unique and interesting: May 2007

Thursday, May 31, 2007

Kromofons

Lee Freedman has waited a long time, but he thinks the moment is finally right to spring on the world the color alphabet he invented as a 19-year-old at Mardi Gras in 1972. For 35 years, Freedman has been working on Kromofons - an innovative alphabet...

A 'then and now' of Star Wars characte...

Japanese company Sangaria has been marketing non-alcoholic beverages to kids for years - as beers, wines, and cocktails in a variety of flavors and packages.Sangaria's kodomo no nomimono is just one line of Japanese non-alcoholic beers - wine and sake...

I've been linking to Bart Bonte's games before.His latest game is called 'Loose the Moose.' It's an 'escape the room' kind of game where you find yourself dropped in a strange room. Are you smart enough to open the do...

WikiDumper

WikiDumper, or the Wikipedia Knowledge Dump, is the Official Appreciation Page for the Best of the Wikipedia Rejects. 'One man's trash is another man's treasure.WikiDumper is edited by Cliff Pickover of Reality Carniv...

Trulia Hindsight is an animated map of residential properties in the USA that allows you to see when neighborhoods and cities were built. Slider controls allow you to view a specific time range or drag through the timeline. You can also search for specific...

The Corona-Matic is a typewriter turned into a waffle iron. It makes keyboard shaped waffles. There's and integrated stand for holding four jars of syrup. The Corona-Matic is a design by Chris Dimino.(via Beancounte...

What's the right way to draw a head?A free class from the Academy of Art.Click on getting started.How to draw a head.(via Information Ju...

Google Maps Street View

Google launched 'Street View' photography. Street View shows a panorama photo for certain locations on Google Maps. By clicking on the arrows on the panorama you can go to that direction. Take a look at this preview page and click on 'Street View.'...

Dazzle camouflage was a camouflage paint scheme used on ships. It consisted of a complex pattern of geometric shapes in contrasting colors, interrupting and intersecting each other. At first glance it seems like an unlikely form of camouflage, drawing...

411-SONG

How many times have you heard a song and wished you knew who it was or wished you could get it before you forget it? Now you can! Whenever you hear a song you love, call (866) 411-SONG. Wait for the beep and hold your cell near the music for just 15 seconds.411 SONG will identify the song and send you...

Underwater sculptures by English artist Jason Taylor.(via Dark Roasted Ble...

Linkdump

Drive Like a Cop301 Useless FactsVery Weird Amusement Parks52 Tips for Happiness and ProductivityBalloon Creati...

Heinz Ketchup Fountains

A commercial for the Heinz Top This TV challenge. This hasn't been done in one take which you can see by the obvious cuts. That's probably because they ran out of ketch...

Theme Park Insider

Planning a trip to Orlando to visit Walt Disney World or Universal Studios? Thinking about a trip to Southern California's theme parks? Looking for insider advice on getting the most from an amusement park trip?Theme Park Insider is a consumers' guide to the world's most popular theme and amusement...

The Doing Business database provides objective measures of business regulations and their enforcement. The Doing Business indicators are comparable across 175 economies. They indicate the regulatory costs of business and can be used to analyze specific...

Dance Sister Dance

Wanna star in a new Scissor Sisters' video? Simply upload your best full-on head, and that of a friend. Then choose a sexy body, outfit and wig, and get down!I created this video with two of the presidential candidates, Hillary and Barack.Create your own dance vid...

An Ames room is a distorted room that is used to create an optical illusion. It was invented by American ophthalmologist Adelbert Ames in 1946 based on a concept by Hermann Helmholtz.An Ames room is constructed so that from the front it appears to be...

Show mom you remember where you came from. Reconnect with your mom in a whole new way with the first after-market umbilical reconnection system. Nothing says 'I love you, Mom' quite like the MaternaCord umbilical reconnection system.Made of durable,...

Does Wi-Fi Kill?

Wi-Fi (WIreless-FIdelity)) is the popular term for a high-frequency wireless local area network and the consumer-friendly name for the 802.11b engineering standard. It lets home and office users create wireless local networks, which connect two or more computers to each other and a faster Internet line.The...

A piechart where each sector is proportional to the area of the color on the respective flag. Click on an image to reveal the flag.Pictured here are the flags of the Netherlands, the USA, and the flag with the most colors, Saint Pierre and Miquel...

Like viruses, spam has become a scourge on the Internet as billions of unwanted messages are transmitted daily to almost every e-mail recipient. In 2006, there were an estimated 183 billion spam messages per day in 2006 or 70% of all e-mail traffic.Eighty...

Women In Film

Last Friday I posted 'Women In Art,' a morphing video about 500 years of female portraits in western art. From the same author comes 'Women in Film.' 80 Years of female portraits in cine...

100 Words Every High School Graduate Should Know

Bowdlerize, soliloquy, gerrymander, moiety, ziggurat. These are some of the words the editors of the American Heritage dictionaries recommend every High School graduate should know.They have compiled a list of 100 words not meant to be exhaustive but to be a benchmark against which graduates and their...

The A-Z Of Modern Etiquette

Modern etiquette is all about hoodies, emails, religion and My Space. Here's an example:M is for MySpaceThe seven laws of MySpace:1. Never join MySpace unless you are in a band and deluded enough to think that you might be discovered without a major record label building your page for you.2. Never befriend...

37 Sources Of Inspiration

Did you ever feel lost in space, trying to gather your thoughts, get motivated to write for your blog, design a website, come up with logo ideas, find a perfect object for your photo shoot, simply be inspired to live your life to its fullest?Here is your one in a lifetime chance to swim in the ocean...

6 billion Others is a project by Yann Arthus-Bertrand, author of Earth from Above. The project collects testimonies of people from all over the world where they speak about what moves them. In 2008 you will be able to listen to the thousands of testimonies,...

10 Disturbing Trends In Subliminal Advertising

Some of the biggest advertisers are taking their advertising away from full page ads and television spots and spending up on hidden persuasion. You won't find these secret messages in ice cubes or flickering film footage like they were in the sixties.Subliminal advertising has gone mainstream - fake...

Home Schooled is a comics series by American artist Ash Jackson.Co-writing by Silas Jackson.The Presurfer will feature a Home Schooled cartoon every Monday. This is an absolute exclusive cooperation between The Presurfer and Ash Jackson.Home Schooled...

The Circus in America: 1793 - 1940

The first American circus was presented on April 3, 1793 in Philadelphia, PA. President George Washington saw the show twice. John Bill Ricketts organized the first show, which included horses, an acrobat, a clown and a rope-walker. The first circus...

The width of neckties has always seemed to change with the fashion of the moment. However, traditional style lends itself to neckties which are in balance with the size of the jacket lapels.A necktie should be tied so that there is no collar space showing...

Flickr Color Selectr allows you to search for images on Flickr based on the primary color within the image.All photos are Creative Commons licens...

Disclose TV

Disclose TV is a new and fast growing video and photo sharing community dedicated to the mysteries, secrets, anomalies, conspiracies and other alternative or unexplained topics of this world.Many of the videos uploaded on Disclose TV have been banned from TV because of their controversial and mind-boggling...

Pistol Shrimp

The pistol shrimp snaps a specialized claw shut to create a cavitation wave that generates noise in excess of 200 decibels and is capable of killing small fish. This sea creature blasts bubbles at over 60 mph with a temperature comparable to that of the s...

Everything you ever wanted to know about butterflies and moths. The latest stories concerning butterflies and moths on the World Wide Web, a searchable dictionary of terms used in lepidopterology.A virtual museum with photos and drawings of real butterfly...

The Dome of Peace is a synthesis of the arts by the Austrian artist DE ES, an alias of Dieter Schwertberger. It is a house of inspiration in the service of the realisation of the dreams of humanity: worldunity, worldpeace and worldculture.The Dome of...

Smile, Though Your Heart Is Breaking

What's that, officer? I'm being arrested?Wow, that's great!Not everyone looks glum when they pose for a mug shot. In fact, some arrestees are actually beaming when the sheriff's deputy says 'cheese.' The men and women pictured here were photographed...

An ekranoplan is a vehicle resembling an aircraft but that operates solely on the principle of ground effect. Ground effect vehicles fly above any flat surface, with the height above ground dependent upon the size of the vehicle. Ekranoplan design was...

Linkdump

How to Photograph Silhouettes in 8 Easy StepsSleep Adjustment - Gain 10 Days per Year10 Benefits of Rising Early, and How to Do ItIllusions Gall...

An 11-year-old Alabama boy used a pistol to kill a wild hog his father says weighed a staggering 1,051 pounds and measured 9-feet-4 from the tip of its snout to the base of its tail.If the claims are accurate, Jamison Stone's trophy boar would be bigger...

The Sarcasm Society

Sarcasm is sneering, jesting, or mocking a person, situation or thing. It is strongly associated with irony, with some definitions classifying it as a type of verbal irony intended to insult or wound. Use of sarcasm is sometimes viewed as an expression of concealed anger or annoyance.(via Miss Cell...

Here's how to take your left over Marshmallow Peeps, add a few components, and make them into pimped-out peepmobiles.(via Everlasting Blo...

500 Years Of Women In Art

500 Years of female portraits in western art.Great morphing vid...

The US government mistakenly listed Bangladeshi-born American Hasan Elahi - a 35-year-old artist and Rutgers professor - on its terrorist watch list. To convince the Feds of his innocence, Elahi has made his life an open book. Whenever they want, officials...

Drum Machine

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Jet Plane Birdstrike

A ThomsonFly jet hit a bird during take-off from Manchester Ringway International Airport. One of the engines appears to injest the bird and the whole thing was filmed by a plane spotter. The crew and air-traffic controllers dealt with the situation in a calm and professional w...

How To Catch A Lion In The Sahara Desert

I think I'll go for the 'magneto-optical method.'We plant a large, lense shaped field with cat mint such that its axis is parallel to the direction of the horizontal component of the earth's magnetic field. We put the cage in one of the field's foci. Throughout the desert we distribute large amounts...

LOLMaps by Nikolas Schiller combines various historic maps and Nikolas' art, with popular image macro phonetics popularized by LOLcats.It also combines some of the 'All your base…' text as well as some Latin words used in old maps. There are currently...

Jay Jacobs is the original user and creator of the mypetfat program. Once morbidly obese, Jay has struggled with his weight for more than 15 years. While at his top weight of 380lbs, he committed to finding a way to get control once and for all.He found...

Interesting and amazing houses from around the wor...

Slow Wave

Slow Wave is a collective dream diary authored by different people from around the world, and drawn as a comic strip by Jesse Rekl...

An Inconsolable Octopus.Written by Deanna Molinaro and illustrations by Aaron Thedfo...

Regular readers of this website know that I'm a big fan of car racing. Whether it's Formula One, NASCAR, Champ Cars or IRL, I love them all. This Sunday, with Formula One in the streets of Monaco followed by the Indy 500, it'll feel like I'm in heaven.Especially...

94 Ways To Keep Kids Busy For The Work At Home Parent

The good news? You can run a business from home no matter what age your children are. The bad news? The smaller your children are, the smaller your business To Do list should be. Plain and simple, until your kids are 3-4 years old, don't expect yourself to be super-mom. Kids this young just need too...

Few medieval people saw lions, panthers or elephants. To know what these looked like, they had to rely on descriptions and illustrations. Centuries ago, no one had cameras, cell phones, or an associated press service. But sometimes, scientists - the...

Greetings! I am Anubis, the god of embalming. The ancient Egyptians believed that the body of the deceased needed to be preserved so that the soul could recognize it after death. Follow my instructions to prepare Seneb for his journey to the Afterlife....

It sounds like a bad horror movie. But it's actually the name of the billions of cicadas expected to emerge this month in parts of the Midwest USA after spending 17 years underground. The red-eyed, shrimp-sized, flying insects don't bite or sting. But...

Battle At Kruger National Park

This is one of the most amazing wild life videos I have ever seen. It's a battle between a pride of lions, a herd of buffalo, and 2 crocodiles at a watering hole in South Africa's Kruger National Park.There's one thing I want to take away before you look at this video. The buffalo calf surviv...

Fifteen exercises performed by Kermit.Click on each exercise to learn mo...

Click on the can of Heinz Baked Beans.See what happens and then click on the bea...

Linkdump

How to Improve your Voice and SpeechUndergrounds of OdessaThe Canonical List of Weird Band Names9 Little Known Ways to SleepPost-apocalyptic BeetlesHow to Deal with Negative PeopleThe 100 Best Products of 2...

A German zoo has hired a clown to stop its monkeys getting bored. Berlin Zoo bosses got local entertainer Christina Peter to act the fool after vets said the chimps, baboons, gorillas and orang-utans in zoo cages were more often sick or aggressive when...

Frank Sinatra - Free Singing Grammar

Frank Sinatra's voice and his clear diction are perfect ingredients for practising English, so this section provides wide possibilities for ESL students and teachers. Here you will find 50 best lyrics, together with audios, some videos, glossaries and...

A look at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper, 106,000 aluminum cans, and so on.The images representing these quantities have...

The Gyros Experience

Gyros signs - the hand-painted pictures found at hot dog stands, pizza parlors and Greek fast-food joints - are modern-day icons, literally: devotional images produced by anonymous artisans to bring the faithful into communion with the object of their...

Jellyfish Lake

Jellyfish Lake is a well-known dive site in the Pacific island of Palau. It is completely isolated, but in the distant past it had an outlet to the ocean. The outlet was closed off and the high jellyfish population started to feed on quickly-reproducing algae.Over millions of years, it became an advantage...

Here is a novel illusion that is as striking as it is simple. The two images of the Leaning Tower of Pisa are identical, yet one has the impression that the tower on the right leans more, as if photographed from a different angle. The reason for this...

Mesmerized

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For the first time ever you can actually become a fully functional timepiece. Your body will be realistically positioned between your arms which will never get tired of telling you what time it is.Your own arms and body become the timepiece. More than...

retroCRUSH has a great article about the worst cover songs ever. Some of these covers were sincere attempts to make good songs, others are so inexplicably awful that you don't know what the hell they were thinking. Others are clearly meant to be jokes,...

Smile - You're On Candid Camera

(via Everlasting Blo...

The Surprising Truth Behind The Construction Of The Great Pyramids

Almost everyone in the scientific world embraces the theory that the pyramids were crafted of carved-out giant limestone blocks that workers carried up ramps.Professor Michel Barsoum, Distinguished Professor in the Department of Materials Science and...

000 Text

Sometimes you come across a very weird web site. 000 Text is one of the weirdest I've ever seen. I don't know what it means, I don't know what its purpose is, it's just plain wei...

Foot binding, also known as kack put, was a custom practiced on young females for approximately one thousand years in China, beginning in the 10th century and ending in the early 20th century. In Chinese foot binding, young girls' feet, usually at age...

Know Your Rights

Think you know your rights during police encounters?Do officers have to read you your rights when you're arrested? Can you be arrested for refusing to identify yourself to a police officer? Do undercover officers have to admit they're police when you ask?Answer 8 short questions, and see how prepared...

Rabbit

When a boy and girl find an idol in the stomach of a rabbit, great riches follow, but for how lo...

Sitting too close to the TV will damage your vision. Reading in the dark will weaken your eyesight. Eating carrots will improve your vision. These were some of the things we learned when we were young. And even now some people believe these are true.Knowing...

Michael Moore Rescues His Harshest Critic

Filmmaker Michael Moore has come to the rescue of his harshest critic. For several years now, Jim Kenefick has been railing against the Oscar-winning director on Moorewatch.com. Recently, Kenefick wrote about the difficulty he was having paying his wife's medical bills.Someone emailed him and asked...

Carlos Diez Diez from Bilbao, Spain, is a fashion designer. When I think of a fashion designer (which I sometimes do, really!) I immediately think of fashion shows, the catwalk, the models.Ah yes, the models. Why they walk so funny. Why they always look...

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Thursday, May 31, 2007

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

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Sunday, May 27, 2007

Saturday, May 26, 2007

Friday, May 25, 2007

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Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Monday, May 21, 2007

Sunday, May 20, 2007