The guy, that is. Yes, this is astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson. He was on the dance team at the University of Texas at Austin as a graduate student, and they won a national championship in Latin Ballroom style in 1985. This photo is part of a list called 14 Things We Can All Appreciate About Neil Degrasse Tyson at Buzzfeed. Link
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Yes, these young folks are hanging on to an electric fence. In a shocking turn of events, Josh had no insulation. As punishment for their shenanigans, they were all grounded. -via reddit
Wild animals as a group tend to avoid humans, because humans are dangerous. However, humans are also tasty and filling. Big cats occasionally develop a famous taste for human flesh, as in the case of the Leopard of Rudraprayag in India.
It’s believed the Leopard of Rudraprayag turned to man-eating after the 1918 flu pandemic that caused millions of deaths in India. So many died that the normal rites of cremation weren’t performed and the plague’s victims were left in shallow, mass graves or even unburied. Scavenging from the corpses, the leopard learned man was an easy meal.
Roaming the Uttarkhan area of Northern India for 8 years, the leopard terrified villages. In the middle of the night, his victims would wake to find the cat clawing through their thatched mud walls to drag them from their beds.
By 1926 alone, the leopard was responsible for killing 250 people. That same year, Jim Corbett shot and killed the leopard, which measured 7’10″ at its death.
Read also about the Panar Leopard, the Champawat Tiger, the Tsavo Man-Eaters, and the Man-Eaters of Njombe, all famous big cats that killed hundreds of people. Then read about the factors that cause these cats to turn to hunting humans for food, at the Art of Manliness. Link
Maybe you wouldn't buy a new fur coat, but how about a 50-year-old coat you found at a thrift store? Those animals were dead a long time before animal rights groups made wearing fur a no-no. And it's recycling, right? A vintage fur coat still in use means a new one that isn't being produced. Or maybe not: there are those who would argue that vintage furs seen as chic contribute to the demand for new furs. And how horrible are fur coats, anyway, compared to say, wearing leather?
Rachel Poliquin, the author of The Breathless Zoo: Taxidermy and the Cultures of Longing, says she’s always wondered why the fur fashion has always garnered so much more hatred than other uses of animals like eating meat or making leather clothes, bags, belts, or shoes.
“I can’t help but think about the fact that it’s a luxury item,” she says. “Why are furs considered to be so much more offensive and horrible than eating a steak? In my mind, it’s the same thing. An animal died in both cases. But one, I guess, has got a little more glamour to it. It’s got the Marilyn Monroe aspect.
“As soon as you get into talking about animals, and the appropriate ways we use animals, it’s just such a never-ending pit of questions,” Poliquin continues. “Unless you live your life without using any animal products, and you don’t wear leather shoes or a leather belt, and you don’t eat meat, you’re always a hypocrite, and there is no gray. I think a lot of people like to live in the gray zone.”
An article on furs both old and new at Collector's Weekly features four other fur experts besides Poliquin, and their stances vary. They all give us something to think about. Link
In the history of the United States, plenty of coins and monetary denominations have come and gone. Just ask anyone who's old enough to know that a Susan B. Anthony is worth the same as a Sacajawea! Each of the bygone coins has a story behind it. Have you ever heard of the twenty-cent piece?
The shortest-lived circulated coin in U.S. history, the twenty-cent piece only lasted from 1875 to 1878. Once again, this was America attempting to keep parity with Europe—France, in particular. Their twenty-franc piece was approximately the same size and material as the twenty-cent piece, and so the two could, in theory, be exchanged equally.
In reality, this was almost never done. Though francs were a popular reserve currency at the time, the average citizen didn’t have much of a need for a twenty cent coin, especially since quarters were already well-established.
Some of the coins on the list of ten lesser-known U.S. coins were never in circulation, and some are still legal -although you probably won't see them. Link
In contrast to the way these battles usually end, the moth manages to hide in the one place that will buy it enough time for a safe getaway! -via Tastelessly Offensive
Mentions of toilet paper don't appear in historical archives until the 16th century. However, cleaning one's posterior is a custom that goes back …no one knows how far. And there is documentation of the different ways they did it in different eras. According to French anthropologist and forensic medicine researcher Philippe Charlier, in ancient Greece, they sometimes used pessoi, or pieces of broken ceramic.
Some pessoi may have originated as ostraca, pieces of broken ceramic on which the Greeks of old inscribed the names of enemies. The ostraca were used to vote for some pain-in-the-well-you-know to be thrown out of town—hence, “ostracized.” The creative employment of ostraca as pessoi allowed for “literally putting faecal matter on the name of hated individuals,” Charlier and company suggest. Ostraca have been found bearing the name of Socrates, which is not surprising considering they hemlocked him up and threw away the key. (Technically, he hemlocked himself, but we could spend hours in Socratic debate about who took ultimate responsibility.)
Putting shards of a hard substance, however polished, in one's delicate places has some obvious medical risks. “The abrasive characteristics of ceramic,” the authors write, “suggest that long term use of pessoi could have resulted in local irritation, skin or mucosal damage, or complications of external haemorrhoids.”
Scientific American gets to the bottom of things in an article from their March magazine tissue, I mean, issue. Link -via Digg
(Image credit: Matt Collins)
The new movie Oz the Great and Powerful opens today in theaters nationwide. The backstory of the wizard is loosely based on the L. Frank Baum book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Baum went on to write 14 more books about Oz, because the public kept demanding more. An interesting fact I didn't know -one of his granddaughters was named after an Oz character!
Baum had a granddaughter named "Ozma," and his 11th Oz book, The Lost Princess of Oz (published 1917), was dedicated to her shortly after her birth. The story begins with the disappearance of Princess Ozma, the ruler of Oz.
Read more interesting facts about Baumm's Oz books and see artwork from all of them at Tres Sugar. Link -via Holy Kaw!
An 8-week-old puppy named Tyson in Leicester, England, found a discarded sink outside and wanted to get a good look, and got his head stuck in the drain hole! Tyson's owner, Nilu Odedra, and her daughter tried lubricating the puppy's neck with shampoo, but could not get his head out. So they loaded the puppy, sink and all, into a car and took him to Park Vet Hospital.
Vet nurse Faye Martin and colleague Ariel Korber treated Tyson. Faye, who has worked at the surgery for seven years, said: "I have never seen anything like it.
"It was really quite funny to see this tiny head sticking out of this huge sink.
"I’ve had dogs with things stuck in their mouths, but never anything like this."
Tyson was given a small sedative to relax him and within minutes vets manoeuvred his head free.
The puppy was a bit shaken by the experience, but was back to normal within a few hours. See more pictures in the Yahoo News article. Link -via Arbroath
(Image credit: Caters)
A couple of red panda cubs get into a wrestling match, which produces a lot of squeaks and squealing! Recorded at the Chausuyama zoo in Nagano, Japan. -via Daily Picks and Flicks
This is a display of cake art, but not exactly a cake. Redditor UberPrioritizer's wife, a baking and pastry teacher at Johnson & Wales University, made each fruit and vegetable from fondant and gum paste. Because it was made for display, and must last several months, the "cake" underneath is made of styrofoam forms. The title is "Eat A Rainbow Every Day." You can see it at the Mint Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina. Link
The parachute, an innovation that has saved so many lives, was not invented by an aerospace engineer. Rather, the modern backpack parachute was patented by a Russian actor in 1911. Gleb Kotelnikov felt compelled to do something after he saw a pilot die during an air show in St. Petersburg.
Kotelnikov’s innovation came with the realization that for a parachute to save lives, it had to meet two primary qualifications: it had to always be with the pilot –ideally, it would be attached to him in some way– and it had to open automatically – presumably to protect the pilot if he lost consciousness. He developed several prototypes that met these qualifications, including a parachute helmet, a parachute belt, and a parachute attached to several points of the body via an elaborate harness. Eventually he came up a working model for a stable parachute in a hard knapsack that would be attached to the pilot by a harness. He dubbed the invention the RK-1 (Russian Kotelnikov 1). The RK-1 was attached to the plane by static line that would pull the chute open once the pilot reached the proper distance from the aircraft, but it could also be opened manually by pulling a cord.
But the Russian military resisted using Kotelnikov's invention, because they thought it would encourage pilots to abandon malfunctioning planes -which would be a waste of planes! But eventually, the innovation spread all over the world. Read how it happened at Design Decoded. Link
In Russia, Yandex Maps is used like Google Maps. Marina Voinova of Perm, Russia, looked up an address and used the "street view" part of Yandex to see where she was going. That's when she saw a picture of her boyfriend standing on the street -with another woman!
- When Sasha came home, I immediately called him to computer and asked him to find that address in the map, – told the girl. – When the image loaded, Sasha’s face changed in color. I looked in his eyes, waiting for explanations.
Alexander did not deny anything and confessed. The young man explained that he cheated on Marina not because of big love [ed: to another girl] but due to his stupidity.
- I was shocked by this confession, – said Marina. – I realized that I did not want to see him again, let alone build relationship with him. At first I regretted searching for that address on Internet, but eventually realized that it was silly to blame the Web for my boyfriend’s unfaithfulness.
Yandex does not blur faces in their street view images unless the person requests it. It's a little too late for Sasha. Link -via Geekologie
Devin at According to Devin drew a series of cats to illustrate what goes on at the biggest social networking sites on the internet. See more of them at his site. Link -via Laughing Squid
1. Vex, Lies, and Literary Debate: Lillian Hellman vs. Mary McCarthy
One January night in 1980, playwright Lillian Hellman (The Children's Hour, The Little Foxes) sat up in bed while watching The Dick Cavett Show. Novelist and critic Mary McCarthy was on the program discussing books when Cavett asked her which writers she considered overrated. "Lillian Hellman," McCarthy promptly replied. "Everything ...every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the.'"
Hellman may have been 74 years old, nearly blind, and unable to walk, but she could still use the telephone. She called her attorney and ordered him to sue McCarthy— along with Cavett, the show's producer, and the station—for $2.25 million in libel. The result was a public slug-fest, with all of America's writers taking sides. Norman Mailer tried to act as a peacemaker via an article in The New York Times, but it only proved to annoy both sides. Hellman even offered to drop the suit if McCarthy publicly apologized, to which McCarthy responded, "But that would be lying."
To the surprise of everyone, including Hellman's attorneys, the New York Supreme Court refused McCarthy's request to dismiss the case on May 10, 1984. Sadly, Hellman didn't have long to enjoy her victory; she died less than two months later. McCarthy, who'd been facing financial ruin, was less than satisfied, complaining, "I didn't want her to die. I wanted her to lose in court." Since then, the case has been remembered in legal circles as raising important free speech issues. As Harper's magazine quipped, "If you can't call Lillian Hellman a liar on national TV, what's the First Amendment all about?"
2. 100 Years of Attitude: Gabriel García Márquez vs. Mario Vargas Llosa
It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Colombian Nobel-prize winning novelist Gabriel García Márquez and Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa together helped to revolutionize Spanish-language literature with their forays into magical realism. The two met in 1967 and immediately became inseparable. In 1971, Vargas Llosa wrote a book-length study of García Márquez' work. García Márquez became the godfather of Vargas Llosa's son.
Then, at a 1976 film premiere in Mexico City, García Márquez spotted his pal Vargas Llosa sitting a few rows back and went to greet him. "Mario!" he exclaimed with open arms, just before Vargas Llosa punched him in the face.
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