"Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid."
Indiana Solo would have dealt with Kylo Ren a bit differently, as this remix of a classic scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark demonstrates. Put the lightsaber away and just use a gun.
-via Geek Art Gallery
The good people of Kuma Films travel around the world, documenting the amazing physical abilities of people. They demonstrate that dance is not something limited to a formal choreography, but any bodily movement that is perfected with time and talent.
In the past, we’ve seen their videos of lightsaber training, contact juggling, yoyo tricks, and cardistry. Now they bring us a man who dances in, around, through, and with a steel cube.
Pursuant the Mutant Registration Act, Marisa Arriaga of Cedar Hill, a suburb of Dallas, Texas, must submit to government supervision. She might have avoided that fate, had she not recorded her amazing abilities last June. She tells Fox 4 News that it’s just a bat trick, but I think that it’s clearly superpowers at work:
"I just started messing around,” said Arriaga. “I'm like, ‘I'm gonna make a bat trick video.’ So I got my sister out here and she was recording me.” […]
LaTisha Griffin, Arriaga’s softball coach, says Arriaga has crazy good skills.
"The finish is something she does all the time in the game, sending the ball a yard or going outfield with the ball with that complete swing through the zone, that's something she does all the time,” said Griffin.
-via Matthew Caverhill
(Photo: Nari Nari)
Japan is crazy for Kit Kat chocolate bars and that nation is home to numerous flavors that Americans might find unusual, including soy sauce and green tea. Now residents of Japan can get Kit Kat bars flavored with rice wine. They consist of 0.08% alcohol, so you will need to eat a lot of them in order to get a real sake experience. I humbly volunteer for that task.
You can read more about these new Kit Kats at Kotaku.
(Photo: baKBlade)
Unless you’re some sort of back hair artist, you’ll need to keep to your body lawn properly mowed. It’s a difficult and time consuming weekly chore for most men, made all the more difficult by small razors, a large surface area, and non-dislocated shoulders.
The baKBlade Bigmouth has a 4-inch blade fitted within a toothed comb that grabs and chops the hair. There’s a long handle so that there’s no spot on your body that you won’t be able to shave. The company says that you don’t need to use shaving cream. I guess that’s because it’s actually trimming the hair very close to your skin rather than bringing the blade into direct contact with it.
Andrew Liszewski of Gizmodo is a bit more skeptical of that than I am. But I think that all that is necessary right now is adding to the quadcopter drones (maybe 3 in tandem) and getting a smaller child, such as a toddler. Once engineers can build more powerful drones, then drone snowboarding won’t be simply a sport, but a form of everyday transportation.
Owen James operates Maven Industries, a metal fabrication shop outside of Cardiff, Wales. He mostly produces and restores motorcycles. But sometimes he also gets a bit geeky. He made this steel chimenea that will exterminate the winter heat.
-via Geek Art Gallery
(Photos: Miaso Wejherowo)
Jakub Wejher was a nobleman who led Polish armies in several wars throughout the Seventeenth Century. He founded the town of Wejherowo, which is now graced with a statue to honor him.
When covered with snow, his long hair looks like Darth Vader's helmet and his cape, shaded in the night, looks like that of the Sith lord.
A few weeks ago, though, Count Jakub had not yet given in to the dark side.
-via Nerd Approved
And it totally works! The musical duo called Team Kozan performs Taylor Swift’s hit song “Shake It Off” on the koto, which is a long plucked instrument with 13 strings, and the shakuhachi, which is a notch flute made of bamboo. At the end of the video, they put down their instruments and start shaking it off.
This is 1 of 6 covers of modern songs with traditional Japanese instruments rounded up by Rocket News 24. You can also find “Smooth Criminal” by Michael Jackson and “We Will Rock You” by Queen.
(Image: National Maritime Museum)
Your task is to invade England from across the English Channel. This has been done twice successfully, many times unsuccessfully, and countless times in the dreams of military planners. The challenge is to move an army across the water and then maintain a supply chain long enough for the invading army to become locally sufficient.
By 1798, the project had become all but impossible due to the supremacy of the Royal Navy. But that did not stop French generals and admirals from dreaming up ways of bypassing the Royal Navy, including digging a tunnel beneath the Channel and moving troops with balloons.
This image in the National Maritime Museum in London shows one proposed method that existed only in the terrified imaginations of Britons. It’s a huge fort on a raft that would carry 60,000 soldiers:
Unlike other prints produced during this wave of paranoia in London, which represent the vessel as an excessively fantastic contraption more appropriate to the tales of Baron Münchhausen, this print pares it down to a severe geometric symmetry to assert its claim to being based in fact. Indeed, a greater air of authority is lent by the claim that the engraving is made after an original drawing by a French prisoner of war, and by the wealth of statistical detail in the caption. The machine is described as: 'Flat; 2,100 Feet long, and 1,500 Feet broad; has 500 Cannon round it, 36 and 48 Pounders; at each end is two Wind Mills, which turns Wheels in the Water at every point of the Wind to Navigate; in the middle is a Fort enclosing Mortars, Perriers, &c. It carries 60,000 Men, Cavalry, Infantry, and Artillery.' Nonetheless, this does not disguise the unseaworthiness of the 'new machine', and neither is there any firm evidence that such a vessel was being constructed on the north French coast at this time.
-via Slate Vault
I’m glad that Christopher Jobson of Colossal spotted this unusually stunning photo. Michele Palazzo dared the hazards of the Jonas Winter Storm to capture the impact of Nature on New York City. The city’s wedge-shaped Flatiron Building looks like the prow of a ship slicing into a raging sea. The snow flooding the air gives the appearance an impressionistic texture.
You can see more of Palazzo’s photos of the storm here.
-via Robb Allen
There's a starry night waving through the locks of this woman’s hair. I think that Van Gogh would approve of this beautiful take on his most famous painting.
Ursula Goff makes amazing images by coloring her hair. Lately, she’s been dying in patterns to imitate famous works of art, including pieces by Andy Warhol, Sandro Botticelli, and Edvard Munch. She provides an art education in the process, too. With each hairstyling, she provides a detailed explanation of the meaning and significance of the particular work of art.
Andy Warhol's Marilyn Diptych
Out: yoga with cats and dogs. In: yoga with rabbits! Metro News reports that Sunberry Fitness in Richmond, British Columbia, recently held classes in which people performed yoga while rabbits hopped around the studio.
The studio offered these classes in conjunction with Bandaids for Bunnies, a local rabbit rescue charity. Their goal was to offer a new yoga experience and get some of the rabbits adopted into good homes. The first two classes sold out and there’s a waiting list for future classes.
Hermann Goering (left) was a devoted Nazi, an early supporter of Adolf Hitler, and eventually the senior commander of the Luftwaffe, Nazi Germany’s air force. He was a war criminal of the highest order and well on his way to a proper hanging before he killed himself with a secret cyanide pill.
His brother, Albert (right), was quite different. In fact, at great risk to his own life, Albert Goering rescued dozens of Jews from concentration camps. Here’s how the Daily Mail describes one of his many daring escapades during the Holocaust:
Albert, it emerged, had not only lobbied his brother to release individual prisoners from Dachau, but also forged Hermann’s signature on documents that allowed anti-Nazi activists and Jews to escape Hitler’s henchmen.
He took company trucks and drove away inmates as ‘forced labourers’ before parking in secluded areas and allowing them to escape.
Albert Goering was nearly tried as a war criminal due to his family connections. It was only at the intervention of the Jews that he rescued that he was able to escape prosecution. Albert went on to die in 1966 in obscurity. But now Yad Vashem, the Israeli organization that honors gentiles who rescued Jews during the Holocaust, may honor with the title of Righteous among the Nations.
-via Ace of Spades HQ
(Photo: WerDu)
Step right up and let me tell you about the latest all-purpose, cure-everything household tool: the horse skull.
Colm Moriarty is an Irish archaeologist. When he was a young boy, his aunt’s home was renovated. Moriarty remembers that the workmen found two horse skulls beneath the floor of the old house. The purpose of their presence was a mystery.
Now Moriarty has a good idea why they were there. He recently excavated two medieval houses near Dublin. He found horse skulls beneath the floor. Why are they there? Sonja Hukantaival, a doctoral student who is writing her dissertation on materials left in household foundations, thinks that the horse skulls served two purposes. The skulls were used in witchcraft to protect or inflict curses and their hollow chambers helped the acoustic qualities of the home. Matt Soniak writes at Atlas Obscura:
Like the horse shoes that some people keep in their homes, the horse skull was thought to bring luck and expel evil. A horse skull foundation deposit, Hukantaival explains, would have ensured fertility, health and a good crop, and guarded against sickness, death, fire and lightning. In the folklore of some countries, like Finland, horse skulls and other foundation deposits were also said to protect against witchcraft when placed at the borders of a house. They could also be used in an act of witchcraft instead of protection against it, Hukantaival says, a deposit secretly placed under someone else’s house would curse the building or steal luck from it.
The other explanation is that they were part of a macabre sound system. The cavities in the skulls amplify and echo ambient noise, and archaeologists think that in some places they were buried under floors to improve the sound when people danced, sang or played music. In the British Isles and southern Scandinavia, presumed “acoustic skulls” have been found in home and churches. In Scandinavia, they also often turn up under threshing barns, where, Hukantaival says, “it was considered important that the sound of threshing carried far.”
-via Marilyn Terrell
