Frances Henshaw was a 14-year-old schoolgirl when she drew a series of maps in 1828. There were only 24 states at that time; she reproduced 19 of them. Henshaw preserved her work in a book with information about each state in beautiful handwriting.
Besides these maps, Henshaw’s book also contains carefully transcribed information about astronomy (likewise a socially-sanctioned area of study for young women), American history, and climatic patterns of the world.
While this personal atlas was produced as a school project, Henshaw clearly relished and took pride in her work. An inscription on the title page indicates that she saved the book and gave it to her son in 1872.
Follow the links at Slate to see the entire book and more analysis of the work. Link
Earlier this month, John posted an image showing how 98% of Australia's population is clustered in a few coastal regions. While that was fascinating, it turns out that America is pretty highly clustered as well. In fact, 50% of our population is located solely in the 146 counties marked in blue on this map.
The BBC filmed a POV train ride from London to Brighton in 1953. Thirty years later, they did it again, and now, another thirty years later they took the same trip. Those three films have been placed together and synched up (the film goes much faster than the actual trip). The result is hypnotic. Not much has changed: the trees have grown, and the world is much more colorful now. -via Jason Kottke
Oh, there's a lot of good ones here …and they get funnier as they go along. The sequence that starts at 7:30 had me rolling on the floor (figuratively). -via Laughing Squid
These are 100% real, honest-to-goodness headlines. can you figure out what they were trying to say?
Doctor Testifies in Horse Suit
Complaints About NBA Referees Growing Ugly
Diet of Premature Babies Affects IQ
Oprah, Madonna Talk Marriage
Groom Sues Bride of 4 Mouths
General Eisenhower Flies Back to Front
Airline Travel Safer Despite More Accidents
God Gets a Parking Caution: "No Execeptions" Say Police
Dumped Fish Remains Upset
American Ships Head to Libya
Woman Not Injured By Cookie
Lack of Water Hurts Ice Fishing
L.A. Voters Approve Urban Renewal by Landslide
Lawyer Calls Soul as Witness
Thanks to President Clinton, Staff Sgt. Fruer Now Has a Son
Tortoise Held Hostage as Lobster War Turns Nasty
Diaper Market Bottoms Out
Snow Storms May be Precursor of Winter
Blind Bishop Appointed to See
Ancient Blond Corpses Raise Questions
Lawyers Give Poor Free Legal Advice
California Governor Makes Stand on Dirty Toilets
Reason for More Bear Sightings: More Bears
Cuts Could Hurt Animals
Ban on Soliciting Dead in Trotwood
Nude Scene Done Tastefully in Radio Play
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The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John's Slightly Irregular Bathroom Reader, a fantastic book by the Bathroom Readers' Institute. The 17th book in this the Bathroom Reader series is filled to the brim with facts, fun, and fascination, including articles about the Origin of Kung Fu, How to Kill a Zombie, Women in Space and more!
Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. If you like Neatorama, you'll love the Bathroom Reader Institute's books - go ahead and check 'em out!
Before you watch this, if you don't live in a big city, you should know that subway commuters are used to panhandlers who take advantage of a captive audience to tell a tale of woe and collect donations. It happens all the time. So these people were not expecting what they got in this incident from College Humor. -via Viral Viral Videos
In 2007, photographer John Maloof went to an auction house across the street from his Chicago home and bought a box of undeveloped film that had been abandoned in a storage locker. When he developed the negatives, he discovered that they contained a photographic gold mine left by a mysterious woman named Vivian Maier.
Vivian Maier - completely unknown at the time - had left a body of work comprising of more than 2,000 rolls of film, 3,000 printed photographs and 150,000 negatives, representing the photos she took from the 40s through the 70s. She took candid pictures of people, street life, and buildings in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, the American Southwest, and places as fara way as Manila, Bangkok, Beijing, Egypt and Italy.
But who was Vivian Maier? Maloof spent years reconstructing her work and life - and when he finally found her identity, Vivian died only days before he could reach her.
But in death, the very private Vivian Maier (friends have likened her to Mary Poppins - Maier was a nanny) has found fame. Thanks to Maloof, her work has found new fans from published books and exhibitions across the United States - and finally, a documentary is in the works.
Move over, Ian McKellen! Country legend Willie Nelson is aiming to play
Gandalf in The Hobbit 2. Here's his audition tape, courtesy of Team Coco
- I dare say he's a shoo-in for the role, dontcha think? Link
- Thanks Diana Chang!
Mark Gee shot a full moon rising over Wellington, New Zealand, from about 2k away from Mount Victoria Lookout, so he could get the silhouettes of the people who had climbed the mountains for a great view. -via Metafilter
Here's something to liven up your bookshelves: YOY
Design Studio designed a planter/vase shaped like a hardcover book.
It's aptly titled "The Life of Plants." Link
- via Colossal
Travis Jonker and his team work at an elementary school library. They had some old auditorium seats left over from renovations. They were functional as seating, but Jonker and his co-workers turned them into advertisements for works of children's literature. Click on Continue reading to view more.
Here's a nifty weekend science project that you can do with your kids:
make a DNA from jelly babies and licorice. Mark Lorch of The Guardian's
Notes & Theories tells us how:
You'll need:
Two long, flexible sweets, such as liquorice ribbons.
A few handfuls of soft, highly coloured sweets, such as jelly babies
or marshmallows.
Peter Nonacs, professor of biology at UCLA, teaches Game Theory in his Behavioral Ecology course. He told his students that for an upcoming exam, they could do anything that would normally be considered cheating:
A week before the test, I told my class that the Game Theory exam would be insanely hard—far harder than any that had established my rep as a hard prof. But as recompense, for this one time only, students could cheat. They could bring and use anything or anyone they liked, including animal behavior experts. (Richard Dawkins in town? Bring him!) They could surf the Web. They could talk to each other or call friends who’d taken the course before. They could offer me bribes. (I wouldn’t take them, but neither would I report it to the dean.) Only violations of state or federal criminal law such as kidnapping my dog, blackmail, or threats of violence were out of bounds. [...]
Once the shock wore off, they got sophisticated. In discussion section, they speculated, organized, and plotted. What would be the test’s payoff matrix? Would cooperation be rewarded or counter-productive? Would a large group work better, or smaller subgroups with specified tasks? What about “scroungers” who didn’t study but were planning to parasitize everyone else’s hard work? How much reciprocity would be demanded in order to share benefits? Was the test going to play out like a dog-eat-dog Hunger Games? In short, the students spent the entire week living Game Theory. It transformed a class where many did not even speak to each other into a coherent whole focused on a single task—beating their crazy professor’s nefarious scheme.
On the day of the hour-long test they faced a single question: “If evolution through natural selection is a game, what are the players, teams, rules, objectives, and outcomes?”
Most students responded by working together:
One student immediately ran to the chalkboard, and she began to organize the outputs for each question section. The class divided tasks. They debated. They worked on hypotheses. Weak ones were rejected, promising ones were developed. Supportive evidence was added. A schedule was established for writing the consensus answers. (I remained in the room, hoping someone would ask me for my answers, because I had several enigmatic clues to divulge. But nobody thought that far afield!) As the test progressed, the majority (whom I shall call the “Mob”) decided to share one set of answers. Individuals within the Mob took turns writing paragraphs, and they all signed an author sheet to share the common grade. Three out of the 27 students opted out (I’ll call them the “Lone Wolves”). Although the Wolves listened and contributed to discussions, they preferred their individual variants over the Mob’s joint answer.
In the end, the students learned what social insects like ants and termites have known for hundreds of millions of years. To win at some games, cooperation is better than competition. Unity that arises through a diversity of opinion is stronger than any solitary competitor.
But that wasn't the end of of Prof. Nonacs's instruction:
But did the students themselves realize this? To see, I presented the class with one last evil wrinkle two days later, after the test was graded but not yet returned. They had a choice, I said. Option A: They could get the test back and have it count toward their final grade. Option B: I would—sight unseen—shred the entire test. Poof, the grade would disappear as if it had never happened. But Option B meant they would never see their results; they would never know if their answers were correct.
“Oh, my, can we think about this for a couple of days?” they begged. No, I answered. More heated discussion followed. It was soon apparent that everyone had felt good about the process and their overall answers. The students unanimously chose to keep the test. Once again, the unity that arose through a diversity of opinion was right. The shared grade for the Mob was 20 percent higher than the averages on my previous, more normal, midterms. Among the Lone Wolves, one scored higher than the Mob, one about the same, and one scored lower
It's a shame such grand homes are built and now no one lives in them. Most are abandoned because restoring them to safe living conditions simply costs too much. See nine such mansions and castles at io9. Shown here is Château Miranda in Belgium, built in 1866 and empty since 1991 due to a property dispute with the government. Link -via the Presurfer
Boston native Hilary Sargent, also known as Chartgirl, made a chart about the various media and news outlets and how well they covered the Boston marathon bombing story. You'll have to click twice enlarge it at the link to read all the information. Which news outlet got the facts right? Which advertised pressure cookers on sale? Who identified the wrong people as the bombers? Who used Photoshop on the photographs? It's all here in the handy chart. Link -via Boing Boing
