Is it the fact that Christmas decorations should not sing, or does this cat have something against Bobby McFerrin? -via Buzzfeed
Miss Cellania's Blog Posts
Bucks Burnett has a lot of eight-track tapes -enough to stock the world’s first eight-track museum! That one is on Texas; now Burnett is opening a second eight-track museum in Roxbury, New York. Burnett sat down for an interview about his retro passion for Stereo 8 tapes and his museums.
Well, they couldn’t be more different. The Dallas location is considered the mothership. That’s where I have the master collection of, say, 3,000 of the best eight-tracks ever made, plus 5 or 10 of the worst. The Roxbury location is more about the hardware. In the Roxbury museum, we’ve constructed a physical walk-through timeline of most major formats throughout the last 120 years or so, from the wax cylinder of the 1870s on up through the iPod. They’re all in perfect working order, so we can demonstrate how a wax cylinder, 78 player, eight-track, or reel-to-reel sounds. We provide that as a sort of public service to really give people a visual and audio education of what music has sounded like throughout the decades.
Burnett also explains why the rarest eight-track he has is so rare, and lots more you didn't know about the history of recorded music, art Collector's Weekly. There's also a bonus video tour of the museum. Link
If you've been around Neatorama for some time, you probably know knitters can be hardcore. Some wear their pride on their skin, with tattoos that speak of their passion. The Knitting Needle and the Damage Done has ten examples of yarncraft tattoos. Link -via Everlasting Blort
The folks in the chemistry lab at Avans University of Applied Sciences have the Christmas spirit! Not only appropriate, but a fine example of making do with what you have. Link
A lioness named Pasha in Zimbabwe has given birth to a record litter of eight cubs! Pasha lives at the Lion and Cheetah Park near Harare. Lions normally give birth to two cubs at a time.
Dr Hillary Madzikanda, the Zimbabwe National Parks and Wildlife Management Authority's head of scientific services gushed: “This has never happened in the history of lions, the world over. It is actually a world record.”
The previous known highest number of cubs in one litter was recorded in China only in July this year when a lioness gave birth to six cubs.
Dr Madzikanda explained: “Normally, you get two cubs per litter and getting four is even very lucky. This one is a record. It is an achievement for this lioness.
“Surprisingly, the lioness was on a contraceptive pill.”
The cubs appear to be gaining strength, and are being fed bottles of formula. Link -via Arbroath
(Image credit: Philimon Bulawayo)
He's so festive, he's going to get himself arrested! Rhett & Link are singing the praises of sweatshirts and sweatpants for Christmas -and other holidays! -via Daily of the Day
This scene is always my favorite of The Nutcracker Ballet. In the version our regional ballet does, Mother Ginger is a man atop a wooden scaffolding that gets rolled out on stage. In this version, the lemon drop dancers underneath are so tiny that such shenanigans aren't necessary. Keep your eye on little Isabella, who is so full of the joy of dancing that she dumps the practiced routine and steals the entire number!
Lee Hardcastle is back with an ultra-violent claymation encounter between a friendly suburban father and a horde of extraterrestrials. Contains NSFW language. -via b3ta
Illustrator Chay Hawes created these images of sixteen well-known scientists from history. How many can you name? See a larger version at his website. Chay will post the answers later, so you can guess without the temptation to peek. Link
A team of biologists led by Professor Anna Nekaris of Oxford Brookes University in the UK, and Rachel Munds from the University of Missouri in Columbia, studied slow lorises in Borneo and the Philippines and discovered what they thought was one species are actually four different ones, all with different facial markings.
Originally there was thought to be just a single species, called N. menagensis.
Two of these new species, N. bancanus and N. borneanus, were previously considered subspecies of N. menagensis.
While, N. kayan, is new to science.
"In Borneo in particular, from where three of the new species hail, this will mean that three new lorises will be added as threatened to some degree on the IUCN Red List of threatened species," says Prof Nekaris.
"With more than 40% of the world's primates already threatened with extinction, this brings the toll even higher."
Outside of Borneo and the Philippines, four other slow loris species are known, living across south and southeast Asia.
Read more about lorises at the BBC. Link -via Fark
(Image credit: Shamma Esoof/Oxford Brookes University)
Some people come by a pop culture costume honestly. Redditor MissAshley214 posted a photo of her husband's grandmother, who doesn't need a lot of special effects to portray the cartoon character Maxine. Link
We've been given the green light to tell you about the origin of traffic signals. Go ahead and cruise through the text, and we'll let you know when to stop.
SIGN O' THE TIMES
We're still stumped on that whole chicken versus egg question, but there's one thing we do know for sure -traffic congestion predates the automobile. Long before the invention of the internal combustion engine, horses and people were already having enough trouble yielding to each other at intersections that, in 1868, a British railroad engineer designed the first traffic signal to help them out. Oddly, the contraption only featured two settings: "stop" and "caution," indicated by a bar held horizontally or lowered to a 45-degree angle.
At night, red and green lights were used to make the bar visible, meaning that, in this case, "green" meant "slow down." A proclamation issued by London's police commissioner in 1868 explained the system as well as the then-novel concept of pedestrian right-of-way, and for the first time, cities had a way of keeping people from constantly running into each other.
CONTROL TWEAKS
The concept of a box with bar sticking out each side like arms was modeled on the naval semaphore system, a way of communicating between ships where a sailor would hold certain flags at certain angles to create messages. As overly complicated on the street as it was at sea, it soon fell out of favor, replaced by an electrical upgrade. The first light-based traffic signals were probably those installed in Salt Lake City, Utah, by police officer Lester Wire in 1912. Featuring a slanted roof to shed rain and snow, Wire's signal boxes contained dye-colored lights that shone through coverless circular openings and were powered by the same wires that ran electric trolleys. Like the earlier signals, Wire's lights only had two settings, in this case "stop" and "go," and were manually operated on-site by a police officer.
A similar system was installed (and patented) in Cleveland in 1914, but with a significant safety improvement. Unlike their western counterparts, the Cleveland lights were all connected back to the same control station and wired so that it was impossible to accidentally tell both directions to "go" at once (an important development, no doubt).
Amazingly, the first three-setting lights didn't come along until the 1920s. Based on railroad signs being used since 1899, the three-light signal first appeared in Detroit and New York City between 1920 and 1922. Not surprisingly, those heavily-trafficked cities were also on the forefront of an effort to streamline signal controls (and thus improve the flow of traffic in general) by wiring several different intersections back into a single control tower -innovations that were quickly mimicked the world over.
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The article above was reprinted with permission from mental_floss' book In the Beginning. From Big Hair to the Big Bang, here's a Mouthwatering Guide to the Origins of Everything by our friends at mental_floss. Did you know that paper clips started out as Nazi-fighting warriors? Or that cruise control was invented by a blind genius? Read it all in the book!
Sorry there's no critique or breakdown of the supercut from Slackstory, but you see, there's just no time. -via The Daily What
If you are planning a holiday party or just want to add a little extra decoration to a room, then these wreath chandeliers are a great way to add to the festivities of the season. They are simple to make and would look great with some flameless candles added at night.
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