The world is changing so fast, but the youngest members of our society don't know that yet. Broadcast TV brought the world together. Cable and home video separated family members by age. Streaming services and binge-watching are changing how entertainment works yet again. I wouldn't let my kids watch The Walking Dead when they were young, but later they caught up easily by binge watching. They now don't have time for TV in college, but that's okay, they'll catch up during vacation. As for this kid, aren't you glad he doesn't have the power to hire and fire? This comic is from Chris Hallbeck at Maximumble.
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A thief has been hitting self-serve car washes across the Midwest to enrich himself by making an end-run around the automated payment machines. His technique is decidedly old school, involving a $20 bill attached to a fishing line for easy retrieval.
Police concluded the $20 bill has to be laminated, which keeps the machines from shredding it to bits. The trick involves connecting the bill to what appears to be fishing line, Ohio police have said.
The suspect entered the coated $20 bill 35 times and voided each car wash purchase to trigger a refund from the machine. Each time, he was able to pull the coated bill back out of the machine. By the time the thief was done, the machine was missing $700 in $5 bills.
In total, he’s estimated to have netted thousands of dollars, with more than $1,000 coming from just two car washes in Indiana alone.
He has covered his license plate and wipes away any fingerprints, but his face has been recorded on security cameras.
'Car wash bandit' has stolen thousands of dollars in five states: police https://t.co/2TAdHeLCt2 pic.twitter.com/O0fZ8OnIOm
— FOX 5 San Diego (@fox5sandiego) February 22, 2018
Read more about the car wash thief at Jalopnik.
(Image credit: Andrew Smith)
The 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia was an account of the adventures of T.E. Lawrence in the Middle East during World War I. The movie, starring Peter O'Toole, Alec Guinness, Anthony Quinn, Omar Sharif, and a host of other big names, won seven Academy Awards and became a classic. While those who knew Lawrence (who died in 1935) and the events of the film quibbled about the movie's accuracy, most had to admit that even a nearly four-hour epic film could not tell the entire story. If you've ever seen Lawrence of Arabia, you'll want to learn more about the movie production. If not, you should watch it the first chance you get.
8. Alec Guinness was mistaken for the real Faisal.
The makeup and clothing he had to wear made many people mistake him for the real person quite often.
7. Peter O’Toole actually bled the first time he rode a camel.
He rode with jeans on and by the time he’d gone for any distance there was blood oozing out of his jeans.
There's more movie trivia about Lawrence of Arabia at TVOM.
This is a peculiar video that will affect Star Wars fans differently depending on whether they are gamers are not. YouTuber UndeadPathfinder_ recreated the final showdown between Luke Skywalker and Kylo Ren using the video game Star Wars Battlefront II. Those familiar with the limits of the game are quite impressed, as they know how difficult this project had to be. They particularly praise the work and skill shown in synching the dialogue to the characters.
Those who have never played Battlefront II get a different vibe, right into the uncanny valley. The voices say the characters are real, while the graphics say no. We can still appreciate the work that went into it. -via Geeks Are Sexy
The following is an article from The Annals of Improbable Research, now in all-pdf form. Get a subscription now for only $25 a year!
Strange Cases of This and That, From Here and There
compiled by Stephen Drew, Improbable Research staff
The Schmarb Puzzle
“The Strange Case of John Shmarb: An Aesthetic Puzzle,” Steven M. Cahn and L. Michael Griffel, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 34, no. 1, Autumn,1975, pp. 21-22. The authors, at the University of Vermont and the City University of New York, explain:
[Newspapers] reported that a grandson of a former student of Brahms, rummaging through an old family trunk, had unearthed some dusty pages that turned out to be an original Brahms manuscript: a fifth symphony completed just prior to the composer’s death in 1897. It had never been performed or published, and, in fact, Brahms seems never to have even mentioned it to anyone....
Incredibly, the Symphony had actually been the handiwork of a young American composer, John Shmarb, who had called a press conference to announce his achievement.... When asked why he had concocted such an elaborate hoax, young Shmarb replied: “For the last ten years publishers and critics and musicologists have been dismissing my work as inconsequential because they claimed all I did was copy nineteenth-century music. Well, I finally got fed up. They weren’t being fair to my music....”
Word soon followed that the Berlin Philharmonia had eliminated the Symphony from its re-cording schedule, that plans to publish the work had been abandoned at considerable cost to the publisher, and that all announced performances had been cancelled.
Jon Townsend (previously at Neatorama) cooks up a little macaroni and cheese from a recipe published in 1784. Along the way, we get a bit of history about the term "macaroni" in the sense that it was used in the song "Yankee Doodle." But that has nothing to do with food. This dish is pretty basic, and sounds delicious.
Several comments under the video asked where the nutmeg is. I had never heard of macaroni and cheese with nutmeg, but apparently there are a lot of recipes that call for it. I prefer onions and dry mustard. Townsends has a blog about historical recipes and food for historical reenactments, called Savoring the Past. -via reddit
The Academy Awards will be bestowed on deserving movies this Sunday night. There have been changes made to ensure that the ceremony won't turn out like it did last year, when the wrong envelope made its way to the stage and La La Land was announced as the winner of the Oscar for Best Picture. After the producers and cast ascended the stage, the mistake was discovered, and La La Land producer Jordan Horowitz interrupted producer Marc Platt's speech to announce that the real winner was Moonlight. The Best Picture award went to a deserving film, but Moonlight was cheated out of its moment in the sun because the snafu dominated the headlines -and social media. Horowitz's announcement became the news.
“It was palpable that people were still super confused,” Horowitz said. He knew that there was one thing left to do. So he put his left hand on his chest to brace himself, swiftly snatched away Beatty’s card, held it up, and said, “Moonlight. Best Picture.” That instant, he thought to himself, I hope the camera person knows what to do. Sure enough, 33 million viewers watching ABC’s telecast of the Academy Awards were treated to a close-up of the card, which indicated that Moonlight had indeed won Best Picture. “The camera person knew exactly what to do,” Horowitz said. After he displayed evidence that proved his claim, the producer continued, “Everybody was like, ‘Oh shit, this is real.’”
A year later, Horowitz talks about what he was thinking and feeling at that moment, and how he inadvertently became the star of the internet for the next few days, at The Ringer. -via Digg
(Image credit: Michael Weinstein)
Evolution depends on random mutations to slowly change species, but the process gets a turbo-charged boost when related species interbreed. It happens more often than you might think- just ask the minority of your ancestors who are Neanderthal, although they wouldn't answer. A new study by evolutionary geneticists from several universities tells of findings from the sequenced genomes of woolly mammoths, a Columbian mammoth, straight-tusked elephants, American mastodons, and three living elephant species. What they found was clear evidence of interbreeding among extinct species, but not among living species.
For example, the researchers learned that the ancient Straight-tusked elephant—an extinct species that stomped around Europe between 780,000 and 50,000 years ago—was a hybrid species, with portions of its DNA being similar to an ancient African elephant, the Woolly Mammoth, and Forest elephants, the latter of which are still around today. They also uncovered further evidence to support the suggestion that two species of mammoths—the Columbian and Woolly Mammoths—interbred. This idea was first proposed by Poinar in 2011. Despite their different habitats and sizes, these creatures likely ran into each other near glacial boundaries and in more temperate regions of North America. Indeed, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that these ancient elephants frequently bumped into each other; for a time, mammoths had a territory that extended from modern-day Portugal and Spain all the way to the US East Coast.
The ability to sequence all those extinct genomes is a story in itself. Read more about the study at Gizmodo.
Some new things I learned from fact-checking this article: mastodons are not considered elephants. Here is the family tree. The article mentions the two extant species of elephant, but they mean two species of African elephants; there's also the Asian elephant. There are an astonishing number of elephant species when you include the extinct ones.
Here's a cooking video that you'll enjoy watching all the way through even if you have no intention of ever making the recipe. Anne Reardon of How to Cook That manages to make individual-size apple custard pies with rainbow stripes on the crust!
Making the crust is the time-consuming part, but the finished product is quite impressive. If you want to give it a try, read the complete recipe with amounts (in weight, not volume). Meanwhile, I'm thinking about how I could use those rainbow discs for something else, like maybe the top crust of a regular size pie. -via Boing Boing
It's a wet day in Davao City, Philippines, and this elderly man is at the market with his dog. Before taking off on his bike, he lovingly tends to the pooch, to make sure he stays dry all through the ride. The dog would probably be okay with getting wet, but he allows himself to be pampered, because he loves his man, too. Besides, neither of them wants to smell a wet dog. -via reddit
"Any idiot that wants to make a couple of thousand drawings for a hundred feet of film is welcome to join the club." -Winsor McCay
Popular lore has it that the 1927 movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was the first animated feature film. That's not true at all, and how many came before that depends on how you define "feature film" and how you define "animated." Let's take a good look into the history of animation in film.
The Royal Ocean Film Society shows us the various milestones of early cartoons and how they became the most imaginative motion pictures ever. They had to admit one mistake -the photograph of Earl Hurd is actually one of Frank Thomas. -via Boing Boing
You know Lupita Nyong’o from her roles in 12 Years a Slave, The Force Awakens, and most prominently in Black Panther. Her next project is producing a film based on the book Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah. Noah is the South African standup comic who took over as host of The Daily Show when Jon Stewart retired. Nyong’o will also have a starring role.
The movie has a lot to with apartheid as it was viewed in South Africa and will be seeing her take on the role of Patricia Nombuyiselo, the mother of Trevor Noah and one of the strongest women that’s ever been detailed in a book or a movie. The story goes that Trevor was born of a white man and a black woman, which was serious crime in South Africa when he was born. As apartheid didn’t end until 1990-91 and Noah was born in 1984, this created a lot of potential problems for Patricia and her son. Added to that was the fact that Noah’s stepfather was very abusive, which only made matters worse.
That may sound thoroughly depressing, but listen to how Noah relates the story in his standup routine. Read more about the upcoming Born a Crime at TVOM.
(Image credit: The Daily Show)
Norway won 39 medals at the PyeongChang Olympics, more than any other country: 14 gold, 14 silver, 11 bronze. In fact, they set a new record for the most medals won at a Winter Games. Norway's medal count was followed by Germany, Canada, and the United States. Consider also that Norway only sent 109 athletes to South Korea, while the US sent 242. The Norwegians are proud but also trying to remain humble with their success. Tore Ovrebo, the director of elite sports with Norway's Olympic program, was asked what made the Norwegian athletes so special.
Ovrebo went out of his way to explain he didn’t want to come across as giving anyone, lest the United States, any advice. “I am not a tiny gorilla beating my chest telling you what to do because it’s not my position,” he says. “We do it this way, others do it another way.” He also admits Norway is blessed with many advantages for Winter Olympics dominance, like snow, a history of excellence in sports like biathlon and cross-country skiing, and free health care, which helps keep young athletic talent in good shape.
But a distinctly Norweigan rule for their youth sports may strike a particular chord with many Americans. (This one included: I’m a youth sports parent, and wrote a TIME cover story on the booming kid sports industry last summer).
Ovrebo says that in Norway, organized youth sports teams cannot keep score until they are 13. “We want to leave the kids alone,” says Ovrebo. “We want them to play. We want them to develop, and be focused on social skills. They learn a lot from sports. They learn a lot from playing. They learn a lot from not being anxious. They learn a lot from not being counted. They learn a lot from not being judged. And they feel better. And they tend to stay on for longer.”
Read more about Norway's Olympic success at Time. -via Metafilter
(Image credit: Trainholic)
People who have no home and nowhere to turn often end up in makeshift camps on public land near city centers. One of the more common ways municipal governments deal with those camps is to raid them and drive the residents away. "Cleaning up" a homeless camp makes the area look better, but it doesn't solve the problem. The evicted individuals are still homeless and even worse off than before, and their numbers are simply shifted to other areas. However, Las Vegas is trying something different: the homeless camp on Foremaster Lane will not only be allowed to continue existing, but the city is fortifying it with essential services.
As part of a broader strategy to address its growing homelessness problem, the city is building an open-air courtyard where homeless people can legally camp. The courtyard would include bathrooms, structures for shade, storage, and sleeping mats, according to reports. Some social services are already operating in the area, but the city plans to bring even more, from essentials like showers to housing, employment, and mental health services.
“It is a service center,” Thomas-Gibson says. “One of the services might be that you need someplace to be overnight, but the intention is that homeless individuals get connected to the services that can help break the barriers to ending their homelessness.”
The Las Vegas scheme follows a similar project in San Antonio that is showing promise. Read about the “Corridor of Hope” at Next City.
(Image credit: Lasvegaslover)
We've posted quite a bit about fecal transplants, but it's been a while. Since then, the procedure has become the "magic bullet," so to speak, in the battle against C. diff, a dangerous antibiotic-resistant strain of bacteria. C. diff is opportunistic, and tends to take up residence in a patient who has already used antibiotics to kill off other harmful bacteria -and killed off beneficial bacteria as well.
In this video, Dr. Mark Smith explains how and why fecal transplants work. Science writer Ed Yong tries to keep a straight face amid Smith's potty humor. The upshot is that when we overdo modern techniques, such as antibiotics, we often provoke new and unforeseen problems with it. The solution can be to go back to ancient traditional remedies and let nature do her work. -via Digg
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