10 Strange and Wonderful Soaps

Solid soap is, of course, a useful consumer product. It is also possibly the perfect multi-dimensional art medium. The shape, colors, design, and scent can all be manipulated to produce just about anything the mind can imagine. Then you can mass-produce them in sizes that many people can afford to buy and use. Here are ten wonderfully creative soaps that will impress your friends and family (or else have them scratching their heads in confusion) in this list I posted at mental_floss.

Fun and Funny Links

Allie at Hyperbole and a Half relates four tales of something she did that turned out completely different from what she expected. At her expense.

Animals on Drugs is just a blog of funny photos. They really don't give drugs to animals. (via Gorilla Mask)

If you followed the saga of the woman who put a cat in a garbage bin (she was found) you'll appreciate the cat's revenge.

History's Most Iconic Images (Ruined by Photobombers).

Up, Down, Ready. This is my kind of game: you only use two buttons. (via The Daily What)

Combine the Electric Light Orchestra, The Supremes, and Michael Jackson to get a really toe-tappin' retro mashup. You can call it Supreme Evil.

A dunk is no longer just a dunk, as you can see from the Midnight Madness 2010 Dunk contest. Putting the ball through the basket is almost an afterthought to the elaborate gymnastics these guys show off.

The Oatmeal has the lowdown on Why Working from Home is Both Awesome and Horrible. I can vouch for all of these things, but I wouldn't go back to punching a clock. (via Gorilla Mask)

Take Me to the River -Al Green

Good Reads and Info

What happens when you give a credit card to a panhandler? A reporter tried it and found the answer is: all kinds of different things. (via J-Walk Blog)

Is that my son wearing a dress? A father wrestles with conflicting emotions when his son wants to be Snow White on Halloween.

The News Merchant. News outlets say they don’t pay for interviews, but they can hire Larry Garrison to produce segments featuring newsmakers he can afford.

Top 7 insane homeowners association rules. HOAs can take control of your life down to the tiniest detail, if you’ve agreed to abide by their rules. (via Boing Boing)

If your brain and your body were separated but still working, which one would be YOU? http://www.newbanner.com/SecHumSCM/WhereAmI.html Since neither can function without the other, the theoretical question is set up with a hi-tech sci-fi story.

7 People Who Messed With Texas. In most cases, Texas messed right back. (via Interesting Pile)

A mass grave unearthed in Pennsylvania has opened a two-century-old murder case. The 57 Irish railroad workers were supposed to have died of cholera, but bullet holes and smashed skulls tell a different story.

Is IKEA the World’s Largest Charity? Maybe not the largest, but it’s certainly pulling in a lot of money for a company that pays no taxes.

Animals on Treadmills

People aren’t the only ones using treadmills to keep in shape. See everything from a turtle to a vampire bat using a treadmill in these videos I posted at mental_floss.



Harpo Marx on The Today Show

He appeared on the show in 1961 to promote his book Harpo Speaks, but he didn't.

Friday Fun Links

Watch me do the Ugly Dance! Click around at the bottom to make it look even sillier. (via the Presurfer)

Twitter meme: fake Star Wars figures.

The Tragic Death of Practically Everything. In case you didn’t know already, the technology you use every day has been dead for a long time… or maybe you didn’t care to know. (via Metafilter)

Crazy Things I Have Done While Partying With One-Year-Olds.

Pics from Star Wars Celebration V.

The most NSFW handbag ever designed.

The Evolution of the Bat Suit. (via Gorilla Mask)

The Edinburgh Fringe Festival has unveiled the ten funniest jokes told this year -and some of the worst jokes as well. You have to be British to understand some of them. (via Metafilter)

What a duck’s bill really looks like. You’ll never look at them the same way after this revelation.

Toddler Think He Is Hula Hooping

(via Boing Boing)

9 Silly Venn Diagrams

Venn diagrams give a visual representation of sets and their logical relations and overlaps. The actual logic behind the nine diagrams in this list I posted at mental_floss varies according to the humor intended.

Good Reads and Informative Links

Over the Rainbow: The Technicolor Life of the Man Who Created Oz.

Kal is a Paramedic in Edinburgh. He writes about his adventures, some bloodier than others, at Trauma Queen. (via Breakfast links)

15 Mind-Blowing Facts About Wealth And Inequality In America. (via J-Walk Blog)

Summertime for George Gershwin. The creation of Porgy & Bess 75 years ago required some fieldwork off the coast of South Carolina.

The Senator, the Dog, and the Trial. A court case from 1869 established the concept of “A Man’s Best Friend is his Dog”. (Thanks, IrisInTheOzarks!)

Both George Orwell and Aldous Huxley had pessimistic views of the future. Which one was more correct about our modern world? (via 9GAG)

4 Things in Your House Dirtier Than A Toilet. Think about it: the toilet actually gets cleaned every once in a while.

The Eternal Value of Privacy. This classic article explains how the concept of privacy is way more than hiding some wrongdoing.

Russian Types is a set of portraits taken in Moscow and St. Petersburg in the 1860s. Is it my imagination, or do most of the men look like Rasputin? (via Dark Roasted Blend)

Stand Up Adolf

The Evolution of Fast Food Logos

International symbols for successful brands don’t change a lot, but they do change. The point of a fast food logo is to make a known brand recognizable at a distance for those who are new to the neighborhood. Here are the histories of some restaurant logos you’ll recognize anywhere in an article I wrote for Neatorama.

Fun Links

My new kitten's first LOLcat!

How to write a scientific paper. This guide goes beyond the scientific method and tells you what you really need to know.

Play the drums in an apartment complex and people will complain. It’s what they don’t complain about that will make you stop and think.

Pee-Wee Herman attended the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in Deadwood, South Dakota. He got a tattoo, rode his bike, and swapped stories with veteran bikers.

The 5 Most Ridiculous Martial Arts Movies Ever. No that we go see martial arts movies for their literary plots, but these are tragic. NSFW text.

The two rules of being cool.

Great day: catching a foul ball at a baseball game. Greater day: casually catching a foul ball while carrying a tray of food and seeing it all caught on tape.

Michael Jackson and the Chinese Red Army perform “Beat It”. This editing masterpiece will make you scratch your head and then laugh. (via Neatorama)

Brian from Buzzfeed watched the new Insane Clown Posse video "Big Money Rustlas" so we don't have to. I'm pretty sure this recap is more enjoyable.

The Lost Boys Give Back

The Lost Boys of Sudan are a group of thousands of young men from Sudan who fled the violence of their villages and lived in refugee camps for years before they were relocated to the United States, Australia, and other nations. After the cease-fire in 2005, many of them are looking homeward, and using the education and skills they’ve learned to help those who remain in Sudan. Meet some who are doing just that in this article I wrote for mental_floss.

Informative Links

As American combat troops leave Iraq, let's recap the last eight years.

Sweet Memories: How Jelly Belly Invents Flavors. You will agree that the exact aroma of your memories is a very important ingredient.

Danny & Annie is the latest animation from Story Corps. It's a heart-tugging interview with a couple who loved each other madly for 27 years.

Tales of Gilligan’s Island.

Scandals: why we can't live without them. Other people's transgressions and embarrassments make us feel good in several ways.

10 Tragic Athlete Deaths. Young, famous, and at the top of their games, their public deaths affected fans as well as family and friends.

In Praise of Toilets, which only seem important in their absence. But getting everyone to want them is no small problem. Warning: do not read while eating.

16 Unbelievable Shopping Disasters.

Debunking Grammar Myths. Defend your language from Grammar Nazis with the lowdown from a grammarian who knows.

Fun and Funny Links

Looking Beyond the SUV – Literally.

There's one thing you don't want to do in front of a studio audience, much less on tape for posterity. But at least she can laugh about it.

The life cycle of the majestic plastic bag is shown in its natural habitat. There's no danger of extinction in this species!

Simon Tofield's delightful animations make you laugh yourself silly over the most common normal occurrances. Especially when Simon's cat finds a box to play with.

The Best Duck Songs in the History of the Universe.

Three years later, The Infinite Oz promotion for a SyFy movie is still available to watch. You may become mesmerized or possibly bored.

A Text in the Night. An animated film noir for the Facebook generation.

The line to eat at McDonalds in Moscow was 30,000 people long -in 1990, when the first outlet in the city was opened. See the video.

8-Bit YouTube

If YouTube was around in 1985. (via b3ta)

Retro Star Wars

Star Wars holds up pretty well no matter what era you put it in. Oh yeah, I know "A long time ago..." but that's just the story. What if we were to set the movies into another period of Hollywood history? Find out in this collection of videos I posted at mental_floss.

Dancing with a Small Hat

A little girl in North Korea entertains the crowd. (via Everlasting Blort)

Good Reads and Information

You might be surprised to find that Vikings were cleaner than the people they conquered and even kept their hair neatly cut. See more photographic evidence here. (via Metafilter)

The Universal Translator. Hollywood has a variety of ways to depict foreign languages in film, from the clever to the ridiculous.

The TimelessBeauty of National Geographic. But this isn’t about the pictures; it’s about the design and layout of the magazine itself.

Six Causes of Online Disinhibition. Things we would never say face to face seem fine online -until we get busted for it.

The Secret Histories of Those @#$%ing Computer Symbols. They involves Swedish campgrounds, Danish blueberries, and Neptune’s trident. (via Bits and Pieces)

The 7 Most Horrifying Museums on Earth. The text is NSFW and the pictures are not for the sensitive, so now you really want to go read this, right? (via Gorilla Mask)

How to make pizza with a waffle iron. I think I'll skip the macaroni-and-cheese topping and go for the traditional flavors. (via Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories)

Neatorama Facts: Sleeping Beauty Castle.

Real World Superheroes of the Midwest

There are everyday folks who spend their free time anonymously helping their communities -anonymous because they are costumed superheroes! We already met some of these superheroes in the southern US; meet some who protect the cities of the Midwest in this article I wrote for mental_floss.


Trouble at the Main Site

I'm having problems at the main site, Miss Cellania. I can't post anything new, since I put up the pictures of the cats yesterday. I'm in contact with support and hope to get it fixed, but meanwhile, all I have scheduled are some posts that I pre-loaded last week. Don't give up on me! Things will return to normal sooner or later.

UPDATE: We fixed it! Trouble with an advertiser's code. If we can't get the blog and the ads to work together, I'll have to give up my personal blog for lack of time. However, if that happens, I'll still be blogging elsewhere.

Fun and Funny Links

The contestants of the 2010 Miss Universe pageant show off their national costumes in a two-part post. With fabulous NSFW commentary critiquing their choices. (via Metafilter)

Jamoya announced on Facebook she had given up her baby for adoption. She got lots of response, but left out one little detail.

New York illustrator Christoph Niemann took a flight from New York to Berlin and documented the absurdities of airline travel in pictures in his blog at The New York Times. I honestly love the idea of a "delete neighbor" button.

We Were There: Cat Fashion Show at the Algonquin Hotel.

The annual Beloit College Mindset List is out and ready to make us all feel old. Meet the authors. I could contribute many anecdotes to their collection of Mindset Moments. (via Metafilter)

Baby Got Back (Gilbert and Sullivan style).

17 Cats Eating Pizza.

An intensely psychedelic "fractal" architecture animation. Zooming into a Mandelbox makes you lose track of how big the whole must be by the time you get down to the small parts.

Math Art

For many of us, the first time we appreciated the art of math was when we played with a Spirograph. However, it’s a long way from addition and subtraction to epicycloids, and very few of us actually study math that far. But those who do sometimes end up creating some very beautiful artworks based on mathematics and geometry. See them in this article I posted at Neatorama.



Good Reads and Information

Washington, We Have a Problem. A day in the life of the US president makes you wonder why on earth anyone would want the job. (via Metafilter)

10 Alfred Hitchcock Cameos. He put himself into every movie, but you have to look really closely to find him.

Why the US Constitution and the Supreme Court don't bend to majority rule.

Shouldn't all electrical pylons look like giant people holding up power lines? Choi + Shine architects entered the design into a competition for high-voltage electrical pylon design in Iceland. (via The Awesomer)

Small Town Noir. Stories of crimes in New Castle, Pennsylvania between 1930 and 1959 are oddly fascinating and sad to read about today. (via Everlasting Blort)

10 Must-Read Books for Geeks.

Make a cone out of a piece of bread, line it with peanut butter, and top with a scoop of your favorite homemade jelly-flavored ice cream! Grathio Labs has the complete instructions for the PB&J ice cream cone. (via Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories)

The 20 Weirdest Apartment Buildings in the World. At least from the outside; inside they might be perfectly normal as far as I know.

Eels are strange and alien to the eye. The real story of the fish's life cycle is even weirder, as National Geographic explains.

Real World Superheroes of the South

Alternate universes and super powers may be limited to comic books, but costumed crusaders are everywhere in the real world. If they aren’t fighting crime, they’re doing good deeds, raising awareness, helping the downtrodden, setting an example, steering kids in the right direction, and generally making the world a better place, each in their own strange way. Here are a few that are based in the southern part of the United States, the first of a series of superhero articles I'm writing for mental_floss.

Fun and Funny Links

FlowerPower is a simple drawing application that strews flowers all about -but you control where. My kids will love this! (via mental_floss)

The Most Amazing Wikipedia Entry Ever.

A TV ad for Egyptian cheese. I bet it doesn't make any better sense if you understood the language.

The Resurrection of Elvis. How the almost bankrupt Presley estate grew into the memorabilia kingdom it is today.

Maru in Slow Motion.

Song Lyrics As Google Maps Directions. Head down the Atlanta highway -and bring your jukebox money!

What Exactly Is a Doctorate? Professor Matt Might of the University of Utah explains in graphic form that makes the idea simple -and frightening. (via Neatorama)

It's spots vs. stripes in this animated Fish War. What this has to do with chocolate candy is beyond me.

Hamster Chess

Big Cats on Nip

Lions, tigers, and leopards are kitty cats, too! Big Cat Rescue http://www.bigcatrescue.org/ shows us how they react to catnip. (via The Daily What)

Melissa Mason and her Amazing Hips (1932)

Informative Links

Dr. Karen Woo, one of the ten aid workers in Afghanistan who were killed by the Taliban this week kept a blog that is now a part of her legacy. (via Metafilter)

What to send with your child to the first day of preschool.

"You Think I'm Mad, Don't You?" Well, yes, we do, that's why we go to the movies to see you.

The new National Library in Kazakhstan will be built in the shape of a Möbius strip.

Make your own soda pop with these recipes. (via Jason Kottke)

Things I Figured Out. Rob Cockerham passes along a few tidbits of knowledge you might find useful.

5 Real Historical Death Stars (Complete With Baffling Flaws).

The history of Ranch Dressing. Why do Americans love it? How can you not love a condiment that makes salad taste like junk food?

New York in Cinema

Or ...Cinema in New York!

Fun and Funny Links

Kanye West started a Twitter feed. Someone figured out his Tweets made great captions for New Yorker cartoons.

This is such a short and simple video and I can't stop watching it again and again. A kitten tries to jump and fails.

Samurai Wars. Sillof's latest creations set the galactic rebellion into Japan during the Edo Period.

5 Ridiculous Attempts at Crime Fighting (That Worked). When crazy hero meets no-so-smart criminal, the results can be better than a movie. (NSFW text)

Do big cats get high on catnip the way house cats do? Seven out of eight cats at Big Cat Rescue say yes!

Articles of War: Wikipedia's lamest edit wars. Over 10,000 edits on Ann Coulter's birth date? (via Metafilter)

Catch up on the whole story behind Antoine Dodson and the Bed Intruder meme.

21 Animals with Crap Stuck on Their Heads. Cows FTW! (via Gorilla Mask)

Hawaiian Caterpillar

Has a claw of death! (via Videosift)

A Non-Math Look at Math Shapes

In researching the earlier post A Non-Math Look at Math Objects, I found that there is what a non-math person like me would call an infinite number of strange terms in geometry and topology that refer to shapes, objects, and patterns both imaginary and usable in the real world. Someone who is not used to this kind of higher thinking can only absorb so many of them at a time! Here are seven more in this article I wrote for Neatorama.

Informative Reads

The Ten Coolest Sci-Fi Planets.

The Origin of the Supermarket. It was a particularly American innovation.

Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in Digital Age. There have always been students who cheated on term papers; the difference today is that you can't convince some that its at all wrong to do so.

Houses Made of Straw. You might be surprised to find how many different ways people have built them -and you can, too!

A scientist takes a closer look at the 1873 battle between a fisherman and a giant squid. There's even a photograph or two!

For reporters, the rules at Guantanamo change daily. Journalists are at the mercy of the military, and the military no longer likes journalists all that much.

7 Famous Polygamists (and their many, many wives). Call it the short course on plural marriage.

Spinout. How cheating in the Soap Box Derby changed a young man's life. (via Boing Boing)

Links for Fun and Entertainment

The Tiger Oil Memos. Interoffice memos from the CEO of a defunct company give us some insight into why they are defunct -who’d want to work with this guy? (via Boing Boing)

What if the game Halo had been developed twenty years ago? Ed Fries pictured it in his mind and developed Halo 2600, which is actually a lot of fun.

13 Obscene Acts Of Car Graffiti. NSFW.

The Oatmeal pays tribute to the parasite Captain Higgins in a much more entertaining way than I did in the 7 More Zombie Animals post. (via Gorilla Mask)

Young music lovers think it's a dream position. Avery Ellis shows us what it's really like to work in a music store.

Deliver Me To Hell is an interactive zombie movie that contains the things you love: zombies, violence, slight gore, scantily-clad women, iphone apps, and pizza. You decide which directions the plot takes, and if you don't like how the story turns out, just start over again.

This is what it looks like when you shoot off 500 Roman candles at once. The display last just about long enough for the cops to find the source of all this commotion.

Lahsaan Kobza can ride a bike like nobody’s business. Bonus: Ray Charles music.

Chopsticks Boogie

Jo Ann Castle shows off on The Lawrence Welk Show in 1960. (via Cynical-C)

Star Wars Deleted Scene

This part was cut from the 1977 movie for time, which was a good thing.

Glass Music

I ran across the term crystallophone while researching the earlier post 8 Weird and Wonderful Musical Instruments. According to Wikipedia, “A crystallophone is a musical instrument that produces sound from glass.” There are quite a few different types, as you’ll see in these videos I posted at mental_floss.

Tetris Gone Wrong

Japanese comedian Jinnai Tomonori is having a bad Tetris day.

Tetris Gone Wrong

Japanese comedian Jinnai Tomonori is having a bad Tetris day.

Good Reads and Information

The Geography of High-Paying Jobs. Before you start packing your bags, remember the cost of living in those high-paying areas is also pretty high. (via BroBible)

Jennifer Lawler tells how having a disabled daughter has changed her life. It’s a wrenching, real-life version of the Holland analogy we’ve used for years. (Thanks, Kent!)

Tarzan Skills: How to Swim, Dive, Climb, and Swing Like the Lord of the Apes. This step-by-step guide won’t make you king of the jungle, but it might improve your yodel. (via Gorilla Mask)

As if crude oil in the ocean wasn’t bad enough, it seems that the oxygen levels in the Gulf of Mexico are falling. That’s bad news for the animals who live in it.

5 Widely Believed Dating Myths (Science Says Aren't True). By 'science", they mean surveys of real people who on average disprove a generalization.

Melinda French Gates has spent over $22 billion (so far) trying to save the world. In this interview, she explains how it's done.

Peanut Butter and Jelly, Deconstructed.

Consumerist rounded up 27 Of The Sickest Things You've Done To Save Money (and more in the comments). We would have never heard of these embarrassing tips if it weren't for online anonymity. (via I Am Bored)

Gifts for the Geek Home

A home should be an expression of who you are. Sure, when you’re young and broke, your room or apartment might be an expression of who your parents or the people who donate to Goodwill are, but gradually you collect items that express your personality, whether you receive them as gifts or purchase them yourself. If you are a technologically-oriented geek, there are plenty of manufacturers and vendors catering to your tastes in home decor. See quite a few in this list I posted at mental_floss.

Links for Fun

These Are Their Stories. Different artists were invited to illustrate one-line episode summaries of the TV show Law and Order, in whatever manner they see fit. (via Buzzfeed)

The Katy Perry song "California Gurls" has inspired so many other states to do their own version that there is now an interactive map to help you find them all. No Kentucky so far.

The Ultimate Collection of Baby Fennec Fox Pictures.

This is what happens when you put a brick inside a washing machine. When it happens, you will laugh, and you'll watch it again.

Russian Techno Dog. This mutt has the moves -all he needs is a partner.

Heavy Metal Fowl.

Why you should never take advice from people on the internet. Or at least 4chan. (via Bits and Pieces)

Jill went to Comic-Con and took lots of cosplay pictures!

The Ten Weirdest Sharks Ever

We are in the midst of the Discovery Channel’s annual celebration known as Shark Week. In honor of the occasion, here’s a look at the strangest species of sharks, both living and extinct, in an article I posted at Neatorama.

Good Reads and Information

Mental_floss magazine just reached a publishing milestone. To celebrate, they put out a list of 50 Amazing Facts for Our 50th Issue.

Many of the scientists who left ScienceBlogs are now gathered at a new blogging collective called Scientopia. You’ll find a list of their members elsewhere.

10 Notorious Criminals Proven Innocent After Execution. Most were victims of a rush to judgment, including two cases in which the victims showed up after the execution!

Predict the Future Using Your Fingernails (and other weird methods).

High school sweethearts reunite after 62 years apart. That's 62 years.

The Do Not Call Registry now has over 200 million numbers. For those of you too young to remember, telemarketers put up a real fight to keep the system from going into effect.

You can learn to influence people by giving them the three things their egos need. Like I tell my middle school daughters: Don't try to impress people, but make them feel good about themselves and then they will love you.
5 Superhero (and Supervillain) Origins. Everyone has a backstory, even if it doesn't make any sense.

Giant Ring

Sweet Canadian Street Performer - Watch more Funny Videos
A Canadian street performer has some skills! I wonder where I can get a giant ring?

Henri

Henri, the French emo cat is having an existential crisis.

8 Weird and Wonderful Musical Instruments

If an object can produce a tone, someone somewhere will make a musical instrument out of it. Some are handed down from antiquity and some are a product of the internet age, but all eight of these are instruments most people are not familiar with. You will be, after you read this article I wrote for mental_floss.

Fun and Funny Links

A washing machine totally spazzes out. You WILL laugh at this!

A university spoofs the Old Spice Guy ads to bring students into the library. Honestly, it's better than studying in the shower.

(Shortlived) Cartoon Superheores That Weren’t Great for Kids. Don't leave it to TV programmers to select your children's role models.

Ghost Spiders are a terror you can't see. Yep, SyFy manages to make another movie without shelling out any money for special effects (or actors).

Crime composite sketches compared with the actual criminal. Some show a slight resemblance; others are so wrong they could've been used as evidence for the defense. (via Gorilla Mask)

Cephalopods In Love. She was an octopus, he was a nautilus, but the passion of six hearts beat between them.

CAPTCHArt is where people illustrate odd word combinations from captchas. Well, if you encountered familiar carrot or spottier smithereens, you’d draw it, too. Occasionally NSFW.

Marti explains Twilight for those of us who don't want to read the books or see the movies. She thinks it suffers from lack of sex.

Baby Panda in a Tree

At the panda research center in Chengdu, China. (via Arbroath)

Good Reads and Information

5 Stupid, Unfair and Sexist Things Expected of Men. Sexism hurts men as well as women, in ways we sometimes overlook. (via Metafilter)

Could this picture be of a young Abraham Lincoln?

Ugly Bugs. Get up close and personal which insect faces only their mothers could love.

Snack Break: The Stories Behind Your Favorite Movie Theater Candy.

What was once thought to be two different dinosaur species may be only one which has bones that change over its lifetime. The triceratops is possibly just a juvenile form of the torosaurus. (via Boing Boing)

How did your favorite science writers get started in the business? Here are the stories of many such writers you may already be following.

Learn to make Fondant Roly Polys. You never know when a child is going to insist on a birthday cake with bugs.

Memento Mori. If you never had a portrait made while you were living, that can be rectified after death.

Zero Hour Trailer

Does this 1957 movie remind you of anything? I thought so. (via Nag on the Lake)

Olivia vs. Darth Tater

Oh, the cuteness!