The UK’s Natural Environment Research Council has a new ship. It’s a polar explorer ready to carry 90 scientists and staff to the Arctic and the Antarctic for research expeditions. And they decided to name the boat by an open internet poll. You know how that goes. The current leading name is an awesome one, though: the RRS Boaty McBoatface. Other notable names in the running are:
RRS Usain Boat RRS Ice Ice Baby RRS Boat Marley and the Whalers RRS I Like Big Boats & I Cannot Lie RRS Pee-Eee Cee Tee RRS Motörboat RRS Feed RRS Icey Smashy-Smash RRS Thanks for All the Fish
NERC appears to be trying to encourage names like Titan, Orca, Ada Lovelace, or David Attenborough. Good luck with that -Boaty McBoatface is unstoppable, although I really like RRS Pee-Eee Cee Tee. You can suggest a name or place your vote here. This site is overwhelmed right now, but bookmark it, because voting will be open until April 16. Meanwhile, Boaty McBoatfacehas its own Twitter account. -via Metafilter
This is what happens when people don’t read the directions on an unfamiliar product. Lush’s Wiccy Magic Muscles massage bar is a disc of solid lotion that slowly melts from your body temperature. It’s also embedded with beans, which gives it a texture to rub stiff muscles. But some people use it as soap in the shower. So the lotion melts, the beans fall out, wash into the drain, and a few days later, you have bean sprouts! See several examples of this at Buzzfeed.
Apparently, cats have a dominant front paw. You can check your cats by putting a treat in the bottom of a glass. Which paw does your cat use to fish it out? You may need to do this several times to make sure, like mugumogu did with Maru and Hana.
So Hana is left-handed, while Maru is right-handed, after first trying it with his face. According to RocketNews24, 40% of cats are left-handed, 50% are right-handed, and 10% are ambidextrous. BRB going to find glasses and treats for four cats. -via Fark
John Elder Robison dealt with autism for 50 years. He had his life in place, with a wife, son, and a job. Then he underwent transcranial magnetic stimulation, or T.M.S., a non-invasive therapy for depression that is under experimental study for the treatment of autism and other uses. In his case, it was wildly successful, which came with a price. How does one deal with suddenly being “non-autistic” after 50 years?
After one of my first T.M.S. sessions, in 2008, I thought nothing had happened. But when I got home and closed my eyes, I felt as if I were on a ship at sea. And there were dreams — so real they felt like hallucinations. It sounds like a fairy tale, but the next morning when I went to work, everything was different. Emotions came at me from all directions, so fast that I didn’t have a moment to process them.
Before the T.M.S., I had fantasized that the emotional cues I was missing in my autism would bring me closer to people. The reality was very different. The signals I now picked up about what my fellow humans were feeling overwhelmed me. They seemed scared, alarmed, worried and even greedy. The beauty I envisioned was nowhere to be found.
The changes in Robison’s life hinged on the way he had built that life to fit around his autism. It’s a fascinating read that highlights the need to add professional counseling to experimental treatments, just in case they work. -via Digg
This Japanese ad for Seiko watches features the world’s tiniest Rube Goldberg contraption. Since it is an ad, we can’t say for sure that there is no video magic involved, but a couple of instances of human intervention would lead one to think not. The device is composed of 1200 mechanical watch parts, the smallest being less than a millimeter in size.
The sequence sure is pretty. The video description focuses on the song, which was composed by Seiko CEO Shinji Hattori, with lyrics by Seiko employees, and sung by Etsuko Yakushimaru. -via Viral Viral Videos
You may have seen this image in your Facebook feed or some other internet forum. Or maybe an email from your aunt Gladys. The caption is usually something along the lines of
“Via Hubble: The cosmic "ice sculptures" of the Carina Nebula. Scientists are still trying to explain the beautiful spires.”
But it’s not. Yes, it’s an astronomy image, but it wasn’t taken by Hubble, isn’t the Carina Nebula, and the original doesn’t quite look like that. The finished image is an artwork by Adam Ferriss, who never intended it to be construed as anything else. Bad Astronomer Phil Plait tells the story of a neat image manipulation that took on a fictional life of its own. It’s an example the many things on the internet that turn out to be something other than what it claims, while the true story behind them is interesting anyway.
Richie Jackson is a different kind of skateboarder. Rather than going faster, higher, or longer than the next guy, he looks at the possibilities of using his skills to do odd tricks that other skaters never think about.
Jackson’s tricks are not only impressive, but downright entertaining. How does he do it? With years of practice, risk-taking, and well-waxed shoe soles. -via the A.V. Club
The 1969 movie Easy Rider was produced by Peter Fonda, directed by Dennis Hopper, and starred both of them plus a young Jack Nicholson. The counterculture biker film was made for a million dollars and made back $60 million, winning awards along the way. It’s a classic. But since Easy Rider is 47 years old, you most likely don’t know what went into making it. Now’s your chance to learn.
1. THE MOVIE WAS MADE FOR THE YOUTH OF THE TIME.
Before Easy Rider, Hollywood was churning out happier films starring the effervescent Doris Day, but Dennis Hopper’s film changed that. “They were making films like Pillow Talk and The Glass Bottom Boat. Gidget? That’s not a kids’ film. Beach Blanket Bingo? C’mon,” Fonda told The Hollywood Reporter. “Those were not really films of the youth that I had grown into and up with, shutting away the establishment, going on their own. We made a movie for these people that didn’t have their own movie.”
Karen Black, who played one of the prostitutes in the movie, agreed with Fonda’s sentiment. “When you went to see a movie like Easy Rider and when you saw these guys really smoking grass by the fire, and really the camaraderie was warm, real, and rare, you went, ‘What the hell am I looking at? This has value! This has a completely different kind of value than Pillow Talk,” she said in the documentary Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. “This is something extraordinary. I want more of that. And then I think it went a bit far, because I kept seeing movie people vomit.”
3. IT WAS ONE OF THE FIRST FILMS TO INTEGRATE FOUND MUSIC.
Instead of hiring a musician to compose a score for the film, Hopper decided to use pre-recorded music from Bob Dylan, The Band, Steppenwolf, and Jimi Hendrix on the soundtrack. “No one had really used found music in a movie before, except to play on radios or when someone was singing in a scene,” Hopper told Interview Magazine. “But I wanted Easy Rider to be kind of a time capsule for that period, so while I was editing the film I would listen to the radio. That’s where I got ‘Born to Be Wild’ and ‘The Pusher’ and all those songs.”
The filmmakers had to show the movie to the different bands involved in order to get licensing approval, and each band received $1000. They showed it to Dylan, whose song “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” was in two scenes, but Dylan said they couldn’t use it. “He said, ‘Have [Roger] McGuinn do this first part, but you can’t do it after that,’” Fonda told Daily Camera. “I said, ‘But, Bob, any good fight’s a combination of punches.” McGuinn covered Dylan’s song, and Dylan and McGuinn wrote the closing credit song, “The Ballad of Easy Rider,” which was sung by McGuinn, and didn’t have Dylan’s name on it.
If you haven’t seen Easy Rider, be aware that this trivia list at mental_floss contains spoilers, but that shouldn’t keep you from reading it, or watching the movie eventually.
Funny how a change of viewpoint makes everything different. John McNamee at Pie Comic says he’s been sick, and this comic is the product of a fevered brain. His pain becomes our laughs.
As he raised his right hand, chest glistening in the golden beams of the waning sunset, hair floating in the wind, the final words passed his lips; "so help me God." Lady Liberty felt a jolt of life and excitement she hadn't felt since Schwarzenegger
If you couldn’t tell from the Fark headline, Fabio Lanzoni became an American citizen on Wednesday. The 57-year-old model we know from the covers of hundreds of romance novels took the Oath of Allegiance at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Fabio was born in Milan, Italy, and has lived in the U.S. for decades.
While medieval Europe was dealing with feudalism, barbarian invasions, and the plague, the African kingdom of Benin boasted a magnificent city with straight roads, record-breaking fortifications, and even street lamps. The streets, houses, and villages were laid out in a planned fractal design, which went over the heads of visiting Europeans. Benin City, in what is now Nigeria, was a sight to behold.
When the Portuguese first “discovered” the city in 1485, they were stunned to find this vast kingdom made of hundreds of interlocked cities and villages in the middle of the African jungle. They called it the “Great City of Benin”, at a time when there were hardly any other places in Africa the Europeans acknowledged as a city. Indeed, they classified Benin City as one of the most beautiful and best planned cities in the world.
In 1691, the Portuguese ship captain Lourenco Pinto observed: “Great Benin, where the king resides, is larger than Lisbon; all the streets run straight and as far as the eye can see. The houses are large, especially that of the king, which is richly decorated and has fine columns. The city is wealthy and industrious. It is so well governed that theft is unknown and the people live in such security that they have no doors to their houses.”
But the city is no more. It was totally destroyed, and the few vestiges left are mostly ignored. Read the story of Benin City at The Guardian. -via Metafilter
Nelson Molina was a sanitation worker in New York City who, 30 years ago, began to collect some of the more notable items he found among the garbage to decorate his locker. His collection grew, and eventually took over the second floor of a sanitation truck depot in East Harlem. There are works of art, antiques, musical instruments, and even trophies. Molina has since retired, but his gallery still stands. The Treasures in the Trash collection is not normally open to the public, but tours are scheduled occasionally. Dylan Thuras of Atlas Obscura went there to take pictures, which gives us a virtual tour of the amazing collection of things people throw out.
In 1932, Louise Thompson noticed that a small spider had gotten into her alarm clock. That wasn’t all that surprising, but she noticed that the spider was trying to spin a web between the hour hand and the minute hand, which was an impossible task because they moved and tore the web. But the spider persisted in its mission. Thompson and her husband kept an eye on the clock for days, thinking the spider would eventually give up, but she didn’t. Word got around, the media was interested, and the next thing you know, the spider was a celebrity. The clock was taken to the University of Akron for study. People all over the world were following the saga of the little spider, and John A. Twamley of Rochester, New York, wrote a poem in its honor.
In the city known as Akron, In the state of O-hio, On a clock face there's a spider Spinning web threads to and fro.
Back and forth he keeps on going From clock hand unto clock hand, And why his threads should keep abreaking He of course can't understand...
When we men meet with reverses We should keep this thought in stock: That 'til death we should keep striving Like the spider in the clock
Most of states in the US have official state fossils -43, to be exact- but there’s no convention for choosing or identifying a state fossil, so each state does its own thing. Some select a species of fossil found in the state. Some choose a particular specimen, usually with a story behind it. At least one state almost had creationism language added to the fossil proclamation. Some states chose plant fossils. And California had a real competition.
California, in the early 1970s, chose between two candidates, each backed by a rival politician. One argued for trilobites, a highly successful group of woodlouse-like marine animals. The other backed Smilodon fatalis, the saber-toothed cat, a frequent resident of the La Brea tar pits at Los Angeles. Choosing the trilobite would have given California the country’s oldest state fossil. Choosing the cat would have given it a fossil with huge, scary teeth. They chose the cat. (Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin all picked trilobites.)
Well, saber-tooth cats are cool. The worst judgment was reserved for Georgia and Kentucky in an article about all the different state fossils at the Atlantic. -via Metafilter
Sometimes the leader of the western world just needs to let off a little steam.
1. Abe Lincoln’s Frat-Boy Act
In January 1833—decades before The Great Emancipator, burdened by the most devastating crisis in U.S. history, couldn’t stomach three square meals per day—a 24-year-old Abraham Lincoln opened a grocery store in New Salem, Illinois, with his Army buddy William F. Berry.
Aptly named Lincoln and Berry, the emporium sold bacon, guns, and beeswax—essentials for any homemaker—plus rum, whiskey, and brandy. That stockpile of tipple came in handy on the day Lincoln had to settle a financial dispute between an employee and a local gambler. According to biographer Carl Sandburg, Lincoln bet the gambler that he could “lift a barrel of whiskey from the floor and hold it while he took a drink out of the bunghole.” If he failed, he’d give the gambler a fur hat. If he succeeded, the gambler got nothing. Abe then dropped to a tactical squat position, lifted the barrel to his mouth, and basically performed a reverse keg-stand with superhuman strength.
Of course, the stunt came back to haunt Lincoln during his 1858 run for Senate. In a series of debates, incumbent Stephen A. Douglas exposed Abe’s past life as a “flourishing grocery-keeper in the town of [New] Salem” who could down “more liquor than all the boys of the town together.” Setting a precedent for eons to come, Lincoln refuted the claim.
