Ignoramusky is back with another cat video dramatically enhanced with a soundtrack. If I saw my cat looking like this, I'd be worried about my safety -or at least my curtains! -via Cynical C
Miss Cellania's Blog Posts
I Love Nerds Knit Beanie | $29.95
Let the world knew you love nerds with this rockin' Nerd Beanie from the NeatoShop! Keeps your head warm and serves as an excellent icebreaker (pun intended) at the same time. These 100% handmade hats are made from 100% wool on the outside with 100% polyester lining, then there's the button-and-felt decorations that tell everyone how you love nerds! Get yours while they last, and while you're at the NeatoShop, check out the other nerd products you'll also love.Link
Panda Knit Mask | $12.95
Hey there, panda bear! How cool it is to stay warm with the Panda Knit Mask over your head -on the ski slopes or on the way to school. This 100% acrylic, machine washable ski mask is available at the NeatoShop. Roll it up like a hat, or roll it down and see out the holes to keep your face warm. To keep your whole family warm (and still tell them apart), check out the entire selection of knit ski masks from the NeatoShop.Link
We don't know about Sasquatch, but we know a giant ape we call Gigantopithecus roamed South Asia until about 300,000 years ago. Gigantopithecus resembled a ten-foot-tall orangutan and weighed about three times as much as a large gorilla. What happened to these great apes?
Read more about Gigantopithecus at Smithsonian's Hominid Hunting blog. Link
(Image credit: Flickr user Lindsay Holmwood)
The features of the dentition—large, flat molars, thick dental enamel, a deep, massive jaw—indicate Gigantopithecus probably ate tough, fibrous plants (similar to Paranthropus). More evidence came in 1990, when Russell Ciochon, a biological anthropologist at the University of Iowa, and colleagues (PDF) placed samples of the ape’s teeth under a scanning electron microscope to look for opal phytoliths, microscopic silica structures that form in plant cells. Based on the types of phyoliths the researchers found stuck to the teeth, they concluded Gigantopithecus had a mixed diet of fruits and seeds from the fig family Moraceae and some kind of grasses, probably bamboo. The combination of tough and sugary foods helps explain why so many of the giant ape’s teeth were riddled with cavities. And numerous pits on Gigantopithecus‘s teeth—a sign of incomplete dental development caused by malnuntrition or food shortages—corroborate the bamboo diet. Ciochon’s team noted bamboo species today periodically experience mass die-offs, which affect the health of pandas. The same thing could have happened to Gigantopithecus.
Read more about Gigantopithecus at Smithsonian's Hominid Hunting blog. Link
(Image credit: Flickr user Lindsay Holmwood)
The newest members of the Baseball Hall of Fame are to be announced today. I found out that no player has ever been inducted with 100% of the votes tallied. But there have been 27 players who got 90% or more of the votes cast. How many of those players can you name? I could only name ten, and that was with a list of Hall-of-Famers and my husband's help! Maybe you can beat the current average of 39%. Link
Twaggies has a new home! Now you can find Twaggies at GoComics. Use the arrows or calendar icon to find all the Twaggies. If you create an account at GoComics, you can subscribe to get a daily Twaggie sent to you. I particularly liked this Twaggie, illustrated from a Tweet from @lunchyprices because I feel the same way in my ancient Mamabus. Link
President Obama, Mitt Romney, and the other politicians you see every day aren't the only ones running for president in 2012. Vermin Supreme is one of the candidates who appeared at the Lesser-Known Democratic Candidates Presidential Forum held at St. Anselm College in New Hampshire on December 19th. -via The Daily What
Congratulations to Neatorama artist Adam Koford (Ape Lad) and his wife on the arrival of Elsa, who was born over the weekend. There's the explanation of why one of his cartoons was posted twice on Friday! Link -Thanks, John Farrier!
(Image credit: Flickr user Ape Lad)
We've read about strange and sometimes embarrassing place names in Britain and the U.S., but English-speaking tourists often don't know when a place name in another language is, shall we say, unusual. Thanks to the English-language Swedish site The Local, we can get translations for the strangest-named places in Sweden.
But that's just the beginning. Check out Sex Swamp, Snot Bog, and more. http://www.thelocal.se/38378/20120107/ -via Fark
People outside Uppsala, for example, can take a stroll in the terrain of Djupröven (Deep Arse), and outside Gothenburg one can enjoy a swim in any of the Yellow, Small or Big Arse lakes (Gula Röven, Lilla Röven, Stora Röven).
A somewhat cuter name but still perhaps not the first pick to put on your resumé, is Kattsjärten in Värmland. The Local's translation for this (hopefully) unusual name is Cat's Bottom.
But that's just the beginning. Check out Sex Swamp, Snot Bog, and more. http://www.thelocal.se/38378/20120107/ -via Fark
I don't know what Mannings is advertising here, but it's a lovely story of selfless devotion nonetheless. A Babelfish translation of the related site offered no help, but if you can read Chinese, you may be able to clue us in. Link -via Everlasting Blort
If this were in my local paper, I'd help pay to have a picture of the cat posted. After all, there are young people who don't know what Barbra Streisand looks like. -via Criggo
Karam and Kartari Chand of Bradford, England, recently celebrated their 86th wedding anniversary. They married when Kartari was just 13 and Karam a few years older.
The Chands live with one of their eight children. They also have 27 grandchildren and 23 great grandchildren. Link -via Arbroath
Karam Chand was born in a small rural village in the Punjab in northern India in 1905.
His family worked in farming and, in keeping with the custom of the time, he married at a young age.
His bride Kartari was born in the same district in 1912. According to their passports, that currently makes Mr Chand 106 and his wife 99 years old.
They wed in a typical Sikh ceremony in December 1925 and have just celebrated their 86th year together as a married couple, which they think may qualify them as the UK's longest married husband and wife.
The Chands live with one of their eight children. They also have 27 grandchildren and 23 great grandchildren. Link -via Arbroath
The Chinese construction company Broad Group built a 30-story hotel in just 15 days (360 hours) in December. This time-lapse video shows the process. See another, longer video showing more details at Geekosystem. Link
Nerdy reputation or not, coin collecting (otherwise known as numismatics) has been a hobby since the days of ancient Rome. If you’re not a member of the enthusiast crowd, though, knowing a thing or two about the following faves just might be enough to help you rub elbows with true aficionados.
1. The Stupidest Coin the Government Ever Made: The Racketeer Nickel
It wasn’t long before light bulbs started going off over the heads of con men all across America. Within weeks of the V’s debut, crooks were gold-plating the nickels and palming them off as $5 gold pieces. Meanwhile, government officials scoffed at the notion that anyone would fall for such an obvious hoax. Unfortunately, they were wrong again. Despite the gold-plated nickels not looking like $5 coins and not being nearly as heavy, most people didn’t notice, because the gold coins were rarely used in everyday purchases.
By April 1883, “gilded nickels” were both a national joke and a growing concern for commerce and law enforcement. The U.S. Secret Service made arrests in 10 states related to the scam. In one raid, they seized a “half bushel” of coins waiting to be plated. But all good things come to an end, and con artists had a hard time getting enough new nickels to keep the racket going. Finally, embarrassed officials put an end to the scam by halting production of the nickels until new dies were prepared. This time, the redesigned backs read “V cents.” Today, the V nickel remains a favorite among coin collectors.
2. The Coin You Carry in Bundles: The Kissi Penny
Money hasn’t always been strictly confined to coins and bills. In Biblical times, for example, people used sheep and cattle as currency. Of course, because deceased livestock don’t paste that well into scrapbooks, numismatists have to draw the line somewhere. And that’s where the phrase “odd and curious money” comes in. It’s a numismatist category used to classify various pre-cash societies in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific.
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1. The Stupidest Coin the Government Ever Made: The Racketeer Nickel
(Image credit: Hephaestos at the English language Wikipedia)
In 1883, the United States issued a newly designed five-cent piece called the “V nickel.” The coin got its name because the value was indicated on the back simply with the Roman numeral ‘V,’ sans the word “cents.” After all, it was obvious it was a nickel, right? Apparently not. Turns out, the V nickel was the same size as a U.S. $5 gold piece, and both coins featured a bust of Lady Liberty on the front.It wasn’t long before light bulbs started going off over the heads of con men all across America. Within weeks of the V’s debut, crooks were gold-plating the nickels and palming them off as $5 gold pieces. Meanwhile, government officials scoffed at the notion that anyone would fall for such an obvious hoax. Unfortunately, they were wrong again. Despite the gold-plated nickels not looking like $5 coins and not being nearly as heavy, most people didn’t notice, because the gold coins were rarely used in everyday purchases.
By April 1883, “gilded nickels” were both a national joke and a growing concern for commerce and law enforcement. The U.S. Secret Service made arrests in 10 states related to the scam. In one raid, they seized a “half bushel” of coins waiting to be plated. But all good things come to an end, and con artists had a hard time getting enough new nickels to keep the racket going. Finally, embarrassed officials put an end to the scam by halting production of the nickels until new dies were prepared. This time, the redesigned backs read “V cents.” Today, the V nickel remains a favorite among coin collectors.
2. The Coin You Carry in Bundles: The Kissi Penny
Money hasn’t always been strictly confined to coins and bills. In Biblical times, for example, people used sheep and cattle as currency. Of course, because deceased livestock don’t paste that well into scrapbooks, numismatists have to draw the line somewhere. And that’s where the phrase “odd and curious money” comes in. It’s a numismatist category used to classify various pre-cash societies in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific.
by Stephen L. Richey
Kolibri Aviation Safety Research, Indianapolis, Indiana, U.S.A.
The author was witness to a case of probable spatial disorientation with flight into terrain in a gull that was feeding upon a discarded bag of microwave popcorn. Spatial disorientation with flight into terrain is a well-documented phenomenon amongst human pilots. Here I discuss it as a possible explanation for some cases of injury and death in birds. I also discuss the risks inherent in attempting to aid what you might believe to be an injured gull—a gull that, in turn, might think you are attempting to take away its hard-earned food.
Flying Garbage Disposal
The ring-billed gull (Larus delawarensis) is among the most adaptable foragers in the animal kingdom. To phrase it more bluntly, they are basically flying garbage disposals that can and will eat nearly any item they can get their beaks around.
Gulls are among the birds most readily adapted to coexistence with human developments. They have learned to utilize human refuse as a food source.
The Scene Seen in Saginaw
The campus of Saginaw Valley State University in Michigan, which the author previously attended, is home to a healthy population of ring-billed gulls (fig. 1). The relatively brazen nature of their feeding behaviors leads to the opportunity for close observation of mishaps related to this activity. The events described took place during an early afternoon in August 2007 as the author, an avid bird watcher and student pilot, was returning home from class to the university’s apartments.
A bag of burned generic microwave popcorn (fig. 2) was thrown out the door of a university apartment building. Immediately several gulls, all presumably L. delawarensis, descended upon the scene.
A squabble over the bag and its contents ensued. One of the birds grasped the bag in its bill, and took off. The weather at the time was observed to be generally clear; visibility was well beyond that which would allow for visual flight rules operations by a human pilot.
The point by which the bag was held was the lower edge (in arbitrary reference to the direction of the ground as the bag landed after being discarded) of the open end. Approximately three seconds after takeoff, the airflow associated with flight blew the bag over the gull’s head. Almost immediately, the bird was observed to go into a steep (~80 degrees angle of attack) climb until approximately 250–300 feet off the ground. At this altitude, the gull, still flapping its wings, experienced an aerodynamic stall which resulted in its nose swinging to the left until it dropped below the horizon, placing the bird into an extreme nose-down attitude. When performed by a pilot in an aircraft, this maneuver is referred to as a “hammerhead stall.”
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Kolibri Aviation Safety Research, Indianapolis, Indiana, U.S.A.
The author was witness to a case of probable spatial disorientation with flight into terrain in a gull that was feeding upon a discarded bag of microwave popcorn. Spatial disorientation with flight into terrain is a well-documented phenomenon amongst human pilots. Here I discuss it as a possible explanation for some cases of injury and death in birds. I also discuss the risks inherent in attempting to aid what you might believe to be an injured gull—a gull that, in turn, might think you are attempting to take away its hard-earned food.
Flying Garbage Disposal
The ring-billed gull (Larus delawarensis) is among the most adaptable foragers in the animal kingdom. To phrase it more bluntly, they are basically flying garbage disposals that can and will eat nearly any item they can get their beaks around.
Gulls are among the birds most readily adapted to coexistence with human developments. They have learned to utilize human refuse as a food source.
The Scene Seen in Saginaw
The campus of Saginaw Valley State University in Michigan, which the author previously attended, is home to a healthy population of ring-billed gulls (fig. 1). The relatively brazen nature of their feeding behaviors leads to the opportunity for close observation of mishaps related to this activity. The events described took place during an early afternoon in August 2007 as the author, an avid bird watcher and student pilot, was returning home from class to the university’s apartments.
A bag of burned generic microwave popcorn (fig. 2) was thrown out the door of a university apartment building. Immediately several gulls, all presumably L. delawarensis, descended upon the scene.
A squabble over the bag and its contents ensued. One of the birds grasped the bag in its bill, and took off. The weather at the time was observed to be generally clear; visibility was well beyond that which would allow for visual flight rules operations by a human pilot.
(Image credit: Wikipedia user Mdf)
Aerodynamics Details: The Popcorn-Bag and the GullThe point by which the bag was held was the lower edge (in arbitrary reference to the direction of the ground as the bag landed after being discarded) of the open end. Approximately three seconds after takeoff, the airflow associated with flight blew the bag over the gull’s head. Almost immediately, the bird was observed to go into a steep (~80 degrees angle of attack) climb until approximately 250–300 feet off the ground. At this altitude, the gull, still flapping its wings, experienced an aerodynamic stall which resulted in its nose swinging to the left until it dropped below the horizon, placing the bird into an extreme nose-down attitude. When performed by a pilot in an aircraft, this maneuver is referred to as a “hammerhead stall.”
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