Images via Just­SayG­nome

The Noam Chom­sky Gar­den Gnome. That’s right, I said it, the Noam Chom­sky Gar­den Gnome.

Over at justsaygnome.net, you can buy, when they’re avail­able, two ver­sions of “Gnome Chom­sky the Gar­den Noam.” Here’s is how it’s gen­er­al­ly described:

Stand­ing at just under 17 inch­es, Gnome Chom­sky the Gar­den Noam clutch­es his clas­sic books, ‘The Man­u­fac­ture of Com­post’ and ‘Hedgerows not Hege­mo­ny’ – with his open right hand ready to hold the polit­i­cal slo­gan of your choos­ing. His clothes rep­re­sent a relaxed but classy ver­sion of reg­u­lar gnome attire, includ­ing: a nice suit jack­et-tunic, jeans, boots, tra­di­tion­al gnome cap, and glass­es. Addi­tion­al­ly, Noam Gnome stands on a base com­plete with a carved title – for any­one who may not imme­di­ate­ly real­ize the iden­ti­ty of this hand­some and schol­ar­ly gnome.

The gnome costs $195 paint­ed and $95 unpaint­ed (plus ship­ping). The bum­mer is that the gnomes are cur­rent­ly out of stock, and when they’ll come back is any­one’s guess. That said, if you real­ly want one, the site’s (pre­sumed) own­er Steve encour­ages you to drop him an email. I might have to send one myself.

Above you can see a pho­to of Chom­sky with a Noam Gnome. Find addi­tion­al views of the Noam Gnome here. And, guess what, they’ve got a Howard Zinn gnome too.

In putting this post togeth­er, I spot­ted an old com­ic bit that took the idea of a Noam Gar­den Gnome as its premise. You can watch it below.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read 9 Books By Noam Chom­sky Free Online

Film­mak­er Michel Gondry Presents an Ani­mat­ed Con­ver­sa­tion with Noam Chom­sky

Clash of the Titans: Noam Chom­sky & Michel Fou­cault Debate Human Nature & Pow­er on Dutch TV, 1971

Dur­ing the 1950s, when a hula hoop craze swept across Amer­i­ca, the Car­lon Prod­ucts Corp. (a com­pa­ny that spe­cial­ized in mak­ing light­weight plas­tic pipes), man­aged to pro­duce some 50,000 hula hoops per day. That got oth­er com­pa­nies think­ing. How could they cap­i­tal­ize on this mania, if not direct­ly, then indi­rect­ly? When a sec­ond hula hoop­ing craze gripped the coun­try dur­ing the mid-1960s, Tran­so­gram Games intro­duced the “Swing Wing,” pos­si­bly the worst idea for a kids’ toy until Bag O’ Glass (who here remem­bers that clas­sic SNL skit?). It’s a dizzy­ing toy, backed by a dizzy­ing — but you have to admit catchy — com­mer­cial. Buy­er beware, there’s a Swing Wing on ebay. Nev­er opened and ready to go for 53 clams.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

On Christ­mas, Browse A His­tor­i­cal Archive of More Than 50,000 Toys

Ele­men­tary School Kids Sing David Bowie’s “Space Odd­i­ty” & Oth­er Rock Hits: A Cult Clas­sic Record­ed in 1976

Friedrich Niet­zsche & Exis­ten­tial­ism Explained to Five-Year-Olds

Famous Philoso­phers Imag­ined as Action Fig­ures: Plun­der­ous Pla­to, Dan­ger­ous Descartes & More

Is there any­thing worse than fly­ing from Newark to San Fran­cis­co? Maybe it’s watch­ing man­nequins tak­ing this cross-coun­try flight. Talk about tedi­um. And yet there’s some­thing a lit­tle bril­liant about this six hour adver­tise­ment from Vir­gin Air­lines — which promis­es a more inspir­ing flight. I mean how many six hour adver­tise­ments have you seen, let alone ones that have “action” from start to fin­ish? Some­where, some­one’s going to watch this thing all the way through. Maybe it’s you.

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Win­ning a Nobel Prize has its perks. When you talk, peo­ple lis­ten. And you end up doing a lot of talk­ing. And trav­el­ling.

Reflect­ing on how the Nobel Prize changed his life, Wal­ter Gilbert (1980 win­ner in Chem­istry) com­ment­ed, “You can find your­self spend­ing years trav­el­ling and talk­ing right after win­ning.”

And what if you want to take your Nobel Prize on the road with you? Accord­ing to astro­physi­cist Bri­an Schmidt (win­ner of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics), that can present its own chal­lenges. He recent­ly told an audi­ence in New York:

‘There are a cou­ple of bizarre things that hap­pen. One of the things you get when you win a Nobel Prize is, well, a Nobel Prize. It’s about that big, that thick [about the size of an Olympic medal], weighs a half a pound, and it’s made of gold.”

“When I won this, my grand­ma, who lives in Far­go, North Dako­ta, want­ed to see it. I was com­ing around so I decid­ed I’d bring my Nobel Prize. You would think that car­ry­ing around a Nobel Prize would be unevent­ful, and it was unevent­ful, until I tried to leave Far­go with it, and went through the X‑ray machine. I could see they were puz­zled. It was in my lap­top bag. It’s made of gold, so it absorbs all the X‑rays—it’s com­plete­ly black. And they had nev­er seen any­thing com­plete­ly black.”

“They’re like, ‘Sir, there’s some­thing in your bag.’
I said, ‘Yes, I think it’s this box.’
They said, ‘What’s in the box?’
I said, ‘a large gold medal,’ as one does.
So they opened it up and they said, ‘What’s it made out of?’
I said, ‘gold.’
And they’re like, ‘Uhh­hh. Who gave this to you?’
‘The King of Swe­den.’
‘Why did he give this to you?’
‘Because I helped dis­cov­er the expan­sion rate of the uni­verse was accel­er­at­ing.’
At which point, they were begin­ning to lose their sense of humor. I explained to them it was a Nobel Prize, and their main ques­tion was, ‘Why were you in Far­go?’”

So just a word of cau­tion to Jean Tirole, who won the Nobel Prize in Eco­nom­ics today, if you’re ever vis­it­ing grand-mère…

via Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read 18 Short Sto­ries From Nobel Prize-Win­ning Writer Alice Munro Free Online

Jean-Paul Sartre Rejects the Nobel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture in 1964: “It Was Mon­strous!”

Hear Albert Camus Deliv­er His Nobel Prize Accep­tance Speech (1957)

Take a Free Course on the Finan­cial Mar­kets with Robert Shiller, Win­ner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Eco­nom­ics

Sit back and let Willie Nel­son, accom­pa­nied by his sis­ter Bob­bie, show you a great card trick. It’s a vari­a­tion on a trick called “Sam the Bell­hop,” which sleight of hand expert Bill Mal­one pop­u­lar­ized, it not invent­ed. If you want to fig­ure out how the wiz­ardy is done, you’ll need to look else­where. We’re not going to spoil this bit of fun.

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Orson Welles Per­forms A Mag­ic Trick

Skep­tic Michael Sher­mer Shows You How to Bend Spoons with Your Mind

Willie Nel­son Audi­tions for The Hob­bit Film Sequel, Turns 80 Today