Neatorama

Get Down Little Porcupine
Jason Segel, Jack Black and Will Ferrell as the Hitchhiking Ghosts
Why Hemingway Used to Dress As A Girl
Punched Ticket Art by Mia Liu
What Happens When You Electrify Plants?
Z Machine: Meet the X-Ray Generator That Can Melt Diamonds
Walter White’s Lab Safety Chart
Circles Optical Illusion
Wealth Distribution: America or Equalden?
The Ultimate In Absurd Dog Luxury
Prescription Rx Shot Glasses
Steam of Consciousness
Penis Snake
Baby’s First Butcher Shop
To Err is Human, To Really Foul Things Up Requires a Computer: Trading Firm Lost $440 Million in 45 Minutes Due to Software Bug
Talking Turkey
24 Photographs of Abe Lincoln Being Awesome
CLOP
6-Year-Old Gives 10 Reasons Not to Vote for Obama
Things to Recall About Total Recall
Affirmation Bandages
Magic Arms
20 Great Geeky Wedding Invitations
Deep Water
Count the Photoshop Disasters
Almost 5,000 Flip Flops Wash Ashore On Chili Beach
How Skyrim Should Have Ended
3 Historical Food Fights

Get Down Little Porcupine

Posted: 03 Aug 2012 08:01 PM PDT

(Video Link)

Talk about a party animal, this little guy not only has some sweet moves, he even has his own theme song.

Via I Can Has Cheezburger

Jason Segel, Jack Black and Will Ferrell as the Hitchhiking Ghosts

Posted: 03 Aug 2012 08:00 PM PDT

For its new ad campaign, Disney engaged famous photographer Annie Leibovitz to feature comedians Jason Segel, Jack Black and Will Ferrell as the Hitchhiking Ghosts from its Haunted Mansion ride.

Yahoo's Shine blog has the behind the scenes photos: Link

Why Hemingway Used to Dress As A Girl

Posted: 03 Aug 2012 07:30 PM PDT

It sounds almost slanderous to accuse someone as manly as Ernest Hemingway to have ever worn women’s clothing, but it’s true -even if it wasn’t actually his choice. You see, Ernest’s mother always wanted to have twins, so when Ernest was born only 18 months after his older sister, mummy dearest decided that was close enough:

Submitting to her twin fantasies, she started dressing Ernest up in Marcelline's old clothes, despite the fact that they were little girl's clothes—lacey white dresses with pink bows and the like. Soon his mom was buying two of everything and dressing her children in identical pink gowns and flowered hats. She would refer to the kids as her "sweet Dutch dollies" and actually tell strangers that they were her twin girls. To perpetuate the twin fantasy, Grace even held Marcelline back a year in school so that she and Ernest would be in the same grade together. Oh, and his mother so treasured the fantasy of Ernest being a little girl that she sometimes referred to him as "Ernestine."

If you’ve ever wondered why the author placed such an importance on masculinity, hopefully that bit of trivia will help answer your question.

Link

Punched Ticket Art by Mia Liu

Posted: 03 Aug 2012 07:00 PM PDT

Photo: Mia Liu/Flickr

Taiwanese artist Mia Wen-Hsuan Liu took thousands of admission tickets to the Guggenheim Museum and punched holes into them to create this wonderful piece of art.

Photo: Mia Liu/Flickr

Check out more at her Flickr page: Link - via Pulmonaire

What Happens When You Electrify Plants?

Posted: 03 Aug 2012 06:19 PM PDT

If you’re photographer Robert Buelteman, you get absolutely gorgeous works of art. Of course, it’s not just a matter of hooking a plant up to a battery. Buelteman shocks the plants with 80,000 volts of electricity and then uses a fiber optic wire to light paint the image, making it look even more shockingly beautiful.

Link Via Laughing Squid

Z Machine: Meet the X-Ray Generator That Can Melt Diamonds

Posted: 03 Aug 2012 06:00 PM PDT

Photo: Randy Montoya/Sandia National Laboratories/SPL

Diamond is one of the hardest material in nature, but it's no match for the Z Machine at the Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It can create electromagnetic pulse that is strong enough to light 100 million light bulbs and melt diamonds:

First the current is fired at hundreds of tiny tungsten wires, vaporising them to form a cloud of charged particles, or plasma. The plasma produces a magnetic field that forces the particles to line up at the centre of the machine, so that they point out of the horizontal plane of its surface, along the vertical or z-axis - hence the machine's name. This arrangement causes the particles to collide, producing exceptionally powerful X-rays.

Z's magnetic field can also be harnessed to accelerate metal plates and squish materials. In fact, Sandia researcher Marcus Knudson was able to apply over 5 million times atmospheric pressure to squeeze diamond, turning the precious stone into a puddle.

Link

Walter White’s Lab Safety Chart

Posted: 03 Aug 2012 05:08 PM PDT

99% of all infographics are made by companies trying to get links to their websites, but that last 1% are often fantastic, like this one, by artist Kevin Tong, depicting all the rules one must follow while working in Walter White’s meth lab in Breaking Bad. The chart is so perfect it actually looks like something that could hang on the lab wall, just so it can be referenced whenever Jesse messes up again. Don’t miss the full chart at the link.

Link Via io9

Circles Optical Illusion

Posted: 03 Aug 2012 05:00 PM PDT

I saw this on @Todd_Roy earlier today via @DiscoverMag, who wrote "Oh this? Its nothing, just a picture of 2 perfectly round concentric circles that ur brain will refuse to see."

Of course, I had to confirm immediately: See it for yourself

Wealth Distribution: America or Equalden?

Posted: 03 Aug 2012 04:00 PM PDT

Photo: Reuters

The ongoing debate of one-percenters versus the rest of us notwithstanding, what is the ideal wealth distribution for America?

To find out, Dan Ariely, author and Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics from Duke University, and his team asked over 5,000 Americans to create a wealth distribution that's ideal to them. Surprisingly, the result is about equal across gender, income, and political affiliation. That's right - both Democrats and Republicans chose the same:

[We] asked people to choose between two unidentified distributions (again under the veil of ignorance). The first option, unbeknownst to participants, reflected the distribution of wealth in America. For the second option we modified the distribution found in Sweden, making it substantially more equal (we referred to this fictional nation as "Equalden").

We discovered that 92% of Americans preferred the distribution of "Equalden" to America's. And if one were to assume that the 8% who preferred America's distribution was made up of wealthy Republican men, he or she would be mistaken. The preference for "Equalden" was slightly different for Republicans and Democrats, and in the expected direction, but the magnitude was very small: 93.5% of Democrats and 90.2% of Republicans preferred the more equal distribution. While this 3.3% difference is substantial when we think about the economy of an entire country, if we look at it from the perspective of the gap between Equalden and the U.S., it's clear that the similarity across the political spectrum is far more substantial than the differences. And once again, participant's gender and income level did not produce any appreciable difference in this preference.

The True Original

Yes, the movie that was released today is a reboot of the original, but even the 1990 Total Recall that most people are familiar with was based on a short story by Philip K. Dick. The story, called “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” was first printed in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in April of 1966.

While the story is somewhat similar to the movie, script writers had a difficult time adapting the story to film, so they ended up changing things drastically. The real short story centers around a man named Douglas Quail (in the movie he's Douglas Quaid) who wants to visit Mars, but can't afford it. So instead he goes to a company called REKAL Incorporated that can implant memories into the brain.

Unfortunately, when they do so, they release hidden memories in Quail's mind when they find out that Quail is really an undercover government assassin who knows tons of dangerous secrets. Quail then heads home to collect evidence that these new memories are real, spurring the government to go after him.

In the end, the assassin surrenders and agrees to be implanted with new memories that he is a hero who saved the world from an alien invasion at age nine. Just before he goes under though, Quail reveals that this is actually a fact and something that should never be revealed.

Of course, the brilliance of the story is the intermingling of the character's factual history with those implanted and the idea that if we start implanting memories, how will we ever know what is or is not true?

Making The First Film

The writers of Alien, O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett, bought the rights to Dick's short story while the author was still alive. Unfortunately, they couldn't find a backer for the film and the idea ended up passing from studio to studio before producer Dino De Laurentiis picked it up in the mid-80s. His original ideas for the lead actor? Richard Dreyfuss or Patrick Swayze –just imagine how different the film would have been with either of these two in Arnold's place! In fact, Schwarzenegger even approached the producer about letting him star in the film and De Laurentiis refused.

Eventually De Laurentiis dropped the project as well, leaving an opening for Arnold to swing in and snap it up. Schwarzenegger convinced Carolco Pictures to buy the rights to the movie and managed to negotiate a contract that not only afforded him $10 million and fifteen percent of the profits, but also veto power over the producer, director, screenplay, co-stars and promotion. While he may not be listed as a producer, Arnold was definitely played one of the most important roles in getting the movie made.

After the script went through more than forty changes through a full decade, it's no wonder that the movie ended up being a bit different than Dick's original story. Even so, the basic idea of a mild-mannered man finding out he's a spy when visiting Rekall to get a memory implant of a trip to Mars remains the same. A lot of the changes were made to give the plot more complexity so it would be able to hold viewer's attention for almost two hours, so really it makes sense that the writers added in massive, ongoing conflicts on Mars, a love story, additional confusion about which memories are implanted, the survival of an entire population, and more. And, of course, it's Arnold, so it also makes sense that they added in a lot more violence and explosions. (I'm really trying to leave out as many spoilers as possible here).

Speaking of violence, the movie was originally so violent that it was rated X! The movie had to be cut and parts of it were reshot so it could get an R rating instead.

Adaptations of An Adaptation

Total Recall did so well that there was actually a sequel written based on another short story by Philip K. Dick, "The Minority Report." It would have been interesting to see Arnie in that one too.

So even though the movie was already based on a short story, author Piers Anthony ended up turning it into a novel. In the novel version, Anthony removed all question of whether or not the events were real or a fantasy, which really upset a lot of fans who felt that was one of the coolest things about the movie.

There were also a few video games based on the movie, a computer game by Ocean Software that was pretty popular, and a widely panned NES version made by Interplay.

In 1999, ~~a pilot was shot for~~ they made a prequel to the movie called Total Recall 2070. ~~Unfortunately for fans of the story, it was never turned into a real show~~. If you just can't bear without seeing more of Douglas Quaid then you can also always check out Dynamite Entertainment’s comic book adaptation that continues the story.

What About The Reboot?

Well, I haven't seen it yet so I can't give you a full rundown of the differences between the two movies, but I can tell you that while the 1990 peaks after Douglas visits Mars for real, he never even goes to Mars in the new version. The film is also said to have a number of pointed political messages that aren't in the earlier version. It’s also PG-13 instead of R. In fact, it sounds just as different from the other film as either story is from the original short story.

Instead of conflicts raging on Mars, the new movie focuses on conflicts on Earth. Still, the main plot focuses on Quaid visiting on Rekall, discovering he once was an agent and struggling to figure out what is really happening.

Interestingly, it turns out that Arnold was vying for the role of the lead character in the remake before Colin Farrell was cast. Personally, I'm glad he wasn't cast –if you're going to reboot a story, you need to work to keep it different from the original. Casting Arnie would just make it too similar to the 1990 version.

So what about you guys? Do you like the original? Do you think the new version will be any good? And if you've read “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale," how do you think the movie(s) have held up to the original story?

Sources: Wikipedia #1, #2, #3, IMDB #1, #2 and eNotes

Affirmation Bandages

Posted: 03 Aug 2012 08:42 AM PDT

Affirmation Bandages – $4.95

Are you in a funk? Don’t let minor wounds keep you down. Heal thy self with Affirmation Bandages from the NeatoShop. Nothing fixes a boo-boo like the power of positive thinking and a yellow smiley face. You are 100% awesome!

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more positively wonderful Health and Wellness items.

Link

Magic Arms

Posted: 03 Aug 2012 08:30 AM PDT

(YouTube link)

Emma Lavelle was born with arthrogryposis multiplex congenita (AMC), which means she does not normally have the strength to lift or use her arms. The WREX system is an exoskeleton that aids in supporting the weight of the limbs, and enabled Emma to do things she she couldn’t before. But it wasn’t small enough to be of much use to a 2-year-old. Engineer Tariq Rahman and research designer Whitney Sample of the Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children used a 3D printer to custom-make a WREX in Emma’s size, and you can see in the video how much that means. Link -via Metafilter

20 Great Geeky Wedding Invitations

Posted: 03 Aug 2012 08:00 AM PDT

If you believe weddings should be more personal than traditional, you’ll love some of the ideas couples have for sharing their happiness with the geeky interests they have in common. In a collection at Oddee, you’ll find custom-made wedding invitations that place the wedding couple in comic books, apocalyptic scenarios, science fiction worlds, video games, movies, and even board games! Link

(Image credit: redditor TheLocoYoko)

Deep Water

Posted: 03 Aug 2012 07:30 AM PDT

(YouTube link)

Sure, it looks funny that people are hanging out in boats when another guy is only ankle deep. This is one of the reasons that people distrust journalists, but there is an explanation. The “deep water” that requires a boat to cross is probably too difficult to set a camera in, so the boats were places in a shallower area for “illustration purposes.” So, what do you think: is this staging an example of journalistic “cheating” or just another way to tell a story? The flood was a couple of years ago in New Jersey. -via Arbroath

Count the Photoshop Disasters

Posted: 03 Aug 2012 07:00 AM PDT

The model is lovely, but everything around her is a mess! I don’t know how many actual Photoshop mistakes this image has because they seem to run into each other, but it’s fun looking for them all. Learn more about it at Photoshop Disasters. Link

Almost 5,000 Flip Flops Wash Ashore On Chili Beach

Posted: 03 Aug 2012 06:30 AM PDT

In an epic display of environmental cleanup, volunteers gathered almost 5,000 flip flops (thongs to Australians) that had washed up on the shore of Cape York’s Chili Beach in Queensland.

It took marine conservation group Tangaroa Blue Foundation nearly a week to clean up the entire beach, and flip flops weren’t the only things gathered, although from the look of the photos they make up the overwhelming majority of the mess.

I’m pretty sure a similar pile could be found on most beaches here in California. I wonder how many complete pairs were found?

Link –via Laughing Squid

How Skyrim Should Have Ended

Posted: 03 Aug 2012 06:00 AM PDT

(YouTube Link)

I’m pretty sure that the hardcore gamers in the world have gotten their fill of the video game Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, but in case you’re waiting for the perfect time to pick up this epic gaming experience you should skip this spoiler-ish video and buy the game already!

The rest of us who’ve spent plenty of time in Skyrim will enjoy this animated short instead, which is part of the ongoing Machinima series How It Should Have Ended.

–via Tastefully Offensive

3 Historical Food Fights

Posted: 03 Aug 2012 05:09 AM PDT

Any group of malcontents can dress up like American Indians and toss tea into a harbor to protest unfair taxation. But how many armies have actually mobilized over food? Real food—as in, "Leggo my Eggo … or I'll send in the troops!" The answer? Not that many. Nevertheless, here are a few of history's greatest culinary-based conflicts.

First Course: The Bovine Brouhaha

Grab a fork and a knife (and a rifle, if you've got one). First up on the menu is The Grattan Massacre, a bloody clash between American Indians and U.S. troops that played out in 1854 in the Nebraska Territory, just east of what is now Laramie, Wyoming.

If you thought Mrs. O'Leary's cow was bad news, consider what the cow that wandered away from a Mormon pioneer train on the Oregon Trail started. The rabble-rousing bovine clomped its way into a camp inhabited by the Lakota Indians, one of seven tribes that made up the Great Sioux Nation. Not being ones to turn down a free lunch, the Lakota promptly killed the presumably abandoned cow and ate it.

That might not seem like a big deal, but in the mid-1800s, few peace pipes were being passed between American Indians and new settlers. So, when the cattle owner realized the fate his cow had met, he immediately went to tattle his tale at the Territory's nearest outpost of officialdom, Fort Laramie. In response to the incident, U.S. officials dispatched an eager young second lieutenant and recent West Point graduate named John L. Grattan to bring the cow thieves to justice.

What happened next underscores the downside of history's insistence on naming events only after they happen. Had John L. Grattan known he was riding off to The Grattan Massacre, it seems likely he might have conducted himself more civilly with the Sioux. Instead, Grattan's approach would later prompt a fellow Fort Laramie officer to comment, "There is no doubt that Lt. Grattan left this post with a desire to have a fight with the Indians, and that he had determined to take the man at all hazards."

Conquering Bear

With nearly 30 men in tow, Grattan met with the Brule Lakota chief, Conquering Bear, and demanded the surrender of the guilty parties. By most accounts, Conquering Bear was open and reasonable during the negotiations, and it was Grattan's behavior that escalated tensions. At some point, Conquering Bear stood up, and nervous U.S. soldiers—thinking the chief was making a move—opened fire, killing Bear and his brother. Warfare quickly broke out on both sides, and Grattan's entire party perished.

When news of the event reached the U.S. War Department, officials sought swift revenge on the Sioux. A little more than a year after the Grattan Massacre, on September 3, 1855, General William S. Harney and roughly 600 soldiers caught up with the Lakota tribe. Harney ordered his men to open fire, and nearly 100 Lakota men, women, and children were shot dead in what became known as the Battle of Ash Hollow. (Apparently, 30 Army men being killed equals a massacre, while 100 Sioux being killed equals a battle. Ain't history grand?)

Second Course: The Breadfruit Battle Royale

History often depicts the infamous mutiny on the Bounty as a power struggle between Captain William Bligh and his crew. But it wasn't about that at all. It was about breadfruit.

On August 16, 1787, 33-year-old Lieutenant William Bligh was named commander of the Bounty. Two months later, the ship was commissioned to sail to Tahiti, pick up some breadfruit plants, and deliver them to the West Indies, where it was hoped they would provide a cheap food source for slaves. It was a simple shopping trip, but one that seemed to go awry almost immediately. Weather conditions around Cape Horn were so bad that the Bounty was forced to detour across the Indian Ocean, prolonging the journey nearly 10 months. Once the ship finally arrived in Tahiti, the dastardly breadfruit were no longer in season. Bligh and his crew had no choice but to hang out there for five months and await the harvest. Of course, there are worse places to get stuck than Tahiti, and the boys of the Bounty took full advantage of the delay. Bligh allowed his men to live onshore, where they tended the breadfruit plants and "mingled" with the native ladies. Needless to say, discipline lapsed, and when it came time to set sail again, much sulking occurred.

Once more aboard the Bounty, the crew became further upset when they discovered how much room the breadfruit required. The ship carried some 1,015 potted plants in a large cabin beneath the deck, creating crowded conditions that caused an already percolating situation to boil over. On April 28, 1789, Bounty mate Fletcher Christian and nine supporters staged a mutiny.

Although bloodless, the incident was far from friendly. Bligh and 18 others were forced into a tiny 23-foot launch boat and abandoned at sea. The group first landed at nearby Tofua, but the island's inhabitants didn't take kindly to strangers. One of Bligh's launchmates was stoned to death by natives, and the exhausted band had to set sail again on May 2. Making like MacGyver, Bligh captained the launch through a harrowing 43-day, 3,600-mile voyage to Timor using only a sextant and a pocketwatch. There, they finally found safe harbor.

Bligh and crew eventually made their way back to England and reported the mutiny on March 16, 1790. Eight months later, the Pandora sailed to Tahiti to find the mutineers and the Bounty (a pursuit that supposedly spawned the term "bounty hunting"). Unfortunately, that mission didn't go so well, either. After the ship's crew rounded up 14 stragglers from the Bounty and imprisoned them in a cell (cleverly named "Pandora's Box") on the top deck of the ship, the ill-fated Pandora sank on the Great Barrier Reef.

Bligh was eventually tried and acquitted for losing his ship, and he went back to work. In 1791, he received another commission—to collect breadfruit plants. This time, he succeeded in bringing the fruit to the West Indies, but—irony of ironies—the slaves didn't like the taste and refused to have anything to do with them. Today, breadfruit growers of the world unanimously consider this the funniest thing ever to happen.

Third Course: Fishy Fisticuffs

(Image credit: Flickr user Brian Gratwicke)

At first blush, cod don't seem like provocative creatures. And yet, these bulbous, fleshy fish have brought NATO allies Iceland and Great Britain to the brink of war no fewer than three times in the past 50 years. Unimaginatively, these incidents are popularly known as The Cod Wars.

The root of the problem in all these tiffs has been Iceland's enormous surplus of nothingness. The frosty island nation has no real fuel, minerals, or agricultural prospects. What they do have is the world's oldest functioning legislative assembly—the Althing, first convened in 930. But, as anyone who's tried to eat or sell a functioning legislative assembly will tell you, they bring little to the party. With nowhere to turn but offshore, Iceland turned to fish. In fact, it's estimated that fish and fish products have long accounted for more than 90 percent of the country's exports.

The first two Cod Wars (one in 1958 and the other from 1972 to 1973) were sparked when Iceland unilaterally decided to expand its fishing boundaries, arguing that it should be allowed to cordon off any areas deemed fit to protect its chief resource. Great Britain's counterargument was, in essence, "Hey, we like fish too!" Ultimately, these "wars" were about as mild as cod itself, consisting mostly of threats, net cutting, and lots and lots of salty language.

A ramming incident during the Third Cod War. (Image credit: Wikipedia user Issac Newton)

The third Cod War, however, got a bit nasty. In 1975, Iceland deployed 16 ships to enforce control over its fishing territories. In response, Britain floated its own armada of nearly 40 vessels to the area to protect its trawlers as they continued to fish the contested waters. All the while, shootings, sabotage, and rammings were had by all. After seven months of skirmishes, Iceland finally got so bent out of shape it threatened to close its NATO base at Keflavik—a measure that would have compromised NATO's ability to defend the Atlantic from Soviet incursion. That's when NATO Secretary General Dr. Joseph Luns stepped in. On June 2, 1976, he brokered an agreement between the nations that limited the British fishing fleet to 24 ships and granted Iceland the right to halt and inspect British trawlers suspected of violating the agreement. In response, the British threatened an embargo on all Icelandic goods, but then remembered there were no Icelandic goods to embargo. Then they all had tea.

________________________________

This article by Christopher Connolly is from Vol 5, Issue 4 of mental_floss magazine. It is reprinted here with permission.

Don’t forget to feed your brain by subscribing to the magazine and visiting mental_floss‘ extremely entertaining website and blog today for more!

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