Kazuhiro Sekino is the 39-year-old pastor at the Tokyo Lutheran Church, located within walking distance of Kabukicho, Japan’s most notorious red-light district. Sekino is not your typical pastor. With his leather jacket and long hair, Sekino delivers his sermons while grooving on his electric bass. The electric bass is his helpful tool in spreading the good word, as The Japan Times details: 

Sekino’s method of delivering God’s message may be unconventional, but he believes it’s a useful tool in reaching more people in a nation where Buddhists far outnumber Christians. According to the Agency for Cultural Affairs, there were approximately 1.91 million Christians in Japan as of 2016. That’s compared to 87.7 million who considered themselves Buddhists and 84.7 million who affiliated themselves with Shinto.

The casual and unorthodox approach in teaching the Gospel may also be one reason why strangers feel compelled to visit his church.

“People who are struggling or suffering from sickness seem to have a special sensor or a sixth sense that guides them toward me,” says Sekino, who, in October, published “Kami no Shukufuku o Anata ni: Kabukicho no Ura kara Goddoburesu!” (“God Bless You: God bless from the back streets of Kabukicho”) a book about the interesting personalities that found their way to his church. He describes a Filipino hostess who asked Sekino to host a funeral for her dead colleague, an African asylum seeker who came begging for money and a lonely drunk who wandered in during the Christmas season and left a jar of “one-cup” sake as a gift.

image via The Japan Times

Black bears apparently know when it's trash day in particular neighborhoods, so this 400-pounder decided to stroll down from the mountains and see what tasty treats could be found.

In the incredibly unlikely event that this happened in my neighborhood, I'd run inside my home and call the police. And I wouldn't leave until wildlife officials or law enforcement had secured the beast.

But these people see a wild bear roaming about unrestrained and think, "It's selfie time!"

Perhaps Californians are made of sterner stuff.

Anyway, wildlife officials tranquilized and relocated the bear from the Monrovia neighborhood. Then, the next day, a different black bear went for a jaunt through the same neighborhood!

In this photo, Lady Bird Johnson (1912-2007) sports an impressive bouffant. Big hair styles were popular in the United States during the 1950s-70s, so the First Lady's hair is not out of the ordinary.

But when, precisely, did big hairstyles reach their zenith in American fashions? Elle O'Brien, an AI researcher for Botnik Studios, and Jan Diehm, an engineer and journalist, crunched the numbers from 30,000 American high school yearbook photos.

At The Pudding, O'Brien and Diehm present an interactive chart showing the growth and shinkage of hairstyles for both men and women over time, as well as a decade-by-decade summary of the most common hairstyles for both sexes.

-via Marginal Revolution

We will probably never know exactly how many people Jane Toppan killed in the latter half of the 19th century. She was a trained and popular nurse, always very attentive to her patient's needs. However, many of her patients died. They were elderly and in pain, and most readily took the lethal doses of medicine Toppan gave them. It was difficult to prove that was murder, so she more often got fired instead.

Toppan was dismissed from Massachusetts General in 1887, yet she received a recommendation to Cambridge Hospital. However, she was dismissed from Cambridge shortly thereafter too, for similar complaints. She left Cambridge Hospital the same way she left Massachusetts General, without her nursing certification.

When she was later asked about her loss of credentials, she told the Boston Daily Journal: “I don’t care. I can make more money and have an easier time by hiring myself out.” And with her unflagging self-assurance, she did that.

Toppan served in many homes as a full-time direct-care nurse, and when she tired of caring for her fussy, elderly patients, she overdosed them, first on morphine and then atropine, drugs with counteracting symptoms that helped her experimentations go undetected. She revealed in her confession that she did not do this quickly, but rather she savored the power of pushing her victims to the brink of death and then bringing them back to life, all the while observing the effects.

In addition to her patients, Toppan killed her foster sister, her landlord, and all of her landlord's family. Read about Toppan's murderous career, including an account from a survivor and Toppan's own remarks, at Narratively. -via Damn Interesting

It's a common joke on English usage: Why do we drive on parkways and park on driveways? Leave it to the guys from Today I Found Out to take the question seriously and do the research to answer it. Simon Whistler explains where those various words came from.

The cat obviously can’t pass through its designated door. Watch as the cat tries to get through, but with the dog’s head clearly blocking the door, it’s time for the cat to move to another place. Maybe there’s another cat door somewhere in the house that isn’t blocked by a dog. 

(Via Digg) 

image screenshot via Digg

Gary DeNoiva has shared his story of dating a ghost named Lisa. The 35-year-old has been dating the ghost for almost three years. They “met” when DeNoiva was eating out alone, with the ghost coming up to him and suggesting the risotto. DeNoiva revealed that they also have a fun ritual on Valentines Day, as Oddee detailed: 

We both think that going out on Valentine’s Day is overpriced and overrated. We have a tradition. The night we make popcorn and ice cream sundaes.”

“Then we watch our favorite movie, which ironically is Ghost. I know… we’re so corny. We can’t help it. Afterward, we make love on a bed of roses. The roses stay on the bed when we go to sleep, so we wake up to the smell of flowers. This year we’re getting kinky. We’re going to have our first threesome. Lisa has recently befriended a female spirit and I thought it would be fun to bring her over and spice things up. I’ve never had one before. Not even with two living women. I’m a little nervous, so needless to say there will be a lot of wine involved to loosen me up. Her only rule is she doesn’t want me kissing her friend Sadie, which I am totally okay with.”

DeNoiva also told Daily Star Online about things he does for her during the day. “I make her breakfast in bed. French toast is her favorite. I also leave notes hidden throughout our apartment for her to find while I’m at work. Romantic things, inside jokes, naughty talk. Basically, anything that will make her smile.”

image via Oddee

Sunday marks the 75th anniversary of the flag-raising on Iwo Jima, a moment captured by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal during the battle on that island in the Pacific. It has been called the most-copied photograph ever, and you'll find few Americans who are not familiar with it- it even inspired the Marine Corps War Memorial. For many, it sums up the entirety of World War II. But in 1945, it was received a bit differently.  

Such flag-raising images routinely appeared in newspaper coverage of island battles such as Tarawa, Guam and Leyte. The newsreels that millions of American moviegoers watched each week also used footage of flag-raisings to punctuate their reports (for example, those depicting the U.S. capture of Peleliu and Kwajalein). The expectation of a triumphant flag planting was so well-ingrained by February 1945 that Dorman Smith’s syndicated editorial cartoon, appearing in newspapers across the country just a few days before Rosenthal’s photograph, depicted a pair of hands jamming an American flag into a rock labeled “Iwo Jima.”

This was a home front, in other words, that was quite used to images of flag-raisings. One might even say that the American people, rather than being shocked by Rosenthal’s image (as many writers have suggested), actually anticipated it.

Besides that, the actual photo was taken a couple of months before that battle was won! Read the story of the iconic photograph in its historical context at Time. -Thanks, Jim Kimble!

(Image credit: Joe Rosenthal/National Archives) 

We humans are political beings. We associate ourselves with people we believe we can trust, and people who do the same things as us. We also create laws to establish order within our society. But can we say the same for ants? Are they political beings as well? According to this study, they most likely are.

Ants may be tiny critters with tiny brains, but these social insects are capable of collectively organizing themselves into a highly efficient community to ensure the colony survives. And it seems that the social dynamics of how division of labor emerges in an ant colony is similar to how political polarization develops in human social networks, according to a recent paper in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.

"Our findings suggest that division of labor and political polarization—two social phenomena not typically considered together—may actually be driven by the same process," said co-author Chris Tokita, a graduate student in ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton University. "Division of labor is seen as a benefit to societies, while political polarization usually isn't, but we found that the same dynamics could theoretically give rise to them both."

Check out the study over at Ars Technica.

(Image Credit: Tworkowsky/ Pixabay)

Have you ever had something important that you should not forget about it? What do you do to always remember it? Do you engrave it in your mind? Or do you make a note about it? Most likely you’ll do the latter. After all, we are forgetful beings, and so we make external memory aids to help us remember important things. For Art Markman, however, this kind of practice comes at a cost.

It takes time to write out a note (or to put my keys in the refrigerator). It takes organization to make sure that notes you keep are available when you need them.

An interesting question is whether people are good at determining when they should use an external memory aid. That is, do they weigh the costs of using an aid against the benefits in a way that takes into account their actual likelihood of being wrong?

Check out more details about the study over at Psychology Today.

(Image Credit: RitaE/ Pixabay)

1999. It was radiologist Nicola Strickland’s first day at the Carribean island of Tobago. It was her first morning on the peaceful island, and she went foraging for shells and corals in the white sand. What she thought was a beautiful day, however, turned out to be really ugly because of this fruit.

Scattered amongst the coconuts and mangoes on the beach, Strickland and her friend found some sweet-smelling green fruit that looked much like small crabapples.

Sounds harmless, doesn’t it? But as the two women took a bite of the strange fruit they just found, they went through a situation that they most likely won’t forget. Thankfully, they lived to tell the tale.

Within moments the pleasantly sweet flavour was overwhelmed by a peppery, burning feeling and an excruciating tightness in the throat that gradually got so bad, the women could barely swallow.

What seemed to be a sweet-smelling fruit turned out to be the fruit of the manchineel tree, also known as “beach apple” or “poison guava”, and arbol de la muerte — “the tree of death” — in Spanish. The Guinness World Records lists it as the most dangerous tree in the world.

As explained by the Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, all parts of manchineel are extremely poisonous, and "interaction with and ingestion of any part of this tree may be lethal".

Learn more details about this deadly tree over at Science Alert.

(Image Credit: Dick Culbert/ Flickr)

A robot named Scribit sketches out a lotus with designs on each petal on a wall. It does this beautiful masterpiece for six hours. As soon as it is completed, however, the robot does the unthinkable: it erases the image it just made, leaving no trace of the artwork behind.

In reality, however, the practice of drawing something and erasing it does exist in real life. This practice is called mandala.

These complex patterns are meant to reflect the visions that monks see while meditating about virtues such as compassion, wisdom, and more, says Tenzin Priyadarshi, a Buddhist monk and the CEO of the Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at MIT...

Traditional mandalas are sketched out by hand and then painstakingly filled with colored sand. Once the mandala is complete, it is destroyed, symbolizing the transience of beauty and existence. Scribit, however, isn’t so delicate, and relies on pre-programmed images. There is no sand, no meticulous sketching, no fear that the mandala could be destroyed any second. There’s also the physical relief. “It was easier on my back than creating these intricate mandalas,” Priyadarshi says of the traditional 50-hour process.

But getting a robot to sketch a design on the wall seems counterproductive. Isn’t it cheating?

Priyadarshi states that this is not cheating. Find out why over at Technology Review.

What are your thoughts about this one?

(Video Credit: Scribit-design/ YouTube)

They stand tall and proud in the high grasslands of the Earth, across northern India, China, and Nepal. They are known for their long snouts and low-pitched calls. They are the Himalayan wolves. But what makes them an interesting subject of study? It is their genes which are very distinct from gray wolves — genes that help them breathe through thin air above 4000 meters.

Himalayan wolves live at higher altitudes than grays, which range across eastern China, Mongolia, and Kyrgyzstan, and their habits are different, too. Whereas gray wolves primarily eat rodents, Himalayan wolves add the occasional Tibetan gazelle to the mix. And Himalayans howl their own tune, with cries of a shorter duration and lower frequency than those of grays.

… Analysis showed that, unlike gray wolves, Himalayans carry specialized genes that help them overcome a lack of oxygen, including ones that strengthen the heart and boost the delivery of oxygen through the blood.

Calls to recognize the Himalayan wolf as a different species have been made in the past, and now this finding supports that call.

(Image Credit: Geraldine Werhahn/ Himalayan Wolves Project)

Bas Timmer is a 29-year old fashion designer from the Netherlands who created the Sheltersuit, a warm, water and windproof jacket for homeless people. The Sheltersuit also doubles as a sleeping bag, and can be easily carried around. Timmer is now in America to convince the fashion industry to donate to homeless people, as Mashable details: 

For the past three weeks, Timmer has been in America in an effort to expand his organization (called Sheltersuit Foundation in the Netherlands) here. He wants the fashion industry to take notice and intentionally handed out suits in New York City to homeless people during New York's Fashion Week from Feb. 6 to 13. Timmer hopes this will push clothing companies to donate their materials waste to Sheltersuit and other like-minded organizations, given that about 30 percent of clothes are never sold and end up in landfills.

Since Sheltersuit started in 2014, companies have been donating Timmer materials, like sleeping bags and tent fabrics that would have been thrown away because of production mistakes like a misplaced logo. Some companies reached out to Sheltersuit after seeing the organization in the media. The suit is made entirely out of these upcycled materials, from the belts that act as the backpack's straps to the large hood that can block out glaring lights homeless people often have to contend with while sleeping on the street.  

image via Mashable

The Confederate submarine known as the H.L. Hunley delivered a torpedo bomb to the underside of the Union ship Housatonic in 1864, sinking the ship and killing five. But the Hunley also sank, and all eight crew members died. No one knew where the submarine was until 1970, and it took another 30 years to raise it to the surface.   

One hundred and thirty-six years later, in 2000, in a massive custom-built water tank, archaeologists clad in protective coveralls and wearing respirators sorted patiently through the muck and silt that had slowly filled the hull of the submarine as it lay on the bottom of the ocean floor. Accounts of the Hunley’s sinking had assumed horrific scenes of the men trying to claw their way through the thick iron hatches, or huddled in the fetal position beneath the crew bench in their agony. Sinkings of modern submarines have always resulted in the discovery of the dead clustered near the exits, the result of desperate efforts to escape the cold metal coffins; to sit silently and await one’s own demise simply defies human nature.

The crew of the Hunley, however, looked quite different. Each man was still seated peacefully at his station.

What killed the eight men of the Hunley? Rising water or lack of oxygen would have induced a mad dash to escape. Damage from the torpedo would have scattered the bodies and left evidence on the submarine itself. Biomedical engineer and blast-injury specialist Rachel Lance modeled the remains of the submarine and recreated the torpedo incident in a pond (assisted by a bomb-demolition expert and the ATF) to test a new theory on what killed the crew of the Hunley. Read a fascinating excerpt from her book on the subject at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: Conrad Wise Chapman)