Ghostbusters Italia forum member Guusc72 has built an exact replica of the Ghostbusters set -in his basement! The details are all there, including Guusc72 and his friends hanging out in costume. He's the one behind the desk in the lower photo. See more pictures and a video at Ghostbusters Italia. Link -via Gamma Squad
Miss Cellania's Blog Posts
The Easter Bunny is a beloved springtime character, but look deeper and you’ll realize nobody gives away that much chocolate unless they’re hiding something.
He Can’t Even Cover the Whole World!
Say what you will about Santa Claus, but at least he’s delivering presents the world over. The shiftless Easter Bunny outsources egg and candy distribution in various parts of the globe. Swiss children have to make do with a cuckoo, rendering Easter no more special than a common clock. In various other cultures, kids have to be content with an Easter stork, fox, or rooster.
He’s a German Sleeper Agent!
The sneakiest spies lie low and work themselves into the fabric of a community before striking. By that standard, the Easter Bunny may well be the most successful German spy of all time. The suspicious bunny traces his roots back to a 16th-century German character named Osterhase. When German immigrants came to North America en masse in the 18th century, they brought their buddy Osterhase with them. Sure, he’s been here for hundreds of years now, but can we really trust him?
He Might Not Be a Rabbit!
(Image source: Flickr user Allison Marchant)
Every Easter, when there are plenty of marshmallow Peeps available in all colors, several large newspapers hold contests for creative dioramas and artworks made from Peeps. The Seattle Times Peeps Contest is closed for entries, and the winners have yet to be selected, but you can see the entries online. One of the most popular themes this year is the selection of a new pope. It was a shock to the world when Pope Benedict XVI announced his retirement in February. The entire story of what happened is enshrined in Peeps.
The Peep announced he was retiring at the end of February. The moment was captured in marshmallow by 13-year-old Chloe.
Grant Snider at Incidental Comics shows us the many blocks that block our lives. The last one is a welcome distraction from the others! Link -via Laughing Squid
The United States launched the Iraq War on March 19, 2003, ten years ago today. To mark the anniversary, Reuters has posted a collection of 45 news photographs of the war and its aftermath. Warning: some of the pictures are graphic, and all are disturbing. Link
(Image credit: Eliana Aponte/Reuters)
Google announced recently that its RSS aggregator Google Reader will be retired later this year. It's just the latest in a long line of Google products offered and then pulled, some living longer than others. They didn't all die of unpopularity. Some were replaced, like Google Video when the company acquired YouTube, some were combined into other existing products, and some were popular but not profitable. Some of the products in the graveyard you've never even heard of because they were doomed from birth. There are 39 graves in the "cemetery" at Slate, and you're invited to leave a virtual flower for the ones you actually miss. Link -via the Presurfer
Forward is a strange name for a video that runs backwards. Israeli artist Messe Kopp walked down a city street doing this and that and made a weird spectacle of himself. The kicker is that he was walking backwards the entire time. -via Viral Viral Videos
Ukrainian conductor and music professor Sergey Neverov plays the Russian folk song "A Thin Rowan Tree" while his cat naps nearby. Despite being asleep (or faking it), the cat sings along. -via Daily Picks and Flicks
The custom of dressing up as wild animals and monsters dates back to pagan rites surrounding the winter solstice in Europe. These traditions continue today, centered around festivals from midwinter to Easter, evoking the hope of spring renewal.
Photographer Charles Fréger set out to capture what he calls “tribal Europe” over two winters of travel through 19 countries. The forms of the costumes that he chronicled vary between regions and even between villages. In Corlata, Romania, men dress as stags reenacting a hunt with dancers. In Sardinia, Italy, goats, deer, boars, or bears may play the sacrificial role. Throughout Austria, Krampus, the beastly counterpart to St. Nicholas, frightens naughty children.
But everywhere there is the wild man. In France, he is l’Homme Sauvage; in Germany, Wilder Mann; in Poland, Macidula is the clownish version. He dresses in animal skins or lichen or straw or tree branches. Half man and half beast, the wild man stands in for the complicated relationship that human communities, especially rural ones, have with nature.
Read more about these traditions and see a photo gallery of Fréger's photographs at National Geographic magazine. Link -via Metafilter
(Images credit: Charles Fréger)
Just who decided that we should slap our hands together to indicate that we like something?
Scholars aren't quite sure about the origins of applause. What they do know is that clapping is very old, and very common, and very tenacious -- "a remarkably stable facet of human culture." Babies do it, seemingly instinctually. The Bible makes many mentions of applause - as acclamation, and as celebration. ("And they proclaimed him king and anointed him, and they clapped their hands and said, 'Long live the king!'")
But clapping was formalized -- in Western culture, at least -- in the theater. "Plaudits" (the word comes from the Latin "to strike," and also "to explode") were the common way of ending a play. At the close of the performance, the chief actor would yell, "Valete et plaudite!" ("Goodbye and applause!") -- thus signaling to the audience, in the subtle manner preferred by centuries of thespians, that it was time to give praise. And thus turning himself into, ostensibly, one of the world's first human applause signs.
But applause itself went through many changes, as it was used for different purposes. And today we are experimenting with digital methods of approval, so we can applaud even where no one can hear the sound of two hands clapping. Read the entire story at the Atlantic. Link -via mental_floss
The funeral industry wasn't always like it is today. Rituals and practices evolve over time, and made relatively sudden changes when society changes. Collector's Weekly spoke to undertaker Caitlin Doughty, the founder of the Order of the Good Death, about how funeral practices have moved away from the personal to the industrial.
Originally, the way we handled death in America was very simple, something I would ideally like to go back to. If somebody died, the family kept the body in the home. They washed them, wrapped them in a shroud, and then carried them to the graveyard and put them directly in the ground.
Collectors Weekly: All within a short time after a person’s death?
Doughty: Yeah, two days or so after the death. But this was in very small towns with communities that could rally to make this happen. There were huge numbers of fatalities during the early years of the American Colonies. Eventually capitalism took over, and death was pulled away from the family.
The first major change was embalming, a chemical treatment of the corpse to preserve it, which is a uniquely American practice. Embalming started during the Civil War, and soon after, anybody could be embalmed, and it was more about creating a standardized product, or what they now call a “memory picture.” Especially in the growing cities, it became clear that taking care of the body yourself was hard emotional work, and people realized they could pay somebody to do it. People who used to be cabinet makers now said, “I can make coffins,” and people who were just dressmakers were like, “I can make funeral mourning clothes,” and all these things now sold as part of the funeral industry.
The services quickly became centralized, with a funeral director or mortician or undertaker, somebody who could take the body away and handle everything. Now the family didn’t have to do any of the hard work around their loved one’s death. This transition happened in the late 19th century, and spilled over into the early 20th century as well.
Read more about the traditions of the past surrounding death, and how historic events shaped the way we deal with the loss of a loved one today. Link
Jillian Pavlica is a news anchor at Fox 54 in Huntsville, Alabama. Her boyfriend Vincent Ramos enlisted the help of her co-workers to make his proposal a "breaking news story" on her teleprompter. -via Hypervocal
It's March Madness time! The tournament field for the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament is set. In offices all over, people are printing out their brackets and making their selections. But how much do you know about the schools these teams come from? Mental_floss offers a quiz that will test your knowledge. They name a school, and you decide what state that school is in. Easy, right? I didn't take the test myself, because I'm a Kentucky fan and don't even want to think about basketball right now. Let us know how you did. Link
A dogsledder, or musher, takes a sideways look at Radagast’s bunny sled from The Hobbit. Bunnies pulling a sled? Could that ever happen in real life? Well, it depends. Recreational musher Teanne Byerts shares the pros and cons of hooking up rabbits to a sled, from the mechanical adaptations needed to the biological drawbacks. Along the way, we learn a lot about dogsledding.
Unlike driving horses, you do not use reins, only voice commands. You do not say mush to start your team, (you shout “hike!”, or scream “waaaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiit, I’m not ready yeeeeeeeeeet!!!!”) Mush comes from a French word; “Marche!” to go, run. The French coureurs des bois and the voyageurs were the first Europeans in the Canadian Shield, so established many of the mushing traditions. The English speaking Canadians mangled it nicely into mush. We linguistically-impaired Americans adopted that. You say “gee” to turn right, “haw” to turn left, and “whoa” to stop. Then you converse like a mariner because your dogs are not stopping. Then you throw the sled over on its side. Or run into a tree and explain later that you were clobbered by an ent.
On-by, and ON-BY!!! (expletive deleted) are used when Radagast passes you on the trail and your dogs attempt to eat the rabbits.
Whether or not you've seen The Hobbit, or even if you're not a Tolkien fan, you'll get a kick out of this post at TheOneRing.net. Link -via Digg
We are told by those who know that homemade Cadbury Creme Eggs are even more delicious than the store bought kind. At least they have fewer unpronounceable chemical additives and you know how old they are. The best part about knowing how to make your own creme eggs is that when the stores are empty of Easter candy, you can just make another batch anytime you want! The complete recipe with pictures is at Food52. Link -via Lifehacker
(Image creditL Ashley Rodriguez)
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