Australian comedian Adam Hills is supposed to have top billing in this act, but the sign language interpreter steals the show. Her name is Catherine King and she is a master of her craft. Her ability to translate with not only her hands, but her entire body permits her to imitate accents that Hills uses. King's physical accents are perfect, as you can see as she switches between Dutch, French, Australian and Yorkshire movements.
I gather that King is Hills's regular interpreter. In this video of a more recent show, he introduces her and teaches the audience how to interact with a deaf performer.
Content warning: NSFW language (oral and gestural) in both videos. The sign for "wanker" is exactly what you'd expect it to be.
Blind soccer was developed in Spain in the 1920s. The rules are complicated, but they permit a spirited game with demanding challenges for athletes.
All of the players are blindfolded, except for the goalies and, for each time, a guide who stands behind the opposing team's goal and shouts suggestions to the players. The ball makes a sound when it moves and players have to say "voy", which is Spanish for "go" when moving toward the ball (or where they think the ball is).
It would be interesting to see similar adaptive versions for other sports, such as stock car racing, paintball, and field hockey.
WDSU News reports that a man in the Metairie neighborhood of New Orleans developed an inventive menthod to prevent thieves from breaking into his fancy Chevy Silverado: he rigged a flashbang to detonate if someone broke in.
A flashbang is an explosive device that triggers a temporarily blinding flash of light and a loud noise. Such devices stun and disorient people who are nearby.
The anonymous owner told reporters that his truck had been broken into frequently in the past. He was determined to find an effective way to deter thieves.
New Orleans police expressed their concern about the use of explosives to stop robberies.
Letters of Note is a blog that features historically significant, unusual, or sometimes amusing letters exchanged between people. A few days ago, it shared the funny correspondence between Justin Lee of Auckland, New Zealand and the national police force.
Lee received a ticket for speeding. When was he driving 100 KPH on a public road? On June 23, 1974. That was also, coincidentally, the date of his birth.
Lee wrote a letter protesting this ticket. He does not remember the date of his birth, so he asked his mother if she remembered him driving too quickly, or even driving, on that date:
[…] I rang Mum to see if she remembered what I was doing that day. She said that – coincidentally – I was born that day!!
Mum mentioned that I was born at around five o’clock in the evening on that day in Porirua, which is not far from Wellington […]
For me to have traveled from Porirua to the foot of the Bombay Hills just out of Auckland by six thirty, I would had to have crawled into the first car in the hospital parking lot and headed for Auckland at around 1,000 km/h. For this reason, it is entirely possible that the constable who clocked me back in 1974 was holding his laser equipment upside down and instead of doing 116 km/h as per the infringement notice, it is more likely that I was doing 911 km/h.
Lee adds that his Nissan Bluebird, a robust and reliable car, was not, unlike Doc Brown's Delorean in Back to the Future, equipped with time travel accessories, making it even more unlikely that it was indeed his car that was recorded by police radar equipment.
You can read all of Lee's letter and the police response at Letters of Note.
Patricia Brennan, a biologist, specializes in animal genitalia, especially female genitalia. She began her exploration of this specialty when she observed the corkscrew-shaped penis of the great tinamou, a bird native to the Costa Rican rainforest. About 3% of bird species have penises, most often shaped like corkscrews. What was less well known prior to Brennan's work was what the receiving female genitals of various animals are shaped like and why.
Her work is the subject of a new article in Scientific American. It includes a lengthy exploration of duck vaginas, which are the most diverse vaginas among birds. The typical duck vagina is a "penis rejection machine" that requires the corkscrew penis to navigate complexly spiralled folds with inner pockets to trap unwanted sperm before it reaches the interior. Mating is enormously difficult and requires the cooperation of the female duck to achieve full penetration.
Brennan looked at mammals as well as birds. She learned that a dolphin clitoris is larger than a tennis ball. Why? It's because dolphins engage in sexual behaviors for pleasure as well as reproduction. It's possible that female dolphins may choose mates based on their ability to stimulate their clitorises effectively.
Why are you just learning these facts now? The author of the article, Rachel E. Gross, explains that biology, a male-dominated field, tends to be overly focused on penises and other aspects of the male, giving less attention to females. This bias can be traced back to Charles Darwin himself, whose Victorian moral sentiments avoided discussions of female sexuality and sex for purposes other than reporduction. Leave Darwin aside when you explore the wild world of animal genitalia.
Would you like to have your own Higgins boat? Very few of the 23,398 LCVPs built by the Allies during World War II survive to this day, but you can own a very similar and, in fact, improved landing craft. Hard Drive Marine, a boat builder in Bellingham, Washington, manufactures practical, civilian-use landing craft for people who need to land in places without docking facilities.
Among the company's innovations is the Maxgate, which is an articulated landing gate that drives spikes into the beach, then pulls the entire boat forward. After disembarking people and equipment, just reverse the system to push the beached craft back into the water.
Robots are increasingly taking over the roles and jobs that humans commonly do manually. Now let's get this slime robot inside you to go rooting around and see what it can find.
The Guardian reports that Li Zhang of the Chinese University of Hong Kong and his research team developed this robot out of polyvinyl alcohol, borax, and neodymium particles. It can be manipulated magnetically to navigate narrow confines of machines or bodies to perform repairs or extract foreign objects.
The magnetic particles are toxic, so Zhang explains that it will be necessary to develop a silica coating for the slime before using it inside human bodies. Adding pigments may make the robot more pleasant to look at.
Certainly improving the appearance of what has been called a "magnetic turd" could make it easier for future times when the use of it inside human bodies becomes permissible and, later, mandatory
Aside from ordinary compensation issues, such as paying rent and eating occasionally, scholars prioritize getting published and getting their published works cited by other scholars. Therefore any means to increase citation rates should be considered.
Scholars Stephen B. Heard, Chloe A. Cull, and Easton R. White report in bioRxiv the results of their recent study in the correlation between the humorous nature of titles among ecology and evolutionary biology papers and the citation rate of those articles.
The authors conclude that, at first glance, having a humorous title tends to correlate with lower citation rates. But this is only because scholars tend to give less important papers humorous titles. When the importance of an article is corrected statistically, it would appear that humorous titles correlate with higher citation rates.
So try cracking some jokes and maybe you’ll get a full-time appointment.
Do breasts normally generate sound effects? I mean outside of anime, of course. The answer, in my admittedly limited experience, is no.
Nonetheless, one woman reported to her physician that her breasts made a "swishing sound". Weird Universe shares her story, which was reported in a 1994 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. She had saline breast implants and asserted that the swishing sound generally came when she was at high altitudes.
Why? Dr. James J. Bachman attributed the noise to Boyle's Law, which provides a formula for the expansion and contraction of gas that varies with temperature and pressure. The woman's breast implants contained a quantity of air, which expanded when the woman was at higher altitutudes and thus lower air pressure.
The would-be viral skateboarding star failed on his first attempt at the trick. Although he did flip successfully, he also lost control of his board. It was up to a Mercedes Sprinter work van passing by to rescue the recording. It performed an impromptu trick when the errant skateboard slipped under a back wheel.
Although the driver brought the van to a quick halt, it was a lot of force for a board to hold. Still, it held together remarkably well and the human was able to complete the trick, despite the damage to at least one truck.
Sin taxes are taxes on behaviors that the taxing authority (a government) wishes to discourage. They are punishments for socially disreputable actions such as, for example, remaining unmarried. This specific type of tax is called a bachelor tax, as it is designed to encourage men to settle down, get married, and have children in wedlock.
In 1900, Argentina had a bachelor tax in place. To avoid paying the tax while remaining single, the bachelor had to swear that he had proposed marriage to a woman, but was rejected.
This situation created a perverse incentive: some women, dubbed "professional lady rejectors", would reject marriage proposals for a fee.
Today, on Twitter, I ran across the calculated weight of Koolaid-Man, the mascot of the Kool-Aid drink brand. Canonically, he's 6 feet tall. So, assuming that he's made of glass 3.6 inches thick that contains 607.6 gallons of water (plus the Kool-Aid mix and sugar), then he would weigh 11,000 pounds.
Kool-Aid man already exists as a monster in fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. He has many powers, including magic resistance, the ability to charge an enemy, and what amounts to bardic inspiration.
These statistics made me wonder how much damage Kool-Aid Man could do if he was dropped on top of someone, which would be a useful action during combat. Although official sources address falling damage (how much damage a character takes by falling), it is silent on damage inflicted by falling objects. There is, though, someonline debate upon it.
One set of house rules assumes that an object in excess of 200 pounds falling 10 feet would do 20d6 (twenty six-sided dice) points of damage. For Kool-Aid Man, that would scale up to 1,100d6, which would be, on average, 3,850 hit points. Since almost all player characters would have hit points in the low double digits, a drop attack by Kool-Aid Man would leave a mark.
I am, of course, assuming a straight drop. If Kool-Aid Man is moving along a parabolic trajectory, the damage could be different. We might need to consult a physicist. Alex hired me for Neatorama based on my good looks, not my brains.
So, in short: Kool-Aid Man can do lot of damage. Maybe your party could avoid combat by having the bard attempt to seduce Kool-Aid Man.
After Colin Darke went to art school, he proceeded to law school and became a practicing attorney. That's not the usual career path for artists or lawyers, but Darke is definitely unusual. Among his other skills is his ability to draw with both hands.
Yes, he's ambidextrous, but he can also draw with both hands at the same time!
Darke worked as an attorney until he asked himself "what would my 80-year-old self tell myself right now?" His goal is to make his 80-year old self happy, so he began drawing more actively and posting his content on TikTok. Now Darke is a viral sensation as he draws precise images, usually with both hands, requested by his followers.
Leon Hanika is a German champion in the sport of canoe slalom, which is navigating rapids in a kayak or canoe. In this video, he is navigating still waters, but it is still a perilous feat. Hanika must ensure that he does not drop his beer in the water as he rolls his kayak.
Without the use of a paddle (that's the advanced version), Hanika rolls his canoe, switches his beer between his hands, and returns to the surface without spilling much of it. Then he takes a celebratory drink.
We have a similar sport here in the South, except that we use ATVs.
Would you like for a stranger to silent and still, but present as you do something?
Okay, it sounds weird. But it also makes sense. Shoji Morimoto, 38, of Tokyo works as a silent stranger. He tells the Washington Post (paywalled article) that his service is most often hired by people who are undergoing a major life experience, such as visiting a loved one's grave or filing divorce papers, and have no one to invite to join them. Give Morimoto money and he'll silently and attentively be present as you experience what you need.
If you have friends, you could call upon them to help you. But there may be a relationship cost to doing so, or it could just be awkward. Morimoto thus fills a niche because the cost is spelled out clearly and paid immediately: $85.
