The following is an article from the book Uncle John's Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader.

Can a plastic orb connect you to the spirit world and life the future's filmy veil? OUTLOOK NOT SO GOOD. Can it at least give good advice? REPLY HAZY, TRY AGAIN. Can a toy company make money selling it? SIGNS POINT TO YES!

A SEEKER BORN EVERY MINUTE

Wartime has long been a boom time for spiritualists, mostly because people long for any news about loved ones a the battlefront. In the 1940s, a woman named "Madame" Mary Carter was capitalizing on that opportunity, plying her trade as a professional clairvoyant in Cincinnati. Her best seance stunt was one she called the Psycho-Slate, consisting of a chalkboard inside a box, with a lid covering it. When a client asked a question, Carter would close the lid, and after a short interval of muffled chalkboard scratching, she would dramatically flip open the lid to reveal the spirit world's answer, written with chalk in a ghostly scrawl. (How she did it remains a mystery.)

TELL A FORTUNE, MAKE A FORTUNE?

Mary Carter had a son named Albert who had little use for any spirits that couldn't be drunk straight from the bottle. When sober, however, he fancied himself an inventor, and seeing the success of his mother's Psycho-Slate, Albert Carter came up with his best idea ever: a portable fortune-telling device that any spiritual seeker could use at any time or place.

It took some time for Carter to work out the details. It had to look mysterious, it had to offer a variety of answers and, because he had no capital to work with, it had to be cheap to build. He went to work using what he knew best -murky liquids in cans and bottles- and developed what he called the Syco-Seer Miracle Home Fortune Teller -a seven inch can-shaped device with a glass window on each end. The inside of the can was divided in two; each half contained a six-side die floating in the dark, viscous liquid (according to some accounts, molasses from his mother's kitchen) and each of the die's six sides was inscribed with a short answer. His reasoning for having two compartments isn't clear, but perhaps it was for efficiency: You could get an answer from one end, then turn it over and get the next answer with little lag time. In 1944 Carter filed for a patent, made a prototype, and began showing it around Cincinnati's toy and hobby shops.

YOU WILL MEET A HELPFUL STRANGER

One of the storekeepers, Max Levinson, not only wanted to stock Syco-Seers, he was very interested in helping Carter produce and market them. Levinson brought in his brother-in-law, Abe Bookman, an engineer from the Ohio Mechanical Institute, who suggested improvements to Carter's design -adding ridges inside the chamber to make the die spin and better randomize the answers. He also hired a designer to give the Syco-Seer's outer label a mystical appeal.

In 1946 the three men formed a partnership, which -in a nod to his two creative partners' first names- Levinson called the Alabe Crafts Corporation. Bookman arranged for a manufacturer and planned for the retail release of the Syco-Seer in 1947. At just about the same time, Albert Carter's alcoholism and self-neglect had finally caught up with him and he died. "While he was sober, he was a genius," Bookman recalled to a Cincinnati Post reporter a few years later. "He stayed in flophouses and was always broke. But I bought every idea he ever had, and that gave him enough to keep going."

I SEE A PATENT IN YOUR FUTURE

Carter's patent came through the following year, and luckily for Bookman and Levinson, he had signed rights over to the partnership before he died. Given new creative freedom to experiment with the design, Bookman began making changes that Carter had resisted.

Does this make sense? In order to get a "blue badge," the UK's disabled parking permit, motorists must go to a disability assessment office. In Liverpool, England, that office is on the 13th floor of a parking garage. And the elevator only goes to the 11th floor! Applicants must climb two flights of stairs to reach the office. But after a complaint, officials say the office will be moved.

Liberal group leader Cllr Steve Radford, who received the complaint from a Tuebrook resident, said: “For the council to say it’s not ideal must be the understatement of the century.”

Graham Footer, of blue badge awareness group Disabled Motoring UK, said the situation was “absolutely unbelievable” but that he was glad “common sense had prevailed”.

It is not yet known where the new assessment office will be located but the move is expected to be within the next four weeks.

A council spokesman said: “We recognise it’s not the most satisfactory arrangement. We will be getting a ground floor office.

Link -via Arbroath

Photographer David C. Shultz attracted the attention of the Emperor penguins he was shooting in Antarctica. The curious birds had to check out the equipment, which led to some funny photo opportunities! See more pictures at Buzzfeed. Link

(Image credit: David C. Shultz)

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Every once in a while, Big Cat Rescue produces a video to show us how much big cats and wild cats are like the house cats we are familiar with. We've seen them play with balls and laser pointers and we've seen them get high on catnip. Now we see the cats getting their first look at a mirror. -via The Daily What

A very popular children's book can inspire others to write their own books, whether it's an homage, parody, or even out of spite. Consider Dr. Seuss's book The Lorax. When it was published in 1971, the logging industry was not happy with the book's environmental message.

To defend themselves against the unjust Lorax, the timber industry provided funding to Terri Birkett, a member of the National Wood Flooring Association, to write a rebuttal book. In it, an irrational, irate “protector of trees” named Guardbark berates a lumberjack who patiently explains that he replaces the trees he cuts down, that they’ve set land aside to serve as Nature Preserves, and that no one really cares about some of the species that go extinct because of logging anyway.

Read about The Truax and six other books written in response to children's books at mental_floss. Link

What a week this has been! March came in like a lion, alright. Tornadoes and strong thunderstorms both Wednesday and Friday left a trail of death and destruction across the Midwest. The Friday storms left me without internet access, so the weekend roundup is a day late. Let's keep our fingers crossed that March will keep the other end of the old saying as well, and go out like a lamb. Meanwhile, let's look back at what happened at Neatorama this past week.

Jill Harness wrote up Five Common Misconceptions About the Middle Ages.

She also wrote a feature for NeatoBambino called The Eight Toughest Babies in the World. Be sure to check out NeatoBambino every day!

The Annals of Improbable Research noticed the improbable number of research papers done on The Lazy Bureaucrat Problem.

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the record-breaking basketball game, Eddie Deezen wrote The Night Wilt “The Stilt” Scored 100.

Mental_floss magazine gave us Putting Animals in Their Place.

The Unluckiest Train Ride came from Uncle John's Bathroom Reader.

In the What Is It? game this week,the pictured object is an M15 Grenade Launcher Sight. The first commenter in with the correct answer was Berhard, who wins a t-shirt for his efforts! The t-shirt for the funniest answer goes to villaridge, who said it was “one of the many scale models that Gene Rodenberry had made whilst he was fine tuning what the Enterprise space ship would look like.” See additional pictures of the grenade launcher sight and the answers to the other mystery items of the week at the What Is It? blog!

The most commented-on post of the week was a tie between Father Jailed Because Daughter Drew a Picture of a Gun and Annoying People Talking on Their Cell Phones? Jam ‘Em! Coming in third was Disney Closes New Habit Heroes Exhibit.

Want more? Be sure to check our Facebook page every day for extra content, contests, discussions, videos, and links you won't find here. Also, our Twitter feed will keep you updated on what's going around the web in real time. Thanks for spending time with us at Neatorama!

Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website.

Any artist is lucky if he produces one enduring, immortal work. Jackie Gleason was to produce 39.  They were called The Honeymooners.

I was October 1, 1955 and Gleason had been starring in and hosting his very popular variety show called, logically enough, The Jackie Gleason Show. The Jackie Gleason Show was a huge ratings hit, ranking at #2 in popularity of the then-current TV shows. The show, like any variety show, consisted of singing, dancing, jokes, and comedy sketches.

Gleason, an incredibly  talented and versatile entertainer, actor, and comedian, had played several different characters on the show, including Reggie van Gleason, Joe the Bartender, Fenwick Babbit, and the Poor Soul. But Gleason's masterpiece of a character was to be an average everyday guy who lived in Brooklyn, a blustery braggart bus driver named Ralph Kramden.

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A local tennis instructor gave this family 300 used tennis balls because their Lab loves tennis balls. This playtime, he hit the jackpot! -via The Daily What

Leif Kellenberger, Erik Wunsch, and Eric Prumm invented a new sport. It resembles a normal ball game, in which two teams try to run a ball past the opposing team into a goal, but there is on difference: each player is armed with an electric stun gun. The stun guns are used against whoever is carrying the ball. In "Tazer ball," a player can get stunned dozens of times in a game.

The first official Ultimate Tazer Ball tournament was in January and there are currently four official professional UTB teams: the Philadelphia Killawatts, the San Diego Spartans, the Toronto Terror and the Los Angeles Nightlight.

Kellenberger said the teams play at tournaments for prizes, but he and his co-founders are in talks with various networks for a TV deal that could pay the players.

Of course, the sport has its critics. Some people think using stun guns in a game is unsafe. Link

Charles Hess patented this combination piano, couch, and bureau in 1866, intending it for hotels and boarding schools in which some bedrooms are used as parlors during daylight hours. Closet F holds the bedclothes, and closet G holds a washbowl, pitcher, and towels.

Supposedly, the piano played just fine with all this furniture packed into it. I don't know if they ever actually built or sold any of these. Link -via Nag on the Lake

A hundred years ago, before OSHA, MSHA, the UMWA, or child labor laws had any real power, children in the mining areas of West Virginia and Pennsylvania were sent to work at an early age. They were supposed to be at least 12 years old, but some were as young as five or six! Their families needed the money, and the operators wanted cheap laborers. The boys in this picture are separating coal from rocks by hand. Note the man with a stick watching over them. Read more about the boy miners and see more of Lewis Hine's photographs at Environmental Graffiti. Link

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A farmer in Brooklyn? Why, yes! Megan Paska has found her calling as an urban beekeeper. This short film is part of the Made By Hand series. Link -Thanks, Keith!

American Bandstand host Dick Clark owns a house in Malibu, California, that looks as if it came straight from the TV show The Flintstones. It has only one bedroom and two bathrooms, but it sits on 22 acres and features great views all around. It can be yours for only $3.5 million! Link -via Breakfast Links

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Current BBC-TV icons sing Irving Berlin's "Anything You Can Do," originally written for the musical Annie Get Your Gun. The result is like a British version of Captain Kirk vs. Captain Picard: a fiercely-fought pop culture argument to no good end. -via Metafilter

Animals. They think they're so special. Sure, they can fly, run at incredible speeds, and regenerate body parts, but do they really have to rub their talents in our faces all the time? Well, we at mental_floss have had enough. It's time to put animals in their place. That's right, crocodiles -call us when you learn to chew.

KANGAROOS CAN'T WALK

(Image credit: Flickr user Chris Samuel)

It's no secret that kangaroos come fully loaded with super-strong legs. The marsupial's powerful gait allows the creature to reach speeds of 40 mph over short spans. And it can travel incredible, marathon-length distances at speeds of about 15 miles per hour -that's a four-minute mile! But don't give those legs too much credit -the kangaroo's long, thick tail also plays a significant part. The natural rudder counterbalances the animal's body as it leans forward to cruise the Outback.

Such muscular gifts do come with some disadvantages, though. While the kangaroo's long, flat feet and 3-foot tail are ideal for hopping, the combo is also the reason kangaroos can't walk. The creature's back legs are designed to move in tandem and don't work well independently of one another. That means it's hopping or nothing. The anatomical quirk also prevents the kangaroo from walking backwards. If the creature tried to back up, its thick tail gets in the way. And because those clunky feet have to move in unison, a kangaroo can't maneuver around the appendage.

Not being able to walk may seem limiting, but it's not a bad tradeoff considering the kangaroo lifestyle. The marsupial's unique makeup proves especially helpful when it comes to self-defense; not only can the creatures outrun dingos and other hungry predators, but if cornered, a kangaroo will become incredibly acrobatic, using its large legs to kick while rising up on its tail for balance.

HORSES CAN'T VOMIT

(Image credit: Flickr user Gunnar Þór Gunnarsson)

When humans ingest a harmful substance, the body's natural reaction is to expel the intruding toxin by sending it right back the way it came. Horses don't have that luxury. The shortcoming is due to a strong band of muscle at the entrance to the horse's stomach known as the cardiac sphincter. While the muscle will open up to send food down to the gullet, it won't work in reverse.