She locked herself out of the house. However, there's a sliding glass door that's only held shut by a sawed-off broom handle, and the dog is inside with it. All Sam has to do is retrieve the stick. His years of training in stick-fetching suddenly pay off! That's a good dog. -via reddit
Artists Arna Miller and Ravi Zupa created a series of tiny 3-color block prints on matchboxes depicting cats acting out common behaviors seen in bars late in the evening. They are on display at an exhibit called Strike Your Fancy: New Artworks by Arna Miller at Abstract in Denver this month, and the matchboxes are for sale at $20 each or a set of all ten for $175. -via Boing Boing
When Don McLean released a seven-minute song called "American Pie" in 1971, music fans clamored to decipher all the cultural references and deeper meaning in the lyrics. I once received a tract that claimed it was a prophesy about the end of the world. That was nonsense; the song is a history of how American culture changed from the '50s to the '70s as told through music. However, nearly 50 years later, we have a couple of generations of music lovers without the first-hand knowledge of those events. Polyphonic gives us an explainer to make them clear. You can hear the original song in its entirety here. -via Digg
An investigation of a murder in 1934 in Indianapolis was fairly open-and-shut, since the police had plenty of information to go on. The hit man was offered an entire ten dollars, the majority of which he spent on a gun. That, however, was one of the more mundane details of this bizarre case.
At the center of our story is Gaylord V. Saunders, the pastor of a Methodist Episcopal church in Wabash, Indiana. As he entered his mid-thirties, Saunders, like so many people, had something of a mid-life crisis. His life felt empty. He needed a sense of meaning to his existence. He longed for excitement, emotional fulfillment, new challenges, a fresh road to travel. So, naturally, he moved to Indianapolis and enrolled in an embalming school. Unaccountably, his wife Neoma failed to heed the siren song of organ preservation and creating a remarkably lifelike appearance, so she and their children stayed behind in Wabash.
Saunders was found dead in his car, shot in the back of the head. Police talked to people who knew the clergyman, and quickly centered their attention on Theodore Mathers, one of Saunders' classmates. And then on Saunders' wife. And a few other people. In fact, folks seemed to be falling all over each other to confess everything they knew about the murder. While the investigation was strange in its simplicity, it was the murder trials that followed that went totally off the rails. Read the entire story of Gaylord Saunders' murder at Strange Company.
At reddit, this video was titled "Petting a VR cat," which set the viewer up to be horrified. That's not what this is at all. No, this is a demo for a virtual reality anatomy education program. With a move of a finger, you can disassemble this cute cat (which does not exist, really) into component parts such as its skeleton, circulatory system, and/or muscles. See an exploded view or even slice it. The virtual cat doesn't mind at all, I swear. You can download the Cat Explorer program from Leap Motion if you have Windows and a VR device.
Off and on from 1987 to 2010, on different networks, people tuned in to watch the weirdness that was Unsolved Mysteries. The show presented mysteries that ran the gamut of murders to Bigfoot sightings. At the end of the show, viewers would be encouraged to call a hotline to share any information they may have about the mystery. You can imagine that hundreds of callers with no connection whatsoever to the case would flood the lines with their opinions. According to an Unsolved Mysteries phone operator named Delilah, that was true, but she listened to each one because you never knew when a nugget of truth would come through.
She would get the callers insisting they knew who was really behind the Oklahoma City bombing, or asking for a segment on the conspiracy behind water fluoridation. UFO callers were the strangest (in a very competitive field), but still, it was her job to listen. When one call came in about Kecksburg (a famous UFO crash in Pennsylvania) ...
"At first, it sounded convincing. He was from around there as a kid, and had been told by a passing soldier that it was a secret satellite that fell. It seemed legit, and I began taking the info down. But he slowly began adding a detail here and there. About the certain project it might have been. About what it was there for. About mysterious happenings. When my supervisor came around, I was writing about how it was a program to destroy aliens. He said, 'Why are you writing this down?' [The caller] had so slowly built up to it I didn't notice."
But then in 2002, they did an episode about the Phoenix UFOs. Among all of the many calls declaring it the beginning of an alien invasion, Delilah got one from a guy claiming, in a rather convincing way, that it was a secret military project.
"I thought, 'Here we go,' but he introduced himself as someone from the military and explained that they were flares dropped during an exercise ... and told us to look into what the Maryland Air National Guard was up to that night."
It turned out that he was telling the truth. The mysterious lights were flares attached to balloons.
"It turns out it was an amazing tip, because it completely debunked the UFO, but we couldn't use it." Because the military had made no announcement to that effect, that caller got lumped in with the cranks.
Useful calls were overwhelmed by pranks, creeps, the unhinged, and people who just wanted to talk to someone, but quite a few real crimes were solved with help from callers. Read about the life of an Unsolved Mysteries operator at Cracked.
Before the 19th Amendment extended voting rights to women nationwide, several states already included women at the polls. Jeannette Rankin, born on this date in 1880, campaigned to get women to vote for her in the 1916 congressional race in Montana, although that wasn't the only reason she won. Rankin became the first woman in the United States Congress because she worked hard for the opportunity to improve the lives of the downtrodden. But the newspapers of the time treated her as they did any woman who rose above her station.
Rankin came in second in Montana’s at-large Congressional race, meaning she secured one of the two available seats. But in those days ballots were counted by hand, which took a long time. Montana newspapers—likely not taking her candidacy entirely seriously—initially reported that Rankin had lost. It wasn’t until three days later that the papers had to change their tune: Miss Rankin was headed to Congress.
Suddenly journalists across the country were clamoring to interview and photograph the nation’s first congresswoman. Photographers camped outside her house until Rankin had to issue a statement saying she was no longer allowing photos and would “not leave the house while there is a cameraman on the premises.” Before the election, Rankin’s team had sent The New York Times biographical material about their candidate, only to have the Times return it and run a mocking editorial urging Montanans to vote for Rankin because “if she is elected to Congress she will improve that body aesthetically, for she is said to be ‘tall, with a wealth of red hair.’” A month later, the paper was profiling her more seriously, reporting on her suffrage work and noting that she had “light brown hair—not red.” Of course, due to her gender, a profile on Rankin could not be limited to political topics. The Times also reported on her “Famous Lemon Pie,” and informed readers that “She dances well and makes her own hats, and sews.” Other newspapers took a similar tone.
Rankin's treatment by the press did not improve after she went to work in Washington, but that seems trivial compared with the insane views her congressional colleagues had on the role of women 100 years ago. Read how Rankin fought for peace, suffrage, and equality at Mental Floss.
Psychologists and anthropologists have long observed how children in Mexico and Guatemala help around the house. Not only do they begin doing household chores earlier than children in the US, they continue to do so as they grow up, and they don't have to be told to do so, or even asked to. They happily contribute their work on their own as a matter of course.
They help do the laundry, help cook meals, help wash dishes. And they often do chores without being told. No gold stars or tie-ins to allowances needed.
In one study, psychologist Barbara Rogoff and her colleagues interviewed moms in Guadalajara, Mexico, who had indigenous ancestry. The researchers asked the moms what their children, who were all between the ages of 6 and 8, do to help around the house and how often they do these tasks voluntarily.
The study — published in 2014 — contains some of the most remarkable quotes I have ever seen in a research article.
For example, one mother said her 8-year-old daughter comes home from school and declares: "Mom, I'm going to help you do everything." Then she "picks up the entire house, voluntarily," the study reported.
"Another time, the mom comes home from work, and she's really tired," says Rogoff of the University of California, Santa Cruz. "She just plops herself down on the couch. And the daughter, says, 'Mom you're really tired, but we need to clean up the house. How about I turn on the radio and I take care of the kitchen and you take care of the living room and we'll have it all cleaned up?' "
Volunteering to help is such an important trait in kids that Mexican families even have a term for it: acomedido.
Recent research reveals the cultural differences in childrearing practices that lead to acomedido. Read how Mexican families teach children the value of household chores at NPR. -via Digg
(Image credit: Adriana Zehbrauskas for NPR)
In the newest episode of Simon's Cat Logic, cartoonist Simon Tofield and veterinarian Nicky Treverrow talk about the possibility of a missing cat, and what to do when it happens. The worst part is not knowing whether your cat is injured, lost, taken by someone, turned in to the pound, stuck up a tree, or just plain ignoring you. The very best thing is to equip your cat with an identifying microchip, but you have to do that before he disappears.
Tofield also tells the story of how his black cat Teddy, who his cartoon cat is modeled after, got stuck up a tree a couple of years ago. You can read the full version of that story at his blog.
You can't produce, or even predict, lightning, but Hollywood keeps trying. A huge summertime hit, now known as a blockbuster, can make or break a film career. When studios have an idea they feel cannot go wrong, they are likely to sink tons of money into it, which only raises the stakes of success. In 2007, it seemed like a sequel to a huge hit would be a no-brainer ...but the producers were wrong.
Evan Almighty had a reported budget, before marketing, of $175 million, in 2007. That might not sound unusual now if you’re talking about a huge action movie with a handful of major stars to its name, but this was a sequel to a comedy about a man who was temporarily granted God’s powers. Bruce Almighty, the original film, made more than $480 million worldwide when it was released in 2003, but it starred Jim Carrey and Jennifer Aniston—two of the biggest stars in the world at the time—and cost just $81 million to produce. Bruce plays God, but the film isn’t exactly packed full of extravagant setpieces. For Evan Almighty, the studio decided to go bigger, much bigger, to the point that the film had the distinction of being the most expensive comedy ever produced at the time.
Steve Carell, who played Evan, was already an acclaimed comedy star, but he didn’t have Carrey’s proven box office draw. All of that, plus the massive costs of visual effects and live animals on the set, led to the film earning just under its reported budget at the box office. When you factor in promotional costs and the cut theatrical distributors take from a film’s earnings, that means the studio had to take a loss.
Other movies that were expected to be blockbusters (but weren't) include a few you may have never heard of, as well as some famous disasters such as Battlefield Earth and Ishtar. And then there are the movies in between, those you've heard about but didn't bother going to the theater for, in a list at Mental Floss.
A year ago, we told you about Grandpa Mason, an elderly feral tomcat that came into the care of TinyKittens in British Columbia. The cat was diagnosed with terminal kidney disease, but more than a year-and-a-half later, he is hanging on. Grandpa Mason doesn't like anyone, but he loves kittens, and nothing makes him happier than cuddling with baby cats. The rescue group put him to work fostering kittens, and that seems to have extended his life. We also told you about the three feral cats who gave birth to kittens under a livestream this spring. The nine kittens are now seven weeks old and Grandpa Mason plays with them while their mothers undergo medical treatment and spaying. He is in cat heaven.
In other kitten news, one of the kittens, Aura, was born with a cleft palate and had to be tube-fed around the clock. Tuesday, she ate her first solid food. She took that lesson too seriously, and later that day she bit through her milk feeding tube and swallowed 4.5 inches of it! A veterinarian retrieved the tube endoscopically, and she has recovered. You can read that story as it happened at Facebook.
You can still follow the kittens on their livestream.
We are so used to computer-generated imagery (CGI) in movies that it's hard to fathom that Star Wars (1977) had none at all ...at least until the "special edition" was produced later. Still, that movie set us on the road to modern moviemaking, as George Lucas founded Industrial Light & Magic to create special effects for his later movies. That company debuted CGI in the 1982 film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and the same year TRON featured an entire sequence made with CGI, animated one frame at a time.
Yet Jurassic Park stands out historically because it was the first time computer-generated graphics, and even characters, shared the screen with human actors, drawing the audience into the illusion that the dinosaurs’ world was real. Even back then, upon seeing the initial digital test shots, George Lucas was stunned: He’s often quoted as saying “it was like one of those moments in history, like the invention of the light bulb or the first telephone call … A major gap had been crossed and things were never going to be the same.”
Since then, computer graphics researchers have been working to constantly improve the realism of visual effects and have achieved great success, scholarly, commercial and artistic. Today, nearly every film contains computer-generated imagery: Explosions, tsunamis and even the wholesale destruction of cities are simulated, virtual characters replace human actors and detailed 3D models and green-screen backgrounds have replaced traditional sets.
Read about the great strides in CGI technology and filmmaking that came after the breakthrough of Jurassic Park at Smithsonian.
You read about world record stunts that are "retired," or proposed ideas that the Guinness Book of World Records rejects because they are dangerous, but somehow self-immolation is okay. Last month, 32 professional stunt people gathered in Cape Town, South Africa, and were all set on fire simultaneously. That broke the record for the most people performing full-body burns. The rules for this record said they had to remain on fire for 30 seconds. Organizers promoted the event as "some fun."
The fire-proof costumes and gel used were thoroughly tested before the official attempt and every person was shadowed by someone who monitored their safety and health both during and after the challenge.
The Guinness World Records attempt made for an impressive spectacle though, as the 32 flaming participants walked together in a line, lighting up the sky.
Once they were finished, they fell to the floor to be extinguished by their helper.
Prior to this, the record for the Most people performing full body burns stood at 21 and was achieved during an event at the Hotcards Burn in Cleveland, Ohio, USA on 19 October 2013.
The event was organized by Paradigm Shift Special Effects, which employs the stunt men and women. Sometimes you have to do weird things for work. -via Digg
PICKLE BULGES pic.twitter.com/FSmVKDTmeX
— Wheel Of Fortune Answers (@wofanswers) June 8, 2018
The TV game show Wheel of Fortune is like a fast-moving crossword puzzle where the audience is always a step ahead of the players onscreen. You can guess the answer before the wheel is spun, and you never have to skip a turn like the competitors do. But how often do you come up with a wrong answer that's funnier than the right answer?
OH SHIT A GHOST pic.twitter.com/lgmmftUiLF
— Wheel Of Fortune Answers (@wofanswers) June 5, 2018
The week-old Twitter account Wheel Of Fortune Answers is full of stuff like this. Some guesses are more plausible than others, and they don't always follow the rules, but the point is not to be right, but to be funny.
Before you scroll through the whole collection, be aware that the "answers" are often profane. -via Buzzfeed
One of the challenges of filming a skater is keeping up as he zips around. One solution is to mount a camera on a loyal and energetic dog! In this video, a dog named Fatman follows Rob Mathieson, Tom Snape, and Nick Jensen around a London skatepark. The result is a dog video and a skateboard video combined, which is a lot of fun. What's really impressive is the stabilization of the footage. See more of Fatman The Dog at his YouTube channel. -via Laughing Squid
