The Salem (Illinois) Police Department posted a courtesy alert for its citizens at Facebook.
This message was written on one of our city sidewalks today with sidewalk chalk. As a courtesy, we want to keep our citizens informed. Please, if you have satin sheets or pillowcases, keep them under lock and key as someone apparently wants to worship them!
This is your periodic reminder that if you want to strike fear into the hearts of your fellow men, it helps if you know how to spell. (via reddit)
Great Scott! Someone actually created a children’s book based on the Back To The Future Movie written by Robert Zemeckis & Bob Gale. I’m in heaven and so will anyone else who is proud to have been raised in the 80’s.
I admit it! I am totally biased when it comes to this book. I am a huge, huge Back To The Future fan. When this book came into our office I practically became giddy.
The book is about 40 pages long and goes through essentially the entire Back To The Future Story line. It starts out by introducing us to Marty McFly who is appropriately gliding around Hill Valley on his skateboard. We meet Doc Brown and Marty’s family. Of course we also meet Biff.
Cats who have human servants know they can dillydally as much as they want. They flaunt their superior position by taking their own sweet time. Why should they be in any hurry for a mere human? And so it is with Simon's Cat. My big tomcat will interrupt work and demand to be let outside, but then after I get up, it takes him forever to actually make it to the back door. He's just asserting his dominion over me, I am sure. -via Tastefully Offensive
Archaeological discoveries of ancient humans keep pushing our knowledge about our species further back in time. The Americas haven't been populated by people as long as other parts of the world, but exactly how long they've been here and how they got here are open subjects we still have a lot to learn about. Occasionally, a skeleton or a skull is found that dates back to the beginnings of their settlement. Real Clear Science give us a list of some of the biggest such discoveries.
Kennewick Man, perhaps the best known and most controversial ancient human remains in the United States, was found jutting from a patch of eroded dirt along the Columbia River near Kennewick Washington just 22 years ago. In life, roughly 9,000 years in the past, he spent much of his time moving around by water, hunting and eating marine animals and drinking glacial meltwater. In death, his remains were constantly the focus of lawsuits between indigenous peoples who sought to bury the remains and archaeologists who sought to learn from them. After DNA tests confirmed that Kennewick Man was closely related to modern day Native Americans, his remains were returned and reburied at an undisclosed location.
Read the stories of five other people who lived thousands of years ago in what is now the United States at Real Clear Science.
(Image credit: Ghedoghedo)
Turn the sound on before you watch this. Tasha is playing hide-and-seek because she doesn't want to go inside, and she's found the perfect hiding place! Tasha is pretty smart for a dog. She understands that her man's viewpoint is different from her own. She's a little fuzzy on the concept of glass doors, though. -via Bits and Pieces
Burros, or donkeys, are descended from the African wild ass. They are not indigenous to North America, but were imported by the Spanish. Burros proved to be the most useful beast of burden for the Grand Canyon area, where unsuccessful prospectors would sometimes abandon their animals, which led to a feral population of burros. That's how the burro named Brighty found himself living in the Grand Canyon.
Brighty himself, who lived from about 1882 to 1922, was first seen in the Canyon near an abandoned miner’s tent, sitting vigil as if expecting the tent’s occupant to return. The burro appreciated occasional human companionship, especially when pancakes were involved. He spent summers on the cooler North Rim, hanging out with the game warden Jim Owens or the McKee family, who managed the first tourist facility on the North Rim, which opened in 1917. Brighty came and went as he pleased, toting water for the McKees’ young son, but scraping off any loads he deemed unworthy of his efforts. For instance, if a hunter caught Brighty and tried to make him pack his gear, Brighty would sneak away, rubbing the pack against trees until the lashing loosened and the load fell off.
It was along the North Rim that early Canyon tourists first met Brighty, probably between 1917 and 1922. Wills writes, “Vacationers struggling to interpret, or connect with, the immense scale of the Canyon (John Muir called it an ‘unearthly’ place), appreciated the presence of a familiar creature.”
But Brighty’s hybrid existence—not exactly wild, but not domesticated enough to be consistently useful—would count against him and his kind when the park service decided in the early 20th century that it should restore the Canyon to a pre-Columbian state of virgin splendor. Having arrived with the Spaniards, the burro was not native to Arizona.
The National Park Service's plan for ridding the canyon of invasive species meant shooting the feral burros. Brightly had already passed on, but his story made him the face of the effort to save the burros. Animal lovers did not want them shot, and others wanted to maintain the feral burros for their part in US history. Others believed the canyon should be returned to its pre-settlement ecosystem. The controversy went on for decades. Read about Brighty and his legacy at Atlas Obscura.
Yes, it would be nice to have a machine that makes breakfast, but then you remember that making bacon and eggs is about the easiest thing there is to do in the kitchen. But this machine is impressive! There are two LEGO contraptions here. One is a huge scaffolding that delivers bacon and eggs to the frying pan, and even cracks the eggs open. The other is a vehicle which can move things around as needed and flip and serve the food with a spatula. YouTuber The Brick Wall (previously at Neatorama) built this set up for his father, who makes breakfast every weekend. He worked an entire week just to get the egg cracking unit right. -via Digg
We love cats, and we love monster movies. What's even better? Cats starring in monster movies! Thrill to the spectacle of a 50-foot cat stomping through Tokyo or some other urban area, blocking traffic and knocking things over (as they do). Indonesian digital artist Fransdita Muafidin imagines these scenarios in photo mashups, with fluffy kittens threatening society with their incredible mutant mass and their adorableness. See 17 of his photo collages in a roundup at at Sad and Useless, and more at Muafidin's Instagram gallery. -via Everlasting Blort
Marching band geeks have a lot of fun in high school, but afterward, you realize that those skills aren't exactly in high demand in the outside world. You have to find some other way to make a living. Then that day comes, maybe years down the road, where you pull out your old skills to impress your co-workers. That happened to Officer Pennington of the Sacramento Police Department when the Kings' drum line approached, and suddenly a flashback caused his billy club to become a baton! Those years of practice weren't for naught after all. -via TYWKIWDBI
Marty Boyer bought Theater House in Covington, Kentucky, in November. He was shocked at the amount in his electric bills. He was being billed for seven electrical meters, but he could only find four in the building. After he requested an audit, Duke Energy confirmed that three of the meters were located across the street from the theater, but they weren't going to separate them from his bill.
Frustrated by Duke's inaction, Boyer told Duke to turn off the meters across the street on March 19 not knowing what they powered. The lights stayed on at the Theatre House, but a Duke worker showed up the next day asking who turned the lights off.
"(The) lesson here: Want to get attention, turn off the lighting on the bridge," Boyer said.
It turned out that Boyer had been paying to power the lights on the Clay Wade Bailey Bridge that spans the Ohio River. But Duke wouldn't change the bill because they couldn't find anyone at the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet to accept responsibility. It was only after Boyer told the story on Facebook Monday and the local newspaper got involved that the meters were separated for billing purposes. Read an update on the story at The Cincinnati Enquirer -via Bits and Pieces
(Image credit: Derek Jensen (Tysto))
Ingesting embalming fluid is a horrible way to die. It's not a death we worry about much these days, but back when funeral wakes were held at the family home, it was a different story. The undertaker would come and do his job at the house, then a wake would be held for days before the burial, often with plenty of drinking to drown the grief. Accidents happened, in an astonishing number of different ways.
EMBALMING FLUID IN THEIR BEER.
Mourners at a “Wake” Poisoned, One of Them Fatally.
Racine, Wis. Oc. 5. Special Telegram.
While attending an Irish wake last night James Payton, James Callahan and Mrs. George Diven were poisoned by drinking embalming fluid. During the night refreshments were served, and beer was poured into a tumbler which contained embalming fluid left by the undertaker. Payton is not expected to recover. Daily Inter Ocean [Chicago IL] 6 October 1888: p. 9
Whether someone poisoned by embalming fluid survived depended on how much they drank. It didn't take much to kill you. Just using a container that once held embalming fluid was often enough. You'd think people would be put off by the smell, but a child or someone who'd already drank quite a bit of alcohol might not. Honestly, look at the bottles it came in. Read a roundup of 19 different cases of poisoning by embalming fluid at Haunted Ohio. -via Strange Company
Last year, Tom Fitzgerald and Marcus Herring assembled a feature-length remix of a ton of Star Wars fan films, parodies, tributes, knockoffs, behind-the-scenes footage, interviews, and fan reactions for the franchise's 40th anniversary. Star Wars Nothing But Star Wars was shown in a theater for a gala celebration on May 18th, 2017, for the anniversary. Since then, the company that commissioned it folded, and the theater closed. So Herring remixed the remix and added new footage, and made it available to all of us on the internet! Enjoy an extended mix of the weirdest Star Wars stuff there is. It's completely bonkers!
This one is the PG edit, with just a couple of scenes excised or censored. If you prefer, there's a somewhat more risqué R-rated version at YouTube. -Thanks, Marcus!
If you're in Anchorage, Alaska, here's a neat art event that you should check out: NeatoShop artist Raven Amos and her husband Scott Elyard are having an art show called Gallimaufric Science.
Info for the opening day (May 4, 2018 - today!) and the rest of the month, as well as the fundraiser.
Thanks Raven!
Following all of Star Wars was a pretty simple task for those of us who have seen every movie in a theater when they were released. That took 40 years, but there was no confusion as to how the story was constructed. It's quite different when you want to introduce your children, or your friend who was never interested until they met you, to the long and ever-expanding Star Wars universe. What's the best order to see them in? George Lucas says to watch them in chronological order, starting with The Phantom Menace. No, no, no.
The problem in getting started with Star Wars is two-sided. First, there's the inconvenient fact that the first three movies to be released, the original trilogy, come in the middle of the current continuity. Then, there's the not-insignificant matter that the prequel movies are widely considered to be terrible. Episode 2, "Attack of the Clones," won a Golden Raspberry award for Worst Screenplay.
Until the release of "The Force Awakens," much of the zeitgeist surrounding the Star Wars saga dealt with the prequels. The conversations were largely negative, along the lines of "are these movies cringe-worthy, or outright detestable?"
There's also the big twist that would be completely spoiled by watching the prequels first -which really only applies to children as viewers. The best way is to show your kids the movies in release order, which is what I did, although back then there were only five movies to catch them up. That's what Mathew Olson recommends, although his list of media in watching order do not include Ewok Adventure or The Star Wars Christmas Special. Even I haven't seen those. Or you might prefer Machete Order. But there's a lot more in the article, including an explanation of the special editions and a look at Disney's vision for the future of Star Wars. And May the Fourth be with you.
The departure screen at Heathrow Airport in London was a little different as May 4th dawned. You can enlarge the picture here. The flight to Hoth has been delayed because of snow on the destination runway. The flight going to Kashyyyk is numbered WOOK1E. And sadly, Flight LE1A to Alderaan has been cancelled.
Good morning from Heathrow. The force is strong with us today and we've got some special new routes. Will you be travelling to galaxies near... or far, far away? #Maythe4th #MayTheFourth #MayThe4thBeWithYou #StarWarsDay pic.twitter.com/B9IcnMOMxC
— Heathrow Airport (@HeathrowAirport) May 4, 2018
Every departure has a story, but you'll see it only if you're familiar with a galaxy far, far away. -via reddit
