A 6th grade teacher handed out this study guide to her students. Redditor Dixichick13 corresponded with the teacher and determined that it was not a true or false quiz or a "find the incorrect statements" quiz. The teacher was unaware of any errors. How many can you spot? Link
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The festival known as Up Helly Aa happens in Lerwick, Shetland, Scotland, on the last Tuesday in January, which was the 29th this year. The celebration is led by the elected Guizer Jarl, or head Viking, and his Jarl Squad, clad in different historic uniforms each year. The squad performs various ceremonial duties during the day, and at night the town's lights are turned off while they lead a procession of up to a thousand men carrying torches while thousands more watch. The public is not allowed to watch the end of the procession, in which the torches are used to ceremoniously burn a Viking galley. After the boat is burned, the guizers return to the village for parties and merrymaking. The festival began in the 1800s as rowdy street parties around Christmas evolved into more civilized rituals. A group of young men introduced the Viking theme into the celebrations around 1870. The oldest and biggest Up Helly Aa is at Lerwick, but other towns in Shetland carry on the rituals as well. There is yet no video of the 2013 fire procession on YouTube, but this report from the BBC from Tuesday gives you a good idea of what happened. Link -via the Presurfer
Funny, I saw all the Star Wars films and I don't recall Arnold Schwarzenegger being in any of them! This is a pirated copy manufactured in China, where accuracy takes a backseat to fast volume production. They may be cheap, unauthorized, and hang up in your DVD player, but they are good for a laugh.
I mean, I can understand a bad translation to Chinese, but how the hell did they come up with these English slogans? Are they the product of a chain English-Chinese-English Google translation? Why did they put these next to the Chinese text? And why are they pasting negative quotes from film reviews on the covers? The one for rom-com The Perfect Man says "The Perfect Man takes its idiotic plot and uses it for scenes of awesome stupidity." I'm sure the critic was right, but how is this honesty a selling point?
The covers' Photoshop jobs, however, are pure genius: I really want to see Star Wars with Predator's Arnold, Indy with a broadsword, and Thor in Games of Thrones. Oh, and Harry Potter in Lord of the Rings would be formidable.
My theory is that instead of attempting to translate whatever information they have, the cover artists use a lot of copy-and-paste from random movie sources that may or may not have anything to do with the movie at hand. Read more at Gizmodo. Link -via Digg
See more pictures at the original article in Spanish. Link
A simultaneous eruption of four volcanoes is taking place on the Russian peninsula of Kamchatka. Despite the fact that all four are within 110 miles of each other, geologists believe that the volcanoes do not share a common magma source, which makes it all the more remarkable.
All four of the volcanoes now erupting have shown significant activity in recent years. Most recently, Tobalchik began spewing lava on Nov. 27 of last year, creating the impressive lava flows visible in the 360 degree video taken by Airpano. Shiveluch, the northernmost of the four, prefers shooting columns of ash high into the air, which it has been doing on a regular basis during the last four years since a magma dome in its crater exploded. Besymjanny awoke with a bang in the 1950s following 1,000 years of dormancy and has been active since then, with huge clouds of ash rising on a regular basis. Finally, the southernmost of the quartet, Kisimen, has been erupting regularly since 2010, and there is concern that it could perform a repeat of the violent explosion which sheered off half of the mountain some 1,300 years ago.
The Russian photography company Airpano flew over the area, taking panoramic shots and a 360-degree video that follows a helicopter visiting all four volcanoes. Link
(Image credit: Airpano)
Every year, around 38,000 Thoroughbred horses are born. Three years later, one of them wins the Kentucky Derby. The rest, well, some race and some win races, which makes them valuable breeding stock. But eventually, they all get old and are no longer useful to those who race horses. Old Friends Farm is a retirement home where horses can be cared for for the rest of their lives. -via Buzzfeed
Artist Chris Bishop designed this marvelous set of valentines based on the characters from the HBO series Game of Thrones. It's available as a giclée print on 100% cotton rag archival paper in two sizes. Not, however, as individual valentine cards. Link -via Gamma Squad
Coco gave birth to a litter of 15 kittens. Fifteen. Here are her mothering methods guaranteed to raise happy, healthy kittens. -via Viral Viral Videos
Illustrator Sébastien Feraut (Niark1) created this poster for SYZYGY containing twenty things that happened on the internet in 2012. I see the IKEA monkey pushing the button to add drama, and there's a dead whale, and Darth Vader is moving his office supplies from Lucasfilm to Disney, but a lot of these are going over my head. And I was here the whole time! If you can help me out, leave a comment. Clues will be released beginning this weekend. Link -via Laughing Squid
Zip the border collie had five canine agility championship titles before a hit and run driver left her paraplegic. She spent two week in ICU and several months in therapy, and was fitted with all-terrain wheels to get around.
After being away from agility for 7 months, we went to a trial far from home to see how Zip would react to being at a trial but not entered. She played tug ringside and barked at her brother when he ran. That part hadn’t changed. Then one day I brought her to agility practice. It was too hot to leave her in the car so my husband put her on a mat near the field. Suddenly Zip appeared at the base of the AF. She’d crawled 60 feet from her mat; she wanted to play agility. A friend and my husband decided to put the bars down on the course and I was handed a leash attached to Zip’s wheelchair. They said, “Run her.” I had reservations but Zip was gleefully barking by this time. We ran and she did great. She now practices all the time. The Five Flags Dog Training Club in Pensacola held a Glory Run for Retired Agility Dogs on December 3, 2011. The small entry fee was donated to the “Chase Away Canine Cancer” organization.
Even though the bars are removed from the jumps, notice how Zip "jumps" with her front legs anyway. That's a good dog! Link -via Buzzfeed
Andrea's father passed away due to pancreatic cancer early last year. When she got married in the summer, her brother sang and recorded "Butterfly Kisses," and she danced to it with her grandfather, her two brothers, and her father-in-law. Cinematography by LaFrance Films. Warning: may cause tears. -via reddit
Looks pretty dangerous to me! At one time, these were chutes in a factory for sending shoes down to lower floors. Now it's part of the City Museum in St. Louis, Missouri. From the website:
Housed in the 600,000 square-foot former International Shoe Company, the museum is an eclectic mixture of children’s playground, funhouse, surrealistic pavilion, and architectural marvel made out of unique, found objects. The brainchild of internationally acclaimed artist Bob Cassilly, a classically trained sculptor and serial entrepreneur, the museum opened for visitors in 1997 to the riotous approval of young and old alike.
Cassilly and his longtime crew of 20 artisans have constructed the museum from the very stuff of the city; and, as a result, it has urban roots deeper than any other institutions’. Reaching no farther than municipal borders for its reclaimed building materials, City Museum boasts features such as old chimneys, salvaged bridges, construction cranes, miles of tile, and even two abandoned planes!
The facility is part playground and part urban exploration site. Oh yeah, those who've been there say only one of these slides is actually open to use, and it has a grill covering. And they have plenty to tell about the rest of the museum. Link
The Disney animated short Paperman is up for an Oscar this year. The technique used to produce it is a combination of hand-drawn art and computer animation, giving it the feel of a classic Disney film.
Paperman‘s seemingly seamless way of blending the personality of hand-drawn animation with CGI in the physical space of the story is the result of new in-house software called Meander, a vector-based drawing program that allows for manipulation of the line after the fact — something that Kahrs described as “just like painting on the surface of the CG.”
In practice, it successfully blends the best of both forms of animation together in way they’ve never been seen before. Depicting George and Meg as flat, drawn characters keeps them safely out of the uncanny valley that even the best CGI sometimes can’t avoid and somehow makes them seem more real; other sequences, like the multiple paper airplanes zooming through the air, would be far less convincing and far more time-consuming if rendered without the help of computer generated imagery.
The plot? Boy meets girl, of course. Link
Is there intelligent life in TV's outer space? You decide.
"Is there anyone on this ship, who, even remotely, looks like Satan?" -Kirk
Tuvok: "The phaser beam would ricochet along an unpredictable path, possibly impacting our ship in the process."
Janeway: "All right, we won't try that."
"Mr. Spock, the women in your planet are logical. That's the only planet in the galaxy that can make that claim." -Kirk
"I'm a doctor, not an escalator." -McCoy
"I must say, there's nothing like the vacuum of space for preserving a handsome corpse." -Doctor
"I'm attempting to construct a mnemonic memory circuit, using stone knives and bearskins." -Spock
"The best diplomat I know is a fully-loaded phaser bank." -Scotty
"Mr. Neelix, do you think you could possibly behave a little less like yourself?" -Tuvok
"What am I, a doctor or a moon shuttle conductor?" -McCoy
"Time travel, from my first day on the job I promised myself I'd never let myself get caught up in one of those God-forsaken paradoxes. The future is the past; the past is the future. It all gives me a headache." -Janeway
"It's difficult to work in a group when you're omnipotent." -Q
Data: "Tell me, are you using a polymer-based neuro-relay to transmit organic nerve impulses to the central processor of my positronic net?"
Borg Queen: "Do you always talk this much?"
"The weak innocents …they always seem to be located on the natural invasion routes." -Kirk
"I'm a doctor, not a bricklayer." -McCoy
These quotes reminded me of a video. Continue reading to see it.
Flipper was born with a twisted spine. She's not paralyzed, but her back end doesn't walk on the same plane as her front end. Vets at the Aspen Park Vet Hospital in Conifer, Colorado, considered putting her down, but then decided to seek the help of the the Blitz Robotic Club at Conifer High School.
Club members—some of whom love cats—developed three prototypes that acted as hind legs for the furry feline. She gets into a harness, which helps her stay erect, then with hind legs pumping Flip begins motoring around the clinic.
“This is just the neatest thing,” said Jan Gurney. “She loves kicking her back legs to help power the cat-traption around, it gives her so much mobility and in time her legs will get stronger and her spine may also loosen up to allow for her to one day get around on her own.”
The kids who build robots used the CAD program to get 3D images of how the chariot of sorts could work.
There's a "lawn dinosaur" in Redwood City, California named Dug. His family dresses him up for special occasions. Dug has his own Facebook fan page where you can see more pictures, and his own subreddit, too!
To answer your questions, Dug is made of tin, and was bought at a lawn and garden supply store in California. Link -via reddit
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