At least one time, you have to face up to the facts and move out on your own. This time, it's just life kicking you in the teeth. from the comic Amazing Super Powers. Link -via Tastefully Offensive
Miss Cellania's Blog Posts
Who still rides scooters? Guys who can do this. They are:
The Pro riders featured in this video were....
Lucky Pro Riders:
Kota Schuetz (@dakotaschuetz)
Lil Jon (@Jonjeffrey92)
Mike Montgomery (@Mikeshyphy)
And special guests Jake Clark (@jakeclarkk1) and Vincent Kudrna
In a video by Devin Supertramp. -via Daily of the Day
Ida Wood had been living in relative peace as a recluse on a New York hotel for 24 years when her sister died in 1931 and everything changed. One of her lawyers, who was unfamiliar with Ms. Wood, worked to figure out who this 93-year-old woman really was. For one thing, he discovered that despite her miserly lifestyle, she was quite wealthy.
A representative from Union Pacific revealed that the sisters owned about $175,000 worth of stock and had not cashed their dividends for a dozen years. Examining the sale of the New York Daily News, O’Brien learned that Ida had sold the paper in 1901 to the publisher of the New York Sun for more than $250,000. An old acquaintance reported that she sold all of the valuable possessions she’d acquired over the years—furniture, sculptures, tapestries, oil paintings. An officer at the Guaranty Trust Company remembered Ida coming to the bank in 1907, at the height of the financial panic, demanding the balance of her account in cash and stuffing all of it, nearly $1 million, into a netted bag. Declaring she was “tired of everything,” she checked into the Herald Square Hotel and disappeared, effectively removing herself from her own life.
As word got out, dozens of Wood's "relatives" came forward hoping to inherit her wealth, going so far as to have her declared incompetent so they could search her belongings. Yes, they found plenty, but it was only after Ida Wood finally died that the strangest part of her story came to light. And that's the story you'll find at Past Imperfect. Link
The pretzel stick is about twice the length of the hamster. Can he stuck the whole thing in his mouth? Watch and see! -via Tastefully Offensive
This is what it looks like to be eaten by a tiger, minus the screams. A safari park in Wiltshire, England, built snowmen in the tiger enclosure and hid a remote-control camera inside. Turns out the tigers love snowmen -for lunch! Don't miss the closeup shot of those immense choppers. -via Uproxx
An American pastor named John Wells Rahill went to Russia in 1917 with the YMCA because he wanted to witness the revolution. He took hundreds of photographs in Russia before being evacuated through China and Japan (where he took more pictures). His photographs were hand-colored and converted to magic lantern slides, but in the 1920s, when it became unpopular to have been anywhere near the communist revolution, the slides were hidden. Rahill's granddaughter uncovered them in 2005, and contacted Russian photography aficionado Anton Orlov, who is sharing them now.
Link to story. Link to photographs. -via mental_floss
Biologists have been relocating healthy Tasmanian devils to a new home on Maria Island, because there's a chance they may be wiped out in their native home of Tasmania. The culprit is two very frightening words: contagious cancer.
Biologists first encountered the cancer in the late 1990s. The tumors grew on the devils’ faces or inside their mouths, and within six months the animals were dead. The first cases appeared in eastern Tasmania, and with each passing year the cancer’s range expanded westward.
When scientists examined the cells in the tumors, they got a baffling surprise. The DNA from each tumor did not match the Tasmanian devil on which it grew. Instead, it matched the tumors on other devils. That meant that the cancer was contagious, spreading from one animal to another.
There are only a few reports of humans developing cancer from other people’s tumors hidden in transplanted skin or other organs. Only one other example of contagious cancer is known from the natural world, a tumor in dogs.
It is thought that the cancer spreads when the marsupials bite each other's faces, transferring the cancer cells into the new host's bloodstream. And this particular cancer is still evolving, showing evidence of thousands of mutations. They don't know which one caused it to become a contagious cancer, but somewhere along the line, the malignant cells learned to bypass the devil's immune system. Carl Zimmer tells us more about these devastating genetic developments at the New York Times. Link -via The Loom
(Image credit: Flickr user Arthur Chapman)
Previously: Tasmanian Devils Face Extinction
A fairly new redditor shared some images her father created about twenty years ago that she recently came across. They are funny, some are even punny, and look like a lot of fun to create! It turns out her dad is actor and voiceover artist Dan Gilvezan, known as the voice of Spider-Man, which a quick search confirmed. There's no Photoshop or computer imagery involved (except for the hearts on the snake picture); the scenes were painstakingly created from toys and other household objects. Link
(Images credit Dan Gilvezan)
Whoa! This animation makes everything so clear, in a way that would be so difficult to explain in words. I watched it over and over, even though it was obviously worth sharing after only one go-round. Not that I ever thought much about keys before, except to not lock them in the car, but I feel so much smarter now! Link
Here it is, our collaboration with the always amusing What Is It? Blog! Tell us what this object is, if you know. If you don't, make a wild guess!
Place your guess in the comment section below. One guess per comment, please, though you can enter as many as you'd like. Post no URLs or weblinks, as doing so will forfeit your entry. We'll have two winners: the first correct guess and the funniest (albeit ultimately wrong) guess will win T-shirt from the NeatoShop.
Please write your T-shirt selection alongside your guess. If you don't include a selection, you forfeit the prize, okay? May we suggest the Science T-Shirt, Funny T-Shirt and Artist-Designed T-Shirts?
Check out an additional picture at the What Is It? Blog. Have fun and good luck!
Update: the picture is of a a lantern shield, it was in use during the Italian Renaissance (15th and 16th century Italy). Its defining feature is a small circular shield with a hook on the back from which to hang a lantern, its light shining through the hole was intended to blind the opponent at night or in duels fought at dawn. The first one with the correct answer was Berhard, who wins a t-shirt for his efforts! The funniest answer of the week came from Blow and Dry LLC, who said, "It is a blame deflector, used by both houses of Congress, and by both political parties. The example shown is for a leftie." That's certainly worth a t-shirt! Congratulations to both winners, and thanks to everyone who played this week. See the answers to all the mystery items of the week at the What Is It? blog.
Cats love the bathroom. They will follow you in because when you're sitting there, you have nothing better to do than pet the cat. They also like to sit in sinks. It's kind of strange and unnerving how they watch everything you do in the loo. That observation has paid off well for Bianca, who knows what a towel is for. -via Arbroath
Children love to play with each other -even when one of those children is a fennec fox! There's not much information on this video, labeled generically in Arabic, but the girls and the fox sure are having a good time. I kept waiting for mama fox to show up, but she may have decided there is no real danger. -via Viral Viral Videos
This jellyfish has a better light show than the Disco Clam! The Monterey Bay Aquarium tells us a little about the lobed comb jelly:
Comb jellies are beautiful, oval-shaped animals with eight rows of tiny comblike plates that they beat to move themselves through the water. As they swim, the comb rows diffract light to produce a shimmering, rainbow effect. Voracious predators on other jellies, some can expand their stomachs to hold prey nearly half their own size.
Yep, disco cannibals. Which would make a great movie title or band name. Link -via the Presurfer
"The movie was better" is what you often hear about a film that was later turned into a TV series. But sometimes that's just not so -usually because a continuing TV series gives us more time to spend with characters and get to know them better. The first example you think of is, of course, M*A*S*H, but there are plenty of others. Looking through the list at the A.V. Club, there are a few TV shows that I'd forgotten were actually movies first. Many of these will be completely unfamiliar to those under a certain age, like Peyton Place.
Grace Metalious’ 1956 novel Peyton Place spawned a hit movie, a book sequel, a movie sequel, and controversy across the country from those who found Metalious’ frank description of small-town vice—from child sexual abuse to abortion to rampant adultery—a bit too spicy for the Eisenhower era. By the time Peyton Place became a prime-time soap in 1964, the title alone had entered the pop-culture lexicon as shorthand for “shocking.” And while the TV series was relatively tame—keeping the routine adultery but losing the more extreme perversion—it had an intense, potboiler quality that makes it compelling even now. (It helps that the show features a young Ryan O’Neal and Mia Farrow, as teenage lovers torn apart by parental pressure and a chain of circumstance.) Peyton Place aired multiple times a week and never repeated, so by the time it ended its run in 1969, 514 half-hour episodes had been completed. The show looks like a 1964 TV series—all backlot-y and Main Street idyllic—except that the characters are all sleeping around and trying to kill each other. It’s like the dark side of Mayberry.
The rest of the list is a similar trip down memory lane. Link -via mental_floss
Just in case you want to carry that funeral home scent around with you all day, there's a cologne for that. I can't imagine that it smells like anything other than carnations, but even so it would remind one of a funeral home. That's just one of the The 16 Strangest Perfumes & Colognes in the World, which include various foods, bodily secretions, fictional characters, and other scents that you'd normally want to wash off instead of put on. Link
(Image credit: Flickr user jaspoid one)
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