How do you take ballet into a new dimension? Do it while freefalling! An alternate but more likely question behind this stunt is “How do we raise the difficulty level of our skydiving?” Watch two Russian skydivers, identified only as Aleksander and Mikhael in this GoPro ad, dance as they descend over the beautiful backdrop of Dubai. The cameraman is not identified at all, but deserves a pat on the back for capturing the performance. -via Buzzfeed
Miss Cellania's Blog Posts
As they did last year, Cinefix recast the movies nominated for the Best Picture Oscar with children. Too bad these aren’t full-length features; from what I’ve heard, most of the nominees would be improved by turning them into comedies and casting 8-year-olds with beards. Then again, I haven’t seen any of those movies. -Thanks, Daniel!
Yasmine Surovec at Cat vs. Human has a good handle on why cats love boxes, but that’s not the full story.
You can buy your cat the nicest new cat gadget there is, but first he has to check out the box it came in. Every cat owner is familiar with the feline tendency to cuddle up in a good box -usually, the smaller, the better. What is it about boxes that cats love so much? A better question might be how many ways do cats love boxes, because there are multiple reasons. Wired goes through several of them, including this bit that I never knew:
According to a 2006 study by the National Research Council, the thermoneutral zone for a domestic cat is 86 to 97 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s the range of temperatures in which cats are “comfortable” and don’t have to generate extra heat to keep warm or expend metabolic energy on cooling. That range also happens to be 20 degrees higher than ours, which explains why it’s not unusual to see your neighbor’s cat sprawled out on the hot asphalt in the middle of a summer day, soaking in the sunlight.
It also explains why many cats may enjoy curling up in tiny cardboard boxes and other strange places. Corrugated cardboard is a great insulator and confined spaces force the cat to ball up or form some other impossible object, which in turn helps it to preserve body heat.
Read more about feline research and the findings about cats and boxes at Wired, plus a slideshow of cats blissfully occupying boxes. -via Digg
They needed a Bob so I subbed! #WSCSF pic.twitter.com/pjZhZkt4LF
— Lawrence Gilliard Jr (@gilliardl_jr) February 2, 2015Guess which one of these Walking Dead characters is actually from the show!
#WSCSF pic.twitter.com/rmn2NeXGzq
— Chad L Coleman (@ChadLColeman) February 1, 2015Only one of these guys is from the show, too.
The Walker Stalker Con was held in San Francisco over the past weekend. It’s mostly for fans of The Walking Dead, but all fans of zombies, horror, and sci-fi were welcome. You can check out the various events, attendees, and celebrity appearances at the con’s Twitter feed. What really impressed me was the winners of the cosplay performance competition. The cosplay group Reel Guise recreated the final scene of the mid-season finale of The Walking Dead. I put the pictures on the next page, as they contain massive spoilers for those who aren’t current with the series. However, those who are current will believe one is a screenshot from the show.
Futility Closet posted a puzzle that might make your eyes glaze over, or could spur some of you to compete over who has the best, clearest explanation.
In the top figure, one coin rolls around another coin of equal size.
In the bottom figure, the same coin rolls along a straight line.
In each case the rolling coin has made one complete rotation. But the red arc at the top is half the length of the red line at the bottom. Why?
I look forward to any explanation you may have, and later I’ll add some I found elsewhere. -via Boing Boing
(Image credit: Lymantria)
The following is an article from The Annals of Improbable Research.
A restrictively nutritious mini-opera
words by Marc Abrahams
This mini-opera had its premiere as part of the 14th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony, at Sanders Theatre, Harvard University, on Thursday evening, September 30, 2004. (That performance included an additional song, which is not given here.)
Video of the entire ceremony, including “The Atkins Diet Opera,” can be seen here.
Original Cast
Pianist: Greg Neil
Dr. Atkins: Jason McStoots
Cats: Margot Button and Jane Tankersley
Scientific Advisors: Jane Tankersley and Margot Button
Coffee-Can-Can Dancers: Katie Hazard and Stacy Raphael, and the Ig Nobel Minordomos
Additional Advisors and Coffee-Can-Can Dancers: Nobel Laureates Dudley Herschbach, William Lipscomb and Rich Roberts, and all of the other dignitaries who were on stage, including the Ig Nobel Prize winners and Dr. Barry Sears (creator of the Zone Diet).
ACT 1 -- “Feed Me”
NARRATOR [SPOKEN]: Tonight’s opera is in four acts -- one now, three later. The opera is about a legend -- purely a legend. It has no basis in fact. None. Zip. Zero. At least we hope not.
Be that as it may... let’s join the legendary Dr. Atkins. He is all set to write his diet book. But first, there’s a little something he needs to do. He has to choose one food -- one simple, basic foodstuff -- to be the BASIS of the Atkins diet. But there are so MANY different foods to choose from. Which one will he pick?
Like all good-hearted people, Dr. Atkins often looks to his pet cats for inspiration. Join us now, as Dr. Atkins relaxes out in his yard, watching his beloved cats interact with nature.
[THIS IS SUNG BY TWO CATS. THEY ARE SLOPPILY, RAVENOUSLY EATING LITTLE ANIMALS. BY THE END OF THE SONG, THEY HAVE MEAT HANGING AND DRIPPING FROM THEIR MOUTHS.]
[MUSIC: ROSSINI’S “CAT DUET”]
Fee-ee-eed me!
Fee-ee-eed me!
Fee-ee-ee-ee-ee-eed me! Fee-ee-eed me!
Pro-o-tein Makes good cuisine.
I enjoy umpteen types of protein.
Bean curd (Meow!)
Is absurd. (Meow!)
Protein is best when it’s feathered or furred.
Meow. Meow. Meow.
I like to lunch on birds.
Birds are too delicious for words.
I’d like to eat a cow...
I’m trying to figure out how.
Meow.
British author Roald Dahl fathered five children with his wife, American actress Patricia Neal. The oldest, Olivia, was the apple of his eye. In 1962, 7-year-old Olivia contracted measles, which developed into measles encephalitis, and she died within hours. Dahl wrote about Olivia and his broken heart in a private diary that his family only found long after his death. In 1988, Dahl wrote an open letter to parents about the measles vaccine, published in a pamphlet from the Sandwell Health Authority. It tells about Olivia’s illness and then says,
It is not yet generally accepted that measles can be a dangerous illness. Believe me, it is. In my opinion parents who now refuse to have their children immunised are putting the lives of those children at risk. In America, where measles immunisation is compulsory, measles like smallpox, has been virtually wiped out.
Here in Britain, because so many parents refuse, either out of obstinacy or ignorance or fear, to allow their children to be immunised, we still have a hundred thousand cases of measles every year. Out of those, more than 10,000 will suffer side effects of one kind or another. At least 10,000 will develop ear or chest infections. About 20 will die.
LET THAT SINK IN.
Every year around 20 children will die in Britain from measles.
Read the rest of Dahl’s letter at Buzzfeed. Measles may have been “virtually wiped out” in America in 1988, but the nation is still vulnerable to infection by travelers coming in from other nations, due to the decreasing ratio of vaccinated children in some areas. In fact, the U.S. is currently experiencing the worst outbreak of measles in decades.
An ode to the spirit of exploration, Wanderers is a short film by Swedish artist Erik Wernquist with narration by Carl Sagan. You might recognize some of the places in this short film, although you’ve never been there.
The title WANDERERS refer partly to the original meaning of the word "planet". In ancient greek, the planets visible in the sky were collectively called "aster planetes" which means "wandering star". It also refers to ourselves; for hundreds of thousands of years - the wanderers of the Earth. In time I hope we take that leap off the ground and permanently become wanderers of the sky. Wanderers among the wanderers.
This one is best seen in fullscreen mode. You can download stills from Wanderers at Wernquist’s website. -via Oregon Expat
The best criminal defense money can buy! This coming Sunday is the premiere date for the Breaking Bad spinoff series Better Call Saul. It revolves around Walter White’s cheesy, sleazy, yet competent attorney Saul Goodman, as portrayed by Bob Odenkirk. It’s been a couple of years since Breaking Bad ended, so let’s review what we know of the character’s persona with a supercut of some Saul’s best one-liners, courtesy of Robert Jones of Tastefully Offensive. Oh, and for the record, Saul Goodman is not even his real name.
Paul Robertson and Ivan Dixon designed an opening sequence for The Simpsons that puts Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie into a retro video game world. All the basic elements are there, plus a trippy long scroll sequence and the appropriate chiptune music with video game accents by Jeremy Dower. It's billed as a "tribute" to The Simpsons, but Fox should snap this up for a real couch gag, don’t you think? -via Viral Viral Videos
In case you were busy watching the Shrek marathon or The Walking Dead and missed the Super Bowl, you also missed a new trailer for Jurassic World. In it, we find that Chris Pratt is training velociraptors! Sure, that’s probably for some show for the tourists, but when it all hits the fan, he has a loyal army of “good” dinosaurs to help him fight the “bad” dinosaurs, which are led by the genetically-modified Indominus rex. You could say that scenario is a little far-fetched, but we’re already talking about a theme park of cloned dinosaurs. -via Uproxx
The following is reprinted from the book Uncle John's Unsinkable Bathroom Reader.
It’s easy to forget that until very recently in history, families who lived in cold-weather areas were snowbound on their land throughout the long winters. One man dedicated his life to changing that.
AN INVENTIVE KID
Fourteen-year-old Joseph-Armand Bombardier was driving his father crazy by constantly tinkering with everything around the house. Young Armand took apart and then rebuilt clocks, toy trains, and even the engine on the family car. It became so maddening that his father bought him a seemingly irreparable Ford Model-T engine just to keep him busy in the garage for a while.
Growing up in the remote town of Valcourt, Quebec, in the 1920s meant long winters and impassable roads. If you needed to travel to the next town -or to a hospital- your only option was a horse-drawn sled. Joseph got the broken down Model-T engine running again, and he had grand plans for it. After working for more than a year in his father’s workshop, on New Year’s Eve 1921, he emerged driving a very loud contraption. It consisted of an engine mounted on wooden skis, with an airplane propellor on the back. And it drove right over the snow.
Dad was impressed, but he had other plans for Joseph: As was the tradition with Catholic families in Quebec, the oldest boy was expected to become a priest. So Joseph went to seminary school.
SNOWBOUND
Bombardier was only one of hundreds of inventors attempting to use an engine to power a vehicle through snow.
In 1931, federal agents raided a New Orleans stash of liquor illegally imported from Vancouver. There were 104 people indicted in an elaborate scheme that was cracked when coded messages were intercepted. To convict all those people, special prosecutor Colonel Amos W. Woodcock had to lead the jury through the process of decrypting the coded messages the smuggling ring used.
To convict the accused, Woodcock had to link them to hundreds—if not thousands—of encrypted messages that passed between at least 25 separate ships, their shore stations, and the headquarters in New Orleans. Defense attorneys demanded to know how the government could prove the content of enciphered messages. How, for example, could a cryptanalyst know that "MJFAK ZYWKB QATYT JSL QATS QXYGX OGTB" translated to "anchored in harbor where and when are you sending fuel?"*
Elizebeth Friedman, the prosecution's star witness, asked the judge to find a chalkboard.
Using a piece of chalk, she stood before the jury and explained the basics of cryptanalysis. Friedman talked about simple cipher charts, mono-alphabetic ciphers and polysyllabic ciphers; she reviewed how cryptanalysts encoded messages by writing keywords in lines of code, enclosing them with letter patterns that could be deciphered with the help of various code books and charts rooted in the schemes and charts of centuries past.
The defense did not want her to stay on the stand for long.
Working for the Coast Guard, between 1928 and 1930, Friedman and her assistant deciphered 12,000 encryptions that used 50 different codes. The work had to be handled with utmost care due to the general unpopularity of Prohibition as well as the government’s strained diplomatic relations with Canada. Read how Elizebeth Friedman, an Indiana farm girl, rose to the occasion and then established a permanent cryptanalytic unit for the Coast Guard, at Smithsonian.
(Image credit: Jon Lazar)
LEGO Friends Mini-Dolls are a different size and configuration from the minifigs we are used to. They were introduced a couple of years ago to appeal to girls. Jon Lazar began customizing these dolls last year with the LEGO Super Friends Project. He completed the first 31 superheroes in July, then added a new one every week -as he still does! Along the way, he’s expanded his range to include male and female characters from popular movies and TV shows. Lazar has created characters from Doctor Who, Indiana Jones, The Hunger Games, Ghostbusters, and more. They are available through his Etsy store.
(Image credit: Jon Lazar)
Continue reading to see more of them.
In the case of a very slow news day, or possibly the UK jumping on the “terrible weather news” bandwagon in its own way, the Plymouth Herald published a news story about a trash can being blown over.
IN A sign of just how windy it really is outside, a dustbin has fallen over onto its side.
The toppled wheelie-bin was spotted in Tavistock Place, off North Hill, by Herald reader Dave Arthur.
The Herald hopes there will be no further reports of items blowing over but if you do spot one, email news@plymouthherald.co.uk.
This scene is recreated on my street every week after the garbage is picked up. However, since they are round, I often have to run down the street chasing my trash cans. Still, the newspaper can’t hold a candle to the weather hype in the satirical Galway Daily News.
-via Arbroath
(Image credit: Dave Arthur)
Post by Plymouth Herald.
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