Just what it says on the tin. The greatest movie quotes are those that people know and use over and over. You can see from this supercut that Inigo Montoya's prepared speech from The Princess Bride can be used for many different situations. While not all the quotes are exact, there is no doubt who inspired them. -via Laughing Squid
Musician Dimitri Manos offers this unique object: a record with six playable . . . well, sides isn't quite the right word.
Each side of the two-sided record has three overlapping circles, each of which has its own track. You can play by placing the record on the turntable with the right hole among the five in the center.
In this video, Mike Dixon gives a demonstration of how it works. Manos's band American Monoxide composed a piece specifically to make use of the record's unique properties. Because the record makes a chirping sound when the needle crosses two overlapping tracks, the composition incorporates that sound.
Content warning: foul language.
-via Core77
There was a fossil skull discovery that was recently determined to be a prehistoric snake with legs. While a snake with legs is impressive, even more impressive is how anyone could tell that from just a skull. But the find brings up a question: is a snake with legs still a snake, or is it just some kind of lizard?
Sara Ruane, a herpetologist and evolutionary biologist at Rutgers University who studies living snakes, has some answers. “Snakes are just fancy lizards,” she says. More precisely, she explains, snakes represent a distinct branch of the lizard evolutionary tree. Both types of animals are squamates, the largest order of reptiles, and snakes belong to the suborder Serpentes. In other words, all snakes are technically lizards, but not all lizards are snakes.
It’s also true, Ruane says, that early species of snake once sported gams. But all these legged snakes are extinct today, meaning that you’d be unlikely to confuse a snake for a lizard in the wild.
But while there are no snakes in existence today with legs, there are lizards around that are legless. You might think that a legless lizard would be a snake, but that's not the case at all. Read how to tell the difference between a legless lizard and a snake at Atlas Obscura. As if you were going to stick around either of them long enough to observe those differences.
(Image credit: Stu's Images)
Have you ever wondered how animals view the world? A new software intends to make the perspective of bees easier to picture for us humans. While the images produced by this software are not an exact replica of what other organisms see (as we do not yet fully understand how our brains and eyes process the world), it is a good omdication of how other animals see the world.
Learn more details about this over at Discover.
(Image Credit: Jolyon Troscianko/ Discover)
Did you know that for this year alone, Americans have spent $72.56 billion on their pets? That just goes to show how much we love our pets, and I believe there is nothing weird in giving them something that they will enjoy. After all, they are our companions for life, or rather, we are their companions for their short lives.
One must wonder, however, as to what is the best gift for their pet this holiday season. Check out some gifts you might consider giving to your pet over at Slate.
(Image Credit: Pixabay)
British tinkerer Colin Furze builds amazing things and screams (which is why I usually watch his videos muted). In the past, he has made a lamp powered with a chainsaw motor, a bumper car with a 600 cc engine, and a bicycle with wheels made of ice. They're amazing, unconventional machines. When the apocalypse comes, you want him on your survival team--especially since he has literally built a bunker for that purpose.
Whatever trouble is coming, he saw it long ago in a galaxy far, far away. To promote the new Star Wars film, he built a functional landspeeder. Yes, it has wheels instead of hover engines. But it's otherwise a completely-scaled up model of a landspeeder toy--the ideal commuter vehicle.
-via Nag on the Lake
This is a gel that goes hard when exposed to heat, and softens again when cooled. This gel, produced by Japanese researchers, could suggest the potential to create new and unique protective clothing.
Takayuki Nonoyama, Jian Ping Gong and colleagues from Hokkaido University were inspired by how proteins remain stable inside organisms that survive and thrive in extreme-heat environments such as hot springs and deep-sea thermal vents.
Normally, heat alters the structure of proteins and breaks their bonds, but the proteins in these thermophile organisms remain stable with heat thanks to enhanced electrostatic interactions such as ionic bonds, the researchers say.
So they developed a polyacrylic gel based on this concept, as they describe in a paper in the journal Advanced Materials.
Check out more details about the gel over at Cosmos.
(Image Credit: Nonoyama, T. et. al, Advanced Materials/ Cosmos)
Your parents and grandparents tried to tell you how to be happy, but those proverbial nuggets of wisdom sounded much too simple to you, so you didn't listen. But science stepped in to observe and measure the effects of certain behaviors on the sense of well-being or happiness they inspire. Kurzgesagt brings us some of those scientific studies, and the results show that ancient wisdom, no matter how trite it sounded to you, had it right. Count your blessings. Stop focusing on yourself and look to help someone else. Look at the bright side. Science says so.
"You can't have Christmas without Star Trek, right?"
Truer words were never spoken, Mr. Ahern.
Martin Ahern of Moncton, New Brunswick gradually built up his annual Christmas light display. It's become his hobby. All year, he prepares his precisely engineered lighting arrangements. Most recently, he's launched a 16-foot scale model of the Enterprise NCC-1701, no bloody A, B, C, or D. It's made of wood and duct tape, but flimsier craft had made it into interstellar space.
-via Geekologie | Image: Global News Canada
Chris Long of Reno, Nevada received a bone marrow transplant. Four years later, his colleagues at the Sheriff's Office tested his DNA to find out of the transplant had affected his DNA. If a transplant could alter DNA evidence, it could impact their criminal investigations.
The result was shocking: the sperm in Long's semen contained no trace of his own DNA. It all belonged to his donor, a German man. The New York Times explains what happened:
Mr. Long had become a chimera, the technical term for the rare person with two sets of DNA. The word takes its name from a fire-breathing creature in Greek mythology composed of lion, goat and serpent parts. Doctors and forensic scientists have long known that certain medical procedures turn people into chimeras, but where exactly a donor’s DNA shows up — beyond blood — has rarely been studied with criminal applications in mind.
Brittany Chilton, a criminologist, found that chimera DNA had confused other criminal investigators in the past:
And it has misled them, Ms. Chilton learned once she began to research chimerism. In 2004, investigators in Alaska uploaded a DNA profile extracted from semen to a criminal DNA database. It matched a potential suspect. But there was a problem: The man had been in prison at the time of the assault. It turned out that he had received a bone marrow transplant. The donor, his brother, was eventually convicted.
Abirami Chidambaram, who presented the Alaska case in 2005, when she worked for the Alaska State Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory in Anchorage, said she had heard about another disconcerting scenario since then. It involved police investigators who were skeptical of a sexual assault victim’s account because she said there had been one attacker, though DNA analysis showed two. Eventually the police determined that the second profile had come from her bone marrow donor.
To go gluten-free or not to go gluten-free, that is the question… on the minds of many Americans today who are avoiding gluten for many different reasons. Gluten-free products cater mainly towards people with Celiac disease, a medical condition that is characterized by having a severe allergy to gluten. But it’s also become an increasingly popular option for even those without the disease who are seeking a healthier diet or lifestyle.
Gluten is basically protein in wheat products and it can be difficult to digest for people, possibly worsening or causing health issues.
Whether or not you avoid gluten is a personal preference. Some people simply avoid it because they follow health experts who recommend cutting it out (which is totally fine). If you don't think you have any issues with it and aren't concerned, you don't have to follow a trend simply because other people do. And if the evidence above concerns you, then taking out gluten is a simple way to avoid the health risks some claim are associated with it.
So, why hop on the bandwagon? Here are top reasons for why people avoid it and the effects it can have on your health, according to nutrition science and health professionals.
-via CNet
Photo: Ray Piedra / Pexels
How do you make close-up shots of tiny things look larger-than-life? You’ll be amazed to find that macro photography is an accessible hobby that does not necessarily require expensive equipment or a far-off destination to get the best shots with what you already have. We’re given useful tips on how to enhance macro photo quality and how you can apply these even when using your mobile phone to capture small subjects, like the insects in your backyard.
Here’s a summary in 7 key points:
- Get a macro lens for your phone
- Find your subject: Insects and flowers work best
- Shoot in manual mode
- Use burst shooting
- Get the focus right, even without focus stacking
- Bring in some extra lighting
- Edit for impact
Find the full article here.
-via CNet
Photo: Aris Ioakimidis / Pexels
In October of this year, when the World Health Organization declared that polio’s type 3 strain had been eradicated, the world was able to have a sigh of relief, as it became a slightly better place. Both the type 3 and type 2 strains have been eradicated and no longer exist outside of highly secure laboratories, with the type 1 remaining the only strain at large. Thanks to the thousands of people who have worked hard for this to happen, the two strains will no longer cause paralysis and death.
While it was once just a dream, permanently ending diseases has been within our power since 1980, when smallpox was eradicated after an intense campaign. This victory has saved roughly 200 million people who would otherwise have succumbed to the disease since then.
But other attempts to rid the world of diseases have not gone as smoothly. Doctors have been working on ending polio for 31 years, initially hoping it would be completely gone by 2000. Now, due to difficulties tracking the disease, the target eradication date for the remaining type 1 strain is 2023. Another pathogen nearing eradication is a parasite known as Guinea worm, but again, problems have complicated that campaign, and others as well.
So what was it about smallpox that made it so much simpler to eradicate? What makes an organism eradicable in the first place?
More about this topic over at Quanta Magazine.
(Image Credit: Pixabay)
Cinnamon, hot cocoa, and nutmeg. Those are some of the usual scents you can smell in houses during the holiday season. Enter the smell of fried chicken.
Okay, so maybe it’s not the most traditional of festive, wintery scents but there’s no denying that the smell of seasoned and breaded chicken cooking in a vat of oil is ridiculously good, and terrible for you. Like all things during this time of year! So I think it only makes sense that we embrace this as a staple smell alongside apple cider and sugar cookies.
There is good news for people who love the smell of fried chicken: KFC is back with its firelog that smells like fried chicken!
Imagine the disappointment of your family once they see that you’re not really cooking chicken. Nevertheless, it is a good scent worthy of filling up your home. What do you think?
(Image Credit: FunnyOrDie)
English is an age old language with some very odd words that are rarely used today. Do you think Londoners will know what words like "tittynope" mean?
