If you stand at the South Pole and walk in any direction, you'd be walking north, wouldn't you? So how do people in Antarctica read a map or give directions? Minnesotastan looked it up, and the answer is: they throw out the directions from the globe and make up a system. The continent is labeled with "East Antarctica" and "West Antarctica" in this map, but of course you must go south to get to either. There are actually two conventions for mapping the continent, as you'll read in this post at TYWKIWDBI. Link
Miss Cellania's Blog Posts
If you stand at the South Pole and walk in any direction, you'd be walking north, wouldn't you? So how do people in Antarctica read a map or give directions? Minnesotastan looked it up, and the answer is: they throw out the directions from the globe and make up a system. The continent is labeled with "East Antarctica" and "West Antarctica" in this map, but of course you must go south to get to either. There are actually two conventions for mapping the continent, as you'll read in this post at TYWKIWDBI. Link
(vimeo link)
Artist Dan Berglund illustrated the song "What a Wonderful World" performed by Louis Armstrong, frame by frame, using ink on glass. The result is a pleasant three-minute break in your workday. -via Arbroath
Do we ever get tired of looking a the nocturnal primates we know as tarsiers? Ugly Overload has a collection of tarsier pictures, facts, and links for your enjoyment. Link
(Image source: I Can Has Cheezburger)
A couple of months ago we saw Wayne Dorrington's retelling of Star Wars Episode IV using only icons. Now he has completed the the plot of Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back in the same manner, which he calls "Iconoscope." If the images aren't showing up for you, click where they should be. Link -via Laughing Squid
To promote the new Internet Explorer 9, Soap Creative developed a Pac-Man game that involves thousands of user-submitted screens, and could take years to play. Link to story. Link to game. -via Simply Left Behind
See a series of classic Gil Elvgren paintings of women in various cheesecake poses, alongside the original photograph he worked from. Slightly NSFW. Link -via Nag on the Lake
(YouTube link)
Enjoy some music by cellist Kevin Olusola. He is an accomplished musician, but the senior at Yale University is majoring in pre-med and East Asian studies. Olusola spent a fellowship year in China to study the language, but also managed to perform a few concerts while there. Read more at his website. http://kolusolamusic.art.officelive.com/bio.aspx -via reddit
Here you see a skeleton knitting a scarf with yarn that is coming from her own bones! She is a knit-covered skeleton. Twilight Kallisti of Crafting Chaos made this artwork called Just One More Row using an educational skeleton model. See more pictures at the website. http://craftingchaos.com/2011/04/17/just-one-more-row/
Here's something that might keep you busy for a while. Robin Words pits your language skills against a computer.
Some people brag of beating the computer fairly quickly, but it depends on the word you're dealt. Others complain that the computer arbitrarily rules your words ineligible. How are you doing? Link -via mental_floss
Change one letter in the four-letter word the computer gives you. The computer will then change one letter in the word you used and so on. You may not use proper nouns or reuse words that have already been used. The first person to use up all possible words wins!
Some people brag of beating the computer fairly quickly, but it depends on the word you're dealt. Others complain that the computer arbitrarily rules your words ineligible. How are you doing? Link -via mental_floss
(vimeo link)
Filmmaker Terje Sorgjerd (previously at Neatorama) set up cameras on El Teide, the highest mountain in Spain, from April 4th to 11th, 2011. The object was to take a time-lapse video of the Milky Way. However, a sand storm blew in from the Sahara desert. Sorgjerd assumed his project had been ruined, but was pleased with the resulting video. -via the Presurfer
Before young Wolfgang Mozart became the toast of Europe, the family promoted his older sister, Maria Anna Mozart.
Her younger brother learned to play as well and eventually joined her on tour. However, Maria, who the family called Nannerl, was taken off the concert circuit when she became old enough to marry. We'll never know what could have become of her music if she'd had the same opportunities as Wolfgang. However, Smithsonian looks at Nannerl's influence on her brother and how much she may have been responsible for his fame. Link
“Virtuosic.” “A prodigy.” “Genius.” These words were written in the 1760s about Mozart—Maria Anna Mozart. When she toured Europe as a pianist, young Maria Anna wowed audiences in Munich, Vienna, Paris, London, the Hague, Germany and Switzerland. “My little girl plays the most difficult works which we have … with incredible precision and so excellently,” her father, Leopold, wrote in a letter in 1764. “What it all amounts to is this, that my little girl, although she is only 12 years old, is one of the most skillful players in Europe.”
Her younger brother learned to play as well and eventually joined her on tour. However, Maria, who the family called Nannerl, was taken off the concert circuit when she became old enough to marry. We'll never know what could have become of her music if she'd had the same opportunities as Wolfgang. However, Smithsonian looks at Nannerl's influence on her brother and how much she may have been responsible for his fame. Link
Encyclopedia Dramatica was always a place to get in-depth information on internet culture, memes, and history, but the site was rarely linked here at Neatorama because it was NSFW and far from family-friendly. Now Encyclopedia Dramatica is no more, and a new site has risen in its place. The new Oh Internet is dedicated to the same type of information, but is not open to unlimited editing by users as ED was. Geekosystem has more on the big switch. Link to story. http://ohinternet.com/Main_Page to website.
Alexia Sloane is only ten years old, but she got the opportunity to work as an interpreter at the European Parliament in Brussels. Alexia received an exception to the age 14 minimum rule because she is fluent in English, French, Spanish, and Mandarin, and is now learning German -and she does a great job interpreting. Did I mention that Alexia is blind?
Link -via Arbroath
(Image credit: Geoff Robinson)
Alexia has been tri-lingual since birth as her mother, a teacher, is half French and half Spanish, while her father, Richard, is English.
She started talking and communicating in all three languages before she lost her sight but adapted quickly to her blindness. By the age of four, she was reading and writing in Braille.
When she was six, Alexia added Mandarin to her portfolio. She will soon be sitting a GCSE in the language having achieved an A* in French and Spanish last year. The girl is now learning German at school in Cambridge.
Alexia has wanted to be an interpreter since she was six and chose to go to the European Parliament as her prize when she won a young achiever of the year award.
Link -via Arbroath
(Image credit: Geoff Robinson)
The following is an article from the book Uncle John's Absolutely Absorbing Bathroom Reader. Contains spoilers, but you can skip to the end and watch the entire movie first if you like.
There are bad movies...and then there are BAD movies. Years ago the Medved brothers reintroduced stinkers like Plan 9 From Outer Space to the public in their groundbreaking books, The 50 Worst Films of All Time and The Golden Turkey Awards. The "Mystery Science Theater 3000" gave us a chance to watch the best of the worst on TV. Today there are millions of bad movie buffs... and Uncle John is one of them. Here's one of his favorite stinkers.
ROBOT MONSTER (1953)
Starring George Nader, Claudia Barrett, Selena Royle, John Mylong, George Barrows.
Background: Director Phil Tucker made this opus for less than $20,000. He couldn't afford to rent a real robot costume, but (fortunately for bad movie lovers) he knew a guy named George Barrows, who owned his own gorilla suit. "When [moviemakers] needed a gorilla in a picture," Tucker explained to the Medveds in The Golden Turkey Awards, "they called George. [He] got like forty bucks a day... [but] I thought, 'George will work for me for nothing. I'll get a diving helmet, put it on him, and it'll work!'"
It did work. Years later, Tucker's robot even won an award. Okay, it was a Golden Turkey Award for "The Most Ridiculous Monster in Screen History." But it was well-deserved. "Unlike many other cinematic robots," Ken Beggs writes in Jabootu's Bad Movie Universe, "[this one] has the appearance of a morbidly obese man in a shaggy gorilla costume, adorned with a deep sea diving helmet over his nylon-stocking bedecked noggin" -and the helmet was topped with a rabbit-ears TV antenna. You have to see it to believe it.
(YouTube link)Note: Strange anomaly for such a seat-of-the-pants production: Robot Monster was filmed in 3D, and the music recorded in stereo. Even more surprising: the score was written by Elmer Bernstein, later one of Hollywood's most accomplished composers (he wrote the music, for example, for The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape).
Continue reading
There are bad movies...and then there are BAD movies. Years ago the Medved brothers reintroduced stinkers like Plan 9 From Outer Space to the public in their groundbreaking books, The 50 Worst Films of All Time and The Golden Turkey Awards. The "Mystery Science Theater 3000" gave us a chance to watch the best of the worst on TV. Today there are millions of bad movie buffs... and Uncle John is one of them. Here's one of his favorite stinkers.
ROBOT MONSTER (1953)
Starring George Nader, Claudia Barrett, Selena Royle, John Mylong, George Barrows.
Background: Director Phil Tucker made this opus for less than $20,000. He couldn't afford to rent a real robot costume, but (fortunately for bad movie lovers) he knew a guy named George Barrows, who owned his own gorilla suit. "When [moviemakers] needed a gorilla in a picture," Tucker explained to the Medveds in The Golden Turkey Awards, "they called George. [He] got like forty bucks a day... [but] I thought, 'George will work for me for nothing. I'll get a diving helmet, put it on him, and it'll work!'"
It did work. Years later, Tucker's robot even won an award. Okay, it was a Golden Turkey Award for "The Most Ridiculous Monster in Screen History." But it was well-deserved. "Unlike many other cinematic robots," Ken Beggs writes in Jabootu's Bad Movie Universe, "[this one] has the appearance of a morbidly obese man in a shaggy gorilla costume, adorned with a deep sea diving helmet over his nylon-stocking bedecked noggin" -and the helmet was topped with a rabbit-ears TV antenna. You have to see it to believe it.
(YouTube link)Note: Strange anomaly for such a seat-of-the-pants production: Robot Monster was filmed in 3D, and the music recorded in stereo. Even more surprising: the score was written by Elmer Bernstein, later one of Hollywood's most accomplished composers (he wrote the music, for example, for The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape).
Email This Post to a Friend