A textbook uses the analogy of a donut to explain how social media sites differ. It's in the way that people use them. And Google+ is the punchline. Who says textbook writers don't have a sense of humor? The price they expect us to pay for them would be funny, too, if it weren't so tragic. Be sure to like and follow! -via reddit
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As civilization continues to encroach on the natural world, we set aside places for nature to remain intact. We have forest reserves, wildlife preserves, and soon, the U.S. may have a dark sky reserve in central Idaho. It would be the first such designation in the U.S., where artificial light would be severely limited order to allow people to see the stars in the sky as they were meant to be seen.
Researchers say 80 percent of North Americans live in areas where light pollution blots out the night sky. Central Idaho contains one of the few places in the contiguous United States large enough and dark enough to attain reserve status, Barentine said. Only 11 such reserves exist in the world.
Leaders in the cities of Ketchum and Sun Valley, the tiny mountain town of Stanley, other local and federal officials, and a conservation group have been working for several years to apply this fall to designate 1,400 square miles (3,600 square kilometers) as a reserve. A final decision by the association would come about 10 weeks after the application is submitted.
The proposed reserve is on land already managed by the U.S. Forest Service. An application is being sent to the International Dark-Sky Association. Read more about the proposed dark sky reserve at the Idaho Statesman. -via Metafilter
(Image credit: Flickr user Damian Ball)
Hey Maymo! Would you rather play with a hundred duck-sized ducks, or one horse-sized duck?
Maymo the lemon beagle wants to play with all of them, of course. The video description sets this up as a "prank" on the dog, but he's just plain delighted. -via The Daily Dot
See more of Mayo's shenanigans.
Oh, you'd be surprised what kids remember. They may not recall those times together the same way you do, or the same details you recall, but they remember in their own way. My now-adult children talk about the adventures of their childhoods and the things we did together, but the details that stuck out in their minds were surprises to me. We all organize our memories in our own way, and adults tend to prioritize things that are novel. To kids, everything is novel, so what stays with them may seem random to us. But his main theme is correct -being there for each other is what matters most. This is the latest comic from Lunarbaboon.
In 1857, the U.S. mail ship SS Central America left California for the East Coast. Aboard were 477 passengers, many of them newly rich from the California Gold Rush. They were returning home with their gold, over $2 million worth (hundreds of millions in today's money). But on the last leg of the trip, between Cuba and New York, the ship encountered a hurricane.
The Central America sprang leaks, the water putting the fire out in the boiler, and the paddlewheel and pumps stopped working. Alarmed, the passengers and crew formed a bucket brigade to bail out the sinking ship, while Captain Herndon ordered the flag flown upside down – a universal distress signal.
By Saturday, September 12, the ship was doomed. That afternoon another ship was spotted, the Marine out of Boston, and Captain Herndon ordered the women and children into the Central America’s lifeboats to make the hazardous transfer to the Marine. Around 150 women and children made it before the weather forced the Marine to leave. The male passengers and crew could not make the transfer. Most of them were still on board when the Central America sank around 8 o’clock that night, settling on the sea floor about 8,000 feet below the surface, 160 miles offshore.
Only 49 men survived, and the loss of the gold to the bottom of the Atlantic caused several banks to collapse. Read the whole story of the sinking of the SS Central America and its aftermath. -via Strange Company
This guy in Croatia took three years to record this music video, and it's still only two minutes long. But he gained a full head of hair and a viral video. He most likely ended up hating the song, though.
The song is "Halo, Džozefina" (Hello Josephine) by Đorđe Marjanović, who was a star in Serbia (Yugoslavia) in the 1950s and '60s. -via reddit
The Television Academy will presents the 2017 Emmy Awards ceremony Sunday night. Did you know the statuette was modeled after a real person? Yes, but that person wasn't named Emmy; the name has its own story. You can learn a lot of trivia about the awards before they air tomorrow night.
9. CABLE SHOWS WEREN’T ELIGIBLE FOR EMMY AWARDS UNTIL 1988.
Up until the late 1980s, only network shows were eligible for Emmy consideration. Cable series competed for prizes at their own awards show, the CableACE Awards. But the Emmys modified their rules in 1988 to allow cable programming in. The last CableACE Awards ceremony took place in 1997.
10. LORNE MICHAELS IS THE MOST EMMY-NOMINATED PERSON OF ALL TIME.
The most Emmy-nominated individual of all time is Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels, with a whopping total of 78 nominations. He'll compete this year for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series for SNL.But when it comes to actual wins, HBO Documentary Films president Sheila Nevins has got Michaels beat; she has collected a total of 30 Emmy Awards over the years (compared to Michaels's 14 wins). She could up that total this year; she's nominated for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking for Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds.
Read the rest of the trivia list about the Emmy Awards at Mental Floss.
(Image credit: Flickr user Niall Kennedy)
A hedgehog is trying to cross a road in Tambov, Russia. A gaggle of geese know that the hedgehog is small and pavement-colored and it's likely that drivers won't see him. So they do the right thing and give him an escort! Notice the one goose that holds her wings out to be more visible. It looks like she is holding traffic back!
They make right proper crossing guards, don't you think? Yeah, sure, it's possible the geese aren't paying a bit of attention to the hedgehog, but that's not nearly as cute. The entire group made it to the other side. -via Tastefully Offensive
It is becoming obvious that 2017 will be a really strange year for trendy Halloween costumes. The company Yandy provides many of the super-specific meme costumes that you see each year, always in a "sexy" version. This year, one of them is "fake news." How do you make a concept into a costume? Just print it on a sexy little dress. The mini-dress sports a newspaper print, with the word "fake" splashed across the front in red. It's a one-joke costume that your grandchildren will be scratching their heads over when they see it for the first time when your possession are distributed. Let's hope this is the lamest of the year's trendy sexy costumes, but I would bet there are more to come. -via Mashable
The doc is telling it like is. Every once in a while I try to think back to the time I wasn't at all careful running down the stairs and never thought about slipping in the shower. Back when my hip never hurt and I could see for miles and miles. Some of the changes are so gradual that they surprise you when you realize them, while others hit you like a truck. You just gotta keep telling yourself that getting older is better than the alternative. And try not to be so grumpy. This comic is from Chris Hallbeck at Maximumble.
In this edition of People Are Awesome, we see many women (and a few girls, and a even a baby or two) show amazing strength, skill, agility, grace, and overall athleticism. In other words, they are awesome.
Yeah, I'm impressed …and maybe a little bit envious, although I realize that these women have put in many hours, or even years, of work and practice to achieve these things. -via Tastefully Offensive
(Image credit: Cosplay Parents)
Steven and Millie Tani are a retired couple in Southern California. Their daughter is a cosplayer who encouraged the couple to try it out. And they did, for a Halloween party at Disneyland three years ago. On that occasion, they dressed as Carl and Ellie from the Pixar movie Up.
They caught the bug, and have been designing, making, and wearing costumes of superhero and Disney characters for special events ever since. Online, they are known as the Cosplay Parents.
The Tanis told Mashable,
"We are both basically very shy and introverted individuals, so when people started to ask to take pictures of us in our cosplays, we were first taken aback at the attention we were getting," they said.
"We [also] weren't sure how people would react to us as an older Asian couple ... but many have welcomed us and ... we are feeling more comfortable and have gained more new friends."
See the Cosplay Parents do Toy Story, Doctor Who, Frozen, Mary Poppins, Captain America, and more at Instagram and at Facebook. - via Laughing Squid
Shannon Selin is the author of Napoleon in America. In researching the book, she came across an English newspaper article by William Cobbett, who had lived in America a couple of times for several years. He was responding to questions from a man who was thinking about emigrating to the United States. First Cobbett declines to give advice on whether the man should go to America at all. But he makes his feelings clear.
As to the first, I give you no advice at all. I never have advised any one to go to America, and I never shall. I would wish every one to stay and take his chance with his country; for richer, for poorer; for better, for worse. …
However, the rest of his advice makes the U.S. and especially New York appear to be heaven on earth, especially in how affordable everything is.
The hog meat is far superior to any thing of the kind known in England. There is more than one reason for this; but the chief reason is that the pigs are fatted with that delightful thing, the Indian Corn, which is eaten in all its stages of growth by man, woman and child. The beef in America is as full fine as in England…. Butter is cheaper than in England. Cheese full as good, upon an average, as the English cheese, is at about two thirds of the English average price. Spices of all sorts, at a quarter part of the English price. Tea, at less than half the English price. Sugar, the same. Coffee at a third of the English price. The chocolate in England is at about six shillings a pound, at New York it is about fourteen pence, English money.
Cobbett explains how housing, furniture, clothing, and other goods are better quality at lower prices than in England. Read the rest of his advice here. You have to wonder why he spent the rest of his life in England. -via Strange Company
Wednesday was #AskACurator day on Twitter. Many museums had people ready to answers questions from the public. But this one started a war!
Who would win in a staff battle between @sciencemuseum and @NHM_London, what exhibits/items would help you be victorious? #askacurator
— Bednarz (@bednarz) September 13, 2017
The Natural History Museum in London fired the first shot.
We have dinosaurs. No contest.
— NaturalHistoryMuseum (@NHM_London) September 13, 2017
The Science Museum, also in London, fired back.
@NHM_London is full of old fossils, but we have robots, a Spitfire and ancient poisons. Boom! #AskACurator https://t.co/lsdOS3HqyO
— Science Museum (@sciencemuseum) September 13, 2017
And then it was on. They both started posting pictures of their exhibits in a game of one-upmanship which only the readers won. The whole thing got quite silly at times, but we saw some amazing exhibits, and both museums ended up looking pretty good. And they have a good sense of humor. See the entire battle here. -via Metafilter
In the early 1800s, several nations set out to explore what we now call the Pacific Northwest, and to take possession of those lands, despite the fact that the area was already populated by natives. In 1846, a line was drawn between the claims of Britain and the claims of the United States along the 49th parallel, except for a small part that followed "the middle of the channel which separates the continent from Vancouver Island and thence southerly through the middle of the said channel.” The could be interpreted in more than one way, and between those two interpretations lay the island of San Juan. The British sent sheep to the island. The Americans sent a tax collector to bill the shepherd, Charles Griffin. The British refused to pay. The Americans sold the sheep for taxes owed.
For the next few years, tensions on the island stayed low, as Griffin oversaw the growth of the farm to close to 4,500 sheep, along with pigs and other animals. But in 1859 American settlers started arriving, intent on setting up their own farms. One brought 20 cattle. These newcomers did not take much stock in Griffin’s presence there. One new farm was located smack in the middle of one of Griffin’s best sheep runs.
Despite their best efforts, the humans on the island had managed to avoid direct conflict, but the animals were less discreet. In summer 1859, one of the pigs from Griffin’s farm discovered a plot of tempting tubers on the farm of American Lyman Cutlar and availed himself of the delights. Cutlar, having fended off this same pig before, could not stand for this theft. He shot the pig.
An argument broke out over the value of the pig, and before you know it, the American Army and the British Navy were facing off at San Juan Island. Read how the conflict played out at Atlas Obscura.
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