“Why are you black?” If you’re a black person visiting China, you may get asked this question. This fascinating video by TMD Shanghai shares the experience of being a black visitor to China, which historically has had few black residents.
For African American visitors, it gets even stranger. The narrator explains that many Chinese believe that all black people are from Africa, so African Americans are not native English speakers.
Content warning: some foul language.
-via Rocket News 24
Need to cut a path through the snow? Maybe you should get an auto sleigh. Even in the early years of automobiles, people were converting their cars into self-powered sleighs. One common arrangement was to place the car on skids and tie the engine drive into one or two helical screws. Pictured above is a converted Hupmobile Model 20 Torpedo Roaster. Below is a patent drawing for a similar car design filed by Charles E.S. Burch of Seattle in 1907. You can read more about these cars at The Old Motor.
(Image: US Patent Office)
-via Nag on the Lake
Taiwanese artist Kare Huang composed this magnificent piece of science fiction (it is fictional, right?) art. The enormous mechanical duck is inscribed with the words “UN Navy” and “Big Rubber Duck.” How does it inspire you? What story or caption can you write for it?
-via The Geek Twins
(Photo: Mini Time Machine Museum of Miniature)
During her lifetime, Tucson, Arizona philanthropist Pat Arnell has collected a wide array of ornate, high-quality miniatures. Five years ago, Arnell opened a museum to exhibit her collection to the public: the Mini Time Machine Museum of Miniature. There, visitors can find this beautiful work by the American miniaturist W. Foster Tracy. It is a 1:8 scale representation of an Eighteenth Century violin maker’s workshop set inside a full-size violin. This is 1 of 6 copies that Tracy made in 1979.
-via Messy Nessy Chic
(Image: Leo Panthera)
This is the Clarendon Dry Pile, a device so old that documentation about its origins is a bit spotty. It was set up at the Clarendon Laboratory at Oxford University in 1840. It’s a dry pile, which means that it’s made of alternating layers of sulfur, silver, and zinc that generate electrical current.
Mechanically, it’s a bell, which is why it’s sometimes called the Oxford Electric Bell. The clapper between the two sections oscillates back and forth. The movements are too small to see easily and the sounds are too quiet to hear unaided. It has rung approximately 10 billion times while in operation. You can read more about this remarkable antique at Vice.
-via Marginal Revolution
If you’re a Disney princess, then your job is to always look good at all times. Thankfully, you’ve got a staff of top-notch animators working with you 24/7 to do that. Shoot, you probably have a designated hair person on duty at all times.
What would it be like if Disney princesses had to deal with real hair problems? A lot of their manes would be out of place, soggy, or sticking up in odd directions. Loryn Brantz of BuzzFeed illustrated 8 princesses with real hair, including Cinderella, Jasmine, Mulan, and Elsa.
Born in poverty and orphaned as a teenager in Hunt County, Texas, Audie Murphy lied about his age in order to try to get into the US Marine Corps. The Marines rejected him, saying that he was too small. Murphy went into the Army instead as an infantryman. He would prove to be an extraordinarily effective soldier and leader.
Time and time again, Murphy would distinguish himself in combat, eventually earning a field commission as a second lieutenant at the age of 19. Before the end of the war, Murphy would earn every combat award offered by the United States Army at the time.
(Photo: Smithsonian Institution)
Among those awards is the Medal of Honor. The Army bestowed that highest of laurels upon 2nd. Lt. Audie Murphy for the actions that he performed on January 26, 1945--70 years ago to this day. Though wounded and badly outnumbered, Murphy personally covered the retreat of his company from repeated German attacks outside of Holtzwihr, France. He did so for an hour with a machine gun on a disabled tank destroyer that was on fire at the time. From his Medal of Honor citation:
Lieutenant Murphy ordered his men to withdraw to a prepared position in a woods while he remained forward at his command post and continued to give fire directions to the artillery by telephone. Behind him to his right one of our tank destroyers received a direct hit and began to burn. It's crew withdrew to the woods. Lieutenant Murphy continued to direct artillery fire which killed large numbers of the advancing enemy infantry. With the enemy tanks abreast of his position, Lieutenant Murphy climbed on the burning tank destroyer which was in danger of blowing up any instant and employed its .50 caliber machine gun against the enemy. He was alone and exposed to the German fire from three sides, but his deadly fire killed dozens of Germans and caused their infantry attack to waver. the enemy tanks, losing infantry support, began to fall back. For an hour the Germans tried every available weapon to eliminated Lieutenant Murphy, but he continued to hold his position and wiped out a squad which was trying to creep up unnoticed on his right flank. Germans reached as close as 10 yards only to be mowed down by his fire. He received a leg wound but ignored it and continued the single-handed fight until his ammunition was exhausted. He then made his way to his company, refused medical attention, and organized the company in a counterattack which forced the Germans to withdraw. His directing of artillery fire wiped out many of the enemy; he personally killed or wounded about 50. Lieutenant Murphy's indomitable courage and his refusal to give an inch of ground saved his company from possible encirclement and destruction and enabled it to hold the woods which had been the enemy's objective.
By the time Germany surrendered later that May, Murphy was a First Lieutenant and not yet 21 years old. He was also tremendously famous (warning: auto-play). When he mustered out and returned home to the United States, he became an actor. He would also write To Hell and Back, his autobiography. When it was turned into a film in 1955, he played himself. You can watch several scenes from it in the video above.
-via American Digest
Vincent Van Gogh is known for his unfortunate decision about his ear. It's hard to imagine Charlie Chaplin without the little tramp's cane. Patrik Svensson, a Swedish artist with a gift for precisely expressing himself through minimal illustrations, has recently been composing portraits of famous people with only their names and tiny, often subtle figures. You find more in his Instagram feed.
(Photo: Craig Hatfield)
You can't unring a bell, but you can unboil an egg. Gregory Weiss, a professor of biochemistry at the University of California at Irvine, and his colleagues untangled the proteins of cooked egg whites to return a key protein to its previous uncooked state. A press release quotes Weiss:
“Yes, we have invented a way to unboil a hen egg,” said Gregory Weiss, UCI professor of chemistry and molecular biology & biochemistry. “In our paper, we describe a device for pulling apart tangled proteins and allowing them to refold. We start with egg whites boiled for 20 minutes at 90 degrees Celsius and return a key protein in the egg to working order.”
What's the point of this research? The ability to untangle proteins could lead to much cheaper cancer drugs:
“This method … could transform industrial and research production of proteins,” the researchers write in ChemBioChem.
For example, pharmaceutical companies currently create cancer antibodies in expensive hamster ovary cells that do not often misfold proteins. The ability to quickly and cheaply re-form common proteins from yeast or E. coli bacteria could potentially streamline protein manufacturing and make cancer treatments more affordable.
-via Jonah Goldberg
(Photo: Hatena Jobmate)
Mukonage is an annual event held on January 15 at the Matsunoyama Onsen hot spring resort in Tokamachi, Niigata Prefecture, Japan. The first son-in-law to marry a girl from town the previous year is picked up by the men of the town, then tossed down a snowy hill. This is followed by Suri Nuri, during which people rub snow and ash on each other's faces to promote health and prosperity.
-via Dave Barry
Spanish artist Marta de Andrés offers this contribution from an art show in Valencia. She writes, "The subject of this festival was Women, the strength of women and equality between men and women." Her response was to imagine the desired Marilyn Monroe as the feared Darth Vader.
-via Geek Art Gallery
DK's Donuts of Orange, a simple, walk-up donut stand in Orange, California, offers this donut that is anything but simple. 7 Deadly says that it would make cronut inventor "Dominique Ansel to kneel over and sob French tears." That would be a great shame, for it would be sad for Ansel to, like Howard Roark in The Fountainhead, withhold future works of his genius from the world to prevent them from being altered.
What does it taste like? Let the reviewers from 7 Deadly speak:
However, the first bite makes it clear that the cronut-gimmick is merely a vehicle for the punch-in-the-face flavors of the thick Sriracha glaze and generous amount of candied bacon sprinkled on top.
If you’re looking for something “delicate,” this is not the donut for you. This savory behemoth is a Sriracha-soaked, protein-packed meal that just happens to be on a cronut-like pastry. There’s a faint hint of sugar from the dough, but that quickly gets lost as the spicy, meaty heat overwhelms every square centimeter of your tongue.
We've long enjoyed the works of British artist Luke Jerram and are especially impressed with his interactive public works, such as this enormous slip-and-slide down the middle of a city street and his singing metal sculpture. So it should come as no surprise that he's the mind behind Play Me, It's Yours, an ongoing project to place beautifully decorated pianos in public spaces. Anyone can sit down and play at one.
It's become a movement far beyond Jerram's work alone. There have been 1,300 pianos in 45 cities on 5 continents. You can find a map of them here and photographs of the more colorful ones at My Modern Met.
The big, ugly, hairless ape isn't going to get through life on his looks or charm. He needs valuable career skills. So the little monkey sets about preparing him to be a productive member of monkey society.
He signals the human to extend his hand, then places leaves in that hand. Next, the monkey closes the human's hand, crushing the leaves. He repeats the process until he is convinced that the human has learned it. The human is now ready to add leaf crushing to his résumé.
Neatorama readers, test your own knowledge on nearby leaves. Can you learn this skill by simply watching this video? Report on the results of your efforts in the comments.
-via Chris Hallbeck
Two professional warriors face off against each other in a refined yet brutal form of combat. This is sword fight of cinema, which is the source of some of the most compelling scenes in film history. Clara Darko rounded up selections of 60 great movie sword fights, including scenes from The Princess Bride, Star Wars, Rob Roy, Kill Bill, Pirates of the Caribbean, among many more. They're arranged from a cautious beginning to a bloody end. She notes that the soundtrack, which was very well selected, is from Kill Bill.
-via io9
