John Farrier's Blog Posts

Semi-Canonically Speaking, George Jetson Will Be Born Tomorrow

I say "semi" because the Hanna-Barbera Television Company never explicitly said that George Jetson, the main character in the 1960s cartoon The Jetsons, was born on July 31, 2022. But one scene seems to imply it.

The Today Show lays out the fan theory: in a particular episode that aired in 1962, a doctor says that George should live to be a 150 years old. George happily affirms that he has another 110 years ahead of him, meaning that he is 40 years old. According the dates provided by the promotional materials released by Hanna-Barbera at the time of the show's premier, that means that George will be born on July 31, 2022.

-via Dave Barry


A Field Guide to Stray Shopping Carts

In 2006, artist and graphic designer Julian Montague wrote an astonishingly comprehensive and thoughtful guide to abandoned or stolen shopping carts in Buffalo, New York. His The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification is not necessarily useful, but it is an impressively sophisticated book inspired by wildlife identification guidebooks.

As soon as I saw the cover of this book on Twitter, I knew that I had to read it. So I ordered it through interlibrary loan.

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Solar Panel Installer Rescues Lost Child from Drowning

In the center of this photo is Jake Manna, a solar panel installer. The Washington Post reports that he was working in the Buttermilk Bay neighborhood of Plymouth, Massachusetts when he saw a woman running through the streets, asking if anyone had seen her daughter. The child is 5 years old and has autism.

Manna immediately joined the local search and effort. He decided to search nearby woods. After encountering a closed trail, he hiked for 10 to 15 minutes before arriving at a marsh. The missing girl was playing in the water. Manna called to her, but she ignored him and continued to walk deeper into the mud and water.

Manna went in after her, which was tricky because the mud sucked at his feet like quicksand. After reaching the girl, he carried her out of the water and back home.

Then he went back to work. After all, he had a job to do. When police arrived on the scene, they tracked Manna down at his jobsite.

Police and the town government have honored Manna, saying that he likely saved the child from drowning in the marsh.

-via Althouse | Photo: Plymouth Police Department


How to Make a Bear Pizza

Michelle Ko, a chef in Vancouver, makes adorably cute foods. They're so kawaii that you may hesitate to actually eat them--but only for a brief moment.

Inspired by this pizza bear illustration by Abby and Bear, Ko decided to turn the fantasy into a reality. She used a yeast dough, which she shaped into the teddy bear. After painting it with tomato sauce, she briefly baked it, then added sliced mozzarella, one of which served as the muzzle, and sliced tomatoes. After baking a second time, Ko used piping to create a cute face.

You can find her dough recipe at the end of the video.

-via Azalea Fairy


Elbow and Knee Tattoos That Change When Extended

Veks Van Hillick, a tattoo artist in Toulouse, France, creates dynamic images that change as the body moves. His knee and elbow tattoo images are astonishingly haunting works of surreal art because they present different scenes as the joints fold and unfold. This knee tattoo, for example, transforms a cute fish into a monstrosity from the abyss ready to devour any passerby that thinks it is harmless.

He works primarily in black ink alone, which adds to the terror of his creatures. They are reminiscent of the works of manga artist Junji Ito with merged and supernaturally altered bodies. You can find more of Van Hillik's work on his Instagram page.

-via My Modern Met


China's Professional Bridesmaids

Xie Yuke is always a bridesmaid and never a bride, but that’s intentional. She’s a professional bridesmaid—one of many in an emerging market in China. Sixth Tone, a Chinese government-owned news website, describes this growing industry and Xie’s story.

Xie has worked at 40 weddings during the past two years. She’s typically paid about $74-296 per wedding, where she pretends to be a close friend of the bride while helping the wedding party change clothes and entertain the guests.

Groomsmen can get jobs, too, at companies that hire out bridesmaids and groomsmen for couples who want grand spectacles for weddings. Xie met her boyfriend at such a wedding where he was working as a best man to the groom. They’re planning their own wedding, where they hope to have 24 fellow professionals working the event.

-via Marginal Revolution | Photo: Xie Yuke


Heroic Pizza Driver Rescues 5 Children from Burning Houses

Nicholas Bostic, a pizza delivery driver in Lafayette, Indiana, noticed that a house in a residential neighborhood was on fire. He parked and ran up to the house to alert the occupants. Inside were five sleeping children.

Bostic rushed in through the back door of the house and screamed out that the house was on fire. He found four children and took them outside. They told him that a six-year-old child was on the second story. Bostic rushed back into the house, now engulfed with flames. The smoke was so thick that he couldn't see, but he nonethless found the child and jumped out of a window with her. Here he is carrying that child to firefighters who arrived on the scene:

Bostic recieved a deep cut on his right arm and suffered severe smoke inhalation. He had to be hospitalized, but, People magazine reports, is now recovering and was released from a hospital in Indianapolis on Wednesday.

Lafayette Police are, quite rightly, calling Bostic a hero.

-via Sam Ro | Photo: Lafayette Police


Hidden Van Gogh Self-Portrait Found in Painting

The famous Dutch artist Vincent Van Gogh was never commercially successful during his lifetime. So, like a lot of starving artists, he reused canvases, painting over them repeatedly. Nonetheless, art convervators at the National Galleries of Scotland were surprised to find a rather complete self-portrait hidden in Van Gogh's 1885 work Head of a Peasant Woman.

The conservators x-rayed the painting in preparation for an upcoming exhibition on Van Gogh's work. Most artists who reuse canvases paint over previous works. But in this case, Van Gogh's self-portrait was painted on the back of Head of a Peasant Woman, then covered the self-portrait with layers of glue and cardboard.

-via Nag on the Lake


This Baseball Field in Finland Has a River

It would be tremendously fun if American baseball fields had rivers, too--especially if they ran through the field in order to create additional obstacles.

In this case, the river is simply a natural feature of the location of the field in Finland. The stadium of the town of Vimpeli, SB Nation reports, fills a small island in the middle of a river. It may be necessary for the outfielders to dive into the river to catch the ball and there are cameras set up to catch the amphibious action.

Strictly speaking, they aren't playing baseball. They're playing pesäpallo, a sport similar to baseball. The primary difference is that the pitcher stands next to the batter and tosses the ball straight up into the air. I don't know if river obstacles are standard.

-via Super Punch


Small Plane Makes Emergency Landing on Mountain Highway

The Charlotte Observer reports that a small plane with a stalled engine made an emergency landing along a highway in the mountains of Swain County, North Caronlina. Sheriff Curtis Cochran reports that there were no injuries, despite substantial traffic along the road.

The pilot, Vincent Fraser, was flying his Aero Commander 100 from Florida with this father-in-law to examine some property he had purchased. When his engine began to stall, Fraser steered toward a river until he noticed that a highway ran next to it. He decided to try to land on the road instead of the water.

At the 0:20 mark in the video, which was captured by a GoPro on mounted on a wing, you can see how the Fraser deftly slipped under a set of power lines. That he was able to land so smoothly while turning the plane on a curved road after touchdown was impressive!

Fraser describes his experiences here:

-via Laughing Squid


You Can See Why This Natural Wonder Is Called the Waterfall of the Bride

Cascada Velo de la Novia in the highlands of Peru (not to be confused with at least two waterfalls of the same name in central Mexico and another in the southern tip of Argentina) is a naturally occurring visual wonder.

The spine of the Andes running through the Cajamarca region allows a river to drop fifty meters down to the valley below. When viewed from the right angle, the water flows over the rocks to form the image of a woman in a long, flowing bridal gown, from her veiled face to her ankles.

-via Nag on the Lake


Strange and Inventive Axes by Jacob Witzling

Sara and Jacob Witzling make beautiful and unusual cabins in a rainforest. On their YouTube channel, Cabinland, they demonstrate how they build their wilderness retreats.

Much wood must be cut not only for the lumber, but also for firewood. This means that Jacob swings axes a lot. To make it more efficient and/or absurd, he's welded custom axes. This Instagram video details 8 of them. The triple axe could actually be practical, but the flail axe blade strikes me (or hopefully doesn't) as dangerous to swing around.

Even if these axes aren't always useful for chopping wood, the Witzlings are, to say the least, amply prepared to survive a zombie apocalypse.

-via The Awesomer


YouTuber Makes and Reviews the Sandwiches of History

It is true that no sandwich surpasses the Reuben, but there are other historic sandwiches worth considering and YouTuber Barry Enderwick is touring them in his kitchen. His channel, Sandwiches of History, shows him recreating sandwiches that appear in old recipe books.

Among them is the Eccles Sandwich, which appears in May E. Southworth's 1901 book One Hundred and One Sandwiches. The origin of the name is mysterious, but the recipe is not.

To make it, Enderwick needed fresh maraschino cherries. These are not what you can find in jars at grocery stores and served on ice cream sundaes. True maraschino cherries should be made from freshly picked cherries that soaked for two weeks in maraschino liqueur. Enderwich chopped these cherries and added them to bread, along with chopped almonds.

Enderwick licked the result, but added grated chocolate to the sandwich as an improvement. He suggests that a heavy, sweet cream would help the loose contents of this sandwich bind together.

In an interview with Atlas Obscura, Enderwick explains that he launched this project when a friend sent him a 1909 sandwich recipe book with some weird dishes. The first that he tried consisted of chopped, raw oysters with Worcestershire sauce, lettuce, and buttered bread. What was his judgment? Enderwick determined that "this was nasty" and moved on to a different sandwich.


Star Trek: Deep Space Nine as a Classic Nintendo Game

How much time during the 90s did you spend on a Nintendo 64? Was it too much or not enough? I'll bet that your answer is "yes!".

At the same time, perhaps you watched Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, which is arguably the greatest series in the Star Trek franchise. BirdTooth Studios offers this adaptation of the introductory sequence to Deep Space Nine as though it was the beginning of a Nintendo game. It does not appear to be a direct translation, though, because it shows a Defiant-class starship, not a Danube-class runabout at the beginning. This does not happen in original source material.

-via Gizmodo


Absurd Trolley Problems

The original trolley problem, developed by philosopher Philippa Foot, is straightforward but complex: you can do nothing and let the trolley run over five people or switch the tracks and kill one person.

Neal Argawal, a maker of silly and fun online games, offers a long series of variations of the trolley problem. For example, would you save one cat or five lobsters? Would you kill one stranger or five clones of yourself? Five elderly people or one baby? The answers are rarely obvious, as this example demonstrates. I'd hate this one in particular because it would require me to do math under pressure.

-via Flowing Data


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