Pucker up as we explore 10 smooches that changed religion, art, culture, and history.

1. The Kiss of Judas: A Betrayal or Just Misunderstood?

Nothing ends a good "bromance" quite like flagrant, murderous betrayal. A long time ago, a wandering preacher named Jesus was doing pretty well for himself—building up a following and promoting religious teachings—until one of his buddies sold him out to the authorities. In exchange for 30 pieces of silver, Judas Iscariot kissed Jesus on the cheek and, by doing so, identified him to Roman soldiers.

Although Judas double-crossed his best friend for a paltry sum, some scholars argue that Judas is the secret hero of Christianity. The claim is based on a recent translation of The Gospel of Judas, a text written by Jesus’ followers a couple hundred years after his death. In 1978, a farmer discovered the mysterious text in Egypt and sold it to an antiques dealer. Years later, a National Geographic Society team got hold of it. They restored and analyzed the document, and in 2006, they announced that the text painted Judas as a man of valor. According to their interpretation, he was actually Jesus’ most trusted friend, because he agreed to fake a betrayal so that Jesus could die a martyr and then be resurrected.

Soon after the National Geographic Society released its findings, other scholars started picking the interpretation apart. Chief among them was April D. DeConick, a Rice University biblical studies professor, who claimed the team made some critical errors, including translating several passages to mean the exact opposite of what they were intended to communicate. DeConick contends that the Gospel says Judas was a “demon” rather than a “spirit,” as interpreted by National Geographic, and that he was set apart “from the holy generation” rather than “for the holy generation.” With just a few tweaks in translation, Judas has gone right back to playing the bad guy.

2. The Kisses You Can Share with a Quaker

(Image credit: Wikipedia user Beatrice Murch)

The Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, is a small Christian sect best known for rejecting all forms of violence, embracing progressive politics, and dedicating themselves to simple, restrained living. They’ve promoted a more harmonious world by founding causes such as Amnesty International, not to mention lending their name to oatmeal.

So we were surprised to learn that when teenage Quakers get together, their favorite activity is a free-for-all kissing game that often ends in bruising and rug burn. Alternately known as Ratchet Screwdriver, Bloody Winkum, or Wink, the game dates back to the early 1900s. To play, participants divide themselves into girl/boy pairs with one boy left over to be the “Winker.” The pairs sit on the floor, with each boy hugging a girl from behind. When the Winker winks at a girl, she tries to scramble across the room to kiss him, while her male partner does his best to hold her back. Hilarity (and release of pent-up sexual frustration) ensues.

But not everyone finds this game so hilarious. In 2002, the Children & Young People’s Committee of the Quakers in Britain issued a statement discouraging the game at official functions. And while that may not seem surprising, the reasoning is. The committee frowns upon the game because younger children and adults don’t get to play, thus making it ageist. Due to their egalitarian values, Quakers seldom segregate by age at get-togethers, and the committee didn’t want the very young or the very old to feel left out.

3. The Kiss that Proved No Means No

Gentlemen, a word: When a lady rejects your advances, you’d do best to listen. Take, for example, the story of Thomas Saverland, an English gentleman who was at a party in 1837 and, as a joke, kissed Miss Caroline Newton by force. In response, she bit off a chunk of his nose.

Gathering Iwatake at Kumano. Woodblock print by Hiroshige II.

When making soup requires scaling a cliff, and grabbing a few olives involves avoiding gunfire, it’s time to find some comfort food that’s a little more comfortable.

1. Iwatake

The annals of Arctic exploration are filled with accounts of frostbitten limbs and near starvation. In fact, many adventurers have reported being so hungry that they’ve scraped papery-crisp lichen off rocks and boiled it into passably edible food. One outdoorsman even claimed that if braised shoe leather was in a taste-test with lichen, the shoe leather would come out on top. And yet, this very same survival food is considered a delicacy in Japan. There, iwatake (iwa meaning rock, and take meaning mushroom) is so highly sought-after that harvesters are willing to rappel down cliff faces for the precious growths. (It takes about a century for the lichen to get to a worthwhile size.)

Needless to say, this is specialty work. As if the rappelling isn’t tricky enough, iwatake is best harvested in wet weather, because the moisture reduces the chance that the lichen will crumble as it’s pried off with a sharp knife. In its preferred preparation, the black and slimy raw material is transformed into a delicate tempura. And while iwatake in any form doesn’t taste like much, it’s esteemed for its associations with longevity. As for the harvesters? Their longevity’s more questionable. “Never give lodging to an iwatake hunter,” goes an old Japanese adage, “for he doesn’t always survive to pay rent.”

2. Bird’s Nest Soup

(Image credit: Flickr user SpirosK)

Cantilevered high off cave walls and cliffs along the seas of Southeast Asia are the nests of the white-nest swiftlet—a bird that’s managed to turn an embarrassing drool problem into a useful D.I.Y. project. The nests, sturdy constructions no bigger than the palm of your hand, are made from the birds’ spit. Yup, these swiftlets have specialized saliva glands powerful enough to turn their tongues into avian glue guns.

You’d think being stuck in caves high above the ground, and the fact that they’re birds’ nests, would protect them against humans—but no. Ever since sailors first brought the nests home for the Chinese emperor and his family in the first century CE, bird’s nest soup has been a favorite among the country’s elite. Never mind that it’s virtually tasteless; the dish is revered for health reasons.

Of course, acquiring the main ingredient is less healthy. Nest harvesters must stand on rickety bamboo scaffolding hundreds of feet off the ground in pitch darkness. They must also endure unbelievable heat and humidity as they try to avoid all the insects, birds, and bats that live in the caves. In addition, the extraordinary value of the nests means the zones are patrolled by machine-gun toting guards. Harvesting rights are multiyear, multimillion-dollar deals arranged with national governments, and poaching is ruthlessly prohibited. Unarmed fishermen have been shot dead after accidentally beaching in swiftlet territory, and local tour group operators pay exorbitant fees to avoid rifle-assisted leaks springing in their kayaks. It all underscores the fact that being a nest harvester is less of a career choice and more of a life sentence—especially considering that the skill is almost exclusively passed on from father to son.

3. West Bank Olives

Arturas Zuokas, mayor of Vilnius, Lithuania, had enough. The mayor was so fed up with illegal parking that he took a spin in a Russian armored personnel carrier, crushing an illegally parked Mercedes along the way.

He said: ”I wanted to send a clear message that people with big and expensive cars can’t park wherever they feel like and ignore the rights of pedestrians and bike riders.

”It shows a lack of respect and won’t be tolerated. Of course, you have to have a sense of humour in my line of work and I thought this would be a way of drawing attention to the fact that the city intends to be proactive in its fight against illegal parking.”

That's at least one driver who won't be parking in the wrong place anymore. Link -via Arbroath

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This Russian wedding video is very special to the couple in it, but it reminds me of a Geocities website. Oh, except for the part where they played Pong. That reminded me of Pong.  -via the Presurfer

An unnamed man in Angelholm, Sweden was arrested for attempting to build a nuclear reactor in his kitchen. He was later released. Authorities doubt he would have seen success, but you never know.

The 31-year-old tells the paper that he was able to buy radioactive waste from foreign companies and picked apart the components in a smoke detector (apparently older smoke detector contain nuclear material). He believes he spent between $5,000 and $6,000 on the project in total.

It was only later when the young man contacted Sweden's nuclear power agency that he realized his project was illegal. Police came to his apartment and confiscated the material. The young man was arrested but later released.

It is uncertain how the project went unnoticed, as the man kept a blog about his experiments. Link to story. Link to blog. -via Breakfast Links

We've featured Andy Rash's iotacons before, but now he's outdone himself. These are the characters from the TV series Breaking Bad, all rendered in 8-bit iotacons. If you're a fan, you recognize who is who, but if you don't, the character names are at the Iotacon site. Link -via Buzzfeed

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

Georgie Porgie, pudding and pie,

Kissed the girls and made them cry.

When the boys came out to play,

Georgie Porgie ran away.

Most of us heard this little nursery rhyme when we were kids. Of course, Georgie Porgie, nowadays, would undoubtedly be sued in a class-action for sexual harassment by the ACLU. But who was the real "Georgie Porgie"?

There are two possible historical candidates. One was George Villiers (1592-1628), the handsome son of an insignificant nobleman who soon climbed his way into great favor with King James I.

Rumor has it that he and the king were more than just good friends. This would certainly explain why, within two years, Villiers was made an Earl and then a Marquess. Five years later, at just 31 years old, George became the first Duke of Buckingham. The nursery rhyme is said to ridicule both King James I and George Villiers over their open romantic interest in each other. In fact, the king even proclaimed openly that "You may be sure that I love the Duke of Buckingham more than I love anyone else and I wish not to have that thought to be a defect."

It is now believed by historians studying court diaries and correspondence that the pair were, indeed, lovers. But George Villiers liked to go both ways and also had many affairs with many young ladies of the court, as well as the wives and daughters of powerful Englishmen. This caused resentment all around, but his relationship with the king gave him a certain amount of immunity.

It has also been said that he forced his affections on other unwilling ladies of privileged position ("Georgie Porgie... kissed the girls and made them cry") while managing to avoid confrontation or retaliation ("When the boys came out to play, Georgie Porgie ran away").

The other candidate for "Georgie Porgie" is the Prince Regent (later King) George IV (1762-1830), the hapless son (said to have "half a brain") of mad King George III. Immensely fat ("Georgie Porgie, pudding and pie"), his corset wearing was a constant source of ridicule and satirical cartoons.

By 1797, his weight had reached 245 pounds, and by 1824, his corsets were being made for a waist of fifty inches. This George was unequivocally straight, but he took advantage of his position much like George Villiers had done.

He had a roving eye for the ladies; attractive female visitors who came to parties he gave were often advised not to be left alone with him. His checkered love life included several mistresses, illegitimate children, and even bigamy. George IV had an "official wife," Caroline of Brunswick, who he detested so much he even banned her from his coronation, and an "unofficial" wife, Maria Anne Fitzherbert. She was both a Catholic and a commoner, so their marriage was not formally recognized and remained a secret. He managed to make both women miserable, as well as many other women he forced himself on ("Kissed the girls and made them cry").

In addition to his crude, uncouth love life, George loved watching prizefighting (bare-knuckle boxing), which at the time was illegal. His own physical and emotional cowardice was legendary. This is illustrated by a story of the most infamous prizefight of the day, where one contestant died from his injuries. George was known to have been present at the fight, but when the man died, he ran away, terrified of being implicated in the fallout, and attempted to conceal his presence at the match. ("When the boys came out to play, Georgie Porgie ran away").

Smallpox was the first disease to be declared completely eradicated. Last year, we told you that rinderpest, a scourge of cattle and other cloven-hoofed animals, became the second disease completely wiped from the earth by human intervention. Now you can read the story of how it was done.

The long but little-known campaign to conquer rinderpest is a tribute to the skill and bravery of “big animal” veterinarians, who fought the disease in remote and sometimes war-torn areas — across arid stretches of Africa bigger than Europe, in the Arabian desert and on the Mongolian steppes.

“The role of veterinarians in protecting society is underappreciated,” said Dr. Juan Lubroth, chief veterinary officer of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, at whose headquarters Tuesday’s ceremony is being held. “We do more than just take care of fleas, bathe mascots and vaccinate Pooch.”

The victory is also proof that the conquest of smallpox was not just an unrepeatable fluke, a golden medical moment that will never be seen again. Since it was declared eradicated in 1980, several other diseases — like polio, Guinea worm, river blindness, elephantiasis, measles and iodine deficiency — have frustrated intensive, costly efforts to do the same to them. The eradication of rinderpest shows what can be done when field commanders combine scientific advances and new tactics.

The New York Times has the saga of rinderpest, from its effects on ancient civilizations to the successful (but long) eradication process. Link -via reddit

Sea captain David O’Keefe spent 30 years on the islands of Yap in the western Pacific. In that time, he established a successful trading company, married two wives (with another waiting in America), introduced alcohol and firearms to the islanders, and gained a monopoly over the island's currency of giant stones called fei. Fei was a rare commodity, as it was quarried and carved on the island of Palau, 250 miles from Yap.

The Yapese may have been using fei as early as 1400, though the stones were so difficult to quarry with shell tools and then transport that they remained very rare as late as 1840. [Price p.76; Berg pp.151-4; Gillilland p.3]  Their existence was first detailed by one of O’Keefe’s predecessors, the German trader Alfred Tetens, who in 1865 traveled to Yap on a large ship ferrying “ten natives… who wished to return home with the big stones they had cut on Palau.” [Gillilland p.4]  It’s clear from this that the Yapese were eager to find alternatives to transportation by canoe, and O’Keefe fulfilled this demand. By 1882, he had 400 Yapese quarrying fei on Palau—nearly 10 percent of the population. [Berg p.150]

This trade had its disadvantages, not least the introduction of inflation, caused by the sudden increase in the stock of money. But it made huge sense for O’Keefe. The Yapese, after all, supplied the necessary labor, both to quarry the stones and to harvest coconuts on Yap. O’Keefe’s expenses, in the days of sail, were minimal,  just some supplies and the wages of his crewmen. In return, he reaped the benefits of thousands of man-hours of labor, building a trading company worth—estimates differ—anywhere from $500,000 to $9.5 million. [Evening Bulletin; Hezel]

Read O'Keefe's story at Smithsonian's Past Imperfect Blog. Link

(Image credit: Eric Guinther)

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Mr. Mochi is an Oblivion machinima (computer-generated production), but he isn't your everyday, garden variety game character. To be honest, he is utterly ridiculous. But gaming doesn't have to always be serious business! -via I Am Bored

You've heard of Wyatt Earp, Billy the Kid, and Wild Bill Hickok, but there were plenty of other colorful figures who left their mark on the Wild West. This list tells us about four that you may never had heard of, like Texas Ben Thompson.

Texas Ben served in the Confederate States Army, then after the Civil War he headed south and served in Emperor Maximillian’s army in Mexico. When Maximillian fell Ben crossed back over the border into Texas, and spent the remainder of his life hiring his gun out to anyone who would pay, regardless of which side of the law it placed him on. Texas Ben even pinned on a badge as a legitimate lawman at times and supposedly put in time as a Texas Ranger at one point in his career. Thompson was even involved in the infamous Railroad War between the Atchison, Topeka  & Santa Fe RR and the Denver & Rio Grande RR. In 1884 Texas Ben shot and killed San Antonio saloon and bawdy house owner Jack Harris. Later that year, passing back through San Antonio with fellow neglected  gunfighter John “King” Fisher, he and his traveling companion foolishly  entered Harris’ former establishment and were riddled with bullets by several of the dead man’s friends. Texas Ben’s trademark tall silk hat was placed on his coffin.

Also learn about Luke Short, Pearl Hart, and Long-haired Jim Courtright in this post at Balladeer's Blog. Link

Once again, it's time for our collaboration with the always amusing What Is It? Blog. Do you know what the pictured item is? Can you make a wild guess?

Place your guess in the comment section below. One guess per comment, please, though you can enter as many as you'd like. Post no URLs or weblinks, as doing so will forfeit your entry. Two winners: the first correct guess and the funniest (albeit ultimately wrong) guess will win T-shirt from the NeatoShop.

Please write your T-shirt selection alongside your guess. If you don't include a selection, you forfeit the prize, okay? May we suggest the Science T-Shirt, Funny T-Shirt and Artist-Designed T-Shirts?

For more clues, check out the What Is It? Blog.

Update: The item in question is a tool that was used to make cavities in bullet molds during the Civil War, sometimes called a bullet mold cherry. Electronix and Winslow both knew the answer. One was a little earlier; the other was more specific, so we are giving t-shirts to both of them! The funniest answer came from rob, who said,"It happens to be part of an ancient game. Originally called Paleolithic Roulette, it's played much like today's version of Russian Roulette. It is spinned (like a dreidel) and whoever it lands on gets the pointed side rammed into their temporal lobe." For that, he also wins a t-shirt!

The Soviet Union launched fruit flies into space in 1947. I did not know that until today. Since then, we've sent many living species up into space for exploration and experimental purposes, and eight of those were mammals. Can you name them all in two minutes? You don't have to know their personal names, just what kind of mammal they were, in today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss. I only missed one. Link

Spanning from over a decade ago to this summer's memes, Ranker has gathered together 35 catchy viral musical videos that swept the internet. You can relive the good old days of "All Your Base" and "Peanut Butter Jelly Time" and also catch up with tunes you may have missed as well. Lyrics in some songs are NSFW. Link

The gnat-ogre, Holcocephalus fuscus, is a tiny insect that eats even tiner insects. You've got to look really close to ever see them, although they may be in your back yard.

Aptly named, gnat-ogres are miniature robber flies, and every bit as carnivorous as their larger, more visible brethren. You've just got to look closely to see them. The gnat-ogre pictured above would be measured in millimeters. They are so small that a person would likely dismiss them as gnats or perhaps extremely tiny flower flies. With the naked eye, they are scarcely visible unless one happens to be closely studying the area in which gnat-ogres have staked out. To get these photos, I was using a heavy-duty macro lens, flash, and a tripod. Fortunately, gnat-ogres are fearless and will allow very close approach.

Ohio naturalist Jim McCormac describes them as "neat," so that's good enough for me! Link -Thanks, Manticore!