Ah, there's nothing like a step outside in the fresh air and sunshine to improve one's attitude. Too bad this scenario is more likely to take place after dark. This is the latest from Chris Hallbeck at Maximumble.
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We learn in school that we have five senses: eyesight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. What we call the "sixth sense" is quite misnumbered, as there are plenty of other senses that are just too hard to explain to kids in school.
Vox looks at some the other senses we have, such as the sense of knowing where our body parts, temperature perception, and a sense of balance. We only become aware of these other senses when something goes wrong with them. They don't speak of common sense or Spidey sense or a sense of humor. -via Laughing Squid
Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website or at Facebook.
He was the most famous and beloved baseball player in the world. She was the movies' most glamorous sex goddess. But our story begins not with Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe, but with Marilyn and a much less famous ballplayer named Gus Zernial.
In 1952, rising starlet Marilyn Monroe went to the Chicago White Sox spring training camp in Pasadena, California, and posed for a few publicity photos with the upcoming Zernial, who, by a bizarre coincidence was being billed as "the new Joe DiMaggio."
Marilyn posed holding a bat in short shorts, a tight sweater and high heels with the much envied (and no doubt delighted) Zernial. No one thought much of the routine publicity shots until Zernial received a phone call from Joe DiMaggio himself. Joe had seen the publicity shots in the newspaper and, much intrigued, asked Gus how he could get in touch wth Marilyn. Gus recommended trying her press agent, which Joe did.
Captain Kirk fought the alien Gorn in the Star Trek episode "Arena" in 1967. It was a lame fight, often called the lamest fight ever. And the lamest move was Kirk's two-handed punch in the Gorn's back that barely registered. But then the move was used again and again in other episodes. It was still lame, but it became part of the Star Trek landscape.
Maybe the move looked cool in 1967, when the episode first aired. After all, the airwaves at the time were filled with homelier fare like The Andy Griffith Show and Bonanza. The punch continued to make appearances in later Star Trek entries: It's featured in the 1980s TV series The Next Generation, and throughout the 90s in Deep Space Nine. Its resilience has led to a ton of speculation among fans: Is the punch somehow an official element of Star Trek's mythos? It doesn't look threatening at all, so there must be some other reason that explains why it's so prominent.
I can assure you it did not look cool even in 1967. It made my dad laugh. We were just glad to have a space show on TV. The double-handed punch didn't originate with Star Trek, but it survives because of Star Trek. Jordan Pearson talked to a Star Trek stunt coordinator about the history the move and why the show continued to use it so much that we think of it as an iconic part of Star Trek. -via Metafilter
Screen Junkies wades into the water to dare give us an Honest Trailer for Wonder Woman. Let's be honest, they liked the movie as much as the rest of us did. But they could still find some things about it to pick on, like how much the plot has the implausibility of a super hero comic book. Strange, that.
Pretty much the worst thing they can say about Wonder Woman is that it had everything a comic book super hero movie should have, and that it surprised us by having that and being good as well. This video does have some good puns, though. -via Tastefully Offensive
If you've ever worn transparent plastic shoes, you know how weird and sweaty they can be. Imagine if they were all that and liable to break into dangerous shards, and you can see that a glass slipper is not the best choice in footwear. The moral of the story is: don't look too closely into the details of your favorite fairy tale. That's the way I felt when I read the ancient Chinese version of Cinderella and realized it was, at its core, a tale of a foot fetish from the land of bound feet. This is the latest comic from Zach Weinersmith at Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.
Smallpox is considered to be a leading factor in the European conquest of the Americas, as the accidental introduction of the disease wiped out entire populations of existing New World civilizations. While variolation was sometimes used to build up resistance to the disease, it had dangerous side effects. Then Edward Jenner introduced vaccination in 1797. King Charles IV had lost family members to smallpox, and was excited to use Jenner's technique to protect his subjects. To fight smallpox in the Spanish colonies, he sent a ship on a vaccination expedition under the supervision of Francisco Javier Balmis in 1803. But how to make the "raw material" last long enough for a ship to sail around the world? The expedition included medical professionals and 22 orphans between the ages of eight and ten.
During the journey, the vaccine was kept viable by passing it from arm to arm in orphaned children, who were brought along expressly for that purpose and remained under the care of the orphanage's director. This expedition was the first large scale mass vaccination of its kind. The historic legacy of this pioneering event in international health should be revisited in the current era of persistent inequalities in global health.
The Balmis Expedition stopped at the Caribbean Islands, Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico, the Philippines, Macau, and Canton over the next three years. Thousands of people were vaccinated, although some places already had the vaccine and others rejected it. It would be almost 200 more years before smallpox was eradicated, but the philanthropical expedition did much to spread the concept of the vaccine. Read about the Balmis Expedition in an article from the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.
PS: In case you were wondering what happened to the orphans,
Happily they were settled in Mexico, educated at the expense of the Spanish treasury, and eventually adopted by local families.
-via Metafilter
The 2009 movie District 9 was Neill Blomkamp's first feature film, an expansion of his short Alive in Joberg. The movie was about an alien invasion, but was also a political allegory illustrating the effects of xenophobia and racism. And it gave Americans a serious look at how alien invasions might play out in other countries. If you liked the movie, you'll want to read some of the behind-the-scenes facts about it.
7. The aliens are all played by the same actor.
The heavy use of CGI left some people wondering just how many different actors there were, but in truth there was only the one that did all the aliens.
6. The lead actor kind of stumbled into the role.
The man that played Wikus wasn’t exactly trying to be the lead but just happened to be in the right place at the right time. In fact he wasn’t even intent on acting at first.
Well, not all the trivia is about making a blockbuster on a small budget. Read the rest the trivia list about District 9 at TVOM.
Jonathan Stryker is a cosplayer who transforms himself into all kinds of characters, but last month, he staged his "Disney week" on Instagram. With the proper costumes, makeup, and wigs (and sometimes contact lenses), he turned himself into a realistic version of nine different animated Disney characters. Tap the video below to see them.
See more of Stryker's cosplay at Instagram. Some images may be borderline NSFW. -via Geeks Are Sexy
(Image credit: J Stryker)
There's still no official announcement of an Obi-Wan Kenobi movie, although people connected with the project have talked about it. The idea is that it will take place on Tatooine in the time between the prequels and A New Hope. Despite no existing film project (yet), merchandising has begun. Sideshow debuted a new 1/6 scale Obi-Wan figurine at San Diego Comic Con this summer. The Star Wars website has a set of pictures, and an interview with Sideshow's Kevin Ellis. The new figure is based on a previous statue that imagined what Obi-Wan would look like during his exile while he waited for Luke to grow up. That statue was a limited edition, and sold out quickly. Ellis says,
I work with a great team of artists, who have an incredible eye for realism. I’m very proud of the team. With our Mythos line, we have the honor and privilege of telling our own small Star Wars stories in figure form, so we asked the same questions any storyteller would. How long has Obi-Wan been on Tatooine at this point? When was the last time he wore his Clone Wars armor? Where did he get that backpack? What would he carry with him to each new adventure? Answering these questions then informs our design. It’s storytelling on a micro scale, and we’re so proud that Lucasfilm once again gave us the opportunity to delve into their rich universe for inspiration.
For the face, sculptors used images of Alec Guinness in his younger days, and then added details from Ewan McGregor's face. The Mythos Obi-Wan Kenobi figure will go on sale September 21. -via io9
(Image credit: Sideshow)
(Image: @Sarahsumbrella)
There seems to be a problem with wildlife in Britain, with ducks invading, and even scarecrows getting in on the action. But there are brave people fighting back.
(Image: @GullOfBrighton)
But it's not just ducks. Mayhem has been caused by squirrels, snakes, spiders, goats, swans, cats, dogs, and other critters. It's as if Mother Nature is seeking revenge on humans -if you go by the headlines. The violent headlines are the kind that attract people in the UK to buy a newspaper. These are from the Buzzfeed list called 24 Pictures That Prove British Animals Are The Most Dangerous On Earth. Taken one by one, they are kind of silly, but when you put them all together, it shows a ridiculous revolution underway that may remind you of George Orwell's Animal Farm.
As we approach the autumnal equinox on Friday, the Southern Hemisphere is approaching the spring equinox. Redditor sky-entist, an astronomer and photographer, watched the sunrise at the South Pole station in Antartica this morning and caught this image. He gave us the conditions:
Current temps are -62.2 °C, -80.0 °F. Flying time was eight hours from Christchurch to McMurdo and another three to pole, both in a ski-equipped Hercules aircraft.
If you recall, the sun moves in a spiral and skips around in a circle along the horizon as it rises and sets in Antarctica. Once it is up, it stays up for half a year, and when it sets, it's gone for months.
1925 Tri-State Tornado Damage, NOAA Archives
Neatorama is proud to bring you a guest post from history buff and Neatoramanaut WTM, who wishes to remain otherwise anonymous.
In the early afternoon of March 18, 1925, there occurred over the Ozark Mountains of Missouri a mysterious weather phenomenon that had never before been observed and has not been observed since, this being the genesis of a one-of-a-kind (thus far) monster of a storm that was to become known as the Tri-State Tornado.
It was the very end of winter, but temperatures in Missouri were unusually warm for mid-March, a balmy 65 degrees. Although each spring brought the threat of tornadoes to Tornado Alley, severe weather usually wasn’t a concern at this latitude until May, and after all, it was technically still winter. No one in the immediate area knew it, but a confluence of three independent weather systems had recently taken place overhead, an event that was soon to have the severest of ramifications. A low-pressure cyclone from Canada had brought cool dry air, a warm front drawn from the Gulf of Mexico by this low-pressure cyclone had brought warm moist air, and another warm front drawn from the desert southwest had brought warm dry air.
The confluence of the three weather systems intensified the cyclone which had by then centered over the midwest, in which then developed unseasonable squall lines of severe thunderstorms, among them a massive type of mesocyclonic (rotating core) thunderstorm known as a supercell. Supercell thunderstorms are one of nature’s danger signals, like rattles on a rattlesnake, for they invariably produce severe weather such as torrential rain, golfball-to-grapefruit-sized hail, hurricane-force downbursts – and tornadoes. One ignores a supercell thunderstorm at one’s own peril, as thousands of people across three states were about to discover.
Manik n Ratan is an artist in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Some his works are whimsical drawings of little people and little monsters that incorporate real-life household objects. The drawings are able to interact with the objects, which are oversized to them, in humorous ways, some that are different from the intended use of those objects.
See a collection of Manik n Ratan's hybrid drawings at Doodlers Anonymous. -via Nag on the Lake
The Princess Bride was released on September 27, 1987, which means it will soon be 30 years since it hit theaters. In honor of the occasion, Cinefix tells us seven things about the movie. Not just tidbits of trivia; these are more like seven stories behind the making of The Princess Bride. As you wish.
The filming was one problem after another. After watching this, you'll be amazed that the movie was ever completed, but they overcame those obstacles with hard work, perserverence, and creativity. It was a difficult production that ended up looking effortless. Inconceivable! The result was a comedy/romance/fantasy/fairy tale/action film that became a classic. -via Tastefully Offensive
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