Have you ever visited a casino on a Native American reservation? David Israel hasn't yet, but he likes to go prepared, so he found out as much as he could about the history and laws of Native American casinos. Here's a sampling:
7. Revenues from gaming are required to be used for tribal governmental and charitable ventures only. The revenues are exempt from federal, state, and local taxes, however there are exceptions. In the cases where the revenues are divided evenly and then distributed directly to tribal members, the federal government gets a nice cut. State taxes are often part of the agreements for large scale casinos.
8. There are 562 recognized tribes in the United States, only about 200 operate full scale casinos. There are approximately 150 additional tribes seeking recognition. Many complain that these tribes have no real membership and are only seeking to cash in on the casino business. Supporters of Native American rights point to centuries old treaties put in place to protect these unrecognized tribes. The Pequot tribe, which operates Foxwoods, received recognition in the early 1980s, after the last surviving member living on the reservation died and her grandchildren came together to recreate the tribe.
Pulsate is a web toy that doesn't serve any great purpose besides possibly amusing you for a few moments. Click on the field to create circles. As they expand and contract, they'll make music as they bump against each other. You'll want to experiment to determine the optimum number of circles and distance between them for the nicest tones. Link -via b3ta
The Solar Impulse (previously at Neatorama), an experimental electric plane with rechargeable solar batteries, has completed a 24-hour continuous flight, with no fuel. The flight proves that the plane's solar collectors can store enough energy through the day to last through the night.
Pilot Andre Borschberg eased the Solar Impulse onto the runway at Payerne airfield about 30 miles southwest of the Swiss capital Bern at exactly 9 a.m. (3 a.m. EDT) Thursday.Helpers rushed to stabilize the pioneering plane as it touched down, ensuring that its massive 207-foot wingspan didn't scrape the ground and topple the craft.The record feat completes seven years of planning and brings the Swiss-led project one step closer to its goal of circling the globe using only energy from the sun."We achieved more than we wanted. Everybody is extremely happy," Borschberg told reporters after landing.
The flight proves that, theoretically, the plane could stay in flight indefinitely. The next goal: crossing the Atlantic. Link -via reddit
Antisa Khvichava is celebrating her 130th birthday today in Sachire, Georgia. She worked as a tea and corn picker until she was 85 years old, then retired and now lives with her 40-year-old grandson.
"I've always been healthy, and I've worked all my life — at home and at the farm," said Khvichava, in a bright dress and headscarf, her withering lips rejuvenated by shiny red lipstick. Sitting in the chair and holding her cane, Khvichava spoke quietly through an interpreter since she never went to school to learn Georgian and speaks only the local language, Mingrelian.
Her age couldn't immediately be independently verified. Her birth certificate was lost — one of the great number to have disappeared in the past century amid revolutions and a civil war which followed the collapse of the Russian Empire.
But Meurnishvili showed two Soviet-era documents that he says attest to her age. Scores of officials, neighbors, friends, and descendants backed up her claim as the world's top senior.
Suspiciously, Khvichava's son is 70 years old, which would mean Khvichava was 60 years old when she gave birth to him. Link
Have you ever known a dog who couldn't figure out how stairs work? Allie at Hyperbole and a Half has such a dog. I guarantee, you will love her no matter how intellectually-challenged she is! Link
Ferdinand Adolf Heinrich August Graf von Zeppelin was born in Germany 172 years ago today. Zeppelin didn't invent the airship, but he made them bigger and better to the point that they became known as zeppelins. Read more about Zeppelin and his airships at Geeks Are Sexy. Link
Telephone booth? What's that? Oh, that's where Superman changes into his costume! I can hear my kids puzzling over this now... but there are phone booths still surviving in the world. Some have quite a story behind them, as you'll see in this list of ten, like this handy mobile pay phone on a boat in Uganda. http://www.yourofficeandpa.co.uk/blog/?p=42 -Thanks, Dave!
Take a second look at this picture. Better yet, look at the full version at NeatoGeek. Now, what's the caption? You could win a t-shirt from the NeatoShop if your caption is the best. Leave yours in a comment at NeatoGeek, and see how your stacks up against some hilarious competition. Link
The Plan: During WWII, Axis powers attempted to wage psychological warfare against the Allies in a highly unusual way. They'd fly over enemy camps and drop pictures of buxom ladies on the troops. The twist? Most of the women were pictured in passionate embraces with strange men.
The Hope: According to German officials, the drops were meant to get GIs thinking about their wives and girlfriends back home-specifically, thinking about them being unfaithful. Axis propaganda wasn't always so convoluted, though. Sometimes the Germans simply dropped pictures of scantily clad women posed over quotes such as "You can enjoy this if you surrender."
The Disappointment: Surprise! Apparently, giving out free pictures of sexy women isn't the best way to demoralize soldiers. Far from being upset, the GIs began collecting the pics and using them as pinups.
The Plan: Soviet leader Joseph Stalin wanted to spread the message of communism far and wide, so in 1934, he enlisted the ANT-20, a massive aircraft with a wingspan of more than 200 feet.
The Hope: In addition to its jaw-dropping size, the plane contained multiple radio stations, a photo lab, and even a printing press for distributing leaflets midair. But the best thing about the plane (from a propaganda point of view) was its loudspeaker. Known as the "Voice from the Sky", the sound system was so powerful that it could broadcast speeches and songs to the public from hundreds of feet in the air.
The Disappointment: Unfortunately for Stalin, the plane's lifespan didn't match its wingspan. In 1935, a fighter plane crashed into the giant aircraft during a demonstration over Moscow, killing 45 people. But that didn't stop the propaganda from living on. Soviet officials quickly blamed the crash on the fighter pilot, Nikolai Blagin, and a new word, Blaginism, was introduced into the Russian language. It translates to "a cocky disregard of authority."
The Plan: In 1975, President Ford signed the Metric Conversion Act, and the United States embarked on a full-fledged campaign to join the rest of the world in using meters and grams.
The Hope: The federal government tried to get Americans on board by pumping tons of money into the effort. It funded metric-touring posters, pamphlets, and TV spots-including a series of animated shorts by the same team that did "Schoolhouse Rock."There was even an answering service set up to help confused citizens.
The Disappointment: It turns out that citizens weren't exactly rushing to borrow 225 grams of sugar from their neighbors or ask the grocer for 3.79 liters of milk. In 1982, President Reagan cut the campaign's funding. Instead, he supported "voluntary metrication." lettiing Americans choose whether or not they wanted to embrace the new measuring scheme. (They chose not to.)
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The above article was written by Maggie Ryan Sandford. It is reprinted with permission from the Scatterbrained section of the July-August 2010 issue of mental_floss magazine.
Be sure to visit mental_floss' entertaining website and blog for more fun stuff!
We've addressed the problem of the methane from livestock farts and burps contributing to global warming. One way to attack the problem is to breed sheep that produce less methane. But researchers at Newcastle University say that adding curry spices to livestock feed could produce the same results.
Research has found that coriander and turmeric - spices traditionally used to flavour curries - can reduce the amount of methane produced by sheep by up to 40 per cent.
Working a bit like an antibiotic, the spices were found to kill the methane-producing ''bad'' bacteria in the animal's gut while allowing the ''good'' bacteria to flourish.
The findings are part of a study by Newcastle University research student Mohammad Mehedi Hasan and Dr Abdul Shakoor Chaudhry.
Spices also help an animal digest its food more efficiently, which could reduce the amount of feed needed. Coriander was the most efficient spice in the experiment, followed by tumeric and then cinnamon. Link -via Fortean Times
In some places, US bank notes are considered filthy lucre. So filthy, in fact, that they have to be washed. This isn't what you normally think of when you think of money laundering. This is actual washing-machine laundry in Zimbabwe! Since Zimbabwe dollars are near-worthless, American dollars are preferred, and they change hands a lot.
Low-denomination U.S bank notes change hands until they fall apart here in Africa, and the bills are routinely carried in underwear and shoes through crime-ridden slums.
Some have become almost too smelly to handle, so Zimbabweans have taken to putting their $1 bills through the spin cycle and hanging them up to dry with clothes pins alongside sheets and items of clothing.
It's the best solution—apart from rubber gloves or disinfectant wipes—in a continent where the U.S. dollar has long been the currency of choice and where the lifespan of a dollar far exceeds what the U.S. Federal Reserve intends.
The recommended method is hand washing, but washing machines are also used. Those who know say chemical dry cleaning will cause the ink to fade. Link -via Arbroath
Showing your emotional side will endear you to the ladies -that is, if you are a mouse! A study led by Kazushige Touhara of the University of Tokyo finds that male mice tears contain a sex pheromone that female mice find irresistible.
Male mice shed tears to keep their eyes from drying out. As they groom themselves, the tears—and the pheromone—get spread around their bodies and nests.
When female mice come in contact with a male or his nest, they pick up the pheromone via a nose organ called the vomeronasal, where the pheromone binds to a specific protein receptor.
"She has to touch it, because this is not a volatile compound like a fragrance," Touhara said, referring to the ease with which some chemicals turn into vapor.
Upon contact, the pheromone is sent to sex-specific regions in the female's brain. The female mouse is then three times more likely to engage in what's called lordosis behavior, a posture shown by many animals in heat in which they thrust their rumps and tails upward.
Humans don't have the gene code for the chemical or its receptor, so crying isn't an automatic aphrodisiac. Link -via Holy Kaw!
There is an argument over where the story of Cinderella came from, China, Egypt, or Greece. But the ancient tale of Ye Xian contains a rather creepy clue that the story originated in the land of the original foot fetish. In the Chinese version, the king never even meets our heroine at the ball -he becomes obsessed with finding her solely because of the miniscule size of the shoe she left behind. This makes sense in light of the traditional practice of foot binding. It is estimated that somewhere between a billion and four billion women in China had bound feet between the 10th and 20th centuries.
Foot binding began in the late T'ang dynasty and lasted for about a thousand years, until the 20th century when the practice was outlawed. Why it ever started is the stuff of legends. Some say the public wanted to emulate a Emperor's favored concubine who had unusually small feet. Others tell of an Empress with club feet and followers who bound their feet in sympathy. There are even tales of an Emperor who ordered his female subjects to undergo the procedure. Whatever the reason for the first foot to be bound, the custom caught on. The reason most often given is that small feet were sexually alluring. Now, anything can be sexually alluring if you are told that it is. Why would crippled, deformed feet make a woman more attractive? The underlying reason is that a woman with bound feet is a status symbol, an indicator of wealth and social standing. Only a man of considerable means could afford to have a wife, concubine, or daughters who couldn't work.
The problem with status symbols is that even people without status crave them. In reality, most women in China had to work, whether their feet were bound or not. With their feet mangled in this manner, women were essentially going through life balancing on their heels. As the practice spread from the upper classes to the rest of the population, the only groups that did not bind a daughter's feet were the Manchus (who still developed a shoe style to imitate the Chinese "lotus walk"), a few ethnic minorities, and some of the women who worked in southern rice paddies. Even poor families doomed their girls to a life of pain, in hopes that she would be able to marry up.
Slate is starting a series of posts on the periodic table of elements, with author Sam Kean writing a separate post about each of about two dozen of the most interesting elements. The first entry is for antimony, which I believe, is the sexiest of the elements. It was widely used in alchemy, but had better results elsewhere.
Egyptian women used one form of antimony, stibium, as eyeliner (hence the symbol for antimony, Sb, even though neither letter appears in the element's name). Pills of the element became popular as a medicine in the 1700s, especially as a laxative, able to blast through the most compacted bowels. It was so good the chronically constipated would root through their excrement to retrieve the pill and reuse it later. Some lucky families passed down antimony laxatives from generation to generation.
Unfortunately, antimony purges the bowels so well partly because it's poison—the body wants to get rid of it. But these were the days in medicine of fighting fire with fire: Doctors believed the only way to cure a violent illness was with an equally violent reaction to medicine, and antimony's popularity grew.
Other elements will be posted through the month of July. Link to introduction. Link to antimony.
