This "impossible" jigsaw puzzle is borderline criminal genius! Now, if they only make it in all white:
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One of my favorite adages is "An uncluttered desk is the sign of an uncluttered mind." It appears to be true that a messy desk fosters creativity. Kathleen Vohs of the University of Minnesota cites three experiments in which a neat or messy setting influenced a person's thinking process. In one experiment, 48 subjects were placed in either a neat or a messy room, and told to come up with creative uses for ping pong balls.
Two assistants rated each idea on a one-to-three scale (from not at all creative to very creative). After adding the scores, the researchers found that those who worked in the messy room were more creative overall, and came up with more highly creative ideas, than those who performed the same task in the neat room. On average, those working in the pristine environment came up with as many suggestions as those in the messy one; their ideas just weren’t as innovative.
“Being creative is aided by breaking away from tradition, order and convention,” Vohs and her colleagues conclude, “and a disorderly environment seems to help people do just that.”
An interesting observation here is that the subjects did not select whether their experimental environment was neat or messy, so a person's natural messiness or creativity did not come into play. And a neat desk has its advantages, too. Vohs tells us of other experiments in which people working in a neater environment tended to be more generous and to select more nutritious foods afterward. Link
(Image credit: Flickr user Ali West)
Earlier this year, the world was introduced to the wonderful spectacle of a cat riding a Roomba dressed in a shark costume while chasing a duck. The whole thing was so crazy that it was bound to end up immortalized across the web. Now we can enjoy the beauty of this magnificent weirdness through LEGO thanks to Flickr user Ochre Jelly.
Link Via Laughing Squid
Poor little Buttons was an orphan, but fortunately, Farasyn Farm’s Wildlife Rescue in Oregon rescued the little gal and will be taking care of her until she is old enough to return to the wild on her own. In the meanwhile, that means we get all kinds of great photos of this adorable little babe.
Link
Ron Gordon is the man behind some of the weird "calendar holidays" you've seen on Neatorama, such as Square Root Day and Odd Day. We've had a lot of fun with those, and I've even won a couple of his contests. However, I received a notice that the next Odd Day is cancelled. Not the day, just the celebration.
Odd Day has brought many smiles since our first celebration on 1/3/5. But we unfortunately cannot change our dates, and the next is 9/11/13. Hence, the very respectful silence for the day. We will emerge in 2 years for 11/13/15, the final Odd Day of the century.
We do, however, have some spectacular news on the math holidays front. The new guy?? On 2/2/22 we celebrate Trumpet Day---just say it aloud---“to to to toooo!!” Yes, it’s simple and funky, but folks really love it---see www.trumpetday.net People are as happy to hear about it today as if it were on the calendar next month!
We’ve also made significant progress on our trek toward the next Square Root Day—we’re now a bit closer to the next one (4/4/16) than to the last (3/3/9). Be patient, we’ll get there!
Odd Day for most of the world is November 9th (“hey diddle diddle, the month’s in the middle”). We will change the website next month and, of course, will sponsor our contest (their final Odd Day---for 11/13/15 doesn’t work without a 13th month.) thanks for your interest, see you in a couple years!! Regards, ron :)
I'm glad he can keep up with all this, because I would totally miss those numbers. Link -Thanks, Ron!
Jenny Lawson of The Blogess has an unusual hobby of sorts: she collects taxidermied animals dressed up as characters from Harry Potter.
As you can see from the pic above, she's got Ron Weasel-y, Ermine-y Granger, and Mad-Eye Toady. She's still on the look out for Draco Mouse-foy, Severus Snake, Harry Otter and Dumble Dormouse.
Jesse Cottle and his wife Kelly were on a family photo shoot when photographer Sarah Ledford suggested the couple take a picture in the water. That's when Jesse - a former Marine who lost his both of legs in Afghanistan - hopped on his wife's back.
It was on patrol in Afghanistan in 2009 when Jesse's life changed forever.
"About 5 hours into that patrol, into that mission, I was struck by an anti-personnel IED," Jesse said. "It was a pressure plate, I stepped on it and lost both legs right away."
One of his fellow Marines was wearing a helmet camera, and the explosion that injured Jesse was caught on tape.
"I remember most everything," he said "I was awake the whole time."
The couple's photo has now gone viral on Facebook, as explained by KTVB7: Link
Harold Knapke met his wife Ruth in third grade, began their romance during World War II and married soon afterwards. The couple died on the same day, just hours apart, after 66 years of marriage. Their children called their deaths "final act of love":
[The couple's daughter Margaret] said Ruth contracted a rare infection shortly before her death and it was clear she was not going to recover. When Margaret and her siblings told her father the news, she recalled, he took it calmly but they saw a "shift" in him.
Just a few days later, Margaret and one of her sisters noticed that their father appeared to be very ill, she said.
"My sister said, 'It's almost like he's trying to catch up to Mom.'"
Three days later, Harold died, at 7:30 a.m.
"I think he realized what was happening and wanted to pave the way for her," the couple's son, Ted Knapke, said.
After their father died, the Knapke children surrounded their mother -- who was not lucid -- and told her, "Dad's up there waiting. They got the card game going and it's time you got up there. Don't stick around for us," Ted Knapke said.
Ruth Knapke died that night, at 6:30 p.m.
Harold was 91 and Ruth was 89.
Allie Malloy of CNN has the touching story - Thanks Tiffany!
Typing a random word into the Google search field and looking at all the autocomplete suggestions is always an adventure. Randall Munroe obviously entered "why" and received an embarrassment of comedy riches, which he took the time to write out for us. It looks as if modern parents got tired of their young children's incessant "whys" and told them to try Google. See a larger version at xkcd. Link
Friday night, voice teacher Sarah Horn went to see Kristin Chenoweth and the L.A. Philharmonic perform at the Hollywood Bowl. Part of Chenoweth's show is a duet of "For Good," a song from the Broadway musical Wicked, and an audience member is selected to sing it. When they asked who knew the song, Horn volunteered, and was brought on stage. Here is an alternate video with a better view, but more audience noise. From the reaction backstage afterward, Horn may be destined for bigger things.
Paul Geller, Production Director at both the Hollywood Bowl and the Walt Disney Concert Hall pulled me aside afterward. He said that the production staff is very picky about the quality of performers that they allow on their stage and that what was produced in that song was better than anything they could have planned. He took down my contact information because at some point during the last three songs, he got a phone call from the LA Times wanting to know if I was an audience plant and asked my permission to pass on my contact information for them to speak to me directly, if needed.
Horn tells the story of that night at Broadway World. Link -via Metafilter
If only evolving to adapt to changing conditions were this easy… Well, things would still go wrong. From Pie Comic by John McNamee. Link
deviantARTist Mikiko Ponczeck wanted to show us that sometimes, when you're having a bad day, all you need is a hug. But us men know that she's secretly trying to steal our coffee.
Photo: Barbara Gallagher
Everybody loves the beach, including horses! Here are some wild ponies of Assateague Island in Maryland and Virginia sunning themselves on the beach. According to The Dispatch, Pony patrol member Barbara Gallagher took this photo on a busy Saturday afternoon.
There are over 300 wild ponies on Assateague Island. According to local legend, they are descendants of a Spanish galleon that shipwrecked along the coast (others claimed that they were descendants of local colonial horses that got loose).
Photo: Bonnie Gruenberg/Wikimedia
Photo: Christopher Evanson/US Coast Guard/Wikimedia
On the Virginia side of the island, the horse population is kept in check through the Annual Pony Swim, in which volunteers called the Salt Water Cowboys round up feral ponies, drive them across the channel during slack tide and auction some of them off, before driving the rest back to the island.
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