It's impossible to resuscitate a frozen corpse. But that doesn't bother the small legion of cryonauts who are betting that an outlaw science will let them live forever.

(Photo courtesy of Alcor Life Extension Foundation.)

The thirtysomething man sitting next to me in this hotel conference room has tousled brown hair, blocky glasses, and a thin goatee. He looks like an ordinary guy, an impression that’s confirmed when he turns and introduces himself.

“Hi! I’m John. I’m just an ordinary guy,” he says, nodding vigorously as if he’s trying to reassure me. “Just an ordinary guy,” he repeats, as if maybe he’s trying to reassure himself. “I’m not a paid-up member yet. You know. In the program.”

“The program” is why John and I and about 300 other people have packed into this auditorium at a resort outside Scottsdale, Arizona. We’re here to learn about the brave science of cryonics.

It’s the 40th anniversary of the Alcor Life Extension Foundation conference, and the company’s proposition is clear: to use “ultra-cold temperature to preserve human life with the intent of restoring good health when technology becomes available to do so.” They promise to accomplish this by freezing the bodies of recently deceased people in liquid nitrogen at a chilly -196° C. Then, if all goes according to plan, sometime in the next 1,000 years, these bold voyagers—known as “cryonauts”—will be reanimated to join the living once again.

At best, this sounds like weird science. At worst, it’s science fiction. I’m afraid that’s the verdict I’m leaning toward right now. In this niche market, there are only a handful of organizations currently freezing people and Alcor—by far the biggest—has frozen just 124 as of May 2013. (Yes, Ted Williams is one of them).

I tell John I’m not in the program either. I’m a little skeptical of the whole freezing-thawing-reanimating idea. John looks at me hard over the rims of his glasses. “I don’t like skeptics,” he says.

Indeed, this is not the sort of place that welcomes skeptics. Many in the crowd are here because they’ve already agreed to invest the $200,000 that will buy them a membership into the cryopreservation club when they die. Others have selected the more economical $70,000 option, which preserves the head only. Members typically buy into the program by signing over all or part of their life insurance to cover the costs: pickup, transportation, and—one hopes—very careful maintenance in Alcor’s storage facilities in Scottsdale. If John the ordinary guy doesn’t want to hear my doubts, I imagine those who have already made a sizable down payment on immortality will be even less open-minded.

Who are these people? It’s a varied group. Many are inspired, visionary thinkers. Some, like John, are seemingly typical people. More than a few, though, appear to be completely bonkers. To spend a day in a room full of cryonauts is to oscillate between astonished enthusiasm and incredulous cynicism in wild swings, punctuated by sudden and uncontrollable urges to laugh hysterically.

Yet I have to wonder: Maybe these 300 people know something the rest of us don’t. That’s what I’m here to figure out.

When Oracle founder Larry Ellison bought 97% of the Hawaiian island of Lana’i, he didn’t realize that the island was covered in cats, and that his new holdings include the Lana’i Animal Rescue Center, home to 425 feral cats. Lana’i has 3200 people and thousands of cats, descendants of abandoned pets. Kathy Carroll began spaying and neutering feral cats in 2004, and founded the rescue center. Carroll knows most of the shelter cats by name. The shelter is supported by donations, including adoptions and cat sponsorships, and has become quite famous.

Last year, around 1,000 people visited the Lana’i Animal Rescue Center. It was named the No. 1 most recommended thing to do on Lana’i, according to TripAdvisor, where it also enjoys a five-star rating (the No. 2 recommendation was the Mike Carroll Gallery). The daily open houses are free, but for sale are a new batch of T-shirts, illustrated by Mr. Carroll, featuring a Hawaiian cat playing a ukulele. For a while, the Four Seasons was running shuttles to the shelter as part of its voluntourism offerings, and the shelter’s own handout invites tourists who are longing for their cats at home to “Visit a Cat Lover’s Paradise.” One Japanese ailurophile did just that and flew straight to Lana’i from Tokyo, stopping only to change planes in Honolulu. Another visitor proposed to his girlfriend underneath the “Cattic” — a three-walled porch with Adirondack chairs and a cat-sized loft where some of the more skittish cats like to hide out. He’d been carrying around the ring waiting for the right moment.

Read all about this unique cat shelter and the cats of Lana’i at Buzzfeed.

(Image credit: Andrew Dalton)

In the Victorian Era, when the child mortality rate was high, death was a part of everyday life. That doesn’t mean it was easy, so certain rules and rituals grew into being to help the bereaved properly cope with the loss of a loved one. Following the social rules was easier than making decisions for someone going through the fog of mourning, but some of those Victorian customs seem particularly stifling today, such as the rules demanding black clothing for the family of the deceased.   

A black ribbon was even tied to their undergarments, and only after the first 12 months of the mourning period ended could they start to wear other colours – and even then, it was only violet, lavender or mauve. Widows wore mourning clothes for no less than two years, and children would occasionally be included in the traditions, though they would typically wear white.

With death coming so frequently, mourning clothes were in high demand. In 1841, Jay’s of Regent Street was one of the premiere suppliers of such garments, enjoying a booming business fueled in part by high mortality rates coupled with the belief that keeping mourning clothes after the mourning period had ended was bad luck.

That sounds quite expensive, but it was a way of showing how much you loved the deceased, and variance from the rules could make one a victim of scorn and gossip. Read more about the rituals and etiquette surrounding death in the Victoria Era at Urban Ghosts.

The annual Pikachu festival was held in Yokohama, Japan, last week, and the videos from the event are delightful! Here they are, dancing for an adoring crowd.

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And here’s one of the many Pikachu parades you could see every day. After all, they can't just perform and then drop the costumes- they have to make a grand entrance and exit, too! 

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A good time was had by all. -via Pleated-Jeans  

Politicians hate it when you put words in their mouths. The congregation of ten Republican presidential candidates on one stage during the first debate was too much of a temptation for the folks at Bad Lip Reading.

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What they say in this video has nothing to do with politics, anyway. It’s just amazing how well nonsense talk can be synched up with what their lips are saying. The songs at the end are a genius touch. -via Tastefully Offensive

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People invent new things all the time, but you’ve only heard about them if they actually proved to be useful, or popular, or newsworthy. That leaves a lot of others that never made a ripple. You’ve probably heard of some of the inventions on the List Show from mental_floss, but I bet you’ve never bought one. You’ve only heard of them because they are so ridiculous! 

In 1899, a story appeared in McClure's magazine by Henry Tukeman. It told of the time he tracked and killed a mammoth in the Alaskan wilderness, and sold the hide, tusks, and bones to a man who donated them to the Smithsonian Institution.

   While wintering at Fort Yukon in 1890, he said, he passed the time by reading aloud to an Indian friend named Joe. One of the stories concerned elephants. When he showed Joe a picture of an elephant the Indian became excited. He said he had seen such an animal, up there, pointing north and east.

    Joe said he had been hunting on the upper Porcupine River when he came to a cave filled with bones of big animals. The cave opened onto a valley, and in the valley were fresh tracks, "footprints longer than a rifle." Joe followed the tracks to a lake, and in the lake stood a creature of size and shape he had never seen, or heard of around the campfire.

    "He is throwing water over himself with his long nose, and his two front teeth stand out before his head for ten gunlengths, turned up and shining like a swan's wing in the sunlight. Alongside him, this cabin would be like a two-week boar cub beside its mother."

    Tukeman said Joe wouldn't guide him to the cave but told a younger tribesman named Paul how to get to the mammoth stomping grounds. They found the cave, found the valley, and, sure enough, found a mammoth.

The account goes on to describe how he killed the mammoth and what he did with the remains. It caused the Smithsonian no small amount of grief. The number of visitors to the institution surged, and many of those visitors became angry when hearing that the museum had no such exhibit. Read how such a fantastic story ended up in a respectable magazine at the Tacoma Public Library website. -via Cliff Pickover

(Image credit: Paul Jamin, 1885)

My family recently celebrated the final “first day of school” ever, as the youngest two of our seven began their senior year in high school. Yay. I also have a granddaughter starting preschool. Let’s have some sympathy for the little children attending school for the first time.

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A reporter is interviewing a 4-year-old on his first day of pre-kindergarten (also known as preschool). She must not have children yet, because any mother knows that you don’t ask THAT question. It’s like turning on a faucet. -via Uproxx

Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website.

I must have read, in my life, a fair estimate of around 500 or 600 books on the Beatles. I have read each and every one worth reading. I will give most any Beatles book a fair chance, but if I spot more than two or three errors or obvious mistakes, I will just stop reading it and go on to another book.

(As an interesting side note, of these hundreds of actual bios, autobiographies and memoirs, I have only found a handful that did not have some kind of a mistake, error, wrong date, or omission- at least one.)

Many questions involving their fascinating history are undisputed, but many are still debated and are a bit foggy, even to this day. One of these is: how did the Beatles get their name? Okay, let's go back to Liverpool, England in the mid-1950's and do some investigating.

In 1956, John Lennon, a loud-mouthed, but talented teenager, started a group called “The Blackjacks.” This original rock "skiffle" band consisted of John and a few of his close pals. Skiffle groups were groups who played on improvised instruments, such as tea chest bass, washboards, etc.

Though this was the group's very first name, the briefly-named Blackjacks never performed under this name. Lennon soon changed his group's name to “The Quarrymen" (in honor of his current school Quarry Bank High School.) It was as The Quarrymen (sometimes spelled as Quarry Men) that John Lennon and his band actually started singing in public.

This was the band Paul McCartney watched the day he met John on July 6, 1957. This is the band Paul McCartney joined in October of 1957. On February 6, 1958, another local lad, George Harrison, also joined the Quarrymen.

Emoji Mosaic by Eric Andrew Lewis is a web tool that reconstructs images using emojis, the new, more colorful emoticons. Just upload a picture, and wait for it to render. The resulting collage is much bigger than what you see here. You might not see each individual emoji, but if you have favorites, they may stand out. Surely you recognize  Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” above. I wanted to see how well it worked, so I uploaded a picture of John Farrier.

 

See some more examples at Digg.

There is a natural well with a waterfall in North Yorkshire, near Knaresborough in the UK, that was once considered cursed by the devil. Objects that came in contact with the water turned to stone! Of course, no one wanted to touch the water, lest they be turned to stone, too. Although there were plenty of supernatural legends associated with the well and nearby Mother Shipton’s Cave, the part about turning to stone was true. Not people, obviously, but anything left in the water stream for some time became petrified. More adventurous people began hanging objects at the fountain deliberately.    

Eventually, scientific analysis of the water revealed the magic behind the petrification process. The water has high mineral content that precipitates over objects creating a hard shell of mineral over it in much the same way as stalactites and stalagmites form in a cave. What’s amazing, however, is the speed at which petrification occurred. Rather than centuries, small toys like teddy bears can petrify in just three to five months. Teddy bears are popular because they are porous which allows water to soak in and petrify the toy inside out. Other have left personal items such as rings and clothing, kitchen utensils, and even a bicycle.

King Charles I sold the well to a private owner in 1630, who opened it as a tourist attraction and charged for guided tours. Almost 400 years later, it’s still operated as a tourist attraction, part of Mother Shipton’s Park. Read the legend behind the park and see more pictures of the Petrifying Well at Amusing Planet. Yes, even the bicycle. -via Ralph Roberts

(Image credit: Flickr user Anne)

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It was the largest explosion ever recorded up to that point. No one went near it for twenty years, partially because there were no roads going to the middle of Siberia where the explosion originated. Dylan Thuras explains the Tunguska event of 1908, or what we know about it, anyway. This is another episode of the 100 Wonders series from Atlas Obscura.

Dude Perfect (previously at Neatorama) and Dale Earnhardt, Jr. illustrate some very common car and driver stereotypes.

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These aren’t universal, but you know some people who fit into these categories. And many of us have a tendency toward one or more of them. I have to admit, I always do the Mom Arm, and I’m starting to turn into the Inspector Dad. The one that’s universal, as far as I know, is the Black Hole. I would like to say that no vehicles were harmed in the making of this video, but apparently they were. Badly.  -via Viral Viral Videos

Women don’t get catcalled when a man is walking with them, so many men are completely unaware of what happens when a woman walks alone. The Scene set up a camera to record instances of catcalling, and then showed the footage to the women’s fathers to show them what happens when a woman walks on a city street. It’s an eye-opening experience. Contains NSFW language and text.

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The third man, who is older, takes some time to realize the intent behind the compliments, but when he does, it upsets him. No man wants their loved ones to experience this. At the same time, it’s sad that it takes a personal experience to drive the point home, because women who aren’t your loved ones are treated this way as well. -via Buzzfeed

The Q'eswachaka Bridge spans the Apurimac River Canyon in Peru, and links two communities. Every year, the communities come together to replace last year’s rope bridge with a new one made of strong, new grass. They’ve done this for hundreds of years, from the time of the Inka, with the process handed down through generations. Watch how they do it.

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Noonday Films made this video for the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., specifically for the exhibit “The Great Inka Road: Engineering an Empire.” The exhibit opened in June and will be on display until June of 2018. -via Twisted Sifter

Also, a note on the spelling on Inka.