Children make up a particularly gullible audience, so its very tempting to impress them with whatever nonsense you want to concoct, and sometimes those tall tales have a positive effect. Or one like this could just as easily scar them for life. This tall tale was inspired by a real-life train ride with children. It was produced by British animation studio Kilogramme, which had already produced another episode of tall tales you can see here. -via Geeks Are Sexy
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Tales born in the confusion of battle can sometimes grow and change considerably by the time they get to you, particularly stories from long long ago. The old saying “History is written by the winners” holds true also, because accounts from the battlefield can be used for political purposes. Some are attempts to explain unexpected victories or defeats. Other stories just grew like any other strange tale. For all these reasons, war is full of urban legends, like the one about the White Tights.
According to Russian legend, the White Tights – or beliye kolgotky – are blonde, beautiful women who are as deadly as they are attractive. The stories began to circulate during the Chechen Wars, when men would tell of a group of women hired as assassins, targeting anyone they’re paid to dispatch.
The legend gives them something of a background, too. They’re reputed to be members of a biathlon team, doing their training right out in the open where they’re groomed for long-distance marathons that end with putting a bullet in someone. They’re also said to be originally from the Baltic states, born with a grudge against Russia that makes them the perfect, cold-blooded killers.
Russian soldiers would report their units receiving radio transmissions from the women, giving them fair warning that they were coming. Their goals were often to wound the regular soldiers and kill the officers – not with a head shot, but with a shot to the groin.
It’s one story that definitely walks the line between truth and fiction, and when members of the Russian Biathlon Federation issued a statement saying that their athletes absolutely weren’t a part of the secret society of assassins, it’s said that they had to double-check first just to make sure. There’s a historical basis for the idea, too – as far back as the Russian Civil War in 1918 women were often employed as snipers. They were patient, they were calculating, and it was easier for them in infiltrate certain areas – especially if they were armed with a child. But the White Tights take the idea of a secret group of deadly, beautiful blonde women who can kill with a single shot to a whole new level.
That’s just one of ten battlefield urban legends you can read about at Urban Ghosts. Others tell of monsters that only come out at night, angelic beings who saved the day, and propaganda stories about the evils of the enemy.
Seventy years ago, on January 27th, 1945, the Soviet army liberated the Auschwitz network of concentration camps. Survivors and dignitaries gathered at the site in Poland, preserved as a museum since 1947, to mark the anniversary. About 300 camp survivors attended, shown here on their way to light candles at Birkenau. Since they are elderly, this is believed to be the last major commenoration attendance for most of them.
A huge, white temporary building has been erected over the brick railway buildings where many of the Jews of Europe were sorted into those who were fit enough for slave labour and those who would be taken straight to the gas chambers.
Candles have been lit at the Death Wall where prisoners were executed - small points of light in this wintry landscape of snow and ice, where Europe is remembering a time of darkness.
You can read about the ceremonies and see pictures of anniversary commemorations from other parts of Europe as well, at BBC News.
Su Daocheng is a farmer in a China and a self-taught mechanical genius. He built this gas engine-powered horse to help him plow his fields, but I honestly don’t see him getting a lot of that done, at least in this version. That fact that he actually built it himself is pretty neat, yet when it starts walking, you’ll laugh out loud just like I did. Later in the video, you’ll get to see more of Su’s kinetic sculptures. -via Boing Boing
Almost-two-year-old Violet Pietrok’s facial bones didn’t fuse together prenatally, leaving her with a syndrome called Tessier Cleft. Her eyes were so far apart that she couldn’t see properly, and her nose had no cartilage. Dr. John Meara at Boston Children’s Hospital wanted to help Violet. He had done this kind of surgery before, but every patient is different, and the bone reconstruction will be different for each one. That’s where 3D printing comes in. Dr. Meara had his colleague Dr. Peter Weinstock made 3D models of the toddler’s skull, using data from magnetic resonance imaging. Meara was able to practice with four skull models, in order to develop the best plan for Violet’s surgery ahead of time.
Dr. Weinstock, the director of the Pediatric Simulator Program at Boston Children’s, sees 3-D models as part of a larger program to improve surgical craft. At Children’s and a dozen other pediatric centers around the world, he says, the surgical simulation program he developed improves team communication and trust, and lifts confidence before extremely complex operations. He believes it also shortens patients’ time under anesthesia.
If the nearly two-year-old program has prevented even one major medical error — and Dr. Weinstock is convinced it has prevented many — it has paid for itself and its $400,000 3-D printer, running nearly full time in the hospital’s basement.
Dr. Meara was able to move Violet’s eyes closer together and eliminate a large hole in her forehead. She will have more surgery as she grows, but the first step was made much easier by the practice skulls. Read the whole story at the New York Times. -via Metafilter
(Image credit: Credit Katherine C. Cohen/Boston Children's Hospital)
Redditor emlod takes lots of video of his cat, Luna. She’s three years old, but still has the heart of a kitten. He made a compilation of her craziest cat behavior, which encompasses the stuff we see on individual viral cat videos: climbing, jumping, sneaking around, napping, drinking out of the faucet, chasing tiny things, play fighting, not landing on all fours, hiding, ninja attacks, miaows, and making biscuits.
I think chattymcgee summed it up well (apart from thinking Luna is male):
So, I'm not a vet, but I've done a lot of internet research on my own cats. This cat appears to have a full blown case of Nut Butt, with probable early onset Furry Ninjitus. I'm sad to say I'm also seeing some indication of an infection of cinnimonbunius patikakius, known to the common man as Biscuit Makers disease.
As he's a young cat I'd advise treats, sun beams for naps, and maybe some more rugs so he stops slipping around so much and looking like a dingus.
He also takes a lot of pictures of Luna, which you can find individually linked here.
A large number of apparently first-time parents gather at the neighborhood park to defend their baby care choices by snarking at those who have selected a different path. I say they must be first-time parents because there’s no older kids with them, and by the time you’ve have several kids, you might tend to be less defensive and judgmental. (Then I wonder, why would you take an infant to a park?) Such dogmatism is one of the main reasons I stay away from mommy blogs and parenting forums. Chill out, moms (and dads)! -via Buzzfeed
Matt Glendinning, the head of Moses Brown School in Providence, Rhode Island, made the decision to close school for the big snow event. But he had to dress the announcement up a bit in the song his students have been singing for over a year now. Oh yeah, you know he had this video ready months ago, but it’s still funny. -via Time
You remember that “documentary” about Megalodon that headlined Shark Week a couple of years ago, don’t you? It kind of ruined the whole idea of Shark Week for many viewers, because we know that Megalodon is extinct, yet the entire production hinted at how they may be roaming our oceans today. Just like “reality TV,” the term “documentary” has been tossed around enough lately that we don’t even agree on what the term means. Do recreations of past events belong in a documentary? Well, that may be okay. How about real subjects being manipulated into acting a certain way? How far can you go before it crosses over into “drama”? The A.V. Club tells us about six documentaries you may have heard of -or even seen- and the charges leveled against their authenticity. Then they pass judgement on each, and it ain’t pretty. Internet hoaxes have made us all cynical, but maybe that’s a good thing.
KFC rolled out a new menu item Monday: the Double Down Dog. This carnivore’s concoction consists of a hot dog nestled in a "bun" of breaded fried chicken pieces. You can have yours with a splash of melted cheese or other condiments. But the supply of the Double Down Dogs was limited yesterday to 50 each at 12 outlets in the Philippines, which sold out all 600 of the sandwiches. However, there will be more Tuesday, the last day of the promotion. Will we ever see the Double Down Dog in the U.S.? That may depend on how well it goes over in this limited run. What's the point in putting a hot dog in your fried chicken, anyway?
(Image credit: KFC Philippines)
The following is an article from The Annals of Improbable Research.
A glance at the colorful research of an under-publicized scientist
by Alice Shirrell Kaswell, with research assistance from Rachael Moeller Gorman
John W. Trinkaus is the rare researcher whose interests and activities suggest the famous passage in Lewis Carroll’s poem “The Walrus and The Carpenter”:
“The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things:
Of shoes — and ships — and sealing-wax —
Of cabbages — and kings —
And why the sea is boiling hot —
And whether pigs have wings.”
For Trinkaus, of the Zicklin School of Business, Bernard M. Baruch College, City University of New York, such a diversity of topics is the norm. During the past 25 years he has conducted research on shoes — and trains — and bakery wrapping-tissues — on Brussels sprouts — and business students — and why commuters carry attaché cases — and whether most people wear base ball-type caps with the bill facing backwards. These are just a few of his interests.
John Trinkaus has published a modest corpus of reports, of which the 86 papers described below are a healthy sampling. On many topics, Trinkaus returned over and again, both to replicate his findings and to delve deeper.
For a full appreciation of John Trinkaus’s body of work, one must go to the library and read the original reports in their full detail. For those who have yet to enjoy that experience, here is a quick, and rather haphazard, sampling of what to expect.
The Early Years
Trinkaus’s first published paper — a 1978 examination of the motivations of potential jurors — is of interest to scholars of that subject, of course, but it is also of larger significance. So far as we are aware, this was the first of his signature pieces — each modestly claiming to be an “Informal Look” at some dazzlingly under-explored subject. Even at this early stage of his career, Trinkaus was conducting multiple lines of research, and publishing on an unusual variety of topics.
* * *
(1) “Jury Service: An Informal Look,” J. Trinkaus, Psychological Reports, vol. 43, no. 3, part 1, December 1978, p.788.
Used participant observation to study 56 potential jurors... Results support the contention of W. Pabst et al. (1976) that potential jurors are divided into those who do and those who do not want to serve.
(2) “Workers’ Arrivals and Departures: An Informal Look,” J. Trinkaus, Psychological Reports, vol. 44, no. 2, April 1979, p. 554.
Suggests that rank-and-file employees do not arrive at the workplace much before the starting time and depart as quickly as possible after the quitting time. Owner-managers, conversely, arrive early and leave late. These assumptions were supported by informal observations of the arrival and departure of ”luxury” cars, assumed to belong to the owner-managers, and ”economy” cars, assumed to belong to the employees, at a suburban industrial parking site.
(3) “Buyers’ Price Perception at a Flea Market: An Informal Look,” J. Trinkaus, Psychological Reports, vol. 46, no. 1, February 1980, p. 266.
Investigated whether buyers at flea markets would display a high degree of price awareness. An informal inquiry showed this not to be the case.
(4) “Preconditioning an Audience for Mental Magic: An Informal Look,” J. Trinkaus, Perceptual and Motor Skills, vol. 51, no.1, August 1980, p. 262.
(5) “Honesty at a Motor Vehicle Bureau: An Informal Look,” J. Trinkaus, Perceptual and Motor Skills, vol. 51, no. 3, part 2, December 1980, p. 1252.
Assessed the veracity of people taking vision tests at a district office of a motor vehicle bureau....
Results suggest that, when given an option, a sizeable percentage of people may well elect a style of behavior that is neither completely honest nor dishonest.
A lonely, damaged, and obsolete robot roams the city, looking for a human connection. But it turns out that R32 is more human than those he meets along the way. This short film by Vladimir Vlasenko might surprise you. -via Geeks Are Sexy
The price of college textbooks in America can give you a heart attack. Students aren’t buying new books as much as they used to, which in a normal market would mean the publishers would have to lower prices- you know, supply and demand. However, with textbooks, very first book printed cost the company a lot of money to produce, and every copy thereafter is just the price of paper and printing. Sell 10,000 books at $50 each, and your initial costs will certainly be covered; the rest is profit -until students start buying the books used. However, all a publisher has to do is tweak it slightly, call it a new edition, and the cycle of profit begins anew. This comic is from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. -via Daily of the Day
TheMadKing trained his girlfriend’s rabbit Wallace to deliver beer in a little pushcart! He says it was an epic accomplishment.
I couldn't have done any of this if it wasn't for Wallace, and he wouldn't have done any of it if he was given a choice... or had any brain power to make a choice.
Wallace is far from a slave. The bunny has an entire YouTube channel that shows how loved he is. -via Boing Boing
Or maybe I say say, campfire OF snow. Brendan Schaffer of Schaffer Art Studios created this hot snow sculpture using art and food coloring in a spray bottle. Although we’ve all heard the warning about eating yellow snow, I’ve never heard anything about eating giant snow marshmallows! -via reddit
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