If you are growing bored waiting for the skilled Olympic skiers in PyeongChang to crash and fall, you need to switch gears and watch the robot skiing event! While robots may be pretty good at driving us around and waging war, skiing is still beyond most of them.  

The video comes from the Ski Robot Challenge in South Korea outside of PyeongChang 2018 yesterday. This week’s robot ski event was held at the Welli Hilli resort in Hoenseong, about an hour’s drive from the actual Olympic games.

And there are few things funnier than robots falling down. The last DARPA Robotics Challenge in 2015 was great for robot fail videos and GIFs. But humanity has largely been deprived of hilarious robotic failures in the past couple of years. We’ve mostly been faced with the terrifying reality of robot backflips and super-human agility.

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This is great on so many levels. We can enjoy the slapstick aspect without worrying about painful injuries. We can laugh at the attempts to make these robots resemble human skiers without getting it quite right. Most importantly, we can comfort ourselves about the ability of killer robots to catch us in the snow during the robot uprising.

Star Trek was written for adults from the beginning. In the original TV series, we became accustomed to Captain Kirk finding a love interest on every planet the Enterprise visited. Star Trek: The Next Generation continued that tradition, although it had a wider range of characters involved in such romances. Captain Picard had a past (and sometimes a present) with Dr. Crusher, and Riker and Troi were definitely a thing, although both couples were on-and-off, so the characters were free to look elsewhere. But the series' trysts were often played for comedy, because there is nothing more down-to-earth than crossed signals, unwelcome advances, and unrequited love. For example, Deanna Troi's mother Lwaxana had the hots for Picard which she never bothered to hide, seen in the episode "Manhunt."

The telepathic and always inappropriate Lwaxana Troi returns to the Enterprise in the throes of the Betazoid version of menopause, which sees her sex drive essentially quintupling. Her mate of choice? Captain Picard, who is put off by her blatant come-ons. Lwaxana’s version of hello is using her species’ advanced mind-reading abilities on Picard to expose his “naughty thoughts” in public. En route to the Pacifica conference as the representative for Betazed, she lures him into what is supposed to be an ambassadorial dinner for the crew (to which she only invites the mortified captain).

It gets more awkward from there. Den of Geek has a list of ten ST: TNG episodes featuring hilariously awkward romantic stories for your Valentines Day viewing. In case that's the sort of thing you want for the holiday. 

When you were a kid making faces, your mother might have told you that your face could freeze like that, and you'd have to live with it forever. That's exactly what happened to Aaron in Cautionary Tales.

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But the story isn't entirely about him. Aaron goes to a support group for people who have to wear their young indiscretions for the world to see. How many different cautionary tales can you identify? They will be revealed during the credits, although the British tale about crusts is supposed to be a good thing instead of cautionary. The moral of the story is that you should always listen to your mother.  -via Metafilter

The 1998 Disney movie The Parent Trap concerned twins separated by their parents' divorce who find each other and scheme to reunite the family. The movie was a remake of the 1961 film starring Hayley Mills, in a time when divorce was rarer and lifelong separation of siblings was somewhat more plausible. The intriguing gimmick of both versions was the interaction of twins played by the same actor. Pulling it off made 11-year-old Lindsay Lohan a star. Twenty years later, let's learn some more about what went into The Parent Trap.     

10. For the split scenes Lohan would wear an earpiece that would allow her to hear the dialogue of the other sister.

This would make an easier dialogue between Lohan and her other self and provide less of a gap in between the different parts of the conversation. Plus it would look more natural.

9. This was Lohan’s first movie.

This was pretty good for for a debut to be honest and it managed to get her noticed and signed to other parts eventually.

There's more trivia about The Parent Trap at TVOM.

First off, this is a difficult quiz about pregnancy, not a quiz about difficult pregnancies. The questions take a deep dive into a natural process that billions of women have experienced, yet most never knew these things. Whether you've given birth or not, you'd have to be pretty well read to get them right. Take the quiz here. It was written by our own Jill Harness, who read quite a bit on the subject before she gave birth to her son last year. I scored a mere 48%, which is unsurprising, as I've never been pregnant and haven't studied it much. Maybe you'll do better.  

On the lake called Lissma Kvarnsjö near Stockholm, a brave man skates on new ice that is only a couple of inches thick (45mm). The ice sings and groans and echoes as he glides along. Those who've done this say that the skater doesn't hear much of this, that it takes some distance for the sound to reverberate properly.

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The eerie sounds are generated by a phenomenon called acoustic dispersion. There's a neat explanation in this video. In case you are simply disappointed that he never fell through the ice, you'll be rewarded by watching this clip. -via Digg

The folks at How It Should Have Ended have made bank by rewriting our favorite films. Here they take on The Last Jedi, which means this video is full of spoilers for a film you should have seen by now. But it's not just the ending that gets re-written. All the elements are changed in one way or another, to make them more logical, to make them fit in with our preconceived notions, or to make them just plain funnier.

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They added one very important element that we expect from all Star Wars films in that someone got their hand cut off. That's a pure staple that The Last Jedi overlooked. "Shut up, Carl, nobody asked you!"  -via Tastefully Offensive

(Image credit: CSIRO)

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!

Improbable theories, experiments, and conclusions
compiled by Dirk Manley, Improbable Research staff

Effect of Microwave Ovens on Astronomy
“Identifying the Source of Perytons at the Parkes Radio Telescope,” E. Petroff, E. F. Keane, E. D. Barr, J. E. Reynolds, J. Sarkissian, P. G. Edwards, J. Stevens, C. Brem, A. Jameson, S. Burke-Spolaor, S. Johnston, N. D. R. Bhat, P. Chandra, S. Kudale, and S. Bhandari, arXiv:1504.02165, April 9, 2015. The authors, at many institutions in Australia, the UK, the USA, and India, report:

“Perytons” are millisecond-duration transients of terrestrial origin, whose frequency-swept emission mimics the dispersion of an astrophysical pulse that has propagated through tenuous cold plasma. In fact, their similarity to FRB 010724 had previously cast a shadow over the interpretation of “fast radio bursts,” which otherwise appear to be of extragalactic origin. Until now, the physical origin of the dispersion-mimicking perytons had remained a mystery. We have identified strong out-of-band emission at 2.3--2.5 GHz associated with several peryton events. Subsequent tests revealed that a peryton can be generated at 1.4 GHz when a microwave oven door is opened prematurely and the telescope is at an appropriate relative angle. Radio emission escaping from microwave ovens during the magnetron shut-down phase neatly explain all of the observed properties of the peryton signals.

[Ed. note: See also: Microwave Oven Baffled Astronomers for Decades.]

Energy in All the Excess Human Fat in the USA

We are only interested in figure skating for two weeks every four years. Then suddenly, we all become experts in the sport. While we wait for someone to fail, we critique their costumes and marvel at the jumps and spins and whatever else they do so well.

[figure skater does something]

me: “THAT’S AMAZING”

announcer: “And that’s really going to cost her, you just can’t be making those sloppy mistakes at this level”

— Josh Billinson (@jbillinson) February 11, 2018

If we are going to be critics, we may as well learn something about what we're watching.

If you tune in to any broadcast of a figure skating competition, it can seem like the announcers are speaking a different language. But all you need to know is that because there are only a certain number of edges and a certain number of ways a skater can land a jump, there are only six recognized jumps in competitive figure skating: the toe loop, the salchow, the loop, the flip, the lutz, and the axel.

These six jumps are generally divided into two groups. “Edge” jumps — the loop, the salchow, and the axel — rely on the power from a skater bending her knee to jump off the ice. “Toe” jumps — the toe loop, the flip, and the lutz — rely on skaters using their toe pick to launch themselves into the air.

In competition, each jump is worth a certain number of points based on their difficulty level, with the toe loop worth the least and the axel worth the most. The elite women figure skaters perform triple jumps (three to three and a half revolutions), while the medal contenders on the men’s side regularly hit quads (four revolutions). Read on for a rundown of each jump.

Vox takes us through the basic elements of figure skating, starting with how ice skates work and going up to how judges rate the moves.

(Image credit: Flickr user { QUEEN YUNA })

Abby and Brittany Hensel are conjoined twins who share a body. Specifically, they each control half of their body, and learned at a very early age to work together in perfect sync in order to walk and do all the other things people with two arms and legs each do. The Hensel twins had their own reality TV series on TLC a few years ago. What's happened since then? Abby and Brittany graduated from college in 2012 and got a job as math teachers for fourth- and fifth-graders.    

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While students may think they are going to get two different perspectives, Abby and Brittany are in perfect sync. While they are do not share any brain connections like the Hogan twins, they are very good at completing each other's sentences. They are receiving one salary, with half the funds going to Abby and half to Brittany.  

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-via Laughing Squid

Indecision wasted this guy's entire weekend. It's a situation in which rationalization would do wonders. I read the first two panels and thought, "How convenient, if your life goals are to relax, watch a film, and play video games." Seriously, that's the life goals of a lot of people. It sure beats being paralyzed by procrastination. This comic is from Gone Into Rapture. -via Geeks Are Sexy

A group of prospectors that included Shaaw Tláa, along with her brothers and common-law husband, discovered gold in the Klondike in 1896. She was the first of many women who became part of gold rush history. Others made their way north to take advantage of the gold rush for riches, freedom, and adventure in a time where few women had control over their own lives.

Without Shaaw Tláa there would be no Klondike Gold Rush, and of course, no Klondike Gold Rush National Historic Park. In 1896, Tláa, a Native American woman also known as Kate Carmack, was traversing remote lands in Canada when her team discovered gold at Rabbit Creek. This event acted as the catalyst for what would become one of the largest gold rushes in American history.

Other women made their way to the Klondike and made a fortune providing goods and services to the gold miners or as journalists chronicling their adventures. Read about five such pioneering women at Attn.

Winemaking evolved from the natural fermenting process, which was discovered in nature. Brewing beer was a step further, but it took an entirely new process to produce distilled spirits. In other words, it took a still. And that was developed by Persian alchemist Abu Musa Jabir ibn Hayyan in the 8th century, during the Islamic Golden Age. Jabir rose to the position of alchemist to the caliph, and his writings on chemistry became famous. Among other accomplishments, he coined the word "alkali," and invented the alembic on order to make spirits.

An alembic is a liquid-filled container placed over a heat source. Connected by a tube to another vessel, it allows vapors from the heated substance to pass through the tube, condense along it, and drip into the other container. That condensation, which is the essence of the distilled material, became known as the “spirit.” Since alcohol has a lower boiling point than water, heating wine in an alembic still causes alcohol to evaporate first, separating it from the water. Jabir made his still of glass or pottery, while later iterations were made of copper.

Jabir’s discovery was the key to producing higher-proof liquor. But he didn’t become a bartender extraordinaire. Instead he noted that distilling wine could create a flammable vapor, which he called “of little use but of great importance to science.”

The spirits were used as fuel and an antiseptic, but a later alchemist and physician used it for medicinal purposes. Read about him, as well as Jabir and the history of distilled alcohol at Atlas Obscura.

Mark your calendars for March 23, because that's the first issue date for the new forever stamps from the US Postal Service featuring Fred Rogers. The beloved host of the PBS show Mister Rogers' Neighborhood was a TV innovator, and is fondly remembered by Generation X, who grew up watching the show. The stamp dedication ceremony will be held at WQED’s Fred Rogers Studio in Pittsburgh, March 23 at 11AM, and it is open to the public. If you can't make it, the ceremony will be live-streamed on Facebook. Afterward, you can request stamps from your local post office, although it may be some days before they are available everywhere. -via Laughing Squid

Kids are going to run into subjects that are difficult for them, whether it's math, reading, history, or whatever. Anything we can do to give them a little push toward feeling better about those subjects will steer them in the right direction. Sure, they may be failing now, but there's gotta be something there to praise. This is the latest comic from Lunarbaboon.