Benjamin Franklin was a polymath with many interests, but one of the most enduring was writing. The Founding Father was never shy about giving his opinion on anything and everything, and often peppered his opinions with something to make the reader laugh. He wrote a scientific letter about farting to poke fun at the pretentious Royal Academy of Brussels. But Franklin didn't use his own name all the time. He first used a pen name as a teenager to get his essays published in his older brother's newspaper, because otherwise they'd be rejected. 

But once that was successful, Franklin discovered he could say anything he wanted as long as he didn't use his own name. First there was Silence Dogood, a middle-aged widow. Then there was unwed mother Polly Baker. Franklin could step into the life of someone completely made up and make everyone interested in the details of their lives. Richard Saunders was the name behind Poor Richard's Almanack. And once Franklin entered politics, making up pen names became a way of swaying public opinion, or straight up insulting someone, without being targeted. Read about the many alter egos Franklin used to say whatever he wanted throughout his life at Smithsonian. -via Strange Company 

The biggest musical acts of the 20th century were Elvis Presley and the Beatles. They traded fame back and forth over time. Elvis owned pop culture in the late 1950s, right up until he entered the military, and afterward focused on movies. The Beatles took over during that period in the early '60s. Was Elvis jealous of the Fab Four's overwhelming popularity? I might seem so. Elvis considered himself the king of pop music, and he chafed under the thumb of Tom Parker, who insisted on so many movies instead of concert halls and albums. The Beatles, for their part, admired Elvis and wanted to meet him. That happened in 1965, although exactly what happened is rather vague, according to the differing accounts of those who were there. Elvis made his musical comeback in 1969, just as the Beatles were falling apart. Elvis' persona at that time made his rivalry with the Beatles about America vs. Britain. Weird History has the story as far as we know it about how each act regarded the other. 

Dr. Iñaki Echeverría-Huarte is a professor of applied physics at the University of Navarra in Spain. He asked 573 people assembled in a schoolyard to roam randomly through the space. Within a few seconds, 80% of them were moving in a counterclockwise direction.

Was this because of a perceived group preference? No. Dr. Echeverría-Huarte performed the test on solitary participants, and about 75% of them moved counterclockwise. This trend persisted across 40 experiments.

A recent article in the New York Times explores the phenomenon and its potential causes. It's clear that left or right-handedness does not correlate with this movement. Nor is it socially conditioned, as young children strongly exhibit counterclockwise movement as well as adults.

Whatever might be the root cause the movement, it will be helpful for architects and other professions that make use of crowd dynamics. I occasionally visit the largest convenience store in the world, which is a masterpiece of architecture designed for crowd movement. An awareness of the counterclockwise tendency could optimize such designs.

-via Althouse | Photo: Sheila Brown

You see the most beautiful travel photography on the internet, and want to go to those places. You'll probably enjoy the trip, but you might completely miss what you're seeing in the photographs. It's better to know before you go, that some places only exist at a certain time of day. 

You've seen beautiful visions of Antelope Canyon in Arizona, like the one shown above, but that only exists for a about 45 minutes around noon on a sunny day, when the sun is bouncing off the rock formations. The number of people who show up for the same view may also interfere- this picture was taken in the off-season in November. Sure, the canyon is beautiful all day long, but you won't get the full effect unless you plan your trip accordingly. There are quite a few places around the world like that, and you'll recognize many of the pictures. Plan your trip with the help of this list at Moss and Fog. -via Nag on the Lake 

(Image credit: King of Hearts) 

Last year, Kate Wagner of McMansion Hell introduced us to the concept of the McModern, a new, larger, glass-enclosed version of the mid-century modern home built for rich people, but not designed as well as the originals. She now shows us the perfect example, a home for sale for $6 million, and she hates it.

Wagner hates this home because it is totally form over function. And the form isn't even all that great, as the rooms are a postmodernist vision built of fake materials. It may look like concrete, but it's a printed surface on something else. Stone is made of aluminum. Everything is too big because that means more expensive. And it resembles an institution of some sort. Even the staging is fake, with furniture Photoshopped in, giving the illusion of a house made of artificial intelligence. 

You might like this home at first glance, but the more you see, the less you want to consider living there. And Wagner's poetic critique will help you recognize what is wrong with such houses forever after.  

Star Trek: The Next Generation aired from 1987 to 1994. When it debuted to much hype, fans of the original Star Trek series from the 1960s were eager to see what else happened with Starfleet. As the characters were introduced, we could see their type and purpose. They had a captain who was a wise, experienced, and stern leader, a woman doctor, her teenage son who was a prodigy, a tough woman security officer, an android, and a blind engineer. Then there was First Officer Will Riker, who was obviously there as the everyman male viewers could relate to, and eye candy for some of us. 

But Riker proved to be so much more throughout the series. The Art of Storytelling lays out in detail how Riker was the moral center of the show from the very beginning, displaying honor, loyalty, responsibility, and a willingness to set his own ego aside for the greater good. But he was no Pollyanna, and had flaws that made him only seem more real to those who were paying attention. He confronted his self-doubt and human desires often. This video is a bit longer than I would normally share, but it's from The Art of Storytelling, so you know it's worth it. -via Laughing Squid  

Alexander Mercieca is a high school principal, weightlifter, and certified CrossFit trainer in Huntsville, Alabama. He loves listening to and playing hip-hop, hard rock, and heavy metal music. He's a multitasker (the quality probably comes from being a principal), so Mercieca sometimes performs heavy lifts while playing music. Here, for example, he plays "Girls" by the Beastie Boys with one hand while benchpressing a barbell with the other.

A breakthrough in testing may have a global impact on the infrastructure we've built in dairy processing. When dairies produce milk, it is tested for protease, an enzyme that breaks down proteins. Protease is important for digestion, but it's not great for commercial milk supplies. Some milk products are more sensitive to protease than others. The problem is that protease testing normally takes about three days, and by the time the results get back, that milk has already been designated for fresh milk, UHT milk, yogurt, cheese, or other products. 

UHT milk, the shelf-stable kind that needs no refrigeration, is not all that popular in the US, but globally it makes up more than half of all milk purchased. It is particularly important in countries that do not have reliable refrigerated transportation and storage. UHT milk is also the milk product that is most sensitive to protease. A new testing process called Cybertongue, developed by PPB Technology in Canberra, Australia, can detect the amount of protease in milk in just three minutes! That means that milk with more protease can be diverted to make products like cheese that are less sensitive, or it can be treated with protease inhibitors. Milk with little or no protease can be made into UHT milk, which would extend its shelf life. The innovation could cut into the millions of tons of milk that are wasted every year. Read about Cybertongue and what it can do for the dairy industry at the Australian Broadcasting Company.  -via Metafilter 

(Image credit: Per Meistrup) 

Soccer fans (not FIFA fans) from all over the world are arriving in the US to attend the World Cup games, and for many, it's their first trip to America. Games are being held in the US, Mexico, and Canada. They've seen a lot of American culture in movies, but finding out it's all real is a different experience. What is impressing them the most? Our food! 

We often think of American cuisine as a mix of dishes from everywhere else, but in the US, we manage to put our own spin on it, and that's something you can't learn from the movies. Visitors are amazed by the size of our drinks, Taco Bell, Waffle House hash browns, french fries, gravy, and most of all, ranch dressing. You have to wonder what the rest of the world actually eats. I'm sure they will go home with an extra few pounds as a souvenir.   

Women as foot soldiers were not common the medieval era. After all, someone had to stay and tend the farm, the children, and the infirm while armies marched off to war. But when an invading army approaches the farm or the children, women can fight with a fierceness that defies all reason. In the case of royalty and the aristocracy, battles between nations often became personal, and queens, countesses, and duchesses were quite willing to command armies to defend their families and kingdoms. 

Jeanne Laisné grabbed an axe and defended the town of Beauvais, France, against invading Burgundians and became in inspiration to the townspeople. Tomoe Gozen was a distinguished horsewoman, archer, and swordswoman who fought in the Genpei War in Japan. Queen Matilda of Boulogne led supporters  against Empress Matilda to secure her husband King Stephen's release from bondage in the English civil war. And contrary to the first paragraph, a Viking woman named Lagertha fought so bravely as a foot soldier that king Ragnar Lodbrok married her. Medievalists.net brings us the stories of 15 medieval warrior women who led armies and defended kingdoms.  -via Strange Company 

Andy Brewer is an audio engineer and composer. He was playing around with pink noise, what we lay people would call static or just noise, on an equalizer and found he could extract musical notes from it with a little work. Could he play a song using just those notes? It would be a song without a voice or musical instrument. Yes, he could, although it was a lot of work. You wouldn't be able to do this if you didn't know a lot about music already. This song is technically "electronic music," and it's what a synthesizer (which is a musical instrument) does, although Brewer didn't use a synthesizer; just an equalizer. 

Music buffs in the comments said this is an additive synthesizer or a subtractive synthesizer. I don't know which is correct, but it took many people many years to develop the music synthesizer, while Brewer started from almost nothing and figured it out on his own. I'm impressed. The song is quite pleasant, too. -via kottke 

The world has always known people who just do not want to be told what to do. Sometimes it can be hard to draw the line between rebellion and mental illness, especially when you throw in exacerbating factors. Frances Farmer was a beautiful woman who became a movie star in the 1930s. Naturally rebellious, she could not abide the Hollywood studio system that had her under contract. They told her what to wear, who to talk to, and even who to marry. They prescribed amphetamines to keep her weight under control. Eventually, it became too much. 

Farmer was arrested several times in the 1940s for various offenses, in which she resisted arrest, even fighting the cops. She back talked a judge in a court exchange that reporters found hilarious. To keep her out of jail, Farmer was sent to a series of mental institutions, where she underwent electroconvulsive therapy, and she came out with stories of neglect, rape, and abuse that were common to such institutions at the time. She still made comebacks, in film, in television, and then on stage, but she never lost her rebellious streak. Read about the crimes of Frances Farmer at Messy Nessy Chic. 

(Image source: Photoplay, January 1937) 

Crazy cat lady that I am, I have a small part of my garden dedicated to catnip (and strawberries; they seem to get along well). The cats like it, and it makes my home the cool place for neighborhood kitties to hang out. But is there any evolutionary reason for cats to go crazy for catnip? Research has isolated the exact compounds that intoxicate cats, nepetalactone in catnip, and nepetalactol in silver vine, another popular cat attractant. 

Not only have scientists found how these compounds affect cats, but also why. It's an adaptive feature of their evolution! Cats rarely pay any attention to plants, but the cats who went for catnip or silver vine were more likely to survive and reproduce millions of years ago until a catnip attraction became quite common among several cat species on the African savannah. This TED-Ed video explains why with some charming cat animation, although you might not like one of the experiments that led to this knowledge. -via Geeks Are Sexy 

Dough Lisa is a bread artist whose sourdough work has become a viral sensation. Pictured above is one of her most recent creations: a groovy-looking loaf with woven threads of tie-dye dough covered with an outer black shell.

You can see her full process video here. It has eleven colors inside. The results when she cuts it open are extraordinary. It's like a human brain that's been drenched in the art of the 1970s.

Cinematographer Jamie McPherson took a crew to northern Canada to shoot footage of narwhals for the Netflix documentary series Our Planet in 2017. In his account of the trip, we will learn more about narwhals than about polar bears, but it was the bear that made the project dramatic. Narwhals gather at the edge of the ice in spring, waiting for the ice to crack so they can reach fishings grounds that were closed to them all winter. The crew got aerial footage in a helicopter, and underwater footage from a specialized crew, but they needed footage from the ground, meaning the ice, to round out the collection. For safety, they were using a boat.

They spotted the polar bear asleep as they prepared to set off in the boat. When the bear woke up and started running toward them, one crew member fired a warning shot to scare it off, but found the gun didn't work. They got the boat into the water in a hurry, planning to put some distance between themselves and the bear. But the boat motor didn't work, either. Since McPherson is telling the story now, you know he survived, and you can read his account at DiscoverWildlife. The moral of the story is to check all your equipment before going on an Arctic adventure. -via Damn Interesting