Neatorama

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• Animal Name Origins
• Pickle Lip Balm
• Space Battleship Yamato Tricycle
• Fake Cat's Paw Toy
• Crocodile Cage of Death
• Union Man Fired For Trying to Organize Union's Own Workers
• Scott Pilgrim vs. The Matrix
• Electronic Home Library, Envisioned in 1959
• LEGO Millenium Falcon Cheeseburger
• Ladder Racing
• The Long Quest for Gender-Neutral English Language Pronouns
• Squeaky Car Engine Turned out to be a Cat
• Funny and Cheap T-Shirts
• "Hotness" of a Woman is Judged by the Male Brain in One-Fifth of a Second
• Westerners Are Actually The Weird ones
• At 101, Grandma Got A Tattoo
• English Rules That Even The Grammar Nazis Got Wrong
• Cyclop Turtle
• World's Most Awesome Pizza Oven
• Politician Raffles off Breast Implants to Raise Campaign Funds
• University Now Offering Course on StarCraft
• The 10 Greatest Fictional Inventors of All Time
• The Fine Art of Punk Rock Hairstyling

Animal Name Origins Posted: 30 Aug 2010 05:05 AM PDT GORILLA “First used in a Greek translation of 5th century BC Carthaginian explorer Hanno’s account of a voyage to West Africa. He reported encountering a tribe of wild hairy people, whose females were, according to a local interpreter, called gorillas. In 1847 the American missionary and scientist Thomas Savage adopted the word as the species name of the great ape and by the 1850s it had passed into general use.” (From Dictionary of Word Origins, by John Ayto) FERRET (Image credit: Flickr user Stacy Lynn Baum) “Ferret comes from the Latin furritus, for ‘little thief,’ which probably alludes to the fact that ferrets, which are related to pole cats, like to steal hens’ eggs. Its name also developed into a verb, to ferret out, meaning ‘to dig out or bring something to light.’” (From Cool Cats, Top Dogs, and Other Beastly Expressions, by Christine Ammer) SKUNK “Because the little striped animal could squirt his foul yellow spray up to 12 feet, American Indians called him segankw, or segonku, the Algonquin dialect word meaning simply ‘he who squirts’. Early pioneers corrupted the hard-to-pronounce Algonquin word to skunk, and that way it has remained ever since.” (From Animal Crackers, by Robert Hendrickson) HOUND “Before the Norman conquest of England, French hunters bred a keen-nosed dog that they called the St. Hubert. One of their rulers, William, took a pack to England and hunted deer-following the dogs on foot. Saxons had never before seen a dog fierce enough to seize its prey, so they named William’s animals hunts, meaning ’seizure’. Altered over time to hound, it was long applied to all hunting dogs. Then the meaning narrowed to stand for breeds that follow their quarry by scent.” (From Why You Say It, by Webb Garrison) LEOPARD (Image source: The Medieval Bestiary) “It was once wrongly believed that the leopard was a cross between a ‘leo’ (a lion) and a ‘pard’ (a white panther)-hence the name ‘leopard.’” (From Why Do We Say It?, by Nigel Rees) PYTHON “According to Greek legend, the god Apollo’s earliest adventure was the single-handed slaying of Python, a flame-breathing dragon who blocked his way to Pytho (now Delphi), the site he had chosen for an oracle. From the name of this monster derives the name of the large snake of Asia, Africa, and Australia, the python.” (From Thou Improper, Thou Uncommon Noun, by Willard R. Espy) CARDINAL “One would think that such an attractive creature would have given its name to many things, but in fact it is the other way around. The bird’s name comes from the red-robed official of the Roman Catholic Church, who in turn was named for being so important-that is, from the adjective cardinal, from the Latin cardo, meaning ‘hinge’ or ‘pivot’. Anything cardinal was so important that events depended (hinged or pivoted) on it.” (From It’s Raining Cats and Dogs, by Christine Ammer) MOOSE “Captain John Smith, one of the original leaders at Jamestown, wrote accounts of the colony and life in Virginia, in which he defined the creatures as Moos, a beast bigger than a stagge. Moos was from Natick (Indian) dialect and probably derived from moosu, ‘he trims, he shaves,’ a reference to the way the animal rips the bark and lower branches from trees while feeding.” (From The Chronology of Words and Phrases, by Linda and Roger Flavell) FLAMINGO (Image credit: Flickr user Luis Argerich ) “This long-legged pink wading bird is named for the people of Flanders, the Flemings, as they were called. Flemings were widely known for their lively personalities, their flushed complexions, and their love of bright clothing. Spaniard explorers in the New World thought it was a great joke naming the bird flamingo, which means ‘a Fleming’ in Spanish.” (From Facts on File Encyclopedia of Words and Phrase Origins, by Robert Hendrickson) _________________________________ The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Unstoppable Bathroom Reader. Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!

Pickle Lip Balm Posted: 29 Aug 2010 10:21 PM PDT Pickle Lip Balm - $2.95 Got chapped lips? Forget boring ol' chapsticks - reach for the Pickle Lip Balm from the NeatoShop. Yes, it's dill-flavored: Link If that's not for you, how about: Nacho Lip Balm Wasabi Lip Balm Bacon Lip Balm More Weird and Unusual Lip Balms | Fun Bath & Body Stuff | Gag Gifts

Space Battleship Yamato Tricycle Posted: 29 Aug 2010 10:20 PM PDT Oh, how I wish I had this growing up: Space Battleship Yamato (you may know it as Star Blazers)-themed tricycle for kids, complete with Wave Motion Gun and its own uniform and helmet. Fanboy has the video clip: Link [embedded YouTube clip]

Fake Cat's Paw Toy Posted: 29 Aug 2010 10:19 PM PDT If the Yamato tricycle isn’t what you’re looking for, don’t count Japan out. Try this one for size – a blast from the past from 2006: Watch out, JAPAN AT ITS BEST! I might have some difficulties explaining this one to you… Bandai is releasing the “Neko Nyanbou” in Japan sometime in April. So what is it? Well, these are fake cat paws with claws that can be controlled by a small switch hidden in the “handle”. Why on earth would you use these? To scratch your back, to scare a colleague or just as an extension of your arm… the drawings below will explain what I mean. So yes, they are crazy, but that’s exactly what we love about them! Link – via The Presurfer | Boing Boing explains

Crocodile Cage of Death Posted: 29 Aug 2010 10:16 PM PDT Old and busted: shark cage The new hotness: croc cage Here’s a new tourist attraction: the Cage of Death over at the Crocosaurus Cove park in Darwin, Australia: Fearless participants climb into the clear container – nicknamed the Cage of Death – which is suspended on a monorail track that runs above four crocodile enclosures. Two grated doors lock into position on the top of the 10ft tall box which is then lowered into the water and comes to rest 2ft beneath the surface. To ensure that the paying customers get their money’s worth, chunks of meat are tied to the bottom of the cage. The crocodiles instantly drawn to it when it enters the water. The results vary from the crocs ‘eye-balling’ the swimmer, rubbing against the cage or going into a full on ‘aggressive attack’ against it. Link

Union Man Fired For Trying to Organize Union's Own Workers Posted: 29 Aug 2010 10:15 PM PDT Jim Callaghan, a veteran writer for the United Federation of Teachers, just got canned for … trying to unionize the powerful organization’s own workers! Jim Callaghan, a veteran writer for the teachers union, told The Post he was booted from his $100,000-a-year job just two months after he informed UFT President Michael Mulgrew that he was trying to unionize some of his co-workers. "I was fired for trying to start a union at the UFT," said a dumbfounded Callaghan, who worked for the union’s newsletter and as a speechwriter for union leaders for the past 13 years. Callaghan said he personally told Mulgrew on June 9 about his intention to try to organize nonunionized workers at UFT headquarters. "I told him I want to have the same rights that teachers have," said Callaghan, 63, of Staten Island. "He told me he didn’t want that, that he wanted to be able to fire whoever he wanted to." Link

Scott Pilgrim vs. The Matrix Posted: 29 Aug 2010 07:43 PM PDT Once upon a time, while serving as battery fodder for machines who’ve imprisoned the human race to a cyber reality, Scott Neo Pilgrim met his dreamgirl, Ramona Trinity Flowers, at a Canadian collegian party for 30-year-old drug and prostitution ringers. Upon being freed from The Matrix, Pilgrim seeks out Miss Flowers, oblivious to the fact that Morphew Patel, the very man who took Pilgrim in, is an ex-boyfriend of hers. Enraged after seeing Pilgrim and Flowers getting flirtatious at the yearly Zion Stock, Patel challenges Pilgrim to a dojo duel for Flower’s hand. Following a narrow victory over Patel, Pilgrim has earned his trust and an explanation: Miss Flowers has Seven Evil Exes that Pilgrim must defeat to prove his heart muscle…but, hey, they can make out! Here’s Scott Pilgrim vs. The Matrix, a trailer mashup by AEmovieguy: hit play or go to Link [YouTube] – via NerdBastards

Electronic Home Library, Envisioned in 1959 Posted: 29 Aug 2010 07:42 PM PDT In 1959, futurist Arthur Radebaugh’s Sunday comic strip Closer Than We Think predicted the electronic home library of the future: Some unusual inventions for home entertainment and education will be yours in the future, such as the "television recorder" that RCA’s David Sarnoff described recently. With this device, when a worthwhile program comes over the air while you are away from home, or even while you’re watching it, you’ll be able to preserve both the picture and sound on tape for replaying at any time. Westinghouse’s Gwilym Price expects such tapes to reproduce shows in three dimensions and color on screens as shallow as a picture. Another pushbutton development will be projection of microfilm books on the ceiling or wall in large type. To increase their impact on students, an electronic voice may accompany the visual passages. How many did Radebaugh got right? Tivo, 3D TV, projection system (though he envisioned it for books, not for movies). Paleofuture has the larger pic: Link

LEGO Millenium Falcon Cheeseburger Posted: 29 Aug 2010 03:24 PM PDT Artist Angus MacLane made Corellian Cheeseburger — a Millennium Falcon-type vessel. Except that it’s a cheeseburger made out of LEGOs. You can view more images at the link, including a R2 unit that appears to be modeled after the McDonald’s mascot The Grimace. Link via Super Punch

Ladder Racing Posted: 29 Aug 2010 02:10 PM PDT (Video Link) I can’t find any reliable information about this video or the sport of ladder racing. Participants run with ladders toward a wall, climb up one segment, hook the ladders on a higher segment, and repeat the process. It certainly appears to be physically demanding. via reddit

The Long Quest for Gender-Neutral English Language Pronouns Posted: 29 Aug 2010 11:24 AM PDT One of the weaknesses of the English language is that it presents no way to refer to person without being gender-specific. The use s/he and his/her, while accomplishing this goal, gets cumbersome. Guardian columnist Lucy Mangan put it like this: The whole pronouns-must-agree-with-antecedents thing causes me utter agony. Do you know how many paragraphs I've had to tear down and rebuild because you can't say, "Somebody left their cheese in the fridge", so you say, "Somebody left his/her cheese in the fridge", but then you need to refer to his/her cheese several times thereafter and your writing ends up looking like an explosion in a pedants' factory? Awareness of this problem is not new, and English Prof. Dennis Baron of the University of Illinois has a lengthy post describing how English users have tried to resolve it over the past 150 years. He writes: In 1890, a report in the Rocky Mountain News recommends hi, hes, hem, as a paradigm that will be "readily taken up and assimilated spontaneously," though of course that didn't happen, and so, after more than thirty years of proposals for hi, ir, hizer, ons, e, and ith, no word took hold, in 1894 the paper called on the state legislature to create a gender-neutral pronoun to "correct a well known imperfection of our language." And shortly thereafter, a reader suggests a "bi-personal pronoun," either the coordinates he or she, his or her, him or her, or the compounds hesher, hiser, himer: "It was particularly appropriate that Colorado should do so, because the ladies are on a political equality with men." And in 1897 a Charleston, South Carolina, newspaper reports on a Massachusetts law that forbids certain kinds of feathers to be worn in hats, a law presumably aimed at women but which employs a masculine pronoun. This presents a problem for the Boston police commissioner, who insists that the masculine pronoun does not include the feminine: "I don't believe I could arrest a woman on that law," he said. "The masculine pronoun does not specifically include the women. The law including both usually says 'person' or 'persons,' but this one simply says 'his.'" Link via Marginal Revolution | Guardian Link | Photo of statute of Samuel Johnson by Flickr user ell brown used under Creative Commons license

Squeaky Car Engine Turned out to be a Cat Posted: 29 Aug 2010 11:07 AM PDT John Kellas went to a car mechanic complaining that his car’s engine was making a squeaking noise. The culprit turned out to be a trapped kitten: "I said no, no, it must be some engine part – as I could not see any cat. But when I went into town in the afternoon, I was convinced too that I heard something. But every time I stopped the car, I could not hear or see anything. "I decided to take the vehicle to Farmer Autocare in Perth, but the mechanics couldn’t find it either. They were thinking I was taking the mickey out of them, that I was referring to a catalytic converter or something "Just when they were about to give up, we all heard the kitten. At that point two of the mechanics stripped out the bottom of the car. That was when we saw a couple of little eyes peeking out from the dark corner, looking very terrified. Link – via Arbroath

Funny and Cheap T-Shirts Posted: 29 Aug 2010 11:06 AM PDT Need funny (and cheap) T-shirts for back to school? We've got plenty of them at the NeatoShop: I Want To Believe, the Alien Version Vandelay Industries Remember: Pillate, Then Burn College 4 Out of 5 Doctors Prefer Me The Gene Pool Could Use a Little Chlorine Link: Funny T-Shirt | Science T-Shirt | Artist-Designed T-Shirts

"Hotness" of a Woman is Judged by the Male Brain in One-Fifth of a Second Posted: 29 Aug 2010 11:05 AM PDT Why do men ogle? It’s not their fault. They can’t help it. Blame biology instead: You’re at a café with the woman in your life when your eyes move inexorably toward another woman walking by. In one-fifth of a second, before the conscious mind has had a chance to react, the male brain has rendered judgment on whether the oncoming stranger is sexually hot. If the ruling is favourable, physical manifestations are immediate. Pupils dilate, heart rate spikes, testosterone surges and the eyes assume a vacant stare — sure signs that the “man trance” has set in. For genetically preprogrammed men, the offence is as involuntary and natural as breathing, says brain researcher, neuropsychiatrist and author Louann Brizendine, whose book, The Male Brain, mounts a unique defence for such male indiscretions. We are more visual, more driven to sexual pursuit and more predisposed to cheat than women, she writes. Link – via Fark

Westerners Are Actually The Weird ones Posted: 29 Aug 2010 11:04 AM PDT In the Ultimatum game, you’re handed $100 and told to offer a portion to someone else. If the person accepts, then both of you get the money. If he declines, then none of you get it. Americans typically offer (almost) $50, and reject offers below $40 if the tables were turned. After all, fair is fair, right? But is this how the rest of the world think? Researchers from the University of British Columbia decided to test the Ultimatum Game to the rest of the world and found that the Western concept of fairness is actually not the norm, it’s the outlier. Western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic (WEIRD) people, he argued, are actually the weird ones: It seems most of humanity would play the game differently. Joseph Henrich of the University of British Columbia took the Ultimatum Game into the Peruvian Amazon as part of his work on understanding human co-operation in the mid-1990s and found that the Machiguenga considered the idea of offering half your money downright weird — and rejecting an insultingly low offer even weirder. "I was inclined to believe that rejection in the Ultimatum Game would be widespread. With the Machiguenga, they felt rejecting was absurd, which is really what economists think about rejection," Dr. Henrich says. "It’s completely irrational to turn down free money. Why would you do that?" Link – via Metafilter

At 101, Grandma Got A Tattoo Posted: 29 Aug 2010 11:02 AM PDT Well, she is 101 years old, so technically, grandma is old enough to get a tattoo: Mimi Rosenthal, 101, pushed her Winnie Walker off to the side and sat back in the black leather chair. At 4 feet, 10 inches, her feet didn’t quite rest on the floor. And for her third tattoo, she wanted to be comfortable. "Let’s find something for your feet," said tattoo artist Michelle Gallo-Kohlas, a longtime family friend entrusted with the honor of inking Rosenthal’s arm. Several teenage girls’ voices traveled down the hall Saturday afternoon from the waiting room of Requiem Body Art, an upscale piercing and tattoo shop. "Is she getting a tattoo?" "Are you serious?" "That is soooo cool!" Shary Lyssy Marshall of St. Petersburg Times has the story of this rebel grandma: Link (Photo: Will Vragovic) – via Look At This

English Rules That Even The Grammar Nazis Got Wrong Posted: 29 Aug 2010 11:01 AM PDT Don’t let the grammar Nazis get you down! If they’ve corrected you for misusing that for whom, starting a sentence with and, but and however, or gasp – the sin of "verbing" – fight back! Jan Freeman of Throw Grammar from the Train blog has a nifty post over at Boston about English language rules that even the grammar Nazis got wrong. For example: The girl that I marry. No, it doesn’t have to be whom I marry. “People that has always been good English,” notes Bryan Garner in Garner’s Modern American Usage, “and it’s a silly fetish to insist that who is the only relative pronoun that can refer to humans.” Choose who if you like, but to claim that using that “makes a person seem less human,” as Mignon Fogarty suggested in a Grammar Girl podcast — that’s just looking for trouble. Since you asked. It’s totally legit to use since for because, unless it would cause ambiguity. Since has had its causal sense, as well as its temporal sense, from the beginning. Link

Cyclop Turtle Posted: 29 Aug 2010 11:00 AM PDT Poor turtle – it’s probably not going to survive into adulthood, but while it’s alive, let’s give it a little bit of love. Here’s Cyclop Turtle – hit play or go to Link [YouTube] – via Geekosystem

World's Most Awesome Pizza Oven Posted: 29 Aug 2010 11:00 AM PDT Without a doubt, this has got to be the world’s most awesome pizza oven. Adam Lindsley of This Is Pizza blog took this photo of a pizzaria in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada: In pizzadom, wood-oven bakers refer to the cooker’s opening as the "oven mouth." This might be taking the term a little too far. But it also might be the coolest pizza oven ever. Link – via Nerdcore

Politician Raffles off Breast Implants to Raise Campaign Funds Posted: 29 Aug 2010 08:23 AM PDT Gustavo Rojas, a candidate for Venezuela’s National Assembly, is short of cash for his election campaign. So he plans to raffle off a set of breast implants to raise money: Cosmetic surgery, especially breast enlargement, is widespread in image-conscious Venezuela, whose beauty queens have won numerous international pageant titles. Even a recession has not diminished Venezuelans’ appetite for cosmetic surgery with many people taking out loans for the surgery. Mr Rojas, of the opposition First Justice party, told El Universal newspaper that he was not too worried about the medical details of his offer. “The raffle is a financing mechanism, nothing else,” he told the newspaper. “It’s the doctor who will do the operation, not me.” Link | Image: US FDA

University Now Offering Course on StarCraft Posted: 29 Aug 2010 07:58 AM PDT The University of Florida is now offering a three-credit course on the computer game StarCraft in its graduate school on business management. The doctoral student behind the idea says that the game teaches players how to wisely allocate scarce resources: “My problem solving skills in StarCraft are the same problem solving skills learned in school or the real world,” declares Nate Poling, Ph.D. candidate at the University of Florida and the instructor behind EME2040: 21st Century Skills in StarCraft.[...] “In StarCraft you’re managing a lot of different units and groups of different capacities,” says Poling. “It’s not a stretch to think of that in the business world or in the work of a healthcare administrator.” Poling points out that people who manage hospitals, factories, small businesses and, say, nuclear power plants all have to manage people who have different abilities, and that they might have learned a thing or two about this process from StarCraft, which demands the same kind of resource and unit management. Link via Kotaku | Photo by Flickr user STARFEEDER used under Creative Commons license

The 10 Greatest Fictional Inventors of All Time Posted: 29 Aug 2010 05:40 AM PDT Wouldn’t you love to know someone like the inventors in our movies and books -someone who can come up with gadgets, materials, and machines to solve your problems? Of course, in some stories inventors cause the problem themselves! Gizmodo takes a look at these geniuses from movies, TV, and literature and why we love them. My vote goes to Doc Brown from Back to the Future, who invented The flux capacitor, the core component of a machine that allowed Brown to travel through time. Brown came up with the idea of the capacitor on November 5, 1955, and worked tirelessly for the next 30 years developing it into a working time machine. The capacitor, which requires 1.21 Gigawatts of electrical power to function, was first implemented in a customized DeLorean and later, or maybe earlier?, in a 19th century train. Link

The Fine Art of Punk Rock Hairstyling Posted: 29 Aug 2010 05:16 AM PDT (Vimeo Link) Some of these early 1980’s punk rock hairstyles resemble works of art but they look a little too high maintenance for my lifestyle. Young Marble Giants provide the music for this vintage French video. Link

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