This remix by the YouTuber known as There I Ruined It (previously) combined Sir Mix-A-Lot with Leonard Bernstein to produce this mess. It's not the first time that "Baby Got Back" has been given the classical treatment, far from it, but the world has room for one more such project. -via reddit

Cat owners know that they are the perfect pet, except for climbing the curtains, skewing the upholstery, waking you up early, and knocking everything into the floor from any elevated surface they can reach. Why do they do that? Are they jealous of any possessions their human might like? Are they doing it to piss us off? Or is it to exert dominance over their environment? The answer is simpler than any of that.

It shouldn’t surprise you to learn that cats knock stuff over because it’s fun. That’s it—that’s the whole explanation. If you want to stop it, you need to know why this particular hobby is so enjoyable so you can give your cats better, less destructive outlets for that energy.

An article at Lifehacker goes on to explain in detail why cats find it fun to knock your stuff to the floor, and more importantly, what you can do to stop this madness.  -Thanks, WTM!

Believe it or not, the song "Stairway to Heaven" is 50 years old. Led Zeppelin first played it in public in March of 1971, and the recording was released on their fourth album in November of that year. The song quickly became a prog-rock favorite but eventually was overplayed. As it was discovered by succeeding generations, that cycle continued over and over again for 50 years -so far. You could say that "Stairway" has everything -a ballad at one end and a rocking climax at the other, the hipness of a permanent album cut, a killer guitar solo, and lyrics that were just confusing enough to act as a Rorschach test: everyone interpreted them in their own way.

What if the lyrics to “Stairway” are so strange and convoluted because they’re actually meant to be played backwards? That was the theory of televangelist Paul Crouch, who decided in 1982 that the verse beginning around 4:19 (“If there’s a bustle …") offers a satanic message when played in reverse. This, according to Crouch, is the hidden message: “Here’s to my sweet Satan/The one whose little path would make me sad, whose power is Satan/He will give those with him 666/There was a little tool shed where he made us suffer, sad Satan.” In the book Hammer of the Gods, one of Zeppelin’s recording engineers offers this rebuttal: “Why would they want to spend so much studio time doing something so dumb?”

That's just one of 11 facts about "Stairway to Heaven" that you can read at Mental Floss. The last one makes it all worthwhile.  

Tyler recently bought a house in New York. One particular drawer in his kitchen would not open, but only because he had not solved a puzzle first. He had unknowingly purchased a carefully crafted lockbox with a hidden treasure inside.

-via Laughing Squid

This is exactly what it looks like. A raccoon in Toronto tore a hole in a roof and tried to enter the attic, where he no doubt thought he'd live the best week of his raccoon life. But his butt was too big for the hole. Yeah, he got stuck, rear end up.



The raccoon was there long enough for the homeowner to notice and call a pest control company. Liddle Rascals Wildlife Control Inc. responded and saw that this was a great opportunity for a video. The guy extracted the raccoon in one piece; the roof wasn't so lucky.  -via Digg

This magnificent piece of stained glass by Courtney Dickerson, suitable for any parlor, shows the villainous Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. We see carefully chosen colors of glass instead of tanned human skin. It has, sadly, already been sold to a buyer of refined taste.

-via Super Punch

Street artist Ivan Sery filled in a gap in a brick wall in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia with a brick of his own. Let's look closer.

Inside the gap is a little man who is gazing at the wonders of the vast universe. You can see more photos at Street Art Utopia.

Mozart's 1787 piece "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik" is only more enchanting when performed on a banjo. That's what master guitarist (and apparently banjoist) Luca Stricagnoli does here. He's perfectly dressed for the occasion, complete with a toothpick in his mouth.

I don't recognize the bowing implement he seems to use. What is it?

-via The Awesomer

Pamela and Sam Coffey had quite an adventure last week. They found something unusual while cleaning up their yard, a metal object with Japanese lettering engraved on it. She posted the story to Facebook.

Some of our yard is still somewhat unexplored due to overgrowth and part of it just being really steep. We've been cleaning it all up and have been finding some really odd things. This was today's find. Sam Coffey wanted to start cleaning the dirt out with sharp objects... on the off chance it's a real mortar shell, he let it be. Can anybody tell me more about this thing? Or who could?

Update: Bomb and arson squad just arrived and confirmed it to be a WW2 Japanese Navy mortar. There's a bomb robot on its way to retrieve it. Never a dull moment.

Never a dull moment, indeed. Experts determined that the World War II-era bomb was still live and could detonate at any moment! Read the rest of the story at NBC. -via TYWKIWDBI

(Image credit: Pamela Coffey)

Did you know that lapis lazuli once adorned great works of art from the past? The material has been associated with ‘cosmic wisdom,’ and it was once more precious than gold. From adorning King Tut’s coffin, and other ancient funeral items, to coloring the most expensive blue paint, the gemstone once ruled the hearts of artists and craftsmen: 

But in addition to being used on pharaoh's masks, scarabs and beads, it is rumored that pulverized lapis lazuli was the eyeshadow of choice for Cleopatra.

During the Crusades, lapis lazuli began making its way to Europe where it was also ground, but in this case for paint. It's "rarity and cost meant that it could be afforded for the creation of art works only by the richest of patrons," Roderick Conway Morris wrote in a 2015 piece for The New York Times.

During that medieval period, the pigment, a color named ultramarine, which means "beyond the sea," was "more precious than gold," Ravi Mangla wrote in The Paris Review. It was so special (and expensive), ultramarine was usually reserved for special commissions or parts of paintings like the Virgin Mary's robes.

Until the 19th century, lapis lazuli was the only game in town for "true blue" ultramarine. But in the 1820s, French chemist Jean-Baptiste Guimet created a synthetic alternative.

Image via How Stuff Works 

The Tropicalia is a conceptual greenhouse that will be built in Northern France by 2024. Designed by French firm Coldefy & Associates, the greenhouse will span over 215,000 square feet and will be covered by a huge 35-meter-tall dome. The Tropicalia will accommodate a diverse range of fauna and flora: 

The experience will be nothing less than that of an enchanted forest as visitors are led along a kilometer-long path where they pass by an 82-foot-high waterfall, an 82-foot-long “tactile pool” filled with koi carp, and an Olympic-sized pool filled with Amazonian fish, some even growing up to 3 meters in length! You can either choose to look at these fish through an aquarium-style glass surface or a platform and pontoon if you are feeling adventurous!

At this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale, you will be able to catch a glimpse of Tropicalia’s architecture, engineering systems, and sustainable air treatment engineering. It will also include the current state of the research on tropical fauna and flora, and how they benefit the ecosystem, the planet, and our health. Tropicalia’s exhibit wants to showcase how science provides ways of peaceful coexistence between man and nature as we move towards a sustainable future. Tropicalia is expected to attract 500,000 visitors per year when it opens and it is certainly on our bucketlist!

Image via Yanko Design 

George Upson has been painting on pavements to get potholes filled. The New Zealand resident understands the power of dick graffiti, as he managed to draw attention to local potholes in need of repair by drawing penises on them. AV Club has the details: 

Upson says he’s “spent about NZ$400 ($286 [USD]) on spray paint this year” and estimates that he’s tagged more than 100 holes to date (though some get shafted, receiving less eye-catching paint circles instead of cartoon dicks). Aside from helping drivers avoid the potholes, the graffiti tends to speed up road repairs when the media reports on the pictures.

The results of his penis praxis have inspired others across New Zealand to join in the practice, but Upson has also been in trouble with the police over his work. He says he’s cooperated when asked to provide formal statements even though he’s concerned about facing “potential charges” or possible jail time.

Image via AV Club 

In developing language, regular people use words for things that we can recognize and agree on, like what a “tree” is. Then scientists got involved and tried to identify and categorize every species of tree. And once genes began to be studied, scientists realized that trees are not all related to each other at any level, and maybe even our definition of what a tree is cannot be trusted.  

“Trees” are not a coherent phylogenetic category. On the evolutionary tree of plants, trees are regularly interspersed with things that are absolutely, 100% not trees. This means that, for instance, either:

The common ancestor of a maple and a mulberry tree was not a tree.
The common ancestor of a stinging nettle and a strawberry plant was a tree.
And this is true for most trees or non-trees that you can think of.

I thought I had a pretty good guess at this, but the situation is far worse than I could have imagined.

So, what is a tree? You might say it’s a plant made of wood, but our definition of wood is pretty muddy, too. It turns out that an awful lot of non-woody plants have genes to make wood, and could be trees if conditions are right. And it gets weirder from there. Read how nature keeps making trees out of other plants, and vice versa, at Eukaryote Writes Blog. -via Metafilter

Imagine finding a marble head of Rome’s first emperor while you’re doing renovations! Well, construction workers in Isernia, Italy, were surprised to find a long-lost portrait of Augustus, who ruled as the first Roman emperor from 27 B.C. to until his death in 14 A.D. The marble bust has remained relatively intact, as the Smithsonian details: 

Speaking with isNews, superintendent Dora Catalano and archaeologist Maria Diletta Colombo, both of whom are overseeing the new project, said that some locals had proposed supporting the historic walls with concrete pillars.

“We highlighted that the solution was not feasible, not in the least because the piling would have risked destroying the foundation of the walls and any traces of ancient presence in the area,” the pair explained, per Google Translate.

“Yes, it is really him, the emperor Augustus, found today during the excavation,” writes the Archaeological Superintendency of Molise in the statement, per a translation by ARTNews’ Claire Selvin. “Because behind the walls of a city [lies] its history, which cannot be pierced with a concrete [pillar].”

Per a separate report from isNews, Mayor Giacomo D’Apollonio announced that the rare artifact will remain in Isernia and eventually go on display in the nearby Museum of Santa Maria Delle Monache.

Image via the Smithsonian 

The remains of a Middle Stone Age child were discovered at the mouth of a Kenyan cave. The burial was composed of a cluster of 78,000-year-old bones of a child believed to have been between 2.5 and 3 years old when the child was buried. In addition to the bones, researchers have found historical artifacts such as beads and tools:  

When archaeologists found Mototo's highly decomposed remains, they couldn't immediately identify them as human. In a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature, researchers from Germany's Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and the National Museums of Kenya detail how they came to conclude, through microscopic analysis of the bones and the surrounding soil, that the skeleton in a cave's shallow circular pit belonged to a child who'd intentionally been laid to rest. 

"Deliberate burial of the dead is so far confined to just Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, setting us apart from all other ancient hominins, and any other animal," Nicole Boivin, an archaeological scientist and director of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, tells me. "Study of mortuary and burial practices gives us insight into the evolution of our own species, our thoughts, emotions and cosmological beliefs, and what it means to be human."  

Image via CNET