Capitán was adopted as a puppy by Miguel Guzmán of Villa Carlos Paz Cordoba, Argentina, in 2005. He got the German Shepherd for his son Damien, but the puppy loved Miguel. Then in March of 2006, Miguel died. The dog disappeared for a while, and the family thought he'd gone to live with someone else. But when they visited Miguel Guzmán's grave, there was Capitán. The dog refuses to leave the cemetery, even six years later.
Hector Baccega, the administrator of the Villa Carlos Paz Cordoba cemetery, told the press that Capitán has won the affection and respect of all the cemetery caretakers, who always make sure he’s properly fed and up-to-date with his immunizations. At one point they even brought in a vet, after Capitán showed up with a broken leg. Baccega says Capitán walks with him through the cemetery every day, but as night approaches, he always returns to Miguel’s graveside and lays his head down next to the headstone. He feels this amazing dog is teaching humans a valuable lesson about cherishing the memory of their loved ones.
An idea so obvious, it's a wonder it took this many years for someone to execute it. But Girl talk's cat pulled it off! The song is "Shine" by Collective Soul. -via Buzzfeed
Stefani and Jeremy got married on September 2nd, Gangnam-style! When you have a cousin with a video production company, things just fall into place.
Stefani and Jeremy are one of our cousins and reached out to us about a fun video project they wanted to make for their wedding day, and the Gangnam Style song and dance just seemed to be a perfect fit for them. This video was shot in San Francisco and various locations throughout the Bay Area. We hope you like it! Thanks for watching.
Those must have been some icy snowballs! These three Princeton students were photographed after the annual freshman-sophmore snowball fight in 1893. You can imagine that the picture was requested as a "trophy" for the other side. Read more about the bygone Princeton tradition at 22 Words. Link -via Buzzfeed
If weird movies are your thing, you should check out this review of a 1981 James Bond parody film called For Your Height Only.
For the essentials: this is a Philippine action movie starring the midget novelty celebrity named Weng Weng as Secret Agent OO (yes, Double O). It sounds like a comedy but what makes it great is that IT’S NOT! It’s played seriously and features Weng Weng using firearms and fancy gadgets like James Bond, engaging in martial arts fights like Bruce Lee, drooling over regular-sized women like Herve Villaichez, sword- fighting as skillfully as Zatoichi and sporting a poorly- concealed bald spot like Ryen Russillo.
If you want to watch it after reading about it, the movie is available on Amazon and Netflix. Link
Little Maddie will never forget that time her dad added special effects to a home video and made her into Avatar Korra with earthbending powers. -via The Daily What Geek
In 1965 and '66, author Ken Kesey and his friends, called the Merry Pranksters, held a series of parties called "acid tests." LSD, which was not outlawed in the U.S. until 1968, flowed freely at these parties in San Francisco. A "graduation" for those who "passed the acid test" was scheduled for Halloween, 1966.
The circumstances leading up to the graduation have been well documented, by Tom Wolfe in his 1968 novel “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” and by the first salaried employee of Rolling Stone magazine, Charles Perry, whose 1984 “The Haight-Ashbury: A History” stands as a definitive chronicle of the late-1960s San Francisco scene. Kesey had been working with rock-promoter Bill Graham to host his graduation ceremony at the Winterland Arena. The Grateful Dead would be the headliners, with support from a group of former Stanford University students called the Anonymous Artists of America.
Plans changed, but the graduation ceremony went on. Now one of those rare diplomas is up for sale, and the story behind it is explained at Collector's Weekly. Link
Sure, Jack could've fit onto that same plank that Rose was floating on in the freezing North Atlantic. Now James Cameron himself responds to the meme and explains how that didn't make any difference to the story.
“It’s not a question of room; it’s a question of buoyancy. Jack puts Rose on the raft, then he gets on the raft — He’s not an idiot; he doesn’t want to die — and then the raft sinks. So it’s clear that there’s really only enough buoyancy available for one person. So, he makes a decision to let her be that person.”
Cameron talks about quite a few items about the making of Titanic in a video you can see at FilmDrunk. Link
Children may inherit some traits that add up to a sense of humor, but recent research shows they learn what's funny by watching their parents. We already knew they looked to parents for cues about what they should be afraid of. A new experiment by Gina Mireault of Johnson State College and John Sparrow at the University of New Hampshire shows they also learn what they should laugh at.
In the latest study, babies watched their parent react naturally to two ordinary events, looking at a picture book and being shown a small red foam ball.
The events were then changed so that they became absurd: The open picture book was bounced on the researcher’s head while she said, “Zoop, Zoop” and the foam ball was placed on the researcher’s nose while she poked it and said, “Beep, Beep”Parents were instructed to either stare at the researcher with an expressionless face or to point and laugh at her.
The study found that, although 6-month-old babies stared longer at the absurd events, showing that these were unfamiliar to them, their reactions to the events did not depend on their parents’ reactions.
However, babies watched their parents closely when they laughed. The combination of paying close attention to absurd events and to others laughing at those events might explain how babies develop the sophisticated sense of humour they possess at 12 months, the researchers said.
So keep up the absurdity, because there's nothing more delightful than a laughing baby! Link -via the Presurfer
Watch four minutes of the greatest cats moves ever caught on video in this collection. They are strong, graceful, tough, funny, and occasionally embarrassed. -via The Daily What
Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website.
It was the spring of 1966 and Capitol Records, the Beatles' U.S. record distribution company, wanted to issue a hodgepodge of recycled and leftover Beatles product and issue it as a "new album." For the record (no pun intended), the Beatles always hated this cheesy procedure. The Beatles were not only great artists and musicians, but also perfectionists. They, unlike so many other recording artists, refused to ever foist off a cheap or downgraded product to their fans. Unlike other artists, on Beatles albums, there were no cheap "filler" tracks; each track was strong and relevant in its own right.
The Beatles had issued just six actual official albums by this time, but this was to be Capitol's ninth of their recycled hodgepodge collection "albums." These chintzy repackaged albums did indeed infuriate the Beatles, but their ruffled feathers were surely assuaged by the millions of dollars (or pounds) they collected from these cheap products, both as singers and composers (mostly John and Paul).
Capitol asked the band to give them a photo to grace the cover of this new collection album, to be titled Yesterday ...and Today. On May 25th, 1966, the boys entered the rented photography studio of an Australian photographer named Bob Whitaker.
Whitaker was "a bit of a surrealist" who greatly admired a German artist named Hans Bellmer. Bellmer had authorized a then-controversial book called Die Puppe, which contained pictures of bizarrely dismembered dolls. Knowing of the Beatles' short attention spans and hoping to create something new and original, Whitaker showed the boys the "interesting" props he had gathered together for the session. These consisted mainly of items culled from a butcher shop and a doll factory, i.e. white butcher smocks, lines of pungent sausage links, a birdcage, joints of raw meat, and several dismembered dolls.
The Beatles quickly got into the spirit of the session. Bizarre photos were taken of George hammering a nail into John's head, John holding George's head in a birdcage, all four holding a string of link sausages in front of a young girl, and John clutching a cardboard box with the number "2,000,000" written on it over Ringo's head. But the piece de resistance was yet to come.
Georgette at Devious Body Art is a professional body paint artist. Here's a super-scary job she did turning a man into Spider-Man's archenemy Venom. See more of him at Geeks Are Sexy. Link
Bat biologist Nickolay Hristov of Wonston-Salem University uses cutting-edge video technology to see bats in new ways that will blow your mind. -via Boing Boing
In medieval Europe, it was common for animals to be put on trial and sentenced to punishment as if they understood the proceedings. Livestock and wild animals would be tried for assault or murder of a human, insects and rats were prosecuted for destroying crops, and livestock could be put to death for bestiality along with the human perpetrator (although a beast could prove innocence with witnesses to its virtue). There were unspoken reasons behind these shenanigans, in the days when the separation of church and state was nonexistent. The church could lay blame for bad events on people or animals, and take credit for doling out justice.
Animal trials certainly solidified the church’s power, but they also made sense of an unknowable world by turning freak accidents into understandable events, with guilty parties and paths to justice. Our grain stores are gone because God is punishing us, or, alternatively, because Satan is toying with us; we must atone and pray. The pig killed my child because it is a common criminal; it must be punished. In this sense, animal trials were not unlike that other great, barbaric version of rudimentary legal justice: the witch hunt, which also reckoned with inexplicable phenomena by targeting scapegoats. Indeed, Evans writes, during witch hunts animals were often punished alongside all those single women and healers, in keeping with the belief that Satan commonly possessed creatures like goats, ravens and porcupines.
Drew Nelles writes about a variety of such animal trials at MaisonNeuve magazine. Link -via Monkeyfilter
Most big fruit tree orchards use grafted trees to combine a sturdier trunk and root plant with delicate branches that produce tasty and consistent fruit. A long-dead fruit tree can keep bearing fruit from branches attached to a different trunk. And it is possible to graft several different kinds of fruit branches onto the same tree!
Grafting unites the tissues of two or more plants so that they grow and function as a single plant. One plant in the graft is called the rootstock, selected for its healthy or hardy root system. The other plant or plants, chosen for their fruit, flowers or leaves, are known as scions. You can join a scion to a rootstock in many different ways. In one of the most common techniques, you remove a branch from a plant whose fruit you want to reproduce and cut the broken end of the branch into a V-shape not unlike the reed for a woodwind. Shaving the scion in this way exposes its vascular cambium—a ring of plant tissue full of dividing cells that increase the branch’s girth. Once the scion is ready, you slice lengthwise into a branch on the rootstock—exposing its vascular cambium—and wedge the scion into the cleft. Successful grafting requires placing the vascular cambia of both the rootstock and scion in close contact. Another grafting method involves cutting small pockets between the rootstock’s bark and cambium and slipping scions into those pouches. To seal the deal, you bind the scion and rootstock with a rubber band, tape, staples, string or wax.
Ferris Jabr at Scientific American goes on to explain what happens inside the branch as grafting takes hold. But you don't have to do it yourself. He also has links to several nurseries that sell fruit salad trees for your backyard. Link -via 80beats
