Greenpeace was working on a video about coal mining on public lands, which features a time-lapse nature sequence. Filming such a sequence doesn’t always go smoothly, though. This one was photobombed by a marmot, who not only screwed up the possibility of converting the video to a time-lapse, but also got so friendly with the camera that it was knocked off balance! That’s a good marmot. -via Metafilter
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Remember when you were a kid and watched Batman and Superman on TV and tied a towel around your shoulders for a cape and pretended you were a superhero? Liz Climo’s latest comic shows us how TV can influence our fantasies. Or mthe honor of having a week named after you just goes to one’s head. She had another ominous shark comic a day earlier.
A pristine issue of Action Comics #1 from June of 1938, featuring the debut of a new superhero named Superman, is up for auction at eBay, with proceeds going to the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation. Want it? The current bid is $1,750,100, and there’s more than a week left before the auction ends. Good lulck! -via Boing Boing
After 41 years, first-grade teacher Mrs. Flexer is retiring. That’s 41 years of little kids she’s influenced, and they love her. With the help of the production team behind Kid President, former students of all ages gathered to honor Mrs. Flexer with a surprise party. They gave testimonials of of how their teacher inspired them to future success. You can’t watch this without getting at least a little choked up. How many of us will be able to retire and see how many lives we’ve influenced for the better? -via Viral Viral Videos
Do you recall a couple of years ago when Lee Hall proposed to Ashley Fragomeni by re-enacting a scene from Jurassic Park? It was very appropriate, as they are both paleontologists. They had a Jurassic Park-themed wedding, too! One of the wedding gifts they received was this custom illustration from their friend, artist Britt Sanders. See it full-size at Imgur. It looks just like them, doesn’t it? -via reddit
Goussainville is a village just north of Paris with a peculiar history. Once it was a perfectly normal small French town -up until just 40 years ago. It is now a group of abandoned homes showing some signs of decay, along with relatively modern touches that show it was not long ago that child grew up here. What happened? The short answer is that the Charles de Gaulle Airport was built.
Goussainville-Vieux Pays was once a postcard perfect town, but less than a year before CDG opened in 1974 a plane crashed into it, destroying several houses and killing six crew and eight locals. The destruction caused many of the townspeople to evacuate immediately, with others following over the course of the subsequent year as the sound traffic from the airport and sorrow for the devastation of their town became too much. Now only a few residents remain.
The result of this recent abandonment is a scene that resembles a post-apocalyptic movie set. See a collection of pictures of Goussainville as you take a short tour at Atlas Obscura.
(Image credit: Ophelia Holt)
The city of Berlin had a particularly gruesome 20th century: World War I, the Holocaust, World War II, the Berlin Wall. And within the city you’ll see plenty of remembrance, memorials, and reminders that those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Even if you skip major tourist destinations like the Berlin Wall Memorial or the Holocaust monuments near the Brandenburg Gate, it’s nearly impossible to visit Berlin without feeling the city’s pain. You might hop a train at Nollendorf Platz, encountering the lone column erected for German transit workers killed during World War I, or the triangle-shaped plaque dedicated to LGBTQ people executed by the Nazi regime. Perhaps you’re shopping along Kurfürstendamm, passing by the ruined steeple of Kaiser Wilhelm Church, whose bombed-out shell has been preserved as a memorial after it was destroyed in 1943. Maybe you head to an art exhibition at Martin Gropius Bau, a few steps from the Topography of Terror, where the excavated basement of the former Gestapo and SS headquarters serves as the backing for a timeline of Nazi persecution. Or you opt for a walk along the city’s quieter residential streets, and come upon small markers placed into the sidewalk denoting the names and dates of those deported and murdered by the Third Reich.
And those are just a few of the many memorials. But other countries have gruesome histories as well, expanded over time. Even the United States, a relatively young nation, has dark spots, but we don’t have daily reminders as we go about our business. Those who live in Berlin cannot escape the meaning of the markers, the monuments, and the preserved ruins of the past. Learn more about them, and what they mean to Berlin’s residents today, at Collectors Weekly.
When Nuseir Yassin graduated from college, he wanted to travel the world, as many graduates do. He also wanted to chronicle his adventures of video, like many travelers do. To make his different, Yassin took along a Rubik’s cube, and asked people along the way to help him solve it by giving it one move each. Eleven countries and 84 movies later, the Rubik’s cube is solved, and the video is ready. The result is like some combination of Flat Stanley, and Where In The Hell Is Matt? -via Time
It’s your brain’s fault! Maybe if we could turn off that troublemaking brain of yours, we wouldn’t have all these overweight fees and you might even have some room for souvenirs in that bag! This is the latest from Doghouse Diaries.
The third annual Internet Cat Video Festival took place last night in Minneapolis. A huge crowd gathered to watch cat vieos and meet some feline internet stars. Here are all the featured videos. The winner of the Golden Kitty Award was 8 Signs of Addiction featuring Shorty and Kodi. Learn more about the event with many links at Metafilter.
(Image credit: Shorty and Kodi)
A UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch report revealed an incident in February in which a pilot was landing a small commuter jet in Belfast when his arm fell off.
The 46-year-old pilot, described byFlybe as among is “most experienced and trusted” pilots, wears a prosthetic limb and said that he believed he had securely fixed the arm in place earlier, but with heavy winds, once he deactivated the Dash 8 aircraft’s autopilot as he prepared to land the plane that’s when the arm troubles began.
Asked why a pilot with only one arm was flying a plane in the first place, Flybe’s safety director, Captain Ian Baston, said that the budget airline had a policy of equal opportunity employment and therefore “in common with most airlines, we do employ staff with reduced physical abilities.”
The pilot lost control of the plane only briefly and still guided it to a safe and bumpy landing using one arm. He promised to secure his arm better in the future.
(Image credit: Flickr user Clément Alloing)
You’ve read about parasites that take over an animal and change its behavior for its own purposes. It’s the stuff nightmares are made of. But humans aren’t as immune to these shenanigans as you may think. Carl Zimmer tells us about research into how the trillions of bacteria and other microbes we carry around with us every day may be influencing our behavior -and we’d never know it. Germs in our guts that help us digest food can manufacture chemicals that communicate with each other, and these chemical signals may influence the brain. Studies of mice show that it’s possible.
A number of recent studies have shown that gut bacteria can use these signals to alter the biochemistry of the brain. Compared with ordinary mice, those raised free of germs behave differently in a number of ways. They are more anxious, for example, and have impaired memory.
Adding certain species of bacteria to a normal mouse’s microbiome can reveal other ways in which they can influence behavior. Some bacteria lower stress levels in the mouse. When scientists sever the nerve relaying signals from the gut to the brain, this stress-reducing effect disappears.
Some experiments suggest that bacteria also can influence the way their hosts eat. Germ-free mice develop more receptors for sweet flavors in their intestines, for example. They also prefer to drink sweeter drinks than normal mice do.
Scientists have also found that bacteria can alter levels of hormones that govern appetite in mice.
So far, it sounds pretty benign. After all, microbes who live in us depend on our continued well-being, right? So far, research shows that behavior that benefits microbes doesn’t always benefit the host, but when they harm us, we go full-throttle after them. However, knowing about this mechanism may one day lead to humans being able to control what microbes do in our bodies to our benefit. Read more at the New York Times.
(Image credit: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
I’ve never dealt with IKEA furniture, but I know for a fact that building furniture, whether it’s from scratch or a kit, is a one-person job. Only ask for help if you need someone to hold something for a minute. I also know that if you buy furniture in a kit, you should add extra reinforcement of some sort. Man, that is one ugly desk these people built.
The other advice I would give about furniture is that you should buy it used, the older the better. You’ll get better quality pieces for the same money. However, you’ll have to pay for it up front and haul it yourself. It’s worth the effort. -via Buzzfeed
Duke is a 7-year-old Great Pyrenees who lives in Cormorant, Minnesota. He was elected mayor of the town by a landslide over his opponent, store owner Richard Sherbrook. The exact vote count was not revealed, but Duke got the vast majority of the twelve votes cast, each backed by a one dollar fee. Sherbrook even voted for Duke.
“I’m going to back the dog 100 percent,” said Sherbrook. “He’s a sportsman and he likes to hunt. He’ll really protect the town.”
Sherbrook, who voted for Duke, himself, admitted that the town thought it would be “pretty cool” to have its first mayor be a dog.
The tiny town was established in 1874, but has never had a mayor before. The new mayor will be sworn in Saturday. As for his salary, he will be paid in dog food, a year’s supply donated by Tuffy’s Pet Food. -via Warming Glow
Science fiction stories, books, and movies can inspire as well as entertain, and everyone wants to see a movie pertaining to their own expertise, don’t they? And such books and movies are more enjoyable if you don’t hold them to the high standards of real-life science. But some books will amaze even specialists.
Dr. Chris Stringer, anthropologist at the Natural History Museum in London: "Brazil -- quirky, with humour and horror juxtaposed, and full of little details about the alternative world that Terry Gilliam creates. And Michael Palin outstanding as a nice man turned into a torturer by the system."
Dr. Jack Horner, paleontologist at Montana State University and consultant for Jurassic Park films: "Jurassic Park is my favorite movie because the paleontologist Alan Grant says all the things I would have said if it had not been a movie!! And bringing back dinosaurs is a goal."
Read what tickles the fancy of astrophysicists, biologists, primatologists, and more at HuffPo.
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