Most of us never think about punctuation when we read books or internet articles or short texts. But when someone sends you a longer, more involved message and they don't use punctuation, then you start to appreciate it. Punctuation is there to make written text seem more like a natural monologue or conversation. Believe it or not, when writing with letters was first developed, there weren't even spaces between words, much less marks to indicate how the words should sound! Sure, few people knew how to read, but when someone read that written text out loud, how it was done made a difference in how the listener understood the original writer. As more people learned to read, those marks had to be standardized, although they varied by language.   

Dr. Erica Brozovsky (previously at Neatorama) tells the story of how different kinds of punctuation came to be, how they evolved into their modern forms, and why. And aren't you glad they did!  

The autumnal equinox was today, and summer is officially over. That means it's time for Fat Bear Week!

Brown bears in Alaska emerge from hibernation and spend all summer eating delectable salmon and anything else they can find. Their goal is to pack on plenty of pounds to last them through the next winter's hibernation. The bears of Brooks River in Katmai National Park in Alaska are once again in competition with each other during Fat Bear Week. Wild Bears cannot be weighed, so bear fans can help identify who put on the most weight by voting for who you think is the fattest bear. Yes, some bears that have been around for a while have an advantage of a built-in fan base. The real reason for the contest is to raise awareness of these wonderful wild creatures. We've heard that the salmon run was particularly good this year, so the bears should be plenty fat!  

Read the biography of each of the twelve bears in this year's tournament, and be ready to vote in the first round on Tuesday, 9AM-6PM Pacific time (noon-9PM Eastern). There will be a new head-to-head matchup each day through September 30th. 

Meanwhile, you can watch the bears hunt salmon at Brooks Falls on the live webcam. -via Metafilter 

We see audacious prison escapes in movies and think, that can't happen in real life. Strangely, it happens, and sometimes in ways too unbelievable for the movies. Successful prison breaks often require collaboration with outside accomplices. Or with those who are supposed to keep you inside, or at least their carelessness or incompetence. It can also require long term planning, patience, and luck.

However, breaking out of prison doesn't mean you are exactly free. Most prison escapees are apprehended sooner or later while on the run, which leads to the subgroup of prisoners who managed to escape over and over. You have to wonder how someone with an escape on their record isn't under better security, but the most talented escapees have several in their history. Honest Jack Sheppard (illustrated above) flew the coop four times! John Dillinger managed multiple prison breaks because he had a network of people willing to help him. And even Ted Bundy pulled off two of them. Read about eight of the most spectacular prison breaks at Mental Floss. 

(Image credit: J. Sketch) 

Try as you might, it would be extremely difficult to find more disparate music genres than Snoop Dogg's West Coast rap style and a classic Russian ballet. But in the hands of Dustin Ballard, also known as There I Ruined It (previously at Neatorama), the two have finally come together. And we only post those songs that aren't ruined, but are instead actually improved. 

You didn't know this tune had lyrics, did you? Snoop Dogg is all about lyrics, and these are definitely NSFW. Snoop not only sings along with Tchaikovsky's "Dance of the Cygnets" from the ballet Swan Lake, he also dances as the prima ballerina. That requires a lot of athletic ability for a 53-year-old. But Snoop has surprised us before. So has Ballard. The comments are all wondering when we are going to see a reaction video from Dogg himself, possibly racking his brain trying to remember when he danced the ballet. 

Mountains are usually measured by their height, but should height be measured from the center of the earth, from sea level (not possible on Mars), or from the surrounding terrain? Besides, a mountain's height is not its only quality. As a Yale mathematics and computer science student, Kai Xu wanted to measure the impressiveness of mountains, or their magnificence to the person looking at them. He came up with a metric that measures a quality he calls a mountain's "jut." It takes into account how steeply a mountain rises from the surrounding terrain, and other factors. 

The measure of jut has been gaining respect over the past few years. People are planning trips around a mountain's jut. You can see rankings of jut in this database. Strangely, Mount Everest doesn't rank high at all, although many of the highest rankings can be found in Nepal. You can explore the jut of mountains near you with this interactive map. 

Still, "magnificence" is in the eye of the beholder. A visitor's experience can be affected by many things, like the psychological experience of high altitude when viewing Everest. Mount Fuji is familiar, iconic, and beautiful, but it doesn't rank high in jut. Yet sightseers can find wonderful new places to visit by seeking out mountains with high jut rankings. -via Metafilter   

(Image credit: Drouyn Cambridge) 

Cats might not understand death the way humans do, but they sure understand when someone they love is not where they should be.

Maru graced us with his presence for 18 years, and then left us on September 6. When we announced his passing, Mary Ann 02 asked about his little sister Hana. Hana had lived with Maru for all of her 12 years, and felt his absence deeply. She and the youngest cat Miri are clinging to Maru's favorite objects and inhabiting the beds where he napped. So many people inquired about the younger cats that mugumogu posted this video update, with the story told in captions. 

A week after Maru died, mugumogu posted about Miri's 5th birthday party (in which a plate was prepared for Maru) and hinted that Miri may have seen a vision of Maru in attendance. A further update tells us that Hana is still looking for him. 

The Nazis who ran the Auschwitz concentration camp assembled a band from musically trained inmates to play lively marches every morning as they hurried other inmates off to work assignments. The 40 or so women, mostly teenagers, were also required to play concerts for the officers and guards and visiting dignitaries. Later on, they greeted incoming trains of prisoners with music to lull them into thinking this place might be so bad after all. But music by Jewish composers was forbidden, so they had to hide in their barracks to play Beethoven for their own enjoyment. 

Survivors of the camp had mixed feelings about the Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz. They were resented by the men's orchestras because they had to perform physical labor in addition to playing music. Some prisoners enjoyed the music as a respite from everything else around them. Some have traumatic responses to music because it was connected to the worst parts of their confinement. Surviving orchestra members also recall those days with mixed feelings, aware of their privilege and racked by survivor's guilt, while also acknowledging they had no choice in the matter. Read about the Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz in a book excerpt at LitHub. -via Nag on the Lake 

If you watch the video before reading this description, it will be a lot more terrifying. Ulvi Ercan was paragliding at an altitude of 1100 meters (3600 feet) when he experienced a "60 percent asymmetrical collapse" which is terrifying, but he managed to recover. The point of view in the video is the camera he dropped. It spins and recovers over and over, but keeps filming the ground rushing up. Is this because the lens is the heaviest part of the camera? You can almost hear the camera go "Wheee!" when it's spinning and "Aaaah!" when its not. 

Luckily, the camera lands not on someone's head or on a boulder, but in a grassy area where an ant is somewhat surprised. Ercan checked his flight log to figure out the approximate location of the camera, then wandered around turning an app on and off to hear a beep and to find his GoPro. We assume the spunky little camera just kept recording until it was found. -via Born in Space 

Panic over consumer products that have been tampered with happens every once in a while. Every year, folks get concerned over Halloween candy, although the original panic was sparked by one incident of a father who attempted to kill his own kids (one died) in 1974. Then there were the Tylenol murders, a very real tampering case in 1982. So when a report of a couple who found a hypodermic needle inside a Pepsi can surfaced in 1993, it sparked a nationwide panic. 

After the case of the found needle made national headlines, around 300 other reports came in of needles or other foreign objects in Pepsi cans -and a few found in Coke cans, too. Over the course of the panic, Pepsi lost more than $50 million. The reports were thoroughly investigated by the FDA's Office of Criminal Investigations. In the end, the panic faded as fast as it arose. Read how that all played out at Mental Floss.  -via Strange Company 

(Image credit: Qirille) 

The 1997 monster movie Anaconda was about a documentary film crew in the Amazon looking for a legendary giant snake, which finds them instead. It was critically panned, but financially successful and spawned five sequels. The sixth movie in the series is somewhat of a remake, a comedy starring Paul Rudd and Jack Black. Also called Anaconda, the new movie sees Rudd and Black on a quest to remake the 1997 film, which was their childhood favorite, on location. They just can't see how history tends to repeat itself. 

I had no idea there were so many movies in the series already, but it's a bit of genius to keep the implausible monster while highlighting the cheesy plot points by making them into intentional comedy. The judicious use of "Baby Got Back" as a threatening background motif in the trailer is too clever by half. Anaconda opens nationwide on Christmas Day. -via Laughing Squid 

What is supposed to be a list of "12 Unforced Errors," is actually way more, since each item may contain a multitude of bad decisions. Each of them probably had their reasons at the time, but were profoundly regretted by someone after the fact. Burt Reynolds was an engaging comedic actor in the 1970s and '80s, with a lot of hit movies, but he could have been so much more. After his breakthrough role in Deliverance, he was offered the biggest roles in Hollywood. These included James Bond, R.P. in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Michael Corleone in The Godfather, and Han Solo in Star Wars. But he turned all those down. Bad decisions also involved studios that turned down movie projects that became classics for the thinnest of reasons, or no reason at all. Imagine greenlighting Howard the Duck after you passed on E.T.: The Extraterrestrial. Too much punctuation in the title? Read about these and plenty of other regrettable choices from Hollywood at Cracked. 

When European colonizers settled in Africa, they heard tales of an animal in the Congo that was made out of parts of other animals. That matched a lot of medieval fantasy, in which many creatures were described to be pastiches of more familiar animals. They didn't see this animal themselves. The story just seemed so fantastic they called it the "African unicorn," and dismissed it as a myth. You know, "pics or it didn't happen." The myth grew and spread to Europe long before the okapi was ever observed by white men and therefore deemed to be "real." Locals knew better all along, but they weren't seen as credible.

Dr. Emily Zarka tells us the tale of the African unicorn, and goes into detail on the history of mythical animals, real animals, and the weird paths taken in studying unfamiliar creatures not native to one's own region. The same disbelief occurred for the platypus, the giant squid, and gorillas. Some of these zoological "discoveries" are pretty recent, so who knows how many other legendary mythical animals may be yet found and studied.

The 35th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony was held Thursday night by the magazine Annals of Improbable Research, at Boston University in Massachusetts. The awards honor and highlight research that may look ridiculous on the surface, but almost always has some underlying purpose in advancing the field of science. In other words, "Research that makes people laugh and then think." To be honest, many science studies are tiny parts of much bigger and more understandable projects. And even studies that don't lead to big breakthroughs all help to further our knowledge about the world. 

The theme for this year's ceremony was "Digestion." Indeed, many of the winning studies involved some form of digestion. The trophy, which is different every year, came in the shape of a stomach with happy and sad faces. A mini-opera titled The Plight of the Gastroenterologist was performed during the ceremony, and the five actual Nobel laureates present participated in non-singing roles. These Nobel laureates also read acceptance speeches by winners who could not attend. Continue reading for the winner's list.

Landon’s Animation Wheelhouse remade Back to the Future with computer animation, except it's wilder than you can imagine. Imagine those physics simulator traffic videos crossed with Grand Theft Auto starring our favorite time-traveling team.    

In this story, Doc drives like a maniac, so the Delorean's flux capacitor becomes damaged. They've lost the ability to pinpoint what date they are going to! Doc thinks he can fix it if he can get the part he needs, so he continues to drive like a maniac, causing massive mayhem on the roads. Along the way, they change history in ways that will make you laugh. It turns out that the Delorean is tough enough to endure a massive beating. Sure, it loses most of its exterior, but it continues to perform, unlike the real-life version of the automobile. And they do all this without dying. Don't think too much about it- it's just a cartoon. -via Geeks Are Sexy 

We are all familiar with CAPTCHAs that make us perform odd tasks that supposedly robots cannot do, like recognize a square or find a motorcycle a half mile down the road in a picture. We sometimes run into one that was surely made by a sadist who doesn't want any real humans to use whatever it is they're offering, either. 

Neal Agarwal of Neal.Fun (previously at Neatorama) made a game out of those CAPTCHAs to drive you mad without offering entrance to anything. A series of challenges starts out easy and get more difficult as they go. But they're also ridiculously funny. I only made it as far as a Where's Waldo? game because I never played that game and have no idea whether I picked too few or too many Waldos. Therefore, I have no idea how long this game really is. Play I'm Not a Robot, and let us know how far you got. -via kottke