Do you have a fussy eater on your hands? Make meals fun again with the Garden Plate from the NeatoShop! This fabulous plate comes complete with ramps and breaks to separate food into groupings. And it's decorated with tiny garden plants! It is specially designed to work with the Garden Utensil Set (sold separately). Dishwasher and microwave safe. Playing with your food just got a whole lot more fun! The Garden Plate is part of a wide selection of mealtime fun products in the NeatoShop.
A modern poetry kit that gives you all the words and none of the work! The Vampire Magnetic Poetry Kit from the NeatoShop has 200 blood-sucking word magnets you can combine over and over again! It's "a box of words that go for the throat." Great for any vampire fan, sparkly or not, and for anyone who likes to leave a message in style. Also see the other magnetic poetry kits in the NeatoShop!
In 2010, scientists announced the discovery of a new primate species, the Myanmar Snub-nosed Monkey, which we posted here. At the time, the only known specimen was a carcass. Now, photographs of a group of these monkeys have been taken with a camera trap in the mountains of Kachin state in Burma. Researchers are especially excited to see that this critically endangered species is producing babies. Link -via Geekosystem
This staircase makes four 90-degree turns, yet forms a continuous loop that would not be possible in the real world.
Optillusions is a blog with more illusions like this. Pretty dumb, yes, but good for a laugh. And each post is handy for sending your annoying relative who forwards things to you constantly. Link -via Metafilter
A driver in Sacramento, California, had trouble getting his car started. He heard a funny noise coming from the engine and found a cat tangled in the motor belts.
Firefighters cut through the belts and were able to free the cat, which was severely injured with several deep cuts.
The cat was taken to the Sacramento Cat Hospital in Carmichael, where life-saving surgery was performed.
The cat, nicknamed Blaze, will be put up for adoption when she recovers in a couple of weeks. Link -via Fark
Animal Planet shows how baby sloths get a bath. Then they hang them out to dry! The babies would rather just stay dirty, but they are rewarded with a treat. -via Arbroath
You've read about plants that eat animals, like the Venus Flytrap and the Pitcher Plant. Philcoxia does it, too, but you can't see it, because this Brazilian plant works underground, using sticky leaves that grow under the soil. Researchers Caio Pereira and Peter Fritsch have been studying how Philcoxia gets its nutrients.
In 2007, Peter Fritsch found a possible answer. He noticed nematode worms stuck to the underground leaves, and reasoned that the plant was trapping and digesting them. Pereira, working with Fritsch, has now confirmed this hypothesis.
He found that Philcoxia’s underground leaves are littered with the bodies of dead nematodes. To check that the deaths aren’t coincidental, Pereira bred nematodes so that their bodies were full of nitrogen-15 – a rare and heavier-than-usual version of the element. He then “fed” the nematodes to Philcoxia. Two days later, Pereira found that 15 percent of the nitrogen-15 in the worms has been incorporated into the plant’s leaves. It was clear proof that Philcoxia was digesting the nematodes and absorbing the remains into their bodies.
Many meat-eating plants digest their prey with high concentrations of enzymes called phosphatases. Philcoxia does so too. Pereira found loads of the enzymes on Philcoxia’s leaves, which means that the plants are probably digesting the nematodes directly.
Fabian Gaete Maureira is an artist in Santiago, Chile. Here he demonstrates his fast finger painting technique for people on the street. See more of Maureira's work at his site. Link -via reddit
If you ever wondered why it is so important to be exact in math, particularly in engineering math, then take a look at cases in which a math error resulted in deaths. Remember the Hyatt Regency disaster in Kansas City some 30 years ago?
When designing their newest hotel to be built in downtown Kansas City, the fine people at Hyatt Regency wanted all the bells and whistles in it. The architectural firm in charge of the building design came up with a series of aerial walkways suspended from the ceiling so that guests could people-watch from a heightened vantage point. All in all, it was a pretty nifty feature. Until it suddenly collapsed and killed more than a hundred people.
Now they know what design flaw caused it, and my mouth dropped open to see how simple it was. Read the rest of the story and others at Cracked. Link -via Digg
People who write for the internet will make a list out of anything. That said, I wish I had thought of this one first! It appears that tacos make people go crazy and commit crimes. They throw tacos, get in fights over tacos, complain about tacos, steal tacos, and smuggle things in tacos. Buzzfeed has thirty, count 'em, 30 examples. Link
No cartoon bunnies were harmed in the making of this violent cartoon by Dylan Vanwormer and Logan Scelina. Carrot Crazy was their senior thesis film at Ringling College of Art and Design. -via the Presurfer
If you remember the Cadbury ad campaign of 2007, then consider this a parody. If you don't, well then it's Chewbacca playing a Phil Collins song on drums, which is awesome enough, right? -Thanks, Nick!
The magic begins after closing time at Type Books in Toronto. This video is brought to you by the same folks who did Organizing the Bookcase last year, with a lot of help from friends. - via I Am Bored
A simple and not-too-effective spam Twitter account has become an internet phenomenon. @Horse_ebooks may or may not be a 'bot, but the nonsensical snippets that it Tweets, supposedly from the ebooks it is trying to sell, has caused over 25,000 people to follow the account.
I tend to liken horse_ebooks to some wacky public access show you might have watched in college. There's no comedic motive — as with the weirdo doing a foreign events call-in show at 3:00 in the morning, there’s no irony — but it doesn't carry that guilt of mockery: you are not, and couldn't be, making fun of Horse_ebooks. If anything, it's making fun of you.
Whatever the appeal — explication does more harm than good — it’s stuck with people. Someone started a genuinely good horse_ebooks fanfiction site. There’s Horse_ecomics, which posts comics inspired by the account’s Tweets, and a litany of smaller tributes: people have had ordered framed images of the account’s avatar, turned Tweets into mug inscriptions (“Swallow that garbage”), and renamed their Twitter accounts in it honor.
John Herrman at Splitsider explains what he knows about this account, and how it has taken off as a rising star on Twitter and in the larger internet universe. Link -via Boing Boing
Ignoramusky is back with another cat video dramatically enhanced with a soundtrack. If I saw my cat looking like this, I'd be worried about my safety -or at least my curtains! -via Cynical C
