Abandoned communities exist all over the world, and the reasons they are empty are quite varied. Some were abandoned because of natural disasters, others because of war, disease, or economic decline. Butugichag, Russia, was home to thousands of people in its time, but no one wants to go back.
The atrocities of the former Soviet Union’s gulags are forever enshrined in world history; Butugichag, a corrective labour camp open for a decade between 1945 and 1955, forced its prisoners to mine dangerous nuclear materials and experimented on them mercilessly. It’s estimated that up to 400,000 people perished in these horrific conditions, mostly through exposure to radiation. The Russian government still refuses to recognise Butugichag on its list of abandoned settlements, shamelessly attempting to avoid investigating the tragedies which occurred in this remote corner of eastern Russia. Today, the sparse, icy camp is barely reachable by road, its abandoned workhouses, mines and experimental facilities hidden away by a nation which wants to forget its brutal past.
Butugichag is just one of twenty fascinating stories of ghost towns from all over, which you can read at Urban Ghosts. Link
The dancers of the Phoenix Dance Theater in Leeds, England, are on fire! Well, just on fire with energy and talent, as the effects were added in afterward. Editor Ben Daure sat in front of a computer for six months putting the fire in. Which is, of course, a much better idea than setting the dancers alight. -via b3ta
Since we saw Jurassic Park in 1993, research on DNA and cloning has brought the idea of bringing back extinct species forward from fantasy to practical possibility. Cloning livestock is easier than ever. Scientists delivered a clone of the extinct Pyrenean ibex, using living cells of the last specimen years after it died. Frozen mammoth DNA holds promise, and there are other schemes to reverse-engineer DNA from thylacines and passenger pigeons. The process of bringing back extinct species is called de-extinction. Considering the scientific progress, it's only a matter of time before success. The question is: should we be doing this?
“If we’re talking about species we drove extinct, then I think we have an obligation to try to do this,” says Michael Archer, a paleontologist at the University of New South Wales who has championed de-extinction for years. Some people protest that reviving a species that no longer exists amounts to playing God. Archer scoffs at the notion. “I think we played God when we exterminated these animals.”
Other scientists who favor de-extinction argue that there will be concrete benefits. Biological diversity is a storehouse of natural invention. Most pharmaceutical drugs, for example, were not invented from scratch—they were derived from natural compounds found in wild plant species, which are also vulnerable to extinction. Some extinct animals also performed vital services in their ecosystems, which might benefit from their return. Siberia, for example, was home 12,000 years ago to mammoths and other big grazing mammals. Back then, the landscape was not moss-dominated tundra but grassy steppes. Sergey Zimov, a Russian ecologist and director of the Northeast Science Station in Cherskiy in the Republic of Sakha, has long argued that this was no coincidence: The mammoths and numerous herbivores maintained the grassland by breaking up the soil and fertilizing it with their manure. Once they were gone, moss took over and transformed the grassland into less productive tundra.
Some are leery of the idea, because if those animals went extinct because of changes in their environment, how will they ever thrive again? Others believe resources spent on de-extinction would be better aimed at preventing endangered animals from disappearing. National Geographic magazine looks at the progress we've made in de-extinction, and the ethics of the practice. Link -via The Loom
Want a cookie? Before you take one, read the sign. And then consider the possibility that the person before you may have followed the directions literally. -via Arbroath
Poor Molly is just a dog, and lacks the agility and the dexterity to jump up on the counter and raid the cookie jar for treats. Meggie, despite the expression on her face, is a good friend and willing to help out. Either that, or Meggie is just showing off. -via Daily Picks and Flicks
This video from AsapSCIENCE provides no reassurance whatsoever for guys who worry about losing their hair. However, women will tell you that a man who wears his baldness proudly can be quite sexy. This video will explain some of the genetic science behind hair loss. -via Daily of the Day
This fantasy map by Dan Meth has a lot of fictional places in it: Narnia, Never Neverland, Westeros, Dinotopia, etc. It doesn't seem to have Freedonia, Starvania, Lower Slobbovia, or Elbonia, but that would require a much larger map. However, there are other funny maps that parody fictional maps in a gallery at Flavorwire. Link
Scientists have discovered living things living in unbelievably hostile environments, from hot thermal vents to a lake buried under Antarctic ice to high-pressure deep ocean trenches. Now we have evidence of living things living in rocks under the bottom of the seas -with no access to sunlight at all.
Persisting in microscopic cracks in the basalt rocks of Earth’s oceanic crust is a complex microbial ecosystem fueled entirely by chemical reactions with rocks and seawater, rather than sunlight or the organic byproducts of light-harvesting terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems.
Such modes of life, technically known as chemosynthetic, are not unprecedented, having also been found deep in mine shafts and around seafloor hydrothermal vents. Never before, though, have they been found on so vast a scale. In pure geographical area, these oceanic crust systems may contain the largest ecosystem on Earth.
“We know that Earth’s oceanic crust accounts for 60 percent of Earth’s surface, and on average is four miles thick,” said geomicrobiologist Mark Lever of Denmark’s Aarhuis University, part of a research team that describes the new systems March 14 in Science.
If what the researchers found resembles what’s found elsewhere below Earth’s oceans, continued Lever, “the largest ecosystem on Earth, by volume, is supported by chemosynthesis.”
This ecosystem is completely separated from all other life on earth, living without oxygen. Read about how they do it at Wired Science. Link
See what makes yesterday's announcement of a new pope different from all the others before it: everyone has a camera, phone, or tablet out to record the event. From a distance, it looks like they are all holding candles, but this is 2013. From the front, the crowd didn't appear to have any lights. See a collection of 34 images from the Vatican's welcome to Pope Francis at the Peoria Journal Star's photoblog, The Eye. Link -via Blame it on the Voices
Spider-Man is a fighter, an acrobat, a breakdancer, and a martial arts master -all at the same time! The bad guys don't have a chance. Aaron Gassor is a martial arts instructor, fight choreographer, and filmmaker. -via Daily Picks and Flicks
The blogger at Harribel & Terribel posted this picture of her grandmother and friends. The photo was taken in the spring of 1930 in Estonia. These young teenagers appear to be emulating the slightly older flappers of the Roaring Twenties, and most likely looked forward to growing up glamorous. At the time, Estonia was an independent democracy. In 1934, it fell into a dictatorship, followed by occupation by the Soviets in 1940, then by Nazi Germany in 1941, and the Soviets again in 1944. You have to wonder how those events affected these young girls. Link -via reddit
Once again the date is 3/14, known affectionately as Pi Day, a holiday in which to pay homage to the ratio of a circle to its diameter. To celebrate Pi Day, Brady Haran of Numberphile produced this video featuring Matt Parker measuring a big circle to calculate pi. With pies.
There are many traditional ways to celebrate Pi Day. You can:
You Bet Your Life was a game show hosted by Groucho Marx that aired from 1950 to 1961. In 1973, Andy Marx was 21 years old and having lunch with his grandfather Groucho Marx. Also at the lunch were Marcel Marceau, Eliot Gould, and Jack Nicholson. When the phone rang, Andy answered it.
“Grandpa Groucho, there’s a man calling from the NBC warehouse in New Jersey, who says they’ve got several boxes of reels of ‘You Bet Your Life’ they’re going to destroy unless you want them.”
“Tell him to burn them for all I care,” my grandfather said, eliciting laughs from his guests. These days it was hard to tell if he was just doing his grouchy act for his invited audience or truly didn’t care.
“Grandpa, you don’t really want them doing the same thing they did to Oscar Levant’s show,” I said, referring to what had happened to all the copies of his good friend, Oscar Levant’s classic show from the ‘50s, “Information, Please,” when all of the kinescopes that existed were destoyed.
“He’s right,” Nicholson chimed in. “Groucho, that stuff is classic. Listen to your grandson. Let them send the reels to you.”
“Alright,” my grandfather said. “Maybe it’ll be fun to watch them again.”
And if the ball had been dropped by any of those people, we wouldn't have the TV show archived and available at Netflix and YouTube today. Read the rest of the story at Boing Boing. Link -via Metafilter
To most of us, the term "journeyman" means a trainee between an apprentice and a master craftsman. But in Germany, journeymen still go on traditional journeys, in which they travel the world for three years, practicing their trades in exchange for room and board. The programs for journeymen are supervised by their guilds, and there are strict rules. There are also traditions, such as getting your ear pierced with a nail before starting off. Learn more about these modern day "jacks of all trades" at Buzzfeed. Link
The sale of Kinder Eggs has been illegal in the U.S. since 1938. We Americans learned of these wonderful chocolate eggs with toys inside them from European friends, and just had to be jealous, unless we traveled abroad. But that will change very soon with the introduction of Choco Treasures!
But first, a history lesson. In 1938, the FDA passed The Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, which prohibits “non-nutritive (inedible) object inside a candy.” Furthermore, the toys in Kinder and other such surprise eggs are also only safe for kids 3 and up, which violates the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission’s requirement that all candy-encased toys be safe for children of all ages.
But Choco Treasures are different. First off, each of the three different editions of Choco Treasure has its own collection of all ages toys, from the original chocolate eggs to sports balls to even a Spider-man-inspired egg, licensed from Marvel. Second, each egg features a specially-designed capsule that separates the two halves of the chocolate so even a small child can see the there’s something on the inside.
Choco Treasures should be in major retailers before Easter. Find out more about them at FoodBeast. Link -Thanks, Dominique!
