This video was presented as "bro's night out," which makes it seem like a silly game, but watch and listen. These guys are making serious music! Well, maybe not 'serious' music, it's the theme from Knight Rider followed by the theme from The Flintstones, but they do it well.  

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They are playing musical instruments called boomwhackers, or tubes that are tuned to a musical pitch to be played like bells. The group is Louie's Cage Percussion, made up of classically-trained musicians from Austria.

Named after the Monkey King Louie and the composer John Cage, this percussion group consists of six talented young musicians in their twenties. They are some of the youngest members of renowned Austrian orchestras including the Vienna Volksoper, the Lower Austria Tonkuenstler Orchestra and the Graz Opera and play all repertoires of classical music. Besides their studies of classical music, they have always been interested in jazz, rock and electronic music and have played in various bands and broadened their knowledge of various musical genres.

You can get an idea of how boomwhackers work from an extended cut of one of their practice sessions. Now watch a stage performance from Louie's Cage Percussion.

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-via reddit

The following is an article from Uncle John's Fully Loaded 25th Anniversary Bathroom Reader.

In the Olympics, silver means second-best. Here's the story of the 1972 U.S. men's Olympic basketball team and how they refused to take second place.

THREE SECONDS TO GOLD!

Before 1972 no U.S. men’s basketball team had ever lost in Olympic play. Starting in 1936 (the year basketball became an Olympic sport), U.S. men’s teams won 63 consecutive games- and seven straight gold medals. But just after midnight on September 10, 1972, in Munich, Germany, that golden winning streak came to a screeching end, courtesy of the Soviet Union. The final three seconds of that game may be the most controversial Olympic finish of all time, because officials allowed those three historic seconds to be played not once, not twice, but three times.

TEAM OF DESTINY

Although the U.S. was favored to win, the Soviet team was not only good, it was seasoned, having played hundreds of games together. The American team, on the other hand, was basically a college all-star team; most of its members had played together only a few times before the Olympics. According to U.S. assistant coach John Bach, the team’s experience amounted to 12 exhibition games plus the Olympic trials. To top it off, the 1972 squad was the youngest ever to represent the United States in Olympic competition. They had two things going for them- they were tall (average height: 6’7″) and they were talented (an amazing 10 members of the team went on to become first-round NBA draft choices.) “These were the two strongest countries in the world fighting for supremacy, and basketball was ours,” said U.S. guard Doug Collins, now head coach of the Philadelphia 76ers.

There have been many theories as to why the dinosaurs disappeared millions of years ago, while leaving a remnant behind we call birds. The comic is cute, but nothing earth-shattering (unless you're a dinosaur). However, it sparked a comment thread that posed alternate theories of why dinosaurs became extinct. Take your pick.

I thought this was the real reason dinosaurs became extinct.

I thought this was the real reason dinosaurs became extinct.

I'm pretty sure that was the reason.

but I thought this was the reason.

Nah, this is the reason.

You're all wrong. This is the real reason dinosaurs went extinct.

No no no, you guys have it all wrong, THIS is the REAL reason.

Don't think so, pretty sure this is the real reason.

Actually, this is the real reason.

No... THIS is the scientifically verified reason.

-via reddit

In the 16th century, Dutch Renaissance artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder painted a village scene filled with people doing nonsensical things. They are each illustrating an old Dutch saying, adage, or proverb. The painting has been called The Blue Cloak or The Folly of the World, but its actual title is Netherlandish Proverbs. It's slightly reminiscent of Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights, but much less creepy.

The precise number of proverbs that Netherlandish Proverbs contains is somewhat uncertain because modern scholarly interpretations vary, and in some case, more than one proverb might be assigned to the same component in the painting. Critics have identified approximately 112 identifiable proverbs and idioms in the scene, although Bruegel may have included others which cannot be determined because they have either disappeared from usage or the language had changed.

Bruegel has hidden his proverbs in the characters as well as in the buildings and in the landscape in highly imaginative ways. At the center of the painting is a woman placing a blue cloak (hence the painting’s original title) over her husband, indicating that she is cuckolding him. The man biting into the wooden pillar is a hypocrite. The man who’s filling a pond after his calf drowned is one who takes action after a disaster. The person who spills his porridge, will never be able to spoon it all back into the bowl. The two men defecating out of the same hole indicates they are inseparable companions.

Proverb: “To be a pillar-biter”
Meaning: To be a religious hypocrite

Proverb: “Never believe someone who carries fire in one hand and water in the other”
Meaning: To be two-faced and to stir up trouble

Read about Pieter Bruegel the Elder and his curious painting at Amusing Planet, where you'll find several individual proverbs. You can also check out an interactive map of the painting, where you can hover over a scene and read its proverb. -via Strange Company  

Dogs amaze us with their ability to detect scents from just a few molecules. At least we recognize their abilities, and use them to find things like drugs, explosives, and even cancer. But how to we train dogs to focus on one kind of smell? It's a basic dog training technique that's been refined to suit the dog's future job. But there are inherent dangers in these jobs, too.

While rare owing to the fact that the dogs are being used to find hidden drugs (thus likely barriers between the drug and the dog), it does sometimes happen where the dog may be exposed to something so toxic that even trace amounts pose a risk to them, such as relatively recently happened in Broward County, Florida where sniffer dogs were exposed to the extremely potent opioid fentanyl.

To get around this problem, the dog’s handler will keep a vigilant watch and particularly not deploy sniffing dogs at all if there are any loose drugs present. For the unseen drugs that nonetheless may be particularly potent, the handler also might carry things like naloxone with them, which rapidly reverses/blocks the effects of opioids, just in case.

Read about the specific training technique for drug detection dogs, plus some of the benefits and dangers of using dogs to detect drugs and other contraband at Today I Found Out.

Last week, parts of Europe were blown around by a storm that was notable for high winds. You may have seen some videos of people knocked down by wind while trying to walk. Now watch what 110kh (68mph) winds can do to a plane trying to land in Düsseldorf, Germany.

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Imagine being a passenger on that plane! When it finally taxied in, I can imagine the cheers, the prayers, and the thank-yous to the steely-nerved pilots. And probably at least one or two losing their lunch. -via Boing Boing

Like many human conditions, medical, psychological, or otherwise, bipolar disorder was at first little-known (then called manic-depression), then described poorly in pop culture, then evolved in the collective mind to mean something different from what is it. Let's get back to the basics with Life Noggin.

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Many folks display symptoms that might lead you to believe that you're "just a little" bipolar, but while there's a spectrum of symptoms we all experience at one time or another, people who suffer from bipolar disorder suffer profoundly, and should seek help. -via Laughing Squid

Janelle Shane (previously at Neatorama) programs neural networks to study machine learning. She's taught algorithms to name Pokemón, Star Wars characters, and fish. The generated fish names were pretty much indistinguishable from existing fish names.

Since that day, and even before, I have been hearing from birders. Any of you who know birders or are birders yourselves will not be surprised. Not only are birders very eager to find out what a neural network would make of bird species, they are also very organized. There is, for example, a downloadable checklist of about 32,000 birds, 14,000 of which have English common names. Big thanks to Kaija Gahm, Dana Terry, and Emily Davis, who sent me this and similar datasets.

The neural network, after reading intently through the entire list about 7 times, is now a dedicated birder.

Some of the more intriguing bird names that were generated include:

Nukh’s Dull Gull
Banded Spectacled Snake-Eagle
Thick-knee
Bunticus Gray-chinned Laughingthrush
Ecuadorian Strange-tailed Cuckoo
Violet-throated Tyrant-Eagle

Read more about the project, peruse the list of bird names, and see more amusing illustrations at Shane's site. -via Metafilter

(Images credit: Carin Powell)

Millennials don't want to be lumped into a group. And they don't want to be labeled -or do they? These folks don't hesitate to tell you how they are special and different, and they'll take a label as long as they get to choose it -and as long as it isn't Millennial. 

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Not wanting to be seen as a Millennial is the most Millennial thing there is. I can't really blame them. No one wants to be seen as a generalized type, especially when they are exactly that type. Generations weren't quite labeled and pigeonholed so much when we Boomers were young and lumped together.  -via Tastefully Offensive  

It's cold outside! How long can you stay out there before you need to worry about frostbite? Pooja Gandhi and Adam Crahen used data from the National Weather Service to construct an interactive chart that combines air temperature and wind speed to calculate the time it takes to develop frostbite. Hover over the chart to bring up the information for a temperature. The news is not that bad- if the thermometer says the temperature is 0 degrees Fahrenheit and the wind isn't blowing much, it would take you three hours to suffer from frostbite. However, if you're skiing or having other fun in the snow, three hours can go by quickly. Or the wind could pick up. This is why your mother wants to you wear a hat, an extra pair of socks, and keep your gloves dry. Check out the chart at Tableau Public. -via Mental Floss

What's worse than being rejected in favor of a pet? Being rejected in favor of someone else's pet! Yes, it's true that dogs won't break your heart the way a person will. The internet allows us to enjoy relationships from afar. Even relationships that are unrequited, and with a dog. Dogs on the internet come with a bonus in that you don't have to feed, walk, or entertain them. Just like internet boyfriends. This is the latest comic from Chris Hallbeck at Maximumble.

Gavin Free, one of the Slow Mo Guys has an 85-inch TV in his house! That implies that he has a large TV room, and from there you can imagine how well viral videos pay. Anyway, he and Dan are going to show us how television sets work, using different kinds of TVs and their mega-fast cameras so we can see thousands of frames for every video frame on the television device, whether its the big LCD set, a CRT, or an iPhone.  

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You're not hallucinating- Gav and Dan borrowed a camera to film at 380,000 frames per second to make this video. Oh yeah, it turns out that the TV was given to him for this project. Nice perks with that job! -via Geeks Are Sexy

There was a time when politicians did not want to appear on TV outside of the news. it wasn't dignified. Things have changed. Three candidates from the last presidential election hosted Saturday Night Live, and President Obama appeared on the web series Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis. Our current president once hosted his own reality TV show, among other entertainment projects. We can trace the crack in the custom back 50 years, to the 1968 season premiere of the sketch comedy show Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In. I will never forget the entire family's jaws dropping when we saw presidential candidate and former vice-president Richard Nixon say "Sock it to me?" in a clip of barely two seconds.  

Laugh-In writer Paul Keyes, a fervent Nixon supporter and media adviser, convinced the candidate to make the brief cameo while campaigning in Los Angeles. At first, Keyes suggested Nixon could make a reference to the show’s catchphrase “you bet your sweet bippy,” but the candidate wasn’t having any of it.

According to television historian Hal Erickson, Nixon told his advisers that he didn’t know what ‘bippy’ meant, and didn’t want to find out. They settled on “sock it to me,” but producer George Schlatter recalled that it took six takes for Nixon to make it through the phrase without sounding angry or offended. Schlatter remembered running out of the studio with the Nixon cameo footage, fearful that the candidate would change his mind or that his campaign team would try to stop him, but television history had been made.

Read the story of Laugh-In and the Nixon appearance that changed TV forever at Smithsonian.

Former Disney animator Joshua Slice has captured the hearts of the internet with his animations of Lucas the Spider (previously at Neatorama), voiced by his nephew Lucas. In the latest episode of the spider's adventures, he finds himself captured. He was playing hide and seek, and tagged the wrong player! Will this be the end of Lucas?

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Of course not. -via Tastefully Offensive

A notice of a public hearing in Hempstead, New York, is impossible to read. Don't even try it, you might hurt yourself. It's not just a design gone wrong. This is an example of malicious compliance, or following the letter of the law while undermining the spirit of the law, like the "small print" on a contract that gets smaller every year. Yes, they were required by law to post the notice of a public hearing, but you can tell they really don't want anyone to attend. The font is exactly as tall as required, but so narrow as to resemble a barcode more than text. If you really want to read the sign, here is a stretched version.  -via reddit