Neatorama

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• Flockdraw
• The Clever Hamsters Jazz Band
• Extinked
• Free Christmas Postcard
• 100 Days in Glacier National Park
• Zebrie Sanders: Statue Player
• Paper Airplane Kept Aloft with Fans
• Adam "Ape Lad" Koford's New T-Shirts on Neatorama
• Searching For Alien to Cost School System $1 Million
• Ring Around The Moon
• Dubai's Economic Woes Sound Death Knell For Fantastic Architecture
• Death & Taxes by Jess Bachman
• LEGO Snowman
• Exploding/Reassembling Picture Frame
• New Artificial Larynx Gives Laryngectomy Patients a Human-Sounding Voice
• Steven Seagal Fighting Crime (For Real!)
• Samurai Mario
• The Somali Pirate Stock Exchange
• Miniature Golf in a Funeral Home Basement
• The Creepiest Places You Can Spend the Night
• What is it? Game 118

Flockdraw Posted: 03 Dec 2009 09:35 PM PST Almost every site I’ve visited today seems to have a collaborative drawing board going at Flockdraw. So I got a new one for Neatorama readers to draw on. Let’s see what you can do! Link -via J-Walk Blog

The Clever Hamsters Jazz Band Posted: 03 Dec 2009 09:34 PM PST (YouTube link) Did you ever think you’d see hamsters playing musical instruments? -via Arbroath

Extinked Posted: 03 Dec 2009 09:32 PM PST The Ultimate Holding Company, a British arts collective, offered tattoos of 100 endangered species to people who are committed to preserving them as a project they call Extinked. One hundred volunteers were chosen out of several hundred who applied to receive a tattoo. Those who made it through had written about why they deserved to be a “lifelong ambassador” for their species. Joe Richardson, founding member of the collective, is confident that the social experiment will rouse people to action. He was surprised to see how personal the tattoos were to the volunteers, who touchingly described their relationship to their chosen species in their applications. One woman, who worked as a conservationist and wanted a tattoo of the crested newt, burst into tears when she got to the desk only to find they had run out of applications, he says. The demand for certain species was so high that many volunteers didn’t get their first choice – but most were still keen to take part. “The idea of the permanent loss of an organism that has taken millennia to evolve is so important to many people that they still thought it was worth doing,” Richardson says. Link -via Metafilter

Free Christmas Postcard Posted: 03 Dec 2009 09:04 PM PST Wanna send someone a postcard these holidays, but don’t want to spend the 44 cents to actually send them something via snail mail? Google’s got you covered. Right now, you can send anyone in the U.S. a free postcard courtesy of Gmail. There are six designs to choose from. Link

100 Days in Glacier National Park Posted: 03 Dec 2009 08:57 PM PST Chris Peterson went to Montana’s Glacier National Park for 100 days starting in May. Every day he took at least one amazing photo and posted it on his site. The result is amazing. Link Via The Big Picture, Image by Chris Peterson

Zebrie Sanders: Statue Player Posted: 03 Dec 2009 06:20 PM PST (YouTube Link) I am a little under the weather today, and maybe the paper airplane thing was fake.  But if this is fake, at least it also fooled The Huffington Post.  The obvious question is, What is he thinking?

Paper Airplane Kept Aloft with Fans Posted: 03 Dec 2009 01:25 PM PST (YouTube Link) "Aerodynamics say that if drag and thrust are equal, as in this video, the plane should move forward, not stay in the same position… why is this? Because the left one runs slower? than the right one."  Sounds logical, but what an impressive visualization. via Unique Daily

Adam "Ape Lad" Koford's New T-Shirts on Neatorama Posted: 03 Dec 2009 11:43 AM PST Arch Enemy T-Shirt by Adam Koford Our pal Adam "Ape Lad" Koford has a new line of colorful T-shirts over at the Neatorama Shop that'll make the perfect Christmas gift. The shirts are based on some of his tweets. Help support Adam and Neatorama, and get a great T-shirt to boot! Check 'em out: If Snow Was Frosting A Way to Spice Up a Meeting Wrapped in Bacon Minding the Gap Higgs Boson Execution vs. Ideas Part of Neatorama's Christmas Special, where purchase of every item gets a free Mystery Bonus: Link

Searching For Alien to Cost School System $1 Million Posted: 03 Dec 2009 11:08 AM PST How clueless are bureaucrats of our nation’s school system? They fired an IT worker for installing the popular freeware SETI@Home on school computers, claiming that it’ll take more than $1 million to uninstall it! The program, known as SETI @ home, uses Internet-connected computers worldwide to analyze radio telescope data in an experiment to find extraterrestrial intelligence. But Superintendent Denise Birdwell told the East Valley Tribune that the program also bogged down the district’s system and interfered with technology use in classrooms. Birdwell said it will take more than $1 million to fix the problem, including removal of the SETI software. She says police are conducting a broader investigation. Link

Ring Around The Moon Posted: 03 Dec 2009 11:07 AM PST Photo: brian s huff [Flickr] Did you see the ring around the moon last night? If you did and wondered what caused it, Yahoo! Buzz Log has the answer: Though it looked ominous, the shiny ring around the moon last night was actually a rather common weather phenomenon. According to various weather-related blogs across the Buzz, this ring around the moon occurs when thin cirrus clouds, which contain ice crystals, refract the moonlight. A blog from the Goddard Space Flight Center explains that "the shape of the ice crystals results in a focusing of the light into a ring. Since the ice crystals typically have the same shape, namely a hexagonal shape, the Moon ring is always the same size." Link

Dubai's Economic Woes Sound Death Knell For Fantastic Architecture Posted: 03 Dec 2009 11:06 AM PST Now that Dubai’s economic bubble has popped and the emirate’s mega-projects are imploding under their own debt crunch, we can weep over all the fantastically outlandish buildings that will never be built. Like the rotating tower by architect David Fisher above, a refrigerated beach, a vertical seawater farm, and so on. Inhabitat and Treehugger have the post: Link

Death & Taxes by Jess Bachman Posted: 03 Dec 2009 11:05 AM PST We’ve blogged about Jess Bachman’s Death & Taxes infographic about the complexity of the federal budget of the United States before on Neatorama. Jess has an updated 2010 version: Death and Taxes" is a large representational graph and poster of the federal budget. It contains over 500 programs and departments and almost every program that receives over 200 million dollars annually. The data is straight from the president’s 2010 budget request and will be debated, amended, and approved by Congress to begin the fiscal year. All of the item circles are proportional in size to their spending totals and the percentage change from 2009 is included to spot trends and disproportion. … and is kind enough to give Neatorama readers a 50% off coupon for purchase of 2 or more 24" x 36" posters. Just enter "neatorama" when you check out: Link – Thanks Jason and Jess!

LEGO Snowman Posted: 03 Dec 2009 10:57 AM PST Flickr user roguebantha_1138 spent two hours assembling this snowman that looks like a LEGO minifig. Link via Geekologie

Exploding/Reassembling Picture Frame Posted: 03 Dec 2009 10:49 AM PST (YouTube Link) YouTube user Mechanical Sculptor created this mechanically exploding and retracting picture frame. His channel is filled with videos of similar works. via Make | YouTube Channel

New Artificial Larynx Gives Laryngectomy Patients a Human-Sounding Voice Posted: 03 Dec 2009 10:40 AM PST About 10,000 Americans every year are diagnosed with laryngeal cancer, and most must submit to the surgical removal of their voice boxes. Machine replacements have, so far, sounded raspy and robot-like. But now medical researchers at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa have developed an device that fits into the mouth and tracks the normal movements of the tongue to produce simulated human speech: The system uses a palatometer: a device that looks much like an orthodontic plate and is normally used for speech therapy. The device, made by CompleteSpeech of Orem, UT, tracks contact between the tongue and palate using 118 embedded touch sensors.[...] To use the device, a person puts the palatometer in her mouth and mouths words normally. The system tries to translate those mouth movements into words before reproducing them on a small sound synthesizer, perhaps tucked into a shirt pocket. Link via Popular Science | Image: Jaren Wilke/Megan Russell, The University of the Witwatersrand

Steven Seagal Fighting Crime (For Real!) Posted: 03 Dec 2009 09:54 AM PST What has action star Steven Seagal been doing since his box-office heyday of the mid 90s? Turns out he’s been battling crime. For real: he’s been working as an unpaid reserve deputy for Louisiana’s Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office. And now, it’s all going to be on TV: Seagal, 58, who has a second home in bayou country, is a fully commissioned deputy and spends several months a year in Louisiana. While on the force, he usually works five-day shifts. Jefferson Parish Col. John Fortunato, who partners with Seagal on the 13-episode series, says Lawman captures deputies in a high-crime arena – interrogating suspects, breaking up fights, chasing bad guys and making arrests. "It just so happens that Steven Seagal is a movie star, but this is not made for TV, where there are second takes or things staged," Fortunato says. "He’s out patrolling areas where there’s a considerable amount of crime. This is for real." Link

Samurai Mario Posted: 03 Dec 2009 08:41 AM PST deviantART user William Chua of Singapore created this remix of Super Mario Bros. and classical Japanese illustration. He claims inspiration by both Super Mario Bros. and the game Monster Hunter. Link via Geekologie | deviantART Gallery

The Somali Pirate Stock Exchange Posted: 03 Dec 2009 08:33 AM PST Pirates operating in the waters off of Somalia have opened a stock exchange in order to encourage investment in their industry. The market has thrived, and the exchange now provides a business forum for 72 “maritime companies”. Mohamed Ahmed writes for Reuters: It is a lucrative business that has drawn financiers from the Somali diaspora and other nations — and now the gangs in Haradheere have set up an exchange to manage their investments.[...] “Four months ago, during the monsoon rains, we decided to set up this stock exchange. We started with 15 ‘maritime companies’ and now we are hosting 72. Ten of them have so far been successful at hijacking,” Mohammed said. “The shares are open to all and everybody can take part, whether personally at sea or on land by providing cash, weapons or useful materials … we’ve made piracy a community activity.” Link via io9 | Image: US Department of State

Miniature Golf in a Funeral Home Basement Posted: 03 Dec 2009 07:28 AM PST Hidden in a Chicago suburb is a funeral home with a 9-hole mini golf course in the basement! Fred Abercrombie made a stop in Palatine, Illinois to visit Ahlgrim Acres, a community room hidden underneath Ahlgrim Funeral Home and took quite a few pictures of the infamous golf course with a haunted theme. Link From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by unnecessaryumlaut.

The Creepiest Places You Can Spend the Night Posted: 03 Dec 2009 06:54 AM PST The world is full of nightmarish places, and many are open to the public. If you are a real thrill seeker, some will let you stay the night -if you dare! For example, you could stay at Margam Castle in Wales. Many years ago, the beautiful woman who once owned the castle died suddenly and without explanation. Some people said it was a murder, yet others were convinced she ended her own life. Do you have the nerve to spend a night in this Haunted House? Margam Castle is a Tudor Gothic castle that was built in the mid-1800's. It has many spectacular features, such as the beautiful winding staircase and an old cistercian Abbey; the castle is located near Port Talbot, South Wales. Because of the history of this castle no one has inhabited this place for over a hundred years! Guests have the option to spend the night until 7AM. If guests wish to stay the whole night they will have to bring their own sleeping bags as there are no beds to sleep in. Link From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by SnezanaP.

What is it? Game 118 Posted: 03 Dec 2009 05:06 AM PST Hooray! It’s time for our weekly collaboration with the What Is It? Blog. Can you guess the purpose of this week’s object? Place your guess in the comment section. One guess per comment, please, though you can enter as many as you’d like. Don’t put any URL or web links, mmkay? Doing so will forfeit your entry. The first correct answer (posted before the answer is revealed at the What is it? Blog), as well as the funniest yet ultimately incorrect guess will win a free T-Shirt from the Neatorama Shop. For more clues, check out the What is it? Blog. Good luck!

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