We introduced you to Bagram Batman, the U.S. Army's training video character, last month. The Duffel Blog, a satirical site for American military personnel, gives us the story of the death of Bagram Batman at the hands of arch-enemy Badghis Bane.

Darkness has fallen on Afghanistan’s largest Coalition base, as news has spread that the Bagram Batman is dead. The caped crusader — who shot to fame for providing friendly, if insufferable, safety tips to deployed personnel on Bagram Airfield — succumbed Friday to injuries incurred during a very unsafe brawl with the villain known as Badghis Bane.

“I just can’t believe he’s gone,” said one grieving soldier, who Bagram Batman taught to properly lace and tie his boots. “Without him around, how will I know to protect myself from sun exposure and loud noises? How will I know ANYTHING?!”

Indeed, Bagram Batman’s popular but incredibly patronizing online commercials advised service members on a range of fairly obvious topics, including ear protection, theft avoidance, and basic human decency. Yet for all the rules he espoused, the Dark Knight was unable to protect himself from Badghis Bane’s wicked backbreaker.

Read the story of how it happened, and the reaction of Bagram Batman's few fans and the many who can't stand him. Link -Thanks, AN!

   

Unicorn Lover Magnetic Poetry

Are you having trouble coming up with the words to convey and illustrate the mysterious and magical unicorn? Let the Unicorn Lover Magnetic Poetry kit from the NeatoShop help you smash away at your writers block and release unleash your inner writer. This spirited kit contains over 200 words to help you describe your favorite mythical creature. 

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Magnets and fantastic Unicorn items. 

Link

A parfait is traditionally topped with a strip of bacon cherry, but the MIOR cafe in Osaka, Japan turns the dessert into a full, balanced meal by adding a slice of strawberry cake. Pro tip: now add the cherry.

Link

If you think it's weird that plants can "talk" to one another, here's something even weirder: one way they talk to one another is via a network of underground fungus!

Many plants have a chemical armoury that they deploy when aphids attack, with chemicals that both repel the aphids and attract parasitic wasps that are aphids' natural predators.

The team grew sets of five broad bean plants, allowing three in each group to develop mycorrhizal networks, and preventing the networks' growth in the other two.

To prevent any through-the-air chemical communication, the plants were covered with bags.

As the researchers allowed single plants in the sets to be infested with aphids, they found that if the infested plant was connected to another by the mycorrhizae, the un-infested plant began to mount its chemical defence.

Those unconnected by the networks appeared not to receive the signal of attack, and showed no chemical response.

Link (Image: Microbe Wiki)

(YouTube link)

Alex Chacon took a year and a half for a motorcycle ride. He left home in Texas, traveled to the southern tip of Argentina, and then back north to Alaska! In this video, you'll see him pass through 22 countries, travel over cliffside paths, rickety bridges, and salt flats, through floods, city traffic, tiny tunnels, snow, and fog, as he picks up hitchhikers, wrecks his bike, and records it all on video. The montage is edited stylistically instead of chronologically, and it is quite mesmerizing. -via Viral Viral Videos 

Israeli fashion designer Kobi Levi makes brilliant shoes. We've previously featured his shoes that look like stuck gum and slides. His latest project was inspired by three female villains of classic Disney princess movies: Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty, the Evil Queen from Snow White and Ursula from The Little Mermaid.

Link -via Fashionably Geek

It's a marriage made in sugar heaven! The genius bakers over at Dominique Ansel Bakery have combined donut and croissant into a new culinary creation. Behold, the cronut (or if you want to appear more sophisticated, cwaahh-nut):

Each one of these puppies is made from pastry dough that's been sheeted, laminated, proofed, then fried like a doughnut and rolled in flavored sugar. But that's not all: Cronuts-to-be are also filled with a not-so-sweet Tahitian vanilla cream, given a fresh coat of rose glaze, and bedazzled with rose sugar. Got it? Good. Let's briefly examine the sheer implausibility and engineering genius that goes into each one of these things.

First off, call your friendly neighborhood pastry chef and ask him or her what happens when you try to fry croissant dough. It's not pretty. Even if the laminated layers don't separate instantly and part ways in the hot oil six ways to Sunday, chances are that yeast-leavened dough will have a lumpy, sad, and uneven ascent before it ever gets to the golden brown stage. Ansel says it took around ten recipes and adjustments to multiple variables of time and temperature before he found a special trick to sheeting the dough, then learning to fry it in grapeseed oil at one specific (and somewhat secret) temperature.

Hugh Merwin of Grub Street New York has more on this new culinary marvel: Link

Ypres, Belgium, stages the Festival of Cats on the second Sunday of May every three years. The festival harkens back to a time in which cats were tortured and destroyed because they were believed to be witches or incarnations of the devil. However, the modern festival is instead a celebration of cats, and no live cats are involved.

The centerpiece of the festival is the Cat Parade. The first parade was held in 1938 with music, a jester, and a bunch of altar boys carrying a bunch of plastic cats. They marched from the city hall to the belfry. Amid a concert of trumpet music and the carillon of bells, the jester climbed to the top of the belfry tower to throw the toy cats into the crowd below. This was based on how live cats were once thrown from the bell tower during the Middle Ages. These days it is soft plush cats that are tossed to the crowd below, perhaps mocking the awful brutality that is now thankfully left to the past. A mock witch burning also remains as a part of the festivities.

Kattenstoet would have been this weekend, but the festival was held last year and the next one will be in 2015. See plenty of pictures and a video of the parade at PetsLady. Link -via the Presurfer

(Image credit: Flickr user Cedric Dubois)

Inception

Like it names implies, the tumblr blog 9 Film Frames aims to capture the gist of a movie in just 9 frames. See if you agree with their picks: Link - via PetaPixel

2001: A Space Odyssey

There Will Be Blood

"In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming. Dreaming of belly rubs." But I'm scared of Jenny Fontana's monstrosity. Will I wake him from his slumber by petting him? Is that a risk worth taking?

Link -via Ian Brooks

Photo: KarenCarvajal/Facebook

It's like art imitating Fight Club. Miami-based artist Orestes de la Paz not only put his heart and soul into his latest artistic endeavor, but also his fat. Literally:

Orestes de la Paz underwent a liposuction procedure in December of last year, and decided to turn the removed fat into soap to prevent it from going rancid. He came up with the idea for his art thesis after realizing that “clients are willing to try anything to feel and look beautiful, even to the extent of buying products with human elements in them (stem cells, placenta, semen; you name it, it’s out there.)” [...]

Apart from coconut oil, organic vegetable shortening, lavender and tree tea oils, as well as other cosmetics ingredients, his unique soap bars are 25% human fat, which apparently leaves the user’s hands soft after washing. “There’s always a certain amount of blood, sweat, and tears that goes into any artwork. I just make it more explicit,” the artist said about his bizarre project.

OddityCentral has more (including the video clip you shouldn't watch if you're squeamish): Link

(vimeo link)

You'll probably see a lot of mushy videos about wonderful mothers this weekend for Mothers Day. How about a supercut of horrible moms that will make yours look saintly in comparison? Flavorwire put together such a video, culled from movies about crazy, evil, and just plain awful mothers. NSFW language. Link -via Holy Kaw!

Mini Moonshine Jar Shot Glass

Are you exhausted from a hard day of clan feuding? Kick back and relax on the front porch with the Mini Moonshine Jar Shot Glass from the NeatoShop. This tiny mason jar is perfect for those who like their fighting clean and their moonshine in moderation. 

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Barware & Cocktail items. 

Link

The best part of last night's episode of Downton Thrones was when Dexter fused with the TARDIS. RT if you agree! 

Oh, you haven't seen it yet? Sorry for the spoilers. But now there's an app for that:

Lamere is a 17-year-old high schooler who has developed a browser plug-in that will block tweets with TV spoilers.

Twivo, a plug-in for Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox browsers that will be available to everyone in a few weeks, blocks tweets if it detects keywords that may reveal important details about a show users may want to watch.

After installing Twivo, users activate the plugin whenever one of their shows is going to come on. They also designate keywords, or tags, to tell Twivo which tweets to block. For example, a user could decide to block tweets that include a show's name, characters' names or even the names of the actors.

Link -via Bit Rebels

The Childrens Television Workshop worked on a new show for a long time to ensure its quality before putting it on the air in 1969. Everything was finally in place, except the show still didn't have a name. A promo sketch shows Muppets mulling over possible titles, but the actual story was more frantic.

The name Sesame Street was not dreamed up by Muppets in a boardroom but the promo sketch does reference the dilemma the Workshop had in finding a name for the show. As producer Jon Stone remembers, “the name was set at the 11th hour and fifty ninth minute.” Early promotional materials simply referred to the show as a “preschool educational television show.” In early spring of 1969, the press conference announcing the show neared and producers had still not made a decision. “We were just frantic for a title,” said Joan Ganz Cooney. “Our press and publicity people were going nuts. How were they going to promote a show that had no name?”

But they managed to come up with the perfect name. Read what happened at the Sesame Workshop blog. Link -via Laughing Squid

Well, that would do it. A spambot wouldn't have decided to major in philosophy or buy into that Jamba Juice franchise on credit.

Link

And that has got critics pouncing, as ABC Good Morning America reports [self-starting video]:

Since Taco Fusion, a Mexican restaurant known to offer unusual game meats like ostrich, camel, and bison in its tacos, added lion meat to its menu of "Safari Tacos" on May 2, the restaurant has had to field hostile calls from critics who are up in arms over the menu choice.

"[People have been] coming into the establishment and throwing punches," the restaurant's manager Brad Barnett told "Good Morning America." "They say they are going to bomb us, burn us down, blow us up."

"They threatened to kidnap Brad [Barnett] and the owner," another manager, Bayardo Alvarez, told ABC News.

But Taco Fusion is fighting back:

Fast forward to 2013: Paranoia has set in as some folks have had their reality challenged. They say that we’ve “crossed the line” by serving Lion. But let me ask you this, did you cross the line when you ate Beef, chicken, or Pork this week? [...]

How is a cow that is injected with hormones, crammed in a dark pen it’s whole life, and then unceremoniously slaughtered any better than a hormone free- free range animal that was raised for meat consumption? One is “majestic” and the other is overweight? One is a fierce predator, the other is a weak link? What exactly is the criteria for which animal has more importance? [...]

Who decides which animals are worthy? If the argument is that a Lion is “Majestic” so you shouldn’t breed them for meat consumption- then what is the lesson here That only the majestic pretty girls get treated well and the ugly ones go to the slaughter pen? How pompous and idiotic does that sound?

POLL: So, what do you think, Neatoramanauts? Is it wrong to eat lions?

• Yes - It's wrong to eat lions
• No - Why are lions any different than other animals that we eat?
• I don't know! Just show me the poll results!

Here's a list you might want to bookmark for the hot months ahead: 33 Super-Cool Popsicles To Make This Summer. Shown is the Grapefruit And Strawberry Greyhound Poptail, made from grapefruit juice, strawberries, and vodka. There are other cocktail popsicle recipes, plus fruity concoctions, dessert popsicles, and even vegan ices, with links to the recipes. Sure beats freezing Kool-Ade in an ice tray! Link -via mental_floss

Jefferson Davis, the first and last President of the Confederate States of America, advocated a paternalistic approach to slaveholding. He believed that white rule over black slaves was beneficial and benevolent toward blacks. Davis claimed that this was how he managed his own plantation.

This lie was exposed to the world when US troops raided his plantation in Mississippi in 1863. Davis's slaves happily embraced their freedom. This sketch by Frederick B. Schell, an illustrator for Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, captured the scene:

Link

(Photo: New York Historical Society)

As the Sun sets in New York City, a group of real life superheroes takes to the streets. These costumed crime fighters go by names of Dark Guardian, Spyder, Spector, and Snipe.  They patrol the gritty streets with hybrid skateboard / shields, in search of danger.

When they are out at night searching the subways and scaling walls, looking for trouble, the superheroes protect themselves with non-traditional body armor made from plastic and metal. 

The group is called New York Initiative and they take their commitment to doing good very seriously. 

CBS New York has more: Link

(YouTube link)

Mark Crayford of Swindon, Wiltshire, England, went for an elaborate proposal plan to ask Tracey Badenski to marry him. He bought a ring, ordered a suit of armor from Germany, and practiced riding a horse over the course of six months. Then the big day came, and it didn't go quite as planned. Oh no, she didn't turn him down, that would be the worst. But he should have practiced dismounting in the armor a bit more. Link -via Arbroath

Like it said on the tin, Guinea Pig Fashion is a website where you can buy haute couture for your cavy. We can't wait till they make a teeny runway for these cute rodents to strut their stuff! Link - via The Cut

If you've been paying attention, you probably know that Mother's Day is tomorrow. If not, HEY! MOTHERS DAY IS TOMORROW! It would be a bit embarrassing if you forgot, and your mom would know, because mothers always just know. So do something nice for your mother, if you are lucky enough to still have one. You should also find some time to catch up on what's been happening at Neatorama this week.

Eddie Deezen wrote a Mothers Day article on Gladys Presley, the Mother Elvis Presley Worshiped.

We had two new books featured in articles this week. The first was Vertical Horizon, from Romain Jacquet-Lagrèze. His stunning photographs are in on the Spotlight blog, where you can see them in the larger format they deserve.  

We also had a guest post from Jessica Hagy: How to be Interesting on Facebook, which is an excerpt from her book How to Be Interesting: (In 10 Simple Steps).  

The Pee-Mobile was a contribution from Uncle John's Bathroom Reader.

The Annals of Improbable Research gave us Pringles in Your Ear.

And 50 Shades of Prey: Poison Dart Frogs came from mental_floss magazine.

We only had one BRI Brainteaser this week, Book on the Floor. We'll have more if I can find some really good ones.

Have you been over to our sub-blog Lifestyles of the Cute and Cuddly lately? Our featured pets from Neatoramanauts this week include Trekker and the siblings Buster and Stella (shown). Your dog, cat, goat, bunny, or other pet can be the featured pet, too: just send us a picture at tips@neatorama.com and then watch for your sweetie on Lifestyles of the Cute and Cuddly!

In the What Is It Game, the mystery object is a rock, but despite many guesses, the What Is It? blog was never able to ascertain anything else about it, which means there is no correct answer this week. So… we decided to pick two of the funniest answers! StilesJM declared it to be C-3PO's kidney stone, which is certainly good for a t-shirt! And Anthony Zaragoza told a great story that's a winner:

A deadline was fast approaching for Clark Kent. But during his speed-typing, the IBM Selectric typewriter ball had a meltdown from the friction. The story that would have exposed the insidious 4-H organization was never published.

See the answers to the rest of the mystery items of the week at the What Is It? blog.

The post with the most comments this week was (by far) Abercrombie & Fitch: No Fat Women, Please! It was followed by Your State's Highest-Paid Employee and Robinsons Ad.

The comments of the week have to go to the folks who visit at the Neatoramanauts Facebook page. You were asked to identify the place in this picture. Great comments ensued! Bill Hunt said, "The seldom visited island of Photoshoppio." Other folks said it was Photoshop Island, Photopia, Palm of Palms, Ray Harryhausen's house, and "a handy place to live."

The most popular post of the week was Vertical Horizon. Coming in second was Mystery of the Atacama Humanoid Solved, and Words That Survived Since the Ice Age was third.

The most emailed post was Science-Based 7 Minute Exercise, which set some kind of record, I think. Then there was a three-way tie between Bluth's Original Frozen Banana Stand, The Colorful Life of Antonia Larroux and Beth for second place.

The post with the most ♥s was Hyperbole and A Half Returns (no surprise there), followed by Riker Sits Down and Adorable Baby Duck Trying to Stay Awake.

May I remind you that the NeatoShop is the perfect place to find gifts for graduates? Get him or her something that will commemorate this auspicious occasion in a way they'll always remember! And if you want to stock up on gifts for future occasions, the NeatoShop has a Clearance Sale going on right now!

(Video Link)

Yes, there is a problem in the Falcon's presentation in this mod. Don't call attention to it, but don't look like you're trying to avoid attention.

Aaraarrrgh?

I don't know. Fly casual.

Link -via Kotaku

Image: STRUCTUREmag

I would've guessed "they ran out of stones," but structural engineer Peter James arrived at a very different answer when pondering why ancient Egyptians stopped building pyramids. Turns out, these pyramids were too perfect and that's the ironic basis for their structural instability:

So what was causing the crumbling? James presents a new explanation: thermal movement -- that is to say the expansion and contraction of the limestone with temperature fluctuations -- has ground down the rocks and shifted their positions.

He estimates that the motion can amount to 1¼ inches per 328 feet. As the stones move, dust and sand would fall from the stones and fill in the spaces between them. The spaces into which they could contract at night would shrink, and over time they would be pushed out of position. "Multiply this endless movement by the number of days that the pyramid has been erected and you have the reason why all the outer casing has moved to the extremities, where it has buckled or displaced against blocks moving in the opposite direction and then fallen off," James writes. "It may then have been picked up by opportunists and removed from the site.?"

Problem was, as ancient Egyptians became better at constructing pyramids, the voids between the stones disappeared and the structure were less able to withstand the thermal expansion and contraction of the limestone.

Rebecca J. Rosen of The Atlantic explains: Link

(YouTube link)

The premise is one that we've all discussed at one time or another: you can make anything exciting if you have the proper dramatic music and a narration by Mike Rowe. To put this trope to the test, Rowe has started a series called Mike Rowe My Life. In the first episode, Janice McMillan's video of a family reunion group photo session is judged to be exceedingly dull to anyone who wasn't there. Can Rowe make it exciting? Watch and see. Find out more about how it's done in a making-of video. -via Viral Viral Videos

Starfish Hair Clip

Are you looking for a fun and easy way to release your inner mermaid? You need the Starfish Hair Clip from the NeatoShop. This fantastic hair accessory is designed to look like an actual sea star. 

The Starfish Hair Clip is handmade by local artisans. It is made out of lightweight resin and features beautiful hand-painted details. No two are exactly alike. 

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Apparel & Accessories. 

Link

Before they went to college, the Disney princesses went to their high school proms. DeviantART member spicysteweddemon was on the scene to take pictures of the couples. You can view them all at the link.

Link | Artist's Gallery

Nothing like a good incentive to keep an eye on your children! The caption at Shorpy reads, "Yes, Billy was lost. But he was also plump and juicy!" This photo was taken at the National Zoo in Washington in 1943. Well, it was wartime, and Llion Chow was probably in short supply. Link -via TYWKIWDBI

Allegedly, this photo was shot in an Uwajimaya, an Asian grocery store chain in Seattle. I think I'll try something safer, such as the chicken.

Link

(Photo: unknown)

(YouTube link)

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield is leaving the ISS Monday after five months of sending us wonderful videos, photographs, and Tweets from space. His farewell musical performance is a custom version of "Space Oddity." -Thanks, Mike G!

Never misplace your lunch again! Wear it instead. Tumbler blogger Jaya blogged about how her friend made a stylish jacket out of Ziploc bags. Best of all, the jacket still functions to carry food in an airtight seal! Link - via Geekologie

The brother and sister cooking duo Bob and Carlene Deutscher prepared a luxurious Mother's Day breakfast. Their crêpe batter contains cocoa and apple cider and the filling has strawberries and heavy cream. This is how breakfast should be on every day of the week!

Link -via Tasteologie

(YouTube link)

Here be dragons, but the kitten doesn't know what they are about. He learned a little lesson, though: while you are focusing on the moving animal, be aware that there may also be one that's not moving …yet. -via Arbroath

Lilly Allen, 10, was playing hopscotch outside her home in Kent, England, when she was approached by police officers that her chalk drawings on the public pavement was criminal:

[Lilly's father Allen] told the tabloid newspaper: “Two policemen in a car drove up to her and said it was illegal to draw on the floor as it was criminal damage. "I am absolutely seething they have done this."

After the public blowback, the coppers are in retreat:

A Kent Police spokesman said in a statement: "We are trying to trace the officers, who are reported to have made this comment. "From the circumstances described, it would not appear to have been necessary to advise the young girl that chalking a hopscotch grid may be criminal damage and illegal."

Link

The Feel Seating System Deluxe is the ultimate office chair. It's a sheet of 120 fabric balls linked with elastic strands. Buckles on the edges let the user reconfigure the shape. When your co-workers see you in this chair, they'll look at you in a new way--especially after you tell them that it cost you $7,950.

Link -via Core77

Psst! Don't panic, but you've got sleeper agents inside of you: viruses that have integrated their genome into human DNA. No big deal, you say, so what if we've got a few hitchhiking genes in our genome? Actually, there's quite a bit of them:

Scientists have identified 100,000 pieces of retrovirus DNA in our genes, making up eight percent of the human genome. That’s a huge portion of our DNA when you consider that protein coding genes make up just over one percent of the genome.

Carl Zimmer of The Loom blog over at National Geographic explains how one such viral gene could be awaken (by infection by HIV, for example) after lying dormant for six million years in our DNA:

Markovitz and his colleagues analyzed the sequence of the virus genes they found in the patients with HIV. The genes belonged to a family of endogenous retroviruses called HERV-K, but they were not quite like any known HERV-K virus previously found.

The Michigan scientists wondered if this new HERV-K virus was hidden in the human genome. They checked the most complete draft of the human genome and couldn’t find a match. They knew that the human genome sequence was only about 95% finished, so they turned instead to the chimpanzee genome, on the off chance that the virus had infected the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees over six million years ago. Bingo: a single copy of the virus turned up in the chimp genome. They dubbed it K111.

Having found this match, the scientists decided to return to the human genome and search for K111. They isolated DNA from their HIV patients, as well as from healthy people. They then split apart the two strands of the DNA and added a short piece of DNA that would bind to K111, should it be lurking there. In all 189 of their subjects, the scientists found the virus’s DNA.

Gollum & Samwise Salt & Pepper Shakers

Are you on a quest to find for a truly precious salt and pepper shaker set for your kitchen table? Stop fretting! Come forth and witness the Gollum & Samwise Salt & Pepper Shaker set from the NeatoShop. This amazing glazed ceramic set features Gollum and Samwise from the Lord of the Rings. Magnets hold the two shakers together.   

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Salt & Pepper Shakers and fantastic Lord of the Rings items. 

Link

A guy forgot two pizzas in the oven and didn't open the appliance again for two weeks. What resulted might supply penicillin for an entire small country. I can't help but believe alcohol or marijuana may have been involved. The questions raised:

1. Who puts two pizzas in an oven at once?

2. Why didn't he remove the pizzas from the oven when he turned the oven off? Lack of potholders?

3. Why does one even have an oven if you aren't going to use it any more often than once in two weeks?

Link -via Boing Boing

Amirite, moms?

Happy Mother's Day to all the wonderful Mothers, Grandmothers, Aunts, and Mother Figures. May your Mother's Day be filled with love, laughter,

wonderful handmade cards,

and gifts.

May you also be lucky enough to have some sweet, sweet person clean all the goo off the inside of your minivan.   

A special thank you goes out to all the hardworking preschool and elementary school teachers who help make Mother's Day so special for us Moms. I applaud your creativity, patience, and follow-through. Without you my scrapbook would be empty. 

A new course to be offered this fall at New College Nottingham in England will lead students to a two-year degree in Heavy Metal. The school says it was developed in response to student demand.

Students will learn how to compose and perform heavy metal songs.

The course, which is due to start in September, will also include modules on the music business, the history of heavy metal and its role in films and video games.

In the students' second year, they will perform on tour at venues around the country.
A female student in a heavy metal band. The college says the degree will be academically rigorous

"It's a degree, so it will be academically rigorous," said Mr Maloy.

"In the past, heavy metal has not been taken seriously and is seen as lacking academic credibility when compared with other genres such as jazz and classical music. But that's just a cultural construction."

Upon completion of the foundation degree, students can opt to continue their studies in music for a third year at the college and get a full degree awarded by Nottingham Trent University, which has accredited the course.

Though some say the degree is a waste of time, others point out that employers tend to cull stacks of job applicants by rejecting anyone without a college degree of some sort. Link -via Arbroath

Is it hard to play a piano? I think I could do a good job on Björn Perborg's variant. It has just five keys and one pedal. Now let's try to play "Galope-Marche."

Link -via Yababoon

Via Like Cool and Holy Kaw

Nurse, cut these truffle intestines out and serve them up to those hungry partiers, STAT!

Annabel de Vetten of Conjurer's Kitchen (previously on Neatorama) created this creepy abdominal surgery cake, which is adorned with real surgical tools like hemostats and scalpels to add to the realism.

(YouTube link)

For Mothers Day, HooplaHa put together a sweet compilation of people finding out that they're going to be grandparents. -via Jezebel

According to several redditors, this photo shows how many people in India queue: very close together. Redditor iwsfutcmd shares a story:

This was a problem when I was travelling in India.

I'm very understanding of other cultures' ideas about personal space and whatnot, but there's a logistical problem:

I'm standing in line for a train ticket, wearing my huge traveller's backpack that's about 3/4 my size. I'm pressed up against the man in front of me (as custom dictates). Man behind me is pressed up against my backpack (again, as custom dictates). I turn sideways to look at something, man behind me moves forward to close the gap made by my backpack vacating precious line space (as custom dictates).

I turn back to how I was, accidentally smashing man behind me with 25 kilos of pain.

"Oh my god, jesus, I'm sorry!"

I turn to help him up, and as I do so, men in line fill gap left by my backpack.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

A 2010 New York Times article describes queuing practice in India:

There is a feline quality to standing in Indian lines. Certain parts of the man behind you — you don’t know which — brush against you in a kind of public square spooning, the better to repel cutters. (Women do less touching.) Still, this is no deterrent to cutters. They hover near the line’s middle, holding papers, looking lost in a practiced way, then slip in somewhere close to the front. When confronted, their refrain is predictable: “Oh, I didn’t see the line.”

But in a churning India, the line has new resilience. Businesses are becoming vigilant about enforcing queues, and a growing middle class, more well-off and less survivalist, is often less eager to cut. In this way, India’s experience seems to feed into a tradition of seeing line etiquette as a marker of modernity, of graduating from chaos to order, whims to rules, brutality to gentility, scarcity to abundance.

What queuing customs have you encountered?

Link -via reddit

(Photo: unknown)

Teen Raymond Walter doesn't expect to live long because he has Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, a genetic disease that causes muscles to waste away. That's why, he said, that he's been on an accelerated course to accomplish as much as he can with his life. Starting with graduating from college with 3 degrees at 18 years of age:

“I don’t anticipate living as long as usual,” Raymond said. “In some respects, there is a lot of pressure to get as much done as I can. I don’t waste time. I skipped three years of grade school and to some extent I’ve continued my acceleration since I reached the university level. I finished my undergraduate economics course work in my freshman year. So as a sophomore I began to take graduate courses.”

Raymond is continuing his studies by pursuing two separate doctoral degrees in math and physics. Simultaneously, of course.

University of Arkansas Newswire has the full story: Link - via io9

When 30-year-old Stephen got married, he wanted a wedding cake based on old school games. Australian cake maker Nicole stepped up to the console and delivered! Check it out: Link - via Technabob

(YouTube link)

A Soyuz capsule brought Commander Chris Hadfield and Flight Engineers Tom Marshburn and Roman Romanenko back from the ISS last night, landing in Kazakhstan. It was Hadfield's first Soyuz landing, as his previous space flights were on the shuttle. The three men of Expedition 35 had been in space for almost five months.

Bob McDonald, the host of CBC Radio's Quirks & Quarks, said the capsule and its crew go through a rapid deceleration as they hurtle back to Earth.

"When they hit the air, they're like a stone hitting water. They're travelling more than 20,000 kilometres an hour.…They have to get rid of all that speed, and they do that just with friction of the air and parachutes."

When the capsule was about 10.7 kilometres high, its parachutes deployed, NASA mission control said. About one second prior to touchdown, two sets of three small engines on the bottom of the Soyuz capsule fired to slow its rate of descent and soften the landing.

After the touchdown, ground crew helped Hadfield and his colleagues out of the Soyuz and put them in chairs so they can begin to re-adapt to gravity.

"[Hadfield's] head is going to feel like a cannonball, his arms are going to feel like logs," McDonald said. "Every time he turns his head the world is going to seem to turn sideways, he's going to get dizzy."

The news story has a much longer video on the landing. Link

Safely home - back on Earth, happily readapting to the heavy pull of gravity. Wonderful to smell and feel Spring.

— Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) May 14, 2013

Pop Chart Lab offers this chart of cocktails featured in your favorite stories as a fine art print. There are 49 recipes in all, as drunk by James Bond, Hunter S. Thompson, Ebenezer Scrooge, Rocky Balboa, Zaphod Beeblebrox, Jay Gatsy, and more.

Browse the whole thing in full size size at the site. Link -via Nag on the Lake

The anime fight scene photo meme is SO last month. The new hotness in Japan's anime-based photo meme is pretending to to be a giant toying with puny humans. The forced perspective photography trick meme is based on the manga Attack on Titan, which tells the story of a city being attacked by human-eating giants.

Brian Ashcraft of Kotaku has the scoop: Link

The mark the 40th anniversary of the release of Cup Noodles's curry flavors, Nissin is releasing a set of little curry-themed model Gundams armed with tea kettles:

The three kits included in the promotion are 1/380 scale, so we're looking at maybe 2.5-3" in height. Included in three different flavors are the RX-78-2 Gundam, Char's Gelgoog and the classic Zaku II. Each of the kits are done in clear plastic and their weapon of choice is a tea kettle. As much as heating water with a beam saber makes sense, the kits will have tea kettles. 

Link -via Mecha Melissa

(Images: Cup Noodle)

(YouTube link)

A case of sour grapes? Since we can't do it, it must be no good! But when you hear the reasons that time travel can be problematic even if it were possible, you'll see that the speed and direction of time is just fine the way it is. -via UpRoxx

Where have all the jobs gone? Computer scientist, and many people say, visionary, Jaron Lanier (he supposedly coined the term "virtual reality" when he helped pioneer the field), has found the culprit: the Internet.

In his new book Who Owns the Future? Jaron explains why the Internet is destroying the middle class by killing jobs, wealth (except for the lucky few) and even - gasp - democracy itself:

“Here’s a current example of the challenge we face,” he writes in the book’s prelude: “At the height of its power, the photography company Kodak employed more than 14,000 people and was worth $28 billion. They even invented the first digital camera. But today Kodak is bankrupt, and the new face of digital photography has become Instagram. When Instagram was sold to Facebook for a billion dollars in 2012, it employed only 13 people. Where did all those jobs disappear? And what happened to the wealth that all those middle-class jobs created?” [...]

So Kodak has 140,000 really good middle-class employees, and Instagram has 13 employees, period. You have this intense concentration of the formal benefits, and that winner-take-all feeling is not just for the people who are on the computers but also from the people who are using them. So there’s this tiny token number of people who will get by from using YouTube or Kickstarter, and everybody else lives on hope. There’s not a middle-class hump. It’s an all-or-nothing society.

Read more in this interview with Scott Timberg of Salon: Link (Image: My Dream is to cut all ties with civilization but still be on the Internet)

Seulbi Kim, a student at the Rhode Island School of Design, offers this one-handed solution to transporting food from your local burger joint. She writes:

The carrier will reduce the volume by about 50% compared to that today because I tried to simplify the design and minimize the amount of paper used with a hook for French fries, a sleeve for a burger, and a hole for soda drink, which causes people to carry it easier, and more materials saving. It is one-handed, convenient, practical, and compact, so your hands can be more free by holding all in one.

Link -via Foodbeast | Designer's Website

Spider-Man Collapsible Water Bottle

Are your spider instincts telling you that you need to get hydrated? Let the Spider-Man Collapsible Water Bottle from the NeatoShop leap into action. This 12 oz. plastic water bottle is collapsible so that you can fold it up and slip it into your spider suit when you are all done.

The Spider-Man Collapsible Water Bottle is BPA free, lightweight, and durable. It features a convenient keychain hook. 

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Water Bottles and fantastic Spider-Man items. 

Link

In 1968, Howard Johnsons produced a children's menu and a comic book in conjunction with the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. The comic explains the movie to Debbie and Robin, who are attending the premiere. It would have been nice if there had been a Howard Johnsons where I lived, because I couldn't make heads or tails out of the most of the movie. At the end of the comic, the children are acting like they don't want to give away the ending, but they are actually hiding the fact that they didn't understand a bit of it. Read the whole comic at Dreams of Space. Link -via Metafilter

The following is an excerpt from The Resurrectionist: The Lost Work of Dr. Spencer Black
by E.B. Hudspeth

Philadelphia, the late 1870s. Doctor Spencer Black, a son of a grave robber and a gifted surgeon, had a revelation: what if mythological creatures like mermaids, minotaurs, and satyrs were, in fact, evolutionary ancestors of humankind? The good doctor dedicated his life studying the anatomy of such beasts, until he mysteriously disappeared years later, leaving only a body of work called The Codex Extinct Animalia, detailing the anatomical structures of mythological beasts.

In the first half of the sci-fi/fantasy book The Resurrectionist, author and illustrator E.B. Hudspeth, retold the fictional biography of Dr. Spencer Black - beginning from his humble childhood, medical training, travel with the carnivals, and his mysterious disappearance. In the later half, Hudspeth included the meticulous anatomical drawings of mythological creatures.

If you love Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and the gorgeous anatomical drawings of Gray's Anatomy, The Resurrectionist is the book for you.

Publisher Quirk Books has graciously supplied a sample of the marvelous illustrations you'll see in book:

Many details regarding the heraldry of the sphinx are still unknown. These creatures varied widely throughout the African continent. In Egypt, there are great statues of this animal - the sphinx sol, the protector and scourge of Ra, the sun god. Sphinxes are shown bearing a ram's head (a criosphinx) or a goat's head. These species are typically depicted without wings; I suspect that, like many flightless birds, the sphinx lost its need for flight because of geographical isolation. This evolution likely occurred before the animal's arrival in Egypt or Africa; however, I cannot determine whence it originated.

The famed sphinx of Thebes appears strikingly similar to the specimen in my record. Though few in number, the species had a developed human mind with an advanced intellect; they were more than likely fierce and successful predators.

Philadelphia. The late 1870s. A city of cobblestone sidewalks and horse-drawn carriages. Home to the famous anatomist and surgeon Dr. Spencer Black. The son of a “resurrectionist” (aka grave robber), Dr. Black studied at Philadelphia’s esteemed Academy of Medicine, where he develops an unconventional hypothesis: What if the world’s most celebrated mythological beasts—mermaids, minotaurs, and satyrs— were in fact the evolutionary ancestors of humankind?

The Resurrectionist offers two extraordinary books in one. The first is a fictional biography of Dr. Spencer Black, from his humble beginnings to the mysterious disappearance at the end of his life. The second book is Black’s magnum opus: The Codex Extinct Animalia, a Gray’s Anatomy for mythological beasts—dragons, centaurs, Pegasus, Cerberus—all rendered in meticulously detailed black-and-white anatomical illustrations. You need only look at these images to realize they are the work of a madman. The Resurrectionist tells his story.

E. B. HUDSPETH is an artist and author living in New Jersey. This is his first book.

Get it from The Resurrectionist official webpage | E.B. Hudspeth's official website

View more Neatorama Book Excerpts | Authors & Publishers: Get your books reviewed on Neatorama. Contact us for details.

Disney has crowned Merida, the heroine of the 2012 Disney/Pixar movie Brave, as the 11th official "Disney Princess" In the process, Merida has undergone an image makeover to better fit in with the group. Her dress has been upgraded, her waist thinned, she now wears makeup, and her hair looks less wild and more, um, "expensive." Brenda Chapman, the creator and co-director of Brave, does not like the makeover one bit.

Chapman fumed. "When little girls say they like it because it's more sparkly, that's all fine and good but, subconsciously, they are soaking in the sexy 'come hither' look and the skinny aspect of the new version. It's horrible! Merida was created to break that mold — to give young girls a better, stronger role model, a more attainable role model, something of substance, not just a pretty face that waits around for romance."

Chapman, the first woman to win an Academy Award for an animated feature, said she has added her name to a petition with more than 50,000 signatures that has gone viral on the female empowerment website "A Mighty Girl," joining other mothers outraged by Disney's sexualization of her headstrong young Scottish heroine, an expert archer with a head of wild, curly red hair and a mind of her own.

Chapman had modeled the character after her 13-year-old daughter Emma, intending her as a strong independent role model for little girls. Link -via reddit

POLL: What do think of Merida's new look?

• Disappointing. Go back to the original!
• Looks good to me, like a princess should.
• I don't see that much difference; she just grew up.
• I honestly don't care.

So this is what it feels like to be able to control the rain. The Rain Room, an art installation by rAndom International, is a large room where it rains indoor. The trick is that cameras detect the visitors' positions to turn off the individual rain strems directly overhead. The result is quite magical: you can walk through pouring rain without getting wet, no umbrellas required.

The art installation, which made its splash at the Barbican in London, is now coming to the MoMA in New York. If you can't make it, check out the video clip below:

America doesn't have many roundabouts because even if you understand how one works, you have to worry about other drivers who don't. But they are a fact of life in Britain. The ultimate roundabout is this one in Swindon that is actually a cluster of roundabouts in one intersection.  

The Magic Roundabout in Swindon, England, constructed in 1972, is the most brilliant and at the same time, the most confusing roundabout ever built. The roundabout, named after the popular children's television series by the same name, is located near the County Ground and consists of five mini-roundabouts arranged in a circle. At first sight, it might appear to confuse or amuse new visitors and certainly baffle tourists but once you understand how the roundabout works you will realize how revolutionary the idea is.

Other pictures and diagrams at Amusing Planet may help you parse out what is supposed to happen. Keep in mind that driving on the  left side of the road is the correct thing to do in this location. Link -via the Presurfer

(Image credit: Google Earth)

Redditor mystery_smelly_feet spent $2,000 and 2 months of work building this magnificent arcade cabinet that looks like a classic Nintendo Entertainment System. It has a PC inside with emulators that permit him to play the old games.

Link -via Technabob

This bird is Nyctibius griseus, or the common Potoo. The nocturnal bird of Central and South America is a master of camouflage, but you'd never know it by looking at those crazy eyes. See more pictures of this funny-looking bird at imgur. Link -via reddit

(Image credit: Carlos Gussoni)

(Video Link)

It's not enough to just spoon in their cereal. The stars of Star Wars have to stay in character while eating. Here's a funny video by Teddie Films, maker of Star Wars parodies of Rebecca Black's "Friday" and Gotye's "The Star Wars I Used to Know."

-via Foodiggity

Storm Neon Candy Trooper by DarkChoocoolat

w00t! We'd like to welcome a new T-shirt artist to the NeatoShop. Check out the nifty Tees by French designer Florent Rousseau AKA DarkChoocoolat (why, my favorite kind of snack!), visit his Facebook page, then head on over to the NeatoShop to get the t-shirts: Link

Storm Candy Trooper	Octosushi	Keep Calm Dharma	Banana Trap

View more T-shirt designs by DarkChoocoolat | Funny T-shirts

P.S. Are you a T-shirt designer? Get your tees listed on the NeatoShop and get featured here - we've got a great profit sharing program for professional artists and illustrators. Email us to find out how!

In today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss, you'll find out how much you really recall about your favorite sitcoms of the past. Sure, you know who Mr. Belvedere was, but do you know in what town the show was set? You'll have to know that for 15 different shows to ace this quiz! I only scored 47%, but I knew all the right settings of the shows I actually watched. Link

Hello Kitty Metal Studded Handbag

Attention Hello Kitty fans! Are you on the prowl for the purr-fect handbag? You need the Hello Kitty Metal Studded Handbag from the NeatoShop this edgy, faux patent leather bag is in the shape of Hello Kitty's Head. The purse features a metal studded front and bow. A chain and faux patent leather handle finish off the look.  

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more fantastic Hello Kitty items and fun Bags & Totes. 

Link

It has taken more than two years of work, but Detroit, the city in which the movie RoboCop takes place, will finally get a statue of its favorite son:

The 10-foot tall statue that pays homage to a crime-fighting cyborg from a 1980s action film based in Detroit has been put together and is ready to head to back to the Motor City. [...]

The fundraising effort to build the monument raised $67,436 through 2,718 backers about two years ago. So far, that funding has been enough to cover the cost of the monument's construction, though organizers have not ruled out the need for an additional round of fundraising or a corporate partnership as the project moves further along.

The effort to build a Robocop statue in Detroit began in 2011 when a Massachusetts resident posted a Twitter message to Detroit Mayor Dave Bing, saying that "Philadelphia has a statue of Rocky & Robocop would kick Rocky's butt. He's a GREAT ambassador for Detroit."

Mayor Bing responded to the Tweet by saying, "There are not any plans to erect a statue to Robocop. Thank you for the suggestion."

Link -via Jalopnik

(Photo: Imagination Station Detroit)

When I was a kid, my introduction to classical music was via Bugs Bunny cartoons. That's where I first experienced composers like Wagner ("Kill the Rabbit!") and Rossini ("Although your face looks like it might have gone through a machine..."). And who can forget Michigan J. Frog's rendition of Rossini's "Largo al Factotum?" ("La, la-la-la-la-la-la LA la!")

For better or worse, kids aren't watching the old WB cartoons like they used to. Maybe they're not PC enough or look too faded next to the awesomeness of The Clone Wars. But kids still need to be exposed to classical music in a way that's accessible. That's why I recently took my son to an evening of John Williams's music, conducted by the maestro himself.

Wow!

Besides the fun atmosphere (like a mini-Comic-Con, people were all decked out in Star Wars, Indiana Jones and Superman garb), my son really enjoyed watching and listening to the big orchestra play all his favorites: "Princess Leia's Theme,"  "The Imperial March," "Luke's Theme," and also the theme from E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.

Having studied classical music in college, I was able to give him special insight and explain which instruments he should watch as different sections of the orchestra brought forth different parts of the themes. If a similar concert comes to your town, I strongly recommend it as a great intro to the symphony orchestra.

Two great things have happened since the concert:

First, I notice when I'm driving him to school in the morning and have the local classical station on the radio, he'll call out which instruments he hears playing. And while not always correct, at least we're not listening to The Backyardigans and Yo Gabba Gabba every day now.

But even better, once, on the way to school, the radio was playing "Habanera" from Georges Bizet's opera Carmen and my son called out: "Hey dad! It's the song from Up!" Indeed it was! If you remember the good folks at Pixar used it extremely effectively when Mr. Fredricksen was coming down the stairlift to get to the main floor of the house.

It doesn't get much better than that! Pixar will be his WB.

(YouTube Link)

Would you sing on TV for a free tank of gas? You would if you were as good as this couple who jumped at the offer! In other news, there was something worth watching on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. -via Uproxx

Continue reading to see part two.

(YouTube link)

All three of Patrick Connan's movie posters that use chess pieces to tell Tolkien's story are excellent, but I especially like the arrangement for Fellowship. Who would have thought that a mere pawn would bear the One Ring and ensure its destruction?

Link -via Geek Art

In nations that were under Hitler's thumb during World War II, it was often difficult to know anyone's actual allegiance. There were those who truly believed in the Nazi cause, others who knew which way the wind blew, and some who put on a Nazi face while secretly fighting for the Allied cause. In the week between Hitler's death and VE Day, these different allegiances turned on each other as Allied forces swept in. The Last Battle is the story of one fight in World War II that you won't find in history textbooks.

Here are the basic facts: on 5 May 1945—five days after Hitler’s suicide—three Sherman tanks from the 23rd Tank Battalion of the U.S. 12th Armored Division under the command of Capt. John C. ‘Jack’ Lee Jr., liberated an Austrian castle called Schloss Itter in the Tyrol, a special prison that housed various French VIPs, including the ex-prime ministers Paul Reynaud and Eduard Daladier and former commanders-in-chief Generals Maxime Weygand and Paul Gamelin, amongst several others. Yet when the units of the veteran 17th Waffen-SS Panzer Grenadier Division arrived to recapture the castle and execute the prisoners, Lee’s beleaguered and outnumbered men were joined by anti-Nazi German soldiers of the Wehrmacht, as well as some of the extremely feisty wives and girlfriends of the (needless-to-say hitherto bickering) French VIPs, and together they fought off some of the best crack troops of the Third Reich. Steven Spielberg, how did you miss this story?

You can read the story in an article at The Daily Beast, as excerpted from Stephen Harding's new book The Last Battle: When U.S. and German Soldiers Joined Forces in the Waning Hours of World War II in Europe. Link

(Image credit: Svíčková)

This hardened criminal was apprehended on Oct. 17, 1893. The nefarious François Bertillon, aged 23 months, was nabbed for "gluttony, nibbling all the pears from a basket."

Parents of toddlers: you know how to use this photo. Keep it handy.

Link -via The Oddment Emporium

(Photo: Metropolitan Museum of Art)

The following is an article from Uncle John's Giant 10th Anniversary Bathroom Reader.

This article by Lisa Bannon, which appeared in the Wall Street Journal on October 24, 1995, tells the story of how a significant rumor was born. It's one of the best investigative pieces we've ever seen on the spread of an urban legend.

Anna Runge, a mother of eight, was so enamored of Walt Disney Co. that she owned stacks of its animated home videos, a Beauty and the Beast blanket and a Disney diaper bag. ''Disney was almost a member of the family,'' she said.

Until, that is, an acquaintance tipped her off to a startling rumor: The Magic Kingdom was sending obscene subliminal messages through some of its animated family films, including Aladdin, in which the handsome, young title character supposedly murmurs, sotto voce, ''All good teen-agers take off your clothes.''

''I felt as if I had entrusted my kids to pedophiles,'' says the Carthage, New York, homemaker, who promptly threw the videos into the garbage. ''It's like a toddler introduction to porn.''

A PERSISTANT RUMOR

By now, just about everyone has heard the rumors that so shocked Runge. Indeed, Disney catapulted into the headlines a few weeks ago on reports that there are subliminal sexual messages in three popular Disney videos: The Lion King and The Little Mermaid, as well as Aladdin. The charges were reported around the world; TV news shows broadcast the offending snippets in slow motion, among them a scene from The Lion King in which dust supposedly spells out the word ''sex.''

Disney denies inserting any subliminal messages. And the three allegedly obscene sequences are hardly crystal clear; even using the pause button on a videocassette recorder, viewers may debate whether they exist. Yet those sequences have quickly become the stuff of suburban myth, like the ''Paul is dead'' rumor from the heyday of the Beatles or the persistent allegations that Procter & Gamble Co.'s moon-and-stars logo symbolizes devil worship.

As the rumors spread, though, so did a common refrain: Where does this stuff come from?

In the case of Aladdin, the allegation crisscrossed the country, traveling mostly through conservative Christian circles and helped by, among others, Runge; a high-school biology class in Owensboro, Kentucky; an Iowa college student; and a traveling troupe of evangelical actors. It was passed on by some people who didn't believe it, by others who thought it was a joke, and by a Christian magazine that later -and apparently to no effect- retracted its story. At least two waves of the rumor swept the country, from very different starting points.

AN AVUNCULAR BISHOP

Most people probably first heard about the allegations in early September 1995, after the Associated Press ran a story saying a Christian group had identified the three subliminally smutty incidents. The article described the Aladdin and The Lion King scenes, as well as one in The Little Mermaid in which it said an avuncular bishop becomes noticeably aroused while presiding over a wedding ceremony. Disney quickly fired back. ''If somebody is seeing something, that's their perception. There's nothing there,'' said Rick Rhoades, a Disney spokesman. Aladdin's line is ''Scat, good tiger, take off and go,'' Disney said. The company maintains that Simba's dust is just that, dust. And Tom Sito, the animator who drew the Little Mermaid's purportedly aroused minister, said, ''If I wanted to put Satanic messages in a movie, you would see it. This is silly.''

The officiant in The Little Mermaid.

From another angle, it was obviously his knees.

AN INADVERTENT FIND

The Associated Press, as it turns out, didn't ferret out the story itself. It picked up the item from the Daily Press in Newport News, Virginia. The reporter on that story, Jim Stratton, himself stumbled on the allegations inadvertently. On a slow day at the end of August, Stratton, who now works for The Orlando Sentinel, was casually flipping through a copy of Communique, a biweekly newsletter published by the American Life League, an anti-abortion group based in Stafford, Virginia. He was struck by an article warning parents about a scene from The Lion King in which Simba, the cuddly lion star, stirs up a cloud of dust. ''Watch closely as the cloud floats off the screen,'' the newsletter instructed, ''and you can see the letters 'S-E-X.' ''

Bemused, Stratton called the league, where a spokeswoman told him about the illicit messages in Aladdin and The Little Mermaid. He decided to see for himself and gathered a dozen or so reporters around a newsroom TV to view The Lion King scene. They weren't convinced. ''We didn't make a final decision either way on what exactly people were seeing,'' he said. Still, he decided to write a breezy tongue-in-cheek article about all three incidents for his paper. ''We handled it lightly,'' he said.

Stratton's source for the story, the American Life League, meanwhile, hadn't actually found the alleged subliminal scenes itself, either. Its article was prompted by phone calls and letters from Christian groups. One of the callers had first read about the Aladdin allegation in the March issue of Movie Guide magazine, a Christian entertainment review based in Atlanta.

ALADDIN EXPOSED

In a story titled ''Aladdin Exposed,'' Movie Guide alleged that, in a scene on the palace balcony with love interest Princess Jasmine and her pet tiger, Aladdin murmurs the ''take off your clothes'' line. The article likened the line to allegedly demonic messages in some 1970s rock songs that can be heard only when the albums are played backward. The magazine urged ''moral Americans'' to write to Disney's chairman, Michael Eisner, asking him to remove the ''manipulative subliminal messages.''

(YouTube link)

Overlooked by the Movie Guide reader who repeated the allegations to the American Life League, though, was one important fact: Movie Guide later ran a retraction. After its piece ran, Movie Guide received a letter from Disney saying that the line was actually ''Scat, good tiger, take off and go.'' Movie Guide's publisher, Ted Baehr, took the video to a digital recording studio to decipher the questionable passage syllable by syllable. While the line is hard to understand, Movie Guide concluded, it ''falls short of the charge of subliminal viewer manipulation,'' as the newsletter put it in its July issue. Added Baehr: ''We messed up by not listening before.''

THE PLOT THICKENS

Movie Guide, in any case, hadn't ferreted out the alleged subliminal message on its own, either. Baehr said the publication received ''a flood of letters and calls complaining about Aladdin'' last December, January and February.

One of the letter writers was Gloria Ekins, Christian education director of First Christian Church in Newton, Iowa. ''I heard it from my daughter'' last winter, Ekins said. Her daughter Jenny, 17, heard it from her friend Jane Ford, a classmate at Newton Senior High School. Jane, in turn, first learned of the Aladdin message from her older brother, Matthew Ford, a college senior at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, Iowa.

Ford would prove to be one of the central figures in the Aladdin saga: He heard the line on his own. The college student, who works part time at a local video store, is an electronic-media major who hopes to go into the movie business. A self-confessed movie buff, he happened to be watching Aladdin one day last January when he stumbled across the alleged line. He had no moral or religious purpose in spreading the word about it. He simply thought it was funny...

''We watch movies to try to find mistakes all the time. Like, there's a car in the background of Maverick when Mel Gibson is talking to the Indians. And if you look in the foreground of First Knight when the horses are charging into battle, you see tracks from a car,'' he said.

''We were all sitting around the dorm back in January watching Aladdin, and I couldn't figure out something he was saying,'' Ford recalled. ''I said, 'Rewind that,' and then we heard it.'' He adds, "My friends think it's funny because it's a Disney movie." Months later, when the Aladdin line showed up on the national news, Ford never imagined he helped start it all. ''When I saw the news,'' he said, ''I just thought I wasn't the only one who noticed it.''

A SECOND WAVE

In fact, almost a year earlier, in the spring of 1994, another teen-ager did notice the supposedly salacious line -and he started a separate wave of the rumor that also ended up tearing through Christian circles. Jon Wood, now a 16-year-old sophomore at Green Mountain Senior High School in Lakewood, Colorado, said he was watching his younger sister's new copy of the video when he ''heard a whisper.'' He added, ''It was weird, I just felt like something was wrong. I heard something in the background and rewound it, and I just heard it.''

Jon, who said he was ''shocked'' by the line, immediately called his 16-year-old brother, Jake, into the room to show him, too. A few weeks later, the boys showed it to their aunt, Chris Leach, of nearby Fort Collins, Colorado, who had just bought the video for her own five children.

Leach, whose husband is a pastor, passed the word on to a friend from religious circles, Glen Lee, who at the time was the youth pastor at Calvary Temple Assembly of God in Owensboro, Kentucky. Lee told a neighbor, Becky Tomes.

Tomes, the mother of two toddlers, listened to the tape in June 1994 with her husband, but ''we didn't really hear it,'' she said. That didn't stop her, though, from spreading the rumor to another friend, Sheryl Arnold, who listened for herself and decided that, no doubt about it, it was indeed an obscene subliminal message. ''We have surround-sound TV,'' she explained. ''And when I listened to it, it was very clear.''

Arnold told a friend of hers from church, Eva Sturgeon, a Pentecostal singer at Calvary Temple. After church one day, Sturgeon passed the word to her brother's girlfriend, Casey Ranson, now a junior at Apollo High School, a public school in Owensboro. Intrigued, Casey brought the Aladdin cassette into school last winter and played it for her English and biology classes. ''Nobody believed me when I told them, so I brought it to school and when I played it, they heard it,'' Casey says.

SOME SKEPTICISM

Casey herself told, among others, a classmate named Whitney Underhill, who said with some skepticism, ''The more I listen to it, it doesn't sound like 'take off your clothes.' It drops off and is hard to understand.'' But Whitney repeated the tale to a friend of hers, Johnny Henderson, who at the time was a senior at Owensboro Catholic High School. He told schoolmate Courtney Lindow, who in turn told classmate Lauren Hayden.

Lauren proved to be a providential choice. Her father, P.J. Hayden, is principal of a Catholic elementary school in Owensboro, St. Angela Merici elementary. Lauren told him the tale, and Hayden promptly spread the word among his school's parents, showing the Aladdin scene at parent-teacher meetings. "I know a lot of our parents are concerned about subliminal messages," Mr. Hayden says. "I tell them, monitor [Disney movies] like you would anything else. The Disney name is not as …clean as we thought it was."

Among the parents he alerted was Lisa Bivens, who has three daughters. On a February afternoon, she took her children to a local church to see a performance by Radix, a traveling evangelical troupe of performers based in Lincoln, Nebraska, that uses song and dance to bring home biblical stories and tell morality tales. After the show, Bivens mentioned the Aladdin episode to the troupe's leader, 30-year-old Doug Barry. In May, Barry and Radix traveled to tiny Carthage, New York, 45 minutes from the Canadian border, for another performance. Among the audience members was Runge, the mother of eight. They spoke together later at a brunch, and as talk turned to the dangers of sex and violence in the media, he repeated the Aladdin tale, throwing in another allegation he had heard from a teen-ager who wrote to him, about the supposed ''S-E-X'' in The Lion King.

IT SMELLS "PERVERT"

Runge was furious -and determined to do something about it. Over the summer, she began calling Christian organizations and conservative groups, from Pat Robertson to Phyllis Schlafly. She hit pay dirt when she reached the American Life League, which politely thanked her for passing on the Aladdin allegation -it had already heard about that one from Movie Guide readers- but which promptly published the article about The Lion King that led to the Associated Press story that started the avalanche of unwanted publicity for Disney.

No matter that Runge wasn't even sure initially that all the allegations were true. ''I really couldn't see The Lion King one myself,'' she said, ''until my teen-agers traced it for me on the screen.'' No matter that her source, Barry of Radix, now said he isn't convinced himself about all the allegations. ''I'm not sure about The Little Mermaid,'' he said. Nor does it concern Runge that Movie Guide, after spreading the Aladdin rumor, has since retracted its story.

''It may be Disney,'' Runge explained. ''But it still smells 'pervert' to me.''

_____________________________

Reprinted with permission from Uncle John's Giant 10th Anniversary Bathroom Reader, which comes packed with 504 pages of great stories.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you'll love the Bathroom Reader Institute's books - check 'em out!

We all dream and wish for the best. We all dream about learning a new language, starting an online business, or just getting better at something simple. We dream and we imagine. We look for answers. Yet we rarely ever take action. We just keep on imagining how much better life would be like. We Google random things and spend hours on Wikipedia.

Today’s not about dreaming. It’s about doing. We conquered our fears last week. This week we’re going to build some habits.

Have you been building any new habits?

"Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going." — Jim Ryun

Have you tried something new lately?

This year I’ve been entering into runs and working on my Spanish.

On May 5th, I did my first 5k run ever. Since it’s Toronto, the temperature was naturally unseasonably high. It was boiling. I was burning up in the sun and finished the run with a tan. The truth was that I struggled with the run. It was way too hot and I wasn’t ready for it. Well, to be fair, I didn’t practise at all. I wanted to prove that if you train your mind, your body will follow.

I was in agonizing pain for the next week. I tweaked my foot. The problem was that I signed up for a 10k run on May 12th.

So May 12th rolls around. This time the temperature was unseasonably cold. It was almost at freezing. It was also very early in the morning. My Sunday morning alarm was at the time that I usually go to sleep on a Saturday night. I don’t know what got into me this time, but I just ran. I managed to finish the 10k in 58 minutes. I never stopped once. Well I did fall down, but I wiped the blood off and got right back up.

My first two runs are now in the books.

Long story short: it’s never too late to work on something new!

As you may know by now, I’m a huge fan of the work of Seth Godin. I love to read all kinds of work and Godin happens to be at the top of this list.

Godin mentions the habits of successful artists in The Icarus Deception…

What habits are common to all of those on cool journeys living life on their own terms?

• Learn to sell what you’ve made.
• Say thank you in writing.
• Speak in public.
• Fail often.
• See the world as it is.
• Make predictions.
• Teach others.
• Write daily.
• Connect others.
• Lead a tribe.

There are a few things not included that we all do: check Facebook, complaining about your problems, take pictures for Instagram, and getting wasted.

How can you start with building these habits?

Pick one of these habits and stick to it every single day for the next 21 days. No excuses. No sob stories. Just get it done.

If you want to fail often, then try something bold for 21 days straights. If you want to write daily, then write every single day for the next three weeks. Don’t let anything stop you. If you want something bad enough, you’ll do it. If you don’t want it bad enough, you’ll make excuses.

Are you writing? My goal is to write 1,000 words every single day. No excuses. No exceptions. I find that if you get into the habit of writing daily and sharing your work with the world, that it’ll help you with many other habits. Writing leads to connecting, teaching, and so on.

You can also teach somebody something this week. This is easy. You can do this with a friend or on the Internet. Teaching is powerful. It reignites your passion and helps someone else out.

What if it all seems overwhelming?

Well, it probably will because you’ve likely been slacking off the last little bit or confused about what to do next. We all slack and we all need guidance. I get lost all of the time. I just became a Toronto Maple Leafs fan again. I got hooked on the playoff hockey. I thought that the Leafs had the game won. They had a 4-1 lead and they managed to drop it somehow. No more hockey for me. It’s too stressful.

You can start off slowly with building habits.

I recommend that you start by writing daily. This is the easiest thing to start with because we all have plenty of ideas in our heads. It’s time to get them out there to the world.

Connecting others is also easy because you don’t have to be helpful with everyone. You can just connect people who need to know each other.

Failure shouldn’t be overwhelming because it’s easy. Get out there and fail. Fall flat on your face. Laugh it off. Failure gives you permission to try again.

Then you can focus on the other habits on this list as you see fit or any other new habit that you’ve been meaning to form.

What are my habits?

I hate just throwing ideas out there and leaving them there. I take pride in testing out everything before I write about it and share it with the world.

What habits have I built that are worth mentioning?

• I never miss a workout. No excuses here and my training partners wouldn’t accept them.
• I write daily. I write every single day. No excuses. It’s midnight on a Saturday night. Instead of drinking or sleeping before my 10k run, I’m working on this article because it’s my first bit of free time today.
• I always look for the best food option. As often as I can I look for the “healthiest” option. I try to limit the pulled pork poutine to rare occasions.
• I’ve been working on my Spanish. I do my Spanish lessons every single day. You need to check out Duolingo.

I plan on building more habits over time. That’s all I could think of for now.

One final note on building habits…

The truth is that we all underestimate what can be day on a daily basis and overestimate what can be done in one night.

You won’t get in shape with one workout. But better meals and a few quick workouts during the week, will get you in better shape in no time. Remember that time flies by. Don’t let it pass you by without getting anything done.

What habits will you build?

The following is an article from The Annals of Improbable Fresearch.

(Image credit: Flickr user Michael Fawcett)

by Scott A. Sandford, NASA Ames Research Center, Mountain View, California

We have all been present at discussions (or arguments) in which one of the combatants attempts to clarify or strengthen a point by comparing the subject at hand with another item or situation more familiar to the audience or opponent. More often than not, this stratagem instantly results in the protest that "you're comparing apples and oranges!" This is generally perceived as being a telling blow to the analogy, since it is generally understood that apples and oranges cannot be compared. However, after being the recipient of just such an accusation, it occurred to me that there are several problems with dismissing analogies with the comparing apples and oranges defense.

First, the statement that something is like comparing apples and oranges is a kind of analogy itself. That is, denigrating an analogy by accusing it of comparing apples and oranges is, in and of itself, comparing apples and oranges. More importantly, it is not difficult to demonstrate that apples and oranges can, in fact, be compared (see figure 1).

Materials and Methods

Both samples were prepared by gently desiccating them in a convection oven at low temperature over the course of several days. The dried samples were then mixed with potassium bromide and ground in a small ball-bearing mill for two minutes. One hundred milligrams of each of the resulting powders were then pressed into a circular pellet having a diameter of 1 cm and a thickness of approximately 1 mm. Spectra were taken at a resolution of 1 cm-1 using a Nicolet 740 FTIR spectrometer. Figure 2 shows a comparison of the 4000-400 cm-1 (2.5-25 mm) infrared transmission spectra of a Granny Smith apple and a Sunkist Navel orange.

Conclusions

Not only was this comparison easy to make, but it is apparent from the figure that apples and oranges are very similar. Thus, it would appear that the comparing apples and oranges defense should no longer be considered valid. This is a somewhat startling revelation. It can be anticipated to have a dramatic effect on the strategies used in arguments and discussions in the future.

__________________________

This article is republished with permission from the May-June 1995 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)

Animals play the cups, too! The otters have it down, while the bunnies and cats just try to look their best while trying. -via Tastefully Offensive

It's not easy to portray a real person, especially a historical figure we all know. But many have done it. In a gallery at My Modern Met, you can see 18 actors and the people they portrayed in movies. Which ones look the most like the real thing? Link -via Flavorwire

Camera Lens Mug

Are you hoping to capture the perfect gift for your favorite photography buff? Zoom in on the Camera Lens Mug from the NeatoShop. This great travel mug is shaped like a camera's telephoto lens. The mug features highly realistic details. 

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Glassware & Drinkware. 

Link

The extraordinary fingernail artist Kayleigh O'Connor, whose work we've featured previously, has really outdone herself this time. This nail looks like E.T.'s glowing finger! She writes, 'I'll be going around trying to revive dead plants and touching strangers with it.. "Ouuuuccchhh..."'

Link

(YouTube link)

Isabella Rossellini, who makes strange videos about what animals do, has a new series called Mammas. It is the third part of her Green Porno series. In the introductory video, a hamster mamma explains why they sometimes eat their babies. At the Sundance Channel, you can see other videos on spider, cuckoo, dunnock, and wasp mothers. Link  -via Laughing Squid

Benjamin Franklin, along with advocating for the turkey at the US national symbol, writing an almanac, experimenting with electricity, inventing bifocals, and helping to found the United States, also proposed a new, simplified alphabet. Franklin came up with it in 1768, and Noah Webster published it in 1789. He dropped some letters, came up with new ones for common phonemes, and assigned only one sound for each letter.  

Franklin was confident that his new alphabet would easier to learn and, once learned, would drastically reduce bad spelling. He believed any difficulty in implementing a new alphabet would ultimately be overcome by its logic and simplicity. However, biographer Walter Isaacson has written that the alphabet “took his passion for social improvement to radical extremes.” But in the heady days after the Revolution, a national language seemed like a natural development for a new country. Franklin’s proposal found little support, even with those to whom he was closest. He did, however, manage to convert Webster, the pioneer of spelling reform.

But it didn't catch on. Would you want to bother learning an entirely new alphabet and way of spelling after you'd spent years learning it the traditional way? Read about how Franklin's alphabet was constructed at Design Decoded. Link

My husband and I often disagree on what shows to watch at night once the kids go to bed. I have a feeling, however, that's all about to change. Behold the clip for Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. This exciting continuation of the Avengers saga is coming to ABC this fall. I can't wait. The cast looks fantastic. 

Link

Some families with money to burn have found a nefarious way to bypass long lines at Walt Disney World in Florida: hire a disabled person to be part of your family for the day.  

The “black-market Disney guides” run $130 an hour, or $1,040 for an eight-hour day.

“My daughter waited one minute to get on ‘It’s a Small World’ — the other kids had to wait 2 1/2 hours,” crowed one mom, who hired a disabled guide through Dream Tours Florida.

“You can’t go to Disney without a tour concierge,’’ she sniffed. “This is how the 1 percent does Disney.”

The woman said she hired a Dream Tours guide to escort her, her husband and their 1-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter through the park in a motorized scooter with a “handicapped” sign on it. The group was sent straight to an auxiliary entrance at the front of each attraction.

Disney allows each guest who needs a wheelchair or motorized scooter to bring up to six guests to a “more convenient entrance.”

Link  -via Digg

(Image credit:Flickr user Joe Penniston)

Google has a cute little Easter egg that might suck up all your time if you let it. Just enter Atari Breakout in the Google Image Search field. You'll get results, all right, but those results turn into bricks and before you know it, you'll be playing your little heart out. Or just press the Link -via Daily of the Day

Once an entire roll of toilet paper is wet, there's no saving it. It's gone. You may as well toss it in the garbage. An unnamed person in Tucson, Arizona, learned that lesson the hard way.

An attempt to salvage a soggy roll of toilet paper will end up costing someone several hundred dollars.

Fire crews were called Saturday afternoon to a Foothills senior living complex in the 1500 block of East River Road when a smoke alarm was triggered, Capt. Barrett Baker, spokesman for the Tucson Fire Department, said.

The apartment sustained several hundred dollars in smoke damage. Link -via Arbroath

(Image credit: Brandon Blinkenberg)

Ink on original Michelin map of France

Growing up, I've always thought the continent of Africa looked like a sideway face, but Ed Fairburn takes that imagination to a whole new level. The Cardiff-based illustrator finds portraits of human faces hidden amongst the topographical features in various maps of the world.

View more over at Ed's official website | Facebook page | Interview with Yatzer - via Juxtapose

Lake Windermere in England

Stafford lane, in collaboration with Bobbie-Jo

Pencil on an original map of the Peak District, England

North America

Geological map of Pennsylvania

Ink on reproduced military maps of the Western Front (World War II)

Pencil on celestial star chart

(Image credit: Flickr user Michael Coghlan)

Old Jay challenged Brian with a question: "What common abbreviation has three times as many syllables as an abbreviation than it does when you say the full words?"

Stumped, Brian decided to look it up, which prompted Old Jay to say. "Don't cheat and use the Google or whatever it is you kids are calling it these days!"

Brian replied, "Thanks for the hint -now I know the answer!"

Continue reading, and you'll know it, too!

Highlight below for the answer.

"World Wide Web" has three syllables, whereas "WWW" has nine.

The article above was reprinted with permission from the Bathroom Institute's book Uncle John's Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader. Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute has published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you'll love the Bathroom Reader Institute's books - go ahead and check 'em out!

Transistor Radio Ted Baker Utility Bag

We interrupt the regularly scheduled program to bring you the Transistor Radio Ted Baker Utility Bag. Do not panic. You will not hear any actual noise from the bag itself. The bag is just designed to look like an old fashioned transistor radio. The bag does, however, have the ability to house all your important toiletries and gear. Please stay tuned for more fun and functional items from the NeatoShop. 

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Bags & Totes. 

Link

When French visual artist Carine Khalifé met Stephen Ramsay and Catherine McCandless of the band Young Galaxy, it started an artistic journey that led to this amazing music video for the band's new single Blown Minded, in which every frame is made out of oil painting.

Carine wrote:

Basically, my technique was to paint on a piece of glass fixed to a light box. I would paint on the glass with oil so that it wouldn’t dry, and I could play with it for hours. A camera, fixed overhead above the animation table and plugged in my computer, would capture my paintings frame by frame and create the animation using the software Stop Motion Pro (the aardman studio software). This process took place inside a dark room so that there wouldn’t be interference or changing lights on the paint. The single light source came from beneath the glass, revealing the textures and details of brushes movements.

I worked a lot with transparency. The more paint, the darker the image, and therefore the animation becomes about gesture, and the texture of brushstrokes; it’s a very physical, organic process. I based the number of frames per second (sometimes 8 sometimes 12) on the rhythm of the music. Everything is based on the rhythm.

Watch and weep: Hit play or go to Link [Vimeo] | Visit Carine's official website - via So Bad So Good

GeoGuessr is a game that uses Google Street View. You'll get an image, and you try to guess where in the world it is. I jumped in and scored 4470 right off, which must be awful, because I guessed very wrong. Then I figured out you can zoom and turn just like any Street View scene, and improved in my second game to 7002, which is still awful. It turns out that no matter how much you zoom into a sign, it will not "enhance" like in TV crime dramas. It also helps to zoom into the world map to make your guess, because even if you know the answer, you'll be scored on how close you mark the spot. I finally busted 10K on my third try. This could be addictive. Link -via the Presurfer

After he retired, Tatsuo Horiuchi wanted to do a little bit of art on his computer, but specialized graphic software is expensive. So the 73-year-old Japanese man settled on a program that came pre-installed on his PC: Excel.

Now, whodathunk that you could make such excel-lent art with that spreadsheet program? Link

Keeping on our classical music theme from yesterday... Like many of you, I've had Shazam on my iPhone since the app launched in 2008. What started out as a party trick for me (look what MY phone can do!) slowly, over time, morphed into a "So what are the kids listening to these days?" necessity. But one thing that remained frustrating about the app was that it couldn't tell Mozart from Bach. In fact, it didn't seem to have ANY classical music catalog in its database.

Well, it's nowhere close to perfect now, but in recent months, Shazam has actually started identifying most of the major pieces of classical music I've thrown its way. And, this will come as little surprise, even giving me the specific recording I'm listening to in that moment complete with conductor and orchestra names and year recorded. This is especially important when trying to discern the difference between, say, Glenn Gould's Goldberg Variations recorded in '55 vis-à-vis the one recorded in '81. (For the, er, record, I prefer the '55… less singing! heh. heh.)

The good folks at Shazam haven't done any major press around this advancement. My hunch is they're keeping it on the DL until they expand their archive. So for now, this post on this blog might be the only Google-able news on the app's classical music evolution. A little over a year ago, I wrote about Shazam's inability to tag classical music over on the mental floss blog and people in the comments were suggesting other apps like Soundhound. I've tried them, but this new version of Shazam is much, much better than all the others. Plus, I'm totally loving the new UI. It's a much improved tagging experience. Now if they'd only get rid of the annoying ads! Sigh. Well, "I can dream, can't I?" (Written by Sammy Fain with lyrics by Irving Kahal, published in 1938, from the musical, Right This Way.) Oh, and, of course, you CAN get rid of the ads... you just need to move from freemium to premium, which they call "Encore" and costs you $6.99 for a life-time subscription. SO here's a challenge to you loyal neatoramanauts:

If 5 people leave comments below telling me why they think I should upgrade, and another 5 tweet @neatorama why I should plunk down the $6.99, not only will I do it, but I'll cover another $6.99 for one of the lucky 10, chosen at random.

Ready, set, SHAZAM!

When Austin photographer Jaime Moore's daughter Emma turned five years old, she wanted to commemorate the event with a photo shoot. But rather than dressing her up as a Disney Princess, the mother-daughter duo tried something else: dressing her up as influential women throughout history.

Take a look at the marvelous project, titled Not Just A Girl: Link - via F Stop Lounge

Before the outbreak of the World War II, a young woman fled Paris for the security of the countryside, never to return. She recently passed away at the ripe age of 91 and when her estate was being inventoried, experts found out that her property in Paris had been left untouched for 70 years:

The property was found near a church in the French capital's 9th arrondissement, between Pigalle red light district and Opera. Experts were tasked with drawing up an inventory of her possessions which included a painting by the 19th century Italian artist Giovanni Boldini.
One expert said it was like stumbling into the castle of Sleeping Beauty, where time had stood still since 1900. 'There was a smell of old dust,' said Olivier Choppin-Janvry, who made the discovery.

Inside was a treasure trove of art, furniture, and other knick-knacks - a time capsule from time gone by. The Daily Mail has more: Link

You got your diploma/degree! Congratulations!

So...now what?

Grant Snider of Incidental Comics has nothing specific to recommend, but he proposes a good mindset for graduates to keep.

Link

Creative people don't let availability stand in the way of something they want. The Atlantic rounded up some great do-it-yourself projects that you may not had heard about because they are in China. See homemade submarines, helicopters, robots, cannons, and other amazing things, including a man with no arms who designed and built his own prosthetics. Shown here is Wu Yulu with his rickshaw-pulling robot. Link -via Jason Kottke

(Image credit: Reuters/Reinhard Krause)

You could just say out loud "Happy birthday!" or "You're fired!", but creative people find different ways of communicating. Victoria Hudgins shows you how, step by step, to bake your special message to a special someone inside a cake.

Link -via Foodiggity

(YouTube link)

Derek Withey is 87 years old, but he still surfs the 'net. His grandson, Steven Withey, found a scan of a Royal Navy photo of the sailor during World War II on the computer and asked redditors at  /r/picrequests if they could help restore it. Many did, and Withey presented his grandfather with several versions, including a framed copy of the best one. You can read the whole story and see each photograph at with-tech. Link -via Boing Boing

LED Tweezers

The LED Tweezers from the NeatoShop are a great way to shed a little light on your first aid or beauty dilemma. With the simple click of a button the attached LED light will allow you to pluck, grasp, pince, and tweeze under sub-optimal lighting conditions.     

The LED Tweezers are functional and stylish. They are available in the following striking colors: 

• Pink
• Blue
• Green
• Orange
• Purple
• and Yellow

Collect them all.

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Personal Care items. 

Link

Vegetarians, do you want to eat yummy burgers but don't want to harm a living being? Soon, you'll be able to have your cow and eat it too. Here comes the $350,000 vatburger:

Down the hall, in a lab with incubators filled with clear plastic containers holding a pinkish liquid, a technician was tending to the delicate task of growing the tens of billions of cells needed to make the burger, starting with a particular type of cell removed from cow necks obtained at a slaughterhouse. [...]

His burger consists of about 20,000 thin strips of cultured muscle tissue. Dr. Post, who has conducted some informal taste tests, said that even without any fat, the tissue “tastes reasonably good.” [...]

But the meat is produced with materials — including fetal calf serum, used as a medium in which to grow the cells — that eventually would have to be replaced by similar materials of non-animal origin. And the burger was created at phenomenal cost — 250,000 euros, or about $325,000, provided by a donor who so far has remained anonymous.

Henry Fountain of The New York Times has the story: Link (Image: Francois Lenoir)

Physically brave to the point of recklessness, this leader has courage beyond any doubt. But sometimes, this hero, revered by many, makes poor decisions, largely because of the belief that the best solution to any problem is a direct, frontal attack. 

Yes, I'm taking about Rainbow Dash from My Little Pony. But I'm also referring to Confederate Lt. Gen. John Bell Hood.

The Elements of Harmony were absent from America during the terrible years of 1861 to 1865. But there were plenty of heroes, clods, fools and geniuses among the general officers of both armies. You can find similar people--er, ponies-- on My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic today. Let's link together ponies and their military counterparts during the American Civil War.

Like Twilight Sparkle, U.S. Maj. Gen. Henry Jackson Hunt did not seek fame, but he also did not avoid great responsibility. He was an intellectual who bent his logical mind to solving complex problems. I suspect that if Twilight Sparkle had been in command of Federal artillery at Gettysburg, she would have devastated Pickett's Charge as well as Hunt did.

Pinkie Pie is an outside of the box thinker noted for her bold and original solutions. The one-man band that she made during "Swarm of the Century" confused her friends, but terminated the parasprite menace. Confederate Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart had a similar disposition, well-demonstrated during his terror-inducing circumnavigation of the Army of the Potomac during the Peninsula Campaign.

But it is fair to say that neither are consistently team players. It is easy to imagine Pinkie Pie repeating Stuart's terrible blunder early in the Gettysburgh Campaign.

Some ponies think that Granny Smith is too old to be useful, if not outright senile. But as shown during the episode "Family Appreciation Day", Granny Smith is wise and knowledgeable--something that Applebloom's classmates learn to appreciate. She proves that her eccentric approach to processing zap apples is, in fact, a marvel of careful planning based on a thorough understanding of the challenge.

At the outset of the war, Lt. Gen. Winfield Scott was the senior general in the United States Army. He was 74 and had led troops from the War of 1812 onward. Some critics thought that his proposed encirclement and division of the South, lampooned as the Anaconda Plan, was foolish. But time proved that Scott, not his critics, understood the task of subduing the South.

Rarity loves to be the center of attention. Nothing delights her more than fame and publicity--especially for her photogenic good looks and keen fashion sense.

The young Union Maj. Gen. George Armstrong Custer similarly pursued headlines and won fame to match his battlefield victories. Custer's rakishly handsome appearance, including long hair scented with cinnamon oil and carefully chosen custom uniforms were the height of military fashion and contributed to his renown.

Spitfire is the Captain of The Wonderbolts, the air cavalry of Equestria. She is professional, brave and all-soldier. Sometimes, though, she is hard to get along with.

She's a lot like U.S. Maj. Gen. Phil Sheridan. The Union cavalry general was highly effective in the field (e.g. Battle of Sayler's Creek). He proved his own resolve beyond all doubt at the Third Battle of Winchester. But Sheridan could be cantankerous and was noted for his contempt for Southerners and gracelessness to them after Lee's surrender.

Trixie is a great believer in her own destiny. Unmatched power and fame will follow her--if only lesser ponies would have the sense to step aside. She has talent, mind you. Her magical abilities are strong. But they aren't remotely as powerful as she thinks they are.

The arrogant U.S. Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan believed that he was the greatest general of the war. He would possess not only great military accomplishments, but even the Presidency. McClellan did possess practical military skills, especially in logistics, and won occasional victories in the field. But what he saw as his potential would never be fulfilled.

Whenever there is a crisis in Ponyville, Big McIntosh never lets it affect his demeanor. He faces any problem, such as the apparent cider market takeover in "The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000", with a calm "eeeyup" and puts his considerable strength to work at solving it.

The model of unflappability during the Civil War can be found in US Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. Historian Shelby Foote described this quality:

He had what they call "four o'clock in the morning courage." You could wake him up at four o'clock in the morning and tell him they had just turned his right flank and he would be as cool as a cucumber. Grant, after that first night in the Wilderness, went to his tent, broke down, and cried very hard. Some of the staff members said they'd never seen a man so unstrung. Well, he didn't cry until the battle was over, and he wasn't crying when it began again the next day. It just shows you the tension that he lived with without letting it affect him.

Would you select alternate generals or ponies? If so, which ones?

(Pony images: Hasbro Studio)

“Student loan debt is leading some borrowers to put off buying a home, saving for retirement or even getting hitched — and many now regret taking out the loans in the first place.”

CNN Money recently published this article on the harsh realities of being in debt because of student loans. The aforementioned quote is a scary truth of what student loans have caused.

Who would have thought that you would have to delay a marriage or home purchase just because you’re still in debt from your education? That totally sucks. Not that I’m a fan of getting married early (far from it), but I feel for those that want to move on with their lives but can’t just because they’re sinking in student loan debt.

It gets even scarier. The article goes on to mention more scary details on student loans hurting those in their 20s…

And debt only continues to grow — exceeding $1 trillion nationwide, with about one in five households carrying student loans. Meanwhile, the average debt load jumped 5% to a new high of $26,600 last year.

That sucks. I hate debt and I’m on a journey to be totally financially secure by 30. I know that most of you are on a similar journey as well. Student loan payments make it virtually impossible to travel the world or do anything cool in your 20s. Screw that!

I’m only one person in this battle against student loans. But guess what? I’m ready to take on this issue and help anyone that’s struggling. There’s no time to waste being in debt. I want to help as many folks as I can with my articles and a select few with one-on-one help (learn more on hiring me).

I’ll keep this article short and sweet. I’ve separated student loans into two stages: before and after college.

Let’s see how you can handle student loans before and after college.

I or someone I know is about to go to college. What do I do?

I wrote about how you can graduate college with zero debt. Yes, it is possible.

You must read that article or share it.

I graduated college with zero debt and I never missed a party I wanted to attend. I had a great time and went away for Spring Break every single year. Everything is totally possible. If a crazy punk like me can do it, what’s stopping you?

How can you pay off student loans while in college?

1. Apply for a program with work terms.
2. Work part-time.
3. Working during the school year.
4. Apply for free money (bursaries, scholarships, and grants).

A quick rant on student loans…

Please do NOT apply for insane amounts of student loans if you’re studying a major that doesn’t have a history of paying well.

It’s noble to study something that interests you and could help the world out. But if the program doesn’t have a history of paying well and doesn’t lead to any sort of guaranteed job, then why get into debt? This makes no sense. It’s just like getting wasted. If you drink and mix a ton of booze, of course you’re going to be hungover. What did you expect to happen?

You should read up on college majors that pay well and guarantee the big bucks. If your major doesn’t guarantee anything, then I strongly recommend not racking up any debt to earn it.

No offence, but if your program is easy and you study a bunch of general crap, why get into thousands of dollars of student debt? How do you plan on paying this off?

Let’s look at the other side of student loans now…

I graduated college and am in huge debt. What the hell do I do?

You can start off by checking out my extensive piece on what to do after college. I received input from experts on the topic. You need to read it.

Then you should check out the only post on student loans you need to read. This will help you figure out what to do next with your student loans.

The process for dealing with student loans is pretty simple…

• There are no shortcuts here.
• Get yourself into action.
• Get a job.
• Get a few jobs.
• Start freelancing.
• Do anything possible to have an income coming in.
• Then work on reducing your expenses.
• Then put every freaking penny towards your student loan payments until you’re debt-free.

You can make a sex tape with a celebrity or win a reality show. Do whatever possible to beef up your income so that you have more money to put towards student loans.

That’s all I’m going to say on student loans today.

Mineo Mizuno, an artist in Brooklyn, grows moss in lovely patterns on stones. He calls his enchanting series "Coexistence." Wouldn't they look lovely in a backyard garden?

Link -via Urban Gardens

Photo: Shelly Hayashi/Facebook

The giant inflatable duck, made by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman (previously), was swimming happily in Hong Kong's Victoria Harbour until it someone, or something, committed duckicide:

The 16.5-meter (54 feet) inflatable sculpture mysteriously lost its mojo overnight, deflated and bobbed lifelessly in Victoria Harbour.

Organizers called an urgent duck crisis meeting early Wednesday and didn't immediately respond to questions about the misfortunes of the duck or whether the deflation was part of regular maintenance, as reported in some local media. A tweet did appear however on the official Harbour City Twitter account, saying: "The Rubber Duck needs to freshen up. Stay tuned for its return."

Much later in the day, organizers responded and said it was a planned deflation. Why it took so long to clarify and why officials had to get senior management approval to make such a statement seems a little odd and naturally, this got Hong Konger's busy with the popular pastime of gossiping.

I smell a cover up! Quick, someone guard the giant inflatable poo against turdicide.

Link

(vimeo link)

They say to never look at a solar eclipse, because you'll hurt your eyes as badly as looking into the sun …because you are looking into the sun. But you don't have to, because Colin Legg took this awesome time-lapse video of the sunrise annular solar eclipse over Pilbara in Western Australia last Friday. Cameras were recording from three different locations. Undoubtedly the strangest sunrise I've ever seen. -via Laughing Squid

The clothespin gravestone marked the grave of W. Jack Crowell, who owned the National Clothespin Company, the last wooden clothespin manufacturer in the United States (today it produces plastic clothespins and barrettes). Originally, Jack wanted a giant clothespin with real spring so children could teeter on it.

View 9 more of the world's most unusual graves over at Oddee: Link

Disney has quietly reversed its decision to give Merida from the movie Bravea new look as she joins the group known as the Disney Princesses. The official Princess website has replaced the newer artwork with images of Merida as seen in the Pixar film.

The new design made her thinner, bustier, older, and hotter, and put her in a slinkier, lower-cut version of the dress she loathed from the film. The new look may have been designed to bring Merida in line with the other princesses on Disney's princess site, all of whom are canonically older and, well, hot. But it was also a move that undid everything the character fought against in her own movie.

After Chapman herself wrote an angry open letter on May 11 addressing the sexualization of the character and the message it sent to teenage girls everywhere, the floodgates opened on an Internet backlash. A Change.org petition started by the media watch website A Mighty Girl received over 200,000 signatures in a couple of days.

Earlier today, just as quietly as it had unveiled Merida's new look, Disney substituted an image of Merida from the film on its princess website, and removed all of the images of the new doll from the website.

Disney might not always make the right decisions, but they can tell which way the wind is blowing. Link

The Galaxy Guide by Warbucks Design

Forget towels and bring an EE-3 carbine rifle so we can properly welcome our newest T-shirt artist, Warbucks Design, to the NeatoShop. Check out his Facebook page to view his neat-o designs, then head on over to his NeatoShop page for more: Link

Wizneyland	You're a Zombie, Chuck!	Wampas, Inc.	Batzinga!

View more T-shirts by Warbucks Design | View all Funny T-shirts over at the NeatoShop

Are you a professional T-shirt designer, artist or illustrator? Get your tees listed on the NeatoShop and get your website/FB page featured here on the blog. We've got a great profit sharing program. Email us to get started!

(YouTube link)

The Portland Police Department shares a dash cam video of Traffic Officer Mark James pursuing a speeder. But that's not all that happens. -Thanks, MB!

Feed Me Duck Spoon

Are you looking for a way to make mealtime more fun for your picky eater? You need the Feed Me Duck Spoon from the NeatoShop. The spoon likes an adorable yellow ducky. This spoon is a real quack-up!

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Mealtime Fun. 

Link

Non-smoking hotel rooms generally contained more third-hand smoke when they were part of hotels that allowed smoking in other, designated rooms. They had, on average, twice the amount of nicotine on surfaces and seven times as much 3EP (another cigarette byproduct) in the air. In smoking-permitted rooms, of course, the presence of these contaminants was much higher.

The women, after spending the night in a hotel that permitted smoking, even after requesting a non-smoking room, the next morning had significantly more nicotine on their fingers, and five to six times the amount of cotinine -- a biomarker of second-hand smoke exposure -- in their urine.

Lindsay Abrams of The Atlantic summarizes the study: Link | The paper over at Tobacco Control

Bridget Evans, founder of the Illini Service Dog Program, received her Masters degree from the College of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on Saturday. She was accompanied at the graduation ceremony by her service dog Hero. Evans said,

Hero knows over forty commands to assist me! He loves to retrieve objects for my like envelopes, pens, my crutches, etc. He also turns off the lights, opens doors, and he pulls me in my wheelchair up ramps! I couldn't have gone to college without him!

Hero grabbed a lot of attention and photographs at the graduation. These were posted by two different redditors, in threads that tell more about Bridget and Hero. In both, it was mentioned that while Bridget got a Masters, Hero was awarded a "dog-torate."

Link and Link

Image: Tischenko Irina/Shutterstock

In 36 B.C., Roman scholar Marcus Terentius Varro came up with the answer of why honeycomb cells are hexagons, in what since has been called the Honeycomb Conjecture. Varro guessed that hexagon is the best way to divide a surface into regions of equal area with the least total perimeter - basically, it's the most compact (and therefore efficient) structure - but he couldn't prove it mathematically.

In 1999, two thousand years since Varro came up with the conjecture, University of Pittsburgh professor Thomas C. Hales came up with the mathematical proof. Robert Krulwich of NPR's Krulwich Wonders explains in plain english what it's all about (complete with cute drawings of honeybees - squee!):

For bees to assemble a honeycomb the way bees actually do it, it's simpler for each cell to be exactly the same. If the sides are all equal — "perfectly" hexagonal — every cell fits tight with every other cell. Everybody can pitch in. That way, a honeycomb is basically an easy jigsaw puzzle. All the parts fit.

OK, that explains why honeycomb cells are same-sized. But back to our first question: Why the preference for hexagons? Is there something special about a six-sided shape?

Some shapes you know right away aren't good. A honeycomb built from spheres would have little spaces between each unit ...

... creating gaps that would need extra wax for patching. So can see why a honeycomb built from spheres wouldn't be ideal. Pentagons, octagons also produce gaps. What's better?

"It is a mathematical truth," Lightman writes, "that there are only three geometrical figures with equal sides that can fit together on a flat surface without leaving gaps: equilateral triangles, squares and hexagons."

So which to choose? The triangle? The square? Or the hexagon? Which one is best? Here's where our Roman, Marcus Terentius Varro made his great contribution. His "conjecture" — and that's what it was, a mathematical guess — proposed that a structure built from hexagons is probably a wee bit more compact than a structure built from squares or triangles. A hexagonal honeycomb, he thought, would have "the smallest total perimeter." He couldn't prove it mathematically, but that's what he thought.

Link

Burlington, Vermont, is home to flying monkey gargoyles on the town's rooftops. Local sculptor Steve Larrabee made the first flying monkey for a waterbed store called The Emerald City in 1976. A second one followed. Through sometimes weird circumstances, the number of flying monkeys in Burlington grew to a half-dozen by 2005. The monkeys have changed locations over the years, but they are always a welcome sight. Read the story of the flying monkeys of Burlington at Kuriositas. Link -via the Presurfer

(Image credit: Flickr user origamidon)

At the age of eight, the boys were sent to ritualists, who bathed them, shaved their heads, and gave them animal skins to wear. Eight years later, the initiates underwent a midwinter ceremony in which they ritually died and journeyed to the underworld. After this, the boys left their homes and families, painted their bodies black, donned a dog-skin cloak, and joined a band of warriors.

Brown and Anthony think that similar rites may have taken place at Krasnosamarskoe at the onset of the raiding season, which ran from the winter solstice to the summer solstice. And they speculate that part of the ceremony required the boys to kill their own dogs. The dead canines ranged in age from 7 to 12 years, suggesting that they were longtime companions—possibly even hounds raised with the boys from birth.

"That makes a lot of sense," concludes Brown. To take on the mantle of a warrior, an innocent boy had to become a killer.

National Geographic News has the story: Link (Image: Dorcas Brown)

You can't select your astrological sign, but you can select your horoscope! The site Convenient Horoscope posts daily horoscopes from several sources. Just select your sign from the menu bar at the top and find the horoscope that's most convenient for you today. That's the one that's right -because it's the best! Link  -via Holy Kaw!  

(Image credit: Flickr user Rromir Imami)

With the help of retired carpenter Julien Forder, designer Cléon Daniel crafted a pool table shaped like a giant banana:

Take a look over at the build process over at Cléon's blog: Link - via designboom

To help new writers on the TV series Star Trek, a 31-page guide was typed up to lay out the rules of the series and ensure continuity of style. It addressed each character's personality, the basic mission of the Enterprise, and the type of stories that work, among other things. Slate has three pages of the guide; the rest are at Harvard’s Houghton Library. Link

Why is Mona Lisa smiling? Perhaps it's because now she's got gorgeous hair! Back in 2007 Procter & Gamble "improved" Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa to advertise its hair care product.

If you like that, take a look at six more examples of famous artwork reimagined by modern brands for ad campaigns over at the Shutterstock blog: Link - Thanks Danny!

Regarding the previous post about Merida getting a makeover to become an official Disney Princess, Neatoramanaut ROJOMOKE points us to a comic from Dork Tower that sums up the feelings of the majority about her new look. Link-Thanks, ROJOMOKE!

(Image credit: John Kovalic)

Tighty Whities Socks

Don't get your panties in a bunch over plain boring socks. Get the exciting Tighty Whities Socks from the NeatoShop. This awesome pair of knee-high socks features an adorable and somewhat unmentionable pattern. 

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Footwear. 

Link

You can find out where your favorite Arrested Development jokes came from with this fun new site called Recurring Development. It's an interactive site where they've tagged dozens of jokes to the first three seasons worth of episodes. And if IT doesn't get you in the mood for What’s Spanish for “I know you speak English?” nothing will.

Many authors make outlines of their novels to keep the story arc in place, make sure the important parts are not missed, and to keep up with each character. They each have their own style, as well. See some handwritten outlines from James Salter, J.K. Rowling, Sylvia Plath, William Faulkner, and more at Flavorwire. The chart shown is how Joseph Heller kept up with the characters and their plot lines in Catch-22. You can click the image twice at Flavorwire to bring up the large size, but you might need to put on your glasses to read it anyway. Link

The artist Han Jan presents Rainbow Dash as Thor, Spike as the Hulk, Fluttershy as War Machine, Pinkie Pie as Iron Man, Applejack as Captain America, Rarity as Black Widow and Twilight Sparkle as Nick Fury. The last pairing is particularly apt because the black outfit and eye patch match Twilight Sparkle's appearance in the time travel episode "It's about Time."

Does Han Jan's style look familiar? We've previously featured his array of Gundam ponies.

Link

(YouTube link)

There's a lot of work in this video. Geoff Klock made a mashup of quotes from and references to Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet taken from 198 movies and TV shows. If you enjoy Shakespeare, you'll love seeing how much modern entertainment leans on the Bard. Contains a couple of NSFW words. Stay through the credits. -via Metafilter

The distance to the stars is often explained by how long it takes light to travel to us from them. That works in the other direction, too. Today's xkcd panel gives us another way to visualize those distances by showing how old our pop culture references and memes are by the time they reach those stars. You can enlarge the image at xkcd by clicking if you can't read this small print. Link -via Tastefully Offensive

Just like everyone else, you learned about how a caterpillar turns into a butterfly (or moth) inside a chrysalis (or cocoon) and you desperately tried to envision what happens inside and what it looks like. Scientists who've opened a lot of chrysalises will tell you the caterpillar turns to goop and then a butterfly, but that's not completely accurate, and the process of opening one destroys the structure anyway.

But now, two teams of scientists have started to captured intimate series of images showing the same caterpillars metamorphosing inside their pupae. Both teams used a technique called micro-CT, in which X-rays capture cross-sections of an object that can be combined into a three-dimensional virtual model.

By dissecting these models rather than the actual insects, the teams could see the structures of specific organs, like the guts or breathing tubes. They could also watch the organs change over time by repeatedly scanning the same chrysalis over many days. And since insects tolerate high doses of radiation, this procedure doesn’t seem to harm them, much less kill them.

Ed Yong explains more about this technology, and you'll more pictures of an insect going through the metamorphosis at Not Exactly Rocket Science. Link

(Image credit: Lowe et al. 2013. Interface)

Instructables member peinkc spent only $15 building this portable fire pit. After removing the interior rubber and plastic components, he built a bottom pan out of cookies sheets and fitted mesh spark screens along the sides and top. The bottom rack provides a convenient place to store logs.

Link

Guys, forget cute puppie - they're messy and poop a lot. Instead, grab a guitar when you're trying to meet women. A new study has proven that women love musicians:

According to the study’s abstract, they enlisted a young man to flirt with 300 women under three different scenarios: holding a guitar case, carrying a gym bag and appearing empty-handed.

Ultimately, the women were much more willing to give him their phone number when they saw the guitar case, “thus suggesting that musical practice is associated with sexual selection.”

Link - via Accordion Guy

The diet can wait until...well, let's not kid ourselves.

Sarah J. Gim used already made glazed donuts and slow churn ice cream to make the sandwiches. She froze them, then dipped them in melted chocolate and served them to undoubtedly thankful people. You can find process photos and her recipe at the link.

Link -via Nag on the Lake

Dead Inside Banshee Bag

Are you looking for an accessory that will really touch your soul? Behold the Dead Inside Banshee Bag from the NeatoShop. This striking purse features a sugar skull / calavera design. A kiss lock metal closure and shoulder strap help make the bag both functional and beautiful. 

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Bags & Totes. 

Link

First milk, butter, coffee and cornmeal ran short. Now Venezuela is running out of the most basic of necessities – toilet paper.

Blaming political opponents for the shortfall, as it does for other shortages, the government says it will import 50m rolls to boost supplies.

That was little comfort to consumers struggling to find toilet paper on Wednesday.

"This is the last straw," said Manuel Fagundes, a shopper hunting for tissue in Caracas. "I'm 71 years old and this is the first time I've seen this."

One supermarket visited by the Associated Press in the capital on Wednesday was out of toilet paper. Another had just received a fresh batch, and it quickly filled up with shoppers as the word spread.

"I've been looking for it for two weeks," said Cristina Ramos. "I was told that they had some here and now I'm in line."

Economists blame government price control that caused Soviet Union-like shortages of toilet paper and other basic commodities: Link

John Cheese at Cracked is 39, and starting to recognize the signs of aging. I can relate to several of these. I don't mind slang terms yet, but I find that it now takes a lot to impress me.

Eventually, you reach a point where you have heard virtually every debate point for every topic ever conceived by man. Nothing anyone says is new. Nothing anyone says is convincing the other side to "convert" to their line of thinking. Consider how long debates have been around between atheists and Christians, legalization and anti-drug groups, pro-lifers and pro-choicers, Democrats and Republicans, and on and on. So many of the talking points and debate styles overlap from topic to topic that you can damn near lip sync to them as they're being said. All debates have turned into a Nickelback album.

Maybe it says something about how much older I am that I don't even know what Nickelback sounds like. But he's got some good points in this list, in plenty of NSFW language. Link

(Image credit: Flickr user Aislinn Ritchie)

In the Nineteenth Century, artisans in Eastern Europe made amazing smoking pipes out of meerschaum, a soft mineral. Roy Ricketts has assembled a collection of outstanding examples of this crafting tradition. Ben Marks of Collectors' Weekly explains why craftsmen used meerschaum:

Meerschaum is a relatively new material to pipe making, appearing no earlier than the 18th century. Found primarily in and around the city of Eskişehir in western Turkey, meerschaum is a porous mineral that’s soft enough to be carved but hard enough to be polished, revealing the carver’s artistry. Unlike hardwood briar pipes, which are also finely carved, meerschaum does not burn, which means the bowl is cool to the touch when it’s being smoked and the pipe material imparts no flavor to the tobacco. And because meerschaum is porous, meerschaum pipes change color over time as they are smoked. Thus, the stone, which is carved white, turns butterscotch brown when made into a pipe, filled with tobacco, and smoked, a process that’s frequently hurried along by rubbing a finished pipe with beeswax and, occasionally, ox blood.

At the link, you can see more photos of pipes in Mr. Ricketts's collection.

Link

Twister Champion by Naolito

Well, this is just fantastic! T-shirt designer extraordinaire Naolito illustrates how Mr. Fantastic is a natural champ at the game of Twister. View his designs over at his official website, Facebook page, Tumblr and deviantArt - then visit his NeatoShop page for more neat T-shirt designs: Link

Beakerful of Science	Evolution of Hypnotoad	Typical Tourist	Dragon Egg

View more designs by Naolito | All Funny T-shirts

Your purchase helps support indie artists, who get handsome royalties for each sale, and this blog. If you're a professional artist or T-shirt designer, let's talk! Sell your designs on the NeatoShop and get your website/FB page featured on the blog.

What is your cat thinking about? Dan Piraro of Bizarro Comics exposed the dark secret of pet psychic in this comic panel. Whaddayasay? Nailed it? Link

If you could arrange a race between famous science fiction spaceships, who would win? Would it be the Milliennium Falcon, the Jupiter 2, Serenity, the Enterprise, or some other ship? Find out in an online race to destinations light years away at Slate. They also explain the results, according to the canon of each science fiction universe as we know it. Link -via mental_floss

You might know her as "Maude "or perhaps as your favorite Golden Girl, but I doubt most of you know Bea Arthur the muse. This cropped image above shows a portion of the 1991 painting by artist John Currin. The full picture depicts Bea Arthur topless. The painting is aptly called "Bea Arthur Naked."

No, Bea Arthur never actually sat for this portrait. Currin, who is known for his sexually provocative paintings, used his imagination. The painting sold at auction Wednesday for $1.9 million. 

Los Angeles Times David Ng has more: Link

To keep up, you'll have to drink at least one cup a day. This calendar designed by the German ad agency Kolle Rebbe for the tea company Halssen & Lyon has 365 shingles of dried, compressed tea. Consume one off each day to mark the passage of time.

Link -via Junkculture

Three years before his death, author David Foster Wallace gave a commencement address to the 2005 graduating class of Kenyon College. In that speech, titled "This is Water," Wallace explained to the bright-eyed grads what real adult lives are like, and in the process, gave them an invaluable advice on life and a simple yet elegant explanation of the real value of education.

YouTube user The Glossary showcased Wallace's speech in the most interesting 10 minute video clip you'll see today: Link

Measurement Conversion Spatula

Could you use a little help reading that critically acclaimed international cookbook? You need the handy dandy Measurement Conversion Spatula from the NeatoShop. This great little cooking tool features a silicone head that is printed with a measurement conversion chart. Now all those conversions will be right at your fingertips.  

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Cooking items. 

Link

Fried S'mores is an easy recipe that goes something like this:

1. Make s'mores.
2. Dip in pancake batter.
3. Fry.
4. Stuff your face.

If you'd like the complete recipe, Carleyy has it for you at Instructables. Link  -via Daily of the Day

If you're tired of being a working stiff and look forward to retirement, here's a study that will spoil your day: according to British think tank Institute of Economic Affairs, retirement is harmful to your health.

The study [...] found that retirement results in a "drastic decline in health" in the medium and long term.

The IEA said the study suggests people should work for longer for health as well as economic reasons. [...]

The study suggests there is a small boost to health immediately after retirement, before a significant decline in the longer term.

Retirement is found to increase the chances of suffering from clinical depression by 40%, while you are 60% more likely to suffer from a physical condition.

The effect is the same for men and women, while the chances of becoming ill appear to increase with the length of time spent in retirement.

Thank goodness that the world's economy has taken care of that pesky problem for many of us who now can't afford to retire! Link (Image: Warning Retiree - Knows Everything and has Plenty of Time to Tell You About It)

(Image credit: Flickr user Voxphoto)

You're at a cocktail party with your date. Strangely enough, there's something in the room that everyone can touch -and so can you, but only with your left hand. What is it?

Continue reading to find out.

Highlight here for the answer: Your right elbow.

_______________________________

The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John's All-Purpose Extra Strength Bathroom Reader.

The 13th book in the series by the Bathroom Reader's Institute has 504 pages crammed with fun facts, including articles on the biggest movie bombs ever, the origin and unintended use of I.Q. test, and more.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. If you like Neatorama, you'll love the Bathroom Reader Institute's books - go ahead and check 'em out!

Donor egg held by pipette prior to nuclear extraction. Image: OHSU Photos/Flickr

A significant, and undoubtedly controversial, milestone in stem cell therapy was reached yesterday. Scientists at the Oregon Health and Science University managed to achieve the Holy Grail of stem cell research: they've cloned a human embryo.

OHSU cell biologist Shoukhrat Mitalipov led a team of 23 scientists who methodically culled the lessons learned from stem cell research on amphibians, mice and rhesus monkeys — as well as from the abundant failures of others in the field. They devised a welter of new techniques to use the DNA of a fully formed skin cell in its most primitive embryonic form. [...]

In past efforts to coax such an assemblage of components to life, researchers have burned through dozens of donor eggs without getting any embryos even to the 16-cell stage at which stem cells become a remote possibility.

This time, the researchers said their methods were so efficient that they could create at least one embryonic stem cell line from each batch of eggs donated by 10 female volunteers. In one case, a single donor produced eight eggs of such exceptional quality that researchers were able to derive four embryonic stem cell lines.

Some hailed the development as an important advance in the paving the way to treat a range of diseases, but others feared that it's one step closer to cloning humans.

Melissa Healy of the Los Angeles Times has the post: Link

(YouTube link)

The pygmy marmoset (Cebuella pygmaea) is the smallest monkey in the world. They are about five to six inches tall, not including the tail. This one is eating a piece of macaroni, which looks huge in its hands! -via Daily Picks and Flicks

Night's Watch The Wall by Wirdou

Night gathers, and now my watch begins. T-shirt designer Wirdou has released another excellent Game of Thrones-inspired design, this time, mashed up with a bit of rock 'n roll.

Visit Wirdou's website, then head on over to his NeatoShop page for more awesome T-shirts. Your purchase helps support the blog and indie artists:

The Gamer Inside of Me	The Hungering	Chemical Avengers	Become A Scientist

View more designs by Wirdou | Funny T-shirts

Mustache-challenged? Do you feel like less of a man because you cannot grow a proper upper lipholstery? Fear not! Head over to Turkey, where you can get a mustache transplant:

The procedure uses a technique called follicle-hair extraction, in which doctors remove clusters of hair from the more hirsute areas of the body and implant them along the lip or cheeks to magnify a mustache or beef-up a beard.

Performed under local anesthetic, the surgery takes around five hours and can cost up to $5,000, cosmetic surgeons say. Tourism agencies have begun offering "transplant packages" combining facial-hair operations with a shopping vacation in Istanbul or beachside retreat on the Mediterranean coast.

Joe Parkinson of The Wall Street Journal explains: Link (Image: Fingerstache from the NeatoShop | View more strange and neat Mustache items there)

It used to be a hipster, but now it's not cool at all. This abandoned refrigerator was spotted on the streets of Glasgow, Scotland. Link

Mashable has a brilliant new video up today that takes a look at the funnier side of Google's new Glass product and how it could be used by certain "less than upstanding types" to cause trouble. Don't pass on this glass.

Via Mashable | Link

What lies beneath Moscow's most iconic buildings? These clever print ads are commissioned to promote the Shchusev State Museum of Architecture in Moscow, Russia. Via Web Urbanist

Zoe Zebra Picnic Lunch Box

Are you looking for a fun and functional lunch box for your favorite wild animal. Behold the Zoe Zebra Picnic Lunch Box from the NeatoShop. This great lunch unzips to become a place-mat. The lunch box is easy to use and easy to clean. It is insulated and can keep food cold for upwards of 7 hours. 

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Lunch Boxes. 

Link

The map above is based on information from the World Values Survey, which does ongoing research. The data from a single question was used to gauge racist attitudes around the world. Two Swedish economists used the data for a study to determine if there was any correlation between economic freedom and racism in different countries.

Among the dozens of questions that World Values asks, the Swedish economists found one that, they believe, could be a pretty good indicator of tolerance for other races. The survey asked respondents in more than 80 different countries to identify kinds of people they would not want as neighbors. Some respondents, picking from a list, chose “people of a different race.” The more frequently that people in a given country say they don’t want neighbors from other races, the economists reasoned, the less racially tolerant you could call that society. (The study concluded that economic freedom had no correlation with racial tolerance, but it does appear to correlate with tolerance toward homosexuals.)

Max Fisher used the raw data from the study to create the map. It has been pointed out that the survey results may be affected by cultural differences in answering survey questions honestly. At the Washington Post, you can enlarge the map and read more about the project. Link -via Digg

Here's the perfect bait to catch the elusive Loch Ness monster. Behold the Lox-Ness Monster (Nessie can't possibly resist!), made by Sandwich Monsters. 'Tis but one of 17 fantastic photos of wonderful sandwich creations you can gawk at over at Instagram: Link or checkout the gallery over at Walyou

Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website.

It is, without question, one of the most oft-quoted anecdotes in the history of comedy. It goes, pretty much, like this:

A woman with 10 (or 12 or 14 or whatever) children makes a guest appearance as a contestant on Groucho Marx's quiz show You Bet Your Life. The following dialogue takes place.

Woman: "I have 14 children, Groucho."

Groucho: "You have 14 children? Why do you have so many kids?"

Woman: "Because I love my husband."

Groucho: "I love my cigar, too, but I take it out every once in a while."

Groucho Marx's popular quiz show You Bet Your Life debuted in 1947 on radio. In 1950, it made the move to television and became even more popular. After a hugely successful 14-year run, the show finally ended in 1961.

On the show, Groucho became famous for his ability to ad-lib. The truth is, Groucho was an undisputed comic genius with a quick, brilliant mind. But ironically, most of Groucho's ad-libs were written in advance by his group of comedy writers. The writers themselves would meet and interview the contestants for the show, then they would write the clever "Groucho quips" on cue cards and Groucho would read them off before the studio audience.

It's true that Groucho did not meet the guest contestants before the show's taping. Groucho, being a talented comedian, had the ability to read the ad-libs off the cue cards and make them sound fresh and original.

The most generally-accepted version of the "cigar story" was that it took place on radio in 1947 during the show's first year. "Mrs. Story" was the supposed contestant's name. But other sources claimed it occurred on TV and the lady's name was "Mrs. House." However it supposedly happened, literally thousands of people claim to have either been there in the studio or heard it on radio or TV. This is, of course, impossible.

If it ever did occur, it would have inevitably been edited out before any actual airing. The ribald gag was much too crude for radio or television in those times. So, at most, 200 people (the capacity of Groucho's studio audience) could have actually heard it.

But in 1972, in an interview with Roger Ebert for Esquire magazine, Groucho himself said, "I got $25.00 from Reader's Digest last week for something I never said. I get credit all the time for things I never said. You know that line in You Bet Your Life the guy says he has 17 kids and I say 'I smoke a cigar but I take it out every once in a while.' I never said it." Interestingly, Groucho himself misrepresents the sex of the contestant and instead of a woman, the supposed butt of the quip is a man! Either way, this unequivocal statement by Groucho himself should put an end to the life of this legendary story.

But in the 1976 book The Secret Word is Groucho, by Groucho biographer Hector Arce, Groucho supposedly says "The story, however, is not apocryphal. It did happen." Unlike the 1972 Esquire interview, this book was largely ghost-written by Arce and he may have easily put these words in Groucho's mouth. By 1976, the year of the book's publication, Groucho was pretty much a shell of his old self, having survived a few strokes. The poor man could barely string together a coherent sentence in his final year. Groucho passed away the next year, in 1977.

Robert Dwan, the producer of Groucho's show, was present at every single radio and TV taping of the show during its 14-year run. Dwan was to insist, "I am (now) convinced that it did happen I believe Groucho said it." But strangely, Dwan consulted 20 volumes of the original series, which included "the funniest and most audacious sequences which were deleted from the broadcasts as being unsuitable for viewing in the 1950s." He made no mention of ever actually viewing or turning up the story.

Dwan's memory may have "dubbed in" hearing the anecdote, when in actuality, he had just "heard of it" second-hand for decades. The truth is, the cigar remark, taken at its burlesque show level, wasn't really Groucho's style. Groucho would definitely make an occasional off-color or lewd remark in private, as most men will, especially among members of his own sex, such as his fellow male comedians at the Hillcrest Country Club. And as we all know, Groucho's sense of humor and mind were amazingly quick, fertile, and hilarious.

But on the air, Groucho was the consummate pro and it wasn't like Groucho to make a remark like that in front of an actual studio audience (especially in the 1940s or '50s, when the public's sensitivities were so much different than they are now).

True, a Marion and Charlotte Story, who had 20 children, were radio contestants with Groucho on November 17, 1947. But there is no record or transcript of the legendary exchange actually taking place. Interestingly, on January 11, 1950, Groucho did interview a lady contestant who was one of 17 children and the following dialogue took place:

Groucho: "How does your father feel about this rather startling turn of events? Is he happy or just dazed?"

Daughter: "Oh, my Daddy just loves children."

Groucho: "Well, I like pancakes, but I haven't got closets full of them."

This rather innocuous exchange may possibly have been the actual source of the "cigar story." Perhaps someone heard this exchange and spiced it up a little with a much funnier (and raunchier) punch line, and attributed it to Groucho. The "cigar story" is hilariously funny and it does "sound" like a Groucho quip, and so…

This is how urban legends get started.

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