Chinese news media is claiming that scientists have discovered a huge salamander in a cave in southwestern China. It measures 4 feet, 7 inches long and weighs 115 pounds. Wildlife experts claim that it's probably about 200 years old, which would make it the oldest living animal on the planet. This would take that title away from Jonathan, the 183-year old tortoise on the island of St. Helena.
The salamander is now resting in a contained pool where he can be further studied.
-via Lost at E Minor
Does it look horrifying? It's supposed to. Jessica Ross, Cathrynn Healy, and Emily Wallace, who are students at the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, call their piece Disposture.
Ross came up with the concept after noticing that she kept slouching over her computer. Disposture illustrates on whoever is unfortunate to sit in it the long term effects of slouching. It's made of strips of oak screwed together in a spiral. It's impossible to sit in it in a comfortable way.
Just looking at these pictures made me sit up straight. How about you?
-via Fubiz
(Photo: Lucho Vidales)
An architect named Manuel del Busto designed the majestic old church in 1912. It gracefully served the community for decades. But for many years afterward, the Church of Santa Barbara in Llanera, Asturia, Spain had been abandoned.
It's found new life and a new purpose, thanks to artist Okuda San Miguel and Red Bull. The interior is covered with fractal murals of abstract forms, human faces, animals, and skulls. It's an eruption of color that caps a skateboarding pipe in what is now called El Kaos Temple. You can see more photos at Design Boom.
-via Colossal
(Photo: Ulysse Lemerise)
Luminothérapie is an annual event at the Quartier des Spectacles in Montreal. It is a celebration of light at night. The firms Lateral Office, CS Design, and the EGP Group offer this contribution called Impulsion. 30 giant seesaws with lights and speakers activate when one person sits on each end. Totter back and forth to emit mesmerising displays of light and sound. They're on display until January 31, 2016.
You can see a video of these wondrous seesaws in action here.
-via Contemporist
While walking through Central Park in New York City, Scott Beale of Laughing Squid spotted this unusual clock. It looks like an ordinary street clock of antique design, but it's not. The face rotates backwards while the second hand remains pointed straight up at all times. Despite the unusual movement, it tells the correct time.
Alicja Kwade, a Polish artist who built the clock, calls the work Against the Run. The Public Art Fund explains:
Our understanding of how a clock should run is second nature, making this variation almost impossible to read, even as it continues to tell the right time. Kwade’s whimsical clock captures her interest in the systems we invent to make sense of our lives and the world. In doing so, it prompts us to see “reality” from a new perspective.
Carrie Dennis of Thrillist recalls a fond childhood memory of Christmas: every year, her mother would make an elaborate gingerbread house—a task that would take 3 full days. That was great, Dennis affirms, “But I am not my mother.” So she built a pizza house using plain cheese pizzas and a wide array of traditional toppings.
You can read the complete instructions at Thrillist (warning: foul language).
-via Foodiggity
(Photo: Lucasfilm)
Dr. Said S.M. Ardalan and his colleagues at Austin Health in Melbourne, Australia conducted a study about the effectiveness of colonoscopies at detecting polyps. For the Value of Audio Devices in the Endoscopy Room (VADER) study, they played music while examining patients. They hypothesized that Star Wars music would be superior to other compositions. The authors write in the Medical Journal of Australia:
The soundtracks from such movies often contain uplifting musical tracks associated with glory, success and large-scale victory. Given we are avid fans of the Star Wars movies (Lucasfilm Ltd), and with the imminent release of the latest instalment, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, we felt it would be important and timely to evaluate the effect of music from the Star Wars soundtrack in colonoscopy. Therefore, we hypothesised that Star Wars music (SWM) would be superior to endoscopist-selected popular music (PM) when measuring quality outcomes in colonoscopy.
From the always creative Firebox studio comes this uniquely festive holiday candle. It looks like an egg. But as the wick burns, it reveals a baby velociraptor inside. As baby emerges from his shell, keep in close contact to make sure that he imprints on you as the leader. It’s like having a human child that will someday kill and eat you.
-via Dangerous Minds
(Photo: David Ball)
But that may change. A British government task force is looking through 44,000 pieces of legislation, some dating back to the 13th Century, to identify obsolete laws for Parliament to eliminate. Among them are laws about wearing armor inside the Houses of Parliament and beating rugs outside. Stephen Castle writes in the New York Times:
Over the centuries, rules have piled up to penalize those who fire a cannon within 300 yards of a dwelling and those who beat a carpet in the street — unless the item can be classified as a doormat and it is beaten before 8 a.m.
The commission has also debunked many popular myths about laws that are allegedly still on the books:
The commission has found no evidence, for example, of any law stating that, in the city of Liverpool, it is illegal for a woman to be topless in public except while working as a clerk in a tropical fish store.
Nor is it true that a man may urinate in public, providing he does so against the rear-passenger-side wheel of his vehicle, with his right hand placed upon it.
-via Popehat
(Photo: American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists)
This beautiful maternal scene suggests that little frogs are erupting out of a larger frog, like the chestbursters in Alien. Your warm fuzzies of the day are courtesy of the Cryptobatarchus boulengeri, a frog species that lives near freshwater sources from California to Colombia. Mommy Cryptobatarchus likes to carry her babies on her back until they're ready to leave home.
-via Super Punch
(Photo: John Lambert Pearson)
Do you miss the days when we lived in trees, ate fresh fruit, and slept whenever we wanted? We can't go back to last week, but we can make lifestyle choices now. Perhaps they will be informed by the results of a new study published in Evolutionary Anthropology. The authors discovered that among all primates, humans sleep the least. Esther Inglis-Arkell explains at Gizmodo:
[...] humans get about seven hours of sleep per night. That’s less than half the time that animals like mouse lemurs devote to sleeping. Some primates sleep up to 17 hours a day. And it holds true in both highly technological societies and those that steer clear of technology and keep to cycles of natural light.
We do, however, dream more than other primates:
When humans do sleep, they’re in REM (random eye movement) sleep for about 25% of the time. REM sleep is associated with dreams. Although other primates may dream, researchers estimate that they spend only about five percent of their time in REM sleep.
Why are we different? Perhaps in our evolutionary development, we found that sleep deprived us of social interaction and exposed us to threats:
According to the study authors, once humans moved from the trees to the ground, there were probably three main selective pressures keeping them awake: “increased predation risk in terrestrial environments, threats from intergroup conflict, and benefits arising from increased social interaction.”
Security camera footage from the Metro, the public light rail service in Paris, shows a crime and an act of kindness in rapid succession.
One man, who is very intoxicated, has passed out while waiting for a train to arrive. A pickpocket robs him, then wanders off. The victim, apparently unaware of what's happened to him, stands up and staggers forward, falling onto the train tracks.
The train stops to drop off and pick up passengers. The train hasn't hit the fallen man yet, but it will run right over him as soon as it starts up again. So the pickpocket alerts passersby and together they haul the victim safely off the tracks.
Why did he do it? Police officer Emmanuelle Oster told The Local that people are a mix of good and evil:
"Inside every thief there’s a human being, and in every innocent bystander there could be a bastard.”
-via Lost at E Minor
Scott Neumyer, a writer for 22 Words and brilliant dessert engineer, has revolutionarized the pie experience. This is not a cherpumple or a piecaken, which is 3 pies baked into separate layers of a cake, but a true pie turducken.
Neumyer baked five concentric pies. From the outside in, they are apple, cherry, peach, blueberry, and cream cheese. He sealed them inside overlapping pie crusts. After baking and eating the result, he proclaimed it "the greatest pie of all time."
This is not boasting by Neumyer. As William F. Buckley, Jr. said, "It is not a sign of arrogance for the king to rule. That is what he is there for." The turducken of pies is now our king.
Yes, rats in New York City love pizza. But a rat of discerning taste need not limit himself to whatever pizza is available around the corner. No other city offers as many dining options as New York--especially when it comes to pizza.
So New York magazine left pizzas from four prominent pizzerias around the city and recorded the responses from local rats. Lombardi's Neapolitan-style was by far the most popular choice.
Like the silly episode “Rascals,” where Captain Picard turns into a 12-year old boy, “Deck the Holodeck” is one of the most underappreciated episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Yes, it’s a bit absurd. But only Scrooges who can’t get into the Christmas spirit fail to enjoy this gem from Season 3. My favorite scene is when Riker attempts to sing “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” to Worf after translating it into Klingon.
This is 1 of 7 oft-forgotten Christmas television episodes rounded up by Clickhole. They include the Law & Order: SVU episode in which the detectives rush to solve two molestation cases before Christmas arrives and the infamous eggnog episode of House M.D.
