The 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia was an account of the adventures of T.E. Lawrence in the Middle East during World War I. The movie, starring Peter O'Toole, Alec Guinness, Anthony Quinn, Omar Sharif, and a host of other big names, won seven Academy Awards and became a classic. While those who knew Lawrence (who died in 1935) and the events of the film quibbled about the movie's accuracy, most had to admit that even a nearly four-hour epic film could not tell the entire story. If you've ever seen Lawrence of Arabia, you'll want to learn more about the movie production. If not, you should watch it the first chance you get.
8. Alec Guinness was mistaken for the real Faisal.
The makeup and clothing he had to wear made many people mistake him for the real person quite often.
7. Peter O’Toole actually bled the first time he rode a camel.
He rode with jeans on and by the time he’d gone for any distance there was blood oozing out of his jeans.
This is a peculiar video that will affect Star Wars fans differently depending on whether they are gamers are not. YouTuber UndeadPathfinder_ recreated the final showdown between Luke Skywalker and Kylo Ren using the video game Star Wars Battlefront II. Those familiar with the limits of the game are quite impressed, as they know how difficult this project had to be. They particularly praise the work and skill shown in synching the dialogue to the characters.
Those who have never played Battlefront II get a different vibe, right into the uncanny valley. The voices say the characters are real, while the graphics say no. We can still appreciate the work that went into it. -via Geeks Are Sexy
The following is an article from The Annals of Improbable Research, now in all-pdf form. Get a subscription now for only $25 a year!
Strange Cases of This and That, From Here and There compiled by Stephen Drew, Improbable Research staff
The Schmarb Puzzle “The Strange Case of John Shmarb: An Aesthetic Puzzle,” Steven M. Cahn and L. Michael Griffel, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 34, no. 1, Autumn,1975, pp. 21-22. The authors, at the University of Vermont and the City University of New York, explain:
[Newspapers] reported that a grandson of a former student of Brahms, rummaging through an old family trunk, had unearthed some dusty pages that turned out to be an original Brahms manuscript: a fifth symphony completed just prior to the composer’s death in 1897. It had never been performed or published, and, in fact, Brahms seems never to have even mentioned it to anyone....
Incredibly, the Symphony had actually been the handiwork of a young American composer, John Shmarb, who had called a press conference to announce his achievement.... When asked why he had concocted such an elaborate hoax, young Shmarb replied: “For the last ten years publishers and critics and musicologists have been dismissing my work as inconsequential because they claimed all I did was copy nineteenth-century music. Well, I finally got fed up. They weren’t being fair to my music....”
Word soon followed that the Berlin Philharmonia had eliminated the Symphony from its re-cording schedule, that plans to publish the work had been abandoned at considerable cost to the publisher, and that all announced performances had been cancelled.
Jon Townsend (previously at Neatorama) cooks up a little macaroni and cheese from a recipe published in 1784. Along the way, we get a bit of history about the term "macaroni" in the sense that it was used in the song "Yankee Doodle." But that has nothing to do with food. This dish is pretty basic, and sounds delicious.
Several comments under the video asked where the nutmeg is. I had never heard of macaroni and cheese with nutmeg, but apparently there are a lot of recipes that call for it. I prefer onions and dry mustard. Townsends has a blog about historical recipes and food for historical reenactments, called Savoring the Past. -via reddit
The Academy Awards will be bestowed on deserving movies this Sunday night. There have been changes made to ensure that the ceremony won't turn out like it did last year, when the wrong envelope made its way to the stage and La La Land was announced as the winner of the Oscar for Best Picture. After the producers and cast ascended the stage, the mistake was discovered, and La La Land producer Jordan Horowitz interrupted producer Marc Platt's speech to announce that the real winner was Moonlight. The Best Picture award went to a deserving film, but Moonlight was cheated out of its moment in the sun because the snafu dominated the headlines -and social media. Horowitz's announcement became the news.
“It was palpable that people were still super confused,” Horowitz said. He knew that there was one thing left to do. So he put his left hand on his chest to brace himself, swiftly snatched away Beatty’s card, held it up, and said, “Moonlight. Best Picture.” That instant, he thought to himself, I hope the camera person knows what to do. Sure enough, 33 million viewers watching ABC’s telecast of the Academy Awards were treated to a close-up of the card, which indicated that Moonlight had indeed won Best Picture. “The camera person knew exactly what to do,” Horowitz said. After he displayed evidence that proved his claim, the producer continued, “Everybody was like, ‘Oh shit, this is real.’”
Evolution depends on random mutations to slowly change species, but the process gets a turbo-charged boost when related species interbreed. It happens more often than you might think- just ask the minority of your ancestors who are Neanderthal, although they wouldn't answer. A new study by evolutionary geneticists from several universities tells of findings from the sequenced genomes of woolly mammoths, a Columbian mammoth, straight-tusked elephants, American mastodons, and three living elephant species. What they found was clear evidence of interbreeding among extinct species, but not among living species.
For example, the researchers learned that the ancient Straight-tusked elephant—an extinct species that stomped around Europe between 780,000 and 50,000 years ago—was a hybrid species, with portions of its DNA being similar to an ancient African elephant, the Woolly Mammoth, and Forest elephants, the latter of which are still around today. They also uncovered further evidence to support the suggestion that two species of mammoths—the Columbian and Woolly Mammoths—interbred. This idea was first proposed by Poinar in 2011. Despite their different habitats and sizes, these creatures likely ran into each other near glacial boundaries and in more temperate regions of North America. Indeed, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that these ancient elephants frequently bumped into each other; for a time, mammoths had a territory that extended from modern-day Portugal and Spain all the way to the US East Coast.
Here's a cooking video that you'll enjoy watching all the way through even if you have no intention of ever making the recipe. Anne Reardon of How to Cook That manages to make individual-size apple custard pies with rainbow stripes on the crust!
Making the crust is the time-consuming part, but the finished product is quite impressive. If you want to give it a try, read the complete recipe with amounts (in weight, not volume). Meanwhile, I'm thinking about how I could use those rainbow discs for something else, like maybe the top crust of a regular size pie. -via Boing Boing
Do you ever feel like your life is some strange reality TV show that you have no control over? Did you think this way before you saw The Truman Show?
If not then you're probably just suffering frum Truman Show syndrome, which makes you question everything you see and hear because it might be part of some elaborate stage show starring you.
But, as this Hot Paper Comics strip shows, if you start to see strange stuff in the skies, like glitches in your perception of reality, and you've never seen The Truman Show then you may be the unwilling participant in a strange experiment...enjoy the rest of your weird life!
If sharks could talk they'd probably have lots to say about the humans who keep invading their waters, and even though some of them would say hateful things just as many would have nothing but good things to say about humanity. Of course, their compliments could be taken two ways- either they mean they like people figuratively, as in they enjoy the company of humans, or they could mean it literally, as in they enjoy the taste of our succulent flesh! Okay, so maybe we're better off not knowing what's on a shark's mind...
Add some aquatic fun to your geeky wardrobe with this JAAAWWWS t-shirt by AnishaCreations, it's a hilarious way to show love for your favorite sea creature and show the world how much they want to love us back!
Are you a professional illustrator or T-shirt designer? Let's chat! Sell your designs on the NeatoShop and get featured in front of tons of potential new fans on Neatorama!
It's a wet day in Davao City, Philippines, and this elderly man is at the market with his dog. Before taking off on his bike, he lovingly tends to the pooch, to make sure he stays dry all through the ride. The dog would probably be okay with getting wet, but he allows himself to be pampered, because he loves his man, too. Besides, neither of them wants to smell a wet dog. -via reddit
In the beginning the depth of an archaeologist's research was limited by how far they could dig, but 20th century technology, such as carbon dating and ground penetrating radar, helped advance the field to new lows.
And now light detection and ranging scanning (lidar) technology has led to an exciting discovery in western Mexico- an ancient "lost" city with as many buildings as Manhattan, built by the Aztec's rivals the Purépecha:
“To think that this massive city existed in the heartland of Mexico for all this time and nobody knew it was there is kind of amazing,” said Chris Fisher, an archaeologist at Colorado State University who is presenting the latest findings from the study at the conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Austin, Texas, this week.
While less well known than the Aztecs, the Purépecha were a major civilisation in central Mexico in the early 16th century, before Europeans arrived and wreaked havoc through war and disease. Purépecha cities included an imperial capital called Tzintzuntzan that lies on the edge of Lake Pátzcuaro in western Mexico, an area in which modern Purépecha communities still live.
Using lidar, researchers have found that the recently-discovered city, known as Angamuco, was more than double the size of Tzintzuntzan – although probably not as densely populated – extending over 26 km2 of ground that was covered by a lava flow thousands of years ago.
“That is a huge area with a lot of people and a lot of architectural foundations that are represented,” said Fisher. “If you do the maths, all of a sudden you are talking about 40,000 building foundations up there, which is [about] the same number of building foundations that are on the island of Manhattan.”
First found by researchers in 2007, archeologists initially attempted to explore Angamuco using a traditional “boots on the ground” approach, resulting in the discovery of about 1,500 architectural features over each square kilometre surveyed. But the team soon realised the rugged terrain meant it would take at least a decade to map the whole area.
Instead, since 2011 the lidar technique has been used to map a 35km2 area, revealing an astonishing array of features at high resolution, from pyramids and temples to road systems, garden areas for growing food and even ball courts.
So far more than 7,000 architectural features over a 4km2 area seen using lidar have been verified by the team on the ground, with excavations undertaken at seven locations to shed further light on the site.
"Any idiot that wants to make a couple of thousand drawings for a hundred feet of film is welcome to join the club." -Winsor McCay
Popular lore has it that the 1927 movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was the first animated feature film. That's not true at all, and how many came before that depends on how you define "feature film" and how you define "animated." Let's take a good look into the history of animation in film.
The Royal Ocean Film Society shows us the various milestones of early cartoons and how they became the most imaginative motion pictures ever. They had to admit one mistake -the photograph of Earl Hurd is actually one of Frank Thomas. -via Boing Boing
Japanese capsule hotels have such a specific interior layout that it's really hard to do anything with them when they go out of business, plus these days the hotel business is all about luxury and comfort, which makes capsule hotels an even harder sell.
Many owners choose to renovate the property rather than sell, and when hotel company Nine Hours decided to renovate their outdated capsule hotel they hired Jo Nagasaka's Schemata Architects, who transformed it into a warm, wooden oasis.
Since capsule hotels are stereotypically known for having saunas Schemata felt like including these beautiful wooden saunas on two of the eight floors would give the Do-C (or ℃) a classic feel while giving them the luxurious amenities they're looking for.
And since the capsules themselves had to stay Schemata used their original color scheme as inspiration for the entire place, going with a clean, natural wood feel throughout:
“The color of the existing capsules—an old-fashioned beige reminiscent of the retro design period—was rather difficult to handle,” the firm writes. “But we intentionally used it as a base color for the interior to eradicate the impression of the existing capsules.”
To complement the capsules, Schemata Architects filled the eight-story hotel with subtle finishes that bring out the warmth of the space. This meant installing plywood cabinetry and shelving, dark concrete floors, and clear FPR (fiber reinforced plastic) in specific areas of the hotel interior. The result is woodsy, yet industrial, providing visitors with a mix of clean lines and retro finishes.
You know Lupita Nyong’o from her roles in 12 Years a Slave, The Force Awakens, and most prominently in Black Panther. Her next project is producing a film based on the book Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah. Noah is the South African standup comic who took over as host of The Daily Show when Jon Stewart retired. Nyong’o will also have a starring role.
The movie has a lot to with apartheid as it was viewed in South Africa and will be seeing her take on the role of Patricia Nombuyiselo, the mother of Trevor Noah and one of the strongest women that’s ever been detailed in a book or a movie. The story goes that Trevor was born of a white man and a black woman, which was serious crime in South Africa when he was born. As apartheid didn’t end until 1990-91 and Noah was born in 1984, this created a lot of potential problems for Patricia and her son. Added to that was the fact that Noah’s stepfather was very abusive, which only made matters worse.
Most Emo kids are misunderstood by their parents, who see Emo as nothing but a moody phase they're going through, but Emo Dad feels their angst and totally gets what they're going through- because he's going through the same thing himself.
His approach to parenting is clearly "if you can't cheer them up then join them in their sulk", but for some strange reason his Emo son doesn't dig having an Emo Dad to share his guyliner with- go figure!
