The flapper culture of the Roaring Twenties was a revolt against the restrictions women lived under before World War I. Young women flaunted their sense of freedom by associating with men unchaperoned, riding in cars, drinking, smoking, and most of all, dancing. Fashions were adapted to the idea of freedom- and the corset was the garment women most wanted to shed. As trendsetters trotted out new clothing forms, a new beauty ideal took hold.  

Lighter, shorter dresses became ever more fashionable after World War I, as did comfortable clothing and relaxed social mores. Restrictions on dating, dancing, and sex loosened. The cosmetic changes reflected changing opinions on femininity, and the person who most epitomized the new era was the corsetless, cosmetic-wearing, free-spirited flapper.

Yet other restrictions surfaced. Designers such as Coco Chanel popularized a slim silhouette. The bathroom scale (patented in 1916) became a household staple. Books, magazines, and the media began depicting fat as the result of insufficient willpower. While people have always dieted to fit their era’s beauty standards, the new female silhouette was a departure from previous buxom ideals. “Though the flapper image minimized breasts and hips, it radiated sensuality,” writes historian Margaret A. Lowe. The slender silhouette seemed modern. Female curves seemed old-fashioned.

So flappers tried all kinds of new diets, such as the Hollywood 18-Day Diet, but there were plenty of trendy plans to choose from. Read about the flappers' weight-loss regimens at Atlas Obscura.

(Image source: Library of Congress)

Charlie Eilhardt noticed a perfect example of a crash blossom in a headline in Thursday's Alameda Sun. You can just picture the City Manager and the District Attorney trying to walk around with their heads taped together, presumably with duct tape. What we have is two words in a row, "tapes" and "head," that are both used as either a noun or a verb, and figuring out which usage is meant depends on the context. What is really happening is that secret recordings will be given to the prosecutor. You can enlarge the picture to read the story here. -via Dave Barry

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Witness me! It appears that Marty McFly accelerated to 88 mph and his time machine ended up in a post-apocalyptic Australian wasteland. Where's the "undo" button? The residents of Fury Road will like his car, all shiny and chrome. Well, stainless steel, but you get the idea. There's no sound to this video, because it was initially uploaded as a gif at reddit. -via Digg

Airlines are always looking for ways to make a few cents more, but the most lucrative way to do that is to squeeze more passengers into each plane. We're at the point now where average-size people are uncomfortable in economy class, even for short flights. How much smaller can airplane seats get? Okay, since you asked... let me introduce you to the Skyrider 2.0. It braces passengers and gives them something to lean against while they stand through the flight. I am not kidding.

Engineered by Italian aerospace interior design company Aviointeriors and introduced at Hamburg’s Airplane Interiors Expo in earl April, the seat positions a willing passenger almost completely upright on a polyester saddle and back support. It seems well thought out, it’s reportedly very functional, and it even looks good.  But I’ll still never sit on one.

Airlines can stack these only 23 inches apart, which means in the future, we may have to board with a lot more fellow travelers. Read more about this abomination at FastCo Design.  -via Digg

(Image credit: Avio Interiors)

BBC2 is presenting a three-part documentary entitled My Year with the Tribe. One episode has already aired, and now British viewers are looking forward to the other two episodes, wondering where it could possible go from what was revealed already. The premise is that Will Millard went to Western Papua in Indonesia to spend an entire year living with the Korowai people. They are a primitive society that was untouched by the outside world until they were discovered in the 1970s. Millard knew there had been plenty of documentaries made in the years since, and his idea of spending a year in the rain forest was his way of doing something different. But when he traveled to the remote Korowai location, he got the impression that things were not as he expected.  

Even so, the penny didn’t really drop until the two men reached their destination, where another Korowai family were sitting naked in a treehouse. Initially, these neighbours gamely tried to pretend this was how they passed an average day. But once they realised that this particular day might go unpaid, the truth started to emerge. ‘This is not our home,’ pointed out a family member. ‘These houses were commissioned by Canadians for filming.’ ‘I was told we should be here with our clothes off,’ added one of the two wives.

Her husband, meanwhile, helpfully laid out the business plan of which this was a crucial part. ‘I lie around until there are guests,’ he told Millard. ‘And then I get naked and they photograph me.’ He also provided a handy price list, ranging from £5 for a basic photo to £50 for the full insect-grub hunt.

Read how Millard's idea went sideways at The Spectator. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Flickr user christian caron)

A log cabin is more than a sturdy shelter- it has become the symbol of the pioneering spirit of America. It wasn't always that way. Despite the pictures you've seen in history books, the earliest English settlers in America did not build log cabins. The structure arose out of necessity later on, because it was relatively easy to put together from available materials when you don't have a sawmill. A log cabin was a step up from a dugout or sod house. Still, log cabins did not have a great reputation, and were often considered a temporary shelter until a proper house could be built.  

Benjamin Franklin wrote that there were only two sorts of people, "those who are well dress'd and live comfortably in good houses," and those who "are poor, and dirty, and ragged and ignorant, and vicious and live in miserable cabins or garrets." Dr. Benjamin Rush, Surgeon General of the Middle Department of the Continental Army and a signatory to the Declaration of Independence, said the cabin dweller was “generally a man who has out-lived his credit or fortune in the cultivated parts."

As for cabins themselves, they were generally seen as “rude” and “miserable,” and no self-respecting American would deign to live in one. Not permanently, at least. Cabins back then were temporary stepping stones meant to be abandoned once something better could be afforded; barring that good fortune, they were to be covered with clapboard and added to as the cornerstone for a finer home.

The log cabin became the symbol it is today due to the way it illustrates the rise from a difficult life of poverty, as in Abraham Lincoln's story. But it wasn't because of Lincoln- it was an earlier political figure that make the log cabin an icon, in a story you can read at Mental Floss.

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Prince originally wrote "Nothing Compares 2 U" for his side project The Family. The song was purportedly about Susannah Melvoin. After the release of one album in 1984, the members of The Family were reorganized into Prince & The Revolution. The song was later a global hit for Sinéad O'Connor in 1990. To coincide with the two-year anniversary of Prince's death tomorrow, his estate has released the original studio recording, accompanied by video footage of Prince & The Revolution's rehearsal sessions from 1984.  -via Uproxx

You've probably been using the same deviled egg recipe your entire life; now its time to try something different! Tye Lombardi at the Necro Nom-nom-nomicon has a spicy, colorful recipe for pickled basilisk eggs. You will need:

6-8 basilisk eggs.
1 fireproof suit and gloves.
Large mirror
Blindfold

Oh, wait, that's the recipe for immortals. For the rest of us, it's a matter of pickling your eggs for a few days with brine colored with beet juice, then deviling the yolks with with wasabi and avocado filling. That's where the fuchsia and chartreuse color scheme comes from. Bone appetit!

Have you ever gone to a restaurant and immediately wanted to leave because it was so loud? Or you had a problem hearing the waiter? It's not your imagination- restaurants have been getting demonstrably louder over the past couple of decades. Changes in architecture, decor, and management have contributed to noise levels reaching the range that can damage your hearing. Some of the increase is on purpose, as proprietors want to create an ambiance of "buzz" and "energy," so they crank the music up. That only forces people to talk louder. Vox gives us five reasons restaurants are so noisy, and tips on what we can do it about it.

(Image credit: Flickr user Kyle Mahan)

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Jordan Watson gave us two lessons on the difference between Australia and New Zealand, because he is from New Zealand and people thought he was from Australia. He must have gotten some feedback from Americans -probably confused Americans. So now he brings us a lesson on the differences between the States and New Zealand, as if we needed that. But he is, as always, entertaining. I honestly saw "Howdy" coming a mile away, and then expected him to go from "chilly bin" to the "chili bun," which is a Southern US thing.  -via Tastefully Offensive

There are variety of possible reasons for the ancient practice of trepanation, or drilling holes in a person's skull, but whatever you call it, it was brain surgery. What is surprising is how good ancient practitioners were at it, and how similar trepanations were around the world. A new science paper may have a clue as to how that happened. In 1999, a 5,000-year old cow skull was unearthed at an archaeological dig in France. It had a hole in it. Researchers assumed the hole was a gore from another cow's horn, and put it away. A more recent examination shows that it was surgery.   

Physical analysis of the hole, which measures 64.5 mm long and 46.5 mm wide, shows no trace of fracturing or splintering, which means it wasn’t caused by a powerful blow, such as goring from another cow or a puncture inflicted by a stone tool. At the same time, the hole shows the characteristic signs of trepanation, namely a square-like shape and cut marks made around the gap. No marks exist on the skull to indicate that pressure was applied by an external force. This hole, the researchers argue, was cut—quite literally—with surgical precision.

The hole exhibits no sign of healing, which means the procedure was performed on a dead cow, or the cow did not survive the surgery.

This is the earliest concrete example we have of veterinary surgery, but we don't know the reason. It's possible, but unlikely, that they were trying to save the cow. Or, whether the cow was dead or alive going into the procedure, it could have been surgeons practicing for human trepanation. Read about the ancient cow surgery at Gizmodo.

(Image credit:  Fernando Ramirez Rozzi)

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We've seen before how people turned art into music by playing it through a midi program. John Keats did that with a map of the world, and the results are surprisingly pleasant. Well, maybe it shouldn't be too surprising, since a talented programmer/musician would adjust those pixels to avoid the most dissonant notes. But it's nice to see our world sounding this good!   

Keats' musical map of Europe is way more discordant, his musical map of Africa is more dramatic, and his musical map of France is experimental, since he used the sounds of different musical instruments. You can see more of Keats' musical midi maps at YouTube. -via b3ta

Image: Jiayi Jin

With a name like the "assassin bug," this little insect better has something really awesome to live up to the badass moniker.

And it does: in a research paper recently published in Nature Communications, entomologist Andrew Walker and colleagues at the University of Queensland, Australia, discovered that the assassin bug Pristhesancus plagipennis has not only one venom, but two distinct ones stored in separate glands.

“We wanted to see if assassin bugs had venom that was similar in composition to other venomous animals due to convergent evolution, or if the different feeding physiology would result in a different composition,” [Walker] said. And when their research began, essentially no one has looked at their venoms—”almost nothing was known about them.”

But what they found was much more surprising: the animals are equipped with two different venoms, which are made and stored in distinct compartments—a first for any venomous animal.

Christine Wilcox of Science Sushi has the intriguing story of the dual-venomed assassin bug.

According to Michael Pickard and Gurpreet Singh, the creators of "The Windmills of Your Mind" illusion, the dots of the windmill are always at constant speed and direction throughout the video clip.

So why did your mind see both clockwise and counter-clockwise movement? The answer, the two researchers at the University of Sunderland, United Kingdom, said, is that perceived direction is changed when the dot pitch is changed (by removing alternate dots or using alternate light and dark colors).

No place is safe from advertisement anymore - not even the restroom.

Mr.Friendly, a Dutch toilet company, has created a high-tech urinal with neat features like waterless/flushless function and anti-bacterial surface. But the unique feature here is the built-in display with an automatic sensor that'll play advertisement while you pee.