This is an oldie but goodie: here's the audition reel of various martial artist-wannabes testing for a movie. They were supposed to show off their skillz against the boxing dummy ... but the dummy won! (Includes the infamous Afro Ninja)
An Internet classic: Link [embedded YouTube clip]
In 1945, physicist Harry Daghlian was working on a 6.2 kg (14 lb) spherical mass of plutonium at the Los Alamos laboratory. He was stacking bricks of tungsten carbide around the plutonium core when he noticed a nearby neutron counter signaling that the addition of the final brick would make the assembly supercritical. Daghlian immediately withdrew his hand ... and the brick slipped onto the center of the plutonium core and the assembly went critical. Daghlian was able to dissemble the bricks (the core didn't explode), but he died from radiation poisoning 28 days later.
Nine months later, physicist Louis Slotin, an expert in triggering devices, and seven other scientists gathered in the laboratory to perform a dangerous experiment he called "tickling the dragon's tail." The experiment involved creating the beginning steps of a nuclear fission reactor by placing two half-spheres of beryllium around the plutonium core. The trick was to keep the beryllium from touching the plutonium core, which Slotin had done many times before.
But on that day, Slotin decided to use a screwdriver instead of shims, and his hand slipped and the beryllium hemisphere touched the plutonium core, which instantly went critical. Slotin realized his mistake, and used his hand to lift the beryllium just a fraction of a second later ... but that was enough to give him a lethal dose of radiation. The other scientists saw a "blue glow" of air ionization and felt a "heat wave" - they were saved from immediate death (though later 3 of them died from side effects of radiation years later). Slotin, on the other hand, died 9 days later.
Both of Daghlian and Slotin's accidents were on Tuesday the 21st, both used the same plutonium core, and both died in the same room at the same hospital. The plutonium core was later named the "Demon Core" and was put to use in the Able test of the Operation Crossroads nuclear weapon test at the Bikini Atoll in the summer of 1946.
The Able test of Operation Crossroads, July 1, 1946.
Photo: Office of History & Heritage Resources
Further readings:
Lori of Clever Cake Studio made this fantastic Indiana Jones and the Raider of the Lost Ark Golden Idol birthday cake. The Golden Idol is made from marzipan, and Lori was thoughtful enough to make a marzipan bag, so you can perform the famous switch! Link - via Super Punch
This YouTube video is about Toby the dog and Sheila the duck who adopted him at the Mac Kenzie farm. The video, first spotted at Cute Overload, has gone viral because of the sheer WTF-ishness of it (is that a word? No? It should be!).
The video is subtitled in Spanish, but you really don't need to speak a whit of Spanish to understand what happened. And be prepared to be amazed: Hit play or go to Link [YouTube]
Update 11/24/08 - It's a viral ad by an Argentinian ISP called Arnet - Thanks Demian!When Dzhana Simmons' heart became weakened and enlarged so it couldn't pump blood, she underwent a heart transplant. But when that heart failed, doctors scrambled to hook her up to a machine: she survives 118 days without a heart!
Doctors scrambled to come up with a way for Simmons to survive until a new donor heart became available. A custom-made artificial heart was the solution. It looked like a large, complex machine, and Simmons was attached to it for 118 days.
"It was like I was a fake person, like I didn't really exist. I was just here," Simmons said. "Now, I know that I really was here and I did live without it."
"It was scary," said Simmons' mother, Twolla Anderson. "I didn't know from day to day how she was going to turn out or if it would've been fatal or what. Thanks to my buddies, the transplant team -- I love them for everything they've done for her -- I couldn't be happier."
On Oct. 29, Simmons received another donor heart and a kidney, as well.
http://www.local10.com/health/18015265/detail.html
TIME has a fascinating account of the 10 biggest pranks in geek history. This one is the infamous Hollywood sign prank, perpetrated by (who else?) Caltech students:
During Hollywood's centennial in 2003, Caltech's Prank Club tackled the famous Hollywood sign with cherry pickers, large sheets of black and white plastic, and duct tape. They hung just enough plastic so that from a distance, the sign appeared to read "Caltech." "Hollywood is still mad about that," says Autumn Looijen, author of the prank history, Legends of Caltech III: Techer In the Dark. The sign assailants' names never surfaced, but their work has become famous on campus. (Both Caltech and MIT tout their students' pranks on their admissions websites.)
Scientists have finally proven parents wrong ... surfing the Internet is actually good for teenagers! Kids, print this out before the vast parents conspiracy shuts this down ...
Surfing the internet, playing games and hanging out on social networks are important for teen development, a large study of online use has revealed. The report counters the stereotypical view held by many parents and teachers that such activity is a waste of time.
More than 800 teenagers and parents took part in the three-year US project.
"They are learning the technological skills and literacy needed for the contemporary world," said the report's author, Dr Mimi Ito. "They are learning how to communicate online, craft a public identity, create a home page, post links. "All these things were regarded as sophisticated 10 years ago but young people today take them for granted," Dr Ito told the BBC.
The report calls teens learnin' on the Web as "geeking out": Link
Previously on Neatorama:
That's an infrared image of an aurora on Saturn's polar cap, taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft:
Energetic particles, crashing into the upper atmosphere cause the aurora, shown in blue, to glow brightly at 4 microns (six times the wavelength visible to the human eye). The image shows both a bright ring, as seen from Earth, as well as an example of bright auroral emission within the polar cap that had been undetected until the advent of Cassini. This aurora, which defies past predictions of what was expected, has been observed to grow even brighter than is shown here. Silhouetted by the glow (cast here to the color red) of the hot interior of Saturn (clearly seen at a wavelength of 5 microns, or seven times the wavelength visible to the human eye) are the clouds and haze that underlie this auroral region.
Meet Mailman Steve. He was a letter carrier who became a local hero for failing to deliver (junk mail, that is):
"Mailman Steve" -- a pudgy, kindly 58-year-old who toiled along a route in a rapidly growing neighborhood here -- was given probation in federal court this week for squirreling away at least seven years' worth of undelivered junk mail, which he had stacked in his garage and buried in his yard.
According to his attorney, Padgett felt overwhelmed by the torrents of "direct advertising mail" he was obligated to deliver as he contended with heart problems and diabetes.
It should come as no surprise that the U.S. Postal Service did not receive a single complaint from Padgett's customers about missing mail during the years he withheld pizza circulars, oil change discount notices and Chinese menus.
But when someone noticed bins of mail stacking up, the authorities were alerted, and Mailman Steve was charged with delaying and destroying U.S. mail. The Postal Service notified hundreds of residents, but only one responded. That customer, Kenna Reinhardt, wrote not to condemn Padgett but to honor him.
(Photo: Shawn Rocco/AP)
The following is reprinted from The Best of The Best of Uncle John's Bathroom Reader. First Thanksgiving 1621 by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris, via Library of Congress It's one of American history's most familiar scenes: A small group of Pilgrims prepare a huge November feast to give thanks for a bountiful harvest and show their appreciation to the Indians who helped them survive their first winter. Together, the Pilgrims and the Indians solemnly sit down to a meal of turkey, pumpkin pie, and cranberries. Just how accurate is this image of America's first Thanksgiving? Not very, it turns out. Here are some common misconceptions about the origin of one of our favorite holidays. MYTH: The settlers at the first Thanksgiving were called Pilgrims. THE TRUTH: They didn't even refer to themselves as Pilgrims - they called themselves "Saints." Early Americans applied the term "pilgrim" to all of the early colonists; it wasn't until the 20th century that it was used exclusively to describe the folks who landed on Plymouth Rock. MYTH: It was a solemn, religious occasion. THE TRUTH: Hardly. It was a three-day harvest festival that included drinking, gambling, athletic games, and even target shooting with English muskets (which, by the way, was intended as a friendly warning to the Indians that the Pilgrims were prepared to defend themselves.) MYTH: It took place in November. THE TRUTH: It was some time between late September and the middle of October - after the harvest had been brought in. By November, said historian Richard Erhlich, "the villagers were working to prepare for winter, salting and drying meat and making their houses as wind resistant as possible." MYTH: The Pilgrims wore large hats with buckles on them. THE TRUTH: None of the participants were dressed anything like the way they've been portrayed in art: the Pilgrims didn't dress in black, didn't wear buckles on their hats or shoes, and didn't wear tall hats. The 19th-century artists who painted them that way did so because they associated black clothing and buckles with being old-fashioned. MYTH: They ate turkey ... THE TRUTH: The Pilgrims ate deer, not turkey. As Pilgrim Edward Winslow later wrote, "For three days we entertained and feasted, and [the Indian] went out and killd five deer, which they brought to the plantation." Winslow does mention that four Pilgrims went "fowling" or bird hunting, but neither he nor anyone else recorded which kinds of birds they actually hunted - so even if they did eat turkey, it was just a side dish. "The flashy part of the meal for the colonists was the venison, because it was new to them," says Carolyn Travers, director of research at Plimoth Plantation, a Pilgrim museum in Massachusetts. "Back in England, deer were on estates and people would be arrested for poaching if they killed these deer ... The colonists mentioned venison over and over again in their letters back home." Other foods that may have been on the menu: cod, bass, clams, oysters, Indian corn, native berries and plums, all washed down with water, beer made from corn, and another drink the Pilgrim affectionately called "strong water." A few things definitely weren't on the menu, including pumpkin pie - in those days, the Pilgrims boiled their pumpkin and ate it plain. And since the Pilgrims didn't yet have flour mills or cattle, there was no bread other than corn bread, and no beef, milk, or cheese. And the Pilgrims didn't eat any New England lobsters, either. Reason: They mistook them for large insects. MYTH: The Pilgrims held a similar feast every year. THE TRUTH: There's no evidence that the Pilgrims celebrated again in 1622. They probably weren't in the mood - the harvest had been disappointing, and they were burdened with a new boatload of Pilgrims who had to be fed and housed through the winter. |
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| The article above is reprinted with permission from The Best of the Best of Uncle John's Bathroom Reader. The Bathroom Reader Institute handpicked the most eye-opening, rib-tickling, and mind-boggling articles from everything they have written over the last ten years and carefully crammed them into 576 pages of the book. Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute has published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. Check out their website here: Bathroom Reader Institute. | |
More than 100 years ago, Albert Einstein put forth his theory of relativity in what is probably the world's most famous equation E = mc2. Now, French, German and Hungarian physicists have computationally proven that he was right:
A brainpower consortium led by Laurent Lellouch of France's Centre for Theoretical Physics, using some of the world's mightiest supercomputers, have set down the calculations for estimating the mass of protons and neutrons, the particles at the nucleus of atoms.
According to the conventional model of particle physics, protons and neutrons comprise smaller particles known as quarks, which in turn are bound by gluons.
The odd thing is this: the mass of gluons is zero and the mass of quarks is only five percent. Where, therefore, is the missing 95 percent?
The answer, according to the study published in the US journal Science on Thursday, comes from the energy from the movements and interactions of quarks and gluons.
In other words, energy and mass are equivalent, as Einstein proposed in his Special Theory of Relativity in 1905.
Previously on Neatorama: 10 Strange Facts About Einstein
Think that only women like to gossip? Scientists have just discovered that it's not just human females that love gossip - female macaque monkeys do to!
Scientists spent three months listening to a mixed group of macaques living on Cayo Santiago island off Puerto Rico.
They discovered that, just as with humans, the female of the species was more talkative than the male.
The experts counted the grunts, coos and 'girneys' - friendly chit-chat between two individuals - while ignoring calls specifically used when in the presence of food or a predator.
Female macaques were found to make 13 times as many friendly noises as males. They were also much more likely to chat to other females than males.
Rosemary Alvarez went to the doctor because she had numbness in her arms and blurred vision. An MRI revealed something unusual deep in her brain stem, so doctors immediately sent her to surgery.
But they didn't find the tumor they expected - instead, they found ... a worm!
Doctors removed the worm and don't believe Alvarez will have any lingering health problems. No one knows exactly where she picked up the worm –- doctors said worms can come from eating undercooked pork or spread by people who don’t wash their hands after using the bathroom, according to the report.
Link (video here) - via Arbroath
What's even cuter than a lil' pygmy hippo? How about a pygmy hippo who loves to be fed with a "Madagascar" movie hand puppet?
The Daily Mail has the story:
Zoo keepers at the private zoo near Chipping Norton in Oxfordshire said they had been 'trying everything' to tempt the fussy eater back to his meals when they stumbled across the hippo glove puppet in a supermarket promotion.
Now keepers don the puppet to hand feed the diminutive hippo, a relative of the larger hippopotamus on whom Gloria is based, his favourite carrot treats.
At one point in our lives, we all love to color - and for some of us whose love of coloring things go beyond coloring books, artist Jon Burgerman has made this wonderful thing: the color-in wallpaper!
http://www.jonburgerman.com/Work/comments/colour_in_wallpaper/ - via RuebenMiller
