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Neatorama

Yama: 3D Pinhole Camera Made From Human Skull - 01/07/2009 08:37 PM

Wayne Martin Belger of Boy of Blue Industries created this pinhole camera, named Yama, out of a human skull! Yama is the Tibetan God of Death: Yama’s eyes are cast from bronze and silver with a brass pinhole in each. A divider runs down the middle of the skull creating two separate cameras. A finished contact print [...]

Einstein Word Portrait - 01/07/2009 08:34 PM

John’s post on the script of The Godfather turned into a visual art reminded me of this Einstein Word Portrait by Jeff Clark of Neoformix: Link Previously on Neatorama: 10 Strange Facts About Einstein

6 Year Old Boy Missed the School Bus, Took Mom’s Car Instead - 01/07/2009 08:34 PM

Who says that video games aren’t educational? Here’s the story of one 6-year-old Virginia boy who took the family’s sedan because he missed the school bus: The boy, whose name wasn’t released, missed the bus, took the keys to his family’s 2005 Ford Taurus and drove nearly six miles toward school while his mother was asleep, [...]

Living Calendar by Maksim Biriukov: Calendar/Clock Combo - 01/07/2009 08:33 PM

What do you get if you combine a year’s calendar with a clock? Behold the Living Calendar by Maksim Biriukov. It displays the time, day (all 365), as well as public holidays in the year, all at once. The long hand points to the day and the short hand points to the present week and [...]

Really Specific Business Hours - 01/07/2009 08:32 PM

Photo: explosive laughter [Flickr] Flickr user explosive laughter snapped this pic of a mighty specific business hour of a "conspiracy theory headquarters" in Toronto, Canada. In that light, 9:11 makes sense, but what about the rest? Perhaps they just like Charlotte Gainsbourg’s 5:55 music album …

Mr. Bond, Meet Mr. President - 01/07/2009 06:57 PM

In today’s Lunchtime Quiz from mental_floss, try to match up the titles of nine 007 films with the nine men who held the office of U.S. president when those movies were initially released. This is not easy! Since I didn’t know the answers, I tried to line them up by how old they seemed, and [...]

New Schools Built From Cardboard Tubes - 01/07/2009 06:56 PM

Last year’s earthquake in Sichuan province, China killed 69,000 people and flattened thousands of buildings, including schools. A team led by Japanese architect Shigeru Ban is constructing new temporary but strong school buildings using plywood and cardboard tubes. Recycled paper tubes aren’t just useful for holding architectural blueprints. They can be molded into load-bearing columns, [...]

Elephant and Dog - 01/07/2009 06:54 PM

(YouTube link) A lovely story about an elephant and a dog who found each other at the Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tennessee. -via Arbroath

Skier Suffers Exposure - 01/07/2009 06:52 PM

A ski lift mishap at Blue Sky Basin resort in Vail, Colorado left a 48-year-old man hanging upside down without his pants on New Years Day. It appears that the chairlift’s fold-down seat was somehow not in the lowered position, which caused the man to partially fall through the resulting gap. His right ski got jammed [...]

Repainted Action Figures - 01/07/2009 06:50 PM

Topless Robot lists The 10 Best Repainted Action Figures of All Time. They’re the bane of many an action figure collector’s existence–repaints. That’s when a manufacturer takes an existing action figure, paints it in all-new colors and tries to pass it off as a new figure, such as “Arctic Batman.” This allows the company to squeeze [...]

Deer Visits Target - 01/07/2009 03:30 PM

This video from Yahoo! of a deer (just a little guy) crashing through the window of an elementary school reminded me of when a deer wandered through the automatic doors at our Target in West Des Moines a couple of years ago. Such a thing would never happen now - all of the wooded [...]

Extra Giblets in Your Chicken? I Smell a Lawsuit! - 01/07/2009 08:37 AM

Usually, consumers are mad if things are missing in the product they buy, but this class action lawsuit is about something extra: We were reminded of that scheming today when we read about what Courthouse News Service reports may be the first federal class action based on concealment of chicken giblets. In the complaint, Perdue Farms [...]

GPS Tracking Watch for Kids: Is it Spying or Good Parenting? - 01/07/2009 08:36 AM

It’s 10 PM. Do you know where your children are? Well, with this GPS tracking watch, you definitely do. Here’s the Nu.M8 digital watch that lets parents track their children’s whereabouts through a secure website (it’ll even overlay the location on Google Maps). And to answer the obvious question: an alarm will be triggered if the [...]

Safety Law Will Effectively Ban Handmade Toys, Children Clothes - 01/07/2009 08:34 AM

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Add this to long things of things that prove the adage: a new law taking effect February 10th requires all children’s clothing and toys to be tested for lead and phthalates. Any product not tested by that day will be considered hazardious waste, regardless whether they [...]

New Study Reveals that Exercise Won’t Make You Thin - 01/07/2009 08:28 AM

Uh oh, here comes another study that will surely add confusion to how exactly one should go about losing weight: exercise won’t make you slim. Researchers from Loyola University Health System and other centers compared African American women in metropolitan Chicago with women in rural Nigeria. On average, the Chicago women weighed 184 pounds and the [...]

Why You Should Learn Math: Mathematicians Have the Best Job - 01/07/2009 08:27 AM

Sarah Needleman of The Wall Street Journal wrote an interesting article about a new CareerCast.com study from Les Krantz, author of Jobs Rated Almanac, about the best and worst jobs in the U.S. The study evaluated 200 jobs according to environment, income, employment outlook, physical demand and stress. The data are from the US Bureau [...]

Everyday normal crew rap - 01/07/2009 07:46 AM

Yo! Jon Lajoie - everyday normal guy & ladies’ man - is back on YouTube, this time spitting ill rhymes with his whole everyday normal crew! If you like everyday normal rappers from CANADA, then you must check this out. [Attention hip-hop parents out there: the everyday normal crew's lyrics are unambiguously laced with profanity.] - [...]

Five Celebrity Wikipedia Entries They Clearly Wrote Themselves - 01/07/2009 05:35 AM

I have to say, Cracked.com nailed this one. I grew up loving Corey Feldman. My cousins and I used to fight over who would get to marry him someday (thank God I lost that one, I guess). But even I have to admit his career is less than stellar at the moment. [...]

Chris “Jesus” Ferguson Makes Fruit Salad - 01/07/2009 05:10 AM

Professional poker player Chris Ferguson can cut bananas and watermelon just by throwing a playing card. Pretty impressive, but wouldn’t it be easier to just use a knife? I kid, I kid.

The Script of The Godfather as Visual Art - 01/07/2009 04:36 AM

The Los Angeles Pop Art company created this poster of Don Vito Corleone, using the entire script of the movie The Godfather as the medium. Copies are are on sale starting for $300, but personally, I would leave the poster and take the cannoli. Link via Urlesque

Translucent Sea Creatures - 01/07/2009 03:13 AM

National Geographic always has cool photo galleries, but I especially like this one. This guy is a cowfish, and although he’s transparent, he’s glowing purple because of the photographer’s strobe. He’s kind of cute. Link, photo by Chris Newbert

Vintage Cereal Boxes - 01/07/2009 02:10 AM

Nostalgic for your childhood? No doubt The Imaginary World’s vintage cereal box gallery will conjure up images of Saturday morning cartoons and massive sugar rushes. And even if you were more of the oatmeal type, some of the boxes are at least pretty interesting to look at. Does anyone remember Sir Grapefellow [...]

Sock Monkey Goddess Sarasvati - 01/07/2009 02:02 AM

Every year, this crafter makes a new sock monkey. I love this one, it’s the Hindu goddess of the arts, Sarasvati. Link via Craftzine

Logic Test - 01/06/2009 05:30 PM

Can you think logically? Take the armchair logic test! There are only 15 questions, and it doesn’t take very long -if you are logical! I scored only 87%, which disappoints me. Link -via the Presurfer (image credit: Flickr user loquenoves)

BaR2D2 - 01/06/2009 05:22 PM

BaR2D2 is a radio-controlled, mobile bar that features a motorized beer elevator, motorized ice/mixer drawer, six-bottle shot dispenser, and sound activated neon lighting. The robot is driveable so you can take the party on the road! It was created in my garage using standard hand/power tools and readily available parts and materials. Jamie Price built this, [...]

Gas Bang Wallop - 01/06/2009 05:20 PM

Barry Bernard loves gas. He has a series of videos in which he blows things up with a secret mixture of gasses. This picture is from the video in which he blows up a friend’s bed. You’ll find more of them at YouTube. Link -via the Presurfer

Nature’s Architects - 01/06/2009 05:18 PM

People aren’t the only ones who build things. In fact, some animals are better at it than we are! Beavers, moles, birds, many insects, and spiders are natural builders with amazing structures you’ll see at WebEcoist. The homes pictured were all built by termites, who erect the largest structures relative to their size of any [...]

Excuses, Excuses - 01/06/2009 05:16 PM

Some people sabotage themselves by setting up an excuse for failure before even trying something. Psychologists have studied this sort of behavior since at least 1978, when Steven Berglas and Edward E. Jones used the phrase “self-handicapping” to describe students in a study who chose to take a drug that they were told would inhibit [...]

Who says TV anchors have no moves? - 01/06/2009 05:14 PM

Have you ever wondered what television news anchors do during commercial breaks? Which local TV news anchors make the best team? Well, judging from a behind-the-scenes video clip that has popped up, it’s WGN’s Robert Jordan and Jackie Bange, hands down. The two are shown going through an elaborate routine—complete with coordinated paper-shuffling, precision gestures and [...]

Next Generation Space Toilet - 01/06/2009 02:46 PM

Leave it to Japan to fiddle with the adult diaper technology and develop the next-generation space toilet. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has teamed up with engineers from the private sector to complete the project in the next five year: Clean and easy to use, the envisioned space toilet is designed to be worn like [...]