The Boston Typewriter Orchestra (previously at Neatorama) has always made music with typewriters the old fashioned way: with manual typewriters, the ones that took real finger power to use and made loud noises. But now they've made a tiny step into the 20th century. They composed a new song for their submission to the Tiny Desk Concert series at NPR that uses electric typewriters! The song is titled "Selectric Funeral."

Still, these typewriters are far from new. I got a Selectric to take to college back in the 1970s, and it looked new compared to these machines. The "new" typewriters give the orchestra some flexibility in the sounds they make, with effects straight out of the 1960s. I love how one machine was equipped with a large bell to give it a "normal" carriage return sound. And having to repair something in the middle of a song is just the way you'd expect an electric typewriter to perform. -via Laughing Squid  

Through most of the 20th century, paleoanthropologists considered the birthplace of Homo sapiens to be in East Africa. Or maybe South Africa. That's where the oldest fossils were found, of both humans and their ancestors. But 21st century discoveries in Morocco, specifically from a site called Jebel Irhoud, suggest that modern man developed in Northwest Africa. Skulls excavated there date back around 300,000 years, much older than human skulls found elsewhere. But are they Homo sapiens? The facial features are modern, but the brain case is shaped a little differently. However, the same brain case shape is found in skulls from East Africa which were always considered Homo sapiens.

Who was there first? Humans could have traveled across Africa over time. There could have been many human species that interbred in different areas. But we have to acknowledge that the fossil record is scant, considering the geography involved, and just because we haven't found more fossils doesn't mean they aren't there. So at this time, we really don't know where humans evolved. Read about these recent discoveries and the questions they raise at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: © Philipp Gunz, MPI EVA Leipzig (License: CC-BY-SA 2.0))

In ancient Japanese lore, earthquakes are caused by the movements of a giant catfish. This idea got an artistic renaissance following the 1855 Edo earthquake close to what is now Tokyo. That earthquake leveled 14,000 buildings and between 7,000 and 10,000 people died. Immediately afterward, artists began producing woodblock prints called Namazu-e that illustrated the earthquake, the populace's reaction to it, and the catfish at the heart of it.  

Many people bought these prints and displayed them in their homes as a charm against another quake. And quite a few of them are rather lighthearted. This was because the greatest damage came to those who had the most to lose, and the earthquake was seen by some as a "great leveling" of social classes. Therefore, the authorities banned the production of Namazu-e within weeks of the earthquake. Some were still produced afterward, but almost all the surviving examples are from late 1855. See a gallery of 45 of these unique artworks at the Public Domain Review. -via Nag on the Lake

Jermain Loguen escaped from his Tennessee slavemaster in 1834 by stealing a horse. He made his way to New York, became a minister and a noted abolitionist, started a family, and built schools. As he became widely known, the wife of his enslaver wrote a letter to Loguen in 1860. It started off as a friendly update on her family and Loguen's family members who were still enslaved, then demanded Loguen send $1000 for the horse he stole (which had been returned), or else she would sell him in absentia. Loguen replied with a letter for the ages. Here's just a small part.

You say you have offers to buy me, and that you shall sell me if I do not send you $1000, and in the same breath and almost in the same sentence, you say, “you know we raised you as we did our own children.” Woman, did you raise your own children for the market? Did you raise them for the whipping-post? Did you raise them to be driven off in a coffle in chains? Where are my poor bleeding brothers and sisters? Can you tell?

There's a lot more to the letter, which drips with "unutterable scorn and contempt." Read the entire response at Letters of Note. -via Nag on the Lake

(Image credit: William Simpson)

When you have more money than you could possibly spend, you might consider traveling the world, or you might want to purchase (another) luxury home among other people of the same class. Then there are the people who do both. The World is a unique cruise ship that has 165 luxury apartments on board and cruises around the world every year. People can buy these apartments for millions of dollars, and then pay recurring fees for food and services. In return, all your needs are met in the swankiest ways, and you can see the sights of the world from the comfort of your own home. Plus your neighbors are all people of means who must be accepted by current residents before they purchase a slot on the ship.

Peter Antonucci spent six years on The World, in five different apartments, upgrading each time he moved. While the ship traveled around the globe, he came and went as he pleased, flying home to New York or going on extended adventures, and then flying to The World's location to rejoin the cruise. After moving back to dry land, he used his journals to write novels set on a ship. Antonucci told CNN about the process of purchasing an apartment on The World and what it's like to live this way. It's a glimpse into a life the rest of us can only dream of. -via Fark

(Image credit: Eric V. Blanchard) 

When my kids lived at home, they flew off on adventures often, and their flights always seemed to leave at 4, 5, or 6 AM. I know this because I had to drive them to the nearest commercial airport 90 minutes away. Now I know why- early morning flights tend to be less expensive than those later in the day. But that's not the only reason you might want to book an early morning flight -and annoying the person who gets up super early to drive you to the airport is not a sufficient reason.

Another reason to fly early in the day is that the odds of flight delays or cancellations are lower for flights leaving first thing in the morning, and there are a bunch of different reasons why later flights can run into problems. There are other reasons why morning flights are a better idea all around, which you can read at Mental Floss. It helps if you are able to sleep on a plane.

(Image credit: Dmitry Avdeev)

The Academy Awards will be given out on March 10, and that's only a couple of weeks away. That's as good a reason as any for Simon Tofield to present his "Simon's Cat Awards." These are some of the same categories as the Oscars, but the competitors are all characters from the world of Simon's Cat. What we get are vignettes from the many cartoons, around one to two minutes each, that illustrate the acting chops of the cats that create non-stop chaos and the surprising peripheral characters. However, I don't believe all of them are from the past year. My favorite is the visual effects award.  

What would you guess this object is? An ancient bead? A ball for some kind of game? Maybe a kitchen tool, like a rolling pin? None of the above, and it's not even manmade. This is a Klerksdorp Sphere, found inside a three billion-year-old rock formation in South Africa. It does look strangely round, and the grooves around the middle seem like deliberate decoration. But this is how they are found. Could they have been left by aliens, or maybe some long-forgotten sentient civilization that died out long before mankind arose? Some people believe that, and that they even have mystical powers. One in a museum is said to have rotated on its own, inside a glass display case.

However, there is a perfectly reasonable explanation, although the above link doesn't make it easy to visualize. Neither does Wikipedia. The best I can make of it is that they were formed by water seeping into metamorphic rock, which carved a round opening before the minerals dissolved in it crystallized into a solid sphere. The grooves around it were caused by rock layering over time. If you understand the process as described at either source, maybe you can explain it better. But it wasn't aliens. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: Robert Huggett)

Fifty years ago, when Baby Boomers were starting families, demographers looked at the statistics and started to panic. World population was growing exponentially, meaning that eventually there would be more people than the world could sustain, and it would happen fast. But, like what happened in China, statistics and extrapolations don't tell the entire story. The exponential growth chart went awry, and population growth slowed. It hasn't gone down globally, but it isn't growing the way it used to. There are many reasons for that, as MinuteEarth explains.

However, fertility rate and population density varies widely by location, and so do demographics. Some countries are already lopsided, with more older people than young people, while other places have plenty of children. While we shouldn't worry about a population explosion, there are challenges in places that go to the extreme in any of those parameters.

Sweetened condensed milk is a glorious can of processed milk with most of the water removed and replaced with sugar. Combine it with cream cheese (along with eggs and splash of lemon juice) and you've got the world's easiest homemade cheesecake. But don't confuse it with evaporated milk, which doesn't contain sugar. That's a recipe for a nasty cheesecake.

Gail Borden (yes, that Borden) introduced condensed milk in response to the swill milk scandal of the 1850s (covered here at Neatorama in two parts). The idea of milk that would last forever in a can didn't catch on with the public right away, but the US military was interested. American soldiers fighting in the Civil War and World War I were equipped with cans of the high-calorie milk to keep them going. As more people discovered condensed milk, we found more ways to use it. Read how condensed milk came about at Jstor Daily. -via Strange Company

(Image source: Boston Public Library)

The US Constitution provides a framework of laws for how the country is run. Its flexibility gives us the ability to add amendments when needed, although the process is anything but easy, requiring a vote of two-thirds of congress plus ratification by three-quarters of the states. So far, we've added 27 of them. The first ten are referred to as the Bill of Rights, which address the reasons we broke away from British rule in the first place. The amendments you don't recall are the ones that only come up when there's a problem in the country that is covered by them (which is why we forget what the Third Amendment is- it never comes up). Amendments that come after the Bill of Rights read like a timeline of American history, marking the Civil War and its aftermath, women's suffrage, Prohibition, the Vietnam draft, etc. The Paint Explainer, who brought us a rundown of logical fallacies, goes over every amendment with a short explanation for each in only eight minutes. There's a one-minute skippable ad at 4:05. -via Laughing Squid

Who is the most famous person born in Valdez, Alaska? Many would say it's Commander Will Riker of the USS Enterprise, who will be born there in the year 2335. A group of Star Trek fans, headed by Valdez native Cameron Harrison, want to erect a bronze memorial statue of Riker and a commemorative plaque to mark his hometown. They even formed a nonprofit organization called Riker Maneuver to enlist public support. They already have the backing of Paramount, the company that owns Star Trek. Harrison says he spoke to Jonathan Frakes, who portrayed Riker, at Comic-Con and says he is all for it.

The design of the statue will include a bench for fans to relax on, while Riker himself is in a position to perform his iconic method of sitting down, which has been dubbed the Riker Maneuver. Fans will also be able to mimic the pose beside him for photographs. Riker Maneuver has filed plans with the Valdez Parks and Recreation Department, and are optimistically awaiting approval, after which they can begin to raise the $125,000 needed for the memorial. Parks director Ken Wilson is open to the plan, despite the fact that he's never seen Star Trek: The Next Generation. He's more of a Star Wars fan.  

The commemorative statue would join other Star Trek birthplaces in honoring their future heroes, such as Riverside, Iowa, the hometown of Captain James T. Kirk, and Bloomington, Indiana, where Captain Kathryn Janeway will be born in the 24th century. Even Vulcan, Alberta, displays a bust of Mr. Spock, despite being on the wrong planet.

(Image credit:Riker Maneuver)

Amsterdam's famous Red Light District doesn't call itself that. To the Dutch, it's De Wallen, or the Wall. The term "red light district" is mainly to tell you what's going on there, and that's sex work (called "pleasure work" here), which has only been legal in the Netherlands since 2000, and only between consenting adults. The wares in the city's windows came about because of a legal loophole. But the history of the area goes back hundreds of years. Everyone knew about it, but police turned a blind eye because it was considered a necessary evil and there was a lot of money to be made, you know, like in the rest of the world. Now that pleasure work is legal, De Wallen is globally famous, and even more money is made from tourists who just want to be there and see it. The pleasure workers are regulated, pay taxes, and belong to a union, but there are still businesses that operate under the radar illegally. And the neighborhood's history has plenty of seedy episodes. Weird History tells us all about Amsterdam's Red Light District. This video is not explicit, but it's probably not safe for your workplace.

The space probe Voyager 1 was launched in 1977 on a three-year mission to explore the outer planets of the solar system. The spacecraft was not expected to remain functional for more than five years maximum. Yet Voyager traveled on, and has been relaying data to earth for more than 46 years. It is now in interstellar space, more than 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from earth.

But as amazing as Voyager's performance has been, nothing lasts forever. The space probe has been glitching for the past two years, and NASA is having a hard time pinpointing the problem. For one thing, it takes 22 hours for signals to reach the probe, and just as long for data to be sent back. For another, the probe is running on computer programming from 1977, and NASA has very few surviving engineers familiar with it.

So Voyager may be on its last legs, even as it continues its eternal trajectory away from earth. The achievements of the probe have been so numerous you could read about it for days (see Wikipedia). But to get an overall sense of what Voyager 1's 46 years of service really means, you can read an almost poetic tribute to the little probe that could at Crooked Timber. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: NASA/JPL)

The best known music composers of history all had their own styles, but unless you are an avid classical music fan, you might not know those styles all that well because they are all expressed in different songs. We just know the songs. Pianist Nahre Sol knows the particulars of the great composers of the past. She illustrates their differences by playing the same song, The Super Marios Bros. Theme, which we all know well, in the distinctive styles of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Franz Liszt, Rachmaninoff, and George Gershwin. Sol adjusted the song somewhat to fit into each style, but if you listen closely, it's all the same basic tune. You'll need to watch as well as listen, as the tunes are annotated, rather amusingly. I was waiting for Rachmaninoff because you know he had big hands. And she refers to those hands when the time comes! -via Laughing Squid