Neatorama |
- Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cups inspired by Fringe
- The Unluckiest Train Ride
- Gatonovela
- 19 Pepsi Flavors You May Not Be Familiar With
- Tug of War With A Dog & Horse
- Talk About An Oscar Snub
- Abandoned Cars Reclaimed By Nature
- The True Cost of Building the Death Star
- Great Pictures of Rock Stars With Their Parents
- Chupa Chups Advertising Isn’t Just For Suckers
- Test Your Trivia Skills Against Hitchcock, Ninjas And Jack Nicholson
- This Radio Will Look Right At Home In Your Fallout Shelter
- Techno Viking Action Figure
- When I Tell People I Work from Home
- Alan Turing’s School Grades
- Listen To These Posters Playing A Pretty Tune
- A Turntable That Plays Pieces Of Wood
- 20th Century Styles, According To 1893
- The Iron Spike of Bacteriophages
- Man Cooked Own Cheeseburger and Fries at Denny’s
- A Generous Tip and an Advice
- Vincent Van Gogh Self Portrait Costume
- World’s Deepest Land Bug
- LEGO Church
- Father Jailed Because Daughter Drew a Picture of a Gun
- Teen Lifted Car Off Grandpa
- What if The Final Countdown Had Ended Differently?
- Tommy Craggs’s Amazing Tree Sculptures
- R2-D2 Birdhouse
- Hit ‘Rock Bottom’ With This Animated Short
| Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cups inspired by Fringe Posted: 27 Feb 2012 05:11 AM PST BraveTart writes “I don't know if I should feel ashamed or proud that I've written the world's first and only Fringe/Reese’s Cup fan fiction.” I’m voting for “proud” because there’s no such thing as too weird. Read her recipe at the link. Link -via Tasteologie  |
| Posted: 27 Feb 2012 05:02 AM PST
Even if you’re not a history buff and know very little about World War II, there is one thing about it that you do know: how it ended. But here’s a part of the story that you may not know. INCOMING Shortly after 8:00AM on the morning of August 6, 1945, lookouts in the mountains east of Hiroshima, Japan, spotted two American B-29 bombers flying in close formation, followed by a third B-29, a few miles back. They weren’t overly concerned. The aircraft were flying at an altitude of more than 31,000 feet, unusually high for a bombing run. The firebombing raids that had devastated more than 60 Japanese cities since March of 1945 operated at a much lower altitude and involved huge numbers of B-29s, sometimes 500 or more. The only bombers that had flown as high as these three had been on reconnaissance missions, not bombing runs. Even when the three aircraft altered course and headed straight for Hiroshima, officials weren’t alarmed. It was common for B-29s to rendezvous near the city before heading off to bomb other targets. At this late stage of he war, fuel, ammunition, airplanes, and pilots were in desperately short supply in Japan; the military couldn’t afford to waste resources chasing just a handful of planes. The B-29s approached Hiroshima unmolested by fighter planes and anti-aircraft fire.  Shigeyoshi Morimoto Two of the three planes were indeed carrying only scientific and reconnaissance equipment. But the last plane, the Enola Gay, was on one of the deadliest missions of the war. It was carrying an atomic bomb, one with an explosive power equivalent to 18,000 tons of TNT -more than 1,500 times as powerful as the British Grand Slam, the largest bomb that had ever been used in warfare. At 8:15 AM, the Enola Gay released the bomb over the city. It dropped to an altitude of 2,000 feet, and then exploded, destroying much of Hiroshima and killing an estimated 70,000 people, or 30 percent of the population. Another 70,000 would die within weeks. BEARING WITNESS Shigeyoshi Morimoto was luckier than many people in the city. The master kitemaster was in town for a secret meeting to study whether kites could be used to protect the Japanese fleet from attack by American fighter planes, and was visiting his cousin’s home about a half a mile from ground zero when the bomb went off. Ninety-five percent of the people who were that close to the bomb were killed, but Morimoto, his cousin, and his cousin’s son all survived. “There was something like a lightning flash, and along with the flash the house collapsed and we were pinned beneath the fallen ceiling and roof,” Morimoto told interviewer Robert Trumbull in 1956. “All three of us were alive -unhurt, in fact, except for bruises from the fallen roof and ceiling of the ruined house, which kept us from being exposed to the horrible blast.” When the three dug themselves out of the rubble, they were stunned by the vastness of the destruction. Like a lot of survivors, they assumed that the blast had been nearby, perhaps caused by an exploding fuel tank or a bomb falling a few blocks away. But when they saw how widespread the damage was, they realized this was no ordinary bomb. Every building within a one-mile radius of the blast was flattened, and every building within a 4.5 square mile area was or would soon be destroyed by fire. (Many of the fires were caused by cooking stoves knocked over by the explosion.) WHAT NEXT? Morimoto returned to the hotel where he had been staying, to see if he could salvage any of his belongings. The hotel was badly damaged by still standing. There he found that three of his colleagues had also survived: Tsuitaro Doi, Shinji Kinoshita, and Masao Komatsu. The four men spent the night in the ruins of the hotel, and the following morning they discussed what to do next.  Tsuitaro Doi, Shinji Kinoshita, and Masao Komatsu.
By now the news of the destruction of Hiroshima had spread to the rest of Japan, but there was no way for survivors to get word out to their families that they were still alive. The bomb had knocked all telephone and telegraph lines, as well as the radio stations. The four men decided to return home, and after obtaining permission to leave the city, on the afternoon of August 8 they walked out of Hiroshima and found a train to their home city: Nagasaki. At least three trains left Hiroshima for Nagasaki, 190 miles to the southwest, and arrived there by August 9, the day that an atomic bomb was dropped on that city. One train left on the afternoon of August 6th, another on the 7th, and another on the 8th. Thought the trains left Hiroshima packed with fleeing refugees, most of the passengers traveled only a few stops beyond the city before they got off. Nevertheless, it’s estimated that at least 165 survivors of the Hiroshima bomb traveled to Nagasaki, were there for the second atomic blast, and lived to tell the tale. The number of Hiroshima survivors who were killed by the Nagasaki bomb is unknown. DUCK AND COVER While it was certainly bad luck to survive one atomic bomb only to be bombed a second time, many of the citizens of Nagasaki who spoke to the Hiroshima survivors before the second bomb fell were fortunate to have done so. They learned valuable information that increased their own chances of survival. The Hiroshima survivors knew, for example, that a short interval of time separated the initial blinding flash of light from the destructive blast wave that followed it, in much the same way that thunder follows lightning. People close to ground zero had just a moment or two to take cover before the blast wave hit; people further away had more time -not a lot more time, but even a few seconds was enough to flee into a basement or a nearby air-raid shelter, or at least duck down below window level before the glass exploded into thousands of flying, razor-sharp projectiles.  Tsutomo Yamaguchi in 1956 Tsutomu Yamaguchi, a ship designer for the Mitsubishi company, was one of the Hiroshima survivors who returned to Nagasaki. He reported to work on the morning of August 9 and shared his experiences with his staff, stressing the importance of getting away from the windows as soon as they saw such a flash. When the flash did come a short time later at 11:02 AM, many workers dove for cover behind desks and other sturdy objects. “My section’s staff suffered the least in that building. In other sections there was a heavy toll of serious injuries from flying glass,” he told journalist Robert Trumbull in 1956. Many such conversations between Hiroshima survivors and Nagasaki citizens were taking place at the very moment the second bomb exploded. Shigeyoshi Morimoto, the master kitemaker, had just finished describing the atomic bomb to his wife (“First there is a great blue flash…”) when their house was suddenly flooded with a blinding blue flash. “There, you see!” he shouted. “It comes again! That’s what I mean!” He shoved his wife and son into the family’s air-raid shelter and jumped in behind them, pulling the heavy trap door shut just as the blast wave destroyed their house. Morimoto, his wife, and their son were uninjured. SILENT WITNESSES The story of the nijyuu hibakusha, or “double bomb-affected people” is one of the least-known stories of World War II, and this is due in large part to the fact that very few of the nijyuu hibakusha have come forward. As of 2009, only one of them -ship designer Tsutomu Yamaguchi- has been officially recognized by the Japanese government as a survivor of both bombs. In the mid-1950s, Trumbull traveled to Japan in search of the nijyuu hibakusha, but he was only able to come up with a list of 18 names. He tracked down 11 people on the list, but only nine, including Tsutomu Yamaguchi, kitemaker Shigeyoshi Morimoto and his three colleagues, Tsuitaro Doi, Shinji Kinoshita, and Masao Komatsu- agreed to speak to him. He published their accounts in his 1957 book Nine Who Survived Hiroshima and Nagasaki, one of the few books ever written on the subject. (A 2010 book titled Last Train from Hiroshima, by another author, was withdrawn from publication after it was found to contain fabricated sources and information.) SECOND-CLASS CITIZENS The reluctance of so many to speak of their experiences may be due in part to the fact that for many years, there was a stigma associated with being an atomic bomb survivor. Because they often suffered from fatigue, malaise, and other illnesses caused by exposure to radiation, survivors suffered from job discrimination and even social isolation, shunned by people who feared that their strange sickness might be contagious. And for a decade after the war, the victims of the atom bombs were largely ignored by the Japanese government, which was wary of assuming responsibility for the victims of American bombs. It wasn’t until 1954, when the crew of a Japanese fishing boat was exposed to radioactive fallout from an American hydrogen bomb test on Bikini Atoll, that public outrage over the incident forced the government to take an active interest in the well-being of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki victims as well. The A-Bomb Victims Medical Care Bill, which provided free medical care to the victims, became a Japanese law in 1957. TRAUMATIZED Another reason for the silence of so many nijyuu hibakusha was that although they were very lucky to have survived two atomic bombings, that experience was so traumatic that many people have simply chosen not to talk about it, at least not publicly. Kitemaker Shigeyoshi Morimoto survived both bombings largely unscathed, but he lost two family members at Hiroshima and eight more at Nagasaki. And the images of death and destruction he witnessed after both bombings were among the most horrific ever seen.  Tsutomo Yamaguchi Tsutomo Yamaguchi, the Mitsubishi ship designer, was badly burned by the Hiroshima bomb and suffered further injuries at Nagasaki. He wore bandages for 16 years, and his wounds never did completely heal. His wife and six-month-old son were exposed to “black rain” radioactive fallout from the Nagasaki bomb, and they, along with a daughter who was born after the war, suffered from chronic health problems for the rest of their lives. Aside from the interview with Robert Turnbull in the 1950s, Yamaguchi largely avoided public attention for decades and was not active in Japan’s antinuclear movement. But when his son died from cancer in 2005 at the age of 59, he went public with his story and began speaking against nuclear war. “Having been granted this miracle, it is my responsibility to pass on the truth to people of the world. For the past 60 years survivors have declared the horror of the atomic bomb, but I can hardly see any improvement in the situation,” he told an interviewer in 2005. Yamaguchi died from stomach cancer in January 2010 at the age of 93. ___________________
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! |
| Posted: 27 Feb 2012 03:53 AM PST Gatonovela is a soap opera starring the cats from Kitten Massage Therapy, Kagonekoshiro, and other viral cat videos. In this episode, a drug cartel throws its weight around. Other episodes are available at YouTube. Link -via Buzzfeed |
| 19 Pepsi Flavors You May Not Be Familiar With Posted: 26 Feb 2012 11:56 PM PST I don’t know about you, but I love me some Pepsi, and I usually give any new flavor that comes out a try before going back to the tried and true original. But some of the flavors on this list sound delicious, and I really wish I could get my hands on a sixer! *soda addiction alert* From ice cream to cucumber to apple, it’s too bad that most of these flavors wouldn’t sell very well here in the U.S. because I have got a craving as fierce as a caged tiger and I need to get my hands on some, unless we’re talking about Crystal Pepsi, which I think would have made a better suntan lotion than a can of pop. And the idea of a hot cinnamon soda really burns my behind for some reason, and the holiday spice can falalalala off the shelves for all eternity as far as I’m concerned. But I don’t think I could ever get my fill of the rest of the flavors on this list. Why does it cost so much to ship cases of soda here from Japan? *grits teeth*
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| Posted: 26 Feb 2012 11:55 PM PST Now that’s an animal friendship you don’t see too often. Isn’t it precious though? Via I Has A Hot Dog |
| Posted: 26 Feb 2012 11:24 PM PST Poor Miss Piggy, she’s totally right, it’s complete pigism that prevented her from getting the nomination. Hollywood, your prejudices disgust me. Via The Mary Sue |
| Abandoned Cars Reclaimed By Nature Posted: 26 Feb 2012 11:23 PM PST The poor old cars in this series of photographs by Peter Lippmann, entitled Paradise Parking, are seemingly being reclaimed by forces of nature, one branch at a time. It’s a dark and horrifying series if you’re a classic car lover like me, and I feel like these pictures should be posted on car restoration enthusiast forums as a plea for help. They would make great backgrounds for a post-apocalyptic photo shoot, or scenes from a horror movie about zombie cars coming back for revenge against their negligent owners. But, like the cameraman shooting a nature video, I can’t help but wonder if Peter had to fight the urge to cut these classic beauties free after he got the perfect shot. |
| The True Cost of Building the Death Star Posted: 26 Feb 2012 11:21 PM PST
Of course, that’s only the price of steel, what about building costs, electric, etc.? That’s a big price to pay for a little intimidation and destruction. Link Via The Daily What |
| Great Pictures of Rock Stars With Their Parents Posted: 26 Feb 2012 11:10 PM PST It’s easy to imagine that rock stars, especially those from the 1970′s were crazy heathens, but seeing them with their parents puts their lavish lifestyles in a whole new perspective. |
| Chupa Chups Advertising Isn’t Just For Suckers Posted: 26 Feb 2012 11:01 PM PST Advertising campaigns usually rely on suckers to buy their products, but this campaign for Chupa Chups candy is trying to get you to buy suckers and prove you’re not just some sucker at the same time. Created by BBH Singapore, the spot is called “R4V3N: Never Not Winning” and it features a rather unique use for their suckers-a lollipop controlled joystick that will help you become an online gaming champion. It’s a clever way to advertise their product and their new online promo game at the same time, and R4V3N’s ridiculous style is what’s truly never not winning about this spot. –via DesignTAXI |
| Test Your Trivia Skills Against Hitchcock, Ninjas And Jack Nicholson Posted: 26 Feb 2012 10:56 PM PST
This screenshot of a Jack Nicholson style character looking rather jaundiced comes from an kooky Japanese video game called Quiz Daisousa Sen-The Last Count Down. It came out in the arcades in 1991 and featured a cast of celebrity characters, including: Bruce Willis, Alfred Hitchcock, Mike Tyson, Jack Nicholson, Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee, among other less famous enemies like ninjas, cyborgs and a girl that looks like Regan from The Exorcist. This rather unique game looks like it would be fun to play, especially while sitting at the bar with a pint of stout in my hand. Too bad the uniquely Japanese sense of humor (probably) kept it from being translated and released in the U.S. If you’re interested you can check out a bunch of screenshots from the game at the link below, the pixelated celebrity caricatures are worth a peek. |
| This Radio Will Look Right At Home In Your Fallout Shelter Posted: 26 Feb 2012 10:55 PM PST This custom radio-like device was made by Autuin from Free Geek Vancouver, who didn’t want to be restricted to creating useful devices, so he made this funky little custom number. Here’s a bit about it:
In case of apocalypse, this CRT radio thingy might not help keep you alive, but it should make your time in the fallout shelter feel a bit less lonesome. Or it will drive you insane and you’ll become some sort of shelter dwelling madman, either way you can’t go wrong when the sky is falling. Link –via Geekosystem |
| Posted: 26 Feb 2012 05:29 PM PST Techno Viking, the character from a 12-year-old video, is a meme that just won’t quit. Now he’s an action figure! There’s no verifiable information, but I gather that this is one of those custom-made action figures that can look like anyone if you pay the premium price. But I don’t know who it belongs to. Link |
| When I Tell People I Work from Home Posted: 26 Feb 2012 05:21 PM PST More and more people every day find themselves working a real job from home, but that is still a novel idea for most of the folks around them. Actually, my home office looks like this. And when I tell people I work from home, they assume I am a housewife and have plenty of time to drive them somewhere or volunteer for their community project. Link |
| Posted: 26 Feb 2012 05:13 PM PST
And his math teacher:
And his science teacher:
One headmaster wrote about his integration into the school community:
Link -via Marginal Revolution | Photo: Sherborne School |
| Listen To These Posters Playing A Pretty Tune Posted: 26 Feb 2012 05:07 PM PST Indie band Dry The River came up with an extremely unique way to advertise the release of their debut album “Shallow Bed”-they hung up string art posters all over London that can be listened to via attached can, like a schoolyard string phone with a band on the other end of the line. The posters are a great fusion of high tech and simplicity, and they look quite cool to boot. Watch the video and you’ll see how these minimalist marvels were constructed, with each one taking about 20 hours to complete. Now that’s doing self promotion like a boss! –via Super Punch |
| A Turntable That Plays Pieces Of Wood Posted: 26 Feb 2012 04:46 PM PST German artist Bartholomaus Traubeck has created one tripped out piece of tech-a turntable that plays pieces of wood instead of records. Here’s how it works: Traubeck has modified a turntable's needle by replacing it with a digital camera and light that scans the wood for thickness, growth rate, texture and overall color tone. A computer then interprets the data and maps it into a musical scale, which is then played back using piano sounds. What results are hauntingly beautiful melodies that differ based on the tree's age. It’s an eerily fascinating way to hear what the trees have to say, but I’m guessing that it all comes out sounding like “you cut me down for this?” or “what have you done with the rest of my body?” And, at this point should we still call Mr. Traubeck an artist, or some sort of mad scientist with a penchant for creating strange electronic devices? Link –via DesignTAXI |
| 20th Century Styles, According To 1893 Posted: 26 Feb 2012 04:37 PM PST The illustrations in this gallery are from a Strand Magazine article from 1893 that was supposed to be a sneak peek of what fashion will look like in the 20th century. The writer even goes so far as to claim that he got these designs from a man who found a book dated 1993 that was full of fashion designs from the 20th century. Looks like Biff Tannen (from Back To The Future) got his hands on the Delorean and decided to blow some 19th century minds. The designs look more like a gallery of science fiction gear and wild outfits for a far out costume party than, say, a mid-20th century Montgomery Ward catalog, but I think the hippies would have been way cooler if they’d dressed like swashbuckling Asian pirates, and I’m sad that we missed out on wearing giant tasseled sombreros and carrying swords. Now these off-the-wall designs are just going to end up in Lady Gaga’s wardrobe, unless they decide to make a version of The Three Musketeers that takes place on Mars. –via i09 |
| The Iron Spike of Bacteriophages Posted: 26 Feb 2012 04:36 PM PST
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| Man Cooked Own Cheeseburger and Fries at Denny’s Posted: 26 Feb 2012 03:35 PM PST
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| Posted: 26 Feb 2012 01:33 PM PST
Ouch that hurts: according to Twitter user @FutureExBanker (whose Twitter account has since disappeared), his "jerk boss tips exactly 1% because he loathes the 99%." Bonus 1: The boss, a banker at a major bank, told the waitress to "get a real job." |
| Vincent Van Gogh Self Portrait Costume Posted: 26 Feb 2012 12:33 PM PST redditor beadmandingo spotted Vincent Van Gogh walking around the streets of New Orleans during Mardi Gras. There’s a lengthy discussion in the comment thread about the identity of the performer, who may be a local underground celebrity. Link -via Super Punch |
| Posted: 26 Feb 2012 12:32 PM PST
Scientists went to the Krubera Cave, the deepest known cave on the planet, to discover the world's deepest insects. They found these creepy-crawlies living more than 6,400 feet below the Earth's surface:
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| Posted: 26 Feb 2012 12:21 PM PST For a more modular ecclesiology, visit this temporary structure in the Netherlands. It’s built not out of LEGO bricks, but Legioblocks — concrete blocks made to resemble LEGO bricks. Michiel de Wit and Filip Jonker erected it for the Grenswerk Festival in the city of Enschede. Link (Google Translate) -via Bit Rebels | Festival Website | Photo by the artists |
| Father Jailed Because Daughter Drew a Picture of a Gun Posted: 26 Feb 2012 11:31 AM PST
Dianne Wood of The Record has the story: Link (Photo: Peter Lee/The Record) What do you think: Over-reaction or sensible precaution? |
| Posted: 26 Feb 2012 10:35 AM PST
The teenager claimed that he "has no idea how he was able to lift a 2,000-pound Buick." I, for one, suspect gamma rays: Link - via Weird Universe (Video: ABC7) |
| What if The Final Countdown Had Ended Differently? Posted: 26 Feb 2012 10:10 AM PST
It’s a fun film, if a bit unsatisfying because it presents viewers with a tantalizing scenario that it never fully explores: what if the Nimitz had stayed behind? What would be different about World War II? Robert Farley offers some speculation on the subject:
Link -via Ace of Spades HQ | Image: United Artists P.S. If you enjoy this type of speculative fiction, then you may be interested in some similar works: |
| Tommy Craggs’s Amazing Tree Sculptures Posted: 26 Feb 2012 09:40 AM PST British chainsaw tree sculptor Tommy Craggs has gotten a lot of attention lately for enchanting sculptures that he has left in a publicly-accessible forest in northern England. Because his identity was a mystery until recently, locals called him the “Yorkshire Banksy”. |
| Posted: 26 Feb 2012 07:38 AM PST |
| Hit ‘Rock Bottom’ With This Animated Short Posted: 26 Feb 2012 05:14 AM PST Here’s a goofy little gem of a cartoon for your amusement, a sitcom spoof that takes place at the bottom of the ocean and lasts about a minute. Oh, and there are lots of bad oceanic puns, and a duck wearing a top hat. If you can look past the misspelling of existential in the opening theme song then you’ll find that it’s a fun waste of time! –via The Daily What |
The following is an article from the newest volume of the Bathroom Reader series, 
The article above was reprinted with permission from the newest volume of the Bathroom reader series, 
It’s obviously a great weapon to strike down your foes, but all that power has a price. If you’ve ever wondered just what that price might be, then you’d better check out this great article over on the economics blog Centives that goes into figuring out just how expensive the Death Star would be to build. The response might surprise you:
As an adult, Alan Turing proved to be a genius. Among other accomplishments, he was a pioneer in computer science. But when he was a teenager, Turing was less impressive. Here’s what his English instructor said about his work:
Scientists have discovered how bacteriophages - viruses that infect bacteria - manage to pierce the bacterial membrane: with an iron spike.
When you want something done right, you've got to do it yourself ... and James B. Summers of Madison, Wisconsin, wants his cheeseburger done exactly his way:
A Canadian man was arrested at his children's school, hauled down to the station and strip-searched ... all because his 4-year-old daughter drew a picture of a gun at school:
Fifteen-year-old Austin Smith he lifted a car that fell on his grandpa:
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