Neatorama

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• Driven to Eat
• WWZD: What Would a Zombie Do? Spinner Folder
• History's Most Famous Black Sheep
• Iconic Film Scenes and Their Original Inspirations
• Predator and Son Bonding Moment
• Pic Memes You Can Surf Endlessly: CAPTCHArt and Responsibility Scallop
• The Coolest Chess Boards in the World
• World's First Double Backflip in a Wheelchair
• Go Where? Sex, Gender, and Toilets
• Evolution in Action: Lizard Lays Egg and Births Babies
• Awkward Moment: Wife and Mistress of Trapped Chilean Miner Learn about Each Other
• Globen Skyview: The Ball Elevator
• The Best Sci-Fi Cartoons Ever Made?
• The Highest-Paid Athlete in Western History was a Roman Charioteer
• The United States of Star Wars
• Tsar Egg Cups
• Sir Spudnik, the Steampunk Mr. Potato Head
• This is Not a Nylon Stocking...
• Food Trucks: Restaurants On The Go
• Today is 9-02-10!
• How Charles Darwin Terraformed a Barren Rock
• Anti-Theft Device: Balls of Orange Paint
• Heat-Tracking Nerf Machine Gun

Driven to Eat Posted: 03 Sep 2010 04:30 AM PDT Back when families felt secure enough in their jobs to take two-week vacations, my wife and I would drive to the Sierras with our son every summer. We would leave early in the morning when it was cool, and head east out of Sacramento climbing hot, winding and steep grades. We would reach our favorite high altitude camp at Tuolumne Meadows in Yosemite National Park by late afternoon. What has always puzzled me is why I would ask for a snack (an apple or trail mix) as soon as the car door was shut and we had barely left our driveway. Why was I suddenly so hungry? I've never figured out the reason for that habit. I know that most people eat inside their cars, though there is a special class of folks who insist on maintaining a pristine car interior and disallow eating. I never had such a rule, even in my nicest cars. I wish it were the case that the acts of dispensing and consuming food inside a car was better supported and acknowledged by the auto interior design community.  On more than one occasion I have tried to design devices that address the need for eating while in a moving automobile. In Public Therapy Buses, Information Specialty Bums, Solar Cook-a-mats and Other Visions of the 21st Century (1991) I presented a system for passing food between front and back seats, called the Automobile Snack Conveyor. I noted: Households have so little time for bonding and closeness that even a moment passing food with an automobile snack conveyor seems special. The conveyor has forward and reverse directions and can also be used for passing notes or maps. It is my habit to work away at an idea for a long time, sometimes for decades. In 2006 I updated the food exchange belt, making it look less like an aftermarket accessory. I integrated the belt into a center console that included a snack drop bin, trash holder and forward-reverse toggle switch. Backseat passengers, especially children, would be assigned the duty to ask for candy bar wrappings or orange peels, which they would place inside the trash bin. Sometimes when I attempt to solve a design problem I discover that the solution has created new problems. In the nifty two-seater convertible below, a picnic table is automatically lowered in place, but both driver and passenger must stand outside the car while it is dropped into place, and later when it is returned to its place. This is a flawed design! Another idea that I came up with is the Inflatable Dining Tray that inflates to a convenient table height when placed on the lap. The Tray could be used by passengers but not by the driver. Earlier, in What the World Needs Now (1984) I offered The Commuter's Breakfast Kit. It addressed the driver's need to eat while on the road. Like most of my "inventions" this one was designed to elicit a laugh more than to garner acclaim for its ingenuity. Yet the joke will be missed by most readers who were born during or after the 1980s. They cannot imagine riding in a car that lacks shoulder harnesses. In this pre-air-bag, pre-shoulder harness car, the driver will lunge forward during a sudden stop, causing the Breakfast Kit to fold up. I'm told that microwaves are now available as an accessory in certain expensive car models. So my 2004 concept is already out-of-date. But I doubt that those cars offer a (literal) glove box like mine that dispenses Drivers' Dining Gloves! As a cartoonist who likes to think of himself as an inventor, I sometimes enjoy depicting an idea for the idea's sake even while I haven't any idea how the device works. For fun, we can assume that my Traffic Meal is a sensitive semi-robotic device, delicate, responsive and "aware" of the driver's mouth position because of a sophisticated mouth-distance sensor. It responds to voice commands like "Feed me!" or "No more." Where it stores the food and how it scoops up the food into the Dispenso-Bite are questions that I cannot answer. Car owners who get upset when cookie crumbs are scattered on their upholstery will never go for my Muffler Oven. Knowing they might need to wipe cooking grease off the steering wheel, dashboard or headliner, they would never buy a car that had this accessory. In this design, the center console connects the front and back passenger areas. It includes a small refrigerator with sliding clear plastic doors. The model on the right includes an easily viewed LCD screen that reports on conditions inside the temperature-controlled Muffler Oven. An oven thermometer and timer serve to control an exhaust fan that sucks food fumes away from the grill. It also raises and lowers the grill above the heat exchange unit that surrounds the hot muffler. In the rear section of the console unit, provision is made for cleanup. Trash bags are stored in a drawer and a mini-vacuum is available for use in getting rid of crumbs. A spray-style grease remover, stored in its own cabinet, is useful for getting rid of smears from buttered bagels or French fry wrapper grease. The spray bottle is also useful for cleaning an Auto Snack Belt. Designing a Muffler Oven, and designing a sensible means for venting it, are not simple tasks. Here, the muffler oven is located in the rear passenger area. A venting system allows cooking smoke and smells to escape from the oven through openings in the car roof. At times a cartoonist simply loses the thread and reaches for ideas that make no sense at all, but that make him or her chuckle anyway. Maybe the idea of cooking inside the car, or cooking under the engine hood, is so silly that it deserves to be lampooned. The above illustration of the CarBQ is one of five drawings I created for "Good Old-Fashioned American Know-How," published in the September 1975 issue of Harper's magazine. Captions were written by San Francisco Chronicle newspaper columnist Arthur Hoppe. The article's thesis was that Americans were preparing to celebrate the nation's 200th anniversary in 1976 and needed to consider ways of demonstrating their patriotism. Because Americans needed to drive their oversized American-made cars less in order to conserve the nation's precious fossil fuels, the most patriotic act would be to not drive their cars at all, but rather to convert them to useful purposes around the home! Eating or cooking inside a stationary or moving vehicle is a complicated matter that raises difficult design issues, especially of driver distraction and car cleanliness. Yet most folks eat while inside their car, some steering with one hand while holding a hot coffee cup or sandwich in the other. There must be a better way! I feel that to address these complex issues properly, I must go back to the drawing board. Visit Steven M. Johnson at his website.

WWZD: What Would a Zombie Do? Spinner Folder Posted: 02 Sep 2010 11:12 PM PDT "What Would a Zombie Do?" Spinner Folder – $4.95 Poor zombies – being the undead is hard work and rotting brains don’t exactly make quick decisions. But take heart, this What Would a Zombie Do? Spinner Folder (yes, with a disembodied zombie arm spinner) over at the NeatoShop surely will make their lives (deaths?) a lot easier! Link | More Fun Back to School Items | Fun and Unusual Office & Desk Items

History's Most Famous Black Sheep Posted: 02 Sep 2010 10:27 PM PDT Think that your sibling is embarrassing? That’s nothing compared to these brothers and sisters. I mean, take Al Capone’s brother Vince, for example. Could you imagine how mortified Scarface was when he learned what his brother was up to? I mean, he’s got a gangster image to keep up and all: In most families, Al would be the embarrassment. However, while he was out making a success of himself by criminal means, his brother “Vince” ran away from home to join the circus, fought in WWI, and eventually became a policeman. Not in Illinois obviously, that would be a conflict of interest. In Nebraska. Vince spent Prohibition shutting down the same type of illegal alcohol productions that were making his brother rich and powerful. He was known as “Two-Gun Hart” and became famous in the Midwest for his law enforcement prowess. Al Capone must have been mortified. Link

Iconic Film Scenes and Their Original Inspirations Posted: 02 Sep 2010 10:26 PM PDT Remember the scene in The Shining where Jack Nicholson chopped down the door with an axe and saying "Heeere’s Johnny"? Turns out it was inspired by a scene in the 1921 film The Phantom Carriage: Filmed in 1921, The Phantom Carriage ranks with Nosferatu and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari as one of the most important silent horror films in cinematic history. A primary influence for countless filmmakers, especially Ingmar Bergman who supposedly watched it once every year, The Phantom Carriage pioneered the use of certain special effects and narrative flashbacks. In one scene, a man named David Holm is visited by his dead friend Georges, cursed to drive the phantom carriage ushering the dead to the afterlife for an entire year. In order to spare his friend from the same fate, Georges forces David to confront the sins of his past, including one incident when he was infected with tuberculosis and locked in a small room by his wife so he wouldn’t infect their family. In a drunken rage, he took an axe to the door, smashing it to pieces. The film inspired Stanley Kubrick to recreate the scene for his film The Shining. TopTenz has 9 more famous scenes in the movies and their original inspirations: Link

Predator and Son Bonding Moment Posted: 02 Sep 2010 10:23 PM PDT It’s not easy being a dad. A human-hunting, flesh eating dad. Here’s what a Predator father and son bonding looks like: Link [embedded College humor clip]

Pic Memes You Can Surf Endlessly: CAPTCHArt and Responsibility Scallop Posted: 02 Sep 2010 10:22 PM PDT Where would the Net be without all those funny pic memes? Even if you’re tired of LOLcats, you’ll still enjoy this big list of image-driven memes lovingly compiled by Geekosystem. This one above is part of a long CAPTCHArt (previously on Neatorama) thread over at Something Awful’s legendary Photoshop Phriday: CAPTCHArt [Part 1, Part 2] CAPTCHArt, or works of art MSPaint inspired by those squiggly CAPTCHA codes some websites make you type in to post or comment, is making a comeback lately since 4chan implemented it recently, but we’ve got to give Something Awful credit for pioneering the form. This is also the origin of Internet hero Responsibility Scallop. Link

The Coolest Chess Boards in the World Posted: 02 Sep 2010 10:20 PM PDT Cool Material blog has a nifty round up of cool chess boards. I particularly like this one above, the 3D Chess Board by Ji Lee. Check out the entire gallery here: Link

World's First Double Backflip in a Wheelchair Posted: 02 Sep 2010 09:26 PM PDT (YouTube link) Aaron “Wheelz” Fotheringham {wiki} has spina bifida and began using a wheelchair when he was three yers old. He has been confined to a wheelchair since the age of eight. Fotheringham achieved the double backflip last weekend. -via the Daily What

Go Where? Sex, Gender, and Toilets Posted: 02 Sep 2010 09:22 PM PDT Restroom signs say much the same thing all over the world, but the way they say it says a lot about how view the differences between men and women. Why are women so often depicted as wearing skirts? And why do we have to use separate bathrooms anyway? Women's and men's washrooms: we encounter them nearly every time we venture into public space. To many people the separation of the two, and the signs used to distinguish them, may seem innocuous and necessary. Trans people know that this is not the case, and that public battles have been waged over who is allowed to use which washroom. The segregation of public washrooms is one of the most basic ways that the male-female binary is upheld and reinforced. As such, washroom signs are very telling of the way societies construct gender. They identify the male as the universal and the female as the variation. They express expectations of gender performance. And they conflate gender with sex. Link -via Metafilter

Evolution in Action: Lizard Lays Egg and Births Babies Posted: 02 Sep 2010 04:47 PM PDT Photo: Rebecca A. Pyles Scientists studying a species of Australian lizard called the yellow-bellied three-toed skink discovered that they’re seeing evolution in action: the lizard lays eggs on coasts but birth babies in mountains. Evolutionary records shows that nearly a hundred reptile lineages have independently made the transition from egg-laying to live birth in the past, and today about 20 percent of all living snakes and lizards give birth to live young only. But modern reptiles that have live young provide only a single snapshot on a long evolutionary time line, said study co-author James Stewart, a biologist at East Tennessee State University. The dual behavior of the yellow-bellied three-toed skink therefore offers scientists a rare opportunity. "By studying differences among populations that are in different stages of this process, you can begin to put together what looks like the transition from one [birth style] to the other." Link – Thanks Ethan!

Awkward Moment: Wife and Mistress of Trapped Chilean Miner Learn about Each Other Posted: 02 Sep 2010 04:21 PM PDT A group of miners in Chile have been trapped underground since August 5. Rescue workers are doing their best to dig them out. The story has attracted a lot of publicity and as a result, the wife and mistress of trapped miner Yonni Barrios met each other: Yonni Barrios’ wife, Marta Salinas, and Barrios’ lover, Susana Valenzuela, were both holding vigils for him outside the mine. Salinas was stunned when she heard Valenzuela shouting his name amid a crowd of miners’ loved ones. Salinas, 56, is said to be “horrified”. However, she is determined not to give up her man to her love rival. She told friends: “Barrios is my husband. He loves me and I am his devoted wife. This woman has no legitimacy.” Link via Stuff | Photo: AAP

Globen Skyview: The Ball Elevator Posted: 02 Sep 2010 04:20 PM PDT Juergen of Random Good Stuff posted a few neat photos of an elevator that looks like it was taken straight out of The Jetsons. Here’s the Globen Sky View in Stockholm, Sweden: The Sky view globe elevators run outside the Ericsson Globe which is currently the largest hemispherical building in the world and took two and a half years to build. Shaped like a large white ball, it has a diameter of 110 metres (361 feet) and an inner height of 85 metres (279 feet). The volume of the building is 605,000 cubic metres (21,188,800 cubic feet). It has seating capacity for 16,000 spectators for shows and concerts, and 13,850 for ice hockey. (wiki) Link – Thanks Juergen!

The Best Sci-Fi Cartoons Ever Made? Posted: 02 Sep 2010 03:33 PM PDT Love geeky toons? Then check out this list of 16 of the best sci-fi cartoons ever made over at our pal Geeks Are Sexy. 16. Exosquad Exosquad was an absolutely amazing cartoon, if you could look past the really, really dodgy moral basis for the series. In its favor, the characters were multidimensional, there were long term plots and continuity, everyone had kickass powered armor, no one was painted as pure good or evil, and it had space pirates! Fuck yeah, space pirates! And who can forget the alternately amazing and terrible 90s era futuristic fashion. A future so bright, everyone has fades. Then you realise the series’ bad guys were a horribly abused slave race, who rose up and overthrew their masters and abusers. Which really makes you question who you should be rooting for in this show. See if you agree with the no. 1 pick: Link

The Highest-Paid Athlete in Western History was a Roman Charioteer Posted: 02 Sep 2010 02:25 PM PDT If you think that modern athletes make a lot of money, they’ve got nothing on the ancients. Peter Struck, a classics professor at the University of Pennsylvania, states that a particular Roman chariot driver far exceeded the earnings of today’s top athletes: The very best paid of these—in fact, the best paid athlete of all time—was a Lusitanian Spaniard named Gaius Appuleius Diocles, who had short stints with the Whites and Greens, before settling in for a long career with the Reds. Twenty-four years of winnings brought Diocles—likely an illiterate man whose signature move was the strong final dash—the staggering sum of 35,863,120 sesterces in prize money. The figure is recorded in a monumental inscription erected in Rome by his fellow charioteers and admirers in 146, which hails him fulsomely on his retirement at the age of "42 years, 7 months, and 23 days" as "champion of all charioteers." His total take home amounted to five times the earnings of the highest paid provincial governors over a similar period—enough to provide grain for the entire city of Rome for one year, or to pay all the ordinary soldiers of the Roman Army at the height of its imperial reach for a fifth of a year. By today's standards that last figure, assuming the apt comparison is what it takes to pay the wages of the American armed forces for the same period, would cash out to about $15 billion. Even without his dalliances, it is doubtful Tiger could have matched it. Link via Super Punch | Photo by Flickr user BBM Explorer used under Creative Commons license Previously: Bizarro: Roman Chariot Bumper Sticker

The United States of Star Wars Posted: 02 Sep 2010 01:47 PM PDT Rebecca Crane matched the geography of US states with planets in Star Wars to create a composite map of the United States. Texas is Kessel, Oregon is Endor, and Maine is Naboo. Crane writes: Planets were assigned based on partial terrain, landmarks that correlate with the planet and state, types of people in the state and planet, famous landmarks, or slightly randomly selected (but loosely based on facts) from my brother and myself. Link via Geekologie

Tsar Egg Cups Posted: 02 Sep 2010 01:36 PM PDT Tsar Egg Cups – $25.95 You don’t need to be the Tsar of Russia to eat your eggs like one! Designer Andrea Kezdi created these gorgeous egg holders inspired by the Fabergé eggs. The Tsar Egg Cups over at the NeatoShop make for a wonderful gift at a surprisingly affordable price: Link | More Fun and Unusual Kitchen Stuff

Sir Spudnik, the Steampunk Mr. Potato Head Posted: 02 Sep 2010 12:00 PM PDT Artist Sarah Calvillo made a steampunk version of Mr. Potato Head. Calvillo works in a wide variety of media, so she also made a vintage-looking wanted poster, offering a reward for the capture of this ungentlemanly spud. At the link, you can view photos of it, as well process photos for the figurine. Link via GearFuse | Artist’s Website

This is Not a Nylon Stocking... Posted: 02 Sep 2010 11:44 AM PDT …on a lumpy leg.  It is, rather, a guilloche pattern, typically seen on banknotes but also incorporated into other works of art and design.  In the past such patterns might have been generated by a geometric lathe, but nowadays they can be created mathematically.   The one above is generated by: Found at The Ministry of Type, via Proof Math is Beautiful.

Food Trucks: Restaurants On The Go Posted: 02 Sep 2010 11:03 AM PDT (Image Credit: Bakerytruck LA) Not only is the food to go, but so are the kitchens.  And the kitchens in many of today’s food trucks are stainless steel beauties serving up five star gourmet meals.  So popular have these trucks become, they have masses of Twitter followers, food truck festivals, and blogs dedicated to them. New York Times writer, Josh Eells gives more insight into this new food truck craze: We're living in a food-truck moment. Thanks to a booming gastro-culture and an economy gone bust, America's streets are filled as never before with high-quality meals on wheels. Tacos and shwarma give way to artisanal ice cream and escargot; devoted chowhounds track their favorite trucks on Twitter and enterprising young chefs bypass storefronts for a good curb. Link Further fueling this movement, is a new series, ” The Great Food Truck Race” airing on the Food Network.  Voting for Season 2 of the show is being held through September 10th. Among the nominees are friends of Neatorama, Tina Trujillo and Donna Collier of Bakerytruck LA.  Tina and Donna are long-time friends and former FedEx couriers turned culinary chefs.  Bakerytruck LA is a full-service bakery on wheels, complete with mixers and ovens on board.  They serve a variety of fresh pastries and desserts, baked from scratch daily from their own recipes and iced and filled to order while you wait! Nominees from across the country can be viewed and voted for online and every vote enters you for a chance to win a trip to the Food Network New York City Food & Wine Festival.

Today is 9-02-10! Posted: 02 Sep 2010 08:30 AM PDT Let’s celebrate with a little 90210 quiz, shall we? While there’s some debate as to whether there were eight or nine original stars on BH 90210, there’s no question that some of the actors weren’t even close to the age of the characters they played. Suspension of disbelief is a glorious thing, and part of the reason the series did so well. See how well you know the real names of the original stars from the first season. We put three minutes on the clock… ready, set, go!

How Charles Darwin Terraformed a Barren Rock Posted: 02 Sep 2010 07:50 AM PDT Ascension Island, a British overseas territory in the south Atlantic, was originally a nearly-lifeless, uninhabited rock. It had no freshwater except for rainfall which quickly evaporated. But in an experiment, Charles Darwin and his friend Joseph Hooker introduced non-native plants that they hoped would encourage water retention. The result is that today Ascension Island has lush, vibrant forests: Egged on by Darwin, in 1847 Hooker advised the Royal Navy to set in motion an elaborate plan. With the help of Kew Gardens – where Hooker’s father was director – shipments of trees were to be sent to Ascension. The idea was breathtakingly simple. Trees would capture more rain, reduce evaporation and create rich, loamy soils. The “cinder” would become a garden. So, beginning in 1850 and continuing year after year, ships started to come. Each deposited a motley assortment of plants from botanical gardens in Europe, South Africa and Argentina. Soon, on the highest peak at 859m (2,817ft), great changes were afoot. By the late 1870s, eucalyptus, Norfolk Island pine, bamboo, and banana had all run riot. Link via Radley Balko | Photo of Ascension Island by Flickr user Drew Avery used under Creative Commons license

Anti-Theft Device: Balls of Orange Paint Posted: 02 Sep 2010 07:39 AM PDT (Video Link) If you go into some Japanese stores, the clerks have fist-sized orange balls behind the counter. No, the are not for sale. They’re balls of paint that clerks throw at robbers so that police can more easily identify them: The orange orbs you observed are called bohan yo kara boru (anticrime color balls). Basically, they’re paint balls — plastic spheres filled with brightly colored liquid pigment. But unlike the fun-and-games variety, these balls are kept on hand in case of a stickup. The idea is to lob one after a robber and mark him to improve the chance of an arrest. Link via Urlesque

Heat-Tracking Nerf Machine Gun Posted: 02 Sep 2010 06:18 AM PDT Make held a weird gadget contest, and Rick Prescott’s modified Nerf Vulcan EBF-25TM machine gun came in first place. It uses heat sensors to track the movement of warm-bodied intruders and fire at them: An idea sparked in my mind one day while walking the toy gun isle in a store with my kid and later that evening learning of the workings of a thermopile array while surfing the internet. The result is this infrared seeking sentinel which joins a realistically priced infrared sensor to a realistically operatable Nerf® machine gun to create a slightly less deadly yet still highly deterring automated machine. Personally I have grand plans to deploy the infrared seeking sentinel facing the entrance of my work cubical in order to speed interaction with less desirable visitors. Link via Great White Snark

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