Neatorama

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• Good Chemistry
• The Alien Chestburster Red Shirt Cake
• 10 Hilarious Pictures of Animals in Clothing
• A 36 Foot Tall Tornado Made From Plastic Bottles
• The Cedar Waxwings Diet Causes Them To Fly Drunk
• Why Do Paper Cuts Hurt So Much?
• The Dark Knight – Just The Joker
• The Hidden QR Pint Glass
• Super Sculptures By Mauro Perrucchetti
• Why Dogs Chase Car Bumpers
• Surreal Anatomical Photo Manipulation Series
• The Unglamorous, Punishing Hours of Working on a Hollywood Set
• The Extraordinary Pink Katydid
• Sketches from Leonardo da Vinci’s Notebook: The Large Hadron Collider
• Why College Tuition Gets More Expensive Year After Year
• The Man Who Lived in AOL
• Wood Cassette Table
• Geologists Found Evidence of the Crucifixion of Jesus Earthquake
• Star Wars Minor Characters Drawn in the Style of Dr. Seuss
• Eobelisaurus mefi: The Dinosaur with Arms Even More Ridiculously Tiny Than T. rex
• Star Trek: Voyager Cake
• The UPS Van Smuggler
• Water Splash Flowers
• The Rise of Plastic
• The Science of Carrying Things on Your Head
• 10 Incredible Confluences Around the World
• How I Stopped Worrying (about science accuracy) And Learned to Love The Story
• After Battleship, What Next?
• The Comic Sans Song
• This Week at Neatorama
• You Gotta Pay the Piper

Good Chemistry Posted: 27 May 2012 05:00 AM PDT (YouTube link) Eli Cirino wrote this love ballad and made this video for extra credit in his 10th grade chemistry class. Totally earned it! -via reddit

The Alien Chestburster Red Shirt Cake Posted: 27 May 2012 04:06 AM PDT I know the chestburster covered in blood is supposed to look horrifically disgusting, but given that it’s cake, my mind automatically starts thinking about raspberry syrup and that just makes me hungry. Link Via That’s Nerdalicious

10 Hilarious Pictures of Animals in Clothing Posted: 27 May 2012 03:00 AM PDT Sure cats and dogs in costumes are pretty darn funny, but horses and geese? Now that’s just plain “redonkeyless.” That’s why this Oddee article is just so darn fun. Link

A 36 Foot Tall Tornado Made From Plastic Bottles Posted: 27 May 2012 02:51 AM PDT Chinese artist Wang Zhiyuan has an interesting way of showing disdain for the state of garbage pollution in his hometown-he created this neat 36 foot tall tornado made out of recyclable plastic bottles and containers. The piece is entitled Thrown To The Wind, with the funnel shape flipped over to appear as if the cloud of bottles is taking off into the sky. You know there aren’t enough recycling programs in your town when a tornado tears through which is made almost entirely out of trash! Link  –via JazJaz

The Cedar Waxwings Diet Causes Them To Fly Drunk Posted: 27 May 2012 01:52 AM PDT A new report in the Journal of Ornithology reports that cedar waxwings are flying drunkenly to their deaths at an alarming rate due to their habit of gorging on berries. Here’s more on this drunken mayhem: Cedar waxwings have evolved to live on a diet that averages 84 per cent fruit. But those evolutionary innovations backfired on several occasions between 2005 and 2007 when flocks of them died after crashing into windows and fences in broad daylight in the Los Angeles area. Now Kinde and colleagues report that the downfall of the flocks came from eating too many berries. Lacking a crop – the expandable pouch near the throat used to store food – waxwings stow meals in a distensible oesophagus. “When the fruit stays in the oesophagus, it ferments and produces ethanol,” says Kinde. The waxwings had ingested so many berries that their large livers “could not keep up with the alcohol produced by the fermentation”, with ethanol concentration as high as 1000 parts per million. By the time they finished stuffing themselves with berries, they were too drunk to fly safely. It appears that no species is safe from the effects of alcohol abuse. Time to develop some little birdie breathalizers to make sure they’re flying straight! Link

Why Do Paper Cuts Hurt So Much? Posted: 27 May 2012 01:50 AM PDT We’ve all had them and wondered, “how the heck can this stupid thing hurt so darn much?” While you probably already know that most paper cuts occur on your finger tips and that they have more nerves than most other areas of your body, you’ve probably still wondered why a knife cut in the same spot seems to hurt less. Well, Mental Floss can help fill you in: Well, the blade of even a fairly dull knife tends to be more straight and sharp than the dull and flexible edge of a piece of paper. When a knife cuts your skin, it leaves a relatively clean cut compared to paper, which will flex a little and do more microscopic damage to the skin. There’s more to the story, of course, but you’ll have to visit the link to read about all of that. Link

The Dark Knight – Just The Joker Posted: 27 May 2012 12:48 AM PDT (YouTube Link) Tired of all that Batman with your Joker? Then feast your eyes on this Joker supercut from The Dark Knight, it’s all killer clown no filler! It’s a tribute to Heath Ledger’s amazing performance, and even though this isn’t the finest example of video editing ever uploaded to YouTube, it’s fun for your eyeballs nonetheless. No likey? Why so serious?! –via Geek Tyrant

The Hidden QR Pint Glass Posted: 27 May 2012 12:42 AM PDT Guinness created this brilliant QR code pint glass in a cool marketing effort. When you scan it, “it tweets about your pint, updates your facebook status, checks you in via 4 square, downloads coupons and promotions, invites your friends to join, and even launches exclusive Guiness content.” Wow, that’s a lot of networking right there. What’s even cooler is that when there’s nothing in the glass, you can’t see the code at all. When you add a light beer into the glass, you can’t scan the code because the background isn’t dark enough. But when you add Guinness (or another beer that dark), you can actually use the code. Link Via BoingBoing

Super Sculptures By Mauro Perrucchetti Posted: 26 May 2012 11:58 PM PDT It’s safe to say that sculptor Mauro Perrucchetti enjoys making a bold statement and a strong impression with his works, which range from hand carved marble to resin casts of iconic figures such as: Jesus, Batman, Superman and Barack Obama. Mauro’s sculptures are classically styled, tongue in cheek statements wrapped up in a bright toylike finish, like pop culture museum candy. And the chuckle worthy images sticks with you, even if the intended statement eludes you, notably buff Jesus tearing himself off the cross and Obama as a Pez dispenser. Link  –via Beautiful/Decay

Why Dogs Chase Car Bumpers Posted: 26 May 2012 11:38 PM PDT (Video Link) Somewhere some sick person is training puppies everywhere that if they chase car bumpers, they’ll get a delicious treat. I hope you’re happy with yourself you monster. Just joking, Maymo’s owners are very loving and even have their own YouTube channel dedicated to her. Via I Has A Hot A Dog

Surreal Anatomical Photo Manipulation Series Posted: 26 May 2012 10:56 PM PDT This is what you’d look like if your skin was pulled off along with your clothes, and your innards were made out of brightly colored plastic. Created by photographer Koen Hauser, this creepy photo manipulation series called Modische Atlas der Anatomie from 2002 looks just as bright and cheerful today as it did waaaaay back then. They’ll make you squirm in your seat like they’re NSFW but, aside from making your boss think you’re a bit of a kook, they’re safe for work and nudie free! Link  –via Juxtapoz

The Unglamorous, Punishing Hours of Working on a Hollywood Set Posted: 26 May 2012 09:00 PM PDT You think you have long working hours? Shooting a movie or TV show can mean you spend the majority of your time -and the vast majority of your waking hours- at work. Gavin Polone has first-hand experience. A week and a half ago we had an unusually long shooting day on the show I'm currently producing, Jane by Design. The crew call time was at 7 a.m. and we wrapped at 10:46 p.m. — fourteen hours and 45 minutes after subtracting our one-hour lunch break. And some had an even longer day: Our actors, including guest star Teri Hatcher, showed up for hair and makeup at 5 am, which meant that hairstylists and makeup artists, as well as someone from the transportation department and the set production assistant, also showed up to meet them and were there until wrap, giving them a total of sixteen hours and 45 minutes. Many of you who are less familiar with the culture of filmmaking may find these hours to be pretty crazy, but those of us who regularly work on sets know there was nothing out of the ordinary about this day — and it wasn’t even that extreme compared to other movies and TV series, which often go beyond the standard schedule of a twelve-hour day. Stars get paid well for those hours, but the many others on the crew are just making a living, and they rarely complain. Polone talked with different workers about how they view their work schedules in an article at Vulture. Link -via Buzzfeed

The Extraordinary Pink Katydid Posted: 26 May 2012 08:00 PM PDT A pink katydid is rare, but not so rare that we don’t have photographs to enjoy! It’s not a separate species, but a condition somewhat similar to albinism. Read more about pink katydids and see stunning pictures at The Ark in Space. Link (Image credit: Flickr user Richard Whitby)

Sketches from Leonardo da Vinci’s Notebook: The Large Hadron Collider Posted: 26 May 2012 07:00 PM PDT You may already know about Leonardo da Vinci’s submarine design, or his sketches for helicopters, parachutes and airplanes. But you not have seen his plan for a compact muon solenoid detector, almost identical to the one now used by CERN in its Large Hadron Collider. That, at least, is the idea behind this drawing by physicist Sergio Cittolin. View more images at the link. Link -via io9

Why College Tuition Gets More Expensive Year After Year Posted: 26 May 2012 06:00 PM PDT Pop quiz: why does college tuition get more and more expensive each year? Answer: because it can. Jacob Goldstein of NPR explains the why the "sticker price," that is the full price colleges list in their brochures, keep on increasing while the "net price" has stayed relatively constant (the difference is attributable to scholarships and grants): Link But what happens if you don't qualify for those scholarships and grants? You have to borrow, which explains the crazy growth of student loans that mirror the growth in college tuition. Daniel Indiviglio of The Atlantic noted that student loans have grown 511% since 1999 - that's 6 times the rate of the housing bubble. Of course the big question is: will the student loan bubble pop just like the housing bubble? Though there are parallels between the student loan and housing, Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus of The Atlantic noted one big difference: With mortgage defaults, banks seize and resell the home. But if a degree can't be sold, that doesn't deter the banks. They essentially wrote the student loan law, in which the fine-print says they aren't "dischargable." So even if you file for bankruptcy, the payments continue due. Hence these stern word from Barmak Nassirian of the American Association of College Registrars and Admissions Officers. "You will be hounded for life," he warns. "They will garnish your wages. They will intercept your tax refunds. You become ineligible for federal employment." He adds that any professional license can be revoked and Social Security checks docked when you retire. We can't think of any other statute with such sadistic provisions.

The Man Who Lived in AOL Posted: 26 May 2012 05:00 PM PDT After completing a four-month incubator program at AOL's Palo Alto campus, Eric Simons discovered that his badge still worked so he decided to live there: "I couldn't afford to live anywhere," Simons recalled. "I started living out of AOL's headquarters." [...] For someone with neither money nor an aversion to sleeping on others' couches, the AOL building had plenty of allure. "They had a gym there with showers," Simons said. "I'd take a shower after work. I was like, 'I could totally work here...They have food upstairs, they have every drink on tap. This would be a sweet place to live.'" CNET's Daniel Terdiman has the fascinating story: Link - via Boing Boing

Wood Cassette Table Posted: 26 May 2012 04:30 PM PDT After five years of planning and work, Jeff Skierka completed this beautiful 12:1 scale audio cassette tape table. It’s made of maple, walnut and lucite. And presumably magnetic tape. The table is reversible, so you can play both sides. Link -via Dude Craft Previously: Wood VHS Cassette Table

Geologists Found Evidence of the Crucifixion of Jesus Earthquake Posted: 26 May 2012 04:00 PM PDT The Crucifixion, Currier & Ives/LOC According to the Gospel of Matthew, the earth shook during the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ: “And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split and the tombs broke open.” (Matthew 27: 50-51) Now, geologists have discovered evidence of major earthquakes during that historical era: To analyze earthquake activity in the region, geologist Jefferson Williams of Supersonic Geophysical and colleagues Markus Schwab and Achim Brauer of the German Research Center for Geosciences studied three cores from the beach of the Ein Gedi Spa adjacent to the Dead Sea. Varves, which are annual layers of deposition in the sediments, reveal that at least two major earthquakes affected the core: a widespread earthquake in 31 B.C. and a seismic event that happened sometime between the years 26 and 36. The latter period occurred during “the years when Pontius Pilate was procurator of Judea and when the earthquake of the Gospel of Matthew is historically constrained,” Williams said. Link

Star Wars Minor Characters Drawn in the Style of Dr. Seuss Posted: 26 May 2012 03:00 PM PDT Sure Boba Fett gets all the attention, but DrFaustusAU decided to give minor Star Wars character Corellian bounty hunter Dengar and trash compactor monster Dianoga some love ... in the style of Dr. Seuss. Head on over to DrFaustusAU's deviantART page to embiggen: Link - via Super Punch

Eobelisaurus mefi: The Dinosaur with Arms Even More Ridiculously Tiny Than T. rex Posted: 26 May 2012 02:30 PM PDT Image: Diego Pol and Oliver W.M. Rauhut / Proceedings of The Royal Society B: Biological Sciences Move over, T. rex! There's another dinosaur with even ridiculously tinier arms: meet Eobelisaurus mefi. Link - via Metafilter ("MeFi" of course!)

Star Trek: Voyager Cake Posted: 26 May 2012 02:00 PM PDT This delicious-looking Voyager cake definitely won’t require 75 years to complete its journey into my belly. Regali Kitchen made it to help Maya and Barry celebrate their eleventh anniversary. The ship’s navigation lights and warp nacelles light up appropriately and the crew is completely edible. Link -via Bit Rebels | Regali Kitchen’s Website

The UPS Van Smuggler Posted: 26 May 2012 01:00 PM PDT Photo: U.S. Border Patrol An enterprising human smuggler tried to use a phony UPS van to make a special delivery to the United States: 13 illegal immigrants from Mexico. What can Brown do for you? Apparently not human smuggling as the scheme was foiled by U.S. Border Patrol: The van looked like a legitimate United Parcel Service Inc. delivery vehicle, except the company decal on the back door was slightly crooked. [..] Migrants told authorities they had agreed to pay between $5,000 and $8,000 each to be smuggled into the United States, according to the criminal complaint.  Link Well, at least being stuffed inside a UPS van beats being stuffed into a van's seat! Previously on Neatorama: 10 Weird Items People Tried to Smuggle

Water Splash Flowers Posted: 26 May 2012 12:00 PM PDT Jack Long of Milwaukee is a master of high speed photography. This flower and its pot are actually just a few splashes of colored water, arranged perfectly and shot at just the right moment. View his other floral works at the gallery link. Gallery and Photographer’s Website -via Colossal

The Rise of Plastic Posted: 26 May 2012 11:00 AM PDT What did we ever do before plastic? After all, the synthetic material is not all that ancient. "Plastic is so new, Freinkel began, that among all the objects preserved in the sunken Titanic, none are synthetic plastic, because there was hardly any available in 1912. Natural plastic, however, was a familiar material. Amber was popular. Rubber was essential (all plant cellulose is made of long-chain polymers). Ivory for everything from billiard balls to piano keys was in such high demand that an 1867 paper warned about the looming extinction of elephants. The first synthetic plastic—celluoid—was developed as a substitute for ivory, and the elephants survived. Wired posted interesting excerpts from a talk by Susan Freinkel about the history of manufacturing objects of plastic. Link -via Boing Boing (Image credit: Flickr user Tinker*Tailor loves Lalka)

The Science of Carrying Things on Your Head Posted: 26 May 2012 10:30 AM PDT Why do people in some cultures regularly carry heavy objects on their heads? It’s because, biomechanically speaking, head-loading is an efficient means of hauling cargo: Based on studies of women of the Luo and Kikuyu tribes of East Africa, researchers have found that people can carry loads of up to 20 percent of their own body weight without expending any extra energy beyond what they’d use by walking around unencumbered. But don’t strap gear to your head just yet. Head-loading only works well if you’ve been practicing it for many years: The subjects in these studies began head-loading as children and had developed a peculiar gait that’s one-third more efficient than the one we’re likely to use. For untrained controls who have not had years to strengthen the right muscles and build up spinal bone density, carrying things on your head actually requires more energy than using a backpack. Link -via Joe Carter | Photo: US Army

10 Incredible Confluences Around the World Posted: 26 May 2012 10:00 AM PDT A confluence is a place where two (or more) bodies of water meet. When two rivers meet and mix, especially rivers with water of different colors, the confluence is quite dramatic. See pictures of the most interesting meetings of contrasting waters from around the world at Twisted Sifter. Shown here is the confluence of the Jialing and Yangtze Rivers in China. Link -via The World Geography

How I Stopped Worrying (about science accuracy) And Learned to Love The Story Posted: 26 May 2012 09:00 AM PDT Dr. Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer, has worked in TV and film quite a bit, often as a science consultant, and sometimes as a “personality.” But even before that he was a blogger -and a critic. Not long after creating my first website (back in the Dark Internet Ages of 1997) I decided it would be fun to critique the science of movies, and I dove in with both glee and fervor. No movie was safe, from Armageddon to Austin Powers. I was right; it was fun. It was surprisingly easy to deconstruct Hollywood accuracy, or lack thereof. Any mistake was fair game; a flubbed line with bad math was just as likely for me to mock as a plot device upon which the entire movie rested. Blowing up a giant asteroid? Pshaw. Saying "million" instead of "billion"? Please. Shadows moving the wrong way at sunset? Let me sharpen my poison keyboard. Phil wrote a guest post for The Science and Entertainment Exchange about how he eventually reconciled the differences in the world of science and the business of entertainment. But he still wants to bring better science to your science fiction! Link -via Bad Astronomy

After Battleship, What Next? Posted: 26 May 2012 08:00 AM PDT Yes, Hungry Hungry Hippos was a good idea for the next game-to-movie idea. But this one… well, together they beat everything! Link -via Pajiba

The Comic Sans Song Posted: 26 May 2012 07:00 AM PDT (YouTube link) A love song to the most disrespected font ever, by gunnarolla featuring Songs To Wear Pants To. -via Buzzfeed

This Week at Neatorama Posted: 26 May 2012 06:00 AM PDT Welcome to another long holiday weekend! Monday is Memorial Day in the U.S. which is often thought of as the beginning of summer, culturally if not astronomically. That idea only came about because it’s a holiday close to the time school’s close for vacation. The holiday is a time set aside to remember and honor those who died serving their nation in wartime. At the end of this post, you’ll find a selected reading list appropriate for Memorial Day. Meanwhile, here’s what happened this past week: John Farrier wrote 10 Facts You Might Not Know about Star Trek: Voyager. Eddie Deezen gave us 12 Baseball Feats That Only Happened Once. Why Disco Died, from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader, was the followup to the previous article Why Disco Happened. The Annals of Improbable Research brought us Integrated Pest Management of Manifestations as Infestations. In other words, pest control for angels. 10 Latin Phrases You Pretend to Understand came from mental_floss magazine. In the What Is It? game this week, the pictured object is a ramp for loading barrels or kegs onto a beer truck. The first correct answer came from Anker, who wins a t-shirt! The funniest answer came from Steve Bennett, who labeled it "a snake winder, used for coiling your snake up on long sea voyages so that it doesn't get tangled up and annoyed." That was nonsensical enough to win a t-shirt from the NeatoShop! Find the answers to all the mystery objects of the week at the What Is It? blog. The post with the most comments by far was Man Beat Noisy 10-Year Old Moviegoer. That was followed by Eddie Deezen’s 12 Baseball Feats That Only Happened Once, and in third place was Why Americans Hate Taxes. It’s not too late to join in the conversation! Suggested Reading for Memorial Day Weekend Five for Fighting Doolittle's Raid Five Medical Innovations of the Civil War Saving Sergeant Niland Building the Wall Day is Done The Curse of the Demon Core The Past, Present, and Future of Being Called to Duty Five Other Remembrance Days Across the World The above Memorial Day suggestions came from The Best of Neatorama, where we have feature articles going back six years! You’ll also find more content, discussions, and treats on our social network pages at Facebook, G+, and Twitter.

You Gotta Pay the Piper Posted: 26 May 2012 05:20 AM PDT If you had to guess what German city has a big rodent problem, you might think of Hamelin -and you’d be right. City officials say a popular fountain has been put out of service after the rodents gnawed through a power cable, according to the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper. The Lower Saxony city is where, legend has it, the Pied Piper led all the rats out in 1284 with his magic pipe into the Weser River, where they drowned. This time around, city officials say they’ll just decommission the fountain, which was due to be permanently closed anyway. Oh, why were they planning to close the fountain? High maintenance costs. Seven hundred years later, the city is still stingy about paying for municipal services. Link -via Fark

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