Public speaking, more robots, Hello Kitty "shoulder massager," Dubai goes green

Motorcycle robot.


Full story here.




WTF taxidermy


Apparently, there was a LiveJournal contest for weird Taxidermy items and this is one of the 'winners' from said contest. You can buy some of the items on Ebay.
Via.




From the retail site, I quote: "You can use the Hello Kitty Vibrating Shoulder Massager vibrator to massage away your daily stress. Works great on your neck, shoulders and back, or anywhere."

Sure, "shoulder massager" vibrator.




I love these cards.

Available at Etsy.
Via.




Useful tips on giving a talk (abbreviated version).

1. Make fun of people in the audience.
   
2. Ridicule bogus claims related to your topic.
   
3. Incorporate the audience’s experiences into your talk.
4. Self-deprecate.
   
5. Comment on how neurotic the thought-process scientists is.
   
6. Use “disciplinary humor.”
   
7. Explain your results in an unusually vivid or graphic way.
   
8. If you’re using PowerPoint, take full advantage of its comic potential: wild animations, text that pops up on the screen to question or even flat-out contradict that you’re saying, a punchline at the bottom of the slide that only gets revealed when you press a key, etc.
   
9. Banter with the crowd: if someone makes a crack at your expense, always respond, and even escalate the interaction into a “staged fight.”
   
10. Have high energy!
    
11. Pause a few beats before the punchline.
    
12. Experiment! If a particular joke bombs, drop it from your rotation; if it brings the house down, recycle it in future talks.
    
13. Steal good ideas shamelessly from other speakers. (I mean the humor techniques, not the results.)
    
14. Tailor your jokes to the audience’s background.
    
15. Make jokes about the country where you’re giving the talk.
    
16. Take risks!
    

See the full version here.




As I said in an older post, I have a new-found infatuation with robots. So here is one of my favorite new discoveries:


From the blue living ideas cite: "WatCleaner is a concept robot that’s designed to float around rivers and lakes and oceans cleaning the water as it goes. It can deal with both bulk garbage (by slurping it down and disintegrating it) and suspended pollution like oil (by absorbing it into collection bladders). It’s even, supposedly, smart enough not to ingest and disintegrate narwhals or porpoises or anything."
Via.




There's an elephant car wash in Oregon.


But they don't guarantee that you will get your car clean with it. Go figure.




I have flown so many times that I seldom pay any attention to the safety videos playing before takeoff. I even thought about it on a recent flight. I've heard the speech so many times about cabin pressure and flotation devices, but do I really remember what you're supposed to do? Well, yes. Probably. Remember to put your mask on first then help others. If you can't breathe, you won't be much help. Something like that. But it seems that the folks at Air New Zealand also thought it would be a good idea to spice up their videos to get their customers to pay attention.

But I'm not sure if they'll hear anything about the safety protocol once they realize that all of the people in the video are completely naked...
Via.







And, of course, the post would not be complete without today's girlie robot.
Today's girlie robot:

Via.




More links:

Dubai going green?

Japan's schools to go solar.

Win a fighting cock robot contest here.

Not for the faint of heart: Sneak peak to gross Animal Planet movie "Monsters Inside Me." (Sorry, in the states you probably have seen commercials for this but we're a little deprived over here.)

Vintage Ghostbusters stickers.

Having baby pictures in your wallet increases liklihood that they will be returned if lost: "The baby photograph wallets had the highest return rate, with 88 per cent of the 40 being sent back. Next came the puppy, the family and the elderly couple, with 53 per cent, 48 and 28 respectively. At 20 per cent and 15, the charity card and control wallets had the lowest return rates." Via.

Prefabs for cold weather.

If Brad and Angelina move to NYC, how will Brad run for Mayor of NOLA?

Man's eye replaced with his tooth (including creepy picture).

Solar night garden, Mr. T Jump drive, watching the flowers grow

In cooperation with the Israel Electric Corporation, which encourages the use of alternative energy for benefit of our environment, OGE made a Enchanting Solar-powered Night Garden.


Here is a shot of it in the day:


And another night shot:

Via.



What was Manhattan like 400 years ago, before the first settlers arrived? Designed by Abbott Miller, the new exhibition Mannahatta/Manhattan: A Natural History of New York City at the Museum of the City of New York reconstructs the ecology of the small wooded island originally known as Mannahatta (“island of many hills” as the Lenape Indians called it) before it became one of the most densely built places on earth. The exhibition is presented in collaboration with the Wildlife Conservation Society.





If this weren't so expensive ($45), I would totally buy it.

It's a shark anatomy toy. Maybe for my Godson's birthday, but I doubt that he would like it as much as I do!
Available to purchase here.




This one, I don't care how much it costs, I am totally buying this once we get a home in the U.S.

I wonder if it matters what species of fish you have? You think Betas can do all this?




You know the Slap Chop infomercial? If so, you are just going to LOVE this. I think I am going to have to rip this song so I can listen to it on my iPod.





I love this idea. Instead of giving someone a gag gift, you give them a gag gift BOX.

It's a bacon tuxedo box. You just buy the $5 empty box and put the real gift in it. Much better than the $7 gift boxes you'd buy at Target!
Available for purchase here.
More ridiculous and strange gift ideas here on Kaboodle's top 10 list.




I think I also found this one on Kaboodle. It's a great idea, but I will probably just make one myself next time I know someone going off to college.

It's a college survival kit. It includes a collapsible clothes hamper, book light, reusable poster adhesive, first aid kit, a $5 Domino's Pizza gift certificate, and other miscellaneous items. I bet it would be fun just to come up with the list of things to include in the gift pack! Ear plugs, flip flops for the dorm, a car lighter outlet for the inevitable road trips

I like how they include a first aid kit, screw driver, and eye covers. I think it would be good to also have a hammer, some sticky tack, and maybe one of those McGuyver tools,

maybe not this one, but something like it at least. Oh, and of course some kind of ridiculous USB drive, like maybe this Mr. T doing situps

And yes, he really bends to do the crunches.

College survival kit found here.
Car lighter outlet available here.
McGuyver toppeak tool found here.
Mr. T, Rocky, and Rocky III Apollo Creed USB flash drives here.



A timelapse garden video camera, that will even have your flower give twitter updates. On the site, you can watch one of the flowers go from bud to full bloom. It's neat, but I am not sure if it's worth the whopping $160!


The thing I think of is all of the other things you could tape with it. Like a building being built or something.
Via.




The litterbox for the modern cat:

It has "rooftop access" and reusable litter bags. It doesn't self-clean. It doesn't prevent odor in any special way I see. It is over-priced. I think it isn't even available yet. But it comes in red, so that makes it for the modern cat from what I gather. Don't think I'll be buying one any time soon, but if you want to preorder one, go here.




This is one splurge I am considering, though:

We have tons and tons and tons of old nintendo games. Now there is a hand-held device that will play them. Also see Super Mario Brothers for your TI-84 Graphing Calculator here. The hand-held device is available here.




And in line with my new obsession with robots, I have to conclude this post with a video of a quarky little robot just for girls.

Bossa Nova Penbo from Gizmodo on Vimeo.

And, I have to say that I am pretty sure that dude talking is Dutch. I wonder if that was filmed here?






More links:

Slideshow of the most outrageous hotel concierge requests.

Free software for Windows to create your own mosaic picture.

Pictures of people doing dumb stuff.

Pentagon is making cyborg crickets that will be able to detect survivors in disasters and notify rescuers. Video and full story here.

Top 10 reasons to quit facebook.

A video about artists from all over the world featured in The United Colors of Benneton's Colors Magazine.

Dutch postal service introduces seeded stamps. Via.

All kinds of things...

Weedrobes made from plants.

Via.



I don't know Italian, but this song is beautiful.

The lyrics are available here.



Here you can see how your country measures up in terms of it's 'carbon footprint,' overall life satisfaction, and life expectancy.

Via.




650-pound virgin loses 410 lbs in about 2 years, and there is a made-for-tv movie coming out about it.

Via (with video clips).





Wes and I went down to a little ice cream shop here in the city center, and they had Arugula ice cream. I thought it was so bizarre, I had to get a sample. Sure enough, it did taste like Arugula. They apparently won a contest at the store for creating the flavor. The guy behind the counter told me that I shouldn't have it on a cone, though. It is made for a kind of ice salad. Go figure. Well, even after having tasted the Arugula ice cream, I am still perplexed by this slideshow of the world's strangest ice creams.

The place that sells this one has over 900 flavors, including tuna flavor!



This one is sometimes eaten with a knife and fork. From the site: "Turkish ice cream, or dondurma, is made with goat’s milk and an ingredient called salep—which translates, literally, to “fox testicle.” In reality, it’s a flour ground from wild orchid tubers, which presumably bear some resemblance to a fox’s family jewels. The resulting cold treat is pretty much an only-in-Turkey delicacy, since the wild orchids technically can’t be exported. You can buy it at cafés and street carts, especially in Istanbul."


This one looks pretty normal, but guess what flavor it is... It ain't vanilla--that is Garlic. See the whole slideshow here.



I love this picture.

Via.



Business lessons acquired from Dungeons and Dragons:
1. Feed the DM. (treat those in power with extra kindness)
2. One spell, used well, can be more powerful than an entire book full of spells.
3. It's better to out-smart an orc than to fight one.
4. "I'm the DM. I'm not there." This is the point of all those tedious "diversity training" exercises from your HR department; perhaps the message would get across better if they talked about the apparently-weak wizard and the bard with those amazing negotiation skills.
5. Simple and internally consistent is more fun than random.
6. You create your own traps.
7. Treasure is not always what you expect it to be.
8. You don't have to read all the books, but a modest description of the beast you are about to face is better than facing a daemon and trying six dozen spells before finding the right one. (If you live that long.)
9. When selecting a weapon or tool, bigger is not always better.
These are just synopses of the good article. Go to the link to read the whole thing.
Via.



This cracks me up; it's a fanny pack for your head:

Buy one here.



And I just can't believe that Harry and Pepper, the famous gay penguin couple are breaking up!




Tron is back as an online sitcom:

Via.



This is also pretty funny. Maybe our kids are getting fatter, but they're also getting trickier: Children taking part in a study to measure how much exercise they do fooled researchers by attaching their pedometers to their pet dogs. Read about the failed study here.


I wish we had more efficient highspeed railways in the U.S.!!! Especially after having lived in Europe, it really hits you how nice it is to 'park and ride'! It seems like having a national railway system would solve a lot of problems. For one, people are afraid of planes, but not as afraid of trains, especially after 9/11. Second, you can always take the train. Fog and rain and snow will not slow down the schedules. Third, (I'm not sure about this one), but I think that they can be more easily produced with "green energy". And, it would create a lot of jobs to have a project like that. After all, that is why our interstates were built.

Via.
Also check out the new London transportation bus that is designed to encourage using public transit.





Giant jellyfish in Japan:

Via.



More links:
Neat architecture art.

Slideshow of world's most spectacular tasting rooms.

Japanese rice paddy crop art.

Science Fiction's greatest legal minds revealed. Yes, Harvey Birdman made the list.

Neat Sci-Fi-looking Owl.

So cute!

There is too much cute stuff in the world...

I want all of these things!!!

This is what this mug looks like when it's clean. Wes said it would drive him crazy if I bought it because he would always be trying to clean it if he found it sitting somewhere in the house. But I think it would be perfect for the office.




This would be good for the office too...

It is really just a simple calculator, but since it stands up on its own, it saves space at least. I am really into robot stuff lately.





and speaking of robot stuff...
That's right. A C3PO jump drive.
They also have Darth Vader and Wicket.






And speaking of Star Wars,
It's an overpriced Japanese Star Wars themed tea towel.
And it says something about how R2-D2 is so steadfast, he always gets C3P0 to do an earnest job. We have some Star Wars twin sheets and I really think that we'll one day have a home to put those sheets in. And when we have that home with that room with those sheets, it sure would be nice for it to have a bathroom with these towels. But I guess we will get to work on the location, then jobs, then home, then rooms, then decorating. It only seems right.


But in that house's kitchen, I think I would put this:




This one makes it fun to play with your food again. I probably won't buy it, but if I had kids, it would be in the mail on its way to my (or make that a--since we don't have one yet) house right now!







AND I don't really want this one, but it sure is funny, isn't it?
It's a 'bald man's comb' !