Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem perform the 1977 hit song by Electric Light Orchestra for the Dear Earth special that premiered Saturday. In this video, Zoot gets the vocal honors, and even uses a talk box to recreate the original sound. The band is joined by a field of flowers, which would sound weird if this were anyone else but the Muppets. -via Boing Boing 

Norsonic Nor277 tapping machine for generating footstep sounds for building sound transmission testing. pic.twitter.com/SQdx1yFd3T

— MachinePix (@MachinePix) October 24, 2021

*slaps fender*

Yessir, this here is a top-of-the-line tapping machine. Barely any taps on it. The previous owner would just use it to tap a few beats on Sunday. You’ve picked the best bargain on the lot.

Why do you need a tapping machine? And, specifically, why do you need the Nor277 tapping machine? Because you need to test the acoustics of an area using a realistic simulation of footfalls with hard-soled shoes. It’s equipped with 5 tapping hammers tapping up to 10 taps per second. It weighs only 22 pounds and can be run from a battery for the off-road adventures that you’re so fond of.

The price? Step into my office. Let’s make a deal.

-via @lazerwalker

When Robert Baden-Powell founded the scouting movement in the early years of the Twentieth Century, it was directly inspired by his military career and the sense that some paramilitary training was proper for patriotic British boys.

This martial flavor is especially evident in the movement’s early literature, such as this 1925 instruction manual that teaches scouts in the tasks necessary to earn the master-at-arms badge. The first section addresses the use of the saber, while using wooden sticks as training implements. Next is the quarterstaff, which is a useful choice, as the most accessible of improvised weapons is surely a broomstick. Leaving aside the weapons, the scouts then train in the basics of boxing, ju-jitsu, and wrestling. The result is a well-rounded combatant.

-via reddit

An obscure scholar decodes some hints from the Bible and believes he's discovered the location of Solomon's treasure and the Ark of the Covenant. He assembles a diverse crew from various nations, people who have varied goals such as knowledge, fame, fortune, adventure, and the hand of a beautiful woman. They set off to Jerusalem, which was under the rule of the Ottoman Empire at the time. Through bribes, they obtain permits to dig for artifacts. Eventually, they begin to dig underneath an extremely sacred site- the Dome of the Rock, built over the site of the Hebrew Temple of Jerusalem. As their permit is about to expire, they get careless, and are spotted by outraged Muslims. They escape, leaving an international incident in their wake.

You might recognize the story as very close to the plot of the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark. There are differences: no Nazis were there in 1909, they did not find the Ark, and the story is completely true. The expedition was led by Captain Montagu Brownlow Parker of Britain, and you can read about the secret excavation of Jerusalem at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: pop culture geek)

Many navies maintain large sailing vessels in order to train naval officer cadets how to travel the seas the old fashioned way. Although the US Navy doesn’t, the US Coast Guard has an impressive three-masted barque for this purpose. Ecuador’s Guayas is a similarly built and equipped vessel. Such training vessels rarely engage in combat or even maritime law enforcement.*

Nonetheless, the cadets of the Ecuadorian Navy answered the call intrepidly when it fell to their ship to intercept a customized drug-smuggling vessel. The US Naval Institute news service describes the smugglers’ vessel as a low-profile boat painted gray and packed with potentially tons of cocaine. The crew of the Guayas captured it with their utility boat.

-via Super Punch | Photos: Ecuadorian Navy

*Though, you’d like to read about such a foray in fiction, consider S.M. Stirling’s excellent Nantucket trilogy in which the USCGC Eagle is transported back in time.

It’s the spooky season, and folks from the History Center of Olmsted County in Minnesota have announced the opening of this year’s creepy doll contest, a terrifying yet season-appropriate pageant. Multiple cursed dolls of different designs are now displayed at the center for appreciation (and nightmare fodder, let’s get real). Check out more photos of the dolls here! 

Image credit: History Center of Olmsted County

Rick Garza came up with the idea of painting a set of doors in Pilsen, Chicago with images inspired by Loteria, a classic Mexican game. One of the nine doors features a painting of a ladder that accompanies the card La Escalera, which can be seen in the game. Other doors show a creative spin on other classic Loteria images. Garza started and funded the project in 2017 in order to combat the graffiti and gang activity in the neighborhood.  “It was mostly to combat gang graffiti, which was a problem on our doors,” Garza said. “The gangbanging culture was so thick. It was just a detriment to all the young people in the community,” he said.

Image credit: Maggie Sivit / WBEZ

Récita architecture has designed a three-story home in Dallet, France -- and it certainly pops out in the countryside! The dwelling features a slender silhouette, and black paint finish all over, which makes it detached from the suburban buildings near it. According to the architects, the design choices made for the home are deliberate, making ‘the house look like an isolated object and give rise to an immediate experience in the landscape.’ Learn more about the unique home here. 

Image credit: Récita architecture

No, it’s not Pokemon in real life, sorry.

I wish those Pocket Monsters existed in real life too, but for now, all we can do is name new species after them. This is what a professor has done upon discovering three new species of beetles in Australia. Dr. Darren Pollock and Yun Hsiao collaborated on a paper to document the beetle discovery, with Ph.D. student Yun suggesting to name the beetles after  Articuno, Moltres, and Zapdos.

Image credit: Dr. Darren Pollock/Yun Hsiao.

A bus station in Brazil has opened its doors for stray dogs to come inside during the winter season. Employees at the Barreirinha bus terminal created a space where these puppers can make themselves warm and cozy. Aside from setting out beds and blankets, the employees have also managed to provide food and water for the dogs. 

Image via Aubtu

You've read about the Japanese delicacy fugu, which is a pufferfish or blowfish that contains deadly toxins. Why would anyone want to eat that? Those who know say it's quite delicious. Chefs who prepare fugu must be certified after years of training in butchering the fish, to avoid serving the poisonous parts along with the flesh that is relatively toxin-free. That makes us curious about which parts are which. Now you can learn those parts with the 3D Fugu Japanese Blowfish Dissection Puzzle.

The plastic fish comes in 34 parts that you can take apart and reassemble. The toxic organs are red, marked with a skull. While playing with the toy does not qualify you to prepare fugu, it comes with a kawaii certificate you can award yourself when you successfully dissect and reassemble the fish. See more of the fugu puzzle at Book of Joe. -via Nag on the Lake

(Top image credit: Flickr user jim)

Filmmakers Michael Reich and Mike Pinkney use marionettes to illustrate the dangers of driving while high. A Puff Before Dying is a spoof of road-safety PSAs, in which three teenage girls head to a party and smoke marijuana. They hallucinate some really cool stuff, but before long we find out how easy it is to portray graphic carnage with puppets.  

While it is satire, this film is listed as a PSA at the National Road Safety Foundation website. It made the rounds of summer film festivals before landing in classrooms. Read more about A Puff Before Dying at Short of the Week.

Consider where James Bond, agent 007, has been. His occupation as a secret agent for MI6 takes him to exotic locations all over the world, often at the drop of a hat. We plebeians know that international travel takes extensive planning, often including health checks and vaccines to obtain visas and tips for avoiding illness. Bond doesn't have time for any of that.

A scientific paper in the journal Travel Medicine and Infectious Disease takes an in-depth look at the dangers Bond confronts as he travels the world, kills people, and beds numerous women. The evidence is gleaned from 25 Eon-produced films from 1962 to 2021, in which Bond goes to 47 identifiable countries on 86 trips. They consider food safety, sexual health, airborne diseases, arthropod-borne diseases, and tropical diseases. From the introduction:

We uncovered above-average sexual activity, often without sufficient time for an exchange of sexual history, with a remarkably high mortality among Bond's sexual partners (27.1; 95% confidence interval 16.4–40.3). Given how inopportune a bout of diarrhea would be in the midst of world-saving action, it is striking that Bond is seen washing his hands on only two occasions, despite numerous exposures to foodborne pathogens. We hypothesize that his foolhardy courage, sometimes purposefully eliciting life-threatening situations, might even be a consequence of Toxoplasmosis. Bond's approach to vector-borne diseases and neglected tropical diseases is erratic, sometimes following travel advice to the letter, but more often dwelling on the side of complete ignorance. Given the limited time Bond receives to prepare for missions, we urgently ask his employer MI6 to take its responsibility seriously. We only live once.

The three authors of the paper "wasted their evening hours examining the films" which totaled 3113 minutes per author. You can read the entire paper at ScienceDirect. -via Metafilter 

Look at these monster s'mores! Sure they are cute, and you can tell just by looking that they are extremely sweet, too. They're made with cut-up marshmallows, heated up in the oven. The pupils are chocolate chips.

You might have thought that s'mores were a campfire treat, since the marshmallows must be properly toasted. My youngest kid started toasting them over the gas stove with a wire coat hanger as soon as we put out the bonfire when she got her first taste of them. In the case of these monster s'mores, they are toasted in a broiler oven to make sure they don't wander off their chocolate bed.

Click to the right on the above image to get the full instructions for these Halloween treats by Jodi Levine for the New York Times. The messiest part would be cutting the marshmallows with kitchen shears, but compared to the mess of eating s'mores made around a campfire, that's nothing.  -via Everlasting Blort

Communities on the island of La Palma in the Canary Islands have been evacuated one by one as lava flowing from a volcanic eruption engulfs them. Small drones have been recording the carnage. One such surveillance flight revealed that four dogs were left behind at a home in an evacuated area. Confined to a fenced-in area, they looked to be starving. Drones were sent in to drop food and water, but the situation looked hopeless for the canines. An animal rights group looked into the possibility of rescue, but there was no way to approach the home. So they turned to Aerocamaras, a company that uses large drones that can carry up to 50 pounds per flight. It was an ambitious plan, using remote-control nets to capture the dogs and airlift them, and it had never been done before.

However, when the Aerocamaras drones set off to get the dogs, they found none! Who had taken the dogs, and how did they get there? The rescuers had left a note on a large banner, but the drone operators did not see it as the wind had blown the fabric over. The note was revealed in a video that was posted to YouTube yesterday. It showed the banner at the house, a message spray painted in red indicating that the dogs had been rescued by "The A Team." The theme music from the '80s TV series was used in the video. The animal advocacy group that enlisted Aerocamaras received a message along with the video, thanking them for their efforts. There's no word yet on who the A team is, how they did it, or where the dogs are, but the pets are no longer surrounded by lava. Read the story and see the video at NPR. -via Digg