English Heritage has some tips for celebrating Christmas in the Tudor and Victorian styles, if you want to be more traditional than everyone around you. For example, a Tudor-style Christmas would start with putting one person in charge of Christmas and all its parties.

If you want your celebrations to go with a bang, appoint a 'Lord of Misrule'. These were usually minor members of the household appointed to run the festivities. Henry VII is recorded as having both a 'Lord of Misrule' and an 'Abbot of Unreason' one year!

During Victorian times, families would play Snapdragon.

You'll need nerves of steel (and possibly a fire extinguisher) if you want to play any Victorian Christmas games. 'Snapdragon' involved making a big pile of dried fruit, covering it in brandy then setting it alight. Then in the dark, the aim was for everyone to pick up a piece of fruit before the fire went out. Let's hope nobody played it with long sleeves!

There's more, including links to some very old recipes and modern events, at English Heritage. Link -via Nag on the Lake

Plenty of books have alternate titles. Sometimes they are working titles that got changed just before publication. Sometimes they are known in other countries by other names. And sometimes they get retitled when they are reissued. Today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss will test how well you can match famous books to their alternate titles. Good luck! Link

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Peter the elephant likes to play. Maybe he should take some lessons. -via Arbroath

The following is an article from the Annals of Improbable Research.

by Matan Shelomi¹, Andrew Richards¹, Ivana Li¹, and Yukinari Okido²

With the phylogenetic and evolutionary relationships of the kingdoms Animalia, Plantae, and Fungi mostly out of the way, attention is now turning towards the Monstrasinu, commonly known as “Pocket Monsters” or “Pokémon” for short. Starting from the 151 original “species” described by Japanese scientist Satoshi Tajiri in a 1996 monograph, Pokémon science today continues to be a rewarding field for taxonomists. Every three to four years, several new species are discovered and described almost simultaneously. A total of 646 Pokémon have been described, most of them in Japan.

This paper represents the first attempt to create a quantitative phylogeny of the Pokémon, using the underlying assumption that Pokémon evolved via natural selection independently from the animals and plants more familiar to Western zoologists. The goal was to apply modern evolutionary theory and techniques to a field previously limited to pre- Darwinian methods of inquiry.

The Need for a Taxonomy
Conservationists have highlighted the importance of documenting extant Pokémon, many of which are known only from single specimens and all of which are threatened by the Pokémon fighting rings that are growing rapidly in popularity, particularly among urban youth.

Further exploration into the world’s Pokémon diversity has been limited in part due to disagreements over which species concept to use for the Pokémon, as translations of Tajiri’s orginal work used the term “evolution” to describe what should otherwise have been called “metamorphosis.” Several sexually dimorphic taxa have had males and females identified as separate species (ex: Nidoqueen and Nidoking), yet these errors remain as Pokémon taxonomists have shown complete resistance to revising the Pokémon taxonomy.

The first film of The Hobbit trilogy hits theaters on December 14th. Lord of the Rings fans have been waiting for years to get their Tolkien movie fix, and some of them are getting pretty antsy at this point. Geeks Are Sexy, the folks who know how hard it is to wait for your favorite films, have some suggestion for making it through the next three weeks. Some look like a lot of fun!  

Watch Leonard Nimoy’s hobbit song, “The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins”. This sprung out of the same generation as the aforementioned hobbit film. And really, there are no words. Thankfully, there is a video (below). Even though I’ve seen the video about thirty times, it makes less and less sense every viewing.

Make some beer. Recently, my husband and I have started brewing again. And, as you well know, hobbits like their malted beverages. If you’re a novice, I’d suggest a kit like what the Brooklyn BrewShop folks do. The directions are easy to follow, and the outcome is splendid. Do it now, and you’ll have some in time for the New Year! Then you can toast the film, more or less, in pints. Or more.

There are nine activities in all. Link

With quite a few states offering petitions to secede from the union, the question arises as to how strong the states would be as individual nations. What if they all seceded and then declared war on each other? This hypothetical question generated some very involved scenarios at Quora. Here's just a short snippet:

First came a period of massive migration back to the homelands. Facing the newly invented discrimination that will be created many felt the need to go back to their own people. While the individual states retained all military assets they couldn't control the individuals who fight. A Texas Marine stationed in California, would not fight for California. A soldier in New York would not fight against their home in Virginia and a sailor in Houston would not fight against their home state of Florida. The warriors returned to their home states and the states had to re-consider that when they measured troop strength of their new nations. Ultimately, they measured troop strength by how much of the population would return home.

The story has the war playing out, with various states joining forces and defending their borders. If you're a Quora member, you can read the input of others as well. Link -via Jason Kottke

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At 1200 frames per second, the first minute of this video only covers one second of the cheetah's run! Greg Wilson shot high-speed footage of five cheetahs from the Cincinnati Zoo, including the world-speed-record-holder Sarah, over three days to get this video. They ran at up to 60 miles per hour, so I would imagine the most difficult part would be keeping the cat toy ahead of them. Read more about cheetahs at National Geographic. Link -via Metafilter

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Improv Everywhere staged a Black Friday shopping mob at one of Manhattan's 99 cent stores. A hundred agents got in line before the store opened, setting up tents to make it look as if they've been there for days, waiting for the Black Friday deals. Agent Cody Lindquist posed as an NBC reporter interviewing shoppers and passers-by. The store manager was confused but gracious, and most the items that were bought ended up being sent to various charities. Read more about the stunt at Improv Everywhere's site. Link -via Laughing Squid

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Cats think you have an unreasonable set of priorities. Petting the cat should always take precedence over working on that computer!

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The Muppets have the Christmas spirit! Here they sing on Cee Lo Green's new song "All I Need is Love" from the album Cee Lo’s Magic Moment. -via Uproxx

The following is an article from Uncle John’s All-Purpose Extra Strength Bathroom Reader.

What cartoon character was so influential that he convinced kids to eat vegetables? Popeye the Sailor Man… Toot toot! Here's the story of how he was born.

WALK ON

In 1919, the New York Evening Journal hired a cartoonist named E.C. "Elzie" Segar and told him to create a comic strip called "Thimble Theater." That's all the guidance he had -the rest was up to him. He came up with a weird bunch of characters: a scrawny, gawky old maid named Olive Oyl; her boyfriend Ham Gravy; her loopy brother Castor Oyl; and her parents Cole and Nana Oyl.

The strip's popularity grew steadily over the next ten years, and as time passed Segar graduated from telling  a new joke in each strip to developing story lines that went on for weeks, months -and sometimes even years. In 1929, he came up with a story in which Ham and Castor decided to set sail in search of a legendary creature called the Whiffle Hen.

Neither Ham nor Castor knew anything about sailing, so they went down to the waterfront to hire a sailor to take them on their trip. In the June 17, 1929, strip, Castor walks up to a scrappy, one-eyed man with a captain's hat and asks him, "Are you a sailor?"

"Ja think I'm a cowboy?" the sailor replies. Popeye the Sailor Man was born.

Segar never intended for the sailor to become a permanent addition to the strip.

Practice your archery skills without worrying about the room or dangers of full sized bows and arrows. This quick tutorial will show you how to make your own miniature bow and arrows using only a popsicle stick, a Q-tip, and some string. You’ll be competing with Robin Hood in no time!

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Why talk when you can text? From the comic Underwhelmed by Sean McLean.

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Shahar Peleg has come up with a very cool design for a book mark, the Zipmark. It is a bookmark that looks like a zipper!  It almost looks as if you can pull on the zipper and enter the wondrous world contained within your favorite book.

Link -via Laughing Squid

Sometimes the simplest and most obvious lines can be the hardest to think up. From Doghouse Diaries.

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