The old joke goes that, if you're walking with a friend or family member in the woods and are attacked by a bear, you don't have to outrun the bear.

You just have to outrun your friend.

So knock him over or smash his knee, then take off sprinting. The bear will eat your friend instead of you.

If you come across a bear, never push a slower friend down…even if you feel the friendship has run its course.⁣⁣

— National Park Service (@NatlParkService) February 28, 2023

The US National Park Service warns against this kind of thinking in a brief Twitter thread . . . but doesn't explain why.

Check in on the friendship before you head to the woods.

— National Park Service (@NatlParkService) February 28, 2023

In fact, the NPS has a limited grasp of relationship dynamics.

Let’s discuss. pic.twitter.com/9Kg7qpaKIm

— National Park Service (@NatlParkService) March 1, 2023

Photo: Denali National Park

Ally the Piper is a master of the ol' pipes and offers classic and modern performances with the world's most beautiful musical instrument. Everything, yes, everything sounds better when performed on bagpipes.

We can see that demonstrated quite well here. Ally does a cover of the iconic 1974 Lynyrd Skynyrd song "Freebird." She moves her fingers at incredible speed to keep up with the fast tempo of the song.

The results are all the more impressive considering how limited an instrument the bagpipes are. In an interview last year, Ally explained that one can play only nine notes with strict limits on sharps and flats.

-via Laughing Squid

If you take a spill while on your motorcycle, you don't have to break your knees and hips as you roll to a stop. Core77 tells us about airbag pants developed by two different companies. Both have a similar premise: a small container of compressed air, when triggered, instantly inflates bladders in these pants, providing shock protection against sudden impacts.

They also, in a manner that would bring a smile from Sir Mix-A-Lot, add some junk to your trunk. The Swedish firm Mo'cycle offers these jeans, which cost $499. Just wear them as ordinary jeans. When you mount your bike, attach the belt to the frame. A hard jerk on the belt triggers inflation.

Photos: Mo'cycle

Yes, in the past, we've looked at various inventions that allow challenged young men to experience simulated relationships. Those wondrous machines, though, did not require the assistance of another person.

This invention does require a second person to function properly. I'm sorry if this news brings you disappointment.

The South China Morning Post reports that the invention, who is named Jiang, developed his idea to allow him to be intimate with his long-distance girlfriend. Plug in paired smartphones and you can virtually smooch your partner with plastic lips that are close enough to resembling a human pair. Each one costs about $38.

Remote kissing device recently invented by a Chinese university student. The device is designed specifically for long-distance relationships and can mimic and transfer the kiss of a person to the "mouth on the other side" pic.twitter.com/G74PrjfHQA

— Levandov (@blabla112345) February 23, 2023

-via Marginal Revolution

Baby bottles are capped with plastic nipples that only vaguely resemble the real thing. Usually babies accept this alternative to human nipples and feed. But Fast Company reports that startup company Emulait thinks that it can provide a better alternative.

Plastic nipples commonly have just a single hole perforating the top, unlike the more porous human nipple. Emulait's design more closely resembles milk ducts--an approach that the company calls "biomimetic." The plastic nipples themselves come in one of five shapes that reflect the five major shapes that a study of 1,000 scanned nipples determined the most common.

Five different colors are available to reflect different skin tones and the bottles themselves are available in a variety of shapes that reflect actual human breasts.

The end result is a bottle feeding experience that, Emulait speculates, will be more successful because it closely replicates natural breastfeeding.

Photo: Emulait

Daredevil repair workers can worm their way out the access hatch, loop ropes over the apex and rappel down the monument. https://t.co/1SBpfmCMDd

— Atlas Obscura (@atlasobscura) February 24, 2023

The Washington Monument measures 555 feet and 5.125 inches tall. When it was finished in 1884, it was the tallest building on Earth.

Scaffolding was used to slowly bring the design erect, jutting into the sky over the city likewise named in George Washington's honor. Then the scaffolding was removed.

So how do people access the top of the structure when it's necessary to do maintenance? When an earthquake struck the D.C. area in 2011, master climbers rappelled down the monument, not up it. They started from a door hidden at the top.

Atlas Obscura tells us that the door is on the eastern side of the monument, which faces the Capitol building. From the photos, I'd estimate that it's about 18 inches across.

Leaving aside electric pencil sharpeners, how do these machines work? The simplest modern pencil sharpner, in which you twist the pencil, uses what I've learned is called a manual prism. If you turn a crank, then you're usually operating helical blades to grind off graphite and wood.

This pencil sharpener from the 1890s is quite different. As far as I can tell, the machine positions the pencil against a grinding plate at just the right angle. YouTuber Resuce and Restore brought this antique back into service. It's one of several fascinating old pencil sharpeners illustrated in a playlist.

-via Steampunk Tendencies

Phil Vance says that he is "an artist obsessed with process, pattern and rhythm." In his works, we read the rhythm of words, including those that are spoken, sung, and written. 

Here is Winston Churchill, a statesman, soldier, and writer. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953 thanks to his vast corpus of written works. By changing the colors of Churchill's words, Vance creates a vibrant portrait of this giant of the Twentieth Century.

This wonderfully weird video is circulating the internet. It's been attributed to the Soviet Union and it definitely has a late Soviet vibe to it. YouTuber Doktor Uzo dates it so the 1990s and, since the USSR lasted until 1991, I suppose that it's possible. But the electronic music emits an 80s feel.

Office ladies in professional clothing and heels pump up the volume and the energy with a light aerobic workout. They smile with delight at the prospect of increased rations if they keep the charade going well enough for it to become someone else's problem. Keep dancing!

-via Rebecca Baumann

I really want this character developed into a full story--even if it lasts only one issue before the people of the city decide to kill Trolley Man.

Daniel Murrell of Danby Draws imagines a hero that you wouldn't want to summon without fully thinking through the implications. We'll need a team of ethicists to at least inform us of the consequences of our choices.

But once we have summoned Trolley Man, how do we choose a sacrifice? Random chance? Perhaps only nefarious criminals? Or should being sacrificed be the responsibility of the person who called our hero to the scene?

-via Super Punch

A letter posted to "my dear Katie" in 1916 has just arrived in Crystal Palace.Stephen Oxford, editor of the Norwood Review, said Oswald Marsh was a highly regarded stamp dealer. Written by family friend Christabel Mennell, daughter of a wealthy local tea merchant Henry Mennell. pic.twitter.com/rmWSPZ2Tm0

— The Norwood Society (@NorwoodSociety) February 16, 2023

The Royal Mail delivered a letter to the home of Finlay Glen in London. The postmark says "2 Feb 16." Was this letter from 2016 and thus a rather late delivery? No, it was much, much older. The letter dated from World War I!

The BBC reports that the letter was written by Christabel Mennell to her friend, Katie Marsh. A local history magazine titled Norwood Review tracked down information about these two women and their families.

Strictly speaking, Glen broke the law by opening a letter not addressed to him. But he's not overly concerned about criminal prosecution and has offered to give the letter to any descendants of the correspondents.

-via Instapundit

The Canadian menace upon innocent America's northern border has only grown. We know that Canada has massed 90% of its entire population within 100 miles of the American border. Now we Americans face an even greater threat north of the 49th parallel: the "super pig".

The Guardian reports that a highly evolved* feral pig species originating in Canada is penetrating the US interior. Pigs, which Europeans introduced to the Americas in the Sixteenth Century, have become bigger, stronger, and perhaps more cunning. They can weigh 250 pounds (that's 113 kilograms in Canadian-speak). In Canada, some pigs have reached over 600 pounds and can survive the full strength of the northern land's brutal arctic winters.

Ryan Brook, a researcher at the University of Saskatchewan, boasts of his nation's super pigs, "They've definitely moved in, and they're here to stay."

-via Dave Barry

*Evolved or, I ask you, genetically engineered as a war machine? I don't know, but I am asking questions.

That's right. This train is not powered by a steam or diesel engine, but by the wind. It's called a sail bogey. This was a Nineteenth Century form of transportation in windy areas, especially those close to the sea. It often took the form of a boat that was mounted on a railway chassis.

You can see a photo and a description of another one in northeastern England here. Such sailing bogeys were, I gather, more recreational than practical.

I suspect but am not certain that the sail bogey photographed above is from the historical Ffestiniog Railway in northwestern Wales.

-via Wrath of Gnon | Photo: Michael Chapman

Through one means or another, you've been given the chance to travel back in time to ancient Rome in order to explore the city. You're not interested in disrupting history, so you're trying to stay inconspicuous. How do you accomplish this?

Garrett Ryan, a historian of ancient Greece and Rome, shares his expertise with us. His insights into Roman political history allow us to avoid tumultuous periods, such as the Year of the Four Emperors, in which the streets of Rome were too dangerous for travel. He also has tips about what to bring with you, what not to bring with you, and how to dress. For example, if you're a woman, don't wear a toga unless you'd like to be mistaken for a prostitute.

This video is part of a series of preparation guides that Ryan has made for time travelers to the distant Roman past. His others include instructions for participating in Roman nightlife and which neighborhoods you should avoid.

-via Nag on the Lake

As a general trend, heterosexual men have an interest in the bodies of attractive women. But to what degree does this interest change seasonally? Polish researchers Boguslaw Pawlowski and Piotr Sorokowski decided to find out.

They asked adult heterosexual men to rate the attractiveness of female faces, breasts photographed by cosmetic surgery clinics, and images of women with pronounced hip-to-waist ratios. They also had the subjects rate their own attractiveness and that of their romantic partners, if they had any. The researchers then followed up every three months for a year to see if their opinions changed over time.

Pawlowski and Sorokowski found that the men were quite keen on women’s breasts and hips during the winter as contrasted to the summer. Why? The researchers speculate that, during the winter, the men had fewer opportunities to look at women’s bodies without heavy protective clothing. The scarcity of such views led to their increased value.

Photo: Pixabay

Chart: Perception, v.37, 2008.