Image: Diego Pol and Oliver W.M. Rauhut / Proceedings of The Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

Move over, T. rex! There's another dinosaur with even ridiculously tinier arms: meet Eobelisaurus mefi. Link - via Metafilter ("MeFi" of course!)

Emily Schuman of Cupcakes and Cashmere has created these Cappuccino Pops, delicious iced pops made primarily with freshly brewed espresso, sweetened condensed milk, and whipped cream. The original recipe is from Everyday with Rachael Ray.

via The Kitchn

This delicious-looking Voyager cake definitely won’t require 75 years to complete its journey into my belly. Regali Kitchen made it to help Maya and Barry celebrate their eleventh anniversary. The ship’s navigation lights and warp nacelles light up appropriately and the crew is completely edible.

Link -via Bit Rebels | Regali Kitchen’s Website

Photo: U.S. Border Patrol

An enterprising human smuggler tried to use a phony UPS van to make a special delivery to the United States: 13 illegal immigrants from Mexico.

What can Brown do for you? Apparently not human smuggling as the scheme was foiled by U.S. Border Patrol:

The van looked like a legitimate United Parcel Service Inc. delivery vehicle, except the company decal on the back door was slightly crooked. [..] Migrants told authorities they had agreed to pay between $5,000 and $8,000 each to be smuggled into the United States, according to the criminal complaint. 

Link

Well, at least being stuffed inside a UPS van beats being stuffed into a van's seat!

Previously on Neatorama: 10 Weird Items People Tried to Smuggle

The trailer for Tetris by Warialasky, a parody live-action thriller based on the popular video game.

The invasion is beginning. It is inevitable. You created them, you can destroy them! I did not create Tetris, I was but the messenger. Tell me how to stop them. This is an extinction level event. No, don’t go! Let her go!

Here’s the Behind-the-Scenes video. Warialasky figured if a movie could be made based on Battleship, then why not Tetris?

via The High Definite

Jack Long of Milwaukee is a master of high speed photography. This flower and its pot are actually just a few splashes of colored water, arranged perfectly and shot at just the right moment. View his other floral works at the gallery link.

Gallery and Photographer’s Website -via Colossal

Instead of asking for an autograph, filmmakers David Walton Smith, Tripp Adams, John Barnhardt, Crynma Jang, and Matt Robinson recently coordinated with Bill Murray to make this short film (done as a Wes Anderson-style faux trailer) of Murray walking down the hallway with them in slow motion.

via Gawker

“Plastic is so new, Freinkel began, that among all the objects preserved in the sunken Titanic, none are synthetic plastic, because there was hardly any available in 1912. Natural plastic, however, was a familiar material. Amber was popular. Rubber was essential (all plant cellulose is made of long-chain polymers). Ivory for everything from billiard balls to piano keys was in such high demand that an 1867 paper warned about the looming extinction of elephants. The first synthetic plastic—celluoid—was developed as a substitute for ivory, and the elephants survived.

Wired posted interesting excerpts from a talk by Susan Freinkel about the history of manufacturing objects of plastic. Link -via Boing Boing

(Image credit: Flickr user Tinker*Tailor loves Lalka)

Based on studies of women of the Luo and Kikuyu tribes of East Africa, researchers have found that people can carry loads of up to 20 percent of their own body weight without expending any extra energy beyond what they’d use by walking around unencumbered.

But don’t strap gear to your head just yet. Head-loading only works well if you’ve been practicing it for many years:

The subjects in these studies began head-loading as children and had developed a peculiar gait that’s one-third more efficient than the one we’re likely to use.

For untrained controls who have not had years to strengthen the right muscles and build up spinal bone density, carrying things on your head actually requires more energy than using a backpack.

Link -via Joe Carter | Photo: US Army

This video of a polar bear being especially lazy was posted by One World One Ocean to bring awareness to their preservation initiatives to help save the Arctic. The video was shot in Churchill, Canada which has the nickname, “The Polar Bear Capital of the World”. You may remember we posted their earlier video of a mother whale lifting her calf up to see humans on a boat.

A confluence is a place where two (or more) bodies of water meet. When two rivers meet and mix, especially rivers with water of different colors, the confluence is quite dramatic. See pictures of the most interesting meetings of contrasting waters from around the world at Twisted Sifter. Shown here is the confluence of the Jialing and Yangtze Rivers in China. Link -via The World Geography

Portland-based actor Isaac Lamb gathered 60 friends and surprised his girlfriend Amy Beth Frankel with this well-choreographed live lip-dub marriage proposal. The video, which features the song Marry You by Bruno Mars, has since gone viral (and yes, she accepted). OregonLive.com has more of their story.

On Wednesday, May 23rd, 2012, I told my girlfriend to meet me at my parent’s house for dinner. When she arrived I had stationed my brother to sit her in the back of an open Honda CRV and give her some headphones. He “wanted to play her a song”…

What she got instead was the world’s first Live Lip-Dub Proposal.

image via Isaac Lamb

image via Amy Beth Frankel

via Doobybrain.com

At the 2012 Emerald City Comicon in Seattle, Washington, several voice actors performed Star Wars Trilogy: The Radio Play, an awesome live reading of the original Star Wars script (also known as Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope). The best part was that they did it in the cartoon voices they are famous for, such as Batman, The Power Puff Girls‘ Bubbles, Futurama‘s Bender and Pinky, and more. Here is a list of the voice actors that participated: Billy West, Tara Strong, Maurice LaMarche, John DiMaggio, Kevin Conroy, Jess Harnell and Rob Paulsen.

via ToplessRobot

Not long after creating my first website (back in the Dark Internet Ages of 1997) I decided it would be fun to critique the science of movies, and I dove in with both glee and fervor. No movie was safe, from Armageddon to Austin Powers.

I was right; it was fun. It was surprisingly easy to deconstruct Hollywood accuracy, or lack thereof. Any mistake was fair game; a flubbed line with bad math was just as likely for me to mock as a plot device upon which the entire movie rested. Blowing up a giant asteroid? Pshaw. Saying “million” instead of “billion”? Please. Shadows moving the wrong way at sunset? Let me sharpen my poison keyboard.

Phil wrote a guest post for The Science and Entertainment Exchange about how he eventually reconciled the differences in the world of science and the business of entertainment. But he still wants to bring better science to your science fiction! Link -via Bad Astronomy

Yes, Hungry Hungry Hippos was a good idea for the next game-to-movie idea. But this one… well, together they beat everything! Link -via Pajiba

A love song to the most disrespected font ever, by gunnarolla featuring Songs To Wear Pants To. -via Buzzfeed

John Farrier wrote 10 Facts You Might Not Know about Star Trek: Voyager.

Eddie Deezen gave us 12 Baseball Feats That Only Happened Once.

Why Disco Died, from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader, was the followup to the previous article Why Disco Happened.

The Annals of Improbable Research brought us Integrated Pest Management of Manifestations as Infestations. In other words, pest control for angels.

10 Latin Phrases You Pretend to Understand came from mental_floss magazine.

In the What Is It? game this week, the pictured object is a ramp for loading barrels or kegs onto a beer truck. The first correct answer came from Anker, who wins a t-shirt! The funniest answer came from Steve Bennett, who labeled it “a snake winder, used for coiling your snake up on long sea voyages so that it doesn’t get tangled up and annoyed.” That was nonsensical enough to win a t-shirt from the NeatoShop! Find the answers to all the mystery objects of the week at the What Is It? blog.

The post with the most comments by far was Man Beat Noisy 10-Year Old Moviegoer. That was followed by Eddie Deezen’s 12 Baseball Feats That Only Happened Once, and in third place was Why Americans Hate Taxes. It’s not too late to join in the conversation!

Suggested Reading for Memorial Day Weekend
Five for Fighting
Doolittle’s Raid
Five Medical Innovations of the Civil War
Saving Sergeant Niland
Building the Wall
Day is Done
The Curse of the Demon Core
The Past, Present, and Future of Being Called to Duty
Five Other Remembrance Days Across the World

The above Memorial Day suggestions came from The Best of Neatorama, where we have feature articles going back six years! You’ll also find more content, discussions, and treats on our social network pages at Facebook, G+, and Twitter.

City officials say a popular fountain has been put out of service after the rodents gnawed through a power cable, according to the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper.

The Lower Saxony city is where, legend has it, the Pied Piper led all the rats out in 1284 with his magic pipe into the Weser River, where they drowned.

This time around, city officials say they’ll just decommission the fountain, which was due to be permanently closed anyway. Oh, why were they planning to close the fountain? High maintenance costs. Seven hundred years later, the city is still stingy about paying for municipal services. Link -via Fark

Isaac enlisted, well, apparently everyone he knew for this elaborate but touchingly personal proposal to Amy this past Wednesday. There’s no way she could’ve said no after all this! -via The Daily What

Some ladies look best in a metalloid. Others prefer a more sedate noble gas. Only the most daring go transuranic. Whatever element works best for you, Etsy seller Ashley Mertz can provide an appropriate skirt.

Link -via Fashionably Geek

(YouTube Link)

Elders React To… is an adorable new web series by The Fine Brothers that shows senior citizens commenting and reacting to viral videos.

This is one hip trip to the old folks home, and these seniors don’t hold back when asked how they feel about Nyan Cat, or how much grass people must have to smoke in order to watch that repetitive little pop tart shaped kitty in the sky.

It’s a laugh riot, and I can’t wait to see what happens in the next episode!

–via Laughing Squid

Fine Brothers LINK

Friendship is magic, or bacon, which is pretty much the same thing. DeviantART user BAwesome-BAcon rendered this pony in pork products. His gallery also contains images of Pinkie Pie made out of oatmeal and Applejack out of breakfast cereal.

Be sure to let us know in the comments if you would like for Neatorama to move to exclusively My Little Pony content 24/7.

Link -via Walyou

These mechanical marionette masterpieces are based on characters from the indie video game Machinarium, as spotted by redditor rasputin777 as he traveled through Prague.

They are beautiful and so detailed that they have controls for the eyes and mouth, along with their regular limb controls.

It makes an old puppet builder like myself all teary eyed to see the art of marionette construction hasn’t died in the city of Prague.

So what’s it gonna take to get people building marionettes in the U.S. again, a sequel to Team America?

Link  –via Geekosystem

Are you itching to get Dad a Father’s Day gift he will really love? Get him the Werewolf Feet from the NeatoShop. Dad will be over the moon for these fantastic slippers. We have no doubt he will have a howling good time wearing them around the house.

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more frighteningly fabulous Footwear!

Link

Ca$h Cats is a simple Tumblr blog with one theme: cats rolling around in piles of money. And sometimes guns.

Never give a cat a gun. Also, monkeys. That is, never give a monkey a gun.

Are we clear?

Link -via Everyday, No Days Off

(YouTube Link)

With the emergence of ridiculous “named after but not really based on the board game” movies like Battleship, it’s only a matter of time before they move from board games to puzzle video games looking for inspiration.

That’s where Tetris: The Movie comes in, because Tetris is sure to be one of the first game titles they secure due to the overwhelming popularity of the game.

I would love to see a Dr. Mario movie about a drug peddling plumber, and if Candyland involved psychedelic induced hallucinations and candy colored strippers I would plunk down my ten dollars in a heartbeat!

–via Geeks Are Sexy

You may have been good beans, but now you’re Bantha fodder. Food artist Jill of Kitchen Fun with My 3 Sons made this marvel out of hummus. It has the shape of a Hutt, but not the gamey flavor of one.

Link -via That’s Nerdalicious!

Any child of the 80s knows that the original Transformers TV show was pretty freakin’ awesome.

It (arguably) sparked a wave of interest in robots, and spawned some decidedly lackluster imitators (GoBots, Convertors and Zybots, just to name a few) that in no way diminished our childhood fascination with all things robotic.

But even a show as awesome as Transformers had to miss the mark on occasion, as Topless Robot’s list of the ten worst episodes of Transformers proves. Check it out for yourself and see-is there more than meets the eye, or are these ten episodes just plain ugly?

Link

Once again bringing Star Trek into reality, researchers at MIT have invented a means of injecting medicine into a body without a needle:

Now the MIT team, led by Ian Hunter, the George N. Hatsopoulos Professor of Mechanical Engineering, has engineered a jet-injection system that delivers a range of doses to variable depths in a highly controlled manner. The design is built around a mechanism called a Lorentz-force actuator — a small, powerful magnet surrounded by a coil of wire that’s attached to a piston inside a drug ampoule. When current is applied, it interacts with the magnetic field to produce a force that pushes the piston forward, ejecting the drug at very high pressure and velocity (almost the speed of sound in air) out through the ampoule’s nozzle — an opening as wide as a mosquito’s proboscis.

Well, that was a pleasant diversion. Now, researchers: get back to the holodeck project.

Link -via Technabob | Images: Paramount, MIT.

The bright and shiny monsters in Adam Wallacavage’s latest series of works would look right at home in any haunted mansion, tomb or spooky kook’s swanky pad, and they really know how to light up a room!

Created with a sense of whimsy, and a ghoulishly delightful interior design aesthetic, these sculptural delights have an added bonus built in-they fill the room with tentacled shadows, sure to frighten and delight once the sun goes down!

Link  –via Hi Fructose

A dozen humans were having a party late Sunday night in Boxford, Massachusetts when several cows charged them, drove them off, then drank up the beer that they left behind. Police came to rescue the precious suds before they completely disappeared:

“I saw one cow drinking the beer on its way down as it spilled off the table,” Lt. Riter reportedly said. “Some of the cows were also picking through the empties in the recycling bin… They just went in and helped themselves.”

The cows’ owner came and herded them back home. The cows went peacefully, which is good, because cows tend to be angry drunks.

Link -via The Agitator | Photo: Boxford PD

The "death tax" is a tax that the government levied on the estate of the deceased - but what happens if that person is resurrected as a zombie? Is he still dead? Should a zombie pay taxes?

Law professor Adam Chodorow of the Arizona State University's Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law explains the tax implication of the zombie apocalypse:

The most pressing tax issue raised by a zombie apocalypse is the application of the so-called “death tax,” which imposes a tax on the transfer of the estate of a “decedent.” Zombies have been described variously as the “walking dead,” the “undead,” and the “living dead,” raising the question whether the estate tax should apply when a taxpayer becomes a zombie or, in the alternative, after a person’s zombie has been dispatched.

The definition of death, and therefore of a decedent, has generally been left to the states, each of which has its own definition. That said, there has been a recent trend away from a definition that focuses on heart function to one that focuses on brain function. Whether people who become zombies would be considered dead for state law purposes depends both on the definition used and the type of zombie involved.

It seems a stretch to conclude that those who transform seamlessly into zombies should be considered dead. They never lose heart or brain function, though they now function quite differently from before. While it might be tempting to declare them dead, significant line-drawing problems would arise as one tried to distinguish between zombies and those who have suffered some mental or physical breakdown. Declaring such zombies dead would open the door to declaring dead a wide range of people currently considered to be alive.

Link - via Nerdcore

Image: Zombies Were People Too from the NeatoShop's Zombie Shop

(YouTube Link)

Everyone knows that the animation industry is full of rip off artists and people trying to capitalize on the success of films made by other studios, but this cheap imitation of the hit film franchise Madagascar is just plain rotten.

Kids will know better than to think that this stinker comes anywhere near comparing to their beloved Madagascar films, and the studio responsible for this film is shameless in their pursuit of profit.

But hey, at least the trailer is worth watching for a cheap laugh!

–via Cartoon Brew

It’s just a tornado…eight to ten miles away from the wedding. In Harper, Kansas, people can deal with that:

“I had my mind on marrying my now wife,” said Caleb Pence.

His bride, a native of northeast Nebraska who had never seen a tornado before, was much less at ease. He said that when he told her what was happening, she responded, “I don’t want to hear it right now.”‘

Some of the guests who filled the 250 folding chairs checked weather reports on their cellphones. But otherwise, the 20-minute service — complete with a solo singing performance — wasn’t altered.

Link -via Blame It on the Voices

Behold, the latest personal mobility device from Stark Industries: the Iron Man Scooter! Via Nerd Approved

These character re-designs show what the X-Men might look like if they’re drawn in the style of Disney animation.

They’re pretty cool despite the lack of edge, and might make for a fun afternoon series for the kiddies to watch, but overall they look a little too cuddly for my taste.

They were re-envisioned by artist Matthew Humphreys, who went for that old school look with the brown and yellow uniform for Wolvie and the classic mohawk look for Storm. *sigh* Those were the good old days!

Link  –via Comics Alliance

A line of cool zip-up Star Wars themed fleece hoodies by clothing company Mad Engine are scheduled to be released in August 2012. Designs come in R2-D2, Darth Vader, Chewbacca, Boba Fett, and a Stormtrooper. You may remember we posted about a similar line of hoodies by Ecko.

via Technabob and R2D2Central.com

images via TheForce.Net

File this under who-needs-a-man: Tired of waiting for someone to come along and make her happy, 36-year-old Nadine Schweigert realized that she's already got that someone ... herself! So she decided to get married:

Nadine Schweigert says her wedding went so perfectly that it left her in awe.

The bride wore a long, satiny dress in peacock blue and carried a cluster of white roses. Schweigert’s best friend stood up for her. After the ceremony, guests enjoyed white wedding cake enrobed in peacock-blue fondant and New Orleans-style king cake.

The affair was missing just one, teensy detail: a groom.

In a purely symbolic ceremony, the 36-year-old “married” herself before a crowd of 45 friends and family members Saturday at Ecce Gallery in Fargo.

During the observance, the Fargo woman read her vows: “I, Nadine, promise to enjoy inhabiting my own life and to relish a lifelong love affair with my beautiful self.” She presented herself with a ring and invited all guests to “blow kisses to the whole world” at the point of the traditional, bride-groom lip-lock.

The quirky music video for the song Zeroes & Ones by California-based indie rock band Baby Seal Club is full of chickens pecking at beet-filled human figures in a tiny faux Apple store. The song (which I think is pretty great) is from their upcoming album titled Default World, due out in summer 2012. The video was conceived & produced by Fudo, Wizzbang, Olava & Uncle Stabby.

Wizz Bang, the band’s Chief-Chicken Wrangler, described the video’s shoot in detail at the Baby Seal Club website:

I have raised many birds from egg to adulthood and one thing I’ve discovered along the way is that the baby chicks really enjoy eating the shredded vegetable fiber that shoots out the back of our big juicer. Being a somewhat macabre chicken-wrangler and verified horror flick fan, I noticed that the beet fibers looked a lot like viscera and guts – the amazing reddish color, the stringy consistency, and the hard-to-identify-on-film quality of the stuff thus sparked an idea. I began feeding them the stuff everyday as a “treat,” so they would become good and hungry for it when it was time to be on the set.

An advance copy of the CD is available now:

No true fan of the Vulcan mastermind known as Spock will be able to live without this amazing painting hanging in their quarters.

Created by Etsy seller Ruth Marcus, this acrylic painting captures Spock in a rare moment of emotional bliss, seated with his favorite kitty Mr. Scrambles on his lap, memories of Vulcan’s wars fading away along with the stress of the current stardate.

And if you’re not a big fan of Spock don’t worry- Ruth will make a custom painting of your favorite celebrity seated with your pet.

I’m thinking a painting of Dom DeLuise with one of my chinchillas sitting on his head might make a pretty swanky portrait to hang over my bed. Get those brushes ready Ruth!

Link  –via Nerd Approved

Wampa Rug – $145.95

Does your home feel  cold and sterile? Harness the force and add a little warmth to your decorating style with the ultimate Wampa Rug from the NeatoShop. This fantastic Star Wars themed rug has a plush head with embroidered facial details and vinyl claws. With the Wampa Rug on your floor you will feel as though you have been transported to a galaxy far, far away.

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Star Wars items.

Link

Researchers have identified the earliest music instrument: a 42,000-year-old flute carved from mammoth ivory, found at the Geissenkloesterle Cave in Germany.

"Geissenkloesterle is one of several caves in the region that has produced important examples of personal ornaments, figurative art, mythical imagery and musical instruments."

Musical instruments may have been used in recreation or for religious ritual, experts say.

And some researchers have argued that music may have been one of a suite of behaviours displayed by our species which helped give them an edge over the Neanderthals - who went extinct in most parts of Europe 30,000 years ago.

Music could have played a role in the maintenance of larger social networks, which may have helped our species expand their territory at the expense of the more conservative Neanderthals.

Link