Neatorama

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• The Dogs of War – a Tribute to The Military Working Dog
• Grow Your Own Replacement Teeth
• New Paper Airplane Flight Record Achieved
• Zeitguised's Imaginative Shorts
• Which of These Figures is "Kiki?" And Which is "Bouba?"
• The World Will Not End in 2012
• Bacon Popcorn
• New Year's Ball Drop
• What Is the Most Complex Language in the World?
• Orangutan Mom Sings to Her Baby
• Best Man Robbed DJ at Wedding Reception
• Divorced After 20 Years Together, Remarried After 1 Month Apart
• Lost That Lovin' Feelin'? Blame The Neutrophins!
• Danish Cartoonist Hid in Panic Room During Home Attack
• Infographic of the Decade
• Today is a Palindrome
• Man Gets Arrested to Avoid Spending New Year's Eve with Family
• Parallel Lines Optical Illusion
• Welcoming 2010 in Pictures
• The Leaning Tower of Liuzhou

The Dogs of War – a Tribute to The Military Working Dog Posted: 03 Jan 2010 03:02 AM PST Dogs have been used in warfare since war began and the last ten years have been no exception.  Used these days primarily to seek out IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) the Military Working Dog has seen a great deal of action both in Iraq and Afghanistan.  This is, then, a homage to the fidelity, tenacity and sheer exuberance of the Military Working Dog – the MWD. It is a fact easily overlooked that dogs are used by the military in war zones – many people do not realise that they are used at all. They have made significant contributions where they have been deployed. A fitting point at which to start is to pay our respects to those dogs that helped win wars in the past. Here, Military Working Dog (from here on in referred to as MWD but sometimes called K9) Rico accompanies Petty Officer 2nd Class Blake Soller to salute the dogs who helped to liberate Guam in 1944. The inscription on the memorial says "25 Marine War Dogs gave their lives liberating Guam in 1944. They served as sentries, messengers, scouts. They explored caves, detected mines and booby traps. -SEMPER FIDELIS" (always faithful). Link From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by taliesyn30.

Grow Your Own Replacement Teeth Posted: 02 Jan 2010 09:02 PM PST A group of British scientists suggest that you will soon be able to replace missing teeth by growing replacements. The procedure is fairly simple. Doctors take stem cells from the patient. These are unique in their ability to form any of the tissues that make up the body. By carefully nurturing the stem cells in a laboratory, scientists can nudge the cells down a path that will make them grow into a tooth. After a couple of weeks, the ball of cells, known as a bud, is ready to be implanted. Tests reveal what type of tooth – for example, a molar or an incisor – the bud will form. The procedure holds great promise in the U.K., where “the average Briton over 50 has lost 12 teeth from a set of 32.” Link.  Image credit to Coverbrowser, which has a collection of 470 Mad covers.

New Paper Airplane Flight Record Achieved Posted: 02 Jan 2010 08:49 PM PST A Japanese man has set a new world record for “maximum time aloft” for a paper airplane. With a bend of the knees and an arch of the back, a Japanese engineer today set a world flight record for a paper plane, keeping his hand-folded construction in the air for 26.1 seconds.  Using a plane specially designed for “long haul” flights, Takuo Toda narrowly failed to match his lifetime best of 27.9 seconds, a Guinness world record set in Hiroshima earlier, but achieved with a plane that was held together with cellophane tape. Mr.Toda has also announced plans to launch 100 paper planes from the orbiting International Space Station.  The planes would be made with heat-resistant paper capable of withstanding temperatures of 250C and wind speeds of mach 7; he has not solve the problem of how to track the planes during their descent to earth. Link.  Photograph: Koji Sasahara/AP

Zeitguised's Imaginative Shorts Posted: 02 Jan 2010 08:37 PM PST Vimeo user zeitguised has quite an array of entertaining art pieces on his profile.  This is my favorite, but I also really liked “The Zoo.” The blending of impossible scenes with crystal clear sound effects wins me over. Peripetics from zeitguised on Vimeo. Zeitguised made a piece in six acts for the opening exhibition at the Zirkel Gallery. It entails six imaginations of disoriented systems that take a catastrophic turn, including the evolution of educational plant-body-machine models and liquid building materials. via TwistedSifter

Which of These Figures is "Kiki?" And Which is "Bouba?" Posted: 02 Jan 2010 08:34 PM PST “95% to 98% of people choose kiki for the angular shape and bouba for the rounded one… Even 2.5 year-old children (too young to read) show this effect.” “Ramachandran and Hubbard suggest the kiki/bouba effect has implications for the evolution of language, because the naming of objects is not completely arbitrary. The rounded shape may intuitively be named bouba because the mouth makes a more rounded shape to produce that sound, while a more taut, angular mouth shape is needed to articulate kiki. The sound of K is also harder and more forceful than that of B. Such “synesthesia-like mappings” suggest that this effect might be the neurological basis for sound symbolism, in which sounds are non-arbitrarily mapped to objects and actions in the world.” Link.

The World Will Not End in 2012 Posted: 02 Jan 2010 08:25 PM PST Those Mayan priests were way off base.  The correct date for the end of the world is May 21, 2011. Harold Camping has announced that this new date corrects his previous incorrect prediction that the world would end in 1994.  He acknowledges that the previous prediction was based on a “mathematical error.”  The new prediction has, however, a much more fundamental theological basis: The number 5, Camping concluded, equals “atonement.” Ten is “completeness.” Seventeen means “heaven.” “Christ hung on the cross April 1, 33 A.D.,” he began. “Now go to April 1 of 2011 A.D., and that’s 1,978 years.”  Camping then multiplied 1,978 by 365.2422 days – the number of days in each solar year, not to be confused with a calendar year.  Next, Camping noted that April 1 to May 21 encompasses 51 days. Add 51 to the sum of previous multiplication total, and it equals 722,500. Camping realized that (5 x 10 x 17) x (5 x 10 x 17) = 722,500.  Or put into words: (Atonement x Completeness x Heaven), squared. “Five times 10 times 17 is telling you a story,” Camping said. “It’s the story from the time Christ made payment for your sins until you’re completely saved.  “I tell ya, I just about fell off my chair when I realized that,” Camping said. Squared, mind you.  How can you argue with such mathematical precision?  And please ignore the shape of his head in the shadow… Link.

Bacon Popcorn Posted: 02 Jan 2010 05:57 PM PST The ultimate mashup: the fabulous taste of bacon meets the irresistible texture of popcorn.  Just in time for the Superbowl. You know it was inevitable. Stacy predicted it in March on Neatorama, with a notable lack of enthusiasm. Link: ThinkGeek via ColdMud

New Year's Ball Drop Posted: 02 Jan 2010 03:23 PM PST No, not that Ball Drop.  The Science Museum of Western Virginia hosted this superball drop at noon on New Year’s.  About 11,000 balls were dropped, and the kids loved it. (YouTube Link) We were stationed on the ground floor, where I hoped my Superball-loving Geeklet would get a good view of the big bounce. While the folks up top had the fun of dropping balls from five stories up, we had the wild experience of being inside the ricochet zone. Yep, I took a couple of hits, but it was worth it — especially when we started scooping up the balls. via GeekDad

What Is the Most Complex Language in the World? Posted: 02 Jan 2010 02:27 PM PST The Economist has an article about how languages can be said to be, comparatively speaking, more or less complex. The grand prize for most complex language goes to one in the Amazon: With all that in mind, which is the hardest language? On balance The Economist would go for Tuyuca, of the eastern Amazon. It has a sound system with simple consonants and a few nasal vowels, so is not as hard to speak as Ubykh or !Xóõ. Like Turkish, it is heavily agglutinating, so that one word, hóabãsiriga means "I do not know how to write." Like Kwaio, it has two words for "we", inclusive and exclusive. The noun classes (genders) in Tuyuca's language family (including close relatives) have been estimated at between 50 and 140. Some are rare, such as "bark that does not cling closely to a tree", which can be extended to things such as baggy trousers, or wet plywood that has begun to peel apart. Most fascinating is a feature that would make any journalist tremble. Tuyuca requires verb-endings on statements to show how the speaker knows something. Diga ape-wi means that "the boy played soccer (I know because I saw him)", while diga ape-hiyi means "the boy played soccer (I assume)". English can provide such information, but for Tuyuca that is an obligatory ending on the verb. Evidential languages force speakers to think hard about how they learned what they say they know. Link via Marginal Revolution | Image: NASA

Orangutan Mom Sings to Her Baby Posted: 02 Jan 2010 11:37 AM PST If you’ve ever sung a lullaby to your baby, you’ve just mimicked an orangutan: turns out orangutan moms sing to make their babies happy. Eyes closed, hand on heart, this orang-utan mother appears to be belting out a ballad to her beautiful orange baby – perhaps I Will Always Love You-oo-oo? Her offspring certainly seems impressed and screeches with delight while swinging among the trees in the wilds of Borneo. Quick, someone call Simian Camel of Jungle Idols! The Daily Mail has the photo that will surely make you smile today: Link

Best Man Robbed DJ at Wedding Reception Posted: 02 Jan 2010 11:36 AM PST We’ve covered a whole lot of strange crimes here on Neatorama, but this one takes the (wedding) cake: when Nadia Clay and Terrance Simmons tied the knot, their best man pulled a gun and robbed the DJ … at the wedding reception! "He steps back, takes it [the gun] and then shoots it in the air," said Kendrick Shepherd, the wedding DJ. "And then comes and pushes me, grabs it and runs out the door and I’m like, did that just happen?" Shepherd said the suspect grabbed an expensive crystal decanter full of liquor and fled. Nearly two months later, police haven’t been able to find the gun-toting best man. The couple claimed that they didn’t know who the best man was. Well, weddings are expensive, or perhaps the music sucked … Link

Divorced After 20 Years Together, Remarried After 1 Month Apart Posted: 02 Jan 2010 11:34 AM PST After 20 years being married, Jan and Lee Jones decided to get divorced. A month later, they decided that they though married life was tough, they couldn’t live apart … so they got remarried! They decided to separate after nearly 20 years of marriage in January 2009. Mr Jones said: "We had a lot of problems, like money problems, me working and Jan doing all the work at home, relying on friends to help take the children to school. We tried to make it work but we couldn’t. We thought we would get divorced and see what happened. I moved out and got a room and I was coming around seeing the children every time I could." The pair stayed amicable for the sake of their kids and were in constant phone and text contact. Mr Jones said: "I’m used to the children and Jan being around me and being on my own was like something was missing out of my life. We were texting each other and ringing and I was coming around all the time. It was the worst time of my life." Link

Lost That Lovin' Feelin'? Blame The Neutrophins! Posted: 02 Jan 2010 11:33 AM PST Have you lost that "lovin’ feelin’"? The Righteous Brothers may not know it when they sang the number-one hit single in 1965, but you can blame a hormone called neutrophin: A team from the University of Pisa in Italy found the bodily chemistry which makes people sexually attractive to new partners lasts, at most, two years. [...] The Italian researchers tested the levels of the hormones called neutrophins in the blood of volunteers who were rated on a passionate love scale. Levels of these chemical messengers were much higher in those who were in the early stages of romance. [...] But in people who had been with their partners for between one and two years these so-called "love molecules" had gone, even though the relationship had survived. The scientists found that the lust molecule was replaced by the so-called "cuddle hormone" – oxytocin – in couples who had been together for several years. Link

Danish Cartoonist Hid in Panic Room During Home Attack Posted: 02 Jan 2010 11:32 AM PST When Danish political cartoonist Kurt Westergaard was attacked at home by an ax-wielding man, he didn’t lock himself in the bathroom – instead, he utilized the panic room: Westergaard took his 5-year-old granddaughter into the "panic room" when he realized what was happening, Chief Superintendent Ole Madsen said. Westergaard, who has been threatened for drawing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, is ordinarily accompanied by bodyguards when he leaves his home, but nobody was on guard at the house Friday, the Security and Intelligence Service told CNN. And you thought that the 2002 movie Panic Room by Jodie Foster and Forest Whitaker was just Hollywood non-sense: Link (Photo: AFP)

Infographic of the Decade Posted: 02 Jan 2010 10:42 AM PST Phillip Niemeyer created an infographic of the big subjects of each year of the past decade for the New York Times. This is just a small part of the chart, which you can enlarge at the link. Keep in mind, this is on the opinion page. Link -via Digg

Today is a Palindrome Posted: 02 Jan 2010 10:15 AM PST January 2, 2010 is a palindrome, at least in countries that write the date in the mm/dd/yyyy form. Personally, I’ve been writing the date without initial zeros, like 12-3-9, but that’s just me. Who notices such things? Professor Aziz Inan of the University of Portland, who teaches electrical engineering but loves math puzzles. A native of Istanbul, Inan creates math puzzles in his spare time. So it was a big day when he looked closely at his own name and saw a pattern. His first and last names are both vowel-consonant-vowel-same consonant — and, if you write the names in all caps, switch the vowels and turn one set of consonants 90 degrees, both names are the same. “I jumped in my chair,” he said of the day two years ago when the connection hit him. “My parents had no idea.” The next palindromic date will be November 2, 2011. Link -via J-Walk Blog

Man Gets Arrested to Avoid Spending New Year's Eve with Family Posted: 02 Jan 2010 09:03 AM PST An ingenious solution to a common problem: The 35-year-old Sicilian first showed up at a police station on Thursday (local time) asking to be arrested because he preferred spending the night in prison rather than with his family, but was rebuffed because he had not committed a crime, the Agi news agency said on Friday. The man immediately went to a tobacco shop next door, where he threatened the owner with a boxcutter as he grabbed a few sweets and a packet of gum. He then waited until police arrived to arrest him for robbery. Link via The Agitator | Image: FBI

Parallel Lines Optical Illusion Posted: 02 Jan 2010 08:33 AM PST YouTube link. Apparently similar in principle to the “tile illusion.”  This one would make a nice tabletop conversation piece if it were commercially available. Via Unique Daily.

Welcoming 2010 in Pictures Posted: 02 Jan 2010 08:17 AM PST The Big Picture has photographs from all over the world illustrating the different ways people celebrate the new year. Yes, there are plenty of fireworks, but also bonfires, skits, costumes, swimming, praying, gunfire, and other customs. This picture was taken in Bhopal, India. Link -via the Presurfer (image credit: REUTERS/Raj Patidar)

The Leaning Tower of Liuzhou Posted: 02 Jan 2010 08:15 AM PST (Live Leak link) A building demolition in Liuzhou, China went horribly wrong on Wednesday. Experts planned for the building to be split in two, but they expected both halves to fall down. Instead, one half of the 22-story apartment building was left leaning at a dangerous angle. It has since been brought down by crane. Link -via Arbroath

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