Every one knows the best way to solve a complex mystery is to hang pictures and newspaper clippings on a wall and connect them with string to show the relationship between each item. At least that's true according to the movies. That familiar scene is called String Theory, and it's there to show you how widespread and complex a hidden conspiracy can be to an experienced professional investigator. On the other hand, it is also used to reveal the compulsions of a serial killer or the insane obsessions of a conspiracy theorist.

Shawn Gilmore has compiled an archive of Narrative String Theory scenes from movies, TV, comedy, books, animation, advertising, comics, art, and even the news. There are 1308 entries so far, including a scene from the documentary The Program: Cons, Cults, and Kidnapping shown at the top, and the parody that became a meme from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, above. Just when you are impressed with how many of them there are, you realize that there's a second page with the previous 900 entries. -via Metafilter 

(Warning: the first link is from TV Tropes)

You've been told all your life not to put metal into a microwave. What's the worst that can happen? The possibility of uncontrollable microwave arcing could damage your appliance, and that's enough to keep most of us from trying it out. But what if the consequences are more serious than we've been told?  This guy wrapped his potato in aluminum foil, as we've all done, but then placed it in the microwave. Instead of melting the machine, it becomes a uniquely powerful energy generator, so powerful that it calls extraterrestrials to come and take it. 

The guy is initially terrified of the situation he has unleashed, but eventually we find that he's sort of into it and joins in the mission to retrieve the potato. The bizarre adventure unwinds wordlessly in this action video from Buttered Side Down. The moral of the story is: always read the directions thoroughly. -via The Awesomer 

Modern technology (IVF, donor eggs and sperm, surrogacy, and chemistry that can temporarily reverse menopause) has led us to ponder questions that we never had to confront before. What makes a parent? Is it a genetic link, the act of giving birth, the people who live with and raise a child, the person who paid for all the above to happen, or something else hidden in the Byzantine laws that have hastily grown up around these new technologies? 

The case of MaryBeth Lewis combines all these questions. When her children grew up, she wanted more, and gave birth to her 13th child at the age of 62. But she still wanted more. For the next pregnancy, she used frozen embryos created with purchased sperm and eggs and a surrogate mother. But she didn't tell her husband Bob, and instead signed his name on the legal contracts. Twins were born in October of 2023, when Lewis was 66. By then, her scheme had started to unravel, and the twins were sent to foster parents, who still have them two years later and want to adopt them. Lewis was charged with felony fraud, yet she went to court to gain custody of the twins. The question is, who do those children belong to? Read the story in this gripping account at the New York Times, or at the Internet Archive. -via Damn Interesting 

(Unrelated image credit: MultipleParent) 

They say that practice makes perfect. More recently, we've all heard that to become really good at something, you need to put in 10,000 hours of practice. Unless you spend all day practicing, that's a lot of years. So not only is the "rule" discouraging, it doesn't really make sense. Quite a few people are very good at something when they are still young, and others change directions completely at an advanced age and then show amazing talent. In this TED-Ed lesson, David Epstein explains that you don't have to devote yourself to a certain activity from childhood in order to become really good at it. Sometimes it takes a bit of experimenting to find out where your talents lie, or what your passion is. If you find something you are excited about doing, practice doesn't feel like work. And if you begin to feel at home with what you are doing, who is counting those hours? We can't all be world famous for our talents, but we can all be good at something.  

Many of us were raised to clean our plates and never waste food. Then as struggling adults, we took advantage of free food and got our money's worth at buffets. The habit of always filling up often leads to obesity or disordered eating and a lifestyle of yo-yo dieting. Contrast this with the Japanese philosophy of eating called hara hachi bu, which encourages us to eat until we are around 80% full. That idea resets our conception of satiety and staves off indigestion. 

While the 80% rule is what you hear most about this philosophy, hara hachi bu involves much more. It is about developing a balanced relationship with food in which we slow down, enjoy eating, and choose more nutrititous things to eat. That means being more aware of what we consume instead of just how much. Hara hachi bu has been shown to be effective in weight loss, but it's not a diet. Rather, it's a long term way of eating that leads to long term health benefits. Read up on hara hachi bu and seven tips for trying it out at the Conversation. -via Real Clear Science

(Image credit: MIKI Yoshihito) 

I once worked as a restaurant bartender, but the reason I got the job was because I spoke fluent English, and could communicate with customers when needed. My language skills came in handy that one time we had a fire. I also had to be there for the local health department inspections, otherwise no one would understand what needed to be fixed. 

Restaurants are inspected by various government agencies, depending on the state or even local regulations. These inspections are crucial to make sure the restaurant meets standards for safe food storage, handling, and cooking, plus sanitation standards for the business as a whole. The results of these inspections can be posted as a percentage, a grade, or some other scale. If the results are bad enough, the restaurant will be shut down until conditions improve. But how are we to interpret passing grades that vary from one place to another? Weird History Food takes us through the system so we can understand what we are getting into a little better.  

It's always been expensive to be poor. In Victorian England, if you couldn't afford accommodations, you could sleep outside, but in rainy and/or cold weather, you could pay for a spot inside for a penny (which was worth more 200 years ago). In a city establishment called a doss house, just providing a roof brought in cash from hundreds of itinerant laborers and homeless people. For a penny, though, you didn't get the luxury of sleeping. That would buy you a spot to sit on a bench overnight, called a "penny sit-up." 

Double the price and you had a "two-penny hangover." This meant a spot on a bench, and a rope to keep you from falling on the floor when you fell asleep. It also meant a rude awakening when your time was up, because that's when the rope was untied. Or if you were to spend four cents for a night, you could really get a good night's rest -in a wooden box on the floor. This was called a "four-penny coffin." Read about the cost of existing in these doss houses and see pictures at Amusing Planet. 

Oreo cookies come in a lot of flavors, but this is one that I can't see gaining any long-term traction. the company is now offering the Oreoid Thanksgiving Dinner Cookie Tin. It's a box with 12 Oreo cookie that come in six Thanksgiving flavors: turkey & stuffing, cranberry sauce, creamed corn, sweet potato, pumpkin pie, and caramel apple pie. Yum! A 12-count box will cost you $19.99 plus shipping. Imagine the kids fighting over the last creamed corn cookie! You can also opt for the tin with 12 classic Oreo flavor cookies with Thanksgiving images and sprinkles for $44.99. 

The term "Oreoid" sounds like "factoid," meaning something that's not quite a fact but is shaped like one. However, this appears to be more like Oreo-ID. It refers to their program in which you can get custom-designed Oreo cookies with pictures on them. Still, those aren't available in turkey & stuffing flavor, even though they offer Thanksgiving-themed images. -via Boing Boing 

Commonsense child-rearing consists of giving them love and security when they are young, and then gradually teaching them and supporting them as they grow and branch out. But there have been many periods in our history when self-styled experts gave advice that will curl your hair today. Bad advice may have sounded sensible at the time, but wasn't based on actual long-range outcomes, just on the desired outcome a parent might hope for. Ignoring a child's pain or giving them drugs might result in less crying, but it could also scar their souls or their livers. Putting children to work in factories or mines was a desperate measure to bring food to the family table, yet it led to stunted growth and a lack of education. 

However, parents wanted to do it right, so they often take dubious advice from dubious experts even today. Read up on some of the worst parenting advice ever at Mental Floss.  

(Image credit: Crimfants) 

What do you do with a car that's 35 years old, has stopped running, and is no good for a trade in? What do you do with a pumpkin that weights nearly a ton and is too tough to cut? Both belonged to one man- Alan Gebert of Millville, Utah, so the answer was to smash them into each other. 

The 1991 Geo Metro named Frosty had been a loyal transport for 35 years, and a tribute video about it went viral earlier this year when Gebert retired from his day job. Gebert's plan was to eventually drop a giant pumpkin on it to give the car a fitting sendoff when it quit working, which it did this year. Gebert grows giant pumpkins for fun, and this year's behemoth weighed 1,917 pounds and won first prize at the Utah Giant Pumpkin Festival weigh-off. 

The pumpkin drop was staged at Hee Haw Farms in Pleasant Grove, Utah, on October 26th. A crane lifted the pumpkin 14 stories high and dropped it, to the utter satisfaction of the crowd below. Both the pumpkin and the car were destroyed. A similar stunt on the same day at the nearby North Logan Pumpkin Toss produced much less mayhem as a 750-pound pumpkin was dropped onto a minivan, which you can see at the same link.    

Horses were domesticated for meat and milk long after cattle and sheep, about 5,000 years ago. Central Asian horse herders understood the inheritance of traits that Gregor Mendel explained thousands of years later- that you breed the horses that have the qualities you want, and you eat the ones that don't. These early horse herders sped up natural selection by breeding horses for their tameness and obedience to humans. That was the first step.

Then around 4,500 years ago, a horse showed a genetic mutation in its spine that made it much stronger. This was immediately bred to other horse generations. Suddenly, a horse became the most useful animal humans had. Horses could then plow fields, pull cargo, and most importantly, they could be ridden by humans, which revolutionized long distance travel and warfare. Read about the genetic journey that enabled humans to ride horses at 3 Quarks Daily. -via Nag on the Lake 

(Image credit: long10000) 

In 1850, the total biomass (weight) of all the earth's wild mammals was about equal to the biomass of humans and their domestic animals. As you can see from the graph above, that has changed considerably in the 175 years since. A new study published in the journal Nature Communications traces the changes in that biomass. The total weight of domesticated mammals is more than ten times the total weight of wild mammals! In the domesticated mammal category, two-thirds of that biomass is cattle. We have a lot of them, and they weigh a lot. The other third of that category includes all other livestock, such as sheep and pigs, all cats and dogs, and mice and rats who depend on humans for their survival. Horse populations have declined. You already know about the population growth of humans. 

The total biomass of wild land animals has declined, but not nearly as much as that of marine mammals. That decline is mostly the result of hunting whales. The number of whales dropped steeply during the 20th century, and has only recovered slightly since whaling bans went into effect. Read more about these changes and their causes in the published paper. -via Damn Interesting  

Laurence Brown contrasts autumn in America and Britain by taking audience questions. Yes, there's a difference, and it's mainly that America is big on autumn. The US is a big country, with an awful lot of beautiful trees. We are an agricultural nation, with a big harvest and a lot of delicious native crops like pumpkins and corn and pecans (turkeys, too). And we are Americans, so we relish making a big deal out of everything. 

But the real difference is that Britain is small, and rainy, and autumn doesn't signify all that much change from summer. Brown calls this season the last hurrah before the misery of winter sets in, because he lives in Chicago. Here in the South, we love autumn because it's a reprieve from the misery of a torrid summer. And wherever you live in the US, you can find a place to visit that's very different from your home, without haveing to get a passport. There's a one-minute skippable ad at 2:45. 

In 1890, lumber baron John Mouat built a beautiful mansion in downtown Denver for his wife Amelia and his five children. It seems he also built it as a showcase for his lumber business. The first floor has three parlors, the original five bedrooms are on the second floor, and the third floor is a magnificent ballroom. Each room was lined with a different kind of wood, all available from Mouat's company at the time. More than 100 years later, the mansion was restored to its original splendor and turned into an inn and event space. 

Current owner Elaine Britten, along with her husband Joel Bryant, love the inn but have decided to retire. Brittan tells us about the spirits that haunt the mansion, which she finds comforting, especially the ghost of Amelia Mouat. However, a little digging suggests that the mansion's past includes an unsolved double murder in 1970. 

Yes, this is a bathroom.

That said, the business seems to be doing well, and you can see more of this gorgeous historical home with six bedrooms and nine bathrooms at the real estate listing. -via Fark 

Oh yes, I completely understand that it's rushing things to bring up Christmas when it's still officially October for another few hours, but this is eerie enough for Halloween. Danny Elfman knows about the macabre. The Oingo Boingo frontman has been the composer for more than 100 movies, including most of the Tim Burton films. Today he presents A Danny Elfman Christmas Story, which he wrote and narrates. 

The story is presented in poetic form, in the style of "A Visit from Saint Nicholas" as Elfman tells of how he delivers gifts dressed as Krampus, and of the one Christmas he was confronted by a "fan" who is an actual demon wishing to apprentice under Krampus. That's when things get weird. But as creepy as this one is, you have almost two months to get over it before you welcome Santa Claus into your home, with better results, we hope. -via The Awesomer