Neatorama

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• Extremely Narrow Buildings in Japan
• Man Found his Double on Facebook
• Extreme Close-Ups of the Human Eye
• Tim Liddy's Board Game Paintings
• Scientists Created Singing Mouse. No, Seriously.
• Dalek Projection Alarm Clock
• The Secret Companies of Zug
• False Hope Syndrome: Why New Year Resolutions Fail
• Why Our Body Temperature is 98.6 °F: The Perfect Balance Between Fighting Fungal Infections and Eating All The Time
• The V-Steam Bath: "Facial" For Her Private Area
• This Week at Neatorama

Extremely Narrow Buildings in Japan Posted: 01 Jan 2011 05:27 PM PST Real estate development in densely-populated Japan can be expensive, so some architects have made good use of very narrow lots. Pictured above is one such project in Nagasaki. You can view several other very narrow buildings at the link. Link via Super Punch | Photo by Flickr user Sergio in Nagasaki used under Creative Commons license

Man Found his Double on Facebook Posted: 01 Jan 2011 04:25 PM PST Graham Comrie of Aberdeen thought someone was impersonating him when he heard of a Facebook account of a Graham Cormie of Ellon, Aberdeenshire. Friends even thought Cormie was using Comrie’s photos, since they looked so much alike! But it was no imitation -just a eerie set of coincidences. The Grahams soon realised they were both professional photographers. And as the two men chatted online, they found out they both had red-headed wives and were both set to celebrate their silver wedding anniversaries next year. Other striking similarities included that they both had two daughters and both owned Lhasa Apso dogs. When they saw each other’s pictures, they realised they were the absolute spitting image of each other, too. The Grahams are only two years apart in age -and live only ten miles from each other. They checked and found that they are not related, just new friends. Link -via J-Walk Blog

Extreme Close-Ups of the Human Eye Posted: 01 Jan 2011 03:13 PM PST Suren Manvelyan is a photographer and physics teacher. He’s created a series of detailed images of the human eye called “Your Beautiful Eyes”: The 34-year-old from Yerevan, Armenia, explains: ‘It is quite natural when you shoot macro shots of insects and plants, but to try to make a picture of the eye? I did not expect these results. ‘I was not aware they are of such complicated appearance. Everyday we see hundreds of eyes but do not even suspect they have such beautiful structure, like surfaces of unknown planets.’ Link via Nerdcore | Photo by Suren Manvelyan used under Creative Commons license

Tim Liddy's Board Game Paintings Posted: 01 Jan 2011 03:05 PM PST That’s not a photograph of an old Battleship set, but a painting. St. Louis-based artist Tim Liddy makes strikingly realistic depictions of old board games on life-sized sheets of copper. Jeffrey Hughes writes: Based on the illustrated box lids of board games, Liddy has developed a subject that like Wittgenstein’s assertion that language games point to the rule governed character of language, these games are reminders of the rules of life. Link via Dude Craft

Scientists Created Singing Mouse. No, Seriously. Posted: 01 Jan 2011 10:03 AM PST Having cured cancer and other serious ailments, a team of Japanese scientists from the University of Osaka turned to the next most vexing scientific problem facing the world today, the lack of singing mice, and licked that problem too. No seriously. Singing mouse. A team of researchers at the University of Osaka created the animal in their "Evolved Mouse Project", in which they use genetically modified mice that are prone to miscopying DNA and thus to mutations. "Mutations are the driving force of evolution. We have cross-bred the genetically modified mice for generations to see what would happen," lead researcher Arikuni Uchimura told AFP. "We checked the newly born mice one by one… One day we found a mouse that was singing like a bird," he said, noting that the "singing mouse" was born by chance but that the trait will be passed on to future generations. "I was surprised because I had been expecting mice that are different in physical shape," he said by telephone, adding that in fact the project had also produced "a mouse with short limbs and a tail like a dachshund". Disney, understandably, should be worried: Uchimura dreams of further "evolution" of mice through genetic engineering. "I know it’s a long shot and people would say it’s ‘too absurd’… but I’m doing this with hopes of making a Mickey Mouse some day," he said. Link Now, if you were to breed a Frankenmouse, would you really make a singing mouse? I mean, what’s the military application of that?

Dalek Projection Alarm Clock Posted: 01 Jan 2011 10:00 AM PST Can’t get up in the morning? Would the threat of extermination by a Dalek motivate you? Here’s a nifty Dalek Projection Alarm Clock from the NeatoShop, shaped like the Supreme White Dalek that projects digital time and yells out "Exterminate!" to wake you up. No more getting up late for work or school! Now, using a Dalek for time management? That’s an irony that only a Doctor Who fan can appreciate! Link

The Secret Companies of Zug Posted: 01 Jan 2011 09:59 AM PST Forget New York, London, and Washington, D.C. The greatest concentration of economic power in the world is in teeny tiny little Swiss town of Zug (pop. 115,000). Well, at least on paper anyhow: Zug canton — there are 26 cantons in Switzerland — is the small nation’s smallest state, with just 115,000 people. Yet its commercial registry lists more than 29,000 companies — nearly one for every person in town — and more than 1,000 more companies arrive each year. Why Zug? The good ol’ Swiss secretive banking and ultra-efficient post office system: [The companies'] "headquarters" exist entirely within the stolid post office building, whose hall holds thousands of P.O. boxes retained by foreign companies. "Many company names are not even on any door. They just have a post office box in Zug," says Rolf Schatzmann of PricewaterhouseCoopers in Zurich. Vivienne Walt of TIME Magazine has the secret companies of Zug: Link

False Hope Syndrome: Why New Year Resolutions Fail Posted: 01 Jan 2011 09:57 AM PST Did you make a New Year’s resolution this year? Many people did, but – here’s the bad news – despite their best effort, most will utterly fail. Why are New Year’s resolutions so hard to keep? You can blame the False Hope Syndrome, the unrealistic expectation of self-change: As many as 90 percent of attempts at change fail, yet New Year’s resolvers are undeterred. In a 2002 report in the journal American Psychologist, University of Toronto researcher Janet Polivy and a colleague came up with a name for this "cycle of failure and renewed effort": the False Hope syndrome. The False Hope syndrome may be particularly common among those who resolve to lose weight, Polivy said. And the chief cause is a combination of unrealistic goals and a misunderstanding of our own behavior. For example, take the perenial New Year’s resolution for millions, dieting. Instead of resolving to lose weight this year, perhaps the trick is to keep a food journal instead: For example, dieters may chastise themselves for eating a few Oreos and feel sad about it. But this only increases their likelihood of emotional overeating. Jotting down a few notes about the sweet snack, however, allows you to be more realistic. By writing, "A couple of cookies isn’t so bad," you can prevent feelings of failure and the desire to give up, Mosunic said. Caitlin Mason, an exercise and health researcher at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, said a food journal also reinforces what you’re doing right. "It can help you see the positive changes you’ve made," Mason said, "and help you identify what triggers might be holding you back from your goals." Link

Why Our Body Temperature is 98.6 °F: The Perfect Balance Between Fighting Fungal Infections and Eating All The Time Posted: 01 Jan 2011 09:55 AM PST Ever wonder why our body temperature is 98.6 °F (37 °C)? Scientists at Yeshiva University discovered the answer. Turns out that our normal body temperature is the perfect balance of being warm enough to ward off fungal infection but not so hot that we need to eat all the time to maintain metabolism: "One of the mysteries about humans and other advanced mammals has been why they are so hot compared with other animals," said study co-author Arturo Casadevall, [...] "This study helps to explain why mammalian temperatures are all around 37° C." The research builds upon earlier work by Dr. Casadevall showing that the number of fungal species that can thrive and therefore infect an animal declines by 6 percent for every 1° C rise in temperature. This means that tens of thousands of fungal species infect reptiles, amphibians and other cold-blooded animals, but only a few hundred harm mammals. Such protection against fungal infection, Dr. Casadevall has speculated, could have been crucial for the triumph of mammals following the age of dinosaurs. Link (Photo: Shutterstock)

The V-Steam Bath: "Facial" For Her Private Area Posted: 01 Jan 2011 09:41 AM PST Let’s start 2011 with a steaming hot and very weird post. You know, a lot of people know about or even like taking steam baths, but have you heard of vaginal steam baths? Just think of it as a "facial" for her private area (that’s how someone in the article described it – not me): Pungent steam rises from a boiling pot of a mugwort tea blended with wormwood and a variety of other herbs. Above it sits a nude woman on an open-seated stool, partaking in a centuries-old Korean remedy that is gaining a toehold in the West. Vaginal steam baths, called chai-yok, are said to reduce stress, fight infections, clear hemorrhoids, regulate menstrual cycles and aid infertility, among many other health benefits. In Korea, many women steam regularly after their monthly periods. Didn’t I tell you it was weird? Sari Heifetz of the Los Angeles Times has the story: Link

This Week at Neatorama Posted: 01 Jan 2011 05:52 AM PST Happy New Year! Let me make a prediction: 2011 is going to be the best year ever! I’m no skilled prognosticator, I just think optimism is a great way to start anything new. But first, let’s look back at what you might have missed during this past week at Neatorama. Jill took a look at the year gone by with 12 Tips From The Stupidest Criminals of 2010. Jill also introduced us to 7 Celebrities Who Made It Big Thanks To Soul Train, with video evidence. Alex brought us a rare weekend feature the day after Christmas, so you might have missed 4 Unusual Treadmills. Don’t miss this chance to read it! Have you seen The Room? Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader asks if it may be The Worst Movie of All Time? From the Annals of Improbable Research, we got Mona Lisa: All Things to Some Researchers. Mental_floss magazine filled us in on The Secret Life of the Banjo. And just to see if you’re reading this at all, here’s a bonus link. In the Name That Weird Invention! contest, winning names came from Madam Atom, who named the boots Ankle Biters, and Carolyn Bahm, who called them Moc Martens. Both win t-shirts from the NeatoShop! The What Is It? game came up on Thursday. Just a guess had the right answer pretty quickly: this object is a fire starter. Soak it in kerosene, then place the business end under the logs and light. The funniest answer came from pismonque, who said, "It's a 2-in-1 Ant Annihilator Toy. The ring at one end originally held a magnifier for frying individual ants, while the other end was used to steamroll dozens at a time. Kids loved 'em!" Both win t-shirts from the NeatoShop! And if you didn’t work it on Tuesday, you can still try Neato-Puzzle #12. Still looking for something to amuse you on a holiday weekend? Check out original fiction at BitLit, cute kids at NeatoBambino, and awesome artists at the Art Blog. And join us at Twitter and Facebook!

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