Theresa Knudson was inspired by Jan von Hollenben's Dreams of Flying photographs and created dream photos of her cat by arranging various backgrounds. Fluffy is a trusting and patient cat! See more pictures at Pawesome. http://www.pawesome.net/2011/03/the-science-of-cat-sleep-favorite-things/

(Image credit: Flickr user Theresa Knudson)

Cuban-American artist Elsa Mora created this lovely miniature dollhouse featuring artist Frida Kahlo. You can see pictures of the details, as well as a similar work called Frida Kahlo's Studio and other dollhouse projects in her dollhouse gallery. Link -via Everlasting Blort

The following is an article from Uncle John's Endlessly Engrossing Bathroom Reader.

It's hard to imagine birthday parties, celebrations, or political conventions without a rainbow of balloons. So considering that they're associated with joyous occasions, it's kind of ironic that if it weren't for poverty and sheer desperation, balloons would never have been invented.

FROM DEPRESSION TO INFLATION

Before the 1929 stock market crash and the Great Depression, Neil Tillotson thought he had a career that could last him a lifetime. In 1915 he dropped out of high school and began working for the Hood Rubber Company, a prosperous manufacturer of tires and and rubber footwear located in Watertown, Massachusetts. In little time, he worked his way into a position as a researcher.

After serving in World War I (he was assigned to a cavalry unit that spent the war years chasing Mexican outlaw Pancho Villa around Texas and northern Mexico), he returned home and reclaimed his position at Hood. With new products and research on artificial rubber, Hood's wartime boom promised to continue in the post-war years. In the 1920s, an industry newsletter reported that Hood had become the largest independent rubber footwear manufacturer in the country, capable of pumping out 75,000 pairs of shoes a day.

But then came the Depression. Struggling with cash flow issues and a lack of demand for its products, Hood Rubber went on hiatus for most of January 1931, locking its doors and laying off 1,200 employees. Along with everyone else, Tillotson found himself on an involuntary, unpaid vacation. To make matters worse, his brother and father-in-law had lost their jobs ...and moved in with Tillotson. Trapped in a house that had become uncomfortable overcrowded, and with cabin fever setting in, he feared that Hood would not reopen. Regardless, he knew that he couldn't afford to work for a company that reserved the right to lay him off periodically with little warning.

ESCAPING TO HIS LAB

So Tillotson built a makeshift laboratory in his attic and set about trying to invent something that might let him start his own business. The problem was that the only thing Tillotson knew well was rubber, and making the vulcanized rubber invented by Charles Goodyear required expensive machinery, lots of raw materials, and workers.

Tillotson pinned his hoped on something new in the field: liquid latex. A few years earlier, German scientist Peter Schidrowitz had developed a thick liquid that could be painted onto almost anything and would air dry into a rubber skin. It didn't require heat, sulfur, or molding machines, just a paintbrush or a dipping bowl, which made it theoretically possible for Tillotson to start manufacturing something (he wasn't sure what yet) with a few molds and minimal up-front costs. But what could he make?

AIR HEAD

Back at Hood Rubber, Tillotson had been lucky: He'd been allocated a supply of liquid latex and assigned the job of finding uses for it, so he already knew something about what it could do.  He'd also had the opportunity to take home a quantity of liquid latex before the plant locked its doors.

His first idea was to create inexpensive inner tubes for automobile and bicycle tires. On paper, it seemed like it should work, but Tillotson quickly discovered that his latex skin wasn't as strong as molded rubber, and it wasn't durable enough for heavy-duty use. His first efforts were, quite literally, a blowout.

[caption id="attachment_42833" align="alignleft" width="200" caption="Not Tillotson's actual cat balloon."][/caption]

Frustrated, Tillotson came up with another idea- one that he thought might be an amusing novelty. He cut a piece of cardboard into the shape of a cat's head (complete with little cat ears at the top) and dipped it into the gooey latex.. He had no idea what would happen, but it was a whimsical diversion from working on inner tubes. After the latex dried, he sprinkled it with talc to keep the rubber from sticking to itself, and then carefully rolled the thin skin off the cardboard. It seemed to be an intact cat-head shape. Gingerly, he put it to his lips and blew a small puff of air into the hole at the bottom. It seemed to be airtight, so he blew a little more and kept repeating until the latex was round and dangerously taut. It was a balloon with cat ears, something he'd never seen before.

BALLOONS FROM THE BUTCHER

Not that toy balloons were anything new. For a great kids' toy in the early 1800s, you couldn't do much better than blowing up a pig's bladder: It was thin, airtight, durable, and fun to toss around. Kids who wanted a different-sized balloon had plenty of choices available, from small balloons made of pig intestines or rabbit bladders to large balloons of cattle organs.

In 1824 British scientist Michael Faraday invented a rubber balloon by taking two pieces of rubber and sticking them together. It didn't require special adhesives because before Charles Goodyear invented vulcanization to fix the problem, rubber was sticky and malleable like a thick bubble gum. Faraday filled his balloons with hydrogen in order to conduct scientific experiments, but it didn't take long for the invention to become a popular plaything for his kids. Problems: The balloons couldn't be mass-produced, and they didn't last long.

A CAT KISS FOR LUCK

Tillotson ha d something new, and he knew it. He tied off the balloon and painted a cat's face on the front. When he carried it downstairs to show the rest of the family, their reaction was enough to make him completely forget about inner tubes. He went to work with his scissors, creating more cat-head molds, and recruited his older brother and father-in-law to help hand dip dozens at a a time. After making and painting 2,000, he sold them all to a Boston novelty company, C. Decieco & Son, who filled them with helium to sell at a parade in nearby Lexington.

Desperately curious to see how the public would respond to his cat balloons, Tillotson headed to the parade site. Besides being reassured by the brisk sales of balloons, he witnessed something that convinced him that he had a hit product on his hands: A little girl pulled her balloon down and kissed the cat's face.

That was it. Tillotson withdrew his life savings and sank the entire $720 into latex, molds, and a building, and set up production. By the end of 1931, the Tillotson Rubber Company had popped out five million cat-faced balloons and, despite the worsening Depression, generated sales of $85,000 (the equivalent of $1.2 million today).

Other companies also began making balloons and plenty of other rubbery products. Tillotson's company went on to develop the first high-speed latex dipping machine, which helped with his second invention in the early 1960s: the one-size-fits-either-hand disposable latex medical glove.

FOOTNOTE TO OBSCURITY

Tillotson became fabulously wealthy, moved to Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, and bought a hotel. There he earned his final claim to fame: For 40 years, until his death in 2001 at age 102, he was the nation's first voter in all presidential primaries and all presidential elections. He slid his paper ballot into Dixville Notch's ballot box at the stroke of midnight every Election Day, followed by the three dozen other registered voters in the tiny town. Dixville Notch became famous as the first place to vote and the first to report its results a few minutes later, resulting in a crush of reporters and television cameras at every election.

Tillotson always ended up in the network news reports. But did that give him the fame he deserved as the inventor of the modern balloon and the disposable surgical glove? No. In 2007 the New Hampshire Historical Society began selling a Neil Tillotson bobblehead ...depicting the staunch Republican dropping his ballot into the Dixville Notch ballot box. (Want one? At last report, they still have plenty on hand.)

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The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John's Endlessly Engrossing Bathroom Reader.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you'll love the Bathroom Reader Institute's books - go ahead and check 'em out!

(YouTube link)

This video contains the title cards from every movie that has ever won the top Academy Award, now known as the award for Best Picture. {wiki} The only exception is The King's Speech, which won the 83rd such Oscar just last night. I've seen 55 of these movies; I'm not going to admit to how many of them I saw in first run theatrical release. How many have you seen? -via Nag on the Lake

The following is an article from Uncle John's Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader.

Americans eat nearly three billion boxes of cereal every year. And yet few of us know how Rice Krispies, Corn Pops, or any other cereal is made. Here's a look at the science behind some of our favorite breakfast foods.

(Image credit: Flickr user Snugg LePup)

NATURAL-BORN POPPER

Popcorn for breakfast? It's not the first thing most people think of eating in the morning, and it's not marketed as a breakfast food. But popcorn does have many of the qualities that cereal manufacturers look for in a breakfast food; It's light and airy, it's crispy, and it crunches when you eat it. If you put some popcorn in a bowl and poured milk over it, it would probably stay crunchy at least as long as your favorite breakfast cereal does.

But what about foods that don't pop naturally the way that popcorn does? Quite a bit of the technology used in the manufacture of breakfast cereals is employed specifically to make those foods "poppable" -to produce desirable, popcorn-like qualities in foods that don't normally have them. Foods like whole-grain rice and wheat, for example. Or grains that have been milled into flour, then mixed with other ingredients to make dough that is then baked into individual pieces of cereal.

POPCORN 101

To understand how whole grains and dough end up as Puffed Wheat, Cheerios, and Kix, it helps to understand what makes popcorn pop in the first place.

(Image credit: Flickr user Jaymi Heimbuch)

* A kernel of popcorn consists of a hard shell that surrounds a dense, starchy center, and there's a lot of moisture in the starch. When you place a bag of unpopped popcorn in the microwave oven, the microwave "cooks" the popcorn by heating the moisture in the starch. The starch softens and develops a consistency similar to gelatin as it cooks.

* When the moisture is heated to the boiling point, it converts into steam and begins to expand. Or at least it wants to: What makes popcorn different from most other grains is that its hard outer shell does not allow the steam to escape. Instead, the kernel of corn becomes like a tiny pressure cooker: The steam pressure builds up until the outer shell can no longer contain it, and it ruptures.

* If you've ever opened a bottle of champagne or shaken a bottle of soda, or squirted a dollop of shaving cream into your hand, it's easy to understand what happens next: When the shell cracks, the pressure drops and the moisture in the starch instantly converts from a liquid state to a gaseous state, creating air bubbles in the cooked, gelatinous starch that causes it to froth up in a foamy mass, expanding it to 30 or 40 times its original size. The steam escapes, leaving behind the dried, crunchy, styrofoamy starch that we know as popcorn.

POP! GOES THE CEREAL



Wheat and rice don't have external shells that trap steam the way corn does, so if you want to obtain popcornlike results with these grains, you have to provide the pressure cooker. When cereal companies want to make puffed wheat, puffed rice, or puffed dough, they do just that, using a process known as "gun puffing" developed by Quaker Oats researchers at the turn of the 20th century. Why is it called gun puffing? Because the process was perfected using an actual Army cannon -one that saw action in the Spanish American War- that was converted into a pressure cooker. (Corn kernels can also be gun puffed. That's how Kellogg's Corn Pops are made.)

(YouTube link)

Corn Pops, Puffed Wheat, and Puffed Rice

* Whole grains are steam cooked in a pressure cooker (or cannon) until the pressure builds to about 200 pounds per square inch (psi), or about 13.6 times the actual atmospheric pressure (at sea level).

* When the grains have been properly cooked, the pressure inside the pressure cooker is released all at once, just like when popcorn pops. There's even a loud POP! when the pressure is released.

* The sudden drop in pressure causes the moisture in the grains to flash into steam, puffing up the grains just like popcorn.

* The puffed grains are baked dry, and in the case of puffed-wheat cereals like Kellogg's Honey Smacks and Post Golden Crisp, lots of sweeteners are added to make them more appealing to kids.

"Extruded" Gun-Puffed Cereals Made From Dough




How do they make Kix, Trix, Cheerios, Alpha Bits, Cocoa Puffs, and other "extruded gun-puffed" cereals?

* Various combinations of corn, oat, wheat, and rice flours are mixed with sugar, water, coloring, flavoring, and other ingredients to make a sweet dough, which is fed into a machine called a foaming extruder.

* The extruder forms the dough into the desired shape just like you might have done if you played with Play-Doh when you were a kid: To create a star shape, you squeeze, or extrude, the dough through a star-shaped hole. If you want a round shape, you squeeze the dough through a round hole. If you're making Cheerios, you punch a hole in the middle to get a donut shape, and if you're making Alpha-Bits, you use letter-shaped holes.

* As the extruded dough emerges from the hole in the proper shape,  rotating blades cut it into individual cereal pieces.

* The freshly extruded dough pieces have too high a moisture content to be suitable for gun-puffing, so they are dried until their moisture content drops from as high as 24% down to a more desirable 9% to 12%. (Unpopped popcorn kernels, by comparison, have a moisture content of 13.5% to 14%.)

* The dried pieces are fed into a gun puffer. The puffed cereal is then toasted dry.

RICE KRISPIES

If you've ever watched cookies bake in an oven, you know that the dough puffs as it cooks. Rice Krispies are made the same way, in a process that's known as "oven-puffing."

* First, the rice is pressure cooked at a low 15-18 psi (vs. the 200 psi used in the gun-puffing process) with water, sugar, salt, flavoring, and other ingredients.

* The cooked rice is then dried to reduce the moisture content from 28% to 17%; then it is "bumped," or fed through rollers to flatten the grains slightly and create small cracks in the rice, which will aid puffing.

* The cooked, bumped rice is dried a second time to bring the moisture content from 17% down to around 10%, which is ideal for oven-puffing. The grains are then fed into a rotating oven and baked at 550°-650°F for about 90 seconds to give them their distinctive puffy appearance and crunchy texture.

* So what causes the famous Snap! Crackle! Pop! sound? The walls of the puffed Rice Krispies kernels are so thin and brittle that many of them collapse when they come into contact with milk.

(YouTube link)

CORN FLAKES AND BRAN FLAKES

Looking into a bowl of Corn Flakes or Raisin Bran, it's easy to imagine all those flakes started out as one single sheet of cereal that was crumbled into a thousand individual flakes. But that's not how they're made.

* It turns out that it's much easier to make each flake separately. In the case of corn flakes, kernels of corn are processed to remove the hard outer shell and the germ, the part of the kernel that would have grown into a corn stalk if the kernel had been planted as a seed. What's left after the shell and the germ are removed? Chunks of starch, each of which will become an individual corn flake.

* The chunks are cooked in a solution of water, sugar, salt, flavoring, and other ingredients until the hard, white starch has become soft, translucent, and a light golden brown in color.

* The cooked corn is fed into "de-lumping" equipment to break up any clumps; then it's dried in a hot-air dryer and fed through giant rollers to flatten the chunks of corn into flakes.

* The flakes are toasted until they reach the proper golden color and have a moisture content of 1.5 to 3 percent.

* Bran flakes are made pretty much the same way, except that whole grains, not chunks, are used to make the flakes. Flaked cereals can also be made from rice or from dough.

___________________

The article above was reprinted with permission from the Bathroom Institute's newest book, Uncle John's Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you'll love the Bathroom Reader Institute's books - go ahead and check 'em out!

You know it as Slaughterhouse-Five, but it goes by another name, too. The complete title of Kurt Vonnegut's acclaimed novel is Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty Dance with Death, by Kurt Vonnegut, A Fourth-Generation German-American Low Living in Easy Circumstances on Cape Cod [and Smoking Too Much], Who, as an American Infantry Scout Hors de Combat, as a Prisoner of War, Witnessed the Fire Bombing of Dresden, Germany, 'The Florence of the Elbe,' a Long Time Ago, and Survived to Tell the Tale. This is a Novel Somewhat in the Telegraphic Schizophrenic Manner of Tales of the Planet Tralfamadore, Where the Flying Saucers Come From. Peace.

Weird, yes. But when you get to know the book, it actually makes a lot of sense. Even the bit about the flying saucers. Allow us to explain.

THE STORY

Slaughterhouse-Five isn't told in the standard, chronological way. On  the contrary, its main character, Billy Pilgrim, is an unwitting time traveler. One moment he's living in 1945, then 1968, then 1954.

Arguably the novel's most compelling sections take place during World War II, when young Billy is serving as a U.S. soldier. The Germans capture Pilgrim, who's lost behind enemy lines, and take him to Dresden, a beautiful city untouched by war. There, he and other POWs are kept in an abandoned slaughterhouse, where they escape the Allied bombing of Dresden in an underground meat locker. Although they are safe, they can still hear the firebombs pounding above. And when they emerge, everyone has been killed, and everything destroyed.

Pilgrim returns to these memories frequently. But after coming home from the war, he marries, graduates from optometry school, and becomes a respected businessman. Despite such positive steps, tragedy seems to follow him. First, he turns up the sole survivor of a plane crash. Next, his wife dies in a car accident.  Following these events, Pilgrim starts telling people he was kidnapped by aliens called Tralfamadorians, who taught him that the past, present, and future don't really exist. Instead, they believe time is a conceptual whole. Pilgrim accepts the Tralfamadorian theory, and as he floats through the unalterable events of his life, he accepts that he has no power over his fate.

THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY

Dresden, Germany was indeed firebombed on the night of February 13thy, 1945, and Kurt Vonnegut was one of the POWs who witnessed the attack. On that evening, Allied forces killed at least 25,000 people (although some estimates that as many as 130,000 people died). Vonnegut decided to write about his experience in Dresden as soon as he returned from the war, but it took him more than twenty years to finish the book. While crafting the novel, he realized that conventional narrative structure imposed logic on events -and that the events he witnessed in Dresden had none. Slaughterhouse-Five therefore lacks conflict, climax, and conclusion. Thus, the short, episodic style of the novel doesn't allow the reader to draw morals from the story, nor allow the characters to find peace. To underscore this point, he inserts himself into the narrative, making it clear that even the author can find no way to form a lesson from such horror.

WHY THE STORY MATTERS

ANTI-PLOT, NON-HERO: Vonnegut abandons traditional storytelling by drastically altering chronology. This strategy allows him to reflect Pilgrim's disjointed reality and avoid a conventional plot. Vonnegut also discards the traditional literary hero. Christ-like in his suffering, Pilgrim does not act, but is instead acted upon -a victim of destiny without any motivation beyond basic survival. Through Billy Pilgrim, Vonnegut paints all participants of war as the "listless playthings of powerful forces."

LITTLE GREEN CREATURES IN FLYING SAUCERS: The science-fiction segments of Slaughterhouse-Five strike most readers as bizarre, even distracting. Out of nowhere,. Billy Pilgrim is kidnapped, displayed in an alien zoo, and mated with a movie star. Vonnegut never says his alien stories are imaginary, but Pilgrim does read science-fiction novels with similar plots. Real or not, the Tralfamadorians are a coping mechanism that enables him to accept empty tragedies. He clings to the Tralfamadorian saying about life and death: "So it goes."

**********

Literary VIPs

BILLY PILGRIM: Slaughterhouse-Five focuses on POW Billy Pilgrim. His first name (Billy, not William) marks him as permanently childlike. His last name identifies him as a voyager, but with one poignant exception: Billy is on a pilgrimage without a purpose.

KURT VONNEGUT: Vonnegut appears as a character in his own book, both in the semi-autobiographical first and last chapters and occasionally in the body text itself. He uses these appearances to remind the reader that many of the events are true, and that he experienced them himself.

Scenes to Remember

* Vonnegut visits his war buddy Bernard O'Hare to talk about Dresden. He's surprised by the hostility of O'Hare's wife, Mary, who accuses his books of portraying war as glamorous, as in a movie with Frank Sinatra or John Wayne. Vonnegut promises her Slaughterhouse-Five won't have a part in it for Sinatra.

* Two days after the war ends, Pilgrim rides on the back of a green cart pulled by two horses. If he could choose to remember only the happy times and ignore the bad, this would be the moment he'd choose: lying in the sunshine with the birds singing in the trees. This is Pilgrim's happiest memory -not his wedding day or the birth of his children, but an experience of simple animal comfort.

Famous Last Words

* "I happened to tell a University of Chicago professor at a cocktail party about the raid as I had seen it, about the book I would write. He was a member of a thing called The Committee on Social Thought. And he told me about the concentration camps, and about how the German had made soap and candles out of the fat of dead Jews and so on. All I could say was, 'I know, I know, I know.'"*
*Though horrified by Nazi atrocities, Vonnegut refused to allow for a "just war" or a "right side." He tried to curtail the inevitable criticism of the book by addressing it within the novel itself.

* "I am a Tralfamadorian, seeing all time as you might see a stretch of the Rocky Mountains. All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I've sad before, bugs in amber."

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The above article by Elizabeth Lunday is reprinted with permission from the July-August 2005 issue of mental_floss magazine.

Be sure to visit mental_floss' entertaining website and blog for more fun stuff!

It's time now for the Fill in the Bubble Frenzy with boy genius Mal and his talking dog Chad! What's he saying in the empty speech bubble? Tell us and you might win any T-shirt available in the NeatoShop -take a look around, pick one out and tell us what shirt you’d like with your submission in the comments. If you don't specify a t-shirt with your entry, you forfeit the prize. Enter as many times as you like (text only, please), but leave only one entry per comment. For inspiration, check out Mal and Chad’s comic strip adventures by Stephen McCranie at malandchad.com. Have fun and good luck!

Update: Congratulations to winner Scott-O, who gave us "Who would have thought picking a nose on Mt. Rushmore could be so rewarding?" He wins a t-shirt from the NeatoShop!

Today is Presidents Day in the US, and it is UNESCO International Mother Language Day everywhere. This is a day to celebrate linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism, and to learn about the world's languages. National Geographic has an interactive world map highlighting areas where languages are in danger of dying out, as part of their Enduring Voices Project. As it is now, one of the world's 7,000 languages is gone for good an average of every two weeks.

Language defines a culture, through the people who speak it and what it allows speakers to say. Words that describe a particular cultural practice or idea may not translate precisely into another language. Many endangered languages have rich oral cultures with stories, songs, and histories passed on to younger generations, but no written forms. With the extinction of a language, an entire culture is lost.

Much of what humans know about nature is encoded only in oral languages. Indigenous groups that have interacted closely with the natural world for thousands of years often have profound insights into local lands, plants, animals, and ecosystems—many still undocumented by science. Studying indigenous languages therefore benefits environmental understanding and conservation efforts.

http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/enduring-voices/?source=link_tw20110221travel-lang -Thanks, Marilyn!

Sister Maria Jesus Galan was asked to leave the Santo Domingo el Real convent in Toledo, Spain, where she had lived for 35 years -over her Facebook activities. The Dominican convent, which normally discourages nuns from dealing with the outside world, first allowed a computer in ten years ago, and Sister Maria put it to work.

Sister Maria saw the future that this computer offered. She digitized the Dominican convent's archives. The computer also offered more mundane assistance.

"It enabled us do things such as banking online and saved us having to make trips into the city," she told the Telegraph.

The local government even gave her a prize for her digital initiatives. Oh, but with the prize came the fame. She began to collect more friends on her Facebook page. It seems, though, that this made her enemies within her own walls.

Her fellow nuns reportedly claimed that Sister Maria's Facebook activity "made life impossible." She was therefore asked to leave and now lives with her mother.

At the time, Sister Maria had 600 Facebook friends. Her profile page shows 1700 friends now, and her fan page has over 8,000 supporters. Link -via J-Walk Blog

Like most trust-fund party boys, astronomer Tycho Brahe came fully outfitted with a less-than-endearing arrogant side. Of course, that's not to say his hubris was totally misplaced. As a child, it didn't take Tycho very long to realize that he possessed not only a lot more mental power than most of his peers, but also a lot more money. His genius came naturally, of course, but his privileged upbringing was a bit more contrived ... to say the least.

While the Danish astronomer may be remembered as one of science's biggest celebrities, Tycho's parents were a few stars short of a Big Dipper. In a grand act of misplaced kindness, Mom and Pop Brahe, Beate and Otte, took pity on Otte's childless brother, Jorgen, by promising him their first-born son. And though they changed their minds when baby Tycho came along on December 14, 1546, Jorgen kept his end of the bargain. He bided his time until Beate gave birth to a second son, then kidnapped young Tycho. Naturally, the youngster's parents were outraged -that is, until they remembered that Jorgen was filthy rich and their erstwhile son would inherit his fortune. So, in yet another display of questionable decision-making, Tycho's parents let Jorgen keep the boy.

This strange transaction gave Tycho an enormous edge. Not only did he grow up in a setting of great wealth, but he also had access to fantastic educational opportunities. At the urging of his uncle (er, father), Tycho studied law at the University of Copenhagen beginning at the age of 13, but his interest quickly waned. Instead of pursuing a legal career, Brahe became convinced he could predict planetary motions better than anyone had during the previous two millennia. He was, of course, correct.

Relax, it's an altered image, not a painted kitten. But isn't it cute? Link -via reddit

(Image credit: Flickr user Martin LaBar)

SUPREME WISDOM

Technically, green peppers, zucchini, cucumbers, and tomatoes are all fruits. But don't try telling that tot he U.S. Supreme Court. Per the 1893 case Nix vs. Hedden, the court decided tomatoes were veggies and therefore subject to the vegetable tariff. What was the Supreme Court's reasoning? Tomatoes have to be vegetables, because they're usually served with dinner, not dessert.

DEATH BY APPLE SEED

Turns out that when Mom told you not to eat apple seeds, she had good reason. From peaches to cherries, many fruit seeds contain cyanogenic glycosides, which turn into cyanide gas during digestion. In the last 50 years, at least nine people in Turkey have died of cyanide poisoning from gorging on apricots. The bitter almond, however, is the most lethal fruit. Experts estimate that eating 50 bitter almonds in one sitting will kill an average-size adult.

EASY AS PIE

When Sony Music complained that Warrant's 1990 sophomore album didn't have a radio-friendly single, lead singer Jani "The Name and the Haircut Say Woman, but I Swear I'm a Guy" Lane wasted no time correcting the problem. Within 45 minutes, Lane had written that great ode to double entendres, "Cherry Pie". In a damning indictment of early 1990s taste, it quickly rose to No. 10 on the Billboard Hot 100. As of 2006, you'll be surprised to learn that Warrant is still a band. [ed note: the band is still recording, but Jani Lane is no longer a member.]

THIS SCRIPT IS BANANAS!

According to David Niven's book Bring on the Empty Horses, when screenwriter Charles MacArthur asked Charlie Chaplin for some advice, it went something like this:

"How, for example, could I make a fat lady, walking down Fifth Avenue, slip on a banana peel and still get a laugh?" he asked. "It's been done a million times. ...What's the best way to get a laugh? Do I show first the banana peel, then the fat lady approaching, then she slips? Or do I show the fat lady first, then the banana peel, then she slips?"

"Neither," Chaplin responded. "You show the fat lady approaching, then you show the banana peel, then you show the fat lady and the banana peel together. Then she steps over the banana peel and disappears down a manhole."

PUN FOR THE ROAD

Talk about your gallows humor. In 1928, condemned killer George Appel was strapped into New York state's electric chair and asked if he had any last words. His parting remarks? "Well, gentlemen, you are about to see a baked Appel."

W.C. FIELDS FOREVER

Actor and comedian W.C. Fields was nothing if not charming about his drinking. He once asked, "What contemptible scoundrel has stolen the cork to my lunch?" Fields was known to drink two bottles of gin a day -while in rehab. He didn't brag about his drinking on movie sets, though. Instead, he referred to the martini in his thermos as "pineapple juice." One day, someone on the set decided to play a prank. After taking a swig from his thermos, Fields shouted, "Somebody put pineapple juice in my pineapple juice!"

YOU CAN'T ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU WANT

Before Stanley Kubrick got his hands on Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange, Burgess optioned the novel's movie rights to Mick Jagger for a few hundred dollars. Jagger wanted to make the film with the Rolling Stones playing the roles of the "droogs." Fortunately for Kubrick, Burgess, and all of humanity, Jagger later dropped the idea.

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The article above was published in the July - August 2006 issue of mental_floss magazine, reprinted here on Neatorama with permission.

Be sure to visit mental_floss' extremely entertaining website and blog!

Famous faces in public places, but these aren't advertising bill boards. Web Urbanist rounded up pictures of street art that incorporates celebrities you know and maybe love. This image of Jack Nicholson was painted in Berlin a few years ago. Link -via Rue the Day

(Image source: Lost At E Minor)

Andy Ellison posts animated images of food on his site Inside Insides. What you see here is an MRI of an onion. The bright spot that appears is actually a bruise! You can also see MRI scans of bell peppers, green beans, persimmons, and much more. Link -via Everlasting Blort

The following is an article from Uncle John's Unstoppable Bathroom Reader.

Mix reality TV and Japanese game shows and throw in the plot of The Truman Show, and you've got this unbelievable true story.

MADE IN JAPAN

In January 1998, a struggling 23-year-old standup comedian known only by his stage name Nasubi (Eggplant) heard about an audition for a mysterious "show-business related job" and decided to try out for it.

The audition was the strangest one he'd ever been to. he producers of the popular Japanese TV show called Susunu! Denpa Sho-Nen (Don't Go For It, Electric Boy!) were looking for someone who was willing to be locked away in a one-bedroom apartment for however long it took to win a million yen (then the equivalent of about $10,000) worth of prizes in magazine contests.

Cameras would be set up in the apartment, and if the contestant was able to win the prizes, the footage would be edited into a segment called "Sweepstakes Boy." The contestant would be invited on the show to tell his story, and, with any luck, the national TV exposure would give a boost to his career. That was it- that was the reward (along with the magazine prizes).

SUCH A DEAL

As if that wasn't a weak enough offer, there was a catch -the contestant would have to live off the prizes he won. The apartment would be completely empty, and the contestant wouldn't be allowed to bring anything with him -no clothes, no food, no nothing. If we wanted to wear clothes, he had to win those, too. Nasubi passed the audition and agreed to take the job.

On the day of the contest, the producers blindfolded him and took him to a tiny one-bedroom apartment in an undisclosed location somewhere in Tokyo. The apartment was furnished with a magazine rack and thousands of neatly stacked postcards (for entering the contests), as well as a table, a cushion to sit on, a telephone, notepads, and some pens. Other than that, it was completely empty.

Nasubi stripped naked and handed his clothes and other personal effects to the producers. He stepped into the apartment, the door was locked behind him, and his strange adventure began.