Hardly any of us get the recommended amount of fruits and vegetables in our daily diet, but I can tell you from experience that making salad is expensive, time-consuming, and more complicated than a typical lunch. It’s not exactly fast food. Yes, you can get a salad at many fast food outlets, but have you seen the prices? A startup founded by Luke Saunders called the Farmer’s Fridge (previously at Neatorama) aims to change all that, by offering salad from vending machines, for as low as a dollar in selected low-income areas.

Most of Saunders’s machines are installed at private office buildings, food courts, and convenience stores, where the salads cost upwards of $7. Eventually, he wants to drive down the price to the point where anyone can afford them.

The Farmer’s Fridge machine at the East Garfield Community Center is his initial attempt to bring healthy food to a low-income area. The buck is a nominal fee—the salads are actually day-old donations that didn’t sell at the corporate locations. (All of the salads are perfectly good for up to three days.)

It sounds like a good idea, although you can see where the economics could be the project’s undoing. I would imagine there would be a great many salads not sold for $7, leading to plenty of $1 salads, but how could you sustain the project with such massive markdowns? The question in the article at The Atlantic is: would people eat healthier food if it were more convenient? There are some who will never eat fresh vegetables no matter how cheap and convenient they are. And although my family will eat salad, it has to be custom made or offered salad bar-style, as everyone hates some ingredient that the others love.

(Image credit: Farmer’s Fridge)

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It was 100 years ago this Christmas that British and German soldiers came out of their World War I foxholes on Christmas Day to greet each other, exchange gifts and play a game of football in what later became known as The Christmas Truce. It only lasted a day, then they had to go back to shooting at each other.

Sainsbury’s, a UK supermarket chain, partnered with The Royal British Legion to produce this video as their official Christmas ad. There’s another video, with more information about the Christmas Truce, and a behind-the-scenes video here. And lest you think there’s no mercenary aspect to the project, the chocolate bar featured in the story is for sale at Sainbury’s, while supplies last. 

The reviews are mixed. One newspaper pointed out how Sainsbury’s has supported the the Royal British Legion for twenty years, and profits from the candy bars go to support them, while others consider it disrespectful to use the war centennial to sell groceries. -via Viral Viral Videos

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Ferrets Teun, Yuki, and Spike have it made, with all these toys and each other to play with. But the real fun starts when a remote control car is introduced into the mix at about 2:40. The brave ferrets can hold their own against the mechanical monster, although they seem to be more curious than intimidated. Yeah, they are living the life of Riley, in fast-forward. -via Tastefully Offensive 

It’s hard to believe that many of the movies we love the most were considered failures when they were first released. There are plenty of reasons why the box office doesn’t do well, even with a good movie: its initial budget may have made profitability a real risk, it may have been up against stiff competition, or maybe it was just too cerebral for moviegoers who wanted pure escapism when they went to the theater. The first reason was the downfall of The Wizard of Oz.

Believe it or not, The Wizard of Oz was a box office bomb when it was released in 1939. At the time, it was Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's most expensive film ever with giant sets and state-of-the-art special effects. MGM had high expectations for the film, however, audiences weren't keen on making the journey to the Wonderful Land of Oz.

In fact, MGM lost $1.1 million on The Wizard of Oz because of its high production and distribution cost. Despite its middling box office numbers, it garnered four Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and won two Oscars for Best Score and Best Original Song for "Over the Rainbow."

Read the reasons behind the box office failures of Fight Club, Blade Runner, The Shawshank Redemption, Citizen Kane, and more at mental_floss.

For decades, the only thing staving off a worldwide Socialist revolution was a grouchy librarian.

(Illustration by Dale Edwin Murray)

There is no clearer sign of Communism’s decline, Russians joke, than its loss of hair. From Karl Marx’s bushy mane to Mikhail Gorbachev’s shiny pate, the movement went bald and bankrupt at the same time. Perhaps this isn’t a theory to take too seriously. But you have to wonder: If Soviet officials had been aware of Charles Goss’s glorious whiskers, would they have picked a fight with him?

The locks on this English librarian were nothing special, but his mustache, oh, his mustache. The elaborate lip mitten slanted downward a full four inches on each side, far beyond his cheeks, obscuring all but a glimpse of his lower lip. It was a marvel of facial topiary that made Stalin’s well-groomed bristles look like unkempt shrubbery.

The mustache, of course, was also an indicator of his quirks. Goss was precise and eccentric—traits that helped him as an administrator at London’s Bishopsgate Institute, an independent cultural center. But it was his decades-long fight with the agents of the Red Revolution, in a battle that would suck in government ministers, journalists, and ambassadors, that truly demonstrated his grit. The source of that fight: a single book Goss took in as an afterthought—a foolscap notebook from the early 1860s full of semi-legible handwriting.

That notebook was “The Minute Book of the General Council of the International Working Men’s Association” (IWMA), a foundational document of the global proletarian movement. Its sacred pages detailed discussions between Marx and Socialists throughout Europe. It revealed the first steps the world’s workers took as they stoked the revolution. As years passed, lore of the book’s power grew. Politicians and intellectuals desperately tried to liberate it from the clutches of this whiskered dinosaur. But Charles Goss was no ordinary guardian.

The Bishopsgate Institute was established in London’s East End in 1895 to improve the neighborhood. Less than a decade before, the bleak streets were Jack the Ripper’s stalking ground. Now, a local rector hoped to curb the squalor by providing books and lectures to the poor. Education, he hoped, would civilize them. Unfortunately, he chose the wrong man to do it.

Any Star Wars fan will recognize an imitation of the Jedi Muppet Yoda even in text because of his peculiar syntax. But is it really so peculiar? There are plenty of examples from history -many from Shakespeare- of the same rearrangement of subject, object, verb, and sentence clauses.

When you bring a later part of the sentence to the beginning, it's called fronting. You can front just a noun or prepositional phrase — "Jackets we hang here, ties we pile over there"; "The life of Riley, you live"; "For $5 you came here?" — or you can front a verb with it as well, as long as you keep a conjugated verb (such as an auxiliary do or have or will) at the end — "Likes it hot, he does"; "Park in my spot, will he?" Sometimes we even leave off the verb at the end, when we start with a shortened sentence and then clarify: "Makes a lot of money, your friend?"

Furthermore, Yoda’s syntax varies from movie to movie, because the scriptwriters were different. Read about how Yoda’s distinctive way with words is perfectly understandable to us because it’s not that new or different, at The Week.

Something as cosmic as space travel would have to change your point of view, don’t you think? To see everything and everyone you've ever known as a pretty blue marble suspended in the universe -that woul be humbling. Or maybe not. Once you’ve slipped the surly bonds of earth, you probably think you’re pretty special. This comic is from Zach at Extra Fabulous Comics. -via Geeks Are Sexy

You’d be forgiven if you thought this was a unicorn. And indeed, a deer shot near Celje, Slovenia, in August had only one horn, er, antler, growing right in the middle of its head. Boštjan Pokorny examined the remains and said he’s never seen anything like it.

"In this species, only males grow antlers, which are bilateral and usually symmetrical bone structures that appear from two antler pedicles, i.e. extensions of the skull," Pokorny, assistant director of the ecological research institute ERICo Velenje, said in an email.

"However, in the case of this very untypical and interesting buck, both pedicles, which should be separated, grew up together in one large pedicle."

That could have been caused by an injury to the deer while the antlers were just beginning to develop. Could an animal like this have been the origin of the unicorn legend? Read more about it at National Geographic News. -via Boing Boing

(Image credit: Eva Klevska, National Geographic - Slovenia)

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Have you ever been to a rowing competition, er, regatta? I haven’t, either, but something tells me they usually go better than this. Last weekend, the Snowflake Regatta took place in Riverhead, New York. There were lots of novice rowers who didn’t know what to do when things went awry, and plenty of things went awry. Each incident was thoroughly coached from the sidelines by expert spectators. If you’re completely confused and want some explanation, here’s a rowing coach who explains the video as he sees it.  -via Viral Viral Videos

Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website or at Facebook.

A cult movie classic? A piece of Americana? A vintage slice of the '60's? Uh, I guess if you want to be diplomatic you could describe the movie Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine in all of these ways.

Made on a record-high budget for Samuel Z. Arkoff's American International Pictures (this was the first-ever A.I.P. film to have a budget of over $1 million dollars) Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine began filming in the late summer of 1965. Much of the film was shot on location in San Francisco, with other scenes shot at MGM studios.

The original idea for the film came from James H. Nicholson, who was one of the owners of A.I.P. films (Nicholson provided the story and is credited as James Hartford). Nicholson had a then-girlfriend, an aspiring actress named Susan Hart. Knowing full well that Susan did not have much acting ability, he wanted to provide her with a role by making her a robot in the film. A plot for the movie was thus hatched.

Dr. Goldfoot, a nefarious, evil, mad scientist, played by Vincent Price, would develop an army of female robots. These sexy and very attractive femme fatales would hunt out and locate wealthy men. The robots would then use their feminine wiles and anatomical endowments to milk the unsuspecting cash cows dry of all their assets.

The original title for the movie was actually Dr. Goldfoot and the Sex Machine.

Vincent Price, the legendary horror movie icon, was recruited for the lead title role. He had already starred in several A.I.P. macabre horror films. In fact, the dungeon and torture scene in the movie actually incorporated a long shot of Vincent from his 1961 A.I.P. film The Pit and the Pendulum. Vincent Price also gave this otherwise "fluff movie" some cachet.

The Chernobyl power plant in the former Soviet Union was the site of the world’s worst nuclear accident in 1986. Almost three decades later, the abandoned town of Pripyat in Ukraine is a mecca for urban explorers, despite the fact that it’s still contaminated by radioactivity. We seen plenty of haunting images of the empty buildings, as if they were a time capsule that haven’t changed in 28 years except for the inevitable decay. But those silent pictures don’t tell the entire story.    

In the case of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, this “Soviet time capsule” is observed and interacted with by a growing number of tourists every year. Up until 2011, numerous tour companies were running illicit trips into the wasteland — a study cited by that same Telegraph article suggested that as many as 10,000 tourists were visiting the site each year. Since then, Chernobyl tourism has been met with official government approval. Even previously restricted areas of the Zone are now open to paying guests, including the unfinished Reactors Five and Six. More tourists than ever are visiting the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, either as a day trip from Kiev, or for longer, overnight stays. This many visitors cannot help but have an impact on their surroundings.

Darmon Richter took one of those tours last year, and stayed overnight with thirty people all looking for photographic souvenirs. He observed how the tourists took objects, left trash, damaged buildings, and staged photographs. So even though no one lives there, the Exclusion Zone is far from empty or unchanged. Read more about Chernobyl Tourism and the effect it has at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Darmon Richter)

Sitting next to the most obnoxious Tinder couple ever. Dude is a 40-something trust fund baby, girl seems normal but inexplicably into him

— Carrie Mantha (@CarrieMantha) November 12, 2014

Carrie Mantha was in a New York City restaurant where a couple met for a Tinder date at the bar. She couldn’t help but hear their conversation, which was so weird she began Tweeting it to her followers. It only got weirder.

Dude just casually admitted it's his 3rd Tinder date OF THE DAY. Girl seems strangely amused, couple on the other side hilariously appalled

— Carrie Mantha (@CarrieMantha) November 12, 2014

Girl: "Have you been to Africa?" Dude: "I used to go on safari with my family, but that's how you get ebola - eating lion brains & stuff."

— Carrie Mantha (@CarrieMantha) November 12, 2014

Dude complaining that his brother is trustee of his mom's estate & won't release her money. "It's family money, it's not like it's hers" Wow

— Carrie Mantha (@CarrieMantha) November 12, 2014

Oh, but that’s just a few highlights. You need to read the entire sequence of Tweets, which are collected at Buzzfeed.

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Cole and Marmalade (previously at Neatorama) show us how they view their world. When you and I see a mundane yet useful object, they see an opportunity for feline entertainment. What a horrible life they lead! -via Tastefully Offensive

What frame of mind are you in? Would you like to change it? Would you like to break out of the frame and think outside the box? You might get a little inspiration from Grant Snider’s latest gallery of ideas at Incidental Comics.

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In this week’s mental_floss List Show, John Green tells us some interesting things about the Harry Potter books and movies. Find out the inspirations and models for J.K. Rowling’s characters, what happened when all those children were on a movie set together, and quite a few details that carry spoilers, so avoid this if you plan to read the books sometime in the future. Who are you kidding, anyway? If you have put off reading the Harry Potter books this long, you probably won’t get around to reading them anytime soon. So enjoy the video!