“Hey, boys! Wanna Milk-Bone? I gotcha Milk-Bones right here! Have one! Have another! Just remember what your old friend Spike did for you some day when I need a hand. Ya never know when I might need a big dog to defend me!”
These Great Danes have a friend in a high place- Spike, the Umbrella Cockatoo, who is glad to hand out the treats they thought they’d have to earn. -via Arbroath
Miss Cellania's Blog Posts
No public urination! The rule is clear, but this addition to the standard sign in the Czech Republic spells out the consequences clearly. A fine can be paid and forgotten, but YouTube is forever.
And this is the same country that has a public fountain featuring a pissing contest between two statues.
You’ve seen some confusing parking signs that pile regulation after regulation atop one another, but this one may have broken a record -although briefly. The signs in front of Linwood E. Howe Elementary School in Culver City, California, went up Thursday, but only stayed up a couple of days before being cut in half. The original 15-foot signs would have drawn even more traffic just to see them! According to CBS Los Angeles (warning: multiple auto play videos):
The signs were meant to clarify a new drop-off and pick-up procedure for when classes resume at the school, but as CBS2’s Juan Fernandez reported, neighbors just found them confusing.
Mayor Meghan Sahli-Wells said the plan was for the signs to only be displayed temporarily.
“They just didn’t look temporary,” she said. “So they were going to be taken down. And it looked like … whoa. It was pretty impressive.”
By late Friday, half of the signs were gone, although that still left more than a few regulations for spaces near the school.
I wouldn’t even think of trying to park in that area -the fine for illegal parking is $73. -via Arbroath
Ted Jackson of the Times-Picayune selected photographs from the archives taken during and after hurricane Katrina in 2005, some of which he took himself. He found the same locations and re-shot them nine years after the hurricane that devastated the city. Jackson also tells us the stories behind the locations. The top picture here was taken in September of 2005 by John McCusker.
This was a perfect choice to reshoot since the two houses in the photo have been rebuilt. The location was iconic. The water lines are clearly visible on the exterior walls. When I located the corner, I was surprised to find new landscaping blocking the view. After carefully studying the angles and rooflines as they compared with each other, it became clear that the spot McCusker stood was now crowded by a large bush and a stop sign. I also needed about six feet of elevation to match the debris pile the security worker was walking on. A ladder and a tripod solved both of these issues.
Jackson mentions in the comments that there were many great photos taken during the disaster that couldn’t be recreated because none of the landmarks in them have survived. You can compare a dozen pairs of pictures with a slide application at the Times-Picayune site. THe very last photo is particularly devastating. -via Metafilter
The following is an article from The Annals of Improbable Research.
Figure 1. The exploding toad news traveled worldwide. Here is a portion of a report on the Taipei Times web site. [Also note the explosive claim, at upper right, that there have been “nearly 200 million visits to the web site.”]
A “dream team” of scientists takes on a nightmarish problem.
by Mark Benecke, Forensic Biologist, International Forensic Research and Consulting,
Cologne, Germany
C.W. Moeliker, Curator of Birds, Natuurmuseum Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Richard Wassersug, Professor, Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, Dalhousie
University, Halifax, Canada
Redacted by Marc Abrahams
[In 2005], news reports described a sudden plague of exploding toads in Hamburg, Germany. The reports carried conflicting descriptions and speculation from scientists, governmental officials,
passersby, and other authorities -- some said these were spontaneous explosions, some attributed them to attacks by killer crows, some to bacterial or viral action. Others advanced still more exotic theories. The public was left with a confused notion as to what exactly had happened, and how and why. To make sense of the reports, we assembled an international “dream team” -- three extraordinarily curious, determined scientists, each of whom has a deep background in one or more elements of the apparent story. Their assignment: to try to discover the truth about the exploding toads of Hamburg.
Mark Benecke is one of the world’s leading forensic biologists. Benecke is based in Cologne, Germany.
C.W. (“Kees”) Moeliker is one of the world’s leading experts on crows and many other birds. Moeliker was awarded the 2002 Ig Nobel Prize in Biology, for publishing the world’s first scientifically documented case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck. Moeliker is based at the Natuurmuseum Rotterdam, in The Netherlands.
Richard Wassersug is one of the world’s leading authorities on frogs, toads, and many other amphibians. He was awarded the 2000 Ig Nobel Biology Prize for conducting a test of the comparative palatability of some dry-season tadpoles from Costa Rica. Wassersug is based at Dalhousie University, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
All are members of the editorial board of the Annals of Improbable Research.Their research was conducted, as much of today’s highly publicized research is, hastily and via email. Here is a concise, edited compilation of their collected reports.
This will be me next year, although I doubt I will get my daughter to leave behind the panda bear she’s had since she was a baby. It no longer has ears, a mouth, clothing, or much in the way of arms, but it is still special. This comic is from Carolyn at A Zillion Dollar Comics. -via Pleated-Jeans
The following article is republished from Uncle John's Ahh-Inspiring Bathroom Reader.
(Image credit: Steve Hopson)
According to one legend, the fruit that Eve found irresistible in the Garden of Eden was not an apple, but a banana. Is it true? Who knows? But for thousands of years, the banana has been a source of pleasure …and sometimes trouble.
HOW THEY SPREAD
* Bananas are believed to have originated in the rain forests of Southeast Asia, where a variety of species still grow.
* Arab traders brought the banana to the Middle East and Africa in the seventh century. But these weren’t the large fruit we know today -they were just a few inches in length. In fact, some historians believe “banana” comes from banan, the Arabic words meaning “finger.”
* By the late 1400s, bananas were a staple food along the western coast of Africa where Portuguese sailors collected plants and brought them to the Canary Islands, between Africa and Spain.
* In 1516 Tomás de Berlanga, a Spanish priest, brought banana stalks to the New World, to the island of Hispañiola (now Haiti and the Dominican Republic). And he took plants with him to the mainland when he was made bishop of Panama in 1534.
* Another priest, Vasco de Quiroga, brought banana plants from Hispañiola to Mexico in the mid-16th century. From there, bananas spread and flourished through the Caribbean basin, leading many to believe -erroneously- that they were native to the region.
COMING TO AMERICA
Look at that boat coming in… that’s a really big boat. Do you think he’s going to try to dock here? Right between these two boats? I don’t think there’s enough room. That boat’s bigger than we thought! How is he going to get between these two? Oh… that’s how.
This is actually a ship wrecking yard in Turkey, so all’s well that ends well in this case. -via Geeks Are Sexy
In this compilation of babies seeing themselves in mirrors for the first time, we see that they catch on fairly quickly that it’s a reflection of themselves. After all, most of them recognize their mothers in the mirror. This new discovery soon gives way to the common and particularly human joy of admiring ourselves. -via Tastefully Offensive
Salt Lake County Mayor Ben McAdams and the area’s tourism board showed their sense of humor by responding to an article in the Onion that claimed the city was changing their tourism tactics. The original article stated (with auto play video):
In a move designed to help the metropolitan area attract more tourists, Salt Lake City officials unveiled a new advertising campaign Thursday reminding potential visitors that they can leave at any time.
The response, according to the tourism site, was to pass an emergency bill to close all exits from the city.
"How are we expecting to increase revenue that way?" an incredulous Mayor McAdams asked tourism board members in an emergency meeting late Thursday night. "The amount of revenue this new bill will generate in hotel and restaurant taxes will pay for the closing of all Salt Lake's exit routes almost immediately. Keeping visitors here indefinitely will help secure our already thriving economy."
The measures taken are then outlined, which includes both freeway off-ramps and airlines tickets, which will now be one-way. The bottom of the article carries the tagline “Welcome to Salt Lake. You Can Check In Any Time You Like…”
-via Marilyn Terrell
Purchasing power varies from state to state, as you probably know. For the rent on a small place in San Francisco, you can mortgage a huge home with acreage in Kentucky. The punchline is, “Yeah, but you’d have to live in Kentucky.” The Tax Foundation crunched the numbers and made a map, comparing how far $100 will go in purchasing power in each state compared with the national average. The map is above, but you can enlarge it at the site, and read about how it was compiled.
The immediate reaction from many was that the map is too simple. The cost of living in New York City is much higher than in the rest of New York state. That’s true- the bigger the city, the more expensive it is to live there. So the Tax Foundation created another map, with more detail to show metropolitan areas compared to their surrounding areas. See the interactive version at the site. In case you’re wondering, the most expensive city in the U.S. is Honolulu. -via mental_floss
The Portuguese man-of-war is not a jellyfish, but is related to them. They are quite amazing, both in form and function. It is made up of a colony of genetically-identical creatures that take different forms to make up the “organs” of the colony. Photographer Aaron Ansarov has been photographing Portugese man-of-wars for two years to capture their ethereal beauty. You can read more about the animals and see more of Ansarov's pictures at National Geographic. -via Nag on the Lake
You see expensive aircraft in movies all the time, but it’s not always easy to get permission to use the real thing. And miniatures, while they have their place, don’t always do the trick. So movie productions often rely on full-scale mockups that, while they don’t work, look just like the real thing. Read the stories behind seven of these mockups.
The futuristic F/A-37 Talon appeared in the 2005 film Stealth, and is pictured here during a simulated launch from USS Abraham Lincoln (although reportedly filmed aboard USS Carl Vinson). The F/A-37 Talon was a single seat stealth fighter built to test cutting edge technologies on the battlefield. It had a central “brain”, which predictably caused it to develop a (dangerous) mind of its own. The “Talon” bore an interesting resemblance to the Northrop Switchblade concept, in a film that was unfortunately considered one of the biggest financial losses in Hollywood history.
Other props had a better result, and a few were used over and over in subsequent films. Read about these full-size aircraft replicas at Urban Ghosts.
The tiny hamster is back! We’ve seen him eat a tiny burrito and go to a tiny hedgehog birthday party, and now we get to see the hamster in his tiny mansion. He gets out of his tiny bed, eats his tiny breakfast, takes a tiny bath, eats a great big strawberry, and drives off in his tiny little car. -via Viral Viral Videos
If a pregnant American woman boards a German flight to the Maldives and gives birth while flying over Pakistan, does the baby get Pakistani citizenship?
There is an ancient doctrine, enshrined in English common law, that says Cuius est solum, eius est usque ad coelum et ad inferos, which means, "Whoever owns the soil, it is theirs all the way up to heaven and down to hell."
That was the old rule, before the advent of air balloons, then airplanes, then V2 rockets, then spy satellites. It's been seriously amended (at least in Britain) to a much more modest: You own the airspace necessary for "the use and enjoyment" of your plot of land. So how high up is that?
We can assume that American parents would not allow any legal move to take away their child’s American citizenship. And does the old rules of ships’ registries apply to airplanes? It appears that no one knows the definitive answer about “sky babies,” and it largely depends on the citizenship laws of individual nations, Some allow for dual or triple citizenship, others don’t. Read more about this puzzling question at NPR.
(Image credit: Robert Krulwich/NPR)
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