When Mr. and Mrs. Rider named their child in 1949, they didn't even think of motorcycles. He was named after a family friend, Harley Harris Bartlett. And now we can read an interview with Harley Rider.
You know, when I was a kid, it really bothered me. I wanted to be named Bill or John or anything but Harley, ’cause the only Harley at the time was a rodeo rider I heard of by the name of Harley May. And it was just, you know, it was an old fogy’s name. I didn’t want to be that.
And maybe kind of a Southern name.
As I got older, it became less onerous, so to speak. There’s still times when John Smith would be a lot easier to forget, and that would be good. But, yeah, I’ve come to live with it.
Well, I gotta ask you. Are you? ... A Harley rider?
I mean, I started riding motorcycles when I was 15 and really rode up to the mid-1990s, actually rode beyond that, but owned my own motorcycle up to the mid-’90s, but never owned a Harley Davidson.
Rider rode motorcycles for years in his job with the sheriff's department. They rode Hondas. Link -via Metafilter
Google is celebrating the 66th anniversary of the Roswell Incident with a Google Doodle game featuring an alien lost on Earth. Click on the Google logo in their search page to activate the game, or bookmark the permanent link to play anytime. That's a must for me, because I'm stuck between a chicken and a barn. Link -via Metafilter
Kai Tak Airport was the international airport in Hong Kong from 1925 until 1998. The city had little available space, so the runway was built on reclaimed land out over Kowloon Bay. As Hong Kong grew during the 20th century, tall buildings went up dangerously close to the airport, and air traffic grew exponentially. In later years, Kai Tak was ranked as the sixth most dangerous airport in the world. It has since been replaced by the new and bigger Hong Kong International Airport to the west of the city.
I flew in and out of Kai Tak airport (twice) in June of 1998, just days before the airport closed for good. No one prepared me for the terrifying landing. I went from pure excitement over being in Hong Kong to HOLY SH…. as the plane appeared to weave between skyscrapers and then land on a runway that looked to be inches from the sea on either side.
The Daily Mail has a collection of scary photographs of Kai Tak landings, taken by English teacher Daryl Scott Chapman, who lives in Hong Kong. Link -via Digg
Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website.
In the early 1960s, screenwriter William Rose, then living in the UK, conceived an idea for a comedy film about a classic chase through Scotland. He called his idea Something a Little Less Serious. He sent the outline to director Stanley Kramer.
The title was switched to Just One Damn Thing After Another and the chase idea was moved to America. Finally, a third title was settled on: It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and movie comedy history was made. It was a crazy idea -let's put every possible comedian, comic, and funny person on screen together and let them all run around together and do slapstick gags and schtick and we'll have a big hit film.
The idea of "let's put a bunch of stars together and we'll have a hit" has been attempted on many occasions before and since and, as most of us movie fans well know, it generally does not work. But somehow, under the brilliant direction of Stanley Kramer, this crazy idea worked. And with possibly the most star-studded cast in the history of motion pictures, a true comedy classic was created.
It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World is a hilarious masterpiece of quick cuts, verbal gags, aver-the-top slapstick, gigantic special effects, and in the end, lessons on greed and avarice, and also an important message on the overall importance of laughter, no matter the situation.
The plot centers around the death of Smiler Grogan (Jimmy Durante), who reveals that he has hidden $350,000 from a criminal job he'd committed 15 years previously. Grogan's car careens off a cliff in front of four cars, carrying various groups of oddballs and eccentrics, who find Grogan just before he dies. Grogan reveals his secret about the hidden loot to the 14 witnesses, who fail to agree on how to divvy up the cash and a crazy chase develops across the state in search of the dough.
The entire cast of the film is (literally) too vast to list, but the main cast members consisted of Spencer Tracy, Milton Berle, Mickey Rooney, Buddy Hackett, Dick Shawn, Sid Caesar, Ethel Merman, Edie Adams, Phil Silvers, Terry Thomas, Dorothy Provine, and Jonathan Winters (in his film debut). Add in Peter Falk (who ad-libbed much of his dialogue), Don Knotts, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, Carl Reiner, Jim Backus, and Leo Gorcey (in his first film appearance since leaving the Bowery Boys in 1956).
As if this stellar cast wasn't enough to make any fan of comedy drool, throw in cameos by Jerry Lewis, Jack Benny, Buster Keaton, and the Three Stooges.
Ever heard of North Sentinel Island? Probably not …even thought's one of the most unusual places on Earth. What makes it so odd? The people -they've been there a long time, completely cut off from the rest of the world.
MAROONED
Late on the night of August 2, 1981, a Hong Kong freighter navigating the choppy waters of the Bay of Bengal ran aground on a submerged coral reef. The ship, called the Primrose, was hopelessly stuck. But there was no danger of it sinking, so after radioing for assistance, the captain and crew settled in for a few days' wait until help arrived.
The following morning, as it became light, the sailors saw an island a few hundred yards beyond the reef. It was uninhabited, as far as anyone could tell: There were no buildings, roads, or other signs of civilization there -just a pristine, sandy beach and behind it, dense jungle. The beach must have seemed like an ideal spot to wait for a rescue, but the captain ordered the crew to remain aboard the Primrose. It was monsoon season, and he may have concerned about lowering the men into the rough sea in tiny lifeboats. Or perhaps he'd figured out just which tiny island lay beyond the reef: It was North Sentinel -the deadliest of the 200 islands in the Andaman Island chain.
SOME WELCOME
A few days later, a lookout aboard the Primrose spotted a group of dark-skinned men emerging from the jungle, making their way toward the ship. Was it the rescue party? It seemed possible …until the men came a little closer and the lookout could see that every one of them was naked.
Naked …and armed, but not with guns. Each man carried either a spear, a bow and arrows, or some other primitive weapon. The captain made another radio distress call, this one much more urgent: "Wild men! Estimate more than 50, carrying various homemade weapons, are making two or three wooden boats. Worrying they will board us at sunset."
After a tense standoff lasting a few more days, the crew of the Primrose were evacuated by helicopter to safety. They were lucky to get away: It was their misfortune to have run aground just offshore of one of the strangest islands on Earth, and probably the very last of its kind. Anthropologists believe the men who appeared on the beach that morning in 1981 are members of a hunter-gatherer tribe that has lived on the island for 65,000 years. That's 35,000 years before the last ice age, 55,000 years before the great woolly mammoths disappeared from North America, and 62,000 years before the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids at Giza. These people are believed to be the direct descendants of the first humans out of Africa.
The outside world has known about North Sentinel Island for centuries, but the islanders have been almost completely cut off from the rest of the world all that time, and they fiercely maintain their isolation to this day. No one knows what language they speak or what they call themselves -they have never allowed anyone to get close enough to find out. The outside world calls them the "Sentineli" or the "Sentinelese," after the island. It's estimated the the 28-square-mile island (slightly larger than Manhattan) is capable of supporting as many as 400 hunter-gatherers, but no one knows how many people live there.
We know beer is one of the oldest concoctions man has ever made, but it has been improved a lot over those thousands of years. Have you ever wondered what ancient beer tasted like? A collaboration between the University of Chicago and the Great Lakes Brewing Company aimed to find out. They used a 5,000-year-old recipe from a Sumerian poem to make a batch of ancient brew.
To help ensure authenticity, they even used recreations of ancient wooden tools and ceramic fermentation pots based on artifacts found in Iraq in the 1930s, malted the barley on a roof, and hired a baker in Cleveland to prepare the bappir (“beer bread”) they used as the source of their yeast. And they heated the beer during the brewing process the old fashioned way: over a manure-fueled fire.
How did it turn out? Find out at Uncle John's Bathroom Reader blog. Link
Twenty-six servo motors make this robot move like a real spider. Add a realistic 3D-printed tarantula costume shell and you get this terrifying toy.
The Robugtix T8 is an eight-legged robot that can move so much like a real spider, you’ll be tempted to smash it. But it’s expensive — don’t smash it.
Each leg of the robot contains three motors, and two more are in the abdomen just to make the movement extra realistic and creepy. The outer shell is produced in a 3D printer, but it’s really just for show. Underneath it’s just your basic eight-legged terrifying robot.
You control the spider, but you only have to tell it where to go; it calculates the necessary movies on its own. And it moves like a real spider -until it starts dancing the boogie! Want to make your own? The kit goes on sale in August. Link -via Digg
Belgian artist Adrien Noterdaem has "Simpsonized" characters from many different fictional worlds. His latest project is the characters from Game of Thrones, which he is adding to his blog Draw The Simpsons. See a gallery of the characters at Uproxx. Link
Most thieves would try to hide their loot, but it was impossible in this case. What were they thinking? Three men were arrested in Putnam County, Florida, for stealing a 9-foot-tall purple chicken.
The owner of the statue said he was getting ready for work Tuesday when he heard a commotion. He looked down the street and saw a pick up truck pulling his purple, 600-pound, aluminum chicken.
One of the men was mounted on the chicken, riding it down the road. They were identified through eyewitness accounts and video surveillance.
The chicken, which is valued at $2,300, sustained "a broken leg, broken claw and there was extensive damage to one side," according to the release.
Darrin Luke Edwards, Tyler Lee Jones, and James Joseph Smith were charged with grand theft. Link -via Arbroath
How many times must a mother breastfeed her baby in a public toilet stall before she breaks? UK poet Hollie McNish was fed up by the attitudes she encountered: that breastfeeding must be hidden, and that maybe a mother should just stay home for a year or two until her child is weaned. This shame sells a lot of formula. In this spoken word performance, McNish says what she thinks, in colorful everyday language that may be NSFW. The text of the poem is at the YouTube page. -via Daily Picks and Flicks
Tom Cox wrote a list of tips to help a cat sitter feed his half-dozen cats. There are 35 steps in all. Here is a sample:
7. Gently greet Prettyboy Tabby Cat in unthreatening girly voice, in an attempt not to hurt Prettyboy Tabby Cat’s increasingly delicate self-esteem.
8. Open sachets of Felix Meat Selection In Jelly and distribute evenly between five porcelain bowls and Free Sideless Entirely Pointless Curvy Purina One Plastic Dish.
9. Bat Overexcitable Ginger Simpleton Cat off worktop with elbow, whilst mocking Overexcitable Ginger Simpleton Cat’s habit of leaving his tongue out and needling him about childhood traumas.
10. Empty and refill Strangely Named Plastic Water Dispenser, removing soggy biscuits from plughole.
11. Forcefully remove Obnoxious Yappy Black Cat from kitchen work surface.
Read the rest at Under My Paw. Note that it is written in British English, so there is probably a perfectly normal reason why anyone would package cat food in jelly. Link -via Nag on the Lake
When one gets attention, they all want attention! From what she says, it appears that they are munching on her hair, too! These kids are from Adamah farm in Connecticut. -via Daily of the Day
It's done in the name of research, but it's also done in the name of tradition. Scientists tend to taste what they are studying. After all, Charles Darwin dined on all the species he described in his works. In the case of marine biologists, that means some exotic seafood. Peter Girguis and his colleagues ate tubeworms specimens.
"We just took off a little piece and ate it raw," said Girguis, a professor at Harvard University. "It had the texture of hot dogs with match heads ground in," he said. Living next to hydrothermal vents that spew toxic water rich in heavy metals and sulfuric acid gives the worms an odd flavor. "If it weren't for the sulfur, who knows, they might even be tasty," Girguis told LiveScience.
Why would Girguis even try a tubeworm? A long-standing marine biology mantra holds that scholars should taste their species of study ... or at least waste not, want not. "It's been a tradition to eat animals that we study," Girguis said. "I figured that if we're going to drag the poor creatures up, I might as well leave no tissue to spare."
This practice is not limited to living animals. Frozen mammoths and bison, toxic plants, million-years-old water, rocks, and insects are all known to have been sampled by scientists. Link -via Not Exactly Rocket Science
A lightning strike can happen at any time, even during a fireworks show -but it takes luck of a quick hand to capture it on camera. Redditor AJ192 took what he calls "One of the best pictures I will ever take" during the fireworks display at Rio Rancho High School in New Mexico. Link -via Laughing Squid
