(YouTube link)
Budget cuts make a librarian's day more hectic than ever! This video was made by Sean Bonney and the employees of the Central Rappahannock Regional Library in Virginia. -Thanks, Sean!
Miss Cellania's Blog Posts
Who says high school science is boring? A hazmat team was summoned to a school in Prince George, British Columbia when a can of sauerkraut exploded!
When the hazmat team was finished, students were sent home for the day. Link -via Fortean Times
(Image credit: Flickr user Maggie Tacheny)
Twenty-four students and four staff members at Kelly Road Secondary School were put into quarantine Friday afternoon after a can of the preserved cabbage exploded in a food sciences class.
Teachers didn't know what was inside the can when it blew up, and called the local fire department and police to prevent an outbreak of botulism, a potentially fatal disease caused by bacteria sometimes found in canned food.
Investigators were soon able to identify the substance as the popular German sausage topping, which had been left to ferment for years.
When the hazmat team was finished, students were sent home for the day. Link -via Fortean Times
(Image credit: Flickr user Maggie Tacheny)
One thing that can make you feel better about the weird things in your home is to see how much worse it could be. A plumbing information site compiled stories, links, and videos of plumbing disasters that range from "substandard" to "Rube Goldberg"! Link -via Dark Roasted Blend
During the Jim Crow era in the United States, it was neither easy nor safe for African-Americans to travel from town to town. For three decades, The Negro Motorist Green Book: An International Travel Guide was an indispensable resource for finding a place to stay, eat, or buy gas in towns across America. Not necessarily the best places, but any place that would provide accommodations at all if you weren't white.
The Green Book has been revived in a way, as a new play and a children's book about the travel guide and those who used it are set to debut. Link -via Metafilter
(Image credit: Erik S. Lesser/The New York Times)
A Harlem postal employee and civic leader named Victor H. Green conceived the guide in response to one too many accounts of humiliation or violence where discrimination continued to hold strong. These were facts of life not only in the Jim Crow South, but in all parts of the country, where black travelers never knew where they would be welcome. Over time its full title — “The Negro Motorist Green Book: An International Travel Guide” — became abbreviated, simply, as the “Green Book.” Those who needed to know about it knew about it. To much of the rest of America it was invisible, and by 1964, when the last edition was published, it slipped through the cracks into history.
The Green Book has been revived in a way, as a new play and a children's book about the travel guide and those who used it are set to debut. Link -via Metafilter
(Image credit: Erik S. Lesser/The New York Times)
If you want to make your wedding day one to remember, why not take a part of it and make it unique, an expression of your personality or interests? The wedding cake is an artful way to do that without affecting the ceremony itself. Rue the Day has a wonderful collection of creative geek wedding cakes, like this cake with bride and groom daleks on top! Link
The lady shown here is wearing "chopines", or platform shoes. Chopines were worn in the Middle Ages to keep feet and dress hems out of the dust and mud. They also came to represent class, as a taller woman was obviously of a "higher" class. However, this picture was taken in 1873 in Damascus. Read more on the history of shoe lifts at TYWKIWDBI. Link
You'll get a kick out of this public service announcement urging British citizens to support publicly funded arts programs, by David Shrigley, who also brought us Pringle of Scotland. The government has proposed a 25% cut in arts programs. A group of around 100 artists are banding together to protest the cuts. Link
A Practical Guide for Genealogists
by Erno Listerhijj, Erno Listerhijj, Erno Listerhijj, Erno Listerhijj, et al.
The Bergen County Amateur Genealogical Association
Pyramus, New Jersey
Here is a simple guide to preparing family trees for clones.
The recent report that a sheep has been cloned in Scotland is happy news for genealogists. Prospects are good that other Scottish sheep will be cloned, and that eventually Scottish persons will be cloned. It is likely that, in the not too distant future, other persons will be cloned, too. As experts on drawing up family trees, we must prepare ourselves to handle this brave new world.
Some may regard cloning as a genealogical nuisance-we have heard it said that a family tree with clones will grow like kudzu. Nevertheless, we can describe and record it simply, using mathematical notation.
A clone is both a child and a sibling of the person from whom he/she was cloned. This is how to identify the clones of a family progenitor/self-genitor. For purposes of illustration, we will call him "Mel." Mel himself is recorded simply as:
Mel
and he looks like this:The first batch of Mel clones—that is, all the clones cloned directly from Mel-each has one subscript. For example, if Mel directly produces five clones of himself, they will be identified, genealogically, as:
Mel1 Mel2 Mel3 Mel4 Mel5
and they will look like this:Each of those clones' clones has two subscripts. For example, if Mel4 has several children, the second child of the new batch will be
| Mel |
| 4 |
| 2 |
and he will look like this:
If this individual sees the need to clone himself, the members of the next bunch will each have an "extra" subscript. For example, the thirteenth child of that bunch (if the bunch be so bountiful!) will be
| Mel |
| 4 |
| 2 |
| 13 |
and he will look like this:
And so forth (no pun intended). You add an extra subscript every time a clone spawns a new (for lack of a better term) generation.
No matter how many times Mel clones himself, and no matter how many times each of the clones clones himself, each clone can be identified simply-and clearly-as:
Of course some or all of the clones might be given other, less formal-sounding, names. Regardless, every genealogist should insist on recording the family proceedings in the standard fashion as we define it here. To do otherwise would be confusing to all concerned.
Copyright © 1997 The Annals of Improbable Research (AIR). All rights reserved.
_____________________
The article above is from the May-June 1997 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. You can download or purchase back issues of the magazine, or subscribe to receive future issues. Or get a subscription for someone as a gift!Visit their website for more research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK.
The following is an article from Uncle John's Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader.
Mad magazine has a place in American pop culture as one of the most successful humor magazines ever published. It's also great bathroom reading. Here's a brief history.
BACKGROUND
In 1947 Max Gaines, owner of Educational Comics (which published biblical, scientific, and historical comic books), was killed in a boating accident. He left the business to his 25-year-old son, William, a university student.
The younger Gaines renamed the company Entertainment Comics (EC) and got rid of the stodgy educational stuff. Instead, he started publishing more profitable crime, suspense, and horror comics like Tales from the Crypt, Vault of Horrors, and House of Fear.
THE BIRTH OF MAD
Gaines paid his writers and artists by the page. Most of his employees preferred this-but not Harvey Kurtzman. Kurtzman was a freelancer who worked on Frontline Combat, a true-to-life battle comic that portrayed the negative aspects of war. He enjoyed writing it, but it took so long to research and write that he couldn't make a living doing it. So he went to Gaines and asked for a raise. Gaines refused, but suggested an alternative-in addition to his current work, Kurtzman could produce a satirical comic, which would be easier and more profitable to write. Kurtzman liked the idea and immediately started creating it.
The first issue of Tales Calculated to Drive You Mad: Humor in a Jugular Vein debuted in August 1952. It was a flop...and so were the next two issues. But Gaines didn't know it; back then, it took so long to get sales reports that the fourth issue-which featured a Superman spoof called Superduperman-was already in the works before Gaines realized he was losing money. By then, Mad had started to sell.
RED SCARE
Gaines didn't expect Mad to be as successful as his other comics, but it turned out to be the only one that survived the wave of anti-comic hysteria that swept the country during the McCarthy era.
In 1953, Frederic Wertham, a noted psychologist and self-proclaimed "mental hygienist", published a book called The Seduction of the Innocents, a scathing attack on the comic book industry. Few comics were left untouched-Wertham denounced Batman and Robin as homosexuals, branded Wonder Woman a lesbian, and claimed that such words as "arghh", "blam", "thunk", and "kapow" were producing a generation of illiterates. The charges were outlandish, but the public believed it; churches across the country even held comic book burnings.
To defend themselves, big comic book publishers established the Comics Code Authority (CCA) to set standards of "decency" for the comic book industry and issue a seal of approval to comics that passed scrutiny. (Among the co-called reforms: only "classic" monsters such as vampires and werewolves could be shown; authority figures such as policemen, judges, and government officials could not be shown in any way that encouraged "disrespect for authority," and the words "crime", "horror", and "weird" were banned from comic book titles.) Magazine distributors would no longer sell comics that didn't adhere to CCA guidelines.
Gaines refused to submit his work the the CCA, but he couldn't withstand public pressure. By 1954, only four EC titles were left. Amazingly, Mad was one of them.
MAD LIVES
Gaines knew Mad wouldn't survive long unless he did something drastic to save it. So rather than fight the CCA, he avoided it: He dropped Mad's comic book format and turned it into a full-fledged "slick" magazine. Thus, it was no longer subject to CCA censorship.
The first Mad magazine was published in the summer of 1955. "We really didn't know how Mad, the slick edition, was going to come out," one early Mad staffer later recalled, "but the people whop printed it were laughing and getting a big kick out of it, so we said 'This has got to be good.'"
The first issue sold so many copies that it had to be sent back for a second printing. By 1960, sales hit 1 million copies, and Mad was being read by an estimated 58% of American college students and 43% of high school students.
In 1967, Warner Communications, which owned DC Comics, bought Mad, but it couldn't affect sales or editorial content: as part of the deal, Warner had to leave Gaines alone. In 1973 sales hit an all-time high of 2.4 million copies; since then they've leveled off at 1 million annually in the United States. There are also 12 foreign editions. Gaines died in 1992, but Mad continues to thrive.
WHAT, ME WORRY?
Alfred E. Neuman has been Mad magazine's mascot for years. But his face and even his "What, me worry?" slogan predate the magazine by 50 years. They were adapted from advertising postcards issued by a turn-of-the-century dentist from Topeka, Kansas, who called himself "Painless Romine".
Kurtzman first dubbed the boy "Melvin Koznowski". But he was eventually renamed Alfred E. Neuman, after a nerdy fictional character on the "Henry Morgan Radio Show." Strangely enough, that character had been named after a real-life Alfred Newman, who was the composer and arranger for more than 250 movies, including The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Grapes of Wrath.
MAD FACTS
*In 1965, Mad magazine was turned into an off-Broadway play called The Mad Show. Notices were sent out to New York theater critics in the form of ransom notes tied to bricks. The show gave performances at 3:00 p.m. and midnight, and sold painted rocks, Ex-Lax, Liquid Drano, and hair cream in the lobby. The play got great reviews from the press and ran two years, with bookings in Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, and other major cities. It was reportedly a major influence on the creators of "Laugh-In".
*The Mad Movie, Gaines' first attempt to adapt Mad for the silver screen, was dumped before production began, and Up The Academy, Mad's second effort, was so bad that Gaines paid $50,000 to have all references to the magazine edited out of the film. An animated TV series in the early 1970s was pulled before it aired. In the mid-1990s, "Mad TV" debuted on the Fox network.
This special edition book covers the three "lost" Bathroom Readers - Uncle John's 5th, 6th and 7th book all in one. The huge (and hugely entertaining) volume covers neat stories like the Strange Fate of the Dodo Bird, the Secrets of Mona Lisa, and more ...
Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. Check out their website here: Bathroom Reader Institute
Mad magazine has a place in American pop culture as one of the most successful humor magazines ever published. It's also great bathroom reading. Here's a brief history.
BACKGROUND
In 1947 Max Gaines, owner of Educational Comics (which published biblical, scientific, and historical comic books), was killed in a boating accident. He left the business to his 25-year-old son, William, a university student.
The younger Gaines renamed the company Entertainment Comics (EC) and got rid of the stodgy educational stuff. Instead, he started publishing more profitable crime, suspense, and horror comics like Tales from the Crypt, Vault of Horrors, and House of Fear.
THE BIRTH OF MAD
Gaines paid his writers and artists by the page. Most of his employees preferred this-but not Harvey Kurtzman. Kurtzman was a freelancer who worked on Frontline Combat, a true-to-life battle comic that portrayed the negative aspects of war. He enjoyed writing it, but it took so long to research and write that he couldn't make a living doing it. So he went to Gaines and asked for a raise. Gaines refused, but suggested an alternative-in addition to his current work, Kurtzman could produce a satirical comic, which would be easier and more profitable to write. Kurtzman liked the idea and immediately started creating it.
The first issue of Tales Calculated to Drive You Mad: Humor in a Jugular Vein debuted in August 1952. It was a flop...and so were the next two issues. But Gaines didn't know it; back then, it took so long to get sales reports that the fourth issue-which featured a Superman spoof called Superduperman-was already in the works before Gaines realized he was losing money. By then, Mad had started to sell.
RED SCARE
Gaines didn't expect Mad to be as successful as his other comics, but it turned out to be the only one that survived the wave of anti-comic hysteria that swept the country during the McCarthy era.
In 1953, Frederic Wertham, a noted psychologist and self-proclaimed "mental hygienist", published a book called The Seduction of the Innocents, a scathing attack on the comic book industry. Few comics were left untouched-Wertham denounced Batman and Robin as homosexuals, branded Wonder Woman a lesbian, and claimed that such words as "arghh", "blam", "thunk", and "kapow" were producing a generation of illiterates. The charges were outlandish, but the public believed it; churches across the country even held comic book burnings.
To defend themselves, big comic book publishers established the Comics Code Authority (CCA) to set standards of "decency" for the comic book industry and issue a seal of approval to comics that passed scrutiny. (Among the co-called reforms: only "classic" monsters such as vampires and werewolves could be shown; authority figures such as policemen, judges, and government officials could not be shown in any way that encouraged "disrespect for authority," and the words "crime", "horror", and "weird" were banned from comic book titles.) Magazine distributors would no longer sell comics that didn't adhere to CCA guidelines.
Gaines refused to submit his work the the CCA, but he couldn't withstand public pressure. By 1954, only four EC titles were left. Amazingly, Mad was one of them.
MAD LIVES
Gaines knew Mad wouldn't survive long unless he did something drastic to save it. So rather than fight the CCA, he avoided it: He dropped Mad's comic book format and turned it into a full-fledged "slick" magazine. Thus, it was no longer subject to CCA censorship.
The first Mad magazine was published in the summer of 1955. "We really didn't know how Mad, the slick edition, was going to come out," one early Mad staffer later recalled, "but the people whop printed it were laughing and getting a big kick out of it, so we said 'This has got to be good.'"
The first issue sold so many copies that it had to be sent back for a second printing. By 1960, sales hit 1 million copies, and Mad was being read by an estimated 58% of American college students and 43% of high school students.
In 1967, Warner Communications, which owned DC Comics, bought Mad, but it couldn't affect sales or editorial content: as part of the deal, Warner had to leave Gaines alone. In 1973 sales hit an all-time high of 2.4 million copies; since then they've leveled off at 1 million annually in the United States. There are also 12 foreign editions. Gaines died in 1992, but Mad continues to thrive.
WHAT, ME WORRY?
Alfred E. Neuman has been Mad magazine's mascot for years. But his face and even his "What, me worry?" slogan predate the magazine by 50 years. They were adapted from advertising postcards issued by a turn-of-the-century dentist from Topeka, Kansas, who called himself "Painless Romine".
(Image source: Kansas State Historical Society)
Mad artists were able to rationalize their plagiarism, according to Harvey Kurtzman, after they discovered that Romaine himself had lifted the drawing from an illustration in a medical textbook showing a boy who had gotten too much iodine in his system.Kurtzman first dubbed the boy "Melvin Koznowski". But he was eventually renamed Alfred E. Neuman, after a nerdy fictional character on the "Henry Morgan Radio Show." Strangely enough, that character had been named after a real-life Alfred Newman, who was the composer and arranger for more than 250 movies, including The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Grapes of Wrath.
MAD FACTS
*In 1965, Mad magazine was turned into an off-Broadway play called The Mad Show. Notices were sent out to New York theater critics in the form of ransom notes tied to bricks. The show gave performances at 3:00 p.m. and midnight, and sold painted rocks, Ex-Lax, Liquid Drano, and hair cream in the lobby. The play got great reviews from the press and ran two years, with bookings in Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, and other major cities. It was reportedly a major influence on the creators of "Laugh-In".
*The Mad Movie, Gaines' first attempt to adapt Mad for the silver screen, was dumped before production began, and Up The Academy, Mad's second effort, was so bad that Gaines paid $50,000 to have all references to the magazine edited out of the film. An animated TV series in the early 1970s was pulled before it aired. In the mid-1990s, "Mad TV" debuted on the Fox network.
_________________________
The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John's Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader.
This special edition book covers the three "lost" Bathroom Readers - Uncle John's 5th, 6th and 7th book all in one. The huge (and hugely entertaining) volume covers neat stories like the Strange Fate of the Dodo Bird, the Secrets of Mona Lisa, and more ...
Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. Check out their website here: Bathroom Reader Institute
We once told you about Athanasius Kircher's cat piano, a concept instrument composed of a group of cats that one "played" by striking their tails, causing them to meow. "Sound sculptor" Henry Dagg made just such an instrument, using toy cats in place of live cats. This performance for the Prince of Wales took place Friday at the START eco-festival in London. http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Strange-News/Prince-Of-Wales-And-Camilla-Reduced-To-Tears-By-Cat-Organ-Rendition-Of-Somewhere-Over-The-Rainbow/Article/201009215725174 -via Arbroath
PS: The blogger we refer to as Arbroath is celebrating his 50th birthday today!
Canadian photographer Peter Riedel balances rocks atop each other as art. It's not easy, and the results are fascinating. The precarious sculptures don't last long at the seashore, but are captured in photographs. Link
(Image credit: Flickr user Laura Dove)
Believe it or not, some of us still play games with real cards at a table with family and friends. Playing cards have a rich history dating back to the 14th century. The oldest cards are rare and precious, and many not-so-old cards are works of art. You'll find everything you ever wanted to know about playing cards and more at the World of Playing Cards. http://www.wopc.co.uk/ -via the Presurfer
Tim Gray wants to grow up to be Tim Burton, which his friends think is weird. Ken Turner created this rhyming stop-motion tribute to Burton and his films. -via Laughing Squid
As we all pause and remember the destruction of the World Trade Center nine years ago today (as well as the Pentagon attack and the plane crash in Pennsylvania), you might want to take a look at what the memorial on the WTC site will eventually look like with a virtual tour from Google Earth that we told you about last May. And you'll want to catch up on any of our exclusive articles you may have missed this past week.
Johnny Cat continues his series about how Hollywood treats all kinds of subjects with In the Movies: Dams.
I atoned for a faux pas in an earlier post by doing some research and finding out The Truth Behind Big Ben.
It's wild to see how many connections television shows have with each other, as we found out from John Farrier in 12 Fun Facts about Lost in Space .
David Israel caught up with the toy artist who never fails to delight us. Find out more in his Interview with Sillof.
Steven R. Johnson added to the Museum of Possibilities with a new entry about hats, er, shoes, er, hats in Fashion Misstatements.
Our new collaboration with the site Annals of Improbable Research gave us A Crusade Against the Quest for the Holy Grail.
From mental_floss, we learned how some food regimens came about in The History of Diets.
From Uncle John's Bathroom Reader, we got the lowdown on the mysterious sites of Pompeii and Herculaneum in The Lost Cities.
We were excited to find that Neatoramanaut Marty McGuire had a viral with his delightful video of penguins chasing a butterfly! And we're glad that we were a part of that success.
Mal and Chad's Fill in the Bubble Frenzy has a winner. Congratulations to this week's winner, Matt, who said "I think you misheard! I wanted PteriYAKI!"
Be sure to check out the NeatoHub for lots more neat things from all over the internet. Have a great weekend!
Johnny Cat continues his series about how Hollywood treats all kinds of subjects with In the Movies: Dams.
I atoned for a faux pas in an earlier post by doing some research and finding out The Truth Behind Big Ben.
It's wild to see how many connections television shows have with each other, as we found out from John Farrier in 12 Fun Facts about Lost in Space .
David Israel caught up with the toy artist who never fails to delight us. Find out more in his Interview with Sillof.
Steven R. Johnson added to the Museum of Possibilities with a new entry about hats, er, shoes, er, hats in Fashion Misstatements.
Our new collaboration with the site Annals of Improbable Research gave us A Crusade Against the Quest for the Holy Grail.
From mental_floss, we learned how some food regimens came about in The History of Diets.
From Uncle John's Bathroom Reader, we got the lowdown on the mysterious sites of Pompeii and Herculaneum in The Lost Cities.
We were excited to find that Neatoramanaut Marty McGuire had a viral with his delightful video of penguins chasing a butterfly! And we're glad that we were a part of that success.
Mal and Chad's Fill in the Bubble Frenzy has a winner. Congratulations to this week's winner, Matt, who said "I think you misheard! I wanted PteriYAKI!"
Be sure to check out the NeatoHub for lots more neat things from all over the internet. Have a great weekend!
Simple Bridge is a piece of jewelry that combines earring and a necklace. The two earrings are connected with a ball chain. From a distance, it looks almost like someone wearing ear buds. Not to be worn on athletic adventures, for obvious reasons. http://kueen.myshopify.com/collections/frontpage/products/simple-bridge -via The Daily What
Email This Post to a Friend