Miss Cellania's Blog Posts
If you are familiar with the Buttered Cat Paradox, you'll appreciate this ad for Flying Horse energy drink. It's the ultimate perpetual motion machine! -via Geeks Are Sexy
I love this! A bath towel that pixelates your body in real life! The Censorship Towel is an art project from the Carmichael Collective, the folks who brought us Piñata Anatomy, but we can hope that this idea makes it into stores sometime. See more pictures at the project site. Link
Screen Junkies brings us a painfully honest trailer for the movie Transformers, telling you all the revelations the real trailer ignored. Language slightly NSFW. -via The Daily What Geek
Or maybe it's actually a "beby skhwer" cake. Anyway, Cake Wrecks has several baby cakes to cry over, including the one you expect that says "babby." Link
These eight students at an unnamed high school in San Jose, California, arranged their yearbook quotes in a manner that answers the question for posterity. Enlarge the picture at Imgur if you can't read it. It says, We know - what - you're - thinking - and - no - we're - not related. Link -via Buzzfeed
Disco diva and five-time Grammy winner Donna Summer died this morning after a long battle with cancer, which she tried to keep out of the press. Summer was 63 years old. Link -via Boing Boing
This woman had a stroke 15 years ago that left her paralyzed. She is a volunteer for the BrainGate2 clinical trial, a project in which sensors are implanted in the patient's brain, which turn neurological signals into software commands that control robotic hardware. In the video, she gets herself a drink, which is a big step in autonomy -as her smile shows. Read more about the project at Wired. Link -via Metafilter
The soon-to-be-in-theaters movie Battleship proves that no idea is too dumb for Hollywood to make a blockbuster out of it. Could other toy-based movies be far behind? How about a film based on Connect Four?
Read the premises for nine other toy-based films at Underwire. Link
Milton Bradley's abstract strategy game transforms into an apocalyptic race against time in this sci-fi blockbuster, starring Ryan Gosling and Rihanna as technocratic dictators (and ex-lovers) locked in a perpetual war of mutually assured destruction and reconstruction on the planet Ouroboros. After erecting, then annihilating, exquisite tech-noir skyscrapers and impossibly high vertical farms using strategically placed death discs, it is left to a brilliant but raunchy elderly mathematician (Betty White) to unite the ex-lovers with a perfect-play strategy inspired by James D. Allen and Victor Allis, who solved the game on Earth in the late '80s. Catchphrases from the game's TV commercial -- "Here, diagonally" and "Pretty sneaky, sis" -- are incorporated into the film's final moments, when the formerly self-centered Gosling asks the formerly obstinate Rihanna how she would like to be kissed.
Read the premises for nine other toy-based films at Underwire. Link
A "ring of fire" solar eclipse will be visible Sunday on the west coast of North America and parts of Asia on Monday morning.
In this weekend’s annular solar eclipse, the moon will slide in front of the sun and block 94 percent of its light. But because the moon is near apogee — the point in its orbit when it’s farthest away from Earth — it appears smaller to us, and will only cover most of the sun — leaving a ring of fiery light blasting the edges. (What, you thought it was a Johnny Cash reference?).
Of course, this ring of fire will be so awesome we shouldn't look at it. And it's relatively rare; the last one was in 1994, but strangely, we'll have another in May 2013. Link
(Image credit: Flickr user José Ángel)
You might think that Adele has little in common with '80s one-hit-wonder Baltimora, but their songs "Set Fire to the Rain" and "Tarzan Boy" mix surprisingly well. How do people come up with these odd combinations? Mashup by The Reborn Identity. -via The Daily What
When you have both male and female LEGO minifigs, you are bound to see babies sooner or later. These custom minifigs are from Citizen Brick. Link -via Laughing Squid
(Image source: The Brothers Brick)
The ancient Greeks were obsessed with sculpting the perfect male form. But when their civilization died out, bodybuilding died with it. It took a Prussian strongman named Eugen Sandow to bring it back.
During the Victorian era, a bulging waistline was a sign of a bulging wallet, and fashion-conscious men weren’t embarrassed to carry around some excess pounds. Even strongmen—who dazzled circus-goers by lifting enormous weights and large animals—were big-bellied. But all of that changed with Eugen Sandow. Sandow did more than simply shock and titillate audiences with his tiny waist and ripped muscles; he pioneered the notion of working out for the sake of aesthetics. He also launched the sport of competitive bodybuilding and inspired the concept of personal fitness. Today, that’s a multibillion-dollar industry in the United States alone.
Cut Like a Statue
Sandow liked to tell his fans that he started perfecting his body at the age of 10, after his father took him to Italy to see the statues of the gods. The sculpted abdomens and chiseled biceps inspired him, and when he returned home, he became obsessed with developing his muscles. Of course, none of this is true.
Professor Attila.
A master of creating his own legend, Sandow’s biography tends to be a patchwork of great marketing and tall tales. What’s known for certain is that he was a Prussian acrobat who toured with small-time circuses across Europe during the 1880s, until he landed in Brussels without a penny to his name. There, he stumbled across an educator in the nascent world of physical fitness named Louis Durlacher, better known as Professor Attila.
At the time, it was thought that lifting more than 5 lbs. at once could cause muscles to cramp and lock, eventually leading to paralysis. Attila, however, decided to buck popular opinion. A former strongman himself, he’d developed a system of progressive weight training in which muscles are strengthened by gradually increasing the weight lifted over time. Today, it’s the cornerstone of bodybuilding. When Attila met Sandow, he knew he’d found the perfect specimen to test his system.
In 1889, the pair moved to London to secure a strongman show for Sandow. In order to grab people’s attention, they set their sights on the city’s reigning brawny duo, Sampson and Cyclops. Sampson was known for lifting “imperial tons” (2,240 lbs.), Cyclops for tearing coins in half.
Sandow began by challenging Cyclops to a feat of strength. On the night of their competition, he walked out in a foppish, tailored suit. Once at center stage, he tore off the outfit in one pull, revealing only Roman sandals, a pair of tights, and a physique the likes of which no one in the audience had seen before. The crowd went wild and quickly took the side of the handsome, mysterious challenger. Sandow soundly defeated Cyclops in a series of barbell lifts.
One week later, Sandow returned to the stage to face Sampson and matched him stunt for stunt. Then came the final challenge—chain-breaking, in which both contestants had to break free only by flexing their muscles. Sampson had never been defeated in this competition, but then again, he’d always cheated; his chains were rigged to fall apart. Sandow had discovered Sampson’s trick weeks earlier and tracked down the blacksmith, who made him a set of his own fake chains. On the night of the contest, the chains burst off Sandow’s body in record time, and Sampson stormed off stage. London had a new king of strength.
Touch My Muscles
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During the Victorian era, a bulging waistline was a sign of a bulging wallet, and fashion-conscious men weren’t embarrassed to carry around some excess pounds. Even strongmen—who dazzled circus-goers by lifting enormous weights and large animals—were big-bellied. But all of that changed with Eugen Sandow. Sandow did more than simply shock and titillate audiences with his tiny waist and ripped muscles; he pioneered the notion of working out for the sake of aesthetics. He also launched the sport of competitive bodybuilding and inspired the concept of personal fitness. Today, that’s a multibillion-dollar industry in the United States alone.
Cut Like a Statue
Sandow liked to tell his fans that he started perfecting his body at the age of 10, after his father took him to Italy to see the statues of the gods. The sculpted abdomens and chiseled biceps inspired him, and when he returned home, he became obsessed with developing his muscles. Of course, none of this is true.
Professor Attila.
A master of creating his own legend, Sandow’s biography tends to be a patchwork of great marketing and tall tales. What’s known for certain is that he was a Prussian acrobat who toured with small-time circuses across Europe during the 1880s, until he landed in Brussels without a penny to his name. There, he stumbled across an educator in the nascent world of physical fitness named Louis Durlacher, better known as Professor Attila.
At the time, it was thought that lifting more than 5 lbs. at once could cause muscles to cramp and lock, eventually leading to paralysis. Attila, however, decided to buck popular opinion. A former strongman himself, he’d developed a system of progressive weight training in which muscles are strengthened by gradually increasing the weight lifted over time. Today, it’s the cornerstone of bodybuilding. When Attila met Sandow, he knew he’d found the perfect specimen to test his system.
In 1889, the pair moved to London to secure a strongman show for Sandow. In order to grab people’s attention, they set their sights on the city’s reigning brawny duo, Sampson and Cyclops. Sampson was known for lifting “imperial tons” (2,240 lbs.), Cyclops for tearing coins in half.
Sandow began by challenging Cyclops to a feat of strength. On the night of their competition, he walked out in a foppish, tailored suit. Once at center stage, he tore off the outfit in one pull, revealing only Roman sandals, a pair of tights, and a physique the likes of which no one in the audience had seen before. The crowd went wild and quickly took the side of the handsome, mysterious challenger. Sandow soundly defeated Cyclops in a series of barbell lifts.
One week later, Sandow returned to the stage to face Sampson and matched him stunt for stunt. Then came the final challenge—chain-breaking, in which both contestants had to break free only by flexing their muscles. Sampson had never been defeated in this competition, but then again, he’d always cheated; his chains were rigged to fall apart. Sandow had discovered Sampson’s trick weeks earlier and tracked down the blacksmith, who made him a set of his own fake chains. On the night of the contest, the chains burst off Sandow’s body in record time, and Sampson stormed off stage. London had a new king of strength.
Touch My Muscles
A quiz from 1948! How fun!
You can be a real he-man and still like to make a cheese souffle. To find out, though, how strongly masculine or feminine your interests are study these six sets of pictures, check your preferences, score yourself.
I saw the first picture, reproduced here, and said, "Neither!" Both of those fabrics are hideous, and unless it's for a young child's room, you should always go for solid color draperies. Other questions were just as difficult, but the apparent answer for each sex is quite obvious. Link
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