Never skimp on quality marketing. You may think that you can just do it yourself, but as John McNamee explains, terrible things go wrong when you don't think through product nomenclature.

Link

Doctor Who TARDIS Hooded Bathrobe (front and back shown)

Father's Day is right around the corner. This Father's Day get your Doctor Who crazy Dad the Doctor Who TARDIS Hooded Bathrobe from the NeatoShop. This beautiful soft cotton terrycloth bathrobe comes with a hood and cinch belt. The robe features amazing embroidered details. 

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

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Mount Pavlof, a volcano in Alaska's Aleutian Islands, is currently erupting. Astronauts on the International Space Station were in a great position to photograph it in action. Do you see that streak across the sky in the lower photograph? That's the cloud of volcanic ash.

Link -via Alexis C. Madrigal

Cracked goes where no one else has time for to find clues hidden in the backgrounds of movies that tell you what's going to happen or what twist will eventually be revealed. Since I now have the endings to three movies I have never seen, I won't give an excerpt here. But your mind will be blown by the tiny details in Back to the Future, Jurassic Park, The Avengers, Reservoir Dogs, and Fight Club. All contain spoilers, so you decide whether to jump into the wormhole. Link -via mental_floss

(Video Link)

Fedoras are popular these days. I assume that's because Freddy Krueger, the demonic villain of the Nightmare on Elm Street horror moviee series, wore them. I never got into either the fedora craze or the movies that inspired it, but I could totally wear this sweater that writhes with the souls that Kreuger captured.

Link (Translation) -via Technabob

Content warning: horror.

Super Iron Bros by Baznet

There's my boys! Look good while you hunt for the Mandarin in this neat new shirt (no need to steal a poncho from a wooden Indian!) by Baznet. He's got a bunch of new T-shirts over at the NeatoShop you simply have to check out: Link

Rancor Pit	Monty Pytron	Walt and Jessie	Bat Country

Your purchase helps support indie artists as well as this blog! Thank you!

View more designs by Baznet | More Funny T-shirts

Adafruit, which posts the geekiest, most wonderful projects I'll never understand, tells you how to make your own "chameleon scarf," an accessory that changes color to match your clothing. The scarf itself is incidental, because what blew my mind is a sensor that detects the color of an object -a piece of fruit or the shirt you're wearing- and matches its RGB code. Then there are LEDs that change color depending on the code sent to them. The possibilities are endless, if you know a little about electronics. Find a video that shows how it works, and links to pages of information behind this project at Adafruit. Link  -Thanks, Becky Stern!

(Image credit: Johngineer!)

Redditor Hika-Tamari asked "Americans of Reddit, what surprised you when you visited Europe?" Here are some of the more interesting answers:

Chippedcoffeemug:

The Italian's way of driving. Never in anytime of my life was I more paranoid of being hit by a moped.

RandomWomanNo2:

I first went to Europe as a twelve-year-old kid, and I was shocked by how OLD everything was. Here, a church that's a hundred years old seems ancient, but in Europe you really do have ancient structures. The sense of centuries and millennia of well-recorded history having played out everywhere I went was sort of crazy. Obviously, we have ancient Native American history, but where I'm from that part of our culture isn't always evident.

And nudity! It was often no big thing in advertisements and television. Not so in America, where a single stray nipple can practically bring down the whole television system.

I also also surprised how much of the landscape reminded me of home. I'm from the American midwest and sections of Germany and Ireland looked just like I was driving through home. But then I'd see some small stone wall that had been around for centuries and I'd be reminded how different the landscape is!

yunith:

how everyone uses normal speaking voices, and how loud i am as an American.

_I_might_be_naked:

People in Scotland (Specifically Glasgow) are the nicest I've ever met, seriously. People would have friendly conversations with you at bus stops, and one person even lent me £2 spare cash at a gas station for petrol. It seems to be 90% of people there are like that. Very unusual.

Neatoramanauts, if you've traveled in Europe, what surprised you about it?

Link

(Photo: We All Have Baggage luggage tag, now on sale in the NeatoShop.)

Children of the 80's, take a stroll down memory lane with this YouTube clip by thepeterson and see if you remember 1986.

Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - via Neatorama's Facebook page (where you'll find tons more neat stuff)

Detroit is finally getting a statue of its legendary hero, RoboCop. But according to Wolf Gnards, there are other great pop culture heroes worthy of their own statues. For example, San Dimas, California should erect a statue in honor of Bill and Ted of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Well, they will establish a great new civilization.

You can read his other suggestions at the link.

Link

Drusilla's Park is a zoo in East Sussex, England. On April 26th, there was a breakout when two raccoons escaped into the surrounding neighborhood. Turpin was found in another area of the park a week later and returned to her enclosure. But her sister Bandit remained at large until she suddenly was seen back in her enclosure when a zookeeper made an evening nose count. She has returned on her own!

Claire Peters, of Drusillas Park, said: “We were incredibly surprised to see Bandit return. Obviously we longed for her safe return but no one expected her to turn up. It is thought the sisters escaped after being spooked by a noise or unexpected movement, leading them to flee up the perimeter fence and through the electric deterrent. Thankfully neither appears to be injured.”

Bandit's identity was confirmed by a scan of her embedded microchip. She apparently found that the grass was not greener on the other side of the fence. Link -via Arbroath

(Image credit: Drusilla's Park)

A little girl dressed as famed comic book artist Stan Lee at the Motor City Comic Con has captured the hearts of of the people of the internet. Here's a photo of her (right) with the great man himself (left).

Link -via Fashionably Geek

(Photo: Vincent James Cracchiolo)

Uranus Wall Clock 

Are you tired of your tardiness making you the butt of office jokes? You need the Uranus Wall Clock from the NeatoShop. This beautiful clock features a graphic of Uranus, as captured by NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft. Now you can gleefully tell people that Uranus helps you stay on time. 

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Clocks & Timers. 

Link

Did you lose your cats? Redditor thingsaintjust found a pile of them sleeping on the porch.

(YouTube link)

Tyler Marcum made a silly dance video in his underwear back in college ten years ago. Now he's turning 30 and recreated that same dance, side-by-side with the original, to mark the occasion. The song is "Landslide," originally by Fleetwood Mac, but this verso is by the Dixie Chicks. -via Viral Viral Videos

Angelina Jolie

It's been a while since we last featured Worth1000, but their "let's photoshop celebrities into Renaissance paintings" contest is full of all sorts of win. Check out the rest of the winning entries: Link - via Co.CREATE

Hugh Laurie

Steve Carrell

Natalie Portman

... and how could we not see this one coming?

Honey Boo Boo's Mama June

Another clever Google Glass spoof. This one featuring our friend Mark Malkoff as he walks around New York tricking people into thinking he's wearing Google Glass when actually it's a '90s video game.

Link: Via Mashable

Jason Criss's knuckles tattoo shows the Enterprise-D from Star Trek: The Next Generation. He writes:

It took me a while to figure out what kind of Star Trek tattoo I wanted to get. I finally decided that the enterprise d on my knuckles was the best choice for me. It’s still a work in progress there will be more shading and colors after the initial outline heals. let me know what you think of them so far.

Note that he can perform a saucer separation by just moving his fists apart.

Link

You don't have to be crazy to believe in conspiracy theories. In fact, 63 percent of registered voters in American believe in at least one political conspiracy theory. Scientists say that the belief that powerful people are manipulating things behind the scenes is the brain's way of making sense out of forces that the individual cannot control, sparked by the region of the brain called the amygdala.  

Economic recessions, terrorist attacks and natural disasters are massive, looming threats, but we have little power over when they occur or how or what happens afterward. In these moments of powerlessness and uncertainty, a part of the brain called the amygdala kicks into action. Paul Whalen, a scientist at Dartmouth College who studies the amygdala, says it doesn’t exactly do anything on its own. Instead, the amygdala jump-starts the rest of the brain into analytical overdrive — prompting repeated reassessments of information in an attempt to create a coherent and understandable narrative, to understand what just happened, what threats still exist and what should be done now. This may be a useful way to understand how, writ large, the brain’s capacity for generating new narratives after shocking events can contribute to so much paranoia in this country.

“If you know the truth and others don’t, that’s one way you can reassert feelings of having agency,” Swami says. It can be comforting to do your own research even if that research is flawed. It feels good to be the wise old goat in a flock of sheep.

Read more about the research into conspiracy theories in an article by Maggie Koerth-Beker in the New York Times. Link

(image credit: Matt Dorfman)

YouTube user Charles Cook uploaded a video clip that captured the birth of the devastating May 20, 2013 tornado at Newcastle, Oklahoma. That tornado later moved to Moore, where it turned into an EF5 tornado, with peak winds at 210 mph (340 km/h) and width of 1.3 miles (2.1 km).

"The birth of the May 20, 2013 tornado," Cook wrote. "Moved from there to Moore where it turned into an F4. God be with its victims."

A Reddit.com user claiming to be the man's son posted a link to the footage.

"Incredible video my Dad took of the May 20th tornado FORMING and destroying everything in its path near Newcastle," the user wrote. "He was out that way for work today and just happened to be in the right place at the right time. He was worried it was going to come back at him and was searching for a way to scoot out [of its] way once he was able to gauge how insanely close it was to him. He hung in there, though. Unbelievable."

Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - via Yahoo! News

Do you maintain a gluten-free diet? You might want to check out this blog I've just discovered: Mom, What's For Dinner? The author, Christi Silbaugh, specializes in creative recipes for that dietary need. Here's her scratch-made ice cream that combines chocolate with--oddly enough--avocados! You can find her recipe at the link.

Link -via Tasteologie

A woman in Tasmania pled guilty to five counts of sex with a minor after she was caught in the act with her boyfriend's 16-year-old son. She explained that she mistakenly thought 16 was the age of consent. But the real kicker is how they were caught.

Crown Prosecutor Jackie Hartnett told the court in October last year the woman had gone to her stepson's room to discuss his driving lessons.

Although the pair had previously had a strained relationship, tickling led to kissing and then to intercourse, the prosecutor said.

The following day, the woman's de facto partner set up a video camera in a bid to capture evidence of paranormal activity in the house, but forgot to turn it off.

When he returned from work and reviewed the footage, he saw his son and the woman kissing and cuddling.

So instead of "paranormal activity," the camera caught normal, but illegal, activity. Link  -via news.com.au

Bartkira is Ryan Humphrey's project to recreate the iconic manga Akira using characters from The Simpsons. So far, he's enlisted over 300 artists in the venture to participate in the development of Neo-Springfield. You can view illustrations from it at the link.

Link -via Booooooom

Captain America Night Light

Are you looking for a night light that is strong enough to stand up to whatever boogie men lurk in the shadows of your home? You need the Captain America Night Light from the NeatoShop. This brave nightlight has his shield in hand and is ready to fight whatever darkness comes his way.   

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Night Lights. 

Link

There's a colorful train that carries visitors to the Asahiyama Zoo in northern Japan. It's designed to amuse and excite kids. Among its features are animal shaped seats. Please let me sit in one, too!

Link

(Images: JR)

(YouTube link)

It's amazing what you can do with time, imagination, and modern cameras. The group Homemade Movies recreated the "chestburster" scene from the movie Alien -and nailed it. You can see a behind-the-scenes video and a side-by-side comparison with the original at Laughing Squid. Link

Undergraduate mechanical engineering students at Rice University built a shoe that recovers and stores energy generated by walking. This energy could be used to power small electronic devices, such as cell phones:

The Agitation Squad – Carlos Armada, Julian Castro, David Morilla and Tyler Wiest – decided last fall to focus their attention on where the rubber meets the road to create a shoe-mounted generator. Another device to draw energy from the motion of the knee had already been developed and patented and led them to analyze other sources of energy.

Working with the Motion Analysis Laboratory at Shriners Hospital for Children in Houston, the team determined the force at the heel delivered far more potential for power than any other part of the foot.

“We went to the lab and saw the force distribution across the bottom of your foot, to see where the most force is felt,” Morilla said. “We found it would be at the heel and at the balls of your toes, as you push off. We went with the heel because, unless you’re sprinting, you’re letting gravity do the work.” […]

The prototypes deliver an average of 400 milliwatts, enough to charge a battery, in benchtop tests (and a little less in walking tests, where the moving parts don’t move as far). They send energy through wires to a belt-mounted battery pack. A voltage regulator keeps it flowing steadily to the battery.

The PediPower hits the ground before any other part of the prototype shoe. A lever arm strikes first. It is attached to a gearbox that replaces much of the shoe’s sole and turns the gears a little with each step. The gears drive a motor mounted on the outside of the shoe that generates electricity to send up to the battery.

You can watch a video of their device at the link.

Link -via Inhabitat

“Money is not the most important thing in the world. Love is. Fortunately, I love money.” — Jackie Mason

Are you interested in financial literacy and becoming the next best investor out there? Are you curious about how mutual funds work?

Hell no. You just want more money. You want a better life. You want a stress-free life where you’re not always thinking about money. You don’t want to be in debt. You want to crush that debt.

Let’s take a break from our awesomeness and wildness for a day to try something different. I really wanted to look at the idea of financial advice and why so many supposed-experts have it all wrong when it comes to personal finance and young people.

Why do most financial experts have it wrong?

Everyone assumes that education is key. We want to put labels on cigarettes and on junk food. We went to educate the masses. We want everyone to be educated. Do the masses care? I doubt it. We’re not logical people. We all know that smoking is bad. We all know that spending money we don’t have is bad.

Education is not the key.

There’s more than enough education out there on this planet. We’re educated enough as it is. We know what we’re doing is wrong. Why? Because will-power only lasts for so long. Education doesn’t hold true for long. We can’t always be logical.

I’ve personally read tons of blog posts on eating and proper nutrition. And guess what? I still snap once in a while and grab a slice of pizza or poutine. I’m educated on the topic. The reality is that education isn’t everything.

Just because you explain to someone how compound interest works it doesn’t mean that they’re going to start saving every single penny.

There are a few more points that deserve to be mentioned…

We don’t want to be preached to.

Stop preaching to us! Experts like to preach to us about budgets, spreadsheets, and complex financial topics. Yet our generation never seems to care because we don’t want to track every calorie nor do we want to think about boring topics 24/7.

We demand to go out and have fun.

We will make plenty of mistakes. We will go on Facebook and post photos. We will spend money on junk food and over-priced drinks. The second you try to tell us to cut this out forever, well, we won’t take your financial advice seriously.

It’s now time to look at the other side of the coin here…

What can you do if you’re a young person looking for financial advice?

“I was so poor growing up…if I wasn’t a boy…I’d have nothing to play with.” — Rodney Dangerfield

Honestly, information overload or analysis paralysis is dangerous. I know friends that have been doing this for years with regards to starting a business. It’s easy to get caught up with the theory and different theories. Why? Because there’s always something new to read out there. There’s always something to respond to. Anyone can spend all day reading random articles.

Stop reading so much.

Get some results first! Apply a few tips. Try something different. See what works for you and what doesn’t. Then you can look around for more financial tips.

Stick to the basics.

The fitness and finance worlds possess many parallels. I’m a huge fan of both. In both groups, the basics work wonders.

You don’t need to count calories. You don’t need to learn about trading commodities. You just need to save some money. You need to eat better than yesterday. The goal isn’t perfection. The goal is to get better.

If you stick to the basics, you’ll get ahead. Don’t waste time on debating stock picks with delusional friends. Just find ways to save more money or increase your income.

Simple usually don’t sell, so we feel that we need to look at graphs.

How does the stock market work? You don’t need to stress. Check out my piece on how to start investing. If you don’t care, then that’s cool. You can read about planning a trip or something more interesting.

What if you’re a “financial expert?”

“The safest way to double your money is to fold it over and put it in your pocket.” — Kin Hubbard

Get to know your target market.

Just because you’re in your 40s and no longer go out because your wife doesn’t allow you to, it doesn’t give you the right to preach to us. Get to know who your target market is. Who are you trying to work with?

Get to know your market before you start preaching useless information.

Get a life.

Nobody cares about how smart you are. Stop using big words and complex theories. I studied finance in college. This stuff is boring and tricky. Most of my peers were happy just to pass the class and never have to think about finance again. What a horrible way to get started with money management.

The following quote summarizes finance and financial advice the best:

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction." — Albert Einstein

He was a pretty smart dude as you may have heard.

Instead of making things more complex, why not try to simplify everything? Why not bring it back a few steps? You might just gain a few fans. Stay tuned for some sweet content coming your way!

What are your thoughts on financial advice?

Rhiannon's cake is delicious, right down to the core. She made it for her sister, a teacher, who wanted to show her students how the Earth is structured. The baking challenge was to bake a hemisphere within a hemisphere within a hemisphere. At the link, you can read about how Rhiannon did it.

Link

Image: MBARI

Meet the Lyre Sponge, a large harp- (or lyre-) shaped carnivorous sponge in the deep waters of the northeast Pacific Ocean off the coast of California. The vertical branches, capped with a balloon-like ball, maximize the surface area of the sponge for capturing planktons.

See that and 9 other neat new species discovered just last year over at LiveScience's Top 10 New Species of 2013 (don't miss the monkey with the blue butt!): Link | Image Gallery

Jason Marlin of ars technica was struck by a bolt of lightning. He was apparently okay enough to write about it right away.  

Yesterday, I was sitting in my studio office—basically a converted garage—while a thunderstorm brewed outside. After wrapping up a conference call with some of Ars' finest, I was getting ready to dive back into work when the storm really picked up. "Ahhhh," I thought as I leaned back in my chair to stare out at the strange greenish light against a purple-clouded backdrop. "So beautiful!"

At that moment—and this part is a little foggy—a bright arc of electricity shot through the window and directly into my chest. I'm not sure whether the arc originated from the sky or the ground, but it knocked me out of my chair. I hit the concrete floor and bounced back up to my feet, which were shuffling at top speed into a bookshelf. I remember thinking, "OK, going to die now. Do not fall down. Do not pass out."

I've read that being struck by lightning is akin to a being hit by a huge defibrillator. I'm not sure about that—but it did feel magnitudes worse than the time I touched an electric fence as a kid.

The paramedics urged him to go to a hospital for tests, but he declined. Read the rest of his first-hand account and the aftermath. Link -via Digg

His hands are full, but this hero is ready for anything. Question: what happens if his Hulk legs get angry while his Tony Stark head wants to kick back and relax?

-via Fashionably Geek

(Photo: unknown)

This picture of a giant spider on the M3 in Hampshire, which is a highway in England, was captured by a CCTV camera. As you can see, cars are speeding away from it as fast as they can. Link  -via Arbroath

(Image credit: ROMANSE and Hants County Council)

(Video Link)

When activated, this zoetrope at the Phillip Island Chocolate Factory in Melbourne, Australia shows ducks jumping in and out of the water. Note: for display purposes only; do not eat.

Link -via Blame It on the Voices

BBQ Golf Tool Set

Father's Day is coming? Are you looking for the perfect gift for your golf loving Dad? Get him the BBQ Golf Tool Set from the NeatoShop. The tools in this fantastic 5 piece set feature golf club shaped handles. The set also comes with a golf club shaped carrying bag for keeping those tools neatly organized.

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Kitchen Stuff. 

Link

Forget the Force! The world's coolest Star Wars creation uses LEGO bricks and lots of it. The LEGO X-Wing is built with over 5 million bricks. It's the largest LEGO model ever built:

The model of the classic Star Wars fighter being unveiled in Times Square has a wingspan of 44 feet and comes complete with R2-D2 and a full range of sound effects. It’s a super-duper-sized version ofStar Wars Lego starfighter set #9493 and was made with 5,335,200 Lego bricks. That, according to Lego, makes it the largest model ever built, eclipsing the Lego robot at the Mall of America by some 2 million bricks. This replica of the Rebel Alliance dogfighter is 42 times the size of the Lego version we’ve all built and a bit bigger than a real X-Wing. (Yes, yes, we know they’re not real. Just go with it.) The X-Wing Luke Skywalker and his fellow rebels flew was about 41 feet long, 2 feet shorter than this Lego masterpiece.

The X-Wing was built at the Lego Model Shop at the company’s facility in Kladno, Czech Republic. It took 32 “master builders” (Note: This is a real job, and we’re preparing our resumés.) 17,336 man-hours to construct the X-Wing.

Angela Watercutter of Wired has the story: Link

PS: CoolThings has an awesome gallery of the LEGO X-Wing: Link - Thanks Sunny!

A busy woman needs the tools of her work accessible. This was a challenge when fashions did not include many pockets. The chatelaine was a popular solution in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries:

Like a customized Swiss Army knife, a chatelaine provided its wearer with exactly the tools she needed closest at hand. For an avid seamstress, that might include a needle case, thimble, and tape measure, while for an active nurse it might mean a thermometer and safety pins. Inspired by the complex key rings carried by “la chatelaine,” the female head of a grand French estate, these beautiful little contraptions were as fashionable as they were practical. In fact, their design was sometimes so trendy that style trumped usefulness.

Link

(Images: Genevieve Cummins)

This is what you get when a linguist's children reach middle school. Linguist James Harbeck gives us the phonetic analysis of the things teenagers say WAY too much, mainly to annoy parents, teachers, and even their best friends. A sample:

1. Breathy-voiced long low back unrounded vowel with advanced tongue root
This is usually spelled something like auuggghhh. It's the classic teenage sound of utter exasperation. The eyes are usually angled upwards, sometimes in contrast with a downward movement of the shoulders. "Breathy-voice" means that the vocal folds are wide apart, giving a very "chesty" sound. "Advanced tongue root" means that the back of the tongue is moved forward to make a larger resonating cavity behind it. "Low back" means the tongue doesn't rise anywhere in the mouth (compare this with "eee," which is high front). "Unrounded" means the lips aren't rounded.

If that makes no sense to you, it will when you hear him reproduce this and all the analyzed sounds in the accompanying video at The Week. Link -via Metafilter

This is the cover of Action Comics #1, the first comic book to feature Superman. Jalopnik author Jason Torchinsky asks a question I've never considered before: what kind of car is Superman lifting? Torchinsky and various Jalopnik commenters think that it's either a 1937 DeSoto, Plymouth or Ford. You can read their analyses at the link.

Link

Caffeine is, according to New Scientist, the planet's most popular "psychoactive drug." In the United States alone, more than 90% of adults are estimated to use it every day.

But now even the US - home of Coca-Cola, Starbucks and the 5-Hour Energy shot - is questioning the wisdom of adding it to everyday foodstuffs like waffles, sunflower seeds, trail mix and jelly beans.

In a statement, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) highlighted the "unfortunate example" of Wrigley chewing gum producing packs of eight sticks which each contained as much caffeine as half a cup of coffee. Subsequently, Wrigley said it would "pause" production of the product.

The agency is also looking at highly-caffeinated energy drinks, and said it was concerned about the "cumulative impact" of adding stimulants to products.

According to the US Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the number of people seeking emergency treatment after ingesting energy drinks doubled to more than 20,000 in 2011.

Jon Kelly of BBC News Magazine has the post that'll go perfect with that cup of coffee: Link

Image: Powered by Caffeine from the NeatoShop

(YouTube link)

Some quotes are attributed to the wrong person. Some get their words garbled a little. And others were just made up and we don't know where they really came from. However, many of these misquotes are versions that I've never heard. Does anyone really think it's "Bubble, Bubble, toil and trouble"? After all, the next line uses "bubble" as the rhyme. Who are all these people getting quotes so very wrong? John Green sets the record straight for mental_floss.  

Photo: Nthach/Wikimedia

Remember the brouhaha over the CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch public dissin' of fat women? Well, it seems that they don't like disabled people, either. A judge in Colorado is considering forcing Hollister, a clothing company owned by Abercrombie, to make their stores more accessible to the disabled:

Lawyer Amy Robertson, who represents the disabled in the lawsuit, compared the case with the fight against racial segregation in the 1960s.

She said that in one case, Julie Farrar, who is confined to a wheelchair, had trouble when she tried to go with her daughter through a side door of one the Colorado stores because there was no access to the front door. She and several other disabled patrons filed a lawsuit in 2009. [...]

The stores put signs on the sides of the doors, one for "Dudes" and the other for "Bettys," and argued that they were complying with federal regulations because the side doors were accessible to the able-bodied and disabled alike, Robertson said.

"In the Jim Crow era, you had a white entrance and a colored entrance off to the side. These stores put up signs for Dudes and Bettys and called it integrated," she said Wednesday.

Abercrombie's lawyers argue that changing the elevated entrance to the stores would cause "immense ... loss in sales and revenue" and "permanent damage to the Hollister brand."

Link - via MSN

Sunday afternoon, four American tourists in Iceland decided to picnic on an ice floe in the Fjallsárlón glacial lagoon. But that was not a great idea, as they discovered when the ice they were sitting on started floating away!

According to Páll Sigurður Vignisson, member of the Hornafjörður rescue team and employee at Jökulsárlón, the tourists, who were from the United States, had set up a table and chairs on an ice floe with the plan of eating dinner when a gust of wind suddenly pushed the ice away from land, leaving them stranded about 10 meters from the shore.

One of the tourists managed to jump to shore before the ice drifted too far and called 112 for help. "When we arrived it was quite comical to see them sitting on chairs and with a table on an iceberg ... Yes the dinner was over," Páll told Iceland Review, adding that he had not noticed what they had been eating as he was too busy getting life vests to them.

Link  -via Arbroath

(Image credit: ICE-SAR)

Ghostbrother by Donnie

When you need a geeky T-shirt this summer, who you gonna call? How about T-shirt designer Donnie over at the NeatoShop? Check out his Behance page, then visit the NeatoShop for more: Link

Kirby Stay Puft	Poulp Fiction	Shadow Link	White Russian

Are you a professional artist or T-shirt designer? Let's chat! Sell your designs on the NeatoShop, earn a king's ransom for every shirt sold and get your website featured on the blog to boot!

Image: Shmuel Marco

Archaeologists are baffled with the discovery of a large, mysterious structure under the waters of the Sea of Galilee:

The mysterious structure is cone shaped, made of "unhewn basalt cobbles and boulders," and weighs an estimated 60,000 tons the researchers said. That makes it heavier than most modern-day warships.

Rising nearly 32 feet (10 meters) high, it has a diameter of about 230 feet (70 meters). To put that in perspective, the outer stone circle of Stonehenge has a diameter just half that with its tallest stones not reaching that height. [...]

Researcher Yitzhak Paz, of the Israel Antiquities Authority and Ben-Gurion University, believes it could date back more than 4,000 years. "The more logical possibility is that it belongs to the third millennium B.C., because there are other megalithic phenomena [from that time] that are found close by," Paz told LiveScience in an interview, noting that those sites are associated with fortified settlements. 

Owen Jarus of LiveScience has more: Link

Cheese Socks

Do your feet smell like cheese? Warn people about their pungent odor with the Cheese Socks from the NeatoShop. This deliciously fun pair of orange socks features the word CHEESE. 

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

Link

This lovely fountain is called Fuente del Barco de Agua, which means "water boat fountain." You can see it at Playa de la Malvarrosa in Valencia, Spain, or you can see plenty of photos at My Modern Met. Link -via Laughing Squid

(Image credit: Flickr user Jesus Solana)

For two days, Korean pop sensation Psy was the toast of Cannes as he partied with stars, guzzled champagne, appeared on French media and even signed deals. Celebs like Naomie Harris even tweeted a photo of them posing together. Problem was, the real Psy wasn't anywhere near the event.

The New York Post, who dubbed the impostor Psych!, wrote:

The next day, Psych! was interviewed by France’s Radio Prestige (and even taught a clueless host how to do the “Gangnam” dance) and then headed to hot Torch Beach Club. “He was playing it up full scale,” said a spy. “He had three security guards with him at all times, in suits and earpieces. He was scamming free drinks and bottle service . . . three bottles of Cristal Rosé with lunch.” Psych! also had a French “manager” with him who negotiated an upcoming appearance at the starry Better World Awards in Monaco.

But an organizer finally e-mailed at 2 a.m. yesterday, “We’ve been duped. I had a conversation with his label . . . it [wasn’t] him, just a look-alike.” Real Psy tweeted from Singapore, “Seems like there’s another ME at cannes . . . say Hi to him.”

Link

We hail you, chubby Asian guy with Psy sunglasses, whoever you are!

When you see the many jokes about graduation, remember they are just jokes. Finishing your education is clearly an accomplishment to be proud of, when you consider the many folks who do not get the opportunity. As his daughter graduates this year, Dr. Harley A. Rotbart thinks back to his own medical school graduation in 1979 and what it meant to his father.

He was the most brilliant fruit peddler in the history of fruit peddling, the smartest man I ever knew. Deprived of a high school education when the Nazis raided his town of Klodowa, he came to America years later as an apprehensive, thickly accented refugee from the unspeakable horrors of Europe. Despite many years in America, the emotional scars were still there. He had a sense of inferiority and was intimidated by those around him who had an education. He was always socially self-conscious, acutely afraid of standing out for his lack of accomplishments. Within his circle of family and friends, dad was proud of who he was and what he had overcome. We knew he was proud of us, too.

It was only after his graduation ceremony that Rotbart realized how proud his father was. When you read about it, you'll need to have a hanky ready. Link -via Metafilter

(YouTube link)

Matt Clarke has started a YouTube series called Convos With My 2 Year Old. In it, he recreates conversations with his daughter Coco. I'm sure the words were exactly the same, but common sense tells me that the original wasn't nearly as creepy as it seems when Matt plays the part. Look at that adorable little girl -who wouldn't want to play the princess for her? -via Viral Viral Videos

Psycho Donuts calls it "Psycho Psushi"--a complete meal served in a bento box with edible chopsticks. I don't care if it's served raw!

Link

It's once again time for our collaboration with the wonderfully entertaining What Is It? Blog. Do you know what the pictured item is? Can you guess? Or can you make up something totally wacky?

Place your guess in the comment section below. One guess per comment, please, though you can enter as many guesses as you'd like in separate comments. Post no URLs or weblinks, as doing so will forfeit your entry. Two winners: the first correct guess and the funniest (albeit ultimately wrong) guess will win T-shirt from the NeatoShop.

Please write your T-shirt selection alongside your guess. If you don't include a selection, you forfeit the prize, see? May we suggest the Science T-Shirt, Funny T-Shirt and Artist-Designed T-Shirts?

See another picture of this item at the What Is It? Blog. Good luck!

These sculptures are amazing! Tom Eckert, a professor of art at Arizona State University, carved these incredibly realistic sculptures of everyday objects. At the link, you can view more photos of his work as well as watch an interview of him.

Link | Artist's Website

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

In 1960, ABC brought something new to the young medium of television: A full-length (30 minute) animated cartoon TV series. Sure, cartoons had been broadcast since TV's inception, but never an actual primetime cartoon series. The show was "made for adults," but the millions of kids who routinely tuned in didn't know or didn't care about that.

The Flintstones ran for six very successful years (1960-1966). The original pilot for the series was called The Flagstones. This name was changed because of the popular comic strip Hi and Lois, whose last name was Flagstone. Their creators threatened legal action if that surname was appropriated by ABC. (Daws Butler voiced both leads, Fred and Barney, in this original pilot.)

And obvious and openly admitted rip-off of The Honeymooners, the show's cast included four lead characters. Fred Flintstone (the earliest animated precursor to Homer Simpson) was the show's central character. Interestingly, although Seth MacFarlane, the brilliant creator of Family Guy, is often accused of "ripping off" Homer Simpson for his lead character Peter Griffin, Seth always denies this theory and says Fred Flintstone was his "favorite cartoon character as a kid" and was the actual inspiration for Peter.

Much like Jackie Gleason's legendary Honeymooners character Ralph Kramden, Fred was loud, overbearing, blustery, and obnoxious. But underneath, he was a good guy, just an average Stone Age "John Doe" trying to earn a living, get by, and have a few laughs on the side. Fred shared one other quality with Ralph: his unequivocal and undying love of this wife, Wilma.

Wilma, much like Ralph's wife Alice, could more than hold her own against her husband's tirades and dramatizations. In the face of Fred's frequent bluster, Wilma could always be counted on to deliver a wisecrack to bring her husband down to size.

Fred's neighbor and best friend, Barney Rubble, was an easygoing, likable little fellow. He was to be Fred's comrade-in-arms in all of his wacky adventures.

Barney's wife, Betty, was a lead character, but was usually in the background, simply there to give Wilma a female counterpart.

Fred Flintstone was voiced by journeyman character actor Alan Reed. Reed had actually dubbed in Gleason's voice on various projects over the years.

The immortal Mel Blanc took on the role of Barney. Blanc was severely injured in a near-fatal auto accident in 1961 and was unable to do Barney's voice, so veteran cartoon voiceover legend Daws Butler (of The Flagstones fame) briefly took over the role. When Blanc was once again well enough to voice Barney, he recorded the character from his hospital bed, in a full body cast. complete with a microphone hung up over his bed.

Jean Vander did the voice of Wilma and Bea Benedaret did Betty Rubble for the first four seasons, before ceding her role to Gerry Johnson.

The Flintstone's family pet, a dinosaur named Dino, was actually featured as a talking dinosaur in one episode, although he never spoke again during there show's run. Oddly, Dino is blue in the show's opening and closing credits, but is purple during the actual show.

Although today it seems quite unbelievable, for the first few seasons, The Flintstones was sponsored by Winston cigarettes. A hilarious Winston commercial (now banned from TV, but available at YouTube) shows Fred and Barney relaxing and puffing on their Winstons as Wilma and Betty do chores around the house. Another early routinely-shown (at the time) commercial spot has Fred lighting Wilma's Winston. As she puffs away, Fred happily sings the Winston jingle: "Winston tastes good, like a cigarette should…"

(YouTube link)

The original beginning of the show was actually "The Flintstones, brought to you by Winston cigarettes." Welch's grape juice, a more appropriate sponsor, took the helm and sponsored the show for the last several seasons. All references and mentions of Winston cigarettes have been carefully and thoroughly erased and expunged from all Flintstones reruns.

Many heavyweight guest stars voiced episodes of The Flintstones (a precursor to The Simpsons custom), including Ann Margret, Tony Curtis, Elizabeth Montgomery, and even legendary pianist-composer Hoagy Carmichael.

In 1963, a new angle was added to the show with the birth of Pebbles Flintstone, Fred and Wilma's daughter. In anticipation of her birth, a huge nationwide contest was held to "name the Flintstone's baby." The show had several historic television "firsts" involving Pebbles: it was the first show to actually have a pregnant lead character and was also the first cartoon to have an actual story arc -that of Wilma's pregnancy, Pebbles' birth, and the following episodes dealing with Fred adapting to fatherhood. (The Flintstones was also the first animated show to feature a couple sharing the same bed.)

Soon thereafter, not to be outdone, Barney and Betty "wish upon a star" in a poignant episode, and are given their own child, Bamm-Bamm, the world's strongest boy.

Originally, the Flintstone child was to have been a boy, Fred Junior. But this idea was scrapped because little girls preferred buying girl dolls to boy dolls. The Pebbles doll was a huge seller in the mid-sixties.

Although many (mainly women and girls) like the Pebbles angle, I have always preferred the pre-Pebbles episodes and thought the show jumped the shark with the birth of Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm. The pre-Pebbles episodes are quite often hilarious, but after her birth, Fred became more domesticated and toned-down, diluting a once-great character.

The "fat jokes" so often unleashed on Ralph Kramden were equally fired at the overweight Fred. Interestingly, Jackie Gleason once threatened to sue the series over its obvious and blatant ripoff of his classic show The Honeymooners. Fortunately, he was talked out of the notion by friends who warned him that he didn't want to be known as "the man who killed Fred Flintstone."

The series, like almost every TV show before and after, was initially new and fresh, but dwindled and limped through the final seasons. The Gruesomes, a weird family of strange, eccentric creatures obviously ripped off from The Addams Family and The Munsters, came and went in two episodes. The Great Gazoo, an extraterrestrial voiced by the great Harvey Korman, was there during the show's final season to help Fred and Barney out of their usual jams. Another fairly unnecessary character in the show's final years was the Rubble's new pet Hoppy the Hopperoo, a kangaroo-like pet, obviously added to give the Rubbles a Dino counterpart.

Finally, after a then-record (since obliterated by The Simpsons) 166 episodes, The Flintstones finally left the airways in 1966. A few much-lesser spinoffs have appeared over the years, as well as both animated and live-action Flintstones movies. But the original stands head and shoulders above all that have come in it wake.

(YouTube link)

Have you been thinking about investing your money? Do you want to get into the stock market?

Most of us just want to have more money. We don’t care if it’s through saving more money with frugality, increasing income, or a mix of a both. We want to see our bank accounts grow.

I’ve always been an ambitious (greedy) guy. I had a job every single summer in high school. I would cut grass in the morning, work at the grocery store a few times per week, and referee soccer games in the evening. I would then try to save as much of this money as possible. Eventually, I became curious with the idea of trading stocks. My father started trading stocks in the mid-90s. He could barely speak English, but he had the ability to watch the stock market channel all damn day.

This was back in the day where you actually had to call your stock trades in. I remember I would get in trouble because I was on ICQ on our 56k dialup while my parents were trying to call a trade in. Sorry!

I eventually got into trading stocks. I sucked at it and never really accomplished much. My stock trading career was short-lived and I pulled my money out of the stock market. I invested my money into a rental property, my education, and my career.

The truth is that I’ve always tried to take risks in life. I’m not afraid of risk nor am I afraid of physical challenges. On the flip side, I’m always nervous with how I invest my money. Some of my friends have made a killing off stock trading. I can’t say that I’ve been so fortunate.

I’ve had no issues with investing in myself in the past. Trading stocks? This is where I’m nervous!

What if you’re too scared to invest real money?

I put together a piece that showed you how to start investing. I’m extremely proud of that article and recommend that you check it out. For today, I wanted to look at a different kind of tool. I wanted to look at the idea of a social investing site that uses virtual currency. This site is Olim Dives.

What is Olim Dives all about?

According to the homepage…

Olim Dives is a virtual stock trading network designed to connect the online investment community through friendly competition.

If you’re too intimidated by the idea of investing real money into the stock market, you should definitely check out a virtual stock trading game. This allows you to buy and sell stocks with virtual money. You can track your trades and your progress to see how you would fare as an investor. It’s an excellent way to find out if you could actually make some money on the stock market.

I remember playing around with a stock trading game many years ago. I would get excited when I made money and then I would avoid the game when I knew I had losses. It was a fun little reality check for me. I also laughed at how now we can buy/sell stocks within a few clicks. We don’t have to wait around on the phone all day like those in the 90s had to. We certainly don’t need to hire a stock broker and pay outrageous fees to make a trade.

Why should you try a stock market game like Olim Dives?

If you haven’t tried out a stock market game, you definitely need to. You can get your friends involved. Who doesn’t enjoy a competition? I love competition, especially against my friends. You can compete to see who would make the most money off trading stocks. On the flip side, you could also see who would lose a fortune if this was real money. There’s definitely some bragging rights in there.

We once looked at the idea of investing in the stock market in your 20s. Is it the best idea? It really depends on your investor profile and your risk tolerance. Some of you guys had awesome stories to share. Others, hmm, didn’t get out of the stock market as fortunate. This is why it makes sense it play around with virtual trades before you spend real money.

Another bonus is that the virtual cash isn’t just there for fun. With Olim Dives, you can win monthly cash prizes and qualify for the annual challenge (with $15,000 in cash and prizes).

At the end of the day, I don’t want you to lose your pants by investing in the stock market. This is why it’s important to start off with virtual currency to see if you have what it takes to make the right decisions when it comes to buying/selling.

I believe that if you’re going to fail, you might as well fail fast. Don’t spend years working on the Titanic. Don’t waste your time reading and theorizing. When it comes to trading stocks, the best way to experience failure is to play around with a virtual game. You’ll see how it feels to make a wise trade. More importantly, you’ll see how it feels to fall flat on your face and fail. Failure in the stock market could result in blowing your life savings (or virtual money in this case).

Play with virtual money first. Risk your savings after if you feel comfortable with how things work.

You can see more about how the stock market works if you’re still interested. Once you’ve mastered virtual currency, you’ll hopefully build up enough confidence for real money. Then there’s no stopping you! You might become the next Warren Buffett — or you might blow your savings. There’s only one way to find out.

Have you played around with any stock trading games before? Any luck?

No, the school isn't tiny. This is actually a bus for a campground in Nova Scotia. The owners call it "Canada's smallest operational school bus." Mark Stevenson of Jalopnik took a few photos of it, which you can view at the link.

Link | Campground Website

Om nom! Cassius the Croc, the world's largest crocodile in captivity, turned 110 this week. Just be thankful that you are not the cake:

Far North Queensland keepers of the world's largest saltwater crocodile in captivity sang the old croc Happy Birthday before giving him the 20kg meat cake topped with candles.

"He destroyed it in about 30 seconds," Marineland Melanesia croc wrangler Billy Craig said. "It's one of the biggest meals he's had - we decided to spoil him."

Cleo Fraser of NT News has the story: Link

(YouTube link)

A classic skit. Some people have no idea how offensive they are until you turn it around on them. And the real kicker is that turning it around often doesn't even get the point across. -via Daily Picks and Flicks

Trolltunga is an odd rock protrusion jutting out over Ringedalsvatnet, a lake in southern Norway. The name means "the troll's tongue." Would you be willing to sit on the end? He promises not to eat you.

Link -via TYWKIWDBI

(Photos: Steinar Talmoen, Jan Skrodzki

Sugar isn't always sweet, especially when Darwin's involved. Entomologists at North Carolina State University showed that when glucose is used in roach-bait poison, cockroaches evolve to dislike sweets:

Glucose sets off bitter receptors in roach taste buds, causing roaches to avoid foods that bring on this taste-bud reaction. This aversion has a genetic basis and it eventually spreads to offspring, resulting in increasingly large groups of cockroaches that reject glucose and any baits made with it.

In normal German cockroaches, glucose elicits activity in sugar gustatory receptor neurons, which react when exposed to sugars like glucose and fructose – components of corn syrup, a common roach-bait ingredient. Generally, roaches have a sweet tooth for these sugars. [...]

Glucose-averse roaches that were forced to taste glucose refused to ingest the sugar, akin to a child who spits out her bitter-tasting food.

Link

A hedgehog in Bude, Cornwall, England, was taken to the vet because he was so big and round that he couldn't walk or curl up. Veterinary staff were puzzled, because the huge hedgehog was of normal weight. An x-ray revealed that the animal was, indeed, inflated. Veterinary surgeon Adam Revitt said he had never seen a case of "balloon syndrome" before.

Balloon syndrome occurs when bacteria gets into a wound and gives off gas that becomes trapped under the skin, Mr Revitt explained.

He added: "This is the first case I had ever seen. It is uncommon. There are very few things published about it.

"Without the treatment it couldn’t breathe and would probably have died."

Revitt used a syringe to slowly deflate the hedgehog over about five minutes. The animal is now on antibiotics and is recovering nicely. Link  -via Arbroath

Previously at Neatorama:A similar case from 2007.

If Klein Bottles - which have neither an inside nor an outside surface - aren't confusing enough for your, check these glass Klein bottles made by Alan Bennett for the Science Museum in London:

A single surface model made by Alan Bennett in Bedford, United Kingdom. It consists of three Klein bottles set inside each other to produce, when cut, three pairs of single-twist Mobius strips. A Klein bottle has no edges, no outside or inside and cannot be properly constructed in three dimensions. (Source)

A single surface model made by Alan Bennett in Bedford, 1995. It consists of a sphere with three interlinked loops the equivalent of three interconnected Klein bottles. (Source)

A single surface glass vessel made by Alan Bennett in Bedford, United Kingdom. It consists of a triple loop Klein bottle which when cut gives a pair of five-twist Mobius strips. (Source)

View those and many more neat Klein bottle images over at this Dark Roasted Blend post aptly titled Topological Marvel: The Klein Bottle in Art - Thanks Avi!

Erin Bradley's Park Slope Family Circus imagines Bil, Thelma, Billy, Dolly, Jeffy and P.J. not in Scottsdale, Arizona, but a wealthy neighborhood of Brooklyn. They're rich enough to afford absurdities.

Link -via 22 Words

Live Long and Prosper Star Trek Photo Frame

Father's Day is right around the corner. Are you looking for the perfect gift for your Star Trek loving Dad? Get Dad the Live Long and Prosper Star Trek Photo Frame from the NeatoShop. This fantastic frame features Spock and the U.S.S. Enterprise. The opening is in the shape of the Sarfleet insignia. The frame holds a 4 x 6 photo.    

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

Link

M.C. Escher's tessellated lizards will look great on your floor! The tiles for the bathroom floor pictured were custom-designed, but you can contact the company Arbore about making some for you. Link -via Boing Boing

Eventually, someone will break your heart. Don't wait until s/he has ripped it out of your chest and stomped on it before developing a contingency plan. Be prepared with Melanie Chernock's first aid kit. It contains chocolate, vodka, tissues, bubble bath, a candle and a music CD with appropriate songs.

Link -via Fubiz

(YouTube link)

Maru, the internet's favorite cat, turned six years old yesterday. As is her custom, mugumogu posted a retrospective of Maru's best moments from the past year in a birthday video. Link -via Cute Overload

w00t! If you love Uncle John's Bathroom Reader series on Neatorama, you'd love this: they're having an awesome Father's Day Sale, where the entire Uncle John's store is 30% off from May 20th to July 16th, 2013. They must be off their rockers! Thanks for letting us know, Mana!

Check out the latest Uncle John's Bathroom Readers article on Neatorama:

• Kibble Me This: The History of Dog Food
• Sex in Aladdin: Anatomy of a Rumor
• The Pee-Mobile
• Betty Freeman's Day in Court
• The Birth of the Dishwasher

View all Bathroom Reader articles on Neatorama | Don't forget to check out the official Uncle John's Bathroom Reader website

(Image generated at Word Cloud for Kids)

What do the following words have in common? It's not really that difficult if you chip away at them for a while.

Sheath

Pirate

Ashamed

Brandy

Continue reading for the answer.

Highlight here for the answer:  

By continuously removing one letter from either the beginning or the end of each word, you create new words, until you are left with a single letter.

Sheath, heath, heat, eat, at, a

Pirate, irate, rate, ate, at, a

Ashamed, shamed, shame, sham, ham, am, a

Brandy, brand, bran, ran, an, a

___________________

This brainteaser was reprinted with permission from Uncle John's Unstoppable Bathroom Reader.

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!

(Video Link)

Guys, she doesn't want you to solve her problems or even just suggest possible solutions. Just listen and empathize as best you can. In this hilarious short film, Jason Headley offers great relationship advice.

-via American Digest

What happened after the movie ended? Old Red Jalopy collaborated with Next Movie to envision what would logically happen after the credits rolled.

As you can see above, Willy Wonka's chocolate factory would've been closed by the authorities for sure. Willy himself is probably hiding somewhere in Loompaland to avoid lawsuits.

Take a look at the rest: Link - Thanks Andie!

(YouTube link)

To celebrate YouTube's eighth anniversary, Dane Boe put together a retrospective of viral videos to the tune of Billy Joel's song "We Didn't Start the Fire." You might recognize all the clips, most of them were posted here at Neatorama over the past eight years. -via Viral Viral Videos   

No ordinary plate will do. The photography duo Nicky & Max photographed food presented in the elegant Bauhaus style. Their simple shapes, colors and forms result in lovely images of fine food. You can see more photos from their series at the link.

Link -via Foodiggity | Artists' Website

Etckt had great success with their Periodic Table of Star Wars (the Original Trilogy), so, just like Lucas did, they followed that up with the prequels. And just like the prequels, this new periodic table has more special effects.

Each element cell is now a cube (rendered as hexagons), with all the pertinent information, and elements/characters categorized as Jedi, Sith, royalty, politicians, droids, etc. Of course, Anakin Skywalker heads the table, along with Qui-Gon Jin. You can see more details and the full-size version by clicking the image at Etckt. Link-Thanks, Matthew Gallagher!

Aragorn & Arwen Salt & Pepper Shakers

Celebrate a love worth becoming mortal for with the Aragorn & Arwen Salt & Pepper Shakers from the NeatoShop. This beautiful set is made of glazed ceramic and feature hand painted details. Magnets hold the two shakers together. 

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

Link

At the age of 80, Japanese mountain climber and adventurer Yuichiro Miura reached the summit of Mount Everest on Thursday. But he may not hold that title for long:

There are reports that Nepalese climber Min Bahadur Sherchan, 81, is planning an assault on the world’s highest peak next week, despite some recent intestinal problems.

Sherchan frustrated Miura’s record-setting ambitions once before when, in May 2008, Miura conquered the mountain at the age of 75, only to arrive a day after Sherchan's ascent at age 76 years and 340 days.

This is Miura’s third ascent of the 29,028-foot peak. He also earned the oldest climber title in 2003, at age 70, a milestone broken four years later when fellow Japanese climber Katsusuke Yanagisawa ascended at age 71.

But at least for now, Miura is expressing nothing but satisfaction at his accomplishment.

"This is the best feeling in the world,” an entry said on his Facebook page. “How could I have come so far at the world's oldest age of 80, I’ve never felt like this in my life. But I've never been more exhausted than this." [...]

The veteran adventurer also hit the spotlight in 1970 when he became the first person to ski down Everest with help from a parachute, a feat documented in the 1975 Academy Award-winning documentary "The Man Who Skied Down Everest."

Link

(Photo: AFP)

(YouTube link)

This video from RTÉ Radio 1 shows a cat in County Offaly, Ireland, suckling ducklings along with her own kittens. Isn't that amazing? Well, from what I can see, the ducklings are not nursing, although they may give it a try after seeing the kittens do it. After all, ducks don't suck. But they sure are craving some snuggling from the mama cat! What really is amazing is that a video from a radio network has no audio. -via Daily Picks and Flicks

"Sorry for trying to enslave Eternia."

"Water under the bridge, man. Water under the bridge."

In an alternate universe depicted by Matthew Skiff, He-Man and Skeletor just talked out their differences.

Link -via Nerd Bastards

Remember that time you gave that long and tearful toast at your brother's wedding, only to find out later that you had a huge chunk of spinach stuck in your teeth? Or the time you stole that basketball and shot that brilliant last-second 3-pointer into the other team's basket? Or what about when you built that giant highway bridge for the city and it suddenly collapsed one day? On second thought, that last one is its own special kind of embarrassing. And one for which you'd probably trade a million spinach-toothed moments. So take comfort in knowing that, if nothing else, your bad hair day didn't put anyone in danger or make the nightly news.

Tacoma Narrows Bridge is Falling Down

Tacoma, Washington, 1940

While buildings and bridges are made to bend in the wind, the engineers behind the Tacoma Narrows Bridge might have benefited from heeding a different aphorism: everything in moderation. Stretching 2,800 feet above the riverbed, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge was (at the time) the third-longest suspension bridge in the world, behind the Golden Gate in San Francisco and the George Washington in New York City. Its sleek design incorporated a roadbed only 39 feet wide, making the bridge far more slender and light than its contemporaries. But it was also a lot more flexible.

The simple fact is that any structure built without enough "give" is more likely to break in a strong wind. There's no shortage of mathematical formulas for calculating how flexible a structure should be. Yet, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge was only one-third as stiff as common engineering rules dictated. Even in modest winds, the roadway oscillated up and down several feet, quickly earning it the nickname Galloping Gertie.

While drivers found the undulations unsettling, the bridge seemed steady enough from the outset—at least to everyone except University of Washington engineering professor Bert Farquharson. Worried that it was far too flexible, Farquharson began studying the bridge in an attempt to uncover what sort of retrofits might improve its stability. As part of his investigation, he showed up at Tacoma Narrows on the morning of November 7, 1940, to film the movement of the bridge. His timing was eerily coincidental. As he was shooting, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge began heaving, and soon collapsed.

(YouTube link) 

The Moral: It's o.k. to be a stiff. Materials like wood, metal, and concrete vibrate when they're struck—whether it's your fork hitting a wine glass (causing it to ring) or wind pushing across the roadbed of a bridge. If sustained, the vibrations can build to dangerous levels. It's like pushing someone on a swing; when they reach the back-most point in the oscillation, the same light push over and over will make the swing go higher and higher. You don't have to push harder each time; you just have to push repeatedly at the right moment. Similarly, if wind pushes a roadbed steadily for long enough, it can oscillate higher and higher, creating what's known as resonance.

The antidote is torsional rigidity, which is just a fancy way of saying a resistance to twisting. In the case of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the undulating roadbed caused alternating tension and slack in the support cables, creating a twisting motion. The action eventually became so violent that the cables snapped, and enormous sections of the bridge fell into the water below. To prevent this, Farquharson had suggested the addition of stiffeners along the roadbed. Indeed, had this retrofit been made, the collapse might have been avoided.

Citicorp Center's Close Call

New York City, 1978

(Image credit: Amar Raavi)

Talk about narrowly averting disaster. When the Citicorp Center in New York was completed in 1977, it added a dramatic, sloping peak to the city's skyline. But less than a year later, the building's chief engineer, William LeMessurier, helped it avoid destruction by razor-thin margins.

LeMessurier faced a unique situation when it came to designing the Citicorp Center. In the early 1970's, the banking behemoth was looking for a new headquarters and had its eye on a vibrant square block in midtown Manhattan. There was just one small problem: the historic St. Peter's church sat on the block's northwest corner. While the clergy wouldn't let Citicorp tear down the church, after a little negotiating, they did agree to let the bank use the airspace above it. This allowed the engineering team to form a novel architectural plan: build the 59-story rectangular tower atop four massive, nine-story-high pillars so that it actually hovered over the church.

Having positioned the building on what essentially amounted to stilts, LeMessurier knew he would have to make the structure especially resistant to strong winds. To help stabilize it, he embedded special braces in the Center's frame every eight stories or so to prevent the skyscraper from bending too far. What's more, LeMessurier devised an additional (and unique) way to counter any swaying that might occur. At the base of the building's steeply angled roof, he placed a giant pendulum-like mechanism called a tuned mass damper—a 400-ton block of concrete resting on a film of oil and held in place by huge springs. If winds rocked the tower left or right, the block would slip in the opposite direction, counteracting the sway. The skyscraper was the first in the United States to sport such a device.

When the Citicorp Center opened, all seemed well. But less than a year later, LeMessurier got a phone call from an engineering student in New Jersey claiming that the building's four columns (positioned at the center of the sides instead of at the corners to avoid the church) were improperly placed, making it susceptible to what sailors call quartering winds—winds that would hit the building across its vertical corners, pushing on two sides at once. LeMessurier assured him they were fine, but it prompted him to review details of the design for his own students at Harvard—and thankfully so.

That's when LeMessurier got some bad news. The skyscraper's builders broke it to him that they hadn't welded the wind braces' joints together, as LeMessurier had prescribed, but simply bolted them. This met code and saved a good deal of money, but it wouldn't allow the joints to hold in winds above 85 mph—like those that accompany, oh, say, a hurricane. True; hurricanes aren't exactly common in New York City, but LeMessurier wasn't going to take any chances.

During what had to be a rather humiliating meeting with Citicorp, LeMessurier informed the bank that it needed to make additional retrofits to the building. As not to scare the employees (or let the building's problems leak to the press), they launched a plan to make the adjustments in a more, shall we say, subtle fashion. An army of welders worked the graveyard shift seven days a week and bound two-inch-thick steel plates over all 200 joints.

The Moral: Own up to your mistakes. Roughly a month before the welding project was completed, weather forecasters predicted that Hurricane Ella was headed directly for the Big Apple. The welders tried frantically to finish the retrofits early, but ultimately, the bank had to go to city authorities and warn them of the possible catastrophe they were facing. Emergency officials secretly formed a massive evacuation plan for midtown and crossed their fingers. LeMessurier (and Manhattan) finally caught a break as Ella veered out to sea.

By the time the welders and carpenters finished, the building was one of the strongest in the country. Though justifiably annoyed, Citicorp executives commended LeMessurier for coming forward with his concerns, even though his initial work had met all code requirements. And fortunately for all the engineers involved, the entire fiasco was kept under wraps thanks to a newspaper strike that coincided with the events. Virtually no one knew about it for more than a decade, until LeMessurier released a report about the ordeal titled, "Project SERENE," an acronym for Special Engineering Review of Events Nobody Envisioned.

The Millennium Bridge's Not-So-Grand Opening

London, June 10, 2000

The world might have avoided a Y2K disaster at the dawn of the new millennium, but it wasn't immune to the follies of bad engineering. On the morning of June 10, 2000, the Millennium Bridge in London opened with great fanfare. Only two days later, it closed with a sigh of relief from hundreds of nauseated pedestrians.

Intended as a high-profile commemoration of the 21st century, the Millennium footbridge was meant to convey a new, innovative spirit. It was given a prime location smack in the middle of downtown, connecting St. Paul's Cathedral on the north bank of the River Thames to the Tate Modern Gallery on the south. Its cutting-edge design included an aluminum deck supported from underneath by two Y-shaped frames, rather than the more common overhanging arches. The final product was sleek, futuristic—and a wee bit wobbly.

As with all bridges, the Millennium engineers designed the span to sway slightly in the wind so that it wouldn't snap. But even the light breeze blowing on the morning of June 10 was enough to make the $26 million bridge swing like a ride in a carnival funhouse. In an attempt to keep their balance, the thousands of inaugural pedestrians began to do what anybody on a rocking platform does: step in time with the rhythm of the swaying, shifting their weight from side to side to counter the motion. The result was something engineers call synchronized footfall. As more people moved in unison, more force was added to the lateral motion, and the rocking increased. Eventually, the sway was so strong that it threatened to loft people overboard. Police quickly restricted access, and only two days later, city officials closed the bridge indefinitely.

(YouTube link)

The following year, at a cost of more than $7 million, the bridge's engineering firm and a New York-based contractor fixed the problem. Underneath the deck, they installed some 87 dampers—huge shock absorbers—to reduce the forces of synchronized footfall. The bridge reopened on January 30, 2002, but this time around, getting people to cross was going to take some convincing. City officials offered walkers free sandwiches, and even had a Southwick mayor and a London town crier dressed in Victorian garb lead the way. Still, just to be on the safe side, numerous British Coast Guard rescue vessels were placed downstream. Fortunately, the bridge proved rock solid.

The Moral: Beware of people. By the time it reopened, the Millennium Bridge (albeit inappropriately named by this point) was safe, but its engineers were roundly criticized for not having heeded the lesson of synchronized footfall. After all, even Napoleon's troops knew about its dangers. His armies always marched in unison, but whenever they came upon a footbridge, all the soldiers would alternate their stepping cadence precisely to keep the bridge from breaking.

If that weren't enough, the Millennium Bridge engineers had a much more recent call to warning. On May 24, 1987, a major "pedestrian jam" occurred on the Golden Gate Bridge, when more than 250,000 people swarmed up the ramps as part of the bridge's 50th anniversary celebration. The sheer weight of the crowd flattened the roadway (more than motor vehicles could have), putting enough slack in the suspension cables to allow the roadbed to swing. The pedestrians began stepping in time with the motion and the sway increased. Police managed to calmly dispurse the crowd, but the incident was an eye-opening reminder for engineers that even one of the most stable roadway bridges in the world isn't necessarily secure enough for people.

Kansai International Airport Learns to Sink or Swim

Osaka Bay, Japan; 1987 to present

Never mind the two-dimensional cell phones and microscopic digital cameras. If you're talking mind-boggling Japanese inventions, think floating airport. In a country where open land is pretty hard to come by, the Japanese government commissioned the construction of an airport for the growing cities of Kobe and Osaka in the only available space around them: the clear, blue sea.

In 1987, builders started construction on a manmade island a mile and a half offshore in Osaka Bay. To build the 2.5 mile-long, half-mile-wide piece of land, they erected a giant box of rock and concrete in the water and filled it with even more rock, gravel, and sand. The idea was simple, but the process of carrying it out was anything but. It took three years, 10,000 workers and 80 barges to level two mountains and shuttle the material to sea before the box was filled.

Geologists and hydro engineers knew the soft clay seabed would compress from the weight of the "island," but they allowed for settlement and filled the box high enough above water to negate the effect. Unfortunately, their calculations were way off. What they didn't anticipate was the amount of water in the clay bed that would ooze out, as if seeping from a sponge. By 1990, the island had already sunk 27 feet. In an attempt to counter that sinking feeling (and heighten the island surface), workers leveled a third mountain to come up with the amount of earth needed.

(Image credit: Carpkazu)

Complicating matters even more were the builders' plans to erect a mile-long terminal alongside the runway. Engineers knew that if the ends or middle of the span sank at different rates, it would tear the terminal apart. To compensate for the varying rates of sinkage, they decided to rest the terminal's glass sides on 900 cement columns sitting atop two foundation walls. As parts of the walls sank, maintenance crews could jack up certain columns, slip a hefty steel plate beneath them, and level out the terminal as needed.

The Moral: Make sure to overbudget. Thanks largely to the steel-plate system, the Kansai International Airport has proved shockingly stable. Since opening in 1994, the single-terminal marvel has survived the 1995 Kobe earthquake (centered only 18 miles away) and a 1998 typhoon packing 200-mph winds.

Nevertheless, the island continues to sink about six inches per year, which means engineers are still stuffing plates beneath columns. All in all, it's a pricey project. Kansai Airport cost more than $15 billion (almost $5 billion over budget) and is deeply in debt, losing more than $500 million a year in interest payments alone. Some airlines won't use the facility because of high landing fees, and air traffic remains below profitable levels. Amazingly, the regional government is already busy building another nearby island of even larger proportions to support a second runway for the airport.

The article above written by Mark Fischetti, is reprinted with permission from the March-April 2005 issue of mental_floss magazine.

Don't forget to feed your brain, subscribe to the magazine and visit mental_floss' extremely entertaining website and blog!

Jeannie Peeper has a very rare and puzzling condition, fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva (FOP), in which her body grows extra bone material. She showed signs since birth, but was only diagnosed at age four.

The name meant nothing to Peeper’s parents—unsurprising, given that it is one of the rarest diseases in the world. One in 2 million people have it.

Peeper’s diagnosis meant that, over her lifetime, she would essentially develop a second skeleton. Within a few years, she would begin to grow new bones that would stretch across her body, some fusing to her original skeleton. Bone by bone, the disease would lock her into stillness. The Mayo doctors didn’t tell Peeper’s parents that. All they did say was that Peeper would not live long.

“Basically, my parents were told there was nothing that could be done,” Peeper told me in October. “They should just take me home and enjoy their time with me, because I would probably not live to be a teenager.”

The problem of rare diseases is that few resources are dedicated to fighting them. But Peeper took matters into her own hands and connected with a couple dozen other people worldwide who suffer from FOP. She interested medical researchers in her condition. And she's in her fifties now, confined to a wheelchair but still alive and still fighting for help for people with FOP. Read Peeper's story and learn what it's like to have such a rare and confounding genetic disease in an article by Carl Zimmer at the Atlantic. Link -via The Loom

(Image credit: Ethan Hill)

To make crapsoup's deep fried ice cream delights, first bore out the centers of several green bananas. Fill the hole inside with sliced fresh cherries and chocolate syrup. Wet the bananas in an egg mixture, flour them, the fry them. Serve them with ice cream on a hot summer day.

Link

Nevermind the rationalists that will say that these monitor lizards are actually fighting. In our romantic mind, these two are long lost brothers who just ran into each other in the streets.

Via Amazing Things in the World

In Rey Taira's reworking of Georges Seurat's A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, members of the Super Friends are enjoying their day off. At the link, you can see an alternate version with the Legion of Doom.

Who is Booster Gold smooching with?

Link -via io9

(YouTube link)

Rhett & Link have a song especially for those of you graduating from high school and looking forward to being adults in the real world. -via Daily of the Day

They look so cute that I could just gobble them up! Panda bear cookies are a rolled cookie. Making them looks like a complex task, but you can find detailed instructions with photos at the link.

Link -via Theresa Helmer

(Photo: Theresa Helmer)

If your mom can't teach you to be nice ... maybe science can!

Researchers at the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the Waisman Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are setting up an experiment to see if they can "train" people to be nicer to each other:

First, the team had the group try the Buddhist technique of compassion meditation: thinking about a time someone was suffering, then chanting, "May you be free from suffering. May you have joy and ease." The people focused on a loved one, like a friend or family member, then themselves, then a stranger, and finally a "difficult person" in their lives. (If only they had an estranged family member they strongly disliked; they could knock out three at a time.) A control group, meanwhile, got cognitive reappraisal training, a technique for turning negative thoughts positive. Both the groups were trained for 30 minutes a day over the internet for two weeks.

So how do you measure compassion?

The researchers here used a game. Two anonymous players--one the "Dictator" and one the "Victim"--shared a pool of $10. The dictator decided how much money the victim got. As dictators are wont to do, the victim didn't get much: only $1 out of the $10. The person playing then had to decide how much of his or her $5 to give to the victim. The Buddhist-meditators were more likely to share more of the dough.

The researchers started the study with fMRI scans and performed them again on both groups after the training. The groups were shown images of suffering while in the machine, like a crying child or a burn victim. They found that the people with meditation training had increased activity in the inferior parietal cortex (that's not necessarily a perfect indicator of empathy, but it suggests something's going on, at least).

Colin Lechler of PopSci has the post: Link (Image: The Jerk, starring the inimitable Steve Martin)

You recall the post last week Biopic Actors and Their Real-Life Counterparts. It turns out those pictures were compiled by redditor banana_rhino. Now he has a second album of 64 actors and the real people they portrayed in movies. Some of them are quite uncanny. Link -via Buzzfeed

As if locusts weren't tasty enough already, the Café & Bar Ristorante Absente in Tokyo now serves them on spaghetti. Rocket News 24 reports:

In their press release, restaurant owner Pasta Dio would like to remind everyone that locusts are an excellent source of calcium, protein, and vitamin A and were used in Japan during times of war to fight malnutrition and save lives. They even claim that once you get past the initial heebie-jeebies, locusts actually have an addictive texture that makes you come back for more.

Link

(Photo: @Press)

Mad Science Socks

Are you mad about science? You need the Mad Science Socks from the NeatoShop. This fabulous and comfy pair of knee-high socks features a mad scientist's laboratory design. Goggles, microscopes, and flasks. Oh My! 

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

Link

Image: NASA, ESA, C.R. Robert O'Dell, G.J. Ferland, W.J. Henney and M. Peimbert

I've always said that if you want to get people more excited about astronomy, name the stars after snacks (case in point). It seems like NASA has finally heeded this sound advice, and announced that the Ring Nebula is actually more like a jelly donut:

The Ring Nebula, whose iconic shape and large size make it a favorite of amateur astronomers, can now be seen in new detail, after NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captured a sharp image of the nebula. Researchers say the new clarity reveals details that were previously unseen, and a structure that's more complex than scientists had believed.

"The nebula is not like a bagel, but rather, it's like a jelly doughnut, because it's filled with material in the middle," says C. Robert O'Dell of Vanderbilt University, who leads a team of researchers studying the Ring Nebula. They combined Hubble's visible-light images with infrared data from telescopes on Earth.

Now doesn't that just make you yearn for more confectionery, ... er, astronomy? NPR's Bill Chapell has the scoop: Link

Michal Krasnopolski's minimalist movie posters takes minimalism to another level. Each title is represented by a very simple shape that makes sense if you've seen the film, or sometimes it's a take on the title (such as North by Northwest).

The designs rigorously adhere to the same mold: a circle overlaid by two diagonals, all inscribed in a square. The structure seems stringent, but, as Krasnopolski found out, it could actually yield “plenty of possibilities.” His poster for the original Star Wars, for example, consists of a grey circle diametrically bisected by a single line and set on a black background. (Hint: it’s the Death Star.) A diagonal red line, partially dissolved at the bottom end, signifies the Man of Steel’s fiery takeoff into the sky in Superman. A dial of red tick marks, each more faded than the last, references the submarine radar screen from The Hunt for Red October.

Of course, you can take minimalism a little too far. I still don't "get" the posters for Pulp Fiction or Raiders of the Lost Ark. You can see all 22 of them at Fast Co. Design. Link

Peter Parker has really let himself go. Now his physique resembles a bowl of jello. For her son's birthday party, eYe recreated Spider-Man's image using black string licorice and Cool Whip.

Link -via Kitchen Fun with My Three Sons

(YouTube link)

It's surprise guest after surprise guest on The Graham Norton Show! If you want to get straight to the music, you can skip the first two minutes, but if you're at work using headphones, try not to sing along too loudly. -via Daily of the Day

Madonna of the Microscope (2013) by Chris Shaw

Madonna of the Particle (2013)

Artist Chris Shaw, whom you may know from his rock poster art, has a new art series centered on the Madonna icon, which is currently on exhibit at The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He wrote:

I’m not sure exactly where my fascination with Madonnas was born, but I’ve loved Icons of all kinds for a very long time.

As an artist I’m intrigued with the the way icons present their ideas — an easily understood, blunt central image juxtaposed with deep symbolism and cryptic geometric foundations. Icons also have a reason for existing, they are conveyers of information.

The modern icons I create also convey information, it could be a scientific concept, a political statement, or a pop-culture reference. Regardless, each icon has a story and a reason for existing.

In this body of work I use the Madonna as the vehicle to literally carry the ideas I’ve chosen to portray. The titles are straight forward. However, underlying and obfuscated by the image is a rigid geometric base, over which the Madonna icon is constructed. The geometry within this base is a riddle to decipher as are many of the symbols within.

I’ve mainly learned about hidden geometry and symbolism in art by deconstructing an artworks composition, then researching what I find, something I like to do for fun. Golden ratios, spirals, and fibonacci sequences are easily found in many types of art, but especially deeply woven into icons. How and why this geometric language was used fascinates me, it ultimately led to creating my own icons with their own meanings.

View more of Chris' Madonnas of Science (and other pop culture Madonnas) over at his website and blog: Link

Madonna of the Dark Matter (2013)

Madonna of the Magnet (2013)

Madonna of Evolution (Simian Vanitas)

You're a Zombie, Chuck - by Warbucks Design

Good grief! Fight the undead with this awesome t-shirt by Warbucks Design. View plenty of neat designs over at Warbucks' Facebook page, then head on over to his NeatoShop page to grab some neat T-shirts: Link

Shmowzow	The Four Elements	Heisenberg's Dark Crystal	Adventure Before Christmas

View more Warbucks Design T-Shirts | More Funny T-Shirts | Zombie items

Christi of the food blog Love from the Oven has designed the perfect breakfast food. She's embedded cookies and cream candy bars and Oreo cookies inside her brownies. Then she slathered on cookies and cream frosting with crushed Oreos and topped the whole magnificent creation with a final Oreo.

Link

Today, and every May 25th, is known as Towel Day. It's a geeky holiday set aside to celebrate the life and works of Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. The main thing is to take your towel with you. Oh, any towel will do, but if you want to have special towels for next year's Towel Day, you can get these embroidered hand towels from Etsy seller Heritage Embroidery. It's just one of the items from a long list of Towel Day products, memes, and art you'll see at The Daily Dot. Link

Men mean well, but they usually say "good".

— Jaydi Samuels (@JessCallMeJaydi) May 13, 2013

(YouTube link)

Vivid Sydney is an annual festival going on now through June 10th, featuring light shows, music, drama, and other performances in Sydney, Australia. This video shows parts of a light show called PLAY by Spinifex Group projected on the Sydney Opera House. The full 14-minute Spinifex show is also available to watch. You can see more video clips of the opening night of the festival at vimeo.  -via reddit

Ninja BBQ Set

Don't let Father's Day sneak up on you. Get your favorite grill master the Ninja BBQ Set from the NeatoShop. This dangerously fun set includes a stainless steel fork and spatula with sword shaped handles. The set comes housed in a black carrying case that converts into a heavy duty pocketed apron. It is the perfect gift for Dad's who love to do battle with the grill. 

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Kitchen Stuff.

Link 

Emily Stoneking, an artist in Vermont, makes delightfully macabre knitted works, often of dissections. Here's an alien who had the misfortune to experience a breakdown while passing through our solar system. 

Link -via Lustik

Memorial Day weekend is the unofficial beginning of summer, since many schools are out, pools are opening, employers are juggling everyone's vacations, and the weather is nice enough for a cookout. I hear there's a big car race Sunday as well. But let's not forget the original meaning of Memorial Day -to remember those who gave the last full measure in service to their country. If you're not familiar with the poppy symbol here, check out the story from the Veterans of Foreign Wars. But the world being the way it is (meaning "we love holidays") you don't have to wait until Monday for a holiday. Today is Towel Day! Don't forget to take your towel with you. And since you have a three-day weekend, why not catch up on everything that's been happening this week at Neatorama!

In the second installment of a continuing series that may be the end of John Farrier -or at least his digestive system- we witnessed Don't Eat That, John! -- The Taco Bell Doritos Taco Smoothie.

Eddie Deezen wrote The Flintstones: A Modern Stone Age Family.

Kibble Me This: The History of Dog Food was a contribution from Uncle John's Bathroom Reader.

The Annals of Improbable Research gave us The Science Behind Luwak Coffee.

Embarrassing Moments in Engineering (and What They've Taught Us) came from mental_floss magazine.

Over at the Spotlight blog, Alex posted Illustrated Recipe: Artwork Inspired by Marie-Antoine Careme's Extravagant Food.

David Israel got some audience participation going with a personal post called The Toy You Can't Throw Out. You can add your favorites to the conversation anytime.
 
Our featured pet this week at the pet blog Lifestyles of the Cute and Cuddly was Steve the cat, sent in by Neatoramanaut Kate Nelson. Your cat or dog or other animal can be a featured pet on Lifestyles of the Cute and Cuddly, too! All you need to do is send us a picture.

We also one brainteaser from Uncle John's Bathroom Reader this week: Fun With Words. As ususal, the answers y'all came up with were more entertaining than the actual answer!

In the What Is It? game, we had an object that is an unknown. Rob at the What Is It? blog researched every guess and found no definitive answer. So we decided to select two winning funny answers! Pismonque said it is "an ingenious device to mechanically reproduce the sound of one hand clapping." That's good enough to win a t-shirt from the NeatoShop! And Joseph Francis said "You cast it like a fishing rod and it scratches the back of someone on the other side of the gymnasium. I forget what it's called." But he didn't specify a t-shirt. Check out the answers to the other mystery items of the week at the What Is It? blog.

The post that drew the most comments (besides the contest) was The Toy You Can't Throw Out, followed by a tie between Don't Eat That, John! -- The Taco Bell Doritos Taco Smoothie and Americans, What Surprised You the Most When Visiting Europe?

The comments of the week are polar opposites. ChrisW responded to the headline Tourist Rescued After Dining on Iceberg by saying, "I had no idea dining on iceberg was dangerous. Perhaps romaine would be better." Ha! Then in the post about precious toys, ladybugs told a great story: "I have a Hawaiian rag doll that I've had since I was 2 months old. My mom & I flew to Oahu to meet up with dad while he was on R&R from the Vietnam war. It's where he got to meet me for the first time. I've had it 43 years and will never get rid of it. I keep the doll in my cedar chest." Thanks for sharing that with us!

The most popular post this week was America's Most Expensive Home for Sale, followed by LEDs in an Engagement Ring and Kibble Me This: The History of Dog Food.

The post with the most ♥s was Fennec Fox Walking Against the Wind, followed by Helen Mirren Fulfills Sick Little Boy's Dream of Tea with the Queen and Tree Got Its Bark Blown Off by Lightning. If you skipped any of these, you might want to take a second look!

The most emailed posts were The NEW Periodic Table Song with LEGO X-Wing is the World's Largest LEGO Model in second place. Nothing else came close.

Three weeks from tomorrow is Fathers Day. Don't wait until the last minute to find something really meaningful for your Dad (or other father figure)! Check out the selection of gifts at the NeatoShop, including the newest t-shirt designs so you'll have something surprising and unique to give.

And be sure to join us for extra content every day at the Neatoramanauts Facebook page. Tell your friends to follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest, too! And mobile users: Flipboard makes it easy to keep up with Neatorama.

Be extra careful if you're traveling this holiday weekend. My family is headed out on a road trip, and we have a daughter with a brand new learner's permit. Buckle your seatbelt and keep a safe distance! 

Photo: Consorzio del Formaggio Parmigiano-Reggiano

You'd expect to find gold bullions inside the vast vault of The Credito Emiliano bank in Italy, but instead, you'd find something else just as valuable: Parmesan cheese.

Oddity Central explains:

Cash-for-cheese sounds more like a joke that a serious financial agreement, but in some regions of Italy it’s a reality. The famous Parmesan is so precious that some banks are willing to keep the cheese as collateral against loans to local producers.

The Credito Emiliano bank has hundreds of branches and thousands of employees around central and northern Italy. Its central offices look like those of any other banking institution, with cameras watching every angle, security doors to lock down the place and even a big vault in the back. Only you’re not going to find too many diamonds or hard cash stored in there. Instead, there are hundreds of thousands of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese wheels, neatly placed on giant shelves. The bank takes the Parmesan from local producers in exchange for a cheap loan, and charges a 3% interest as well as a fee for looking after the cheese and making sure it matures properly in the air-conditioned, humidified vault. It might seem strange, but Credito Emiliano treats Parmigiano-Reggiano like other banks do gold. And for good reason, as the mountains of cheese locked away in its secured vault are worth around $200 million.

Link

A Brazilian Lothario decided to take advantage of his lover's quarrel with her husband to make a hasty getaway. The man, who wore only his boxer shorts, climbed down the third story window of a house in São Paulo using knotted bed sheets, then jumped onto fireman's emergency mattress ... straight onto YouTube infamy!

It's unclear whether the event was real or staged for for a reality TV show: Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - via Telegraph

There's a limit to a mother's love. Like, for instance, when 37-year old Latasha Renee Love called the cops on her son for stealing her Pop-Tarts.

The child was busted on a larceny charge, according to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, whose officers were summoned Monday night to a Charlotte home by Latasha Renee Love, the accused juvenile’s 37-year-old mother.

A police report notes that “the known suspect stole Pop-tarts belonging to his mother at their home at 530 Goldstaff Ln. The suspect was juvenile arrested at the time of the offence.”

Cops described the stolen goods as “Foodstuffs” valued at $5.

The Smoking Gun was there: Link

Retro Pockets Fire Truck 

Are you looking for a fun place to store your most prized trinkets? Embrace your inner child and get the Retro Pockets Fire Truck from the NeatoShop. This versatile pocket purse is shaped like a toy metal firetruck. It is perfect for holding money or other small items. 

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Wallets, Purses, & Coin Bags. 

Link

M41A3 Walker Bulldog tank in Cantigny Park, Wheaton, Illinois. Photo: Paul Shambroom

Something old,
Something new,
Something armored,
something blue ...

What wedding wouldn't be improved with a battle tank? After all, all is fair in love and war.

Photographer Paul Shambroom was fascinated with weapons of war brought back from distant battlefields as memorials and public art, and decided to feature them in his latest photograph series titled Shrines.

Shambroom wrote in this fascinating article over at Visura Magazine:

What happens to weapons of war when they are no longer useful for their original purposes? Those that are not scrapped often are given second lives in the public sphere, mounted in places of honor in communities across the United States. Town squares, city parks, armories, VFW and American Legion posts display retired weapons from past American conflicts. Built for combat or other military functions, these objects now serve in a range of entirely different roles in their new settings: memorial, tourist attraction, retail signage, playground equipment, historic artifact. [...]

View more over at Visura Magazine and Paul's website

If you love butter, Southern cooking, more butter, and Paula Deen you are going to be super excited to learn that Paula Deen's childhood home is being turned into a museum. A group of investors recently purchased the Albany, Georgia home and have plans to turn it into a lucractive tourist destination.

Paula Deen said she was deeply touched by the desire to turn her home into a museum. She may even help furnish the space with real Paula Deen artifcats.   

"That house holds so many memories for me," Paula Deen said of the Whitney Avenue residence. "All the cheerleader cookouts, the spend-the-night parties. ... And it just so happens I can pretty much furnish it like it was. I still have mama's living room set and daddy's -- they had separate rooms later on because daddy had to sleep with a night light on and mama couldn't.

Will there or won't there be a bronze statue of Paula holding a stick of butter placed in the garden? We don't know, but this is one rumor we hope is true. 

Carlton Fletcher of the Albany Herald has more: Link

Photo: Zombie Back Scratcher from the NeatoShop

Itchy? Blame the neurotransmitter Nppb!

Santosh Mishra and Mark Hoon of the National Institute of Health have answered the question you've been itching to ask:

To test whether Nppd played a role in the itching, they genetically engineered some mice so that they failed to produce the chemical. Initially, they checked to see if these engineered mice were impervious to other types of sensations also conveyed by these neurons (pain, movement and heat), but they seemed to behave just the same as the normal mice, indicating Nppb wasn’t involved in the transmission of those stimuli.

Then, they exposed them once again to the itch-inducing chemicals. The normal mice scratched away, but the genetically engineered mice were another story. “It was amazing to watch,” Mishra said in a press statement. “Nothing happened. The mice wouldn’t scratch.”

Dawn of Gaming by Naolito

It's On like Donkey Kong! T-shirt designer extraordinaire Naolito mashed up a bit of classic video game with Space Odyssey in this brilliant T-shirt. The Monolith has never looked so fun!

Check out Naolito's website, FB page, Tumblr and deviantArt for more geeky designs, then visit his NeatoShop page to get some! Link

Dragon Egg	Beakerful of Science	Evolution of Hypnotoad	To Infinity and Beyond

View more T-shirts by Naolito | More Funny T-shirts

Are you a professional illustrator or T-shirt designer? Let's talk! Sell your designs on the NeatoShop, earn generous royalties, and get featured in front of tons of potential new fans on Neatorama!

Here's proof that all you need in life are laughter, funny Internet videos, and take-outs. All in large quantities! Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - via Miss Cellania

Like it says on the tin, Animated Albums is a Tumblr blog dedicated to applying the high art of animated GIF to music albums. The result is simply fantastic! See if your favorite album has been animated: Link

If you think that your cat has a hairball problem, just be thankful that it's not as big as Ty's. The 400-lb tiger had to have surgery to remove a 4-lb hairball!

Veterinary surgeons in Tampa Bay were called in after Ty the tiger failed to cough up the monster obstruction all by himself. [...]

The vets initially performed an ultrasound and took X-rays before using a endoscope with a camera to gauge the size of the hairball. But it was so big, they determined there was no chance of retrieving it that way and an operation would be needed.

Link

Who has time to change the car tires? Time is short in Saudi Arabia. There's oil to pump out of the ground, palaces to build and a kingdom to run. That's why Saudi men decided to multitask a bit on this exciting driving stunt dubbed "sidewalk skiing," which strangely involved no sidewalk and no skiing.

Tim Allman of BBC News has the story: Link [self-starting video]

The Lorax speaks for the trees and now writes for them, too. DeviantART member Inciatus made this bookcase inspired by Dr. Seuss's classic children's book The Lorax. He gave it to his cousin, an elementary school teacher.

Link

This odd but cute-looking home is in Salzburg, Austria. Markus Voglreiter designed it to house two generations of the same family. You can view more photos of it at the link. Before you leave it, put the parking brake on.

Link

Transformer Xi 12-in-1

Father's Day is almost here. Don't get Dad another useless gift. This year get Dad your gadget loving Dad the Transformer Xi 12-in-1 multi-tool from the NeatoShop. 

The Transformer Xi 12-in-1 is a lightweight and compact multi-tool that includes: 

• 6 Swing-out Screwdrivers
• 2-LED Flashlight
• Ruler Marks
• Straight Edge
• Key Ring
• and Work Light

This fantastic tool comes housed in a handsome gift box. 

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

Link

But first, you have to buy the mint at this Ling & Louie's. And they cost a dollar each.

-via Pleated Jeans

(photo: unknown)

Do Nathan Shields's human parasite pancakes contain actual parasites? Well, Mr. Shields doesn't write much about his creations. He just posts pictures and lets you guess.

Link

Don't worry English majors. Graduate, get about a decade of experience and you might get to write for a blog someday. 

Link -via 22 Words

Anne Wheaton, the wife of celebrity geek and Star Trek: The Next Generation star Wil Wheaton, writes: 

Wil was asked to sign the yearbook of a boy who just graduated from high school. He added a little extra something.

All of this is good advice to high school graduates. I would also suggest not attempting to perform a Kolvoord Starburst unless you're a master pilot.

Link

The remains of the abandoned Beelitz Sanatorium is a combination of grand architecture and eerie medical artifacts. Built in 1898 in Berlin, it served victims of tuberculosis until it was converted to aid the wounded of World War II, including Adolf Hitler. After World War II, the hospital was used by Soviets occupying East Germany. Most of the Beelitz-Heilstätten complex has been empty since 1994. See a collection of awesome photographs of the sanatorium at Kuriositas. Link -via the Presurfer

(Image credit: Flickr user Judith74)

As the centennial of World War I approaches, Erik Sass is giving us a series on the events that led to the conflict, each story posted 100 years after it occurred. In the latest installment, we learn of the Colonel Alfred Redl, head of Vienna's military intelligence, who was uncovered as a spy for Russia.

Redl was unusual all around: the son of a poor railway clerk in the eastern Austrian province of Galicia (now Ukraine), his brilliant intellect propelled him into the top ranks of the army, usually an aristocratic preserve, where he served as chief of counter-intelligence from 1903-1907, then head of all intelligence operations from 1907-1912. In a conservative institution he embraced modern, innovative techniques like telephone and wireless eavesdropping, hidden cameras and recording devices, and dusting for fingerprints.

But Redl had more secrets than anyone could have guessed: in an era when homosexuality was a deviant crime punishable with prison time or worse, Redl’s double life was a huge liability that left him vulnerable to blackmail. During a visit to Russia to polish his Russian in 1889, Russian intelligence discovered his secret via a woman Redl employed as his “beard,” then supplied Redl with a series of young lovers to further incriminate him. Beginning in 1902 the Russians threatened to uncover Redl while also offering him huge sums of money for top secret information. The combination of carrot and stick was enough to convince Redl to turn traitor.

When Redl was caught, his shocked fellow officers attempted to avoid scandal by giving Redl the opportunity to commit suicide, averting a full investigation. But it didn't matter, as a strange series of circumstances brought the investigation to the Viennese press. Read the while story at mental_floss. Link

(YouTube link)

When this zinger came up during a video shoot, Mom and Dad decided this short clip was the perfect way to announce the big news to family and friends. -via Daily Picks and Flicks

Richard Arvine Overton of Austin, Texas, plans to spend this Memorial Day at home, with his usual cigars and whiskey-spiked coffee. At the age of 107, the World War II veteran deserves to do what he pleases. 

Overton, who is believed to be the nation's oldest veteran, told FoxNews.com he’ll likely spend the day on the porch of his East Austin home with a cigar nestled in his right hand, perhaps with a cup of whiskey-stiffened coffee nearby.

“I don’t know, some people might do something for me, but I’ll be glad just to sit down and rest,” the Army veteran said during a phone interview. “I’m no young man no more.”

Overton, who was born on May, 11, 1906, in Texas’ Bastrop County, has gotten used to being the center of attention of late. In addition to being formally recognized by Austin Mayor Lee Leffingwell on May 9, Overton traveled to Washington, D.C., on May 17 as part of Honor Flight, a nonprofit group that transports veterans free of charge to memorials dedicated to their service. Despite serving in the South Pacific from 1942 through 1945, including stops in Hawaii, Guam, Palau and Iwo Jima to name a few, it was Overton’s first time in the nation’s capital.

Read more about Overton and his secrets for a long life. Link -via reddit

(Video Link)

Well, it was a wrenching scene. And this pug/chihuahua is only 3 years old--young for that kind of drama.

-via Ace of Spades HQ

Backbiting and political intrigue? That's just a regular day at the office, as Jimmy Fallon's new clip Game of Desks shows. Watch, but beware. You know what they say. Paperwork is coming.

Hit play or go to Link [Hulu]

Bacon Tie

Father's Day is coming. Don't get Dad another ordinary tie. Get Dad the Bacon Tie from the NeatoShop. This deliciously fun necktie looks like strips of raw bacon. Your smokin' hot Dad will appreciate your meaty gift. 

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

Link

You can probably parallel park easily with the super short bus that we featured yesterday, but can you climb over obstacles? Could you jump over other school buses? Jalopnik tells us about this beauty that could:

Unsurprisingly, the owners of this fine machine do a metric ton of custom work, mostly of the off-road variety. As you read this, they're busy stuffing a 602 cubic inch V8 into a 30 year old Silverado, getting it ready for some major mud bogging here in Nova Scotia on June 15th.

Link