Neatorama

Posted: 01 Jan 2009 03:43 AM PST

W00t! It’s time for our collaboration with What is it? Blog. This week’s mysterious object is pictured to the left: can you guess what it is for?

Place your guess in the comment section. One guess per comment, please, but you can enter as many as you can think of. The first person who guesses right (or gives the funniest guess, if no one gets it right) wins a Free Neatorama T-Shirt.

For more clues, check out the What is it? Blog. Good luck!

Happy New Year, Everyone!

Posted: 31 Dec 2008 11:12 PM PST

Here’s to a more prosperous 2009! We have a big and fun surprise for Neatorama coming very soon (you’ll see) but for now, I wish everyone a safe and happy New Year!

Got a New Year’s Resolution? What’s yours? I’ll go first in the comment.

Papercraft Animation

Posted: 31 Dec 2008 09:56 PM PST

This video is truly amazing to watch. City made of books, sounds like my idea of a good hometown.

Link Via Craftzine

Longer Eyelashes, Just A Drug Away

Posted: 31 Dec 2008 09:50 PM PST

The FDA has just approved a drug that will help lengthen your eyelashes. Hopefully they won’t get quite as long as the ones in this photo, but who knows the long term effects of eyelash medication overdoses?

The drug, Allergan, contains an active ingredient that was originally created to treat glaucoma, but found to have this pleasant side effect. The drug should be available in May and will cost $120 per each month’s supply. It will take about two to four months for the effect to start to show.

Link Photo By Asobitsuchiya [Flickr]

Woman Gives Birth on Trans-Atlantic Flight

Posted: 31 Dec 2008 07:32 PM PST

On a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Boston, a Ugandan woman gave birth to a healthy baby girl. They were both fortunate that there were two doctors on board. As the child was born while in Canadian airspace, she automatically became a Canadian citizen.

Link

Origami Hamburger Kit

Posted: 31 Dec 2008 02:59 PM PST

Giving up fast food for your New Year’s Resolution? You can still have it - since it’s made out of paper, it’s much healthier for you. I probably wouldn’t recommend eating it, though. For $6, you get 16 pieces of paper that will allow you to make two burgers, fries, a soda and a tray to put it all on.

Link

Terry Pratchett Knighted

Posted: 31 Dec 2008 02:41 PM PST

You may now refer to the Discworld author as “Sir Terry”, although he regrets that the honor did not come with a sword.

Link via Wired

UN satellite presentation of current Gaza conflict

Posted: 31 Dec 2008 11:45 AM PST

While war most certainly isn’t “neat,” those following the Israel/Hamas conflict in Gaza at the moment might appreciate the United Nation’s UNOSAT division’s excellent marked and annotated satellite image that illustrates current information about the conflict.

If you find the Gaza image useful, you can sign up for notifications or an RSS feed from the site. They provide similar timely annotated imagery of many natural disasters, conflicts and other newsworthy geographically relevant events throughout the year.

[UNOSAT]

Smiley Masks for Thai Highway Patrol

Posted: 31 Dec 2008 11:27 AM PST

Thailand, nicknamed "The Land of Smiles" by countless tourist books, are living up to its name: the highway policemen in Thailand will be wearing smiley masks to "lift the mood of motorists":

The new cloth masks, which hook behind the ears and cover the mouth and nose, will help "reduce the stress from drivers when they see the police," said Somyos, the Highway Police commander.

To that end, he said, some 200 police booths would also distribute holy water, chewing gum and mints.

He defended his force when asked why drivers needed smiley masks and gum and holy water to calm down when approached by a patrolman.

"The police are not that scary," he said. "When I was in the United States, their highway police seemed to be more fierce than Thai police. I was scared of them."

Link

Photo: Sarot Meksophawannakul/Bangkok Post

Movie Mistakes of 2008

Posted: 31 Dec 2008 11:16 AM PST

Despite costing hundreds of millions of dollars to make, Hollywood movies are filled with "mistakes" (Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Last Action Hero even parodied these mistakes by purposely incorporating them in the film).

But one man’s mistake is another man’s bread. To wit, here’s MovieMistakes, a website dedicated to documenting the glaring, silly, and obscure mistakes that occur in some of Hollywood’s greatest hits. Here are their list of 2008 Movies with the Most Mistakes:

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - 67 mistakes
The Dark Knight - 46 mistakes
Mamma Mia! - 45 mistakes
Twilight - 42 mistakes
High School Musical 3: Senior Year - 40 mistakes

… and the list for the Best Movie Mistakes of 2008:

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
At the beginning when Indy is talking to Spalko, his hands keep alternating from being in his pockets to just resting at his sides between shots.
Iron Man
When Iron Man and Iron Monger are fighting, Iron Man catches the SUV, and you can see the family inside the car. Although the car is completely vertical, the hair of the people in the car seem to defy gravity.
Solstice
The moon is full every night the highschoolers are at the lake house.
10,000 B.C.
After Evolet got hit by the arrow and presumably dies, D’leh is staring at a mammoth. Behind the mammoth, you can see that the background is a picture.
Meet the Spartans
When Britney Spears gets pushed into the Pit of Death, you hear her talk and scream but her lips are not moving.
The Dark Knight
At around an hour and a half into the movie, during Batman’s interrogation of Joker, when he picks him up and slams him against the wall, for a very brief moment you can see the camera and the cameraman in the reflection of the mirror on the right.

Link

Depressed, Sick, and Fat? Blame Your Friends!

Posted: 31 Dec 2008 11:15 AM PST

Image: J Fowler and N Christakis/New England Journal of Medicine/BMJ

Research by medical sociologist Nicholas Christakis and colleague at the Harvard Medical School in Boston revealed how oher people’s happiness, depression, and obesity can affect you:

Recent research shows that our moods are far more strongly influenced by those around us than we tend to think. Not only that, we are also beholden to the moods of friends of friends, and of friends of friends of friends - people three degrees of separation away from us who we have never met, but whose disposition can pass through our social network like a virus.

Indeed, it is becoming clear that a whole range of phenomena are transmitted through networks of friends in ways that are not entirely understood: happiness and depression, obesity, drinking and smoking habits, ill-health, the inclination to turn out and vote in elections, a taste for certain music or food, a preference for online privacy, even the tendency to attempt or think about suicide. They ripple through networks "like pebbles thrown into a pond", says Nicholas Christakis, a medical sociologist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, who has pioneered much of the new work.

At first sight, the idea that we can catch the moods, habits and state of health not only of those around us, but also those we do not even know seems alarming. It implies that rather than being in charge of where we are going in life, we are little more than back-seat drivers, since most social influence operates at a subconscious level.

Link

Previously on Neatorama: 14 Habits That Make You Fat (which also noted the study above)

Lancelot Link: Secret Chimp

Posted: 31 Dec 2008 10:25 AM PST

Children of the ’70s might remember this Saturday morning show on ABC; apparently Nickelodeon also aired reruns of it in the ’80s. That’s my demographic, but I don’t remember it. Anyway, it’s a bunch of chimps (with dubbed human voices) running around solving mysteries and fighting crime. It’s strangely riveting. Lance Link sounds like Humphrey Bogart and his partner, Mata Hairi, sounds sort of like Fran Drescher mixed with Ruth Gordon.

It’s That Time of Year Again: Banned Words for 2009

Posted: 31 Dec 2008 09:22 AM PST

Each year since 1976, Lake Superior State University has released a list in late December of words that should never be used again based on their overuse in the 12 months prior. This year’s list largely revolves around the election and the economic crisis:

Maverick

From Wall Street to Main Street

Desperate search

monkey, when used as a suffix

game-changing

carbon footprint or carbon offsetting

green

bailout

“winner of five nominations.”

<3 - It's the first time an emoticon has made the list.

First Dude

icon or iconic

staycation

not so much

it’s that time of year again

Leave a comment and let us know what 2008 word you think should be banned forever.

Link via Yahoo

Cheating Death

Posted: 31 Dec 2008 08:36 AM PST

The final Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss for 2008 challenges you to cheat death -retroactively. Match the famous dead person with the object that might have prevented his or her death. Some are easy; other I had to guess, and I ended up with a score of 70%. Link

Uncle Jay Explains 2008 in Song

Posted: 31 Dec 2008 08:33 AM PST

(YouTube link)
Uncle Jay wraps up the entire year to the tunes of your favorite Christmas carols. -Thanks, Duke!

Secret Agent Camcorder Watch

Posted: 31 Dec 2008 08:32 AM PST

Even Dick Tracy would be amazed at a normal-sized watch that can record eight hours of color video with sound! Just plug your watch into your computer via USB and download your recordings. On sale for only $199.95. Link -Thanks, =RaZ34=- Ron!

Rickrolling New Years Eve

Posted: 31 Dec 2008 08:30 AM PST

Anyone who’s been around Neatorama for any length of time is familiar with the Rickroll. For New Year’s Eve, Randall Munroe of xkcd takes the Rickroll concept and stands it on its head to surprise a girl. Link -Thanks, mmat!

The 12-cent Perpetual Calendar

Posted: 31 Dec 2008 08:28 AM PST

You don’t need a new calendar for the new year, if you’ve got 12 cents and an understanding of binary numbers! Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories posted instructions for making your own perpetual calendar.

It’s Wednesday, the fourth day of the week. The binary number for 4 is 100. We use “heads” for 1 and “tails” for 0. So the left hand column has (top to bottom) heads-tails-tails = 100 binary = 4th day of week = Wednesday. (If you don’t already speak binary, no biggie. Start here or here and join us in a minute.)

It’s December, month 12, and 12 in binary is 1100, so the middle column is heads-heads-tails-tails.

Finally, the last column is all heads, since it’s December 31, and 31 decimal = 11111 binary.

Got that? Me neither. Link