Words: Marc Abrahams (acts 1-4), Tom Lehrer (Act 5)
Music: Johannes Brahms, Georges Bizet, Jacques Offenbach, Luigi Denza, and Arthur Sullivan

Chemist in a Coffee Shop premiered as part of the 21st First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony, at Sanders Theater, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, on September 29, 2011. Special thanks to Tom Lehrer for letting us use and slightly mangle his classic song “The Elements” in Act 5.

The story: A CHEMIST comes into the coffee shop, gets a cup of coffee, then chats briefly and insultingly with the two baristas—named BARISTA and BAROASTA—who work in the shop. He sits down with a cup of coffee. Mostly he stays in that seat throughout the opera. BARISTA and BAROASTA turn out to know quite a bit of chemistry. In act 2 and thereafter, BARISTA and BAROASTA keep feeding THE CHEMIST free coffee, to which the chemist responds physically, more and more, as the opera goes on. He becomes devoted to the baristas, taking notes about what they say and helping them, becoming their increasingly admiring assistant.

ACT 1: “A Chemist Comes Into a Coffee Shop…”

[WE SEE THE TWO BARISTAS ALREADY IN THE SHOP, WORKING AWAY.]

NARRATOR [WHO IS ALWAYS SIPPING COFFEE]: Tonight’s opera is about a coffee shop. It’s also about chemistry.

[THE CHEMIST WALKS INTO THE SHOP, AND THE BARISTAS QUICKLY, EFFICIENTLY SERVE HIM A CUP.]

NARRATOR: The shop has two baristas, who are really knowledgeable about coffee. It looks like they have a new customer. It looks like that customer is a chemist. It looks like the baristas are giving him a nice, fresh cup of coffee. And it looks like it’s time for me to shut up and see what happens.

[MUSIC: “Hungarian Dance #5,” Johannes Brahms]
[CHEMIST takes a big sip of coffee]

CHEMIST [SPOKEN:] Hey, this cup of chemicals tastes pretty good! Tastes like coffee, ha ha ha ha ha!
That’s because it IS coffee, ha ha ha ha ha! Heh—I know you work in a coffee shop, but I bet you don’t know the secret of WHAT’S IN COFFEE, chemically speaking.

CHEMIST: [SINGS A BIT TAUNTINGLY, A CAPELLA AND NOT TOO SKILLFULLY, TO THE TUNE OF
BRAHMS’ 5TH HUNGARIAN DANCE:]

Coffee isn’t what you think—
Coffee’s a…
Very simple drink.
Mostly good old H-two-O!
Hydrogen and oxygen!
That’s WATER, don’t you know!
[SPOKEN:] Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

[SITS DOWN WITH THE COFFEE, AND POINTEDLY STOPS PAYING ATTENTION TO THE BARISTAS.]

[THE TWO BARISTAS NOW SING THIS SONG, BEGINNING WITH THE START OF THE ORIGINAL TUNE. THEY PRETEND THAT THEY DON’T KNOW THE CHEMIST CAN HEAR THEM. THE CHEMIST PRETENDS THAT HE ISN’T PAYING ATTENTION TO THEM. AS THE SONG PROGRESSES, THE CHEMIST PRETENDS HE IS NOT EMBARRASSED AT HAVING ACTED LIKE AN ASS. ]

If you've always seen yourself as a zombie, but don't want to go through the hassle of special effects makeup, here's a way you can literally "see yourself" as a zombie any time you want! Zombie illustrator Rob Sacchetto has turned thousands of people into zombies, including celebrities, brides and grooms, and even pets! And now he has relaunched his Zombie Portraits business, and is taking orders for custom zombie portraits, of yourself, someone you love, or even as a gift. Full color if you dare, or a black-and-white drawing if you are a little squeamish. Link 

Three-year-old Hunter Spanjer is deaf and talks with his hands. In the S.E.E. (Signing Exact English) language, the gesture that means his name violates his school's weapons policy. Grand Island Public School wants Hunter to change his name so he won't have to use the sign.  

Grand Island's "Weapons in Schools" Board Policy 8470 forbids "any instrument...that looks like a weapon," But a three year-old's hands?

"Anybody that I have talked to thinks this is absolutely ridiculous. This is not threatening in any way," said Hunter's grandmother Janet Logue.

"It's a symbol. It's an actual sign, a registered sign, through S.E.E.," Brian Spanjer said.

The sign may look a little bit like a gun, but Hunter's name is a slightly modified sign to designate it as his name, in which he crosses his fingers. His fingers still look too much like a gun for school authorities. The National Association of the Deaf has been notified, and is expected to send lawyers to talk to officials from the school. Link  -via Boing Boing

It was decommissioned in 1995, but a step inside this Foxtrot B-39 (U 475) Russian submarine is enough to send you back to the Cold War. This Soviet submarine would spend weeks submerged with a full contingent of men crammed into the steel tube. Read more about it and see plenty of pictures at Environmental Graffiti. Link

(Image credit: Foantje)

The story of the botched restoration of the fresco Ecce Homo spawned a lively round of Photoshoppery and other meme-making activities. Buzzfeed has a roundup of some of the funniest. Oh, and the Mr. Bean episode that Alex referred to in the original article? That's included, featuring the new masterpiece. Link

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"Sit still, son, we're makin' a video!" Greta seems to think that Lee needs a little grooming. Or maybe a lot. Commenter Auden declared this the result of "Johnson & Johnson No Tears Fancy Feast Child's Tasty Head Shampoo." -via Metafilter

Lawyer and financial planner Joseph Caramadre has made a career out of reading the fine print and exploiting loopholes. He's under fire now for a scheme in which he sold variable annuities with life insurance. The catch he found is that Rhode Island doesn't specifically state that you have to have some kind of relationship with a person in order to insure their life. And during the latest economic boom, insurance companies were very eager to sell policies. So Caramadre sold variable annuities to investors, tagged the attached life insurance policy on someone else who was close to death, and made himself and/or his investors the beneficiary of their insurance policy.  

There is something morally unsettling about this. Put simply: Caramadre was setting himself and his clients up to profit from the demise of strangers. While the macabre aspect of his scheme offends many, it did not make Caramadre squeamish. He rationalized that a lot of people — funeral homes, hospitals and cemeteries — make money from the dead and dying, why not him?

Caramadre's insight might have remained a curiosity were it not for something called "the arms race." As competition intensified in the mid-2000s, many life insurance companies launched an unprecedented war for customers, offering benefits they now acknowledge were far, far too favorable.

The insurance companies' contracts provided little defense against Caramadre's approach. For policies under a million dollars, they didn't check the health status of people receiving variable annuities. Instead, they limited the ages of annuitants or the amount that could be invested. All that the companies required for persons to serve as a measuring life was their signature, birthdate and Social Security number. Some didn't even require the signature.

There was usually only a single line that touched on insurable interest in the contract. Companies would ask if a relationship existed between the investor and the annuitant. Caramadre and the men with whom he worked would either leave the answer blank or type in "none." The companies, eager for business, took the policy anyway.

Insurance companies have sued Caramadre left and right, and he is also being investigated for criminal conspiracy. The question is not whether the scheme was despicable; the question is whether it was strictly illegal. Link

(Image credit: Matthew Healey for ProPublica)

Did you know that there are only ten schools in the Big 12 conference? I didn't. But if you knew that, you'll probably do well in today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss. The challenge is to name all the Big 12 school in one minute. Good luck! Link

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Josico shows off her lovely voice. This sweet cat belongs to model and professional wrestler Reby Sky. Is Josico imitating a duck, a crow, or is she practicing her witch laugh for when she grows up to be a Halloween cat?

The Burj Khalifa in Dubai may be the world's tallest building, but not for long. China and Saudi Arabia already have plans to build taller skyscrapers. How long can this go on? Is there a physical limit to how high you can build a tower? Architect Tim Johnson of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat thinks the only real limits are practicality and money, as engineers can always find a way around physical limits.

For a Middle East-based client he's not allowed to identify, Johnson worked on a project back in the late 2000s designing a building that would have been a mile-and-a-half tall, with 500 stories. Somewhat of a theoretical practice, the design team identified between 8 and 10 inventions that would have had to take place to build a building that tall. Not innovations, Johnson says, but inventions, as in completely new technologies and materials. "One of the client's requirements was to push human ingenuity," he says. Consider them pushed.

With those inventions and the hollow, Eiffel Tower-like base, Johnson says the design could have worked. The project was canned as a result of the crash of the real estate market in the late 2000s (and probably at least a little good old-fashioned pragmatism). But if things were to change, that building could be built, he says.

"We proved that it is physically and even programmatically possible to build a building a mile-and-a-half tall. If somebody would have said 'Do it two miles,' we probably could have done that, too," Johnson says. "A lot of it comes down to money. Who’s going to have that kind of capital?"

Other architects, engineers, and planners share their opinions on the limits of construction at the Atlantic. Link -via the Presurfer

(Image credit: Jeddah Economic Company/Adrian Smith/Gordon Gill Architecture)

In the 20th century, we became used to seeing hoards of girls excitedly screaming over a musician: Frank Sinatra, Elvis, the Beatles ...all the way to Justin Bieber in the 21st century. But the phenomenon did not start with Frankie; musician-mania just became better publicized in the modern era.

In the year 1842, five years into the proper Victorian Era, and that's when Lisztomania swept the land. [Hungarian musician Franz] Liszt was 31 years old the year he landed in Berlin. He'd established a new mode of performance — the solo piano recital — and new kinds of non-narrative music that people compared to musical poetry. He also developed a violent playing style that broke strings and sometimes brought down entire pianos. The Berliners were enchanted. At his concerts, they worked themselves up to screaming, fainting ecstasies. Women followed Liszt down the street and picked up his old cigarette stubs, made bracelets from his broken piano strings — and tried to rush him en masse, and pull out or cut locks of his hair. The craze spread outward from there, getting Britons and Italians as Liszt moved around.

Read more about Liszt and his fans at io9. Link

See also: 6 Classical Scandals Straight from the Tabloids

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Isn't it amazing what a set of fans and one piece of fabric can do? Artist Daniel Wurtzel creates kinetic sculpture with air currents. The installation Magic Carpet appears in the new Cirque du Soleil tour Amaluna. -via I Am Bored

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YouTube member adnmusic "improved" the video of Joe Rinaudo playing his 1926 Photoplayer by requesting a polka version of the Guns 'n' Roses song "Sweet Child of Mine." A simple joke, but I had to laugh! -via Buzzfeed

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That's no moon, but it's no Death Star, either. When you invest in a Death Star, make sure it's the real McCoy. This ad parodies the Mac Genius ads in the flavor of Star Wars. -via The Daily What Geek 

Flavorwire has compiled a collection of wonderful places to relax, unwind, and take in the scenery while you release the stress of your life. There are spas set up in boats, mountaintops, islands, jungles, and other neat spots all over the world -even under the ocean! Me, I'd want to try out this hot springs spa called The Blue Lagoon in the lava fields of Grindavik in Iceland. How about you? Link