Go, dog, go! On October 23, Frisbee Rob McLeod and a very talented dog named Sailor performed during halftime at the Calgary Stampeders and Saskatchewan Roughriders game in Calgary. Rob threw a Frisbee from one end zone to the other- and sailor not only caught up with it, he caught it!

This sets a new world record for the longest catch at a live sporting event. Earlier this year, Rob Gronkowski caught a ball from 200 yards, albeit that was a ball dropped from a helicopter into an empty stadium. The longest catch possible in an official football game is the 99-yard pass, which has been done quite few times. But Sailor did it the hard way, by starting in the same spot as the thrower. If you want to see more of Sailor, a longer (five minute) video shows us the entire sequence.

That's a good dog. -via reddit

How does one survive the Antarctic cold? Seals develop a thick layer of fat. Penguins combine fat, feathers, and the habit of clinging together in large numbers. People build science stations with heaters. But the Antarctic icefish (Channichthyidae) is cold-blooded and uses some really weird alternative anatomy. It is the only known vertebrate that doesn't have hemoglobin in its blood! The blood of the icefish is almost clear.

What the fish's blood does contain is organic antifreeze. It has unique and specific proteins that lower the freezing point of water, so neither the blood nor the fish's tissues will develop ice crystals. Inspired by the icefish, a food company developed a yeast that produces these same antifreeze proteins and uses it in ice cream!   

But back to the icefish. Without hemoglobin, how does the fish get oxygen to its tissues? Luckily, Antarctic Ocean water holds more oxygen than warmer water. The fish has no scales, so it absorbs some through it skin. It also has a heart that's four times the size of those of similar-sized fish. Read more about the strange Antarctic icefish at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Marrabbio2)

The best part of the traditional Thanksgiving feast is the dressing, unless you call it stuffing. The basic recipe for both is the same: bread, turkey broth, onions and celery, and spices. My recipe calls for cornbread and lots of sage, others use white bread, sometime sausage or oysters, and an article at Lifehacker mentions eggs, although I never found eggs necessary.

In the South, it's called dressing. If you call it stuffing in the South, people will think you are making Stovetop Stuffing, the instant stuff that comes in a box. In the West, it's more likely to be called stuffing. Other areas vary between the two terms. Semantically, it is stuffing if you put it inside the turkey to be cooked, and dressing when it is cooked separately and served on the side. Still, people tend to use the word common in their region instead of by how it is used.  

No matter what you call it, you shouldn't cook the stuffing inside the bird, though, regardless of what your ancestors did. The reasons why are spelled out at Lifehacker.

In the 1980s and the decades afterward, a cult flourished that revolved around Ior Bock, a Finn who claimed to be descended from mystical ancient pagans. Bock was once a well-known actor in Finland, and he spent years as a tour guide for a historical site until he was let go for embellishing his historical tales. Honestly, Ior Bock's biography is bonkers, involving incest, adoption, fratricide, showbiz, cult leadership, mental illness, paraplegia, and murder -and some of it is true.

In the 1970s and '80s, Bock spent his summers in Goa, India, which was at the time a refuge for hippies looking for enlightenment. He told the story of his family's saga as the keepers of history. It explained the origins of all the people of the world and how they are related, as well as the pagan paradise that was once the North Pole, but is now in Finland. Bock gathered followers and told them of a temple called Lemminkäinen that was a chamber full of treasures from the early civilizations he spoke of.  

So, since 1987, a small but dedicated team of amateur archaeologists have been excavating the Temple of Lemminkäinen on the Bock family estate.

According to Ior Bock, the temple was sealed in 987AD to protect the pagan artefacts from Catholic crusaders who invaded Finland, so the first job was to open it back up.

They've been digging for more than 30 years now. Dutch author Carl Borgen traveled from Canada to Goa as a teenager and heard Bock's saga, but didn't follow him back to Finland. He kept in touch with friends who did, and now had published a book called Temporarily Insane, which is an account of Bock and his followers. Read an overview of Bock, Borgen, and the book at The Scotsman. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: Paasikivi)

Just like clockwork, the end of the Halloween season means Christmas shopping is upon us. And every year, the John Lewis Christmas ad campaign sets the standard for holiday advertising that makes you go all verklempt inside. This year's ad offers us a close encounter, a new friend, and an out-of-this-world experience. Science fiction meets Hallmark, as it were. A YouTube commenter said, "Explain the plot of E.T in 2 mins. Oh, but make it set at Christmas.” His classmates are not going to believe this story when school starts again after the holidays. As many years as I have been posting John Lewis Christmas ads, I still don't know what they sell.

To someone who's not into chemistry, the Periodic Table of Elements may seem incomprehensible. Looking at it without understanding is downright boring. For that matter, looking at it can be boring even if you do understand it. So how about a bit of poetry to make the elements relatable? That's what we get with Elemental haiku. Here are some samples.

Neon

There's no shame in it.
Advertising pays the bills.
Stop looking so red.

Arsenic

Called in for questions,
blacklisted, cannot quite shake
your poisonous past.

Radium

Licked by the women
painting luminous watches.
How much time stolen?

See, every element has a story, one that can be told in seventeen syllables. Elements matter, so to speak. Check out all the elements at Elemental haiku.  -via Nag on the Lake

A question used for the 2014 US Physics Olympiad team qualifying exam managed to stick around because it was so intriguing. If you hang a flexible but consistent rope underneath a moving helicopter, which of the above shapes would that rope take? I figured that would depend on other factors, but let's assume they are not carrying a piano or a rhino. Derek Muller of Veritasium decided to find out once and for all, so he hired a helicopter and a pilot to do the experiment. Think about how you would answer the question, maybe even write it down, and then watch the video.



It's pretty neat that he also tracked down the origin of the question and interviewed the guy who came up with it. Don't be concerned with the length of the video; the basic question is answered in about four minutes, but then they add some confounding factors that you'll find quite interesting. The last minute is an ad. -via Digg

Facebook has been in the news lately for reinforcing preconceived notions and contributing to information bubbles. That's because the algorithm loading your feed is programmed to give you more of the same kinds of things you've shown interest in before. It's not the only social media platform to do this, and all kinds of websites are glad to recommend that you read "more like this." You can understand why they do that, but without some effort, you'll end up being recommended the same subjects over and over until you may begin to think that's all there is. Clive Thompson calls that "a form of intellectual monocropping." This applies to more than just politics or pandemic information. If you are into crocheting, football, veganism, or Marvel comics, and you keep following recommendations, you can end up missing out on a lot of the other things that the web has to offer.

Of course, you, being a Neatorama reader, have varied interests and already know that the internet is more than just social media. However, you may want to try some new ways to expand both your web surfing and offline interests. Clive Thompson has put a lot of thought into this, and gives us nine methods he uses to get out of a rut and into something fascinating you wouldn't have considered otherwise.  -via Kottke

(Image credit: Flickr user Jennifer C.)

You've heard the phrase "dead as a doornail" before, but it never made much sense, because all inanimate objects are just as dead. Besides, doors are now more likely to be held together with staples and glue than with nails. Maybe whoever coined the phrase just liked the alliteration. But there's more to it than that.

This video starts off talking about the phrase, but fairly quickly turns into a chapter in the history of carpentry. It has to do with the particular challenge of joining flat slabs of hand-hewn wood side-to-side to build a door, back when nails were hand-made. The video ends up being way more interesting than you expect. -via reddit

This odd picture has a wonderful story behind it.

A redditor who goes by Wildlife-outside works at a nature center that has hawks and owls and she got used to handling what we would consider dangerous birds. She also became a volunteer bird rescuer, and now get calls when a situation arises. One day, a bald eagle collided with a bucket truck and was injured. Authorities called her for help while she was in the middle of dying her hair! Wildlife-outside responded and chased the injured eagle through a swamp before wrapping him up in a blanket. Yes, he's a wrapped raptor. He had already tried to bite her in the face, which would have made a very different picture. She put the eagle in a box and drove it to a wildlife rehabilitation center, but not before her husband took a one-of-a-kind snapshot. The eagle doesn't look happy at all, and she has a thousand-yard stare that says, "You have to take a picture NOW?" 

The fallout: In case you're wondering, the dye job came out just fine. This type of color doesn't contain any bleach, but you still want to wait until it's finished to show it off. Wildlife-outside doesn't know what happened to the eagle, but is certain that the rehab center took good care of it. While it took her months to get up the nerve to share the picture, the post at reddit got 85K upvotes and 24K comments in only eight hours. I would love to say that a good time was had by all, but neither she nor the eagle had fun saving the bird's life. We are just glad she did.

(Image credit: Wildlife-outside)

Update: by request, she did an AMA (Ask Me Anything) post as a follwup.

Her life began in the countryside. A skill with poisons brought her to the heart of the empire. Jennifer Wright (@JenAshleyWright) on the world's (potential) first serial killer.https://t.co/Tn1B66oUIj

— CrimeReads (@CrimeReads) November 2, 2021

Some may consider Locusta of Gaul to be the world's first serial killer, but she was probably just the first one that was well-documented. She didn't kill for thrills, though. She was a professional. Locusta was born in the countryside where she learned the powers of plants for both healing and killing. Upon moving to Rome, she found out how many people wanted to kill each other, so she went into business providing poisons.

Locusta came to be so well-known that she was eventually arrested, but then was saved from punishment in 54 CE by Agrippina, who wanted to kill her husband, Claudius, and needed professional help. Then Agrippina's son, Nero, gave Locusta the title of Imperial Poisoner! Read how she carried out her most famous murders, and eventually paid for them, at CrimeReads. -via Damn Interesting

Mr. Andrew Cotter frames this as a bedtime story for his two dogs, Olive and Mabel. Mabel is having trouble sleeping and is very attentive. Note her adorable head tilt! Olive, not so much. Olive falls asleep during the story, but Mabel really gets into it, and so will you, as Cotter (previously at Neatorama) is a Scottish broadcaster for BBC Sports and has a lovely voice that you must listen to carefully or you'll miss his delightful one-liners ("I'm too handsome to die!"). Get ready to be spooked by the pale wolf in the woods.

The story turns out to be truly terrifying for dogs, particularly the final line, which causes Mabel to freak out a bit. Surely that will help her get to sleep. And give her nightmares. -via Laughing Squid

McDonald's is getting into the market for meatless burgers with the new McPlant. It's a hamburger with no ham. Scratch that, it's a hamburger with no beef, either. By this weekend, it should be available at a small number of American McDonald's outlets. It's not the first meatless fast food burger, as Burger King has been selling the Impossible Burger for a couple of years now.

Despite the name, the McPlant is not vegan, although it may be pass as vegetarian. It is normally served with cheese and mayonnaise, and it will be cooked on the same grill as regular burgers, at least in the US. In the UK, the McPlant is grilled on a separate cooking surface, and the cheese and mayo are also made of plants, making it certified vegan burger.

But how does it taste? Mat Smith has tried it and he says, "it tastes like... a McDonald’s burger." Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing is entirely up to you. Read the rest of his review at Engadget. -via Fark

On October 30, 1961, the Soviet Union tested the world's largest nuclear bomb. Tsar Bomba, as it came to be known, was deployed over an Arctic island and produced a fireball six miles wide. The explosion yielded the power of 50 megatons of TNT, although the bomb was capable of 100 megatons. In comparison, the bomb the US dropped on Hiroshima had the explosive power of 15 kilotons of TNT. Tsar Bomba was 40 times as powerful as any nuclear weapon the US ever built to this day. The test of the bomb brought an end to the nuclear test ban treaty between the US and the USSR that had been in effect since 1958.

The US denounced the test, but publicly downplayed it in the press. The Soviets were obviously ahead the nuclear arms race, but that was because the US at the time deliberately avoided building larger nuclear bombs. The Eisenhower administration didn't think it was ethical, as if small nuclear bombs were. But once the Soviets had tested its Tsar Bomba, scientists were asked to design larger nuclear weapons. And US nuclear testing came back in full swing. Read the story of Tsar Bomba and the American response at Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. The article includes footage from a Soviet documentary about the bomb.   -via Digg

Get ready for the uproar- the Bird of the Year (Te Manu Rongonui o Te Tau) competition has been won by a bat! The New Zealand organization Forest & Bird stages a poll each year to determine the best bird. This year, the winner is the long-tailed bat, or pekapeka-tou-roa. The announcement of the poll results has people wondering how a bat ever got into the competition, much less defeated the actual birds that were in the running.  

This is the first time New Zealand’s only land mammal has been included in Forest & Bird’s annual contest, and it has flown away with the title.

“I think I’m going to be fired,” says Forest & Bird’s Bird of the Year spokesperson Laura Keown.  

Organizers say they included the bat in order to draw attention to it. In that they have succeeded wildly. On top of that, more votes were cast this year than in any previous year. The 2020 winner, the kākāpō, came in second in the polling. It's not the first time that the Bird of the Year contest was in the news for odd reasons. Last year, the contest had to deal with a case of voter fraud, in which 1500 votes had to be thrown out.  -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Ian Davidson-Watts)