First, watch the video. Then come back and read the rest of this description. J.W. Suchow and G.A. Alvarez studied how motion affected awareness of color change in their research on change blindness. Try it yourself!
Keep your eyes fixed on the small white mark in the center. At first, the ring is stationary and it's easy to tell that the dots are changing. A few seconds later, the ring begins to rotate and the dots suddenly appear to stop changing.
But play the movie again, this time looking directly at one of the dots and following it as the ring rotates. You will see that, in fact, the dots had been changing the whole time, even during the rotation—you just didn't notice it. This failure to detect that moving objects are changing is silencing.
The findings were published in the journal Current Biology, with an abstract available online. Link -Thanks, Rob Hartmann!
Ani is an abandoned city in Turkey near the Armenian border. At one time it had 200,000 residents, but no one has lived there for 300 years. Huge empty ancient buildings remain, all alone in their magnificence. The history of this city is long and bloody, and the remaining archaeological site is in danger of disappearing completely. See lots more pictures at Kuriositas. Link
Augustin Zamora was walking his Great Dane Scooby in Chicago Thursday afternoon. Meanwhile, another man was following a 14-year-old girl.
The girl had just gotten off a Diversey Avenue bus near the 2800 block of North Whipple street and was walking home when she noticed a man following her, the Chicago Tribune reported. The man grabbed her as she ran up the stairs to her home, threw her to the ground and began to undress her.
Startled when Scooby and Zamora approached them, the attacker ran into an alley at George Street where he was corner by the team until police arrived.
Smell the buttercream flavor of this box of three cupcakes! But these sweet treats aren't for dessert -they're for bathing, or showing off in your guest bathroom. Cupcake Soaps come in a clear gift box for easy display. Newly available at the NeatoShop. Sweet!
Heidi the Cross-eyed Opossum lives at the Leipzig Zoo in Germany, where she is set to be a part of Gondwanaland, a new area of the zoo which will open in July. The two-and-a-half year old opossum has already inspired a song and a plush toy.
It is a long way from home. According to the zoo, Heidi and her sister, Naira, originally came from the US state of North Carolina, where they were turned over as foundlings to a facility for wild animals. The sisters then made their way to the zoo in Odense, Denmark, before ending up in Leipzig.
The reason for Heidi's crossed eyes is unclear, but zoo officials speculate that it might be because of fat deposits behind her eyes, caused by a bad diet early in life. The eyes might look off, but they cause the animal no pain, and don't affect her ability to get around, according to the zoo. She is, aside from her looks, a normal opossum.
See more pictures of Heidi at der Spiegel. Link -via J-Walk Blog
This awesome beanbag chair in the shape of a Snorlax (from the world of Pokémon) was made by DeviantART member SmellenJR for a Christmas gift.
This took I think... over 100 dollars in supplies to make. I ended up with a little extra cream colored fabric and muslin. Thankfully muslin is super cheap.
Most of the work was done the last minute to be in time for Christmas. The box we put it in was perfect because when she lifted the top box off, it's arms flopped out as if to say: "HUG ME!"
Just in case you were busy this past week packing up Christmas decorations or digging out of the snow, here's what you can catch up on from the past week at Neatorama!
At NeatoBambino, we saw a series of kids with amazing accomplishments this week! Read about the 11-year-old who is building a house, a 2-year-old who can identify US presidents, and a 10-year-old who discovered a supernova! And I can't even get my kids to load the dishwasher.
Jill Harness gave us the stories of 11 Amazing Animals That Saved Lives.
In the Museum of Possibilities, we learned about the Bike Vest, which is both a vest AND a bike!
Uncle John's Bathroom Reader had several Cold Cases that still haven't been completely solved.
We got a dose of science gone wacky in Feline Reactions to Bearded Men from the Annals of Improbable Research.
From our friends at mental_floss magazine, we saw The Confederacy's Plan to Conquer Latin America.
There were a lot of entries Monday in the Name That Weird Invention! contest. First prize goes to inky for StairChaise. The second place winner was steamtroll for the Stratolounger. Third place: DS for the name Lofty-Boy, and in fourth place was yuck2me for Loft-o-Lounger. T-shirts from the NeatoShop go out to the two winners who posted shirt selections with their entry! Honorable mentions: The Over-Study, The ChairCase; Over Easy Chair, Chairway to Heaven, Thermo-Chair, The Vertigo Lounger, Decliner, and Reclimber.
Wednesday brought another chance to win with Mal and Chad's Fill in the Bubble Frenzy! Mysfyt had the winning line: “Avast, I be Peg-eye the pirate.” and wins a T-shirt from the NeatoShop!
In the What Is It? game on Thursday, Vince had the right answer: the device is to hold logs while they are cut! Kelly gets the funniest answer prize for “The jawbone of a Domokun.” She was the first of many to see a Domo-kun in this device. Both win t-shirts from the NeatoShop!
Congratulations to the December winners of the How Did You Know? contests co-sponsored by Neatorama at mental_floss: Chelsea Tymms, Nate Littlefield, Aaron Sugar, and Gabe Jacquez all win prizes from the NeatoShop!
Still looking for more enjoyment on the 'net? Check out our earlier feature articles at The Best of Neatorama, and find more cool stuff elsewhere with the NeatoHub!
Another new item at the NeatoShop is the toy called the Ball of Whacks. It consists of 30 magnetic pyramidal pieces -just imagine all the weird shapes you can make out of them! A great stress reliever or boredom-fighter at work or at home. Also available in black.
You'd be surprised at how many book stores across the country (and probably around the world) have cats living in them. It makes sense -people who enjoy books usually enjoy cats as well, often at the same time. In this mental_floss article, you'll meet a dozen of the many bookstore cats who have their own fans, locally and online. Pictured is Asimov, resident cat at Seek Books in West Roxbury, Massachusetts. Link
Recently-unearthed documents from the the German Foreign Office reveal a World War II dog story destined to eventually become a movie. A dog in Finland named Jackie could do a Hitler salute so well that the Nazis considered it a gross insult.
The dog, Jackie, was a mutt owned by Tor Borg, a businessman from the Finnish city of Tampere. Borg's wife Josefine, a German citizen known for her anti-Nazi sentiments, dubbed the dog Hitler because of the strange way it raised its paw high in the air like Germans greeting the Fuehrer with a cry of "Heil Hitler!"
On January 29, 1941, German Vice Consul Willy Erkelenz in Helsinki wrote that "a witness, who does not want to be named, said ... he saw and heard how Borg's dog reacted to the command 'Hitler' by raising its paw."
Borg was ordered to the German embassy in Helsinki and questioned about his dog's unusual greeting habits.
He denied ever calling the dog by the German dictator's name, but admitted that his wife called the dog Hitler. He tried to play down the accusations, saying the paw-raising had only happened a few times in 1933 — shortly after Hitler came to power.
The German Foreign Office was ready to arrest Borg for insulting Hitler, but no one wanted to testify against the man. Link -via Metafilter
You knew some presidents were hams (cough*Clinton*cough) and some no doubt ate ham, but I bet you've never seen a gallery of all the president holding hams! Click on a president (or a ham) and you'll be taken to a larger picture and interesting trivia about that president. Link -via J-Walk Blog
Not only is this super cool, it's homemade! Instructables user chr posted the entire process, with pictures. This project is entered into a contest where the rules were "Make something awesome". I think he did. Link -via The Daily What
Say hello to Dilbert, Dogbert, Boss, Wally, Alice and Catbert! It's a half dozen of your favorite characters from the Scott Adams comic Dilbert in one set of PVC figurines. The perfect inspiration for your cubicle, available now at the NeatoShop!
Artist Kasey McMahon (previously at Neatorama) created an "infographic" with 22 reasons to explore outer space. I put quotes around the word infographic because even though that's the word she used, this is really more of a art poster, and there's no links to unrelated sites like many of the infographics you've seen. http://atypicalart.com/space/
