Writer and editor Maia Weinstock is also a LEGO artist. To celebrate the women of the U.S. Supreme Court, she recreate them in custom LEGO minifigs! The project is called the Legal Justice League. They are, from left, Sonia Sotomayor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sandra Day O’Conner (who retired in 2006), and Elena Kagan. See the full group in various judicial activities and individually in Weinstock’s Flickr set. -via Metafilter
The weirdest organ in our bodies is the one that makes us who we are. But when something goes wrong in the brain, it can present itself in any number of bizarre ways. That may depend on what’s wrong, what region of the brain is affected, or considering the odd ways the brain works, pure luck. For example, a case in Paris 150 years ago had a particularly specific symptom:
When Louis Victor Leborgne died in 1861, aged 51, he had been virtually speechless for 21 years. Not completely speechless: He could speak one word, “tan”. Over and over again: “Tan. Tan.” In the months before he died, a doctor called Pierre Paul Broca, a language specialist, had become interested in his case. Leborgne was apparently still intelligent, still aware of his surroundings, still capable of telling where he was and how long he’d been there. But he’d lost all use of language, reported Broca:
He could no longer produce but a single syllable, which he usually repeated twice in succession; regardless of the question asked him, he always responded: tan, tan, combined with varied expressive gestures. This is why, throughout the hospital, he is known only by the name Tan.
After Leborgne’s death, Broca examined his body, and found a lesion in the posterior inferior frontal gyrus – a brain region now known as “Broca’s area”.
A ferret finds a place to hide, and then proceeds to take everything he/she finds of value inside to make him/herself a perfect little nest. First the pee pad, then the sponges, then lots of nice laundry to sleep on. I love the way the ferret goes in butt first in order to drag the precious items through the small opening. Yes, that’s perfect now! -via Daily of the Day
When the opposing team gets a free throw at Arizona’s State University’s home court, they have to deal with the Curtain of Distraction. That’s a portable curtain with a different distraction shown every time it opens. Since 2013, the curtain has attracted students to basketball games they might not otherwise attend. And the stunts have gotten their share of publicity -sometime more so than the school’s players. Does it work? Analysis says it’s worth about 1.4 points per game, if that’s your goal. But if the goal is to create excitement and grab TV minutes, it’s working very well.
Secret societies actually do exist. In fact, there are dozens of them, from the Freemasons to the Ku Klux Klan. But are they really responsible for the world’s ills, as some people believe? Probably not, but on the other hand, you never know…
THE ILLUMINATI
Who They Are: The group was founded in 1776 by Adam Weishaupt, a Jesuit priest, in Bavaria. His mission: to advance the 18th-century ideals of revolution, social reform, and rational thought (the name mean “The Enlightened Ones” in Latin). Weishaupt and his cronies were fiercely opposed by the monarchs of Europe and by the Catholic Church, which is why they had to meet and communicate in secret. German author Johann Goethe was a member. In the United States, both Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were accused of being members and denied it, but both wrote favorably about Weishaupt and his efforts.
What They’re Blamed For: The group has been associated with more conspiracy theories than any other. Considered the silent evil behind such bugaboos as One World Government and the New World Order, the Illuminati have been blamed for starting the French and Russian revolutions, as well as both World Wars, and almost every global conflict in between. They are said to use bribery, blackmail, and murder to infiltrate every level of power in society -business, banking, and government- to achieve their ultimate goal: world domination.
Who They Are: Founded in 1952 by Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, the Bilderberg Group (named after the hotel in Oosterbeck, Holland, where the first meeting was held) was founded to promote cooperation and understanding between Western Europe and North America. To that end, leaders from both regions are invited to meet every year for off-the-record discussions on current issues. The list of attendees has included presidents (every one from Eisenhower to Clinton), British prime ministers (Lord Home, Lord Callaghan, Sir Edward Heath, Margaret Thatcher), captains of industry like Fiat’s Giovanni Agnelli, and financiers like David Rockefeller.* Invitees are members of the power elite in their countries, mostly rich and male. Meetings are closed. No resolutions are passed, no votes are taken, and no public statements are ever made.
Lifehacker asked this question of its readers: What necessary adult skills were you never taught growing up? The site was properly called out for asking it as a call for article ideas, but that’s not really a sin. It’s kind of related to a discussion thread we once posted titled Buying Bread that asked what surprised you when you got out on your own away from family. The answers Lifehacker got were about personal finance, personal hygiene, sex, taxes, health, job hunting, and auto mechanics, among many other things. A thread at Metafilter has even more.
The first thing I thought of was computers: I knew nothing of computers because no one had any. Even in college you couldn’t touch one unless you were taking one of the three computer language classes. But I don’t have to worry about teaching computer skills to my kids. I do worry about what else they don’t know. They can write cursive, read a map, budget their money, and cook better than their peers, but maybe I’m overlooking something. What else should be on the list?
There are things happening on the gas giant we call Uranus. The odd blue planet tilted on its side is hosting giant methane storms. Phys Org tells us about it.
In August 2014 a group led by Imke de Pater pointed the Keck telescope at Uranus and were a little bit surprised to see storms raging. It wasn't as though clouds haven't been seen before, but the clouds they spotted last year were very much brighter than any seen before. The fact that the storms are bright in the methane spectrum isn't a surprise – Uranus, and its neighbour Neptune, are pretty much just big balls of methane, water and ammonia (but it does make for a snigger-worthy headline).
Not all cat ladies are hermits or animal hoarders, locked away with more cats than they can take care of. Many of us have other everyday activities, and some prominent cat lovers have even changed the world! When you look at notable women from history, quite a few of them loved their cats dearly, like nurse Clara Barton.
Clara Barton, the famous nurse and founder of the Red Cross, was an animal lover with a particular affinity for felines. During the Civil War, Barton earned the nickname “Angel of the Battlefield,” and in appreciation for her selfless work, U.S. Senator Schuyler Colfax sent Barton a kitten. Barton’s most beloved cat was the black and white Tommy, who kept her company for 17 years. A portrait of Tommy painted by Barton’s friend and fellow nurse Antoinette Margot still hangs in the Barton house in Glen Echo, Maryland.
This video from the Ad Council shows what happens when we see what people do before we see how they look. Learn more about the Love Has No Labels campaign at its website or at Facebook. You can read the stories of the people who participated in the video at Buzzfeed. What I didn’t find was an explanation of the technical stunt. We can assume that they did not use a real x-ray machine to show the skeletons. It was most likely motion-sensing technology like what is used in a Kinect game system.
Need a nice soothing song to help you go to sleep early now that you’ve set your clocks ahead an hour for Daylight Saving Time? How about a nice mashup of “I Can’t Go For That” by Hall and Oates and “Enter Sandman” by Metallica? Mashup artist Neil Cicierga seamlessly blends the tune of the former with the vocals of the latter, leaving us delighted at how melodic the Metallica vocals really are. The A.V. Club says:
Cicierga is able to turn the song of childhood fears and torments into a melodic quasi-lullaby thanks to the soft rock stylings of the ’80s duo. It’s a pleasing yet pungent mixture that elevates both songs while pleasing neither set of fans, a notion that seems to be what makes Cicierga’s creations so entertaining.
I dunno, I quite like it. Maybe it helps that I was never a really big fan of either group.
Shot at Brick 2014, the LEGO convention in London, here is the climactic “will he make it home” scene from the movie Back to the Future rendered in tremendously fine detail by Macro Lego Universe. -via Daily of the Day
Here we have an outdoorsman who must cross a frozen creek where the ice is kind of thin. The creek seems to be shallow, and he’s wearing waders anyway, so why is the guy so skittish? It’s not explained why he must cross the ice; my theory is that the buddy recording it has already crossed, since he seems to know so much about the ice conditions, and he weighs a lot less than the fellow shown. Anyway, the humor comes from not only the guy’s actions, but also his buddy’s laughter. Best of all, we get to hear the creaking and cracking of the ice as he makes his way across. -via Daily Picks and Flicks
Cornell University researchers havedesigned a model for a potential outbreak of zombie infection.
Using data from the 2010 U.S. census and the SIR model, an epidemiological tool that can project the progress of actual infectious diseases, the scientists created "large-scale exact stochastic dynamical simulation" of a such an outbreak. Their findings were to be presented Thursday to the august American Physical Society.
The interactive map shows how the zombie infection can spread. You can adjust several parameters for your apocalypse scenario. In the map shown, I began the outbreak in the most obvious place, Atlanta. In this scenario, zombies only kill one out of every four persons they bite, and it takes a zombie 18 minutes to walk a mile. Yet in only 48 hours, they’ve spread the infection over a huge part of the South. If you begin a scenario, you should leave it running for as long as it takes to determine the safest geographical area to hide. -via Metafilter
The artwork on the covers of sewing patterns is always supposed to showcase the clothing, not the models. But the models were sometimes drawn in ways that make you wonder what they’re thinking. Wonder no more! The fairly new blog Pattern Behavior puts dialogue to those images. The captions are humorously odd, but they go perfectly with the humorously odd art. -via Everlasting Blort
World War I changed the way we do warfare in many ways, and one of the biggest was the use of airplanes. To defend against air strikes, many nations developed acoustic locators, which detected the sound of planes much further away than mere ears could hear. The Japanese version is shown here, which look like oversized musical instruments. They were, in fact, called “war tubas.” Such instruments were used from World War I until the development of radar during World War II. See war tubas from Japan, England, and America at Mashable. -via the Presurfer
