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Neatorama

Snow Face - 01/08/2009 07:27 PM

See what happens when a bunch of students have some free time and a lot of snow? This image is a 5′ sculpture made out of snow. In March of 2003, there was a huge blizzard in Denver and school was canceled for an entire week. With nothing else to do and artistic frustration to get [...]

19 Cool Products That Are Almost Impossible to Use - 01/08/2009 07:24 PM

You’d think that making a product simpler would be a good thing, but sometimes minimalism goes too far. Cool Material has a list of beautiful minimalist products that are so simple they may be hard for a normal person to use! Pictured is the Nimbus Ultimate Wheel, which does away with the bicycle’s second wheel, [...]

Barriers - 01/08/2009 07:23 PM

From Prague, Czech Republic: If you want to promote the slogan “Europe Without Barriers”, what better place to put it than on some police barriers? Link -Thanks, Jeff!

Particle Accelerator vs. Webcam - 01/08/2009 04:01 PM

Etahan Cascio from the Proton Therapy Center at Massachusetts General Hospital demonstrates what happens when a Particle Accelerator is turned on in front of a Webcam. Devices used for the experiment consists of a Beam Aperture, CRaTER Instrument and a Webcam. Very interesting results at the end. Link: YouTube

What is it? Game 87 - 01/08/2009 12:41 PM

Our weekly collaboration with the What is it? Blog brings us this mysterious object - can you guess what it is for? Place your guess in the comment section. No prize this week, so you’re playing for fame and glory only. Please don’t post any URL - let others play. For more clues, check out the What [...]

Jaguar Motorcycle by Barend Hemmes - 01/08/2009 10:32 AM

Barend Massow Hemmes of Massow Concept Cycles along with Polar cycles of Doncaster UK created what is probably the most awesome motorcycle I’ve ever laid eyes on: the Jaguar "leaper" cat logo concept bike, made from stainless steel. Just how awesome is that? Link - via Modern Urban Living

Kerouac’s On the Road Visual Maps by Stefanie Posavec - 01/08/2009 09:45 AM

Literary Organism, a visualization of Part One of On the Road, by Jack Kerouac Artist Stefanie Posavec took pieces from On the Road by Jack Kerouac and turned them into various maps, dissecting the literary masterpiece and converting it into a visual one: Stefanie’s maps capture something above and beyond that of the others. Rather than mapping [...]

Jack Skellington in LEGO - 01/08/2009 09:44 AM

Photo: Legohaulic [Flickr] Flickr user Legohaulic is a big fan of Tim Burton and an avid LEGO hobbyist, so what better tribute to The Nightmare Before Christmas than to create this masterpiece: Jack Skellington made entirely of LEGO! Link - via The Brothers Brick

5 Things About Shakespeare You Didn’t Know - 01/08/2009 09:43 AM

AskMen has a pretty nifty post about the 5 things you didn’t know about Shakespeare. Take, for instance, the word "torture" - yep, good ol’ Will invented it (well, technically he made the noun "torture" which existed at the time into the verb form): 3- Shakespeare invented "torture" Shakespeare didn’t just invent "torture," but also "excitement," "addiction" [...]

Can Science Make a Love Spray? - 01/08/2009 09:42 AM

Guys, are you unlucky in love? Thanks to science, there may just be hope for you yet: a love spray! Neurobiologist Larry Young of Emory University, Georgia, explains: Animal testing is beginning to shed light on the complex neural and genetic components of love in the same way they have led to pharmaceutical therapies for anxiety, phobias [...]

Dragon Cake - 01/08/2009 09:41 AM

Flickr user Astro-Lopithecus has a photoset of an amazing birthday cake shaped like a dragon clutching a 10-sided die. I’d venture a guess that whoever was celebrating his birthday is a D&D lover … The Dragon Cake is made by Mike McCarey of Mike’s Amazing Cakes [warning: Flash and self-starting audio] Link - via reddit

For People Who Like to Make Lists - 01/08/2009 04:35 AM

I’m a compulsive list-maker. If you look in my purse at any given time, you can usually find three different mini notebooks filled with random scribblings, lists and ideas. You don’t even know how delighted I was to come across Listography. It’s a place to keep online lists of anything your little [...]

Star Wars Matryoshka Dolls - 01/08/2009 04:16 AM

These little dolls are adorable and clever. I want a set! There are plenty more images and close ups on artist Matt Brown’s site. Link

Where are they now? Ferris Bueller & friends - 01/08/2009 04:13 AM

Who among us hasn’t asked themselves at least once “whatever happened to the cast of Ferris Bueller’s day off”? Well now you can find out! The link includes fascinating “then and now” pics. (I certainly think Jennifer Grey is very beautiful now post-nosejob, but wasn’t she even more beautiful before? Anyone?) Save Ferris! [Thanks, Gail!]

Things You Probably Don’t Need #7 - 01/08/2009 04:03 AM

Hey, I like Abraham Lincoln as much as the next person. Not only was he one of our greatest presidents ever, he was a fascinating man. But let’s be honest… you probably don’t need this. No one really needs this. It’s beyond creepy. Then again, it might be a great [...]

World’s Largest Sand Carpet - 01/08/2009 03:55 AM

This Persian rug is made of colored sand and is located beside the Straight of Hormuz. Life In The Fast Lane has some great images of the “carpet” being assembled as well as some largest sand carpets of the past and some neat sand sculptures. Link

Fantastic Global Street Art - 01/08/2009 03:13 AM

Good Magazine has a fantastic gallery of some of the best street art in the world. Some are sculptures and some are murals. The site paired up with Wooster Collective, a street art blog that has some great stuff and some just ok sauce.

The Customer is Not Always Right - 01/08/2009 12:51 AM

As a former retail employee, I wholeheartedly agree with that statement. And so do the people at NotAlwaysRight. I only wish I knew of this site when I actually worked retail - I could have contributed so many good stories. But there are some really funny ones even without my additions. [...]

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 [...]