According to internet rumor (sorry, but that's as far as I have been able to confirm this news story), the Hato Bus company, a sightseeing bus company in Tokyo, has been shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic. The 60 unused buses at their depot have been arranged into a maze to provide more static entertainment.
-via Super Punch | Photo: Sankei
One fan in the video says, "What are we doing?" It doesn't look like football.
But the complicated play does end in a touchdown that secures victory for Hillcrest-Tuscaloosa over Wetumpka (Alabama high school football teams) with only 2.9 seconds left on the clock.
Believe it or not, this is actually what the coach planned. AL.com reports:
The play “Bronco” is named after Adams saw Boise State run a similar scramble play years earlier.
The play started with quarterback Ethan Crawford passing in the left flats to running back Marcus Wilkins. Nine laterals later, Crawford picked up a fumbled ball and ran untouched the final 46 yards for the game-winning touchdown.
-via Dave Barry
Singapore Airlines has been financially devastated by the coronavirus pandemic. Working with the Singapore Tourism Board, it plans to, by the end of October, launch a series of flights that will take off from Changi Airport, stay airborne for about three hours, and then return home.
It's a government subsidy program. The Singaporean national government will give tourism credits to passengers. The Straits Times reports:
Mr Stefan Wood, director at aircraft charter firm Singapore Air Charter, told ST that he had approached SIA about the possibility of setting up a joint venture to provide such flights to nowhere using the Airbus A-350 planes from SIA. [...]
"We will make an announcement at the appropriate time if we go ahead with these plans."
Several airlines worldwide, including EVA Air in Taiwan, have piloted flights to nowhere in an attempt to cope with the drastic fall in demand for air travel due to the coronavirus pandemic.
-via Marginal Revolution | Photo: Steve Lynes
Mary Donahue, a college professor, champion swimmer, outdoorswoman, and, well, her list of accomplishments is very long, writes about how park rangers and staff at Yosemite National Park have attempted to make human food stores safe from bears. Bears are smart, ravenous, have a keen sense of smell, and very flexible paws.
They can manipulate many physical objects, so one food storage locker design requires the user to insert the handle into the lock before turning it.
The ball python (whose identity the St. Louis Zoo is protecting), laid a clutch of eggs despite being the oldest known snake in a zoo and, even more impressively, having no males to mate with. How is this possible? Stuff reports that the snake may have kept a sperm sample handy:
Mark Wanner, manager of herpetology at the St. Louis Zoo, said it unusual but not rare for ball pythons to reproduce asexually. The snakes also sometimes store sperm for delayed fertilization.
Photo: St. Louis Zoo/Chawa Schuette
Bill Edgar, a private investigator in Queensland, Australia, offers a special service. For $10,000 (that's $7,318.55 US dollars), he'll quietly attend your funeral. Then he'll stand up and reveal the secrets that you had held onto all of your life. He described one such funeral job to ABC News:
Dressed in tailored pants and vest, Mr Edgar said he was very respectful in the way he carried out his job.
"I actually blend in with the mourners," he said. "I sit with the family and friends. I sit in the middle with everybody."
In the case of his very first client Mr Edgar said he was instructed to interrupt the man's best friend when he was delivering the eulogy.
"I was to tell the best mate to sit down and shut up," he said.
"He knew that he'd [the best mate] been trying to have an affair with his wife.
And if there's someone at your funeral whom you don't want there, he'll eject them.
-via Marginal Revolution | Photo: Bill Edgar
/r/SonicShowerThoughts is a subreddit filled with the off-the-bulkhead ideas that have occurred to Trekkies when their minds are empty of more important issues. It's a collection of shower thoughts that don't get you wet.
Data's first job would indeed have been a data entry level position. His supervisor, likely a lieutenant, would have worked in data management.
There's great stuff in this subreddit. My favorite is about Barclay and The A-Team.
Milena, a 17-year old hairstylist from Germany, is a master of her craft. Working upon mannequin wigs, she creates intricate hair designs that appear to be almost magical. Her Instagram page includes video instructions on how to replicate her work upon a friend's hair--or your own, if you're exceptionally dexterous.
Arnold Schwarzenegger (champion bodybuilder, actor, businessman, and politician) recently turned 73. To celebrate the occasion, Redditor /u/Radonlab carved this magnificent pipe showing the Governor in his most famous acting role: the Terminator.
Schwarzenegger is an active redditor known for his jovial interactions on that forum. He asked Radonlab to sell the pipe. Radonlab gave it to him, and Schwarzenegger responded with a photo of him using it!
-via Born in Space
Pictured above is a Robertson screw, invented by the Canadian Peter Lymburner Robertson and patented in 1907. It was brilliantly designed to avoid cam out and was far superior to other screws available at the time.
We Americans might still be using them widely if Robertson hadn't gotten into a dispute with Henry Ford. Road & Track magazine traces the history of the screw and the downfall of the Robertson:
But unless you’re Canadian, there’s a good chance you’ve never heard of Robertson screws. That’s because Henry Ford wanted to use Robertsons in all of his plants, and he wanted more control over how they were made. Robertson, by most accounts a stubborn man, wouldn’t agree. No deal was struck, and the Canadian lost an important part of his business. Meanwhile, other engineers worked on their own types of screw heads.
The eventual replacement for the Robertson was the now-ubiquitous Phillips:
A Phillips screw offers many of the benefits of a Robertson and can be driven by a traditional slotted screwdriver in a pinch. Phillips licensed his design to the giant American Screw Company, which got General Motors to use the screw in the 1936 Cadillac. Within the decade, almost all automakers were using Phillips screws.
A Phillips is, arguably, not a better screw than a Robertson. Consumer Reports once wrote that “compared with slotted and Phillips-head screwdrivers, the Robertson worked faster, with less cam-out.” However, cam-out was good for automakers increasingly relying on automation, as it meant screws wouldn’t be overtightened. Today the Phillips is the standard, except in Canada, where the Robertson remains popular, and in Japan, which has its own cruciform screw, the Japanese Industrial Standard.
Next time you strip out a Phillips, shake your fist at Henry Ford.
-via Instapundit | Photo: Safforest
This amazing video of uncertain provenance appears to show an aquarium loop that allows a pet seal to swim over the surface of the pool. It has my seal of approval. I want one, even though I don't own a seal.
-via Geekologie
Here is a story about the time I got in trouble as a kid for repeatedly using the word “whorehouse.”
— Andrew Farmer (@thatsajellyfish) September 1, 2020
When I was a little boy, I misunderstood something that my mother said and believed for far too long that human hair is made of peanut butter.
Children hear things that adults say, but don't necessarily understand them. When he was eight years old, comedian Andrew Farmer heard the word "whorehouse" and misunderstood it to mean "psychiatric hospital". He tells a funny and hopefully true story about the results.
-via Super Punch
Marquetry is the craft of creating decorative patterns and images in wood by the inlay and adhesion of different woods, grains, stains, and colors. Andrea Nyilas, a Hungarian artist, is a master of it. Here is a recent piece displaying the Borg Queen from Star Trek. There is no more Borg Queen because you don't cross Janeway.
Rastra are dip pens that composers use (or used in the past) to draw musical staff. They were common among European composers in the 18th and 19th Centuries. Some, such as the one above, survive as prized antiques. Rastrum is the Latin word for, appropriately, "rake".
-via TYWKIWDBI | Photo: Worthpoint
There are so many reasons to get naked (or, as we bloggers call it, "in dress uniform"). One is to avoid polar bear attacks.
Polar bears are dangerous, aggressive predators that view humans as food. That's why, in Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago, carrying a gun is not only allowed, but mandatory. It's why people in Churchill, Manitoba, Canada leave their car doors unlocked and have built a polar bear jail.
There's something else that you can do: strip. The New York Post reports:
“Polar bears are very curious,” Sarah Woodall, a tourism destination manager for Visit South Greenland told me during my first trip to the country in 2015. To that end, if you should come face-to-face with one, back away (slowly at first), while peeling off your clothes one item at a time. The bears are very curious so they should stop, sniff, and perhaps play with each item as they come across it, leaving you free to run somewhere across the Arctic buck naked.
Suddenly taking your clothes off can also shorten the line at store cashier lines or the DMV.
-via Dave Barry | Photo: Anita Ritenour
