Lee Hardcastle remade the 1982 John Carpenter movie The Thing in claymation! And there are no human characters -Pingu the penguin makes a better hero, anyway. See a "making of" video as well. See the storyboards at his website. http://leehardcastle.com/blog/storyboards-pingus-the-thing/ -via Metafilter
Miss Cellania's Blog Posts
Urban explorers and photographers have a tendency to keep exact locations a secret, but somewhere in Spain lies a porcelain doll factory that was abandoned decades ago. The business was dropped in a hurry, it seems, as many half-made dolls and doll-making equipment was left behind to decay. See a collection of photographs from inside, and read about the history of the porcelain doll business at Environmental Graffiti. Link
(Image source: Abandonalia)
Photographer Kien Lam documented an epic round-the-world trip in this time-lapse video.
If this visual tour goes too fast, you can read about Lam's adventures at his website. Link -Thanks, Kien!
I quit my job last year and began backpacking around the world. To capture the spirit of the trip, I took time lapse photographs at practically every city I traveled to and compiled over 6200 photographs across 17 countries, during a span of almost a year to form one short video. Each 2 second scene is comprised of about 40-60 photographs.
If this visual tour goes too fast, you can read about Lam's adventures at his website. Link -Thanks, Kien!
The Tweeting Cat Toy is handy for keeping up with your cat's activities while you're gone, but wouldn't it be nice to pet your cat or even groom him from a remote location? Taylor Veltrop hooked together a Nao robot, a Kinect sensor bar, two Wii remotes, a head-mounted display, and a treadmill for the purpose of brushing his cat. Rube Goldberg himself would have been proud! And all this technology only worked because the cat is extremely tolerant. But Veltrop shows that it can be done, even though it took a year to perfect the procedure. Link
Inspired by the video game WipeOut, researchers at the Japan Institute of Science and Technology incorporated quantum levitation into a miniature race track. Or it's viral marketing for the game. -via Geeks Are Sexy
Yesterday, after 22 years, Universal officially closed down the Jaws ride at Universal Orlando for good. Inside the Magic produced a tribute video to the now-bygone ride. For those who never got to experience the Jaws ride, this may be your best chance to experience the freaky, fast-talking tour guide, the splashing murky water, and Bruce the sometimes-functioning mechanical shark. Link -via Movieline
Four years ago, we published an article called Life Imitates The Simpsons, containing six plots from the TV show The Simpsons which later happened in the real world. In the years since, many more Simpsons plots were prescient of, or else inspired, real-life incidents. Ranker now has a list of 13 Simpsons Jokes That Actually Came True, and I was amazed to find no overlap in the two lists! Check this out: the picture on the left shows a promotional billboard for Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie, which was featured on The Simpsons in 1992. On the right is a billboard for Kill Bill, which came out in 2003. Read all the details at Ranker. Link
There are 15, or possibly more, TV show themes in this medley by the Koren Ensemble. So far, I haven't found a cheat list, and there's no way I could name them all. See, I didn't even know the Paula Cole song was a TV theme! How many can you name? Go to the YouTube page and find out how to get a free download of this song. -Thanks, Daniel!
It is once again time for our collaboration with the ever-amusing What Is It? Blog! Do you know what this object is? If not, can you fake it?
Place your guess in the comment section below. One guess per comment, please, though you can enter as many as you'd like. Post no URLs or weblinks, as doing so will forfeit your entry. Two winners: the first correct guess and the funniest (albeit ultimately wrong) guess will each win a T-shirt from the NeatoShop.
Please write your T-shirt selection alongside your guess. If you don't include a selection, you forfeit the prize, okay? May we suggest the Science T-Shirt, Funny T-Shirt and Artist-Designed T-Shirts?
Check out the What Is It? Blog for more clues, and more mystery items. Put your thinking cap on, and good luck!
Update: the very first answer was correct -it's a form for baking bread (or a "bread mold" which sounds like a fungus). Anker wins a t-shirt from the NeatoShop for knowing that! The funniest answer came from The Professor, who said, "It’s a good old-fashioned can of whoop-ass!" he wins a t-shirt, too! See the answers to all the mystery items of the week at the What Is It? blog.
Artist and photographer Carrie M. Becker re-imagined Barbie (the doll) as a pathological hoarder, and arranged Barbie's dream house as such. She explains some of the thought behind the project in her artist's statement. Somebody call a maid! No, a sanitation crew! You can see many different rooms in her Flickr set. Link -via Laughing Squid
(Image credit: Flickr user Carrie M. Becker)
Adam Koford (Ape Lad) made me smile with this edition of his Laugh Out Loud Cats. I'm a sucker for simple math humor. Link
Conventional wisdom holds that seeing someone naked makes you think of them as more of a sex object than seeing them clothed. According to a recent study, that is an oversimplification of what really happens. The human mind thinks of other people in two different dimensions: agency, or what the person observed can or will do, and experience, or what that person perceives and feels. And the amount of clothing worn changes what dimension the observer focuses on, as seen from an experiment in which people looked at pictures of faces or pictures of faces with some body skin also showing (as shown by the hunky "Aaron" shown here, or the female "Erin").
Read more about it at Frontal Cortex, but be warned there is no full nudity in the article. Link -via Not Exactly Rocket Science
It turns out that a glimpse of flesh strongly influences our perception of Erin/Aaron. When the pictures only showed a face, they had lots of agency. But when we saw their torso, we suddenly imagined them as obsessed with experience. Instead of being good at self-control, they were suddenly extremely sensitive to hunger and desire. Same person, same facial expression, same brief description – but a hint of body changed everything.
In another experiment, the researchers varied the volunteers’ mindsets, sometimes asking them to look at photos as if they were on an online-dating website, focusing on attractiveness, and sometimes asking them to look at the photos as if they were hiring for a professional job, focusing on the mind. Once again, thinking about how “sexy and cute” someone is – those are bodily attributes – led students to endow them with more experience and less agency. The opposite held when people were asked to evaluate intelligence and efficiency.
Read more about it at Frontal Cortex, but be warned there is no full nudity in the article. Link -via Not Exactly Rocket Science
Here's a simple physics game in which you release a little red block by rotating the fence holding it. Or multiple fences. And please avoid the force field! Oh yes, it starts out easy, but gets more challenging. The level you see here gave me fits, but I breezed through the next couple easily -go figure. Link
In 1954, Coya Knutson won a seat the the US House of representatives by championing the rights of farmers in Minnesota (and by raising her own campaign funds). Over two terms she became quite popular among voters and her Washington colleagues, although she alienated her own party. But Knutson's real trouble came from her alcoholic husband, Andy. When she was in Minnesota, she sometimes had to wear sunglasses in public to hide the bruises he gave her.
Knutson lost her third congressional campaign, but the story does not end there. The real truth behind what happened came out later, and you can read it all at the Smithsonian's Past Imperfect blog. Link
In May, 1958, Coya Knutson was gearing up for her third term. Because of her unwillingness to fall in line with traditional Minnesota politics, the Democratic Party of in her home state would not formally endorse her, so she was forced into a primary—and it was then that a bombshell was released to the press in the form of a letter signed by Andy Knutson.
“Coya, I want you to tell the people of the 9th District this Sunday that you are through in politics. That you want to go home and make a home for your husband and son,” it read. ”As your husband I compel you to do this. I’m tired of being torn apart from my family. I’m sick and tired of having you run around with other men all the time and not your husband.” Andy pleaded with her to return to “the happy home we once enjoyed” and signed off, “I love you, honey.”
Soon, the front pages of newspapers, first in Minnesota, then across the country, bannered headlines of “Coya, Come Home.” Andy Knutson claimed that he was broke and that she “wouldn’t send me any money.” He sued Kjeldahl for $200,000 in damages, alleging that the young aide had “ruthlessly snatched” Coya’s “love and consortium” from a simple middle-aged farmer from Minnesota. Andy further alleged that Kjeldahl had referred to him as an “impotent old alcoholic whose departure from the farm to the nation’s capital would shock society.”
Knutson lost her third congressional campaign, but the story does not end there. The real truth behind what happened came out later, and you can read it all at the Smithsonian's Past Imperfect blog. Link
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