TomSka has been producing the asdf movie series for quite a few years now, or maybe it just seems that long because there's so much time between episodes. The ninth asdf movie was in 2015. Now we have number ten!
Beep, beep! I'm a sheep! The series of vignettes make no sense at all, and can be somewhat disturbing in places. But it goes pretty fast, so pay attention. -via Laughing Squid
Colleen Jordan recorded her two-year-old twin daughters Maddie and Scarlett acting out a scene from the movie Frozen as they watched it on TV. You think these little girls have seen the movie a few times before? They may grow up to be Hollywood stars! -via Tastefully Offensive
Maude Wagner was the first American woman who displayed tattoos done of her own volition, but she also became the first American woman tattoo artist. She was a circus performer, an aerialist and contortionist. What caused her to became the tattooed lady? It was love.
He was Gus Wagner, a midwestern man himself who had been sailing the world in the late 1800s and returned home covered in nearly 300 tattoos. He claimed to have learned his tattoo technique from tribesmen in Java and Borneo.
Wagner met Maud at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904, where she was working as an aerialist. At the time, Gus was also traveling in circuses and doing sideshows, amazing audiences with his intricate and extreme ink work. In exchange for a date, Gus offered to give Maud a lesson in tattooing. She obliged, and the rest was history.
Gus and Maude looked like any ordinary family, with their daughter Lotteva, dressed with their arms and legs covered like proper Victorians. But without the yards of clothing, they were covered in art. They even taught Lotteva to ink tats, starting when she was nine years old. Read the story of Maude Wagner at Messy Messy Chic.
Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website or at Facebook.
Dawn Elberta Wells was born on October 18, 1938, in Reno, Nevada. Dawn Wells has lived such a full, rich, idyllic life, it is a bit ironic that her very first dream was probably the only one she never achieved. "I wanted to be a ballerina more than anything," she says, "(but) I couldn't get 15 inch thighs and grow another five or six inches. And my knees started dislocating."
Nonetheless, Dawn had a very happy childhood, she rode horses, and her mother grew the family's own fruits and vegetables. She attending Reno High School where she was class treasurer, president of the debate team, and an honor roll student. After high school, Dawn enrolled at Stephens College in Missouri, where she studied chemistry. But after taking a theater course, Dawn got the acting bug and transferred to the University of Washington, where they had a good theater department.
A knockout, Dawn also entered and won the Miss Nevada beauty pageant in 1959. She competed in the Miss America pageant in 1960, in which (hard to believe) she did not win. Although she didn't win, the contest paid for Dawn's last two years in college.
After graduating, Dawn went to Hollywood to attempt a career in show business. She got both her first agent and her first acting job within six weeks. Dawn was to marry her agent Larry Rosen in 1962. Beautiful, eager, and talented, Dawn got many guest starring roles in tv series including '77 Sunset Strip, Wagon Train, Maverick, and Bonanza.
In 1964, Dawn auditioned for a new show on the CBS schedule called Gilligan's Island. She met with the show's creator, Sherwood Schwartz, where the two chatted about the character she was up for- Mary Ann Summers, a farm girl from Kansas (based on Judy Garland's "Dorothy" character in The Wizard of Oz.)
The best April Fool prank I've seen yet. You have to wonder how many medical emergencies this has caused already. According to those who have actually encountered this at PornHub, clicking either of the buttons will let you know it's an April Fool joke. -via reddit
April Fool's Day has turned out to be a shopping spree for pets, featuring products that don't exist across the corporate world. Liberty Games has an arcade game for cats, and another for dogs.
Petco offered a poop-scooping drone.
Florida Atlantic University will allow students to bring pets to school next fall. They even offer a meal plan for pets, 15 campus cat trees, and a video explaining the program. The scheme is only revealed when you register your pet.
Trulia has doghouses for rent.
Analog Watch Co. will make a watch band for you out of your pet's discarded fur.
The candy store Sugarfina unveiled its first boutique candy for dogs, Beef Broth gummy bears.
Puzzlenation launched a line of puzzles for pets.
But the pranks from retail companies don't all involve pets. See a running list of corporate April Fool jokes at Time.
The following is an article from The Annals of Improbable Research, now in all-pdf form. Get a subscription now for only $25 a year!
(Image credit: Geoff Gallice)
Research about a theory about worms
compiled by Stephen Drew, Improbable Research staff
Velvet Worms and Caterpillars (Yes)
"Caterpillars Evolved from Onychophorans by Hybridogenesis," Donald I. Williamson, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 106, no. 46, November 24, 2009, pp. 19901–5. The author, at the University of Liverpool, explains:
I reject the Darwinian assumption that larvae and their adults evolved from a single common ancestor. Rather I posit that, in animals that metamorphose, the basic types of larvae originated as adults of different lineages, i.e., larvae were transferred when, through hybridization, their genomes were acquired by distantly related animals.
Lutz Heck is the villain in the new movie The Zookeeper's Wife. The real life Lutz Heck (director of the Berlin Zoo) not only plundered the Warsaw Zoo, but he directed a Nazi animal breeding program. It was a continuation of the work he had begun with his brother Heinz (director of the Munich Zoo) before the Nazis came to power. They were trying to "back breed" domestic animals to recreate their wilder ancestors. One was the wisent, the European bison that was close to extinction, another was the auroch, wild cattle that had gone extinct in 1627. The practice of back breeding involves selecting existing animals with some of their ancient ancestors' traits and breeding them to bring out those traits in their offspring. But the rise of the Nazi party separated the brothers. Heinz became a political prisoner, while Lutz joined the party and intrigued them with his experiments.
“Göring saw the opportunity to make nature protection part of his political empire,” says environmental historian Frank Uekotter. “He also used the funds [from the Nature Protection Law of 1935] for his estate.” The law, which created nature reserves, allowed for the designation of natural monuments, and removed the protection of private property rights, had been up for consideration for years before the Nazis came to power. Once the Nazis no longer had the shackles of the democratic process to hold them back, Göring quickly pushed the law through to enhance his prestige and promote his personal interest in hunting.
Lutz continued his back-breeding experiments with support from Göring, experimenting with tarpans (wild horses, whose Heck-created descendants still exist today) and wisent. Lutz’s creations were released in various forests and hunting reserves, where Göring could indulge his wish to recreate mythic scenes from the German epic poem Nibelungenlied (think the German version of Beowulf), in which the Teutonic hero Siegfried kills dragons and other creatures of the forest.
The idea of an forest preserve full of ancient wild animals was one reason Göring was so excited about the annexation of Poland. Read the story of Heck's breeding experiments and what happened to those animals at Smithsonian.
(Image credit: Henryk Kotowski)
Researchers from the University of Utah took seven calf carcasses out to the desert to see what would happen. They were going to record, count, and identify the vultures, coyotes, and other animals that tend to feed off dead animals. Evan Buechley, co-author of the study, returned to the area to find one of the carcasses gone. He admitted he was disappointed because dragging the calf out there was "a ton of work."
But examination of the pictures from the camera trap revealed an extraordinary turn of events. A badger completely buries the calf, with the animal setting to work almost immediately after its initial discovery of the carcass. Despite being a nocturnal creature, the images show it digging both during the day and at night.
From the time-lapse video created from the images, the badger can be seen digging around the calf until the dead bovine sinks into the dirt as the tunnels dug beneath it collapse.
The badger then covers its cache with soil, before taking what appears to be a well-earned rest atop the mound, looking directly at the camera. “I was really shocked and amazed, and really excited,” said Buechley.
You can read more about the study, and see the time-lapse video at The Guardian. Meanwhile, at Metafilter, Hairy Lobster summarized the incident with a poem.
my name is badge
and wen its nite,
i find som meat
and take a bite
i cannot eat
much more than half
i dig the dirt
and hide the calf
(Image credit: University of Utah)
Two cats have learned that they will get a bite of kibble when they ring their bell. Apparently, it works just as well if one cat rings the other cat's bell, too. They have trained their human well.
Sure, it's cute, but aren't you glad they aren't your cats? All night long, you'd be trying to sleep, and Hector Salamanca would be trying to detonate an explosion. But who knows, maybe its better than the racket these two were making before. -via Boing Boing
No matter how cute they are, I don't want a raccoon for a pet. I will, however, gladly watch other people's raccoons having fun.
— (=^･ω･^=) (@kirayusa) March 9, 2017
As nice as it to watch a couple of raccoons play with bubbles, turning on the sound will only add to that enjoyment. (via Everlasting Blort)
Debra Anderson delivers mail in Canada. She seems like a cheerful person. She really gets a kick out of one of the homes she delivers to, because of the tuxedo cat that obviously hates her.
Part two, taken a few days later.
Anderson truly enjoys her job. I hope she enjoys having a viral video. -via reddit
They can save your life, crush your soul, make you a fortune, or even leave you penniless. Here are 10 reasons why video games have more real-world power than you think.
The next time you go under the knife, make sure to vet your surgeon's video game skills first. In 2007, researchers at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City reported that people who played video games for at least three hours a week made better surgeons. In a series of hands-on tests that mimicked laparoscopic surgery, gamers made 37 percent fewer errors and were 27 percent faster than non-players. Among the 33 surgeons who participated, skill and experience at video games were better predictors of test performance than years of training or even the number of surgeries they'd previously performed.
The study's results confirmed what Dr. James Rosser, Beth Israel's chief of minimally invasive surgery, had long suspected. A lifelong gamer, Rosser noticed that his non-gaming peers didn't have the same fine motor control with their hands that he did. Now that there's proof to back his theory, Rosser and his colleagues have a good excuse for keeping multiple video game systems close to the operating room and playing them in their downtime. After all, a surgeon's got to stay sharp!
Men have loved video games for a long time, but we know of only one man who has proven his love with a commitment ceremony.
You may have seen one of the trendy fancy wedding cakes that incorporated a sugar crystal geode, but this goes a step further. Alex Yeatts created what appear to be natural geodes, but they're entirely edible! Just watch him crack open this amethyst:
Yeatts worked for six months to perfect his chocolate and candy crystal geodes. See more images of Yeatts' edible geodes at Teen Vogue. -via Metafilter
This is just silly enough to be satisfying. Erwin Trummer recorded candy as it melts, reversed some of the sequences, and then set them to classical music. It doesn't make a bit of sense, but it's fun to watch. -via Tastefully Offensive
