Category: Neat-o

(Im)practically speaking, it’s just freaking amazingly cool. Few people in the world can pull it off, and that’s reason enough to take a weekend or slow evening to try. Instead of watching another bad movie, you can become one of the memory illuminati.

Airdancers—better known as wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube men—are staples in used car parking lots and discount stores everywhere. The ubiquitous dancer exists thanks to famous Trinidadian artist Peter Minshall, who designed puppets for Carnival. For the 1996 Summer Olympics, Marshall was commissioned to help create the opening for the Atlanta-based games, according to the video above from Great Big Story. He designed the inflatable tube man and enlisted the help of engineer Doron Gazit to make it a reality. Unfortunately for Minshall, Gazit ended up getting a patent for the design—notoriously, without the artist—and now the wacky inflatable arm men are everywhere.

If you've ever felt like being MacGyver was a feasible career choice for yourself, we can help. As it turns out, it is possible to combine a few seemingly normal household items together to create something awesome, VOLTRON-style.

How many times have you gone to open a can of tomato sauce and misplaced the can opener? Not anymore! It turns out that there is an easy way to open a can without a can opener. This incredible video by the CrazyRussianHacker shows exactly what you should do if you ever find yourself in that situation again.

Winter’s here, and for lots of us, that means dealing with a foggy windshield full of condensation when we go to start our cars. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t take that long for your defroster to clear your windshield, but if you’re harried and already late for work, that extra time waiting can feel like an eternity. And it’s no good to be driving around looking through a half-obscured windshield like a dingus.

If there's a mathematical idea that applies itself to almost everything in everyday life but is almost unknown outside the scientific world, the Fourier transform has to be the most unsung contender. It pops up wherever scientists need to study complex things that fluctuate in the real world – sound, heat, light, stock prices – and has been used to separate the signal from the noise in data collected for astronomy, medicine, genetics and chemistry. It is also the main equation used in the compression of digital images and sound on the web.

People’s decisions — good or bad — can be predicted by how big their pupils are moments before they even make the decision, a new study finds.

Do you ever have that feeling that everyone else is more successful than you? If you think that's bad - try being Leonardo Da Vinci. This is the first of a two-part series on our distorted view of creativity and success.

One bit of realism that corny '80s action movies brought to cinema is the one-liner: as we have mentioned before, soldiers have a surprising way with words when it comes to those badass boasts we all wish we could think of with when faced with a threatening situation. Not only do they have ample ability to come up with zingers, they often manage to chuck them out with deadly accuracy while staring death right in the eye until its bony balls shrivel and it skulks away grumbling.

The first true e-commerce transaction didn’t happen until 1994 with the advent of the Internet as we more or less know it today. Though Pizza Hut often gets credit for the first e-commerce transaction (they started selling pizzas online in late August 1994) the actual credit goes to Dan Kohn, a 21-year-old entrepreneur who ran a website based in New Hampshire called NetMarket.

We all have memories of our favorite lunch boxes growing up. Whether its displayed your favorite Saturday morning cartoon or favorite band — a lunch box was the ultimate expression of who you were in school. And while your lunch box probably didn't make it through adolescence, there are quite a few still out there. Even better, some of them go for a lot of money! We scoured the web to find some pretty distinctive lunch boxes that go for a pretty penny. Some of the highest sellers might surprise you.

Many rulers of the Middle Ages got nicknames, ranging from the Magnificent to the Crazy. Some monarchs got the title ‘The Great’ – what did they do to deserve such an honour. Here is a little information about 15 ‘Great’ medieval rulers, arranged chronologically:

Joel Haddley and Stephen Worsley, from the University of Liverpool came up with a previous method for cutting the perfect slice, known as monohedral disc tiling, which results in 12 identical slices.

This week Flavia Frigeri, assistant curator of our Matisse cut-outs exhibition, takes a closer look at the honest friendship and open rivalry between the two masters of modern art, Matisse and Picasso.

In her new book Mathematics and Art, historian Lyn Gamwell explores how artists have for thousands of years used mathematical concepts - such as infinity, number and form - in their work. Here she choses ten stunning images from her book that reveal connections between maths and art.

In 2013, mathematician and science author Ian Stewart published a book on 17 Equations That Changed The World. We recently came across this convenient table on Dr. Paul Coxon's twitter account by mathematics tutor and blogger Larry Phillips that summarizes the equations. (Our explanation of each is below):

Even the most brilliant minds need to unwind.

Franklin, as well as other almanac writers, peppered his book with witticisms and proverbs. “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise” is one of the sayings he used. This proverb actually originated long before Franklin’s time. It was seen in print as early as 1496, in a piece called The Treatise of Fishing with an Angle. There it is referred to as an old English proverb:

Remembering things, like names, dates, and other fine details is a skill—one that you can sharpen and hone. Here are ten memory boosting techniques everyone can learn.

The vintage photographs you're about to see have an interesting history. They all came from a cardboard box filled with negatives that was unopened and virtually forgotten for over 45 years. When undiscovered photographer Frank Larsonpassed away in 1964, his wife Eleanora boxed up all of their possessions and moved out of their retirement home in Lakeville, Connecticut. The box of negatives was one of these items, and it has remained with the family ever since, tucked away in storage.

Among the multitudes of photos of the past, there are some that show the history from a different perspective. The best of theses images can help you to imagine better than any book or movie what it was really like to live through that moment, now lost forever.

Humanity has achieved a number of incredible space milestones and discoveries this year, and we've seen some stunning images from space. Here's a selection of our favourites.

In this list, you’ll find some of the best desktop wallpapers of all time for creatives, with tips from an expert designer on how you can design them yourself.

The most incredible display of all? Cinderella Castle at Disney’s Magic Kingdom park dripped with white and blue lights that felt straight out of the fairy tale. Christmas may almost be over but we’re hoping these lights don’t come down quite yet.

All you’ll need is some water and a bit of conditioner.

“I see myself as a housewife and artist more than a businesswoman.”

Einstein's favorite scientist died an ardent Catholic.

Emoticons are pretty important: Harvard cognitive scientist Steven Pinker says they're an extremely useful linguistic evolution; The Oxford English Dictionary named "crying face" the word of the year; humans collectively send 6 billion emoticons every day.

The relatively new cover photo feature in Facebook has provided an expansive template for creative individuals to express themselves. Enter Nikki, a Reddit user who has figured out how to insert herself into popular television shows and movies by masterfully interplaying her Facebook cover photo with her profile picture. Enjoy her brilliant Facebook cover photos below:

We have a collection of 11 gifts that are completely over-the-top, ranging from the world's largest tin of caviar to a private jet tour around the globe. They're just as lavish as the millionaire in your life.

Simple advice from the president of America's most venerable university.

At the CIA Museum in Washington, DC, you can get a glimpse of the gadgets used in past spy missions.

Ever since he showed up in A Study in Scarlet, Sherlock Holmes has fascinated readers with his powers of deduction and arrogant eccentricities. But is this iconic investigator purely fictional, or was he based on a real-life hero?

The title of this article sounds little creepy, but it’s true. Social media, especially Facebook, can say more than you think. Researchers have discovered that the way people present themselves on social media can say a lot about their personality.

Sherlock Holmes is one of the most famous example of brilliant memory. And his talkings about the mysterious mental space, coat flapping, opening doors and yanking out crucial bits of arcane information isn’t something fictional. This mental space he’s talking about is called memory palace, also known as The Method of Loci.

Every film has its share of nutty behind-the-scenes stories. But when you have a series as grand as the Star Wars saga, the crazy story factor gets dialed up to 11. To help illustrate this we teamed up with the Han Solo to our Chewbacca, AuntieMeme, to present some of the craziest goings-on that occurred while filming one of the greatest film series in the history of cinema.

A lot of (auto)biographical books and historical documentaries have been made over the years, all reflecting on (the pros and cons of) the studio system that was responsible for Hollywood’s golden era of filmmaking. So is this little piece.

"Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" ran in April 1966 and became one of the most celebrated magazine stories ever published, a pioneering example of what came to be called New Journalism -- a work of rigorously faithful fact enlivened with the kind of vivid storytelling that had previously been reserved for fiction.

Ah, Old Glory. A symbol of hard-won freedom that we honor by printing on $60 short shorts. It seems eternal, but it's actually gone through dozens of revisions over the years. Would your beer kozies and bikinis have looked better if we'd stuck with the Bedford Militia Men's flag of 1775? You be the judge.

The New York tristate area in the 1980s was an amazing time for local TV ads. Let’s go back in time...

It stands among the most famous theories ever created, but the general theory of relativity did not spring into being with a single, astonishing paper like the special theory of relativity in 1905. Instead, general relativity's birth was more chaotic, involving a handful of lectures, manuscripts, and more than one parent.

Hand Georg Bernardini, a professional chocolate taster and tester, a bar of Hershey’s milk chocolate and he’ll unwrap it, smell it, examine the surface and texture, and then bring it to his ears to listen to it break. Finally, he takes a bite, letting the chocolate melt almost completely before he chews, deliberately.

With Father’s Day around the corner, here comes a fine addition to history’s greatest letters of fatherly advicefrom none other than Albert Einstein — brilliant physicist, proponent of peace, debater of science and spirituality, champion of kindness — who was no stranger to dispensing epistolary empowerment to young minds.

The UNESCO Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage on Wednesday added Japanese papers known as “washi” to its Intangible Cultural Heritage list. The process of making the handmade paper has been passed on for generations for over a thousand years in Japan. Here are 5 things to know about its craftsmanship.

There are endless possible ways to win a game of chess. But the "Fool's Mate," the fastest way to win a game of chess, is often an easy way to win against newcomers to the game.

The sacred silverware became spliced with other legends, invested with mythical powers, and hijacked by conspiracy theorists and demagogues. Pat Kinsella separates the few facts from the profuse fictions that continue to evolve around this elusive relic…

Some handy math tricks can help you figure out each of these situations quickly — and without having to resort to pulling out the calculator on your phone. We've assembled seven such tricks and talk a little about how they all work.

The best movie about obnoxious geniuses ever made shows us that being smart is good, but having fun is gooder.  Here are some of the 10 best quotes and scenes from the Val Kilmer classic Real Genius

Why has Captain Kirk remained an icon when Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon have faded?