How far can we go? If humans were to develop technologies way beyond what we have now, there are still limits on how far we can travel, which is just a tiny fraction of the size of the universe. A very tiny fraction.
Add to that the rate at which the universe is expanding, and you can see how it will always exceed our range. Kurzgesagt explains some things about the universe that limit the way we use time and distance, which is all a bit much to absorb, but the accompanying graphics help, and are cute, too. As you can see at the top, John Farrier represents the intelligence of the future. -via reddit
The Arkansas School for the Deaf selected a leopard as a mascot for their athletic teams back in 1941. Since then, the athletes have been the Arkansas School for the Deaf Leopards. The British band Def Leppard played a concert in Little Rock last night and made some time before the show to meet with students of the school.
The group posed for photos holding a replica of the school's scoreboard and in front of a banner emblazoned with the band's name. The band later posted them on social media with the caption "Arkansas Deaf Leopards and #DefLeppard."
The meeting came about after an online petition drew nearly 1,500 signatures in support.
We’ll never know why a cat decided to climb this tall utility pole, but we know he/she was there long enough for someone to call out the Algerian Civil Defence force. They came with a ladder and safety equipment for a rescue, but the cat was not having any of that.
Earthship homes are designed to be completely friendly to the environment, sustainable, and inexpensive. Just don’t try to build one in an area with an HOA. They may look weird, but there are plenty of advantages to living in an Earthship. First off, you can build it yourself. They are made from recycled tires and aluminum cans, although you really can’t tell by looking. They are solar-powered and use collected water for four purposes, running from clean to dirty. Get the details of the many benefits of an Earthship home at Housely.
DJ Cummerbund combined as many internet memes that revolve around sadness as he could find to make this remix. We have Smash Mouth’s big hit “All Star” altered to a minor key, the musical hook from “The Sound of Silence” (with a bit of the music video from Disturbed), and clips from various sad movie movies that will bring the feels.
The video is rendered in gloomy black and white to enhance the subject matter. You have to either laugh or cry. There, there. Have a hankie. -via the A.V. Club
Fred Harvey knew an opportunity when he saw it. Railroads were bringing travelers to California and the West Coast, but the desert in between was still seen as the rough-and-tumble Wild West. The trips took quite a few days, and the trains made many stops in small towns along the way. That’s how Harvey House restaurants became familiar to travelers. They were large, clean, and respectable, unlike so many of the desert’s earlier facilities. Beginning in 1876, Harvey and the Santa Fe Railroad opened around 100 restaurants along the railway, which made him a pioneer of the chain restaurant business.
In 1883, Harvey had decided to fire the rowdy male waiters at his restaurant in Raton, New Mexico, and hire respectable young women in their place. Customers responded so positively to the female staff that Harvey began replacing all of his company’s male servers, advertising for women employees in newspapers throughout the Midwestern and Eastern states.
Unlike much of the Eastern United States, in small Western outposts, it was acceptable for single young women to work and live away from their parents—though they were often stigmatized as being prostitutes or sexually promiscuous. “The Harvey Company called its servers ‘Harvey Girls’—not waitresses—because the term waitress had a bad connotation: It was linked to the saloon girls,” who were viewed as bawdy and indecent, Melzer says. “Fred Harvey didn’t want customers thinking there were saloon girls at his restaurants, and he certainly couldn’t recruit respectable women to work there if they thought they’d be working in a saloon-like atmosphere.” To ensure there’d be no confusion, the Harvey Girls were always attired in a conservative black-and-white uniform, just one of many strict job requirements.
Neatorama is proud to bring you a guest post from Ernie Smith, the editor of Tedium, a twice-weekly newsletter that hunts for the end of the long tail. In another life, he ran ShortFormBlog.
For a short period in the early 1980s, giant satellite dishes ruled the land. It was a rare moment when big telecom wasn’t in control. That quickly changed.
As a whole, the most interesting time for television was the late 1970s and early 1980s. It was an era when most networks were still willing to experiment and the technology wasn’t so locked down that an enthusiast couldn’t get around it. Comcast existed back then, but it wasn’t the juggernaut it is now; DirecTV and Dish Network hadn’t yet taken their current forms. The result was that satellite dishes—which were really freaking massive back then—were only starting to take off, and there was nothing really stopping people willing to buy a dish from investing once and getting all their shows for free after that. Today’s Tedium is about the rise and fall of the 10-foot-wide satellite dish during its glory days—before cable networks learned how to encrypt their feeds.
They weren't cheap in the beginning
The price of a backyard satellite dish advertised in a 1979 Neiman Marcus catalog was $36,000 —the first such dish sold commercially. Soon, the prices went down significantly, especially after the Federal Communications Commission deregulated the usage of such dishes, which used the open-air C-Band range of wireless signals, so they could be used by more than cable companies. A 1981 New York Times article noted that dishes could be had for as low as $3,000; a 1985 piece cut that price down to $1,500.
The guy who built his own satellite dish on his kitchen table
In the 1970s, the odds of seeing a television program designed for another country were extremely low—especially if you didn’t live near that country’s border. But when British man Stephen Birkill heard that NASA was delivering educational literacy programs to rural India via satellite, he had a hankering to see what they were like.
Birkill, fortunately, was the kind of person who could figure out such a task. He was a tinkerer who already managed transmitters as a BBC employee. Inspired, he decided to attempt to build his own dish and point it in the general direction of the satellite broadcasting the program.
What do you want to be when you grow up? There’s a lot more occupations to select from than there once were, even if there are fewer jobs available overall. Maybe the lack of jobs has something to do with the more unusual new jobs that have sprung up, because so many more people are self-employed and using their imagination to fulfill a need that one can be paid for. John Green explains some of the jobs you don’t normally hear about on this week’s episode of the mental_floss List Show.
We’ve always said “Money can’t buy happiness,” because we don’t want to overlook the intangible pleasures of life. Of course, you know that research says that for people who don’t have much, money can well buy happiness, in the form of stress reduction, safety, health, nutrition, and a decent standard of living. We also know that spending money on others produces happiness. But aside from all that, the way you spend your money can make all the difference in the amount of happiness your purchases bring you. Jacob Falkovich has some tips on how to get the most bang for your buck. He even breaks it down into a formula to select what item or activity will bring you more happiness than the next item or experience. But even if you don’t want to crunch number with him, there’s a lot of good advice here.
Finally, if you take nothing else from this post, take this tip: buy great soap. I think that people strongly undervalue the happiness to be had from excellent products in cheap categories. A Chanel bag costs $5,000 not because it’s 1oo times better at being a bag than a $50 bag, but because it’s a signaling-positional-keeping-up-with-Joneses-luxury good. On the flip side, in every category that’s not consumed conspicuously the highest quality things will not be overpriced. I drive a cheap ass-car and wear $30 jeans but I buy the best soap, underwear, toilet paper, tea, socks, shaving cream and bbq sauce I can find.
Joe Santagato came up with a game that’s not only challenging, but entertaining. He and his siblings try to make each other understand a nonsense phrase they say while wearing a dental mouth opener. Yeah, that’s what those things are called.
There are points where I can tell they really want to just break down and start acting their words out, like charades. If you ever get a chance to play this in real life, don’t be in a hurry to get the right answer, because it’s much funnier when you don’t! -via Tastefully Offensive
The Covington Farmers Market in Covington, Kentucky, marked its season opening Saturday by staging The Running of the Goats. The name was meant to evoke images of the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, Spain, but organizers assured people on its Facebook event page that the goats would not be running rampant. They would be marching to the market, escorted by handlers.
Are the goats RUNNING through the streets (Bulls of Pamplona style??) Nope! The goats will walk/trot an organized route through Covington guided by our goat team volunteers and the City of Covington Police Department. You and yours are asked to walk along on the sidewalks. Several local shops will have fun interactions (music, photos) to keep the walk interesting along the way.
During the parade, six of the seven goats decided to break out of the pack and run through the town. A mad dash ensued as volunteers and police tried to catch the goats. They eventually rounded them all up by Sunday, after the last two goats spent Saturday night on the run. Organizers say that the incident brought so many people to the park that they plan on doing it again next year, with improved procedures. -via Arbroath
Nathan Yau at Flowing Data has a chart that explains where you are on the age continuum. Select your age, and find out what percentage of all living people are older than you are, and what percentage are younger. Before you try it, think about whether you even want to know. At least I can console myself with the fact that I am at the 50th percentile in my household, unless you count the cats. Now get off my lawn! -via Digg
This truck was spotted in Florida. If you were following it, you might become alarmed until you saw it from the side. The truck belongs to All-Pro Blinds (note the URL), which has several locations in northern Florida. It’s an old joke, but it’s still funny. And like many other people, you will be reminded of a similar joke (NSFW language). -via reddit
Tumblr user kehinki imagined a synopsis of a James Bond-type movie with the gender roles reversed. Other Tumblr users gladly added to the story until it was a full-blown treatment. A team of spies made up of diverse women battle super villains, also women, while the sole male character is only there because he’s sexy. Here’s one contribution.
In one scene, the lead villain captures the Strong Male Character. He is, once more, inexplicably shirtless as she ties him to the chair. He makes some quips about his sexual independence before he is rescued by a sweat-drenched Helen Mirren, who kicks down the door and nukes everyone in the room. Strong Male Character’s hair remains perfect throughout the ordeal.
Oh yeah, the Bond character is played by Helen Mirren, which means we must cast a 20-something male. Artist Jenna Amber was inspired to add the above illustration of the main characters. See a few more illustrations of the movie at Ambervisions (possibly NSFW). -via Metafilter
How can you find enough space to build a campground in the city? Make it a skyscraper! That’s the idea behind “Camping in the Sky,” a concept building from the Italian architecture firm FLT Office. The outside of the building can go from transparent to semi-translucent depending on weather conditions, and therefore acts as a greenhouse for the trees and plants inside -and the photovoltaic skin provides the energy needed to keep guests comfortable year-round.
The proposed skyscraper model boasts a rooftop that can host concerts and other events. On every level of the skyscraper is a forest to simulate the natural environments found during a camping trip. As an added benefit, the skyscraper can act as a greenhouse during the winter to protect guests and internal plants from the cold temperatures and other weather patterns. The boom on a sail is the inspiration for the adjustable skin on the skyscraper. The façade is the piece that contains the organic photovoltaic system which works in conjunction with the skin to maximize flexibility.
