Never trust a "trust fall," especially if you don't really understand it. This illustrates a recurring theme in parenting, in that we have a hard time figuring out all the details we need to communicate when teaching a child something brand new. Sure, we know how it works, but there's so many ways to misunderstand when it's something you've never seen. -via Daily Picks and Flicks
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Every year, Garry puts together a video for the family Christmas party. This Christmas, he included Dean's music video because Dean's American girlfriend Lauren was visiting. Now, Dean didn't really have a singing group named Fancy, but he got his mates Mark, Scott, Sean, and Glenn to help him out. The audio isn't great at the beginning, but it improves when the music video starts. What you'll hear is a boy band-type love song with the goofiest lyrics ever written. But it did the job, as Lauren agreed to marry him by the end of it. Oh yeah, the song is available at iTunes. -via Viral Viral Videos
Aspiring photojournalist Todd Robertson took this picture during a KKK rally in Gainesville, Georgia, on September 5th, 1992. It came close to never being published.
Back at the newspaper office, Robertson was told his photos weren’t worth developing because the staff photographer had come back with plenty of good images from the rally. A photograph of a Klan leader was selected to be the primary shot for the Local section cover.
On his own initiative, Robertson took his film to a local one-hour photo developer and brought a stack of 4×6 prints back to the newspaper office. He was showing the photo of the young boy and the trooper to a few reporters when the managing editor walked by.
“He grabbed it up, walked directly to the photo guy and said, ‘This picture’s running in the paper,’” Robertson says.
The AP picked up the photo and it spread at least as far as Europe. It later won an Associated Press Award. Read the story of the day the photograph was taken, how it has been used since that day, and its resurgence on the internet. Link -via the Presurfer
Last week it was Oomps-Loompas; this week Smurfs. Four men painted blue and dressed as Smurfs entered a store in Pascoe Vale, a suburb of Melbourne, Australia.
A 37-year-old Pascoe Vale man was buying cigarettes at a convenience store when he was approached by a man painted blue and dressed as a character from the 1980s cartoon show, police say.
The Smurf asked for a cigarette and was offered one, but he demanded the man light the cigarette before handing it over.
The man refused and was later assaulted.
Police appealed to the public and asked the four men to come forward. Three unidentified 19-year-men and one 18-year-old turned themselves in, and will be charged with "assault-related offences." Link -via Arbroath
(Image credit: Victoria Police)
The artist, S. Anomalous, calls them "latex monocle prosthetics" but these monocles are handmade artworks. Besides the bony hand you see here, there are models featuring Cthulhu, skulls, gears, lions, mythological figures, and other motifs. The lenses can be mirrors, opaque black, or even crystal balls! No, they're not heavy, they just look heavy. See the selection at S. Anomalous Etsy shop. Link
When you see the bowling pins set up outside, your first thought is that you're going to see a cat chasing a laser right right through them. But no, Bailey is a border collie, so he (or she) bowls in the correct manner! -via Say OMG
His job is to grab attention, and he's a master at it! Nonstop (Marquese Scott) collaborated with this sign flipper to bring us a video celebrating their mad skills. -via Holy Kaw!
Michael Santos was in prison from 1987 to 2012. Imagine how much the world has changed in that time. Computers, smartphones, and the internet present a mountain of things to learn, if you hadn't been with it all along.
Technology has changed considerably during the 25 years that I served. I read extensively during my term of incarceration, but reading about technology felt a bit like reading about typing. Regardless of how much I read, I wouldn't grasp the power of technology until I started using it. Forget the power, I don't even understand the language of technology. For example, I never understood what people meant when they spoke of a "browser." In fact, I just asked my wife to define a browser, and when she described it as a program that would allow me to access the Internet, I gave her a blank stare.
"But I thought the browser was the little text box on top of the screen, where I type in what I'm looking to find on Google."
"No honey," she said. "That's the URL bar."
Actually, you should type what you're looking for into the Google search field. Which all reminds me of young people who grew up using computers making fun of grandma's slow learning curve. The huge amount of information needed to learn anything new is so much easier when you get it little by little, instead of having to confront it all once. Read more about Santos' learning curve at Gizmodo. Link -via Digg
These cats find it hard to share one bowl. Still, they are rather civil about it. Such situations often involve growling, slapping, and hissing. -via Daily Picks and Flicks
He doesn't know how thin the ice is, and he doesn't care. I don't have any information on this vehicle, but it's apparently a real all-terrain vehicle, with "terrain" including water. Pretty lightweight, with oversized tires that are basically flotation devices. -via Daily Picks and Flicks
Once again, it's time for our collaboration with the always amusing What Is It? Blog! Do you know what the object in this picture is? You can win even if you don't know!
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. Two winners: the first correct guess and the funniest (albeit ultimately wrong) guess will each win a 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 the What Is It? Blog for more pictures of the mystery object. Good luck!
Update: the mystery item is a a harness cutting machine that was made by The International Harness Manufacturing Company, of Cincinnati, Ohio. The first with the correct answer was ladybugs, who wins a t-shirt from the NeatoShop! The funniest answer was from MEM, who said. "It's a heavy-metal harpsichord; very heavy-metal." That's good for a t-shirt, too! Congratulations to both winners, and thanks to everyone who played along. See the answers to all this week's mystery items at the What Is It? blog.
Flavorwire has a list of ten movie scenes that masterfully elicit a sense of dread in the viewer, even though they're not all horror films (or eleven, if you count Cape Fear discussed in the introduction). Unless you're a youngster, you've probably seen most of them, but videos are included for your convenience. Watch at your own risk. Link
Pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope introduced us to the star Fomalhaut, which is informally called the Eye of Sauron because that's what it looks like. More images led astronomers to believe there was a planet orbiting the star, but they weren't sure because it didn't show up on infrared and didn't appear to disturb the star's photogenic ring of dust. Now we know more.
The original astronomers realized it’s possible the planet was enshrouded in dust, which would absorb the planet’s intrinsic infrared light, but still reflect enough starlight from Fomalhaut to be visible to Hubble. If it were a gas giant with the mass of Saturn or so, it would be able to hold on to a cloud of dust and yet not be bright enough to see in the infrared. They also found with follow-up observations that the orbit of the object didn’t cross the ring, so the ring’s gravitational disruption wasn’t a problem.
So where do we stand now? Last year, more observations were taken, and were just released. They clearly show the blob has moved again, and the movement is consistent with the orbit of, well, something, including a planet. But the orbit is really weird: It’s highly elliptical, taking the planet (if that’s what it is) as close to the star as 7 billion kilometers, and as far out as 45 billion km. Mind you, that puts the inner part of its orbit farther out than Neptune orbits the Sun!
But the new images raise even more questions about the possible exoplanet. Read more about this mystery of deep space at Bad Astronomy. Link
(Image credit: NASA/ESA)
If you have, say, four people discussing a war movie they've seen, three of them will mention whether it moved or frightened them, and the one veteran in the group will talk about how inaccurate it was. That's what military veterans do, because they are trained for precision and proper procedures, while most moviemakers consider themselves artists. So when I saw an article titled "10 Most Inaccurate Military Movies Ever Made," I said to myself, this had better be written by a veteran. And apparently it was.
There are many flawed Vietnam War movies, but none are quite as out of touch as John Wayne’s The Green Berets. Essentially, the film was a propaganda movie meant to counter the burgeoning anti-war movement. It was grossly misleading, both in military details and in terms of capturing the mood of the time.
The supposedly highly trained Green Beret Colonel was played by Wayne – who actually holds his rifle upside down in some scenes. The actor was 60 years old and overweight when The Green Berets was filmed. He wouldn’t have been allowed a field posting outside of the movies.
But it's not just the details that make war movies inaccurate -some take serious liberties with historical facts in order to sell tickets, or even worse, to make the home team look better. Link -via the Presurfer
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