Neatorama

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• Reading Textbooks for Pleasure
• Pacific Rim: The Cake
• Instagram Cake
• Visualization Madness
• Japanese Prison Creates Cuddly Mascot to Improve Its Image
• Shaun vs Zombies
• Danny DeVito in Gears of War
• Batman, Foster Care Provider
• Prescription Nifty Note
• A Pack of Pandas Invade Curry
• A Modern Trailer for Monty Python and the Holy Grail
• Hyder, Alaska: The American Town That's Secretly Canadian
• Zach Anner's Workout Wednesday
• Lamps Made from Carved Eggshells
• To The Humans of This House: A Single Mom's House Rules
• Sixty Years in Five Minutes
• NASA Mashups
• 5 Crazy New Man-Made Materials
• Lovecraftian Darwinism
• Zombie Banana Costume
• We Want Your Most Memorable Halloween Costume
• A Lovely Haunted Mansion Painting Cosplay
• Ballpoint Barber
• The Sweet And Sour Chicken Cone
• Eating Goldfish with a Treadmill
• Meanwhile On Flickr: Dogs Gone Camping
• Batman and Captain America Save Cat from Burning Home
• TARDIS Clock
• Twerking Girl Revealed
• This Minimalist Children's Book Hides Some Cool Secrets

Reading Textbooks for Pleasure Posted: 11 Sep 2013 05:00 AM PDT The following is an article from The Annals of Improbable Research. (Image credit: Flickr user Quinn Dombrowski) by Alice Shirrell Kaswell, AIR staff There are many dying arts. Reading in general may be one of them, but I don’t know how you’d go about truly assessing that. I do know about reading textbooks for leisure. No one would call it a dying art. The practice of reading textbooks for leisure is just as lively now as it has ever been. More people buy textbooks -- actually spend their own money to do it -- now than ever before. And in deciding what to buy, they -- we -- are kids in a candy store. There’s an ever-growing number of specialized subjects for which textbooks exist, and so the variety of textbooks on offer is always increasing. Even if you somehow manage to exhaust the cream of one genre, you can easily find another genre to sample. There is much to be gained, potentially, from trying a textbook from a world that’s new to you, especially one that hasn’t yet been hyped by the critics and lit-blogs and talk shows. It’s fun to get in on something while it still has cult status. Let me make three suggestions off the top of my head. Ferziger and Peric’s Computational Methods for Fluid Dynamics is packed with ideas and language you’ll seldom find in anything by Charles Dickens or Virginia Woolf or in most of the Harlequin romances. Correctional Administration: Integrating Theory and Practice, by Richard P. Seiter, is bursting with plangent metaphors. And cozying up with a hematology textbook, if you’re not a hematologist, is more of an adventure than many people realize. An un-timid reader can find lots of other good, meaty reads packed with traditional literary merit. Like the best novels, many of the textbooks in forestry management and ergodic theory and multinational auditing and thousands of other genres try to fill a reader’s mind with ideas and words that, at first read, really do feel completely novel. But that’s not the best part. Used textbooks offer one thing more to beguile the leisure-time reader. For many of us, the highlight of reading used textbooks is the highlighting, the lines previous readers have drawn under or around or through particular words or passages. Good highlighting makes any used textbook worth the purchase. Bad highlighting makes it even better. And in buying highlighted textbooks, you sometimes get a double bonus. Despite the carefully added interest, they often have drastically reduced price tags. The subject of pre-highlighted books is not just of non-academic interest. Vicki Silvers and David Kreiner, of Central Missouri State University, were awarded an Ig Nobel Literature Prize for a study they published in 1997. Titled "The Effects of Pre-Existing Inappropriate Highlighting on Reading Comprehension," their report describes a series of clever experiments.1 In their acceptance speech, delivered at the ceremony at Harvard, Silvers and Kreiner offered one piece of advice: “Don’t buy a textbook that was highlighted by an idiot.” I’m not sure I’d agree. Reference 1. “The Effects of Pre-Existing Inappropriate Highlighting on Reading Comprehension,” Vicki Silvers and David Kreiner, Reading Research and Instruction, vol. 36, 1997, pp. 217-23. _____________________ This article is republished with permission from the May-June 2005 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. You can download or purchase back issues of the magazine, or subscribe to receive future issues. Or get a subscription for someone as a gift! Visit their website for more research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK.

Pacific Rim: The Cake Posted: 11 Sep 2013 04:00 AM PDT It was the best blockbuster of the summer and now it is one of the summer's best cakes as well. This amazing Pacific Rim cake featuring a Jaeger and the Shatterdome was created by gifted husband and wife baking team The Bunny Baker. Link Via When Geeks Wed

Instagram Cake Posted: 11 Sep 2013 03:00 AM PDT Brilliant! Ann Reardon made a cake that cuts neatly into the Instagram logo with every slice. She used chocolate mousse and colored jello for the details. At the link, you can find her recipe and a video showing how she made it. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to Instagram this! Link -via Foodbeast P.S. Remember that Neatorama is on Instagram!

Visualization Madness Posted: 11 Sep 2013 02:00 AM PDT WTF Visualizations is a blog that archives charts and graphs that make no sense. Oh yeah, they may be pretty, or shall we say, "visually appealing," but they don't communicate the information in any coherent way. Link -via Metafilter

Japanese Prison Creates Cuddly Mascot to Improve Its Image Posted: 11 Sep 2013 01:00 AM PDT (Photo: Asahikawa Prison) Don't think of your stay as an unpleasant one. Katakkuri-chan, the lovable pal on the left, wants you to think of Asahikawa Prison as your new happy home: Officials say Asahikawa Prison in Japan’s far north is too often thought of only as a dark place with imposing grey walls and not as a place of rehabilitation. [...] “Prisons have the image of being isolated places that have no contact with the rest of society and are surrounded by imposing grey walls,” said a public relations official at Asahikawa. “We made the character to change the image into that of a facility open to society and supported by society. Link -via Dave Barry

Shaun vs Zombies Posted: 11 Sep 2013 12:00 AM PDT Shaun vs Zombies by Alberto Arni The "Z" word - don't say it ... unless you're wearing this awesome T-shirt by Alberto Arni. Visit Alberto's official website and Facebook page, then visit his NeatoShop page for more neat shirts. Your purchase helps support indie artists as well as this blog! Nightmare Intensive Care Unit Anyone Can Cook Always Angry View more designs by Alberto Arni | More Funny T-shirts | New T-Shirts | Zombie Shop Are you a professional illustrator or T-shirt designer? Let's chat! Sell your designs on the NeatoShop, earn generous royalties, and get featured in front of tons of potential new fans on Neatorama!

Danny DeVito in Gears of War Posted: 10 Sep 2013 11:00 PM PDT I admit that I have never played Gears of War, but I have seen Danny DeVito in Throw Momma From The Train and think that after living with Momma Lift, battling the Locust Horde is probably a walk in the park. Or if you're a It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, I'm sure you can appreciate Frank "The Trashman" Reynolds all ready for action. Alan Lee created this disturbingly realistic image of Danny DeVito (check out those guns) in Gears of War get up.

Batman, Foster Care Provider Posted: 10 Sep 2013 10:00 PM PDT Some Gotham City social worker wasn't thinking through this placement. Andrew Bridgman and Julia Lapetit tell a Batman story more disturbing than what you may be used to. Link -via Wolf Gnards

Prescription Nifty Note Posted: 10 Sep 2013 09:00 PM PDT Prescription Nifty Note Do you consider yourself the office therapist? Are you looking for a way to streamline your advice giving so that it doesn't interfere with the other work that have to do? Dole out your prescription for happiness with the Prescription Nifty Note pad from the NeatoShop. Each pad contains 50 sheets for your writing pleasure.  Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Office & Desk stuff.  Link

A Pack of Pandas Invade Curry Posted: 10 Sep 2013 09:00 PM PDT (Photo: NariNari) With a bit of rice and seaweed, you can make little pandas. Here's a herd of them heading down to the curry pond for a swim. While writing this post, I discovered that there is no specific collective noun for pandas. In the comments, suggest one. Link

A Modern Trailer for Monty Python and the Holy Grail Posted: 10 Sep 2013 08:00 PM PDT (YouTube link) Imagine that the classic 1975 film Monty Python and the Holy Grail were to be released in 2013. The trailer would follow the same formula as every other film this year, building suspense with quick shots of action and facial expressions that either give away the entire plot or else tell you nothing that you need to know. Oh, yeah, and put that Inception music behind it. You got it! All of the hype, and none of the charm! Seriously, this trailer parody had to have been a lot of work, to find the few seconds of the movie without a laugh. -via Digg

Hyder, Alaska: The American Town That's Secretly Canadian Posted: 10 Sep 2013 07:00 PM PDT Hyder, Alaska, population 87, is, practically speaking, cut off from the United States. The easiest way to get there is by road through the nearby Canadian town of Stewart. Daily life there is tied more to Canada than the United States: As a result of its geographic isolation, Hyder functions as America’s only de facto outpost of Canada. All businesses (except the post office) price stuff in Canadian dollars, and take “Victoria Day” and “Boxing Day” off every year. Clocks are set to British Columbia time, the electricity comes from a B.C. utility, and the nearest police are Mounties. It’s the only place in Alaska not to use the state’s 907 area code—even Hyder’s phone numbers have joined in the open treason, and begin with a Canadian code, 250. Kids can be taught at home or bundled off to boarding school in Ketchikan, but many parents choose the dubious indoctrination of the Canadian public school system instead, especially up to the sixth grade. (Oops, sorry, Canada. “Grade 6.”) Link -via Nag on the Lake (Images: kcxd, Google)

Zach Anner's Workout Wednesday Posted: 10 Sep 2013 06:00 PM PDT (YouTube link) Zach Anner has a new video series called Workout Wednesday, in which he shows you how to get in shape. While trying a new exercise, he also gives out weird and wonderful motivational tidbits. This is episode three, where we see Zach bench-pressing and giving advice to returning students. The other episodes are just as funny, especially #2 where he answers a challenge to work out on a treadmill. -via Metafilter  Previously: More from Zach Anner.

Lamps Made from Carved Eggshells Posted: 10 Sep 2013 05:00 PM PDT Vietnamese artist Ben Tre carves incredibly intricate images on eggshells, then illuminates them with wondrous effects using LEDs. How does he inscribe them? With a tiny dentist's drill. Link | Artist's Website

To The Humans of This House: A Single Mom's House Rules Posted: 10 Sep 2013 04:00 PM PDT It's hard enough to be a single parent, but when single mom SongBird130 decided to go back to college at night (while working during the day) she really needed to set the house rules straight with her HS senior and college junior kids. This is what she came up with: To the humans of this house: This week we will all become busy students with jobs, homework and studying. There is no maid, butler, laundress, cook, valet, errand runner or other help employed here. Do your dishes Feed yourself Pick up your mess Sort & put away your laundry Yes - you can buy a few groceries BE A GROWN UP I'll pay the utilities, insurance & mortgage Apparently, Meg is in charge of working out and Wes gets to play with the power washer: Now, if only I can assign my work out routine to one of my kids, that'll vastly improve my day! Mom later updated the story to explain the whiteboard: "We communicate via this whiteboard in the kitchen and have for years. It is amazingly helpful. We eat together when we can. I cook and leave leftover meals. Yes my classes are at night and work all day. I do the laundry. They just have to sort. Avoids mistakes on my part. Meg is very thin and beautiful. She wants to be stronger. Wes likes to power wash. They are Dean's list students and have jobs. We all have to break the cycle of leaving messes and things undone. I love them more than life itself. They give me my reason to get up each day."

Sixty Years in Five Minutes Posted: 10 Sep 2013 03:00 PM PDT (vimeo link) The video is five minutes long, but if you skip around, you'll miss the amazing effect, the point of it all. Anthony Cerniello wanted to show the aging process in a way that hadn't been done before. He used Danielle, but Danielle is more than one person.   Last Thanksgiving, Cerniello traveled to his friend Danielle’s family reunion and with still photographer Keith Sirchio shot portraits of her youngest cousins through to her oldest relatives with a Hasselblad medium format camera. Then began the process of scanning each photo with a drum scanner at the U.N. in New York, at which point he carefully edited the photos to select the family members that had the most similar bone structure. Next he brought on animators Nathan Meier and Edmund Earle who worked in After Effects and 3D Studio Max to morph and animate the still photos to make them lifelike as possible. Finally, Nuke (a kind of 3D visual effects software) artist George Cuddy was brought on to smooth out some small details like the eyes and hair. After all, it would be hard to get anyone to stand still long enough for a video to show them growing older. Link -via Metafilter

NASA Mashups Posted: 10 Sep 2013 02:00 PM PDT Before we can boldly go where no one has gone before, we need a plan ... and blueprints! That's where illustrator Doug Pedersen come in. The Minneapolis, Minnesota, based artist has created a sci-fi inspired series of mashups of popular pop culture vehicles with real ones from NASA's space program.

5 Crazy New Man-Made Materials Posted: 10 Sep 2013 01:00 PM PDT What will they think of next? Aluminum bubble wrap! Molecular superglue! And how about that titanium foam? It's as simple as coating a piece of polyurethane foam with titanium, and then getting rid of the foam. Neat, but this next part is even better: The exact properties depend on the porosity of the foam, but the results are strong and—most importantly—incredibly light. In fact, the material is just perfect for replacing bone: it has incredibly similar mechanical properties and, because it's porous, new bone can grow and around its structure, truly integrating the implant within the skeleton. Anything that gets us that much closer to a real-life Wolverine is okay in our book. Read about five such brave new materials and what they may be good for at Gizmodo. Link

Lovecraftian Darwinism Posted: 10 Sep 2013 12:00 PM PDT Lovecraftian Darwinism by Alan Bao Ah, the march of progress doesn't mean a thing to the Old Ones, as Alan Bao cleverly illustrates in his design above. Check out Alan's Website and Tumblr, then head on over to his NeatoShop page for more great T-shirts: Link. Your purchase helps support indie artists like Alan, as well as this blog. Thank you in advance for your support! The Joker Contemporary Avian Discourse Motivate King of Clubs View more designs by Alan Bao | More Funny T-shirts Are you a professional illustrator or T-shirt designer? Let's chat! Sell your designs on the NeatoShop, earn generous royalties, and get featured in front of tons of potential new fans on Neatorama!

Zombie Banana Costume Posted: 10 Sep 2013 11:00 AM PDT Zombie Banana Costume Halloween is coming. Are you looking for the most appealing Zombie costume out there? Stop monkeying around and slip into the Zombie Banana Costume from the NeatoShop. You are sure to feel like a top banana as your friends go bananas over this gruesomely fun costume.   Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Halloween items.  Link

We Want Your Most Memorable Halloween Costume Posted: 10 Sep 2013 11:00 AM PDT What did you want to be for Halloween when you were a kid? As you see here, redditor Lillibeth wanted to be a table. Did you ever go trick-or-treating in anything so strange? Or maybe you were kid who constructed your own costume -or maybe you had the mom who went all out for Halloween. We would love to see pictures of your Halloween costumes. Whether you were a kid or an adult, whether they are awesome, odd, funny, or horribly embarrassing, find those pictures of Halloweens past and send them in! Tell us the story behind the costume, if you've got one. We will post as many of them as we possibly can on the Halloween blog in October. And when Halloween draws near, we will select the top costume pictures and reward the senders with t-shirts from the NeatoShop! Send your Halloween costume pictures to tips@neatorama.com and check the Halloween blog for the pictures to start popping up. You could be a winner this Halloween!

A Lovely Haunted Mansion Painting Cosplay Posted: 10 Sep 2013 10:00 AM PDT Here is DeviantArt user dismaldreary in her corruptable, mortal state before she became one of the 999 happy haunts currently residing in the Haunted Mansion. Link

Ballpoint Barber Posted: 10 Sep 2013 09:30 AM PDT (YouTube link) Wooly Willie comes alive in a stop-motion animation by Peter Simon. As you can guess, the behind-the-scenes video shows a very hairy Tom Offer-Westort taking all day to get a haircut and shave, considering they stopped between every phase to take a set of portraits. -via Tastefully Offensive This is not the first time that Simon has documented his friend Tom's rare haircut. It happened two years ago as well.

The Sweet And Sour Chicken Cone Posted: 10 Sep 2013 09:00 AM PDT Now that the weather is finally cooling down, we probably won't be eating as many ice cream cones. Fortunately for those of us who love food in conical form, Dude Foods has developed a new and improved way to eat one of our favorite Chinese food snacks -sweet and sour chicken. The treat is made from a deep-fried won ton skin filled with rice, chicken and sweet and sour sauce. Link

Eating Goldfish with a Treadmill Posted: 10 Sep 2013 08:30 AM PDT This looping gif may be a goldfish lover's dream, but the actual video of the guy is a bit messier. See the original stunt at Vine. Link -via The Daily Dot

Meanwhile On Flickr: Dogs Gone Camping Posted: 10 Sep 2013 08:00 AM PDT These two look like they're having a great time in the great outdoors, as captured by Flickr user bugeater. Just look at this pup-sized boat and the tent built-for-two. I think they'll have a hard time fishing without thumbs though. Link

Batman and Captain America Save Cat from Burning Home Posted: 10 Sep 2013 07:30 AM PDT A pair of superheroes responded to a house fire in Milton, West Virginia, even before the firefighters arrived. Batman and Captain America, or John Buckland and Troy Marcum -- were both in costume at an event at the nearby American Legion Post. They were teaching positive lessons to children, but the lesson became real life. When they saw smoke, the two super heroes sprang into action, rushing towards the flames to see if anyone was inside. *** "He (Captain America) breaks out the window," Buckland said. "The smokes lets out and as I can start to see I reach down and grab something furry!" While the home owners were out of town, their cat couldn't get out and had to be resuscitated by Batman. Buckland was a firefighter before his career as the Caped Crusader. The cat was not initially happy about being rescued, and even hissed at Batman. But bystanders were impressed. Link -via Daily of the Day (Image source: WBLX)

TARDIS Clock Posted: 10 Sep 2013 07:00 AM PDT DeviantART member Panda rabbit spent only $5 on materials for this wibbly-wobbly wall clock. If I had a TARDIS clock, I'd set it to run backwards. Link

Twerking Girl Revealed Posted: 10 Sep 2013 06:30 AM PDT (YouTube link) Last week, the video labeled Worst Twerk Fail Ever took the internet by storm. It showed a girl start out dancing and end up on fire. No one at Neatorama posted it, because 1. Twerking videos are not particularly neat. 2. It was either fake or she was hurt. 3. It smelled like viral video advertising. Then last night it was revealed that the whole thing was a prank by the show Jimmy Kimmel Live. Now that a layer of comedy has been added to the story, it's well worth sharing with you. The funniest part is how many TV news outlets ran the video without checking out the circumstances behind it. Link

This Minimalist Children's Book Hides Some Cool Secrets Posted: 10 Sep 2013 06:00 AM PDT The children's book above looks cute, but pretty boring, right? But shine a flashlight underneath the page and all kinds of new details pop up. The delightful creation, titled Hide and Eek!, was designed by artist Rebecca Sutherland, design studio Hat Trick and design company Knock Knock. Link Via Design Taxi

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