Last night, Miss Connecticut, Erin Brady, won the Miss USA pageant. But she will not be the contestant that gets the most publicity out of the evening. If you recall the Miss Teen USA pageant of 2007 at all, it's the moment Miss Teen South Carolina, Lauren Caitlin Upton, answered her interview question. She didn't win, but she is still the most famous contestant from that pageant ever. Now it is possible that Marissa Powell, Miss Utah, will go down in history as the most memorable interviewee from the Miss USA pageant. Yes, we all know that it is difficult to collect your thoughts under pressure, but if you can make any sense out of this response, you've got the rest of us beat. -via BroBible
Miss Cellania's Blog Posts
Sure, you admire the Old Masters, but there are plenty of accomplished artists from the past 100 years -enough to fill an alphabet! Andy Tuohy designed this poster featuring 26 modern artists, representing each letter of the alphabet. Some you know; others you should look up. The poster is for sale, too. Link -via Everlasting Blort
To celebrate the milestone of a million Facebook likes, Matthew Inman asked people to post their profile pictures to his Facebook page, so he could make cartoons of them. See the top ten photos and the cartoons he created at The Oatmeal. Link -via Laughing Squid
There was once a TV commercial in which a chef was frustrated to find that the Italians did not invent spaghetti -it was supposedly the Chinese. It ended by saying at least the Italians invented ice cream. Well, that's not exactly true, either. It turns out that earliest form of ice cream was made in -you guessed it- China.
No specific person has officially been credited with inventing ice cream. Its origins date back as far as 200 B.C., when people in China created a dish of rice mixed with milk that was then frozen by being packed in snow. The Chinese King Tang of Shang is thought to have had over ninety “ice men” who mixed flour, camphor, and buffalo milk with ice. The Chinese are also credited with inventing the first “ice cream machine.” They had pots they filled with a syrupy mixture, which they then packed into a mixture of snow and salt.
But frozen dairy desserts popped up in various places over history, making it hard to pin down any one place of origin. Read about the history of ice cream at Today I Found Out. Link -via Digg
A handsome cat reacts to the sound of a tape measure retracting. There is no other information with this video, but you can almost imagine that the cat is imitating the gadget. "Hey, I can stick it out and retract, too!" And he certainly has the long tongue to show off! -via Arbroath
We now know that many dinosaurs had feathers; the question is, why? They couldn't fly, but for some reason, they developed fluff that eventually became feathers. There must have been some benefits from the plumage that eventually helped birds to fly. One of my favorite science writers, Carl Zimmer, explains how this may have happened. -via Geeks Are Sexy
In 1902-04, the magazine Vanity Fair (unrelated to the current magazine of the same name) was a precursor to the "girly magazines" that followed. One of the raciest things they could publish was women wearing pants, meaning you could actually see that they had two legs! They were called "bifurcated girls," as if they were split in two. Bifurcated girls were a regular feature of the magazine, and in 1903 it published a special issue featuring a full set of pictures of women in men's clothing (sometimes accompanied by women in skirts, outrageously showing their petticoats). See more at the Public Domain Review. Link -via Everlasting Blort
The encounter does not end as you would expect, after a lifetime of fairy tales about wolves. This was filmed in Norway. -via Tastefully Offensive
The new Superman film is guaranteed to be a marketing boon -both for the officially licensed merchandise and for the cheaper knockoffs. Some of those knockoffs are produced without the slightest bit of research into what the particular superhero being portrayed is all about. Others are repackaged comic book heroes with different names. Check out Superheroic Man, Special Man, Spader Man, and the various collections called "the Sense of Right Alliance," which here includes Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, a Power Ranger, a car, and Shrek. See a whole slew of these toys at Flavorwire. Link -via mental_floss
Redditor bluesberry's mother ordered a graduation cake. She said something to the effect of "put a cap on her head." And apparently they heard that just a little wrong. Still, the finished product is a work of art! Link
The following article is taken from the book Uncle John's Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader.
Today we know that there's no such thing as unicorns. But back in the 1500s, they were sort of a respectable version of Bigfoot. Although only a few people had ever "seen" them, it was widely believed that they existed. So when Topsell's Historie of Four Foot Beasties, the first illustrated natural history in English, was published in 1607, unicorns were included. Here are some excerpts from the original version of the book. Remember, as you read, that these descriptions were considered science, not fantasy.
ABOUT THE HORN
* "We will now relate the true history of the horn of the unicorn. The horn grows out of the forehead between the eyelids. It is neither light nor hollow, nor yet smooth like other horns, but hard as iron, rough as a file. It is wreathed about with divers spires. It is sharper than any dart, and it is straight and not crooked, and everywhere black except at the point."
* "The horn of the unicorn has a wonderful power of dissolving and expelling all venom or poison. If a unicorn puts his horn into water from which any venomous beast has drunk, the horn drives away poison, so that the unicorn can drink without harm. It is said that the horn being put on the tables of kings and set among their junkets and banquets reveals any venom if there be any such therein, by a certain sweat which comes over the horn."
* "The horn of a unicorn being beaten and boiled in wine has a wonderful effect in making the teeth white or clear. And thus much shall suffice for the medicines and virtues arising from the unicorn."
THE WILD CREATURE
* "Unicorns are very swift. They keep for the most part in the deserts and live solitary in the tops of mountains. There is nothing more horrible than the voice or braying of the unicorn, for his voice is strained above measure."
* "The unicorn fights with both the mouth and his heels, with the mouth biting like a lion's and the heels kicking like a horse's. He is a beast of untamable nature. He fears not iron nor any iron instrument."
* "What is most strange of all other is that he fights with his own kind (yea, even with females unto death, except when he burns in lust for procreation), but unto stranger-beasts, with whom he has no affinity in nature, he is more sociable and familiar, delighting in their company when they come willingly unto him, never rising against them, but proud of their dependence and retinue, keeps with them all quarters of leagues and truce."
The following is a Whodunit by Hy Conrad featuring Sherman Oliver Holmes, a mysterious crime solver and great-great-grandson of Sherlock Holmes. Can you solve the crime?
(Image credit: Flickr user Yumi Kimura)
Here's a little backstory on our hero:
No one knew where Sherman Oliver Holmes came from or how he'd gotten his money. One day, Capital City was just your run-of-the-mill metropolitan area. The next day, a short, rotund millionaire in a deerstalker cap began showing up at crime scenes, claiming to be the great-great-grandson of Sherlock Holmes and offering his expert opinion.
Sergeant Gunther Wilson of the Major Crimes Division was irritated by how often this eccentric little man with the southern drawl would appear within minutes of a grisly murder and stick his nose into official police business. What disturbed Wilson even more was the fact that this eccentric little man was nearly always right.
"The loony should be committed," Wilson had been heard to say on more than one occasion. "He always has some outlandish theory. I'd sign the commitment papers myself Đ if I didn't have a soft spot for him." But Wilson didn't have a soft spot. What he did have was a phenomenal record for solving cases, thanks in large part to his "loony" friend.
To his credit, Sherman wasn't much interested in taking credit. As far as the public was concerned, the Capital City police were simply doing a better job than ever before. So Sergeant Wilson decided to swallow his pride and befriend the exasperating, unique little gentleman who had nothing better to do than pop up like a fat rabbit and do the work of an entire detective squad.
And now, the Bus Station Bomber.
"Where have you been?" Sergeant Wilson stepped around the burned and mangled debris of what had been the rear wall of the Capital City bus terminal. "I thought you must be sick."
Gunther Wilson was secretly dependent on Sherman Holmes's habit of showing up uninvited at crime scenes. He certainly wasn't used to waiting three hours for the odd, pudgy millionaire to make an appearance.
"Sorry, old man." Sherman sniffled. "I haven't been myself. Spring allergies."
Wilson pointed to a four-man squad arranging charred bits of metal on a white sheet. "The bomb was in a locker. It went off at three P.M. There were a few injuries, but nothing serious. The mechanism was an old wind-up clock wired to two sticks of dynamite. It was triggered by the alarm mechanism hitting the '3'."
"Do you have a motive?"
"Not a clue. My guess is he did it for the thrill, like some of the sick arsonists we've dealt with lately."
It seems like a silly question, as we tend to think of spaghetti and meatballs as an Italian feast. But like many Chinese-American recipes, what we eat in the U.S. is quite different from what you'll find in the old country.
If you go to Italy, you will not find a dish called spaghetti and meatballs. And if you do, it is probably to satisfy the palate of the American tourist. So if not Italy, where does this dish come from? Meatballs in general have multiple creation stories all across the world from köttbullars in Sweden to the various köftes in Turkey. Yes, Italy has its version of meatballs called polpettes, but they differ from their American counterpart in multiple ways. They are primarily eaten as a meal itself (plain) or in soups and made with any meat from turkey to fish. Often, they are no bigger in size than golf balls; in the region of Abruzzo, they can be no bigger in size than marbles and called polpettines.
So there are meatballs in Italy. And marinara sauce. And spaghetti noodles. But combining them was a process made in America. Read about how Italians immigrants in the U.S. developed the spaghetti and meatballs we grew up on. Link
(Image credit: Flickr user Roger Ferrer Ibáñez)
Maybe a better question would be, "Are YOU a Geek Dad?" This chart is spot on, but quite age-specific. My dad was real geek, but predated most of the references. He certainly played a mean game of chess. Link -via Bits and Pieces
The Seattle Public Library lined up 2,131 books and knocked them all over to kick off their summer reading program. It took all day to get the books to fall just right.
At around 11 p.m., when the fifth try was successful, “everyone was jumping up and down, hugging and shouting,” Twito said. “Despite how tired we were at that point, everyone stayed to box up all the books, which had to be on the loading dock by midnight,” she said.
She noted that if it the fifth attempt had not been successful, there wouldn’t have been enough time to try again. “We had to be packed up and out of the building by midnight,” she said. “Everyone was so happy that we were able to break the record.”
The books used in the chain will be sold, each with a special sticker noting its use in the event. Link -via Metafilter
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