Neatorama

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• Clever Bird Goes Fishing
• Lord of the Ring's Rivendell In LEGO
• Tag, You're It!
• This Wedding Brought to You By Gears of War
• Everybody Jump
• <i>My Little Pony</i> Carved Pipes
• "It's Not His Fault"
• A Hunter S. Thompson Board Game
• Footprints Bring a Tree to Life
• Obama vs. Romney Slugging it out on the Cover of The Atlantic
• Biblical Theme Park Outfits Donkeys with Wi-Fi
• R.I.P. Neil Armstrong
• Pencil Nunchucks
• Amazing Twilight Sparkle Automaton
• Moth Trails at Night
• Gangnam Style is Actually Subversive
• Meat America
• Ribbon Eel
• The Bermuda Triangle for Pigeons
• Famous Architects Dressed as Their Buildings
• World Record for the Longest Basketball Banked Shot
• Sushi Art
• Look At That Amazing Flittering Nose Action!
• How Your Grandpa Got His LOLs
• The Baked Potato Taco
• Kid Snippets: Salesman
• Vulture Hook Pillow
• A Pizza Burrito Wha-Wha-What?
• This Week at Neatorama
• A Wild Game of Soccer

Clever Bird Goes Fishing Posted: 26 Aug 2012 05:00 AM PDT (YouTube link) He has no rod or reel, but he certainly has the right bait! -via Say OMG

Lord of the Ring's Rivendell In LEGO Posted: 26 Aug 2012 04:00 AM PDT Talk about an epic LEGO build, this incredible Lord of the Rings design took over 50,000 blocks to create and weighs an amazing 120 pounds. Link Via i09

Tag, You're It! Posted: 26 Aug 2012 03:00 AM PDT (Video Link) A kangaroo and a lemur playing tag? Stranger animal friendships have happened. Via I Can Has Cheezburger

This Wedding Brought to You By Gears of War Posted: 26 Aug 2012 02:00 AM PDT Who knew retro lancers are not only good for slaughtering grubs, but also for cutting wedding cakes? Now that's such a romantic way to share your mutual appreciation for a video game. Link Via That's Nerdalicious

Everybody Jump Posted: 25 Aug 2012 11:00 PM PDT People ask the question every once in a while, "What would happen if everyone on Earth jumped at the same time?" Sometimes they are specific in saying everyone on one side of the Earth. The short answer is: nothing. But Randall Munroe at xkcd explains that while the Earth wouldn't move, there are a lot of other things that would happen as a result of this stunt. Link -via Bad Astronomy

<i>My Little Pony</i> Carved Pipes Posted: 25 Aug 2012 10:00 PM PDT ArgtheAvatar carved beautiful pipes with the visages of Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash. He used Mediterranean briar, a hardwood commonly used in pipe carving. Let's give him a double brohoof. He's more than earned it. Link

"It's Not His Fault" Posted: 25 Aug 2012 09:00 PM PDT You have to feel sorry for redditor MechaArif. He had a birthday with a party and a nine-year-old ate the entire birthday cake. It was my birthday and my friends and family were over, which included my distant cousin and her 9 year old overweight son. We just got done with the pizza and were about to go eat the cake when we walk in on the 9 year old (who i'll call Jake). Jake had eaten all the cake and had frosting on his hands and around his mouth. Of course right then Jake's mom comes in and says stuff like "It's not his fault" and "why is the cake out anyway?". Right then I told her "Get out, NOW." and she said that she wouldn't because AND I QUOTE, "It's not ONLY your birthday MechaArif, it's all of ours too." after that my mom stepped in and told her she needed to leave. Luckily we had a second cake and ate that instead. Unluckily for me it had no frosting, but unluckily for her she's not getting any Christmas presents. So here I am after my party, venting this on Reddit. His story is the first in a huge thread where he invited people to tell the stories of parents who defended the most outrageous behavior from their children. After reading some of the stories (reading them all would take quite a while), tell us if there have been anything similar in your experience. I can't recall any parent ever defending a child's bad behavior to me, but then I haven't worked among the public in many years. Link (Image credit: Flickr user Solo)

A Hunter S. Thompson Board Game Posted: 25 Aug 2012 08:00 PM PDT Live your life like Hunter S, Thompson did, and you could find yourself arrested, wealthy, loved by fans, insane, lauded as a genius, or dead. Who wants to take those chances? It's much safer to pretend you're Hunter S. Thompson with the board game modeled on his best-known book, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It comes with fake drugs and explores their effects and interactions. Take a look inside the game developed by Jonathan Baldwin at InventorSpot. Link

Footprints Bring a Tree to Life Posted: 25 Aug 2012 07:00 PM PDT The China Environmental Protection Foundation hired the DDB China Group to encourage people to walk rather drive in order to reduce pollution. So DDB placed an enormous canvas across a street intersection. Pedestrians stepped into a mat filled with washable green paint. As they crossed the street, their footprints painted leaves on the tree. Link | DDB China Group

Obama vs. Romney Slugging it out on the Cover of The Atlantic Posted: 25 Aug 2012 06:00 PM PDT The Atlantic wanted to do create something different for its September 2012 cover, and got the idea to picture Obama slugging it out with Romney in the ring. Should be simple, right? Well, 9 hours of photo shoot with Obama and Mitt look-a-likes and 15,000 photos later, they've got it. Luke Hayman explains the making of The Atlantic's magazine cover in this behind-the-scene tell-all: Link - via coverjunkie

Biblical Theme Park Outfits Donkeys with Wi-Fi Posted: 25 Aug 2012 05:00 PM PDT For it is written: And the Lord activated the Wi-Fi signal of the ass, and she tweeted unto Balaam, What have I done unto thee, that thou hast smitten me these three times? And so, 3,500 years later, the Kfar Kedem park in northern Israel maintains that tradition by offering visitors a look back into the past while connecting them to the modern world: A device slung around the donkey's neck like a feedbag is actually a wi-fi hotspot. [...] Visitor Peter Scherr accessed the Internet while touring the Galilee hills to do some donkey fact-finding with his family. "It has been used as a working animal for 5000 years," said the New York native, reading from a Wikipedia page on his iPad. "There are more than 40 million donkeys in the world . That's a lot of donkeys!" [....] "I don't miss any news," Scherr said. "I send pictures back to my family while I'm having fun on the donkeys." Link -via Dave Barry | Photo: AP

R.I.P. Neil Armstrong Posted: 25 Aug 2012 04:00 PM PDT Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the surface of the moon, has died. He gave the world a quote on that occasion on July 20, 1969, that will live in history:  "That is one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind." Armstrong's family released a statement through NASA. Here is a small portion: Neil Armstrong was also a reluctant American hero who always believed he was just doing his job. He served his Nation proudly, as a navy fighter pilot, test pilot, and astronaut. He also found success back home in his native Ohio in business and academia, and became a community leader in Cincinnati.   He remained an advocate of aviation and exploration throughout his life and never lost his boyhood wonder of these pursuits.   As much as Neil cherished his privacy, he always appreciated the expressions of good will from people around the world and from all walks of life.   While we mourn the loss of a very good man, we also celebrate his remarkable life and hope that it serves as an example to young people around the world to work hard to make their dreams come true, to be willing to explore and push the limits, and to selflessly serve a cause greater than themselves. The cause of death was complications after a cardiovascular procedure. Armstrong was 82. Link -via mental_floss (YouTube link)

Pencil Nunchucks Posted: 25 Aug 2012 03:00 PM PDT We've featured the incredible pencil carvings of Dalton M. Ghetti before on Neatorama, but I'm blown away to find his latest creation: pencil nunchucks. From Dalton's website: To create his sculpture, he holds the pencil in his hand under a strong light source (table lamp or sunlight) and carves it mostly with a sewing needle and a very sharp, triangular, small, metal blade. He works at very small intervals: 1 to 2 hours maximum per day whenever he gets inspired. He works very slowly by removing specks of graphite at a time. It therefore takes months or sometimes years to complete a sculpture. Link - via Incredible Things

Amazing Twilight Sparkle Automaton Posted: 25 Aug 2012 02:00 PM PDT (Video Link)  Turn the crank of renegadecow's automaton. My Little Pony's Twilight Sparkle reads and turns the page while Spike puts books away: Twilight Sparkle loves to read. And she's just so cute when she's at it! A passion for literature is something I share with this adorkable pony and so the idea for an automaton of her came to me rather easily. Like Twilight says, "Reading is for everypony..." Link -via My Little Pony Crafts

Moth Trails at Night Posted: 25 Aug 2012 01:30 PM PDT Steve Irvine captured this amazing long exposure photo of moth trails at night. The National Geographic explains: Fluttering wings leave lacy trails as moths beat their way to a floodlight on a rural Ontario lawn. The midsummer night’s exposure, held for 20 seconds, captured some of the hundreds of insects engaged in a nocturnal swarm. Link - via Twisted Sifter

Gangnam Style is Actually Subversive Posted: 25 Aug 2012 01:00 PM PDT We've told you about the South Korean viral hit Gangnam Style by K-Pop musician Park Jae-Sang. The song with the silly "let's ride an invisible horse" dance move actually belies a subversive message. Max Fisher of The Atlantic explains: This skewering of the Gangnam life can be easy to miss for non-Korean. Psy boasts that he's a real man who drinks a whole cup of coffee in one gulp, for example, insisting he wants a women who drinks coffee. "I think some of you may be wondering why he's making such a big deal out of coffee, but it's not your ordinary coffee," U.S.-based Korean blogger Jea Kim wrote at her site, My Dear Korea. (Her English-subtitled translation of the video is at right.) "In Korea, there's a joke poking fun at women who eat 2,000-won (about $2) ramen for lunch and then spend 6,000 won on Starbucks coffee." They're called Doenjangnyeo, or "soybean paste women" for their propensity to crimp on essentials so they can over-spend on conspicuous luxuries, of which coffee is, believe it or not, one of the most common. "The number of coffee shops has gone up tremendously, particularly in Gangnam," Hong said. "Coffee shops have become the place where people go to be seen and spend ridiculous amounts of money." Link

Meat America Posted: 25 Aug 2012 12:30 PM PDT Americans love meat, that's for sure. So surely they'll love the meat-based art by photographer Dominic Episcopo. Meat lovers, I give you: Meat America! More awesome photos over at Dominic's website, Meat America, and his Facebook page. Take a look!

Ribbon Eel Posted: 25 Aug 2012 12:00 PM PDT This is the most amazing thing you'll see today: a ribbon eel filmed swimming in the oceans off Lembeh, Sulawesi, Indonesia. Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - via Ever So Strange

The Bermuda Triangle for Pigeons Posted: 25 Aug 2012 11:30 AM PDT If you're a pigeon fancier in England, then you probably already knew about the mysterious "Bermuda Triangle" area encompassing Thirsk, Wetherby and Consett: In the latest episode, only 13 out of 232 birds released in Thirsk last Saturday by a Scottish pigeon racing club made it back to Galashiels in the Scottish Borders. [...] Scottish pigeon racer Austin Lindores said: “When they fly down to the Thirsk, Wetherby and Consett area we call it the Bermuda Triangle because something always seems to happen. Theories include summer rains that send the birds off course, high solar activity that distorted the magnetic fields the birds use to navigate, problems with birds of prey, and even signals from a local monitoring station. Link What say you, Neatoramanauts? What do you think caused the birds to go missing in the Bermuda Triangle of pigeons?

Famous Architects Dressed as Their Buildings Posted: 25 Aug 2012 11:00 AM PDT It was 1931--the skyscraper era. At a ball in New York City, architects dressed as buildings they had designed: L-R: A. Stewart Walker (Fuller Building), Leonard Schultze (Waldorf-Astoria), Ely Jacques Kahn (Squibb Building), William Van Alen (Chrysler Building), Ralph Walker (1 Wall Street), D.E.Ward (Metropolitan Tower), Joseph H. Freelander (Museum of New York). Link | Photo: Ely Jacques Kahn, Architect by Jewel Stern and John A. Stewart

World Record for the Longest Basketball Banked Shot Posted: 25 Aug 2012 10:30 AM PDT (Video Link)  David Crawford of Eagleville, Missouri banked a basketball off a gym wall and landed it in a basket 42 feet away. Can you beat him? -via The Presurfer

Sushi Art Posted: 25 Aug 2012 10:00 AM PDT The American Kid asks, "Do you sushi what they did there?" I do, I do! Link -via That's Nerdalicious!

Look At That Amazing Flittering Nose Action! Posted: 25 Aug 2012 09:30 AM PDT (Video Link) What an adorable little mush face. It's like a puddle of Jell-O that jiggles even more as he breathes. Via Cute Overload

How Your Grandpa Got His LOLs Posted: 25 Aug 2012 09:00 AM PDT Those of a certain age will recall "gag boxes," which are little jokes hidden inside a small box. You gave (or just showed) them to people like a greeting card. Irving Fishlove, founder of H. Fishlove and Co. novelties, popularized the little boxes in the 1920s and '30s. Collector's Weekly talks to novelty collectors Mardi and Stan Timm about gag boxes. Collectors Weekly: What’s with the toilets? Mardi: Toilets were Irving Fishlove’s thing. Well, anything to do with elimination, really. Fishlove focused on toilets when, in 1924, TootsieToy started making doll-house furniture using a new injection-molding process. One of the items they made was a toilet. When Fishlove looked at that toilet, he didn’t see doll-house furniture. He saw funny. And so he started making all kinds of gags using this little toilet. The beauty of it was that Fishlove could use the same toilet in any gag box. His strategy was pretty ingenious, actually. He would just order tons of these toilets for gag boxes. All he had to do was change the wording on the box. For example, we have one that looks like a stop sign in a stand, and it says, “Parking Limit 30 Minutes.” And when you open it up, there’s a toilet inside. Of course, gag boxes weren't limited to toilets -any joke would do, as you'll learn in the interview, along with plenty of pictures to illustrate the concept. Link

The Baked Potato Taco Posted: 25 Aug 2012 08:30 AM PDT Feeling a little guilty after binging on tacos night and night again? Then consider replacing the shell with a  baked potato and feel filled up twice as fast with something that's not deep fried. Yummy!!!! Link Via That's Nerdalicious

Kid Snippets: Salesman Posted: 25 Aug 2012 08:00 AM PDT (YouTube link) Now, this is real improvisational theater, with a twist. Kids are given a vague scenario, such as "pretend to be a salesman and a customer" in this case. Then adults act out what came up. There's a series of these Kid Snippet videos by BoredShortsTV. Link -via Metafilter

Vulture Hook Pillow Posted: 25 Aug 2012 07:30 AM PDT Vulture Hook Pillow - $47.95 Are you hunting for a way to add life to your dying home decor? You need the Vulture Hook Pillow from the NeatoShop. This beautiful hand-hooked decorative pollow features your favorite scavenging bird.  Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more frighteningly fabulous Home Decor items! Link

A Pizza Burrito Wha-Wha-What? Posted: 25 Aug 2012 07:30 AM PDT Can't decide between your two favorite drunk foods and you're too darn jacked up to make a decision? Then why not get the best of both worlds and enjoy a pizzarito? In case you're wondering, it contains Italian-style tomato-filled rice, mozarella and the meats or veggies of the chef's choosing. Link

This Week at Neatorama Posted: 25 Aug 2012 07:00 AM PDT Look! Look! Up there! It's a leaderboard! The new feature at the top of the page shows you important things you should read here at Neatorama: open contests you can enter and win, exclusive articles, and particularly hot posts that may have aged off the front page. How handy! Try it out: just click on any of the pictures to go to the post it describes. Use the arrows on either end to find more featured items. With the leaderboard here at all times, this weekend column might be shorter or possibly unnecessary, but you know we'll always find a way to give you the information you need. Here's what went on this past week. Monday was a special date in history, so Jill Harness wrote Celebrating The Life & Birthday of H. P. Lovecraft. Our pop culture historian Eddie Deezen had two articles this week: Goldfinger: the Bond Movie That Was Banned in Israel, and The Embarrassing Magical Mystery Tour Party. Alex put together the explanations of The World's Most Complex Borders. The Resistance of Astronomers to New Paradigms was a funny personal story dressed up in science from the Annals of Improbable Research. Uncle John's Bathroom Reader gave us Artificially Sweetened: The Story of Canned Laughter. And 9 Weapons That Failed Spectacularly (and 1 That Possibly Didn’t) came from mental_floss magazine. In the What Is It? game, the little hatchet-looking thing is actually a cigar box opener. The notch is for removing nails. The first commenter who knew that was just a guess, who wins a t-shirt from the NeatoShop! The real clue was at the What Is It? blog, where you'd read that it was only a few inches long. The funniest answer was from GlenW, who said, "Years after George Washington became famous for chopping down that cherry tree his less known cousin Hank started making and selling these as souvenirs to tourists at The White House during Washington's presidency." For that, he also wins a t-shirt! Find out the answers to all the mystery items of the week at the What Is It? blog, and stay tuned for the next What Is It? game at Neatorama. Pinterest is a popular image-based social network you should try out. Whether you are a new or established Pinterest user, you can win great prizes in the Neatorama 'Pin To Win' Contest! You'll find the contest instructions in the post. Good luck! The post that got the most comments was 10 Millenials Say Thanks But No Thanks to Cars and Houses. The only other posts that got any comments to speak of at all were the contests. Are you intimidated by the new comment system? Have you put off registering a Neatorama account? You needn't be afraid. We won't spam you. The registration system is only to keep the spammers and abusive commenters out. YOU are certainly welcome in! And sooner or later we are going to roll out rewards for commenters, and you'll want to be ready when that happens! The instructions for, and the benefits of, registering with Neatorama are right here. So, are your kids back at school yet? Schedules vary so much across the United States. The great thing about online shopping is that web stores cater to a worldwide customer base. At the NeatoShop, you'll find kid's school items, office stuff, and geeky giftsall year 'round, so if you want something really special and personal for your kids to take to  school, you can find it at the NeatoShop.

A Wild Game of Soccer Posted: 25 Aug 2012 06:00 AM PDT (YouTube link) It's the muntjac deer and the kangaroo vs. the team of two lemurs! Will Mojo the soccer star deer get the ball past the lemur guard and onto the porch goal? The crowd is on the edge of their seats. The lemur is distracted. The deer is determined. Who will win? This video is from Exotic Experience in Orlando, Florida. -via Buzzfeed

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