Everyone has their own story, their own joys, fears, and worries. If we could see what they are carrying around, would we treat them differently? The Cleveland Clinic produced this video and presented it to the staff. It was picked up by the Everyone Matters campaign. Link -via the Presurfer
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Your chances of escaping poverty differ quite a bit by what region of the United States you live in. The map shown plots the chances of a child born into a family in the bottom fifth of income in America rising to the top fifth in income during adulthood. The data is from a study by a group of economists from Harvard and UC Berkeley.
Climbing the income ladder occurs less often in the Southeast and industrial Midwest, the data shows, with the odds notably low in Atlanta, Charlotte, Memphis, Raleigh, Indianapolis, Cincinnati and Columbus. By contrast, some of the highest rates occur in the Northeast, Great Plains and West, including in New York, Boston, Salt Lake City, Pittsburgh, Seattle and large swaths of California and Minnesota.
“Where you grow up matters,” said Nathaniel Hendren, a Harvard economist and one of the study’s authors. “There is tremendous variation across the U.S. in the extent to which kids can rise out of poverty.”
That variation does not stem simply from the fact that some areas have higher average incomes: upward mobility rates, Mr. Hendren added, often differ sharply in areas where average income is similar, like Atlanta and Seattle.
The original study found that intergenerational income mobility is "modestly correlated" with tax expenditures, but a lot of the variation is due to other factors yet to be studied. See more and larger maps at the New York Times. Link -via Metafilter
Four cats investigate an addition to their home -a stuffed bobcat! There's a dog, too, but he stays way back in the distance, just in case. -via Daily Picks and Flicks
Eleven-year-old Nada Al-Ahdal lives in Yemen. Nada was raised by an uncle, and didn't even see her parents for years until she was of an age that men were willing to pay for her hand in marriage. She ran away from her parents' home when she found out she was contracted to be married. Rather than face kidnapping charges, the uncle went to the Ministry of the Interior’s family protection department. After an investigation, the parents relinquished Nada to her uncle's care. In this video, Nada vents her feelings about what she went through, and asks for the world to consider other girls in the same situation. Link -via The Daily Dot
Here's a clever way to keep track of how old the coffee is, using two foam cups. Good idea, huh? This was seen at a nurses station in a hospital in Louisville, Kentucky. Redditor Jackytar saw it and decided to try this out at the emergency room where he works. Lo and behold, here's what happened:
More proof that nothing is so foolproof that a better fool can't find a way to mess it up. The day shift blames the night shift, and vice versa. Link
Men tend to be more generous when they have women in their families. It goes beyond a wife making decisions about giving: Danish CEOs are likely to pay their employees less money after they have a baby boy, but not after having a baby girl. Fathers with daughters tend to vote more liberally than men with sons or no children. And how many sisters one grew up with makes a difference, too. Psychologist Paul Van Lange at the Free University in Amsterdam conducted an experiment in generosity. The participants had a choice in splitting money with someone they did not know:
(a) You get $25 and your partner gets $10.
(b) You get $20 and your partner gets $30.
The first option is the selfish one; you’re claiming most of the resources for yourself. The latter option is more generous as it involves sacrificing a small amount ($5) to increase your partner’s gains by a much larger amount ($20).
The players expressed consistent preferences in each of the nine rounds they played on Professor Van Lange’s watch. The data showed that players who made the more generous choices had more siblings. The givers averaged two siblings; the others averaged one and a half siblings. More siblings means more sharing, which seems to predispose people toward giving.
And once again, gender mattered. The givers were 40 percent more likely to have sisters than the people who made more self-serving, competitive choices. (There was no difference in the number of brothers; it was the number of sisters, not siblings, that predicted greater giving.) And Professor Van Lange’s team pointed to another study showing that the more sisters a father has, the more time he spends raising his own children. After growing up with sisters, men who have opportunities to give are more likely to do so.
The exact mechanism of the difference can be debated forever, and some of the possible theories are laid out at the New York Times. Link -via Digg
(Image credit: Rachell Sumpter)
The news is out that Kate Middleton -excuse me, Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge- has been admitted to St. Mary's Hospital in London in the early stages of labor. We won't know for quite some time whether the new heir to the British throne is a boy or girl, but we can look back into the history of other royal births. Mental_floss has four stories of how it was done in the past, such as the custom of public witnesses to ensure that the royal baby indeed was born from a royal mother.
For hundreds of years, royal women gave birth in front of spectators. It was a big custom among the French royalty—poor Marie Antoinette was almost killed by the great crush of people who poured into her bedchamber at Versailles when the doctor shouted that the baby was coming. Contemporary reports claim that it was stiflingly hot, that it was impossible to move for spectators, and that some people were climbing atop the furniture for a better view. No wonder she fainted. (And no wonder the custom was abandoned soon after. Well, sort of: The royal mother still gave birth before a crowd of people—ministers, advisors, trustworthy types—just a smaller one.)
Read about other royal births, and be glad you're a commoner. Link
(Image credit: Carfax2/Surtsicna)
Update: It's a boy!
Imgur member haydenbbickerton posted an album of pictures labeled "Things my little sisters have made for their barbies." These furnishings and accessories are amazingly detailed! For example, the tiny eggs in the second picture are made out of colored paper and hot glue. The sisters are 11 and 12 years old. There are 61 pictures, all of handcrafts that show imagination, resourcefulness, and care. Link -via Nag on the Lake
The following article is from the book Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Tunes Into TV.
Back before YouTube, the best way for an average Joe (or a not-so-average Joe) to get an audience was to book some time on a local cable-access channel. Here are some classic cable-access kooks from around the country (all of whom you can still see …on YouTube).
Program: Jonathan Bell
Location: Dallas (1992-93)
Details: Public-access cable has had more than a few televangelists -from the mild to the extreme- but none were quite like Jonathan Bell, a makeup artist who dropped everything to start a ministry on public access, reaching out directly to viewers at home, all of whom he thought needed to be "saved." What was unusual about Bell was his approach: He screamed at Satan, and about everything else, constantly. Here's a typical Bell rant (delivered, like everything else, in a constant shriek): "I read my Bible five to six to seven, eight hours a day. Every time I got a chance, my Bible tape is on in the car. Actually, I don't have a car right now, my car got stolen four weeks ago, and the Dallas police hardly do nothing to help me. I can't get my insurance money, either, so right now I'm bussing it."
Program: The Junior Christian Science Bible Lesson Program
Location: Los Angeles (1985-2005)
Details: Once called "the most bizarre children's program ever conceived," this Los-Angeles-based public-access show was just like the title says -a Christian Science children's program. Without any irony or satire, the show addressed topics such as the danger of drugs and UFOs through the use of puppets that were variously described as "deformed," "frightening," and "creepy." Most of them were operated and voiced by David Liebe Hart, a self-described ventriloquist …whose lips were always moving. Amazingly, the show ran for more than twenty years (a favorite of viewers, not just children or religious types, who loved it because it was so bad). Hart went on to become a cast member of the bizarre Cartoon Network sketch show Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!
Program: Let's Paint
Location: Los Angeles (2002-08)
Details: Artist John Kilduff created and hosted this "variety" show. Dressed in a paint-splattered suit, he simultaneously jogged on a treadmill, painted pictures, blended smoothies, and chatted breathlessly with callers.
Nick Kosir, the rappin' weatherman at KMVT/KTWT in Twin Falls, Idaho, does a duet with his clone. That's pretty nice weather they have in Idaho, while the rest of us are sweating through a heat wave! -via The Chive
In 1994, the internet was still in its infancy. A fairly new software company called Netscape set up a live webcam, trained on its fish tank. It was only the second live webcam feed on the internet. In the nineteen years since, the tank has grown from 40 gallons to 600 gallons, the cameras have been upgraded, and Netscape took it offline in 2008. Within a year, Lou Montulli, the Netscape employee who originally rigged up the Fishcam, rebuilt the webcam site and brought it back online. You can enjoy watching the fish yourself, in living color during the hours that the lights are on (9AM to 7:30PM PDT). Link -via Geekologie
This picture reminds me of the game Stack the Cats. But you wouldn't get any points for the configuration, as the colors of the four cats don't match! -via Pleated Jeans
Even with modern digital tools, restoring and coloring a faded, damaged old photograph is a time-consuming process, requiring skills you can't pick up overnight. But making the past come alive in a well-restored portrait is worth the effort! Redditor thehatersalad applies his talents to a picture of redditor f2ISO100‘s grandmother in this time-lapse video. The work shown took 2.5 hours. Link
"Grandma Drummer" is the name affectionately given to the lady who comes into Coalition Drum Shop in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Now she's gone viral on the internet! Sixty-three-year-old Mary Hvisda started playing drums at age 15, and has played in bands since she was 16 years old -all the way to 1990.
“I couldn't find no other bands to play with, and then I did quit,” said Hvizda.
Soon after, Hvizda sold her last drum set, but she never really lost her love for playing.
“I still kind of like to go to the music store and play a drum set, and then that's it,” said Hvizda. “My music urge has been satisfied.”
The drum store is giving Mary a set of electronic drums, which will be delivered on Monday. After all, she's not nearly as old as most of The Rolling Stones -and they're still playing. Link -via Metafilter
Videographer Maura Cunningham gives us an update on the Irish cat named Clara who is raising a nest of ducklings along with her own kittens. The ducklings grew faster than the kittens, and Clara did not like it one bit when one of them dared to leave the nest! For the rest of the video, she was all, "Come back here! I'm not finished lecturing you!" -via I Have Seen the Whole of the Internet
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