Who is Hammurabi, and what's in his code? And why is it considered so important? Mainly, it was written down in stone, and is therefore the oldest set of laws we have in their original form. Simon Whistler of Today I Found Out takes us back to ancient Babylon for a look at the Code of Hammurabi.

There are certain skills that aren't taught in schools, that parents just handed down to children as they performed those tasks, like reading a map or changing a tire. But now kids don't see their parents do those things, for one reason or another, so they don't learn them, and they don't have to. But is that a good thing? I give my younger daughter a hard time about relying on GPS for navigation, but she manages to find her way around even where there's no wifi, since she didn't listen to me when I told her not to talk to strangers, either. We lament that the younger generation doesn't know how to write a check, but do they really need to?

Considerable has a list of 12 skills that young people no longer learn. I can do all these things, but a couple I just don't do anymore, because it's easier to hand off those tasks to professionals. Whether they actually matter is the real question. Sure, you can get through life without knowing how to sew or read cursive, but if you had those skills, you could have the custom curtains you otherwise couldn't afford, or read your father's old love letters.

(Image credit: Zirguezi)

Last Sunday, at a nursing home in Fukuoka, the oldest person in the world, Kane Tanaka, celebrated her 117th birthday.

Since turning 100, Tanaka has dreamt of holding the record for the world’s oldest person. Now, she is holding that record.

Tanaka remains the oldest person in the world—a title she formally claimed last year, when Guinness World Records confirmed her supercentenarian status.

Know more about her life over at Smithsonian.

(Image Credit: Guinness World Records/ Smithsonian)

A radio tower of the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which is located near the Texas-Mexico border, has become home to 300 vultures. Both inside and out, as well as the ground below, the vultures have covered the entire structure’s surface with “droppings mixed with urine.” These droppings proved to be troublesome for the tower, as well as for the workers in that place.

A smoothly-functioning communications network is essential for CBP officers to do their jobs. The agencies under the aegis of the Department of Homeland Security, of which CBP is one, have suffered from radio problems in the past.

The birds in the Texas tower have been roosting there for more than six years, a CBP spokesperson told Quartz, adding, “They will often defecate and vomit from their roost onto buildings below that house employees and equipment…

As a defense, vultures “regurgitate a reeking and corrosive vomit,” explains a factsheet from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). This kills bacteria on the birds’ legs, but also eats away at the metal in radio towers, reducing the life of the structure and making it unsafe for the maintenance workers who climb it. Vulture droppings can also carry a range of diseases such as histoplasmosis, salmonella, and encephalitis.

Find out more about this story over at Quartz.

(Image Credit: US Customs and Border Protection)

There has been an insistent pattern in Tom Vanderbilt’s household. It goes like this: he goes to order a product online. The product then will arrive, and Tom will unwrap it and retrieve the instructional manual. He will examine the product, and then he will read the instruction manual. And then he goes to the wonderful world of YouTube.

There, I will find, almost invariably, that someone has already done the thing that I am hoping to do. They will have documented the process with varying degrees of professionalism ranging from chirpy, well-captioned professional productions to people in their poorly-lit bedrooms.

Most recently, it was a hitch-mounted bicycle rack for my car giving me trouble. The written instructions were telegraphic, the drawings may well have been ancient cuneiform. I found my salvation on YouTube, and the rack was road-ready in minutes. When I later thanked a friend who had recommended the product, I confessed I had gotten a video assist on the install. “The guy with the Subaru?” he asked. “In his driveway?” Our path to enlightenment had apparently crossed, along with some 57,000 other viewers.

[...]

… as I racked up time looking for people to show me how to do things, I wondered: Why did this seem to be such an effective way to learn, and how could I do it better?

Check out the full story over at Nautilus.

(Image Credit: Pixabay)

It has taken quite a long time for society to see the beauty in non-skinny people. For years, being skinny has been the standard of beauty and fitness. But due to the continuous effort to promote body positivity, infiltrating social media, news, and pop culture, we see love and appreciation for bodies of different shapes and sizes. Elle’s Jes Baker shares her thoughts on the impact the movement has done: 

Curvier women with this feature are often called “Rubenesque,” after the voluptuous female nudes famously captured in great fleshy detail by painter Peter Paul Rubens five centuries ago—women whose body type was an ideal of the time. Rubens’s subjects, usually themes from Greek mythology, often included women lounging or twisting about, their bodies irresistibly soft-looking. The Flemish artist is quoted as saying, “My passion comes from the heavens, not from earthly musings.” Whether that was specifically about painting women or not, it certainly speaks to “heavenly bodies.” They are otherworldly. And suddenly Rubenesque is starting to feel more and more modern (and desirable) today.

On the modern-day canvas of Instagram, curvy models like Paloma Elsesser, Tara Lynn, Ali Tate Cutler, Tess Holliday, and Charli Howard have amassed devoted social followings, often garnering more likes and engagement when they post clear images of their “rolls.” Some influencers, like Megan Jayne Crabbe, who has more than a million followers, have built entire communities around normalizing their shape.

On the runway, rolls were anything but hidden at Rihanna’s Savage x Fenty show, where models like Margie Plus, Raisa Flowers, and Alva Claire walked in the singer’s cult-loved lingerie (lauded for its size range of XS–3X and 32A–46DDD). What once was almost always hidden has now moved proudly front and center. Witnessing this celebration of a body type we used to singularly abhor brings me an indescribable amount of joy; it’s apparent that a cultural shift is happening.

image via Elle

Fact checking politicians isn’t enough, according to The Digital News Project 2020. The Project predicted that politicians may take on misinformation or disinformation tactics in the coming elections. In a survey of 233 executives in traditional and digital publishing companies, 85% agreed that while fact checking is essential for assessing politicians, there should also be another way to ensure that politicians would be of good faith. Rappler has the details: 

There needs to be a more nuanced response, they said. "We certainly need to offer fact checks and reality checks. But we also need content which explores good faith politics, what might be working, how policy develops and makes a difference," the report quoted BBC World Service's Mary Hockaday as saying.

Tech platforms are also at fault, said publishers, with Facebook (17%) receiving the least credit among publishers for their fight against misinformation and disinformation. Facebook is followed by YouTube (18%), Google Search (34%), and Twitter (41%).

image via wikimedia commons

You might think that a home is "cursed" if two famous musicians died there, at the same young age, only four years apart. But then if you consider how many famous musicians spent time partying hard at Harry Nilsson's fashionable London flat, it may seem inevitable that the odds would eventually catch up with you.

He had bought it two years previously in 1972 while he was particularly good friends with Ringo Starr; it was a two-bedroomed top-floor flat in a large eighteenth-century house at 9 Curzon Place, on the south-east edge of Mayfair. Nilsson and Ringo had become good friends during 1972: Ringo, although credited as ‘Richie Snare’, was the drummer on much of Nilsson’s Son of Schmilsson released in July of that year. ‘Ringo and I spent a thousand hours laughing,’ Nilsson once said. They were part of a social set that included Marc Bolan, Keith Moon and Graham Chapman of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. As rock stars can do, they met in the afternoon and when each arrival dropped by they would say, ‘I hope I’m not interrupting anything?’ Nilsson recalled: ‘We would drink until 9 p.m. That’s six hours of brandy. Then between 9 and 10, we would usually end up at Tramp, the most uproarious exclusive disco-restaurant in the world. Royals, movies stars, world champions, all frequented there. It was really a ride, meeting these luminaries and having total blow-outs almost every night.’

In 1974, Cass Elliot was staying at Nilsson's flat when she was found dead of a heart attack. Four years later, Keith Moon died there as well. Read the accounts of both deaths and of Nilsson's unique apartment at Flashbak. -via Strange Company

Sir Ian McKellen kept an online diary between 1999 and 2003 that chronicled his time filming The Lord of the Rings trilogy. He calls the first part of it The Grey Book, followed by The White Book, and it's delightful.

So the journey has begun without me. On Monday 11th October, Elijah Wood et al gathered in Hobbiton — and I hear they are behaving themselves! I have been in Toronto, masquerading as Magneto, the master of magnetism, on the set of Bryan Singer’s “X-Men.” I have just sent Peter Jackson an e-mail of good luck. I don’t expect an immediate reply — directing a film is totally time-consuming.

Meanwhile, Tolkien aficionados are mailing to the “Grey Book.” From teenagers and readers old as wizards come the advice, the demands, the warnings — united by the hope that the film’s Gandalf will match their own individual interpretations of the Lord of the Rings. I take comfort from the general assurance that they approve of the casting (not just of me but of all the other actors so far announced - thrilling news that Cate Blanchett is joining us.) Yet how can I satisfy everyone’s imagined Gandalf? Simply, I can’t.

I recognise the responsibility of course. It's not as if LOTR were a play that could be revived over and over, each new cast adding to the discoveries that their predecessors have made. The Jackson trilogy will be unique. It is, after all, unlikely that there will be a re-make any time soon - although there have already been the cartoon "Hobbit" (which I have yet to see) and the BBC's radio LOTR (with Ian Holm as Frodo). But some of my correspondents seem to think that actors are essayists or critics who analyse a character's complexities and then parade them, like sticking on a false beard. It's just not like that.

It bears repeating that, as with Richard III or James Whale or Magneto, I must discover Gandalf somewhere inside myself - and that process depends on absorbing the words of the script and its story, listening to the reactions of the director and responding to the performances of the rest of the cast. So now, still 3 months away from shooting (for me), my Gandalf doesn't exist, not even in my mind. He will only come to life as the camera turns and discoveries are made in the very moment. Even when I am in the thick of it, in costume and make-up and speaking Tolkien's words, I'm not sure I will be able to describe the character to you. Actors don't describe - they inhabit.

You can read McKellen's musings of his Gandalf experience in chronological order at his site, or in its original form through the Internet Archive.  -via Kottke

Algol designed a visualization of the four billion year history of the earth. The overall effect is to drive home how relatively recently everything we know came about. The video is three quarters of the way through before plants made it to land, and the percentage of oxygen finally got above 1%. Then things go pretty fast. But it's not as if nothing happened earlier. There was that time the ocean turned red, and meteor impacts to stir things up, and the time the ocean turned purple. If you have trouble catching the notes along the way, they are easier to read here. -via Digg

To the average American, Italian food means something flavored with garlic. To some, the more garlic, the more "authentic" a dish is. But that isn't the story in Italy, and the flavor of garlic was not always welcomed in America the way it is today. See, in most of Italy's long culinary history, garlic was seen as something only poor people ate.

While garlic is as central to Genovese pesto and Piedmontese bagna càuda as it is to any spicy Calabrian tomato sauce, there is a sense that strong flavors like garlic were initially introduced to mask the absence of better ingredients in times, and especially regions, of scarcity. Former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi famously wouldn’t allow anyone in his cabinet to eat garlic when they were around him—a taste that suited his “successful businessman” persona. And when Italian cookbook author Marcella Hazan called the overuse of garlic “the single greatest cause of failure in would-be Italian cooking,” she was not denigrating any region or class of Italian food per se, but rather attempting to distinguish her recipes for dishes like delicate risotto alla parmigiana or luxurious vitello tonnato from the cucina povera that had dominated Italian-American cooking up to the mid-20th century.

And who immigrated from Italy to America? Poor people, looking for better opportunities. Read how garlic came to be accepted and even lauded in America, while the rift remains in Italy, at Taste.  -via Damn Interesting

If you're in the US, you might not have realized that there is a Canadian version of Family Feud. A recent episode featured the question "What is Popeye's favorite food?" The answer highlights generational differences in pop culture knowledge, but the best part is how proud she is of herself. But there's more, as these two people had a hard time getting any answer right.

There's more to the #FamilyFeudCanada chicken story - What happens when contestants guess wrong on a sudden death round? Take a look at these behind-the-scenes bloopers and see what you'd never get to see on TV. #bloopers #chicken pic.twitter.com/K7x6V0hpSv

— Family Feud Canada (@FamilyFeudCa) January 10, 2020

-via Boing Boing

A central element to an effective post-secondary education that prepares the mind for the workforce and engaged citizenship is pizza. College students need pizza to survive, especially when ramen is in short supply.

So it is good that the University of North Florida in Jacksonville has installed a pizza vending machine. It is stocked with pre-cooked pizzas, which are warmed up when hungry college students buy them. This particular one is conveniently located in one of the residence halls on campus.

In this video, Joe Lachina, dining services manager at the University of North Florida, demonstrates how the ATM works.

-via Dave Barry | Photo: CBS 4 Miami

The Star Wars franchise has been rich with worldbuilding, history, and unique set designs and scifi gadgetry that is still celebrated today. With four decades of 11 films, six television shows, and a lot of releases in other media, it’s always been a wonder for many to think about the process behind the creation of any aspect of the famed franchise. Wired talks to Victoria Mahoney, the second unit director for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Mahoney shares what it’s like behind the scenes of the movie, and the process of its creation: 

If you thought even space opera scenery would get humdrum after seeing it all day, every day for months, think again. “I can tell you with my whole soul that every time we went to a new location, or we walked onto a different sound stage, I had the same feeling as when I walked onto the first one: ‘Hoooly shit,’” Mahoney says. “You’d hear everyone whispering through the crowd, ‘I love this set.’ [As a director,] what’s fun was finding how to celebrate each crew’s set and all the little, teeny hidden Easter eggs they tell you about. It was like a really great Rubik’s cube. You had to really study them.” Getting her to pick a favorite was difficult, but she settled on Ajan Kloss, the jungle planet where the rebels make their base. “The height and the scale was really something to see. A ship inside a soundstage! The crew had built a forest! There were so many places for really delicious shots and story points to be discovered.”

image via Wired

When the flight attendant asks the passengers, "Is there a doctor on board?" you may be in for an adventure. Do you respond if you're a veterinarian or a psychiatrist? It might depend on the emergency. For a 1995 case, two doctors, Angus Wallace and Tom Wong, were flying British Airways from Hong Kong to London and realized that a woman who had fallen before takeoff was in worse shape than they initially knew. A fractured rib had punctured her lung, causing a pneumothorax. The air leaking into her chest cavity could kill her during descent, so an emergency landing was not an option. An account of the in-flight surgery is at Dr. Wallace's Wikipedia page.

With the limited medical equipment on board, Wallace and Wong had to improvise heavily. The medical kit had lidocaine – a local anaesthetic – but the catheter in the kit was designed only for urinary catheterisation and was too soft for use as a chest tube. The doctors fashioned a trocar from a metal clothes hanger to stiffen the catheter, and a check valve from a bottle of water with holes poked in the cap.[9] They sterilised their equipment in Courvoisier cognac, and began surgery by making an incision in the patient's chest, but with no surgical clamps available, Wong had to hold the incision open with a knife and fork while Wallace inserted the catheter.[7] The whole surgery lasted about ten minutes; the doctors successfully released the trapped air from the patient's chest, and she spent the rest of the flight uneventfully eating and watching in-flight movies.[9]

Wallace's more detailed account of the emergency was published in the British Medical Journal. Since the incident, medical kits in both British and US commercial planes have been expanded to include more equipment and medicine. -via Boing Boing

(Image credit: Alan Wilson)