Located in Japan’s Toyama Prefecture (one of the country’s smaller prefectures which borders Ishikawa and Nagano) is Japan’s very own Swiss Alps — the Hida Mountains. Also known as the Northern Alps, the Hida Mountains boasts beautiful and elegant scenes, as well as the view that make you feel like you’re in the European Alps. 

So it’s the Alps, but in Japan.

Check out the photos by local photographer Yasuto Inagaki over at Spoon & Tamago. You can also follow him on Instagram and Twitter.

(Image Credit: Spoon & Tamago)

Ever since we were kids, we were always reminded by the people around us to brush our teeth, visit the dentist regularly, and floss (no, not the dance popularized by the backpack kid). We do these things to keep our mouth healthy, and oral health is said to be linked to the health of the whole body. Unfortunately, there are some of us who don’t floss and don’t visit the dentist regularly. Perhaps this study might change their mind.

Colorado State University microbiome researchers offer fresh evidence to support that conventional wisdom, by taking a close look at invisible communities of microbes that live in every mouth.

The oral microbiome - the sum total of microorganisms, including bacteria and fungi, that occupy the human mouth -- was the subject of a crowd-sourced, citizen science-driven study by Jessica Metcalf's research lab at CSU and Nicole Garneau's research team at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. Published in Scientific Reports, the study found, among other things, a correlation between people who did not visit the dentist regularly and increased presence of a pathogen that causes periodontal disease.

More details about this over at Science Daily.

(Image Credit: jambulboy/ Pixabay)

Do you love being a couch potato? Are you good at being a couch potato? Well, you might be the person that USDish needs. Right now, they are offering $1,000 for the person who will binge watch 15 hours of the mockumentary The Office. There’s a twist, however.

… As part of the coveted gig, you’ll need to take meticulous notes on the common tropes that occur in each episode.

For instance, how many times does Stanley roll his eyes at the camera? And how often does Phyllis talk about Bob Vance from Vance Refrigeration?

So if you think you can do the challenge, you can go apply now before March 16 (Monday), 5 PM, MST.

Via Geek.com

(Image Credit: USDish/ Geek.com)

Austin-based Vodka maker Tito’s Vodka has clarified on social media that their vodka cannot be used as hand sanitizer. Even if it’s handmade. Even if alcoholic beverages have alcohol, it doesn’t really sanitize! While it would be good for the company if people would keep buying their alcohol, the company had to set things straight, as Eater detailed: 

The confusion arises amid a shortage of hand sanitizer as concerned members of the public attempt to protect against the spread of the novel coronavirus. That lack of supply has led to price gouging for hand sanitizer online: a box of small Purell bottles that might sell for $10 typically are now listed for hundreds from secondary sellers on Amazon. It’s also led to DIY advice and online recipes for homemade hand sanitizers, most of which call for rubbing alcohol (99 percent alcohol by volume) plus aloe vera gel.

Tito’s, meanwhile, is actually just 40 percent alcohol by volume, not the 60 percent required to kill viruses. As Dallas Morning News reporter Dom DiFurio noted, the company will probably have to keep Tweeting ad nauseam while people on Twitter threaten to “get me a handle of @TitosVodka and make some hand sanitizer for my family.”

“Per the CDC, hand sanitizer needs to contain at least 60% alcohol by volume,” Tito’s writes soberly in reply after reply, attaching an explanation for added clarity.

image by Th1234

You know Kevin James from the TV series King of Queens, and some movies, too. Now he's taken to YouTube to bring us some blissfully short (most less than two minutes) comedy skits. Several of them have James in the role of a movie sound technician encountering job problems, like he hasn't read the script, as in the above video, or not getting any cooperation, as in this one.



Yeah, I figured they were so short, you may as well try out two of them. You can check out all his videos from the last two weeks at James' new YouTube channel. -via Metafilter

George Lucas and Steven Spielberg had dreams, some that they shared, and when they reached the point where they both had Hollywood clout, they could so any kind of film they wanted. So they designed a thrill ride that gave us Indiana Jones.  

“What we’re doing here, really, is designing a ride at Disneyland,” Spielberg kept telling his collaborators. Spielberg wanted Raiders to be less of a linear story and more of a series of increasingly giddy cliffhangers. Spielberg, Lucas, and Kasdan designed Indiana Jones to be a classical, mythic man of action, the kind of guy who steals the horse and launches himself after the truck without thinking twice about it. They succeeded wildly. Raving about Raiders, Roger Ebert wrote, “It’s actually more than a movie; it’s a catalog of adventure.”

They actually designed the action scenes first, then filled in a plot just to string those scenes together. Read how it happened at The A.V. Club.

Some people are never going to be happy. They take a vacation trip to a US National Park and then leave a one-star review. Artist Amber Share found some rather interesting one-star reviews on various public sites and used the complaints in them to illustrate park posters in her series Subpar Parks.   



See all the posters so far at Instagram, and read an interview with Share about them at Atlas Obscura.

So many sports evolved gradually from one form to another, but trampoline -both the apparatus and the sport- are the product of one man's imagination. That should be George Nissan, who was inspired by a 1930 visit to the circus as a teenager. When the aerialists dropped to the net below them, he saw them bounce and thought that would be fun ...if the bouncing could continue. Nissen's granddaughter Dian tells his story.

Nissen continued to pursue his dream in college, where he teamed with his gymnastics coach Larry Griswald to produce the first viable prototype in 1934 made with angle iron, canvas and inner tubes to give it that oh-so important bounce. The rubber parts were later replaced with metal springs for durability and strength.

The duo persisted with their invention by promoting its uses with children and athletes. As popularity soared, they started the Griswold-Nissen Trampoline & Tumbling Company in 1942. Griswold was dropped from the business name after the gymnastics coach later left the business to pursue a solo career in acrobatics, diving and entertainment.

“My father knew he was on to something,” Dian says. “He took it to a YMCA camp to try it out and the kids loved it. They wouldn’t even get off it to go to the pool.”

Read about the invention of the trampoline, and Nissen's other contributions to the sport at Smithsonian.

In the middle of Rome, there is a stone stairway leading from the Arx of Capitoline Hill down to the Roman Forum. These are called Scalae Gemoniae, and they were the site of many executions during the height of the Roman Empire, because the more public an execution is, the more it displays power to the masses.

Falling down a flight of stairs by itself was seldom fatal, so the condemned was usually strangled, then their lifeless bodies bound and thrown down the stairs. The bodies remained at the bottom of the stairs for a few days until they started to rot or were partially scavenged by dogs and vultures. When Lucius Sejanus’s body came tumbling down the stairs, the frenzied crowd themselves tore it to pieces. The corpses were then dragged off with a hook and thrown into the Tiber.

After Tiberius’s death in 37 AD, the practice of execution on the stairs became less frequent, although the stairs continued to be used in this fashion throughout the imperial period. One famous victim of the stairs was emperor Vitellius. During the brutal battle for Rome between Vitellius' forces and the armies of Vespasian, in 69 AD, Vitellius was dragged out of his hiding place and driven to the Gemonian stairs, where he was tortured to death. His body was then flung down the stairs where it was attacked by Rome’s residents. Indeed, getting executed and abused on the stairs was a matter of great shame and dishonor for the dead.

Read about Scalae Gemoniae, or the stairs of death, at Amusing Planet.  -via Strange Company

Although I prefer a good Port Salut, the judges at the World Cheese Contest in Wisconsin gave the top prize to a Swiss gruyere. The Associated Press reports:

The cheese from Bern, Switzerland made its maker, Michael Spycher of Mountain Dairy Fritzenhaus, a two-time winner. Spycher also won in 2008. [...]

The contest is the largest technical cheese, butter and yogurt competition in the world and started Tuesday in Madison with a record 3,667 entries.

The 55 judges taste, sniff and inspect the 132 classes of dairy products during the biennial contest. The judges include cheese graders, cheese buyers, dairy science professors, and researchers from 19 nations and 14 states.

-via Rod Dreher | Photo: Richard Allaway

According to legend, Saint Patrick drove all of the snakes out of Ireland. Nonetheless, one made it back into the country and bit a 22-year old man in western Ireland. It was a puff adder--one of the world's most venomous snakes--which the man decided to keep as a pet. The Irish Post describes this pet:

Considered one of the most aggressive and dangerous snakes of its kind, the puff adder carries a particularly venomous bite. 

Most commonly found in Morocco and Western Arabia, the species is responsible for more snakebite fatalities than any other African snake. 

Just one bite can lead to necrosis of the flesh and even death if left untreated. 

Forced to visit his local hospital, doctors treating the biten Dublin man got in touch with the National Reptile Zoo for help. 

Perhaps a hamster would be a better choice.

-via Instapundit | Photo: Nheyob

Sure, some people will say that this wondrous event was caused by plumbing problems. But I prefer to attribute it to divine intervention. UPI reports that water taps in the Italian village of Settecani began pouring out wine from the local winery:

Officials at the winery said technicians investigated and discovered a technical fault had caused wine to leak from a silo into water pipes.

The high pressure of the wine leak was enough to displace the water in the pipes, resulting in the spilled alcoholic beverage entering the water supply and the homes of nearby residents.

-via Dave Barry

When everyone was busy watching the sea cucumbers and urchins on the old time-lapse photos of the seafloor from cameras 2.5 miles below the ocean’s surface, a woman named Amanda Khan was, apparently, watching something else on the time-lapse photos — she was watching the sponge. And then, throughout the course of the video, the sponge suddenly changed size.

Kahn and her co-author Clark Pennelly, an atmospheric researcher at the University of Alberta, took a closer look at the images and found that several glass sponges, which stick up from the seafloor like tulips, seemed to contract and expand in a rhythmic pattern over time. The researchers saw similar movements from sputnik sponges, which periodically unfurled and retracted their "parasol-like" filaments in the surrounding water. "It's not yet known what the timing of those rhythms are or why they happen the way they do," Kahn added.

Apparently, the process is similar to why we sneeze.

More details about this over at Live Science.

(Video Credit: Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI)/ YouTube)

The brain is the command center of the human body. It is what makes us capable of breathing and controlling our limbs. It is also what makes our organs function properly. More than these things, our brain is the one responsible in handling complex processes — such as thought, emotions, and memories. The brain indeed is an amazing organ, and speaking of amazing, Neuroscience News gives us five amazing facts about the brain. One of these facts is our brains are always active.

Even when we’re sleeping, our brain is always active. It has to be to keep us alive. But different parts of the brain are responsible for different functions. The brain is divided into four pairs of lobes on each side of the head. The frontal lobes are located near the front of the head and the temporal lobes are just beneath them. The parietal lobes are located in the middle and the occipital lobes are at the back of the head.

Check out the other facts over at the site.

(Image Credit: TheDigitalArtist/ Pixabay)

For over a month, the Hacksmith team created their own version of Tesla’s Cybertruck, but with a twist: it was half the size of the original. It cost them “a lot of time, blood, sweat, and tears.” They tested the toughness of their half-scale Cybertruck by hitting it with a sledgehammer, which left no dents in the metal. They also hit the truck’s glass with a metal ball, and “not even a blemish” was made. (Perhaps the glass here is more durable than the original?)

After confirming the Cybertruck’s tougness, the Hacksmith team then tested the truck’s strength by making it compete against other vehicles in a game of tug of war.

Can it win against a Ford F-150? Watch the video to find out.

Via Futurism

(Video Credit: the Hacksmith/ YouTube)