It's time for our collaboration with the always amusing What Is It? Blog. Can you guess what the pictured item is? Great guesses win prizes!
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 win T-shirt from the NeatoShop.
For more photos of this object, check out the What Is It? Blog. Good luck!
Update: It took a while, but Edward K had the right answer. This is a pet ID holder. You can slip paper inside it and attach it to a dog's collar. The funniest answer came from Randall, who called it "A hummelfubertapfer. Scandenavian beer drinker would use this timy hammer to break of the ice that formed on their beer as they drank it. This led to the colloquial joke of 'Is that your wife's nose or a Hummelfubertapfer?' after which the the joke's subject would either fly into a rage or laugh uproarously, depending on their level of inebriation." Both win t-shirts from the NeatoShop!
Dr. Nigella Hillgarth, director of the Birch Aquarium at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, took this picture during an outing last month off the coast of Baja California.
The Young Gray Whale came up to our Boat and put its head up - a life changing experience
Definitely worth sharing! Link-Thanks, Dr. Hillgarth!
Why is a curveball so hard to hit? Some say it presents an optical illusion to the batter. Others say it really does curve. Lyman Briggs of the National Bureau of Standards aimed to settle the matter.
This was a period when the question of whether the curve ball actually curved was hotly debated. Among the true believers was St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Dizzy Dean. "Ball can't curve?" he famously declared during the 1930s. "Shucks, get behind a tree and I'll hit you with an optical illusion." But anecdotes aren't a substitute for scientific data. So once Briggs officially retired, he decided to do the experiments to settle the matter. And he was well-connected enough to enlist the aid of the pitching staff of the Washington Senators and their manager, Cookie Lavagetto, to do so. It wasn't just a question of baseball, either: the question related to NIST's ongoing research into ballistics and projectiles: the rate of spin is related to how much the ball (or projectile) is deflected at different speeds. Apparently the NSB (now NIST) conducted lots of experiments with golf balls and baseballs; one of Briggs' publications was a 1945 paper entitled, "Methods for Measuring the Coefficient of Restitution and the Spin of the Ball."
Read how Briggs designed experiments to find out exactly how much of a curve there is to a curveball at Cocktail Physics. Link
The tree named Ochroma pyramidale is better known as the balsa tree, from which we get lightweight wood to make model airplanes. But its flowers are more valuable to many species in Panama, because they bloom at night during the dry season and fill and refill with sweet nectar.
Throughout the night and into the next morning, the trees here and on the mainland nearby will play host to an unusually large and pan-Linnaean cast of characters—mammalian, avian, amphibian, insectile. A few of the customers look familiar: A close cousin of the opossum often seen bumbling around trash cans in the United States turns out to thrive in the tropics and to love the taste of Ochroma juice. Others are gorgeously obscure: If you were to catch a rare glimpse of the olingo, a distant relative of the raccoon, as it slid silently through the branches like an oil spill with feet, you'd realize how alien our planet remains, how poorly we understand its parts.
Read more about this fascinating tree at National Geographic. Link to story. Link to photographs. -Thanks, Marilyn!
Bruno Miguel snapped this photograph of Yoda, just moments before he became a Jedi Master. Now you know where he got his infinite wisdom. The best part is that the Yoda in the picture came from the NeatoShop! Link-Thanks, Bruno!
Larry Marten wanted to build a coffin for his father as one last gift. Making the finely-crafted coffin, complete with parts saved from his father's life, was easy compared to negotiating the bureaucracy involved in burying the dead.
He was required to get a permit from the county to transport his father. The woman at the county office said that they don’t issue permits to individuals but to businesses licensed to do this work. She refused to issue the permit but Larry refused to leave without one. He thinks that he just finally wore her down and he got the permit.
At every point, he met resistance as though it was the craziest thing they’d ever heard of. Only professionals are allowed to do it, he was told, and there are all kinds of regulations. He was determined, however, and in the end, everyone at the hospital and county turned around and became helpful and came to respect his decision.
But that was not the end of the red tape Larry had to cut through. Read the rest of the story at Make magazine. Link -via Boing Boing
William Shakespeare has writer's block! In this story, his little stick figure friends, Romeo and Juliet, try to help out, but inspiration only comes when they give up. Shakesperean Tragedy (a comedy) was the final student project by Anna Cohen at Emuna College in Jerusalem. Link
A grocery store in Hamilton, New Zealand opened its doors automatically without any store employees present on Friday morning. The store's computer system opened the doors at 8AM, and shoppers came in as normal. Some bought groceries and used the self-checkout, while others just left without paying.
Supermarket owner Glenn Miller was initially furious over the incident, fearing that thousands of dollars of groceries might have walked out the door. But after reviewing the shop's security footage during the weekend his mood had mellowed.
"I can certainly see the funny side of it ... but I'd rather not have the publicity, to be honest. It makes me look a bit of a dickhead."
The security footage showed shoppers were not aware that there were no staff in the supermarket, Mr Miller said.
"They weren't in for a free-for-all. They were doing their normal shopping and then got to the checkout. Half of them paid and the other half thought, `this is a good deal' and walked out."
Customers' choices were recorded on closed-circuit TV, but Miller says he will not prosecute those who left without paying. Link to story. Link to video. -via Arbroath
Graphic designer Matt Chase got a peek into the life of a Storm Trooper by taking screenshots of his desktop. This one is just email. See the other windows at the post. http://www.behance.net/gallery/Imperial-Desktop/1305695 -Thanks, Nicholas!
An article at the Wall Street Journal says Americans spend $1.2 trillion annually for things we don't need.
As it turns out, quite a lot. A non-scientific study of Commerce Department data suggests that in February, U.S. consumers spent an annualized $1.2 trillion on non-essential stuff including pleasure boats, jewelry, booze, gambling and candy. That’s 11.2% of total consumer spending, up from 9.3% a decade earlier and only 4% in 1959, adjusted for inflation. In February, spending on non-essential stuff was up an inflation-adjusted 3.3% from a year earlier, compared to 2.4% for essential stuff such as food, housing and medicine.
Minnesotastan wonders how we define essentials and non-essentials. There are a lot of items that can be defined either way. Braces for teeth? Books? College tuition? Lawnmowers? Where do you draw the line? Link
No, not the one about the Hollywood studio and all that -the other one.
A WALK ON THE MOON
On August 25, 1835, the first of a series of front-page article was published in the Sun, a two-year-old newspaper in New York City. The subject was Sir John Frederick William Herschel, one of the most respected scientists of his day, especially in the field of astronomy. He'd already identified and named seven moons of Saturn and four of Uranus, and had received numerous awards for his work, including a British knighthood. The information for the article came from the Edinburgh Journal of Science and a Dr. Andrew Grant, who had recently accompanied Dr. Herschel to South Africa, where they were mapping the skies of the Southern Hemisphere. To do the job properly, Herschel had built a massive telescope -the lens was 24 feet in diameter- that operated "on an entirely new principle." It was all very scientific and complicated.
The first article didn't reveal much, but over the next six days readers received some amazing news. In the course of his investigations with the new device, Hershel had aimed his new telescope at the moon. The scope was so powerful that looking through it was almost like standing on the lunar surface, enabling Herschel to make an astonishing discovery: The moon was teeming with life. And not just plants -there were animals running all over the place.
EXPERTS AGREE
Extraterrestrial life was a hot topics in the early 1800s. Telescopes were getting larger, and astronomers were discovering more and more stars, moons, planets, comets, nebulae, etc. Along with these discoveries some claims -sometimes from respected astronomers- that it was only a matter of time before life was discovered on other planets. One especially popular book at the time was Christian Philosopher, or the Connexion of Science and Philosophy with Religion, by Scottish scientist and minister Thomas Dick, first published in 1823. In it, Dock estimated (somehow) that there were roughly 21 trillion inhabitants in our solar system -4 million of whom lived on the moon!
MOON BATS
Over the six days, the Sun's readers learned even more new information about the moon. A few examples: The lunar surface is covered in forests, lakes, rivers, and seas, inhabited by spherical creatures that rolled across the beautiful beaches, blue unicorns that wander the mountains, and two-legged beavers that live in huts and use fire. But there was one even more outlandish claim: There are intelligent humanoids on the moon -about four feet tall, largely covered in hair, with faces that are "a slight improvement upon that of a large orangutan." And they have wings. They spend their time flying around, eating fruit, bathing, and talking with each other. Herschel gave them the scientific name Vespertilio-homo, or "man-bat," and said they were actually civilized.
What could be more pleasant than a bevy of bouncing bunnies? This collection of pictures at The Ark in Space is just the thing to put a smile on your face! Link
The car that was built for the 1968 film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is up for auction at eBay.
Built on a custom ladder frame chassis, many old world forms of car building were employed, and modern technology stepped in to create a vehicle which was both accurate enough to fool veteran and classic car experts, when held under the scrutiny of 70mm cinema cameras, and durable enough to withstand everything from driving in sand, cobbled streets and down staircases. The bonnet is crafted of polished aluminum; the boat deck is hand-crafted of red and white cedar built by boat builders in Buckinghamshire, and the array of brass fittings were obtained from Edwardian cars. Even the alloy dashboard plate is from a British World War I fighter plane! The car weighs approximately 2 tons and measures 17 1/2 feet in length and is powered by a Ford 3 litre V-6 engine mated to an automatic transmission.
Other vehicles were built for the film to be used for special effects, but this particular car was the only one that actually worked. And it only has 44 miles on it. However, bidding has started at a million dollars. Link -via the Presurfer
There are as many Easter traditions as there are cultures that celebrate it, whether as a religious observance or a welcome to spring. Buzzfeed gathered several international customs together in a post, like Easter Simnel, which is a fruitcake topped with marzipan balls signifying the twelve apostles, served in the UK. Link
The servers at Amazon had some technical problems this week that affected a lot of sites, most notably reddit. Neatorama always welcomes poor lost internet surfers in when their favorite networking site is down. It's the least we can do! If you weren't with us all this week, here are our exclusive articles you might want to catch up on.
From Uncle John's Bathroom reader, we learned about the movie Robot Monster: The Ultimate Golden Turkey. The full movie is also embedded in the article.
Mal and Chad's Fill in the Bubble Frenzy came around on Wednesday. The winning entry is from Alan: “Be careful; someone started a flame war between mac and pc users and it’s a long way down.” However, Alan did not select a t-shirt.
In the What Is It? game this week, ladybuggs was the first of many with the correct answer. This is a National Cash Register Stamping Phone, used in bigger department stores. It was for clerks to get approval from “credit specialists” in the back room for customers to charge their purchases. Read more about them here. Ladybuggs wins a t-shirt from the NeatoShop! The funniest answer came from next2exits, who declared that this is a Wisconsin voter polling station. The handset allows the governor to call you and tell you who to vote for. But next2exits didn't select a shirt.
There are more ways to get your Neatorama fix: If you aren't checking our Facebook page every day, you're missing out on extra content, contests, discussions, 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. Have a wonderful Easter, everyone!
