Mountains are usually measured by their height, but should height be measured from the center of the earth, from sea level (not possible on Mars), or from the surrounding terrain? Besides, a mountain's height is not its only quality. As a Yale mathematics and computer science student, Kai Xu wanted to measure the impressiveness of mountains, or their magnificence to the person looking at them. He came up with a metric that measures a quality he calls a mountain's "jut." It takes into account how steeply a mountain rises from the surrounding terrain, and other factors. 

The measure of jut has been gaining respect over the past few years. People are planning trips around a mountain's jut. You can see rankings of jut in this database. Strangely, Mount Everest doesn't rank high at all, although many of the highest rankings can be found in Nepal. You can explore the jut of mountains near you with this interactive map. 

Still, "magnificence" is in the eye of the beholder. A visitor's experience can be affected by many things, like the psychological experience of high altitude when viewing Everest. Mount Fuji is familiar, iconic, and beautiful, but it doesn't rank high in jut. Yet sightseers can find wonderful new places to visit by seeking out mountains with high jut rankings. -via Metafilter   

(Image credit: Drouyn Cambridge) 

Cats might not understand death the way humans do, but they sure understand when someone they love is not where they should be.

Maru graced us with his presence for 18 years, and then left us on September 6. When we announced his passing, Mary Ann 02 asked about his little sister Hana. Hana had lived with Maru for all of her 12 years, and felt his absence deeply. She and the youngest cat Miri are clinging to Maru's favorite objects and inhabiting the beds where he napped. So many people inquired about the younger cats that mugumogu posted this video update, with the story told in captions. 

A week after Maru died, mugumogu posted about Miri's 5th birthday party (in which a plate was prepared for Maru) and hinted that Miri may have seen a vision of Maru in attendance. A further update tells us that Hana is still looking for him. 

The Nazis who ran the Auschwitz concentration camp assembled a band from musically trained inmates to play lively marches every morning as they hurried other inmates off to work assignments. The 40 or so women, mostly teenagers, were also required to play concerts for the officers and guards and visiting dignitaries. Later on, they greeted incoming trains of prisoners with music to lull them into thinking this place might be so bad after all. But music by Jewish composers was forbidden, so they had to hide in their barracks to play Beethoven for their own enjoyment. 

Survivors of the camp had mixed feelings about the Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz. They were resented by the men's orchestras because they had to perform physical labor in addition to playing music. Some prisoners enjoyed the music as a respite from everything else around them. Some have traumatic responses to music because it was connected to the worst parts of their confinement. Surviving orchestra members also recall those days with mixed feelings, aware of their privilege and racked by survivor's guilt, while also acknowledging they had no choice in the matter. Read about the Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz in a book excerpt at LitHub. -via Nag on the Lake 

Canonically, the Riker Maneuver is a tactical maneuver completed in the movie Star Trek: Insurrection, which is the last of the Next Generation films. But in trekkie parlance, the Riker Maneuver refers to the way that Jonathan Frakes would swing his leg over a chair to sit down--a practice that the actor didn't know was notable until years after the end of the series.

In this AI-generated video by NetDystopiaMusic, Captain Picard summons Commander Riker to a private meeting in the captain's ready room to address complains about how members of the crew are experiencing these close encounters with Riker's masculinity.

-via Holodeck Four

West of Bakersfield is the town of Taft. It has a population of 8,546 people. It developed in the late 1800s and was known as Moron.

Stories vary as to how it got its name. Either the residents chose it on their own or the Southern Pacific Railroad decided to change its name from Moro to Moron so as to distinguish it from the town of Morro Bay.

Either way, Moron was at the center of the 1909 California oil boom. The next year, residents decided to change the name of the town to Taft in honor of then-President William Howard Taft.

-via Super Punch | Photo: LA Dork

If you watch the video before reading this description, it will be a lot more terrifying. Ulvi Ercan was paragliding at an altitude of 1100 meters (3600 feet) when he experienced a "60 percent asymmetrical collapse" which is terrifying, but he managed to recover. The point of view in the video is the camera he dropped. It spins and recovers over and over, but keeps filming the ground rushing up. Is this because the lens is the heaviest part of the camera? You can almost hear the camera go "Wheee!" when it's spinning and "Aaaah!" when its not. 

Luckily, the camera lands not on someone's head or on a boulder, but in a grassy area where an ant is somewhat surprised. Ercan checked his flight log to figure out the approximate location of the camera, then wandered around turning an app on and off to hear a beep and to find his GoPro. We assume the spunky little camera just kept recording until it was found. -via Born in Space 

Panic over consumer products that have been tampered with happens every once in a while. Every year, folks get concerned over Halloween candy, although the original panic was sparked by one incident of a father who attempted to kill his own kids (one died) in 1974. Then there were the Tylenol murders, a very real tampering case in 1982. So when a report of a couple who found a hypodermic needle inside a Pepsi can surfaced in 1993, it sparked a nationwide panic. 

After the case of the found needle made national headlines, around 300 other reports came in of needles or other foreign objects in Pepsi cans -and a few found in Coke cans, too. Over the course of the panic, Pepsi lost more than $50 million. The reports were thoroughly investigated by the FDA's Office of Criminal Investigations. In the end, the panic faded as fast as it arose. Read how that all played out at Mental Floss.  -via Strange Company 

(Image credit: Qirille) 

The 1997 monster movie Anaconda was about a documentary film crew in the Amazon looking for a legendary giant snake, which finds them instead. It was critically panned, but financially successful and spawned five sequels. The sixth movie in the series is somewhat of a remake, a comedy starring Paul Rudd and Jack Black. Also called Anaconda, the new movie sees Rudd and Black on a quest to remake the 1997 film, which was their childhood favorite, on location. They just can't see how history tends to repeat itself. 

I had no idea there were so many movies in the series already, but it's a bit of genius to keep the implausible monster while highlighting the cheesy plot points by making them into intentional comedy. The judicious use of "Baby Got Back" as a threatening background motif in the trailer is too clever by half. Anaconda opens nationwide on Christmas Day. -via Laughing Squid 

What is supposed to be a list of "12 Unforced Errors," is actually way more, since each item may contain a multitude of bad decisions. Each of them probably had their reasons at the time, but were profoundly regretted by someone after the fact. Burt Reynolds was an engaging comedic actor in the 1970s and '80s, with a lot of hit movies, but he could have been so much more. After his breakthrough role in Deliverance, he was offered the biggest roles in Hollywood. These included James Bond, R.P. in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Michael Corleone in The Godfather, and Han Solo in Star Wars. But he turned all those down. Bad decisions also involved studios that turned down movie projects that became classics for the thinnest of reasons, or no reason at all. Imagine greenlighting Howard the Duck after you passed on E.T.: The Extraterrestrial. Too much punctuation in the title? Read about these and plenty of other regrettable choices from Hollywood at Cracked. 

Open Reel Ensemble comically refers to their apparati as "traditional folk instruments." These are electronic instruments that involve pulling and releasing magnetic tape with bamboo rods. When accompanied by keyboards, the resulting techno music is mesmerizing and, I find, reminiscent of 70s-era science fiction. 

The band members do not restrict themselves to these bowed instruments. They also sing in front of live audiences. I don't know what this song is about, but I heard the words "America" and "San Francisco." This electronic piece has no vocals, but it does use the magnetic reels as turntables and percussion instruments. It's impressive how Open Reel Ensemble can find so many uses for these antiques.

-via David Thompson

When European colonizers settled in Africa, they heard tales of an animal in the Congo that was made out of parts of other animals. That matched a lot of medieval fantasy, in which many creatures were described to be pastiches of more familiar animals. They didn't see this animal themselves. The story just seemed so fantastic they called it the "African unicorn," and dismissed it as a myth. You know, "pics or it didn't happen." The myth grew and spread to Europe long before the okapi was ever observed by white men and therefore deemed to be "real." Locals knew better all along, but they weren't seen as credible.

Dr. Emily Zarka tells us the tale of the African unicorn, and goes into detail on the history of mythical animals, real animals, and the weird paths taken in studying unfamiliar creatures not native to one's own region. The same disbelief occurred for the platypus, the giant squid, and gorillas. Some of these zoological "discoveries" are pretty recent, so who knows how many other legendary mythical animals may be yet found and studied.

The 35th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony was held Thursday night by the magazine Annals of Improbable Research, at Boston University in Massachusetts. The awards honor and highlight research that may look ridiculous on the surface, but almost always has some underlying purpose in advancing the field of science. In other words, "Research that makes people laugh and then think." To be honest, many science studies are tiny parts of much bigger and more understandable projects. And even studies that don't lead to big breakthroughs all help to further our knowledge about the world. 

The theme for this year's ceremony was "Digestion." Indeed, many of the winning studies involved some form of digestion. The trophy, which is different every year, came in the shape of a stomach with happy and sad faces. A mini-opera titled The Plight of the Gastroenterologist was performed during the ceremony, and the five actual Nobel laureates present participated in non-singing roles. These Nobel laureates also read acceptance speeches by winners who could not attend. Continue reading for the winner's list.

Ball pits--a staple of indoor playgrounds--were invented in 1970 as a children's play area inside an Ikea store in Sweden. They became very popular, despite a reputation as being unhygenic. Adults may cringe at the bodily excretions that may be present in ball pits, but children don't know better or don't care.

One must be very careful to keep one's balls clean. It's not just good business; it's also good manners. Easyfun is one manufacturer of a ball cleaning machine that vigorously brushes, disinfects, and dries balls. They're sucked in through one tube and shot out the other. Although the process may take a few hours, it's a lot faster than cleaning balls by hand. You can see more images of this process at Core 77.

Historically, gravedigging has not been considered a respectable profession. Because of their association with death, gravediggers are sometimes thought to be at least ritually unclean if not physically dirty.

But it's a serious job that requires athleticism. Oddity Central reports that gravediggers from around the world assembled in Hungary to discover which of teams of two men could dig a complete grave the fastest and most precisely. A finished grave is 2 meters long, 0.8 meters wide, and 1.6 meters deep.

A Hungarian team won first place for the second year in a row. László Kiss and Robert Nagy completed their grave in 1 hour, 33 minutes, and 20 seconds.

Landon’s Animation Wheelhouse remade Back to the Future with computer animation, except it's wilder than you can imagine. Imagine those physics simulator traffic videos crossed with Grand Theft Auto starring our favorite time-traveling team.    

In this story, Doc drives like a maniac, so the Delorean's flux capacitor becomes damaged. They've lost the ability to pinpoint what date they are going to! Doc thinks he can fix it if he can get the part he needs, so he continues to drive like a maniac, causing massive mayhem on the roads. Along the way, they change history in ways that will make you laugh. It turns out that the Delorean is tough enough to endure a massive beating. Sure, it loses most of its exterior, but it continues to perform, unlike the real-life version of the automobile. And they do all this without dying. Don't think too much about it- it's just a cartoon. -via Geeks Are Sexy