If you are trying to avoid the flu, simple math tells us that placing all your faith in hand sanitizer is a mistake. Randall Munroe at xkcd even did the math for you! Wash your hands, cover those sneezes, and get a flu shot. Link -Thanks, Ned Scioneaux!
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Redditor Rhinobeetle has an awesome mom:
My brother is special needs and 17, this year he drew his first picture. My mother did something pretty special with it.
A team led by Australian amphibian biologist Jodi Rowley was hiking through the lowland forests of Vietnam in 2009 when they first saw the large frog on a log.
Rowley later discovered that the 3.5-inch-long (9-centimeter-long) creature is a relatively large new type of flying frog, a group known for its ability to "parachute" from tree to tree thanks to special aerodynamic adaptations, such as webbed feet, Rowley said.
Rowley dubbed the new species Helen's flying frog, in honor of her mother, Helen Rowley, "who has steadfastly supported her only child trekking through the forests of Southeast Asia in search of frogs," according to a statement.
The newfound species—there are 80 types of flying frogs—is also "one of the most flying frogs of the flying frogs," Rowley said, "in that it's got huge hands and feet that are webbed all the way to the toepad."
"Females even have flappy skin on their forearms to glide," added Rowley, who has received funding from the National Geographic Committee on Research and Exploration.
The flying frogs aren't seen much because they tend to stay in the forest canopy, but with Ho Chi Minh City only a few miles away and growing, their habitat may soon be threatened. Read more on the new frog at NatGeo News. Link
(Image credit: Jodi Rowley)
Pendleton Ward, the creator of Adventure Time, celebrated his 30th birthday in style...with a Beemo cake that was almost too cute to eat.
When someone did finally work up the nerve to slice into poor little Beemo they discovered a magically delicious surprise inside- rainbow colored cake layers divided by white frosting. Mmmmm...cakey!
Onsen tamago is a simple Japanese dish, but you may not be able to make an authentic version of it at home. They're eggs slowly cooked in nature's crockpot--a hot spring:
Hot springs or "onsen," dot volcanic Japan from tip to tip (dipping into a steaming onsen one of the great pleasures of visiting Japan), and a custom for cooking eggs at these springs evolved over the years -- toss them into the hot water, wait a bit, and the egg magically poaches. The secret is the onsen's water temperature, which causes the egg's yolk and albumen congeal into a nice sphere on the outside, and beautifully creamy and tasty on the inside.
Link -via Tasteologie | Photo: Rainer Zenz
Marceline is the rockin' vampire chick from Cartoon Network's hit show Adventure Time, but cosplayer Red Cappy has chosen to portray her as sinister rather than cartoony.
In fact, the only thing setting Red Cappy's Marceline apart from the rest of the vampire brood is that sweet red axe of hers. Still, you wouldn't wanna run into this rockin' hottie in a dark alley!
The first photographic portraits were taken in 1839, but it took decades for the custom to become common. This is a portrait of Conrad Heyer, taken around 1852. Heyer may be earliest-born person ever photographed, as he was born in 1749!
He was approximately 103 when photographed, having been born in 1749. He was reportedly the first white child born in Waldoboro, Maine, then a German immigrant community. He served in the Continental Army under George Washington during the Revolutionary War, crossing the Delaware with him and fighting in other major battles. He eventually bought a farm and retired to Waldoboro, where he happily regaled visitors with tales of his Revolutionary War exploits until his dying day.
The article at Doug's Darkworld goes on to describe how different the world was at the beginning of Heyer's life from the modern world in which he had his portrait made. Link -via reddit
Freelance illustrator and designer Charlie Layton began using the refrigerator/freezer in his Philadelphia apartment as a dry-erase board several months ago. He drew on the surface of the appliance while having his morning coffee. Layton started photographing the drawings and posting them to his Facebook page each Friday, calling the feature "Freezer Fridays." Then Charlie's friend, Redditor unsavory77, uploaded his work to Reddit. The photos instantly became so popular that Layton's website crashed from being overwhelmed with traffic. Layton said of his newfound popularity:
"It's pretty crazy. It's hard to grasp that thousands of people have seen something so quickly."
See more of Layton's work at his website. Link -via Twisted Sifter
(Image credit: Charlie Layton)
This contraption is a Steenbeck flatbed editor, used to edit motion picture film before it all went digital. The process was unwieldy compared to modern computer editing, but the old methods gave us a hundred years of art.
The table doesn't actually do any editing in and of itself. It merely controls playback. You would shuttle back and forth to the frame around which you wanted to make a cut, then you would place the film into a splicer which would cut the film with a blade and stamp a piece of tape over the seam. So primitive! We were told as film students that editing the old fashioned way at first would force a more sophisticated understanding of editing. Is that true? Does writing on paper force a greater understanding of the written word?
I can't speak to film editing, but as far as sound editing and writing go, I can say that learning it the old-fashioned way first gives a person a great respect for the individual elements of the art. It also helps one to appreciate the ease of more modern methods! Gizmodo has more, including a video of editing film by splicing. Link
(Image credit: Flickr user DRs Kulturarvsprojekt)
Before chocolate candy was developed, cocoa was almost always a drink. And far before chocolate milk became a kid's staple, cacao was a manly beverage, reserved for warriors.
Cacao was cultivated and consumed by the Olmecs and Mayans, but is most famously associated with the Aztec civilization. Montezuma the II, who kept a huge storehouse of cacao (supplied by conquered peoples from whom he demanded the beans as tribute) and drank 50 golden goblets of chocolate a day, decreed that only those men who went to war could imbibe cacao, even if they were his own sons. This limited chocolate consumption to royals and nobles who were willing to fight, merchants (their travels through hostile territory necessitated their taking up of arms), and warriors. For the latter, chocolate was a regular part of their military rations; ground cacao that had been pressed into wafers and could be mixed into water in the field were given to every solider on campaign. The drink provided long-lasting nourishment on the march; as one Spanish observer wrote, “This drink is the healthiest thing, and the greatest sustenance of anything you could drink in the world, because he who drinks a cup of this liquid, no matter how far he walks, can go a whole day without eating anything else.”
All Aztecs thought of both blood and chocolate as sacred liquids, and cacao seeds were used in their religious ceremonies to symbolize the human heart – harkening to their famous ritual in which this still-beating organ was torn from a sacrificial victim’s chest. The connection between blood and chocolate was especially strong for warriors, and it was served at the solemn initiation ceremony of new Eagle and Jaguar knights, who had to undergo a rigorous penance process before joining the most elite orders of the Aztec army.
As chocolate was carried around the world, it was changed considerably, but still made into a manly beverage as nutritious sustenance for Arctic explorers and soldiers at war. The Art of Manliness has an extensive history of hot cocoa and its use, including tips for making yours better. Link
You'll be able to communicate across space but not time using stamps from the UK's Royal Mail. That agency plans to release stamps in March showing all eleven known incarnations of the Doctor and four of his enemies:
Andrew Hammond of the Royal Mail said the commemorative selection "pay tribute to the brilliant actors that have played the Doctor over the years, as well as the adversaries that helped make the show so popular"
Although Santa Claus supposedly lives at the North Pole, many nations would love to claim him. Scandinavia and the World (SATW) is a webcomic that helps explain the dynamics of the different nations of Scandinavia, and often other European nations, to English speakers. A couple of years ago, it laid the question of Santa's ethnic origin to rest. Sort of.
Everybody knows Santa’s sledge is pulled by reindeer, lives somewhere cold and even the Finns say he lives in Lapland.
In other words, Santa is a Sami. Just look at this [link] and deal with it.
The Sami people are the “Indians” of the North and they belong in the same group as Native Americans and Aboriginals. They live in Lapland, an area that stretches from north Norway over Sweden and Finland to Russia.
When Boeing tested its new in-flight Wi-Fi system, they needed passengers in the plane to simulate the presence of bodies and how those bodies interfered with the signal. But instead of human passengers, they used something much easier to deal with -20,000 pounds of potatoes!
"The vegetables' interactions with radio-wave signals mimic those of the human body," a video from Boeing explains.
They labeled the test SPUDS: Synthetic Personnel Using Dielectric Substitution.
The potatoes were later donated to a food bank. Read all about the simulation at the Atlantic. Link -via Ed Yong
Les Gregor's map of common soils in the United States doesn't use pictures of dirt, but thin layers of real dirt. He wrote to the departments of agriculture in each state requesting a sample. Slate's Seth Stevenson described what happened next:
When I got in touch with Gregor, he explained that he asked each state for a "representative" soil. Many sent theirofficial state soils—which, wow, who knew that was a thing? Michigan sent two soils, so Gregor blended them together. Other soils came in clumps that he had to sift.
His favorite soils came from Colorado ("quite reddish"), Maine ("pale and sandy"), and Mississippi and Alabama ("deeply colored with iron oxide"). There are varying degrees of acidity. Every soil is a slightly different color. "It makes a nice quilt," says Gregor.
Link | Photo: Les Gregor
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