Alexander Barrett is working on a camouflage pattern made of cats! You have to get a close look to see them.
I don’t know if anyone has ever been this stressed out about cats.
I bet there would be a market for clothing made of this -don't you? Link -via Laughing Squid
A fire started in an upstairs dishwasher at Medivet veterinary clinic in Southend, Essex, England. When the Essex Fire and Rescue Service arrived, they found a vet performing surgery on a dog. Firefighters battled the blaze and evacuated other animals, and also protected the operating room until the surgery could be completed.
A spokesman from the fire service said: "The main problem was the smoke-logged building.
"Crews assessed the situation and decided it would be safe for the operation to continue."
A high pressure fan was used to clear the building of smoke.
The fire was brought under control in a half hour, and the animals were taken to another clinic. Link -via Arbroath
(Image credit: Essex County Fire and Rescue Service)
We've seen videos labeled "human beatbox" before, but usually those are people slapping themselves around -not another guy! Still, these percussionists lay down some pretty good beats. -via Daily of the Day
How to Cut an Onion may be an unexpected subject for a TED Talk, but this informative piece by Bastyr University Culinary Curriculum Director Cynthia Lair goes beyond onions and speaks to our relationships with food. She eventually does cut an onion, using the same technique I do, except that I cut the first dimension before halving the onion, to avoid those risky horizontal cuts. -via Laughing Squid
In 1967, Addams Family creator and New Yorker cartoonist Charles Addams published a children's book in which he put his own irreverent spin on Mother Goose rhymes. See a collection of illustrations from the delightful volume at Brain Pickings. Link -via Metafilter
The following is an article from the Annals of Improbable Research.
by Wolter Seuntjens
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands
[EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a specially abridged version of the Ph.D. dissertation which the author defended (successfully!) on October 27, 2004. Dr. Seuntjens can be reached at <seuntjens@baillement.com>. The web site www.baillement.com is a lavish compendium of information about yawning.]
In science, the yawn has not received its due attention. In this investigation I provide (1) a systematic-encyclopedic overview of all available knowledge about yawning. The fields from which I derive my data are linguistics (semantics, etymology), sociology, psychology, the medical sciences (anatomy, physiology, pathology, and pharmacology), and the arts (literature, film, visual arts). Then, I (2) associate a number of these data in order to (3) test the hypothesis that yawning has an erotic side, a sexual aspect.
A Taboo, an Unsolved Riddle
The mass of data that I present in the encyclopedic overview makes one thing clear: there is no good explanation for yawning.
As regards physiology: the hypoxia and hypercapnia theories -- these long-untested theories that also figure prominently in common-sense notions -- were conclusively refuted by Robert Provine and his collaborators (Provine, Tate, and Geldmacher 1987). The now popular theory that yawning leads to wakefulness (‘arousal defense reflex,’ Askenasy 1989) is not without its problems (Regehr, Ogilvie, and Simons 1992).
In the paragraphs on pathology and pharmacology I enumerate so many different illnesses and disorders that are associated with increased yawning that for the moment it is impossible to extract a common factor. The same goes for the very many chemical substances that induce yawning (Crenshaw and Goldberg 1996: 415; Argiolas and Melis 1998: 12). What this common pharmacological factor, if there is one, constitutes, remains unclear.
In the chapter on the psychology of yawning I discuss various subthemes of which the most concrete are: contagiousness, non-verbal behavior, and conditionability. Neither of these subthemes has been completely clarified. Psychologically, too, the yawn is still very much an unsolved riddle.
In the chapter on the sociology of the yawn I note that the yawn is (quasi-)universally taboo. The reason why this is so remains shrouded in mystery: the various rationales given -- superstitious, hygienic, aesthetic, psychological -- are all implausible. The ethological rationale (bared teeth) may turn out to provide the best explanation for the taboo of yawning.
The following is an article from The Annals of Improbable Research.
(Image: University of Edinburgh)
A new way to compare the branches of science
by Kevin Krajick, New York City, New York
[EDITOR’S NOTE: This paper describes a major scientific advance. We invite you to follow the author’s clear instructions, and calculate the Name Number for your own profession, and then to submit your results (and you must name names!) here. We hope to compile a comprehensive list, and so make it possible to compare each profession against all others.]
We don’t get to choose our name, but we do get to choose our calling. Or do we? Some people’s names are spookily related to their professions. The phenomenon is called “Nominative Determinism,” a term coined by John Hoyland of New Scientist magazine. How common is Nominative Determinism within any particular profession? No one knows. But now that I have raised the question, we must find out.
I have come up with a simple measurement that we can apply to any profession. It’s called the “Name Number.” The Name Number for a particular profession is the percentage of people in that profession who have names that are related their work. I could have called it the “Name Percentage” or the “Name Ratio,” but “Name Number” is easier to remember.
This paper describes how I developed the concept, how it applies to one profession -- geology -- and how you can calculate the Name Number for any particular profession.
(Image: University of Birmingham)
A Warm-Up: Names Without Number
To prepare for the rigors of collecting names, I read scientific literature, attended meetings, perused magazines and newspapers, and talked to people at cocktail parties. In so doing, I randomly discovered many scientists whose names closely matched their fields of study.
Here are some of the fields that yielded results.
The world is full of different cheeses, each with their own history. Challenge yourself and find out how much you know about cheese in today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss. All you need to know is which country each cheese is from. I did horribly, scoring 40% by taking wild guesses. Link
Screen Junkies have done it again, by giving Inception the Honest trailer treatment. This might contain spoilers; I can't tell. -via Laughing Squid
A few people claimed to have invented foosball in the 1930s. That has to be wrong, as it was patented in Britain in 1923. However, that patent lapsed, and the game may have been invented much earlier anyway.
The world would have been a much quieter place if the game had stayed as just a children’s plaything, but it spread like a prairie fire. The first league was established in 1950 by the Belgians, and in 1976, the European Table Soccer Union was formed. Although how they called it a ‘union’ when the tables were different sizes, the figures had different shapes, none of the handles were the same design and even the balls were made of different compositions is a valid question. Not a unified item amongst them.
The game still doesn’t even have a single set of rules – or one name. You’ve got lagirt in Turkey, jouer au baby-foot in France, csocso in Hungary, cadureguel-schulchan in Israel, plain old table football in the UK, and a world encyclopedia of ridiculous names elsewhere around the globe. The American “foosball” (where a player is called a “fooser”) borrowed its name from the German version, “fußball”, from whence it arrived in the United States.
So it is possible that such a game arose in more than one place, but after it arrived in the U.S. in the early '60s, it took off like wildfire. Read what we really know about the origins of foosball at Smithsonian. Link
(Image credit: Rue des Archives/The Granger Collection, New York)
Costume, hair, and makeup test footage is necessary, but with the right music, can be super creepy. But at least we get a look at a some of the "looks" that might have been on Star Trek: The Next Generation and, fortunately, were not. I knew that Geordi's vision visor was based on those hair thingys, and now it's been proven! Doesn't Wil look awful young? -via io9
Seven-year-old Luka Apps used his Christmas money to buy the LEGO Ninjago Ultrasonic Raider set. Despite his father's warning, he put some of the minifigs in his pocket when they went out. And he lost one. So he emailed the LEGO company and asked for a replacement. Richard from LEGO replied, in part:
Luka, I told Sensei Wu that losing your Jay minifigure was purely an accident and that you would never ever ever let it happen ever again.
He told me to tell you, "Luka, your father seems like a very wise man. You must always protect your Ninjago minifigures like the dragons protect the Weapons of Spinjitzu!"
Sensei Wu also told me it was okay if I sent you a new Jay and told me it would be okay if I included something extra for you because anyone that saves their Christmas money to buy the Ultrasonic Raider must be a really big Ninjago fan.
Read Luka's letter and the entire response at ITV. Link -via @Marilyn_Res
"The Cockroach That Ate Cincinnati" is a 1974 tune by Rose and the Arrangement, written as a parody of the song "The Eggplant That Ate Chicago" by Dr. West's Medicine Show and Junk Band. Both songs should be familiar to fans of the Dr. Demento radio show. A sci-fi comedy film with the same name was released in 1996. -Thanks, Geoduck!
The dog zips through an agility course so fast that his handler can't keep up. That's a good dog! -via Buzzfeed
