Improbable, stimulating investigations compiled by Marc Abrahams, Improbable Research staff
Shoehorn Data “Can Shoe Size Predict Penile Length?”, J. Shah and N. Christopher, BJU International, vol. 90, no. 6, October 2002, pp. 586–8. (Thanks to Edward Crutchley for bringing this to our attention.) The authors, who are at St. Mary’s Hospital, and Institute of Urology, University College Hospitals, London, U.K., confirm the work of 1998 Ig Nobel Prizewinners Jerald Bain and Kerry Siminoski. Shah and Christopher summarize their work thus:
SUBJECTS AND METHODS: Two urologists measured the stretched penile length of 104 men in a prospective study and related this to their shoe size.
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!
Research involving, or said to involve, centrifugal force compiled by Katherine Lee, Improbable Research staff
Far-Flung Centrifugal Distribution of Fresh vs. Aged Poultry Litter
“Centrifugal Spreader Mass and Nutrients Distribution Patterns for Application of Fresh and Aged Poultry Litter,” W. D. Temple, M. Skowrońska, and A. A. Bomke, Journal of Environmental Management, vol. 139, 2014, pp. 200–7. (Thanks to Marcin Klejman for bringing this to our attention.) The authors, at the University of British Columbia, Canada and the University of Life Sciences in Lublin, Poland, report:
We've often posted pictures of intricate, amazing, and beautiful gingerbread houses, the kind that inspire you to try one yourself. But not all of us are master food artists, or even competent food artists, and gingerbread houses present a variety of challenges. Icing is not as easy to work with as Pinterest would have you believe. Structural integrity is an art in itself. Cookie slabs break. And when things start to go awry, you get a sudden urge to revel in your failure by adding all the leftover icing and candy to the mess you made. See 21 examples of gingerbread houses gone wrong at Buzzfeed. They will make you feel better about your own half-baked efforts.
Young Rebel pilot Luke Skywalker is about to do the trench run when he gets sucked through a wormhole and flung 30 years into the future. Instead of the Death Star, he is on a collision course with Starkiller Base! Yeah, the X-wing allies and the enemy Tie fighters are familiar to him, but his target is not what he had studied. Will the Force be with him?
This mashup of the first Star Wars movie (known to young folks as A New Hope) and The Force Awakens from Fabrice Mathieu (previously at Neatorama) is a masterful edit, but also highlights how very similar the two films were. -Thanks, Fabrice!
Harry Houdini became the most famous escape artist and magician in the world, but who remembers his brother Theo Hardeen? Theo was an accomplished escape artist in his own right, and was even ahead of Harry Houdini in some measures of the art. The brothers worked together as teenagers, but it was a woman who came between them.
They soon took their took their act on the road, and toured to Coney Island, where Theo began courting Beatrice, a young perfomer in a vaudeville act called The Floral Sisters. This Beatrice would later become Bess Houdini, aka Harry’s long time wife and future worldwide sensation. Within a month, they were married, and Bess quickly usurped Theo’s place in the traveling show.
That doesn't mean the brothers were estranged, or even separated for any length of time. Theo had his own successful stage career even as he was eclipsed by his brother, and his life later intertwined with Harry's in several ways. Read the story of Theo Hardeen at Messy Nessy Chic.
National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation hit theaters in December of 1989 as the second sequel to National Lampoon's Vacation. Unlike many sequels that used a "Christmas version" to tell the same story again, this one had legs. Christmas Vacation became a holiday classic that stood on its own feet. Are there any more body part analogies we could make about the movie? Let's head into some trivia about Christmas Vacation and get knee-deep into the story behind the film.
1. THE MOVIE IS BASED ON A SHORT STORY.
Like the 1983 original, Christmas Vacation is based on a short story, “Christmas ‘59,” written by John Hughes for National Lampoon in December 1980. Its literary predecessor is paid tribute to when Clark is trapped in the attic and pulls out a box of old home movies, including one labeled “Christmas ’59.” (Eagle-eyed viewers might notice that when Clark is watching the film, it actually says “Christmas 1955.”)
3. JOHN HUGHES WASN’T A FAN OF SEQUELS.
Though many of Hughes’ films have spawned sequels, the man himself was not a fan of retreads. “The only sequels I was involved in were under duress,” Hughes once stated in an interview. Though he’s credited as a writer on European Vacation, he said that was only because he had created the characters. “But the studio came to me and begged for another [Vacation movie], and I only agreed because I had a good story to base it on. But those movies have become little more than Chevy Chase vehicles at this stage. I didn't even know about Vegas Vacation until I read about it in the trades! Ever since it came out, people have been coming up to me with disappointed looks on their faces, asking ‘What were you thinking?’ ‘I had nothing to do with it! I swear!’”
The 1984 film Purple Rain appears to encapsulate everything about Prince, yet it came out near the beginning of his reign at the top of the music charts. The story is somewhat autobiographical, but Prince never let us know exactly how close it was to his real life. How like him. If your memories of the first time you saw Purple Rain are as vivid as mine, you'll want to read more about the making of the movie.
9. The symbol Prince changed his name to is found in a couple of different locations.
It can be found printed on the gas tank of his bike and on an overpass that he rides under during the movie.
8. There were only three professional actors in the cast.
Everyone else was an unknown at that point or had come without a great deal of credentials to their name.
The Serbian a cappella choir Viva Vox (previously at Neatorama) perform a medley of Star Wars themes with just their voices. All the orchestral parts are there, and they are wonderful.
Fidel Castro ruled communist Cuba for 58 years. In that time, the United States made plans over and over again to take him out, and deprive the country of its revolutionary icon and leader. He died last year at age 90 of natural causes.
According to one 2006 documentary for Britain’s Channel Four, the government of the United States hatched no fewer than 638 separate plots to kill “the Beard.” Of course, not all those plots got out of the planning stage, and it goes without saying that none of them succeeded (unless they finally got him at 90), but some of the ones that did get within striking distance were absolute clinics in how not to kill a communist strongman.
Some of these plans failed because of bad luck or planning, some failed for unforeseeable reasons or sudden changes of circumstance, and some of them failed because they were just stupid. These are five of the most ridiculous.
Tuesday will be the 20th anniversary of the release of James Cameron's blockbuster film Titanic. The movie was over three hours long, cost $200 million to make, and everyone already knew how it ended, since it was based on the real-life sinking of the RMS Titanic in 1912. Studio executives expected a flop of epic proportions, not because the movie was bad, but because they had sunk so much money into it that it had seemingly impossible hurdles to jump before it could break even. It was a miracle that Cameron got the chance to do the movie in the first place.
Cameron asked for $125 million to make Titanic. Fox Chairman Peter Chernin balked, and told Cameron he could make the movie he had first pitched as “Romeo and Juliet on a boat” if he could have it ready for a July 1997 release, and keep the budget to $110 million. Cameron, perhaps believing this might really be possible at the time — and perhaps also figuring it was better to beg for forgiveness than to ask for permission — said he could do it, offering to forfeit $4 million of his own salary to squeeze under the line.
Almost as soon as Titanic went into production, it began to go over budget. In 1996, shooting a typical action blockbuster — a Batman Forever or a Tomorrow Never Dies — cost an average of $100,000 to $150,000 a day. Titanic averaged between $225,000 and $300,000 — and this was after construction ended on the brand-new 40-acre movie studio Cameron needed to film it. He had considered locations all over the world, and ultimately decided on a spot 15 miles south of the border, in Rosarito, Mexico. Workers needed 10,000 tons of dynamite to blast a hole in the coastline big enough for the 17-million-gallon open-air tank — the largest ever built — that Cameron needed to hold his ship.
That's just the beginning of the spending bill for the production of Titanic. The finished film spent months in theaters and made a billion dollars, mainly due to repeat viewings. Read how Titanic went from Cameron's obsession with the ocean to a pop culture phenomenon twenty years ago, with input from Cameron, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, and others at Buzzfeed.
What do you do when you feel miserable? Do you withdraw and feel sorry for yourself? Doing something for others might mitigate the misery for a little while, like it does for this guy, or a good deed might go even further. For one thing, it takes your focus off yourself, even just for a short time. And the happiness you've boosted in someone else could easily bounce back on you. Worth a shot! This is the latest comic from Lunarbaboon.
A donor took a piano to a Goodwill store. Is it in tune? Why, no, but that only lends an air of authenticity when a patron sat down and played "Alley Cat" by Danish composer Bent Fabric. The ragtime tune sounds right at home on this instrument. With a one-time tune-up, it would be a fine addition to a home with children learning to play. Meanwhile, the folks shopping at Goodwill got a free concert while they selected items to buy. -via reddit
What on earth inspired this guy to bring in an Eldritch Insanity Drake as a new member of the household? We all build our families in our own ways, but you have to take the feelings of existing members into consideration. But you also have to teach the young ones how to treat strangers. This is only the beginning; you can see the rest of the comic by noobtheloser at imgur. The story is really going somewhere, I promise, but you have to read it to the end. The punchline is worth the confusion on the way there. -via Geeks Are Sexy
Porgs are the token "cute" aliens (read: toys) in the new Star Wars film The Last Jedi. They played their role perfectly by looking cute, but what do they taste like? As the most prevalent wildlife we see on the planet Ahch-To, we can assume that they've been eaten quite a bit. The question has been discussed by the cast and crew of the movie, fans all over, and even biologists and chefs. Gizmodo reached out to experts to get their opinions. Kevin McGowan of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology speculated on how porgs would taste based on an extrapolation of the biology of birds on Earth.
It’s hard to say what a porg’s lifestyle is from the brief clips I’ve seen. But, if they’re supposed to be seabirds and can fly, then they’re probably all slow-twitch muscle, just like real seabirds. Swimming and flying takes constant effort. Living in the ocean means probably eating smaller ocean-going life, which on Earth usually means fish at some level. Many birds that eat mostly fish tend to taste fishy (or so I’ve heard).
A couple of cooking experts weighed in, one of whom questioned whether porgs are really birds. And chef Steve “Mo” Fye got to the heart of the matter.
First of all, I don’t believe in Porgs. They’re not real like Tribbles are.
Who would hang a stocking by the chimney with care if they didn't want treats stuffed in it? That's not teh story here. Craig Groeschel posted this picture of his wife Amy showing off the new Christmas stocking that just arrived. The caption says,
Guess what @amygroeschel typed in the box that said, “Would you like a name to personalize your stocking?”
We come across the command that "all fields must be filled" so often that we forget that there are some fields that truly do not need to be filled in. This one's funny enough to become a family heirloom. -via reddit
