In 1954, Toho Studios turned Haruo Nakajima into a monster. Nakajima was the first actor to portray Gojira, or Godzilla, in a movie. He made the role his own, appearing as the giant reptile in 12 films. That wasn't his only role in monster movies.
In addition to Godzilla, Nakajima also portrayed monsters in Rodan, Mothra, The H-Man, and Frankenstein Conquers the World, and The War of the Gargantuas, as well as the Tsuburaya-produced series Ultraman: A Special Effects Fantasy Series. Simply, if you’ve seen a kaiju movie made before 1973, you’ve seen phenomenal and iconic work of Haruo Nakajima. He’s a legend.
As an actor and stuntman, Nakajima was also seen in movies such as Seven Samurai, Eagle of the Pacific, and Sword for Hire. We posted an interview with Nakajima just a few months ago. Toho studios announced that Nakajima died on Monday. He was 88.
The African Grove Theater was an attempt to bring culture and entertainment to black audiences in Manhattan. It flourished for only a few years beginning in 1821, while slavery was still being phased out in New York state. But during those few years, a teenager named Ira Eldridge caught the acting bug. He learned the basics of his craft at the African Grove, and when it folded, he saw there was no other outlet for his passion in the United States. So he boarded a boat for Europe at the age of 17, and never looked back.
Aldridge’s career as an actor was exceptional, and not just for a black actor at that time. He traveled farther, was seen by audiences in more countries, and won more medals, decorations, and awards than any other actor of his century. But, somehow, this 19th-century great slips under the radar. He seems to be too American to make it into British or European theatrical histories, and, because he performed almost exclusively in Europe, tends not to appear in American ones. For most of his career, Aldridge traveled from place to place, on short-term engagements that made it hard for him to build a reputation in any one spot. “As a luminary,” writes scholar Bernth Lindfors in the introduction to Ira Aldridge: The African Roscius, “he was more a comet than a fixed star—here today, gone tomorrow—and as a consequence, he shines less brightly now.”
Berkeley Breathed's revival of his Bloom County comic strip is on Facebook. A recent story contains a couple of beautiful paintings like the one above. The story pertains to a young child who is in the hospital for cancer treatment. A big storm comes up, scaring the little boy so much he is unable to sleep. But Frank the hospital custodian is there (click it, you need to see the large version). You can read the story at Facebook, although it's in reverse order. To read them in order, you can follow the links at Metafilter.
Lisette Pylant was set up on a date with a guy she'd never met. They met at a bar in Washington, DC, to get to know each other. Luckily, Pylant has a lot of friends, and even knew some people who work at the bar. When she and her date decided their relationship wasn't in the cards, she surreptitiously stayed at the bar and observed him meeting five other women, one after another, on that same night!
JK ITS NOT OVER! The bartender just texted us to tell us homeboy is on another date so I sent my friend over to retrieve his 8pm date
He had apparently arranged a speed-dating session, unbeknownst to the women who met him there. Pylant found a way to speak to each of the subsequent dates, and the women ended up bonding as friends. And she live-Tweeted the experience! Read the whole story in Tweets at Mashable.
NBC 4's news crew in Washington, DC, saw a driverless van on the streets. But it wasn't your everyday driverless vehicle. The van was being driven by a guy dressed as a car seat! We've seen this at Halloween, but this driver honestly did not want publicity. Reporter Adam Tuss approached the vehicle to interview the disguised driver. He got no cooperation.
After multiple inquiries by News4, the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute said Monday afternoon that the van and van driver are part of a study they are conducting on driverless cars. The worker was wearing the uniform he was supposed to wear.
"The driver's seating area is configured to make the driver less visible within the vehicle, while still allowing him or her the ability to safely monitor and respond to surroundings," a statement from the institute says.
So what are they studying? The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute has some information on the experiment, and deep down in the bullet points, we think they may be studying the reactions of people to seeing a driverless vehicle. I wonder if the "reaction" of requesting an interview will be included in their data. -via Ars Technica
compiled by Alice Shirrell Kaswell, Improbable Research staff
People who watch the faces of other people eating, or who watch those other people while those other people are not putting food in their faces, may sometimes react to what they see. Here are some attempts to probe some questions that some people wondered about, about that.
Conscious Effect of Faces on Other Faces (1995) “Facial Expressions Are Contagious,” Lars-Olov Lundqvist and Ulf Dimberg, Journal of Psychophysiology, vol 9, no. 3, 1995, pp. 203-211. The authors, at Örebro University and Uppsala University, Sweden, explain:
[We] explored the facial muscle responses to exposure to stimuli of facial expressions (FEs) that correspond to specific emotional experiences; and whether FEs are contagious. 56 subjects were exposed individually to slides of males and females...
Sad faces evoked significantly larger reactions from the M. corrugator supercili muscle region. Faces expressing surprise evoked significantly larger reactions from frontal M. lateralis region. Angry faces evoked an increased experience of fear and disgust.
Unconscious Effect of Faces on Other Faces (2000) “Unconscious Facial Reactions to Emotional Facial Expressions,” Ulf Dimberg, Monika Thunberg, and Kurt Elmehed, Psychological Science, vol. 11 no. 1, January 2000, pp. 86-89. The authors, at Uppsala University, Sweden, explain:
We investigated whether corresponding facial reactions can be elicited when people are unconsciously exposed to happy and angry facial expressions.... Despite the fact that exposure to happy and angry faces was unconscious, the subjects reacted with distinct facial muscle reactions that corresponded to the happy and angry stimulus faces....
Sunday morning I found ten zucchinis on the railing of my back deck. It had to be one of my two next-door neighbors, because anyone else would have left them on the front porch. I went to Google and found out they were two days early. Trying to get a jump on the rest of the neighborhood.
Every year, millions of backyard gardeners decide to grow a variety of vegetables, including zucchini. Yeah, they'd like a loaf of zucchini bread (they think). But there are many seeds in an envelope, and even if they buy plants, they usually come in at least a four-pack. But even when they only have one surviving vine, zucchini produces way more than you need. What to do with all these vegetables? Give it to your neighbors, even if they don't want it!
"Everyone who has grown zucchini knows that it can be difficult to keep up with the yield. The gourds grow quickly if not picked, and do not freeze or can well," said Dr. Pam Duitsman, nutrition and health education specialist with University of Missouri Extension. "Since you can only bake so many loaves of zucchini bread, many folks find giving their zucchini to neighbors is a great solution. To celebrate the holiday, you are to quietly sneak up to your neighbors' porch, and leave them a pile of homegrown zucchini."
When the apocalypse comes, it's not going to be the way it's scripted out for you in Fallout 4 or Mad Max or The Walking Dead. And even if it were, there will be a lot more red shirts than cult leaders. Think for a moment: how many ways could the apocalypse happen? Can you possibly be prepared for all of them? If you think you can, you are probably not living much of a life in the here and now. This is the latest comic from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. The story is by Zach Weinersmith, with guest illustration by Abby Howard. Like any of the comics, it can be purchased as an art print, which would be the perfect gift for your favorite prepper.
Tom Otto and Shaun Sears are professional arborists (tree guys) and cat lovers. The brothers-in-law volunteer to rescue cats that are stuck in trees. See, in Washington state, the trees can be very tall, and cats can be very scared once they get too high. Firefighters aren't equipped for that kind of height, even if they had the time to rescue cats.
Their project is called Canopy Cat Rescue. Since they don't charge owners for rescuing their cats, the organization relies on donors. -via Tastefully Offensive
The Andy Samberg movie Hot Rod was released ten years ago this week. That seems like just yesterday, but the guys from The Lonely Island made their first feature film in 2007. Let's learn some trivia about the movie.
10. The stuntman trying to jump over the bus actually broke his leg.
Gotta give it to stuntmen and women, they take a horrendous beating sometimes for their job. The kind of things they go through on a regular basis can risk life and limb for just a brief moment on camera that a lot of times they won’t ever be known for.
9. The band called “Gown” is actually Queens of the Stone Age.
It’s kind of interesting why they wouldn’t use their real name, but in a film I suppose it doesn’t matter. They were awesome as always. Sometimes the director just wants to keep the fantasy without bringing too much of the real world into the picture.
The kids are asleep! That means it's time to do that thing. Meaning, all those things you can't get done when the kids are sucking up all your time and attention. How you prioritize that long list of things is up to you. In this case, the reward is a cleaner home, although tomorrow it will go back to chaos. It's one step forward and two steps back, but it's better than no steps forward at all. This is the latest from Lunarbaboon.
Trader Joe's is a grocery store chain with 450 locations in the United States. The chain has thrived by offering a wider variety of food than their competitors at reasonable prices. But there are lots of procedure that go on behind-the-scenes that make the store what it is. That includes the benefits that go to employees, several of which involve food.
10. THE BREAK ROOM KEEPS THEM WELL-FED.
Trader Joe’s customers enjoy visiting the store’s sample station for food and coffee, and employees enjoy their own grub in the break room. “We are always cooking things up,” a Trader Joe’s employee tells Forbes. “When we get new foods in, we try them out. We eat and drink throughout the day here.” Because employees are constantly tasting new products and familiarizing themselves with older ones, they can recommend certain products to customers and speak genuinely about the flavors, textures, and overall tastiness of the food. And just like customers, Crew Members also definitely hit up the sample station. “I can’t even begin to tell you how many teeny tiny cups of coffee I chugged or samples I inhaled in a given shift,” Royal says.
This is not an old music video. Believe it or not, it's brand new. Yet the costumes, dancing, and even the production values are right out of the mid-70s disco era.
"Guardians’ Inferno" is the song that played over the end credits of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, and appears on the soundtrack album. Now it has a video, featuring David Hasselhoff, and a cameo appearance by Stan Lee. This video is a bonus feature on the home video version of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. -via Geeks Are Sexy
We've mentioned a few times that the rules and regulations we have today normally originate from some horrible precedent. The many rules and regulations regarding air travel come together to make flying the safest mode of transportation per mile, so you know that the mistakes of early aviators and plane designers contributed to what we know about safety. However, those mistakes were tragic.
Upgrade: Retiring tin
As Aloha Flight 243, a weary, 19-year-old Boeing 737 on a short hop from Hilo, Hawaii, to Honolulu, leveled off at 24,000 ft., a large section of its fuselage blew off, leaving dozens of passengers riding in the open-air breeze. Miraculously, the rest of the plane held together long enough for the pilots to land safely. Only one person, a flight attendant who was swept out of the plane, was killed.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) blamed a combination of corrosion and widespread fatigue damage, the result of repeated pressurization cycles during the plane's 89,000-plus flights. In response, the FAA began the National Aging Aircraft Research Program in 1991, which tightened inspection and maintenance requirements for high-use and high-cycle aircraft. Post-Aloha, there has been only one American fatigue-related jet accident—the Sioux City DC-10.
Did you ever get the feeling that Luke Skywalker was dealt a truly raw deal, having to grow up on Tatooine, raised by a moisture farmer? Meanwhile, Leia, who wasn't his twin sister until Return of the Jedi, was adopted by planetary royalty, eventually becoming a senator! It turns out that Lucas had an even bigger vision for Leia than all that.
Hang on wait what... Leia had a PhD in Star Wars? Christ can you imagine having everyone call you Princess when you were actually Dr Organa pic.twitter.com/HYertPJqWU
Wow, talk about an overachiever! A PhD at 19 is almost unheard-of in our galaxy, outside of a few child prodigies who clepped through high school at a ridiculously young age. This tidbit gives Leia another title in addition to General, Senator, and Princess. We can call her Doctor.
We have clearly, clearly all been doing our PhDs in Alderaan places....
We can tell ourselves that what Luke didn't get in genetic brains, he made up for in his sensitivity to the Force. That is, as long as you ignore midi-chlorians. Which we all do. -via Buzzfeed
