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
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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
Previously: Venom Face Paint
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
(Image credit: Rick Sealock)
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
(Image credit: Fruit Salad Trees)
In 1952, Air Force Captain James Robinson Risner and his wingman 1st Lieutenant Joe Logan chased enemy MiGs across Korea into Chinese territory. After the battle, Logan's plane was disabled and leaking oil and fuel. Instead of bailing out to be captured, Risner used his plane to push Logan's plane along!
With jet acedom and hours of practice time fueling his Fighter Pilot Ego, Risner vowed not to let Logan go down. Risner radioed instructions to his wingman: shut down the engine, and jetman jargon for “hang on to your butt”. Risner carefully positioned himself behind Logan, and gave the throttle a gentle nudge. He closed in on the damaged Sabre. The injured plane leaked fuel and hydraulic fluid into Risner’s engine, and smeared his canopy with a gooey patina. He kept on until the nose of his aircraft collided with Logan’s tail. The planes bucked unsteadily. “[the plane] stayed sort of locked there as long as we both maintained stable flight,” Risner explained, “but the turbulence created by Joe’s aircraft made stable flight for me very difficult. There was a point at which I was between the updraft and the downdraft. A change of a few inches ejected me either up or down.”
The unorthodox maneuver kept Logan at 190 knots, and imparted sufficient force to stay beyond the reach of AA guns below. Risner broke off after a few minutes when his own plane threatened to choke on the unwelcome juices in its intake. They glided for a time, but Risner had to push him again to get him out over the sea.
Risner's maneuver landed him on the cover of TIME magazine in 1965. But that's not the end of the story, because that issue caused him even more grief from enemy forces ...in Vietnam. Read the entire story at Damn Interesting. Link
Once again, it's time for our collaboration with the always amusing What Is It? Blog! Do you know what the object in this picture is?
Place your guess in the comment section below. One guess per comment, please, though you can enter as many as you'd like. Post no URLs or weblinks, as doing so will forfeit your entry. Two winners: the first correct guess and the funniest (albeit ultimately wrong) guess will each win a T-shirt from the NeatoShop.
Please write your T-shirt selection alongside your guess. If you don't include a selection, you forfeit the prize, okay? May we suggest the Science T-Shirt, Funny T-Shirt and Artist-Designed T-Shirts?
You'll find more pictures of the mystery object at the What Is It? Blog. Good luck!
Update: this is a device to hold golf tees and ball markers. Berhard was first with the correct answer, and wins a t-shirt! As for the funniest answer, pismonque said,
Well, it used to be a robot centipede, before some cruel little fiend pulled all its legs off and made it into a keychain. Some people shouldn't be allowed to have nice things.
Yep, that's worth a t-shirt as well! Thanks to everyone who played this week. You'll find the answers to all this week's mystery items at the What Is It? blog.
The most memorable prop from the TV show M*A*S*H would be the sign that shows how far away the character's hometowns were. But second to that is the still that Hawkeye, Trapper, and B.J. used to distill their own gin. The still was destroyed and rebuilt several times, and had several different looks, from a hillbilly moonshine-style tank to a mad scientist's lab. And where is it now?
Following the end of production on M*A*S*H in January of 1983, 20th Century-Fox donated the O.R. set and the Swamp set to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Included was the still. An exhibition was held at the National Museum of American History from July of 1983 to January of 1985. When the exhibition closed, the sets were packed up and placed in storage. The still is likely in a box somewhere in a warehouse.
You can read about the different stills and the M*A*S*H episodes that revolved around them, complete with pictures, at the show's biggest fan site, M*A*S*H4077TV.COM. Link -via Boing Boing
Living in an underground cave has many advantages: they are sturdy, well-insulated, energy-efficient, and who cares about all that, because it's just plain cool! Shown here is Cottage Cave, a home established over 200 years ago in Wolverley, Worcestershire, England. See the other nine cave homes on this list at Flavorwire. Link
Redditor mrfahrenheit94 tells the story of an elementary teacher. She didn't believe her young student when he said he'd brought his cat to school -until he opened his backpack! The child's parents were called to come pick up the cat, who was undoubtedly happy to go home in a car instead of a backpack. Did you ever take a pet to school, thinking it was a great idea? Link
We can hear him, but he doesn't want to respond to his owner's whistle. Can you find the dog in this video? -via the Presurfer
Twitter is a great way to keep up with people on the internet, but it's also a source of entertainment from accounts created just for that purpose. You have to admire a novelty account that can keep the one-liners coming day after day after day. If you're not following any parody accounts, you'll find a list of recommendations at Oddee that includes fictional characters, alternate celebrities, and inanimate objects. For example, the Mars Curiosity rover has a Twitter account, then there's a parody account named Sarcastic Rover that has the same job, but does it with a big dose of snark.
Mars is a lot like Arizona… red, desolate, everyone's obsessed w/ trying to find aliens. Also, I regret visiting both.
Check out the entire list -you may find just what you need to brighten your day! Link
A new trailer is out for the proposed webseries Star Trek: Renegades. We at least learn that Chekhov has never mastered the English pronunciation of "v." Link -via The Daily What Geek
If world leaders could just play Rock, Paper, Scissors to solve their disputes, the world would be a better place. They're already doing it, just not so as we'd notice. -via The Daily What
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