This video by  Steve Cutts (previously at Neatorama) takes a look at the state of our planet and asks, what if the shoe were on the other foot?

This monk in Thailand needed to pray for five hours for rites associated with the new year. He needed to focus.

The cat needed rubs.

Thus a spiritual battle began. The cat prevailed after several failed attempts by the monk to deflect it. But he doesn't seem to upset by his defeat.

-via Steve Silberman

Etsy seller Krukru Studio has some amazing designs for luxury bags, including octopodes, angel wings, coffins, cacti, the Eiffel Tower, and a boxing glove. But the one that I found most amusing is this gas can purse. I wouldn't mind too much carrying it as murse if I had to. It still conveys a manly sense of utility.

-via Technabob

The footbridge shown above crosses the river Cam on the campus of Queens' College in Cambridge, England. The Mathematical Bridge was first built in 1749. It has a nice arch, but there are no curves in the design- all the timbers are completely straight.

The Mathematical Bridge is constructed out of interlocking pieces of timber. Each rib of the superstructure are set at tangents to the circle describing the underside of the arch of the bridge. In the arch itself, each member is under compression with little or no lateral force that could cause bending. Where the main members cross, the wood joint transmits the compressive stress from one member to the next, with a bolt serving to hold the joint together laterally, rather than itself carrying any stress. There are also radial members which both support the top rail and lock all the overlapping tangents into a rigid truss. The load bearing deck is supported by horizontal cross-beams attached to the bottom of the radials, close to the junction of two tangents. When a load is applied the vertical forces get distributed along the tangents as compression opposite to the compressive forces from the tangents, thus balancing each other.

The rest of the article on the bridge at Amusing Planet is less technical, and goes into the history of the design, which has been used elsewhere, and may have originated with Leonardo da Vinci.

(Image credit: Flickr user Michael Jefferies)

Sha Wellness Clinic is an elite holistic health center and spa located in Spain. Allure’s Jessica Cha shares her visit inside the world-renowned spa, experiencing private sessions, nutritional consultations, and other wellness packages. Cha tells of her experience of Sha Wellness Clinic’s Discovery program, which allows people to indulge in Sha’s offerings over the course of a few days: 

The next few days are a cornucopia of hourly appointments: a private yoga session, a general health exam, a nutritional consultation, a neurocognitive assessment consultation, an acupuncture session, a deep-tissue massage, a "therapeutic recipes" cooking class. It's Utopia for the wellness set. Every single aspect of your holistic health is measured and considered both quantitatively and qualitatively by medical experts, and then you're prescribed a proper course of action to optimize that facet of your well-being. Though they offer anti-tobacco, weight control, and stress management programs,

image via shawellness (Instagram)

You might recall the harrowing story of Harrison Okene, who was rescued from a sunken ship after being trapped for three days in 2013. Okene has the unwanted title of "accidental aquanaut." In this video,  RealLifeLore explains why Okene's ordeal was so frightening, and his survival so amazing.

I've always loved seeing glass bricks installed in architecture. My brother once installed a glass brick in his floor -with a light underneath- for no reason at all. You may have noticed grids of glass installed in the sidewalks of a city, which we assume are there to let light in. But where does that light go, and why is it needed? What are the origins of those grids? And most importantly, why are some of them purple? You'll find answers to all those questions at KQED. The question they don't answer is: Where can I get some of that purple glass for my floor? -via Digg

(Image credit: Flickr user Mike)

The British Newspaper Archive takes a look at the twenties -the 1920s, that is, from a British viewpoint. Among several new innovations that were introduced was the newly-invented refrigerator. The American company Frigidaire had sold hundreds of thousands of refrigerators in the US by 1926, and wanted to expand into Britain. It wasn't that easy.

But the introduction of the fridge was met with some scepticism by the British. There was an assumption ‘that we don’t need such cold storage because we don’t have enough hot weather to make it worth while in the average home.’ But the British population was up against a new challenge: the eradication of preservatives in food.

According to the same article in The Sphere, ‘less preservatives are to be permitted by law,’ meaning that the population had to look for some other way of keeping their food fresh. The answer, naturally, was the Frigidaire.

It certainly helps when regulatory agencies make your product necessary. Read about refrigerators and other innovations of the 1920s, such as television and the death ray, and find out why a full English breakfast includes baked beans, in the list at the British Newspaper Archive. -via Strange Company

Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama is known for her psychedelic sculptures that were turned into luxury handbags, and her Infinity Rooms. Kusama has now created a balloon for Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. If you’ve seen the red balloon full of white polka dots at the parade, that is Kusama’s Love Flies Up to the Sky, a 34-foot-tall balloon based on a character from her My Eternal Soul exhibition. Elle has the details: 

But it's her ability to evoke real emotion through the simplest polka dot pattern or flower wall that makes her one of the most beloved contemporary creators on the planet. It's also what attracted top brass at Macy's.

There's something wonderfully universal about Kusama's work. As ELLE.com's own digital art director Mia Feitel put it, her innate ability to bring a "democratic quality to her work gives it instant mass appeal. The idea that you can spread happiness through a red polka-dot, or that a hall of mirrors can transport you to infinity — is something that can be understood by every culture [and] city."

image via Elle

Ron Mallett is an astrophysicist who has spent his adult life believing that time travel is possible. According to him, with the help of scientific equations and principles, a time machine could be built. Mallett is a professor of  physics at the University of Connecticut. He investigates black holes and general relativities, theories of space, time and gravity. He also theorizes about time travel, with the dream of building a time machine that would let him see his father again. CNN has the details: 

It all hinges, says Mallett, on Einstein's special theory of relativity and general theory of relativity.

"To put it in a nutshell, Einstein said that time can be affected by speed," says Mallett.

Mallett gives the example of astronauts traversing space in a rocket that's traveling close to the speed of light. Time would pass differently on Earth than it would for the people in the rocket.

"They could actually come back finding out that they're only a few years older, but decades have passed here on Earth," he says.

Mallett points to the 1968 sci-fi classic movie "Planet of the Apes," at the end of which [spoiler alert] an astronaut realizes that he hasn't traveled to a distant, ape-ruled planet, but merely returned to Earth in a post-apocalyptic future in which mankind has been subjugated by simians.

"That is an accurate representation of Einstein's special theory of relativity," says Mallet. "So the upshot is that, according to the special theory of relativity, if you're traveling fast enough, you respectively are traveling through time. And effectively, that would be a representation of time travel."

image via CNN

People save the darnedest things. Janet Gnosspelius was a British architect and historical preservationist who died in 2010. Her obituary tells us:

Janet was meticulous in everything she did – and eccentric. She was known for her jodhpurs, collar-and-tie, handmade tweeds and elegant cigarette holder, her cats (who signed off many letters), 1939 Sunbeam Talbot car, prodigious workload and caustic red pen. She carried on an extraordinary range of correspondence, all hand-typed on a battered Imperial.

That meticulousness was a lifetime habit. As a teenager, Gnosspelius kept her cats' discarded whiskers as she found them, documented the circumstances of each, and bound them in a book. That catalogue is now part of an exhibition about Gnosspelius' distinguished family, and you can see images of it (and her cats) at Colossal.  -via Metafilter

If you ever found yourself traveling in the woods, you might have a hard time looking for a place where you can answer nature’s call. No, that isn’t a magical call of the forces of nature, it’s the call that you need to use the bathroom. That would be a difficult challenge, as you’d have to find the right place where you can settle down and let it all out. Australian studio Madelein Blanchfiels Architects designed a restroom that you can stumble towards in when you’re outdoors. The Kangaroo Valley Outhouse is a restroom designed to mimic the experience of camping, as Plain magazine details: 

Known for her purity of design and her penchant for crafting out unique spaces and experiences from any given site, Blanchfield’s outhouse is a simple cube slightly raised off-ground featuring facades completely covered with mirrors. With the landscape reflected on its surfaces, the cube completely blends into nature, rendering it virtually invisible save for the its legible edges.

And if you haven’t fully realised just how unique this outhouse is from its exteriors, then the stunning contemporary interior bath fixtures will. Equipped with a sink, toilet and a free-standing bathtub, this Aussie outhouse is pure luxury ensconced in the midst of nature — definitely a game-changer for non-camping enthusiasts.

image via Plain magazine

Every year, we watch people on the New York streets wait for the annual ball drop, a long running tradition on New Year's Eve to welcome the new year. But did you know that this tradition was inspired by a Victorian-era contraption? Royal Navy officer Robert Wauchope created the time ball for navigation. His goal was to give the exact time for mariners, as time would make shipping safer. BBC has the details: 

His ball, first demonstrated in Portsmouth, England, in 1829, was a crude broadcast system, a way to relay time to anyone who could see the signal. Typically, at 12:55, a creaky piece of machinery would raise a large painted orb halfway to the top of a pole or flagstaff; at 12:58, it would proceed to the top; and precisely at 13:00, a worker would release it to drop down the pole.

“It is a clear signal,” said Andrew Jacob, a curator who operates the time ball at the Sydney Observatory in Australia. “It’s easy to see the sudden movement as it begins to drop.”

Before the time ball’s invention, a ship’s master would typically come ashore and physically visit an observatory to check his watch against an official clock. Then he would quite literally bring time back to the ship. Wauchope’s invention let sailors calibrate their shipboard timepiece, called a chronometer, without leaving their boat.

As for the New Year’s connection, that came in 1907. The New York Times newspaper had instituted a midnight celebration in Times Square several years earlier, punctuated by dynamite and fireworks. After authorities banned the explosives, promoters needed something splashy to mark midnight and found inspiration in New York’s popular Western Union Telegraph’s time ball, which had been operating on the roof of the company’s Broadway headquarters since 1877.

The newspaper constructed an impressive orb weighing 700 pounds and covered with 100 25-watt lightbulbs. But in the spirit of showmanship, organisers altered time ball protocol, making the crucial moment of demarcation the moment the ball landed, not when it was released.

image via wikimedia commons

If you see a tiny building standing by itself, check the door. If there's a crescent moon cutout there, you know it's an outhouse. We all know that, just the way we know a barber shop has a striped pole and a pawn shop has three balls outside the door. But why a crescent moon? And how did that custom begin? There are a lot of explanations, some more plausible than others.

For example, in Outhouses, it’s claimed that “it’s a widely held historical view” that the crescent moon is a holdover from a time when illiteracy was rife. Supposedly before the adoption of the more familiar male and female bathroom symbols, it was common to use a crescent moon to denote that an outhouse was for women and a sun to denote that it was an outhouse for men. This supposedly being a nod to the fact that women have long being associated with the moon and men supposedly with the sun.

From here, opinion is divided on why the crescent moon rather than the sun caught on as the defacto symbol for an outhouse, with perhaps the most common explanation being that men’s outhouses fell into disrepair because men would just do their business in the great outdoors as God intended, without need of such an enclosure. Thus, only the women’s outhouses were left regularly used and the others went the way of the dodo.

As you might have guessed from the number of “supposedlies” in our previous paragraphs, there is absolutely no evidence supporting that being the origin of the crescent moon on outhouses. And, in fact, the evidence we do have seems to indicate that that hypothesis is about as accurate as the contents of that political chain-letter forwarded to you by your great-grandmother.

The true story behind the crescent moon on an outhouse will surprise no one who's had to live with an outhouse, nor anyone who has struggled to use a scroll saw. And besides answering that question, we get a bonus history of the act of "mooning," at Today I Found Out.

(Image credit: Javier Robles)

Every local newspaper announces the first baby born in the new year, but the story is even bigger in Carmel, Indiana. Dawn Gilliam and Jason Tello weren't expecting their twins to arrive for another seven weeks, but children have a way of stepping on your holiday plans. The twins were born on different days, in different years, and even in a different decade.

Joslyn Grace Guilen Tello was born at 11:37 p.m. on December 31, 2019 at Ascension St. Vincent Carmel and her twin brother, Jaxon DeWayne Mills Tello, was born at 12:07 a.m. on January 1, 2020.

Not only were their birthdays unique, but they were the last baby born in 2019 and the first baby born in 2020 for the hospital.

The babies are each four pounds and change, and are doing well according to the hospital. When they are older, they can one-up each other in ways most twins cannot. Joslyn will never let Jaxon forget that she is the elder twin, and Jaxon will never let Joslyn forget that he was a New Year Baby while she was not.  -via Mental Floss

(Image credit: Dawn Gilliam)