the 300 calorie food gallery

for the visual learners, curious people, and people trying to lose weight: the 300 calorie food gallery - which has a nice sound to it - featuring photos of different kinds of foods equaling 300 calories, with the weight and cost of the food. also, a $10 bill for scale. for example, how many bananas make 300 calories? you can see it in the gallery: about 2.5 medium-small bananas. categories include fruit, veggies, meats/fish, fairy/eggs, grains/nuts/seeds, and pastries/candies.

totally useful, and i am appalled at the amount of olive oil equaling 300 calories. ah well. just a smidge, then. from neatorama and healthassist.net, that's who.

edit: i love my typo, "fairy" instead of "dairy"! i'm keeping it.

aardvarks and cheap adjustable eye-glasses-for-the-masses

from zooborns and neatorama - i can't believe i've been missing out on a blog dedicated to new baby zoo animals around the world!!! - here is a fresh baby aardvark at the Detroit Zoo. (yes, an "ahd-vahk".) this is one precious wrinkly little animal.


so this is a photo of the receptacle in which scientists plan to ignite a tiny man-made star, dabble in fusion, and see what happens. we all feel an "i lived through" tshirt coming on, yes? from the Daily Telegraph and neatorama, here's the article about igniting a tiny man-made star in a giant metal box. this'll be at the National Ignition Facility in california, btw. brink of fusion power, one more time! c'mon y'all, let's see if you can do it without blowing us all up.


my fave picture here - this is a Zulu man wearing adjustable glasses. a physics professor at Oxford university designed some glasses with adjustable, liquid-filled lenses. They are adjustable in the sense that one can fill the lenses to the desired thickness, and thus change the magnification. the professor wants to distribute them to poor folks worldwide, and make these glasses for less than a dollar each. he's already distributed over 30,000 pairs in poor countries, with great success. one point for the near-sighted and far-sighted of the world! i myopically salute you all, and professor Silver. brilliant!!!

from the Guardian UK and neatorama, here's the link to adjustable glasses for the masses.

"Silver has devised a pair of glasses which rely on the principle that the fatter a lens the more powerful it becomes. Inside the device's tough plastic lenses are two clear circular sacs filled with fluid, each of which is connected to a small syringe attached to either arm of the spectacles.

The wearer adjusts a dial on the syringe to add or reduce amount of fluid in the membrane, thus changing the power of the lens. When the wearer is happy with the strength of each lens the membrane is sealed by twisting a small screw, and the syringes removed. The principle is so simple, the team has discovered, that with very little guidance people are perfectly capable of creating glasses to their own prescription."

i wonder how the glasses stand up over time? is there a mini-warranty? harnessing the power of fluid, okay!

owl demonstrates relativity

huh-larious. i can't even understand what they're saying, but just watch - the video becomes reeeally interesting at about the 1min 45sec mark. i love that owl.

this is from Wired's Top 10 Reader's Choice Animal Videos. includes "hamster eats popcorn while laying on piano keys", "dolphins artfully blowing bubble rings", "genius cow dog" and "chickens herding rabbits", among others.

wearable art and buzzwords

why haven't i heard of the wearable art blog before? ah well. thanks neatorama! i'll add it to my linky links. in the meantime, look at these crazy dresses and suit jackets sewn together from FRAGMENTS OF ANCIENT POTTERY, omg. you can even wear them, since they are sewn onto sturdy leather clothing. wear the weight of art, clink-clink. i love it - here's a link to the article on the wearableart blog. Chinese artist Li Xiaofeng does some beautiful stuff.

here's a temporary link to the gallery showing at the Virginia Miller Galleries in Coral Gables, FLorida.

also: a link to buzzwords of 2008, including "obamanation", "staycation", and "caribou barbie" among others. from the NY Times.

crown royale and forensics

okay, the two are not really related. yet! check out this case of linking a carjacking suspect to his police file, using the stomach-blood of a mosquito found in the stolen car! GENIUS. that is almost jurassic park, even. from neatorama and yahoo news, here is the link to the secret of the finnish auto-mosquito!


next we have a quilt made out of crown royal bags - you know, the purple velvet bag the bottle of fancy whisky is wrapped in before you gift it to your aunt who doesn't drink. it's apparently made-to-order on ebay. found on geekologie. will only cost you about $400 including shipping, because crown royal is not that cheap. drink up.

tshirt origami

seriously, what? i need a slo-mo replay, seventeen times.

wolverine: the movie!

origins of wolverine in movie format, with outrageously inconceivable action sequences and all kinds of weird comic-book characters fighting each other. i love it! i must see it. comes out in may! next: maybe a movie with hugh jackman and george clooney making out?

now you know more about me.

X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE HD

paper water bottles, omfg

you loved your nalgene so much, you carried it everywhere - once you even defended yourself against a mugger using your trusty nalgene. but then we discovered the plastic in nalgene bottles was leaching toxins into our water, and you switched to an aluminum bottle. or you bought a sigg bottle. or you just started drinking out of cheap plastic water bottles because you're contrary and grieve for your nalgene. aluminum, plastic, maybe you even tried glass...where's the love? why isn't it easy to carry potable water?



what about recycled paper water bottles, holy shit! these are from geekologie. and they look very sci-fi to me. and what a great idea - does it really work? why don't they leak, why don't they soak through? SOMEONE TELL ME WHY. here's the product page.


and then of course we have apples with apple logos on them. the geekologie writer assures us that No, The Apples Are Not McIntosh! (fuji apples, 'cause it's japan and all.) dammit. those japanese people missed the whole point. but, the apples are quite adorably commercial-ready. who knew you could do that with stickers? heck. this one is from geekologie and weird asia news, which is an awesome site i keep forgetting to check! here's the article.

how to ruin a book

found this instructable on neatorama: turn a favorite book into a working clock. great! a cookbook for the kitchen, a children's book for the rugrats' room. what an amazing way to ruin a useful, readable book! and make it into a semi-useful clock. a clock that you CANNOT READ - a book that has been DISABLED. the pages literally stuck together forever BY TIME.

this instructable, though outwardly cute, may as well be called How To Greatly Annoy A Librarian With Little Effort.

just saw this picture on the daily coyote blog

this is charlie the coyote enjoying a smoked pig ear. just like your average coddled domestic dog. charlie is so cute and clever-coyote-ish, you just want to bring him home and put him on the couch, no? i sure do.

except that shreve, the woman who raised him, does not want you to believe that raising a coyote is easy. for example, charlie the coyote - in his inexhaustible coyote cleverness - becomes easily bored. charlie will turn the kitchen faucet on and off, on and off, to provoke his boring human companion. he can turn the roomba on and off with his nose. he can open the cupboards and take all the pots and pans out, making a pile in the center of the room. he also does not accept anyone other than his two human companions, and friendly dogs.

he could probably suffocate me in my sleep. or win every game of battleship. or trick my chihuahua into trying to swim in the deep end.

so, class. let's enjoy the cute coyote while also remembering that coyotes do not make good pets. primarily because they'll erase your favorite tivo shows when you're not home.

'tis the season...for frugal gifting

found a list of 50 frugal or DIY gift ideas on boingboing - originally from the LA Times - and i liked many of them! particularly the mason jar of prunes stewing in armagnac for two weeks. or the homemade baby carrot pickles? or toasting some pecans in a sweet/hot spice mixture with sugar, then putting them in a little tin? cute and edible gets four gold stars from me. i love a reuseable gifting container. this list goes way beyond so-called denominational holidays; i just like to give people gifts in winter. the idea being that, in case of zombie war, the gifts will foster secure social bonds with my friends. and then those friends will be less likely to cannibalize me.

especially if i gave them breadsticks or herbally infused vodka. yep, i'm up way too late tonight.


speaking of food, i love love love these adorable fold-out sandwich boxes. found these on boingboing, and they are designed by emma smart, for ASDA - british grocery company. trompe l'oeil place settings are just what the world needs for take-out food! i would totally keep trying to pick up that shiny fork.


and here we have an expandable christmas stocking from neatorama and instructables. this is DIY project involving lots of zippers, and ends up making a cunning striped stocking. however, one could look at the glass half-empty, and see a clever way of making a shrinking stocking.

yep - just enough room for an orange, an apple, a milk chocolate jesus-on-the-cross, a fancy fountain pen...oh wait, that was last year. all i've got now is this bagel i found in the dumpster. (i know you like sesame, though.) and some baby carrot pickles in a jar i forgot to sterilize. and a pink slip from work, how 'bout that?

mouse obstacle course

this video from CuteOverload makes me feel a little better about the mouse poop on my kitchen stove. like, if the mouse is going to look cute and work so hard, well...fine, i guess one tiny mouse turd on the stove is fine. but not more than that, right? jeez.

ramen pizza, ramen pizza!!

yes, ramen pizza. from neatorama and seriouseats, here we have one of the annual ramen-off cooking contest winners. yes, karol lu won the competition at brooklyn kitchen with her recipe for pepperoni ramen pizza. i can't even talk about it anymore. ramen was created to be the stuff of my nightmare, yet i'm strangely drawn to the picture of ramen pizza. get the recipe for ramen pizza here, at seriouseats.



and here we have this clever ad about global warming, in the form of a huge aerial cityscape - new york - decal on the bottom of a swimming pool in mumbai, india. get it? because that's where we'll all be if we don't cut down on the fossil fuel! picture is neat-o-rama. i would prefer swimming in this pool to a slice of ramen pizza, thanks.

so the only encouraging part about our "economic downturn" is that library usage is up - thrifty patrons are looking to squeeze every freebie out of the local library, perhaps not realizing that resources and services are always free at the library? well, happy day for libraries in search of funding. here's the link to the article from lisnews. apparently libraries are always more popular during recessions, how 'bout that. it's like the library is the plain, steadfast wife, there when you need her. and blockbuster/amazon is the blonde bombshell bimbo mistress of patrons everywhere, a fair-weather rental.


what we have here is fiber-optic wallpaper with intricate floral designs. don't know how it works. probably couldn't look at it for very long. but it's kinda nice. let's try an LED fireplace next, with built-in crackle. also, i just read about a japanese aurora-borealis simulator/projector machine thing. the likelihood of an accurate aurora on one's bedroom ceiling is minute! but a sweet idear.

humbuggery

no, humbuggery is not what you think. you pervert. what's really obscene is this pair of salt and pepper shakers cast from the heads of actual dead turkeys. they are, at the time of this writing, on sale at www.etsy.com for $65. i kind of love them - like these are what you bring to thanksgiving dinner when you hate thanksgiving. or perhaps when you are a vegetarian attending the carnivore carnival. morbid! awesome! from boingboing and neatorama - here's the boingboing link to turkey shakers.



so this is a link to a 10-item list of usb-powered warming devices for chilled personal computer users. (for instance, my feet and hands have gotten painfully cold in previous apartments with sketchy radiators. this made playing zoo tycoon for five consecutive hours that much harder!) so for all those people tied to their computers and suffering from sluggish sedentary circulation, here is a list of usb-powered gadgets that will keep the warmth in your extremities. from neatorama and geekalerts.

i think my favorite is the heating mitt/mousepad shaped like a fish.

finally, did y'all known that there is a world-class gym inside disney's matterhorn mountain ride? well, i just accidentally closed the tab to the article. so you'll have to find that article yourself - 10 things you didn't know about disneyland, on neatorama. i was shocked! but then, i have not been to disneyland since i saw michael jackson in "captain eo" in 3D.

my god, i love 3D movies.

omg, omg = usb-powered owlbot from ThinkGeek and Japan

See it on www.thinkgeek.com right here! maybe buy me one. blink-blink! also featured on cuteoverload, where this phenomenon is known as both adjective and noun: baroo?!owl.

chocolate fashion shows and giant salmon

this picture is a Chinook salmon found dead post-spawn by a park ranger in Battle Creek, California. from Neatorama, read the original post here. see, this is why untouched nature - the kind of nature that gets large in the absence of humans eating up their habitat and resources - is a little scary. it's the world of 800 lb bears, 300 foot trees, 150 lb wolves, giant sea creatures of all kinds...including giant salmon. (yes, salmon spend their lives at sea before swimming up their freshwater birth streams and spawning. this makes salmon anadramous fish.)


here we have a swiss chocolate swiss army knife. filled with hazelnut praline! 'nuff said. what a great consolation stocking stuffer! and so shiny... from neatorama, right here.


here's that chocolate fashion show i mentioned. seems it's the 11th annual new york chocolate show, and this is the fashion segment. warm chocolate is adhered and molded to models, who then strut around wearing chocolate corsets and things. one model does faint - perhaps the combination of heat and weight? from the amazing boingboing.


last but certainly not least, a sort-of-new species of simulation video game. "after shock" is a 3-week real-time california earthquake disaster simulation - you can jump in and participate at any time! simulated disaster recovery think-tank, anyone? what a great idea. gaming for the greater good. no seriously, AWESOME. next, a simulated zombie/vampire attack. here's an excerpt, followed by a link to play:

"Aftershock, run by the Institute for the Future and Art Center College of Design, is based on a 300-page U.S. Geological Survey scenario report that details the extensive damage that Southern California could experience in the aftermath of a 7.8-magnitude quake on the San Andreas Fault. The game began on Thursday and will run for three weeks, prompting users to complete real-world missions — and submit content based on them to the gaming community."

play After Shock!

still exhausted: presidential election joy hangover

well, i apologize for lacking the energy to post interesting and distracting things on this blog for a while. i'll try to reverse the trend. here, from BoingBoing and Shape&Color:

this is artist roger hiorns in his piece "seizure"; it's an apartment coated with blue copper phosphate crystals. the artist pumped in the liquid copper solution, let it crystallize on all surfaces in cooler temperatures, and then pumped out the remaining fluid. who knows how he managed to pump it all! but now it looks like a magical, sparkly, inky-blue rabbit warren. it's in london, and it's open to the public for now. i think it's pretty cool.

http://shapeandcolour.wordpress.com/2008/09/11/roger-hiorns-seizure/

you said it, Mr. President!

cakewrecks is making me feel all patriotic and proud...of cupcakes!!!!

http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/2008/11/cake-headlines.html

election updates on your mobile device

i voted! and because i'm impatient to hear the results, i want election count updates on my cell phone! and i can do that, because the internet loves me.

text "elections zipcode" to 698698 to get the NYTimes election results updates on your duh-vice.

for eg: send "elections 90210" to 698698, no actual quotation marks. you get it. elections - it's plural! you get house, state, and governor election results, too.

Tuttuki Bako, generously nicknamed "the fingerbang game" by geekologie writer

actually, he's totally right.

Library Headlines

- the graphic novel "Bunny Suicides" freaks an Oregonian mom out to the point of bizarre-o. (it's free speech, lady. sorry you don't think it's funny. maybe you shouldn't read it, y'know?)

- the winning essays for a contest How The Library Changed My Life. I get weepy. I could write a few words on this subject, myself.

- MSN's "America's 10 Coolest Public Libraries" concentrates on snazzy architecture instead of the crazy services rendered within. all librarians now feel pissy and devalued. but it's okay, because librarians rock. and I would totally visit Seattle PL (pictured above) just to visit their insane library and ask a reference question that could somehow be answered with the reference dumbwaiter(!!). Also, woo for the BPL (pictured below) making third on the list with its Renaissance Revival architecture; after all, it was "the first large free municipal library" in the United States, founded in 1848. Info from the BPL's website, history portion.

but first, a watermelon brain.

from boingboing and instructables, we have an impressive brain carved from a watermelon. my first thoughts on seeing this creation were "my goodness, the skill involved!" and then "i wonder if a pumpkin-carving kit could do that?" here is the instructable for melon brains, too.



from boingboing gadgets, we have the winner of a seoul design contest: Life Pebbles! it's a pack that drops glowing green pebbles behind firefighters as they enter burning buildings. Thus, as the boingboing writer says, they are much like radioactive hamsters in a smoking maze.


try watching this video of a danish-built "walking house" art installation. yep, it's like a camper shell that walks. Howl's Moving Castle?

also, neatorama tells me that an octogenarian norwegian man can still see out of the cornea he received via transplant in 1958. that's pretty damn impressive. especially since the transplant came from a man born in 1885. that's a 123 year-old organ transplant.

WHOA, 1885, 1885!!!

i'll show *you* a special character...

so typing special characters is my pet peeve. or shall i say, my pet ineptitude? anyway, i looked up an online chart of key-strokes to create special characters. not the same as making special characters in html or xml - no no! this is for creating special characters - like pound-sterling and umlaats and vowels with niblets on top - in your PC word processor. yes, now i can correctly type the word "résumé" in my résumé. all hail Alt 130.

http://www.forlang.wsu.edu/help/keyboards.asp


also, here is a link to a rather fantastic article from boingboing, called "Xrays made from Scotch tape". apparently when you peel off some Scotch tape in a vacuum, you can create enough x-rays to see some bones through your flesh. picture at the top. researchers stress this happens in a vacuum, and so no one should be dissuaded from using Scotch tape in everyday life.

phew! i was really worried, you guys. here is the link to the original article published in Nature: Sticky Tape Generates X-rays. so it seems you can get the unpeeling tape to emit an eerie light, as well. mechanoluminescence is crazy.

WHAT.

it's funny, i was just fantasizing about my own little hover scooter. you know, for buzzing through the city and flattening pedestrians. i could hover smugly past hipster cyclists and those guys on segueways, too. how awesome would that be. WHAT DOES IT RUN ON, my god, TELL ME. i have $17,000 right here in my pocket... from geekologie and others who wish to hover, too.

oh, but the hover scooter website mentions that "the friction wheel makes contact with the ground, up to a maximum of approximately 15 mph." what kind of sloppy levitation is that?!

[disgruntle]


so here we have an electric, smoke-less cigarette, the "Crown 7 Hydro". wtf? actually, as someone who is quite affected by cigarette smoke, i appreciate their intentions here. let's all be a little less carcinogenic in our personal habits, i guess. and it only costs $80 to save your fellow human beings from second-hand smoke! it's sort of sci-fi, sort of like you're chewing on an expensive pen. it's from geekologie, too!

not too shabby

this playful site is updated daily until the election. click on over and fiddle with the oval office as interpreted by sarah palin. it's, like, totally fun.

http://www.palinaspresident.us/

and then there's this addictive little online video game, MotherLoad. the context is that you're a little drill machine getting started on Mars. you collect minerals, refuel to avoid imploding, and upgrade your vehicle and drill and fuel tanks. more valuable minerals are deeper! you get out with a cute little helicopter attachment. but if you land too hard, your hull will split and explode. upgrades include teleporting devices, nanobots to repair your hull, and DYNOMITES. ultimate time-waster of today.

update: i have basically finished MotherLoad - it has a silly ending, but the tense build-up towards the finish was intense! i heard the scary music in my head throughout the day. and i like that it remembers my computer when i want to play again, just for the fun of detonating plastic explosives, finding martian mummies, and mining amazonite.

as usual, boingboing has cool schtuff

well, amputee David Savage is now a man with a new human hand - which seems to work surprisingly well. read more about his new hand here!

in other news, Jonathan Hennessey and illustrator Aaron McConnell have created a graphic novel version of the United States Constitution. i just requested that my local library purchase it, so i can read it, dammit. too good. except that it does not handle recent law-making higgledy-piggledy like the Patriot Act, but maybe that will be the next book.

and here we have a link to a blog post by an icelander, detailing the surreal milieu of reykjavik the day after all major icelandic banks failed as a consequence of U.S. banks tipping. a horrifying and astounding blog post to read, i might add. suicides beginning to be reported.

in a metaphorical response to the above paragraph, here we have duct tape bandages:



finally, the U.S. Army is working on developing "synthetic telepathy" helmets which will transmit the thoughts of one person to another person in a matching helmet. it will be something along the lines of composing an email in your head, then "sending" it by thinking. lawd, the world makes me tired.

NASA's APOD on RSS, OMG

so i just discovered Astronomy Picture of the Day, or APOD. each lovely photo has a short explanation written by a goshdarn professional astronomer. and it's just kinda cool, y'know? the pic above is a fly-by picture of Mercury taken from the satellite Messenger, Oct 2008. brought to you by NASA.

google makes anti-drunk-emailing app(!!!)

i could totally use this, btw. occasionally, i mean. a few math problems between me and sending a drunk email? GENIUS. and it's kind of cute, too. i like how the app asks you in this concerned text: "Are you sure you want to send this email?" from geekologie, read more about it here.



and what is this? why, it's a recycling egg! "jimmy, give it something, quick. before it demands your pop can!" more here, from boingboing.

finally, an article about the squirrels of washington, d.c. - nearly eradicated by enthusiastic hunters during the turn of the century, then reintroduced for "urban charm" here and there. originally they installed squirrel drinking fountains and squirrel feeding stations, but eventually those weren't really needed anymore...SQWERL MADNESS, LOOK OUT.

golden kate moss, etc

so now i can't remember if it was geekologie or neatorama or boingboing that told me about the solid-gold statue of kate moss as the modern aphrodite: read about it here! this british artist cast 110 lbs of gold into the likeness of kate moss, and used her as a live model, too. (i kinda wish he had just spray-painted kate moss gold. woulda weighed about the same, but much cheaper? except for kate's hourly rate, hmm.) and you know what else? gold is not cheap these days.



and then there's this awesome boingboing post about how a public library dealt with Banned Books Week: they made a sensational window display with Live Readers Reading Banned Or Challenged Books! for the whole week. i love that. it's an especially good picture, too.

finally, you can make acorn pancakes with this how-to for acorn flour; soak to remove the bitterness/tannins! described as "nutty" and "hearty", i wanna try it. surrounded as i am with oak trees and gorging squirrels, seems pert'nent.

the one reason to visit new haven

the cupcake truck makes toothsome red velvet cupcakes, lemon chiffon, salted caramel, and coconut cupcakes. among other awesome flavors. and they sell frosting shots for when you just need that cream cheese frosting to continue living. they drive around and sell their super cupcakes for $2 a pop. why don't they come to boston? they have a mouth-watering blog and stuff. here's the site: the cupcake truck!

cupcakes in the picture are not cupcakes from the truck. they're just cupcakes on the internet that make me hungry. aggggh. i want a chocolate coconut cupcake!

okay, adorable.

this cute little blog makes me fall on my face, it's so cute. and not like CuteOverload cute, but just sweet.

1000 Awesome Things

here are some of the headlines by way of adorable example (i feel closer to humanity at large already):

#930 Finally getting a piece of popcorn that’s been stuck in your teeth all day out

#937 The smell of rain on a hot sidewalk

#946 The first shower you take after not showering for a really long time

#953 When cashiers open up new check-out lanes at the grocery store

the bacon cinnamon bun!

once again, the obsession with bacon! i don't eat it often, i could easily live without it. but i can appreciate it when it sizzles my way. but here we have something so evil and insidious, it could have been created by McD's! the cinnamon bun made with a strip of bacon inside it, and then frosted. one of those tubes of dough that you curl yourself, bake and frost...only it's curled up with some friendly friendly bacon.

i think the picture speaks for itself. salty, yet sweet! in fact, i just died from all the transfats in the above paragraph.

ultraviolet-sensitive bikini is over-rated

when i visited ------------, i had to wear a little paper sticky patch on my shirt. if the sun hit it, or if in other words i went outside, the patch would turn bright purple. i think these bikini beads are the same sort of things. but they're just beads on a bikini. and it can't possibly be that expensive to make UV-sensitive beads, y'know? but still, a nice thought. helpful and all. from geekologie.

exotic meat parties and other roman delights

one of my librarian colleagues recently told me of an "exotic meats party" that she had with her housemates. the party's highlights included a bear pot roast! and there were other amazing things, but all have been eclipsed by her story of the Enormous Ostrich Egg Benedict! for which a custom-made enormous english muffin had to be baked! she had some ingenious way of getting the egg whole out of the shell; her method involved the back of a kitchen knife and much tentative knocking at the shell.

as far as i know, the internet does not have a picture of ostrich eggs benedict for me. but it does have numerous articles and blogs concerning the eating of ostrich eggs. here is one that i liked, called Dessert Comes First. funny captions and glorious photos, i say. also an article about eating monitor lizard eggs...ooo...{puts on reading glasses}

Adventure with an Ostrich Egg

Adventure with Hot Tsokolate

crazy stuff for a crazy day

according to neatorama and probably others, the fitbit is a little clip-on device that tracks your mileage, caloric burn, REM sleep patterns, and motion in general. you can put it in your pocket and it will still function as a pedometer. and it'll upload your info to its website for free. it sounds creepy, but satisfying for the curious. i want one. read more about it on MIT's Technology Review.




and in a complete non sequitur (sp?) extraordinaire, here is Urinary Tract Wallpaper from neatorama and LA Weekly. quite clever, i think.

and in a more drastic tangential tweak, scientists emphasize that HIV was already infecting humans in 1959. and they have samples that prove it, although there's much to be said about shaky computer-time-elapse models and formalin-damanged dna. but still, it's damn interesting. neatorama showed me, and i read more about it here.

and omg, you can spin your dog's hair into yarn and then weave that yarn into a scarf. or have some custom-made "keepsake" whipped up after the spinning, via VIP Fibers. the coyote on dailycoyote.net had his fur spun into yarn by a nice woman in idaho. and i think that is way cool.

did you say "iphone-inspired cupcakes"?

mo' cakewrecks, mo' problems. fondant looks good, tastes bad! but, looks good!

news, cake, and celluloid

the cake picture is from cakewrecks, the blog. it says "congratulations on your vasectomy pete!" it's too good.

and now, more food photos because i'm hungry: eyeball insalata caprese! via neatorama. i'm not even that into halloween, but i'd make this.



one more thing, also from neatorama: ping pong balls as useful aids to organ transplant surgery! in this case, a little girl's adult-sized liver transplant was putting too much pressure on nearby arteries. so, the surgeon called for a ping pong ball to hold the liver away...and then just decided to leave it inside. why not...what are ping pong balls made of, anyway?



wikipedia's entry on table tennis tells me this:

"The ball is made of a high-bouncing gas-filled celluloid, colored white or orange, with a matte finish. The choice of ball color is made according to the table color and its surroundings. For example, a white ball is easier to see on a green or blue table than it is on a grey table. Stars on the ball indicate the quality of the ball. 3 stars indicates that it is of the highest quality."

so of course i looked up "celluloid" and this is what i found:

"Celluloid is the name of a class of compounds created from nitrocellulose and camphor, plus dyes and other agents. Generally regarded to be the first thermoplastic, it was first created as Parkesine in 1856 and as Xylonite in 1869 before being registered as Celluloid in 1870. Celluloid is easily molded and shaped, and it was first widely used as an ivory replacement. Celluloid is highly flammable and also easily decomposes, and is no longer widely used. Its most common uses today are the table tennis ball and guitar picks."

guitar picks!!!

breaking news! thinking makes you fat

they've found a link between mental activity (i.e. problem-solving at computer) and increased appetite due to glucose instability in the body. apparently muscular exertion requires proteins, fats, and glucose...but mental activity only requires glucose. So much so that the brain freaks out and needs you to eat stuff with the aim of providing a fast glucose fix.

well, results are "tentative" for now. Read about it here, on ABC News. meanwhile, i'll be horking down my lunch and buying an ice cream before i sit at this computer for a few more hours.

pinhole camera built into prepared skull, yowza

what is crazy and really cool? this thing. according to geekologie, neatorama, and engadget, and probably others, this camera is built using the century-and-a-half-old skull of a 13 year old girl. the camera takes hazy, dreamy pictures which can only be described as Incredibly Creepy Since They Are Produced Through A "Third Eye" Bored Into A Skull AND AS SUCH ARE Just Like Prophecy On Film OMFG! freak. out. the artist responsible is wayne martin belger; he's a man that loves to make a good pinhole camera, what. click here for his creepy and incredibly fascinating website, with more pics and more pinhole cameras. (check out "yama", which is another skull-cam with cast-bronze pinholes in the eye sockets; it's set-up to take 3-D pics.)

omg what is even happening

from cuteoverload: RepairCat will repair your printer! with captions. hilarious.

miscellania superb

so neatorama rocked me again. sorry about the long list of links, but there is so much! i should probably update more frequently instead of having long lists. i'll work on that. but for right now, link madness!

1. How long could you survive chained to a bunk bed with a velociraptor? It's a 10 question quiz! According to the quiz, I could survive for 51 whole seconds. Hah!

2. Stealth Cell Phone Towers: why is that tree so ugly? This is a great article - with photos - about how our need for constant cell phone reception and our rejection of ugly cell phone towers has resulted in "urban camouflage" cell phone towers. they've got 'em on church steeples, grain silos, palm trees, pine trees, fake trees, even fake boulders. in-SANE, but in the back of your mind, you already knew. some of the pictures are impressively stealth.

3. some crazy artist-guy got sick of his blond wood kitchen flooring. so he got a fat Sharpie marker, put down some white plastic board, and doodled. pretty trippy.

4. speaking of crazy artists, this belgian artist named Wim Delvoye likes to build digesting machines that create unique turds. yes! the turds are then vacuum-packed and displayed. one of the machines - called cloacas - has three settings: human, rabbit, and cat! it's art, people. art imitates LIFE. ("cloaca" is latin for "sewer", btw. it's also the combined excretory opening for reptiles and birds, and platypi, and echidnas.) here is a sketch from the website, although there are also many photographs of everything. you'll find much art of interest on delvoye's site, but beware: it is almost all scatalogical, sexual/pornographic, or involving dead animals.

i know, because i just looked. this is a weaker version of how i felt after watching Pink Flamingo. listen, it's Not Safe For Work, but it's damn interesting. and i'm so curious in general. right now i'm imagining the Power Puff Girls scouring out my brains with soap, baking soda, and diamond gravel.