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2012/01/13

Neatorama

Neatorama

10 Coins That Aren’t Boring

Posted: 13 Jan 2012 05:04 AM PST

Nerdy reputation or not, coin collecting (otherwise known as numismatics) has been a hobby since the days of ancient Rome. If you're not a member of the enthusiast crowd, though, knowing a thing or two about the following faves just might be enough to help you rub elbows with true aficionados.

1. The Stupidest Coin the Government Ever Made: The Racketeer Nickel

(Image credit: Hephaestos at the English language Wikipedia)

In 1883, the United States issued a newly designed five-cent piece called the "V nickel." The coin got its name because the value was indicated on the back simply with the Roman numeral 'V,' sans the word "cents." After all, it was obvious it was a nickel, right? Apparently not. Turns out, the V nickel was the same size as a U.S. $5 gold piece, and both coins featured a bust of Lady Liberty on the front.

It wasn't long before light bulbs started going off over the heads of con men all across America. Within weeks of the V's debut, crooks were gold-plating the nickels and palming them off as $5 gold pieces. Meanwhile, government officials scoffed at the notion that anyone would fall for such an obvious hoax. Unfortunately, they were wrong again. Despite the gold-plated nickels not looking like $5 coins and not being nearly as heavy, most people didn't notice, because the gold coins were rarely used in everyday purchases.

By April 1883, "gilded nickels" were both a national joke and a growing concern for commerce and law enforcement. The U.S. Secret Service made arrests in 10 states related to the scam. In one raid, they seized a "half bushel" of coins waiting to be plated. But all good things come to an end, and con artists had a hard time getting enough new nickels to keep the racket going. Finally, embarrassed officials put an end to the scam by halting production of the nickels until new dies were prepared. This time, the redesigned backs read "V cents." Today, the V nickel remains a favorite among coin collectors.

2. The Coin You Carry in Bundles: The Kissi Penny

 

Money hasn't always been strictly confined to coins and bills. In Biblical times, for example, people used sheep and cattle as currency. Of course, because deceased livestock don't paste that well into scrapbooks, numismatists have to draw the line somewhere. And that's where the phrase "odd and curious money" comes in. It's a numismatist category used to classify various pre-cash societies in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific.

One widely collected type of odd and curious money is an iron currency from West Africa known as the Kissi penny or Kilindi. Named for the Kissi people living in and around Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia, the pennies are actually rods of twisted iron roughly 1 foot long. Each has a double-pointed tip at one end and a leaf-like piece at the other—distinctive marks that kept "clippers" from being able to whittle away the metal and pawn off the cut coin as whole. The exact value of the Kissi penny is not known, but it wasn't much. Large purchases were made by binding Kissi pennies into bundles of 20 to 100. Historians do know, however, that Kissi pennies weren't taken lightly. They were said to possess a soul, and if one was broken, it was repaired by a blacksmith under the guidance of a local priest.

3. The Coin Your Mom Doesn't Want You to Pick Up: Leper Colony Coins

(Image credit:Flickr user Jerry “Woody”)

Leprosy, or Hansen's disease, was once among the most feared diseases in the world.  Mistakenly believed to be highly contagious, it was a disfiguring and paralyzing condition that, until the 1900s, had no known cure. Sufferers were forced from their homes and exiled into colonies, where they wouldn't be able to spread the disease to the larger population.

Among attempts to quarantine lepers? Giving them their own currency. Many people feared leprosy could be transmitted by handling money, so special coins were minted (and, in some cases, paper bills printed) for leper colonies in areas including Venezuela, Brazil, Colombia, the U.S. Canal Zone, and the Philippines. Some city officials found another convenient use for leper money—paying inmates for their work and allowing them to buy personal items with it. This, so the logic went, prevented prisoners from ever being able to save up "real" money to aid in an escape.

4. The Coin from 1780 That's Definitely Not from 1780: The Maria Theresa Thaler

The English word "dollar" comes from "thaler," any of several large silver coins issued in the German-speaking countries of central Europe between the 15th and 18th centuries. But by far the most famous is the Maria Theresa thaler, which features a portrait of Archduchess Maria Theresa of Austria (1717–1780) on the front. And though the archduchess' thalers were Austrian coins, they wound up being circulated across North Africa and the Middle East for almost two centuries. Because Austrian traders used them to buy coffee in the Middle East, thalers quickly became popular among Eastern merchants, who came to trust the weight and purity of the coins' silver content.

The catch? Merchants put their trust solely in the 1780 Maria Theresa thaler. When presented with newer (and perfectly legitimate) thalers imprinted with more current dates or featuring different monarchs, Eastern traders assumed the coins were counterfeits. Eventually, it became such a problem that the Austrian government agreed to mint new Maria Theresa thalers, dated 1780, for foreign trade. In fact, for decades after that prized date, demand for the coins was so strong that mints in Italy, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands churned out their own versions of the 1780 Maria Theresa thaler.

Reportedly, the 1780 thalers were still circulating in parts of Yemen, Muscat, and Oman until the early 1980s. And today, Austria still mints Maria Theresa thalers, though they're commemorative coins not used for regular trade. Estimates vary, but it's believed between 400 million and 800 million of them may have been minted during the last 225 years.

5. The Coin You Can Never Take on an Airplane: Spanish Pieces of Eight

In the New World, colonists had to get creative when it came to currency. Because the British were too cheap to mint coins for their American settlements, colonists had to make do with barter, paper money, or whatever foreign coins they could scrape up through trade. Fortunately, Spain's New World colonies were rich in silver mines, and the Spanish had plenty of coins to toss around.

At the time, Spain minted coins about the same size as the Germanic silver thaler coins of Europe, and Americans took to calling them "Spanish dollars." But officially, Spanish dollars were valued at eight reals (real being Spanish for "royal"). So how do you make change for a Spanish dollar? For our colonial forefathers, it was easy. Knowing that silver is a fairly soft metal, they'd just take a mallet and a chisel, or even an axe, and slice up the coin like a pizza. The cut slices were called "bits," or pieces of eight. A 2-real piece was worth about 25 U.S. cents, which is why a quarter is sometimes referred to as "two bits." Another term for cut coin slices was "sharp silver," because the points were indeed sharp enough to cut cloth or even skin.

The circulation of pieces of eight and Spanish dollars in America began to decline after the first U.S. Mint opened in Philadelphia in 1792. However, it took a long time for the establishment to catch up with America's demand for coins, and foreign currency was legal tender in the United States until 1857.

6. The Dreamiest Coin of All Time: The King Edward Coin

When Britain's King Edward VIII gave up his crown, he also gave up the glory of seeing his face on English currency. Edward succeeded his father, King George V, in 1936, but problems quickly arose after he announced his intentions to wed a twice-divorced American named Wallis Simpson. Rather than dump his scandalous fiancé, Edward played to the fairy-tale dreams of every girl in the world and gave up the crown instead.

Edward VIII's reign lasted less than one year, which wasn't long enough for Britain to switch to new coins, so all the British coins minted during his reign still bore the profile of his late father. Certain colonial coins, such as this 1936 10-cent piece from British East Africa, carried King Edward's name, but not his image. Rare relics of Edward's short (and romantic) reign, these coins are a numismatist favorite.

As for the hole in the middle, that's a fairly common design trait of yore. One explanation is that it allowed people to carry their coins on a string or wear them on a necklace, so they'd be easier to keep track of.

7. The Not-Quite Counterfeit Coin: The 1804 Silver Dollar

America's most famous rare coin is the 1804 silver dollar. Why so special? Because it was actually made by mistake. Due to governmental budget constraints, the production of silver dollars was halted in the early 19th century. And while a few thousand $1 coins were minted in 1804, they were produced frugally, using the previous year's dies. Ironically, the first $1 coins dated 1804 weren't made until 1834, when the United States decided to present the King of Siam and the Sultan of Muscat with a diplomatic gift: complete sets of American coins. Records at the U.S. Mint correctly listed 1804 as the last year silver dollars were made, but didn't specify that the last ones were dated 1803. Consequently, American officials decided to strike a few new dollars with the date 1804, and ended up creating a coin that had never before existed.

Today, there are only 15 of these 1804 silver dollars left. Eight of them were from the batch minted as diplomatic gifts. The other seven were produced between 1858 and 1860, when an employee of the Philadelphia Mint decided to get rich quick on the coin collector's market. Using the mint's silver and equipment, he struck a number of new 1804 silver dollars to sell to collectors. The phony coins (although illegally produced, they're technically not counterfeits because they were made at a U.S. Mint) were eventually found and melted down—all but seven of them, that is. One of these re-strikes was auctioned in 2003 for $1.21 million, but that's chump change compared to the $4.14 million paid for one of the original coins back in 1999.

8. The "Choose Your Own Coin" Coin: Blank Coins

The quality-control regulators at our mints do a great job of catching mistakes, but luckily for collectors, some botched coins do make their way into circulation. Among the more common errors are blank coins, such as this one-cent piece. Coins are made by pressing a die onto a planchet, or coin blank, that's been punched out of a piece of sheet metal. Sometimes, a planchet slips through the process without being struck, and a blank coin, such as the one above, ends up in an otherwise ordinary roll of pennies. Other common errors include coins struck off-center, coins struck on the wrong planchet (i.e., the image of a quarter stamped onto a penny), and double-struck coins.

9. The Coin You Could Stub a Toe On: England's Giant Pennies

(Image credit: Wikipedia user Wehwalt)

The original English penny was a silver piece descended from a dime-size Roman silver coin, but that sleek and elegant design began to change in the late 1700s. During that century, Britain struggled with the cost of minting coins and often didn't bother to mint them in small denominations. Labor costs were high, and those who had money dealt in larger denominations, anyway. Then, in the late 18th century, inventors Matthew Boulton and James Watt (who are often credited with creating the first practical steam engine) invented coin-making machinery that greatly cut production costs.

During the Middle Ages, English monarchs, always in need of money, realized they could make a profit by cranking out pennies with less than a penny's worth of silver. More and more copper was added to the mix, and by the turn of the 19th century, pennies were entirely copper (or bronze). Of course, because these metals were cheaper, the coins got bigger—much bigger.

For the next century and a half, English pennies stayed big—about the size of a modern U.S. half dollar. They also stayed heavy. In fact, demonstrators in the 1960s sometimes used British pennies to throw at police officers. And in 1966, a woman was arrested in Nevada for plunking British pennies into slot machines meant to take U.S. half-dollar coins.

Inflation eventually drove the price of copper so high that making coins out of the metal no longer made sense. By 1969, a ton of English pennies, worth about $1,080 U.S., could be melted down and sold for more than $1,600 worth of scrap copper. The official end to the giant penny craze came in 1971, when Great Britain decided to decimalize its currency.

Incidentally, the United States once followed in the mother country's footsteps by minting huge pennies. From 1793 to 1857, America made one-cent pieces that were almost the size of today's half dollars.

10. The Coin That Taught the Government to Recycle: Steel Pennies

While meat, sugar, and gasoline were in short supply during World War II, Uncle Sam was also having trouble getting his hands on enough copper. Turns out, the country's entire supply was being used to mint coins. In fact, it's estimated some 4,600 tons of copper went toward making pennies in 1942—enough to make 120 field cannons or 1.25 million artillery shells. So, in 1943, copper pennies were replaced with pennies made of zinc-coated steel.

Steel pennies were unpopular from the start. Vending machines read them as fakes; streetcar conductors mistook them for dimes; and, after the coins had circulated for a short time, the zinc began to wear off and the steel core began to rust.

By the end of 1943, steel pennies were on their way out. But, how would the government scrounge up enough copper for decent self-respecting pennies? Recycling, of course. Army and Navy personnel were ordered to pick up rifle and artillery-shell casings from firing ranges and even battlefields. The empty brass shells were then sent to the Mint, where they were melted down, mixed with a little more copper, and made into pennies.

The campaign worked. All U.S. pennies minted in 1944 and 1945 were made from World War II shell casings. Yet, the new coins presented their own problems. Sometimes, the brass shell cases and fresh copper weren't mixed completely, giving some of the coins noticeable brass streaks. Also, the explosive residue in the shell casings often stained or discolored the pennies.

_______________________

The article above, written by David A. Norris, is reprinted with permission from the September-October 2006 issue of mental_floss magazine. Get a subscription to mental_floss and never miss an issue!

Be sure to visit mental_floss‘ website and blog for more fun stuff!

 

Improv on a Trash Bin

Posted: 13 Jan 2012 03:42 AM PST


(vimeo link)

Sound Artist Diego Stocco is at the CES convention in Las Vegas. Sudden inspiration came from the resonant sound of a trash can, so he recorded this impromptu performance on his iPhone. -Thanks, Diego!

“I Will Be Your Girlfriend at Facebook for 10 Days for $5″

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 06:58 PM PST

So is this better or worse than having a Cloud Girlfriend? Will the position of girlfriend, once a local affair, become an outsourced industry?

I’m Cathy, a 23 year old student and I live in New York city. There’s a second option by the way: If you want a few messages (3 max.) on your profile to make somone jealous that’s also possible, just send me the message(s) and the facebook-link!

Link -via Glenn Reynolds

Roommates and Portals

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 06:44 PM PST


(Video Link)

The moral of Shane English’s story is to choose roommates carefully. A mere background check won’t be enough.

-via Machinima | English’s Website

Crocheted Cyclops Costume

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 05:37 PM PST

Crocheting may have started out as a craft, but it’s turning into an extreme sport. Veronica Knight, maker of the crochet viking costume, produced this full body crocheted cyclops suit. Think: casual Fridays.

Link

Date Stamp Art

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 05:25 PM PST


When it’s slow at the circulation desk, just get out a sheet of paper and start stamping. Italian artist Federico Pietrella found that date stamps can be used effectively to create images resembling pointillist paintings.

Artist’s Website — via Colossal

Six Daleks Disguised as “Space Shuttle Engines”

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 05:18 PM PST

Six daleks, labeled as “Pratt Whitney Rocketdyne engines” from the space shuttles Endeavour and Atlantis are invading being shipped to Stennis Space Center in Mississippi to be refurbished for use in NASA’s new project, the Space Launch System (SLS). Link -via io9

(Image credit: NASA/Dimitri Gerondidakis)

Braille Handburgers

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 05:10 PM PST

The South African division of the fast food chain Wimpy provides menus in Braille. To get the word out, its chefs produced hamburger buns with sesame seeds carefully arranged on the surface to spell out words in Braille. At the link, you can watch a video of visually impaired people reacting to the burgers.

Link -via NotCot

How to Make Unicorn Poop Cookies

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 04:23 PM PST

Before you get your hopes up, you should know that these are not real unicorn droppings. They’re just cookies that look very much like them. They do not have the magical properties of authentic unicorn poop, but they are probably tasty. You can find the recipe at the link.

Link -via Geekologie

Punching Bag as a Musical Instrument

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 04:18 PM PST


(Video Link)

Do you remember chess boxing — the sport consisting of alternating rounds of chess and boxing? Well, just imagine what you could do with this bag, allegedly built by researchers at the UK’s Open University. If you could put these sensors on a human body, then boxers might be challenged to perform music while simultaneously beating each other senseless.

-via Boing Boing

Watch This Japanese Man Jam With A Celery Flute

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 04:00 PM PST

(YouTube Link)

If you’re fed up with simply eating celery, then why not take a note from this guy’s playbook and turn it into a musical instrument!

Watch as he sticks a custom made celery flute up his nose, then plays some sweet tunes for your enjoyment, tunes that can only be played via vegetable, or recorder, or any other toy flute ever made.

But hey, he’s obviously after style points with this one, and I’m sure he’ll get invited to lots of dinner parties once everyone sees his amazing talent.

Thankfully, he doesn’t eat his instrument when he’s finished playing. And, if you thought the celery flute was the extent of his power over vegetables, check out his other YouTube videos and be amazed at his homegrown musical skills!

–via Geekosystem

Play The Retro Styled Game Abobo’s Big Adventure For Free

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 03:40 PM PST

Retro gaming enthusiasts will remember the big bald baddie known as Abobo from his appearance in the Double Dragon games from the 80s and 90s. He’s large, moustachioed, packs a mean punch, and now stars in his own online game, which is really fun and  totally free to play!

So hit the link, and get ready to game like the good old days, in Abobo’s Big Adventure!

Link  –via GeeksAreSexy

Razer Unleashes A Tablet Hybrid Gaming PC

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 03:36 PM PST

The future of portable gaming looks pretty sweet, thanks to Razer’s newest innovation Project Fiona, which looks like a tablet but has a gaming PC worth of power under the hood.

With Intel’s Core i7 processors, both game controllers and a touch screen, and no issues with compatibility when running PC games (it will come with Windows 8 installed), this isn’t just a tablet-it’s a way to take your favorite PC games with you wherever you go, and have them look as good as they do on your monitor at home.

Now, the fact that the projected launch price is “under $1,000″ may make this unit too pricey for all but the wealthiest and most diehard gamers, but to me it’s all about what this unit represents-the future of portable gaming, and it’s looking good!

Link

The Hobbit Trailer Gets The Sweded Treatment

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 03:26 PM PST

(YouTube Link)

It seems like every movie trailer with any trace of geek interest gets sweded by fans then put on YouTube, so why should the trailer for the upcoming Peter Jackson film The Hobbit be left out?

Although this isn’t a traditional swede, and the filmmakers from MonkeyTheater take some liberties with the lines,  it’s still hilarious and entertaining to watch. My fav scene-when Bilbo is introduced to the dwarves. Haha, classic!

–via The Mary Sue

Oscar the Grouch Junior Backpack

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 03:02 PM PST

Oscar the Grouch Backpack | $16.95

Look, it’s Oscar -with sunglasses! How cool is this? It’s a Sesame Street Junior Backpack featuring Oscar the Grouch at the NeatoShop. The toddler size backpack has padded adjustable shoulder straps, a zipped compartment, and a velcro compartment. See the other Sesame Street Junior Backpacks at the NeatoShop -your child’s favorite character is bound the be there! And there are plenty of other Sesame Street products as well.

Link

Dutch Boys

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 02:58 PM PST

This adorable old picture would have made a great postcard. It is part of a collection of photographs of Dutch life published in the 1906 book De Aarde en haar volken (The Earth and Its People). See more at IllustratedPast.com. Link -via Everlasting Blort

Aches on a Plane

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 11:31 AM PST

On April 7, 1994, pilots Captain David Sanders and Captain Jim Tucker took off in a FedEx cargo jet from Memphis. Andy Peterson was their flight engineer. Also aboard was Auburn Calloway, a FedEx flight engineer who was just hitching a ride. But getting a ride wasn’t his entire plan, which became evident only a few minutes into the flight.

Auburn Calloway had swung a hammer with great force into the top of Andy Peterson's head several times in rapid succession. Jim Tucker turned to see what the commotion was about just as one of Calloway's hammers landed a crushing blow to the left side of the co-pilot's skull, driving bone fragments into his brain. Having temporarily incapacitated 2/3 of the crew, Calloway turned his attention to the pilot. Captain Sanders managed to deflect some of the hail of hammer strikes, nevertheless several blows penetrated his confused defenses and rendered him bleeding and disoriented.

Calloway withdrew back into the galley as the mauled crew members attempted to disentangle themselves from their seats with sluggish limbs and excruciating pain. The instrument panels were spattered with blood and all three men bled profusely from head wounds. Co-pilot Jim Tucker, unable to get out of his seat, repeatedly urged "Get him!" to his more mobile crew mates. Engineer Andy Peterson could barely hear due to a loud ringing in his ears.

Before Sanders and Peterson could mobilize, Calloway reappeared holding a spear gun.

Flight 705 never made it to its destination in California, but did not crash. How the crew managed to land the plane while sustaining terrible injuries is a story told at Damn Interesting. Link

How Fast Does the Grim Reaper Walk ?

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 10:45 AM PST

About two miles (three kilometers) per hour.  That’s the conclusion of a group of researchers at the University of Sidney, who found that the walking speed of adults correlated inversely with their risk of death.

The Grim Reaper's preferred walking speed is 0.82 m/s (2 miles (about 3 km) per hour) under working conditions. As none of the men in the study with walking speeds of 1.36 m/s (3 miles (about 5 km) per hour) or greater had contact with Death, this seems to be the Grim Reaper's most likely maximum speed; for those wishing to avoid their allotted fate, this would be the advised walking speed.

Details of the methodology and analysis of the results are published in the British Medical Journal.  The authors note also that “the preferred walking speed of the Grim Reaper while collecting souls is relatively constant irrespective of people's geographical location, sex, or ethnic background.”

Link.  Image credit Belle Mellor.

Where the Trees Are

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 09:48 AM PST

NASA posted a map detailing the “Aboveground Woody Biomass” in the continental United States (in other words, trees).

Josef Kellndorfer and Wayne Walker of the Woods Hole Research Center (WHRC) recently worked with colleagues at the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Geological Survey to create such an inventory for the United States. The map above was built from the National Biomass and Carbon Dataset (NBCD), released in 2011. It depicts the concentration of biomass—a measure of the amount of organic carbon—stored in the trunks, limbs, and leaves of trees. The darkest greens reveal the areas with the densest, tallest, and most robust forest growth.

Over six years, researchers assembled the national forest map from space-based radar, satellite sensors, computer models, and a massive amount of ground-based data. It is possibly the highest resolution and most detailed view of forest structure and carbon storage ever assembled for any country.

Forests in the U.S. were mapped down to a scale of 30 meters, or roughly 10 computer display pixels for every hectare of land (4 pixels per acre). They divided the country into 66 mapping zones and ended up mapping 265 million segments of the American land surface. Kellndorfer estimates that their mapping database includes measurements of about five million trees.

Since I live in the greener part of Appalachia, this explains why I went to Colorado and expected to be really impressed with the Rockies, but was puzzled at the lack of trees. Link -via Buzzfeed

I Love the Smell of Napalm in the Morning

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 09:45 AM PST


(YouTube link)

The line from Apocalyse Now has been used and reused and adapted in so many other movies that YouTube member dondrapersayswhat made them into a supercut. Contains NSFW language. -via The Daily What

Reality Shows for the Gaming Industry

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 09:20 AM PST

There are all kinds of reality-based television shows built around what people do: their workday, their obsessions, their love lives -so why don’t television producers reach out to the world of gamers? Unreality has some suggestions for show premises that would draw in gamers, if the production is entertaining enough to make them put down their controllers! Link

Shakespeare’s Bear

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 09:01 AM PST

In the play Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare, we see a stage direction that has caused mouths to drop open since the 17th century: "Exit, pursued by bear." Those who wrote about it mostly assumed he meant an actor in a bear costume. But Tom Levenson found an intriguing footnote in the book Verdi's Shakespeare, by Garry Wills that throws a different light on the subject.

It used to be thought that the "bear' was a man in costume.  But scholars have now focused on the fact that two polar bear cubs were brought back from the waters off Greenland in 1609, that they were turned over to Philip Henslowe's bear collection (hard by the Globe theater), and that polar bears show up in three productions of the 1610-1611 theatrical season….Polar bears become fierce at pubescence and were relegated to bear baiting, but the cubs were apparently still trainable in their  young state."

Read more in the post In Praise of Footnotes. You might even start reading the fine print in your books! Link -via Improbable Research

(Image credit: Flickr user Rainer Hungershausen)

9 awesome Hotel Pools

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 08:59 AM PST

Many of the pools in this list are spectacular because of their location or view, but the pool at the Golden Nugget Hotel in Las Vegas has a shark aquarium in the middle of it! The salt-water aquarium is separated from the swimming area, but only by glass -and they even have a water slide running through the shark enclosure! Link -via the Presurfer

The Great Mistake Lurking in “Don’t Stop Believin’’

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 08:02 AM PST

The song by Journey came out thirty years ago, but after its initial hit status, “Don’t Stop Believin’” got more mileage thanks to the TV shows The Sopranos and Glee. After all this time, I just learned a fact that everyone in Detroit knew all along.

For nearly 31 years, this flash of distracting cognitive dissonance has struck each time Steve Perry’s bright tenor lands on the iconic but geographically flawed second line: "just a city boy, born and raised in South Detroit.” Because, as anyone with a tie to the Motor City knows, South Detroit doesn't exist, either as a term of art or a geographical locale.

East Side? Sure. It's where Eminen spent his adolescence. West?* Home to the original Motown Records. Southwest? Best Mexican food in the state. But South Detroit is as fictional as the Shire of Middle-earth.

Even songwriter Perry did not realize that there was no such place until just a couple of years ago. He finally explains how it ended up in the song. Link -via Metafilter

What Is It? game 209

Posted: 12 Jan 2012 06:30 AM PST

It’s once again time for our collaboration with the always amusing What Is It? Blog. Can you guess what these things are? Or maybe you can amuse us with an entertaining wild guess!

Place your guess in the comment section below. One guess per comment, please, though you can enter as many guesses as you’d like in separate comments. Post no URLs or weblinks, as doing so will forfeit your entry. Two winners: the first correct guess and the funniest (albeit ultimately wrong) guess will win T-shirt from the NeatoShop.

Please write your T-shirt selection alongside your guess. If you don’t include a selection, you forfeit the prize, okay? May we suggest the Science T-Shirt, Funny T-Shirt and Artist-Designed T-Shirts?

For more clues, check out the What Is It? Blog. Good luck!
@

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