What are you doing to celebrate Presidents Day? If nothing else, you should test your presidential knowledge. Can you recognize the names of the 43 (so far) U.S. presidents? It might not be as easy as you think, especially when you’re in a hurry. A quiz from mental_floss presents a whole slew of names, and all you need to do is click the ones who were actual presidents. The catch is that as soon as you click a wrong answer, the quiz is over! You can reload to try again, but the choices will be scrambled each time. You have two minutes. Good luck.
(Image credit: National Park Service and EarthCam)
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Howard Hankins has an unusual set of lawn ornaments on his farm in Virginia: 20-foot-tall busts of all 43 U.S. presidents. He salvaged them from a defunct theme park, as that was the only alternative to destroying them. Saving them cost Hankins around $50,000, since they weight between five ten tons each, but the process of moving them damaged the statues anyway.
Any hopes of preserving the presidents in their original state were literally crushed as the busts made their journey from park to field. Each bust had to be lifted from its base by a crane, cracking the sculpture’s neck to get the full piece off the ground. The crane attached to a steel frame inside the busts through a hole smashed into the top of each sculpture’s head. Then, each president was loaded onto a flatbed truck and hauled away to Hankins’ property.
Cracked skulls were just the beginning: The team improvised as they went along, and the earlier busts moved bore the brunt of the movers’ initial inexperience. The first few moved have broken noses, missing backsides and other structural issues. Abraham Lincoln's bust now has an eerie hole in the back of its head that brings to mind his tragic end, and Ronald Reagan's bust bears the scar of a lightning strike. They all now sit decaying in three neat lines on the farm (except for George Washington, who stands to the side overlooking the group), where they continue to crumble, peel and crack.
Read the story of how this bizarre field of crumbling presidents came to be at Smithsonian. And see more pictures by David Ogden at the Instagram page @abandonedearth. -via Metafilter
You’ve read enough about cheetahs right here at Neatorama to know that more than two cubs in a litter is unusual. A cheetah named Addison at the San Diego Zoo gave birth in November to a litter of six cubs! She’s a prolific cheetah -her only other litter had four cubs. The zoo says the number was a surprise.
Although Addison’s previous litter was good-sized, this one came as a little bit of a surprise. “A radiograph had shown she was definitely carrying three cubs, and possibly a fourth,” explains Jillian King, a senior keeper at the Cheetah Breeding Center. But when the staff arrived on November 21, 2015 and checked the closed-circuit cameras in the den, they counted half a dozen squeaking, squirming, bitsy bundles of spotted fluff.
At twelve weeks of age, the cheetahs are beginning to show signs of growing up. -via Uproxx
(Image credit: San Diego Zoo)
My husband found Grease on TV one day and mentioned it was the only musical he really liked. I had some other suggestions, which turned out to be movies he hasn’t seen or kids’ movies that were spoiled by the fact that his children watched them over and over too many times. You know that feeling. While it’s honestly okay for a guy to like any musical, we have a list to consult written by an actual guy, with video evidence for each. So guys, if you think all musicals are off limits to your masculine reputation, you might want to try some from the list of Nine Movies with Singing Throughout That are OK to Like if You’re a Guy from TVOM.
Prankster Roman Atwood (previously at Neatorama) arranged to have snow in his own house for his kids to play in. And it’s not just snow, but also evergreen trees and a ramp for sledding, too! It looks like a lot of fun and Noah and Kane will never forget the day it snowed inside.
According to the behind-the-scenes video, some of the snow is biodegradable “Hollywood snow” and some is real snow blown in from outside. The room was kept cold while they played, and the cleanup involved sweeping it outside and using a ShopVac before it melted, so there wasn’t a flood left behind. -via Viral Viral Videos
February is the tail end of winter and often has the worst weather of the year. Those of us in four-season zones are tired of being cold and can’t wait for spring. Maybe that’s the reason that February is so short and full of holidays! You’d also think that February might be the peak month for Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD. But a study of over 34,000 adults show that about the same number of people show symptoms of depression no matter what time of year it is. Another study used fewer people but measured more parameters, including doing tasks while hooked up to a brain scanner.
The participants’ feelings of alertness, their emotional state, and melatonin levels mostly didn’t vary with the seasons, and they actually performed equally well on both tasks in the scanner regardless of the time of year, thus undermining the idea that the winter has an adverse effect on our mental abilities (more on this shortly). One question on mood did show some seasonal variation, but participants’ moods were lowest in the fall, not winter. In terms of underlying brain function, participants’ neural activity was highest during the memory task for those participants tested in spring and lowest for those tested in the fall, so, far from being a special case, winter brain activity sat in the middle.
Meanwhile, during the vigilance task, brain activity was lowest in the winter and highest in the summer. Some media outlets have interpreted this as evidence for winter sluggishness, but as the participants’ performance and alertness was as good in winter as at other times of year, their reduced winter brain activity can actually be seen as a sign of improved efficiency. For comparison, consider research showing how the more expert people become at a task, the less brain activity is seen while they perform that task, as the brain becomes more efficient.
There are other studies that focused on how weather affects our mood and abilities, including one from the Arctic Circle. The upshot is that winter weather may be tough, but humans have learned to deal with it pretty well, for the most part. Read more about this research at The Science of Us. -via Digg
This Presidents Day article is from the book Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges Into the Presidency.
We’ve all heard of playing sick, but it turns out that presidents like to “play well” instead.
The forty-three men who have held the office of chief executive have ranged in age from 42 to 77 while in office, middle to old age. Unsurprisingly, then, the presidents have had a number of medical issues while in office. More surprisingly, perhaps, a large number of those episodes were hidden from the public to avoid a loss in confidence in their leader -even though such a loss of confidence may at times have been justified. Here’s the lowdown on some of the top secret maladies of the presidents.
KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT
Grover Cleveland, during his second term in office, had a cancerous growth removed from his mouth in a surgical procedure done aboard a friend’s yacht, the Oneida. The growth was a “gelatinous mass” which was (in a rather unappetizing visual) referred to as a “cauliflower lesion.” It may have resulted from Cleveland’s heavy smoking -the president was known to enjoy his vices. He was a heavy smoker, drinker, and especially eater. At 280 pounds, Cleveland was the largest president ever except for the famously portly William H. Taft.
Cleveland took his doctors’ advice and arranged for the growth to be removed immediately. Meanwhile, the country was ailing financially, with the disagreement about whether to continue basing the value of U.S. currency on silver reaching a fever pitch. Cleveland worried that the appearance of his failing health would be enough for a contagious unease to spread around the country and per hep precipitate a financial panic even worse than the one already taking place. He called for a special session of Congress to convene in just over five weeks, when he expected to have recovered, to discuss the coinage issue. Then he traveled on the Oneida on the pretense of taking a vacation.
This is Valentines Day at my house. We might have done something if it weren’t for a snowstorm dumping another eight inches outside, or the frozen pipes, or the kid who’s gone on a trip, or a million other things. But then again, we might not. No one says it as well as Lunarbaboon.
Valentines Day is an odd holiday, the feast day of a saint and a celebration of romance at the same time. It’s been evolving for a long time. While the operant word for the modern celebration is “love,” the holiday has its roots firmly in “sex.”
From Feb. 13 to 15, the Romans celebrated the feast of Lupercalia. The men sacrificed a goat and a dog, then whipped women with the hides of the animals they had just slain.
The Roman romantics "were drunk. They were naked," says Noel Lenski, a historian at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Young women would actually line up for the men to hit them, Lenski says. They believed this would make them fertile.
The brutal fete included a matchmaking lottery, in which young men drew the names of women from a jar. The couple would then be, um, coupled up for the duration of the festival — or longer, if the match was right.
The saint known as Valentine came later, and like Christmas and other holidays, the church used the feast day to supplant the earlier pagan celebration. Read how that happened, and more of the history of Valentines Day, at NPR.
The whale shark is the largest fish known. This one got a fishing line caught around him and continued to grow while the rope tightened. Seeing the condition of the rope, it has most likely been there a long time. A diver takes the opportunity to free the shark.
You’d expect the big fish to either attack or swim away, but this one sits still long enough for the diver to do his work. A happy ending, for now! -via Viral Viral Videos
Don’t let this happen to you! Some folks have their hearts in the right place, but completely fail at Valentines Day romance. Some are pranks, others are just awkward, and some are businesses that completely missed the point. Oh, and a few adorable kids’ attempts. They’re all funny. Here’s one story.
My fiancé, a guy, and I, a girl, wanted to go see Fifty Shades of Grey on Valentine's Day with another couple, good friends of ours who told us a few days ago that they might want to go see it with us. Anyway, this morning I texted the girl, who is listed in my phone as Ashley R., "Do you want to go see Fifty Shades of Grey on Valentine's Day?" in order to figure out our plans. The response: "I'm going to [city across the state] to visit my mom for her birthday." ...Ashley's mom's birthday is not this weekend.
I looked at the contact name I had texted--Adam R.--and realized that I had just asked my boss to go with me to see Fifty Shades of Grey on Valentine's Day.
Some are sexual in nature, contains NSFW text. See all 18 at The Daily Dot.
(Image source: imgur)
While the biggest issue during Abraham Lincoln’s political career was slavery, it wasn’t the only issue. The nation was swinging from a freewheeling culture of alcohol to a movement for temperance, and a politician’s stance could affect votes. Lincoln’s father worked off and on at a distillery in Kentucky. Liquor was a part of everyday life where he grew up.
In the first of a series of legendary debates with the democrat Stephen Douglas, Lincoln’s history of co-owning a grocery in Salem, Illinois, in the 1830s was mentioned by his opponent as a way to tie him to the alcohol trade. “I was a school teacher in the town of Winchester, and he a flourishing grocery-keeper in the town of Salem,” accused Douglas.
The audience would have understood that calling Lincoln “a flourishing grocery keeper,” meant that he essentially ran a popular bar. And at the time, these types of establishments were blamed for causing all kinds of disorderly conduct and encouraging a range of sinful behaviors.
Lincoln staunchly denied Douglas’ accusation and always claimed that people could purchase liquor at his store but not consume it there. During the debate he was, however, careful not to condemn those grocery store owners that did sell liquor by the glass: “The Judge is wofully [sic] at fault about his early friend Lincoln being a “grocery keeper.” I don’t know as it would be a great sin, if I had been, but he is mistaken. Lincoln never kept a grocery anywhere in the world.”
Lincoln’s statements appear to contradict each other, but may be a confusion over the definition of “grocery” in context. Lincoln and his partner William Berry had a liquor license for their businesses, but it is unclear whether Lincoln himself ever sold any liquor by the drink. While in office, Lincoln had to walk a fine line between advocating for alcohol or advocating against it. Read more about that struggle at The Daily Beast.
Here's some background on Lincoln's stores and liquor licensing.
1/2 & 1/4 time at The Swamp will never be the same.. @TsvCrocs told to hand in their t-shirt cannon @7NewsTownsville pic.twitter.com/VJ5ZM4I0jT
— Tom Hartley (@TomHartley_7) February 5, 2016
The Townsville Crocodiles basketball team in Queensland has used a homemade cannon to toss t-shirts into the crowd for more than ten years. Only recently did someone ask the Townsville Police where one could obtain such a launcher, which sparked an investigation. Police determined that the cannon, which is essentially a PVC pipe powered by an air compressor, is a category B weapon. The team surrendered the cannon to the police. A Queensland Police Service statement said,
"Category B weapons need to be licensed and registered, having established a genuine need for possession.
"Weapons of any category can only be manufactured by a licensed armourer."
The determination puts the homemade pipe launcher in the same category as a single shot centre-fire rifle, a double barrel centre-fire rifle, a repeating centre-fire rifle, a break action shotgun and centre-fire rifle combination.
The Crocodiles general manager Rob Honan was perplexed, as the cannon can’t fire anything heavy enough to hurt someone. The team is looking for another way to distribute t-shirts for the last game of the season tonight.
-via Arbroath
We’ve had the Star Trek universe for 50 years now, which includes 726 episodes of six television series plus 12 movies (soon to be 13). The concept of time travel has figured prominently in many of those stories, but it doesn’t always work the same way. In some tales, the theory is of a “consistent universe,” in which you can’t change the past. What has happened has always happened, and if you think you’re changing it, you’ll find that you’re just part of history. In other stories, the timeline of the universe is changeable. In fact, if you change the past and don’t like the results, you can go back and change it again. Then there are some episodes where both theories are present, or you might say, a hybrid of those theories.
The animated series (TAS) was one of the first to build on the ideas presented in “The City on the Edge of Forever.” The episode “Yesteryear” has the Enterprise return to the Guardian of Forever to monitor the past eras flashing across its surface. This causes a change to the timeline—without even going back to the past. Luckily the Enterprise still exists, but Spock has been replaced as First Officer by an Andorian. The change happened because Spock didn’t go back in time as he was supposed to. To repair the timeline, he must go back and visit his childhood self on Vulcan.
Consider: If Spock hadn’t failed to travel into Vulcan’s past, the timeline wouldn’t have been changed. If the timeline hadn’t been changed, he never would have had a reason to go into his past in the first place. (Janeway’s headache coming on yet?)
In a sense, this is an integration of both the consistent universe and the changing timeline models. And some of the episodes mentioned under the header of “consistent timeline” also show signs of belonging to both categories. DS9’s “Past Tense” has the Defiant crew experience their timeline changing around them even though the same time travel incident includes evidence of a “consistent universe” event. In many of these episodes, even if the crew’s actions do end up as part of the way things were “supposed” to happen, the crew still worries about damaging the timeline. They act as if their actions potentially could alter history.
If that wasn’t complicated enough, the crew of the Enterprise occasionally gets stuck in a time loop, Groundhog Day-style, until they can figure out how to stop it. Even more confusing, sometimes time travel splits the timeline in two parallel timelines, two alternate universes that exist without awareness of the other. Can all these theories ever be reconciled? Possibly; after all, Star Trek is fiction. Read about the different rules of time travel in the Star Trek universe, with examples and explanations, at Ars Technica. -via Digg
As we’ve seen before, you can imagine anything as the Disney Princesses, from zombie fighters to hot dogs. Now Deadpool is getting in on the action! This is a little different, though, in that it’s a webcomic, with a story of sorts, instead of an art project. Read the whole thing at Rock, Paper, Cynic by Peter Chiykowski. -via Geeks Are Sexy
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