The BBC was interviewing Professor Robert Kelly of Pusan National University in Korea about the impeachment of former (as of today) South Korean President Park Geun-hye, when it became very clear that he was working from his home office.

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Will he be able to get a coherent thought out before Mom arrives? Did he have to stay seated because he's not wearing pants? So many questions, and none of them about the impeachment results. You can guarantee he will lock the door before his next Skype interview. -via reddit

Sergey Zimov has a dream to take a chunk of the Siberia tundra back to the last Ice Age, to the Pleistocene era, when giant mammals roamed the earth. Zimov and his son Nikita founded Pleistocene Park twenty years ago, and since then have stocked it with bison, musk oxen, wild horses, reindeer, and other grass-eating beasts. But to really move the ecosystem back to the way it was, they need the tree-trampling talents of wooly mammoths.  

Pleistocene Park is named for the geological epoch that ended only 12,000 years ago, having begun 2.6 million years earlier. Though colloquially known as the Ice Age, the Pleistocene could easily be called the Grass Age. Even during its deepest chills, when thick, blue-veined glaciers were bearing down on the Mediterranean, huge swaths of the planet were coated in grasslands. In Beringia, the Arctic belt that stretches across Siberia, all of Alaska, and much of Canada’s Yukon, these vast plains of green and gold gave rise to a new biome, a cold-weather version of the African savanna called the Mammoth Steppe. But when the Ice Age ended, many of the grasslands vanished under mysterious circumstances, along with most of the giant species with whom we once shared this Earth.

Nikita is trying to resurface Beringia with grasslands. He wants to summon the Mammoth Steppe ecosystem, complete with its extinct creatures, back from the underworld of geological layers. The park was founded in 1996, and already it has broken out of its original fences, eating its way into the surrounding tundra scrublands and small forests. If Nikita has his way, Pleistocene Park will spread across Arctic Siberia and into North America, helping to slow the thawing of the Arctic permafrost. Were that frozen underground layer to warm too quickly, it would release some of the world’s most dangerous climate-change accelerants into the atmosphere, visiting catastrophe on human beings and millions of other species.

The possibility of cloning a mammoth Jurassic Park-style has been in the news for years, but finding viable mammoth DNA still eludes us. But there's another possibility: designing a cold weather elephant species by tweaking the genes of existent elephants. Read about this research and about the development of Pleistocene Park at the Atlantic. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Kevin Tong)

Some people at NASA think we’ll discover alien life by 2025. What will life on Earth be like then?

1. WE’LL FINALLY DISCOVER WHO THE MONA LISA WAS.

The identity of Mona Lisa has long been a mystery. Some think Leonardo da Vinci modeled his masterpiece on his mother; others, on a secret male lover. In fact, one art historian identified her just a few decades after the painting was completed as Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo, the wife of a wealthy cloth merchant who commissioned the piece to a then-broke da Vinci. (The fact that the artist named his work La Gioconda was a big clue.) Now, thanks to radiocarbon dating, this hunch may finally be confirmed. Researchers believe they may have found Gherardini’s remains in a convent in Florence. If the carbon-14 tests confirm that it’s her, scientists will also do DNA tests to determine the color of her eyes, skin, and hair. With that information, they’ll be able to confirm if she is the world’s most famous half-smiler.

2. GROCERY STORE CHECKOUT LINES? ANCIENT HISTORY.

The question “Paper or plastic?” will be a distant memory in the not-so-distant future. The Food Marketing Institute predicts that by 2025, customers will no longer wait in lines to check out at grocery stores. Just like a car zipping through an electronic tollbooth, shoppers will walk out the door and a “frictionless checkout” will automatically account for products in their carts. Also coming soon: stores with moving walls. With a flick of a switch, businesses will be able to change their floor plans and turn into restaurants in the evenings or farmers’ markets on Saturday mornings.

3. THE STRONGEST ROBOTS WILL BE MADE FROM...ONIONS.

(Image credit: Shannon May)

Your local grocery store is a psychological minefield, where even the bananas are ripe with mystery.

1. SOUTHPAWS HAVE AN INVISIBLE ADVANTAGE

You’ve probably seen that stores keep go-to items—produce, meats, dairy—on the perimeter. But did you notice that most of them are set up to make your lap run counterclockwise? “Ninety percent of us are right-handed, so we buy more when it’s counterclockwise. It puts us closer to the shelf,” says Martin Lindstrom, author of Brandwashed: Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy. Places that do this see sales climb 7 percent. You’ll also often find the dairy section in the back left corner: Because dairy is likely on your list, stores make sure you take the longest route to get there. In fairness, it’s also a more convenient place to put a fridge.

2. EVERYTHING IN ITS PLACE

Futility Closet gives us a crime scene and a logic puzzle to solve it. Five children go into a candy store, and one of them steals a box of candy. Let's assume that none of them have chocolate on their faces, and the stolen box is not in their possession at the moment. Each of the five children gives a statement of three sentences.

Ivan:

1. I didn’t take the box of candy.
2. I have never stolen anything.
3. Dennis did it.

Sylvia:

4. I didn’t take the box of candy.
5. I’m rich and I can buy my own candy.
6. Linda knows who the crook is.

Ernie:

7. I didn’t take the box of candy.
8. I didn’t know Linda until this year.
9. Dennis did it.

Dennis:

10. I didn’t take the box of candy.
11. Linda did it.
12. Ivan is lying when he says I stole the candy.

Linda:

13. I didn’t take the box of candy.
14. Sylvia is guilty.
15. Ernie can vouch for me, because he has known me since I was a baby eight years ago.

Okay, the clue is that each child told the truth in two sentences and lied in one sentence. Who stole the candy? Don't let the fact that there are 15 sentences deter you; it's not that difficult when you get into it. When you come to an answer or give up, see the explanation at Futility Closet. -via Boing Boing

There are Disney fans, then there are Disney fanatics. This couple has been together for a while, but she doesn't know he's a Disney fanatic. She's about to find out during a conversation about their upcoming vacation.

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She had me at "Why would we ever willingly go to Florida?" I've been to Walt Disney World three times, but the only time I really enjoyed it was when I had a 4- and a 5-year-old with me. And even then, it was grueling. For me, it's okay as a once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage for your children, but otherwise, that money should go into a fund for a retirement anywhere but Florida. -via Geeks Are Sexy

Claudy Charles was on trial for arson in Miami. His defense was that the car spontaneously combusted. His lawyer, Stephen Gutierrez, was arguing this defense when his pants burst into flame! When a lawyer's pants are on fire… well, you know. However, prosecutors were concerned that the stunt was planned, to demonstrate the possibility of spontaneous combustion. As if anyone would believe that. Charles was ultimately found guilty of the crime. -via reddit

That kind of behavior could very well be misunderstood, but we get the point. Besides, you should never pass up an opportunity for delicious homemade dahi vadas. This is the newest comic from Lunarbaboon.

Harvey Washington Wiley of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Bureau of Chemistry was concerned about the unrestricted contents of food that Americans were buying. So when he sent out a call for volunteers, 12 young men, mostly poorly-paid clerks, answered the call. They must have been hungry, because they didn't run for the hills as soon as they found out what kind of six-month experiment they'd signed up for.

Wiley’s staff would put borax in their butter, milk, or coffee. Formaldehyde would lurk in their meats, copper sulfate and saltpeter in their fruit pies. Wiley would begin at low doses and then ratchet up the amount until one or more of the men complained of debilitating symptoms, like vomiting or dizziness. Those people would then be excused from the program until they felt well enough to resume. In the event a subject died or became seriously ill, he would waive the right to pursue legal remedy against the government.

The year was 1902. With funding and consent from Congress, Wiley was about to embark on an experiment he dubbed the “hygienic table trials,” but it was the Washington news media that came up with the nickname that would stick: They called his volunteers "the Poison Squad."

The results of those experiments led to the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act in 1906. The experiments lasted for five years, although the squad of volunteers changed. Read what those young men went through in the name of science and safety at mental_floss.

Movie fans and fans of a particular franchise love to dig out trivia behind the movies they love, and science fiction is full of it. When you go back to the pre-internet era, you are very likely to find lots of obscure information that even fans don't already know.  

These sound like the product of a brainstorming session where the most obscure fact about movies everyone has seen were thrown out, possibly with a prize at stake. Check out all 15 trivial facts about science fiction movies. -via TVOM

Redditor parsect runs a metal-detecting service. As a new daycare center was about to open, he was asked to check the bark-chip playground mulch for anything that might be dangerous to children. He found quite a bit, as you see. What have we learned here? Never trust a construction crew to clean up all their mess, and get your kids vaccinated for tetanus.  

The comments at reddit became a mini-AMA where parsect answered questions about his work. While he does find occasional jewelry, the weirdest thing was a stash of gellignite. He even showed us pictures. 

Firefighters in Nanticoke City, Pennsylvania, were called to a home last week over a report there was a dog on the roof. A husky inside the second floor had managed to open a window, popped out the screen, and went outside on the slanted porch roof. His owner was not at home. A firefighter climbed to the roof and got the dog back inside, then closed the window. But that wasn't the end of the story. 

About an hour later, firefighters received another public assist call to same location for the dog on the roof. The dog apparently wanted to be back outside again and reopened the window and let himself out again.

That's one determined pooch! So they got the ladder out again and a firefighter once again got the dog back inside. This time, they made sure the window was secure. -Thanks, John Farrier!

(Image credit Nanticoke City Fire Department via Facebook)

Robert Kennicott was a well-liked and respected young naturalist for the Smithsonian Institution in its early days, when naturalists actually lived in the museum together. He was dedicated to collecting specimens for the institute, up until his untimely death at age 30. Kennicott's bones will be put on display at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History on March 10 as part of an exhibit called “Objects of Wonder.” For Kennicott, that might be the ultimate honor. But his story did not end with his death. Over a hundred years after burial, Kennicott's coffin was exhumed for examination to determine the exact cause of death.

The mystery begins with Kennicott’s death on May 13, 1866. He had been on another long mission to the Yukon—this time for the Western Union Telegraph. He was the only person who had lived in Russian America, and was to help that company find a route to lay a cable connecting the United States with Europe via the Bering Strait. Kennicott and two fellow naturalists also planned to collect rare specimens, but they arrived just below the Arctic Circle as winter began in 1865. They made a grueling trip to Fort Nulato on the Yukon River, 500 miles from any other fort, in temperatures as low as 60 below zero.

By spring, Kennicott intended to begin his own work as a naturalist. But he didn’t show up for breakfast that day, and his men found him dead by the bank of the river near the fort. Rumors began that he had committed suicide by swallowing the strychnine he often carried to preserve specimens. His friends spent eight months on a journey to bring Kennicott’s body back. He was buried in January 1867 at The Grove, in an airtight metal coffin.

Kennicott's family never really bought the idea that he had committed suicide. In 2001, forensic anthropologist Kari Bruwelheide and the museum’s division head for physical anthropology Doug Owsley performed a thorough examination and a chemical analysis to find out why he died. In analyzing Kennicott's remains, they also got a glimpse at the chemicals that 19th century people were exposed to, both accidentally and medicinally (such as lead, strychnine, and mercury), and the effects of diseases that were common at the time. Read the story of Robert Kennicott at Smithsonian.

King Ranch is the largest ranch in Texas, at 1,289 square miles. That's bigger than Rhode Island. In the 1940s, owner Richard M. Kleberg, a US congressman, approached Buick designer and executive Harley Earl about a vehicle he could use on the ranch. What they came up with was the El Kineño, a custom-designed 1949 Buick convertible with every outlandish feature you can imagine. The car had two spare tires, six shotgun sheaths, its own winch, a two-way radio, and a beefed-up suspension and cooling system. It even had a seat perched on the front fender for a cowboy to rope cattle from! Strangely, it did not have a longhorn hood ornament, but did have a hood ornament in the shape of the ranch's brand. Read how the King Ranch El Kineño came about, and see the pictures, at Just a Car Guy. -via Everlasting Blort

In 1957, Alfred Hitchcock spoke to interviewer Collin Edwards for Pacifica Radio about his upcoming movie, tentatively titled From Amongst The Dead, which the next year turned out to be Vertigo. Subjects covered include dead bodies and humor, as you might expect.

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That radio interview finally gets a proper animation that evokes the way we still see Hitchcock: clever, macabre, and funny all at the same time. -via Boing Boing