In 1936, when she was 17 years old, Helen Viola Jackson married James Bolin, 93 years old, of Niangua, Missouri. Private Bolin served in the 14th Missouri Cavalry Regiment, a US unit, during the Civil War. Jackson was a caretaker for the elderly Bolin, who offered to compensate her for her work by marrying her, thus entitling her to his military pension.

Ms. Jackson died on December 16 at the age of 101. The Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War asserts that she is the last documented widow of a Civil War veteran. She never applied for the pension, as she worried about how it would impact her reputation.

With her passing, an era slips out of our grasp.

-via Kottke | Photo: Helen Viola Jackson

Previously on Neatorama: The Last Person to Receive a Civil War Pension

When the astronauts from Apollo 11 returned to Earth, could they bring with them a microorganism that could sweep across the earth, killing an Earth population biologically unprepared for it? That was a major fear leading up to the moon launch and return. Aeon describes the extraordinary precautions that NASA engineers and scientists took to ensure that there were no breaches in the quarantine around the astronauts, machines, and lunar samples:

It was now clear that NASA would need to design a facility that could not only protect Moon rocks from terrestrial contamination but also protect Earth from contamination by those rocks – all while conducting complex experiments using the rocks and maintaining a strict quarantine of everything else that had returned from the Moon, astronauts included. Nothing like the facility they would need had ever been imagined, let alone built.

After more than a year of bureaucratic squabbling, NASA planners settled on a design for an 86,000 sq ft laboratory. It would cost nearly $75 million to build, $60 million to equip, and more than $13 million annually to operate (all in 2020 US dollars). It would consist of three parts, each with a different function: a quarantine facility to isolate returned astronauts and spacecraft behind a biological barrier; a sample operations area to run experiments on Moon rocks and Earthly biota behind another barrier; and an administrative area.

Despite these expensive and carefully-arranged procedures, there were several breaks in the quarantine system. Fortunately, the astronauts did not return to Earth with a plague (such as space herpes).

-via Nag on the Lake | Photo: NASA

Weird Universe introduces us to Stuart Stebbings, a businessman in Wisconsin (of course), who marketed candy made from cheese. He speculated that cheese might absorb smoke effectively and could therefore be used as the filters in cigarettes. In 1958, he worked with Henry Lardy, a biochemistry professor at the University of Wisconsin, to develop an effective filter and patented the result. The best cheeses for these filters are Parmesan, Romano, and Swiss.

I had no idea that UPS invested so much time and resources in calculating the movements and actions of its drivers. The delivery company is already famous for not making left turns because it's more efficient to make a series of right turns.

But its training facilities teach more than efficient land navigation. There's even a simulator for walking on ice, as well as drills for drivers protecting themselves from dogs and getting into a truck with a minimum number of movements. As this video from Business Insider illustrates, what appears to be a casual if rapid process by drivers is actually precision drill designed to move quickly and safely through the delivery process.

-via Born in Space

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In the old days, before the internet, if you wanted to encounter the rantings of angry, semiliterate people, you usually had to go search your house for a family member or, possibly, even step outside. Now you can enjoy such delights from wherever you are seated at the moment.

To enhance this experience, you can listen to Instagram user Lubalin melodiously sing these online arguments. That he sings the misspelled words as they are written is especially delightful.

-via @kaijubushi

When interpreting literature (or, more broadly, narratives), what should be the role of the author in the interpretation of that work? Carl Jung said that "Poets are humans to, and what they say about their work is often far from being the best word on the subject." What are we to do when an author explains his or her work in a way that makes no sense? Is interpretation bounded by the author's intentions or life experiences?

In a 1967 essay, the French literary critic Roland Barthes famously proclaimed the "death of the author." He meant that the author's interpretation of the meaning of a work should not be prioritized over other interpretations. Authorial intent is not authoritative.

Now game designer David J. Prokopetz helpfully updates the Death of the Author to critique other abuses of literary interpretation:

Death of the author: Treating the author’s stated interpretation of their own work as merely one opinion among many, rather than the authoritative Word of God.

Disappearance of the author: Treating the context and circumstances of the work’s authorship as entirely irrelevant with respect to its interpretation, as though the work had popped into existence fully formed just moments ago.

Taxidermy of the author: Working backwards from a particular interpretation of the work to draw conclusions about what the context and circumstances of its authorship must have been.

Undeath of the author: Holding the author personally responsible for every possible reading of their work, even ones they could not reasonably have anticipated at the time of its authorship.

Frankenstein’s Monster of the author: Drawing conclusions about authorial intent based on elements that are present only in subsequent adaptations by other authors.

Weekend at Bernie’s of the author: Insisting that the author would personally endorse your interpretation of the work if they happened to be present.

-via Alex de Campi | Image: 20th Century Fox

Arcangelo Ambrosi, a craftsman of smoking pipes, recently made this whimsical mushroom. It's composed of maple with an acrylic mouthpiece. I can imagine Papa Smurf or, perhaps, the Caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland puffing from it.

Rosemary Mosco, a naturalist, science writer, and cartoonist, proposes that Santa consider replacing his reindeer with other magical animals. I would personally go with the anglerfish and do not consider their lack of flying abilities to be a detriment: it turns out that, as I recently learned, normal reindeer cannot fly. Their flight is just part of the Santa Claus narrative.

-via Marilyn Terrell

While dressed as the impulse control-impaired character Eddie Johnson from National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, Timothy Browning of Ashland, Kentucky celebrated Christmas morning the traditional way. He got out his flamethrower and blasted the snow off of his driveway. He is thus the model to all men about how we should conduct ourselves during this yuletide season. Let us do likewise--assuming that we can construct a functional flamethrower in our workshops.

-via Dave Barry

Natalie Portman uses the domino run effect to suggest an active book shelf. Oh, she says, did my taking down a book cause that? How unfortunate. That's always happening. pic.twitter.com/QaafnK1hzc

— Bookcase Credibility (@BCredibility) December 3, 2020

Bookcase Credibility is a Twitter account that judges famous people for the books that appear in the background of their Zoom or WebEx video conferences. It's an inevitable practice, as the new ways of telework inevitably bringing the world into your home to judge you for your interior design choices. Or, more specifically, your intellectual rigor and home library organization skills.

So it's now important to not only dress well and furnish your office to look professional. Now even your bookcase has to impress people. Now you could read respected academic works that expand your mind. But that takes time and is boring. Instead, just have the service Books by the Foot send you a curated collection of books that subtly deceive people you work with into thinking that you're smart.

Books by the Foot, which is operated by a company called Wonder Book has been in business for many years, but quarantine life has given its services only greater importance. Politico reports:

The Wonder Book staff doesn’t pry too much into which objective a particular client is after. If an order were to come in for, say, 12 feet of books about politics, specifically with a progressive or liberal tilt—as one did in August—Wonder Book’s manager, Jessica Bowman, would simply send one of her more politics-savvy staffers to the enormous box labeled “Politically Incorrect” (the name of Books by the Foot’s politics package) to select about 120 books by authors like Hillary Clinton, Bill Maher, Al Franken and Bob Woodward. The books would then be “staged,” or arranged with the same care a florist might extend to a bouquet of flowers, on a library cart; double-checked by a second staffer; and then shipped off to the residence or commercial space where they would eventually be shelved and displayed (or shelved and taken down to read).

Only sometimes do Bowman and Wonder Book President Chuck Roberts know the real identity of the person whose home or project they’ve outfitted: “When we work with certain designers, I pretty much already know it’s going to be either an A-list movie or an A-list client. They always order under some code name,” Bowman says. “They’re very secretive.”

Visually-appealing book arrangements are important for more than just video conference calls. Books by the Foot also provides scenic backgrounds for offices on TV shows and movies:

Books by the Foot’s creations have also popped up in a variety of TV shows and movies, many of them politics-adjacent. “Madam Secretary,” “Veep,” “The Blacklist,” “House of Cards,” as well as the 2017 movie Chappaquiddick, for example, have all outfitted their sets with Books by the Foot curations. Some of the most high-profile projects the team works on, however, aren’t revealed to them until after the fact: Bowman has had the distinctly surreal experience of watching a movie for the first time and recognizing her work onscreen. (That’s how it works, she said, with “pretty much anything Marvel.”)

-via Althouse

Part of traditional martial arts training is conditioning the body to withstand hard blows by building up bone and muscular density. One kung fu tradition from China calls for the sensitive and vulnerable male genitals to be prepared to take heavy blows. Training involves ramming a steel-capped log into a student's groin.

This video from Luoyang, Henan province, China features masters of this conditioning practice, as well as "iron throat", "iron back", and "iron stomach." Those training regimens are also demanding, if somewhat less terrifying to men.

-via Geek Tyrant

It's the age old problem: how do you keep your snacks warm while keeping Agent 47 busy on his killing spree? Kentucky Fried Chicken has now solved that conundrum by designing a console with a built-in chicken warmer.

It's not exactly an original idea. Gamers have been heating food on overly-hot consoles for years. But what the KFConsole does is conveniently and intentionally conduct the machine's heat to the food. CNN reports:

Your chicken will be kept hot thanks to a custom-built cooling system that keeps the console hardware at a regular temperature while using heat produced by its components to warm the chicken chamber. [...]

The console can handle virtual reality games and offers smooth gameplay thanks to 240 frames per second frame rate and 4K display compatibility, according to details published by Cooler Master.

-via Dave Barry | Photos: KFConsole

The Veal family of Indianapolis has bushes growing near the pond on their property. For every winter since 1961, they have sprayed pond water with food coloring onto the bushes (now an artificial scaffold), encasing them in layers of colored ice. They carve steps into the back so that family members can climb it to trim the ice into the vivid sculpture you see above. You can see photos from this ongoing project on their Instagram page or learn how to visit it in person here.

How does the Veal family manage to create this sculpture? This 2018 local news video illustrates the process after one daring reporter climbs the ice tree to inspect it.

-via Design You Trust

Every year, the small Scottish town of Newburgh turns a local child's drawing into a Christmas light on public display. For nearly two decades, the town has added a new light to a particular lamppost. BBC News describes the mysterious origins of this project:

The tradition is now in its 19th year, but no-one remembers who started it.

Shona Gray, head of Newburgh Action Group, who organise the lights, told BBC Scotland: "It might have been that there was a teacher from the local school on the committee that year, but no-one remembers.

"All we know is it became an annual competition and all the schoolchildren entered their drawings, with one being chosen to turn into a light." [...]

Shona said: "Lamppost 15 is always the new light. It's opposite St Katherine's Court where we gather for the light switch-on.

You can see more photos at Design Boom.

Photo: Newburgh Action Group

For several years, Ruby Silvious, an artist in New York, has enchanted the world with her delicate, precise paintings on tea bags. She has refined and expanded her art with every work, making use of her skills during quarantine lockdown to transform what we might think of as trash into aesthetic wonders.