Life can't be full of nonstop action -can it? Even Supermen has some down time, and that time is filled with mundane things like hanging out with superhero friends or getting this driver's license renewed. Artist William Wray depicts those moments that we rarely see in the comics. The painting shown here is called "Partners in Crime." See more at Unreality. Link | Artist's site
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Simon's Cat discovers a mirror. He reacts a bit more emotionally than most real cats you've seen. It's a rather short, but satisfying, episode in our favorite cartoon cat's life. -via Tastefully Offensive
The common insect called the planthopper (Issus coeleoptratus) is a real-life steampunk bug. At the point where its back legs meet at the top, there are rows of small teeth that mesh together, ensuring that the legs move in sync.
Gears allow two machines to rotate together in opposite directions. That’s exactly what the planthopper’s trochanter bumps do. Sutton tested this by pulling on the tendons of its jumping muscles with some forceps (“It’s the Serious Edition of Operation”, he says.). Even if he only pulled one tendon, both legs would extend because the gears transmitted the motion of one trochanter into the other.
“Then, we got really lucky because we saw a few jumps where the gears wouldn’t engage perfectly,” says Sutton. When this happened, one leg was partially extended before the gears finally snagged and the planthopper’s nigh-perfect coordination was ruined.
Wait! It gets better. These gears are training wheels!
Training wheels, meaning that the gear teeth are not present in the final, molted, adult version of the bug. By then, the leg pivots are smooth, but they do move together, leading scientists to believe that the insect has its legs movements well-synched by that stage. See pictures of the gears at Not Exactly Rocket Science. Link
(Image Credit: Malcolm Burrows)
Finnish and Danish airline passengers aren't particularly superstitious, or this flight would be empty. On the contrary, Finnair flight AY666 bound for Helsinki (code HEL) is almost full.
"It has been quite a joke among the pilots," said veteran Finnair pilot Juha-Pekka Keidasto, who will fly the Airbus A320 from Copenhagen to Helsinki. "I'm not a superstitious man. It's only a coincidence for me."
The daily flight AY666 from Copenhagen to Helsinki falls on Friday the 13th twice in 2013. Friday the 13th is considered bad luck in many countries and the number 666 also has strong negative biblical associations.
The forecast for the flight is for calm skies over the Baltic. Link -via reddit
This ad from Thailand is for a mobile phone company, but that really doesn't factor into the story at all. Bring a hankie. -via Daily Picks and Flicks
The Ig Nobel Prizes are awarded each year to real scientists for real research that makes you laugh and then makes you think. There are plenty of head scratching-research projects that won last night. The categories shift as necessary every year. For example, the Safety Engineering award does not appear every year, and the awards in Biology and Astronomy were combined because the winning project would have won both. You can watch the recorded ceremony, and you can read more about the winning research with the links below. In most cases, the first link is the more readable.
MEDICINE PRIZE
Masateru Uchiyama [JAPAN], Xiangyuan Jin [CHINA, JAPAN], Qi Zhang [JAPAN], Toshihito Hirai [JAPAN], Atsushi Amano [JAPAN], Hisashi Bashuda [JAPAN] and Masanori Niimi [JAPAN, UK], for assessing the effect of listening to opera, on heart transplant patients who are mice.
REFERENCE: "Auditory stimulation of opera music induced prolongation of murine cardiac allograft survival and maintained generation of regulatory CD4+CD25+ cells," Masateru Uchiyama, Xiangyuan Jin, Qi Zhang, Toshihito Hirai, Atsushi Amano, Hisashi Bashuda and Masanori Niimi, Journal of Cardiothoracic Surgery, vol. 7, no. 26, epub. March 23, 2012.
PSYCHOLOGY PRIZE
Laurent Bègue [FRANCE], Brad Bushman [USA, UK, the NETHERLANDS, POLAND], Oulmann Zerhouni [FRANCE], Baptiste Subra [FRANCE], and Medhi Ourabah [FRANCE], for confirming, by experiment, that people who think they are drunk also think they are attractive.
REFERENCE: "'Beauty Is in the Eye of the Beer Holder': People Who Think They Are Drunk Also Think They Are Attractive," Laurent Bègue, Brad J. Bushman, Oulmann Zerhouni, Baptiste Subra, Medhi Ourabah, British Journal of Psychology, epub May 15, 2012.
JOINT PRIZE IN BIOLOGY AND ASTRONOMY
Marie Dacke [SWEDEN, AUSTRALIA], Emily Baird [SWEDEN, AUSTRALIA, GERMANY], Marcus Byrne [SOUTH AFRICA, UK], Clarke Scholtz [SOUTH AFRICA], and Eric Warrant [SWEDEN, AUSTRALIA, GERMANY], for discovering that when dung beetles get lost, they can navigate their way home by looking at the Milky Way.
REFERENCE: "Dung Beetles Use the Milky Way for Orientation," Marie Dacke, Emily Baird, Marcus Byrne, Clarke H. Scholtz, Eric J. Warrant, Current Biology, epub January 24, 2013. The authors, at Lund University, Sweden, the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa, and the University of Pretoria
SAFETY ENGINEERING PRIZE
The late Gustano Pizzo [USA], for inventing an electro-mechanical system to trap airplane hijackers — the system drops a hijacker through trap doors, seals him into a package, then drops the encapsulated hijacker through the airplane's specially-installed bomb bay doors, whence he parachutes to earth, where police, having been alerted by radio, await his arrival.
US Patent #3811643, Gustano A. Pizzo, "anti hijacking system for aircraft", May 21, 1972.
PHYSICS PRIZE
Alberto Minetti [ITALY, UK, DENMARK, SWITZERLAND], Yuri Ivanenko [ITALY, RUSSIA, FRANCE], Germana Cappellini [ITALY], Nadia Dominici [ITALY, SWITZERLAND], and Francesco Lacquaniti [ITALY], for discovering that some people would be physically capable of running across the surface of a pond — if those people and that pond were on the moon.
REFERENCE: "Humans Running in Place on Water at Simulated Reduced Gravity," Alberto E. Minetti, Yuri P. Ivanenko, Germana Cappellini, Nadia Dominici, Francesco Lacquaniti, PLoS ONE, vol. 7, no. 7, 2012, e37300.
CHEMISTRY PRIZE
Shinsuke Imai [JAPAN], Nobuaki Tsuge [JAPAN], Muneaki Tomotake [JAPAN], Yoshiaki Nagatome [JAPAN], Toshiyuki Nagata [JAPAN, GERMANY], and Hidehiko Kumgai [JAPAN], for discovering that the biochemical process by which onions make people cry is even more complicated than scientists previously realized.
REFERENCE: "Plant Biochemistry: An Onion Enzyme that Makes the Eyes Water," S. Imai, N. Tsuge, M. Tomotake, Y. Nagatome, H. Sawada, T. Nagata and H. Kumagai, Nature, vol. 419, no. 6908, October 2002, p. 685.
ARCHAEOLOGY PRIZE
Brian Crandall [USA] and Peter Stahl [CANADA, USA], for parboiling a dead shrew, and then swallowing the shrew without chewing, and then carefully examining everything excreted during subsequent days — all so they could see which bones would dissolve inside the human digestive system, and which bones would not.
REFERENCE: "Human Digestive Effects on a Micromammalian Skeleton," Peter W. Stahl and Brian D. Crandall, Journal of Archaeological Science, vol. 22, November 1995, pp. 789–97.
PEACE PRIZE
Alexander Lukashenko, president of Belarus, for making it illegal to applaud in public, AND to the Belarus State Police, for arresting a one-armed man for applauding.
PROBABILITY PRIZE
Bert Tolkamp [UK, the NETHERLANDS], Marie Haskell [UK], Fritha Langford [UK, CANADA], David Roberts [UK], and Colin Morgan [UK], for making two related discoveries: First, that the longer a cow has been lying down, the more likely that cow will soon stand up; and Second, that once a cow stands up, you cannot easily predict how soon that cow will lie down again.
REFERENCE: "Are Cows More Likely to Lie Down the Longer They Stand?" Bert J. Tolkamp, Marie J. Haskell, Fritha M. Langford, David J. Roberts, Colin A. Morgan, Applied Animal Behaviour Science, vol. 124, nos. 1-2, 2010, pp. 1–10.
PUBLIC HEALTH PRIZE
Kasian Bhanganada, Tu Chayavatana, Chumporn Pongnumkul, Anunt Tonmukayakul, Piyasakol Sakolsatayadorn, Krit Komaratal, and Henry Wilde, for the medical techniques described in their report "Surgical Management of an Epidemic of Penile Amputations in Siam" — techniques which they recommend, except in cases where the amputated penis had been partially eaten by a duck. [THAILAND]
REFERENCE: "Surgical Management of an Epidemic of Penile Amputations in Siam," by Kasian Bhanganada, Tu Chayavatana, Chumporn Pongnumkul, Anunt Tonmukayakul, Piyasakol Sakolsatayadorn, Krit Komaratal, and Henry Wilde, American Journal of Surgery, 1983, no. 146, pp. 376-382.
You can find more at the Annals of Improbable Research. Link
When an Apple programmer’s project got canceled, he didn’t despair. He just kept sneaking into the office until the program was finished.
(Image credit: Joe Ravi)
Ron Avitzur knew his project was doomed. By the time his bosses cut the cord in August 1993, his team was actually relieved. The graphing calculator program they’d been working on for new mobile devices had finally been shelved, and they could all move on.
Most of his fellow programmers were reassigned to other projects within Apple. The company offered Avitzur a job, too, but it didn’t interest him. Avitzur, then 27, had been freelancing at tech companies since he was a student at Stanford—to him, the work wasn’t worth it if it wasn’t interesting. And what interested him was finishing the graphing calculator program that had just been canceled. But his ambitions were greater than that—Avitzur wanted to make the graphing calculator work on the new PowerPC computer that Apple planned to ship in early 1994.
The young programmer knew the project had merit. Everyone he mentioned it to exclaimed, “I wish I’d had that in school!” If he could just get the program preinstalled on the new computer, teachers across the country could use the tool as an animated blackboard, providing visuals for abstract concepts. The program could simultaneously showcase the speed of the new machine and revolutionize math class. All he needed was access to Apple’s machines and some time.
Apple Power PC G4. (Image credit: Clemens PFEIFFER)
In 1993, Avitzur had nothing but time. His girlfriend lived in another city, and he’d already spent the previous 18 months working late five or six days a week, sometimes until after midnight. His Apple gig had paid well, and Avitzur lived simply. He could work for almost a year without a paycheck. Plus, Apple had lots of extra offices and computers— who would it hurt if he just kept coming in? It would be the perfect crime.
On the last day of the canceled project, Avitzur’s manager called him into her office to say goodbye. He hadn’t completed the length of his contract, but the company would pay it in full anyway.
“Just submit your final invoice for what’s left,” she told him. That’s when it clicked: If Avitzur didn’t submit the invoice, his contract stayed in the system. And if his contract stayed in the system, his ID badge would keep getting him in the front door.
So Avitzur told his boss that he’d find someone to supervise him while he completed the program. Great, his manager said. Good luck. On the first day Avitzur came to work without a job, everything was pretty much the same. He drove his 1987 Toyota Corolla from the room he rented on the edge of a nature reserve in Palo Alto and parked in the lot outside Infinite Loop, Apple’s fancy new headquarters. He swiped in, went to his old office, and resumed working on the calculator.
Buzzfeed has a gallery of 17 photographs taken between 1937 and 1943 illustrating how segregated the U.S. used to be. Blacks and whites had separate water fountains, restrooms, movie theaters, diners, overnight accommodations, and pretty much everything else. However, there are a couple of signs indicating that both "white and colored" were served. Link
(Image credit: Marion Post Wolcott/Library of Congress)
Spring Lake, fed by the springs of the San Marcos River in central Texas, once had an “Aquarena,” or submersible theater. Aquarena Springs resort operated for fifty years, beginning in 1949. It's main attraction: mermaids! Hunter Oatman-Stanford remembers the heyday of Aquarena Springs, and interviewed two of the "aquamaids" who performed there, Peggy Sparks in the 1950s, and Sue Cregg, Oatman-Stanford's great-aunt, in the 1960s.
“Before we sat down on the picnic perches, we fed the fish frozen dog food,” says Cregg. “When we weren’t in a show, part of our job was to make balls of frozen dog food. Our meal for the picnic was celery with the strings stripped out of it so we wouldn’t choke, sprinkled with this gravel-type stuff. We’d sprinkle that from a shaker like it was salt. We also bottled our own Kool-Aid in Coke bottles. In order to drink underwater, you have to blow into the bottle to force the liquid into your mouth. And we had napkins to put in our laps; it was very elegant.” During Cregg’s time, the aquamaids also had to decorate their own swimsuits, sewing on rhinestones and sequins to resemble glittering scales.
“We would do a suspension demonstration showing how we controlled where we were in the water by the amount of air we took in and let out. It was hard to get three aquamaids to be at the same place at the same time, but we did our best. Then the three clowns would come out and swim their part of the show, and go down to the stationary air hoses on the bottom of the river.”
Read all about the aquamaids of Aquarena Springs at Collectors Weekly. Link
The votes are in. With a face only a mother could love (and only then if you were a blobfish mother), the blobfish has been elected by the Ugly Animal Preservation Society (previously at Neatorama) as the world's ugliest animal. As such, the fish will now represent the society as its mascot.
"This is one of the funniest fish faces in the ocean, although you're not likely to see a blobfish since they live in very deep water off Australia. In fact, it's pretty rare for anyone to see blobfish, although they're sometimes taken in nets hauled in by Australia's deepwater fishing fleet. They really do look like a big, blobby tadpole, just a mass of pale, jelly-like flesh with puffy, loose skin, a big nose, and beady, staring eyes. But looking like a floppy water balloon is what actually helps the blobfish make a living. This guy just sort of floats above the sea floor so it doesn't have to spend a lot of energy swimming around, sort of like when you float in the water wearing a life jacket.
The blobfish beat out the axolotl, the proboscis monkey, the dung beetle, and several other hideous creatures. Link -via Metafilter
(Image credit: NOAA)
DJ Davyjones said he couldn't help but hear the Sanford and Son theme music every time the Robin Thicke song "Burred Lines" played. They just go together like peas and carrots. -via Laughing Squid
Tonight, the 23rd First Annual Ig Nobel prize Ceremony is being held at historic Sanders Theater on the campus of Harvard University, from our friends at Improbable Research. Ten laureates will be honored for research and achievements that first make people LAUGH, and then make them THINK!
Genuine Nobel laureates will physically hand the prizes to the winners. Attending the ceremony will be Dudley Herschbach (chemistry, 1986), Eric Maskin (economics, 2007), Frank Wilzcek (physics, 2004), Sheldon Glashow (physics, 1979) and Roy Glauber (physics, 2005). One of them will also be the prize in the Win-a-Date-with-a-Nobel-Laureate Contest.THEME: The theme of this year's ceremony (though not necessarily of the individual prizes) is: FORCE.The ceremony will also include:
• The premiere of "The Blonsky Device", a mini-opera inspired by the life and work (US patent #3216423, "Apparatus for Facilitating the Birth of a Child by Centrifugal Force") of 1999 Ig Nobel Prize winners George and Charlotte Blonsky. The opera stars Maria Ferrante (as Charlotte), Martin Kelly (as George), Philip Lima (as The Zookeeper) and Miles Rind (as The Patent Examiner), under the direction of maestro Henry Akona. They will be accompanied by, "The Forces of Nature", a new orchestra composed of Harvard and MIT doctors and researchers.
In a first for Neatorama, we are proud to present the ceremony to you in live streaming video. Continue reading to see the live webcast.
Update: The live webcast went great, and has been replaced by a video recording of the September 12, 2013 event.
This art print from Esty seller NutCracks features villains from Disney movies illustrated as Day of the Dead sugar skulls! You see here Maleficent, Ursula, Cruela, the Queen of Hearts, and Snow White's stepmother the Evil Queen. Each character is also available in separate prints. Link -via Daily of the Day
Psst! Wanna watch the new World Trade Center being built in two minutes?
One World Trade Center, or the Freedom Tower, stands at a symbolic 1,776 feet and is the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere. Over the course of nine years it went from groundwork construction from the final touches, and Earthcam captured it all.
The webcam company recorded the nine-year construction progress of One World Trade Center using hundreds of thousands of high-definition images. From October 2004 to September 2013, the company caught nearly every major moment including the installation of the spire back in May.
-via The Daily Dot
How can you possibly say that any recipe is "the world's best"? There is no body of experts that control such titles, but a lasagna recipe submitted to AllRecipes in 2001 by John Chandler has some impressive statistics to back the claim.
Chandler is, by day, a 43-year-old salesman and father of two, a self-proclaimed “Southern boy” who lives outside Dallas and grew up on college football and barbecue. Online, Chandler’s fans know him differently: He is the creator of the World’s Best Lasagna, an artery-clogging tower of sweet Italian sausage, ground beef and ricotta cheese that has reigned as the most popular recipe on AllRecipes.com for more than a decade. It has earned 10,423 ratings and been “pinned” to Pinterest more than 25,000 times. AllRecipes estimates that 12 million people viewed it in the past five years alone.
Given the wild popularity of AllRecipes.com — it averages 20 million visits each month, according to analytics firm SimilarWeb — it’s entirely possible that Chandler’s lasagna is the most popular recipe on the English-speaking Internet.
I checked out the recipe, and found that it's not all that different from the lasagna recipe in my circa 1974 Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook, except I don't use any eggs. But when you want to make something delicious, you can't go wrong looking for a basic recipe for lasagna from the most popular recipe database on the internet. Link -via Digg
(Image credit: Heather)
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