A 40-foot deep sinkhole opened under a Guatemalan woman's bed on Monday. At 3-feet across, the suddenly-appearing death trap could have been a major safety hazard, but its location saved the family from harm.
"When we heard the loud boom we thought a gas canister from a neighboring home had exploded, or there had been a crash on the street," Inocenta Hernandez, 65, said in an Agence France-Presse report.
"We rushed out to look and saw nothing. A gentleman told me that the noise came from my house, and we searched until we found it under my bed," AFP quotes Hernandez as saying.
In 2007, another sinkhole claimed three lives in Barrio San Antonio in Guatemala City.
Hernandez told AFP that she is thankful the surprise under her bed wasn't any bigger.
"Thank God there are only material damages, because my grandchildren were running around the house, into that room and out to the patio," AFP quoted her as saying.
Last September, Archie Comics introduced a new student in Riverdale High: Kevin Keller, the series' first openly gay character. Kevin's inclusion in the comics after Issue 202 proved popular with readers--so popular, in fact, that Kevin Keller is now getting his own spin-off.
The series, titled Kevin Keller, will follow a four-issue mini-series starring Kevin that began in July and has started filling out his background, including his relationship with his father, who serves in the military and is supportive of his son’s desire to follow in his footsteps. Like those for the other Archie characters, Kevin’s series will deal with his life in high school. “He’s going to be the class president,” said Dan Parent, the writer-artist who created Kevin. But it won’t all be a good time. “Even the most popular kids are not popular with everybody,” Mr. Parent said. “There’s some adversity he’ll have to deal with.”
Readers will also get a glimpse into Kevin’s adulthood thanks to a continuing married life story line in Life With Archie, which shows that famous redhead’s life on two paths: one in which he married Betty, the other in which he married Veronica. In early 2012 that story line will feature Kevin’s marriage. “We needed to figure out how to get Kevin into that book and, frankly, not sidestep the issue,” Mr. Goldwater said. “It deals with the fact that he’s a gay man and has gay relationships.” Mr. Goldwater said the overall reception to Kevin has been positive. “Out of all the people who subscribe to the Archie books, we only had seven total cancellations,” he said.
Before I left my day job, I had plenty of "I quit" fantasies. Mostly, they involved walking away from an explosion a la every major action star ever, but I can't say at any point I imagined being a robot. But that's what's happening here and in a new series of videos by deviantART:
Have you ever wanted to quit work because your boss is a jerk or because you wanted to dedicate your time to something you’re truly passionate about? That’s the inspiration behind our newest project. DeviantART has teamed up with a stellar production crew, some very talented actors, and some awesome deviants to create a series of short videos that we all wish could happen IRL. Watch above as our overworked, underpaid, and unappreciated employees quit work and show their bosses who they really are!
THere are also "Be a Panda" and "Be a Wizard" videos up, and t-shirts to boot.
Don't get too excited, hippies. This video made the rounds today with explicit "this is real" remarks that initially had me a little bit giddy with the Rube Goldbergesque idea of first breeding super-pigeons, then training them, then convincing every customer to send photographs of themselves, cities and homes to Jojo, all to avoid shipping shoes via freight or traditional carrier. I wanted to believe it, I did. But a disclaimer at the end of the video implicitly denies the reality of super-pigeon shoe shipping:
The remarks made in this video do not reflect the reality of pigeon fancying. No birds have been maltreated during the shooting of this film.
None of this should distract from the JoJo Project's goal of providing clean water and reforestation efforts, though, it's too bad, really. I almost bought a pair of men's shoes.
PS from Miss C: This marks published post #35,000 at Neatorama! That's quite an archive. I would throw some confetti at Adrienne if I knew where she lived.
I love scientific studies. I read study reports before reading study reports was my job, and I continued afterward just for kicks. In the piles of new innovation and breakthroughs, though, there always seem to be a few that make me wonder why the topic warranted study at all—sometimes, it seems, science sets out to confirm the obvious. Here are a few such results, in no particular order.
What’s that you say? Chicks dig the swagger? We like the dark, broody type? Yes, we know. But, in case there was doubt, a study published in the American Psychological Association journal Emotion indicates that women find men who look powerful or moody more sexually attractive than smiling men. Conversely, men in the same study find smiling women most attractive, and are least likely to find powerful- or confident-looking women appealing.
Theories about why this is true rely on data from other studies, which report that male expressions of pride accentuate masculine features that women find most drool-worthy, whereas men find amiable, happy women most enticing, aligning with the traditional role of women as “submissive and vulnerable.” It seems feminism and gender equality haven’t been around long enough to change the way our brains work. It also explains why Don Draper is dead sexy even though he's such a jerk.
If people are talking smack about you, chances are they probably see you differently than they see others. I mean, duh, right? Think about it: you probably see between dozens and hundreds of people in a given day, but you don't notice them all. If, however, a person is preceded by a bit of bad gossip, your brain will pick him or her out of a crowd. But why? To determine whether someone is a friend or foe, according to Science Now.
To test this, researchers showed different images to each subject’s left and right eye at the same time, effectively pitting them against each other in a contest for the brain's attention. The viewer has to register one image before the other; the winner is the picture with priority granted by the brain. Every picture (all of people) was given a bit of information: "threw a chair at a classmate" or "helped an elderly woman with her groceries," or similarly negative/positive statements. The negatively noted face reached the subjects' consciousness about half a second faster than the nice person's face, essentially spotting a foe or rival with
So, in short: if you think a person might be worth avoiding, you can spot them in a crowd pretty quickly. This sounds pretty much like high school to me, but it's nice that it's been confirmed.
Huh. Really. This is one of the least surprising no-brainers in this list, I think, for no other reason than I can't imagine a situation in which the opposite (or anything like it) might be true. But it's not the snotty nose or hiccuping wail that makes men hightail it for the door--it's the smell of your tears, woman.
Even if the scent isn't detectable on a conscious level, the chemical signal of weepy eyes will temporarily send testosterone plummeting in nearby men. You can blame pheromones for this one; tears produced as a result of emotional turmoil are chemically different than, say, eyelash-in-the-eye tears. And the worst part may be that men who sniffed a woman's sad tears were not only not attracted to her, they were also less empathetic. Yeesh.
The study's reverse--testing the female reaction to the emotional tears of men--hasn't been conducted yet. It seems getting men to cry voluntarily, even for science, is not an easy task
People Find Scientific Conclusions Obvious
That's right. Scientists know that people will find their conclusions a matter of common sense. Hindsight bias is a bit like the Guess Which Number I'm Thinking Of game; you have no idea which number I'm thinking of, but when I say "42!" you think, "Ugh, I knew that!"
The brain is a place that likes to keep its contents organized. So when you learn new information, you tend to lose previous contradictory ideas that would muddy-up the works. You thought I was thinking of 17, then maybe 4, then maybe 291. But when I tell you I've been thinking of 42 the entire time, you toss out your old ideas about it and replace those ideas with memories graced with hindsight. You know now what I was thinking, so you knew then, too. Or so you tell yourself. You Are Not So Smart explains it like this:
You are always looking back at the person you used to be, always reconstructing the story of your life to better match the person you are today. You have needed to keep a tidy mind to navigate the world ever since you lived in jungles and on savannas. Cluttered minds got bogged down, and the bodies they controlled got eaten. Once you learn from your mistakes, or replace bad info with good, there isn’t much use in retaining the garbage, so you delete it. This deletion of your old incorrect assumptions de-clutters your mind. Sure, you are lying to yourself, but it’s for a good cause.
If hindsight bias holds true, everything on this list was news to me when I read it the first time, and in looking back, I'm replacing my previous ideas about what women like and how men react to emotional outbursts with what I know now.
But I knew that already, of course. It's so obvious.
We're big on unusualandbeautifulaquatica around here at Neatorama, and today is no different. The pink dolphin of South America is an interesting creature--it lacks the dorsal fin of its more familiar bottle-nosed cousin, and has unfused neck vertebrae, allowing it to make a quick 180º turn from predators. You can see their pink coloring is mottled, with each dolphin sporting its own pattern of pink and grey. Check out more pics and lots of info about the Amazon River Dolphin on the Ark in Space. Link
Even if your interest in the bird eggs of Germany and neighboring countries is close or equal to zero, there's enough artistic merit in these hand-colored engravings by JF Naumann, a self-taught engraver and etcher who co-founded the German Ornithological Society in 1850, to take a peek. The arrangement of the eggs is really the striking part, though some of the individual shell patterns are lovely.
These ten plates are collected from the five-volume Bird Eggs from Germany and Neighbouring Countries - Described and Illustrated, published in 1818. See them all on BibliOdyssey. Link
If you're a villain-in-training or just really interested in how to stop a fictional character with real tools, then this is the gallery for you. From Captain Planet's susceptibility to pepper spray to the one thing outside of Kryptonite that can stop the Man of Steel, Dvice celebrates Superhero Week by revealing weaknesses for puny mortals to exploit. Link
The shuttle's days are over, but its impact on daily life is by no means diminished. Since NASA began development of new tech for astronauts, we the people have gotten trickle-down innovations from the science implemented in shuttle missions. PopSci has rounded up ten inventions originally used on the shuttle that are implemented right now by non-astronauts. From baby formula to fishing nets, check out the gallery at Popular Science. http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2011-07/ten-tech-innovations-nasas-space-shuttle-trickled-down-non-astronauts
Random acts of violence are not funny. They aren't. And the attack of a gorilla mascot in a Wireless Center in Strongsville, OH, last week is not funny. According to Fox8:
[T]he store has the gorilla as a marketing tool a couple of days a week. Brandon Parham, the store manager, told the TV station that he had seen the kid inside the store prior to the attack.
"Then he just emerged, dressed up as a banana, and sprinted as fast as he could at our gorilla," Parham said. "The kid just speared our gorilla."
Meantime, the store manager feels his guy got a bad deal: "The gorilla should have won," Parham said.
I'm not saying my gameface is pretty, but these pictures of people playing video games are hilarious. From now on I'll be gaming all alone, far from a camera. Photographer Phillip Toledano took these way back in 2002 in an effort to capture "[c]haracteristics that are usually secreted from the world." I'm going to say he pulled an epic pwn, at least in this round. You can check out the rest on Flavorpill. Link
How do you turn a small space into a huge cash cow? Fill it with the most claustrophobic living quarters imaginable, call its lack of width a feature, then rent it out to artists as a living/workspace. That's just what architect Jakub Szczesny and team are doing with the skinny space between an old tenement block and a tower block in Warsaw, Poland. The design allows for a bedroom, lounge, bathroom and kitchen within the tiny space, all accessible by ladder. Read more about to Warsaw design and other skinny houses on Daily Mail. Link
[caption id="attachment_48912" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Don't Wake Me Lucifer! / 83" x 95" / 2010 Hand-made Quilt, Heavy Metal T-Shirts, Fabric, Batting, Thread"][/caption]
Ben Venom might be handy with a sewing machine and embroidery floss, but that doesn't mean he's not capital-H Hardcore. Venom's quilts are made from vintage metal band shirts. Why? Because it's brutaaaaal. The artist's statement on Venom's site describes his work as a "collision of Iron Maiden Metal ballads with the outrageous stage antics of Ozzy Osbourne." Check out more of his work on his site, or at the BAN6: Visual Arts Exhibition,” Group Show, Jul 9 – Sep 25 at the YBCA Gallery in San Francisco. Link
I reside squarely in the "iceberg-with-ranch-dressing-eating" area even though I dislike both those things intensely. The best, I think, is the huge collection of countries in Europe who think the others are all arrogant, though "old and bad at real estate" made me giggle. You can see a larger version of this on Laughing Squid. Link
If you need another reason to be totally freaked out by ocean waters (I don't), Zoologger has a feature on the Pink Magnet Slug. The nudibranch Rosy tritonia isn't exactly cuddly-looking, nor is it brightly patterned like its recently discovered cousin, the Sea Pancake, but it has an enviable perk: its entire body is a compass.
The rosy tritonia is one of the growing list of animals that are known to sense Earth's magnetic field to help them navigate. It was first seen doing so in 1987.
The discovery raised two questions: how does it do it, and why? A. O. Dennis Willows of the University of Washington in Friday Harbor has spent the past two decades trying to get answers.
Many animals use localised sensors to detect magnetic fields – some birds seem to use special chemicals in their eyes, for instance – but Willows says the rosy tritonia has sensors throughout its body.
Early experiments identified pairs of neurons in the rosy tritonia's brain that fired more, or in some cases less, when the direction of the magnetic field was changed. But those neurons aren't the sensors: cutting the nerves running into the brain stopped the neurons responding.
Willows and colleagues have now tried recording from peripheral nerves in animals that have had their brains removed. Nerves from all over the body responded when he rotated the magnetic field. The response was stronger on the right side: 43 axons responded on the right but only 25 on the left.
Because so many nerves responded, Willows thinks the rosy tritonia must have sensors distributed throughout its body. But he doesn't know what sort of sensors: it might be a chemical like the one birds use, or small bits of magnetic metal embedded in cells.
Read more about the Pink Magnet Slug on New Scientist. Link
