(YouTube link)
This video tour of life in Norway is not particularly new or accurate, but it sure is interesting! It was produced by Norwegian YouTube member petepants. -via Breakfast Links
Miss Cellania's Blog Posts
For his wedding, redditor joeythehobo had rings of Damascus steel inscribed as you see here. As you can see, the wedding went off without a hitch. Or with a "hitch," as it were. Link -via @johncfarrier
You know there's a problem in your neighborhood when drug dealers are brazen enough to post signs saying "heroin for sale" -with an address! That's just what happened in north Portland, Oregon, last week. Portland police served a warrant on the address on Tuesday.
Six adults were arrested. There was also a teenager in the home at the time of the raid. http://www.kptv.com/story/15741294/police-raid-home-after-neighbor-finds-heroin-for-sale-sign-via Arbroath
Officers who raided the home found a small meth lab, 19 grams of marijuana, 10 grams of heroin, 190 pills and $4,143 in cash, police say. They also seized a shotgun.
Police began looking into the home more than a year ago because of numerous neighborhood complaints. At one point, an unidentified neighbor gave police the "Heroin for sale" flier, which also had the address and names of the suspected drug dealers.
In addition, there were a number of public safety meetings where neighbors complained about the drug problem in their neighborhood, and they asked for something to be done, police say.
Six adults were arrested. There was also a teenager in the home at the time of the raid. http://www.kptv.com/story/15741294/police-raid-home-after-neighbor-finds-heroin-for-sale-sign-via Arbroath
When you heard the name Clifford A. Pickover, you might think of the website Clifford Pickover's Reality Carnival. Or you might think of the book The Math Book: Milestones in the History of Math, which we featured here a couple of years ago. Pickover has done it again, with a new book called The Physics Book: From the Big Bang to Quantum Resurrection, 250 Milestones in the History of Physics.
The Physics Book is a large, substantial book, but don't let that fool you! It's a treat to read, whether you have a background in physics or not. I don't, so I was delighted to see how interesting and accessible The Physic Book is. The 500 pages are broken down into 250 subjects, with a one-page explanation plus a gorgeous, full-page illustration for each. This means that each of those 250 physics topics can be consumed in bite-size pieces at your leisure. They are laid out in somewhat chronological order -"somewhat" meaning that the order is either when something happened, when it was discovered, or when it was particularly meaningful. So you can start at the beginning if you like and get a good overview of the timeline of physics or you can browse topics that interest you anywhere in the book. Of course, there's an alphabetical index so you can easily find any of them.
The topics range from simple everyday subjects to higher concepts you've heard of, but don't (yet) understand. In the simpler subjects, Pickover gives us a short explanation of scientific milestones and basic concepts that make the mundane into something fascinating. For example, for the hourglass, a mundane yet ingenious device, you get both history and science in one page.
Read the rest on page 68. My younger children didn't realize that gears had anything to do with physics until they saw page 57.
And then Pickover goes on to explain exactly how gears do these things. Other basic concepts covered include the invention of the telescope, the discovery of planets (which is, of course, related), and how things like boomerangs and pulleys and atomic bombs work. But it's not only simple physics concepts. Interested readers can select puzzlers like the Schrödinger's Cat thought experiment, proposed by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935 and explained on page 376.
Continue reading
The Physics Book is a large, substantial book, but don't let that fool you! It's a treat to read, whether you have a background in physics or not. I don't, so I was delighted to see how interesting and accessible The Physic Book is. The 500 pages are broken down into 250 subjects, with a one-page explanation plus a gorgeous, full-page illustration for each. This means that each of those 250 physics topics can be consumed in bite-size pieces at your leisure. They are laid out in somewhat chronological order -"somewhat" meaning that the order is either when something happened, when it was discovered, or when it was particularly meaningful. So you can start at the beginning if you like and get a good overview of the timeline of physics or you can browse topics that interest you anywhere in the book. Of course, there's an alphabetical index so you can easily find any of them.
The topics range from simple everyday subjects to higher concepts you've heard of, but don't (yet) understand. In the simpler subjects, Pickover gives us a short explanation of scientific milestones and basic concepts that make the mundane into something fascinating. For example, for the hourglass, a mundane yet ingenious device, you get both history and science in one page.
Interestingly, the sailing ships of Ferdinand Magellan retained 18 hourglasses per ship as he attempted to circumnavigate the globe. One of the largest hourglasses -39 feet (11.9 meters) in height- was built in 2008 in Moscow. Through history, hourglasses were used in factories and to control the duration of sermons in church.
In 1996, British researchers at the University of Leicester determined that the rate of flow depended only on the few centimeters above the neck and not on the bulk of sand above that. They also found that small glass beads known as ballotini gave the most reproducible results. "For a given volume of ballotini," the researchers write, "the period is controlled by their size, the size of the orifice, and the shape of the reservoir."
Read the rest on page 68. My younger children didn't realize that gears had anything to do with physics until they saw page 57.
Rotating gears, with their intermeshed teeth, have played a crucial role in the history of technology. Not only are gear mechanisms important for increasing the applied twisting force, or torque, but gears are also useful for changing the speed and direction of force. One of the oldest machines is a potter's wheel, and primitive gears associated with these kinds of wheels probably existed for thousands of years. In the fourth century B.C., Aristotle wrote about wheels using friction between smooth surfaces to convey motions. Built around 125 B.C., the Antikythera Mechanism employed toothed gears for calculating astronomical positions. One of the earliest written references to toothed gears was made by Hero of Alexandria, c 50 A.D. Through time, gears have played a crucial role in mills, clocks, bicycles, cars, washing machines, and drills. Because they are so useful in amplifying forces, early engineers used them for lifting heavy construction loads. The speed-changing properties of gear assemblies were put to use when ancient textile machines were powered by the movement of horses or water. The rotational speed of these power supplies was often insufficient, so a set of wooden gears was used to increase the speed for textile production.
And then Pickover goes on to explain exactly how gears do these things. Other basic concepts covered include the invention of the telescope, the discovery of planets (which is, of course, related), and how things like boomerangs and pulleys and atomic bombs work. But it's not only simple physics concepts. Interested readers can select puzzlers like the Schrödinger's Cat thought experiment, proposed by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935 and explained on page 376.
How the KKK helped get children out of the factories and into the classroom.
Members of the Ku Klux Klan liked to think of themselves as white knights. And when it came to compulsory education for schoolchildren, believe it or not, they actually were. To understand how this bizarre heroism came to pass, you have to go back to the 1820s, when about half the laborers in America's cotton mils were children under the age of 15. Adults had a serious hankering to get those kids out of the workforce -not because they were concerned for their well-being but because adults resented the competition. After all, employers could get away with paying children much lower wages, and the little ones had energy to burn. Mary Kenney O'Sullivan, vice president of the National Women's Trade Union League, put the situation bluntly: "Wherever child labor prevails there is a corresponding decrease in employment for adults."
In fact, getting rid of the kids was one of the first causes to unite the American label movement. When labor leaders realized they couldn't just turn youngsters out in the streets to fend for themselves, they proposed a one-two punch of ending child labor laws and requiring school. Massachusetts was the first state to pass a compulsory education law. In 1837, its state legislature barred factory owners from hiring anyone under age 15 who hadn't attended public school for at least three months during the previous year. The law was ignored, and factory owners kept hiring kids anyway. Five years later, Massachusetts passed a second law, which went after factories more directly, limiting the amount of time children could work. When this law was ignored as well, the state made education compulsory in 1852.
By 1884, 16 states had instituted laws that forced children to go to school. Business owners, enamored with their short, low cost labor pool, denounced the status as "communist" and "un-American." But the percentage of children in the workforce in cotton mills fell nonetheless; by 1890 it was just 10 percent. And not coincidentally, adult workers were awarded higher wages and better working conditions over the same period. From 1840 to 1880, average wages rose as much as 150 percent, while at the same time, the average workday fell from 13-14 hours to 10-11 hours.
At the turn of the century, labor unions lobbied for compulsory education nationwide, and they soon found an unexpected ally. The Ku Klux Klan supported the idea of public schools as a way of forcing immigrants to conform to white, Protestant culture. By 1918, labor unions had succeeded in getting compulsory education laws passed in every state. Two years later, a Catholic organization in Oregon demanded that the laws be amended to include private schools. The KKK took a more outspoken stance, and its membership grew quickly in support of the public school system.
Continue reading
Members of the Ku Klux Klan liked to think of themselves as white knights. And when it came to compulsory education for schoolchildren, believe it or not, they actually were. To understand how this bizarre heroism came to pass, you have to go back to the 1820s, when about half the laborers in America's cotton mils were children under the age of 15. Adults had a serious hankering to get those kids out of the workforce -not because they were concerned for their well-being but because adults resented the competition. After all, employers could get away with paying children much lower wages, and the little ones had energy to burn. Mary Kenney O'Sullivan, vice president of the National Women's Trade Union League, put the situation bluntly: "Wherever child labor prevails there is a corresponding decrease in employment for adults."
In fact, getting rid of the kids was one of the first causes to unite the American label movement. When labor leaders realized they couldn't just turn youngsters out in the streets to fend for themselves, they proposed a one-two punch of ending child labor laws and requiring school. Massachusetts was the first state to pass a compulsory education law. In 1837, its state legislature barred factory owners from hiring anyone under age 15 who hadn't attended public school for at least three months during the previous year. The law was ignored, and factory owners kept hiring kids anyway. Five years later, Massachusetts passed a second law, which went after factories more directly, limiting the amount of time children could work. When this law was ignored as well, the state made education compulsory in 1852.
By 1884, 16 states had instituted laws that forced children to go to school. Business owners, enamored with their short, low cost labor pool, denounced the status as "communist" and "un-American." But the percentage of children in the workforce in cotton mills fell nonetheless; by 1890 it was just 10 percent. And not coincidentally, adult workers were awarded higher wages and better working conditions over the same period. From 1840 to 1880, average wages rose as much as 150 percent, while at the same time, the average workday fell from 13-14 hours to 10-11 hours.
At the turn of the century, labor unions lobbied for compulsory education nationwide, and they soon found an unexpected ally. The Ku Klux Klan supported the idea of public schools as a way of forcing immigrants to conform to white, Protestant culture. By 1918, labor unions had succeeded in getting compulsory education laws passed in every state. Two years later, a Catholic organization in Oregon demanded that the laws be amended to include private schools. The KKK took a more outspoken stance, and its membership grew quickly in support of the public school system.
It's time to unlock your body's full potential.
1. Friends in High Places
In 2003, a 28-year-old Swedish man named Johan Adolfsson took a nine-hour flight from Thailand to Australia with eight extremely lethal snakes -four king cobras and four emerald tree boas- strapped to his inner thighs. His plan to cash in on the $3,500 booty for black market serpents was dashed when Australian officers captured him as he passed through customs at Sydney airport. Sadly, it too late for some of the snakes; all four king cobras died midflight.
2. Live by the Seat of Your Pants
The business of trafficking exotic animals is a multibillion dollar industry -and it's more than just shoving reptiles into pairs of Dockers. In 2010, agents at Mexico City International Airport noticed a bulge moving under a nervous passenger's t-shirt: Roberta Cabrera, 38, had 16 rare, 6-inch titi monkeys in pouches fastened to his chest with a special girdle. Two were dead. In separate incidents, airline passengers have also been caught with two pigeons, six lobsters, 14 songbirds, and 44 lizards crammed into their slacks.
3. Skirt the Issue
Mammals aren't the only creatures customs officials have to watch for. In 2005, a 45-year-old woman was detained by customs in Melbourne International Airport after she'd arrived from Singapore. "During the search, officers became suspicious after hearing 'flipping' noises coming from the vicinity of her waist," the Australian Customs Service later told the press. They found she had 51 exotic fish -all alive, hallelujah!- swimming in water-filled baggies hidden inside specially made pockets, which were concealed under her skirt.
4. Love Your Curves
In November 2010, two women were caught leaving a T.J. Maxx in Oklahoma with four pairs of boots, three pairs of jeans, a wallet, and one pair of gloves hidden in rolls of fat around their boons and bellies. All told, they'd squeezed $2,600 worth of loot under their excess body fat. The police officer on the scene later struggled to explain the situation to reporters from a local television crew: "These two were actually concealing them in areas of their body where excess skin was, underneath their, um, and their armpits, and things of that nature."
5. The Cast System
People have been hiding objects inside of fake casts for centuries. In March 2009, a 66-year-old Chilean man one-upped his predecessors by wearing a real, functional cast that was entirely made of pure cocaine. A little more than two pounds of pressed blow, to be precise. What's more, the cast was covering an actual injury; the Chilean had broken his own shinbone in a failed attempt to make his ruse seem believable. After the police in Barcelona caught him entering Spain, they rushed him to the hospital to treat his broken leg.
Be sure to visit mental_floss' website and blog for more fun stuff!
1. Friends in High Places
In 2003, a 28-year-old Swedish man named Johan Adolfsson took a nine-hour flight from Thailand to Australia with eight extremely lethal snakes -four king cobras and four emerald tree boas- strapped to his inner thighs. His plan to cash in on the $3,500 booty for black market serpents was dashed when Australian officers captured him as he passed through customs at Sydney airport. Sadly, it too late for some of the snakes; all four king cobras died midflight.
2. Live by the Seat of Your Pants
The business of trafficking exotic animals is a multibillion dollar industry -and it's more than just shoving reptiles into pairs of Dockers. In 2010, agents at Mexico City International Airport noticed a bulge moving under a nervous passenger's t-shirt: Roberta Cabrera, 38, had 16 rare, 6-inch titi monkeys in pouches fastened to his chest with a special girdle. Two were dead. In separate incidents, airline passengers have also been caught with two pigeons, six lobsters, 14 songbirds, and 44 lizards crammed into their slacks.
3. Skirt the Issue
Mammals aren't the only creatures customs officials have to watch for. In 2005, a 45-year-old woman was detained by customs in Melbourne International Airport after she'd arrived from Singapore. "During the search, officers became suspicious after hearing 'flipping' noises coming from the vicinity of her waist," the Australian Customs Service later told the press. They found she had 51 exotic fish -all alive, hallelujah!- swimming in water-filled baggies hidden inside specially made pockets, which were concealed under her skirt.
4. Love Your Curves
In November 2010, two women were caught leaving a T.J. Maxx in Oklahoma with four pairs of boots, three pairs of jeans, a wallet, and one pair of gloves hidden in rolls of fat around their boons and bellies. All told, they'd squeezed $2,600 worth of loot under their excess body fat. The police officer on the scene later struggled to explain the situation to reporters from a local television crew: "These two were actually concealing them in areas of their body where excess skin was, underneath their, um, and their armpits, and things of that nature."
5. The Cast System
People have been hiding objects inside of fake casts for centuries. In March 2009, a 66-year-old Chilean man one-upped his predecessors by wearing a real, functional cast that was entirely made of pure cocaine. A little more than two pounds of pressed blow, to be precise. What's more, the cast was covering an actual injury; the Chilean had broken his own shinbone in a failed attempt to make his ruse seem believable. After the police in Barcelona caught him entering Spain, they rushed him to the hospital to treat his broken leg.
_______________________
The article above, written by Haley Sweetland Edwards, is reprinted with permission from the Scatterbrained section of the September-October 2011 issue of mental_floss magazine. Get a subscription to mental_floss and never miss an issue!Be sure to visit mental_floss' website and blog for more fun stuff!
Designer Ben Douglas illustrated a dozen pop culture vampires into one art print. Can you name them all? Of course you can! It's for sale as a poster print or on canvas. Link to print. Link to artist's site. -via Buzzfeed
(Image credit: Flickr user Ben Douglas)
(Image credit: Flickr user Ben Douglas)
TODAY IS INTERNATIONAL CAPS LOCK DAY. THE OFFICIAL CAPS LOCK DAY SITE LISTS OCTOBER 22 AND JUNE 28 BOTH AS CAPS LOCK DAYS. OTHERS CELEBRATE ON AUGUST 22. I DON'T KNOW WHO IS RIGHT. Agh, that is exhausting, especially since my caps lock key does not work. Link to official site. Link to Wikipedia. -via Metafilter
This past week, we've had some scary spooky-type posts, to get you ready for Halloween. You can only look forward to more of those coming up next week! Meanwhile, here's what's been going on, in case you need to catch up on everything at Neatorama.
Jill Harness took us on a tour of 9 Creepy Places to Visit For a Good Scare.
Eddie Deezen gave us a rundown of Celebrity Tattoos.
Read about Roger Corman and what he did for cinema in Attack of the Killer B-Movies! from mental_floss magazine.
Uncle John's Bathroom Reader told us about The Origin of Frankenstein.
The Pathology of Classical Sculpture came to us from the Annals of Improbable Research.
Adrienne Crezo's discussion topics this week included the decline of marriage, allowing celibate gay men to donate blood, privately owned exotic animals, and whether men or women are funnier. You can still add your opinion to any of these.
We welcomed a new gallery at the Neatorama Art Blog. Illustrator Randy Bishop sent us a great collection of monsters and other figures from comic books, literature, and film. Check them all out here.
In the What is It? game this week, the pictured item is a “beer growler.” It’s a container used to carry draft beer home before the use of bottles. See a picture of them being filled at the What Is It? blog. Red Neptune was the first commenter who knew the answer, but did not select a shirt. The funniest answer? Oscar the Grouch’s starter home, you know, when he was little. Cristal was the first of several to suggest this one, so she wins a t-shirt from the NeatoShop!
Want more? Be sure to check our Facebook page every day for extra content, contests, discussions, videos, and links you won't find here. Also, our Twitter feed will keep you updated on what's going around the web in real time. Thanks for spending time with us at Neatorama!
Jill Harness took us on a tour of 9 Creepy Places to Visit For a Good Scare.
Eddie Deezen gave us a rundown of Celebrity Tattoos.
Read about Roger Corman and what he did for cinema in Attack of the Killer B-Movies! from mental_floss magazine.
Uncle John's Bathroom Reader told us about The Origin of Frankenstein.
The Pathology of Classical Sculpture came to us from the Annals of Improbable Research.
Adrienne Crezo's discussion topics this week included the decline of marriage, allowing celibate gay men to donate blood, privately owned exotic animals, and whether men or women are funnier. You can still add your opinion to any of these.
We welcomed a new gallery at the Neatorama Art Blog. Illustrator Randy Bishop sent us a great collection of monsters and other figures from comic books, literature, and film. Check them all out here.
In the What is It? game this week, the pictured item is a “beer growler.” It’s a container used to carry draft beer home before the use of bottles. See a picture of them being filled at the What Is It? blog. Red Neptune was the first commenter who knew the answer, but did not select a shirt. The funniest answer? Oscar the Grouch’s starter home, you know, when he was little. Cristal was the first of several to suggest this one, so she wins a t-shirt from the NeatoShop!
Want more? Be sure to check our Facebook page every day for extra content, contests, discussions, videos, and links you won't find here. Also, our Twitter feed will keep you updated on what's going around the web in real time. Thanks for spending time with us at Neatorama!
Artist Miquette Breitenbach makes miniature "pot heads" set in tiny clay pots! They are a combination of clay, metal, and glass, and no two are alike. See a selection of existing pot heads at her Etsy store, Strawberry Anarchy. Link
Vivi Rrr was asked to bring a "sciency" dessert to a lab party, and so made a cake in the shape of a Venn diagram. This cake illustrates Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory by using angel food cake, devil's food cake, and a combination of the two where they intersect. What's even better, she posted the process of making it, so you can make one, too! Link
These specimens in jars look pretty nasty, and the labels make them seem even worse. But believe it or not, they are all not only edible, but tasty! They contain unfamiliar fruits, or foods cut into odd shapes. Your Halloween guests will be delighted, if they can get over the willies and try them out. Get the recipes at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories. Link -via Buzzfeed
Draw2D2 has a collection of art mashups called "Zombie/Steven Spielberg" that place zombies in Spielberg movies, or otherwise combine the two ideas. The example shown is by Alex Ryan. Go see the rest! Link -Thanks, Jason Welborn!
It’s that time of year, when we look to graveyards for tales that scare the Dickens out of us. You've read about 9 Creepy Places to Visit for a Good Scare and you've seen lists of haunted houses. Now how about cemeteries? These six stories don't all contain ghosts -some are about vampires, poltergeists, and unidentified flying objects! Shown here is Chesnut Hill Cemetery in Rhode Island, the site of a vampire exhumation in 1892.
Chesnut Hill Baptist Church Cemetery in Exeter, Rhode Island is reported to be haunted by a vampire named Mercy Lena Brown. She was preceded in death by her mother and sister, victims of tuberculosis, and Mercy would often visit their graves. In January 1892, 19-year-old Mercy herself fell to tuberculosis and was interred with her family members. Mercy’s father George claimed she haunted him every night, complaining of hunger. His son Edwin fell sick, also with tuberculosis, but as he experienced visits from Mercy, the family and townspeople considered the cause of his illness to be the restless dead. George Brown, with the help of others, dug up the graves of his wife and two daughters on March 17, 1892. Only Mercy, who died in January, was free of decomposition. This led George to believe she was a vampire.
Read what happened then, and other tales, at mental_floss. Link
Atlas Obscura continues with their 31 Days of Halloween, featuring a new and gruesome post every day about the world's ghosts, goblins, legends, and death rituals. This post deals with the widespread fear of being buried alive, whether by mistake or by evil intent. That fear has a long history.
Being buried alive is a fear that has been with humanity for a long, long time. As early as the Greeks one can find stories of people being prematurely pronounced dead and accidentally burned alive on their funeral pyres. At various moments throughout history, this fear, this Taphephobia, has actively gripped the Western mind. The terror wasn't without it's basis in reality. One circumstance in which live burials are thought to have often taken place were during outbreaks of disease such as the black plague. Due to the rapid spread of the disease victims were buried almost immediately after death, and sometimes beforehand. These circumstances would repeat themselves again with the cholera outbreaks throughout Europe. Throughout the enlightenment, doctors were learning more about the human body and death. As they learned to revive people who were previously considered dead (such as drowning victims via the recently invented mouth to mouth resuscitation) doctors began to question if all the people they were burying had truly been dead. With increasing reports of premature burial, by the late 1700s the fear of being buried alive had fully taken hold of the Western mind.
And then folks dreamed up many ways to avoid this horrific fate, which you can read about. Link (Image credit: Illustrator Harry Clarke)
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