Why do you suppose a rooster decided to make his home near a KFC outlet? Was he waiting for the rest of his family to come back out? A local news outlet said the capture was fairly complicated. The animal shelter said if the owner wasn't found, the rooster would be adopted out for just a few dollars. You have to wonder whether KFC made an inquiry. Link -via Criggo
Miss Cellania's Blog Posts
@sirpatstew I've been trying to get TWCable_LA to put CRN Digital Talk Radio back on my service. Been waiting 4 weeks for an answer Terrible
— William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) September 20, 2012
Captain Kirk and Captain Jean-Luc Picard are battle-hardened warriors who command billion-dollar starships. But neither are a match for the baffling foe that is Time-Warner Cable! The confluence of Tweets was truly epic. I can relate to their frustration ...recently my local cable company sold out to Time-Warner, so I sympathize with both Captains. Link
We've had a couple of Glove and Boots videos here before. This one is a bit different, as the puppets Fafa and Mario were recruited to produce a personal marriage proposal. How could any woman resist an engagement ring that sings ...along with a gorilla? -via The Daily What
Inventive, yet under-publicized devices
by Marina Tsipis, Improbable Research staff
U.S. patent #1,799,664, for a “safety drop device for aviators’ use,” was granted to H.W. Williams on April 7, 1931. Here are some of the details:
[A] safety device for use in making a landing from an aeroplane or other vehicle of the air especially in case of mishap to the aeroplane or other air vehicle. The ordinary parachute of umbrella type which requires to be opened out from its collapsed or folded form for a safety descent sometimes fails to open at the critical time. The object of the present invention is to provide a safety landing device which does not require any preliminary opening but is always operative for a gliding descent as soon at it is attached to the body of the user….
[It] somewhat resembles in form the maple key or seed pod of some types of maple trees….
Preparatory to making his descent from the aeroplane, the flyer will place the hooks or loops of the harness under his arms or thrust his arms through the loops to bring them up under his shoulders. When he has fallen a short distance after he releases himself from the aeroplane, the wing will begin to rotate in a plane at right angles to the axis of rotation of the head according to the air currents and he will come down gradually in a gliding or floating descent to the earth rather then by a straight vertical drop. The pressure of the air against the under face of the face of the wing will retard the descent. The spinning movement of the wing in its own plane, that is, the swinging of the wing around the axis of rotation of the head, will steady the descent so that the passenger can remain in an upright position as shown in the drawings during the descent.
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This article is republished with permission from the September-October 2011 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. You can download or purchase back issues of the magazine, or subscribe to receive future issues. Or get a subscription for someone as a gift! Visit their website for more research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK.
The following is an article from the book Uncle John's Absolutely Absorbing Bathroom Reader.
You've heard of Air Force One, but what do you really know about it? Here's a short history of what's now considered the "flying White House."
HOMEBOUND
Nowadays we take for granted that traveling around the world is part of the president's job. But that wasn't always the case: As late as the 1930s, it was considered the president's duty not to leave the country -he was expected to remain on U.S. soil for his entire term of office ...and wasn't even supposed to stray far from Washington, D.C. This tradition was left over from the pre-telephone age, when the only way a president could command the government on a moment's notice in an emergency was to be physically in or near the nation's capital at all times. Leaving town literally meant leaving power, and presidents aren't supposed to do that. For the first 130 years of the Republic, not a single American president left the United States while in office, not even once. (Well, okay, once. Grover Cleveland briefly sailed across the U.S.-Canada border back in the 1890s.)
So in January 1943, when Franklin Roosevelt flew to North Africa to meet with Winston Churchill and plan the Allied invasion of Southern Europe, he became only the third president to go overseas (the others: cousin Teddy Roosevelt inspected the Panama Canal in 1906 and Woodrow Wilson attended the Paris Peace Conference at the end of World War I).
SMALL WORLD
FDR hated airplanes, but German submarines were patrolling the Atlantic and sinking American ships, so the Secret Service forbade him from traveling by sea. He flew in a chartered PanAm Flying Boat seaplane called the Dixie Clipper. That changed everything.
The European supermarket chain Billa uses a slogan urging more "common sense." Then at least one store in Austria offered bananas for sale as you see here: peeled and packaged in styrofoam trays with plastic wrap.
But the stunt by the German-owned Billa supermarket chain - part of the Rewe group that has thousands of stores in 9 European countries, has caused outrage among users after it was posted on the firm's Facebook page.
Last night staff moved to distance themselves from the sale of ready-peeled bananas and apologised for the "one off" mistake, saying it would not happen again.
I guess someone explained to them that bananas come in their own nature-made packaging that's even safer than plastic wrap. Link -via Arbroath
This guy gets the award for the most efficient lumberjack ever. You might not believe that seeing him chop away with an axe at the beginning, but stay with it. -via the Presurfer
Creative editing once again takes a story out of context and makes into something completely different. In this case, the TV show Breaking Bad become a tender love story -between Walt and Jesse. You could say they have "chemistry." -via Buzzfeed
Imagine browsing the Halloween costume store and find that there's a costume of YOU on sale! Redditor LiarInGlass says this happened to his uncle, with photographic evidence. Link
Dashrath Manjhi lived in the little village of Gahlour, Bihar, India. The nearest medical facility was in Gaya, which was only about 8 km away as the crow flies, but 50 km away by road due to a mountain. Manjhi's wife, Falguni Devi, was injured in the 1950s, and died on the long route to the hospital. Manjhi (and his neighbors) were of low caste and therefore the village was low on the government's priority list for road building. So in honor of his late wife, Manjhi took it upon himself in 1959 to cut through the mountain to provide medical access to his village. By himself. With hand tools.
He knew his voice will not create any reaction in the deaf ear of the government; therefore, Dashrath chose to accomplish this Herculean task alone. He sold his goats to purchase chisel, rope and a hammer. People would call him mad and eccentric spirited with no idea of his plans. Unfazed by his critics’ discouraging remarks, Dashrath hammered consistently for 22 long years to shorten the distance from 50km to 10km between Atri and Wazirganj. The day came when he stepped through a flat passage — about one-km long and 16-feet wide — to his dream, ‘the other side of the hill’.
Manjhi became famous for his accomplishment, and was given a state funeral upon his death in 2007. He was also the subject of a movie. However, Manjhi's family is still impoverished and the road he cut is still unpaved. Link -via Metafilter, where'll you'll find additional links.
Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website.
It was 1969 and The Beatles, although still brilliant as musicians and as a recording group, were on their last legs. But the band still owed one film on a long-ago signed contract with United Artist films. Let It Be was originally planned as a television documentary, but later became the contract-fulfilling film the Beatles needed to be over and done with it all.
By this time, John had found the great love of his life, the woman of his dreams, the enigmatic Yoko Ono, and the sad truth was he just didn't care much about being a Beatle anymore. Also, John's growing drug use, especially his current experimentation with heroin, definitely added to his growing disenchantment, paranoia, and hostility.
George's attitude about being a Beatle was about the same -if not worse. George, at the point in time, was eager and anxious to get out from under the collective thumbs of John and Paul. Frustrated at always being the fifth wheel in the band as a composer, George was seemingly always taking a back seat behind the daunting combination of Lennon-McCartney.
And George was not enamored of John's beloved Yoko, either. In fact, in a moment of characteristic bluntness one day, George actually came up to Yoko's face and told her she had "bad vibes" and tactlessly informed her that he really just didn't like her at all. John later said he didn't know why he didn't punch George for his careless statements, but tellingly, he admitted he "still loved him."
Ringo, as always the most easygoing Beatle, came along for the ride.
And Paul, seemingly the only band member who still cared about being a Beatle, became the group's de facto leader, rallying the troops and getting the Fab Four in front of the cameras. In direct contrast to the lethargy and apathy of John and George, Paul seemed chipper, eager, and optimistic to make Let It Be a great Beatles project.
Filming began on January 2, 1969, at a chilly (literally and figuratively) Twickenham Studios. For the first few days, as John and George grumbled and complained, Yoko sat firmly by John's side, almost as if they were conjoined twins. According to one witness, Yoko even accompanied John to the men's restroom. Between takes of every song, John and Yoko would huddle up together to whisper, gossip, and giggle. This, of course, only added to the increasingly frosty atmosphere.
Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website.
Athletes, like most other people, are praised, admired, and rewarded for things they have done. It is a rare thing when an athlete (or anyone) is rewarded for not doing something. But not doing something was to be the defining moment in the legendary baseball career of the immortal Sandy Koufax.
It was the autumn of 1965 and, as usual, the World Series was to be played. That year's fall classic pitted Koufax's National League champs, the L.A. Dodgers, against the American League champs, the Minnesota Twins.
By 1965, Sandy Koufax was the undisputed best pitcher in baseball. He had won 26 games that season, losing only eight, and led the league in earned run average. On September 9th, he had pitched his record 4th no-hitter, a perfect game, against the Chicago Cubs.
Koufax also set a new season strikeout record, whiffing an amazing 382 batters in 336 innings pitched. It was a mere formality that Sandy would win his second Cy Young Award after the series (he won unanimously). Another formality was that Sandy Koufax, baseball's greatest pitcher, would pitch the opening World Series game in Minnesota.
Oh yes, I have neglected to mention one other highly pertinent fact: Sandy Koufax was Jewish. And game one of the World Series was scheduled to be played on Yom Kippur, the holiest Jewish holiday of the year. Yom Kippur is the Jewish Day of Atonement, when followers are asked to fast (no food or water) for 25 hours to repent for one's transgressions of the previous year.
Sandy wasn't a super-religious Jew. He often pitched on other Jewish holidays- Rosh Hashanah, Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot. In his 1966 autobiography Koufax, Sandy said, "Yom Kippur is the holiest day of the Jewish religion. The club knows that I don't work that day. When Yom Kippur falls during the season, which it usually does, it has always been a simple matter to pitch a day earlier, with two days rest, when my turn happened to be coming up." Dodger manager Walt Alston had been criticized in previous years for not keeping abreast of Koufax and the days Jewish holidays occurred. In 1962, a fan sent him a calendar with the Jewish holidays marked.
You thought movies were less than a couple hundred years old. Of course, zoetropes and other such optical toys go back hundreds of years. But archaeologist Marc Azema and French artist Florent Rivere say that prehistoric cavemen had their own way of making moving pictures! Cave paintings in Lascaux and other areas of France have animals with multiple heads and legs. This is a puzzle, until you imagine a Paleolithic storyteller waving a torch back and forth over the images to make... moving pictures!
“Lascaux is the cave with the greatest number of cases of split-action movement by superimposition of successive images. Some 20 animals, principally horses, have the head, legs or tail multiplied,” Azéma said.
Azema and other archaeologists have found small disks called thaumatropes which were carved from bone in Paleolithic times and acted as a crude, mini movie camera by tricking the eye. Azema thinks these artists used similar tools to create the drawings, which give us a glimpse at the first origins of what we know as cinema…and they did it well before those credited with the invention in the 19th century.
The cave movies depended on persistence of vision, just like the later zoetropes and film projectors. See examples in a video at WebProNews. Link -via Not Exactly Rocket Science
On September 23, 1962, 50 years ago Sunday, The Jetsons premiered on American TV. It was the first show ABC broadcast in color. Although the series only lasted one year in its initial run, it left more than one generation with the definitive vision of "the future."
“The Jetsons” was the distillation of every Space Age promise Americans could muster. People point to “The Jetsons” as the golden age of American futurism because (technologically, at least) it had everything our hearts could desire: jetpacks, flying cars, robot maids, moving sidewalks. But the creators of “The Jetsons” weren’t the first to dream up these futuristic inventions. Virtually nothing presented in the show was a new idea in 1962, but what “The Jetsons” did do successfully was condense and package those inventions into entertaining 25-minute blocks for impressionable, media-hungry kids to consume.
And though it was “just a cartoon” with all the sight gags and parody you’d expect, it was based on very real expectations for the future. As author Danny Graydon notes in The Jetsons: The Official Cartoon Guide, the artists drew inspiration from futurist books of the time, including the 1962 book 1975: And the Changes to Come, by Arnold B. Barach (who envisioned such breakthroughs as ultrasonic dishwashers and instant language translators). The designers also drew heavily from the Googie aesthetic of southern California (where the Hanna-Barbera studios were located)—a style that perhaps best represented postwar consumer culture promises of freedom and modernity.
Paleofuture takes a close look at The Jetsons, in an introduction to a series of blog posts that will break down each episode. Link -via Metafilter
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