The Commute Map is an interactive graph that shows the flow of commuters in your area. Select a state and county, and whether you want to see the patterns for people who live there or for people who work there. Below the map, you'll see a list of counties where the traffic is coming from or going. You can even select the range, up to 300 miles. The commute to work in Washington, DC, is shown here; apparently no one travels to work in my county. Creator Mark Evans explains more about this visualization at I Like Big Bytes. -via Metafilter
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Montreal is marking the 375th anniversary of its founding in 1641. One of the ways the city is celebrating is with projection art that tells stories from the city’s history. Cité Mémoire (Memory City) consists of 18 installations, projected on buildings, roads, and even trees. There is audio to go with them, accessible through an app on your mobile device. Juergen Horn and Mike Powell made a video giving us a little taste.
If it were just short movies projected against the sides of buildings, Cité Mémoire would be cool, but not all that memorable. However, each of the eighteen tableaux has been produced with the utmost artistry. They’re the work of some of Quebec’s most renowned multidisciplinary artists. The projections are poetic, haunting and beautiful, and each one makes perfect use of its individual location.
For example, the tableaux about the 1849 burning of the Parliament is found at the old firehouse in the Place d’Youville. The projection uses a walled-up window on the building to create the illusion of a concerned couple peering outside. You watch along with them as protesters gather in front of the building across the street, which has been illuminated to resemble the Parliament. As it burns, the effect is stunning.
Read more about Cité Mémoire and see lots of pictures at For 91 Days.
Let’s Melt This is a YouTube channel that shows various things melting. This one a switch-up, where they show the videos in reverse. It’s neat because instead of being destructive, it looks constructive. Also, some of the things are completely unidentifiable melted, so we get to guess what they are as the video rolls.
The only part I don’t like is that the music is backwards, too. If that bugs you, turn the volume down, or mute it. -via Laughing Squid
If the most misspelled words by state wasn’t funny enough for you, here’s another chance to be embarrassed to admit which state you’re from. Estately crunched the data and came up with what questions states disproportionately ask in Google searches. See a larger map at the site.
To be clear, the list below does not represent what each state Googles the most, it simply shows the searches each state Googles more frequently than the other 49 states and the District of Columbia.
While people in paradise (Hawaii) have the leisure to pose philosophical questions, those in Alaska are worried about stocking up for the winter, lest they starve. Arkansas needs a history lesson. People in Montana are apparently reacting to people in Idaho. You have to wonder what is going on in Delaware. And sadly, people in Kentucky learn how to use the internet before they learn the important things in life. -via the A.V. Club
About half the students reading this will cringe because they can relate to it, while the other half will laugh because finals are over. Finals week is the one thing about school you won’t miss at all when you graduate. This is the latest from Buttersafe.
At 96, Dr. Heimlich finally gets to use the life-saving maneuver he invented: https://t.co/JSB4bU4og7 pic.twitter.com/vKO4kfU9mG
— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) May 27, 2016
Dr. Henry Heimlich, the inventor of the Heimlich Maneuver that has saved countless choking victims, is 96 years old and lives at a senior living facility in Cincinnati. The staff are all trained in the Heimlich Maneuver, but on Monday, when 87-year-old Patty Ris got a piece of hamburger stuck in her airway, they deferred to Heimlich. The doctor immediately performed as he had practiced for decades, and the obstruction was dislodged. Ris was okay! The real kicker is that this is the first time Heimlich had ever used his maneuver to save someone's life.
In a telephone interview Thursday, Heimlich recounted what happened. He said Ris had been sitting next to him at his table.
“When I used it, and she recovered quickly,” he said, “it made me appreciate how wonderful it has been to be able to save all those lives.”
His son, Phil Heimlich, said his father regularly meets people who were either saved or saved somebody else.
“Just the fact that a 96-year-old man could perform that, is impressive,” he said.
Heimlich has lived at the facility for six years, but still stays active and in shape. -via Metafilter
Remember the Junk Lady from the film Labyrinth? Jen Yates of Cake Wrecks and Epbot and her husband John built this Junk Lady costume. The whole thing is 37 pounds, and can either be worn or carted around. It was designed for the Labyrinth Ball at Dragoncon, but alas, the tickets to the ball sold out immediately.
See more pictures and a description of the build process with all the little details at Epbot here and here. Look for the Junk Lady at Megacon this weekend, and also at Dragoncon in Atlanta this fall. -via Metafilter
Update: They won Best in Show! -Thanks, Dani 4!
Junk Lady victory dance after winning Best In Show at @MegaConvention! I'm still crying, you guys. So, so happy. pic.twitter.com/gBOEdS18m3
— Jen Yates (@cakewrecks) May 29, 2016
A hundred years ago, automobiles were a new and fairly untested idea, so why would someone buy a car when they had a perfectly good horse, which was safer? Enter the marketing department.
While the poor horses got slandered, there were definite advantages to driving cars, especially in cities. Car manufacturers didn’t have to be so nasty about it, but even when they’re right, business trumps the common good. The campaign against the horse wasn’t nearly as bad as the battle against pedestrians or the campaign to design American infrastructure around the automobile. -Thanks, Phil Edwards!
Barnaby Dixon shows off his new puppet design, and it’s quite clever. It combines the articulation of a marionette with the direct action of a hand puppet. Of course, the skill of the operator is key to making it move realistically, and he’s pretty good at that, too.
The only drawback I see is that necessarily long loincloth, which could create design problems in making a specific puppet, but I’m sure that can be worked around.
While the artists who make rock concert posters for venues in San Francisco in the 60s became famous, John Moehring was doing the same thing in Seattle with little fanfare. Fifty years later, he is famous among poster collectors, those who really appreciate the psychedelic art of the era. Moehring produced posters for appearances by The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead, and other monsters of rock. Collectors Weekly has an exclusive interview with Moehring about those days.
“Lots of bands playing at Eagles came to the house to partake of the Alice B. Toklas-inspired chewies and hang out before or after concerts,” Moehring says. “It was a safe environment for rock ’n’ roll road warriors often quite a distance from home.”
Naturally, Moehring had his favorites. “I have special memories of Pink Floyd’s visits,” he says. “They were fun people to spend some time with. And Alice Cooper, in spite of his appearance, was just a down-to-earth guy who liked to play golf. Go figure. People weren’t really stuck-up about their fame back then,” Moehring adds. “Everybody was interested in meeting new people and hearing what they thought and had to say.”
One of Moehring’s fondest memories is of an evening spent with English rocker Marc Bolan of Tyrannosaurus Rex—his second band, T-Rex, and its big hit, “Bang a Gong (Get It On),” were still a few years away. Accompanying Bolan on this particular evening was his then-girlfriend and future wife, June Child.
“Marc wanted to go out and have some real American French fries,” Moehring recalls, “so we piled into whatever ramshackle vehicle I had at the time and drove to a restaurant, where we ate French fries and just talked and talked. Eventually Marc got tired, so I drove him back to where they were staying, but June was still raring to go. We stayed up the entire night driving all over Seattle. I showed her all my favorite little places.” For example, one stop on this after-midnight tour was an old water tower way out on the Magnolia Bluffs overlooking Puget Sound. “The tower had these real cool cross braces all around it,” Moehring says, “and if you shook one of the braces that was down close to the ground, the whole thing would start to vibrate and reverberate. It was just a lovely, lovely evening.”
Read the rest, and see a nice collection of posters, at Collectors Weekly.
In a wonderful example of how to reuse Olympic venues, the city of Montreal converted the velodrome from the 1976 Olympics into an indoor zoo, with five distinct ecosystems, plenty of sunlight and vegetation, and animals from all over. Juergen Horn and Mike Powell visited recently to enjoy the environment and take pictures.
Dwarfed by the Olympic Stadium to which it’s adjacent, the Biodôme doesn’t look like much from the outside. But inside, an illusion of immense space has been created, and each of the five ecosystems are surprisingly spacious. After leaving the Biodôme, I looked back on the building in confusion. How did they manage to fit everything into that cycling dome?
The five zones are Tropical Rainforests, Laurentian Maple Forests, Gulf of Saint Lawrence, Labrador Cliffs, and the Antarctic. See more of the Biodôme at For 91 Days.
Everyone loved Calvin and Hobbes, and they still do, even though the comic ceased over twenty years ago. What is it that made the strip so special? Bill Watterson never phoned it in. He held his comic to the highest standard until he ran out of things to say …and then he quit. The strips never had a chance to become repetitive or cliched. But that’s not all there was to it.
Even all these years later, seeing a Calvin and Hobbes strip is a delight. Little boys with vivid imaginations will always be with us, as well as the philosophical questions they have about our confusing world.
Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website or at Facebook.
The Andy Griffith Show ran for 8 seasons on CBS (1960-1968). It remains with us, not only in our hearts, but in reruns, the world over. Perhaps more so than in any other familiar "classic" television show, Sheriff Andy, Deputy Barney Fife, Opie, Aunt Bee, Goober, Gomer, Floyd the barber et. al. seem more like friends to us than fictional characters. And although Mayberry may be a fictional town, I think, in times of stress, angst, and overwhelm in our own world, we all like to close our eyes and wish it were a real place.
Let's take a look at a few facts behind the beloved classic The Andy Griffith Show.
1. The characters were introduce on another show.
Sheriff Andy Taylor (Andy Griffith) and his son Opie (Ronnie Howard) were first seen in a February 1960 episode of Make Room for Daddy. Aunt Bee (Francis Bavier) was also featured in this episode, but was introduced as Harriet Perkins.
2. The opening theme song was called "The Fishin' Hole."
It was composed by Earle Hagen and Herbert Spencer. That's Earle you hear whistling the song himself on the show's opening and closing credits. Everett Sloane composed the lyrics to the song, which were never used on the series. Andy Griffith actually made a record of the words to the song. You can hear it on YouTube.
3. Andy's homage to his dad.
At the beginning of the show, where you see Andy and Opie walking down the road together, you will see Opie throwing a rock and Andy nodding or shaking his head in acknowledgement. This was Andy's personal tribute to his own father, who he said would shake his head in the same manner to tell him "nice work" or "good job."
Alabama A&M student Rodney Smith Jr. didn’t own a lawnmower himself when he started volunteering to mow lawns for elderly people last year. He ended up mowing 100 lawns in 2015 and, with Terrence Stroy, launched an organization called Raising Men Lawn Care Service. The group of volunteers mow lawns for the elderly, disabled, single parents, or anyone in need. They have become quite popular in Huntsville, Alabama.
His service receives recommendations through Facebook of people in the Huntsville area who need their lawn mowed. He and Stroy often post photos on the organization's Facebook page of boys in their program, smiling with the person whose lawn they just mowed.
"A lot of people, they can't afford it," he said. "They're on social security, barely making it, and they're happy we can do this every two weeks for them."
That's another thing. The lawn-mowing isn't just a one-time thing. The lawncare service visits its clients every two weeks to make sure their lawns stay tidy.
Smith said he's seen clients cry tears of joy when they see their lawns. "One lady had bone cancer and couldn't afford to pay someone to cut her grass. So many people have fallen on hard times and it feels good to be able to help them."
About 20 boys, ages 7 to 17 participate in the program. Their parents or friends contact the service through Facebook, and Smith sends them the sign-up forms.
The group has received support from law mower companies, hardware stores, and donors. Smith hopes the concept will catch on another communities. -via reddit
Today is National Tap Dance Day! You might think tap is an obsolete form of dance, but the troupe Syncopated Ladies puts a modern twist to their routines.
Here they dance to Prince’s song “When Doves Cry.” They dance in perfect rhythm with very little repetition in the routine. This had to take some real work to learn.
Want to see more tap? Check out these 12 famous tap dance routines.
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