(YouTube link)
Ormie wants a cookie. There's a reason we put cookies up on top of the refrigerator -so little pigs can't get them! Ormie does have his own Facebook page, though. Link -via the Presurfer
Miss Cellania's Blog Posts
It's time to play a game in collaboration with the always amusing What Is It? Blog! Do you know what this thing is?
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 an additional picture of this item, and more mystery items. Good luck!
Update: the object in question is indeed a set of manual hedge trimmers. Berhard was the first of many with the correct answer. The funniest answer cam from SisterMerryHellish, who declared this is a wookiee toenail clipper! Congratulations to both for winning t-shirts from the NeatoShop!
A new art installation at the Holburne Museum in Bath, England, uses a "garden" of 5,000 lights planted on the grounds. Artist Bruce Munro was inspired by fields of flowers blooming in the Australian desert. See more pictures of the work called Field of Light in all its glory at Kuriositas. Link
(Image credit: Flickr user Richard Breakspear)
TV, literature, and movies are full of fictional businesses and products. How well do you know these companies that don't exist? Find out in today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss. I didn't know any of the answers, but scored 7/12 by educated guess! I bet you can do better. Link
Teddy Bear the porcupine loves corn on the cob, and wants it all for himself. He doesn't mind to tell you about it, in his Ewok voice! -via I Have Seen the Whole of the Internet
This Twaggie was rendered in comic form from a Tweet by @anniecolbert. Although I've known people like that, I hope it isn't a true story! Link
Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website.
George Harrison passed away due to lung cancer ten years ago today, on November 29, 2001. George will, of course, always be remembered and beloved as the youngest member of The Beatles. But George was, besides that, a brilliant guitarist, a great singer, and a very gifted composer in his own right. Let's take a look at a few facts you may not know about "the quiet Beatle."
* George's favorite color was purple. He loved Formula One racing, egg sandwiches, and watching Monty Python's Flying Circus on TV. His favorite movie was Mel Brook's The Producers (1967).
* George's birthday was a bit nebulous. For most of his life and career, George thought his birthday was February 25, 1943. (Hundreds of Beatle's book state this date.) But near the end of his life, George changed his story and said his actual birthday was February 24, 1943. A family document revealed that he was actually born at 11:50 PM on the 24th.
* George and Paul McCartney were the first two Beatles to meet. The two rode on the same school bus in 1954. Paul was 12; George 11. Before this, George and John Lennon had gone to the same elementary school (Dovedale Primary School) for three years but never met there.
* George was the original "prolific" Beatle composer. Although everyone knows John and Paul composed a great majority of the classic Beatles songs, George actually co-composed the first two Beatles songs on record. In 1958, at their very first recording session, the Beatles (then called "The Quarrymen") played the Paul McCartney-George Harrison song "In Spite of All the Danger." In their next early recording session in 1960, the band played a John Lennon-George Harrison instrumental called "Cry for a Shadow."
* He officially joined the Beatles ("The Quarrymen") on February 6, 1958. He was only 14 at the time. George briefly changed his name to "Carl Harrison" (in honor of his idol, Carl Perkins) for an early tour of Scotland in 1960.
* George's "first time" was with a German prostitute in Hamburg. He was 17. After the act was finished, the other three Beatles (John, Paul, and then-drummer Pete Best) applauded heartily. George didn't know they were in the room.
* He wrote his first "official" Beatle "Don't Bother Me" (it was featured on With the Beatles, their second album), when he was sick in bed.
* George became a devout vegetarian at the age of 22 in 1965. According to his ex-wife Pattie, he would allow neither meat nor fish to be brought into their home.
* He gave a slang word to the national vocabulary. In The Beatles' first movie A Hard Day's Night (1964), George used the word "grotty" to describe some items of clothing. "Grotty" (meaning "grotesque") caught on as an actual slang word used frequently in the sixties. It is still used, albeit sparingly, to this day. According to John, George "used to cringe every time he had to say it."
* He was the "best Beatle actor." Well, at least according to the director of the boys' first two films. Richard Lester, who directed both A Hard Day's Night and Help! (1965) named George as the best actor of the foursome. According to Lester, in A Hard Day's Night, George "nails every line."
* He was the first Beatle to have a number one song as a solo act. "My Sweet Lord" hit the #1 spot on the charts in December of 1970.
* A versatile musician, George played 26 different instruments. Every Beatles fan knows George could play the guitar and the sitar. But he was also well accomplished on the conga drum, the African drum, the xylophone, violin, harmonica, marimba, and glockenspiel.
* George's greatest joy was gardening. He claimed to have "planted 10,000 trees" in his lifetime. In 1980, he published his autobiography I Me Mine. The book was dedicated "to all gardeners everywhere."
* He put up $4 million "to see a movie." When the Monty Python comedy troupe was having trouble getting their movie The Life of Brian (1979) financed, George actually mortgaged his home to help finance it. He said he gave them the money "because he wanted to see the film." According to Monty Python member Eric Idle, this remains "the most money anyone ever paid to see a movie."
* As we all know, George passed away from cancer in 2001. His mother, Louise, had previously died of the disease in 1970. George wrote the song "Deep Blue" in her honor. His dad, Harry Harrison, also died of cancer in 1978. The night of his father's passing, both George and his wife Olivia awoke in bed and viewed the same blue light. They both testified they saw a vision of Harry smiling at them.
There were almost 4,500 Hasidic rabbis at the International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Emissaries in Brooklyn, and 3,000 of them posed for a photograph together. Not all of them got into the frame, but this is still a big picture! There's a link to the high-res version at NBC if you want to find someone you know. Link -via Buzzfeed
(Image credit: Tina Fineberg/chabad.org)
One way to sell Christmas cards is to create an outlandish story about their origin. Brad McGinty III tells about his father's failed 1955 business venture with a Japanese artist whom he shot in the face during World War II. The artist's "misinterpreted" idea for a greeting card is now for sale at his site. Whatever you may think of the cards, the story behind them is priceless. Link -via Metafilter
(vimeo link)
The Aviarios del Caribe sloth sanctuary in Costa Rica is an orphanage that cares for abandoned and injured sloths with the goal of releasing them back into the wild. But the youngsters have to be taught how wild sloths do sloth things. -via Arbroath
(YouTube link)
Who can hold a candle to the Grinch in evilness? Darth Vader, that's who! This mashup of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas and Return of the Jedi is the latest from OneMinuteGalactica. -via Buzzfeed
Grant Woolard (previously at Neatorama) dreamed he was in the world of famous paintings. How many do you recognize? But you don't really have to know your Monets from your Manets to enjoy this animation. -Thanks, Grant!
The following article is from the science humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research.
The year 1931 stands out in the history of research about insane people’s favorite colors. That summer, Siegfried E. Katz of the New York State Psychiatric Institute and Hospital published a study called “Color Preference in the Insane.” The full citation is:
Assisted by a Dr. Cheney, Dr. Katz tested 134 hospitalized mental patients. For simplicity’s sake, he limited the testing to six colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet. No black. No white. No shades of gray.
“These colors,” he wrote, “rectangular in shape, one and one-half inches square, cut from Bradley colored papers were pasted in two rows on a gray cardboard. They were three inches apart. The colors were numbered haphazardly and the number of each color placed above it. The cardboard was presented to the patient and he was asked to place his finger on the number of the color he liked best. After he had made the choice he was asked in a similar manner for the next best color, and so on.”
Some of the patients “cooperated well”, and made six choices. Others, Dr. Katz reported, “quickly lost interest and made only one, two or three.”
Blue was the most popular color. Men, in the aggregate, then favored green, but the female patients were divided on green, red or violet as a second choice.
Patients who had resided in the hospital for three or more years were slightly less emphatic about blue. Dr. Katz says that these long-term guests were “those with most marked mental deterioration.” Their preference, as a group, shifted somewhat toward green and yellow. Those of longest tenure, though few in number, had a slightly elevated liking for orange.
The report is packed with tidbits that beg, even now, for further analysis:
==> “38 per cent of dementia praecox and manic-depressives, each, gave first preference to blue, and 42 per cent of all other patients.”
==> “Green received the first choice from 16 per cent of dementia praecox, 9 per cent of manic-depressives, and 13 per cent of other diseases.”
==> “For red as first choice, the percentage of votes were: Manic-depressives, 16; other diseases, 15; dementia praecox, 12. As second choice, they were: Manic-depressives, 22; dementia praecox, 18; other diseases, 13.”
==> “Orange and yellow were also best liked by manic-depressives; green by dementia praecox; and violet by all others.”
Dr. Katz foresaw practical applications for his research. He suggested that “in the furnishings of living quarters the selection of colors pleasing to special groups of patients might be worth consideration.”
Consciously or not, hospital staff seem to have followed Dr. Katz’s insights in fashioning their personal at-work appearance. The evocatively-named Bragard Medical Uniforms, a New York firm founded in 1933, now publishes a list of the most popular uniform colors. The list currently is topped by, in order: royal blue; dark grey (which, alas, Dr Katz excluded from his 1931 survey); dark green; and red.
Dr. Katz’s findings were put to the test, partially, decades later in the study:
“The Relationship Between Color Preference and Psychiatric Disorders,” Cooper B. Holmes, H. Edward Fouty, Philip J. Wurtz and Bruce M. Burdick, Journal of Clinical Psychology, vol. 41, no. 6, November 1985, pp. 746–9.
The authors, at Emporia State University and at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, explain, at the end of their study:
Visit their website for more research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK.
(Image credit: Flickr user Jean-Etienne Minh-Duy Poirrier)
The year 1931 stands out in the history of research about insane people’s favorite colors. That summer, Siegfried E. Katz of the New York State Psychiatric Institute and Hospital published a study called “Color Preference in the Insane.” The full citation is:
“Color Preference in the Insane,” Siegfried E. Katz, Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, vol. 26, no. 2, July 1931, pp. 203–11.
Assisted by a Dr. Cheney, Dr. Katz tested 134 hospitalized mental patients. For simplicity’s sake, he limited the testing to six colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet. No black. No white. No shades of gray.
“These colors,” he wrote, “rectangular in shape, one and one-half inches square, cut from Bradley colored papers were pasted in two rows on a gray cardboard. They were three inches apart. The colors were numbered haphazardly and the number of each color placed above it. The cardboard was presented to the patient and he was asked to place his finger on the number of the color he liked best. After he had made the choice he was asked in a similar manner for the next best color, and so on.”
Some of the patients “cooperated well”, and made six choices. Others, Dr. Katz reported, “quickly lost interest and made only one, two or three.”
Blue was the most popular color. Men, in the aggregate, then favored green, but the female patients were divided on green, red or violet as a second choice.
Patients who had resided in the hospital for three or more years were slightly less emphatic about blue. Dr. Katz says that these long-term guests were “those with most marked mental deterioration.” Their preference, as a group, shifted somewhat toward green and yellow. Those of longest tenure, though few in number, had a slightly elevated liking for orange.
The report is packed with tidbits that beg, even now, for further analysis:
==> “38 per cent of dementia praecox and manic-depressives, each, gave first preference to blue, and 42 per cent of all other patients.”
==> “Green received the first choice from 16 per cent of dementia praecox, 9 per cent of manic-depressives, and 13 per cent of other diseases.”
==> “For red as first choice, the percentage of votes were: Manic-depressives, 16; other diseases, 15; dementia praecox, 12. As second choice, they were: Manic-depressives, 22; dementia praecox, 18; other diseases, 13.”
==> “Orange and yellow were also best liked by manic-depressives; green by dementia praecox; and violet by all others.”
Dr. Katz foresaw practical applications for his research. He suggested that “in the furnishings of living quarters the selection of colors pleasing to special groups of patients might be worth consideration.”
Consciously or not, hospital staff seem to have followed Dr. Katz’s insights in fashioning their personal at-work appearance. The evocatively-named Bragard Medical Uniforms, a New York firm founded in 1933, now publishes a list of the most popular uniform colors. The list currently is topped by, in order: royal blue; dark grey (which, alas, Dr Katz excluded from his 1931 survey); dark green; and red.
Color Preference in the Insane Reconsidered
Dr. Katz’s findings were put to the test, partially, decades later in the study:
“The Relationship Between Color Preference and Psychiatric Disorders,” Cooper B. Holmes, H. Edward Fouty, Philip J. Wurtz and Bruce M. Burdick, Journal of Clinical Psychology, vol. 41, no. 6, November 1985, pp. 746–9.
The authors, at Emporia State University and at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, explain, at the end of their study:
We realize that the reader may question whether the present study merely has added to the confusion about color preferences and personality and color preferences and psychiatric illness. We think not. Enough studies have been reported to present a consistently inconsistent picture of the relationship. That is, it is apparent that a clear-cut relationship between color and psychiatric illness has not been established, and our study continues to show that pattern. This brings into question the use of color in psychiatric diagnosis.
_____________________
This article is republished with permission from the July-August 2008 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. You can download or purchase back issues of the magazine, or subscribe to receive future issues. Or get a subscription for someone as a gift!Visit their website for more research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK.
(YouTube link)
Six famous thought experiments explained humorously in a minute each, by David Mitchell of the BBC's That Mitchell and Webb Look. Produced by The Open University. -via The Daily What
These sculptures of flames by artist Herb Williams are an outdoor installation at the National Ranching Heritage Center in Lubbock, Texas. The name of the work is "Unwanted Visitor, Portrait of Wildfire." But take a closer look -the flames are made of crayons! As the suns hits them, temperatures rise and fall, and the wind blows, the sculptures will melt, move, and change considerably, as they are designed to do. Link -via Laughing Squid
(Image credit: Ashton Thornhill)
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