Here's a crafting project that makes clever use of what a fan looks like when it's turned on. Just apply paint in the right spots and you have a Captain America shield. You can throw it at your enemies, but first make sure that you have a long extension cord attached.
-via Pleated Jeans
(Photo: Karyn Christner)
It seemed like a foolproof plan. But like many brilliantly conceived capers, it failed anyway. Police in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania found a man walking into a busy street. They talked to him and discovered that he was drunk. They also pointed out that he had stepped in dog poop on the sidewalk.
This is when the suspect developed a cunning plan: if he was covered in dog poop, they police wouldn't be able to arrest him! The Times-Leader reports:
At that point, Franklin allegedly jumped to the ground and started rolling in dog feces. He then allegedly stated that officers could not arrest him because he is “covered in (expletive),” police said.
Franklin was taken into custody, cited and held until sober, police said.
-via AP
Nerd Court is a riveting courtroom drama in which geeks battle over their greatest controversies. In the most recent episode, two Trekkies debate whether Commander William T. Riker of Star Trek: The Next Generation is a great leader or a flake. The outcome appears uncertain until actor Jonathan Frakes himself shows up to defend the reputation of his character.
Frakes strides in, performs the Riker Maneuver at the 6:26 mark, and is sworn in by the Vulcan bailiff.
He then argues effectively for the awesomeness of Commander Riker in a testimony packed with overt and sometimes subtle Star Trek references.
-via Jonathan Frakes
It's real good what you've done there, Anthony. Yes, real good. Having your parents fight each other to the death is just what we needed.
(Photo: unknown)
My 4-year old loves ranch dressing. She calls it "table glue"--apparently as a compliment. Dipping food in sauces and spreading sauces over food makes eating fun for her.
Not all kids agree. The food brand Chef Kidd works under the assumption that a lot of kids don't like standard salad dressing flavors. So it's developed a line of salad dressings that will appeal to more finicky eaters. These flavors include honey, pizza, lime, peanut butter & jelly, and chocolate.
NPR's food blog The Salt subjected members of the NPR staff to taste tests. The pizza dressing mostly fails as both a salad dressing and a pizza substitute. Here is their hilarious discussion on the subject:
Ian: "Funagrette" is also a good name for a product that gets kids to try cigarettes.
Jeanette: I never thought a salad could make me feel so bad about my eating habits.
Miles: This product is under the false impression that what kids hate most about salad is the dressing, when in fact what kids hate most about salad is salad.
Eva: I like to fold my salad in half and eat it with my hands.
Peter: A better way to get pizza-flavored salad is to just eat a pizza and then burp on a head of lettuce.
Miles: No. The only way to make a decent pizza-flavored salad is to replace all of the lettuce with slices of pizza.
Ian: As a salad dressing, it's gross. As a proof of concept for intravenous pizza, it's promising.
Robert: This isn't nearly as authentic as that brick-oven salad bar I found in Rome.
Eva: This is what pizza looks like on the sidewalk at 3 a.m.
Peter: This isn't a way to get kids to like salad. It's a way to get them to hate pizza.
If I were on Cheff Kidd's marketing team, I would put "What Pizza Looks Like on the Sidewalk at 3 AM" on all of its ads. That's a winning tag line.
-via Blazenfluff
Chris Duffy is a designer who offers homes and offices unique pieces of furniture that make you question reality. We've previously seen his chairs inspired by millipedes, his coffee table that looks like a flying carpet, and his conference table that has swinging chairs.
Recently, he developed the UP Balloon Coffee Table. He's building 25 of these tables made of glass, metal resin, and steel rods. You can take the glass sheet off, but the balloons still won't fly away.
-via NotCot
It is true that the workplace has changed since I got went to college so many years ago. But it seems like the millennial generation is adding to its own challenges in the workplace by creating unnecessary drama over ordinary adult life.
If you have a thin résumé, but want to prove that you can thrive in a competitive environment, then you'll have to take up a tough internship. Part of work is doing things that you don't like, such as serving coffee to a supervisor or a haymaker punch to a fellow intern. Life is not like TV. Life is hard and complaining about a couple lost teeth or a broken nose on the job will hold you back. All of us who have succeeded in the workplace started out with blood on our faces and knuckles.
The people in this video from The Onion who want to ban unpaid intern fights are acting out of good intentions. But they're not paying attention to the incentive structures that they're creating. If you prohibit intern fights, you diminish the incentive to take on interns. Practically speaking, banning intern fights means banning internships. The people who wil suffer the most from that outcome are the interns themselves.
In the village of Nanwan, Guandong province, China, local residents annually detonate a pile of firecrackers spread over an open street. This is part of a ceremony in which a local god is removed from a temple and paraded through the streets in order to bring good fortune for the next year.
What could possibly go wrong?
Actually, nothing did. This inflammatory activity was conducted safely. There were no reported injuries or damages resulting from it.
-via Kotaku
(Photo: Stuff)
David Seymour is a member of the New Zealand Parliament who represents the Epsom constituency. He insists that he is a completely biological life form, not a holographic projection.
This became an issue because a citizen, known only as Zoe, submitted a request under the Official Information Act with the office of John Key, the Prime Minister of New Zealand. Zoe wanted the Queen's own Prime Minister to confirm that the MP from Epsom is not a hologram. Stuff reports:
Seymour says Key's staff contacted him on Tuesday afternoon about the request. "You'd think if you were going to create a person from scratch, you would've done a bit better."
Seymour offers to let anyone see him to personally confirm his physical existence. They may also touch him for $5 a person.
Unfortunately, we live in an age in which such narrow-mindedness is catered to. Is photonic life not real? Can we not let Photons Be Free?
Professional stuntman and parkour competitor Ronnie Shalvis likes to show off his team's skills by displaying its members performing incredible physical feats as characters from popular culture, including Santa Claus, Spider-Man, and Desmond Miles from Assassin's Creed.
For his latest video, Shalvis and his colleagues use their own bodies and special effects to show a multitude of super-powered people playing soccer. Using an expansive definition of super hero, Shalvis includes Neo from The Matrix, Hermione Granger from Harry Potter, and Mario from Super Maro Bros. All of them have incredible powers that make them unbeatable by normal humans.
-via Fashionably Geek
Linus warned us. Long before we listened--before we ran out of time--he warned us. Lucy had the football. She would use it, eventually. And when Schroeder walked away, out of her life, she felt that she no longer had anything to live for. And neither did we, apparently.
A boy and his dog make their way across the wasteland in this image from a horrific Peanuts. Max Dunbar composed the original image, Vitali Iakovlev did the inks, and Sean Ellery did the colors.
-via Ace of Spades HQ
Which is good because I almost skipped the video for that reason.
YouTube star CGP Grey explains in an extended metaphor how ideas spread on the internet and why certain ones spread faster and with greater depth than others. He calls this concept a "thought germ."
In the internet content business, there is one essential question: what gets traffic? More clicks mean more money. Predicting what will go viral is an incredibly difficult task that combines intuition and statistics. The statistics that CGP Grey points out say something important: anger gets traffic.
Angry thoughts are a type of thought germ that can reach across huge audiences and divide them. They split along different sides of a controversy. But those opposing thought germs are actually cooperative partners because they contribute to the spread of each other.
-via Dan Lewis
Bonus Item:
@cgpgrey I like this video because its a Rorschach test: What springs to mind first tells you more about yourself than the video itself
— Last Name's Not Ford (@harrisonstwrt) March 10, 2015Everything has gone wrong.
You are, inexplicably, at work. This is not as it should be (as your co-workers readily agree). Your boss wants you to perform labor in exchange for money. This is a ghastly scenario. In fact, it's an emergency. That's when you reach for your Emergency Nap Kit.
(Photos: Firebox)
Each kit, which conveniently comes in a single box for easy deployment, comes with a soft full-body napping suit and an inflatable pad.
Pro-tip: wear your napping suit to work every day. Then you will always be prepared for an emergency nap.
-via Gizmodo
In the Wall Street Journal, Christopher Caldwell argues that the revered Calvin and Hobbes was America's most profound comic strip. He quotes the late political scientist James Q. Wilson, the inventor of the Broken Windows Theory of policing, who stated that Calvin and Hobbes expressed an Aristotelian worldview:
The late political scientist James Q. Wilson described “Calvin and Hobbes” as “our only popular explication of the moral philosophy of Aristotle.” Wilson meant that the social order is founded on self-control and delayed gratification—and that Calvin is hopeless at these things. Calvin thinks that “life should be more like TV” and that he is “destined for greatness” whether he does his homework or not. His favorite sport is “Calvinball,” in which he is entitled to make up the rules as he goes along.
Day-in, day-out, Calvin keeps running into evidence that the world isn’t built to his (and our) specifications. All humor is, in one way or another, about our resistance to that evidence.
-via Joe Carter
(Statue of Washington in Union Square Park by Eden, Janine, and Jim)
On November 25, 1783, General George Washington, mounted on a white charger, marched the Continental Army into New York City as the last British troops in that city evacuated. For many years, this event would be remembered as Evacuation Day, an important holiday in New York City for more than a century.
When General Washington dismounted from his horse, where would he have parked it?
Where would you park a horse--that is, tie it off and leave it alone--now?
Rhett Jones of Hopes & Fears thoroughly researched that question. As you might expect, NYPD cops can park their horses with great leeway. But what about those of us without government privileges? Jones eventually tracked down an answer in the New York City Traffic Rules, section 4-12.f, which says:
No person shall leave a horse unbridled or unattended in a street or unenclosed place unless the horse is securely fastened, or harnessed to a vehicle with wheels so secured as to prevent it from being dragged faster than a walk.
So, basically, you just need a solid hitching post.