A leopard wandered into the Vibgyor International School in Bangalore, India, Sunday and mauled six people as it wandered around in a panic. It took ten hours to subdue the big cat. Some of the cat attacks were captured on security cameras.
Conservation scientist Sanjay Gubbi and forest department employee Benny Maurius were injured when they tried to corner the animal and tranquillise him, reports say.
"It was a long struggle to capture the leopard. Although it was injected with tranquillisers it could be captured only around 20.15 local time when the medication took full effect," senior police official S Boralingaiah told reporters.
After the drug took effect, the leopard was transported back into the nearby forest. Six people were treated at a nearby hospital for minor injuries. -via reddit
A photo posted by briankesinger (@briankesinger) on Feb 6, 2016 at 9:13am PST
About a month ago, we steered you to Disney artist Brian Kesinger and his delightful Star Wars/Calvin and Hobbes mashups. The new ones he’s done since then are so funny, we have to share them with you!
Vehicles sometimes become stars of TV series, even when they don’t get credit or draw scandalous headlines. Everyone recognizes the Batmobile, and we of a certain age recognize the Partridge Family bus and the Clampett’s old rattletrap. Newer shows have star vehicles as well, like the Stair Car from Arrested Development.
When the Bluth’s lost all their money, the only mode of transportation they had was the Stair Car. It was originally paired with the company jet that was sold to pay off some debt. This car was perfect for helping inmates escape prison, letting people enter homes from the second story, and tearing down signs. 3 different trucks were used over the course of the series.
Americans living abroad have all kinds of reasons for doing so. Some wanted to shake their lives up. Others followed a job or spouse. Some went for a visit and then decided to stay. All of them miss something from the United States, but also cherish their new experiences. Heather Mancini lives in Barcelona, Spain.
What she misses most about life in America: Family and friends. “When I was still single and living abroad, I got back to the States once or twice a year. Now that I have a family, and many of my friends and family have their own families, two or three years may pass without seeing some of my siblings or closest friends.”
What she loves most about life in Spain: “I learn something new every day. It could be a new word in another language, politics in another country, or how to prepare a cultural dish. Also, my kids hold three passports and will grow up with an international mindset, speaking four languages. I’m not sure what others think, but to me, that’s pretty cool.”
Here’s a web toy that could also be a game if you played against someone and made up some rules. There’s a grid of faces. Click on them, and they will start to either smile or frown. Keep clicking after you think the face won’t change any more, and it might change again in some randomly interesting way. Or not. Yes, there is a score at the bottom, which you can maximize by concentrating on the happy faces instead of the frowny ones, but that seems irrelevant.
The game FAQ gives you reasons to keep clicking on the faces. A vague offer of a reward for clicking more did not induce me to try for a thousand clicks. Oh yeah, the grid is different every time you load it, so you can’t just memorize the most interesting faces. -via Metafilter
In which we examine the necessity of mountain climbing through the lens of the famous quote by George Mallory. Mallory died on his third attempt at climbing Mt. Everest in 1924, which only makes that pizza look all the better. This comic is by John McNamee at Pie Comic.
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.
Abraham Lincoln may be the greatest president ever … in terms of the crazy cultural crap he inspires.
Apologies to Ronald Reagan, but no president has lent himself to kitsch and over-analysis as much as Abraham Lincoln, perhaps the best 16th president a democratically-elected country could ask for. There has been much written and collected about ol’ Abe, and as someone who has seen Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter in the theater and lived to tell the tale, I’m probably just as qualified as anyone to talk about Lincolniana. In honor of the dude’s birthday, this issue is all about him. So put on your stovepipe hat and let’s go for a ride!
In which we discuss Abraham Lincoln’s face.
You probably don’t know your own face as much as the Lincoln Institute’s Richard J. Behn knows Lincoln’s. The Lincoln Institute has numerous articles about the former president—from his time as an athlete, the ways that his moods shifted, to his philosophy on life.
But no article on Lincoln gets nearly as up-close and personal with Lincoln’s face as much as Behn’s does about the man’s facial features. Here’s a sample of the 5,500-word article, full of scholarly quotes:
President Lincoln’s face was a mobile instrument that left a lasting impression. One contemporary observed: “His large bony face when in repose was unspeakably sad and as unreadable as that of a sphinx, his eyes were as expressionless as those of a dead fish; but when he smiled or laughed at one of his own stories of that of another then everything about him changed; his figure became alert, a lightning change came over his countenance, his eyes scintillated and I thought he had the most expressive features I had ever seen on the face of a man.”
If you have a face, you should read this article, which describes, in-depth, the troubles that sculptors had in recreating his face. After you’re done, you’ll probably want to use an Oxy pad or something.
The Beatles were famous ambassadors for peace and love, but they also generated a lot of lawsuits. Here are some of them.
BEATLES VS. EMI: From 1979 through 2006, the Beatles skirmished with the record company EMI five different times. Four times, it was over royalties. The remaining issue was about EMI’s plans to release the Red (1962–1966) and Blue (1967–1970) albums on CD in 1991 without the band’s permission. The Beatles won every time, but after winning the last case and establishing their veto rights, they let EMI release the albums anyway.
BEATLES VS. APPLE: Steve Jobs reportedly named his fledgling company Apple in part because he was a Beatles fan and they’d named their own multimedia company Apple Corps, which owned their record company Apple Records. The Beatles threatened to sue, and in 1981, Jobs’s Apple settled by paying $80,000 and agreeing to stay out of the music business.
It didn’t last long. In 1989 the Beatles’ Apple Corps noted that Apple computers were being used to play, record, and mix music. The band sued again. This time, the computer company paid $26 million and won the right to create “goods and services… used to reproduce, run, play, or otherwise deliver” music, but not any actual music.
Ellen Gibson is dressing her 8-month-old triplets (Jackson, Olivia, and Levi), while their 2-year-old sister Emily tries her best to set a bad example for the little ones. And if you look closely, there’s a cat, too.
My guess is that she doesn’t dress them all at once on a normal day, but is making a video to illustrate the chaos of having this many little ones. A sane person would leave two in a crib. Dad? I don’t think he was there at the time. Follow the triplets and the rest of the family at Facebook and at their website. -via Metafilter
You’ve seen the painting, but you’ve never seen it up close like this! An interactive look at The Garden of Earthly Delights lets you zoom in on the details of the hi-res image and hear the stories behind them. Or you can take a virtual guided tour of the painting, and see all the narrated details. For example, the scene above is in the far right corner of the triptych. The narration tells us:
An ink jar is dangling from the mouth of a helmeted demon. A man wearing a pale-red robe and a pig dressed up as a nun try to persuade a soul to sign a document. This is a serious legal document, the red seals are testimony enough. But what exactly is this man signing for? Maybe they want the man to sign a pact with the devil to sell his soul. To make it look more convincing, the three have dressed up as a knight, nun and clerk, respectively. The nude man is on to them, it seems, as he is casting anxious looks at the viewer, as if pleading for help. At the same time he seems to be warning us: Don’t fall for the devil’s tricks!
Margaret Chase Smith was the first of many things in American politics. She was the first woman to serve in both the House and Senate (representing Maine). When she retired from the Senate in 1973, she was the longest-serving woman senator until 2011. And she was the first woman to be placed in nomination at a major party convention to run for president of the United States. Smith did not achieve the nomination at the Republican convention in 1964, but she made Americans sit up and consider the idea of a woman president.
Smith’s entry into the race sparked hundreds of newspaper stories. They invariably mentioned her appearance and her age. “Trim as a model, she carries herself more like a clubwoman than a politician,” one story noted. “At 66, she is an exceedingly attractive figure,” another reported, praising Smith as “slender, silver haired,” sincere, and quick to laugh. But if commentators and reporters admired her figure, they expressed reservation about her length of years. A columnist for the Los Angeles Times identified Smith’s age as one of the biggest obstacles she faced. Richard Wilson wrote that “Mrs. Smith has qualifications and experience for the Presidency no less than many men who have served in the office.” But her age “tends to be a disqualifying factor.” This was especially true given that she would be not only old but also an old woman. The optimum age for presidents, in Wilson’s view, was late forties or early fifties. Alas, at this time in life, “the female of the species undergoes physical changes and emotional distress of varying severity and duration.” The author never used the indelicate term “menopause” in his article. But he underscored the change in a woman midlife “is known to have an effect on judgment and behavior.” The steady allusions to age were not lost on the candidate herself. “Since my candidacy was announced, almost every news story starts off ‘the sixty-six-year-old senator,’ ” she observed. “I haven’t seen the age played up in the case of the male candidates.”
Smith was extremely popular in her state and had powerful allies in Congress, but she didn’t want to play the campaign game. She didn’t fundraise, and she didn’t campaign much because she refused to miss Senate votes, decisions which doomed her race no matter her sex. But her story is one of ambition and ethics and hard work. Smith is especially remembered for a 1950 speech in which she condemned fellow Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy for his tactics while never mentioning him by name. Read the story of Margaret Chase Smith at The New Yorker.
It’s been six weeks since we first saw Star Wars: The Force Awakens. And that was after a year-long buildup of hype. Some of us went way overboard, overdosing on Star Wars to celebrate a decade without a movie. For some, this may call for an intervention.
Some down time between Star Wars frenzies is in order, but we'd better get that downtime started. After all, Star Wars: Rogue One will be here in December, and Star War Episode VIII is scheduled for December of 2017. What happens when the Force won’t stop awakening? It’s time to let it go. Did I say let it go? This is going to be worse than Frozen. -via Geeks Are Sexy
It’s a testament to the quality of the first trailer for The Force Awakens that so many video mixmasters use its style to promote other things. We’ve seen the original Star Wars movie done this way, and Masters of the Universe, too. Even the US Navy put themselves into it. Now let’s see how well it works with Doctor Who.
YouTube member VG934 looks back to 2005, when Doctor Who was rebooted for a modern audience. He used the trailer for The Force Awakens to make a trailer for Doctor Who Series 1, when Rose Tyler met the Doctor. Makes you want to watch it right now, huh? -via Laughing Squid
We talk about recurring themes in blockbuster movies, because new stories feel as if they pull elements out of a hat and just combine them in new ways. John Atkinson at Wrong Hands put together a chart that makes new movie ideas a cinch, Mad-Libs style! Put one from each column together: Adjective, subject, verb, clause, and you’re very likely to say, “I’d go see that!” Of course, there’s a good chance you’d also realize, “I’ve seen that movie!”
Redditor burnmongham and his brother took their kids on an outing. They took pictures, but there wasn’t one with all of them in it. So he took two of the snapshots and stitched them together digitally to include everyone. It took him a month to realize the one little error in the image fusion. How fast can you find the special child?
