Neatorama

If Only the 80s Had Been Like This
5 Ways to Measure the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill
The Mythbuster That Won't Be Aired
Sportsmanship Wins in High School Softball
What It Feels Like
Man Crosses English Channel With Balloon-Power
Lincoln Tunnel Hokey Pokey
The Colossal K Cooling Tower Crashes
The Lace Art of Joana Vasconcelos
The Secret Powers of Time
This Week at Neatorama
How to Remember Soldiers on Memorial Day

Posted: 30 May 2010 04:24 AM PDT

[YouTube - Link]

The 80s were much coller when they were THE FUTURE! The TV show "UFO" was broadcast in Britain in the 1970s. The show was set in the early 1980s, when space aliens were kidnapping Earthlings and a secret military organization called SHADO was set up below a London film studio to stop them. Back then, spaceships had flashing colored lights, women had purple hair and IBM Selectric typewriters automatically spat out the latest UFO warnings. Opening sequence created by Gerry Anderson.

– via lileks

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Marilyn Terrell.

5 Ways to Measure the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

Posted: 30 May 2010 04:21 AM PDT

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill is getting progressively worse, as the media reports that the latest effort to stop it, the "top kill" method, is not working. So far, an estimated five million gallons of crude oil have leaked into the gulf.

Asylum has put together five interesting ways to understand just how much oil this actually is: enough to fly a full Boeing 777 jet around the world, six times, for example.

Let’s do some simple math. There are 42 gallons per barrel of oil. That means 5 million gallons of crude oil equals about 119,047 barrels. From those barrels we can create 56,666 gallons of actual gasoline. So what can you do with nearly 57,000 gallons of gasoline? For starters, you can hop into a Hummer and drive from New York City all the way to Los Angeles. And back. About 100 times.

Link – via mentalfloss

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by nmiller.

The Mythbuster That Won't Be Aired

Posted: 30 May 2010 03:03 AM PDT

(video link)

Adam Savage of the TV show Mythbusters explains an experiment that the Discovery Channel rejected. Did your mother ever say “The box is more nutritious!” when you asked for sugary cereal? Adam and Jamie set up a test to find out if that’s true, which turned out completely different from anything they expected. This is an excerpt from Savage’s speech at Maker Faire. You can watch the entire speech at FORA.tv. Link -via Digg

Sportsmanship Wins in High School Softball

Posted: 29 May 2010 08:34 PM PDT

The story started simple enough: an undefeated high school softball team was absolutely obliterating a team that had never played before, led by a coach who hadn’t ever seen a game, and supported by not enough equipment.

Instead of walloping the inner-city team, the undefeated team stopped playing, forfeited the game, and then spent two hours teaching the newcomers how to actually play the game.

After two hours of training, they collected money for new equipment, acquired them a new coach, and professional contacts to get even more for the school’s brand new softball program.

“One wrong attitude, one babying approach from our players would shut down the Marshall team, who already were down,” wrote Traylor. “But our girls made me as proud as I have ever been. … [By the end], you could tell they were having a blast. The change from the beginning of the game to the end of the practice was amazing.”

Link – via metafilter

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by nmiller.

What It Feels Like

Posted: 29 May 2010 08:33 PM PDT

[YouTube - Link]

This CLIO award winning commercial shows an interesting and hilarious perspective on sibling rivalry.

– via clioawards

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by djinny.

Man Crosses English Channel With Balloon-Power

Posted: 29 May 2010 08:32 PM PDT

Taking a page from Pixar’s Up, American Jonathan Trappe made a fantastic journey across the English Channel via helium balloons.

Ultimately, his journey proved successful, and Trappe landed in a French cabbage patch. He’s the first person to accomplish such a feat, but it was not his first balloon trip.

Trappe hitched a bunch of balloons to a chair, but his rig was a little more complex than a toy or the house in ‘Up.’ He took navigation equipment, tracking devices and an oxygen system along for the ride, which was approved by aviation officials.

Link – via gothamist

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by nmiller.

Lincoln Tunnel Hokey Pokey

Posted: 29 May 2010 08:07 PM PDT

Have you ever tried to drive straight from the New Jersey Turnnpike to the Lincoln Tunnel? It’s not possible, and this map by artist Christoph Niemann shows why. Click here to embiggen.

Niemann’s amusing illustrations appear regularly on his New York Times blog, Abstract City.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Marilyn Terrell.

The Colossal K Cooling Tower Crashes

Posted: 29 May 2010 07:47 PM PDT

Built just as the Cold War came to its end, the K Cooling Tower at Savannah River Site in South Carolina, a nuclear processing plant, was never much in demand. Finally this week the enormous structure crashed to the ground in a remarkable controlled implosion. What goes up, must come down!

This was the second largest cooling tower to be consigned to oblivion by controlled destruction in the world, ever. The pictures do only little justice to the huge size of K Cooling Tower – it was 450 feet tall and 345 wide. As such it posed what you might call an exceptional challenge to the SRS managers. As such many experts were also called in to advise on the obliteration of the tower.

With video! Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by taliesyn30.

The Lace Art of Joana Vasconcelos

Posted: 29 May 2010 04:01 PM PDT

We’ve previously featured Joana Vasconcelos’ chandelier made out of tampons. Some readers thought it was pretty gross. Consider this to be a unicorn chaser.

Drawing upon the Portuguese lace tradition, she’s created a series of works consisting of solid objects covered with lace. DudeCraft and Lovely Textiles have some excellent roundups of her work, such as the above “Piano Dentelle.”

Link and Link | Artist’s Website

The Secret Powers of Time

Posted: 29 May 2010 12:12 PM PDT

We’re all familiar with the concept of time seemingly moving faster when we’re having fun, and dragging when we’re bored. Professor Philip Zimbardo explains in this artfully presented video that it’s a lot more precise than that. Past-oriented vs. present or future-oriented personalities differ across many landscapes, and factors like religion, geography and culture greatly influence how individuals experience time.

(YouTube Link)

This Week at Neatorama

Posted: 29 May 2010 09:43 AM PDT

You might have noticed that some images were missing from some posts this morning. Thanks to our programming expert, the issue was soon resolved and everything should be back to normal now! If you notice anything still awry, let us know.

To make sure you don’t miss anything at Neatorama, here’s what he did this past week. Jill Harness looked at internet advertising campaigns in the post Does Viral Marketing Make You Sick? with some examples of really cool videos that disappointed us when we later found them to be professional ads.

From mental_floss magazine, we had An Ode to Great Double X-Chromosomed Scientists, about three women who didn’t get the credit they deserved for their work.

We learned about four Obscure Monsters from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader. Read about the Sciopod, Gowrow, Encantado (Boto), and the Kappa.

The NeatoShop welcomed Ben Rollman as a collaborative artist. He will draw a custom robot portrait of you or someone you love!

Congratulations to prize winners attorneyadrian and Jaded Unicorn for winning prizes in this week’s What Is It? game!

Congratulations to Ben Dussault, Leah and Margaret, Ian, and Kim Kutz, who all won prizes in the How Did You Know? contest we sponsored in collaboration with mental_floss.

The Neatorama Mini-Hunt sent you searching for awesome things to win The Book of Awesome by Neil Pasricha.

And we’re in the last few days of the Upcoming Queue competition, with an iPad at stake. Go take a look at the submissions and vote for the ones that should be featured on our main page!

You’re invited to join in the discussion with the daily question at Facebook and keep up with even more neat links with our Twitter feed!

How to Remember Soldiers on Memorial Day

Posted: 29 May 2010 08:24 AM PDT

(Daily Motion link)

For further information, you can visit the links mentioned in the video:

The Memorial Day Foundation.

National Moment of Remembrance.

The Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund.