Machines that harness the energy of the wind are nothing new, and have been used to pump water or grind grain for more than a thousand years. But in 1868, French engineer Ernest Sylvain Bollée had a few ideas to improve on the standard windmill. His turbine, called the Éolienne Bollée, had two sets of blades. The blades facing the wind did not move, but funneled the wind efficiently onto a second set of blades that turned. A few years later, Bollée added an outer funnel to the design to concentrate more wind into the turbine. 

For even more efficiency, a weather vane below the turbine was added that determined wind direction and moved the entire turbine around to face oncoming wind! All this happened automatically, without outside power or human interaction. The Éolienne Bollée was not only a great innovation in efficiently generating power, the metal turbines were steampunk works of art. You can still find them today, some in working order. You would think this design would have been widely adopted outside of France, but either the company that held the patents couldn't produce enough of them, or they were too expensive. Read about the Éolienne Bollée and see plenty of pictures at Amusing Planet. 

(Image credit: Olvr) 

American stands at two hundred and fifty years since its independence. There are those who say that our best days are behind us; that we cannot accomplish great things anymore. Where is the next moon landing, atomic bomb, or squatty potty?

Dennis Lee, a patriot and writer for The Takeout, reassures us of our innately Promethean spirit. He tested the lore that one can produce blue hot dogs by boiling them in blue-colored (and presumably Smurf-flavored) Gatorade. Some experimentation was necessary, as hot dogs float and thus must be continuously rotated during boiling to produce a smooth coloration.

But the discovery works.

If you're in Maine, you might want to check out First Fridays at Bowdoin College's Special Collections Library. On the first Friday of every month, people gather together for a surprise. Some of them have even placed bets on the reveal. When News Center Maine attended First Friday a couple of weeks ago, the crowd was even bigger than usual as it was alumni weekend, and quite a few people skipped other planned events to see... a page being turned. Yes, one page every month, for ten years now. But this is a special book, kept under glass, with the regular page-turning timed to prevent sun damage to the paper. What will be revealed on the next page? The librarians know, but they aren't telling. What kind of book inspires this kind of interest? You'll have to watch the video for that, and you'll be delighted to find out. -via Metafilter 

PS: In the comments at Metafilter I find that this also happens every month at the Cincinnati Public Library.

A scientific study out of Russia shows us what we already know- the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, and the french fries we steal from someone else's plate taste better. An experiment involving 120 people had them eat french fries under several different conditions, one in which the subject owned the fries, another in which they were given to them as a gift, and two in which they were instructed to steal them from someone else, either in a high-risk or low-risk situation. The fries themselves were prepared exactly the same way for each scenario. After each session, subjects rated the french fries on range of qualities. The fries taken in the high-risk thievery scenario were judged nearly 40% tastier than when the subject ate their own fries. The subjects also reported both guilt and excitement over it.      

The study cites the global maxim that "stolen food tastes better," which I've never heard, but maybe that's because of the way I was raised. Another finding was that how hungry a subject was at the time affected how good the fries were, which alludes to a maxim I've always heard, "hunger is the best sauce." The full study is not available publicly, but some of the possible underlying reasons are presented at Refractor. -via Damn Interesting 

When older people talk about how certain technologies were better in the past, young people roll their eyes. In some ways, the youngsters are right. It's really nice to have a phone, camera, flashlight, and clock all in one small gadget. However, there's a reason I have two vacuum cleaners. My modern 10-year-old vacuum is easy to use and picks up dirt quite well. But I also have a 75-year-old Kirby that's very heavy and not quite as efficient. Why? Because when the lighter vacuum breaks, I'll still have the Kirby. It refuses to break. 

I have a mental image of Chill Dude Explains as a young guy, from his voice and the way he pronounces some words. But even he has discovered that fancy modern features are not always the miracles they seem to be. Newer gadgets are fancy, lightweight, and convenient, but they don't last as long as they should and are expensive to repair or replace. In this video, he looks at ten things that are old school but will still do the job when modern innovations don't, and sometimes better.  

Two Australian paddleboarders rescued a stranded wallaby after it was swept out to sea pic.twitter.com/PyPe9Ql3S9

— Antidepressant Content (@depressionlesss) June 15, 2026

Nine News in Australia reports that two men were paddelboarding off the coast of East Grippsland in Victoria when they spotted a small furry creature struggling in the water. They were about 300 meters (176 Quarks stood end-to-end) off the beach, so it was an unusual sighting.

Huwan Medcalf and Harrison Mog found that the animal was a wallaby, which is a marsupial species native to Australia and New Guinea. They placed it on a board and brought it back to shore where it lay stunned for a while before starting to move on its own.

The Guardian reports that during a recent staging of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, an orange cat wandered on stage, seeking attention from the actors playing the lead roles. Given the physical actions on stage, I think it's during Act 5, Scene 3 in which the star-crossed lovers die. To his credit, the actor who played Romeo remained still after death (the character, not the actor) even as the cat played with his hair.

At the conclusion of this performance in Izmir, Turkey, the cast from the Imperial Russian Ballet Company came on stage to make their bows. The cat joined them.

-via Dailymeow

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? It 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)