zoo out of Lego bricks! It's got all the things you expect at a zoo, including a duck pond, an enclosure with a missing sign that makes you wonder what is in there, zookeepers shoveling manure, an aquarium, the snackbar you must pass no matter where you are going, and the animals of course. It also has some things you don't normally see in a zoo, like a crocodile in the monkey enclosure, clowns, and a kraken. Link -via b3ta
