The United States funds scientific research that may seem useless on the surface. However, that's how science works -every new discovery adds to a body of knowledge that may one day lead to life-changing or even life-saving results.
The Golden Goose Awards recognizes those federally-funded research projects that lead to significant breakthroughs, sometimes many years later. This video gives you a closer look at three of the 2013 recipients of the Golden Goose Awards. Read more about them and their fellow honorees.
Meanwhile, the U.S. government shutdown will reduce the National Science Foundation's workforce from 2,000 to about 30. The work of scientists who are not federal employees but are supported by by the NSF will continue, but they won't receive any payments while the shutdown is in effect.
-via Metafilter
Miss Cellania's Blog Posts
Marina Shifrin quit her job producing viral videos at at Next Media Animation (the folks who make those crazy Taiwanese news animations), by posting a viral video of herself dancing along with a text explanation.
We hope she already has another job lined up, at a company that doesn't care about page views. We can admire her chutzpah and dedication to her journalism ideals, but we all know that it's hard to get someone to hire you after you've publicly criticized your previous boss. I've seen it happen too many time, and although that taboo tends to insulate bad managers from accountability, that's the way it is.
The music is "Gone" by Kanye West and contains NSFW lyrics.
Conor P. Fudge took the concept of nominative determinism a little too seriously. The 25-year-old was caught on video surveillance cameras taking ice cream, cakes, and cash from a Cold Stone Creamery outlet in Iowa City, Iowa.
The owner of the business told officers that Fudge used an unauthorized key to enter the business, according to a police complaint.
Fudge hadn’t worked at the ice cream shop since Aug. 27, according to police.
That's only been a month, Apparently it wasn't long enough to forget how good the ice cream is. Fudge has been charged with third-degree burglary. -via Time Newsfeed
(Image credit: Flickr user Cedrick Ledesma)
Emily Helck was diagnosed with breast cancer last year, and started a blog, The Real Tumors of New Jersey, to chronicle her story. She also took pictures every week, which she combined into one video to show how her appearance changed over that time.
I'm still not completely sure why I took these photos. At first it had to do with documenting the hair saga. But it wound up becoming about something else, too. The photos became hash marks scratched on the wall, marking time spent inhabiting the world of this disease. Every time I set up the tripod was another week down. Or was it another week lost?
Becoming aware of what one patient goes through, even just a little bit, seems an appropriate way to enter Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October. -via Buzzfeed
Artist Chet Phillips lis continuing to expand his pop culture poster line. We've seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and the movies of the Coen Brothers, and now we have more movie and TV favorites to enjoy, including Breaking Bad, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and A Christmas Story. All are available as art prints at Etsy. -Thanks, Chet!
Here we see Wonder Woman (played by Rileah Vanderbilt) being generally tough as nails, in both the modern world and in the mythological pantheon from which she originated. The idea of a Wonder Woman feature film has been talked about for years, with studios considering it, and deciding that it's too difficult, or won't draw enough fans. This short film by Rainfall Films gives the Amazonian the treatment the character deserves. It seems like a teaser for something more to come. Or is that just wishful thinking on my part? Read more about the project at Fan Voice. -via Daily of the Day
The Cushing Center is in the basement of the medical school at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Named after neurosurgeon Harvey Williams Cushing, the center is also known as the brain museum. Cushing began collecting and preserving brains and tumors in 1902, and kept them in his office. The huge collection was eventually sent to the basement, but in 1990, the school decided to display the brains to the public. Read more about the brains in the basement at mental_floss.
(Image credit: Flickr user Pattie Belle Hastings)
The cupcake you see here will be sold at the Eat Your Heart Out 2013 pop-up cake shop in London, England, open October 25-27. Food artists will be offering the world's most gruesome and delicious treats. These cupcakes are made by Twisted Fondant, a macabre division of Fantasy Fondant. What makes them so gruesome? The explanation may be a bit disturbing, visually, so if you are up for it, continue reading.
The Chachapoya people were a tribe that flourished until they were conquered and assimilated into the Inca culture around 1470 CE. Oner type of artifact they left behind was their purunmachus, or sarcophagi. These were built high on cliff faces so they wouldn't be looted.
A trove of these purunmachus were discovered in 1928 when an earthquake brought one down into the Utcubamba valley. More have been found since then, in several styles. It is believed that a deceased body would be placed on a cliff ledge and then the purunmachu was built around it.
There are plenty more pictures of the purunmachus at Kuriositas, but beware, there are also pictures of the centuries-old human remains found inside. -via the Presurfer
(Image credit: Flickr user Nick Leonard)
An article on scurvy opens up with the story of the Norwegian whaling station named Smeerenburg, which was abandoned every winter during the off season. When someone got the great idea to leave seven men there all winter to guard equipment, they all died by the end of February.
Scurvy is a particularly horrible way to die, as lack of vitamin C prevents the body from producing sufficient collagen. The symptoms include pain, bleeding, and the inability to move correctly as the body falls apart at the seams. Couple these awful symptoms with the fact that no one knew why it happened, and many societies did not know how to cure it, until James Lind experimented with folk remedies in 1747, including citrus fruits. Even that did not help much, as it took decades for authorities to implement Lind's recommendations.
Read a history of scurvy at Lapham's Quarterly. -via Metafilter
(Image credit: The National Archives, UK)
You are about to watch young men and women perform stunts that were once only seen in circuses. This is a music video from CheerSounds, a company that produces custom music for cheerleading squads, with video recorded at StuntFest 2013. The song is called "Decitona."
Oh, these gymnasts are impressive, but also frightening from a parent's perspective. A recent study in the Journal of Pediatrics confirmed a trend that cheerleading is the most dangerous sport for female Americans. So I feel I must say, "Don't try this at home." You have to wonder about the stunts that didn't make the cut. -via Daily Picks and Flicks
Jonathan proposed to Danielle in the most spectacular way he could imagine -by arranging for the University of Michigan Marching Band to spell out the proposal! They did it right after the Michigan vs. Illinois game in October of 2012. That was a spectacle, but when Jonathan asked Scott to edit the video, Scott went berserk, making it into a hilariously "epic" proposal video, complete with atomic bombs and the proper soundtrack. It's enough to bring a tear to your eye. Stay for the credits and the noisy cameraman at the end. -via Viral Viral Videos
(Something tells me they didn't ask Scott to edit the wedding video.)
Neatorama presents a guest post from J. Tithonus Pednaud of The Human Marvels. This story is condensed from his forthcoming book After Life: True Tales of the Wandering Dead.
Most famous for his poems Prometheus Unbound, Cenci and Adonis, Percy Bysshe Shelley is widely regarded as a pioneer of the English Romantic movement. It is a place in literary history he shares with his friends and colleagues Lord Byron, John Keats and George Gordon. All four poets died young, within only a few years of one another, but it's the circumstances surrounding the earthly remains of Percy Shelley that are most intriguing.
The fact that his wife, Mary Shelley, kept his withered heart wrapped in silk and pressed in her leather bound copy of Adonis for over 30 years does seem odd - even for the author of Frankenstein. But the truth is that the preservation of her morbid memento is actually the least remarkable part of this true tale especially when one considers the serendipity and obsession involved in securing the heart of Percy after life.
On July 8, 1822 Percy set sail from Leghorn to Lerci in his refurbished boat, The Ariel. It was actually a trip home as the Shelleys had been living in Lerci, Italy for several years. The voyage was only fifty miles across the Gulf of Spezia. However, Percy and his two crewmen were never seen alive again.
At some point, The Ariel was forced under by a squall and all aboard her were drowned. For several days no bodies were found and the story would have ended there if Percy had not met an adventurous seaman by the name of Captain Edward John Trelawny six months earlier.
Percy and Captian Trelawny had become very fast friends in a very short period of time. Trelawny's affection for Percy was so rich that he personally trolled the coast for 10 days until he heard of three bodies that washed ashore.
The bodies had washed ashore in the jurisdiction of three different governments, as Italy was not unified at this time, and so Trelawny had to negotiate with the Lucca, Florence and Pisa governments to access and identify the bodies. Paying bribes out of pocket to circumvent quarantines Trelawny discovered that, in all three locations, law dictated that all bodies washed in from the sea were to be buried immediately. Further, the bodies were to be covered in quicklime to hasten their decomposition for fear of disease.
This meant that the bodies could not be exhumed or transported for a 'proper' English burial.
The Leidenfrost effect is when a liquid (in this case, water) comes in contact with a surface so hot (above the liquid's boiling point) that instead of evaporating in hurry, the water droplet becomes surrounded by a layer of water vapor, which slows down the evaporation. This is how cooks use water droplets to see how hot a griddle is. In essence, the water droplet is hovering over the hot surface. This hovering droplet can be manipulated: for instance, when the hot surface is textured in a certain way, the drop will skitter in a predetermined direction. Even uphill!
Carmen Cheng and Matthew Guy used that principle to build a maze in which water droplets were directed along a winding path by the Leidenfrost effect. They use this maze to demonstrate the science, but it looks darn cool, too! -via Arbroath
If your gadget isn't working, your first instinct is to give it a good whack! That worked a lot better in the days of rust and shorted out wires than it does with your computerized electronics. The movies still do it, all the time! The technique is called Percussive Maintenance, or my circle referred to it as Impact Technology (we did a lot of this at radio stations). This supercut was edited by Duncan Robson with music by Joel Robson. -via Colossal