Neatorama

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• The End of a Beautiful Friendship: Houdini and Arthur Conan Doyle
• Neatorama Redesign (Help!)
• Taser Shockwave
• Banned Words of 2010
• Karate Kid, the Remake
• Traveling While Dead
• Adopted at 23 Years of Age
• Missing Pier 39 Sea Lions Are Found in Oregon
• Economists Are Cheapskates
• "The Dog Was Discovered When She Fell Out of the Sky"
• A Pictorial Guide To Avoiding Camera Loss
• Robot Band
• All About the Sling
• Star Trek Waffles

The End of a Beautiful Friendship: Houdini and Arthur Conan Doyle Posted: 04 Jan 2010 04:58 AM PST It seems strange that a man best known for creating the quintessential detective, who based his deductions solely on reason, would also be one of the biggest proponents of Spiritualism around the turn of the last century. Equally strange is that a man who based his career of performing illusions and magic tricks was one of the most stringent disbelievers of the same religion. Perhaps strangest of all was the friendship of these two men, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini. Good Beginnings Houdini met Doyle while doing a performance tour in Europe. While the magician did not believe in Spiritualism, he had a strong interest in the subject and said many times that he did desperately want to believe, as he truly wished to speak to his beloved deceased mother. Doyle was already well-known for his support of the belief by this point, and was considered by many to be a saint of Spiritualism. When he met Houdini, he went about bringing him to some of the best mediums in Europe in an attempt to convert the magician. At this point, Houdini attempted to lead Doyle to believe that he was very open to the idea, but just undecided. He did enjoy hearing about the religion from a person he considered to be on the same intellectual plane as himself and not an entirely gullible person. Still though, the magician was able to see through the parlor tricks used by the mediums that Doyle brought him to. The more of the mediums he saw, the less convinced he became. While he did not yet begin exposing the frauds, he did record their methods and become increasingly frustrated with their taking advantage of people's trust. At Cross Purposes Soon enough, Houdini started to begin his famous crusade against fraudulent mediums. He eventually even became part of a Scientific America committee offering a massive reward to anyone who could prove their methods were authentic –of course, no one ever managed to claim the reward. As his fame grew for these acts, Houdini even started attending séances in costume, taking with him a reporter and a police officer. Funny enough, Doyle actually supported these efforts at first, because he was afraid the fakes would damage the religion's legitimacy. Although Houdini offered to show Doyle how to spot the tricks used  by mediums, Doyle insisted that the mediums he knew were extremely honest and would never cheat their followers. As Houdini started to push Doyle even further to admit the people were acting dishonestly, Doyle soon converted to the belief that Houdini himself was one of the most powerful mediums around. Doyle and other Spiritualists who held this belief claimed the magician actually dematerialized himself to make his famous escapes. They believed he was working to discredit other mediums so he could gain publicity and take his act even further. Doyle expressed many of these beliefs in his last book, The Edge of the Unknown. Houdini, unfortunately, was caught between a rock and a hard place with these accusations. He couldn't actually reveal his tricks, but by not doing so, the Spiritualists still had ammo to claim he was a medium. While he simply stated that his escapes were all performed by physical means, these tales haunted him until his death. Attempting to Convert Doyle In an attempt to prove to Doyle that his performances only involved trickery, Houdini offered to perform a special trick for his friend. The two men were joined by the Bernard Ernst president of the American Society of Magicians for the test, which started with a room filled with a slate, five cork balls and some white paint. Doyle was instructed to choose one of the balls at random and then place it in the container of paint. He was then given a pencil and a piece of paper and was told to go wherever he wanted to write a message of his choice on the paper. Houdini and Ernst stayed in the room, while Doyle left the house, walked three blocks away and then wrote a message on the paper. He then folded the paper, put it in his pocket and returned to the house. Upon his return, Houdini instructed Doyle to pick up the ball and put it on the slate. The ball then began to roll over the slate, where it spelled out the words Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin, the same words Doyle wrote on the paper. While Houdini devised this test to show Doyle these methods all involved simple tricks, Doyle was convinced more than ever that Houdini was a medium. Attempting to Convert Houdini The two continued to be friends and spent a vacation together in Atlantic City shortly after Doyle's speaking tour in New York. During the vacation, Doyle's wife, lady Jean offered to perform a séance for Houdini. He accepted, trusting her sincerity and honesty, and tried to completely accept the realism of the experience. As stated earlier, Houdini wanted to believe, he still had not found anyone who was worth believing in though. He was particularly excited about the séance when Jean announced that she would be try to contact his mother. Houdini said, "I had made up my mind that I would be as religious as it was in my power to be and not at any time did I scoff during the ceremony… with a beating heart I waited, hoping that I might feel once more the presence of my beloved mother.” Lady Jean entered a trance during the séance and her hand started moving, scribbling words across paper, which Doyle then handed to Houdini. The message detailed his mother's pleasure in finally getting to contact her son. They started off saying, "Oh my darling, thank God, thank God, at last I’m through. I’ve tried, oh so often — now I am happy. Why, of course, I want to talk to my boy — my own beloved boy — friends, thank you, with all my heart for this.” After the séance, Houdini wrote a small note on the bottom of the paper, saying, "Message written by Lady Doyle claiming the spirit of my dear Mother had control of her hand — my sainted mother could not write English and spoke broken English." A few months after the Doyle's returned home to England, Houdini went public about the incident. He said there was no chance his mother had been summoned in the séance based on her poor English and the fact that she never learned to read or write. He said he believed the Doyle's did not deceive him intentionally, but were victims to their own gullibility. Doyle tried to argue against these claims by saying that language is universal to the dead. He also said Houdini was too nervous about the encounter to accept that it was his own mother speaking to him from the beyond. The End of It All After this, the pair tried to maintain some level of strained friendship, but the final blow came when Houdini began publicly attacking Mina "Magery" Crandon. His Scientific American panel was fervent in discrediting Mrs. Crandon after she came forward to claim the prize. Doyle was a huge supporter of Crandon, even praising her in his later book The History of Spiritualism. "The commission is, in my opinion, a farce,” he wrote, “and has already killed itself.” The two began privately quarreling, but by 1923, the were exchanging criticizing letters to one another via the New York Times. After they publicly feuded when their tours happened to cross in Denver, they stopped talking for good. A few years later, Houdini died. When his wife, Bess began clearing out his property, she uncovered a huge collection of books on Spiritualism and she opted to send them to Doyle. The author wrote back to her, stating his reluctance to accept the gifts though, because he thought Houdini harbored bad feelings against him up until the time of his death. Bess wrote back and said that Houdini had, in fact, held out hope of contacting his mother up until his death and even told her so on his death bed. She assured Doyle that Houdini carried no resentment towards him and that the press had greatly exaggerated the feud between the two. She best summed up Houdini's thoughts by writing, "he was deeply hurt whenever any journalistic arguments arose between you and would have been the happiest man in the world had he been able to agree with your views on Spiritism. He admired and respected you –two remarkable men with different views." Source #1, #2, #3, #4

Neatorama Redesign (Help!) Posted: 04 Jan 2010 12:41 AM PST Hello, Neatoramanauts! Boing Boing did it, Engadget did it, and now it's Neatorama's turn. Yep, we're going to give the blog a makeover. It's time to shake things up a bit. Keep Neatorama fresh and all that. Now, blog redesigns are fraught with potential problems (this is not our first redesign, but so far, all Neatorama's theme changes had been incremental and evolutionary - I'm thinking that we should shake it up by a lot this time), some people simply hate change, and it's just nice to have our readers to be involved - so let me ask you: what can we do to improve the blog? What should and shouldn't we do in this redesign? There are things that I can't change: we need ads to help defray the cost of running the blog, so eliminating ads is not a viable option (though we try to keep the number of ad spots to a minimum), and no, we won't get rid of the Upcoming Queue :) (I believe the quality of front-paged UQ posts have improved greatly since the last Great Upcoming Queue Revolt of 2009) I'd like to keep Neatorama's "everything on the front page" philosophy. We've had this from the start: all of Neatorama's full posts (and comments - if you check the "show comment" box in the footer of the blog) are visible on the front page. The good thing about it is that there's not a lot of clicking. The bad thing is that there's a lot of scrolling - the blog's front page can get quite long. For an ad-supported blog, this philosophy is quite paradoxical. After all, a lot of clicking translates into more pageviews and therefore more ad revenue. But we're not shooting ourselves in the foot here: I believe Neatorama is more reader-friendly because of it and that this philosophy encourages frequent repeat visits. After all, 31.8 million visitors in 2009 (and growing) couldn't be wrong, could they? There's a lot of things to consider: Do you guys use the Browse by Date and Browse by Tag features on the side bar? Should we keep those or get rid of 'em? What do you guys think about social media buttons? Are those used or are they just graphical flotsam that should be culled to make the design cleaner? Should we expand or contract the long list of categories? Should we make the pictures and text larger? Monitor sizes have increased over the years so it makes sense to make things larger on the blog, but that will probably make it harder to read the blog from your iPhones. Above all, I'd appreciate your input and feedback. Love it or hate it, I'd like to hear what you think about Neatorama. Best 5 comments (it doesn't have to be related to the redesign, and it doesn't have to be all lovey dovey - your honest opinions about the blog, please) will get free T-shirts from the Neatorama Shop. Thank you!

Taser Shockwave Posted: 03 Jan 2010 10:26 PM PST Photo: Pat Shannahan/Wired.com What do you get when you cross a taser with a machine gun? Behold the Taser Shockwave, a weapon that fires 24 electrified probes at the same time in a single direction. It’s one example of Aaron Rowe’s Danger Room Blog gallery of 10 Sci-Fi Weapons That Actually Exist: Link

Banned Words of 2010 Posted: 03 Jan 2010 10:24 PM PST Every year, Lake Superior State University publishes a list of overused words that should be banned: Word "czars" at Lake Superior State University "unfriended" 15 words and phrases and declared them "shovel-ready" for inclusion on the university's 35th annual List of Words Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness. "The list this year is a 'teachable moment' conducted free of 'tweets,'" said a Word Banishment spokesman who was "chillaxin'" for the holidays. "'In these economic times', purging our language of 'toxic assets' is a 'stimulus' effort that's 'too big to fail.'" Former LSSU Public Relations Director Bill Rabe and friends created "word banishment" in 1975 at a New Year's Eve party and released the first list on New Year's Day. Since then, LSSU has received tens of thousands of nominations for the list, which includes words and phrases from marketing, media, education, technology and more. Word-watchers may check the alphabetical "complete list" on the website before making their submissions. Here are the 35th annual List of Words Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselesness: Shovel-ready Transparent/Transparency Czar Tweet App Sexting Friend as a verb Teachable moment In these economic times ... Stimulus Toxic assets Too big to fail Bromance Chillaxin' Obama-prefix or roots Link

Karate Kid, the Remake Posted: 03 Jan 2010 10:23 PM PST [YouTube Clip] Remember the 1984 movie Karate Kid with Ralph Macchio and Pat Morita? Well, it’s going to have a remake, featuring Jackie Chan and Jaden Smith (Will Smith’s son). From Monsters and Critics: Jaden Smith’s character moves to Beijing with his mother, where he encounters a bully situation similar to Macchio’s in his new locale. Smith’s character will be named Dre instead of Daniel, and take lessons from Chinese martial arts master Mr. Han, played by Jackie Chan. Whereas Daniel Larusso and his mother only faced a regional move across the United States in the the first film, the producers say the script will integrate language barriers and an international collision of world views into the bully-victim-turned-martial-artist tale. Now, take a look at the trailer and tell me, shouldn’t that be "kung fu" kid instead?

Traveling While Dead Posted: 03 Jan 2010 10:22 PM PST Dying usually puts a dent on one’s travel plan, but not Ralph B. White’s. His friends at the Adventurer’s Club of Los Angeles have taken him (or rather, his ashes) to some of the world’s most remote places: In the last 22 months, Ralph B. White’s meticulously logged schedule shows trips to the mountains of Nepal, the Australian outback, the China-Mongolia border, a Rwandan volcano, Iceland, Benin and the waters off Zanzibar. [...] Thanks to [Ralph's friends at the Adventurer's Club], tiny portions of White’s remains, carefully measured out in plastic bags, have put in enough posthumous miles to rival King Tut. Instead of a bucket list, he’s got an ash log. It’s six pages long. "Rather than have people mourn him, he wanted to give people incentive to go have adventures," said Rosaly Lopes, who was engaged to White when he died and is the keeper of the ashes. Though White covered a lot of the Earth during his life, said Krista Few, his daughter, most of these scatterings have delivered his ashes to new territory. "The competition is what is the most bizarre place we can take Ralph?" Christopher Reynolds of The Los Angeles Times has the story: Link

Adopted at 23 Years of Age Posted: 03 Jan 2010 10:20 PM PST Like many foster children who "age out" of the system, 23-year-old John had given up hope of ever being adopted. Then he met Mark Hauck and his partner, Tim Ferraro, who became his friends … and later, parents: The soda shot out of John’s nose when Mark asked the question. He thought that maybe he hadn’t heard Mark correctly. "We’d like you to be our son," Mark offered. "We’ll leave it up to you to decide." But John didn’t have an answer. He asked for a few days to think about his decision. At first, John grew angry when he thought about their offer to adopt him. "I don’t think I was used to the level of commitment they were offering," John said. "An adoption can’t end." The permanency Mark and Tim promised was a striking contrast from his past. When John stirred trouble, the state moved him to another foster home. When he acted violently, the state punished him by sending him to residential treatment. Several days later, John appeared at Mark and Tim’s door with his belongings. John decided he was tired of spending Christmas and birthdays alone. He realized, even as an adult, that he still needed parents to provide him advice — and compassion. He wanted a family of his own. Link (Photo: Kevin Davis)

Missing Pier 39 Sea Lions Are Found in Oregon Posted: 03 Jan 2010 10:19 PM PST Remember the case of the "missing" sea lions of San Francisco’s Pier 39? Well, they have been "found": Marine experts now believe that the Pier 39 sea lions have gone to Oregon. A couple thousand California sea lions showed up off the coast of Oregon with their typical bark that separates them from the growling Stellar sea lions that usually live in Oregon. Dan Harkins is the Sea Lion Caves general manager. He says: "We’re seeing the sea lions coming up this way from California because of the feeding. If the cold water fish move north to find colder waters, the sea lions have to eat and they follow the fish wherever they go.” Link (Photo: Swift Benjamin [Flickr])

Economists Are Cheapskates Posted: 03 Jan 2010 10:18 PM PST Perhaps it has something to do with their field of choice, economics AKA the dismal science, but many of the world’s most famous economists share one extraordinary trait: they’re cheapskates! Some economists may be cheap, at least by the standards of other people, because of their training or a fascination with money and choices that drives them to the field. In recent research, University of Washington economists Yoram Bauman and Elaina Rose found that economics majors were less likely to donate money to charity than students who majored in other fields. After majors in other fields took an introductory economics course, their propensity to give also fell. "The economics students seem to be born guilty, and the other students seem to lose their innocence when they take an economics class," says Mr. Bauman, who has a stand-up comedy act he’ll be doing at the economists’ Atlanta conference Sunday night. Among his one-liners: "You might be an economist if you refuse to sell your children because they might be worth more later." Economists long have studied "free riders," the sort of people who take more than their fair share of something when circumstances permit. Think of the person who orders the most expensive entr[eacute]e at a restaurant, knowing that the check will be shared equally among companions. University of Wisconsin sociologists Gerald Marwell and Ruth Ames, in a 1981 paper, found that in experiments, economics students showed a much higher propensity to free ride than other students. In questioning after the experiment, the sociologists found that for many of the economics students, the concept of investing fairly "was somewhat alien." Link

"The Dog Was Discovered When She Fell Out of the Sky" Posted: 03 Jan 2010 09:32 PM PST YouTube link. Sadie is a Pomeranian who ran away from her home in Iowa after being frightened by fireworks. “Sadie was swooped up by an owl in the woods,” the AP reports. The dog was discovered when she fell out of the sky, landing in the middle of the road in front of a surprised driver, Jamie Padden. Padden had gotten out of the car to help the dog when she saw the owl returning. The rest of the story is in the video, or you can read the text at Pawnation.

A Pictorial Guide To Avoiding Camera Loss Posted: 03 Jan 2010 06:22 PM PST When trying to prevent the loss of your digital camera, a good practice is to take a photo of your name and contact info.  That way, if someone finds it when you leave it in the planetarium, you at least have a chance of getting it back. Andrew McDonald took that concept to the next level, with a whole stream of photos imploring the finder to return the camera.  Even the criminally minded would have second thoughts about stealing this camera. To illustrate just how you can safeguard your camera from the crippling effects of Camera Loss, here are the pics that I always keep on my camera. Link

Robot Band Posted: 03 Jan 2010 12:38 PM PST Fronted by Gamon, the Robo-Band, found object assemblage sculpture by Brian Marshall also features Johnson on lead guitar, Ritan on bass, and Topper on drums.  Genre: metal. Robot sculpture assembled from found objects by Brian Marshall – Wilmington, DE. Items included in my sculptures vary from vintage household kitchen items to recycled industrial scrap. Some of my favorite items to use are old oil cans, aluminum measuring spoons, electrical meters, retro blenders, anodized cups, and pencil sharpeners. Will be on display at my upcoming show at the RedMohawk gallery on January 29th in Wilmington, DE. Adopt-A-Bot [Flickr]

All About the Sling Posted: 03 Jan 2010 12:16 PM PST All that most of us know about a sling is that David slew Goliath with one. Maybe our fathers made one for us when we were kids (mine did). But what else do you know about the sling as a weapon? The sling was likely mankind’s first, true projectile weapon. It generally consists of two cords and a pouch. These cords are held in one hand and a projectile is placed in the pouch. The length of the sling provides greater mechanical advantage than one’s arms. Projectiles can be slung over 1500 feet (450m) at speeds exceeding 250 miles per hour (400 kph). The sling is unique in that the movement of the weapon is merely an extension of the user's body. The power and accuracy of the weapon is not by technological means, but rather user skill. The connection between slinger and sling is an intimate one, a relationship rarely found in modern weaponry. Slinging.org has the history of the sling, information on different kinds of slings, and advice on making and using a sling. Link -via Everlasting Blort

Star Trek Waffles Posted: 03 Jan 2010 07:43 AM PST The Kellogg Company, producer of Eggo Waffles, released a limited line of Star Trek-themed waffles. They include 25 different images, icons, and phrases from the science fiction franchise. You can view more pictures at the link. Link via Geekologie

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