You might have actually asked yourself this question before, especially after seeing Sandra Bullock propelling herself through space with a fire extinguisher in the movie Gravity. PBS Space Time attacks the problem from a science viewpoint. We have to change reality a little, by bypassing the spacesuit that keeps bodily gasses from meeting the vacuum of space. Then it gets really technical, both about farts and space travel. Yeah, he eventually has an answer. They also talk about the rocket effects of urination and sneezing. -via Boing Boing
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Coleg Cambria’s Northop campus in Wales has a policy to turn off lights to save energy. But the lights were reported on after hours frequently at the goat barn. The staff all swore that they turn the lights off every evening, but the lights continued to be turned back on. Manager Wendy Gacem thought it could possibly be intruders, or even a ghost turning the lights on. But the real perpetrator turned out to be a Bagot billy goat named Jake.
Staff were working in the barn when the lights came on and turned around to see Jake had climbed on his hayrack and pushed the switch with his horns!
Wendy said: “It is a relief that we do not have intruders or a ghost, and animal care staff are relieved that they are no longer being grilled about leaving lights on.
“Jake has been a cheeky character since he arrived and will often jump on to a wheelbarrow to be pushed around.”
The staff at the barn are not only relieved to have the mystery solved, but are also proud of their intelligent rare goat. -via Arbroath
(Image credit: Coleg Cambria)
Walnut is a white-naped crane, a highly endangered species. She is part of a “security population” of breeding cranes in captivity to keep crane genetics in existence if the wild population fails. But Walnut doesn’t want to mate with another crane- she has imprinted on humans, and even killed two potential mates.
Following the incidents, Walnut was transferred to the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in Front Royal, Virginia, where she met Chris. Her new keepers were eager to see her mate with somebody. Anybody. So when she lifted her wings in a mating dance and let fly the sensual woo-wooooo that can only mean one thing, her keepers were inclined to give her what she wanted. Namely, Chris. And because cranes can live up to 60 years in captivity, Chris isn’t getting out of this anytime soon.
Walnut could have chosen worse: her guy has always had a soft spot for animals, particularly endangered species. In the past, his conservation work sent him into the field, where he worked with California condors, red wolves, and black-footed ferrets. Now, he cares for 24 cranes. "I like getting to know these animals individually and giving them the best captive life they can have," he says.
Since Walnut was willing to mate with Chris Crowe and no one else, he became responsible for getting her pregnant …by artificial insemination, of course. An article at the Verge explains how he managed to do that. It may seem a bit creepy, but you do what you gotta do in the world of wildlife conservation. -via reddit
(Image credit: Warren Lynch/SCBI)
A New York woman was caught marrying ten different husbands in eleven years without divorcing any of them. Liana Barrientos began her serial wedding spree in 1999, when she married for the first time. After that, the marriages came thick and fast, all registered in different counties.
Barrientos married Mohamed Gerbil in November 1999, Ahmed Allam in November 2001, Habibur Rahman also in November 2001, Davit Koridze in February 2002, Duran Goktepe in March 2002, Aliaksandr Paharelau also in March 2002, Vakhtang Dzneladze in May 2002, Rashid Rajput in July 2002, Kakhaber Khorbaladze in August 2002, and Salle Keita in March 2010, prosecutors alleged.
Although the case was exposed in 2010, it has still not been adjudicated. Barrientos is due in court today in the Bronx for an arraignment on charges of false instrument for filing. -via Uproxx
(Image credit: CBS New York)
When you think of an animal advocacy group trying to eliminate factory farming practices, you probably think of PETA. While the radical group gets more press, and has had some successes over time, the Humane Society of the United States has been actively working behind the scenes to get large corporations to switch to using cage-free methods of producing livestock.
For the past 10 years, the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) has focused on bringing an end to the confinement of farm animals, mainly pigs and young cows (future veal) who are kept in crates without room to turn around, and the egg-laying hens kept in cages too small to spread their wings. “[It’s] one of if not the worst forms of animal cruelty within industrial animal production,” says Josh Balk, senior director of food policy at HSUS.
To achieve its goal, HSUS has worked with nearly 100 corporations, including Starbucks, Marriott, and Aramark, and major restaurant chains like Burger King and Panera Bread. In the last few months, for example, the country’s three largest food service providers—Aramark, Sodexo and Compass Group—have committed to switch their collective 1-billion-plus eggs to cage-free. And in late March, Dunkin’ Donuts announced a plan to up their current domestic commitment — 5% cage-free eggs — to 10% by 2016, and to consider the feasibility of eventually going to a full 100%.
How did they do that? By recognizing that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. The Humane Society reached out to corporate heads and met them as equals, then helped them to see the advantages of cage-free farming practices. They focused less on "us vs. them," and more on the third party that would benefit: the customers. An article at Fortune magazine goes through the Humane Society’s negotiation strategy step-by-step to see how it achieved such breakthrough success. -via Digg
(Image credit: Evelyn Simak)
Eric Mccowan’s teenage daughter thinks she knows it all, as teenagers do. She even claimed to have watched every video on the internet. Dad thinks she may have missed a few old tricks that parents have up their sleeve, as you’ll see when she falls for this magic trick. -via Viral Viral Videos
When you are preparing your wedding, it’s nice to know exactly how many people will show up, because a lot of your expenses and plans depend on the guest count. That’s why a guest must let the couple know whether they will attend, and why many invitations contain a card to make that easy. But brides would also like to know what kind of nightmares you're going to bring with you. Bob Powers posted this modern version of the wedding RSVP card at Someecards. It contains the most common obnoxious behavior among wedding guests, and it should have a second page for warnings of any disasters not specified on the first page. -via Laughing Squid
The May Natural History Museum near Colorado Springs is the home of one of the world’s largest private collections of insects. The story behind the museum covers several generations of a fascinating family. James May, the son of a collector for the British Museum, built the collection of bugs from all over the world.
After his father died of malaria, young James May continued in his footsteps, eventually traveling to South Africa for the Second Boer War in 1899. Though critically injured and left for dead, May was rescued by a group of Zulu people who took him to a British aid station. While recuperating, May began saving rare and exotic species in a personal archive of tropical insects.
Eventually, May moved to Canada and continued to accumulate insects by trading with other collectors around the globe. “James May would collect specimens wherever he was, then carefully package and ship them to a missionary in Borneo, let’s say, who would in turn capture local specimens and ship them via parcel post back to James May,” says Steer. “That’s why we have insects from all over the world—they were sent from an aid station in the middle of Africa, or some place in Japan, or wherever.”
May’s oldest son John developed methods for preserving and displaying the collection, and took the insects on the road. The family found Colorado’s lack of humidity to be the perfect place for a permanent museum, and it opened in 1952. It has remained largely unchanged since that time, so the museum itself is a glimpse into a bygone era of insect collecting. It is now under the administration of James May’s great-grandson, R.J. Steer. Steer talked to Collectors Weekly about the museum’s history, including the short experiment with a Florida branch and a couple of run-ins with Disney, and the exhibits, including an 18-inch stick bug and a 9-inch long Hercules beetle.
The next installment of the abomination that is Sharknado will hit TVs in July of 2015, and the title of the movie is Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! Which is exactly what film and TV critics thought when they heard The Asylum was going to produce another sequel. Tara Reid will once again star, with the Jedward twins and David Hasselhoff joining the cast for this go-round.
It will also feature a number of guest stars including Ann Coulter as the Vice President, Jerry Springer as a tourist and WWE’s Chris Jericho, who is set to play a roller coaster ride operator.
The latest film sees the sharks take a bite out of the East Coast when the sharknado hits Washington, D.C. and Orlando, Florida.
But the poster pretty much says it all. Look for the movie on SyFy. -via Geeks Are Sexy
(Image credit: The Asylum)
The average man in the Netherlands is just over six feet tall (1.84 meters), and the average woman is 5’ 7” (1.71 meters). Although there is plenty of variation, that average makes the Dutch the tallest people in the world. Of course, some country has to be the tallest, but the weird thing is that just 200 years ago, the people of the Netherlands were among the shortest in the world. What happened since then? Does it have anything to do with living below sea level? Is it the cycling? Or is it the rich diet of a relatively wealthy nation?
Other European countries, too, have enjoyed similar prosperity and a rise in living standards, yet their citizens have not shot skywards as much. The average male height in the Netherlands has gained 20 cm (eight inches) in the last 150 years, according to military records. By comparison, the height of the average American man has risen a mere six centimetres over the same period.
A study of 94,500 people who lived in the Netherlands during the 20th century yielded some interesting data that points to natural selection ...and math. Read what they found at The Guardian. -via the Presurfer
(Image credit: Flickr user Marc van Woudenberg)
Animals are really into sports these days. Didga the cat rides a skateboard, and just the other day we saw a dog playing table tennis. Today we have a rooster playing soccer with a guy. Ain’t he the cock of the walk? Red is pretty good with his feet. Now if he can just remember where the goals are supposed to be… -via Tastefully Offensive
You may have heard the joke about the English teacher explaining double negatives to a class of teenagers. He states that while we have various levels of positive/negative phrases, there is no case of two positives meaning a negative. To which one student responds, “Yeah, right.”
That neologism wasn’t so hard to understand, because parents and teachers are well-attuned to a sarcastic tone of voice. But now we have another language conundrum popping up that can be difficult to parse for some of us, whether it is spoken or written. It’s the phrase, “No. Totally.” Apparently it means “yes.”
“No, totally.” “No, definitely.” “No, exactly.” “No, yes.” These curious uses turn “no” into a kind of contranym: a word that can function as its own opposite. Out of the million-odd words in the English language, perhaps a hundred have this property. You can seed a field, in which case you are adding seeds, or seed a grape, in which case you are subtracting them. You can be in a fix but find a fix for it. You can alight from a horse to observe a butterfly alighting on a flower.
The blogger in me wonders how quoting people who use this will confuse a reader. The parent in me is glad to read about it so I can interpret what my kids are trying to say. Read about the new slang and how to deal with it at The New Yorker. -via Digg
(Image credit: Ellen Surrey)
The “women’s tax” is a real thing. Products and services tend to cost more when they are gendered, meaning they are labeled to sell to women, or they are painted pink. There are plenty of examples in this video from The Daily Share. Commenters immediately pointed out that men pay more for car insurance because they cause more accidents, which is kind of like long-term care insurance for women. If we could get men to drive better or women to die younger, things would even out, but neither sex really wants to make that sacrifice. As for the products, I learned long ago that buying merchandise in the men’s aisle (unscented, please) can save money over time. The dollars add up fast when shopping for children’s clothing. -via Time
Thanks to new geneological technology, we'll soon be able to see exactly how all 7 billion people on earth are related. Save the date for the world's largest family reunion!
By A.J. Jacobs
Some of my relatives are pretty impressive. There’s my cousin Albert, who was an expert on gravity and untamed hairstyles. There’s Gwyneth, another cousin and a fine actress, even if she did popularize the unfortunate phrase “conscious uncoupling.” And of course there are also some black sheep, like my cousin Jeffrey Dahmer, the serial killer. But let’s not dwell on him.
If it sounds as if I’m boasting, well, I’m not. As it turns out, you have these very same relatives. (Yes, you.) In fact, you may be on my family tree already. And if you’re not, I am going to do my darnedest to include you.
I’m one of thousands of researchers tackling the biggest challenge in the history of ancestry: We are building a family tree of the entire human race. All seven billion members.
It’s an incredibly ambitious project, requiring countless hours online, billions of obscure records, and unprecedented numbers of DNA tests. And frankly, we’ve got a long way to go. But at least we’ve made a dent: Currently, the world family tree includes some 77 million people in all seven continents (including Antarctica). That’s 77 million people on a single tree, all connected by blood or marriage or (sometimes) both. Which makes for the longest branches in human history. Paltrow is 17 steps from me. Einstein is 21. President Obama is my aunt’s fifth great-aunt’s husband’s father’s wife’s seventh great-nephew. Practically my older brother!
Twenty years ago, we wouldn’t have been able to conceive of this megatree. Back then, in order to build your tree, you had to schlep to, say, a Cleveland courthouse or write oft-ignored letters to distant relatives. Then along came the Internet and the Wikipedia model. Several sites—including WikiTree and Geni (which is owned by MyHeritage)—have revolutionized the field with a collaborative, crowdsourced approach to family-tree planting.
So how does it work, exactly?
You wouldn’t know it today, but at one time, the entire concept of watching Hollywood movies in your own home was a revolutionary idea. We rented and bought movies like crazy, and watched them over and over. This craze brought with it a new art form -that of the home video cover. Now that VHS has given way to on-demand streaming, that art form is part of history. The 1980s and ‘90s were its heyday.
That lost art form is curated in a new book VHS: Video Cover Art by Thomas “The Dude Designs” Hodge. It contains over 240 full-scale, complete video sleeves of all movie genres, with designs ranging from the mundane to the insane. The book explores the images, typography, and sometimes hilarious text that was designed to reach out and grab you from the shelves of the movie rental store. Continue reading for a sampling from the book.
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