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2012/07/11

Neatorama

Neatorama

Abandoned Section Of Detroit May Become Zombie Theme Park

Posted: 11 Jul 2012 04:31 AM PDT

Parts of Detroit already seem like a scary place to visit, but add a zombie theme park and you’ve got a nightmare in the making.

Entrepreneur Mark Siwak feels that a zombie themed adventure might be just the thing to revitalize abandoned sections of Detroit, but to me it just sounds like a bad idea leading up to one hell of a lawsuit.

And what’s up with the childlike scribbles they’re calling concept art? I guess Mark’s kids are helping out with the development phase of Z-World Detroit.

Link  –via Geekologie

Fan Film – Indiana Jones And The Jungle Spider

Posted: 11 Jul 2012 03:24 AM PDT

(YouTube Link)

A very young fan of Indiana Jones asked his father to help him make this adorable fan film, in which young Logan plays Doctor Jones of course.

Watch as he searches for the elusive Tiki looking ceramic thingy missing from his collection, all the while trying to avoid being bitten by a rather nasty looking spider.

Oh, kids these days, what will they come up with next?!

–via Tastefully Offensive

The Psychedelic Works Of Keiichi Tanaami

Posted: 11 Jul 2012 02:23 AM PDT

These eye popping, neon colored illustrations are by Japanese artist Keiichi Tanaami, who wants to feed warped imagery to your head until it explodes!

Inspired by a trip to NYC in the 1960s, during which he had the good fortune to meet Andy Warhol, Keiichi went home with a head full of dreams and started creating these far out works of psychedelic art.

–via Juxtapoz

What Your Favorite Literary Characters Were Almost Named

Posted: 11 Jul 2012 01:53 AM PDT

Did you know Sherlock Holmes was almost named "Sherringford" Holmes? Or that Gandalf was almost “Bladorthin?”

Bladorthin the Grey? Yeah, not so much. But that seems to have been J.R.R. Tolkien's original thinking. In pencilled notes on early drafts of The Hobbit, Tolkien noted that "Gandalf" was the name of the chief dwarf and "Bladorthin" was, of course, the great wizard. After the author decided to switch the names around, Bladorthin became the name of a dead king who is mentioned just once in all of Tolkien's prolific writings.

There’s just something wrong about Bladorthin the Grey.

Link

Watch A Clam Use His Foot to Get Back in the Water

Posted: 11 Jul 2012 12:38 AM PDT

(Video Link)

Earlier, Alex posted a video of a clam “licking” up salt off of a table. As it turns out, the poor clam was actually trying to use its foot (they don’t have tongues) to climb back to safety. Here’s what it looks like when the creature isn’t just seasoning himself for someone’s dinner.

Via BoingBoing

A Browser Extension That Translates YouTube Comments

Posted: 10 Jul 2012 11:32 PM PDT

Let’s face it, YouTube commenter are some of the worst on the net (unlike most of you great Neatorama commenters), that’s why Tanner Stokes created Herp Derp YouTube Comments to hide all those idiotic comments by translating them into herp derp speak. If, for some odd reason, you want to read the actual comment, you can click on a comment to see what the person actually wrote.

Link Via BoingBoing

Lean with It

Posted: 10 Jul 2012 11:30 PM PDT

Paul Octavious’s series Lean with It shows people leaning parallel to trees that have grown at angles. I agree with Christopher Jobson, who suspects that the human subjects are actually falling.

Link -via Colossal

Game of Thrones Impersonator Is Surprisingly Good

Posted: 10 Jul 2012 11:00 PM PDT


(Video Link)

Steve Love is so good that he could dub over the dialogue from Game of Thrones and you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. Watch him impersonate Ned Stark, Robert Baratheon, Jon Snow, Varys, Littlefinger, Pycelle, Davos and Jorah Mormont.

I don’t remember all of the lines from the Jorah Mormont portion. Especially the last one. Maybe I stepped away from the screen at the wrong time.

Content warning: foul language. No nude scenes or gore, though.

-via Blame It on the Voices | Love’s Twitter Stream

20 Weird and Fantastic Fungi

Posted: 10 Jul 2012 10:27 PM PDT

Fungi are simply amazing in general, but these 10 species are so uniquely fascinating, they’re certainly worth reading about. For example, the false morel may look brainy like a morel and taste unbelievable when prepared correctly, but when it’s cooked wrong, the results  can be deadly.

Link

Animated Ode To YouTube Commenters

Posted: 10 Jul 2012 10:25 PM PDT

(YouTube Link)

This goofy animated short captures the statements made by archetypal YouTube commenters, and the state of their lives, rather perfectly.

Meet the colorful cast of characters who make the comments you love to hate as you wait for your video to load.

The only problem with this video – these guys are tame compared to the real thing!

(Barely NSFW due to one word)

–via BoingBoing

Bacon Spoon Rest

Posted: 10 Jul 2012 10:05 PM PDT

Bacon Spoon Rest - $7.95

Do you know someone who loves all things bacon? Get them the sinfully fun Bacon Spoon Rest from the NeatoShop. This mouthwatering dish is fashioned to look like a delicious strip of bacon.

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more fantastic Bacon items!

Link

 

Mapping the Politics of the Social Web

Posted: 10 Jul 2012 10:00 PM PDT

The folks at Engage used an analysis of Facebook likes to plot the political leanings of the users of various social networking sites. Its accuracy is anyone’s guess, but it is kind of interesting to see who cares more about what. You can click the graphic twice at the site to see the full-size version. Link -via Buzzfeed

Who Watches The Simpsons?

Posted: 10 Jul 2012 09:30 PM PDT

I suspect that the correct answer is “Fewer people than there were fifteen years ago.” Chris Weiermiller composed this mashup. I thank him for depicting Doctor Manhattan with pants.

Link -via Popped Culture | Artist’s Website

When Big Kitties Go for the Goal

Posted: 10 Jul 2012 09:10 PM PDT

(Video Link)

When paper mache soccer balls are given to lions and tigers, adorability ensues. Need proof? Just watch the video.

Via I Can Has Cheezburger

Game of Thrones for Math Nerds

Posted: 10 Jul 2012 09:00 PM PDT


(YouTube link)

If you are both a math nerd and a Game of Thrones fan, you’ll love this “song of ice and statistics” from Josh Sundquist. It’s a Vi Hart-style breakdown by numbers of the book series and the HBO show. -via The Daily What Geek

America: Land of the Anxious and Home of the Stressed

Posted: 10 Jul 2012 08:00 PM PDT

You'd be excused if you're feeling a bit anxious given today's economic outlook, but worrying has become a popular pastime for many Americans, even in good times.

Taylor Clark, the author of Nerve: Poise Under Pressure, Serenity Under Stress, and the Brave New Science of Fear and Cool noted that Americans are five times more likely to have anxiety than Nigerians, who face much more basic life-necessities problems.

But why?

In this article over at The Atlantic, Maura Kelly explores the reason why we've become a nation of worrywarts: you can blame our (broken) system of meritocracy!

The meritocratic pressure-cooker

The idea that we can accomplish anything we put our minds to is so pervasive that we often have a lot on our minds. We feel pressure to take on more responsibilities and to make the "right" choices -- and we beat ourselves up when we fail, as Princeton professor Anne-Marie Slaughter, the former director of policy planning for the State Department, wrote in this month's Atlantic cover story. "Millions of women feel that they are to blame if they cannot manage to rise up the ladder as fast as men and also have a family and an active home life (and be thin and beautiful to boot)," she wrote. And unsurprisingly, perhaps, women suffer from a number of anxiety disorders -- including generalized anxiety and panic attacks -- at a rate twice as high as that for men.

But men feel the heat, too. As McNamee puts it: "A reasonable argument could be made that the race to get ahead in America is particularly stressful. If Americans believe that individuals 'get what they deserve' based on their merit (innate abilities, having the right attitude, working hard, playing by the rules), then distain for the unsuccessful is seen as warranted." Comedian D.L. Hughley makes a similar point in his forthcoming book, I Want You to Shut the F#ck Up: How The Audacity of Dopes is Ruining America: "There's this American idea that we're a meritocracy, that people reach the top through the virtue of hard work and perseverance. But the flipside to that thinking is that the poor ... must be flawed, lazy, stupid, or whatever other terrible adjective you would like to use. They didn't work hard enough in some kind of way but had every opportunity."

Link - via IdeaFeed

Spaghetti Ice Cream

Posted: 10 Jul 2012 07:30 PM PDT

This culinary wonder isn’t spaghetti, but an ice cream sundae made to look like it. Spaghetti eis is a German creation dating back to the 60s. It consists of vanilla ice cream formed into noodles and topped with strawberry syrup.

Link -via Offbeat Home | Photo: gillyberlin

Hello Sonic the Hedgehog

Posted: 10 Jul 2012 07:00 PM PDT

If she can’t defeat Dr. Eggman through conventional means, she’ll just cute him to death. Sanrio and Sega unveiled this creation, the result of their latest forays into genetic engineering.

Link (Google Translate) -via Kotaku

P.S. This toy may not be available in the United States yet, but you can find lots of Hello Kitty and Sonic the Hedgehog items that are, thanks to the NeatoShop!

Spacefaring Worms Live Longer

Posted: 10 Jul 2012 07:00 PM PDT

Want to live longer? The good news is that all you have to do is move about 50 miles. The bad news? Straight up into space.

That is, if these scientific findings on the nematode C. elegans hold true for humans:

Spacefaring worms undergo genetic changes associated with longer lives in their Earth-bound cousins, research has shown.

A number of Caenorhabditis elegans worms were carried aboard a mission to the International Space Station (ISS) and brought back for study.

Researchers found reduced activity of five genes in the worms that, when suppressed in the species on Earth, lead to longer lifetimes.

Link

My Little Stormtrooper

Posted: 10 Jul 2012 06:30 PM PDT

Fluttertrooper can’t find those two droids, but he can find adorable bunnies for everyone back at the base to play with.

So suffice it to say that he’s not getting that promotion.

Link -via Fashionably Geek

The Fish With a Penis On Its Head

Posted: 10 Jul 2012 06:00 PM PDT

A newly discovered fish in the Mekong River in Vietnam has a, how shall we say this, unique male anatomy: its penis is on its head.

And the weirdness doesn't stop there:

Male priapiumfish don't have a penis like humans and other mammals. Instead they have a unique organ called a priapium, which faces backwards and looks like a muscular nozzle. It's actually a modification of the fish's pectoral and pelvic fins.

The priapium of P. cuulong has two attachments, both of which look frankly dangerous. At the bottom near the tip, there is a forward-facing serrated saw, or ctenactinium. Further forward, right under the head, there is a forward-facing rod called the toxactinium.

No one has seen P. cuulong mating, but based on observations of other species it's likely that the saw and rod are used for grasping the female during mating. One goes on either side of her head, holding her still while the male transfers his sperm.

Michael Marshall of New Scientists explains: Link

Previously on Neatorama: 30 Strangest Animal Mating Habits 

Poison Pocket Tin Box

Posted: 10 Jul 2012 05:12 PM PDT

Poison Pocket Tin Box – $5.95

Are you looking for a suitable place to store your most prized, and perhaps toxic, tiny possessions. You need the Poison Pocket Tin Box from the NeatoShop. This  humorous little hinged box will always keep people wondering what is inside.

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more splendid Money Banks & Storage Containers.

Link

Dog Mansions

Posted: 10 Jul 2012 05:00 PM PDT


Photo: La Petite Maison

Doghouses have gone a long way since the simple days of slapping together leftover boards in the backyard. At least for the 1-percenters. The kicker is, these dogs don't even live in them!

MANY of them have carpeting, heating and air-conditioning, indoor and outdoor lighting, elaborate music and entertainment systems. Some are even eco-friendly, with solar panels or planted green roofs.

In fact, the only superfluous accessory in the modern doghouse may be the dog.

Take, for instance, the Palladian-style mini-mansion that Glenna and Ed Hall bought at a charity auction three years ago for about $300. With Jeffersonian columns that match the ones on their home in Roanoke, Va., the two-foot-tall doghouse makes a perfect accent for the garden. No one seems to mind that the garden is off-limits to Maggie May, their 28-pound whippet-borzoi mix — least of all Maggie May.

“We bought the house because it looks a lot like our house,” said Mrs. Hall, 66, a retired interior designer. “Maggie’s never been in it. She’s a house dog.”

These dogs live better than me! Jennifer Kingson of The New York Times has the story of the world's most luxurious dog mansions, and the dogs who don't live in them: Link

Super Golden Friends

Posted: 10 Jul 2012 04:30 PM PDT


(Video Link)

Starring Bea Arthur as Batman, Betty White as Aquaman, Rue McClanahan as Superman and Estelle Getty as Robin. Kevin Bapp proposes that Cartoon Network pick up this show inspired by The Golden Girls. Four elderly superheroes retire to a home in Miami. It’s perfect. Mr. Bapp, you are a genius. I award you two Internets.

-via Nerdcore | Bapp’s Website

Artificial Retina for the Blind

Posted: 10 Jul 2012 04:00 PM PDT

Carnegie Mellon professor has developed a retinal prosthesis that restores sight to the blind:

"My group has created a micro-fabricated thin film that is inserted behind the retina of the human eye. From this thin plastic film, the width of an eyelash, flexible electrodes send stimulating current signals to retinal nerves. A miniature microchip located in a titanium package generates these stimulating currents. That package is attached to the patient's eye, and receives image signals from specially designed glasses worn by a visually impaired patient. My device works very much like a camera, replacing the function of the rods and cones of the human eye," Kelly said.

To the novice, the eye operates on the same principle as the camera - the only machine directly modeled on a sense organ. The eye, however, takes two simultaneous pictures, one in black and white, the other in color. Cells in the retina, called rods, register black and white only; they are so sensitive they can detect light as faint as 100-trillionth of a watt. Other retinal cells, the cones, are affected by color and are most abundant at the fovea, the place where the image falls when the eye focuses. The blind spot, lacking both rods and cones, is where the optic nerve leaves the retina, carrying the pictures for the brain to see.

It looks better than having a tooth planted in your eye: Link

Gift-Giving is the Secret of Successful Firefly Matings

Posted: 10 Jul 2012 03:00 PM PDT

The secret to mating, according to male fireflies (and undoubtedly applicable to many humans), is to give gifts to females. And now, scientists have found out the why:

Male fireflies, known for attracting mates with a flash of light, also seduce with a gift, say scientists.

This gifts comes in the form of a spermatophore: a package containing sperm and nourishment for the female.

Researchers from Tufts University in Boston, US, found that females preferred males that had the largest, most nourishing gift.

Link (Photo: Shutterstock)

Dog: Baby’s Best Friend by Preventing Infections

Posted: 10 Jul 2012 02:00 PM PDT

Woof! New research shows that a dog is not only man's best friend, it can also be a baby's best friend ... by preventing infections:

The study, posted online Monday and based on 397 children who lived in rural and suburban parts of Finland, examined whether contact with dogs and cats during a baby's first year offers any protection from respiratory tract infections, such as colds and resulting common ear infections. "The children having dogs at home were healthier, they had less ear infections and they needed less antibiotics," said Eija Bergroth, the study's lead author and a pediatrician affiliated with Kuopio University Hospital in Kuopio, Finland. [...]

One theory is dogs that spend a lot of time outside likely bring more dirt and bacteria inside the home compared with dogs and cats that spend more time indoors, she said. Researchers believe that exposure to dirt and bacteria builds up babies' immune systems.

Jennifer Corbett Dooren of The Wall Street Journal has the post: Link

Economic Mobility Across Generations in the USA

Posted: 10 Jul 2012 01:30 PM PDT

The Great Recession notwithstanding, can you still bootstrap yourway to success in America? After all, America is built on the idea of equal opportunity, regardless of economic status at birth. If you work hard enough, even if you were born in poverty, you too can be rich.

But is that reality? Analysis of intergenerational income and wealth by the Pew Center on the States revealed that even though most Americans have higher family income than their parents did, it's still tough to climb that economic ladder for some:

Pursuing the American Dream: Economic Mobility Across Generations, the latest research from The Pew Charitable Trusts, shows opportunity is not the same for everyone. While 84 percent of Americans have higher family incomes than their parents did at the same age, those born at the top and bottom of the income ladder are likely to stay there as adults.

"The ideal of the American Dream is complex and we see again that one’s ability to achieve it is impacted by race, education, and family background,” said Erin Currier, manager of Pew’s Economic Mobility Project.

Pursuing the American Dream uses the most current data to measure mobility by family income and family wealth, furthering the project’s understanding of how closely tied a person’s place on the economic ladder is to that of his or her parents. The research shows that:

- African Americans are still less likely to exceed their parents’ income and wealth than are whites and they are more likely to be stuck at the bottom of the economic ladder across a generation.

- A four-year college degree promotes upward mobility from the bottom and prevents downward mobility from the middle and the top.

- Most sons are meeting or exceeding the earnings of their fathers at the same age. However, the sons’ earnings represent a smaller proportion of family income than did men’s earnings in the fathers’ generation.

Link 

So, Do You Believe in Global Warming Now?

Posted: 10 Jul 2012 01:00 PM PDT


More than 2,000 highest max temperature records across the USA were
broken in July 2012. Source: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/National Climatic Data Center)

No, I won't ask whether it's hot enough for ya, as I'm sure you've heard that many times before. But how about if we ask you the next best thing: so, do you believe in global warming now?

Bryan Walsh of TIME Magazine wrote:

This isn't to say that climate change is directly causing the extreme heat that's been suffocating much of the U.S. this summer. Fingerprinting a single extreme weather event as evidence of global warming — be it a heat wave, a major storm, a drought or a flood — take years of intensive study, though researchers are beginning to make those connections. A 2011 study in Nature made waves by linking rising instances of extreme precipitation in the second half of the 20th century to man-made global warming — the kind of large-scale survey that needs to be done to make the climate change case authoritatively. The sheer number of factors that influence individual weather events is immense. But we do have a pretty good idea of what climate change will look like in the years to come — if it continues uninterrupted — and it will look a lot like this summer, this spring and this winter. "The frequency of hot days and hot periods has already increased and will increase further," says Oppenheimer. "What we're seeing fits into the pattern you would expect."

Link 

LEGO Rolls-Royce Jet Engine

Posted: 10 Jul 2012 12:30 PM PDT

Meet the Rolls-Royce of LEGO creations: an astounding half-scale jet engine made out of over 150,000 bricks, complete with 160 separate engine components:

Rolls Royce’s Trent 1000 powers the Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft in real. However, the British automaker has revealed its half-sized lego model at the Farnborough International Airshow. The model is deemed as one of the most complex lego model ever made.

The lego structure of the Trent 1000 that took four people eight weeks to construct shows the intricate craftsmanship and working of the complex engine. It took 152,455 Lego bricks to make 160 separate engine components that once joined gave form to an exact half replica of the engine that weighs 307 kg and measures over two meters long and 1.5 meters wide.

More at Auto Chunk: Link - Thanks Vinod! 

Why Airline Food is So Salty

Posted: 10 Jul 2012 12:00 PM PDT

That's a scanning electron micrograph of dissolved salt by Signe Emma, who used it to illustrate the reason airline food (remember that? You'd have to travel abroad to eat airline meals nowadays) is so salty:

At 30.000 feet the cabin humidity drops by 15%, and the lowered air pressure forces bodily fluids upwards. With less humidity, people have less moisture in their throat, which slows the transport of odours to the brains smell and taste receptors. That means that if a meal should taste the same up in the air, as on ground it needs 30% of extra salt.

Link - via Fast Company and It's Nice That

Why Dog Loves to Chew Bones

Posted: 10 Jul 2012 11:30 AM PDT

Why do dogs love to chew bones? Because they've got the jaws to do it, a new research studies confirmed. Joao Munoz-Doran of the National University of Colombia explains:

"And after many generations of this grouping behaviour, there are new selective pressures on their [skull shape]," said the researcher.

This pressure meant that animals with larger teeth and stronger jaws were more likely to succeed in hunting, and to survive to pass on their large-toothed, strong-jawed genes to the next generation.

"They developed strength in their muscles - especially the muscles that close their mouth," said Dr Munoz-Doran.

"And bones that are more resistant to bending, so they could support the mechanical strains of biting the prey.

"Over time, they became adapted to be 'hypercarnivorous'."

The researcher pointed out that domestic dogs had "very good evolutionary reasons to enjoy chewing a bone".

"They have the tools to do that," he told BBC Nature, "and they want to use their tools."

Victoria Gill of BBC Nature has the story: Link

Get Crap Done Pen

Posted: 10 Jul 2012 11:08 AM PDT

Get Crap Done Pen – $13.95

You are responsible. You are determined. You are drowning in work. Get motivated and tackle your overwhelmingly large To-Do list with the Get Crap Done pen from the NeatoShop.  This hilarious pen comes printed with the text “Get Crap Done.” The box includes additional motivational texts like:

  • Mightier Than Chaos
  • Show The World Who’s Boss

Now stop procrastinating and get out there and do some work!

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more Great Office & Desk items and great Back To School gear!

Link

Girls Have More Math Anxiety Than Boys

Posted: 10 Jul 2012 11:00 AM PDT

If the thought of a math test has you breaking out in sweats, you'd be glad to know that it's actually a medical condition called "mathemetics anxiety" and that you're not alone.

Math anxiety is a vicious circle: having math anxiety hurts performance in math, which makes the sufferer even more anxious and so on.

Now, new research shows that girls have more math anxiety than boys:

"These results might suggest that girls may have had the potential to perform better than boys in mathematics, however, their performance may have been attenuated by higher levels of (mathematics anxiety)," the research team from the University of Cambridge and the University of Oxford write online today (July 9) in the journal Behavioral and Brain Functions. [...]

They found that test anxiety was also linked to poor mathematics performance, but this link was stronger for girls than boys.

Wayne Parry of LiveScience explains: Link

Dance Move or Colorful Term for the Runs?

Posted: 10 Jul 2012 10:30 AM PDT

Today’s Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss may make you giggle or cringe. You’ll be given 13 words or phrases, and you decide whether each is a dance move or a slang term for diarrhea. And to increase the difficulty, the guesses are also given in slang (although they don’t change)! I got eleven of them right, some by educated guessing. Link

Clam Licks Salt Off the Table

Posted: 10 Jul 2012 10:01 AM PDT

Love salt? So does this clam*, which uses its ridiculously large tongue** to eat some salt off the table. Hit play or go to Link [YouTube]

*Clams don't really like salt, but they love wine
**It doesn't have a tongue either, so stop writing that "Dear Neatorama, you're wrong" email. My inbox is full.

Share It Maybe

Posted: 10 Jul 2012 09:30 AM PDT


(YouTube link)

I’ve encountered a gazillion parody versions of the Carly Rae Jepsen hit song “Call Me Maybe,” but skipped posting them because, well, there’s so many of them. But who could resist Cookie Monster singing about the possibility of sharing …a cookie? -via Buzzfeed

What Would Happen If You Tried to Hit a Baseball Pitched at 90% the Speed of Light?

Posted: 10 Jul 2012 08:59 AM PDT

If the question "What would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90% the speed of light?" has been keeping you up at night, you'd be pleasantly surprised that Randall Munroe of xkcd has devoted a lot of time researching the answer:

I sat down with some physics books, a Nolan Ryan action figure, and a bunch of videotapes of nuclear tests and tried to sort it all out. What follows is my best guess at a nanosecond-by-nanosecond portrait:

The ball is going so fast that everything else is practically stationary. Even the molecules in the air are stationary. Air molecules vibrate back and forth at a few hundred miles per hour, but the ball is moving through them at 600 million miles per hour. This means that as far as the ball is concerned, they’re just hanging there, frozen.

The ideas of aerodynamics don’t apply here. Normally, air would flow around anything moving through it. But the air molecules in front of this ball don’t have time to be jostled out of the way. The ball smacks into them hard that the atoms in the air molecules actually fuse with the atoms in the ball’s surface. Each collision releases a burst of gamma rays and scattered particles.

These gamma rays and debris expand outward in a bubble centered on the pitcher’s mound. They start to tear apart the molecules in the air, ripping the electrons from the nuclei and turning the air in the stadium into an expanding bubble of incandescent plasma. The wall of this bubble approaches the batter at about the speed of light—only slightly ahead of the ball itself.

Read what happened when the ball reaches the batter a fraction of a second later, over at xkcd: Link - via metafilter

A Rare Film Program for Fritz Lang’s Metropolis

Posted: 10 Jul 2012 08:30 AM PDT

The 1927 film Metropolis is hailed as a masterpiece of cinematic art, and any surviving ephemera associated with it is very valuable. An original poster for the movie sold for $690,000 in 2005! There are only three known original programs from the London film premiere still in existence. One of these has been scanned for your enjoyment.

Not only a list of cast and crew, it includes eleven short pieces on the making of the movie, commentary from the director and cast, and numerous production photographs and film stills, many attractively arranged as modernist collages. One of the most interesting sections shows in parallel columns how a passage of film scenes was adapted from the novel of the same name by Lang's wife, Thea von Harbou.

You can read the whole program at The Cataloguer’s Desk. Link

Student Debt Suicides

Posted: 10 Jul 2012 08:00 AM PDT

There are no hard statistics about the number of suicides linked to student debt, but once the question is asked, many debt-ridden former students admit to thoughts of ending it all. And we know that the rate of suicide rises during times of unemployment and economic crisis. Take the story of 47-year-old John Koch, who has a law degree, but works as a painter and lives with his parents.

Koch originally borrowed $69,000 in 1997. The majority of that money was loans for law school, seemingly, he says, to “better myself.” After he graduated from Touro Law School, Koch struggled to find steady employment and eventually he defaulted on his loans. He was immediately slapped with $50,000 in penalties. For years, he had been filling out deferment forms every six months to buy himself more time but in 2009, Sallie Mae declared him in default. At the time of this writing, Koch owes over $320,000. That sounds staggering but it’s hardly unusual. Once a person defaults on a student loan, the balance grows exponentially, with interest compounding on interest, penalties and fees. By the time he “retires,” in 23 years, Koch figures he will owe close to $1.9 million. He can’t get even subprime credit, he tells me, and it’s not like there’s any way out of his trap: student loan debt cannot be absolved through bankruptcy.

Koch struggles with suicidal thoughts and admits to self-destructive behavior, such as heavy drinking and cigarettes. Eventually he channeled those feelings into a blog that draws more readers each month. In January of 2012, though, the Suffolk County police paid his parents an unpleasant visit to inquire about their son’s suicidal comments and posts

Link -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Flickr user CampusGrotto)

North Africa and the Middle East

Posted: 10 Jul 2012 07:30 AM PDT

You’ve heard it said that war is nature’s way of teaching us geography. I prefer map games myself, but I must admit that the news media taught me about the Middle East. We first posted this map quiz on North African-Middle Eastern countries from Rethinking Schools four years ago -how much have you learned since then? Link (via TYWKIWDBI)

Barbecue Chip Bandits

Posted: 10 Jul 2012 07:00 AM PDT


(YouTube link)

A theft of potato chips in Saanich, British Columbia, got a press conference and some serious TV news coverage. However, Police Sergeant Jantzen understandably had a hard time keeping a straight face. -via The Daily What

Parking Spaces for Men and Women

Posted: 10 Jul 2012 06:30 AM PDT

Gallus Strobel, the mayor of Triberg, Germany, a small town in the Black Forest, has discovered a surefire shortcut to international publicity: political incorrectness. A city parking garage has unveiled parking spaces designated for male and female drivers.

Unlike the 12 spaces set aside for women, which are wider, well-lit, and closer to the exit, the men's spaces require the driver to pull in at an angle, and avoid hitting cement pillars. They are an "attraction" for any ambitious driver, Strobel told the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung.

"But men are, as a rule, a little better at such challenges," he told the paper.

Strobel, 58, who says he has parked in the spaces three times, admitted that "of course, there are also great women drivers!" He told the paper that when he came to the idea, he knew it would challenge "political correctness." But he says he has received mostly positive feedback from his stunt.

Link -via Arbroath

TV Dinner Gumballs

Posted: 10 Jul 2012 06:14 AM PDT

TV Dinner Gumballs – $3.45

Don’t have time to sit down to a hearty microwave meal? You need the TV Dinner Gumballs from the NeatoShop. This fantastic gumball set tastes like a delicious TV dinner feast. It is perfect for when you can’t spare the 5-minutes it takes to make a truly delectable frozen meal.

Each TV Dinner Gumballs tin comes with 3 mouthwatering flavors: buttered corn, roast beef, and apple cobbler. Yum!

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more hilarious Mints & Candies!

Link

Levitating Light

Posted: 10 Jul 2012 06:00 AM PDT


(YouTube link)

Chris Rieger, a student at the University of Queensland in Australia, combines a wireless power transfer system with some powerful magnets to get a light bulb to float in the air while shining brightly. Just imagine what this will do for the future of home decor! -via The Daily What Geek
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