Neatorama |
- Creative Writing Prompt: Big Rubber Duck
- The Double Down Dog
- If Disney Princesses Had Realistic Hair
- Artist Inserts Iconic Symbols of Famous People into Their Names
- School is Closed
- Snow Tauntaun
- This Battery Has Been Running for 175 Years
- Textbooks
- Bacon Sriracha Cronut
- Long Live The Queen - Like Many Monarchs She's A Real Monster
- The Story of R32
- Sublime Sci-Fi Album Art by Dan McPharlin
- Bunny Delivers a Beer
- TSA's Report on Confiscated Items in 2014
- Campfire in the Snow
- 25 Sinister Animals Secretly Plotting Their Revenge
- The Subterranean Theme Park 390ft Down in a Transylvanian Salt Mine
- Scientists Figure out How to Unboil an Egg
- Whodunit: Super Bowl Madness
- Verdant Canopy
- Cheshire Express - Your Neighbor Is Mad!
- New York During the Great Blizzard of 1888
- 70 Years Ago Today: Lt. Audie Murphy Holds the Line
- The A to Z of Australia Day
- Some Like It Dark
| Creative Writing Prompt: Big Rubber Duck Posted: 27 Jan 2015 04:00 AM PST Taiwanese artist Kare Huang composed this magnificent piece of science fiction (it is fictional, right?) art. The enormous mechanical duck is inscribed with the words “UN Navy” and “Big Rubber Duck.” How does it inspire you? What story or caption can you write for it? -via The Geek Twins  | ||||||||
| Posted: 27 Jan 2015 03:00 AM PST KFC rolled out a new menu item Monday: the Double Down Dog. This carnivore’s concoction consists of a hot dog nestled in a "bun" of breaded fried chicken pieces. You can have yours with a splash of melted cheese or other condiments. But the supply of the Double Down Dogs was limited yesterday to 50 each at 12 outlets in the Philippines, which sold out all 600 of the sandwiches. However, there will be more Tuesday, the last day of the promotion. Will we ever see the Double Down Dog in the U.S.? That may depend on how well it goes over in this limited run. What's the point in putting a hot dog in your fried chicken, anyway? | ||||||||
| If Disney Princesses Had Realistic Hair Posted: 27 Jan 2015 02:00 AM PST If you’re a Disney princess, then your job is to always look good at all times. Thankfully, you’ve got a staff of top-notch animators working with you 24/7 to do that. Shoot, you probably have a designated hair person on duty at all times. What would it be like if Disney princesses had to deal with real hair problems? A lot of their manes would be out of place, soggy, or sticking up in odd directions. Loryn Brantz of BuzzFeed illustrated 8 princesses with real hair, including Cinderella, Jasmine, Mulan, and Elsa. | ||||||||
| Artist Inserts Iconic Symbols of Famous People into Their Names Posted: 27 Jan 2015 01:00 AM PST Vincent Van Gogh is known for his unfortunate decision about his ear. It's hard to imagine Charlie Chaplin without the little tramp's cane. Patrik Svensson, a Swedish artist with a gift for precisely expressing himself through minimal illustrations, has recently been composing portraits of famous people with only their names and tiny, often subtle figures. You find more in his Instagram feed. -via 123 Inspiration | ||||||||
| Posted: 27 Jan 2015 12:00 AM PST Matt Glendinning, the head of Moses Brown School in Providence, Rhode Island, made the decision to close school for the big snow event. But he had to dress the announcement up a bit in the song his students have been singing for over a year now. Oh yeah, you know he had this video ready months ago, but it’s still funny. -via Time | ||||||||
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| This Battery Has Been Running for 175 Years Posted: 26 Jan 2015 10:00 PM PST
This is the Clarendon Dry Pile, a device so old that documentation about its origins is a bit spotty. It was set up at the Clarendon Laboratory at Oxford University in 1840. It’s a dry pile, which means that it’s made of alternating layers of sulfur, silver, and zinc that generate electrical current. Mechanically, it’s a bell, which is why it’s sometimes called the Oxford Electric Bell. The clapper between the two sections oscillates back and forth. The movements are too small to see easily and the sounds are too quiet to hear unaided. It has rung approximately 10 billion times while in operation. You can read more about this remarkable antique at Vice. -via Marginal Revolution | ||||||||
| Posted: 26 Jan 2015 09:00 PM PST The price of college textbooks in America can give you a heart attack. Students aren’t buying new books as much as they used to, which in a normal market would mean the publishers would have to lower prices- you know, supply and demand. However, with textbooks, very first book printed cost the company a lot of money to produce, and every copy thereafter is just the price of paper and printing. Sell 10,000 books at $50 each, and your initial costs will certainly be covered; the rest is profit -until students start buying the books used. However, all a publisher has to do is tweak it slightly, call it a new edition, and the cycle of profit begins anew. This comic is from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. -via Daily of the Day | ||||||||
| Posted: 26 Jan 2015 08:00 PM PST DK's Donuts of Orange, a simple, walk-up donut stand in Orange, California, offers this donut that is anything but simple. 7 Deadly says that it would make cronut inventor "Dominique Ansel to kneel over and sob French tears." That would be a great shame, for it would be sad for Ansel to, like Howard Roark in The Fountainhead, withhold future works of his genius from the world to prevent them from being altered. What does it taste like? Let the reviewers from 7 Deadly speak:
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| Long Live The Queen - Like Many Monarchs She's A Real Monster Posted: 26 Jan 2015 07:00 PM PST Long Live The Queen by BeastPop She's got the kind of smile that can make a space marine drop his pulse rifle and run away screaming in terror, eyes that seem to bore into your soul and a spooky fanged tongue that actually bores right through people's chests! Those who worship the xenomorph Queen do so purely out of fear, because they know that, despite what Ripley says, it's only a matter of time before her primal alien offspring have conquered the universe... Take your geeky wardrobe to the sci-fi dark side with this Long Live The Queen t-shirt by BeastPop, it's the best way to show your allegiance to our xenomorphic overlords. Visit BeastPop's Facebook fan page, Twitter and Tumblr, then head on over to his NeatoShop for more mighty geeky designs:
Are you a professional illustrator or T-shirt designer? Let's chat! Sell your designs on the NeatoShop and get featured in front of tons of potential new fans on Neatorama! | ||||||||
| Posted: 26 Jan 2015 07:00 PM PST A lonely, damaged, and obsolete robot roams the city, looking for a human connection. But it turns out that R32 is more human than those he meets along the way. This short film by Vladimir Vlasenko might surprise you. -via Geeks Are Sexy | ||||||||
| Sublime Sci-Fi Album Art by Dan McPharlin Posted: 26 Jan 2015 06:00 PM PST
"Surrealism has always been an influence and I suppose my work also draws heavily on what I consider the ‘golden age’ of sci-fi art. The artwork that is the most exciting to me was what I grew up with; lavish paperback covers, record sleeves and game boxes by Roger Dean, illustrated speculative fiction like the Terran Trade series, art books published by Dragon’s Dream, Paper Tiger (exactly the kind of thing you feature on Sci-fi-O-Rama in fact!) I remember a handful of tattered school library books that I would borrow over and over. I think there was one called Space Wars that I just kept re-borrowing for a whole year; my name was probably the only one on the library slip! That retro surrealist quality is certainly evident in these striking artworks. Additionally, interviewer Kieran bonded with McPharlin over their heavy use of the Commodore Amiga back in the day. You can take the boy out of the retro... | ||||||||
| Posted: 26 Jan 2015 05:00 PM PST TheMadKing trained his girlfriend’s rabbit Wallace to deliver beer in a little pushcart! He says it was an epic accomplishment.
Wallace is far from a slave. The bunny has an entire YouTube channel that shows how loved he is. -via Boing Boing | ||||||||
| TSA's Report on Confiscated Items in 2014 Posted: 26 Jan 2015 04:00 PM PST The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has detailed the dangerous items it seized at U.S. airport security checkpoints in 2014. The number of passengers screened in 2014 — 653 million — has increased by nearly 15 million since the previous year. A whopping 2,212 firearms were discovered in carry-on bags in 2014, which marks a 22-percent increase from the year prior. The top ten airports at which the most offenders were caught are as follows:
See the TSA's interesting year-end review of the dangerous items seized on their blog. Look at photographs of the (often completely bizarre) items confiscated at the TSA Instagram account. | ||||||||
| Posted: 26 Jan 2015 03:00 PM PST Or maybe I say say, campfire OF snow. Brendan Schaffer of Schaffer Art Studios created this hot snow sculpture using art and food coloring in a spray bottle. Although we’ve all heard the warning about eating yellow snow, I’ve never heard anything about eating giant snow marshmallows! -via reddit | ||||||||
| 25 Sinister Animals Secretly Plotting Their Revenge Posted: 26 Jan 2015 02:00 PM PST Don't think for a minute that the costume you stuffed your loyal canine into last Halloween has been forgotten. No, the cat hasn't forgiven you for enforcing the new policy of feline-free keyboards and laundry baskets. Dry food? Duly noted. Pink sweaters? Still in the mind's eye. Your animals are simply biding their time until it's right to strike. Be afraid. | ||||||||
| The Subterranean Theme Park 390ft Down in a Transylvanian Salt Mine Posted: 26 Jan 2015 01:00 PM PST For hundreds of years, workers broke and hauled salt out of the Salina Turda mine in Romania. That stopped in the 20th century. Since 1992, the huge chambers left behind have been a tourist attraction, which became a full-fledged theme park in 2010. The features include a 65-foot-tall Ferris wheel, an amphitheater, bowling alleys, a miniature golf course, and a lake where you can ride a boat, all contained in the huge underground chambers. Read more about Salina Turda and see lots of pictures in a slideshow at Scribol. | ||||||||
| Scientists Figure out How to Unboil an Egg Posted: 26 Jan 2015 12:00 PM PST
What's the point of this research? The ability to untangle proteins could lead to much cheaper cancer drugs:
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| Posted: 26 Jan 2015 11:00 AM PST The following is a Whodunit by Hy Conrad. These mysteries are from The Little Giant® Book of Whodunits by Hy Conrad and Matt LaFleur. Can you solve the mystery before you read the solution?
Vince McCormick was a big, angry slug of a man just a month shy of retirement. On Super Bowl Sunday, his two sons, Vince Junior and Sonny, came over as usual to watch the game. As kick-off time approached, the boys were in the kitchen, helping their mother prepare the snacks. Junior heated up nachos in the microwave while Sonny poured the bags of potato chips and pretzels into bowls. Marie McCormick was mixing the ice and ginger ale and rye together in tall glasses. "Make sure mine is strong enough," came her husband's growl from the living room. Junior saw the bruise on his mother's arm. "Did he do that to you?" he asked. Marie didn't answer. "What'll you do when he retires and hangs around all day?" Sonny asked. "It'll only get worse." "No one in our family gets divorced," Marie said firmly. "Oh, dear. I forgot which is your father's. Taste the highballs, Sonny." Sonny tasted the drinks, nearly choking on the third one. "It's about twice as strong as the others." "Give it to me." Vince was suddenly standing right behind them, grabbing for his drink. "Making me come in here," he muttered dangerously. Sonny carried in the snack bowls while Junior took in the nachos, just in time for the kick-off. Marie followed with the other drinks. All four sat around the T.V, munching on the snacks and sipping their drinks. It was near the end of the first quarter when Vince Senior held up his empty glass. "Get me another," he bellowed. Marie was in the kitchen working on the refill when she heard a gasp, then a moan. She returned to find her husband crumpled in his easy chair, dying. "A strong, fast-acting poison," the homicide detective said. "Two to five minutes. And yet they all claimed to be eating the same things. They're obviously lying, covering up for each other." "Not necessarily," a sergeant ventured. "It could've happened just the way they said." How could Vince have been poisoned? And who could have done it?
In addition to his work in mystery and crime puzzles, Hy was also one of the original writers for the groundbreaking TV series Monk. Currently, Hy is working on mystery novel series "Abel Adventures" as well as the Monk series of novels, starting with Mr. Monk Helps Himself (published by Penguin, order from Amazon here Check out Hy's official website and Facebook page - and stay tuned for more whodunits puzzlers on Neatorama from the master of whodunit mysteries himself! | ||||||||
| Posted: 26 Jan 2015 10:00 AM PST
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| Cheshire Express - Your Neighbor Is Mad! Posted: 26 Jan 2015 09:00 AM PST Cheshire Express by Emilie Boisvert When you decide to catch a cat bus for a trip across the moonlit forest make sure you hop on board the right cat! The nekobus you're looking for is orange and striped, with bright yellow headlight eyes and an idiot grin, but if you see a purple catbus come up all covered in green stripes and sporting a mischievous grin don't take that ride! Take it from Alice, the Cheshire Express's last passenger- there's no such thing as a free ride in Wonderland... Take the world on a grand adventure, wear this Cheshire Express t-shirt by Emilie Boisvert and show your fellow geeks the way to Wonderland! Visit Emilie Boisvert's Facebook fan page, official website, Tumblr and Twitter, then head on over to her NeatoShop for more geek-tastic designs:
Are you a professional illustrator or T-shirt designer? Let's chat! Sell your designs on the NeatoShop and get featured in front of tons of potential new fans on Neatorama! | ||||||||
| New York During the Great Blizzard of 1888 Posted: 26 Jan 2015 09:00 AM PST While the northeast U.S. brace for a snowstorm today that is expected to leave two to three feet of snow, there are already comparisons with the record-setting storm of 1888. | ||||||||
| 70 Years Ago Today: Lt. Audie Murphy Holds the Line Posted: 26 Jan 2015 08:00 AM PST Born in poverty and orphaned as a teenager in Hunt County, Texas, Audie Murphy lied about his age in order to try to get into the US Marine Corps. The Marines rejected him, saying that he was too small. Murphy went into the Army instead as an infantryman. He would prove to be an extraordinarily effective soldier and leader. Time and time again, Murphy would distinguish himself in combat, eventually earning a field commission as a second lieutenant at the age of 19. Before the end of the war, Murphy would earn every combat award offered by the United States Army at the time.
Among those awards is the Medal of Honor. The Army bestowed that highest of laurels upon 2nd. Lt. Audie Murphy for the actions that he performed on January 26, 1945--70 years ago to this day. Though wounded and badly outnumbered, Murphy personally covered the retreat of his company from repeated German attacks outside of Holtzwihr, France. He did so for an hour with a machine gun on a disabled tank destroyer that was on fire at the time. From his Medal of Honor citation:
By the time Germany surrendered later that May, Murphy was a First Lieutenant and not yet 21 years old. He was also tremendously famous (warning: auto-play). When he mustered out and returned home to the United States, he became an actor. He would also write To Hell and Back, his autobiography. When it was turned into a film in 1955, he played himself. You can watch several scenes from it in the video above. -via American Digest | ||||||||
| Posted: 26 Jan 2015 07:00 AM PST January 26 is Australia Day, and the Aussies get to celebrate it earlier than most of the world. In honor of the occasion, Sydney Morning Herald cartoonist Cathy Wilcox gives us an illustrated alphabet of what the holiday means to Australians. From the misheard lyrics of their national anthem to chilling out after a good time, each letter will make you smile -or think. Especially if you are Australian, know an Australian, or have been to Australia. | ||||||||
| Posted: 26 Jan 2015 06:00 AM PST Spanish artist Marta de Andrés offers this contribution from an art show in Valencia. She writes, "The subject of this festival was Women, the strength of women and equality between men and women." Her response was to imagine the desired Marilyn Monroe as the feared Darth Vader. -via Geek Art Gallery |
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The whodunit above was provided by American mystery fiction author 
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Molyvos, Lesvos, Greece | Image: Jay 21310
Stockholm, Sweden | Image: Hector Melo
Tunnel of Love Romania, Caras-Severin | Image: Sue Hsu
Wisteria Tunnel, Japan | Image: Andreea Vintila Kostova
Bamboo Forest, Sagano Japan | Image: Andreea Vintila Kostova
Grafton, New South Wales, Australia | Image: Jo Hitchin
Valencia, Spain | Image: Visittheworld.tumblr.com
Orton Plantation Driveway, Smithville, NC | Image: Mia of Sky People
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