Babies learn by imitating others. Usually, we think of that as a baby imitating his parents. But when the family dogs begin to howl, that’s a learning experience for this 5-month-old baby.
The baby boy has joined a long line of canines who learn from their elders. Will he grow up to be a werewolf? Only time will tell. -via reddit
A video from The Royal Institution explains in a very calm, subdued, British way what happens when you burn iron oxide and aluminum powder inside a pumpkin. The visual effects are quite impressive.
It’s also quite dangerous, so don’t try this at home. Please. Thermite is nothing to fool around with. -via The Daily Dot
Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website or at Facebook.
You've probably already figured out the first half of the above question before even taking a look at this article. I imagine you have already guessed that the popular drink was originally made from roots.
And guess what? You're right! But why "beer"?
Charles Hires (1851-1937) was a Philadelphia druggist. At the age of 12, he worked as a drugstore boy. At the age of 16, he moved to Philadelphia and found work in a pharmacy. With $400.00 he had saved, Hires started his own drugstore.
While honeymooning in New Jersey in 1875, he tasted an herbal tea containing juniper, wintergreen, and sarsaparilla. Root and berry drinks had been around for a long time, but this tea was different.
Upon returning from his honeymoon to his pharmacy's soda fountain, he worked on creating a similar-tasting carbonated drink. He came up with a mixture of sassafras roots, barks, herbs, and flowers. He was soon marketing an selling it and it became the first commercial brand of root beer.
Hires originally sold his new beverage in boxes. He only sold it to housewives and proprietors of drugstores. Those who purchased the product had to mix in their own water, sugar, and yeast.
Talk about heavy equipment! This is the SLJ900/32, a Chinese bridge-building machine. It weighs 580 metric tons and is 91.8 meters long. It carries and installs concrete bridge girders in places where a crane can’t go. This time-lapse video makes it look simple. It can’t be simple.
But at least it’s doable. Watch the guys working with this machine. They hop around hundreds of feet above a chasm, installing tons of concrete, with no safety harnesses. There are two other videos that give a closer look at some of the steps, if you are interested. -via Daily of the Day
Sedlec Ossuary, near Kutná Hora in the Czech Republic, is one of many bone repositories in Europe, but it stands out for its unique architecture. The bones of the dead were used to make murals, light fixtures, and gingerbread to decorate the church!
How did that happen? Dylan Thuras of Atlas Obscura tells the tale of Sedlec Ossuary.
It can be a lot of fun to find an old map and try to determine its date by the place names on it. North Vietnam and South Vietnam? Obviously between 1954 and 1976. East Germany? Between 1949 and 1990. But getting a precise year may take some further sleuthing. Luckily, we have a chart from Replogle Globe to consult. If your world globe has Southwest Africa on it instead of Namibia, but also has Zimbabwe instead of the older name Rhodesia, you can narrow it down to the 1980s. Using the chart, you’ll know to then look for the Leeward Islands, or St. Kitts & Nevis, as they were renamed in 1983. Outside of dating globes and maps, this can be a really handy chart for teaching your kids the history of world geography. Or yourself, for that matter. -via Digg
Here’s a joke from the last time we posted this link years ago:
My globe is so old...
HOW OLD IS IT?
My globe is so old it still says "here be dragons." On France.
(Image credit: Petar Milošević)
#new #artproject @MuseionBZ #goldiechiari #Doveandiamoaballarequestasera #disco80 #lafestaèfinita #tuttiassolti pic.twitter.com/9iKxGqAH2H
— ME Putz (@MarleneP_) October 22, 2015
This scene looks like a mess left after a party, doesn’t it? That’s what most people would think. But this is an art installation, titled “We were going to dance tonight” by Milanese artists Goldschmied & Chiari. It went on exhibit last Friday at the Museion modern art gallery in Bolzano, Italy. And, of course, when a new exhibit opens at a gallery, there’s always a reception. The cleaning crew arrived Saturday morning and saw what appeared to have been quite a party, so... they cleaned it up.
“Of course we warn staff not to clean away art,” gallery curator Letizia Ragaglia told Alto Adige. “ We told them just to clean the foyer because that's where the event on Friday night had been. Evidently, they mistook the installation for the foyer...”
Fortunately, all was not lost. After organizing the 'rubbish' art into separate bin bags for glass and plastic, the cleaners realized their error before they threw out the artworks for good.
The museum staff went to work to re-assemble the installation, using photographs as a guide. -via Arbroath
A new promotion for The Peanuts Movie is a generator that turns your text into the trombone adult voices you hear in the Peanuts cartoons. Try out the Wah Wah Machine! Just type in whatever, and listen to the machine-translated gibberish. I get the idea that vowels are crucial, and punctuation is more important than the actual words you use, so punctuate away. You can even save your creation as an mp3, in case you want to use it as a ring tone or send it to Aunt Betty. Oh yeah, it knows when you’re typing profanity, too. -via Boing Boing
Spooky things are happening on the set of the mental_floss List Show. Weird things also happen on the sets of horror films, which you’ll learn about in this episode. Find out which films are based on true stories, which productions were plagued with bad luck, and where horror novelists and screenwriters get their ideas.
You remember Nibbles the Duck: he’s the one who couldn’t wait for his boy Jonny to get home from school. Now Nibbles is modeling his Halloween costume. He’s a Lobster!
You could say the costume is, um, daffy. What makes the video is the infectious laughter. Nibbles is quite a trooper. He’ll put up with anything for his beloved, if somewhat wacky, family. -via Tastefully Offensive
The following is an article from The Annals of Improbable Research.
by Stephen Drew, Improbable Research staff
The Cops: Cheese It! (The Case of the Cheesy Toothmark)
“Comparison Microscope Identification of a Cheese Bitemark: A Case Report,” H. Bernitz and B.A. Kloppers, Journal of Forensic Odonto-Stomatology, vol. 20, no. 1, June 2002, pp.13–6. The authors, from University of Pretoria, South Africa, report:
Police investigating the murder of a farmer recovered a piece of cheese containing bitemarks. The local dental practitioner used white plaster to make casts of the bitemarks in the cheese and also of the teeth of three suspects. The cheese specimen was retained by the police and seven months later the case was referred to the Forensic Odontology Unit at the University of Pretoria where a silicone rubber cast of the bitemarks in the cheese was made. A lack of concordant features present in a conventional pattern-associated comparison was overcome with the aid of a Leica DMC comparison microscope. Individual features observed under 6.3x magnification aided in the positive identification of the suspect, who when confronte with the evidence, admitted guilt at his first court appearance.
Experimental Cheesy Toothmarks
“Application of Incise Dental Scanner to Compare Bite Marks in Cheese with Models of the Suspects’ Dentitions,” A. Al-Ali, F. Wong, and M. Hector, Journal of Forensic Odonto-Stomatology, vol. 31, 2013, p. 130.
A sample of 6 dental study models and their corresponding bite marks, made by the same participants into cheese blocks (20×40×20 mm) with their 6 upper anterior teeth, were digitized.... The descriptive statistical differences between the two corresponding images revealed a high degree of fit.
An Earlier Case of a Cheesy Toothmark
“Saliva from Cheese Bite Yields DNA Profile of Burglar: A Case Report,” D. Sweet and D. Hildebrand, International Journal of Legal Medicine, vol. 112, no. 3, 1999, pp. 201–3. The authors, at the Bureau of Legal Dentistry, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, report:
How would you design a chain reaction that takes six weeks to complete? Bob Partington of Field Day did it. My question was how do they expect us to sit through the video? But that’s easy, because the slower parts of it are time-lapsed, with a clock in the corner to indicate when and how much time is compressed.
Part of this involves filling a trough with enough molasses to float a boat. Slowly. A tortoise has to carry the ball for a while. Popsicles have to melt. And the last “slowness” gimmick is a real doozy. I'm just glad they didn't recreate the Pitch Drop experiment, which would have taken years. Partington has a behind-the-scenes video in which he explains the design process. -via Viral Viral Videos
The New Conformity is a trio of jugglers who perform with Cause & Effect Circus. They start off with synchronized juggling, which is nice to see. Then they start juggling each others’ balls. A nicer term for that would be tandem juggling.
They also do contact juggling, ball balancing, a hand dance, and even a Three Stooges-type routine. After all that, they just start showing off. -via Digg
Kurt Richter took this picture of the construction site near his home. The heavy equipment crew has a sense of humor! Let's get a closer look.
Their simple Halloween decoration is tasteful, subdued, and really appropriate for the scene. Incidentally, I would advise springing for the deluxe service. -Thanks, Kurt!
Once upon a time, you didn’t think about a movie until it reached your local theater. And that was a good thing, because they didn't play in small towns until months after the official release. Then as theaters expanded, you’d see trailers on TV a couple of weeks before the movie opened, and that was the first you heard of it. Now, we get every scrap of film development on the internet years ahead of time. And for a fan, it’s not easy to wait for the finished product.
You might think this is about The Force Awakens, but it also applies to the Marvel universe films, Star Trek, or any number of popular film franchises. Sadly, it also applies to TV shows, video games, and books. We get teased too much about them before we ever get a chance to try them out. -via Tastefully Offensive