Pop Chart Lab offers this chart of cocktails featured in your favorite stories as a fine art print. There are 49 recipes in all, as drunk by James Bond, Hunter S. Thompson, Ebenezer Scrooge, Rocky Balboa, Zaphod Beeblebrox, Jay Gatsy, and more.
Browse the whole thing in full size size at the site. Link -via Nag on the Lake
Disney has crowned Merida, the heroine of the 2012 Disney/Pixar movie Brave, as the 11th official "Disney Princess" In the process, Merida has undergone an image makeover to better fit in with the group. Her dress has been upgraded, her waist thinned, she now wears makeup, and her hair looks less wild and more, um, "expensive." Brenda Chapman, the creator and co-director of Brave, does not like the makeover one bit.
Chapman fumed. "When little girls say they like it because it's more sparkly, that's all fine and good but, subconsciously, they are soaking in the sexy 'come hither' look and the skinny aspect of the new version. It's horrible! Merida was created to break that mold — to give young girls a better, stronger role model, a more attainable role model, something of substance, not just a pretty face that waits around for romance."
Chapman, the first woman to win an Academy Award for an animated feature, said she has added her name to a petition with more than 50,000 signatures that has gone viral on the female empowerment website "A Mighty Girl," joining other mothers outraged by Disney's sexualization of her headstrong young Scottish heroine, an expert archer with a head of wild, curly red hair and a mind of her own.
Chapman had modeled the character after her 13-year-old daughter Emma, intending her as a strong independent role model for little girls. Link -via reddit
In 1968, Howard Johnsons produced a children's menu and a comic book in conjunction with the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. The comic explains the movie to Debbie and Robin, who are attending the premiere. It would have been nice if there had been a Howard Johnsons where I lived, because I couldn't make heads or tails out of the most of the movie. At the end of the comic, the children are acting like they don't want to give away the ending, but they are actually hiding the fact that they didn't understand a bit of it. Read the whole comic at Dreams of Space. Link -via Metafilter
In today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss, you'll find out how much you really recall about your favorite sitcoms of the past. Sure, you know who Mr. Belvedere was, but do you know in what town the show was set? You'll have to know that for 15 different shows to ace this quiz! I only scored 47%, but I knew all the right settings of the shows I actually watched. Link
Creative people don't let availability stand in the way of something they want. The Atlantic rounded up some great do-it-yourself projects that you may not had heard about because they are in China. See homemade submarines, helicopters, robots, cannons, and other amazing things, including a man with no arms who designed and built his own prosthetics. Shown here is Wu Yulu with his rickshaw-pulling robot. Link -via Jason Kottke
(Image credit: Reuters/Reinhard Krause)
The following is an article from The Annals of Improbable Research.
compiled by Alice Shirrell Kaswell,
Improbable Research staff
Frank Fish is a Professor of Biology at West Chester University in West Chester, Pennsylvania. He studies energetics and hydrodynamics of vertebrate swimming, with particular regard to propulsive modes and the evolution of aquatic mammals. He also likes fish.
We previously presented some of Professor Fish’s work (see “What Do Fishes Know About Fishes?” AIR 9:4) and some photographs of him in the company of several kinds of fish and other animals (see the AIR Vents column for the past several years).
Here is a further selection of Fish’s citations and cetaceans and fish and much else. The citations
are partial -- just the titles and publication years of some of Professor Fish’s studies on swimming, fish, or related subjects. For fuller details, see any good database or see Professor Fish’s web site.
1982 - Muskrats
Aerobic energetics of surface swimming in the muskrat (Ondatra zibethicus).
Function of the compressed tail of surface swimming muskrats (Ondatra zibethicus).
1983 - Muskrats
Metabolic effects of swimming velocity and water temperature in the muskrat (Ondatra zibethicus)
1984 - Muskrats, alligators
Mechanics, power output, and efficiency of the swimming muskrat (Ondatra zibethicus).
Kinematics of undulatory swimming in the American alligator.
1987 - Alligators, frogfish
Behavioral thermoregulation of small American alligators in water: Postural changes in relation to the thermal environment.
Kinematics and power output of jet propulsion by the frogfish genus Antennarius (Lophiiformes: Antennariidae).
1988 - Seals
Kinematics and estimated thrust production of swimming harp and ringed seals.
1990 - Flying fish
Wing design and scaling of flying fish with regard to flight performance.
America doesn't have many roundabouts because even if you understand how one works, you have to worry about other drivers who don't. But they are a fact of life in Britain. The ultimate roundabout is this one in Swindon that is actually a cluster of roundabouts in one intersection.
The Magic Roundabout in Swindon, England, constructed in 1972, is the most brilliant and at the same time, the most confusing roundabout ever built. The roundabout, named after the popular children's television series by the same name, is located near the County Ground and consists of five mini-roundabouts arranged in a circle. At first sight, it might appear to confuse or amuse new visitors and certainly baffle tourists but once you understand how the roundabout works you will realize how revolutionary the idea is.
Other pictures and diagrams at Amusing Planet may help you parse out what is supposed to happen. Keep in mind that driving on the left side of the road is the correct thing to do in this location. Link -via the Presurfer
(Image credit: Google Earth)
Would you sing on TV for a free tank of gas? You would if you were as good as this couple who jumped at the offer! In other news, there was something worth watching on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. -via Uproxx
Continue reading to see part two.
This bird is Nyctibius griseus, or the common Potoo. The nocturnal bird of Central and South America is a master of camouflage, but you'd never know it by looking at those crazy eyes. See more pictures of this funny-looking bird at imgur. Link -via reddit
(Image credit: Carlos Gussoni)
In nations that were under Hitler's thumb during World War II, it was often difficult to know anyone's actual allegiance. There were those who truly believed in the Nazi cause, others who knew which way the wind blew, and some who put on a Nazi face while secretly fighting for the Allied cause. In the week between Hitler's death and VE Day, these different allegiances turned on each other as Allied forces swept in. The Last Battle is the story of one fight in World War II that you won't find in history textbooks.
Here are the basic facts: on 5 May 1945—five days after Hitler’s suicide—three Sherman tanks from the 23rd Tank Battalion of the U.S. 12th Armored Division under the command of Capt. John C. ‘Jack’ Lee Jr., liberated an Austrian castle called Schloss Itter in the Tyrol, a special prison that housed various French VIPs, including the ex-prime ministers Paul Reynaud and Eduard Daladier and former commanders-in-chief Generals Maxime Weygand and Paul Gamelin, amongst several others. Yet when the units of the veteran 17th Waffen-SS Panzer Grenadier Division arrived to recapture the castle and execute the prisoners, Lee’s beleaguered and outnumbered men were joined by anti-Nazi German soldiers of the Wehrmacht, as well as some of the extremely feisty wives and girlfriends of the (needless-to-say hitherto bickering) French VIPs, and together they fought off some of the best crack troops of the Third Reich. Steven Spielberg, how did you miss this story?
You can read the story in an article at The Daily Beast, as excerpted from Stephen Harding's new book The Last Battle: When U.S. and German Soldiers Joined Forces in the Waning Hours of World War II in Europe. Link
(Image credit: Svíčková)
The premise is one that we've all discussed at one time or another: you can make anything exciting if you have the proper dramatic music and a narration by Mike Rowe. To put this trope to the test, Rowe has started a series called Mike Rowe My Life. In the first episode, Janice McMillan's video of a family reunion group photo session is judged to be exceedingly dull to anyone who wasn't there. Can Rowe make it exciting? Watch and see. Find out more about how it's done in a making-of video. -via Viral Viral Videos
Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield is leaving the ISS Monday after five months of sending us wonderful videos, photographs, and Tweets from space. His farewell musical performance is a custom version of "Space Oddity." -Thanks, Mike G!
A guy forgot two pizzas in the oven and didn't open the appliance again for two weeks. What resulted might supply penicillin for an entire small country. I can't help but believe alcohol or marijuana may have been involved. The questions raised:
1. Who puts two pizzas in an oven at once?
2. Why didn't he remove the pizzas from the oven when he turned the oven off? Lack of potholders?
3. Why does one even have an oven if you aren't going to use it any more often than once in two weeks?
Link -via Boing Boing
