There have been 26 James Bond movies, in which agent 007 clashes with various nefarious forces and invariably saves the world. Whether a good villain, or even a good plot, is crucial to the success of a Bond film is debatable, as some people watch them for James Bond himself, the Bond girls, the gadgets, or the action. Or even just out of habit. Esquire identified 104 Bond villains worthy of note and ranked them from the lamest to the most awesome. Looking through the list can be an exercise in nostalgia, and the villains you forgot about are just as wacky as they ever were, like the Three Blind Mice.    

The Film: Dr. No

The Actors: Eric Coverly, Charles Edghill, and Henry Lopez

The Basics: A trio of assassins who pose as blind beggars

Noteworthy for being the first Bond villains we see on screen, these three putter around Jamaica pretending to be blind so they can sneak up on their victims and pump them full of lead. One of their hits brings Bond into the plot. He returns the favor by sending them driving off a cliff to a fiery death. "I think they were on their way to a funeral," Bond quips.

No, I won't say where they ranked (the three are counted as one villain), but you can read about all 104 Bond villains at Esquire. -via Boing Boing

Rhubarb is an acidic plant that thrives in cool temperatures and contains a decent amount of vitamin C. Rhubarb was mostly a medicinal plant until the rise of affordable sugar. The leaves are toxic, but the stems are used in pies, jam, wine, and can be eaten raw when dipped in sugar. And where do you find the biggest rhubarb plants? In Alaska! The plant is not native to the region, but Alaskan farmers grow enormous stalks, mainly thanks to Henry D. Clark, the "Rhubarb King" of Skagway, Alaska.  

In early 1900s, settlers in the frontier marveled at rhubarb’s massive growth potential. Newspapers and books often profiled Clark’s farm in particular. The man himself came from humble beginnings, says Caroline Hill, general manager of Jewell Gardens, which occupies part of Clark’s old homestead today. Clark hailed from Wisconsin, and trekked to Alaska during the Klondike Gold Rush. On the infamous White Pass Trail, Hill says, Clark witnessed people suffering from scurvy.

“We think that maybe he had rhubarb seeds in his pocket,” Hill says. On his return to the town of Skagway, Clark established his rhubarb farm⁠—a wise decision, considering the local lack of fresh food. A photo from 1913 shows Clark holding a humongous rhubarb stalk, topped with a large fluffy leaf, along with a yardstick in one hand to demonstrate its size. “That’s three feet just there,” Hill points out. “I don’t think he was an abnormally short or tall man. So it’s a very large piece of rhubarb.”

Read about Alaska's giant rhubarb at Atlas Obscura.

Even when things went wrong on set, Fred Rogers was always good-natured about it. As we've learned over the years, he was exactly the same off-camera and on-camera. -via Geeks Are Sexy 

According to the Harris Poll Reputation Quotient, the most respected company in the US is Wegmans Food Markets, Inc. The poll that determined that queried over 18 thousand Americans on the 100 companies that were the "most visible" during the previous year. TitleMax brings us a visualization of the top ten companies over the past five years and their movement, and also the bottom ten companies. Those that don't show movement may not have been so "visible" during other years.  

You can enlarge the graphic here if you need to. Read more about the graphic at TitleMax. -via Digg

The Kennel Club's Dog Photographer of the Year winners for 2019 have been announced. The overall winner Denise Czichocki for the picture above.

Swiss photographer Denise Czichocki was chosen as the Overall Winner and 1st Place Winner in the Oldies category for her image, Dreaming Merlin. Her photo beautifully captures the 14-year-old rescue Podengo, sat amongst a pink-flowered magnolia tree. “It wasn’t easy to take photos of him because of his absolute deafness,” says Czichocki. “So I couldn’t work with noises to get his attention…afterwards it wasn’t necessary. He gave me so many beautiful moments as you can see in this picture. This is Merlin, beautiful, dreamy and kind of wise. A wonderful old dog with so much charisma.” Czichocki will receive an original oil painting of her image by award-winning artist Sara Abbott.

There are also winners in eleven categories such as Dogs at Work, Dogs at Play, Puppies, Assistance Dogs, and more. Read about the competition at My Modern Met. See all the winners in the Kennel Club's gallery. -via Everlasting Blort

A bizarre clip of Nicolas Cage in the 1989 movie Never on Tuesday has gone viral thirty years after the fact. The movie, produced by Cassian Elwes, was a teen sex comedy that was not a hit and was never released on home video. But it was notable for having some big names in it, mostly as cameos. Nic Cage had already made a splash in movies like Raising Arizona and Moonstruck at the time, and Elwes was overwhelmed that he agreed to appear. Gothamist scored an interview with Elwes about the strange one-minute performance, in which Cage wears a fake nose, speaks in a falsetto voice, and comes across as reminiscent of Crispin Glover.

How did Nicolas Cage become involved? As I said, we made it very low-budget: under a million dollars. I made a movie called Oxford Blues a few years earlier with Rob Lowe and Ally Sheedy. I was hoping to get Rob Lowe to do that cameo in Never on Tuesday. At the last second, he couldn’t do it. We were scrambling—literally had like 48 hours to come up with a star. A friend of a friend said, “What about asking Nic Cage?” I was like, “Ask him!” Then he called me back and said, “Yeah, he’ll do it, but he wants to wear this nose in the movie.” I was like, “Tell him to come, bring the nose, no problem.” I didn’t know him at all.

Were you a fan? Yeah, a big fan. Nic was a huge star at that point. I can’t remember if Moonstruck was before that one? [Note: It was.] It was preceding Leaving Las Vegas, but he was already a huge young male star. So for him to come do this cameo in our film… Short of wearing a bag over his head, I was totally cool with whatever he wanted to do.

They just said, "Could he wear a fake nose?" I was like, “Sure!” I didn't know what it was gonna look like.

There's lots more to the story, which you can read at Gothamist.  -via Metafilter

The government of Japan has approved a research plan to create human-animal chimeras, or organisms with both human and rodent cells. Specifically, the plan is to grow a human pancreas in the body of a rat or mouse, with the goal of harvesting organs that can be transplanted into human patients.  Scientist Hiromitsu Nakauchi has been working on getting approval for such a plan for ten years. The previous guidelines in Japan were to allow this kind of cell-mixing in embryos, but not to implant them into surrogate animal mothers, nor to grow them past 14 days.  

The strategy that he and other scientists are exploring is to create an animal embryo that lacks a gene necessary for the production of a certain organ, such as the pancreas, and then to inject human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells into the animal embryo. iPS cells are those that have been reprogrammed to an embryonic-like state and can give rise to almost all cell types. As the animal develops, it uses the human iPS cells to make the organ, which it cannot make with its own cells.

In 2017, Nakauchi and his colleagues reported the injection of mouse iPS cells into the embryo of a rat that was unable to produce a pancreas. The rat formed a pancreas made entirely of mouse cells. Nakauchi and his team transplanted that pancreas back into a mouse that had been engineered to have diabetes. The rat-produced organ was able to control blood sugar levels, effectively curing the mouse of diabetes1.

There are quite a few hurdles between combining rats and mice and combining human cells with vasty different species. The ultimate goal is to be able to grow human organs in species closer to ours, such as pigs. Of course, there are ethical concerns. Read more about the planned experiments at Nature.  -via Gizmodo

Why would a theater decide not to show a particular movie- especially one that was guaranteed to be a hit? You might think that it's because a theater owner's religious sensibilities came into play, and that does happen. But there are other, more concrete reasons not to screen a film, ranging from legal obligations to fear, as you'll see in this video from Looper. -via Digg

Fainting, or syncope, happens in the movies more than in real life. In the movies, when a woman faints, it's often because she needs a minute to think about how to respond to something that just happened. A man will faint so that the audience will know he's a wimp. Fainting can be a simple shortcut in fiction.In real life, the reason people faint is simply because of not enough blood getting to your brain. The body passing out and falling to a horizontal position is also its own cure, although not without its own dangers. However, there are several reasons for a deficit of blood going to the brain, some of which are explored at Jstor. -via Damn Interesting

Heard a sound come from the kitchen and noticed four fresh cookies went missing. pic.twitter.com/uqK8WLvb12

— Aaron (@AaronMicron) July 29, 2019

Four cookies have been stolen. But evidence points to a possible suspect. The timing of the camera pan makes this a glorious 18-second video. Even in this predicament, he tries to stealthily steal away. -via Nag on the Lake

Brownies are like pizza- even those that rank relatively low are pretty good. But if you could learn to make better brownies, you would surely jump at the chance, wouldn't you? The staff at Delish went all out to find the best brownie recipe, and they went through "45 cups of cocoa powder, 43 sticks of butter, 180 eggs, 14 bags of chocolate chips...and some of our sanity." Since "best" depends on the kind of brownie you prefer, four experimental bakers divided up the goal into the best chewy brownie, the best fudgy brownie, the best cake brownie, and the best gluten-free brownie.

We suffered some seriously intense sugar crashes and chocolate withdrawals, but we actually had fun. Since we were looking to make four unique recipes (not pit our four recipes against each other, like we have in the past), we were able to troubleshoot and taste test each other’s recipes. It made our roads to brownie perfection far less lonely. We became each other's cheerleaders, and each of our personal favorites didn't even end up being our own: Makinze loves Lena's most, Lauren prefers Makinze's, June declared Lauren's the best cake brownie she's ever had, and Lena is obsessed with June's.

***

As you might guess, we learned quite a bit along the way—enough to lay out all the biggest brownie don'ts so you'll never mess up a batch again. We geeked out a little, too, to bring you a chart detailing how oven temperature, butter, and sugar affect your final brownie. And if you'd rather just eat brownies than bake them, we gotchyu: We'll tell you what kind of brownie you are based on your horoscope.

Hey, your brownies might already be great, but that doesn't mean you won't enjoy learning more about brownie craft at Delish. -Thanks, WTM!

It is illegal to take anything from a national park, even a small rock. That's because in centuries past, tourists would ruin natural wonders and monuments by taking a piece home as a souvenir. But maybe nature has something to do with the "hands off" policy, too. When people visit the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona, they are tempted to take a piece of petrified wood home with them. Many later regret the theft, and send the rocks back to the park with apologies. This mail became known as "conscience letters," and they come from all over. During a visit in 2011, Ryan Thompson became fascinated with these letters and eventually wrote a book called Bad Luck, Hot Rocks, chronicling the best of them.      

Unfortunately for folks who think they’re doing the right thing by mailing in rocks, these specimens won’t ever return to the Petrified Forest’s natural landscape. Although previous park staff sometimes responded to letters and returned rocks to where a visitor described finding them, that practice ended decades ago. “Because of their unknown provenance,” Thompson writes in his book, “these specimens can not be scattered back in the park; to do so would be to spoil those sites for research purposes.”

Instead, mailed fragments of petrified wood become part of the “conscience pile” near a private service road that visitors do not have access to. Park staff believe there have been a few different locations used to dump stones sent via mail, and are unsure when the current site was first used.

“The conscience pile, to me, is really one of the more interesting parts of the whole phenomenon,” Thompson says. “It’s this weird purgatory for these rocks. Visitors are trying to make these atonements or set something right in their lives and for the world, and ultimately, ironically, they’re unable to.”

Many of the letter writers describe the bad luck that followed them after picking up the illegal rocks, as if the petrified wood is cursed. Read how that story got started, and see some of the conscience letters and returned rocks at Collectors Weekly.

If you know anything about Adolphe Sax, you know that he invented the saxophone. But while he was a talented and innovative instrument developer, the rest of the Sax's life was quite extraordinary as well. Taken as a whole, you get the idea that the very universe was against him. As a child, he survived dangerous falls, burns, poison, explosion, drowning, and even managed to swallow a needle and recover. He outshone all the competition in an annual musical instrument competition for years, but the judges refused to pronounce him the winner. So he went to Paris and outfitted the French military band with new instruments of his own design.  

This was the last straw- when Sax, a Belgian no less, secured the contract to supply the French military, his rivals decided to literally form an organization who might as well have called themselves the “Anti-Sax Club”, but in the end went with- L’Association générale des ouvriers en instruments demusique (the United Association of Instrument Makers). This was an organization to which the most prominent and talented instrument maker in France at the time was most definitely not welcome to join.

Their principal order of business throughout Sax’s lifetime seemed to be to try to ruin Sax in any way they could. To begin with, adopting the age old practice of “If you can’t beat ’em, sue ’em”, a long running tactic by the organization was simply to tie up Sax’s resources, time, and energy in any way possible in court.

After that, Sax was beset with lawsuits, infringement, arson, an assassination attempt, bankruptcy, and cancer. Yet he persevered. Read how Sax took on the world at Today I Found Out.

The year 1969 was pretty momentous, giving us Apollo 11, Woodstock, Chappaquiddick, Stonewall, and the Manson Family murders, the last of which features prominently in the new Quentin Tarantino movie Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Those of us of a certain age followed the murder investigation in the news and/or read the brutal, salacious, and just plain weird details in the book Helter Skelter. Younger people might wonder what cult leader Charles Manson had to do with the fame factory of Hollywood.

Manson had connections to a number of wealthy and influential people in Los Angeles. Through Dennis Wilson, he became acquainted with record producer Terry Melcher, son of actress Doris Day and boyfriend of model and actress Candice Bergen. At one point, the daughter of actress Angela Lansbury was a Family hanger-on, and though she wasn’t an official member, she used her mother’s credit cards to buy the Family’s food and clothing.

Melcher and Bergen lived at the house (10050 Cielo Drive) that Tate would eventually rent with her husband, director Roman Polanski, and Guinn posits that the house represented Manson’s rejection by the musical establishment—he’d courted Melcher as a patron, and even hosted the producer at Spahn Ranch, where Melcher politely listened to Manson and the Family perform. Manson pinned a great deal of hope on his connections with Wilson and Melcher, and it’s widely believed that once it became clear the two men weren’t going to significantly advance his music career (though Wilson did convince the Beach Boys to re-work and record a version of Manson’s song “Cease to Exist,” which they renamed “Never Learn Not to Love,” it was considered a flop), Manson became increasingly focused on violence.

One can only wonder if it would have made any difference if Manson were more musically talented. Read an overview of the Manson Family murders at Smithsonian.

"Tiny bombs in your blood" may sound like a description of a deadly disease, but it's perfectly normal. This is about your immune system, or more specifically, the "complement system," a complex network of proteins that interact in amazing ways to protect us from infection. The teamwork displayed by these proteins is nothing short of astounding, and it all happens on a scale that even microscopes struggle to see.