You can buy a replica of the necklace from the 1997 film Titanic from many vendors, but only one company got the rights to the design from the film: The J. Peterman Company. Their replicas were authentic, well-made, expensive, and best of all, officially licensed. Company founder John Peterman knew the movie would be big before it was released, and his gamble paid off.  

But how did Peterman get his hands on such a valuable piece in the first place? “I remember it like it was yesterday,” he tells me by phone. “Someone in the company said, ‘I know this movie, Titanic, is coming up. It’s a period movie, and the same kind of stuff we always do. We should have a deal with them!” Peterman’s team reached out to 20th Century Fox a few months before the film was set to hit theaters in December 1997 and struck a deal: They’d buy some of the actual props featured in Titanic, in addition to licensing the whole lot for commercial reproduction. “This was the first time that had ever been done,” Peterman says of the deal, “and we ruined it for everyone else — because suddenly, [the studio] realized those props had value.”

The company sold most of the props they obtained, and replicas of the costumes from the movie. But the necklace, known as the Heart of the Ocean, was a big hit. It sold amazingly well. Too well, as you'll see in an article at Racked. -via Digg
 

Life becomes more precious when you realize how precarious it is. Joy is celebrating the milestones of life. Hope means making plans in spite of your experience. In 2010, Randall Munroe's fiancée (now wife) was diagnosed with stage III breast cancer. Even after treatment, the only way to know if you beat it is to go on living.  

In 2012, we posted an update as they were celebrating two years cancer-free. It was a relief after following their story for so long. That comic is the part in lighter ink. Now he has an update on the story at xkcd. Seven years is good. 

A comment thread about snow dogs led me to an interesting interview with Dr. Susan Whiton, an Alaskan veterinarian who is married to a champion musher who runs a sled dog kennel. She talked about how Siberian Huskies, Alaskan Huskies, Malamutes, and other dogs bred specifically for cold weather are different from other dogs. Their ability to tolerate cold is amazing, as long as they are healthy, well-fed, and are in their prime.  

Q. What diet should they eat if they are outside for long periods during the day?

A. The calories in most commercial dog foods come from carbohydrates. In very cold weather, the dogs do better with a higher amount of fat calories. A study indicated a sled dog racing the Iditarod required 10,000 calories a day to meet their metabolic needs. The only way to meet that high caloric need is with a diet high in fat calories. Most pet dogs do not need that many calories and may get very sick from a high fat diet.

When I ran the Yukon Quest in 1987 we encountered -55° F temperatures at night and -20° F during the day. The sled dogs did fine at those temperatures. They were being fed a very high fat, high calorie diet up to four times a day during the rest periods and often got fatty meat snacks during the runs.

Q. How are dogs with a thick undercoat able to keep warm when sleeping?

A. When they sleep they curl up with their tail over their nose, which traps the heat against their bodies. There are lots of photos of resting sled dogs covered with snow. They are holding their heat well since the snow is not melted. The dogs that are not doing well will have ice on their fur. It indicates that they are losing enough body heat to melt the snow. Because their coat is not insulating well more ice will build up making the hair less lofty and less insulating. The thick undercoat of the Northern Breeds provides loft, like a fuzzy mohair sweater, and keeps the warmth next to the animal rather than allowing it to escape. The Iditarod sled dog race only allows Northern Breeds in the race because other breeds can’t retain heat well. So when the ice hits their coat it melts and then freezes.

There's more to read about sled dogs and cold-weather breeds here.  -via a comment at reddit

(Image credit: Ajarvarlamov)

DJ Earworm is back with the ultimate year-end music mashup. His mix for 2017 highlights the dance sounds of modern pop music. The 25 biggest songs of 2017 are all in the mix, which all together has a definite Latin sound. Honestly, it's more than just "Despacito." 

(YouTube link)

The song list and lyrics are at the YouTube link. -via Metafilter

Rob Bliss (previously at Neatorama) lives in New York City, where "same day delivery" means someone will bring what you buy fairly quickly. What would be the greatest good he could use that for? He approached homeless people and asked them what they needed the most. Click, click, click, and someone was on the way to deliver what they told him.

(YouTube link)

Note: this video is NOT SPONSORED OR AFFILIATED WITH AMAZON. I'm sure this technique could be used with Postmates or whoever else too. I simply wanted to demonstrate how easy and convenient it can be to bring a person in need, what they need, and to encourage that behavior.

That said, Bliss was impressed at how the Amazon delivery guys (who are part of the gig economy, after all) were cheerful and respectful when they delivered the goods. It had to leave them with a good feeling, as well as Bliss and the people who received the warm clothing and other supplies. -via Laughing Squid

The 1950s Cold War craze for fallout shelters was a serious undertaking for the US government. Nuclear war with the Soviets seemed inevitable, and the prudent thing to do was prepare for it. While public campaigns urged families to prepare their own shelters, stocking them with food for a long period underground was going to be difficult, especially in cities where people did not have adequate personal storage space. What were all those people going to eat in crowded municipal shelters?

That coldly logical approach, combined with an extensive 1958 study by the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, led the government toward a single commodity as the foundation for its plan to feed a nation: The “parched wheat form known as Bulgur,” one of the simplest ingredients known to man. The main ingredient in dishes like tabbouleh, kibbeh, and pilafs, bulgur is nutty, nutritious, high-fiber, and supremely safe. “Bulgur was selected for this investigation because it is processed from a basic agricultural commodity, whole-grain wheat, which is plentiful in the U.S., low in cost, highly palatable, and reportedly very stable,” one government report explained.

That last thing stood out in particular, because it would need to hold up for years inside fallout shelters, awaiting the apocalypse. “Indeed a long shelf life may well be the single most important criterion for choosing bulgur in a stockpiling program,” the government reported. As part of its research, the USDA eventually landed on crackers as the best medium for bulgur-wheat rations in a bunker scenario; after 52 months of storage it reported merely a “discernible but inconsequential decrease” in flavor.

Producing, distributing, and storing those "all-purpose survival crackers" posed its own problems. Read about the scheme to feed the nation during nuclear war at Eater. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: The National Archives)

One quite valid way to look back at the year gone by is to see what people wanted to know more about. Search engines are not only the easiest way to get more information, but those searches are also documented. Every year, Google releases their statistics on what people searched for the most, which gives us an overview of the world's curiosity. The most asked question was "how," as in how-to, meaning that people were planning to do something, whatever it was.

(YouTube link)

The top search terms of the year in the United States were:

1 Hurricane Irma
2 Matt Lauer
3 Tom Petty
4 Super Bowl
5 Las Vegas shooting
6 Mayweather vs McGregor fight
7 Solar eclipse
8 Hurricane Harvey
9 Aaron Hernandez
10 Fidget Spinner

The global results are quite different, and you can also find lists of top search terms broken down by category as well as location at Google Trends.

The 2000 movie Almost Famous is a fictionalized account of writer Cameron Crowe's experiences as a teenager writing about 1970s rock bands for Rolling Stone. The film didn't do all that well at the box office, but really hit home with folks who remember the early '70s rock scene. Critics raved about it, and Almost Famous won several awards, including Best Screenplay for Crowe. Let's take a look at what went on during the filming of Almost Famous.   

10. The music budget for this film was $3.5 million.

The average music budget for a film is around $1.5 million. This film had about 50 songs to go with it which was kind of insane but still great.

9. The actors rehearsed for quite a while until they looked the part.

The actors had to rehearse for four hours a night, five nights a week, for six weeks.

Read more about Almost Famous at TVOM.

The eight-day celebration of Hanukkah began last night. It is tradition to publicize the miracle of the Maccabees by placing the menorah in a window for all to see. In 1932, in the town of Kiel, Germany, Rabbi Dr. Akiva Posner and his wife Rachel set their menorah in a window facing the Nazi party headquarters across the street. Rachel took this picture to document the juxtaposition of the menorah and the swastika. The Nazis took control of Germany the next year.

Rabbi Posner, Rachel and their three children left Germany for the Holy Land in 1933. Rabbi Posner managed to persuade many of his congregants to leave as well.

For 51 weeks of the year, the menorah belongs to Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust museum in Jerusalem. But each year, right before Hanukkah, the family takes the menorah back and puts it to good use.   

Rabbi Posner's great-grandson, Akiva Baruch Mansbach, now uses that same menorah every year. Read the Posner's story at the New York Times. -via reddit

(Image credit: Shulamith Posner-Mansbach/United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)

Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website or at Facebook.

October 5, 1962 stands as a red letter day in the history of American pop culture. That is the day the Beatles' first record "Love Me Do" was released. It is also a landmark day in the history of motion pictures. Coincidentally, the fifth of October in 1962 happens to be the date the first-ever James Bond movie was released.

Dr. No was originally turned down by several film studios, on grounds of being "too British" and "too blatantly sexual." After United Artists finally decided to take a gamble and finance the film, the casting of Agent 007 was the most important matter to be taken care of.

Reputedly, Cary Grant was the first choice to play James Bond, but he would only commit to one film, and this, combined with his being a rather awkward 58 years of age, took him out of the running. Several other famous actors were also considered for the Bond role, including Rex Harrison, Stewart Granger, Trevor Howard, and Richard Burton, none of whom, for various reasons, passed muster. There was even a "find James Bond" contest, six finalists were chosen, and a 28-year-old named Peter Anthony was chosen, but Anthony lacked the acting chops and was ultimately rejected too.

Finally, a relatively unknown former milkman, coffin polisher, and Mr. Universe named Sean Connery was thrown into the mix. Producer Albert Broccoli had seen Connery in the 1959 film Darby O'Gill and the Little People and was impressed, particularly by the climactic scene in the film where Connery takes on, beats up, and dispatches the film's villain. Although Broccoli approved, he asked his wife, Jean, to watch the film, to get a female barometer of Connery's sex appeal.

Why is this cat so grumpy? Was someone a little late with the kibble? Or is he passing judgement on the photographer? The truth is that Merlin looks like this all the time, whether he's chilling in the sink, playing with his toys, or chatting with the dog. Merlin is a ragdoll/Himalayan mix with beautiful blue eyes that are always partially shaded by his overly stern eyebrows.

Turn the sink on. I dare you. . . . #bestmeow #meowdel #picoftheday #potd #cat #kitten #top #healthy #instacat_meows #happy #catoftheday #catfeatures #cat_features #l4l #like4like #likeforfollow #catlovers #gato #catsofinstagram #cat_my_boss #cute #love #katze #magnificent_meowdels #instacat_meows #instacat_models #balousfriends #cats_of_world #cats_of_instagram #photos4ellen

A post shared by Merlin (@merlinragdoll) on Sep 19, 2017 at 4:08pm PDT

Yo this rock is so chill, lots of room to pawty here! . . . . #bestmeow #meowdel #picoftheday #potd #cat #kitten #top #healthy #instacat_meows #adorable #cutestcatever #happy #ragdoll_feature #catoftheday #catfeatures #cat_features #kittens #l4l #like4like #likeforfollow #catlovers #gato #meow #catsofinstagram #cat_my_boss #bestmeow #cute #love #katze #monday

A post shared by Merlin (@merlinragdoll) on Jul 5, 2017 at 6:12pm PDT

You can see more of Merlin at his Instagram gallery, where he gives his many followers the stink-eye on a regular basis. Believe it or not, he didn't look grumpy at all when he was a kitten. If you go back far enough in the gallery, you'll find that Merlin's kitten pictures are quite charming. -via Bored Panda

The Olympic Torch Relay is underway in South Korea, even though the Winter Games in Pyeongchang are still two months away. One of the torch bearers in Daejon on Monday was a Hubo robot from the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. The robot, wearing a stocking cap and nothing else in the cold weather, took advantage of its time in the spotlight to show off a little, by using a tool to cut through a wall and hand off the torch to the next runner.

(YouTube link)

According to Olympics news website Inside the Games, it’s not the first robot in history to carry the torch—or even the first one in the 2018 relay. Earlier this year, an “undersea robotic craft helped carry the flame” for a separate stretch of the months-long relay, which involves some 7,500 volunteers. Once the competition in Pyeongchang does kick off in February 2018, approximately 85 robots will be “deployed as volunteers.”

Read more about the robots of the 2018 Olympics at Sploid.

Every Christmas, the British Medical Journal turns away from dry-but-new scientific research and has some fun with tongue-in-cheek articles. This year, one of them looks at the existence of "man flu," that horrible disease that makes men take to bed and require constant care, while a woman in the same household with the same illness tends to him. You , no doubt, are familiar with the joke, but some media outlets reported on the article as a research breakthrough.

The man flu paper in particular has led to a chorus of media headlines and articles proclaiming with a straight face that “new research” shows that the man flu is real, and credulously quoting the paper’s author, Kyle Sue, a Canadian family doctor, as he advocated for “male-friendly spaces, equipped with enormous televisions and reclining chairs, to be set up where men can recover from the debilitating effects of man flu in safety and comfort.”

Sue’s paper isn’t a new study though, the kind where we imagine lab coats shuffling around the lab testing mice and men. It’s just a review of some interesting research, in both animals and humans, that suggests men generally have weaker immune systems than women and offers some reasons why. The reasons range from plausible—testosterone and estrogen could weaken and strengthen the immune system, respectively—to seemingly tongue-in-cheek: Sue suggests that men could have evolved their man flu response because it kept our surviving paleolithic ancestors better protected against predators. He also cringingly turns it back around on women for choosing these high-T men to mate with in the first place.

So, the research is real, but we aren't meant to take it seriously? Yes, the research is real, but its inclusion in the December BMJ means it had a lighthearted presentation. A review at Gizmodo takes issue with the BMJ holiday issue, particularly in the age of "fake news" and media distrust.

(Image credit: Wellcome Images)

Just before we all go see The Last Jedi, Screen Junkies found it necessary to take a look back at the third Star Wars film from 1983. After we waited for what seemed like forever between movies (at the time), we found out in Return of the Jedi how the Rebellion defeated the Empire once and for all -until they were resurrected as the First Order and the Resistance. The one that introduced us to the Sarlacc, Luke's twin sister in a bikini, and the Ewoks.  

(YouTube link)

Wait a minute- the special edition doesn't have the Yub-Nub song? It seems like the Star Wars you get is heavily dependent on your age, at least in the age of Lucas. Oh, well. Watch this and get a little more amped up for The Last Jedi, which is only three days away. If you count today. -Thanks, Lacey!

Let's take a look at the magical woodland creatures and how they prepare for Christmas! You've got the turkeys, and the candy cane-antlered deer, and the, uh, elusive Christmas pudding emerging from his den.

(YouTube link)

Not the way you expected that to end, huh? Birdbox Studio presents an animated Christmas greeting card for you. -via Tastefully Offensive