You know how it is: anytime we see a hummingbird, we stop and watch, but they fly so fast and dart around so much that you really can't get a good look at an individual bird. But by the magic of high-speed photography, we can see many different species of hummingbirds frozen in time, in a collection of pictures at Ark in Space. Link -via the Presurfer

(Image credit: Flickr user Chris Dupe)

Laws against jaywalking are there to protect people from automobiles, but that's a relatively new concept in the long history of roads. A hundred years ago, pedestrians had the same right to use the streets as cars (or horses, for that matter). When a person on foot was killed by the newfangled automobiles, it was always assumed to be the driver's fault.

“If you ask people today what a street is for, they will say cars,” says Norton. “That’s practically the opposite of what they would have said 100 years ago.”

Streets back then were vibrant places with a multitude of users and uses. When the automobile first showed up, Norton says, it was seen as an intruder and a menace. Editorial cartoons regularly depicted the Grim Reaper behind the wheel. That image persisted well into the 1920s.

Today, livable streets advocates such as New York’s Transportation Alternatives spend a lot of time and energy trying to get people to take pedestrian fatalities seriously. But at the beginning of the 20th century, traffic deaths – particularly the deaths of children – drew enormous attention.

“If a child is struck and killed by a car in 2012, it is treated as a private loss, to be grieved privately by the family,” Norton says. “Before, this stuff was treated as a public loss – much like the death of soldiers.” Mayors dedicated monuments to the victims of traffic crimes, accompanied by marching bands and children dressed in white, carrying flowers.

So what happened that relegated pedestrians to the sidewalks and cross walks? The turning point was a public relations battle over a referendum in Cincinnati. Read what happened at The Atlantic Cities. Link -via Boing Boing

(Image credit: Flickr user Jay Wilson)

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Patrik Wallner visited North Korea earlier this month, and was there for the commemoration of the 100th birthday of North Korea's first leader, Kim Il-Sung, the grandfather of the current ruler. The footage for this video was recorded in Pyongyang on April 15th. North Korea sure knows how to throw a (Communist) party! -via The Daily What

Before vigilante hackers like Anonymous tamed the internet, two brothers started their own fight against software piracy. Their weapon: the first PC virus.

Twenty-five years ago, students at the University of Delaware began experiencing strange symptoms: temporary memory loss, a lethargic drive, and fits of rage. This wasn't just any old flu -it was the world's first personal computer virus. Known as Brain, the bug destroyed memory, slowed the hard drive, and hid a short copyright message in the boot sector, introducing the world to two soon-to-be hacker celebrities.

In 1986, coders Basit and Amjad Farooq Alvi were just 17 and 24, respectively, running a computer store in Lahore, Pakistan. When they discovered that customers were circulating illegal copies of software they'd written, the brothers decided to retaliate. Brain was their attempt to scare pirates straight, but, as the creators tell it, the virus was never intended to be malicious. In a 2011 interview with F-Secure, a Finnish anti-virus company, the brothers called the bug a "friendly virus," one that "was not made to destroy any data." Why else would they have stamped the virus code with their names, their phone numbers, and the address of their shop?

"The idea was that only if the program were illegally copied would the virus load," Amjad said in a Pakistani TV interview a few years ago. The Alvis also had an ingenious method for keeping track of how far a virus had spread. "[We] had a 'counter' in the program, which could keep track of all copies made and when they were made."

by Anders Sandberg
SANS/NADA, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden

[EDITOR'S NOTE: we apologize for the lack of clear formatting,in this web version, of the mathematical formulae.]

Abstract

We derive upper bounds for the density of angels dancing on the point of a pin. It is dependent on the assumed mass of the angels, with a maximum number of 8.6766*10exp49 angels at the critical angel mass (3.8807*10exp-34 kg).

Ancient Question, Modern Physics

"How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" has been a major theological question since the Middle Ages.[5]

According to Thomas Aquinas, it is impossible for two distinct causes to each be the immediate cause of one and the same thing. An angel is a good example of such a cause. Thus two angels cannot occupy the same space.[2] This can be seen as an early statement of the Pauli exclusion principle. (The Pauli exclusion principle is a pillar of modern physics. It was first stated in the twentieth century, by Pauli.)

However, this does not place any upper bound on the density of angels in a small area, because the size r of angels remains undefined and could possibly be arbitrarily small. There have also been theological criticisms of any assumption of angels as complete causes.

Stating the Question Correctly

The basic issue is the maximal density of active angels in a small volume. It should be noted that the original formulation of the problem did not refer to the head of a pin (R?1 mm) but to the point of the pin. Therefore, the point, not the head, of the pin is the region that will be studied in this paper.

One of the first reported attempts at a quantum gravity treatment of the angel density problem that also included the correct end of the pin was made by Dr. Phil Schewe. He suggested that due to quantum gravity space is likely not infinitely divisible beyond the Planck length scale of 10exp-35 meters. Hence, assuming the point of the pin to be one Ångström across (the size of a scanning tunnelling microscope tip) this would produce a maximal number of angels on the order of 1050 since they would not have more places to fill.[1]

While this approach does produce an upper bound on the possible density of angels, it is based on the Thomist assumption of non-overlap.

Since angels can be presumed to obey quantum rules when packed at quantum gravity densities, the uncertainty relation will cause their wave functions to overlap significantly even if there is a strong degeneracy pressure. If the non-overlap assumption is relaxed, this approach cannot derive an upper bound.

Quantum Gravitational Treatment

A stricter bound based on information physics can be derived that is not based on overlap assumptions, but merely the localisation of angelic information.

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Japanese baseball is as open to weird promotions as the US Major League. However, you won't see a movie tie-in this creepy over here. I hope. On Wednesday, the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters (no kidding) invited the ghost character Sadako Yamamura, hair and all, from the horror movie Ring to throw out the opening pitch. -via Geeks Are Sexy

The following is an article from Uncle John's Endlessly Engrossing Bathroom Reader.

Atlantis is one of the longest lasting -and most easily disproved- myths in world history. Yet people just keep looking for it.

PLATO'S RETREAT

According to the ancient Greek philosopher Plato, Atlantis was a continent larger than Asia and Africa combined, sitting on the western edge of the Mediterranean Sea. Its capital city was built in a perfect circle, composed of alternating bands of earth and water. At its center was a temple to the Greek god Poseidon, surrounded by walls of solid gold and coated in silver. The city was equipped with canals, tunnels, racetracks, and a prodigious merchant fleet, all remarkable achievements for more than 12,000 years ago and more than 9,000 years before the golden age of ancient Greece.



Athanasius Kircher's Map of Atlantis, 1669

And then... it vanished. As the Atlantian army attempted to conquer the known world, having already enslaved much of Asia, Africa, and Europe, it was defeated by an early incarnation of Greece. In what the Greeks believed to be an act of divine intervention, the continent of Atlantis was destroyed in 24 hours by violent earthquakes and floods, sending it to the bottom of the sea.

There's just one big problem with this story: It's just a story. Everything "known" about Atlantis was laid out in two of Plato's dialogues: Timaeus and Critias. The story may have been based on real events,such as the volcanic eruption on the Greek island of Thera. It may also have been inspired by much older mythological tales such as the Trojan War. Or it may have been purely an invention of Plato's imagination. We may never know for sure. No evidence of any civilization matching Plato's description has ever been discovered, but his descriptions are so vivid that for centuries many have believed Atlantis to be real.

BANANA FLOAT

There are certain drawbacks to having a five-foot-long mane of hair. Twelve-year-old Natasha Moraes de Andrade of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, was proud of her hair, but it took hours to wash and comb it. Her family couldn't turn on fans for fear of getting it caught. And riding a bicycle was out of the question. Still, getting her hair cut was a difficult decision.

'I cried at first when I was at the hairdressers to get it cut,' she says.

'I was afraid I wouldn't like it, and I was also scared I might not get the money I wanted for it.

'Getting it cut has given me a new life. I used to be afraid every time I went out that someone would grab my hair or try to cut it off, but now I can do a lot of things which I couldn't do before.

'Now I'm having cycling lessons, and I've got my freedom back. I much prefer it. I want to learn English and Spanish, and I've been able to go to the beach and swim without being afraid of getting my hair wet.'

But the best part is the $5,000 she earned by selling her hair, which will enable her family to build a much-needed new home. Link

(Image credit: Daniela Dacorso/Barcroft)

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Not too long ago, mental_floss had an article about bygone items that included a church key. Young commenters were mostly familiar with the item they know as a "bottle opener," but didn't know it was once called a "church key." That term is back now, thanks to the Churchkey Can Company, which brews beer sold in flat-top cans that require a church key to open them. If that's the major selling point, you have to wonder whether it will last past the novelty phase. That will depend on whether the beer is good! Link

On the surface, this appears to be a titanic missed opportunity to add an extra layer of realism to the movie. But since this came from a British site, there are probably "health and safety rules" to consider. Link -via Arbroath

In just a blink of an eye, April is almost over. May begins on Tuesday with International Worker's Day, which is like Labor Day for the entire world. When I was a kid, May the first meant we no longer had to wear shoes outside (Mom's rule). This Friday is Star Wars Day ("May the Fourth be With You"). Saturday brings us the Kentucky Derby. And the rest of the month we'll be busy with Mother's Day, Victoria Day, Memorial Day, graduation, school vacation, garden planting, and generally enjoying the return of good weather. But before we get too excited about the future, let's take a look back at some of the good stuff that happened at Neatorama this week.

The biggest post of the week was Married… With Children Around the World.

Eddie Deezen commemorated The Last Days of Lucille Ball on the anniversary of her death Thursday.

Joe McCarthy’s Joke was a little history lesson from Uncle John's Bathroom Reader.

A Tribute to Professor Lipscomb was an affectionate yet funny memorial from The Annals of Improbable Research.

Mental_floss magazine gave us 14 Essential Talking Points for the Constitution Enthusiast.

Our social networking guru David Israel made a video this week on how to make an Apple Puzzle that landed on NeatoBambino.

In this week's What Is It? game, the mystery object is a lid reformer, use to repair a damaged jar lid. Honestly, I have a few of these old zinc lids, and I can just imagine a world where one would have a special tool to repair them when they get bent instead of buying new jar lids every year like we do now. You can see a picture of it in action at the What Is It? blog. No one got it right this week; it was a hard one! The funniest answer came from Cori Philips, who said, “We see this every Thanksgiving at my house – It’s a ‘Mom plays favorites’ pumpkin pie slicer. I never got the good “half.” siiigh.” That’s good for a t-shirt from the NeatoShop! The rest of the answers are worth looking through, too.

The most commented-on post of the week was One Third of Waiters Consciously Provide Poor Service to Black Customers. Coming in second was The Flight From Conversation, and our features on Joe McCarthy and Married… With Children tied for third.

Which social networking site is your favorite? Neatorama is there! Be sure to check our Google+ page and our Facebook page every day for extra content, contests, discussions, videos, and links you won't find on our main page. Also, our Twitter feed will keep you updated on what's going around the web in real time. And Neatorama is part of Pinterest now, too!

It boggles the mind to think about typesetting in Asian languages with the huge number of different characters! But still, the world's first moveable type was invented in China, centuries before Gutenberg's printing press. Master custom printer Takuma Nakagawa tells about storing and retrieving Japanese characters:

"You have to remember each place for each word - it's about 400,000 characters, can you imagine!.. Too many. Some of them are set in alphabetical order, and then kanji characters are categorized for each kind. It's hard to remember it."

Read more about the moveable type process and see pictures of Japanese type sets at Dark Roasted Blend. Link

(Image credit: All Right Kou Bou)

Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch went into foreclosure a few years ago, and was sold off in pieces. But before that happened, urban explorers Scott Haefner and Jonathan Haeber sneaked in to document the amusement park in photographs for posterity. See 25 pictures from their night in Neverland at Environmental Graffiti. Link

(Image credit: Scott Haefner)

We've all learned to recognize the international symbols for restrooms, if nothing else, but you probably know a lot of them. But where did they come from in the first place? Rob Lammle at mental_floss takes you back to Vienna in the 1920s for the real origins of the "pictograms" we see every day. Link

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B3ta member Mr. Eraserhead made quick edits of the Discovery show Blue Planet to create a music video for "Cusp" by Eraserhead. Sweet! -via b3ta