What if there were an artful video game in which you could score points and advance to different levels by kicking cats? Well, there is no such game here, but instead a video that imagines one, by Pamela Reed and Matthew Rader. No cats were harmed in the making of this video. -via Everlasting Blort
Miss Cellania's Blog Posts
There are many ways the world could end, according to the movies. Watch them all happen in just eight minutes, in this supercut from Zach Prewitt. -via Flavorwire
A solar flare sent a filament 500,000 miles into space on August 31st. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory caught it, and here you see it with different filters looking very pretty. Link
Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website.
The all-too-common phrase "the butler did it" is commonly attributed to Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876-1958). Mary was a very popular writer who authored over 50 books, many of which became best-sellers. Known as "the American Agatha Christie," Mary (also a playwright) at one point had three plays running simultaneously on Broadway.
Mary was the first writer to use the "once naive but now older and wiser woman narrating the story" device in her novels. She also created a super-criminal called The Bat (1920), who was cited by Bob Kane as one of his inspirations for Batman. Mary's first book The Circular Stairs was published in 1908.
In 1930, Mary's book The Door was published and (spoiler alert) in the story the butler does, indeed, do it. Although Mary Roberts Rinehart is generally credited with the origin of the expression, the words "the butler did it" do not actually appear in the book. Mary was to use the "butler as criminal" device in other novels during her illustrious writing career.
Before Mary Roberts Rinehart it was extremely rare for a butler to be the bad guy in any work of fiction. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle did use the device in an 1893 detective story called "The Musgrave Ritual" from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. Though not the actual central bad guy, the butler in this tale is found dead beside the Musgrave family treasure. "The butler, guilty of betrayal and theft, paid with his life for his perfidy." -as The Oxford Companion to Crime and Mystery Writings puts it.
Here it is, our collaboration with the always amusing What Is It? Blog! Tell us what this object is, if you know. If you don't, make a wild guess!
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. We'll have two winners: the first correct guess and the funniest (albeit ultimately wrong) guess will win 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?
Check out this and other mystery items of the week at the What Is It? Blog. Have fun and good luck!
Update: the mystery items is a steak branding iron, used when grilling for marking steaks Well done, Medium, or Rare, the fourth side had a John Deere buck logo. Craig Clayton had the answer right off, and wins a t-shirt from the NeatoShop! A lot of folks had fun with the M and W, which stands for a lot of things, but the funniest was from trishlovesdolphins.
That's The Dark Lord, Voldemort's old seal. Back when he was called "Morty" he would dip the hammer in wax to seal his correspondence. However, too many people mistook the M for a W and started calling him "Worty." This lead the the immediate torture and death of many, and thus "Voldemort" was born.
That's certainly worth a t-shirt! The answers to all the mystery items of the week are up now at the What Is It? blog. Congratulations to the winners, and thanks to everyone for playing along!
Jessica Milazzo directed this cute music video for "Amazing Disguise" by The Stars for Yo Gabba Gabba. -Thanks, Jessica!
The Obscura Society of New York City invites you to a lecture by Professor Sarah Tarlow on English executions during the 18th and 19th centuries.
By the middle of the eighteenth century in England, people could be executed for damaging the banks of a canal or sending poison pen letters. In response to this runaway punishment inflation, the Murder Act of 1752 specified that those convicted of really serious crimes should have their sentence augmented by a post-mortem element: they were to be denied burial until they had first been dissected by anatomists or left to rot in a gibbet cage. In this talk, Sarah Tarlow will examine the power of the criminal corpse through its journey from the gallows, where the touch of a dead man's hand could be used to cure disease, through the weird geography of its dissection or 'hanging in chains', to its eventual deposition in a grave, a medical museum or a cabinet of curiosities.
The event will be on September 28th, as part of the “Atlas Obscura Speakers” series. This is just the kind of thing the Obscura Society comes up with in cities all over. Find out more about it at Atlas Obscura. Link
Bewitching II is a Halloween-themed art show at Stranger Factory in Albuquerque's historic Nob Hill neighborhood.
The roster of internationally acclaimed artists contributing to the show includes such lowbrow luminaries as Jason Limon, Joel Nakamura, Andrew Bell, Ragnar, Gris Grimly, Chris Ryniak, Ferg, Sean Mahan, Shigeta Tanaka, Amanda Louise Spayd, and many more! Artworks will range from paintings to sculptures to mixed media of all kinds, with a range of prices suitable for all collectors.
Bewitching II will open at Stranger Factory on Friday, October 5th, with an opening reception from 6 PM - 9 PM. The opening reception will coincide with the opening of a solo exhibition by Arizona pop artist and illustrator Gary Ham entitled "Dead Wood", as well as the release of an exclusive colorway of Gary's "Wooper Looper" vinyl art toy.
(Image: "Beneath The Sheet" by Gris Grimly)
Well, that's it. You no longer have to buy albums or collect songs for a dance party because it's all here in one mashup featuring PSY, LMFAO, Dev, Offspring, and Bloodhound Gang. How many songs you can mash together is only limited by how many use the same source music and/or beat. Steve Streza says this is the first full mashup he's done. I think he did okay! -via Buzzfeed
The 22nd annual 2012 Ig® Nobel Prize Ceremony will be held on September 20 at Harvard University's Sanders Theater. Ten Ig Nobels will be awarded for research that makes us laugh, and then makes us think. The ceremonies will feature "a variety of momentously inconsequential events," or in other words, silliness.
The identity of the winners is kept secret until they receive their prize on stage. Their acceptance speeches will be brief, with time limits being enforced by a stoic, very cute eight-year-old girl.
Genuine Nobel laureates will physically hand the prizes to the winners. Attending the ceremony will be Dudley Herschbach (chemistry, 1986), Rich Roberts (physiology or medicine, 1993), Jack Szostak (physiology or medicine, 2009), and Roy Glauber (physics, 2005). One of them will also be the prize in the Win-a-Date-with-a-Nobel-Laureate Contest.
Another of the evening's events will be the part in which noted scientists will present lectures on their research limited to 24 seconds, followed by a summation of no more than seven words. If you cannot attend, the entire evening will be streamed live via internet, and then archived for later view. If you can attend, Improbable Research has a link for ticket purchases, and plenty more information about the awards. Link
Some guys are so good at Parkour that they make our jaws drop. Then there's Ronnie Shalvis, who takes it to another level by doing it dressed as Altair from Assassin's Creed. You can see a behind the scenes video as well. -via The Daily What Geek
The conga lines are a fine addition to the singing, which is a little choppy, but still a hoot! -via Stuff I Stole From the Internet
WWE fans surely know the names of their favorite wrestlers. You can learn a lot of them without even being a fan, if you surf pop culture sites as much as I do. But... do you know what their mothers call them? This Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss will separate the true fans from everyone else. I, of course, scored a perfect 33%, meaning they were all perfectly wild guesses. Link
So many wonderful products came about by accident, but that's not really surprising. Scientists and inventors often come up with a substance as a byproduct, mistake, or flat-out discovery that's not what they were looking for. However, with a little imagination, that unintended stuff might find the perfect use. For example, Robert Chesebrough was looking for oil, but he found Vaseline, which turned out to be quite profitable.
Men working in the fields complained about gunk called rod wax that was clogging up their drilling equipment. The enterprising Chesebrough took the substance back to his lab in New York, isolated it from petroleum, and found it to be very good at healing cuts and scrapes, among other uses. In fact, Chesebrough was such a firm believer in the stuff that he ate a spoonful every day until he died.
Read more about Vaseline and 8 other accidental breakthroughs at Gizmodo. Link -via the Presurfer
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