Why can't I just give the name of my high school mascot or my first pet? Why do I have to suffer every time I forget my password.
Oh.
It's to encourage me to remember so that I never have to use these painful security questions. Read the rest by Soheil Rezayadhi at McSweeney's Internet Tendency.
-via Jeremy Barker
(Photo via War Eagle Reader)
The rabbits in the novel Watership Down can count up to four. Any number higher than that is "hrair", which means "more than four" but is often translated as "a thousand."
This is not dissimilar to the way in which many technologically primitive human societies count. Michael Erard writes in the magazine Science:
For some cultures, big numbers just don’t make sense. Take the shepherd who knows that he has the right number of sheep not by counting them one by one but by grasping the gestalt of his flock. That may sound strange to people from other cultures, says Patience Epps, a linguist at the University of Texas, Austin. Indeed, she says she’s often asked by incredulous Americans how people with few numerals know, for instance, how many children they have. When she asks this of the Amazonian tribe she works with, “they look at me like it’s a weird question. They list the names, they count on their fingers, but they don’t go around with a quantity in their heads,” she says.
From her research the Amazon, Epps found that once tribes began regularly trading with each other, higher numbers became a necessity. The tipping point in number formation, linguist Claire Bowern found in her study of a group of Australian languages, is the number five:
Surprisingly, they tended to acquire numerals in bunches, leaping from five numerals to 10 or 20, for example. The numeral five was often the tipping point—once a system reached five, it was likely to add more numerals, up to 20. As a result, numeral systems with five as an upper limit are rare in Pama-Nyungan languages.
“This is surprising, given the predominance of fingers and toes as things to count,” Bowern notes. Adding or losing the numeral four was the most frequent change. (The words for “four” were most often composed out of words for “two,” not by creating or borrowing a new word that means “four,” showing how the numeral systems evolved.)
Bowern thinks that numerals were added in clusters for practical reasons: If you need to count above five, you probably need to go higher than seven or eight as well. And she speculates that perhaps a cognitive shift occurs at about five. “Once you generalize beyond five or so, it becomes easier to generalize to an infinite system.”
-via Ace of Spades HQ
He calls it handskating--no, extreme handskating. And it is. Mirko Hanßen possesses extraordinary coordination, balance, and upper body strength. While wearing rollerblades, he can flip over from hands to feet and back again, all while moving at high speed. He can perform jumps, use ramps, and weave through obstacles upside down with skates attached to his hands.
-via Geekologie
(Photo: Marina Agular)
Researchers at Indiana University found that women who have sexual intercourse even while they were not ovulating were more likely to become pregnant than women who had sex only while ovulating. Physiological changes resulting from non-fertile sexual congress increased the likelihood of conception. Eureka Alert quotes lead study author Tierney Lorenz:
"It's a common recommendation that partners trying to have a baby should engage in regular intercourse to increase the woman's changes of getting pregnant -- even during so-called 'non-fertile' periods -- although it's unclear how this works," Lorenz said. "This research is the first to show that the sexual activity may cause the body to promote types of immunity that support conception.
"It's a new answer to an old riddle: How does sex that doesn't happen during the fertile window still improve fertility?"
Women in the study who had regular non-procreative sex were preparing their immune systems to accept conception:
"We're actually seeing the immune system responding to a social behavior: sexual activity," Lorenz said. "The sexually active women's immune systems were preparing in advance to the mere possibility of pregnancy."
Both studies contribute to a growing body of evidence that the immune system isn't a passive system that waits to react to outside threats, but a highly proactive system that changes in response to external cues, such as the physical environment and social behavior.
-via Dave Barry
It's the best time of day--when Daddy is back! Baby and puppy can see him drive up. They're so excited and express their joy in nearly identical ways!
(Image: Chris Murray/NBC 4)
During the past week, areas of South Carolina have experienced major flooding. When fire ants, the dominant life form in South Carolina, encounter a flood, they form enormous rafts using their own bodies. Entire colonies consisting of thousands of them can clump together in floating islands consisting entirely of painful red bites. Brian Clark Howard of National Geographic explains how these fire ant rafts work:
When waters start to flood a fire ant colony, they take evasive action. Worker ants link legs and mouths together, weaving a raft in a process that can take less than two minutes (see pictures).
The ants move their queen and larvae to the center of the raft, where they stay high and dry on top of the mass of bodies. The fine coat of hairs on the ants traps enough air that those on the bottom layer of the raft avoid being completely submerged.
Fire ants can survive in a raft up to several weeks, though they must eventually reach dry land if they are to restart their colony. In the water, they face constant danger from predators, particularly fish, who pick them off one by one. If enough ants are removed, the whole colony can collapse.
-via Dave Barry
Daniel Drake is constantly creative. He's the frontman for the band Psych Squared, writes comic books, does graphic design, and makes pancakes that almost look like photos. With a griddle, a spatula, and carefully colored pancake batter, he can compose portraits that go well with syrup, such as this one that looks like Sam Winchester, a character on the TV show Supernatural.
This isn't just cooking, but a performance art. Drake is available to fry his custom pancakes at parties and other entertainment venues.
In a traditional tabletop role-playing game, the players' imaginations make an adventure an immersive experience. I've seen some game masters use audio soundtracks to enhance this experience. Here's a new sensory tool to make traditional RPGs even more realistic: scents for particular scenarios.
Jennifer Howlett is the founder of Adventure Scents, a line of aromatic beads carefully selected to reflect common role-playing game situations. They include Horse Stables, Rowdy Tavern, Fishing Docks, Pirate Ship, Enchanted Forest, Dusty Library, Moldy Crypt, Roman Bathhouse, and Fetid Swamp.
Which one should you choose? Howlett makes suggestions with the Scent-O-Matic--an interactive tool that helps game masters select scents by game, fantasy setting, entertainment franchise, and location.
-via Nerd Approved
You're about to leave the building when you realize that it's raining. You have an umbrella at home, but you didn't bring it with you. Do you have to just get wet?
Here are Amir Entezari and Babak Asad standing before an UmbraCity kiosk--their solution to this common problem. Sign up for the program, then swipe a credit card. The machine dispenses an umbrella. If you return it to a kiosk within 2 days, it's free. If you don't return the umbrella, the system charges $2 per day for up to 10 days.
Entezari and Asad are debuting their program at 5 locations on the campus of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
-via Technabob
(Photo: John Hope)
Your ravishing good looks, charming personality, and flair for romantic gestures help you. But what will likely predict your ability to maintain a committed relationship over time is your credit score. That's the conclusion of a paper by the Federal Reserve Board. The paper surveyed 12 million consumers participating in the Equifax credit reporting agency for a 15-year period. The Washington Post reports on the findings:
They found that people with higher (i.e. better) credit scores are more likely to form a committed relationship, as the chart below shows. This was true even after controlling for other differences between partners, like education level, race or income.
The researchers also found that having higher credit scores when they started the relationship meant that couples were less likely to separate over the next few years, as the chart below shows. In fact, for every extra 100 points in the couple's average credit score when beginning the relationship, their odds of splitting in the second year fell by around 30 percent.
-via Robb Allen
(Photo: Santa Claus's Facebook page)
His legal name is Santa Claus. He's running for the city council of North Pole, Alaska. The election is today. Last Thursday, he filed paperwork to run as a write-in candidate for an open seat. So he's not on the ballot and will count on people voting for him based on his reputation alone.
Santa Claus previously ran for President of the United States in 2012. You can watch his campaign announcement here. FYI: he lost. So now he's setting his sights a bit lower. Good luck, Santa!
-via Dan Lewis
In 1958, Frank and Dan Carney opened the first Pizza Hut in Wichita, Kansas. They sold two pizza sizes and offered two toppings: pepperoni or sausage. The business grew into six restaurants within a year. Then the Carneys began franchising and the company grew even larger.
By the mid-1960s, half of the revenue came from takeout orders. In 1965, Pizza Hut issued its first television commercial with this market in mind. It shows a man ordering pizza over his home phone, then driving to pick it up. He's using a tiny Junior Central brand Ford Mustang go-kart.
One surprise for me: the pizza doesn't come in boxes, but in paper bags.
-via Weird Universe
When it debuted in 1975, Jaws terrified audiences and made its movie production studio rich. This led to three sequels in 1978, 1983, and 1987. The last one, Jaws: The Revenge secured seven Golden Raspberry Awards and is widely regarded as among the worst sequels ever made.
Nonetheless, it was commercial success, earning more than $51 million in box office receipts, which was more than twice the production cost. So Universal Pictures continued to make Jaws movies, as we can see in Back to the Future II. When Mary McFly visits October 21, 2015, he sees an advertisement for Jaws 19. Here's a trailer that Universal recently made for Marty's future and ours.
-via Uproxx
Etsy seller Andrea y Diego makes storage benches that are shaped and colored like blocks from the classic video game Tetris. Each square of her 5-piece set is 20 centimeters across, so the units are about 40 cm deep. They're made of artificial leather and wood.
Be careful: if you arrange the blocks so that the form a horizontal line, it disappears. Don't interlock them.
-via Technabob
(Photo: Lane Turner/Boston Globe)
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) was one of the leading French painters of the Impressionist movement. He painted scenes of everyday life in France, portraits, landscapes, and nudes. He was world famous in his own day and remains loved and appreciated in art museums around the world.
But don't tell that to Max Geller, the owner of the Instagram account Renoir Sucks at Painting. He and his compatriots are appalled that the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston has chosen to exhibit Renoir's work. That's why on Monday they protested in front of the museum. MassLive reports:
One sign harkened to ones held by members of the Westboro Baptist Church, read "GOD HATES RENOIR." Another read, "We're not iconoclasts, Renoir just SUCKS at painting." One kept it simple, stated, "reNOir." [...]
The small group chanted protests in unison such as, "Other art is worth our while, Renoir paints a steaming pile."
-via Kevin D. Williamson
