If you found The Force Awakens to be a bit familiar, you’re not the only one. There are a lot of elements that harken back to the original trilogy, and the various character types have many things in common with all adventure movies. Here they are, meeting each other, in this video that may contain spoilers for those who haven’t seen The Force Awakens. If you haven’t seen the original trilogy, this will spoil nothing.
A few days ago, Dogma mentioned that her granddaughter had only seen The Force Awakens and none of the other Star Wars movies. That just seems so cockeyed to us older fans, but it makes perfect sense for someone who is too young to have been around for the prequels, much less the original trilogy. Nevertheless, a real Star Wars fan would’ve felt a disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced, at the very minute this happened. This is the latest from Chris Hallbeck at Maximumble.
On Tuesday morning of this week, the U.S. Senate convened in Washington. But this session was different. Many were absent due to icy road conditions, and those that showed up for work were all women. Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska presided, mainly to delay business until the workforce got back to normal.
“As we convene this morning, you look around the chamber, the presiding officer is female. All of our parliamentarians are female. Our floor managers are female. All of our pages are female.”
Murkowski noted that she and Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who was wielding the Senate gavel, hadn’t planned the all-women session. It was, she said, just a coincidence.
Coincidence? Maybe it had something to do with the difficulty of actually getting to work that day. You can see a video of Murkowski’s comments at The Washington Post. If this snowstorm had happened a couple of decades ago, the Capitol Building might have been completely empty. -via Daily of the Day
Most eggs come from Leghorn hens. According to Steve Ettlinger’s Twinkie, Deconstructed, they’re cracked in specialty plants like Papetti’s in New Jersey, which breaks nearly 7 million a day! Once liquefied, the eggs are hosed into trucks and shipped off.
2. CORN SYRUP
Yellow #2 dent field corn puts the “corn” in your corn dog. Corn syrup is made in huge batches: First, 40,000 bushels of corn are soaked in seven-story tanks of hot water for two days. Corn starch is separated from the wet-milled kernels, centrifuged, and washed up to 14 times! Most of the starch is used to make cardboard, but the rest is placed in a vat with hydrochloric acid and heated into corn syrup.
3. SMOKE FLAVORING
Liquid smoke comes from actual smoke! To make it, wood chips or sawdust are burned and the vapor is captured and condensed into a liquid. After the dogs are cooked, they get a quick shower in it.
4. CELLULOSE*
For nearly 6,000 years, people have used animal intestines to encase sausages. But chances are, your frank was wrapped in trees. Wood chips are steamed, saturated in a stew of caustic sodium sulfide, cooked, and screened into wood pulp. The result is cellulose, popular for paper, textiles, and hot dog casings (which are stripped off after the dog is factory cooked).
5. THIAMINE MONONITRATE (B1)
Although B1 is found in brown rice husks, it’s usually synthesized from petrochemicals derived from coal tar. (It’s easier and cheaper to synthetically create vitamins than to extract them from plants.) Most B1 companies keep the details secret.
What happened here? It doesn’t look good. In fact, it looks like a nightmare of oven cleaning ahead. At least they got a photograph before the whole thing ignited. If you can’t figure out exactly what happened, you’re not alone. People had plenty of strange explanations before they found out. What happened is this: Show Answer
They used a plastic cutting board instead of a pizza pan.
You would never make that mistake, now, would you? -via reddit
Someone who goes by the name of elpher explained that he doesn’t like Monopoly. Yet he always wins. The point of winning is to prove to his friends that Monopoly is not fun, and they should play something else. Then he gives us his exact strategy so you, too, can win the game. First off, read and understand the rules, because no one else does. He lays out the best monopolies for you to collect. Never upgrade your houses to hotels, because you want to create a housing shortage. He is ruthless.
At this point, you more or less have the game sewn up. If losing a normal game of monopoly is frustrating, losing to this strategy is excruciating, as a losing opponent essentially has no path to victory, even with lucky rolls. Your goal is to play conservatively, lock up more resources, and let the other players lose by attrition. If you want to see these people again, I recommend not gloating, but simply state that you're playing to win, and that it wasn't your idea to play Monopoly in the first place.
It was 49 years ago today, January 27, 1967, that a launch rehearsal for the Apollo 1 mission turned into a tragedy. The launch was scheduled for February 21. The rehearsal was a simulation of the countdown and launch. The spaceship cabin was filled with 100% oxygen.
Just after 6:31 that evening, the routine test took a turn. Engineers in mission control saw an increase in oxygen flow and pressure inside the cabin. The telemetry was accompanied by a garbled transmission that sounded like “fire.” The official record reflects the communications problem. The transmission was unclear, but the panic was obvious as an astronaut yelled something like “they’re fighting a bad fire — let’s get out. Open ‘er up” or “we’ve got a bad fire — let’s get out. We’re burning up.” The static made it impossible to hear the exact words or even distinguish who was speaking.
Efforts to open up the capsule were useless, because the doors opened to the inside, and the pressure in the capsule was too high. The highly flammable oxygen blazed out of control. Astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee died that day, the first casualties of the U.S. space program. It took a year of meticulous investigation to determine exactly what happened, and what would be changed to keep it from happening again. You can read the whole story of the Apollo 1 disaster at Scientific American. -via Digg
Animation student Jacob Frey presents his thesis work from the Institute of Animation in Ludwigsburg, Germany. It's a tale of a video game-obsessed boy and the present his mother gives him, hoping to get him off the couch and maybe even outside for a change. You might recognize the story right off.
Western Canada during the 19th-century was a harsh place for Europeans. The Hudson's Bay Company sent workers out west to support the fur trade, but women were forbidden. Yet 15-year-old Isobel Gunn left her home in the Scottish Orkney Islands in 1806 dressed as male, and made her way across Canada, working as hard as any man. Why would she set out on such a backbreaking, dangerous life? For the usual reasons that women in history have lived as men: freedom, self-determination, respect, adventure, and money.
Others note that early 19th-century Orkney really only only gave three options to men: risk life and limb fishing in the dangerous North Sea for a pittance, sign up to fight against Napoleon’s army for a pittance, or join Hudson’s Bay Company, head to Canada, and earn a whopping £8 a year–far more than any of the men could earn at home.
As a woman, Isobel would never be able to earn as much as even the poorest male worker in Orkney. And she’d likely need that money–one side of her face was marred by smallpox scars, which would have ruined her marriage prospects. So why not dress as a man and try to earn some money for herself?
Lauren Clark went out of town to attend a music festival. She and her group stopped at a Super 8 motel for the night. They’d never been to the motel, but her sister noticed that Lauren disappeared as they walked down the hallway. That’s what you get for buying your clothes off the Super 8 rack at the department store! Read the whole story, and see a couple of other surprise hotel camouflages at Buzzfeed.
Will putting your onion in the freezer keep you from crying as you cut it? Maybe, but if you leave it in there too long, you’ll have trouble cutting it at all, and you better know exactly how many onions you’ll need. On this week’s mental_floss List Show, John Green tests more tips from the internet that may or may not be of any use. The best part is seeing Green turn red as he tries to tear an apple in two with his bare hands. I have to object to his whipped cream asessment. This will work, but ten quick shakes are not sufficient to do the job. This is the fourth of a series. You’ll find more “life hacks” (or tips) debunked in part one, part two, and part three.
What kind of cake do you get for a divorce party? The fact that at least one participant considers it a reason for celebration means you should have something light-hearted, complete with a pun. This is one Star Wars pun I hadn’t heard before. It may become popular in the future. AskJoshy snapped a picture of the cake served at his friend’s divorce party. The guest of honor’s new girlfriend brought it, prompting others to say, “It’s a trap!” -via reddit
Here’s something that fans can argue about for days. Who portrayed Batman the best? I am partial to Michael Keaton, but that may just be an artifact of my age (and the fact that I still haven’t seen The Dark Knight). You may prefer Christian Bale or even Adam West or Val Kilmer. What if none of them made this list of the ten best superhero performances in movies? There are also plenty of actors who’ve played Superman, not to mention the Avengers, X-men, Spider-Man, and so many other superheroes on film. The list isn’t ranked, but if your favorite made it on there at all, you can pat yourself on the back for your good taste.
A penthouse in Chicago is listed for sale. It was built in 1972. The original owners lovingly decorated it in the style of the time, and never used it. What is left is a time capsule of the hippest 1972 decor. Groovy! Even the bathroom products are vintage.
It can be yours for just $158,000, plus monthly building fees. It’s possible that you can sell a lot of the furniture and accessories to pay for the property; after all, they were never used and are in mint condition. Or you might want to keep it as is, but only if your favorite color is bright green. Take a virtual tour of the entire penthouse at Zillow. -via Metafilter
The other day we posted The White Room, in which a guy died and immediately got the opportunity to ask questions about the unknowns in his life. That was a comedy, while this is anything but. The protagonist here was the victim of a traffic accident. Contains NSFW language.
The lesson here is somewhat ambiguous. Yeah, he knows now what he should have done differently, but he didn’t have the answers until it was too late to change anything. And would he have listened if he did? Or maybe it all comes back to the old adage, “Live each day as if it’s your last.” The Answers is an award-winning short film by Michael Goode and Daniel Lissing. -via Digg
