The calendar says we're officially into spring, but if you are watching the snow fall outside, you might need some encouragement to remind yourself that the season of growing is just ahead. GPhase grew a kidney bean plant from seed in a glass container and recorded it growing over 25 days. This time-lapse video captures its progress in photos taken every 9.5 minutes. It's set to the most appropriate soundtrack: "The Blue Danube" by Johann Strauss.
If you'd like some music that's just as pleasant but more contemporary, enjoy this time-lapse video of eight spinach plants growing for 40 days, set to the song "Spanish Summer" by Audionautix.
No matter what age you are, that age is new to you, and you learn surprising things about being that age. Cracked has a pictofacts post about things that surprised you about adulthood, and it's obvious that the top contributors range in age from new adult to newly elderly. Having to change your own sheets comes a long time before waking up with aches and pains every day.
However, thanks to sharing on the internet, we needn't be too surprised by things our parents didn't tell us about aging. No matter what (adult) age you are, there's something you can relate to in the list of 23 disappointing things about being an adult.
Randall Munroe at xkcd has been playing with names. You can string a lot of celebrity names together, as there are so many standard names that are used over and again, in different combinations. That is only multiplied when a famous person uses three names because their names are so common. Munroe laid out these associations in a game of dominoes to show how they fit together. See the enlarged readable version here. When you study this grid, you comes across some full squares where everyone's name intersects with someone else's.
John Brown leads to James Brown, which leads to James Newton Howard, which leads to Wayne Howard, Wayne Brady, Wayne Knight, and Wayne Newton, which leads back to James Newton Howard. And John Wayne fits in there just fine. You don't even need Olivia Newton John! And the Howards peel off in a second direction, which leads one to believe this could have been 3D dominoes. The grid is from today's xkcd comic.
Philosopher Jeremy Bentham believed in using dead bodies for practical purposes, instead of fearing or revering them in a religious sense. When he died in 1832, he willed his body to science, directing that it be used for medical dissection, then preserved for display, difrected by his protege Dr. Thomas Southwood Smith. And so it was, but you know what they say about the best laid plans. The only part of Bentham's body that was salvageable after medical dissection was his skeleton, which was firmly wired together and covered with stuffing and clothing.
But not everything went quite according to plan. The philosopher had asked to have his head preserved in the "style of the New Zealanders," which Smith attempted by placing the head over some sulfuric acid and under an air pump. The result was ghastly: desiccated, dark, and leathery, even as the glass eyes Bentham had picked out for it during life gleamed from the brow.
Seeing as how the results "would not do for exhibition," as Smith wrote to a friend, the doctor hired a noted French artist, Jacques Talrich, to sculpt a head out of wax based on busts and paintings made of Bentham while alive. Smith called his efforts "one of the most admirable likenesses ever seen"—a far more suitable topper for the auto-icon than the real, shriveled head, which was reportedly stuffed into the chest cavity and not rediscovered until World War II.
This "auto-icon" sat in a glass case at University College London for over 150 years. Bentham always wanted to visit America, and that has finally happened, 186 years after his death. The auto-icon is now at the Met Breuer museum in New York as part of an exhibition called Like Life: Sculpture, Color, and the Body (1300–Now). Getting the auto-icon to the U.S. was quite an undertaking, requiring meticulous cleaning, packing, and transport procedures. Read about Jeremy Bentham, his remains, and how they came to America at Mental Floss.
A hungry corpse in London's Trafalgar Square meets a friendly pigeon. Now, when we think a hungry corpse, the first thing to come to mind is a zombie that is going to try to eat us. In this case, no, all he wants is food, but he is missing the proper organs to consume it. The poor guy just wants a sandwich!
An architectural oddity that is almost exclusively found in Vermont is the "witch window." These are windows mounted on a slant, just under the roof line of a house. They are sometimes referred to as "Vermont windows" (for obvious reasons) or "coffin windows." The tale told is that crooked windows are harder for a witch to fly into. That doesn't make much sense. There was one witch trial in Vermont, but it was a couple hundred years before the witch windows became a thing. Other explanations don't make sense, either.
“You’ll also hear them referred to as coffin windows,” explains the Historical Society rep, “The idea being that it’s difficult to maneuver a coffin with a body from the second floor down to the first floor in these narrow staircases, so slide it out through the window and down the roof.” Then again, she says, that “does not seem any easier.” At the end of the day, every conclusion drawn about the curious windows ends with a question mark. Why on earth create a completely lopsided, and by all means impractical, window?
The real answer may be that it's the only way to fit a decent-sized window into a room that sits in an offset gable. But that explanation is no fun! And can you imagine trying to hang a curtain in one? Read about witch windows and see more pictures at Messy Nessy Chic.
Here's an online generator that lets you put any picture you like on a flag and watch it wave! Try Flag Waver with an image URL from any webpage, or upload your own picture. I don't see any option to save your creation in the generator itself. You could take a screen cap, or use LICEcap to make your own gif like I did. -via Boing Boing
Carden Corts got a assignment in his kindergarten class to make a weather forecast video. His dad, Charlie Corts, helped a little. Charlie's career is in video production. It's adorable, but wait until the subject shifts to spring break for things to really heat up!
Kindergarten teachers don't grade on a curve, do they? Even without the awesome video effects, six-year-old Carden does a great job doing the weather. That kid is going places. Like reddit, where his uncle posted this video. And probably The Ellen DeGeneres Show by next week.
Have you ever seen a slide saxophone? Or a Conn-o-sax? Those are just a couple of the rare saxophones in the collection of Dr. Paul Cohen, who plays, writes about, and collects unusual saxophones. Here he shows off his instruments to saxophone players from the United States Army Field Band.
The saxes range from tiny little things to the huge 6.5-foot contrabass sax that will make your chest rattle. Dr. Cohen even has some custom-made and one-of-a-kind instruments, such as the saxophone with no keys that you play in the manner of a bugle. You could make an entire band out of saxophones! -via Metafilter
Have you ever wanted to go on a road trip and have the road to yourself? It might be possible, or at least you can find the road less traveled with this interactive map. Pull up the least-traveled road in your state, and see if it's anywhere near you. GeoTab compiled the least-traveled roads in each state, according to data from the Department of Transportation. They all appear to be paved, which would exclude some very quiet routes I know in Kentucky. The small print says, "The data covers Interstates, US Routes, and State Routes over 10 miles long." Okay then. In addition to the interactive map, there's a list of the ten most scenic of these quiet routes. If you choose to take a road trip on any of them, you will want to gas up, have a spare tire and jack, and maybe take snacks, because some of them cover many miles. -vias Digg
We know cats are liquid, as they take the shape of their container. And cats love any kind of container: boxes, dishes, shelves, closets, bags, or whatever they can get into. A cat's definitinon of "container" is pretty flexible, ranging from mom's purse to a rain gutter. We might even call a cat a "container-seeking liquid."
Chris Poole has recorded video of his cats Cole and Marmalade ever since they were kittens. Here is a compilation that shows how they like to try on any kind of container to see if they fit. And if they fits, they sits! -via Tastefully Offensive
The movie Hidden Figures focused on the contributions of NASA mathematicians, engineers, and computer programmers who weren't recognized because they were black women. A literal example of the phrase was found in a photograph taken at the 1971 International Conference on Biology of Whales. The caption identified every person in the picture by name and title, except for one, whose face is partially obscured. She is also the only woman, and the only black person, in the photo. Candace Jean Andersen came across the photograph in her research and wondered who the woman is, and why she wasn't identified. She turned to social media, and clues began to come to light. A couple of men who were at the conference said she was Sheila Minor, who they thought was "support staff." The Smithsonian’s archive reference team unearthed a receipt for the hotel that conference members used for Sheila M. Jones (which was Minor's name at the time).
The image proved that she was there at the conference. But when the archivists got their hands on Minor’s file this week, they were able to fill in more details to her story. Minor wasn’t there as an administrative assistant; she was a biological research technician with a B.S. in biology. This was her first job with the federal government in what would become a 35-year-long career at various federal bureaus.
She went on to earn an environmental science master’s degree at George Mason University, and collaborated with K-12 schools to improve science education. In the next two years she participated in a two-island study researching mammals of the Poplar Islands, and presented her findings at the American Society of Mammalogists Meeting in 1975.
Shapiro says the fact that Minor was initially dismissed as an administration assistant made the ultimate reveal all the sweeter. “There’s so much unconscious bias—maybe even conscious bias—because she happened to be a black woman in the photo,” she says. “It wasn’t until I got the biofile back from offsites I saw that, no, she was really a scientist and she did research of her own.”
Lauren Lorenzo of eLL cartoons recorded her family trying to explain how to use the Amazon Echo personal assistant. To activate it, you have to say "Alexa" first. But if you tell that to Grandma, you will activate it yourself, so they are trying to avoid saying the name. But Grandma doesn't get what they are trying to tell her, and she can't remember the name anyway. This video contains some NSFW language.
Lorenzo has animated her family's interactions before. If you are curious about what they look like, she also recorded their reaction to the above animation. Again, this contains NSFW language.
This comic has three different punch lines. You can stop the story after six panels. Or nine panels. Or twelve panels. But you only notice that later, after you've made sure that our protagonist got to relieve himself after all. I would assume that he went next door where they really do sell candy. We've all been there. Now, imagine doing all this in a country where you don't speak the language. This is the latest comic from Alex Culang and Raynato Castro of Buttersafe.
In a followup to his previous video on the differences between Australia and New Zealand, Jordan Watson (also known as the How-to Dad) draws more contrasts between the two countries. He lives in New Zealand, which he paints as a more peaceful and sensible place.
This video delves deeper into the language differences of two English-speaking nations, although he does wander into the wildlife, sports, and geography a bit. Jordan is quite proud to be a Kiwi, although he should brush up on recognizing his own flag. -via Tastefully Offensive
