Wednesday night, the security cameras outside radio station KIRO in Seattle caught a vandal trying to break the window on a truck. With a mop. They reported the incident to the police, and then got morning show host John Curley to narrate it in play-by-play fashion.
Last night we captured surveillance footage of a vandal trying to break in to one of our employee's vehicles in our parking lot. While the suspect is still at large, we took the liberty to have John Curley give his play-by-play of the incident.
Every once in a while, Hollywood will put its performers in the place of the audience -in a movie theater, watching from the seats. When I saw "scenes that take place inside movies theaters," I immediately thought of the Coen brothers movie O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Considering that this exchange followed Everett’s discovery that his wife divorced him while he was in jail and is now about to marry a man named Waldrip and declare that he is the new father of their girls you might think it’s allowable for Everett to vent just a little. And poor Delmar, he’s got to listen to every word of it, and the confusion on his face when he’s asked about having a woman is priceless.
Yeah there are other awesome film scenes that are set in movie theaters, but if you don't immediately recall them, you'll want to go see them at TVOM.
The Chicago Bears did not know they were going to win the 1986 Super Bowl when ten of the players got together to record a novelty song six weeks earlier. They didn't even know they'd be in the game. "The Super Bowl Shuffle" was a collaboration between wide receiver Willie Gault and Richard Meyer of Red Label Records. Other players wanted in on the fun, and besides, the song lyrics promised to "feed the needy." The song was an instant hit in Chicago, then went nationwide and ended up at #41 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Incredibly, the VHS copy of the video moved so many units it threatened to unseat Michael Jackson’s Thriller on sales charts. In February of 1986, the song was nominated for a Grammy for Best Rhythm & Blues Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group. (It lost to Prince & the Revolution's "Kiss.") Best of all, the Bears’s victory at Super Bowl XX was, at the time, the highest-rated in the game’s history. What started as a glorified joke had become a lucrative venture.
Just how lucrative would quickly become an issue for Illinois’s attorney general.
Gault and Meyer had succeeded in orchestrating an unlikely hit, but they did fumble one detail: No one had checked in with the head office of the Chicago Bears to see if “The Super Bowl Shuffle” had their official blessing.
The more we learn about other parts of our galaxy, the more we are intrigued with the possibility of finding life on other planets. In reality, that life would be nothing like our science fiction stories. That's exciting, but the odds are that contact would not be good for us.
Aliens could be harmful to us, whether they are what we'd consider "intelligent" or not. And intelligent aliens would almost certainly be our doom. Where do we fit in with alien life? It's all up in the air, so to speak. The latest video from Kurzgesagt explains some of the possibilities of what we might find ...someday. -via Boing Boing
Losing baby teeth is one of the earliest and most anticipated rites of passage for a young child. In our part of the world, it often involves a visit from the tooth fairy. But just how old is the tradition, and what came before it? This visit from the trivia fairy will reveal all.
TOOTH OR CONSEQUENCES
“Shed tooth rituals,” as anthropologists and folklorists call the traditions that accompany the loss of baby teeth, have varied widely from one place to another and from one time to another. Every human culture has such rituals, and many have a feature in common: whatever is done with the baby tooth is done in the belief that it will protect the child from harm or ensure that a strong, healthy permanent tooth grows in to replace the old tooth.
For centuries in Europe, it was common practice to “plant” baby teeth in the ground as if they were seeds. Doing so was thought to encourage the growth of the new tooth. Planting the tooth also kept it from falling into the hands of a witch, who could use it to cast spells on the child who lost it. (If there was any question as to whether the tooth had already been bewitched, throwing it into a fire destroyed the tooth and broke the spell.)
One of the more crucial components -and often the most overlooked by spectators- is the ice and snow under the performing athletes. The Games cannot rely on the weather providing the required conditions for skiing, skating, and sledding. And the quality of the ice and snow is important for the fastest races and the most intricate stunts. Bumps on a bobsled run? They'll not only ruin an Olympic race, they're also dangerous. Tracy Seitz of Whistler Sliding Centre in Canada explains the intricacies of Olympic ice.
The quality and purity of ice is so important that a special position—the Ice Master—has been created to ensure its viability. Forget sculptors who make intricate ice sculptures; Ice Masters shape ice into some of the most impressive structures on earth. At least a year in advance of the Games themselves, they spray hundreds of paper-thin coats of this ultrapure water on a concrete course or rink, which is chilled by an embedded refrigeration system for rapid freezing. It takes around five days of non-stop work to lay the frozen track for a bobsled run, says Seitz.
This process prevents the formation of frost layers, which form when humid air freezes over the icy surface. Frost layers can trap air bubbles in the ice, which can work their way out as tiny pockmarks. “We don’t think of it [ice] as fluid, but it is very much so fluid, and it’s moving all the time,” says Seitz. “Those layers of air in the ice will create weaknesses that can break out and create inconsistencies in the ice surface.” For a bobsled, one tiny pockmark can cause a sled to bounce, perpetuating the problem. “One bump creates two bumps creates three bumps, and on and on and on,” he says.
The ice for indoor rinks is built to different standards for speed skating, figure skating, curling, and hockey. And the snow under skiers and snowboarders is engineered for speed as well, with the added difficulty of dealing with the vagaries of actual weather. Read about the different kinds of snow and ice and how they are created for the Olympics at Smithsonian.
Three-year-old Ruby went to the zoo in Tulsa with her toy Beast (from Beauty and the Beast) and set it down in the viewing area of the tiger enclosure. The tiger was instantly attentive!
This is the truth of raising children. You may recall doing plenty of chores for your parents in your own childhood, but they remember it differently. For them, it was a matter of either teaching you how to do them or getting you to do them, and they always ended up expending the lion's share of the effort. That's because it is a parent's job to teach you the things you need to know to deal with life. That's one reason being a grandparent is so great. You reap that sweet, sweet karma when your kids find out how hard they made it for you. This comic is from Zach Weinersmith at Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.
A wholesome meme these days means one that doesn't involve politics or death threats between participants. So how about a meme that involves death threats from nature? This game has sparked a lot of interesting yet non-earth-shattering conversation about the animals around us. Here's the premise. Which is most dangerous: 50 eagles, ten crocodiles, three grizzly bears, seven bulls, one armed hunter, 15 wolves, 10,000 rats, five silverback gorillas, or four lions. You can pick two sets of creatures to be your allies in order to defend against the rest of them. The whole idea is to hear your reasons for your picks, but as far as I'm concerned, you are doomed. That's a lot to defend against, no matter what is helping you. -via Metafilter
Forty-two years ago, the U.S. government was just starting to use computers. Few Americans at the time understood computers at all, and couldn't wrap their heads around what they did. Honestly, they didn't do much, compared with how we all use computers today, but it was a big step forward in replacing large banks of file cabinets. When the Domestic Council implemented computer use, people complained. George Humphreys, the Domestic Council’s Associate Director for Environment, sent this letter to Domestic Council Executive Director Jim Cannon encouraging the use of the new technology.
“The basis of the complaints, valid or invalid, was with the implementation of the concept… Many people think of ‘computers’ as a dark, mysterious force that somehow pulsates ominously in an unknown recess, ready to bite if not properly respected.”
The 2010 film Eat Pray Love is based on a true story of Elizabeth Gilbert, a woman who traveled the world to find out what's important in life. It starred Julia Roberts, Javier Bardem, James Franco, and a whole slew of actors who we didn't know at the time, but who have become big names since then. The movie was panned by critics, but was a box office success. And there are things about Eat Pray Love that you don't yet know.
8. Many fans didn’t agree with Bardem’s casting as a Brazilian.
Bardem is Spanish, and many Brazilians had a big issue with his Portuguese accent since it wasn’t as accurate as it should have been.
7. Julia Roberts says she gained 10 pounds during the Rome scenes.
If she was eating the entire time it would make sense. Being overseas usually makes people want to try the local cuisine as much as possible.
What in the world is this thing? The formations found in the 19th century in Nebraska resembled huge corkscrews, and locals called them the Devil's Corkscrews. Yeah, scientists knew they were fossils of some sort, but what made them: a vine, a tree root, or a worm from an ancient sea bed? Maybe a monster? These things could have been the inspiration for the movie Tremors! But if you looked at the picture and thought "spiral staircase," you'd be on the right track.
With all the different theories, it took decades for scientists to come to an agreement about what made these "Daemonelix." The final bit of evidence that confirmed the theory wasn't discovered until 1977! -via Mental Floss
This is a throwback to the kind of goofy video the internet was built on- four guys in bathrobes imitating water fountains. While the production is quite low-tech, the idea is genius and they do it well. Stay with it for the grand finale.
Four must-see locations for those in search of some local color.
1) CHILE’S MOST VIBRANT CITY
Hugging the Pacific coast, Valparaíso (shown above) was South America’s greatest international waterway until the Panama Canal stole the spotlight. The city is home to Latin America’s first stock exchange, Chile’s first public library, and the world’s oldest continuously running Spanish-language newspaper. Colorful homes dominate, mostly perched on hillsides in a maze of cobblestone alleys. In 2003, its historic quarter was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
People, especially women, have often put their lives at risk to be attractive. Some fads and fashions are more dangerous than others, and throughout history, it took more than few deaths to change what we considered beautiful. Jennifer Wright is the author of the book Killer Fashion: Poisonous Petticoats, Strangulating Scarves and Other Deadly Garments Throughout History, which chronicles 26 deadly fashions, one for each letter of the alphabet. They cover a range of dangerous fashions from Chinese foot-binding to flammable crinolines.
Many women have heard the old adage, “One must suffer for beauty”—“Il faut souffrir pour etre belle” in French—so like the pain of an uncomfortable push-up bra worn to achieve a curvier silhouette, death by fashion might seem like a grim comeuppance for feminine vanity. But the most troubling stories in Killer Fashion aren’t even about the style mavens who wore the toxic looks, but the poor souls tasked with making the clothes.
While fashionable flappers adopted the questionable habit of applying glow-in-the-dark radium on their lips and teeth to shimmer on the dance floor, the women who suffered most from exposure to radioactivity were the “Radium Girls” who worked in factories in the 1920s carefully painting the small numbers on the faces of swanky Undark watches and licking their glowing paint brushes to make a finer point. In a particularly gruesome Killer Fashion passage, Wright explains, “The radium painters’ teeth began to rot. When they went to the dentist to have their teeth pulled, some of their jawbones crumbled under the pressure.” In fact, the radium weakened all their bones and gave them tumors. In a few short years, the radium-factory death toll had reached 50.
