Neatorama

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• Flower Power Fan
• LEGO AT-AT Ice Cream Truck
• "Paint It Black" Played One Note at a Time on Eight Pianos in Sequence
• 10 Cool Tiny Artworks
• Toad Babies Delivered From The Back
• Snails Can Survive Being Eaten
• Delightfully Strange Patents
• The Amazing Slide House
• Shoes Delivered by Super Pigeons (Sort of)
• Ultrasonic French Fries
• Meanwhile at Walmart ...
• Die-Hard Fan
• The Largest Gun Ever Built
• If Rupert Murdoch Had Never Been Born
• Visual Thesaurus
• Soccer Ball That Is Also A Portable Generator
• Sneaker Pen Case
• This Week at Neatorama

Flower Power Fan Posted: 16 Jul 2011 08:30 PM PDT Flower Power Fan - $12.95 Is your office cubicle getting a little stuffy?  You need to circulate some air with the cheerful Flower Power Fan from the NeatoShop.  This great little desktop fan can run on batteries or plugged into your USB port. The Flower Power Fan comes in blue or red. Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more Office & Desk fun! Link

LEGO AT-AT Ice Cream Truck Posted: 16 Jul 2011 06:43 PM PDT On a brisk day on Hoth, you might enjoy an ice cream treat — if the ice cream truck can make it to your Wampa cave. LEGO artist Louis K. has the right idea about what sort of transportation would be necessary. Link -via reddit

"Paint It Black" Played One Note at a Time on Eight Pianos in Sequence Posted: 16 Jul 2011 05:28 PM PDT (Video Link) This clever piece of video editing by Abandoned Rugs shows eight people playing “Paint it Black” by The Rolling Stones. Each player is on a different piano and is responsible for only one note. The shots flick back and forth between the different players as each note of the song is played. -via The Mary Sue

10 Cool Tiny Artworks Posted: 16 Jul 2011 05:02 PM PDT Over on Mental Floss, Miss C has a great round up of tiny artworks by extremely talented artists. My personal favorite is the tiny working gun seen here, created by Michel Lefaivre. I can’t help but wonder how much damage this little thing could actually do. Link

Toad Babies Delivered From The Back Posted: 16 Jul 2011 04:58 PM PDT (Video Link) The video isn’t nearly as raunchy as my title might have you believe, but it can be even more disturbing. I’ll be honest, this video gives me chills every time I watch it. Even so, it’s fascinating to watch the surinam toad give birth, being as how the male embeds the eggs on the female’s back. Via The Ever So Strange

Snails Can Survive Being Eaten Posted: 16 Jul 2011 04:52 PM PDT A new study has found that around 15% of all snails eaten by hungry birds survive the ordeal and live to be eaten another day. In fact, one of the snails in the study immediately gave birth right after she crawled out of the bird’s waste. Link Image via parl [Flickr]

Delightfully Strange Patents Posted: 16 Jul 2011 04:36 PM PDT I don’t know about you guys, but I’m a sucker for articles with funny patents and this Life article quickly drew me in with these delightful chicken spectacles. There are 40 more for those of you looking for a great laugh at terrible inventions. Link

The Amazing Slide House Posted: 16 Jul 2011 04:30 PM PDT When I was a youngster, I thought firefighters were the coolest people alive…not because they were heroes, but because they got to slide down a pole to go to work. These days, while I respect the heck out of firefighters (anyone who lives in Southern California knows just how important they are), I have to say the people who own this house filled with slides might just be the coolest people on earth. Link

Shoes Delivered by Super Pigeons (Sort of) Posted: 16 Jul 2011 03:29 PM PDT (YouTube link) Don’t get too excited, hippies. This video made the rounds today with explicit “this is real” remarks that initially had me a little bit giddy with the Rube Goldbergesque idea of first breeding super-pigeons, then training them, then convincing every customer to send photographs of themselves, cities and homes to Jojo, all to avoid shipping shoes via freight or traditional carrier. I wanted to believe it, I did. But a disclaimer at the end of the video implicitly denies the reality of super-pigeon shoe shipping: The remarks made in this video do not reflect the reality of pigeon fancying. No birds have been maltreated during the shooting of this film. None of this should distract from the JoJo Project’s goal of providing clean water and reforestation efforts, though, it’s too bad, really. I almost bought a pair of men’s shoes. Polkadot via This is Colossal via FlavorWire PS from Miss C: This marks published post #35,000 at Neatorama! That’s quite an archive. I would throw some confetti at Adrienne if I knew where she lived.

Ultrasonic French Fries Posted: 16 Jul 2011 02:23 PM PDT Love french fry? You ain’t tasted nothin’ yet! Research chefs have inveted a new way of cooking fries that supposedly made them taste so much better. The secret? A little ultrasonic wave: Maxime Bilet, Johnny Zhu and the other research chefs (including Young) at our culinary lab in Belle­vue, Wash., explored a variety of techniques for doing better still. The winning combination is simple in its ingredients but quite fancy in its execution. The potato batons are vacuum-sealed with 2 percent salt brine in bags to keep them intact during boiling. They are then bombarded with intense sound waves from the same device that dentists and jewelers use. A lengthy ultrasound treatment at 40 kilohertz causes the surface of each fry to crack and blister with myriad tiny bubbles and fissures. The cook next vacuum-dries the pretreated potato sticks to adjust the water content of the exterior and then briefly blanches them in oil at 340 degrees Fahrenheit to tighten their network of interlaced starch molecules. After cooling comes the final step: a quick plunge into hot oil at 375 degrees F. Water flashes to steam inside each minuscule bubble on the surface of the fries, expanding in volume by a factor of more than 1,000 and forcing the bubbles to puff up. In just a few minutes of deep frying, the french fries take on an almost furry appearance. Link

Meanwhile at Walmart ... Posted: 16 Jul 2011 11:13 AM PDT There are two sure things about Walmart: there are great shopping deals and strange people (I'm looking at you, People of Walmart) every single day. Heck, with some 3,750 stores across the United States visited by customers 140 million times a week, you're bound to see strange sights. Yet it seems like there's something special about Walmart shoppers ... Miguel Bustillo wrote his observation for The Wall Street Journal: Almost any imaginable aspect of American life can and does take place inside Wal-Mart stores, from births to marriages to deaths. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin once officiated a wedding at the Wal-Mart in her hometown of Wasilla. So, it seems, can any conceivable mishap. A Maryland man wound up in an emergency room with a toilet seat stuck to him after pranksters in March doused a Wal-Mart restroom with glue. Last year, an Ohio shoplifter who jumped in a garbage bin outside Wal-Mart later called 911; he was being compacted, and needed rescue. A shopper at a Wal-Mart in Falmouth, Mass., uncovered a dental mystery two years ago when she found 10 human teeth inside a wallet for sale that was imported from Asia. "I wanted to investigate it further but my supervisor said it wasn't worth the trip to Taiwan," says Falmouth police detective James Pires. Animal sightings are a subspecies of Wal-Mart weirdness. The most notorious was "Norman the Nutria," a rodent that took residence inside a Wal-Mart in Abbeville, La., and spooked a female customer so badly that she says she ran over her foot with a shopping cart in 2008, breaking two bones. She sued in Louisiana state court, alleging workers had been chasing the animal for days and had given it a nickname. "They should have been warning people," says Anthony Fontana, the attorney for alleged victim Rebecca White, who says she's racked up $58,000 in medical bills. "Those things get teeth as big as a beaver's." Link

Die-Hard Fan Posted: 16 Jul 2011 11:13 AM PDT There are fans, there are die hard fans, then there's Roy Miracle. His daughter Juli took this photo of Roy in his final proclamation of love for the Ohio State Buckeyes: "Now Dad is the permanent "I"" Father, the "I" was a HUGE fan. Long time fan who was always the "I-O", is forever the permanent "I". Roy Miracle was shown in an OSU turtle neck that he loved, and holding the position that he loved! The rest of the long time fans are from left to right, Ann Robinson, Juli Miracle, my Dad (Roy Miracle), and Rick Ives. Link - via Huffpo (Photo: Juli Miracle)

The Largest Gun Ever Built Posted: 16 Jul 2011 10:55 AM PDT In 1939, Adolf Hitler commissioned the Friedrich Krupp A.G. company of Essen, Germany to build a gun that would breach the French Maginot line. They responded with the “Gustav Gun,” the largest gun ever built. Named after the head of the Krupp family, Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, the Gustav Gun weighed in at a massive 1344 tons, so heavy that even though it was attached to a rail car, it still had to be disassembled before moving so as to not destroy the twin set of tracks as it passed over. This 4-story behemoth stood 20 feet wide and 140 feet long. Its 500 man crew, commanded by a Major-General (that’s two stars), needed nearly three full days (54 hours, to be exact) to set it up and prep for firing. But when it did fire, whoowhee, hold on to your hat. The description of this gun’s destructiveness is at Gizmodo. Link -via the Presurfer (Image credit: American Rifleman, February 1998)

If Rupert Murdoch Had Never Been Born Posted: 16 Jul 2011 10:05 AM PDT (YouTube link) In light of the recent fortunes of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, {wiki} here’s a 1995 parody of the movie It’s a Wonderful Life that inserts Murdoch as the principle character. The sketch is from the BBC TV series A Bit of Fry & Laurie, starring Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, but still contains language consider NSFW in the US. -via Dangerous Minds

Visual Thesaurus Posted: 16 Jul 2011 10:02 AM PDT Here’s an online thesaurus that gives you a graphic look at how words relate. Neat! Or otherwise tasteful, refined, clean, tidy, smashing, great groovy, nifty, or keen! Link -via Breakfast Links

Soccer Ball That Is Also A Portable Generator Posted: 16 Jul 2011 09:23 AM PDT (YouTube link) Many children around the world don’t have electricity but they do play soccer. The soccket is a soccer ball that captures energy with every kick. Fifteen minutes of play produces three hours of light. The sOccket harnesses the kinetic (motion) energy of the soccer ball during normal game play and stores it for later power needs. After play, an LED lamp can be plugged into the sOccket to provide light for reading and other activities normally impossible after dark. It’s a clean, portable generator that can provide light to families in need around the world. Four Harvard students created this project for the American Express-sponsored Take Part program. Link – Via John Gushue … Dot Dot Dot

Sneaker Pen Case Posted: 16 Jul 2011 06:50 AM PDT Sneaker Pen Case – $5.95 Does your favorite pen keep walking off?  You need the Sneaker Pen Case from the NeatoShop.  This canvas pen case shaped like a shoe will keep all your pens tidy and safe.  Don’t run back to school without one. The Sneaker Pen Case is available in black, pink, and red. Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Back to School items. Link

This Week at Neatorama Posted: 16 Jul 2011 06:00 AM PDT It should be apparent to regular readers that we have some Harry Potter fans here at Neatorama. The many posts and tributes are not just because we are obsessed, but the internet that we surf for neat things is wallowing in Pottermania as the eighth and final film of the series hits theaters this weekend. If you enjoy Harry Potter, get your fill while it lasts. For you Muggles who don’t, hang on -it will all blow over in just a few days. Meanwhile, we have plenty of things for you to read that have nothing to do with wizards and spells. Jill Harness looked up 10 of the Most Famous Teachers Ever, some of whom will surprise you! Eddie Deezen brought us another tidbit from music history in Elvis, from the Waist Up. From Uncle John’s Bathroom reader, we learned the story of The Real Spartacus. War and Social Upheaval Cause Spikes in Zombie Movie Production was a report from the Annals of Improbable Research. Mental_floss magazine gave us some draft facts in The Past, Present, and Future of Being Called to Duty. At NeatoBambino, you still have time to enter the Decipher The Doodle Contest. Give your best shot at figuring out what two children have painted together, and you cold win a t-shirt from the NeatoShop! The mystery object in the What Is It? game this week is an anti-theft pocket watch attachment! When pulled by the chain the spikes would catch in the fabric of the pocket. You can see an explanatory graphic from the patent application at the What Is It? blog. The first commenter to give us the correct answer was kremer333, so he wins a t-shirt! The funniest answer was from The Professor, who wins a t-shirt from the NeatoShop with this poem: On Neato a picture that shows A thingy that nobody knows But this handy device While it looks not so nice Is great for just cleaning your nose! When you’ve caught up, you’ll always find more great reading material by browsing through The Best of Neatorama. Use the slider to pull up articles from different years, all the way back to 2006!

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