We looked forward to the promise of video phone calls for fifty years, but now that they are here, no one wants to actually use them. The hassle of dressing up or cleaning the room for a phone call only explains part of it. Joel Stein captures the exact reason why video phone calls never caught on, despite the availability of Skype.

...Skype breaks the century-old social contract of the phone: we pay close attention while we're talking and zone out while you are.

As soon as you begin to talk, I feel trapped and desperately scan the room for tasks I can do to justify the enormous waste of time that is your talking. I wash dishes, I file receipts, I read news sites, I make little fake suicide faces to my wife Cassandra about how much I want to hang up that cause her to yell "Joel, I need you now" in a really unconvincing way that I've asked her not to do, but I still can't stop making the suicide faces. In desperate times, when I am on my cell phone in the middle of nowhere, I will pace. The only other time I pace is when I stub a toe or burn myself. But when I start talking, I assume that you are sitting perfectly still, rapt.

Link -via Digg

(image credit: John Ueland/TIME)

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These folks in South Carolina have another innovative use for heavy equipment. You don't need a lake and a boat to go skiing! -via Buzzfeed

Sal Esposito of East Boston has been summoned for jury duty. He just might be excused for being a cat, but so far he is expected to serve. Sal's owners Guy and Anna Esposito think his name may have been pulled from census records, where he was listed as a pet.

Anna filed for Sal’s disqualification of service. However, the jury commissioner was unmoved and denied the request.

Sal’s service date at Suffolk Superior Court is set for March 23. Anna said that if the issue isn’t cleared up by then, she will simply have to bring the cat to court.

Link -via Digg

Today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss is a lot of fun, especially for someone like me who spent decades connecting audio-video equipment professionally. I'm sure you will enjoy it, too! Can you identify ten different types of connecting cables, both old and new? Good luck; I scored 80%. Link

While people all over the world are marking the 75th anniversary of the birth of Elvis Presley, we would like to give a big shout out to a treasure who is still with us -University of Cambridge professor emeritus Stephen Hawking, who turns 68 years old today.

Born on the 300th anniversary of Galileo's death, Hawking is a theoretical physicist who is regarded as one of the most intelligent men alive. He has published numerous papers and books on the nature and origin of the universe, the best known being A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes. Hawking also had a miniseries on PBS in 1997, Stephen Hawking's Universe, as well as a long list of TV and movie appearances. He is renowned for making difficult concepts comprehensible to the average reader or viewer.

Hawking has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease, which has taken his ability to move or speak under his own power. He uses a speech synthesizer to communicate. Still, Hawking has been heard singing at least three times on Neatorama, in A Glorious Dawn, I Love the World, and in this lecture.

Among Hawking's degrees, honors, and other accomplishments is the awesome fact that he is the only person ever to play himself in any Star Trek film or series.

Happy Birthday, Professor Hawking!

Unusually cold temperatures in southern Florida are causing a novel problem -falling iguanas. Iguanas are an invasive species in Florida due to pet owners abandoning the lizards. When the temperature falls below 40 degrees, they automatically begin to hibernate and fall out of the trees they live in. Ron Magill of Miami Metrozoo has a warning for those who find the iguanas.

"I knew of a gentleman who was collecting them off the street and throwing them in the back of his station wagon, and all of a sudden these things are coming alive, crawling on his back and almost caused a wreck," Magill said.

The stories of "kamikaze iguanas" plummeting from trees were urban legends in Florida, but now have a plausible explanation. Link (with video)

Learn about the different species of big cats as you enjoy photographs by zoo photographer and "cat whisperer" Akishin Vyacheslav. Shown is a leopard with startling blue eyes. Link -via Digg

Maybe writers aren't aware how their copy inspires a "Duh!" reaction. Or maybe they are trying to entertain us to make up for a boring story. Either way, these headlines and newspaper clips are funny enough to ensure a long life on the internet. Link

Police in Cheshire, England are investigating the case of a man who installed a camera in a fitting room at the Asda department store. Finding him should be easy as he left crucial evidence behind. A police spokesman said,

"The device was placed in a light fitting and was in place for 30 minutes before being discovered by staff.

"Unfortunately for the man he did not turn off the camera while placing it in situ and forensic examination of the data card shows an image of him while doing this."

Link -via Arbroath

Male flies have penises covered with spines and hooks. To figure out what the purpose of those spines are, researchers Michal Polak and Arash Rashed removed the spines to see what would happen.

Their spines are too small to cut off by hand. So the duo used a laser instead, wielding the light with such surgical precision that they could cut off a third of each millimetre-long spine, or the entire structure.

They found that a partial shave did nothing, but the full treatment significantly reduced the odds of the males mating with females.

The conclusion is that the fly's penis hairs act as Velcro, to grasp the female long enough to inject sperm. Now you know. Link -via Treehugger

Previously at Neatorama: 30 Strangest Animal Mating Habits.

Photo manipulated at Speechable.

You might have noticed that Neatorama went away for a while today and came back minus a few posts. The site suffered a system crash, at the worst possible time -when Alex is out of town and has no computer access. Luckily, our talented staff of tech wizards were able to restore the site using a slightly older saved version, which did not include most of today's posts. We will try to get those reposted as soon as possible. Let your friends and neighbors know that Neatorama is back online!

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Going old school in the geekiest way possible, Windell Oskay at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories has built a non-video version of Pong. The process of building it is posted as well. Link

It's not a weather anomaly, but an art project. Stevie Famulari used a weed sprayer to paint the snow on her Fargo lawn pink!

Famulari is an environmental artist and a landscape architecture professor at North Dakota State University.

She changes the color of her snow with each new layer that falls. She plans to paint the next snowfall a purplish blue and the one after that will be black.

She chose her colors to become darker as the season progresses. When the snow melts, she expects the older layers to be revealed.

Famulari says she will not paint the snow yellow. Oh yes, she also paints her lawn in the summer. http://www.inforum.com/event/article/id/264474/ -via Unique Daily

(image credit: David Samson/The Forum)

NASA's Kepler space telescope mission is sending back data on exoplanets we've never seen before. Five new planets that the probe recently discovered are large planets that revolve close to their stars, making it easier for us to see them.

The smallest of the new planets is about the same size as Neptune, though much more massive. All of the planets are hotter than molten lava and could turn gold to goo, according to NASA temperature estimates.

Dubbed Kepler 4b, 5b, 6b, 7b, and 8b, the five new planets range in temperature from 2,000 to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,090 to 1,650 degrees Celsius), William Borucki, Kepler's principal investigator, said today during a press briefing at the American Astronomical Society's annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

One of the worlds, Kepler 7b, is among the lowest-density planets yet found, with about the same density as Styrofoam, he said.

The data from Kepler contains the possibility of many new exoplanets, but only these five have been confirmed so far. Link

(image credit: William Borucki/NASA)

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Nicholas Nunley needed a little cash, so he did what anyone would do -he hooked a Coke machine to his car and drove off! Deputies from the McMinn County Sheriff's department in Riceville, Tennessee chased Nunley as sparks flew from the dragging machine Wednesday morning. The Coke machine eventually disconnected from the car, but Nunley drove on. He pulled over after a nearly five mile chase. Nunley was charged with theft and resisting arrest. http://www.nbc-2.com/Global/story.asp?S=11764287 -via Arbroath