For Rod Serling, TV was the perfect landscape to battle bigotry and corporate censorship. But was the nation ready for it?

In the late 1950s, Rod Serling found himself sitting in a London airport tired and ready to go home. As he waited to board his flight, he spotted something eerie. Across the room stood his doppelgänger: a man who looked to be his same height, sporting the same coat and carrying the exact same cowhide briefcase. It blew his mind. As the award-winning TV writer tried to catch a glimpse of his double’s face, a strange thought hit him: What if, through some glitch in the universe, he was watching another version of himself?

“I kept staring and staring,” Serling recalled, “with this funny, ice-cold feeling that, if he turns around and it’s me, what do I do?” Eventually, the gentleman did turn around. He was a decade younger and, Serling joked, far better looking. But the experience was too uncanny to forget.

As a writer, Serling made his name toying with unsettling concepts, which made him a critical darling. His 1956 teleplay, Requiem for a Heavyweight, had garnered numerous awards, an Emmy among them. But corporate sponsors didn’t find his work appealing. Always looking to skirt controversy, they preferred to work within the confines of formulaic Westerns and bland sitcoms. Serling wanted none of that. He thought TV should probe deeper, believing it could address big concerns: social injustice, bigotry, mortality. In 1959, he got the chance to do just that, using that strange airport experience as the kindling for his legendary science fiction TV series, The Twilight Zone. The series would be a double itself, a serious exploration of politics and ethics disguised as harmless sci-fi. The question was whether he could get away with it.

Even as a teenager, Serling had been a social activist. Growing up in Binghamton, New York, he was editor of the high school newspaper, injecting social commentary in between box scores. Fighting in World War II only galvanized his mission. Stationed in the Philippines with a demolition platoon, he witnessed horror firsthand. Serling left the island consumed by a hatred for war, and he brought back a souvenir: a piece of shrapnel in his knee that bled spontaneously for the rest of his life.

At home, Serling struggled for direction.

Ever wonder why normal people are intimidated by the thought of learning to code? Or for that matter, intimidated at the very thought of talking to geeks who make a living coding software? This is why. In middle school, my kids already figured it was too late to learn. This is the latest from CommitStrip. The top comment:

Ya, well, let's see how good your code is during the zombie apocalypse

Touche!

The Slow Mo Guys were inspired by an imaginary digital image of a tennis racket slicing up Jello (or jelly, as Brits call it). They had to try it in real life, and capture it in 2500 frames per second.

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They made five balls of Jell-o, red, green, blue, orange, and more red, because they figured they would mess up the first ones. But they all were quite photogenic! -via Boing Boing

See more from the Slow-Mo Guys.

The cats from Breaking Cat News (previously at Neatorama) explain how cats wind up in animal shelters, and why some of them don’t get adopted. To illustrate, they follow five different cats who become homeless for five different reasons. At least 95% of those who read the whole story will need a hankie before it’s over, so be warned before you begin. But these cats have happy endings. So many shelter cats don’t. -via Metafilter

If you find the comic overly disturbing, follow it up with a Halloween Breaking Cat News report.

On October 2, 1950, Charles M. Schulz’s comic strip Peanuts debuted in seven newspapers. October is also National Stamp Collecting Month. To celebrate the 65th anniversary of Peanuts, the U.S. Postal Service is releasing a new set of Peanuts stamps today, featuring ten scenes from the TV special “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” The TV show first aired 50 years ago, in December of 1965.

The stamps are “forever stamps,” meaning they are sold at the current rate for a first-class letter and will always be good for mailing a one-ounce letter, even when rates go up. They will be formally introduced at a ceremony this morning at the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, California. You can order the stamps through the USPS website or, if you’re lucky, at your local Post Office. Stamp collectors can also purchase First Day Covers with either black or multicolor postmarks, press sheets, and framed art.   

(images ©2015 USPS)

Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website or at Facebook.

Everyone knows Popeye the sailor. And everyone knows his secret. Whenever the cartoon sailor is on the verge of a fight, he squeezes open a can of spinach, pours the greens down his throat, and uses his muscles to pummel his opponent (almost inevitably fellow sailor Bluto, his arch-enemy.)

As an interesting sidebar, in the classic Popeye animated cartoons, it wasn't always Popeye who eats the spinach. In one Popeye cartoon, he actually forces the spinach down Bluto's throat, so Bluto will work him over and he'll get sympathy from his dream girl, Olive Oyl.

Even Olive Oyl eats her spinach in one rare Popeye cartoon. A Mae West-like competitor is flirting a little too intimately with Popeye in a gym and Olive gets fed up, downs some spinach, and proceeds to beat the crap out of her competition.

Few people know that the U.S. government is directly responsible for Popeye's dependence on the canned green vegetable.

In the 1930's, America was mired in the Great Depression. The U.S. government was looking for a way to promote iron-rich spinach as a meat substitute. To help spread the word, they decided to hire one of America's favorite celebrities, Popeye the Sailor Man.

It was a smart plan. And it worked like a charm.

This report from last Saturday has people laughing out loud across the country. You have to ask why the raccoon didn’t tear the guy up when he first caught him. Well, he probably did, but the guy was drunk, so that part didn’t get mentioned in the report.

The sad part of the story is that it’s not true. The watermark logo is JTTOTS, which designates military humor. Yet enough people believed it to make the debunking itself worth a news story. People wanted this to be true because it paints such a funny picture. Expect to see the vignette incorporated into some movie screenplay before a year passes. -via reddit

Atlas Obscura and Digg teamed up to plot a map of businesses with pun names in America. They asked for submissions, and ended up with about 1900 business names, which are plotted on an interactive map for your viewing pleasure.

I zoomed in on Lexington, Kentucky, and found four hair salons: Hair Jordan, The Twisted Scissor, Hair on Broadway, and Hair and Now. The nail salon is Clip Art. But you’d expect salons to have punny names, like Curl Up and Dye (from the movie Earth Girls Are Easy). There’s also the Thai and Mighty restaurant and Common Grounds Coffee House. But the one we all expected to see, and it’s there, is Hugh Jass Burgers. (Sadly, it closed this year. We still have Big Ass Fans.)

Check out the map here, zoom in, and look around. There are also links to editors’ picks in different categories. I haven’t had time to go through all 1900 yet, so what’s the funniest name you’ve found?

Mode brings us another 100 Years of Fashion video, this time for bridal gowns. You'll recognize the fashion eras, taken to the elegant extreme for a once-in-your life event.

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If I had to pick one, I’d go with 1925; none other comes close for me. The 1955 gown looks just like my mother’s wedding dress, except hers was blue. The 1975 gown looks like what I wore to the prom that same year. -via Buzzfeed

See also: 100 Years of Lingerie History in Three Minutes, One Hundred Years of Men's Fashion in Three Minutes, and 100 Years of Fashion in 2 Minutes.

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Introducing VODER (Voice Operation DEmonstratoR) from Bell Labs. From Wikipedia:

The Voder synthesized human speech by imitating the effects of the human vocal tract. The operator could select one of two basic sounds by using a wrist bar. A buzz tone generated by a relaxation oscillator produced the voiced vowels and nasal sounds, with the pitch controlled by a foot pedal. A hissing noise produced by a gas discharge tube created the sibilants (voiceless fricative sounds). These initial sounds were passed through a bank of 10 band pass filters that were selected by keys; their outputs were combined, amplified and fed to a loudspeaker. The filters were controlled by a set of keys and a foot pedal to convert the hisses and tones into vowels, consonants, and inflections. Additional special keys were provided to make the plosive sounds such as "p" or "d", and the affrictive sounds of the "j" in "jaw" and the "ch" in "cheese". This was a complex machine to operate. After months of practice, a trained operator could produce recognizable speech.

This device was demonstrated at the World’s Fair in New York in 1939 and at the Golden Gate International Exposition. Pretty amazing for the time, huh? -via Everlasting Blort

Just about every time something new and different comes along -technological advances, that is- people get all uneasy, as if Skynet is about to take over. So many things that are unveiled as an improvement for our lives are regarded as taking us to hell in a hand basket. But it was that way for our ancestors, too. People were afraid of the telephone until they got used to it. It was seen as a device destined to power the downfall of society.

In 1909, sociologist Charles Horton Cooley wrote a typical critique of the telephone’s influence in his book Social Organization: A Study of the Larger Mind. “In our own life the intimacy of the neighborhood has been broken up by the growth of an intricate mesh of wider contacts which leaves us strangers to people who live in the same house. And even in the country the same principle is at work, though less obviously, diminishing our economic and spiritual community with our neighbors.”

In fact, the invention served many existing needs beyond its business-related functions, particularly helping to cement social bonds in an era when families and communities were physically spreading further apart. In his 1992 book on the adoption of the telephone, America Calling, Claude Fischer writes that “conversation, even gossip, is an important social process, serving to sustain social networks and build communities.”

Fischer’s analysis of three California communities during the initial expansion of telephone lines found that phones actually increased the strength of ties to both immediate and distant social networks. “The net trend was in the direction of greater attention to the outside world. Yet, rather than indicating a displacement of local interest, these changes suggest a simultaneous augmentation of local and extra-local activities,” Fischer explains. Technology allowed people to be more social than ever before.

We’ve heard the same arguments about television, video games, and the internet. But as time goes by, those technologies become ubiquitous and society manages to survive. Read about many other technological advances and how they were first received at Collectors Weekly.

Above Average is making a series of videos called Criminal Crimes, which pokes fun at police dramas. It stars the sketch group Chess Club Comedy. This episode takes place in the morgue, as our detectives examine a murder victim.

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The coroner needs to get out more, maybe see a movie or two. I know she’d enjoy Thor. -via The A.V. Club

How would you rate me on a scale of one to ten? That’s a question you should never, ever ask. Or answer, although trying to get out of it would just as likely start an argument as answering.

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Asking to be rated is akin to asking if these pants make my butt look big. You don’t want honesty, you want validation. But you might get honesty instead. -via reddit

Once upon a time, before computers or even photography, young people in France, Germany, and the Netherlands would keep journals called alba amicorum, which translates from Latin to “friend books.” Young men would use them to document their travels and education, and have teachers and experts write -or draw- in them. They could eventually be used as resumes. Girls made their own books, and had their friends add art, poetry, and personal notes to them. They became a document of events and relationships. There’s more to learn and fascinating images at Messy Nessy Chic. -via the Presurfer    

It is illegal in most places to damage, destroy, or remove survey markers, for good reason. But over a couple of hundred years, they tend to sink, disintegrate, or otherwise disappear as progress goes on over them. More than once I’ve had to deal with property markers that were swallowed by growing trees! Imagine what happens to markers in an ever-changing city- but occasionally someone finds a historic surveyor bolt in Manhattan.

The bolt was hammered by John Randel Jr, the surveyor and brains behind the Manhattan Grid. In 1808 he was given the task of planning and commencing the beastly project of transforming the as-of-yet piecemeal-designed New York City into the modern gridded metropolis we know today. For years he surveyed and mapped his vision for the new city. Finally, in 1811 he submitted his designs to the city of New York.

But that was the easy part. For nearly a decade he roamed the city, attempting to put either long metal bolts or monuments (three-foot by nine-foot marble slabs) into nearly 1,000 future intersections. These markers were the necessary precursor to actually building the brand new streets.

That was a big job, and he also had to contend with the existing residents who didn’t think much of his plan that would evict most of them in order to build new roads. Over 200 years later, finding one of the original Randall bolts is a rare and glorious find, but don’t expect to find a map of them so you can go see. Read about the bolt hunters of New York at Atlas Obscura.  

(Image credit: z22)