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2012/06/03

Neatorama

Neatorama

The Freakish Beauty of Human Eyes

Posted: 03 Jun 2012 04:18 AM PDT

We’ve all seen human eyes, but it’s rare to look this closely at them -and when you do, it’s amazing how weird they actually look, filled with nooks, crannies and a surprising array of vivid colors. See more fantastic close ups of human eyes at the link.

Link

Glazed Donut Vodka Is A Sweet Way to Forget Your Troubles

Posted: 03 Jun 2012 03:02 AM PDT

Like donuts? Like vodka? Like drinking cocktails that taste like pure sugar? Then you’ll love Glazed Donut Vodka, just try to avoid the diabetes that come with so many sweet treats.

Link Via Laughing Squid

Beware the Kitten in Power

Posted: 03 Jun 2012 02:02 AM PDT

Mecha kitty says his litter needs to be changed now and he’s not kidding. And you’d better cough up the cat nip quick.

Reddit user Tastybread made this great cardboard kitty bed for his hardcore kitty fighter.

Link Via io9

Upside Down Helicopter is a Ceiling Fan

Posted: 03 Jun 2012 12:00 AM PDT

It looks like an RC helicopter landed upside down on your ceiling, but it’s actually Raffaele Iannello’s new ceiling fan. It’s a 1:6 scale model of the Hughes/MD 500 mounted on what appears to be a helipad. Do the narrow blades cool well? Yes, they are extremely cool.

Link -via Gizmodo

Manliest Shaving Stand is Made of Welded Gears

Posted: 02 Jun 2012 11:00 PM PDT

Let’s shave old school. No, no, not the Bowie knife. That’s going a bit too far. But redditor awwbeans does use a safety razor, solid shaving soap and a lather brush. He needed a way to organize his gear, so he asked a friend to weld together spider gears and worm gears from his Toyota 4Runner.

Link -via Make

Whoops!

Posted: 02 Jun 2012 10:00 PM PDT

The Taxi agency’s ad for the Vancouver Aquarium reminds us that male seahorses gestate their young. A pregnancy test embedded in the bottom of urinals returns a (presumably false) positive result whenever a man uses it.

Link -via Super Punch

Resistor Cross Stitch

Posted: 02 Jun 2012 09:00 PM PDT

If you do a lot of electronic work, it may be handy to keep a color-coded resistor chart nearby. Becky Stern of Adafruit has you covered with this cross stitch sampler. You can find her pattern at the link.

Link -via Geekosystem

Little Mermaids around the World

Posted: 02 Jun 2012 08:00 PM PDT

Carl Jacobsen’s famous mermaid sculpture in Cøpenhagen harbor isn’t the only seaside mermaid statue. It has inspired many similar sculptures around the world, including this one in the estuary of Britain’s Dart River. You can view several others at the link. Content warning: artistic nudity.

Link | Photo: me’nthedogs

Angry Birds Ultimate Receiving Blanket

Posted: 02 Jun 2012 07:40 PM PDT

Angry Birds Ultimate Receiving Blanket – $27.95

Are you looking for the perfect baby gift for the absolute Angry Birds fan? You need the Angry Birds Ultimate Receiving Blanket from the NeatoShop. This fantastic premium cotton flannel blanket is soft, lightweight, and breathable. It is the optimum size for swaddling.  The Angry Birds Ultimate Receiving Blanket is available in Red, Bird, Blue, Bird and Yellow Bird. Buy 1 or buy all 3.

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Baby & Tots items.

Link 

Guitar Pee

Posted: 02 Jun 2012 07:00 PM PDT

Gotta pee? Urine for a treat! Men can now relieve themselves, strum a few chords, and play Micturition Hero with this: Guitar Pee, by Billboard Brasil. It's now "touring" the restrooms of various bars in São Paulo. Best yet, you can download "MPEE3" to your mobile phone.

Hit play or go to Link [vimeo] - via CNET

DNA Sans Font

Posted: 02 Jun 2012 06:00 PM PDT

Say it with love ... and DNA! Researchers from Harvard Medical School have made letters and wingdings out of DNA. Each one of the letter above is made from a single strand of the genetic material:

Each strand is unique, and folds to form a rectangular tile. When mixed, neighbouring tiles stick to each other in a brick-wall pattern, and shorter boundary tiles lock the edges in place.

In their simplest configuration, the tiles produce a solid 64-by-103-nanometre rectangle, but Wei and his team can create more complex shapes by leaving out specific tiles. Using this strategy, they created 107 two-dimensional shapes, including letters, numbers, Chinese characters, geometric shapes and symbols. They also produced tubes and rectangles of different sizes, including one consisting of more than 1,000 tiles.

DNA sans, anyone? Link - via Not Exactly Rocket Science

Alan Scott, the Original Green Lantern, Comes Out as Gay

Posted: 02 Jun 2012 05:00 PM PDT

Alan Scott, the original Green Lantern, is back. This time, DC Comics has a twist for comic lovers: Alan is back as a gay man.

Appearing in next week’s EARTH 2 #2, Alan Scott is the only Green Lantern of Earth 2. A team leader with a Type-A personality and an appetite for justice, Alan also happens to be homosexual. And while his origins won’t be shown in full detail until issue #3, we can tease that a traumatic event will serve as the catalyst for him assuming his superhero identity as The Green Lantern.

Alex Nagorski of DC Comics Blog explains: Link 

American Heads Are Getting Bigger

Posted: 02 Jun 2012 04:00 PM PDT

Anthropologists who examined 1,500 skulls dating back to the mid-1800s noticed one trend: American heads are getting bigger.

The researchers cannot pinpoint a reason as to why American head shapes are changing and whether it is primarily due to evolution or lifestyle changes.

"The varieties of changes that have swept American life make determining an exact cause an endlessly complicated proposition," said Lee Jantz. "It likely results from modified growth patterns because of better nutrition, lower infant and maternal mortality, less physical work, and a breakdown of former ethnic barriers to marriage. Which of these is paramount we do not know."

In a few short years, we'd all look like Mr Medulla (from Sky High, pictured above): Link 

Chicken Footstool

Posted: 02 Jun 2012 03:00 PM PDT

Which came first, the footstool or the egg? The designers at thecityfarmgirl answer unhesitatingly, “The egg.” These eggs, given time and proper care, grow into 12-inch or 17-inch footstools. They’re made of felt and are available in a variety of colors.

Link -via NotCot | Photo: Kara Kersten Design

Flerovium and Livermorium: New Elements in the Periodic Table

Posted: 02 Jun 2012 02:00 PM PDT

Let's welcome two new elements to the Periodic Table: Flerovium and Livermorium!

The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry officially approved names for the elements – which sit at slot 114 and 116, respectively — on May 31. They have until now gone by the temporary monikers ununquadium and ununhexium. [...]

In addition to providing new trivia for fifth-graders to memorize, the names honor the labs of their creation. Flerovium was chosen for Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions in Russia, a facility where many superheavy elements have been produced. The lab is named after physicist Georgiy N. Flerov, who discovered the spontaneous fission of uranium, which led to the USSR’s development of an atomic bomb.

Livermorium honors Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, which has been involved in the discovery of heavy elements 113 through 118. Another element, Lawrencium at 103, is already named after the lab’s founder, Ernest O. Lawrence.

Link

See also: Periodic Table Building Blocks over at the NeatoShop

O Fortuna, with Internet Memes

Posted: 02 Jun 2012 02:00 PM PDT

Many have heard O Fortuna, a medieval poem set to music and made famous by Carl Orff's Carmina Burana, but not many know what exactly it says.

Until now: YouTuber FamishedMammal enlightened us with this clever animated version, featuring many of the Interweb's most cherished memes.

Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - via Mashable

Old People Smell Really Does Exist!

Posted: 02 Jun 2012 01:00 PM PDT

Old people really do smell - that's right, science has proven that the elderly has body odor that is distinct from that of younger people.

The good news? Old people actually don't smell bad:

Research conducted at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia had 41 young people ages 20 to 30 sniff body-odor samples collected from 41 donors from three age groups: “young” (20-30 years old), “middle-age” (45-55) and “old-age” (75-95). They were asked to rate the scents’ intensity and pleasantness, determine which ones came from old donors, and estimate the age of each sample’s donor.

The samples were gathered via pads affixed to the underarms of T-shirts that the donors wore every night for five nights. Steps were taken to keep other smells, such as those from soap, detergent, cologne, medications or spicy foods, from skewing the scents. [...]

The young sniffers correctly identified the age groups from which the sample sets were taken. They were better able to guess the ages of the people from the old group than younger donors’ ages. And while they found the scents from the older people’s armpits distinctive, they didn’t find them unpleasant or intense.

At least not bad like the body odor of young and middle-aged people: Link

Shining Light Into Ears Can Stimulate The Brain

Posted: 02 Jun 2012 12:00 PM PDT

Here's something I bet you didn't know: you can stimulate brain activity by shining light ... into your ears!

Bright light stimulation was found to increase activity in brain areas related to processing of visual sensory information and tactile stimuli. The findings are the first ever published scientific article about functional modulation of the brain with bright light delivered to the brain through the ears. [...]

"The research results confirm that it is possible to influence brain functions with bright light delivered directly to the brain through the ear," says researcher TuomoStarck from the Oulu University Hospital. "The group that received bright light demonstrated in the analysis significant increase in neural network activity especially in brain areas connected with visual perception."

"There is earlier proof of the existence of photosensitive proteins, such as opsins, in the brain. This study confirms light-responsiveness of the brain itself, and that bright light given through the ear canal is a very viable method for influencing mood," says Professor and Leading Senior Physician Timo Takala from Oulu Deaconess Institute.

BRB! Getting a flashlight! Link - via Now What's Trending

Nicolas Cage Performing John Cage’s 4’33″

Posted: 02 Jun 2012 11:00 AM PDT

In 1952, American experimental composer John Cage composed what he considered to be his most important work, 4'33" ("four minutes, thirty-three seconds") which is basically about 4 minutes of silence in 3 movements (Cage's idea is that the ambient sound becomes the music).

Fast forward to 2012, where Adam Lucas took it to the next level. Here's Nicolas Cage performing John Cage's 4'33." See if you recognize all of the movies used.

Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - via Metafilter

Previously on Neatorama: Invisible Art 

Norway to Hire “Friends” for Mass Murderer

Posted: 02 Jun 2012 10:00 AM PDT

Ah, Norway. It has luxury prison for common criminals, island getaway for hardened ones, and now, it is looking to hire friends for a mass murderer.

That's right: the Norwegian prison where Anders Behring Breivik, who massacred 77 people - mostly children - last year, is being held, is trying to hire friends for him.

To avoid keeping the confessed killer in total isolation, the high security prison, northwest of Oslo, could let him play sports with the guards and hire someone to play chess with him, among other things, [prison director Knut Bjarkeid] added.

"We are planning a professional community around him, with employees and hired personnel," he told the paper.

Norwegian law forbids keeping prisoners in total isolation for long periods of time because it is considered an unduly cruel punishment.

Link (Photo: Krister Sorbo/AFP)

STEADYo

Posted: 02 Jun 2012 09:00 AM PDT


(vimeo link)

When we watch someone play with a yo-yo, we normally see the yo-yo move while the person is standing relatively still. Douglas Khozam reversed that view by using motion-tracking technology to make the yo-yo stationery while the operator does the moving around. Or, actually just the hands. The video really gets wild when it turns into a kaleidoscope! -via Laughing Squid

Guilt Trip Nifty Note

Posted: 02 Jun 2012 08:44 AM PDT

Guilt Trip Nifty Note – $3.95

Are you a very busy individual who does so, so, so much for others?  Don’t let time stop you from your obligation to remind people of their transgressions. You need the Guilt Trip Nifty Note from the NeatoShop.  The Guilt Trip Nifty Note provides 50 sheets of checkoff reminders that they NEVER:

  • Call
  • Write
  • Visit
  • Invite Me
  • Clean up
  • Arrive on time
  • Show support
  • Hang out
  • Recycle
  • Give me a ride
  • Listen
  • Apologize
  • Pick up the tab
  • Flatter Me
  • And fill in the blank

The Guilt Trip Nifty note is a fun guilty pleasure.

After all we’ve done for you the least you can do is check out the rest of the fabulous Stationary items at the NeatoShop. Seriously, they are amazing.

Link

The Cutest Proposal

Posted: 02 Jun 2012 08:30 AM PDT

How could anyone say no to this adorable kitten looking at you with those big eyes and offering you an engagement ring? Newly-adopted kitten Luke helped a thoughtful guy propose to redditor stenston’s sister. Link -via Buzzfeed

Queen Elizabeth II’s Fashion Rainbow

Posted: 02 Jun 2012 08:00 AM PDT

Queen Elizabeth II ascended to the throne of England upon the death of her father in February of 1952, but her official coronation took place on June 2, 1953. As Britain celebrates the Queen’s diamond jubilee, designated as this weekend, Chris Ritter put together a tribute showing the colorful range of her monochromatic outfits. See a larger version at Buzzfeed. Link

When “Find and Replace” Goes Wrong

Posted: 02 Jun 2012 07:00 AM PDT

Philip at Ocracoke Island Journal was reading War and Peace on an e-reader and marveling at how lightweight it made the heavy tome, when he found something peculiar.

As I was reading, I came across this sentence: “It was as if a light had been Nookd in a carved and painted lantern….” Thinking this was simply a glitch in the software, I ignored the intrusive word and continued reading. Some pages later I encountered the rogue word again. With my third encounter I decided to retrieve my hard cover book and find the original (well, the translated) text.

For the sentence above I discovered this genuine translation: “It was as if a light had been kindled in a carved and painted lantern….”

Someone at Barnes and Noble (a twenty year old employee? or maybe the CEO?) had substituted every incidence of “kindled” with “Nookd!”

Was is a nefarious effort in branding a certain e-reader at the expense of the other? Does it remind you of George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, in which history was regularly re-edited? Is this the future of publishing? Probably not, as an anonymous commenter pointed out:

This obviously wasn’t done by Barnes & Noble, but by the publisher who submitted the book to Barnes & Noble.

They created a Kindle version of this public domain book first, realized they used ‘Kindle’ somewhere in their submission, and did a quick find-and-replace to change ‘Kindle’ to ‘Nook’ – never once thinking it would affect the book’s text rather than just whatever they put in the title page.

Of course, the same mistake could go the other way, as “nook” is also a word used in literature now and again. Link -via Metafilter

Matt and Asia’s Minecraft Wedding

Posted: 02 Jun 2012 06:30 AM PDT


(vimeo link)

Matt and Asia are both avid Minecraft players. He even proposed to her onstage at MineCon! The wedding was beautiful and geeky -see lots of pictures at The Goodness. Link -via Boing Boing

This Week at Neatorama

Posted: 02 Jun 2012 06:00 AM PDT

Hi there, Neatoramanauts! This week, we experimented with a new way to present an original feature article, and now we’d like your feedback. David Israel wrote On Music: Beatlemania Week, which he called, at one point, a “week-long mini-series.” See, when you put them all together, it’s a list, the kind you see a lot of on the internet. But these stories about various Beatles songs were originally posted one at a time, over several days. The advantages of doing it this way are that each item gets the attention it deserves, it doesn’t look like a lot to read when you’re in a hurry, there’s no “second page” to click to, and everyone knows which item is being discussed in the separate comment threads. The disadvantage is that I haven’t figured out how to best promote the list, but that’s my problem, not yours. What do you guys think? Would you like to see more of this kind of thing? Of course, we also had our regular roster of exclusive features, too.

Jill Harness rounded up The 16 Funniest and Coolest Video Game Mods Ever.

Eddie Deezen ranked The Top Ten Botched Escapes from Gilligan's Island.

Kansas Is Flatter Than a Pancake. It’s been proven experimentally, as we learned from The Annals of Improbable Research.

Mental_floss magazine gave us Where Does Decaf Come From? …and Other Burning Questions About Coffee.

For Memorial Day, we featured The Story of The Lost Battalion from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader.

On the Neatorama Spotlight Blog, where we have more room for big pictures, we brought you Deep Fried Gadgets, an art project from Harry Hargreaves.

In the What Is It? game this week, the picture shows a wrench for turning the nut on the inner end of a tooth in the cylinder of a threshing machine. It even has a patent. The first one who knew that was Jerry K, who wins a t-shirt for his efforts! The funniest answer came from Allison, who said this is clearly to straighten 10-dollar bills. However, Allison did not select a t-shirt. You'll find more on this tool, and the answers to all of this week's mystery items at the What Is It Blog. Thanks to everyone who participated!

The post that got the most comments this week was Typing Two Spaces After a Period? You're WRONG! followed closely by Geologists Found Evidence of the Crucifixion of Jesus Earthquake. The difference between the numbers isn’t really enough to say that Neatoramanauts get more worked up about typography than religion, but both are hot buttons. Trailing far behind in third place was 50 States, 50 Sandwiches, 50 Posters. But you can still put your two cents worth in!

When you’ve caught up on everything else, be sure to check our Facebook page and our Google+ page every day for extra content, contests, discussions, videos, and links you won’t find on our main page. Also, our Twitter feed will keep you updated on what’s going around the web in real time. And remember, we always welcome your comments, feedback, and suggestions for making Neatorama ever better.

Game Of Thrones Theme on Squeaky Toys

Posted: 02 Jun 2012 05:30 AM PDT


(YouTube link)

With a little imagination (and more talent than I have) anything can be made into a musical instrument! YouTube member advaitnemlekar explains how this came about:

My dog was biting on the toys shown in the video and by chance he ended up making a tune which sounded like the game of thrones music.That turned into this.. The audio is indeed recorded on these very toys…from my phone and then auto-tuned to sound like the way it does.
Special thanks to my dog ‘Simba’ for allowing me to use his toys for this video..

-via Buzzfeed

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