San Fermin in Nueva Orleans is a festival that begins today and runs through Sunday. It is a homage to the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, Spain, which is also happening this week. If you can't make it to Spain, you can run with the "bulls" this Saturday in New Orleans!
The event will replicate and pay homage to the world famous Encierro of Pamplona, Spain, aka The Running of the Bulls, only our bulls are members of New Orleans’ all-female flat-track derby team the Big Easy Rollergirls and select participants from other rollerderby leagues across the country!
Oh, and there will be a special appearance by a group of Elvises on wheels as well! Link-Thanks, John Brauner!
Is there any movie creature more cuddly than the Facehugger from Alien? Ha! Still, if you want a plush version of this monster, you can make your own Facehugger Pillow Pet with guidance from Kaisei13 at Instructables. Link -via io9
Photographer William Carrick and his partner John MacGregor traveled throughout Russia between 1857 and 1878 taking portraits of Russians of all stations and occupations. These pictures form an ethnographic overview of Russia in the 19th century, and are a historical treasure. This picture shows a young vendor with his hand-carved wooden abacuses for sale. See a varied collection of Carrick's photographs at Environmental Graffiti. Link
Andy Cavatorta was commissioned to build a new musical instrument based on a pendulum for Bjork's Biophilia show in Manchester, UK. The first such instrument built was the Gravity Ring, but that was scrapped as too bulky for the tour. The next idea was Gravity Harps. The pendulums each contain harp strings, which are plucked as they pass through the bottom of their swing. The harps also rotate, which exposes different strings to the "plucker." You can see the process of designing and building the harps at Cavatora's website. http://andycavatorta.com/2011/07/02/gravity-harps/ -Thanks, Andy!
It's once again time for our collaboration with the always amusing What Is It? Blog. Can you guess what the pictured item is? Can you make up something interesting?
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.
Update: This an anvil for hand forming sheet metal with a hammer, for making armor or other curved metal parts, also called sinking or doming. Berhard knew that, and said so in the very first comment! For that, he wins a t-shirt. As for the funniest answer, greg urbano said, "it is a discarded reflecting dish used by aliens to gauge their distance from the earth as they approach for landing, similar to the reflectors we placed on the moon to bouce laser beams back, im almost certain of this because i have seen this on other planets during my travels." However, he did not select a shirt. You can see more picture of this anvil in use at the What Is It? blog.
There are so many companies that put a crown on the labels of beverages that mental_floss decided to make a quiz out of them! In today's Lunchtime Quiz, you'll be given a picture of a crown, and you try to match it with the drink it comes from. Simple? No. I scored horribly, but you might ace this one -you won't know until you try it! Link
Some people really know how to write a letter and get to the point, with the result of pleasing the recipient.
Despite never being published in the paper, the following brief letter — sent to the offices of The Times in 1946 by the famously eccentric Lt. Col. Alfred Daniel Wintle — was so adored by staff, it has apparently been preserved ever since. It's easy to see why.
I won't spoil the surprise by putting the transcript here, so go read the whole thing at Letters of Note. Link
Who knew? A tunnel dug underneath the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea is open for tours, even though you cannot access the ground above it! This is just one of several odd and interesting corridors you can read about in a list at Atlas Obscura. Others are in Vietnam, Brooklyn, Liverpool, and Australia. Link
Do legends and traditions of storybook giants have some basis in fact? Fossils of Gigantopithecus suggest the species reached almost ten feet tall and lived up to 300,000 years ago. Fortean Times looks at the possibility that the primate wasn't an ape, but something a bit closer to human, and might not even be extinct.
There is plenty of American Indian lore concerning True Giants; they have left their mark in the names given to places in North America. And there are modern reports for them as well, from all over the world. To survive at all, they remain shy of human beings. It is no accident that the detailed observations of these giants are so often made from a distance and that the best records generally come from mountainous areas, just as they do in North America. There are two reasons for this.
Firstly, these surviving giants no longer confront human beings if it can be avoided. In rare instances of prolonged visual contact, they have kept their distance from observers. Secondly, in the New World’s Pacific Northwest there has been an unparalleled effort to collect accounts of hairy beings of all kinds. If comparable efforts were made elsewhere, we would be likely to hear of similar matter-of-fact and detailed sightings of True Giants.
Of course, you'll want to read this while taking a few large grains of salt. Link
We always get a kick out of announcing the winner of the British contest Shed of the Year, but this year, the winning shed is quite interesting in its own right. Jon Earl of Clevedon, Somerset won £1000 and a "shedload" of the sponsor's products. His shed is more than just a place to store things -it's also a place for musicians to film videos!
Originally a First World War billet hut, music fan and regular festival goer Jon decided in 2009 to turn his ramshackle shed into a venue to video acoustic music sessions. He began inviting musicians from all over the world into the 12ft by 10ft shed to video the sessions. The humble looking shed has hosted sessions for musicians ranging from the Fairport Convention to Steve Harley and has even been the setting for a video for US band the Water Tower Bucket Boys.
You can see those videos on the website Songs from the Shed. Earl plans to use the prize money to fix up his shed. Link -via Breakfast Links
Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website.
John, George, Pete Best, Paul, and Stu Sutcliffe in 1960
As we all know, there is a time in every performer's career where they are "complete unknowns." Yes, there was a time, really not so long ago, when no one knew or had ever even heard of Frank Sinatra or Woody Allen or Meryl Streep. And so it was with the greatest, most famous, most deified show biz act of the 20th century: The Beatles.
In the summer of 1960, none of the usually-employed Beatles even had a day job. And like us all, the boys wanted to make some money. The then-foursome consisting of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Stuart Sutcliffe played the oddest gig in the Beatles' long and storied history.
In those days, the Beatles were such a small-time act, they didn't even have a drummer: Tommy Moore left the group in May after a traffic accident, and Pete Best joined in August. John, Paul, and George would play guitar and Stu Sutcliffe was the band's pretty mediocre bass player.
Allan Williams
The Beatles, in those days, had a semi-manager named Allan Williams. Williams was one of those "on the fringe" show business figures we're all so familiar with- the guy who was always trying to hustle up a "deal," the guy with the "big dreams," the poor chap who never really got a break.
Anyway, in that summer (July is usually considered the exact time) of 1960, Williams had just opened up a new club called "The New Cabaret Artistes Club." This was what we now refer to as "a gentleman's club," i.e. a high class strip joint. Williams had hired an entertainer for the man, a stripper, to perform that July week. Her name was Janice. She was a stripper from Manchester (in some accounts, her name is given as Shirley).
Allan Williams approached the four "layabouts" and asked if they'd play backing music all week for Janice the stripper. After some initial resistance, the four Beatles had haggled out an equitable financial deal. Supposedly, Sutcliffe was the tough negotiator and got them a fairly decent fee. "Why so much?" Williams had asked them during the negotiations.
Paul had replied, "For the indignity. The bloody indignity of it all!"
A fee of 50p (about two dollars) per night was agreed upon for each musician. That came to 250p for the week per man, i.e. around ten dollars.
Janice the stripper wanted the Beatles to play her usual selected repertoire and handed them the sheet music. That was pointless, as none of the Beatles could read music. It was reputed that during the engagement they played such songs as "Moonglow" and "The Harry Lime Theme" from the movie The Third Man.
Janice was a bit of a tease (being a stripper, of course). After each number, she would bow to the crowd, then she would turn around and bow facing the four teenage boys -stark naked. According to Paul: "She would turn around -completely starkers. We were just lads. We didn't know where to put ourselves."
Not that I know anything about strip clubs (ahem!) but it must have been an incredibly surreal sight in that incredibly surreal week, seeing a smoke-filled club filled with lonely, sex-starved men, in front to them on stage a sexy stripper and standing a few feet behind her, four teenagers who were, in a few short years, to become the most famous and influential human beings on the planet.
Stu Sutcliffe
The week's series of gigs backing Janice went on without a hitch, and the Beatles wrapped up what was -undoubtedly- the strangest gig of their career. The very unusual week was hardly ever mentioned in the countless later interviews given by John, Paul, or George. (As a sad sidebar, Stu Sutcliffe died tragically young in 1962, at the age of 21.)
One wonders whatever became of Janice (or possibly Shirley). Maybe she is still alive. But we can safely assume one thing: Wherever she went, wherever she performed, as long as she lived and breathed, every friend, relative, and acquaintance of Janice heard her stories regaling and boasting about the week she was backed up as a stripper by The Beatles.
Stu, John, Paul, guest drummer Johnny Hutchinson, and George in May 1960
You can find a Tumblr picture blog for almost any subject under the sun. Starbucks Spelling is dedicated to the custom of baristas writing a customer's name on a cup, for which they sometimes get the spelling wrong. What makes this worth a look is 1. there are so many misspellings, and 2. how can anyone keep track of all the venti and grande lattes and espressos and then spell Joe G-I-O? Shown here are four different orders Omar recorded. Link -via Gorilla Mask
Take a bunch of skateboarders, attach remote-control spray paint devices underneath the boards, and let them loose in a an empty pool. The result resembles a human Spirograph! -via Dangerous Minds
