The German TV show Beginner gegen Gewinner (Beginner vs. Winner) pairs an amateur with a professional in athletic competition. The pro must perform with some kind of handicap. In this case, professional long jumper Alyn Camara is wearing a T-rex costume. The participants are taking this way too seriously, but it's all worth it to see the T-rex bounding down the ramp to make his jump.
The amateur won this one because Camara's last jump was disqualified. He couldn't see the line! This show is broadcast live in Germany, which is why we had to wait for the sand to be swept between each jump. Also see a women's footrace and men's table tennis. -via reddit
I've actually thought about the curves and a possible sphere when playing with matches. But it's been long time since I've played with matches, and I never had enough free time to amass this many matches and put this experiment into action. YouTuber All Is Art did it.
What happens when you start gluing matches together? Because the heads are slightly wider than the wooden bodies, they begin to form a sphere. This was an experiment in how many matches it would take to get all the way around to make a perfect globe. After months of gluing and gluing and gluing we made it to the other side.
The answer is 42,000, give or take a few matches. What do you do with this sphere afterward? Light it up, of course!
Don't let the length of this video deter you- that all happens in the first three minutes. Then we get to see it from all angles, then in slow motion. -via Geeks Are Sexy
Every U.S. president eventually has a portrait hanging in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. Last Monday, President Obama's portrait was unveiled. At the ceremonies for these unveilings, the subject of the portrait normally has praise for the artist's talent, often accompanied by a self-deprecating joke about their own appearance. That was not the case when Lyndon Johnson's portrait was made public in 1967.
When he first laid eyes on the painting that was to be his official White House portrait, Lyndon B. Johnson disgustedly called painter Peter Hurd’s work “the ugliest thing I ever saw” and refused to accept it. Hurd was already decades into his successful career as a painter, specializing in portraiture and landscapes of the American Southwest. Arrogant enough to be unaffected by the comment and eager to publicize the president’s “very damn rude” behavior, he readily responded to press curiosity about the incident. Americans were sympathetic toward the scorned artist and increasingly skeptical of the president’s character—a slight that Johnson, who was already seen as short-tempered, could hardly afford. After displaying the piece at a Texas museum in retaliation, Hurd later donated his painting to the Portrait Gallery, which agreed to not display it until after Johnson’s death.
Johnson did not elaborate on what made the portrait "ugly." Hurd's portrait was a very good likeness of the former president, and if anything, it made him look less mean than he was. Plenty of folks speculated as to why Johnson reacted the way he did, which you can read about in an article at Smithsonian that looks into Johnson's way of thinking.
We all know it, and we all struggle with it. The worst part about listening to oneself is that there's always an argument going on. The id battles with the superego. The heart conflicts with the brain. Then our fears and doubts take over and we end up giving in to the tongue and the stomach. Maybe the real secret to discipline is to stop listening to our own bodies and take control. This comic is from Zach Weinersmith at Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. Go to the comic link for the hovertext and push the red button for an extra punch line.
H. Mayne Young, a Church of England cleric, was living in colonial India in 1906 when he saw a Bijli, or evil spirit. A wandering holy man had warned him not to use water from a certain tank, but he ignored that warning and used it to bathe. Young wrote an account of what happened later when he traveled to a camping spot in the middle of the night. His servants and even his horse fled when they saw a light approaching.
The situation was now getting exciting. Deprived of my horse, and two guides, and in the midst of pathless fields, I felt it would be difficult for me to proceed, so raising the rifle to my shoulder, I cried “Stand still, or I fire at you! ” Hardly had I uttered the words, when I was horrified to see that the figure, which seemed to fly along, and was now only some few yards distant, was no human being at all. All that was visible was a grinning, bony skull and eye sockets, with long lank hair, and a fleshless arm holding a flaming torch ; the rest of the figure being a mere trail of grey mist.
As I stood there, unflinching, with my finger on the trigger, the apparition, which was now only ten or fifteen feet distant, suddenly diverged from me, and rapidly sank into the ground, some twenty feet past me, so that I had a good view of IT. I rushed up to the spot where it had disappeared, but no trace of it was to be found. I stamped upon the ground, but the only proof of the apparition was a sprinkling of red hot embers, which a moment before had formed the flaming torch.
The encounter was interpreted as a further omen that bad things were going to happen to Young, but what could he do about it at that point? And something bad indeed happened. You can read the whole story of the Bijli encounter at Haunted Ohio. -via Strange Company
A true capitalist can see the value in any political movement if there is enough money to be made from it. In 1911, women in England were working to achieve the right to vote. A large demonstration was planned for June 17, to coincide with the coronation of George V, in which participants were urged to wear white in solidarity. That, of course, meant buying new clothing, and there was a mad scramble for customers who wished to vote.
Readers of the weekly newspaper, Votes for Women, which was edited by Frederick and Emmeline Pethick Lawrence, were urged to buy their outfits from firms that advertised there. ‘If they find it pays them to advertise in VOTES FOR WOMEN they will advertise – if they find it doesn’t, they won’t. The more money that flows into the coffers of our advertisement department the better our paper can be made, the wider its influence reaches. Therefore let every woman who believes in this cause never enter a shop that does not advertise in VOTES FOR WOMEN, and let her deal exclusively with those firms that do, and inform them why.’
Women who obeyed this call to arms would have had a good choice of items to ensure a suitably modish appearance during the procession. Advertisers enticed them with pictures of dresses, dainty blouses, charming hats, smart coats and hair care products. The procession through London from Westminster to the Albert Hall comprised around 60,000 women from around the world carrying 1,000 banners and stretched for seven miles. One hopes that they also bought the comfortable shoes on offer!
On the one hand, it helped the cause that so much purchasing power could be harnessed in the fight to change hearts and minds about the rights of women. On the other hand, third-wave (and even second-wave) feminists have to cringe at the image of women buying new corsets, wigs, and "charming" hats for a suffrage demonstration. See more of these ads at The British Library. -via Strange Company
For her latest weird tech project, Simone Giertz teamed up with William Osman to modify her tiny electric car, Cheese Louise. They turned it into a computer mouse. The aim is to draw a picture on a computer screen by driving the car.
What you might need to know is that Giertz only recently got her driver's license, and the car is around 30 years old. So the picture isn't all that much, but the project was a success and the video is entertaining. Osman's video about the project goes into more detail about how they did it, and it's funny, too, but longer.
Vikki Gasco makes a living as a ventriloquist. She sat down talk to several young children and explain what she does. Most of the kids had no idea, but they really got into the idea that you can play with puppets as a job! Then they all wanted to try it out. This is really cute, thanks to their enthusiasm. -via Laughing Squid
You've seen wiener dog racing, but you've never seen it like this! The Daytona 500 race is coming up, and the dachshunds Crusoe and Oakley are getting into the spirit. Watch them race around in their little wiener dog cars!
Ice skating has been around for at least 5,000 years, but for most of that time, it was a method of transportation. The first competitive skating was racing. Figure skating is called that because in the beginning, it was all about making a perfect figure 8 on the ice. There were also some rudimentary "tricks" for show-offs, like jumping over things. Then came Jackson Haines, who is now considered the father of figure skating.
The person credited with developing the artistic side of skating in the late 19th Century is Jackson Haines, an American skater and dancer from New York. “Haines saw in skating tremendous theatrical and artistic possibilities,” Adams writes. “Haines experimented with a form of skating inspired by dance. He fit his skating to music, developed new moves (including the sit spin, which for many years was called the Jackson Haines spin, and invented a one-piece skate.”
But his style and innovations did not gain much traction in the U.S., which was more taken with the English style. So Haines went to Continental Europe to see if he could do any better there.
He did well, indeed. And the style he promoted is the reason why we watch young Olympians do amazing things in PyeongChang. Read about Jackson Haines at Deadspin.
Disney is doing their best to milk the Star Wars franchise for all it can. We are looking forward to Solo: A Star Wars Story, Star Wars: Episode IX, the Kenobi film, a new trilogy of films by Ryan Johnson, another trilogy by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, and a slew of TV series for Disney's streaming service. The Hard Times took this nonsense and ran with it, plotting a new Star Wars film for every year through 2361. They include documentaries, musicals, pornography (Porgasm! 2284) and origin stories for every character in the galaxy. Here's a sample.
228. Uncle Owen’s Revenge (2299) 229. Honey, I blew up the Death Star (2300) 230. Kylo Leonard Part 6 (2301) 231. Gone with the Mace Windu (2302) 232. Untitled Movie Set in Jedi Ghost Planet Starring a Yoda Puppet (2303)
At this rate, we shouldn't be surprised that Jar Jar's dad gets his own film (2022). I might skip that, but I am intrigued by Viva Los Vader (2038). I think Moisture Farmers’ Almanac (2032) might be a snooze. You can see them in classic Star Wars opening crawl form or read them at The Hard Times. -via Metafilter
Apple is all about beautiful design, and the company's new "spaceship" headquarters building in Cupertino, California, has been hailed as a work of art. The huge work spaces are a mix of open floors plans and not-so-private offices, separated by glass walls. The design is meant to facilitate collaboration. That doesn't mean there aren't problems.
Surrounding the building, located in Cupertino, California, are 45-foot tall curved panels of safety glass. Inside are work spaces, dubbed “pods,” also made with a lot of glass. Apple staff are often glued to the iPhones they helped popularize. That’s resulted in repeated cases of distracted employees walking into the panes, according to people familiar with the incidents.
Some staff started to stick Post-It notes on the glass doors to mark their presence. However, the notes were removed because they detracted from the building’s design, the people said.
How do you make a dance team's routine much cooler? Put a talented dancer in an animal costume! We learned that watching the cheerleader who wore a T-rex costume for Halloween. So watch the BYU Cougarettes get upstaged by the mascot Cosmo Cougar at a football game last fall.
Reading this comic, I had to nod, yeah, yeah, I'll always remember how I felt when I heard "It Don't Come Easy," "Love Her Madly," or "Treat Her Like a Lady," which are all songs from 1971. That's the year I turned 13. Then I got to the end of the comic and suddenly I feel so very, very old. They didn't even call it middle school back then. This comic is from the young Québécois geeks at CommitStrip.
In the word association game Robot Mind Meld, the object is to come up with the same word as a robot in as few steps as possible. You each start with a random word, and try to get closer to each other in the next attempt. I got lucky on the first try, as you can see from the three steps pictured. My second attempt landed in Israel, where it became clear there would never be an agreement. After that, I started to get the idea that the robot was not trying to follow me nearly as much as I was trying to follow it. Robots can drive you crazy! Or maybe I was in too much of a hurry. Try the game yourself, and let us know how well you did. -via Metafilter
