Miss Cellania's Blog Posts

How QWERTY Conquered Keyboards

That title was strangely easy to type. The keyboard layout that we are familiar with, with QWERTY  at the top left, became the default pattern when typewriters became popular. But even then, learning to touch type was a specialized skill. Some people were professional typists, while the rest of us didn't type often enough to question a typewriter's design. Now that everyone types on a personal device, you might wonder why we stick with the same layout.      

(YouTube link)

Personally, it just seems like too much trouble to re-learn where the keys are. Vox gives us the history of the QWERTY keyboard layout, and why we still use it today. -via Geeks Are Sexy


10 Things You Didn’t Know about the Movie Fatal Attraction

The 1987 film Fatal Attraction was one of those movies that you saw once, and never had to see it again because it stuck with you. Unless you found out someone in your life hadn't seen it, then you screened it to see if it was as disturbing to them as it was to you. Thirty years later, you still recall the key points even if you're fuzzy on the details. It was disturbing for the cast, too, especially Glenn Close. Let's learn some details about Fatal Attraction.

8. The term “bunny boiler” is actually in the dictionary.

It’s amusing to think that this film actually coined a term that was put into the dictionary. It literally means a woman who acts vengefully when spurned by her lover.

7. In the original ending Close’s character kills herself and blames it on Douglas’ character.

This ending was determined to be just too low key and was scrapped in favor of the current ending. Close didn’t care for the new ending but went along with it and still regrets it to this day.

Read the rest of the trivia about Fatal Attraction, and how the movie is an artifact of its time, at TVOM.


Buster Keaton's Funniest Gag

In this scene from the 1921 movie Hard Luck, Buster Keaton misjudges a dive and crashes through the brickwork. It's a riff on the old joke about digging a hole so deep that you eventually reach China. Keaton said the gag got more laughs than any other in all his movies. However, the film was lost for many years until it was partially reconstructed in 1987- without the pool scene. That part was finally found in a Russian archive years later.

If you're scrolling the front page and find the gif is already halfway through when you get to it, click here to start it again.

But how did he do that dive into the brickwork? Silent Locations explains that the pool did extend to the left, and was covered for the scene. Keaton often did dangerous stunts for his movies, but he couldn't dive that far out, so the falling scene was enhanced with animation cels of his body falling. You can see the entire movie here. -via reddit


RIP Tom Petty

Musician Tom Petty suffered a cardiac arrest at his home Monday morning. Emergency responders were able to stimulate a pulse, and Petty was taken to a Los Angeles hospital in critical condition. However, he never regained consciousness, and after it was determined that brain activity had ceased, the decision was made to remove life support. Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers had just concluded their 40th anniversary tour with a concert at the Hollywood Bowl last Monday. Petty had hinted that the tour would be his last.

"I'm thinking it may be the last trip around the country," says Petty. "It's very likely we'll keep playing, but will we take on 50 shows in one tour? I don't think so. I'd be lying if I didn't say I was thinking this might be the last big one. We're all on the backside of our sixties. I have a granddaughter now I'd like to see as much as I can. I don't want to spend my life on the road. This tour will take me away for four months. With a little kid, that's a lot of time."

After erroneous reports of Petty's death were published and retracted on Monday, CNN reported that Petty's death was confirmed by Tony Dimitriades, longtime manager of Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers. Tom Petty was 66.

(Image credit: Takahiro Kyono)


Invasion from the 23rd Century

Redditor Blueyeguy (standing in the red shirt) and a few friends beamed down from the Enterprise into a Renaissance Fair in Minnesota. They are blatantly violating the Prime Directive with their time travel shenanigans. What do Ren fair enthusiasts think of such party-crashing? According to the comments at reddit, many think it's fine as long as everyone has fun. Some dislike the invasion of the integrity of the fairs. Several said that any costume is better than no costume at all, because so many people at Ren fairs these days are just there to watch and take pictures. And a couple mentioned that the time travel joke has been overdone.



One commenter even mentioned a Ren fair that was invaded by an army of Doctor Who cosplayers. -via reddit


Faces Research

The following is an article from The Annals of Improbable Research, now in all-pdf form. Get a subscription now for only $25 a year!

(Image credit: Wellcome Images)

Research About Faces
compiled by Alice Shirrell Kaswell, Improbable Research staff

Faces fascinate. The range of research about faces is enormous. Here are some examples plucked from many fields.

Carrots vs. Tanning Beds
“Fruit over Sunbed: Carotenoid Skin Colouration is Found More Attractive Than Melanin Colouration,” Carmen E. Lefevre and David I. Perrett, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, vol. 68, no. 2, 2015, pp. 284-293. The authors, at Leeds University Business School and the University of St Andrews, Scotland, explain:

While both increased carotenoid colouration and increased melanin colouration enhance apparent health in Caucasian faces by increasing skin yellowness, it remains unclear, firstly, whether both pigments contribute to attractiveness judgements, secondly, whether one pigment is clearly preferred over the other, and thirdly, whether these effects depend on the sex of the face. Here, in three studies, we examine these questions.... We show, firstly, that both increased carotenoid colouration and increased melanin colouration are found attractive compared to lower levels of these pigments. Secondly, we show that carotenoid colouration is consistently preferred over melanin colouration when levels of colouration are matched.... Of the participants, 78% self-identified as white.

Continue reading

Who's That Ghost?

The last thing you want to hear from a ghost, even the "friendly kind," is that they have good news and bad news. The latest comic from Chris Hallbeck at Maximumble starts out as a horror story, switches to science fiction, and ends as a horror story once again. But now the real story can begin: What's he going to do between now and next Thursday? Whatever he does, it will set up a paradox in the space-time continuum, because if he knows what will happen, he will change it. But if he changes anything, he won't know what will happen.   


The Mysterious Teenage Ghost That Haunted Taft's White House

There have been many tales of ghosts in the executive mansion in Washington, but the one that set the staff on edge during the Taft administration became the subject of a White House cover up. President Taft's personal assistant, Major Archie Butt, told the story to his sister-in-law in a letter, which is the only surviving written account of the ghost that terrified the household staff in 1911. This ghost made his presence known by touching people on the shoulder.

Several of the White House staff reported feeling this mysterious pressure on their shoulder, only to turn around to an empty room. Just one member of the household, though, said she actually saw the ghost. Marsh, First Lady Helen Taft’s personal maid, reported not just feeling the ghost leaning over her shoulder, but seeing the ethereal figure, whom she described as a young boy with light, unkempt hair and sad blue eyes. “Now who on Earth this can be,” Butt mused, “I cannot imagine.”

Taft responded to news of the spooky rumor with “towering rage,” Butt said, banning anyone in the house from speaking of the ghost under threat of firing. The president worried that the story would get out and the press would have a field day with the news. But his aide seemed to have a sense of humor about the whole situation. “I reminded him that the help was in such a state of mind that, if it was positively believed that the upper floor of the White House was haunted, the servants there could not be kept in their places by executive order,” Butt wrote.

Although Butt wasn't afraid of any ghost, he did investigate the reports. Read about "The Thing" that haunted the White House at Mental Floss.


Dog Spells Her Name

(YouTube link)

They say that Penny is a smart dog, but why can't she put the letters in the right order from left -to-right instead of piling them on top of each other? Oh yeah, because she's a dog, and you don't expect dogs to be able to spell in the first place. What Penny is doing is a trained response, but a spectacularly well done one. -via Tastefully Offensive


Nobel Prize Awarded for Research in Circadian Rhythm at the Molecular Level

The 2017 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to three American scientists who identified genes and proteins that regulate our biological clocks. Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael W. Young, and Michael Rosbash worked with fruit flies for decades to crack the code

In 1984, Rosbash and Hall, working at Brandeis University in Boston, and Young at Rockefeller University in New York isolated a gene they called "period", which controlled the expression of a protein called PER. They saw that PER builds up during the hours of night, and dissipates again in daytime, so the levels oscillated over a 24-hour cycle, the basis of the "circadian rhythm" or body clock.

Importantly, they also discovered that when PER builds up in the cell, it turns off "period". So it is a self-regulating mechanism. "That was the key fundamental breakthrough," said Russell. "The appreciation of a molecular feedback loop – a gene encodes a protein which feeds back and inhibits the gene's own expression."

It wasn't clear how PER could influence its own expression, since it was unable to bind to DNA. But in 1994, Young also discovered another gene-protein pair, "timeless" and TIM, which was the missing link. He also found a third, "doubletime" and DBT, which helped control the 24-hour period.

Michael Rosbash describes the irony of the middle-of-the-night phone call he got from Stockholm that disturbed his sleep cycle.  

You can read more about this research, and keep up with other Nobel Prizes as they are awarded, at the Nobel Prize website.


Plan Your Halloween Film Festival

If you are a horror movie fan and subscribe to one (or more) of the many streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, or HBO, you are in for a great October. The hard part is deciding how to want to use your embarrassment of riches. You can select a new movie (or two) for every evening. You can spend a weekend (or two) smuggled up with your significant other binge-watching until you are a quivering mass of fear. Or you can plan a Halloween party with a film festival theme and invite all your friends! Check out the list of the 31 Best Streaming Horror Movies at Den of Geek.


The Northernmost Places You Can Live

For most of us, the charm of cold weather can be enjoyed only because we know there will be an end to it next spring. But if you really hate fresh fruit and lawn mowing and swimming pools, if you prefer polar bears to penguins, there are places above the Arctic Circle you can go and live. And there are places even further north that you can't, unless you are assigned to duty there.  

(YouTube link)

Half as Interesting gives us a short delightfully snarky tour of the world's most northern settlements and how you might want to join them. We also learn how to pronounce Thule. -via Laughing Squid


10 Things You Didn’t Know about the Movie Space Jam

The 1996 movie Space Jam will forever mark the generation of people who were children when it was released. They love it; no one else does. The film featured a disparate cast of characters that included NBA stars, animated Looney Tunes characters, and Bill Murray. There are aliens from outer space, too. If this cavalcade of weirdness is part of your childhood, you'll want to learn some trivia about the movie.

9. Michael Jordan had his own basketball court.

Jordan was actually given his own court to shoot on between takes.

8. It’s the first animated film to be edited for content.

There’s no really bad language in Space Jam, I mean come on it’s a kid’s cartoon. But when Daffy Duck says “We’re getting screwed” that was deemed to be too much for TV and it was cut out.

Read the rest of the trivia list about Space Jam at TVOM.


Doctor!

It seems like just yesterday when we found out the Lunarbaboon family was going to welcome another child, and now she's old enough to have role models. I can attest to the importance of role models for little girls. Every time we met a woman pediatrician, she'd soon find another position in a larger city. So my youngest decided she wanted to grow up to be a waitress, because that's the job she saw women doing. Luckily, she discovered Jane Goodall during grade school. This is the latest comic from Lunarbaboon.


The Dyatlov Pass Incident: Mountain of the Dead

The following is an article from Uncle John's Bathroom Reader The World's Gone Crazy.

More than 50 years ago, a group of experienced skiers met a gruesome end on a snowy mountain range. And to this day, no one knows for sure what happened to them.

INTREPID EXPLORERS

In January 1959, 23-year-old Igor Dyatlov led a group of 10 college students from the Ural Polytechnic Institute on a two-week cross-country ski trek across the northern Ural mountains of Russia (then the Soviet Union). To reach their destination, the eight men and two women first had to ski over a mountain pass known as Kholat Syakhl. In the language of the Mansi people native to the area, the name means “Mountain of the Dead.” But as far as Dyatlov’s team was concerned, that was just folklore.

Just three days into the trip, one of the members, Yuri Yudin, felt sick, so he left the group and returned home. The remaining nine continued on… and no one ever saw them alive again.

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Profile for Miss Cellania

  • Member Since 2012/08/04


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