When Robert Baden-Powell founded the scouting movement in the early years of the Twentieth Century, it was directly inspired by his military career and the sense that some paramilitary training was proper for patriotic British boys.

This martial flavor is especially evident in the movement’s early literature, such as this 1925 instruction manual that teaches scouts in the tasks necessary to earn the master-at-arms badge. The first section addresses the use of the saber, while using wooden sticks as training implements. Next is the quarterstaff, which is a useful choice, as the most accessible of improvised weapons is surely a broomstick. Leaving aside the weapons, the scouts then train in the basics of boxing, ju-jitsu, and wrestling. The result is a well-rounded combatant.

-via reddit

Many navies maintain large sailing vessels in order to train naval officer cadets how to travel the seas the old fashioned way. Although the US Navy doesn’t, the US Coast Guard has an impressive three-masted barque for this purpose. Ecuador’s Guayas is a similarly built and equipped vessel. Such training vessels rarely engage in combat or even maritime law enforcement.*

Nonetheless, the cadets of the Ecuadorian Navy answered the call intrepidly when it fell to their ship to intercept a customized drug-smuggling vessel. The US Naval Institute news service describes the smugglers’ vessel as a low-profile boat painted gray and packed with potentially tons of cocaine. The crew of the Guayas captured it with their utility boat.

-via Super Punch | Photos: Ecuadorian Navy

*Though, you’d like to read about such a foray in fiction, consider S.M. Stirling’s excellent Nantucket trilogy in which the USCGC Eagle is transported back in time.

If someone asks you to count with your fingers, how do you do it? Anand Jagatia writes for the BBC that this practice varies by culture.

Like a good American, I count off starting on my index fingers. Europeans tend to start with the thumb. Iranians start with the pinky finger. In Japan, the norm is to start with an open palm, then curl fingers in as they are counted.

Here’s where it starts to get complicated. In India, it’s common to count off the lines of the finger segments. In Tanzania, both hands are used, with counts switching from hand to hand, forming a symmetrical pattern. The Northern Pame people of Mexio prefer to count on knuckles. The Yuki people of California used to take a different approach: counting the spaces between the fingers. Read about these customs at BBC Future.

-via Kottke

Harland Sanders came to financial success only in his sixties. By then, he was firmly committed to his restaurant vision as not only a means of making money, but serving particular types of food. He was a perfectionist, which sometimes caused conflicts with his business partners, such as former Kentucky Governor John Y. Brown.

In Colonel Sanders and the American Dream, Josh Ozersky describes some of the spin-off businesses that Brown encouraged as Sanders lost control over the company he founded. Among these were a motel chain named Colonel Sanders Inns and a line of British-inspired fish-and-chips shops called H. Salt., Esq., Authentic Fish and Chips (89-91).

Perhaps the most daring venture to accompany Kentucky Fried Chicken was Kentucky Roast Beef and Ham. It was modestly successful, both as freestanding restaurants and as additional menu items, but as it was not as wildly popular as the fried chicken, the company eventually dropped the chain in favor of a focus on fried chicken.

-via Weird Universe | Image: Kawanee Historical Society

Pictured above it the late actor Nigel Terry, who portrayed King Arthur in the greatest movie ever made. At the end of that story, the fallen once and future king was carried off to the mystical island of Avalon to await the day when he would take up the sword of power and be king again.

Similarly, the Nigels have left us. The United Kingdom’s Office of National Statistics reports that not a single baby born last year was named Nigel. Although once a very common British baby name, it is now extinct.

On the upside, journalist Harry Wallop reports that there 189 Kylos, 86 Aadams (yes, I spelled that correctly), and 64 Cais.

But no Nigels, “for it is the doom of men that they forget.”

-via Marginal Revolution | Image: Orion Pictures

The headline is a translation. In New Zealand, the standard emergency number is 111. The concept is the same as the American emergency number of 911.

The Associated Press reports that a 4-year old boy dialed 111 on a phone while he was at home in the city of Invercargill. There was no emergency. He just had some awesome toys and wanted to show them off to someone. Could a police officer come and check them out?

The dispatcher put out a call to available units. An officer was, fortunately, available to examine the toys, which he confirmed were indeed “cool”.

Hadrian (r. 117-138) lived to the ripe old age of 62 before he died of natural causes. He was an outlier on that count. Only 25% of Roman Emperors died of peacefully. That's if you count from Augustus all the way to Constantine XI Palaeologus, who died during the fall of Constantinope in 1453. That is a total of 175 emperors. Data scientists in Brazil examined statisical trends in the lifespans of these rulers and published their findings with the Royal Society.

The researchers that found that the likelihood that an emperor would be killed early in his reign was very high. Consider the infamously named Year of the Four Emperors. But once an emperor was able to establish himself and get past these early trials, he tended to live for the next 13 years. Thereafter, his reign became unstable again and the likelihood of assassination increased.

This 13 year rule, the scholars note, confirms a study of 106 modern dictators who ruled between 1875 and 2004. Their power, once they survived initial turbulences, tended to become unstable after 12.3 years.

-via Instapundit | Photo: Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin

What’s your style of kayaking? Do you like to tumble through rapids? Do you prefer the rigors of the open ocean? Or, like redditor /u/twitch119, do you enjoy quiet, still waters?

The water calls to him in more ways than one. Aside from kayaking, his favorite hobby is painting with watercolors. To combine them, he built an easel onto his boat. You can read a description of his build process here. The unit, which has a side table attached to the easel, fits around the rim of the cockpit. Paracord keeps it snugly secured. The top can be adjusted to different angles and will even fold flat.

Tom Scott, a traveler and teacher about the world’s curiosities, muses philosophically about what makes a place fascinating to people. It is usually a combination of the very familiar and the unfamiliar. For example, we’ve probably all eaten at McDonald’s at some point. But very few of us kayaked up to the restaurant for our Big Macs.

In Germany, a canal that connects to the Elbe River features a McDonald’s. You can drive up or walk up, as usual. But you can also boat up, too. Be sure to watch to the end for Scott’s punchline.

Exit question: can you swim up to the dock and get service?

The calm waters off of Puerto Madryn, Argentina are famous for the many visits of southern right whales. UPI tells us that tourists flock there during whale watching season, which runs from May to December. So far, there have been 1,600 sightings of these majestic leviathans this year.

One paddleboarder got a very close look at one. In the perfectly calm waters, a whale approached and looked at the human for a few minutes. Then he gave the back of the board a push with a fin, submerged, and left.

The human, Analia Giorgetti, tells BBC News that she wasn’t scared. She describes it as a “magical moment” that coincidentally occurred on her birthday, so it was a birthday present from the whale.

-via Lawrence Everett

スペインの画家セルギ・カデナスの作品、見る角度によって老化していく人生を表したアートが凄い…pic.twitter.com/mXOgMXWvNY

— 最多情報局 (@tyomateee) October 9, 2021

Move from one direction to another and you’re looking at a completely different subject. Sergi Cardenas, a painter from Spain, has become famous for his shifting paintings. The young become old, people change genders, or one person is swapped with another.

Artsy asserts that Cardenas taught himself this amazing skill. He uses a pastry piping bag to apply long, thick lines of paint that serve as boundaries between the two different images on a single canvas. This practice, Indie88 explains, is called “lentricular art.” Cardenas adopted it when he took up painting at the age of 30.

This was not, though, Cardenas’s first foray into the art world. He was raised in it. Cardenas’s family has, for three hundred years, operated Ferros d’Art Cadenas, a decorative iron work foundary. Cardenas is a recognized master of that craft. But, as you can see, he wasn’t bound to it.

-via @sanka_kamaru

I’m so sad no one outside of Nova Scotia - for the Most part - gets to experience moon mist ice cream pic.twitter.com/CuMxMjqnJH

— Courtney Danielle 🦔 (@WeAreTheFoxes_) June 20, 2021

What does Nova Scotia, Canada taste like? To find out, you'll need to go there and try Moon Mist, an ice cream favor that is iconic of that province. Gastro Obscura describes it as a mixture of bubblegum, banana, and grape. The origins of the flavor are shrouded in myth and legend, but it probably started in the 1980s. Although Moon Mist can be found outside of Nova Scotia, it’s a favorite there and considered one of the gastronomical delights of it.

If Moon Mist is available here in Texas, I don’t know where. I could easily combine banana and bubblegum ice cream flavors, but, apparently, grape ice cream is very unusual.

This unusual cloud formation lasts only a brief period of time, which is why it is so rare to see one in the sky. Jonathan Belles of the Weather Channel calls it a “horseshoe cloud”, which is definitely an appropriate name. Belles explains that sometimes a flat, pancake-like cloud moves over a column of warm air. The warm air punches a hole through the center of the cloud, sending that water vapor higher while the edges remain condensed. Perfect conditions are necessary for one of these horseshoe clouds to form, which is why they rarely last more than 20 minutes.

-via Nag on the Lake | Photo: GerritR

Ever wondered if you could meet all your favourite wildlife biologists in a video game? pic.twitter.com/RALrkEB2w2

— Peter Cooper (@PeteMRCooper) October 6, 2021

Peter Cooper, a wildlife biologist, describes the different species of wildlife biologists that you may encounter. Be careful: they are wildlife biologists, not domesticated, and thus should be approached with caution. Do not feed them and, more importantly, do not attempt to touch them.

A safer approach is to play an immersive role-playing video game that lets you encounter highly realistic simulations of these creatures. You can practice safe handling practices, such as not accepting brownies offered by the mycologists. No matter what they tell you, the brownies will not enable you to make planar shifts.

-via Rosemary Marco

The Awesomer introduces us to this art exhibit by FudouKamui, a student at the Xi’An Academy of Fine Arts in northwestern China. Pay and the machine will dispense one of the ceramic plates, each of which has a different price. When the plate hits the bottom port, it breaks.

The exhibit is subtly titled “This Is the Proof of Our Stupidity.”

I don’t get it, but perhaps if I buy a few more plates, I will. I mean, eventually, I have to win the game, right?