Today, February 29, is leap day. It occurs only once every four years and is thus a special occasion.
In the Nineteenth Century, in the United States, Leap Day was the one day a quadrennium when it was considered socially acceptable for a woman to propose marriage to a man. Some men took advantage of this fine reversal of fortunes and offered themselves up for the bonds of matrimony.
On January 1 of 1884 and 1888, the Chicago newspaper the Daily Inter-Ocean presented a list of eligible bachelors who would entertain proposals on Leap Day. You can find more of their ads at the blog of the New York Public Library.
In Episode VII: The Force Awakens, Kylo Ren vowed to finish what his grandfather started. But Darth Vader eventually turned away from the dark side of the Force and appeared in astral form beside Yoda and Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Humanity began in Africa, as did the zebra. Why did we never domesticate it? Why did we instead journey on foot to meet the Eurasian horse and only then mastered and trained an animal for transportation?
CGP Grey explains in his latest video. There are certain characteristics of animals that are necessary to either domesticated or tame (which are two distinct concepts) them. He explains what makes the zebra different from the horse and the elephant different from the grizzly bear.
Reddit an open forum utility with a place to discuss everything on every subject. If you can think of it, there's a subreddit (an online forum) for it. It's a central hub for the latest news of the world.
Blair Erickson, a redditor, spent 4 years building a hilarious parody of reddit that imagines what the site would look like a thousand years into the future. It's called Reddit 3016. It's a non-stop parade of jokes, both about futurism and the tendencies of reddit.
Everything, including the ads, is part of the humor. For example, there's a sidebar promo for the latest Transformers movie, Dark of the Crack. Its tagline is "This time, one of them has a Jamaican accent." Popular subreddits in 2016 are updated to 3016 with discussion boards called Artificial Pro Life Tips and ExplainItLikeImAFireMite.
To dream up all those stories, videos, and images, Erickson combined futuristic technology with what he sees as universal themes around human conversation. “If you read graffiti in Roman bath houses you see human beings make... the same silly things even thousands of years in the past. Who’s sleeping with who. What kind of foreigners disturb their xenophobic feelings. Who’s a badass. What they like, what they hate. Who is a liar in politics, etc. So I wanted to play it out in a fun futuristic way.”
You should go to Reddit 3016 right now and go waste some time like, just like you do on the older reddit.
If you coddle your children, all you do is set them up for failure. You've got to teach them your values by example. If your son doesn't learn how to shirk responsibilities from you, how do you expect him to be able to shirk them when he's an adult?
The Storm Crow Tavern is a restaurant and bar in Vancouver with a gaming theme. The entire place is filled with board games and Choose Your Own Adventure novels to amuse yourself with while dining. There's a heavy emphasis on fantasy role-playing games. You've got to read the menu, which has appropriate dishes, such as the Tacos of the Damned and Patton Oswalt's Sadness Bowl. If you're not sure what to drink, you can randomly roll a d20 for a $5 Random Shot. These include the Critical Miss and the Grue.
Artist Noah Stacey loves the place. When the restaurant decided to open a new location called the Storm Crow Alehouse, he decided to contribute to the decor. He painted 9 burgers with different Dungeons & Dragons alignments.
Are you enjoying the Academy Awards this evening? While listening to the excessively long introductions and acceptance speeches, you can search for the Oscar. Mike Rogalski of Mental Floss placed one somewhere among this golden sea of C-3POs.
Can you find it? The odds of doing so are approximately 3,720 to 1.
The divorced mother and father share custody. But instead of the child moving from home to home, the child stays in the same home and the parents move in and out.
The Telegraph reports that the arrangement probably originated in a Virginia courtroom in 2000. It's spread elsewhere as some split families find it the best way to keep children's lives stable. Attorney Margaret Hatwood in London explains the advantages:
‘This is something the court always tries to achieve, but it’s not always possible. The big benefit of bird’s nesting is that the child’s needs come first. It provides them with some stability. We know that children find it difficult to move from one property to another when parents divorce and they get stressed about things like leaving homework at one house, or not having the appropriate PE kit.
With bird’s nesting, parents do the moving and have to experience the inconvenience instead.’ There are no statistics available to indicate how many UK families have adopted this child-centred approach, as parents agree on it out of court, but Hatwood knows of several families with bird’s nest custody arrangements and predicts it could be on the rise, as more divorced couples move away from ‘traditional’ set-ups.
The set up varies from family to family:
Bird’s nesting looks different in every household. Parents who live near each other, and have enough funds, can opt for a three-home system - where the children live in the main family property and both parents have separate homes of their own. They can then move in and out of the shared home on weekends or alternate weeks.
But it can also provide a cheaper solution for parents struggling to maintain their former lifestyle after a divorce. In these circumstances, the children would live in a family home with one parent while the other could live in a smaller flat. It would negate the need for children to have two bedrooms – with two sets of toys, furniture and so on.
In a previous era in Britain, if you said that you needed to "spend a penny," that meant that you needed to use a toilet. That's because public toilets used to cost a penny per visit.
Many of the old public toilets of London are closed now. But the physical infrastructure may still be there, such as the ladies' toilet pictured above. Agnese Sanvito, a photographer, visited many of these disused establishments around London. Spitalfields Life talked to her about the project:
“They’re part of the fabric of the city, but because they’re not in use no-one pays attention to them, they are forgotten spaces,” confirmed Agnese affectionately, delighting in these structures that are the catalyst for her elegant photographic mediations upon the culture of the metropolis. “At the moment, I have just photographed those in the area that are near to me. It’s a work-in-progress, I don’t know where it’s going.” said Agnese, thinking out loud, “Now my friends call sometimes and say, ‘I’ve found another one.’”
And they're holding lunch in classrooms instead. Students move, class by class, to the cafeteria, get their food, then come back to their home classrooms
The Wisconsin State Journal reports that some schools in Madison, Wisconsin have found that doing so reduces behavior problems and makes transitions between activities easier:
Students describe their noon meal now as calmer, quieter and less rushed. Teachers say the children are better behaved and they eat more. […]
Principal Beth Lehman said that while Hawthorne’s cafeteria was by no means a nightmare, aspects of it were not ideal.
“You had all these children crowded in there like sardines,” she said. “They were excited to see each other, so they’d be whooping it up and talking instead of eating.” […]
Huegel Principal Abby Potter-Davis said behavior problems during the lunch period have all but dried up, and teachers report much less food waste.
Hawthorne teacher Rosa Burdulis said she likes getting to spend time with her fifth-grade students during a non-academic portion of the school day, which has led to more “community-building opportunities.” Her 15 students created a playlist of songs they enjoy listening to while they eat.
The People's Daily Online reports that a garage owner in Qingdao, Shandong, China got tired of people illegally parking their cars in front of their garage. So he got a forklift, picked up two cars, then placed them on the roof of the garage. The Daily Mail reports:
According to reports, the owners of the two cars in question were unable to get their vehicles off the roof. This is because both the police and the garage's owner said they were not able to get involved as it was a 'private matter'.
In order to get their vehicles back, the cars' owners reportedly had to hire a forklift themselves to bring their vehicles down.
Once you have your first baby, it is essential to book a shoot with a professional photographer so that you can have high quality photos to share on Facebook.
M.K. Paulsen and Ella Gale, who are comedians, don't have a baby. But they recently welcomed into the world an adorable little burrito. They commissioned photographer Erin Holsonback to take photos of the new family together. The result is a series of heartwarming images of a loving couple and their lunch. You can view more on their blog Burrito Makes Three.
There are many hidden images of Mickey Mouse throughout Disney World. But you'll only see this one from the air. Disney World recently completed its largest hidden Mickey. It's a 11.5-acre arrangement of solar panels.
Disney worked with Duke Energy to develop the facility. It produces 5 megawatts, which is as much electricity as might come from 1,000 home rooftop solar energy systems. You can read more about it at the Orlando Weekly.
