The 1980s was a glorious time for cinema. Audiences could swoon over soaring science fiction epics like Dune and Return of the Jedi. It was also a high time for fantasy film making. Leah Schnelbach of Tor has ranked 18 of them. They include some of my favorites of the genre, including Krull, Conan the Barbarian, and The Beastmaster.
Krull is a sadly neglected work that has not received the attention that it deserves. It is not a truly great movie, but it is consistently entertaining. I became enamored of it in my youth. By the time I was 16, I had watched it so many times that I could recite the dialogue from memory.
What movies on the list do you like? Are there any films you would add to it?
Can you guess what animal is cooked in this special sandwich?
The café at the Japanese science museum Orbi Yokohama is noted for its surprising hamburgers, such as one that looks like the Earth. That museum, in conjunction with the nearby Sunshine Aquarium, held an exhibit on poisonous and venomous animals, including frogs. After looking at poisonous frogs, you’re invited to eat a presumably non-poisonous one. You read more about it at Rocket News 24.
Your must-see video of the day is this gripping shot of a man barely escaping death because he was unable to open his parachute.
Christopher Jones of Perth, Australia has epilepsy. The debilitating effects of a grand mal seizure hit him at the worst possible moment: while he was skydiving. He jumped at 12,000 feet. At about 9,000 feet, the seizure started.
At the 1:10 mark in the video, it becomes apparent to the jumpmaster that something was terribly wrong. He made his way over to Jones and pulled his ripcord at 4,000 feet. Jones regained consciousness before landing safely on the ground.
Etsy seller lyl393 makes clever use of the elongated characters on Adventure Time by showing them stretched as necklaces. The shapeshifting Jake is, of course, the most obvious choice. But the form also works very well with her depictions of Lady Rainicorn, Fiona and Cake, and Lord Monochromicorn.
This romantic piece that shows Jake and Lady Rainicorn together is especially charming.
Madera, an 11-year old Labrador Retriever, is completely blind. She lives in Fairbanks, Alaska with Ed Davis, her owner. On February 6, Davis let her outside briefly to relieve herself. Madera usually does her business then comes right back in. But this time, Madera started wandering. She vanished into the snowy darkness.
On February 19, Constantine Khrulev, another local resident, was out biking with his own dog. They heard another dog whining and investigated. It was Madera! The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner describes the rescue:
Khrulev went into the woods and found her under a tree, more than 100 yards from the trail and about half a mile from Davis’ house.
“She was not going to be found accidentally,” Davis said.
Khrulev took Madera to one of Davis’ neighbors. The dog had lost about 14 pounds but was otherwise in good health, Davis said. Her rescuer asked for the $100 reward money to go the the Fairbanks Animal Shelter Fund, a gesture that so impressed Davis that he decided to increase the donation to $250.
This is a photo of the main entrance to the Terence Cardinal Cook-Cathedral Library, a branch of the New York City Public Library. You've never heard of it? That's because it's so underground. If you want to go inside, you'll have to go to the 6 line station located at the corner of Lexington Avenue and 50th Street.
According to a New York Times article written in 2010, there's been a library in that spot since 1887. The first one was operated by the Archdiocese of New York. The NYPL has been there since 1992. Corey Kilgannon talked to librarian Anisha Huffman, then the branch manager:
At 2,100 square feet, it is the second smallest of the 90 branches in the New York system, which covers Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island (the Macombs Bridge Library in the Harlem River Houses is 700 square feet). It has little space for desktop computers, so there are 13 laptops. But the Cooke branch has the circulation activity of a much bigger library, officials said.
Ms. Huffman, who commutes on the No. 6 from Upper Manhattan, said the patron pool seemed to reflect the ridership of a typical downtown train in Manhattan: an extreme diversity of ethnicity, wealth, education and occupation. You have the rich and the poor, the soiled and the well scrubbed, all pushed together. The branch also sees tourists from Midtown hotels who check e-mail, print airplane tickets and ask touristy questions.
“It’s funny,” said Alvin Tulshi, a clerk at the library. “One question we get regularly is ‘Where’s the Barnes & Noble?’ ”
Don't try to visit right now. The library is temporarily closed for renovations.
The Journal of Dracula Studies is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal published annually by the English Department of Kutztown University, a college in Pennsylvania. It contains studies of vampiric images in folklore, literature, and popular culture.
It is unclear if this publication is still active. The last call for papers that I can find was approximately one year ago. Perhaps it is simply slumbering, waiting for the right moment to rise out of its crypt.
This photo of unknown origin shows what appears to be a breakfast buffet table. There's a honeycomb frame offering the freshest possible honey to diners!
I don't know where this one is, but various redditors report having seen set ups like this at high-end hotels around the world.
Zoe Laughlin, the director of the Institute of Making, says that, "my ambition is to make the best spoon in the world." Oliver Wainwright of The Guardian met her to learn about how important it is to choose the right eating utensils in order to taste particular foods. He writes:
I reach for a spoon and plunge it into some yoghurt. The resulting mouthful tastes a bit fizzy, as if the yoghurt’s gone off – the trademark tangy tingle of zinc. A second spoon gives a salty metallic kick – the steel – while chrome makes no difference at all. Sadly, there is no magnesium spoon; if you ever put an old school pencil sharpener on your tongue, during an idle moment in maths class, you’ll know that it gives even more of a thrill than popping candy. (Or was that just me?)
In a blind tasting, Laughlin’s guinea pigs found that copper and zinc were the sourest, while the spoon to end all spoons was, of course, made of gold. “Mango sorbet with a gold spoon is just heaven,” she sighs. “Mango never tasted so mangoey.” But too bad if you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth: in the blind tasting, it came out near the bottom.
It all has to do with the “reduction potential” of the different metals – the ease with which they oxidise – which affects how many atoms come off in your mouth. The relatively inert gold is best suited to subtle, creamy foods, Laughlin found when she put on a seven-course banquet with a Michelin-starred chef, because it has the least metallic taste. Cod on a zinc spoon, on the other hand, was revolting. Time for Heston to appoint a spoon sommelier, perhaps?
Like, gag me with a spoon! But make sure that it's the correct spoon. To know for sure, consult designer Andreas Fabian, who wrote his doctoral dissertation on spoons. He's working to optimize the tactile experience of eating:
He unravels a black pouch, containing a collection of oddly fetishistic implements, like the toolkit of an aesthete-torturer. There is a pair of golden tongs – half knife, half chopstick – and a silver-plated tuning fork, for pronging chunks of food with a twang, along with several glass wands with rounded, pendulous ends.
“This one is to replicate the pleasure of licking your finger,” he says, inviting me to dip a gold-leafed wand in a jar of warmed Nutella. Then there is a glass bowl covered in rabbit fur, designed to encourage a more tactile experience with your soup.
Fred Rogers helped generations of children grow up into healthy adults. He told us all that he loved us just the way we were and he made the world a better place by being just the person that he was.
Shortly before he died 12 years ago, he recorded a brief video message to the adults whom he nurtured through his television work. It was only a few days ago that the Fred Rogers Company released the video to the public.
The video settings do not permit me to embed it at Neatorama. But you can watch it here. And you should.
Foilboards are surfboards with hydrofoil fins built into the bottom. When moving at high speed, the surfer appears to be hovering over the water. Gizmodo's Omar Kardoudi aptly compares it to a Back to the Future II hoverboard.
Foilboards are especially impressive when used by top surfers, like Laird Hamilton. In this video, he rides one off the coast of Raglan, New Zealand. After being towed out into the surf, Hamilton flies over the water on his foilboard.
