She was prim and proper, educated, and wielded en enchanted umbrella. Was Mary Poppins trained in the magic arts at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry? It makes so much sense! The various clues for this fan theory are explained in a video from Uproxx. Don't let the fact that Mary Poppins was a Disney movie and the Harry Potter films were from Warner Bros. make you doubt it. Remember, they were all together in the library to begin with.
Miss Cellania's Blog Posts
There are quite a few literary classics in which the characters must deal with the death of a beloved dog. It's heart wrenching, but sometimes it's there to make a point, and sometimes it is the entire reason for the story. But we don't need "reasons" for a dog to die, or "reasons" to come up with a way that the dog doesn't die. Riane Konc did just that, reworking well-known canine death scenes to make them less sad, and sometimes completely hilarious. Take The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck:
A big swift car squealed its tires and jerked his wheel, the car nearly tipping up on two tires as the vehicle narrowly missed the family pet.
“Dammit, but I won’t be a symbol for the suffocatin’ and murd’rous weight of capitalism and the myth of the American Dream on the day laborer and migrant worker by killin’ your pup with my sportscar!” the driver screamed out his window, giving the whole Joad family the finger.
And he wouldn’t. Everythin’ else — ev’ry death an’ loss an’ unjustice an’ tragedy an’ animal for the next 400 pages or so would basically drive that point home — but at least the whole time, through everything, the Joads had their beloved dog. He wasn’t very good symbolism, but he was a very good boy.
Read about the survival of good dogs from Old Yeller, Marley & Me, Where the Red Fern Grows, The Odyssey, and even Cujo at Electric Literature. -via Metafilter
Hope for Paws got a notification of a kitten on the freeway in Los Angeles, on a fast lane with no shoulder. Eldad Hagar and Loreta Frankonyte were out transporting a dog with puppies, and did a detour to make a scary rescue. The kitten was scared, hungry, flea-ridden, and had infected eyes. There's no telling how long he was out there on the road by himself. But Napoleon was fed, bathed, treated, and named, and now has a bright future. -via Laughing Squid
In 1997, downloading a short video clip took forever, Flash animation was still in development, we had never heard of Midi-chlorians, and people with time on their hands created little pictures with ASCII characters. New Zealand Star Wars fan Simon Jansen was one of those casual artists who tried a little ASCII fan art from the first Star Wars movie, now called A New Hope, that turned into an 18-year project.
For reasons that are a mystery even to himself, Simon Jansen began creating individual frames of A New Hope after a chain of joke emails. Though not particularly keen on animation or ASCII art, Jansen was just enough of a Star Wars obsessive to keep up with the project.
Obsessive is pretty much the only way to describe Jansen’s project. With more than 16,000 frames at 15 frames per second, the animation only lasts about 18 minutes. It’s not a perfect, shot-for-shot recreation. Those 18-plus minutes manage to cover almost 40 percent of the original. And Jansen had much less than that completed two years after he started the project, when he went viral before it was even a term.
As the years went by, Jansen added to his ASCII remake of Star Wars, while technology advanced to the point where amateur animators could turn out Star Wars fan films in a matter of hours. No doubt that's one of the reasons why Jansen quit adding frames in 2015, but what he accomplished is legendary. Read about Jansen's epic project at Tedium. And if you've got 18 minutes, you can watch ASCIImation Star Wars here.
Imagine a GPS (or SatNav, if you're British) in 1971. There was such an idea, but since the satellite technology wasn't there yet, it came on pre-recorded cassette tapes that gave you directions as you played it. Watch how it works in this clip from the erstwhile TV show Tomorrow's World. Of course it could never work as advertised. If you ever made a wrong turn, the whole system would suddenly turn useless. Or if you were caught in a traffic jam, didn't drive the speed the cassette expected, or the machine ate the tape- which was a fairly common occurrence with cassettes. You would need to buy a new cassette for every new route, and once you drove there, you wouldn't need that tape again. I'm sure there were more reasons not to buy into this system. It would have been easier (and cheaper) to learn to read signs and maps, develop a sense of direction, and ask someone as a last resort. -via Nag on the Lake
Once, Jon Arbuckle of the comic strip Garfield was voted "The Most Depressed Comic Book Character." He serves as a comic foil for his cynical cat Garfield. That's not quite the case in this version of Jon by cartoonist Gail Galligan. In two comics, she turns Arbuckle into the main character who's not so much depressed, but introverted in a way we can all understand. Part one is about a dinner party in which he meets his significant other Liz's college friends, three of them veterinarians like her. In part two, he goes to a comic convention for the first time in years.
Both adventures are frightening prospects for the shy cartoonist, but he powers through. Garfield and Odie are peripheral characters seen only occasionally watching the action. The comics are not jokes, but sweet and relatable stories that make Jon a three-dimensional person instead of a cat's punching bag. -via Metafilter
Extreme nerdery incoming! EC Henry used a virtual wind tunnel to test the aerodynamics of the ships seen in the Star Wars movies. It becomes clear that they were designed to look cool, and not to work in a real atmosphere. But when you compare them to each other, the Rebels with their ugly ships were more realistic and might have even worked. -via io9
The most popular cherry in America is the dark red Bing cherry, but few know where its name came from. The variety was first developed at Seth Lewelling's orchard in Oregon. The Lewelling family had hauled 700 fruit trees out west in the mid 1800s to take advantage of the region's fertile land and mild weather. Ah Bing was a 6-foot-tall Chinese immigrant who worked for Lewelling for 30 years, earning money to send back to his wife and children in China.
As the foreman of Lewelling’s orchard crew, Ah Bing supervised more than 30 men. He worked closely with Lewelling on grafting, propagating, and caring for trees. The Bing cherry, Ledding recalled, surfaced one day when Lewelling and Ah Bing walked through the rows of cherry trees, where each man maintained separate rows. In Ah Bing’s row, there was a marvelous new type of cherry. Someone suggested that Lewelling name the cherry after himself. But Lewelling protested. He had already named a cherry for himself. “No, I’ll name this for Bing,” Ledding recalled him saying. “It’s a big cherry and Bing’s big, and anyway it’s in his row, so that shall be its name.”
But other stories portray Ah Bing as even more central to the development of the cherry. In 1922, the agricultural journal The Oregon Grower related that Lewelling had assigned a collection of “Black Republican” cherry seedlings to Ah Bing to care for in 1875. Ah Bing’s cultivation resulted in the Bing cherry, which, the author commented, would “pass his name down in horticultural history.”
The name stuck, but the connection to Ah Bing is little known. He was a victim of the Chinese Exclusion Act and suffered through riots as anti-Chinese sentiment worsened. Read about Ah Bing and his cherries at Atlas Obscura.
For ten years now, we've followed the story of Mark Hogancamp, who created the intricate miniature World War II world called Marwencol. His art went viral, and led to a book and then a documentary about how Hogancamp used Marwencol as therapy after he suffered horrific injuries from a beating. Now his story is a feature film called Welcome to Marwen, starring Steve Carell as Hogancamp. The movie has an advantage over a documentary in that the dolls and action figures of Marwencol, or Marwen, come to life to support Hogancamp. Welcome to Marwen is scheduled to open on November 21. -via Tastefully Offensive
The Gorilla Foundation has announced the passing of Koko. Koko the lowland gorilla was born at the San Francisco Zoo and was only one year old when she began to train in sign language with Dr. Francine “Penny” Patterson. Koko's amazing ability to communicate led to the establishment of the Gorilla Foundation. She had a vocabulary of around 1,000 words in sign language and understood around 2,000 spoken words. Koko loved to watch movies and was an avid fan of the TV show Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. She was the first non-human to successfully participate in an internet chat. Koko was famous for her loving relationship with cats, and her intense bonding with her first kitten.
Koko’s capacity for language and empathy has opened the minds and hearts of millions. She has been featured in multiple documentaries and appeared on the cover of National Geographic twice. The first cover, in October of 1978, featured a photograph Koko had taken of herself in a mirror. The second issue, in January of 1985, included the story of Koko and her kitten, All Ball. Following the article, the book Koko’s Kitten was published and continues to be used in elementary schools worldwide. Her impact has been profound and what she has taught us about the emotional capacity of gorillas and their cognitive abilities will continue to shape the world.
Koko was 46.
(Image credit: Flickr user sid)
Brazil is a big country, with a lot of people, so why isn't it a world power? The answers lie in the very things that make Brazil unique. The land that it covers is very different from smaller nations. Wendover productions looks at Brazil and its geography. -via Digg
Archaeological excavations of ancient sites usually don't come in color, as hundreds of years and exposure to air, water, and/or soil will fade the original colors. But archaeologists in Denmark have studied the materials and pigments used in Viking paint to approximate what they might have looked like when they were new. The Vikings made paint out of various pigments bound with milk, eggs, or linseed oil, and used it to decorate their buildings. Some colors were more expensive than others, and some had cultural meaning.
It is not insignificant which colours the Vikings used on their houses. For example, some colours were rarer than others and were costly having been imported over long distances, says archaeologist Lars Holten, director of Sagnlandet Lejre and co-author on the new report.
“We know that the symbolism of colour is enormously important in all cultures. Red, white, and black are some of the most common and have similar symbolism among numerous cultures,” says Holten.
One of the more expensive colours is the red ‘cinnabar’ (number 5 on the interactive chart above), and it was likely used by chieftains or princes as a status symbol to demonstrate power over their surroundings, says Holten.
The Viking paints that have been identified so far have been posted at an interactive site, where you can learn the ingredients, cost, and symbolism of each color. Read more about the research into Viking color at Science Nordic. -via Metafilter
Bruce and Terry Jenkins have led an interesting life. Now that they are retired, they spend their time running a private shelter called Cat's Cradle. They have 30 cats, all of them rescues, elderly cats who have outlived their original owner. They get to spend their sunset years being loved and fussed over by the Jenkins. They are awesome people. Stay for the credits, where we get to see the finished butterfly garden. -via The Atlantic
(Image credit: Scott Beale)
Domino Sugar operated a sugar refinery on the East River in Brooklyn from 1858 until 2004. It lay abandoned until 2012, when Two Trees Management Company bought it, and this summer it has opened as Domino Park. The park has green space, game courts, flowers, an interactive fountain, playground equipment, a fog bridge, and a dog run. The park incorporates structures from the historic factory, such as these sugar augers.
(Image credit: Scott Beale)
See more pictures that show how an old factory can become a community park and still retain its history at Laughing Squid.
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom officially opens Friday, although you can attend previews on Thursday. This will be the fifth movie in the Jurassic Park franchise, which began in 1993. However, the sequels came to a screeching halt in 2001 when Jurassic Park III came out. It was the first of the movies not to be directed by Steven Spielberg, and the first that wasn't based on a book. It made money, but was not well received. Screen Junkies explains why in an Honest Trailer for Jurassic Park III. Fourteen years went by before producers were healed from the trauma enough to bring us Jurassic World. -via Geeks Are Sexy
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