The following is an article from The Annals of Improbable Research.

A closer look at a medical research report
by Bertha Vanatian, AIR staff

Do shoes cause schizophrenia? Jarl Flensmark of Malmo wants to know, and in a recent paper in the journal Medical Hypotheses, he explains why.

“Heeled footwear,” he writes,” began to be used more than a 1000 years ago, and led to the occurrence of the first cases of schizophrenia. ... Industrialization of shoe production increased schizophrenia prevalence. Mechanization of the production started in Massachusetts, spread from there to England and Germany, and then to the rest of Western Europe. A remarkable increase in schizophrenia prevalence followed the same pattern.”

The story, if accurate and true, is disturbing. Flensmark sketches the details:

“The oldest depiction of a heeled shoe comes from Mesopotamia, and in this part of the world we also find the first institutions making provisions for mental disorders. ... In the beginning schizophrenia appears to be more common in the upper classes. Possible early victims were King Richard II and Henry VI of England, his grandfather Charles VI of France, his mother Jeanne de Bourbon, and his uncle Louis II de Bourbon, Erik XIV of Sweden, Juana of Castile [and] her grandmother Isabella of Portugal.” All of these individuals are either known or suspected of wearing heeled shoes.

He cites evidence from other parts of the world, too -- Turkey, Taiwan, the Balkans, Ireland, Italy, Ghana, Greenland, the Caribbean, and elsewhere.

“Probably the upper classes began using heeled footwear earlier than the lower classes,” Flensmark points out. He then cites studies from India and elsewhere, which seem to confirm that “schizophrenia first affects the upper classes.”

(YouTube link)

Jake is a 10-week-old puppy who’s already got a job! He’s in training to become a Vail Ski Patrol dog. Like humans, puppies learn best when they are young, but Jake gets his share of affection and playtime, too. This video is from his first trip up the slopes. -via Daily Picks and Flicks

Has this ever happened to you? Some bosses demand 21st century output while adhering to 20th century workplace customs. That’s not the way to keep your best workers around. While CommitStrip is a webcomic about working in tech and IT, this happens in many other industries. -via Geeks Are Sexy

The lip-sync dash cam video Mime Through Time by Australian comedy trio SketchSHE became quite an internet hit. The Russian comedy duo Bonya and Kuzmich took that idea and ran with it. And since there are only two of them, they enlisted a good-natured grandpa to ride in the back. They might not be as smooth as SketchSHE, but the extra goofiness they slather on top makes up for it.

(YouTube link)

Because Bonya and Kuzmich used songs popular in Russia, you won’t recognize or understand all of them. That only makes the video more interesting. -via Daily Picks and Flicks

(YouTube link)

If you recall the 1983 film Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, you’ll recognize “Galaxy Song.” That was far from the only incarnation of the tune.

“Galaxy Song” was previously included on the 1989 album “Monty Python Sings”, and included in the 2014 reissue of the album, “Monty Python Sings (again)”, in its original form - sung by Eric Idle - to coincide with Monty Python’s record breaking “Monty Python Live (mostly) – One Down Five to Go” run of 10 live shows at The O2, London. On film during the live shows, Professor Brian Cox berated the scientific inaccuracy of the “Galaxy Song » lyrics before Professor Stephen Hawking knocked him to the ground. Hawking then began reciting the “Galaxy Song” lyrics as he lifted off to journey through outer space. It is this unique rendition of “Galaxy Song” which is now available as a single.

And of course, available as a new video that includes scenes from Monty Python's live shows (on and off stage) and footage of Hawking in action. There’s a video game to accompany the song, in which you play Asteroids as Hawking and shoot at members of Monty Python.

You have to sign in with social media to play. -via Boing Boing

This tale of theft reads like a comedy of errors. A homeowner caught Damien Lewis and an unnamed teenage accomplice red-handed as they stole pork from a neighbor’s shed in Hervey Bay, Queensland, Australia. They fled before police arrived, but it was fairly easy to find them. Officers followed their footprints to Lewis’ home, where the aroma of frying bacon added to the evidence. Lewis’ sentencing argument is priceless.   

While he insisted he "wasn't actually the one taking the food", Lewis admitted to being in the man's yard when the bacon was stolen and that he should have known better.

He pleaded for another chance on the grounds his dog was waiting at home to be fed and he needed to clean his home so he didn't fail an upcoming rental inspection.

He also told the court he had previously completed more than 100 hours community service and was so popular he had been asked to return as a volunteer.

Magistrate Graeme Tatnell ordered Lewis to spend another 80 hours doing community service, where his popularity presumably will be put to use. -via Arbroath

(Image credit: Kevin Payravi, Wikimedia Commons)

(YouTube link)

Australian musician Daniel Buccheri was asked to serve as best man at his brother Adrian’s wedding. Instead of an everyday best man’s speech, Buccheri wrote personal lyrics and set them to a medley of pop songs to perform at the reception. He starts off making jokes about Adrien’s childhood, but the song eventually turns into a loving tribute that may have you reaching for your hankie. It turned out quite well, don’t you think? What a wedding gift! -via Viral Viral Videos

We’ve posted a few times about the creepy Sedlec Ossuary in the Czech Republic, the Paris Catacombs, and the Capuchin monastery in Sicily, among other tombs. Now here’s another reliquary overflowing with the bones of hundreds of people.

The church that was later named San Bernardino alle Ossa in Milan, Italy, was built in the year 1269 near a hospital and an overflowing cemetery. The structure was just a regular church until it was damaged in 1642. As it was reconstructed, renowned sculptor Giovanni Andrea Biffi decorated it with the material at hand: deceased parishioner’s bones from the basement ossuary. San Bernardino alle Ossa has walls completely covered in skulls and bones, including one wall reportedly covered with only the remains of executed criminals. Read the story of this macabre chapel and see lots of photographs at Scribol.

(Image credit: Pullus In Fabula)

Sixty years ago today, April 12, 1955, Dr. Thomas Francis of the University of Michigan made the announcement that a polio vaccine had been created. The nation immediately celebrated the life-changing news.

If it is difficult now to understand why that was so momentous, credit the vaccine announced that day, and another one revealed soon after. In the United States, polio killed or paralyzed thousands of children every summer. In 1952, the worst year on record, it attacked 58,000 American kids, closing pools and movie theaters, turning streets into ghost towns as families fled crowded cities for sparsely settled summer colonies where they imagined they would be more safe. Around the world, hundreds of thousands more every year were mowed down by it; in societies with few resources to treat the illness or support the disability that followed, they faced a lifetime of mistreatment and poverty.

Scientists had been working on the problem of polio for years, and while millions of vaccinations ended the terror of the disease in the U.S., it took decades to do so. Polio still exists in some parts of the world, and the battle to eradicate it continues. Mary McKenna of the science blog Germination talked to one of the pioneering “polio warriors,” Dr. John Sever. Sever knew both Dr. Jonas Salk and Dr. Albert Sabin, the inventors of two polio vaccines, and was the founder of Rotary International’s campaign against polio.

John Sever: I was working on a PhD in microbiology and an MD at Northwestern Medical School in the 1950s, so I was aware, of course, of polio. My father had been a practicing physician in the Chicago area, and I had a cousin who had polio paralysis of her legs, so it was very much a personal experience as well as professional. I remember that parents with newborns could buy “polio insurance” against the possibility their child would develop polio, so they could pay for the cost of care. It was on everyone’s mind, that children would be paralyzed and have to be in “iron lungs,” or die.

In the interview, he tells what those early days of polio vaccination were like and how it grew from an emergency measure to a global eradication project. Read the story of the polio breakthrough, and then take a minute to be thankful for the miracle of modern science.

(Image credit: CDC)

A couple of years ago, Metro Trains Melbourne released a safety PSA called Dumb Ways to Die, featuring a song by Tangerine Kitty that got stuck in our heads. Now that same song has a new animation by Egor Zhgun illustrating the many ways characters on the TV show Game of Thrones have died.

(YouTube link)

Although the Game of Thrones deaths are overwhelmingly murder, the accidents in the song fit some of them ridiculously well. Oh, yeah, this contains spoilers if you’re not current on the series. That’s why I used the screenshot above instead of a group picture. However, not all the characters in the group picture on the video are dead going into the fifth season of the series.  -via Viral Viral Videos

The following is an article from the book Uncle John’s Perpetually Pleasing Bathroom Reader. Note: although there are plenty of images of roadkill available, we opted to not use them in this article.

(Imge credit: Thomas R Machnitzki/CC)

Most of us simply keep on driving when we see a splattered ’possum on the side of the highway, but a peculiar few ask, “Why let all that free meat go to waste?”

CLEAR AND PHEASANT DANGER

One day in the 1950s, a 15-year-old British kid named Arthur Boyt found a dead pheasant on the ground while bicycling through a park near Windsor Castle. The creature piqued his curiosity, and he brought it home to show his mother. Mrs. Boyt responded in a way that might prompt a visit from a social worker today: She cooked the bird and told Arthur to eat it— not to teach him a lesson about the dangers of bringing home dead things, but because pheasants are game birds and good to eat.

Young Arthur happily ate the bird. Now in his seventies, he remembers the experience fondly. Boyt never lost his sense of wonder regarding the natural world: He became an entomologist, someone who studies bugs. And he never lost his taste for eating dead critters hit by cars, either. As he grew older and became philosophically opposed to hunting (cruel) and farm-raised meats (cruel and unhealthy), he obtained more and more of his meat on the road. The last time he purchased a piece of store-bought meat: 1976. All the creatures he’s eaten since then— more than 5,000 animals in all— have been roadkill. Roast deer, spaghetti in hedgehog sauce, breast of barn owl, pheasant stew, pigeon pot pie, badger sandwiches (his favorite), you name it— if a car can hit it, Boyt has probably eaten it. He even eats rats, which he insists are delicious stewed. “People say rats carry disease, but I’d sooner eat a country rat than any raw meat you get served in restaurants,” he told The Times of London in 2003.

IN THE STATES

Boyt isn’t alone. In the United States, more than a dozen states allow the collecting of roadkill for food, and the number is growing. In 2011, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn vetoed a bill legalizing the collecting of roadkill from the state’s highways, fearing that people might themselves become roadkill while trying to drag critters off the asphalt. But the bill was so popular that the state legislature voted 87– 28 to override the veto, and the bill is now law.

The rules regarding collecting roadkill vary. In some states, a permit is required; in others, carcasses may be collected only during hunting season. Reason: Officials want to discourage “bumper hunting”— deliberately running down game animals at times of the year when shooting them would be illegal. In Alaska, food banks, homeless shelters, and other charities get first dibs on meat from the more than 800 moose killed by cars and trains each year. (One adult moose yields as much as 700 pounds of meat.)

KIDS, DON’T FRY THIS AT HOME

If you’re thinking about taking the plunge, it’s important to know that handling and eating roadkill can kill you if you don’t know what you’re doing. Just because that tasty-looking raccoon died when it was hit by a car doesn’t mean it didn’t have rabies. If you’re not experienced at handling wild game meat, it’s not worth the risk. That being said, here are some safety tips from the pros:

(YouTube link)

The song is “Vendetta” by Warren “Wawa” Snipe and DJ Nicar. Both are included in in the article Deaf Rappers Fight to be Heard in a Field Dominated by Sound. Wawa is deaf, and has been rapping since the late ‘80s. Rap producer Nicar is a hearing graduate of Gallaudet University who works with deaf rappers and DJs. The article also profiles rappers Prinz-D and Polar Bear, and tells of the impact deaf performers are making on the music scene. -via Metafilter

(YouTube link)

As it has been done many times for more innocuous TV shows, George R.R. Martin was easily convinced to take his very adult stories from Game of Thrones and spin them off into an animated version aimed at children. Luckily, it will most likely only be one episode, as it was produced by Team Coco. Contains adult subject matter and mild spoilers if you know the characters. Honestly, this is not for children. -via Uproxx

The biggest volcanic eruption in 10,000 years happened when Mount Tambora exploded on April 10, 1815. The eruption killed thousands of Indonesian villagers immediately, and the effects of disaster went global and lasted for years. Some 36 cubic miles of ash and rock were flung into the air, and a lot of remained there as particles that encircled the earth.

Tambora was “a tragedy of nations masquerading as a spectacular sunset,” Gillen D’Arcy Wood of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, writes in Tambora: The Eruption That Changed the World. Those aerosol particles stayed in the stratosphere for two years, blocking sunlight and causing havoc on Earth’s climate. The year 1816 was so cold that it snowed in New England in June, and the period became known as “the year without a summer.” Grain shortages and famine occurred across the globe, and Tambora’s far-reaching death toll would eventually claim more than 100,000 according to some estimates.

Our world would be different today if the Tambora disaster had never happened. Smithsonian has a list of seven of the effects Tambora had on history, including weather patterns, disease, human migration, food, and even art and literature.

(Image credit: Jialiang Gao)

"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."
- Popular Mechanics (1949)

Computers have been around a long time: exactly how long depends on how you define “computer.” However, the development of computers took off big time in the past 100 years. Before transistors, they were incredibly massive, and before microchips they were too big for home use. Now just about everyone carries one around in their pocket. We’ve come a long way, baby. Dark Roasted Blend takes a look back at some of the famous early supercomputers -at least the ones that were photographed. Shown above is an IBM model from the 1960s that stored data on reels of tape. Yes, all that is one computer.