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2015/09/21

Neatorama

Neatorama

Celebrate Our Facebook Milestones & Win Free Tees!

Posted: 21 Sep 2015 05:09 AM PDT

Hey gang, we have amazing news! Our Neatorama Facebook is just about to hit 100,000 fans and at the same time, our NeatoShop Facebook is about to reach 10,000. In celebration of these two major milestones, we're hosting an awesome contest to give our fans free tees. To be more specific, the grand prize winner will win five NeatoShop tees and five runners up will each win a tee of their own.

Whether you're a new fan or don't have a Facebook at all, you can enter just by visiting our pages through the form below. (You can also win by following us on Twitter or Tweeting about the contest). Of course, if you're not a fan, we urge you to follow our pages where there's all kinds of great content to keep you entertained all day.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Maximum Overdrive Melodies - This Car-Toon Is Not For Kids

Posted: 21 Sep 2015 05:00 AM PDT


Maximum Overdrive Melodies by Spicy Donut

The Merry Melodies cartoon series came to a screeching halt when they hired a young writer named Stephen King to write a few of their shorts. They gave him guidelines and told him the short couldn't contain foul language, nudity or bloody violence, but he disregarded those rules and wrote up a script called "One Batty St. Bernard" about a rabid dog attacking a town. Short on time for a rewrite they decided to give him another chance, with King swearing he would get it right this time with a little ditty called "Comet Car-Tastrophe" about cars coming to life in a small town. The execs thought this episode might work, until they saw a steamroller flatten a kid like a pancake...

Show love for your favorite cartoons and your favorite murderous vehicles at the same time with this Maximum Overdrive Melodies t-shirt by Spicy Donut, it'll drive your fellow Maximum Overdrive fans wild!

Visit Spicy Donut's Facebook fan page, official website, Twitter and Tumblr, then head on over to his NeatoShop for more frighteningly good designs:

Elm Street LullabyCat Burglary Never Looked So Good!Friday The Toon TeenthA Nightmare Before Pinup

View more designs by Spicy Donut | More Funny T-shirts | New T-Shirts

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!

Discovered in Dreams

Posted: 21 Sep 2015 05:00 AM PDT

Have you ever had a great idea come to you in a dream? These people have, according to the new book Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Attack of the Factoids.

DREAMER: Otto Loewi

DREAM: Two live frogs with their hearts exposed

RESULT: Figured out that chemicals communicate nerve impulses to the body’s organs

In the early 20th century, there was a lot of debate about whether nerve impulses were communicated to the organs via electrical or chemical messages. Loewi believed it was chemical but couldn’t prove it. Then, one night in 1921, he dreamed of an experiment that would settle the issue. When he woke up, he feverishly scribbled notes but in the morning discovered that his notes were unreadable and he couldn’t remember what he had dreamed. Luckily, he had the same dream the next night. It was a gruesome experiment on the still-beating hearts of two frogs.

(Image credit: Nrets)

Loewi followed the procedures in the dream: he slowed the heart of one frog using electrical stimuli and collected the chemical secretions that resulted. Then he injected the secretions into the other frog’s heart, and it slowed too, proving that chemicals were how the nervous system communicated with a body’s organs. Loewi won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1936.

DREAMER: Elias Howe

DREAM: Being boiled by cannibals who danced brandishing spears with a hole near the tips

RESULT: The sewing machine

American inventor and former textile-mill worker Elias Howe couldn’t quite figure out how to make sewn stitches interlock so that seams didn’t pull apart. But in the 1840s, he had a dream about being boiled alive by cannibals who danced while brandishing spears with holes near the tips.

In the dream, the cannibals moved their spears up and down in a rhythmic way. He thought and thought about it, and then one day, inspiration struck: instead of using a standard sewing needle with a hole at the dull end, he needed to use a thread near the sharp tip. That kind of needle could pull a loop of thread through the cloth where it could meet on the other side a moving part that would anchor it with a second thread. It was just the breakthrough Howe was looking for and allowed him to make the sewing machine possible.

DREAMER: Mary Shelley

DREAM: A mad scientist creating life in laboratory

RESULT:Frankenstein


In 1816, challenged to write a ghost story to amuse fellow guests housebound during a storm, 19-year-old Mary Shelley lay in bed half asleep. She later wrote, “With shut eyes, but acute mental vision, I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half-vital motion.” The next morning, she got up and began writing what became the book Frankenstein.

DREAMER: Paul McCartney

DREAM: A lilting melody

RESULT: “Yesterday”

While filming the movie Help!, Paul McCartney woke up with a tune in his head and rushed to the piano to play it, singing “scrambled eggs” and other random words in the place of lyrics. He recalled, “I liked the melody a lot, but because I’d dreamed it, I couldn’t believe I’d written it.” Thinking maybe he had just remembered an old song, he played it for other people, asking if they’d ever heard it before. They hadn’t. But they would, repeatedly, for decades. It became the 1965 Beatles hit “Yesterday,” one of the most popular tunes ever recorded.

DREAMER: William Watt

DREAM: Being pelted in a hailstorm of perfectly round lead balls

RESULT: Perfectly round musket shot and cannonballs

Eighteenth-century Bristol, England, was known for its industry, especially smelting lead from local mines. Lead balls for muskets and cannons were big business, but were difficult to make round and smooth enough that they wouldn’t jam weapons. A plumber by trade, William Watt’s dream inspired him to climb to the top of a church steeple and dribble a stream of melted lead into a bucket of cold water far below. Sure enough, like any liquid, the lead formed itself into perfect balls and stayed that way until it solidified in the cool air and cold water. Watt had remarkably figured this out long before high-speed photography proved that raindrops were round and not, as widely believed, teardrop-shaped.

_______________________________

The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Attack of the Factoids. Weighing in at over 400 pages, it's a fact-a-palooza of obscure information.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. If you like Neatorama, you'll love the Bathroom Reader Institute's books - go ahead and check 'em out!

JoJo, 4, Lectures Daddy on Wedding Etiquette

Posted: 21 Sep 2015 04:00 AM PDT


YouTube Link

Four-year-old JoJo has some concerns about her father's behavior during an upcoming wedding in which she is a flower girl. Just to make sure she and Daddy are on the same page, she has a talk with him prior to the ceremony. JoJo, wise beyond her years, knows full well that you can never be too safe when it comes to such important events. Via Daily Dot

The World’s Largest Employers

Posted: 21 Sep 2015 03:00 AM PDT

Who employs more people than anyone else in the world? I once heard it was Indian Railways, but that was quite a few years ago. They still made the list, but are far from the top. This chart is from Forbes.

The U.S. Department of Defense is the #1 employer, even as the number of active duty personnel continues to decrease. Of 3.2 million employees, only 1.7 million are active duty military. Defense contractors and civilian employees make up the rest. Although the Chinese military comes in second, the size of China’s military as a percentage of its population is much smaller. China has 1.4 billion people.   

Walmart is the largest private employer in the world. There are now over 11,000 Walmart stores in the world. I don’t know how they number them all now, but I worked for store #80 back in the days when Sam Walton could walk in any minute (1979-82).  

The number of McDonald’s employees includes franchises. McDonald’s has 35,000 outlets in 119 countries.

The National Health Service is a special case. The government agency covers the four countries of the UK, and comprises the vast majority of healthcare workers there. In contrast, the U.S. has over 18 million healthcare workers, but they work for many different companies.

China National Petroleum and the State Grid Corporation of China are both state-owned companies. The oil company feeds the utility, and if they were combined, they would be at the #2 spot on this list.  

If you exclude government agencies, the list is a bit different. This screenshot is from Wikipedia.

Hon Hai Precision Industry is also known as Foxconn. They make our iPhones, iPads, Blackberries, Kindles, Xboxes, and Wiis, so there’s no puzzle about their growth.  

Sinopec is an oil company in China. Although it is not a government agency, it is owned by the state. You say tomayto, I say tomahto.

The British firm GS4 is a security company with operations in 125 countries.

The Tata Group is a 147-year-old Indian company grown into a conglomerate that has a hand in  everything from telecoms to industrial chemicals to cars to coffee.  

If you don't work for any of these employers, I bet you know more than one person who does.

Jimmy Fallon Parodies Lionel Richie's 1980s "Hello" Video with Lionel Richie, and It's Hilarious

Posted: 21 Sep 2015 02:00 AM PDT


YouTube Link

Jimmy Fallon enlisted the help of Lionel Richie himself to parody his 1984 video of one of his most famous songs, "Hello." The bizarre, almost creepy original video for the single, combined with the modern internet meme of the lyrics, seem to have turned the song into the comedic gift that keeps on giving. Watch Fallon and Richie singing the song as a duet until neither can keep a straight face. To add more comic context, familiarize yourself with the original video for "Hello" below. Via Rolling Stone



YouTube Link

Selfies Are Spreading Lice among Teenagers

Posted: 21 Sep 2015 01:00 AM PDT


(Photo: Joan Sorolla)

Head lice require direct contact to easily move from host to host. When teenagers press their heads together to take a group selfie, they provide bridges that lice can easily cross.

Dr. Sharon Rink, a pediatrician in Appleton, Wisconsin, says that she's seen a surge of teenage head lice cases. She advises that teenagers keep their heads apart a bit when taking group selfies in order to reduce the likelihood of lice transmission. WBAY reports:

“People are doing ‘selfies’ like every day, as opposed to going to photo booths years and years ago,” says Rink. “So you’re probably having much more contact with other people’s heads.”

She says you should keep a little distance between you and your friends heads when taking a selfie, just in case one of them has lice.

“If you have an extremely itchy scalp and you’re a teenager, you might want to get checked out for lice instead of chalking it up to dandruff.”

-via TYWKIWDBI

Tiana’s Plea for Peace

Posted: 21 Sep 2015 12:00 AM PDT

(YouTube link)

Tiana is six years old. In this video, tells how she wants her divorced parents to be friends and get along. Her mom recorded this after they had a fight and posted it to Facebook. 

“My heart is something. Everyone else’s heart is something, too.” Excuse me, I have to go get a whole box of tissues. -via Buzzfeed

Smart Basketball Constantly Tracks Performance

Posted: 20 Sep 2015 10:00 PM PDT

(Photo: Wilson)

Wilson calls its new product the Connected Basketball. The $200 ball is designed to help individual players monitor their practice. Interior sensors detect shots taken, shots made, free throws, and other common basketball feats. Wilson says that the battery is good for at least 100,000 shots. All of the information that it records is accessible through a smartphone app. CNET reviewed the ball and the app:

The Wilson app includes four game modes: Free Range, Free Throw, Buzzer Beater and Game Time. The Free Range lets you shoot from anywhere on the court, while the Free Throw sees how well you can shoot from the line. The Buzzer Beater and Game Time modes are used to test how well you can do in clutch situations, such as when the clock is ticking down to zero or your team is down by a few points. There's even crowd noise and sports commentator observations to get you in the zone.

-via Marginal Revolution

Documentary Reveals What It Means To Be A Florida Man

Posted: 20 Sep 2015 09:00 PM PDT

Ask anyone who has lived in Florida for an extended period of time and they'll tell you that the state's bad rep was earned by the violent and brutally wasted people who keep Florida far from chill.

Documentarian Sean Dunne didn't set out to make a film about Florida's less than esteemed citizens, he just “drove around aimlessly, stopping any time we saw something or someone that interested us”.

But when he hit the sidewalks and started filming he discovered Florida's citizens, lowlifes or otherwise, are more than happy to chat about how their lives revolve around fighting, drinking and carousing.

Heck, one ornery old cuss even tried to fight the audio guy! (Video is NSFW due to language)

(Vimeo Link)

This is how Sean's incredibly raw and poignant documentary "Florida Man" was born, and although he went into it without bias, Sean's opinion was surely swayed by the drunk and dangerous characters he encountered during filming. It's a wonder Sean and his crew made it out of Florida with their equipment intact!

-Via Dangerous Minds

Duck-Shaped Tomato

Posted: 20 Sep 2015 08:00 PM PDT

If it looks like a duck and quacks . . . well, it's actually a tomato. But it also looks like a rubber duck. Marie Davidek of Mt. Morris Township, Michigan grew it in her home garden. She's been raising tomatoes for many years, but has never produced one like this. Davidek doesn't want to slice the tomato up yet and hopes to find some way to preserve it.


(Video Link)

-via Nothing to Do with Aborath

New Discoveries Could Explain What Happened to the Lost Colony of Roanoke

Posted: 20 Sep 2015 06:00 PM PDT

A couple of years ago, we told you about a new clue in the mystery of Roanoke Island. That’s where a group of English colonists settled in 1587 and disappeared without a trace sometime before 1590. A previously-unseen mark on a 1585 map led investigators to think that the “Lost Colony” may have moved 60 miles inland. An archeological dig at the spot has since revealed some intriguing relics.

It’s here that archaeologists from First Colony have been digging for the past two years. In August, the foundation announced that it had found remarkable archaeological evidence of 16th century Europeans at Site X. Among more than 30 artifacts recovered here (including artifacts like nails and ceramics from both Indian and European sources that date from well after the Roanoke era) they found shards of a type of ceramics called Surrey-Hampshire Border ware. These helped researchers pin a date on the site.

Border ware, as it’s often called, was common among settlers of the Virginia company. But when the company failed in 1624, no new colonists were bringing the stuff to the area. Thus, finding it at Site X is a pretty good indication that at least some of the artifacts found dated from the time of the Roanoke colonists.

An article at Gizmodo tells about the dig, plus the history of the Roanoke Colony, some new findings about why the colony was evacuated, and more about the motives for settling in that inhospitable spot in the first place.  -via Science Chamber of Horrors

(Image credit: First Colony Foundation)

Hillarious Joker - One Sinister Splatter

Posted: 20 Sep 2015 04:00 PM PDT


Hillarious Joker by Wimido

The hills of Gotham are alive with the sound of manic laughter, and it's not the Von Trapp family celebrating. It's the sound of the Joker celebrating another win over ol' Bats, but instead of throwing a big bash or taking in a night on the town that clown prince of crime is off planning his next move. Will Batman be able to figure out what Joker and Harley are up to and lock them away in Arkham asylum before they do more harm? Or will the Joker's next move be too abstract for the master detective to figure out? One thing's for certain- that chucklehead will make the crime look like a criminal work of art!

Add some abstract artistic awesomeness to your geeky wardrobe with this Hillarious Joker t-shirt by Wimido, it's truly a madcap masterpiece!

Visit Wimido's Facebook fan page, Instagram and Tumblr, then head on over to her NeatoShop for more geek-tastic designs:

Fox Wolf AbstractCrystalballoonRed TransmutationExpecto Patronum Potter

View more designs by Wimido | More Comic T-shirts | New T-Shirts

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!

Watch a Stone Skip 88 Times

Posted: 20 Sep 2015 04:00 PM PDT

When I was a young boy, I felt proud when I could get a stone to skip twice. That's nothing compared to what Kurt "Mountain Man" Steiner can do. For Steiner, stone skipping isn't just a casual activity to do while passing by a lake. For for more than a decade, he's carefully collected the best skipping stones and practiced constantly, refining his already world-class technique.


(Video Link)

Steiner has secured Guinness World Records for stone skipping in the past by once attaining 40 confirmed skips. He has since more than doubled that number. Here he is getting the top title again 2 years ago with a full 88 skips. According to Guinness World Records:

He has collected more than 10,000 "quality rocks" and has sorted each according to its type, to prepare for the best possible throw. He looks for stones "that weigh between 3 - 8 ounces... that are very smooth (they don't have to be perfectly round), flat bottoms and are between 1/4 - 5/16th of an inch thick."

-via Gizmodo

You’ll Never Get Me!

Posted: 20 Sep 2015 02:00 PM PDT

A police raid can be a horrible experience, or it can turn into an opportunity for catharsis, reflection, and emotional growth. Like that ever happens. This is the latest comic from Buttersafe.

The Village Where Boys Grow Penises at the Age of 12

Posted: 20 Sep 2015 12:00 PM PDT


(Photo of Johnny, a guevedoce, via the Daily Telegraph)

They're called the guevedoces, which translates into English as "penis at twelve." The isolated village of Salinas in the Dominican Republic is the center of an extremely rare genetic disorder. About 1 in 90 children born there have it. When these guevedoces are born, they appear to be anatomically female--or at least lacking external male genitalia. Then, sometime between the age of 7 and 12, hormonal changes cause a functional penis to grow. The Daily Telegraph explains why this happens:

But some male babies are missing the enzyme 5-α-reductase which triggers the hormone surge, so they appear to be born female with no testes and what appears to be a vagina. It is not until puberty, when another huge surge of testosterone is produced, that the male reproductive organs emerge. What should have happened in the womb happens around 12 years later. Their voices deepen and they finally grow a penis.

Dr. Julianne Imperato, an endocrinologist at Cornell University, first documented the phenomenon in the 1970s:

When Dr Imperato investigated the Guavadoces she discovered the reason they don’t have male genitalia at birth is because they are deficient in an enzyme called 5-α-reductase, which normally converts testosterone into dihydro-testosterone. [...]

Around one in 90 children in Salinas are guevedoces and although they resemble sexually normal males, subtle differences do still exist in adulthood. Most have decreased amounts of facial hair and smaller prostate glands relative to the average male.

Movie Phone Super Call

Posted: 20 Sep 2015 10:00 AM PDT

Imagine if all the movie stars got on the phone with each other at once. That would probably make less sense than this supercut of movie phone calls that are actually strung together in a fairly coherent order. There are classic scenes and great lines from obscure films as well. What they all have in common: talking on the phone. You can probably guess some of the better ones before they appear.   

(YouTube link)

Oh by the way, the call is coming from INSIDE THE HOUSE! Don’t hang up! -via Viral Viral Videos

Bride Makes Sure Her Wedding Photos Are Perfect By Shooting Them All Herself

Posted: 20 Sep 2015 08:00 AM PDT

Choosing the right photographer is one of the most important decisions you can make when planning a wedding, and why many couples are willing to pay a little extra for someone with lots of experience.

So what's a bride to do when she wants to make sure her wedding photos come out perfect? According to Estonian photographer Liisa Luts she should shoot them all herself, and Liisa's wedding photo series serves as a very compelling proof of concept.

Here's why Liisa chose to be her own wedding photographer:

“I just felt that I want something different, not those posed beauty shots and not that post-processed glamorous photo gallery,” she says. “With all respect to the wedding photographers, I just wanted something more ‘us’ and therefore more authentic.”

“And what could be more real than me taking the photos myself on the way as the day goes?”

See more of Liisa's self shot wedding photos here

-Via Petapixel

Peruvian Wildlife Caught on Camera Trap

Posted: 20 Sep 2015 07:00 AM PDT

Wildlife photographer Jeff Cremer of the Tambopata Research Center is an occasional contributor to Neatorama. He set up a camera trap in the Peruvian rainforest to capture animals in their natural habitat and shared some of them at reddit.

You can see all the pictures at imgur. And here’s an additional photo of an ocelot. The camera was set up for four weeks before termites ate it. The memory card survived. Here’s that story.

(YouTube link)

See more of Cremer’s wildlife photography at his website. 

<i>Millennium Falcon</i> Multi-Tool

Posted: 20 Sep 2015 06:00 AM PDT

You came with that thing? You're braver than I thought. It doesn't have a knife blade. Otherwise, this multi-tool sold by Firebox is remarkably well equipped even without special modifications. This Millennium Falcon features 11 tools, including a can opener, wire strippers, a ruler, and 5 hex wrenches. It also has earbud wrappers that will help you avoid Imperial entanglements.

-via Dude I Want That
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