Category: Neat-o

Everyone’s at least somewhat familiar with the Scooby-Doo series of animated low-stakes real estate mysteries, correct? The one where a group of nomadic teens in a van roam the country stopping (usually) real estate developers from using Halloween costumes to force the sale of properties? You know what kind of van they drove? I bet you don’t.

In advance of the Paris reveal of the new $338,625 Bentley Mulsanne Speed, the company invited us into its Crewe factory near Manchester, England, for a no-limits walk of the assembly line to see why Bentleys in general—and Mulsannes in particular—are so expensive.

Wouldn’t it be great to be able to just look at someone and tell what they’re really like? Sherlock Holmes does this all the time and it’s incredibly cool. Of course, Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character and nobody can read people quite that well. We can all get better at it, though. But where do you learn a skill like that? And I mean for real — methods backed by science.

Have you ever wondered why your cat's eyes have those creepy vertical slits for pupils? A new study suggests the reason may lie in cats' preferred mode of hunting.

Have you ever wondered how Shazam works? I asked myself this question a few years ago and I read a research article written by Avery Li-Chun Wang, the confounder of Shazam, to understand the magic behind Shazam. The quick answer is audio fingerprinting, which leads to another question: what is audio fingerprinting?

While many of our devices have evolved beyond the battery, there are still plenty of things — from remote controls to handy calculators — that need trusty AA batteries to function.

It's startling to think of the multitude of objects Leonardo da Vinci conceptualized, and it's a tad heartbreaking to realize he saw so few of them actualized. But nearly 500 years after da Vinci sketched his plans for a musical instrument he dubbed the Viola Organista, Polish concert pianist Slawomir Zubrzycki spent more than 5,000 hours making da Vinci's idea a reality.

Many of us think of reading somebody else’s mind as a sort of control mechanism. If you can figure out their next move, you can manipulate them or anticipate their future actions.  In reality, it can be far more practical and personal.

Let’s face it. Most of us don’t pay attention to the world around us. We are horrible observators of our lives. And Sherlock, actually, proved this in “A Scandal in Bohemia."

Principles of cognitive neuroscience and time management can be applied to attain conversational fluency (here defined as 95%+ comprehension and 100% expressive abilities) in 1-3 months.

This ranking of the richest people of all time is based on hours of interviews with academic economists and historians. To read more about how the order was determined despite the difficulty of comparing wealth across a wide range of time periods and economic systems, read this. But for now, suffice to say that the following is a rigorous but highly debatable attempt to list the wealthiest historical figures in order of their economic influence.

We are all passing through these uncertain times with a drop of care and insanity. We have to take our time to meditate, think and create anchors for ourselves and the ones around us. We have found DIY projects as being pieces of this anchor. By slowly upcycling and recycling as much as possible around us we strengthen our belief that small things do matter the most. We are shaping our small world as much as possible. Through simple backyard projects, DIY wall art projects,DIY furniture hacks and paper crafts alike we are becoming more of an individual than we were before. Different is good. Different is better. Be yourself and craft your way to happiness!

Here, we have a list of 20 awesome inventions that take advantage of clever design. Some of them are already available whereas some of them are still a concept hoping to get into production. Have a look at them and do not forget to tell us your favorite one in the comment below!

Right now you’ll find 133 free philosophy courses, 85 free history courses, 120 free computer science courses, 71 free physics courses and 55 Free Literature Courses in the collection, and that’s just beginning to scratch the surface. You can peruse sections covering Astronomy, Biology, Business, Chemistry, Economics, Engineering, Math, Political Science, Psychology and Religion.

Forget overpriced schools, long days in a crowded classroom, and pitifully poor results. These websites and apps cover myriads of science, art, and technology topics. They will teach you practically anything, from making hummus to building apps in node.js, most of them for free.

Being that there are so many aspects to the work, describing someone as a “NASA engineer” could mean a thousand different things of course. In this case, we had a chance to speak with Edward Gonzales, an electromagnetic compatibility engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. Edward spoke with us about his experiences, his work, and how he ended up at NASA.

A prodigy grows up to become one of the greatest mathematicians in the world.

So what’s the secret for someone who’s affluent and interested in being seen — and maybe sampling the food — at the trendiest restaurants in New York, Los Angeles and Miami? Success at the game often entails calling in all sorts of favors.

Bugs Bunny, corporate mascot of the Warner Bros. Enertainment corporation, first appeared on this day in 1940.

Larry Ellison, Oracle's billionaire cofounder and current CTO, is famous for his brash personality. He's shown time and time again that he's willing to go to great lengths to win, both in business and in his extracurricular activities. We've rounded up the stories that best show how competitive Ellison really is.

The sheer size of the solar system is difficult to comprehend, but this serves as a great reminder that we’re very, very tiny in the grand scheme of things.

Ignored in her own time, Lord Byron’s daughter was the first to grasp the implications of Charles Babbage’s analytical engine. James Essinger examines how the 21st century has resurrected her as an icon of suppressed female genius.

Yet the real-life story of the city is more complicated than popular mythology makes it out to be. The task of sorting out what is real about the Spartans from what is myth has been made more difficult because many of the ancient accounts were written by non-Spartans. As such, they need to be taken with the appropriate grain of salt.

Why Blinky the red ghost is the most dangerous in the game of Pac-Man...

The biggest building boom in the history of astronomy is upon us. In Chile and Hawaii and in space, astronomers are getting powerful telescopes that dwarf the current state-of-the-art instruments. When the mountain blasting and the mirror polishing are all done, we will have the clearest and most detailed views of outer space ever.

Classical piano pieces by such composers as Beethoven, Mozart and Chopin likely sounded much different when the masters first performed those works than they do today. Pianos themselves have changed considerably — but so, too, has technique.

What material did they cut out of Harry Potter? And which manuscript was delivered in a plastic bag?

At 10:56 p.m. EDT, American astronaut Neil Armstrong, 240,000 miles from Earth, speaks these words to more than a billion people listening at home: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Stepping off the lunar landing module Eagle, Armstrong became the first human to walk on the surface of the moon.

I think this is the most impressive video that Man At Arms has ever done, and that’s saying a lot since they’ve recreated all the coolest weapons from TV shows and movies in real life. But there’s something ridiculous impressive about making a katana (stylized like the one from Kill Bill) the traditional old school Japanese way.

Photographing great white sharks for 20 years gives Chris and Monique Fallows front row seats on the amazing behavior and secrets of formidable predators few people see. In this post they share ten of their favorite images of great whites and describe the electric moment when each was made, when conditions came together for a photographic capture of an awesome predator.

These exist because, well, sometimes it's really hard being a girl. Besides, guys can use some of these, too. Winning.

Cover up your accessories with art. This is genius; follow these instructions to create your own.

April is National Poetry Month,  so I thought the time was ripe for another round of famous poems read by famous people (see previous round here). It didn’t hurt that I found this little gem in my various social media feeds:

“The idea that we’re running out of resources is foolish, all we’re running out of is imagination.”

As aesthetically-engaging and rich with visual detail as it is rife in complex characters and an acutely-crafted drama, Matthew Weiner’s Mad Men broke new ground for network television, and its influence will be felt on future programs for years to come. And to honor Weiner’s beloved show, the Museum of the Moving Image has devoted both an upcoming exhibition and film series to exploring the creative process and ambition of Mad Men‘s history.

So unless you have a coffee table that’s just the perfect height (lucky you!), you’re going to want to take a look at this incredible DIY project.

Just about everybody lies on a regular basis. Usually these are small fibs, along the lines of "I like your jacket," as opposed to a whopper like "no, I didn't embezzle $70 million." But it's helpful to be able to spot liars and the lies they tell.

Thomas Hardy—architect, poet, and writer (above)—gave us the fierce, stormy romance Far From the Madding Crowd, currently impressing critics in a film adaptation by Thomas Vinterberg. He also gave us Tess of the D’Urbervilles, The Return of the Native, and Jude the Obscure, books whose persistently grim outlook might make them too depressing by far were it not for Hardy’s engrossing prose, unforgettable characterization, and, perhaps most importantly, unshakable sense of place. Hardy set most of his novels in a region he called Wessex, which—much like William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha—is a thinly fictionalized recreation of his rural hometown of Dorchester and its surrounding counties.

For anyone tired of tales of visionary young CEOs, here’s one old man’s meandering journey to discovering his greatest talent: He could sell the hell out of fried chicken.

Growing a lemon trees from seed is surprisingly easy. Generally, lemon trees flourish outdoors year-round in hot areas, but they can also grow indoors as edible houseplants.

Get a bad hair cut? Japan has just the word.

"Let the future tell the truth, and evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishments. The present is theirs; the future, for which I have really worked, is mine." - Nikola Tesla

While the standard espresso drinks in the States consist of a macchiato, cappuccino, red eye, latte, etc., when you peek around the corner at how the rest of the world takes their coffee, you'll be impressed at the variety.

You might remember seeing this microscopic photo of vinyl record grooves a few months ago. Ben Krasnow has one-upped that with this slow-motion video of a record player's needle riding in the groove of a record.

Ever mentally undress someone with your mind? How about fake sick to avoid work, or dance like no one was watching? Well guess what? There’s a word for that! Here are a few beautiful words to add to your vocabulary...

Every Friday brings a new performance of another Bach piece — until, that is, the Netherlands Bach Society gets through all 1080 of them. But between now and then, they’ve also got special musical events planned, such as a special performance of the whole of the St. Matthew Passion scheduled for this Friday, April 3. (You can now find it online here.) It will mark the probable 288th anniversary of the piece’s debut, an event which musical historians think happened in Leipzig’s St. Thomas Church, where Bach served as cantor and chorus director.

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We’ve gotten so used to smartphones in our lives that we don’t realize just what incredible feats of engineering they really are. PhoneArena has spotted an incredible new GIF made by an anonymous imgur user that quickly shows all of the components that you find in an iPhone 5s that need to be assembled to make a finished device.

For any of you in the rest of the world who may not know, we Americans use the fourth of July to celebrate our independence from the British Empire a few hundred years ago. Fortunately, we're now the best of friends, but the holiday remains a very popular one for us. In order to remember and relive those historic battles from the 1700's, we launch fireworks at nightfall and all become children once again, at least for a few special moments.