Ceejay Epton of Doncaster, South Yorkshire changed her name. This is nothing unusual, especially in England, where the process is simple. But look what she changed it to!
Ceejay A Apple B Boat C Cat D Dog E Elephant F Flower G Goat H House I Igloo J Jellyfish K Kite L Lion M Monkey N Nurse O Octopus P Penguin Q Queen R Robot S Sun T Tree U Umbrella V Violin W Whale X X-Ray Y Yo-Yo Z Zebra Terryn Feuji-Sharemi - better known as 'Mummy' to son Kian - says she made the change ‘for a bit of a laugh’ after her baby was born.
‘My friend wanted to be called “Pink”, so I thought I might as well change my name too,’ said the 22-year-old from Doncaster, South Yorkshire.
‘I’ve just had a baby, so I thought I would change it to help teach him the alphabet.’
For another £10, she'll be able to change it back when she's had enough laughs. Link -via the Presurfer
The Art of Manliness has a step-by-step guide on "How to Swim, Dive, Climb, and Swing Like the Lord of the Apes." It's very detailed.
In the movies, Tarzan always uses the front crawl stroke (what we often call the freestyle). And with good reason. The front crawl (aka the forward, American or Australian crawl) is the fastest and most efficient of all the swim strokes. Swimming is such an essential Tarzan skill that the movie producers back in the 1930s brought in Johnny Weissmuller, a five-time Olympic gold medalist in swimming, to play the role of Tarzan.
The technique for the Tarzan front crawl is pretty basic. Float face down in the water with both arms stretched out in front of you. This is the starting position. Flutter your legs alternately in short, up and down thrashes. The arms move in alternating sweeping strokes. The arm movement can be broken down into three parts: pull, push, and recovery.
There's even a bonus section on how to emulate Tarzan's (or, specifically, Johnny Weismuller's) distinctive yell. Link -via Gorilla Mask
In early 2009, Lynn France of Cleveland was looking for evidence that her husband was cheating on her. She had already caught him with another woman once, and had evidence that he wasn't traveling to the places he claimed he was. So she typed the name of the "other woman" into Facebook's search field.
Click. And there it was, the stuff of nightmares for any spouse, cuckolded or not. Wedding photos. At Walt Disney World, no less, featuring her husband literally dressed as Prince Charming. His new wife, a pretty blonde, was a glowing Sleeping Beauty, surrounded by footmen.
"I was numb with shock, to tell you the truth," says France, an occupational therapist from Westlake, a Cleveland suburb. "There was like an album of 200 pictures on there. Their whole wedding."
France began divorce proceedings after the discovery. So remember, Facebook is no place to practice bigamy. http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hvQWahOxWvjwxFBWLlRVT2qf4NVwD9HDB11G0 -via reddit
Amy Windom of Atlanta, Georgia was the victim of a break-in at her home. The gunman struck her with a handgun and tied her hands to the bed. She was left tied up for hours, while the intruder robbed the house and left. But Windom didn't take it lying down!
Officers say the woman remained tied up for five hours before using an unusual method to notify police -- the woman had her laptop with her and used her feet to type a message to her boyfriend who then called police.
In the early 20th century, people across the world cut their own bread, one slice at a time. But in 1902, a Missouri inventor named Otto Frederick Rohwedder couldn't get his bread slices to fit inside the slots of his toaster. Thus began his 26-year quest to invent a bread-slicing machine. Although Rohwedder had a prototype as early as 1912, he soon realized that cutting the bread wasn't enough; he also needed to package the slices in such a way that they wouldn't go stale. By 1928, Rohwedder had modified his machine to wrap the bread in addition to cutting it, and his first loaf of sliced bread was sold that July in Chillicothe, Mo.
But just because it sold, that doesn't mean that it sold well. For years, sliced bread was a commercial flop. Consumers thought the loaves looked sloppy, and bakeries hesitated to invest in the machines. That all changed in the 1930s, when Wonder Bread hit the shelves. Lured by its colorful red, yellow, and blue packaging, Americans picked up the sandwich slices and put down their bread knives for good.
PEANUT BUTTER, A VEGETARIAN GODSEND
Health guru Dr. John Harvey Kellogg spent the late 1800s extolling the virtues of vegetarianism at the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan, a spa that welcomed the likes of Thomas Edison, William Howard Taft, and Amelia Earhart. There, Dr. Kellogg also perfected new forms of vegetarian cuisine, including breakfast cereal and peanut butter. He even toured the country, lecturing about the spread's health benefits. In fact, one of these talks possibly changed the course of legume history. When Dr. Kellogg spoke at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, George Washington Carver was in attendance; that may have been what piqued his interest in the peanut.
AMERICA IS READY FOR THIS JELLY
During its early years, peanut butter was a delicacy, only to be served in upscale tearooms. Chefs combine it with beef, pimientos, Worcestershire sauce, and other ingredients, with limited success. But around 1900, peanut butter met jelly, and the sweet-salty combination was a hit with kids. As the commercial peanut butter industry took off, the cost of the spread dropped dramatically. By the time the Great Depression hit, hungry Americans were relying on the PB&J as a cheap, nutritious meal, and later, during World War II, soldiers were scarfing them down on the battlefield. The sandwich has been a national touchstone ever since. Nowadays, the average American child eats about 1,500 PB&J sandwiches before finishing high school.
THE PASSION OF THE CRUST
In 2000, the J.M. Smucker company came to the aid of parents everywhere by patenting and marketing the first crustless peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The frozen, disc-shaped Uncrustables quickly became a top-selling product. All was well until 2001, when a small Michigan grocery store started selling its own crustless PB&Js, and Smucker's sued them for patent infringement. But after a thorough investigation, the US Patent & Trademark Office ruled that the Smucker's version was nothing special. After all, cutting the crust off children's sandwiches is practically an American tradition.
CAUGHT BREAD-HANDED
In January 1943, US government officials put the kibosh on sliced bread, arguing that it was detrimental to the war effort. They claimed the bread went stale too fast, wasting precious wheat, and that the metal in the slicing machines would be better used for guns, tanks, and ships. When the ban was lifted a few months later, the country rejoiced. A headline in The New York Times read, "Housewives' Thumbs Safe Again!"
THE MOST EXPENSIVE PEANUT BUTTER IN AMERICA
Want to know who makes the priciest peanut butter on the market? The federal government, of course! For about $220 per 6-ounce jar, The National Institute of Standards and Technology sells what it calls "Standard Reference Material No. 2387," a pristine peanut butter spread. The price tag comes with a precise analysis of the peanut butter's nutritional composition, including levels of vitamins, minerals, fats, amino acids, and aflatoxins, the carcinogens produced by mold in peanut crops. Food manufacturers use the spread for quality control, comparing it to their own products. Sadly, this means that no one actually eats the gold-standard peanut butter; it's fed exclusively to laboratory equipment.
It would take 500 million pounds of peanut butter to cover the floor of the Grand Canyon, which happens to be how much Americans consume each year.
__________________________
The above article was written by Megan Wilde. It is reprinted with permission from the Scatterbrained section of the July-August 2010 issue of mental_floss magazine.
Be sure to visit mental_floss' entertaining website and blog for more fun stuff!
Hayes Johnson made a Storm Trooper hood ornament for his Buick Park Avenue. Geeks Are Sexy asked and found out how he did it. These might become really popular! Link
Erica Goldson gave a very different speech at Coxsackie-Athens High School Coxsackie, New York. The class valedictorian gave the commencement address many students over the years claimed they would make if they ever got the chance. She began by stating that her goal in school was to get out as soon as she could.
I should look at this as a positive experience, especially being at the top of my class. However, in retrospect, I cannot say that I am any more intelligent than my peers. I can attest that I am only the best at doing what I am told and working the system. Yet, here I stand, and I am supposed to be proud that I have completed this period of indoctrination. I will leave in the fall to go on to the next phase expected of me, in order to receive a paper document that certifies that I am capable of work. But I contest that I am a human being, a thinker, an adventurer - not a worker. A worker is someone who is trapped within repetition - a slave of the system set up before him. But now, I have successfully shown that I was the best slave. I did what I was told to the extreme. While others sat in class and doodled to later become great artists, I sat in class to take notes and become a great test-taker. While others would come to class without their homework done because they were reading about an interest of theirs, I never missed an assignment. While others were creating music and writing lyrics, I decided to do extra credit, even though I never needed it. So, I wonder, why did I even want this position? Sure, I earned it, but what will come of it? When I leave educational institutionalism, will I be successful or forever lost? I have no clue about what I want to do with my life; I have no interests because I saw every subject of study as work, and I excelled at every subject just for the purpose of excelling, not learning. And quite frankly, now I'm scared.
You can read the entire speech and some reactions at Swift Kick Central. Link -via Holy Kaw!
We are in the midst of the Discovery Channel's annual celebration known as Shark Week. In honor of the occasion, here's a look at the strangest species of sharks, both living and extinct.
There are seven known species of sawsharks (Pristiophoriformes) that have long snouts with teeth, but they are not related to sawfish (although sawsharks are fish). They swim along the floor of the ocean and use their snouts exactly as you would imagine: they smack their prey sideways to disable them. Sawsharks eat squid, crustaceans, and small fish. They look much more dangerous than they are.
2. Basking Shark
The basking shark (Cetorhinus maximus) is the second-largest of all living shark species, with only the whale shark growing larger. They normally grow to 20-26 feet long, with the biggest confirmed specimen measuring over 40 feet long! They have mouths up to three feet wide, which they hold open while swimming. That's because they are filter feeders that scoop up plankton, crustaceans, and small fish as they swim.
There are eight or nine different species of hammerhead sharks (Sphyrna), named for their unusual shape. The reason behind the peculiar shape of the shark's head was debated for many years. Scientists speculated that the distance between the shark's eye gave it some kind of advantage. Recent research confirms this. Hammerhead sharks can see a range of 360 degrees vertically. They can easy see behind them with a slight turn of the head, and most importantly, their two eyes have a huge overlap of field compared to other sharks, indicating they have excellent binocular vision. Hammerhead sharks are able to judge distances well by sight alone. They also differ from other sharks in that they tend to swim in schools and they can develop a tan when exposed to sunlight.
Once again, a Neatorama t-shirt is up for grabs in the NeatoGeek Caption Contest! Pick out a shirt from the NeatoShop, and leave it along with the best caption for this week's picture in a comment at the post. Even if you don't have a funny caption, you'll get a laugh out of the captions others have left! Link
This skirt, designed by Meredith Scheff, is called the StarBoard North Skirt. When you are facing north, little LEDs in the skirt light up! Actually, the part of the skirt that is facing north is always lit, so different panels light up as you move around. She doesn't sell the skirts, but she will sell you a kit that includes LEDS and soft circuit boards so you can make your own. Link to project (with video). Link to the kit. -via Bad Astronomy
It's been 25 years since the John Hughes movie Weird Science premiered. It is the subject of today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss, which tests your memory of the film that catered precisely to the fantasies of teenage boys everywhere. Since I've never been a teenage boy and haven't seen the movie since it was new, I flunked the test miserably. You have to do better (you can't do any worse)! Link
Deliver Me To Hell is an interactive zombie movie that contains the things you love: zombies, violence, mild gore, scantily-clad women, iphones, and pizza. You decide which directions the plot takes, and if you don't like how the story turns out, just start over again. I wish life were like that. Produced by Hell Pizza of New Zealand. Link (embedded YouTube clip)
It seems that Zach Anner's life is taking some momentous turns. Too bad we don't know what they are. Fans will be glad to see he now has his own website. Link
Previously at Neatorama: Zach, Zach, Zach, Zach, and Zach.
Minnesotastan found a strange photograph on a Japanese site with no information. Commenters looked around and suggested this is "sausage jelly", which is the egg case of the snail Polinices sordidus, commonly called the sordid sand snail or moon snail. Other photographs of sausage jelly do not show the eggs as hatched. Have you ever seen anything like this? Link
