It’s occurred to every reader of Superman comics sometime in their childhood: how can those smart investigative journalists who work at The Daily Planet not recognize the crime fighter they cover so often as the mild-mannered reporter in their midst who looks just like him? The only difference is the glasses, and the lack of spandex. The reason they never did is explained in the rest of this comic by Tony Wilson at Dorkly.
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Shark Week has been a TV staple since 1988, but like many institutions, it has changed over time. What was once educational is now entertainment, but the Discovery Channel needs to make their intentions more clear for those who grew up thinking Shark Week was for information. Oh, there’s nothing wrong with throwing an occasional movie into the mix, but it’s easy to see that Jaws or Sharktopus is fictional. It’s not so easy for the general public to separate “mockumentaries” and “reality TV” from nature documentaries, especially after so many years of traditional educational fare about sharks. -via Viral Viral Videos
Mulder is a clever cat. He’s not only figured out how to open a door, he works around a trap (a tray of water) to do it. This is why we went from latched doors to round knobs, although I suspect that bears had more to do with it than house cats. -via Daily Picks and Flicks, where you can see another video of Mulder’s cleverness.
The 2014 winner has been crowned in the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, in which writers compete to construct the worst opening line for a novel. The winner is Elizabeth (Betsy) Dorfman of Bainbridge Island, Washington, for this gem:
When the dead moose floated into view the famished crew cheered – this had to mean land! – but Captain Walgrove, flinty-eyed and clear headed thanks to the starvation cleanse in progress, gave fateful orders to remain on the original course and await the appearance of a second and confirming moose.
Dorfman received “about $150” for her prize. The contest site has winning entries in various categories such as children’s literature, fantasy, and crime, as well as runners-ups that are all hilariously bad. The contest takes its name from Victorian novelist George Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who started a novel in 1830 with “It was a dark and stormy night,” a sentence that has come to be shorthand for a hack novel. -via Metafilter
Fee Jeanes and her family moved to Bridport, Dorset, UK, 19 months ago, to a home near the bus station. Their 15-year-old cat Dodger quickly made friends with bus drivers and riders, who would even feed the cat occasionally. Jeanes recently found out her cat has been riding around on bus trips in his spare time.
"He is an old boy and is very friendly. At first Dodger kept going to the bus station because people there fed him tit-bits and scraps of food.
"But then he started climbing on board the buses because they are almost like greenhouses when it is sunny.
"Then last week I found out he had travelled to Charmouth and back, which is a 10 mile round trip.
"I hadn't seen him all morning until my daughter Emily told me one of her friends had just seen him on the bus at Charmouth.
The bus drivers know the cat well, and make sure Dodger gets off at his home stop when the day ends. The bus company says they do not encourage the cat to ride, but don’t mind if he does. As a senior citizen, he is eligible for free rides. -via reddit
(Image credit: Peter Willows/BNPS)
If you’re a fan of The Walking Dead, you’ve no doubt already seen the preview trailer for season five, which begins in October. If you haven’t, you can see it here. But why watch the real thing when you can watch a LEGO version? YouTube member kristo499 went the extra mile to make sure this shot-for-shot LEGO trailer has all the fine details and that the characters are totally recognizable, even if they are minifigs. -via Warming Glow
She was born Betty Joan Perske in 1924, but the whole world knows her as Lauren Bacall, the woman who taught Humphrey Bogart how to whistle. Bogie and Bacall only made four movies together, but shortly after she starred with him in her first film, To Have and Have Not, they married. Bogie was 45 and Bacall was 20. They remained together until Bogart’s death in 1957.
Working with Bogart, 25 years her senior, the 19-year-old was so shy that she was often photographed with her head down, her eyes cast up— but that pose became known as The Look, a sultry trademark gesture to go with the equally sultry Voice. The chemistry between the pair was evident, unfolding on-screen as it did in real life. Within three weeks, the stars were having an affair. Seven months after the picture premiered, Bogart split from his third wife (actress Mayo Methot) and married Bacall. Their marriage produced two children and the most productive period of her career, including three more pictures together. There was The Big Sleep, the Raymond Chandler mystery in which society dame Bacall send's Bogie's sleuth Philip Marlowe reeling. There was Dark Passage, an innovative thriller in which the first half of the movie is seen from Bogart's point of view, so that pretty much all you see is Bacall through Bogie's eyes. And there was Key Largo, a sort of rewrite of their first movie, with Bogart and Bacall falling in love while standing up to gangster Edward G. Robinson. And that was all, but those were enough to ensure that Bogart and Bacall topped the all-time list of couples who sizzled on-screen as much as they did in private.
Bacall’s acting career spanned seven decades, and she appeared in the TV show Family Guy in 2014. The actress died of a stroke at her home in New York today. Lauren Bacall was 89 years old.
Sir David Attenborough brings us a nature documentary like no other, as he observes and introduces us to the herd behavior of …the Fangirl. Warning: this creature can be terrifying. When asked about the full documentary, one of the subjects had this to say:
“OMG! I can’t even.”
A Turkish farmer has built a scarecrow that rivals the Terminator in terror. To be honest, this terrifying mannequin was developed to keep bears away from crops. In addition to walking, or actually rolling around, spewing siren sounds, shaking its arms. and flashing its glowing eyes, it can also send 25,000 volts of electricity into an intruder! (Let’s hope that’s with low current, very painful even so.) Channel 9 has the story:
Inventor, Mustafa Karasungur, 46, told the Doğan News Agency his creation can also be used "as a mobile power supply", which is handy if you need to charge your phone between bear attacks.
"It can light a lamp for four hours," the inventor who has been tinkering with electronics over the past 30 years said.
Mr Karasungur's hopes of mass producing the robot may not come to fruition. There are fears the robot could attack and electrocute innocent passers-by because it is unable to tell the difference between animals and humans.
Which makes me believe the reporter in this video needs a substantial raise for going above and beyond the call of duty. -via Geeks Are Sexy
How does a cat become a DJ? Practice! Although I think this one may be born to do it. There are training programs for kitten DJs, though, where they learn to scratch and mix. Here’s one session caught on video:
They are surely nightclub stars in the making! -via Metafilter
We often say, “You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.” And that’s the case for Robin Williams, who died yesterday of an apparent suicide. From standup comic to TV alien to comedic movie star to dramatic actor, here’s a look at some of Williams’ most memorable roles. IMDb lists 102 acting credits, and his Wikipedia filmogrpahy lists 81 movies. There were so many, you probably couldn’t list them off the top of your head, so here’s a reminder. -via Digg
As we reach further and further into the depths to come up with new shark movies and shark TV shows to fill out Shark Week, Funny or Die has opened an entirely new can of worms by mashing up a terrifying shark with old TV characters we know and love. In Sharklumbo, the shark is a shark, but he’s also detective Columbo.
The following is an article from The Annals of Improbable Research.
Selected by the Ig Nobel Board of Governors
Commissioned by Wired News and the Annals of Improbable Research
by Marc Abrahams
In a century crammed to bursting with screw-ups, a century that gave birth to Murphy's Law ("whatever can go wrong, will go wrong"), it is difficult to choose a mere twenty outstanding screw-ups. Inevitably and unfairly, several hundred thousand worthy achievements were left out. We chose for style and symbolic value, as well as for substance or lack thereof. We kept in mind that technology is a combination of things, techniques, and the people who devise, make, and use them.
The people mentioned here had reasons -- in many cases very good reasons -- for doing what they did. (In at least one case, that of Corrigan, some contend that the entire screw-up was cleverly planned as such.) These screw-ups can serve as fodder for thought, argument, or pure, unabashed wonder.
* * *
1. In 1903, physicist Prosper-René Blondlot of the University of Nancy, France, announced a great scientific discovery: a new kind of radiation called "N-rays." X-rays had been discovered just a few years earlier, causing worldwide excitement, and Blondlot's N-ray announcement caused a sensation. After seeing a demonstration of Blondlot's N-ray detector, American physicist R.W. Wood secretly removed the guts from the machine and then asked Blondlot to repeat the demo. Blondlot, using the broken machine, insisted that he was still seeing N-rays. Almost everyone except Blondlot then concluded that N-rays do not exist. This became the science community's great example of why extraordinary claims ought to be tested before people accept them as valid.
INFO
2. On April 14, 1912, the ocean liner Titanic, described by its manufacturers as unsinkable, sank on her maiden voyage.
INFO
3. During World War I, nearly all the world's technological innovation was poured into the battlefields of Europe's Western Front. Both sides expected their technology would quickly break the impasse. Instead, it produced three years of deadlocked trench, barbed wire, rifle, grenade, machine gun, artillery, gas, tank, and aeroplane warfare, and the deaths of millions of people.
4. On May 6, 1937, the hydrogen-filled dirigible Hindenburg, arriving in Lakehurst, New Jersey, after a transatlantic flight, caught fire and disintegrated.
INFO
5. On July 17, 1938, pioneer aviator Douglas (ever after to be called"Wrong Way") Corrigan, took off for California from an air field in Brooklyn, New York. He landed in Ireland.
You’ve heard it said that the Lord of the Rings saga would have been much shorter and simpler if our heroes had just rode their giant eagles into Mordor. But, just as one does not simply walk into Mordor, neither does one simply fly in, either. See, giant eagles are like the Wicked Witch's flying monkeys: only used when the plot needs to hurry up and cover a lot of ground that earlier in the story took too much time. Brotherhood Workshop brings us a chapter of an alternative version of Lord of the Rings in LEGO. -via Geeks Are Sexy
What were you expecting, the bluebird of happiness? I was expecting a Twitter joke, myself. From now on, I am going to picture my multitude of responsibilities as a flock of cute little birds. Now, where’s my birdshot? This is the latest comic from Lunarbaboon.
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