Mark Rober (previously at Neatorama) builds a contraption in his backyard to play with sand. It's more than a sandbox- it's a hot tub full of sand, which can be made liquid with the injection of air. But you better keep that air flowing, because without it, you're trapped!
Watch Rober try all kinds of weird tricks to show how sand and air acts like water. Oh yeah, if you're going to dive into liquid sand headfirst, you might want to pinch your nose shut. It's still sand. He eventually gets around to explaining the science of how it works, but most of the video is the fun stuff. -via Digg
Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website or at Facebook.
In looking over John Lennon's finest compositions as a Beatle, choosing his greatest song is a rather tough assignment. There's "Help," his not-so-hidden actual cry for help during his "fat Elvis" period. There's "In My Life," his autobiographical tribute to an unnamed friend or lover. "If I Fell" (John's "first proper ballad"), "Across the Universe" (which John himself considered perhaps the finest poem he ever wrote), and "A Hard Day's Night" (John's title song to the Beatles first film) are all worthy too of consideration..
In September of 1966, the Beatles were at liberty. The Fab Four had performed their final official concert in Candlestick Park in San Francisco on August 29th. What to do now?
Paul decided to compose the title song and the soundtrack of the Hayley Mills movie The Family Way. George went off to India to study sitar under the instruction of his new mentor, Ravi Shankar. And Ringo chose simply staying at home and spending more time with his wife and new son, Zak.
Dick Lester, who had directed the Beatles' first two movies (A Hard Day's Night and Help!) asked John if he'd like to take a role in his new film How I Won the War and John accepted. Filmed in Almeria, Spain, How I Won the War turned out to be a rather forgettable film. But John used his free time off-camera in Almeria to write a new song. This very unusual song, originally called "It's Not Too Bad," was later be considered, by many, to be John's finest accomplishment in his acclaimed and prolific career as a Beatle composer.
If you thought there was something just a little creepy about meat generated in a lab without the use of a slaughterhouse, you probably tried to convince yourself that it is infinitely better than killing animals. Leave it to Zach Weinersmith of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal to give that creepy feeling a concrete explanation. What was previously just a domestic squabble is now a horror story with implications of cannibalism. It's enough to turn someone into a vegetarian. Almost. Those leftover turkey sandwiches aren't going to eat themselves ...unless they have a bioreactor.
Hey, do you think that Screen Junkies can find anything bad to say about The Room? Tommy Wiseau's 2003 magnus opus has already achieved cult classic status for being thoroughly terrible. But now that we have an Honest Trailer, we can "watch" the movie without watching the movie.
Of course, this is designed to get us up to speed for The Disaster Artist. However, James Franco assures us that it is not necessary to see The Room before we see The Disaster Artist.
Aluminum Christmas trees were all the rage in the late 1950s and early '60s. They were easy to set up and store, would last for years, and gave a modern, space-age feel to your Christmas decor. And they were lit by psychedelic rotating projection lights. Cool! And then, suddenly, the fad was over in 1965.
Aluminum Christmas trees were at peak sales from 1958 until the airing of A Charlie Brown Christmas. As you might recall, during the Christmas special Charlie Brown heads out to buy a Christmas tree. Lucy ordered him to buy an aluminum Christmas tree.
When Charlie Brown and Linus arrived at the tree lot, there were plenty of fancy aluminum trees for sale, but the only tree that catches his eye is a little sapling. It was also the only real tree on the lot. When he arrives back to the set of the play the girls started mocking him for choosing the ugly little tree. In a fit of frustration, he loudly asks if “anybody knows what Christmas is about?” Linus said that he did and then started quoting the Annunciation to the Shepherds from the Bible.
Cats want ribbon, boxes, shiny toys, crinkly wrapping paper, and turkey for Christmas! But those things aren't always good for them. In this episode of Simon's Cat Logic, Simon Tofield and veterinarian Nicky Treverrow give us a guide to cats and Christmas. The first part is about Christmas hazards to watch out for. Cats can get tangled in lights, swallow ribbons, choke on bones, and eat poisonous greenery.
The second part is Tofield explaining the inspiration for his Christmas cartoons. Then there are some classic Simon's Cat videos. So don't let the length of this video deter you from watching- the new content is only five minutes long.
Margaret Atwood (author of The Handmaid's Tale) wrote a short story about Martians who tried to travel to New York to see a Broadway musical, but got lost and landed in Canada. There were no people around, so they talked to a mushroom. Now, a mushroom understands the concept of "place" very differently from the way humans do, or Martians for that matter, but he tries his best to explain what Canada is.
‘But what is a country?’ says the third Martian.
‘Ah,’ says the mushroom. ‘You’ve heard of people?’
‘Yeah, sure, of course,’ says the first Martian. ‘Two legs, only two arms, strange-looking heads, only two eyes. You need them for putting on musicals.’
‘Okay, a country is an idea people get into their brains,’ says the mushroom. ‘Without people, there aren’t any countries. Mushrooms don’t bother with countries.’
‘That’s a start,’ says the second Martian. ‘What sort of idea, in their brains?’
‘You draw a line, you put up walls and gates and such, you say some people can’t come in and other people can’t go out, you say everything inside this country is a certain kind of thing and that’s how it is done inside the line you’ve drawn, you make laws, you have customs and a language, or two languages, or fifty-four languages, it depends. You have a flag, which is a piece of cloth with some sort of pattern on it, and it waves around in the wind. Unlike mushrooms: we don’t wave anything. Maybe you have national outfits. You have a special song that you’re supposed to sing, it’s a ceremonial thing on special occasions. You’re supposed to look really solemn and have deep emotions while doing it.’
Mikayla Holmgren made history in Minnesota and became a role model to young girls nationwide Saturday night. The 22-year-old became the first women with Down syndrome ever to compete in a Miss USA state pageant. Holmgren was awarded the Spirit of Miss USA Award and the Director's Award during the Miss Minnesota USA pageant.
Dressed in a blue gown, a shocked and elated Holmgren accepted her awards Sunday as the audience gave her a standing ovation.
“You make people smile every time you talk, cheer, smile, and dance,” Denise Wallace Heitkamp, executive state director, said as she presented the Spirit Award. “You exude the spirit of Miss USA by always being true to yourself and putting others first. You have selflessness, humility, and the ability to overcome obstacles with a smile on your face and excitement in your heart.”
After reading about Holmgren's participation in the pageant, the Pioneer Press reported that several women brought their daughters, who also have Down syndrome, to watch her participate in the event.
“I was overwhelmed,” Lana Beaton, who brought her 2-year-old daughter Clara to see the pageant, told the Press. “I was full of so much hope and joy and excitement for her and our future.”
We don't like to post too many trailers for the same movie, and there have been a boatload of trailers for The Last Jedi, from theatrical previews to 30-second TV ads. Now, with the movie less than three weeks away, Science vs Cinema has compiled the best clips from all the trailers into a somewhat coherent order in this supercut. This is probably the most you're going to see of The Last Jedi before the premiere.
Lois Lane has been Superman's girlfriend for 79 years and still doesn't look a day older. A dedicated career woman, she is capable of sniffing out news stories, but still can't see past Clark Kent's glasses. However, in all that time she's gone through a lot of other changes. And some of the important things you don't know about Lois Lane happened a long time ago.
8. She was inspired by real women.
Lois Lane was a combination of two real life reporters and two movie actresses that displayed the kind of nerve and skill at discovering new stories and pioneering new methods in order to get the inside information needed to do their job.
7. She and Clark Kent met as teens.
Both of them won a contest that was sponsored by the newspaper that would eventually hire them both. They had to compete to win their first byline, which Lois got when she scooped Superboy after he saved her.
All fans of Superman and the woman that makes him interesting will want to check out the rest of the Lois Lane trivia list at TVOM.
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!
An Economic Theory with Horses and Dogs, for CEOs “The Thrill of Victory: Measuring the Incentive to Win,” Bentley Coffey and M.T. Maloney, Journal of Labor Economics, vol. 28, no. 1, January 2010, pp. 87–112, DOI 10.1086/648318. (Thanks to Peter Kinder for bringing this to our attention.) The authors, at Clemson University, explain:
There is ample evidence that incentive pay structures, such as tournaments, result in increased performance. Is this due to selection or increased individual effort, and is any increased individual effort caused by pecuniary incentives or merely thirst for the thrill of victory (TOV)? Prior literature has not separated the different effects. We look at performance in horse and dog racing and find that only horses, controlled by jockeys during the race, exhibit performance corresponding to pecuniary incentives, while both respond to selection and TOV. The results show that pay structures do matter.
Swapped, Unnoticed Cinnamon-Apple and Bitter Grapefruit “Magic at the Marketplace: Choice Blindness for the Taste of Jam and the Smell of Tea,” Lars Hall, Petter Johansson, Betty Tarning, Sverker Sikstrom, and Thére se Deutgen, Cognition, in press, 2010. (Thanks to Ig Nobel Prize winner Dan Simons for bringing this to our attention.) The authors, at Lund University, Sweden and University College London, U.K., explain:
High mortality rates converged with the development of photography in the Victorian era. Along with extended mourning rituals and mementos, photography offered a way to remember a lost loved one long after they were buried. In fact, it may well have been the only photograph taken of the person. However, most post-mortem photography showed the deceased laid out for a funeral. The very idea of taking someone's portrait after they've died led to a rash of post-mortem photographs shared on the internet.
Fake post-mortem photos, whether categorized in error or intentionally mislabeled to sell for a profit, have in recent years become widespread on the Internet. They fill online galleries of Victorian oddities and accumulate on Pinterest and Instagram—even otherwise reputable websites have contributed to the myths. Though unfortunate, it’s also understandable: there’s clearly something compelling about a lurid, not-so-distant culture engaging with death in a way we don’t.
In truth, the propped-up people in Victorian “post-mortems” look alive for a much simpler reason: because they are.
The key here is "propped-up." The story is that professional photographers used elaborate stands and other devices specifically for post-mortem photography, which is not the case at all. The root of the myth is explained with a primer in early portraiture at Atlas Obscura.
A survivalist has been getting ready for the end of civilization for a long time. Finally, the sirens start to blare, and he knows what is coming. Time to head for his reinforced and well-stocked bunker for protection to ride out the storm. That's when his true nature emerges.
This short film is called simply H.B. That may stand for "Home Bunker," or maybe not, since it is in French. Anyway, Gaspar Palacio made it for the Film Riot and Filmstro One Minute Short Film Challenge. It was shot in just a few hours and edited over two days. -via Digg
Tea party? No, we have more important things to discuss, like crafting a perfect Nobel acceptance speech. Or a post-election victory speech. Or practicing your college applicant interview. Or re-enacting history with an eye to the future. Heck, if you're going to stage a make-believe party, you may as well make it an Oscar party or a gallery reception. There are so many things you can do with dolls, or even action figures! This is the latest comic from Lunarbaboon.
A rat caught up in the rat race searches for happiness. But what is happiness? A new TV? A sports car? Cash? Altered states? Advertisers will be glad to tell you where to find happiness- in whatever they are selling. How far would you be willing to go for such happiness?
The animated short Happiness by Steve Cutts (previously at Neatorama) is beautifully illustrated. Maybe watching it will make you happy, or at least make you think. -via Nag on the Lake
