Neatorama

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• BuckyBalls: Insanely Fun Magnetic Toy
• Medical Afflictions of the Cartoon World
• Are Jocks Jerks?
• Tee Virus: A Nifty New T-Shirt Community
• Exploiting Chaos – New Book by TrendHunter’s Jeremy Gutsche
• Weirdest Magazines Still Around Today
• Hangman Light
• Unsettling Old Photos of the “Living” Dead
• Happy Clouds
• Kitten with Eyebrows
• Single Molecule Pictured for First Time

BuckyBalls: Insanely Fun Magnetic Toy Posted: 31 Aug 2009 02:42 AM PDT BuckyBalls Magnetic Toy – $29.95 [YouTube Clip] This is the current rage in the Neatorama Shop: Zoomdoggle’s insanely fun BuckyBalls – a set of 216 balls made from powerful rare earth magnets. You can shape and mold an unlimited variations of magnetic sculpture (of course, if you get more than 1, you can combine them to create a mega-sculpture!). Tear ‘em apart and snap ‘em back together for hours of fun. BuckyBalls is this week’s featured product at the Neatorama Shop. For a limited time, you’ll get a free Mystery Gift for the purchase of each BuckyBalls (What will you get? Well, we won’t tell you … it’s a mystery!) Don’t miss this: Link

Medical Afflictions of the Cartoon World Posted: 31 Aug 2009 02:02 AM PDT What would you add to this cartoon character list of medical afflictions? I’d add Donald Duck (anger or social anxiety disorder) … Does anyone know who originally created the image above so we can credit it properly? – via Accordion Guy See also: Presidential Diseases

Are Jocks Jerks? Posted: 31 Aug 2009 01:50 AM PDT Kate Dailey of Newsweek’s The Human Condition blog wrote a very interesting post about the role of sports in child development. Is sports beneficial for kids or does it turn jocks into jerks? The answer – painfully obvious to those who still remember their high school days – came by way of a new psychology study by Richard Lerner et al: Depending on one’s high-school experience, there are two distinct philosophies about the role sports plays in a child’s development. There’s the idea that youth sports teaches kids discipline and respect, keeps them off the street, and helps them mature into adults: it’s sports that turned athletically gifted but insecure Daniel Larusso into The Karate Kid. But just as pervasive is the opinion that jocks are jerks, and kids who play sports are mean bullies who will do anything to win, who need to dominate their opponents and who carry that aggressiveness streak off the field. Kids who play sports, this line of thinking goes, are more like Johnny Lawrence, star athlete (and big-time bully) from the Cobra-Kai dojo. A recent study in the journal Developmental Psychology suggest that jocks really are jerks—if they focus exclusively on sports at the expense of other more-well rounded programs. But kids who both play sports and are exposed to youth-development program like scouting or 4-H show the most markers of personal growth and maturity. Link

Tee Virus: A Nifty New T-Shirt Community Posted: 31 Aug 2009 01:38 AM PDT Our good friend Rommel Santor (who coded the Neatorama Upcoming Queue) and Brian "Dag" Houston of VideoSift have just launched a new venture: Tee Virus, an online community where you can create your very own T-shirt design, submit it to the community for feedback, and – if it passes muster – get it printed and sold through the website. Best of all, you’ll earn cash with every shirt sold. I’ve got my TBIF T-shirt and am happy as a clam with it Check ‘em out: Link

Exploiting Chaos – New Book by TrendHunter’s Jeremy Gutsche Posted: 31 Aug 2009 01:22 AM PDT Our pal Jeremy Gutsche, the founder of TrendHunter Magazine – one of the neatest websites around, by the way – has an interesting new book titled Exploiting Chaos: 150 Ways to Spark Innovation During Times of Change. Perhaps you’ve heard the saying popularized by John F. Kennedy that the Chinese word for crisis is composed of two characters, danger and opportunity. That turned out to be a fallacy, but the reasoning behind it is actually not all that bad. In his book, Jeremy outlines ways you can utilize chaos and the current economic uncertainty for your benefit (shades of Obama White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel saying "… Never let a serious crisis go to waste" perhaps?). For example: Crisis creates opportunity Prior to the Great Depression, the only cereal brand that mattered was Post. After your great-grandfather silenced the piercing bells of his wind-up alarm clock, he savored the delicious taste of Post Grape-Nuts. Launched in 1897, the cereal dominated the marketplace leading up to the 1930s. As the Great Depression tightened its angry claws on America, Post found itself hungry for cash. The prominent cereal maker assumed they "owned" the market. How could anyone stop lusting for Grape-Nuts? Accordingly, advertising budgets were cut to weather the storm. As the managers of Post reclined in their rawhide chairs, bracing for a slow economy, a hungry tiger lurked in the shadows. That tiger was the Kellogg Company. Their mascot, Tony the Tiger, had not yet appeared, but his insatiable spirit was already born. While Post retreated, Kellogg doubled their ad spend. In 1933 their campaigns introduced slogans like "Snap! Crackle! Pop!" and "You’ll feel better": motivational mantras during a gloomy era. The investment paid off. Americans loved the message and sales began to grow. Kellogg’s became the go-to pick for breakfast cereal and your great-grandfather abandoned his beloved Post Grape-Nuts. The upbeat impact of a crisis is that competitors become mediocre, and the ambitious find ways to grow. For such a serious topic, the book Exploiting Chaos is a rather breezy read. Jeremy himself acknowledged that our reading habits have changed (I blame texting) – you can browse the colorful book in a sitting. Anyhow, the real gem here isn’t the anecdotes that you get from the book, but the ideas, impetus, or kick-in-the-pants or whatever you want to call it – that you may get from reading it. Check out the first chapter of Exploiting Chaos, available as a free PDF download here: Link | Exploiting Chaos website | Book available starting Sept 1, 2009 – Thanks Jeremy!

Weirdest Magazines Still Around Today Posted: 30 Aug 2009 11:07 PM PDT Our pal Asylum blog has compiled 15 of the weirdest magazines still in publication today. Included are Crappie World Magazine (unbeknowst to me, crappie is a type of fish), Bacon Busters (Australia’s hog-hunting magazine – not, I repeat not, a cooking mag) and Girls and Corpses (a self-described "Maxim Magazine meets Dawn Of The Dead" – you’ve been warned). Check out the whole list here: Link

Hangman Light Posted: 30 Aug 2009 10:50 PM PDT Designed by Ji-youn Kim, this hanging lamp can shed light in the darkness, but probably won't make you feel any more secure. What a conversation piece! Link -via Coolest Gadgets

Unsettling Old Photos of the “Living” Dead Posted: 30 Aug 2009 10:10 PM PDT Is the man in this picture dead or alive? It's not a silly question. In the early days of photography, dead bodies would be photographed for posterity. Often this would be the only picture ever taken of the person. Sometimes the bodies were posed as if they were alive. There's something just unspeakably creepy about this fireman. At first glance, he looks like a normal, awkwardly-posed guy from the 19th century. But upon closer inspection, you notice a few tell-tale signs: a rigid pose and fingers, a stand not quite completely hidden behind his feet, which is holding him up by some unseen armature on his back, liberal amounts of rouge applied to too-white cheeks, and those blank, blank eyes. This picture is available on eBay. See more possibly post-mortem posed portraits at mental_floss. Link

Happy Clouds Posted: 30 Aug 2009 10:08 PM PDT Artist Stuart Semple uses soap and helium to create floating foam clouds in the shape of smiley faces. A machine he developed makes and releases them, thousands at a time, in public places. Link (with video) -via Metafilter

Kitten with Eyebrows Posted: 30 Aug 2009 12:17 PM PDT (Live Leak link) He can't help the facial expression -he was born that way! -via Arbroath

Single Molecule Pictured for First Time Posted: 30 Aug 2009 11:21 AM PDT Why would people get excited about this blury picture?  The pentacene molecule pictured is commonly used in solar cells and has five benzene rings.  There is only .14 namometers between rings, which is one million times smaller than a grain of sand! Credit for this nifty picture goes to IBM Research Zurich who used an Atomic Force Microscope.  This is the first time all of the atoms in a molecule have been imaged. ‘If you think about how a doctor uses an X-ray to image bones and organs inside the human body, we are using the atomic force microscope to image the atomic structures that are the backbones of individual molecules,’ said IBM researcher Gerhard Meyer. The team from IBM Research Zurich said the results could have a huge impact of the field of nanotechnology, which seeks to understand and control some of the smallest objects known to mankind. The AFM uses a sharp metal tip that acts like a tuning fork to measure the tiny forces between the tip and the molecule. This requires great precision as the tip moves within a nanometer of the sample. ‘Above the skeleton of the molecular backbone (of the pentacene) you get a different detuning than above the surface the molecule is lying on,’ Mr Gross said. This detuning is then measured and converted into an image. Link From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by OddNumber.

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