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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This pet hermit crab climbed to the top of his, um, food container or something, and now he’s trying to raise the roof! When his owner came in the room, he said, “Me? No, I’m not trying to escape. Oh, I’m just exercising! Lifting weights! Yeah, that’s the ticket…” -via Tastefully Offensive
The following is a Whodunit by Hy Conrad. These mysteries are from The Little Giant® Book of Whodunits by Hy Conrad and Matt LaFleur. Can you solve the mystery before you read the solution?
The silent alarm announced a break-in at the home of Jordan Marsh, the famous collector. When a patrolman arrived, he found two men waiting for him in the backyard of Marsh's suburban home, standing by a broken window.
"My name's Digby Dunne," the first man said. "Jordan's next-door neighbor. I caught this man red-handed, breaking in and stealing the Cleopatra coin."
"I caught him red-handed," the other man countered. "I'm Kenny Johnson, Jordan's other neighbor."
"One at a time," the patrolman said. "Mr. Dunne?"
Cameron Drake put together sequences of x-rays into animated gifs that show human bones as they move inside our bodies. He says it’s for a website he’s working on. They are, definitely, cool!
-via Boing Boing
(Images credit: Cameron Drake)
A couple in Zurich, Switzerland, were asked to babysit for a friend, who was a rather nervous father with plenty of instructions. Erica and Hannes had a good time of it. They took the baby, Alex, outside for a stroll and took pictures. Then they Photoshopped various disaster scenarios into the pictures to send to the father every hour as updates. Posting at reddit, one of them said,
True, we didn't teach the kid how to read that day. We also didn't expand his brain by playing classical music nonstop. We didn't feed him an immune system boosting meal every 15 minutes. But he survived, giggled a lot was looked after the entire time by the two of us and went to bed at 7.30PM perfectly happy. And we will show him these pics in maybe 10 years or so and say: "Young man, we had an awesome time together that day"
A good time was had by all. -via Buzzfeed
Some people recognized the opportunities afforded by digital photography before the rest of the world. Hugo Cornellier of Montreal started taking selfies when he was 12 years old -and took one every day for the next seven years. Now he is 19, and Cornellier has put all those pictures together to document his growing up. The first 20 seconds are a little jarring, but then he became really good at centering the face, so you can see the transformation from boyhood to manhood easier. If you’ve ever watched your own kids grow up, you can attest that it seems like it happens this fast in real life, too. I say that as a mother who watched her daughter begin her senior year in high school today. (via Viral Viral Videos)
The 2014 World Yo-Yo Contest was recently held in Prague, Czech Republic, where the best yo-yo artists showed off their best tricks. Californian pro Gentry Stein of the YoYoFactory team was named the best in the contest’s 1A division.e was the U.S. champion in 2013, and now, the entire world! I won’t show this video to my kids -they think I’m an expert because I can get a yoyo to return to my hand. That’s all I can do. Warning: I found the music on this video highly annoying. -via Time
A TV show that’s had 800 episodes over a 50-year period produces a lot of trivia, so any list you see probably has some tidbits you’ve never read before. A list of Doctor Who trivia at Buzzfeed tells us, among other things, how inbred the production is.
7. In fact, three of the actresses who played the Doctor’s companions went on to become agents, and all of them ended up representing actors who would play the Doctor.
15. Tennant is married to Georgia Moffett, who played the Doctor’s daughter opposite him in “The Doctor’s Daughter” and is actually the daughter of the fifth Doctor, Peter Davison. So the couple’s children have Doctors for their father and grandfather.
20. The 2008 episode “The Fires of Pompeii” was notable for having a future companion and a future Doctor in its cast as different characters – Karen Gillan and Capaldi.
My personal favorite is the story of the fourth Doctor’s knitted scarf. I’m sure you’ll find something that will surprise you among the 39 things.
(Image credit: BBC/Pitris/Tom Phillips/BuzzFeed)
Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website or at Facebook.
Sir Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980) is, undisputedly, one of the great filmmakers of all-time. “Hitch" is universally accepted as the “Master of Suspense" in the same way Fred Astaire is known as the movie's greatest dancer or Marilyn Monroe is the screen's greatest sex symbol.
Hitch made cameo appearances in 39 of his 52 surviving films (sadly, his second film The Mountain Eagle is lost). Hitch's cameos became his "signature" on his movies, in much the same way as an artist signs his paintings.
In his earliest films, the “Hitchcock cameo" could occur at any time in the film, but as his career went along and as he gained greater fame, he tried to make his cameos earlier in the films. He knew all the fans were preoccupied looking for the Hitchcock cameo, so he'd make them earlier to limit their distraction from the actual film. The earliest Hitchcock cameo occurs in The Birds (1963), where Hitch is seen two seconds into the film. Hitch's latest cameo occurs in Suspicion (1941), where he appears 46 minutes and 54 seconds into the film. Hitch's longest-ever cameo lasts a whopping 19 seconds, in Blackmail (1929).
Interestingly, in three Hitchcock films, Hitch makes two appearances, instead of the usual one. These three "double Hitchcock cameos" occur in:
The Lodger (1926)- (his first film, a silent)- Hitch first appears seated in a newsroom, then later as a bystander when the lodger is lynched by a crowd.
Rope (1948)- walking along the street after the main titles, then later his profile drawing is seen as a flashing neon sign advertisting "Reducto."
Redditor Thegrizzlybearzombie spotted Charlie Brown and his dog Snoopy on the streets in Traverse City, Michigan. If you look closely, you’ll see that Snoopy has a GoPro camera attached to his Sopwith Camel. Be on the lookout for these two soon in a video. I bet they have their soundtrack already picked out.
A heart attack at 32. Let’s rewind to see how this happened. This powerful anti-obesity PSA from Your Nutrition Spot gets you right where you live. Makes me glad that my parents never kept junk food or soda around when I was young, and sweets were a rare treat. I have too many unhealthy friends who weren’t as “deprived.” -via reddit
If you read about science on the internet, you’ve probably run into the embarrassing misuse of the words “poisonous” and “venomous.” And you might want to tear your hair out when someone says “evolution is just a theory.” Those are some of the science terms that laymen often use incorrectly. “Microbe” is another -one that I use a lot, because its a useful synonym, especially when you aren’t sure how to classify those little critters. Here’s one I didn’t know: "hominins."
Homo sapiens are the only remaining descendants of a once-varied group of primates called the Hominini. You’re probably used to using the term hominids to refer to humans and their ancestors, and not long ago, you would have been correct—but recently, the definition of that word has expanded to refer to all great apes and their ancestors. Instead, you should be using the word hominins to describe the group comprised of modern humans, extinct human species, and our immediate ancestors.
There are 13 such terms we should all learn to use as scientists do, in a list at mental_floss. There are also videos further explaining some of the terms.
(Image credit: Profberger)
It wasn’t all that long ago that organ grinders trained monkeys to fetch offerings from onlookers while the busker played his music. Monkeys aren’t the only animals trained to collect money! In China, these birds are happy to take your coins and deposit them in the bank -and their owners doesn’t even have to be there! the novelty of birds taking money is enough to get people to search through their pockets for change. -via Tastefully Offensive
In Australia, emus are a protected species, but they are not endangered. For a while they lost that protected status, when they threatened the grain farms of World War I veterans in Western Australia. The big birds can destroy a crop in no time, and 20,000 of them were quite a threat. In November of 1932, the military was called up to take action against the emus. Author Murray Johnson tells us how that mission went.
“On 8 November, it was reported that Major Meredith’s party had used 2,500 rounds of ammunition – twenty-five per cent of the allotted total – to destroy 200 emus,” says Johnson. “When one New South Wales state Labor politician enquired whether ‘a medal was to be struck for those taking part in this war’, his federal counterpart in Western Australia, responded that they should rightly go to the emus who ‘have won every round so far’.”
Yes, the army was no match for the flocks of flightless birds. But they pressed on, with another campaign later that month. Read about the emu’s tactical strategy and the outcome of the Great Emu War at Scientific American. -via Not Exactly Rocket Science
(Image credit: Flickr user Tony Marsh)
Is this vehicle weird, or what? It was designed by French architect Felix Aublet in 1953 for the French yarn and clothing company SOFIL.
Part of the long, illustrious tradition of eye-catching promotional vehicles (of which the most outrageous were built in France for such epic sport events as Tour De France), this marvel of engineering had bent acrylic and glass panels, which would light up in different colors at night - promoting the rainbow colors of famous SOFIL array of yarns - plus it would broadcast music by Radio Luxembourg and other stations!
But this transparent bus was far from the only outrageous vehicle SOFIL used to promote their wares. And Felix Aublet designed fantastic futuristic vehicles for other companies, too, which resembled anything from stained-glass chapels to spaceships! See a selection of these vehicles at Dark Roasted Blend.
They remind me a little of Steven Johnson’s fantastically odd designs.
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