Neatorama

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• They Say Raccoons Are Bandits for a Reason
• Synchronized Flushing of One Million Toilets Planned in Zimbabwe
• Nutella Banana Sushi
• Mind-Controlled Tail
• The World's Most Expensive Hotel Suites
• Emmy Speech Master Class
• Towering Jigsaw Puzzle Made of Stone
• Vintage Photos of Old-School Celebs in Drag
• Spider-Man Night Light
• Animated Cave Drawings
• Touchy: The Human Camera
• Curtain Door
• Marines Swap out a Car Engine in 42 Seconds
• Newly Divorced Woman Launches Old Wedding Ring into Space
• The Secret to Happiness and Productivity at Work
• 50 Years of the Jetsons
• Two New York Gentlemen Hailing a Taxi
• Cartoonist Makes World's Largest Hand Drawn Maze--But He May Not Get into the Record Books
• Stop Working and Love Me!
• Stormtrooper Crossbones Bifold Wallet
• Inside the Cockpit of the Space Shuttle Endeavor
• Archaeologists Find Stone Age Dental Filling
• The Feast
• Dubstep Music with Power Tools
• This Week at Neatorama
• Hide and Seek

They Say Raccoons Are Bandits for a Reason Posted: 23 Sep 2012 05:00 AM PDT (Video Link) That's the problem with cat doors -you never know who's coming in or out of them, or what they're going out of your house with. Via Pets Lady

Synchronized Flushing of One Million Toilets Planned in Zimbabwe Posted: 23 Sep 2012 04:00 AM PDT Severe drought conditions in Zimbabwe have caused a number of issues for larger cities, including blocked sewers (thanks to dry supply dams). To help alleviate the stinky situation, the city of Bulawayo has adopted an interesting strategy: synchronized flushing. Bulawayo City Council has asked its more than 1 million residents to flush their toilets simultaneously at 7:30 p.m. when water supplies are restored. City officials say "synchronized flushing" is needed to clear waste that would have accumulated in sanitary facilities which will have been affected by days of water outages. The practice isn't new; the first synchronized flush took place in the city two decades ago. However, local residents say they're largely unaware of today's planned event, as "the whole issue wasn't properly communicated to them." Link | Photo

Nutella Banana Sushi Posted: 23 Sep 2012 03:00 AM PDT You had me at Nutella, Inspired Housewife. Are crepes too frilly-sounding for your fam? Then roll a banana up with some Nutella inside of a crepe accentuate with a little bit more Nutella on top and voila -now it's Nutella banana sushi! Link

Mind-Controlled Tail Posted: 23 Sep 2012 02:00 AM PDT The geniuses at Neuroware previously made cat ears leap from anime to reality. Now they're back with an even more ambitious project: a tail that wags based on your mood. If you're happy, it wags vigorously. If you're upset, it droops. In either event, it will use GPS to tag your physical location as a happy or sad place. We have seen the future. And it is furry. Video Link -via Nerdcore

The World's Most Expensive Hotel Suites Posted: 23 Sep 2012 01:00 AM PDT Got a spare stack of hundreds lying around and don't feel like sleeping in your own bed tonight? The good news is that you can resolve both of these fist-world problems at the same time. The bad news is that you might have to take a flight or two to get to your destination. From a 4,ooo-sq ft suite in Hong Kong to a room that costs as much for one night as — oh, let's get creative here — 6,500 malaria-preventing mosquito nets, these are the world's priciest digs-by-the-night. Link Photo: The Peninsula Hotel, Hong Kong

Emmy Speech Master Class Posted: 23 Sep 2012 12:00 AM PDT (YouTube link) The most important performance of an actor's career is the Emmy Awards acceptance speech. So of course you must take lessons to get it right. Parker Posey stars in this short from the Emmy Awards, which will be broadcast Sunday. -via Irene's Internet

Towering Jigsaw Puzzle Made of Stone Posted: 22 Sep 2012 11:00 PM PDT Studio Gang Architects' Marble Curtain consists of 620 interlocking stone slabs stretching 18 feet high and weighing in at over 1,500 pounds. The stone chosen is transluscent and the pieces are only 3/8 of an inch thick, so the sculpture glows from interior lights. Marble Curtain is on display at the Smithsonian Institution's National Building Museum to help teach visitors about the science behind masonry. I suggest starting with the edge pieces and then working your way up. Link | Architects' Website

Vintage Photos of Old-School Celebs in Drag Posted: 22 Sep 2012 10:00 PM PDT This isn't a collection of Bosom Buddies stills obehind-the-scenes shots from all-male Broadway shows. Whether taken on Halloween or just another Tuesday, these are photos of notable cultural figures in crossdress. Check out Virginia Woolf and friends decked out as convincing Abyssinian dignitaries, F. Scott Fitzgerald in his pretties, and Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall as the least attractive woman and most beautiful man ever, respectively (above). Link   Photo: Philippe Morillon, 1978

Spider-Man Night Light Posted: 22 Sep 2012 09:00 PM PDT Spider-Man Night Light - $16.95 Are boogie men and things that go bump in the night keeping you from a good night sleep. Keep scary things at bay with the Spider-Man Night Light from the NeatoShop. Spider-Man is always there to swing into action and save the day night.  Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Night Lights and Fantastic Spider-Man items.  Link

Animated Cave Drawings Posted: 22 Sep 2012 09:00 PM PDT You thought movies were less than a couple hundred years old. Of course, zoetropes and other such optical toys go back hundreds of years. But archaeologist Marc Azema and French artist Florent Rivere say that prehistoric cavemen had their own way of making moving pictures! Cave paintings in Lascaux and other areas of France have animals with multiple heads and legs. This is a puzzle, until you imagine a Paleolithic storyteller waving a torch back and forth over the images to make... moving pictures! “Lascaux is the cave with the greatest number of cases of split-action movement by superimposition of successive images. Some 20 animals, principally horses, have the head, legs or tail multiplied,” Azéma said. Azema and other archaeologists have found small disks called thaumatropes which were carved from bone in Paleolithic times and acted as a crude, mini movie camera by tricking the eye. Azema thinks these artists used similar tools to create the drawings, which give us a glimpse at the first origins of what we know as cinema…and they did it well before those credited with the invention in the 19th century. The cave movies depended on persistence of vision, just like the later zoetropes and film projectors. See examples in a video at WebProNews. Link  -via Not Exactly Rocket Science

Touchy: The Human Camera Posted: 22 Sep 2012 08:00 PM PDT Oh, Japan. You are so weird/awesome. If, like artist Eric Siu, you've ever been jealous of a camera's charmed life, then you'll appreciate Touchy, a combination headgear-and-sensor setup that turns a person into human camera. Hold Touchy's sensor and his eyes/lenses open; hold for 10 seconds, and he'll take a picture of you, which you can view via LCD on the back of his head. Link -via kuriositas

Curtain Door Posted: 22 Sep 2012 07:00 PM PDT Hello Neatoramanauts, look at your front door, now back to this one. Now back at your front door. Now back to this. Sadly, your front door isn't the Curtain Door, designed by architectural firm Matharoo Associates of Gujarat, India: The massive door is made of 40 sections of thick Burma teak and sits between the entrance’s concrete walls. Each section has been carved to incorporate 160 pulleys, 80 ball bearings, one wire rope, and a hidden counterweight. When closed, the door just looks like a huge, horizontally slatted wood door. Push on the door and the wood feathers out into a beautiful curve, much like a curtain would. Design Milk has more pics: Link

Marines Swap out a Car Engine in 42 Seconds Posted: 22 Sep 2012 06:00 PM PDT (Video Link)  In this clip from the old TV show Record Breakers, six Royal Marines turned on and off the engine of a Ford Escort, took it out, put a new one in, then drove the car ten meters. ...in just 42 seconds. -via Yababoon

Newly Divorced Woman Launches Old Wedding Ring into Space Posted: 22 Sep 2012 05:00 PM PDT "We are never ever ever getting back together," says Taylor Swift, and recent divorcee Rebecca Gibbs of New Zealand, who sent her former husband's promises to love, honor and cherish into space on a small rocket. After giving away her wedding dress and other items symbolic of her failed union, Gibbs' plans for the ring were hazy until someone suggested she launch it off of the planet. For more about Gibbs, and a collection of other bizarre divorce stories, check out the piece on Huffington Post. Link | via-The FW Photo: NASA

The Secret to Happiness and Productivity at Work Posted: 22 Sep 2012 04:00 PM PDT The secret to unlocking happiness and productivity at work, according to Harvard Business School professor Teresa Amabile, is surprisingly simple. It's not the big wins, it's the small ones. And oh, yeah, you've got to keep track of them: Speaking at the 99U Conference, Amabile describes a study that analyzed thousands of daily diary entries from more than 200 professionals. The research showed that keeping track of challenges, successes, and other experiences enhanced creativity and motivation. Some of her tips: Don't make a big commitment to it; tell yourself you'll do it for just one month. Five to 10 minutes a day, focusing on just one project, one issue, that you want to work on. Pick a time in the day when you're likely to have about 10 minutes uninterrupted. It's a good idea if it can be the same time every day. Attach a reminder to that time. So if you want to do your diary before you leave work, you might set a repeating calendar alert for 15 minutes before you take off ... From Kasia Cieplak-Mayr von Baldegg of The Atlantic: Link Imma gonna pat myself in the back for finishing this post!

50 Years of the Jetsons Posted: 22 Sep 2012 03:00 PM PDT On September 23, 1962, 50 years ago Sunday, The Jetsons premiered on American TV. It was the first show ABC broadcast in color. Although the series only lasted one year in its initial run, it left more than one generation with the definitive vision of "the future." “The Jetsons” was the distillation of every Space Age promise Americans could muster. People point to “The Jetsons” as the golden age of American futurism because (technologically, at least) it had everything our hearts could desire: jetpacks, flying cars, robot maids, moving sidewalks. But the creators of “The Jetsons” weren’t the first to dream up these futuristic inventions. Virtually nothing presented in the show was a new idea in 1962, but what “The Jetsons” did do successfully was condense and package those inventions into entertaining 25-minute blocks for impressionable, media-hungry kids to consume. And though it was “just a cartoon” with all the sight gags and parody you’d expect, it was based on very real expectations for the future. As author Danny Graydon notes in The Jetsons: The Official Cartoon Guide, the artists drew inspiration from futurist books of the time, including the 1962 book 1975: And the Changes to Come, by Arnold B. Barach (who envisioned such breakthroughs as ultrasonic dishwashers and instant language translators). The designers also drew heavily from the Googie aesthetic of southern California (where the Hanna-Barbera studios were located)—a style that perhaps best represented postwar consumer culture promises of freedom and modernity. Paleofuture takes a close look at The Jetsons, in an introduction to a series of blog posts that will break down each episode. Link -via Metafilter

Two New York Gentlemen Hailing a Taxi Posted: 22 Sep 2012 02:00 PM PDT It's a dog eat dog world out there, but thankfully these gentlemen still know how to treat each other with respect, as Ron Senkowski filmed in New York City. There's no discernible audio in the video clip above, but I assume the two gents were saying "You go first", "No, you sir, go first. I inisist" and so on and so forth. Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - via Animal New York

Cartoonist Makes World's Largest Hand Drawn Maze--But He May Not Get into the Record Books Posted: 22 Sep 2012 01:00 PM PDT Joe Wos, a cartoonist, has long desired to get into the Guinness Book of World Records. As he neared his fortieth birthday, he formulated a specific record that he could set: the world's largest hand drawn maze. Wos approached Guinness with his idea: Guinness accepted Mr. Wos's proposal on condition that it be 10 square meters, or 107.6 square feet, drawn by him alone, with witnesses—five people are witnessing and signing off at regular intervals—and that it be solvable. It is this last requirement that is preventing Wos from completing the record. No one wants to take up the laborious task of solving the maze: "Let's face it, it will be a pain," acknowledges Mr. Wos, who estimates the task at 30 to 40 hours. There is also a slim chance he has inadvertently sealed the winning path. "I'm 99.4% sure it can be solved," he says. His 10-year old son is willing to try, but only for $20 per hour. Link -via Nag on the Lake | Photo: The Nation

Stop Working and Love Me! Posted: 22 Sep 2012 12:00 PM PDT (YouTube link) Cats are very good with body language. And they operate on the premise that it's always fine to ask for, or rather demand, what you want. -via Buzzfeed

Stormtrooper Crossbones Bifold Wallet Posted: 22 Sep 2012 11:59 AM PDT Stormtrooper Crossbones Bifold Wallet - $19.95 Is your wallet failing you? Forget replacing it with a clone. Upgrade it to the Stormtrooper Crossbones BiFold Wallet from the NeatoShop. This powerful men's wallet is made of soft vinyl and features a stormtrooper graphic.  Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more fantastic Star Wars items.  Link

Inside the Cockpit of the Space Shuttle Endeavor Posted: 22 Sep 2012 10:00 AM PDT Photo: Ben Cooper/Launch Photography I was locked inside the NeatoWarehouse yesterday and couldn't find my way out of the maze that is made of hundreds of new Halloween items, so I didn't get a chance to post about the Space Shuttle Endeavor arriving in Southern California. But surely you guys already know all about it. From the looks of it, everybody and their uncle have got photos of space shuttle on top of the Boeing 747 flying around California, but not everyone has got these gorgeous photos of the cockpit of Endeavor, all lit up for one last flight, except Ben Cooper of Launch Photography. Take a look and weep: Link - via Metafilter

Archaeologists Find Stone Age Dental Filling Posted: 22 Sep 2012 09:00 AM PDT In a cave in Slovenia, archaeologists found a human jawbone with intact teeth. One in particular captured their attention because it had a cavity filled in with beeswax. At 6,500 years old, this is the oldest dental filling ever discovered: While the beeswax may have been applied as a coating before the crack opened, or placed after death as part of a funeral ritual, the researchers think it was a filling. It looks like the cavity formed before the wax’s application, and it seems odd that a funeral ritual would have targeted a single tooth—no wax was placed on the other teeth, even those with some damage. This particular crack would have been a nasty, painful cavity, and the beeswax probably soothed the pain and insulated the damaged tooth from temperature changes and contact with food. Link -via Alex Knapp | Image: PLOS One

The Feast Posted: 22 Sep 2012 08:00 AM PDT Redditor Livinglife91 is an artist. She sculpted forks into these creepy shapes and made a tableau called "The Feast." You can see close-ups that tell the story at imgur. Link -via reddit

Dubstep Music with Power Tools Posted: 22 Sep 2012 07:00 AM PDT (Video Link)  Think of your local hardware store as a music store. With a few power tools, Mystery Guitar Man makes a mysterious object and music at the same time. -via NotCot

This Week at Neatorama Posted: 22 Sep 2012 06:00 AM PDT Aha! It's finally autumn! Or it will be at 10:49 AM Eastern time this morning. Your equinox may vary. I'm not sorry to say goodbye to the summer of 2012, as hot and dry as it's been. There were weeks at a time when no one went outside all day except to dash to the car because the 100+ degree heat would weigh you down like a brick. But I love fall. This one will be glorious! Did you notice the new green button at the top of the page here? That's your direct link to the new Neatorama blog called On the Origin of Success, shortened to just "Origin" for the button. Alex rolled it out last weekend with an introduction and the first featured origin involves, appropriately, the man who wrote On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin. "You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family" We'll be adding new stories on the beginnings of great careers, popular products, familiar customs, pop culture icons, and successful companies as we go along. What origin story would you like to see? Tell us what you're curious about, and we'll see what we can dig up and present on the new blog On the Origin of Success.  Another new feature I hope you're enjoying is Drawn to Facts, in which artists put their spin on a piece of trivia for your amusement and edification. Drawn to Facts appears every Sunday evening. We had a great batch of exclusive feature articles for you this past week. Tuesday was National Cheeseburger Day, so Jill Harness found us 11 of The Weirdest Burgers Ever. Jill also marked a special occasion on Friday with Happy Birthday to Bill Murray! Eddie Deezen looked into food history for 14 Memorable Meals and Menus. David Israel brought back some great photos from his trip to The Jet Propulsion Lab: Up-Close & Personal. He also promises interviews to come with the rocket scientists who are controlling the Mars Curiosity rover. I was pleased to tell you about The Medical Book: From Witch Doctors to Robot Surgeons, the latest book by Clifford A. Pickover. The Great Seattle Windshield Epidemic was a contribution from Uncle John's Bathroom Reader. The Annals of Improbable Research gave us the geekiest wedding post ever: Finding an Optimal Seating Chart. It's Good to Be King: 5 Monarchs Who Tipped the Scales came from a mental_floss book. Over at our Halloween blog, things are heating up. We brought out a couple of interesting articles from our archives: I Was a Teenage Monster Movie and The 10 Most Fascinating Tombs in the World. There will be more feature articles, both old and new, coming your way on Neatorama's Halloween blog! In the What Is It? game this week, the object in question is an electrical connecting device for neon signs for connecting the luminous tube electrode to an electrical conductor, patent number 2,072,042. The first person who knew that was Tofui, who wins a t-shirt! Although I suppose it could also make a good egg separator. The funniest answer came from ColShorts, who declared it to be The "One Cup At A Time" moonshine still. (Good to the last drop) ;). That's good for a t-shirt from the NeatoShop! Thanks to everyone who played, and thanks to the What Is It blog, where you can find quite a few mystery items every week and the answers on Friday. At NeatoBambino, we had posts about childhood gambling, geeky flash cards, and a cool Halloween costume for a visibly pregnant belly. The post with the most comments of the week was Should We Ban Father-Daughter Dances Because of Gender Discrimination? Nothing else came close. Here are the results of the poll attached to that post, which may change because you can still place your vote. If you're not already, we'd love for you to connect to Neatorama's social networking spots. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest for even more fun! What's coming up next week? Let's see, there's Yom Kippur, my birthday, and lots more great stuff here at Neatorama!

Hide and Seek Posted: 22 Sep 2012 05:00 AM PDT Is there any parent who hadn't tried this trick? Only my kids gave up long before the niece in this Twaggie. Wobbly Goggy illustrated a Tweet by Sixth Form Poet to create it. You'll find a new illustrated Tweet every day at Twaggies! Link

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