Dallas meteorologist Jennifer Myers belongs to a Facebook group for women meteorologists on TV. One of the things they discuss is clothing, because there are many restrictions on what you can wear: no green, no patterns, no stripes, no reflective material, no noisy fabric, no cleavage, must be dressy, and you can’t wear the same dress too often. Still, most buy their own work clothes, so when one member posted a link to a dress for only $23, they all bought it. Myers tells us,

I'm on here twice. Top second from left in the purple and second from the right on the bottom in the blue.

If you want to find your local weather reporter, the enlargeable picture is at imgur. -via reddit

Update: Within hours, many redditors identified the dress on their local weather forecast.

A few facts about giraffes, from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Attack of the Factoids. 

(image credit: D. Gordon E. Robertson)

Giraffes don’t make a lot of noise, but they are able to make sounds like grunts, hisses, snorts, and even moos.

Baby giraffes grow about an inch every day during their first week of life. But only about one giraffe baby in four makes it to adulthood. Big cats and jackals hunt them, and their mothers aren’t great at defense.

Giraffe males can be as tall as 18 feet; females, 14 feet.

Like cows, giraffes are ruminants, which means they have four compartments in their stomachs and they regurgitate and chew their cud.

A giraffe tongue measures about 2 feet long and is blue-black in color. Scientists think that might be so their tongues don’t get sunburned.

A giraffe’s legs are taller than the average human adult.

Giraffes have seven vertebrae in their necks— the same as every mammal.

A giraffe newborn falls from a height of about 6 ½ feet. Luckily, it’s already about 6 feet tall at birth, so the fall isn’t really that bad.

Male giraffes are often at more risk from predators than females, even though they’re larger, because they spend a lot of time alone and are easy to sneak up on.

The giraffe has only one known relative: the okapi, a mammal native to rain forests in central Africa. Okapis somewhat resemble giraffes, but have black and white striped legs and short necks.

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The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Attack of the Factoids. Weighing in at over 400 pages, it's a fact-a-palooza of obscure information.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. If you like Neatorama, you'll love the Bathroom Reader Institute's books - go ahead and check 'em out!

Floreana is a small island in the Galapagos that became home to a few very adventurous people almost 100 years ago. They came a few at a time, each with bizarre stories, beginning with Dr. Frederick Ritter and Dore Strauch, who left their lives in Germany behind in 1928 for what they thought would be an island paradise.

Strauch wrote a memoir about her life on the island, and it’s like Into the Wild written by an old-timey German lady with Stockholm syndrome. She met Ritter, a doctor fifteen years her senior, when he treated her for multiple sclerosis. They bonded over their shared hatred of bourgeois domesticity.

Ritter was a sort of reverse Henry Higgins for Strauch, pushing her to change from a bored city wife into a stateless, toothless hermit. He told her she could overcome her physical ailments through sheer willpower, she believed him, and they left their respective spouses and families to move from Germany to Floreana.

He also held, uh, unorthodox views for a doctor. Ritter preemptively removed his teeth before the trip because he wanted to see if his gums would toughen up in the wilderness. He didn’t bother arranging for Strauch to get her teeth removed, nor did he bring any dentistry tools, so her teeth rotted and had to be yanked out with gardening supplies while they were on the island. Then they shared the one pair of DIY stainless steel false teeth Ritter had made. They also didn’t wear many clothes.

Other people followed, but they didn’t form a community because they didn’t have anything in common. They didn’t even like each other. First came a family with a pregnant mom, then a baroness with two lovers, and occasional visitors who might be shot at. The animosity between the Floreana islanders led to accusations of murder when two of them disappeared. Read the whole sordid story at Gizmodo.

We don’t know anything about Luke Skywalker’s role in the Star Wars: The Force Awakens. He’s not in any of the trailers, and he’s not even on the poster. It’s supposed to be a surprise. Such a surprise, in fact, that Mark Hamill gets a bonus payment if he can keep it a secret until the movie comes out on December 18th.

(YouTube link)

PC Gamer got an interview with Hamill all decked out in motion-capture equipment as he worked on the the upcoming game Squadron 42 (Star Citizen). Hamill tells the story of how he kept the revelation of Skywalker's genetic lineage a secret until the premiere of The Empire Strikes Back. He should be able to keep an expected plot twist a secret for another month. This is a small portion of a longer interview that you can see here. -via Geeks Are Sexy 

Isn’t this the classiest, coziest bar you seen in a while? Redditor marauder09 has this in his home! He designed it after the speakeasies of the Prohibition era. Among the actual liquor bottles are antique bottles. On the walls, he has prescriptions for alcohol written by doctors during the ‘20s, as well as tintypes of entertainers from the era.

He’s gradually collected bar equipment, furniture, art, and other accoutrements of the era to make it authentic, down to the ceiling tiles. He made the chandelier himself, and his sister gave him several homemade bitters for the bar.

See a couple of dozen pictures of marauder09’s speakeasy at imgur.  

Cheers!

Since the earth is spinning to the east, why doesn’t flights to the west take less time than one going east? According to this video from Minute Physics, it’s kind of complicated.

(YouTube link)

I know it takes a lot longer to drive east than to drive west, but only if you cross into another time zone. Even without factoring in the effect of jet lag, driving or flying, you are going to be tired either way. -via Digg

The final Hunger Games movie, Mockingjay Part 2, opened nationwide last night, so it’s perfect timing to see Katniss in a rap battle in Whitney Avalon’s Princess Rap series. Her opponent: Hermione Granger, played by Molly C. Quinn.  

(YouTube link)

Who’s tougher, smarter, and hotter? You decide. All I know is that they rhyme well. -via Viral Viral Videos

Alex Weinberg is a structural engineer, and as such, he notices inaccuracies in movies. He is particularly distracted by the many suspension bridges that get destroyed. "Americans don’t build real bridges anymore, or maintain the ones that we have, but we sure love to blow them up in movies." It’s not so much that they get destroyed that bugs him, but the way that destruction is portrayed goes against the laws of physics. A little consultation with an engineer could go a long way in making those scenes accurate. So Weinberg explains what’s wrong with suspension bridge wreckage in quite a few movies.

Godzilla (2014)

An errant army missile completely severs one of the Golden Gate Bridge’s two main cables. The loss of that cable, which had been supporting the right side of the road deck, should result in a catastrophic collapse: Without one of its two vertical supports, the road deck would hinge downward like a trap door, dropping all the tanks and school buses into the water below.

However, in the film world, bridge suspension cables are purely decorative elements that can be destroyed without consequence. The soldiers continue to battle Godzilla and the drivers motor across the bridge to safety, all oblivious to the physics errors that spared their lives. Godzilla even tugs at the remaining cable, which should at least cause the impossibly floating road deck to sway, but it doesn’t. Even when Godzilla busts through the center of the main span, the function of the bridge is unaffected.

Read about the suspension bridge destruction scenes in Final Destination V, I Am Legend, X-Men: The Last Stand, and The Dark Knight Rises as well at Hackaday. -via Metafilter

Jaime Margary made this awesome costume in the image of the Superb bird-of-paradise (Lophorina superba). You  might remember this bird’s peculiar mating ritual. It was quite striking.

(YouTube link)

Anyone who sees the costume will react with either complete puzzlement or they will recognize it and dissolve in tears of laughter. The only thing that would make this costume better for Margary would be to have a David Attenborough soundtrack to play while he wears it. -via Geeks Are Sexy

These are even cooler than the ones you see on TV!

Forensic Botanist

In 1932, Bruno Hauptmann propped a homemade ladder against Charles Lindbergh’s house, climbed up to one of the bedroom windows, and snatched the aviator’s 20-month-old son. When Hauptmann was brought to court, forensic botany helped lock him away. Arthur Koehler, a wood technologist, discovered that one of the ladder rails had formerly been part of a floor. He later matched the tree rings on that ladder with a missing floorboard in Hauptmann’s attic. Since then, botanists have used pollen (which clings to clothes and hair) to link suspects to crime scenes, soil and plant samples to determine when unmarked graves were dug, and algae blooms to identify where drowning victims died. So avoid committing crimes in front of your ficus. It’s a snitch.

Forensic Linguist

From pronunciations and misspellings to overused words, the language patterns you demonstrate while communicating are as distinct as the sound of your voice. That makes them an important piece of evidence in a criminal investigation. Though forensic linguistics emerged in the late 1960s, it didn’t become popular in the United States until the mid-1990s, when FBI linguist James Fitzgerald was hunting for the Unabomber, who had killed three people and injured two dozen by mailing homemade bombs. Fitzgerald believed publishing the bomber’s “manifesto” would help catch the criminal—and it worked. Several people, including his brother and sister-in-law, recognized the writing style and called in. Soon Ted Kaczynski was in handcuffs.

Forensic Accountant

In 1971, Big Bird made friends with a creature called Mr. Snuffleupagus. But the adults of Sesame Street never saw Snuffy, and thought he was Big Bird’s imaginary friend. That went on for 14 years!

Norman Stiles (Writer/Head Writer, 1971-1995): The character was kind of a collaboration between [executive producer] Jon Stone and Jim Henson. I think the initial idea was really to be ambiguous in the sense that, well, Big Bird says he’s real and the audience sees him and yet he always manages to not be there when the other people were there—so is he real or isn’t he real? The whole idea was to not really answer that, but to leave it as an open question.  

Emilio Delgado (“Luis,” 1971-Present): It was going with the whole thing of a child’s imaginary playmate, which a lot of kids have. Big Bird was the only one who could see him. When adults came around, he would be talking about Snuffy this, and Snuffy that. We’d just say, "Yeah, sure, OK." We didn’t believe him.

Carol-Lynn Parente (Executive Producer, 2005-Present): There was a lot of humor to be mined from the issue. We never explained whether he was imaginary or not. Kids were able to see him, but adults couldn’t. You never really knew—was he imaginary? Playing with that question was a lot of fun; kind of a healthy ambiguity.  

Stiles: You really had to believe that it was just terrible coincidences and quirks of Snuffy’s own personality that made it so that he just wasn’t there when Big Bird wanted him to be there to introduce him to his friends.

Then in 1985, the Sesame Street adults all found out that Big Bird had been telling the truth all along! For 14 years. The entire 1984-85 season was used to lay the groundwork for the “big reveal.” The writers, Muppeteers, and producers explain why Snuffy came out, and how they went about doing it the way they did, in a conversation at mental_floss. You can also watch a video of the big moment. 

(Image credit: Sesame Street via Facebook)

Are you excited about the new Star Wars movie yet? You will be, after you see this fan-made trailer!

(YouTube link)

It is truly amazing what you can do with cardboard and duct tape. On the other hand, there is no substitute for Harrison Ford. Dumb Drum put together this shot-for-shot remake of the trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens on a budget of what looks to be about $40. You can see a side-by-side comparison here. -via Pleated-Jeans

Randall Munroe’s latest comic at xkcd is a discussion about whether we’ve actually cracked the code of life. Sure, we know about DNA. On the surface, it seems so simple: only four bases in only two combinations. On the surface, it may as well be just digital code. However, it is digital code that not only makes up a living being with all its components, but also contains a lot of code that isn’t necessary (at least not that we know), but still tells the history of evolution. The most complicated digital codes we’ve written don’t hold a candle to DNA.   

Did this comic cause you to view the source code for Google’s minimalist home page? I did. It was an eye-opener.

If you have any interest in science and public health, you probably appreciate the hard work and genius that went into the development of vaccines as we know them. But there’s always more to the story. Or in this case, stories. Edward Jenner is credited with developing the smallpox vaccine, but he was far from the first to use the technique of conferring immunity by deliberate infection.

History doesn’t record who first got the idea to expose healthy people to pus from infected patients’ pustules - or how they talked anyone into letting them try it. But the practice seems to have sprung up independently in several places: India, China, West Africa, and elsewhere. The idea was already an old one in 570 AD when people in Europe started calling it “variolation,” from the Latin name for smallpox, Variola. (Later generations used “variolation” and “inoculation” interchangeably; today “inoculation” also includes vaccination.)

Variolation usually meant rubbing pus from a smallpox pustule - a good ripe one, the runnier, the better - into a cut or scratch on a healthy person’s arm, but in China, people just soaked a cotton ball in infected pus and stuck it up their noses. (Ah, the good old days, right?)

The whole idea is counterintuitive and sounds terrifyingly dangerous, so it took centuries and some key travelers, from royalty to slaves, to convince the world that it worked. Read about those baby steps in the slow eradication of smallpox at Gizmodo. -via Digg

A mother's work is never done. Jill the ferret is busy putting her babies to bed. She takes the last one from her human’s hand, but she’s not through!

(Live Leak link)

Oh, she just got caught up in the process and didn’t stop when all the babies were in. No, she does it again! Jill is adamant that it’s bedtime for her human, too. Some mothers are just bossy that way. -via Tastefully Offensive