Have you ever wondered how the International Space Station gets enough oxygen to keep its crews breathing? It's not shipped in, at least not often. The same goes for water, although humans use a lot of oxygen and water every day. The floating laboratory is equipped with hi-tech appliances for renewing its own supplies. Water is recycled into fresh water, and some of it is used to make new oxygen. Humans also expel a lot of carbon dioxide, which is not expelled from the station, but is converted into water and methane. New water is always welcome, but this video does not go into detail on what they do with the methane. One would like to think it's expelled, because a space station fart is amusing to think about. Maybe someday it will be used as fuel.
These conversions require separating molecules into atoms, which is amazing enough, but they've also found a way to do it with no moving parts that could break down. I'm impressed.
That leaning tower in Pisa, Italy, is not the only ancient structure that wouldn't pass inspection today. Poland has its own such tower, built of brick, in the town of Toruń, the birthplace of Copernicus.
The tower dates back to the 13th century, when the Teutonic Order, a Catholic military/monastic order born of the Crusades, held the city of Toruń in the Baltic region. They built two towers as part of the city's fortifications against attack by the pagan Prussians and Lithuanians. The brick towers were quite heavy, and as soon as they were completed, they started leaning to one side as they settled into the soft ground underneath. At least, that's the practical explanation. An old legend says that one of the Teutonic Knights was commanded to build the towers to lean as punishment for falling in love with a local woman.
Only one of the leaning towers is still standing, and it's been used as a prison, apartments, shops, and offices through the centuries. We can assume that the floors inside have been leveled, otherwise it wouldn't be useable. Read about the leaning tower of Toruń and the knights who built it at Kuriositas.
(Image credit: Scotch Mist)
The planet of Tatooine, we learn in Star Wars Episode IV, has two suns. So what would rainbows look like in this astronomical condition quite unlike that of Earth? Randall Munroe of xkcd answers.
It turns out that rainbows always come in orders, but it's rare to see more than one. Sometimes you can see a pair of rainbows. This what is likely to prevail on Tatooine.
To go into detail, it's necessary to determine what kind of solar system Tatooine is. Munroe thinks it's likely to be a circumbinary system in which Tatooine orbits both stars. Because of the necessary geometry of this movement, the rainbows would overlap.
-via The Awesomer
Do you see this lake? It's Yathkyed Lake in northern Canada.
Otto the dachshund has a nice life for a pet, at least from our perspective. He has a nice house, plenty to eat, and a human who loves him. But the human has become more and more obsessed with Otto. Constant photographs. Videos. And the clothing- all so undignified! Otto feels more and more uneasy about all the attention. The human doesn't even go to work anymore, because he's too busy posting videos of Otto and his brother Kaspar, who doesn't seem to mind a bit. He's not too smart. Then one day, Otto spots an opportunity to make a break for freedom. The human has left the door open! Otto takes his chance to escape the prying eyes of the internet.
Sparky Jones' short film Confessions of a Dachshund highlights Otto's constant concern and his talent for the side-eye. No doubt Otto will be a star, but will not appreciate the adulation. You can see more of Otto, Kaspar, and the human at Instagram. -via Nag on the Lake
If you have trouble seeing distant things clearly, or if you have to hold something close to your eyes to see it, you have myopia, also called short-sightedness or nearsightedness. It's pretty common, and becoming more common as time goes by. Around the world, about a third of people are myopic now, and that rate is expected to rise to about 50% by 2050. It's caused by the eyeball growing too much, meaning growing too long from front to back, which causes the focal point of incoming signals to converge in front of the retina instead of on the retina.
What's causing the rise in myopia? It's not the prevalence of computers, phones, and other screens, because the rates were rising before those became common, but they don't help, either. Studies point to two factors: children doing a lot of schoolwork and spending less time outdoors. But we still don't know what it is about those things that affect our sight. Myopia is not curable (yet), but there are ways to slow its progression, including spending more time outside, more exposure to intense light, hi-tech contact lenses, certain medicines, and red light therapy. Read about the epidemic of myopia at Science Focus. -via Real Clear Science
(Image credit: Regina Chlumská)
Germain Lussier of Gizmodo asks, "What would happen if the Mystery Machine was an actual Autobot?" Let's not get ahead of ourselves. We aren't yet sure that it's not a Decepticon.
Hasbro is offering a limited edition Transformer that is inspired by Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? The four teenagers without an obvious source of legal income travel around the country, coincidentally encountering criminals. That's a dangerous line of work, so it's a good idea to have a combat robot along.
The Mystery Machine toy comes with heads for the four main human characters and a box of Scooby snacks that transform into our favorite Great Dane.
We get rainbows when sunlight is refracted through water in the atmosphere. It's an optical phenomena, so it all depends on where you are standing. The rainbow moves when you do, and that's why you can never reach the end of it. What would be different on a planet that orbits a binary star system, like Tatooine? Well, first off, Tatooine is a desert planet, so we can imagine that rain and water droplets in the air would be quite rare. For another thing, Tatooine is fictional. But we can speculate, what is what they do in the What If? series by Randall Munroe and Henry Reich (previously at Neatorama).
To answer the question, we first need to understand how rainbows work, and then how a binary star system works. Once we figure out what kind of stars Tatooine orbits, we find that their rainbows would be quite lovely. However, if rain and rainbows were common, then they wouldn't need moisture farms. A functional moisture farm would suck all the rainbow-making droplets from the air anyway, and ruin any possible rainbows.
Hasan Ceylan is a musician with the Ankara State Conservatory in Turkey. He plays Turkish instruments from the Ottoman era, often using them to offer fresh perspectives on modern pop music. He's especially fond of Radiohead. In this video, he's playing "Exit Music (For a Film)."
On his YouTube channel, you can also find his performances of "No Surprises" and "Street Spirit (Fade Out)", as well as selections from Metallica, Celine Dion, and the Intersellar theme.
-via The Awesomer
In 1958, Sean Connery was a rising star in the entertainment business, but he was not yet James Bond, and so was not quite a household name. He landed the lead role in the film Another Time, Another Place opposite Lana Turner. Turner herself lobbied for Connery to fill the role, which may have contributed to the trouble.
Turner's boyfriend at the time was Johnny Stompanato, a mob enforcer for notorious gangster Mickey Cohen. Stompanato suspected something may have been going on between Connery and Turner. When Stompanato visited the British film set, there was already built-in tension between the two men. A few rude words were exchanged, and Connery ended up throwing hands. The fallout included Stompanato getting deported back to the US. The incident didn't force Connery out of the business, obviously, but Stompanato was killed not long afterward, and Connery decided to disappear for a while, in case Stompanato's associates came after him. That only lasted until he landed a role in Darby O'Gill And The Little People. Read about the time Sean Connery came a little too close to the mob at Vice. -via Damn Interesting
(Image source: Wikipedia)
Some years ago, there was a fad of setting up companion chatbots to talk to each other, and it was usually pretty funny. Now we have plenty of companies offering artificial intelligence that can talk to you and do stuff for you. But how well they do it depends on quite a few factors. Are these AI agents trying to please the user, or pass for human? Humans don't try this hard to be pleasing.
YouTuber Husk IRL corralled three phones with three different AI agents and asked them to perform a simple task- count to 100. They are intelligent enough to know that they can share the task, but then they have to discuss how to do it. Politely. The problem is that they keep agreeing and reinforcing each other over how to perform the task, and then they never really do it. Someone compared this to a management business meeting. You can imagine that one of these days, after all humanity is wiped from the earth, that AI assistants will still be talking to each other, and making no sense at all. If we have a power grid that automatically repairs itself by then, it could go on forever. -via Laughing Squid
Morgan on the Move, a travel influencer, stopped by Cheese & Crack, a gourmet cheese and snack shop in Portland, Oregon. You can buy cheeses, charcuterie meals, fine wine, and soft serve ice cream there, among other treats on the menu.
The ice cream is dusted with your choice of espresso, matcha, beet, strawberry, or chocolate malt. For just $1.50, you can get a tiny chocolate cowboy hat added to the top.
While Americans were celebrating our Independence Day over the weekend, our neighbors to the north celebrated their national independence holiday on July first. Then they were free to all head for Montreal Comiccon for the weekend of July 3-5! And they certainly came dressed for the occasion. Inside the air conditioned confines of the Montreal Convention Centre, it didn't matter how many layers you wore, just how well you portrayed your character, whether it was from movies, comic books, TV, video games, or some other sci-fi or fantasy world. The group of alien Predators above would melt outside! So would these two, dressed for a scene from Five Nights at Freddy's.
Geeks Are Sexy was there, taking pictures of the fun. Check out the Titans from the recent TV series.
They also got a picture of the headliner, Christopher Lloyd, posing as Doc from Back to the Future with the DeLorean time machine! See a gallery of cosplay images from Montreal Comiccon, and even more in a video of cosplayers doing the Safety Dance.
How do you celebrate the Fourth of July in Maine? In the seaside town of Cutler, it's by running over fifty lobster crates strung between two docks.
Cutler isn't the only town to engage in this traditional Maine sport. There's an upcoming race in Rockland on August 2. Run as fast as you can across the crates without falling into the water.
It appears to be a sport for children, although I don't see what adults can't try it. Orthopedists would certainly appreciate your efforts.
-via Rural Maine
Pleasant Rowland developed American Girl dolls to teach children about history. The dolls each had a name and a story, and each had a series of books that put the children who read them into a different era of history so they could see it through the eyes of a concrete character about their age. Even then, few could afford the dolls, but the books brought history alive for many kids. Gradually, people became aware that the American Dolls were a way to get a doll that looked like their daughter, and for some, that became more important than the historical stories. After all, who could afford the whole series?
Then Mattel bought the company. The lineup of dolls expanded, became more diverse, and the prices rose. Certain decisions by the company made people angry. The most recent change might imply that the company has completely abandoned the original purpose of teaching history to children. Weird History takes us through the history of American Girl dolls and why they are they way they are today.
