As the kids at Sunflower Farm Creamery (previously at Neatorama) are weaned, they are separated from their mothers for longer periods of time so they will learn to eat grain and hay and to drink water. But in the morning they are off to visit their mamas for some breakfast! Then it's playtime.
When they are ready, they'll be taken to new homes, except for Mildred, who will be staying permanently. You can see Mildred and read her story here. -via Tastefully Offensive
It was twenty years ago today that the movie Con Air hit theaters. It was a run-of-the-mill summer action film, but it is memorable for turning Nicolas Cage into the action hero he has been ever since. Sure, he did The Rock earlier, but he was more emotion than action in that one. Con Air was different, and led to every other action film Cage starred in afterward.
What really makes Con Air the pivot point in Cage’s move to action stardom, however, comes from the fact that he might be the only one underplaying his role. Sure, he’s sporting an absurdly flowing mane of hair, delivering his lines in a wobbly Southern drawl that borders on mumbling, and delivering lines like “Put the bunny back in the box” with straight-faced bravado, but the bug-eyed mania that would become his stock-in-trade is nowhere to be found. Instead, he’s doing what he’s actually done far more of in the intervening decades—namely, make weird choices, hit his marks, and call it a day, commanding attention without once erupting in a look-at-me demonstration of unnecessary bombast. It proved that Cage didn’t always have to dial his intensity up to 11 when he appeared in such films, for good and ill. It was just Nic Cage, action star—no surprise or winking air quotes around the film or his performance.
Read a breakdown of Con Air and what it did to Cage's career at the A.V. Club.
If you've thought about getting into anime, but don't know where to start (there's an awful lot of it to consider), help is here in the form of an easy-to-use flow chart. Imgur user lukeatlook is a real anime fan. He's made a recommendation chart three times before, and used feedback to improve the flowchart each time. In case you find it hard to read here, you can enlarge it to an enormous size at imgur. Now we need to find John Farrier to get his opinion on this. -via Geeks Are Sexy
What would you do? A snake decided to catch a ride with a driver in Buford, Georgia. As he approaches the driver side window, we can assume that he's trying to ask the guy to pull over. Which he did.
What would you do?? Buford man gets an unusual hitchhiker a snake on his hood! It even slithers up to his driver side window. #Nightbeat pic.twitter.com/90SFtiwfUm
— Carl Willis (@CarlWillisWSB) June 6, 2017
This was Tweeted by Carl Willis of Atlanta's WSB-TV, but does not appear the station's website. As of yet. -Thanks, John Farrier!
You might already know that the 2009 movie Avatar is the biggest money-making movie in history, with a global box office of over $2 billion. However, if you ignore the value of a dollar, the movie making the most money will always be relatively recent. Once you adjust for inflation, there are some classics that still haven't been beat. Check out a list of the top 15 movies ever, based on inflation-adjusted U.S.-only earnings. I've seen them all, and would recommend that you see them all, too, eventually.
In 2007, New York City window washer Alcides Moreno fell 472 feet when his scaffolding collapsed. Amazingly, he survived, although he suffered broken bones, internal injuries, and was in a coma for weeks. His brother, who was also on the scaffold, did not.
By 100 feet or more, falls are almost always fatal, apart from freak accidents. People have fallen miles from planes and lived, due to tumbling down snowy hillsides, the way extreme skier Devin Stratton did when he accidentally skied off a 150-foot Utah mountain cliff in January 2017 and escaped unharmed, his fall arrested by branches and cushioned by deep snow. He was wearing a helmet, which cracked even as its camera recorded his plunge.
"It's not the fall that gets you," the skydiving joke goes. "It's the sudden stop at the bottom." Deceleration is the key to surviving falls and reducing injuries — it isn't the length of fall that's relevant, but what happens as you reach the ground. This was dramatically demonstrated in the summer of 2016 by professional skydiver and safety expert Luke Aikens. He jumped from a plane without a parachute at an altitude of 25,000 feet, or 4.7 miles, hitting a 100-by-100-foot net positioned in the southern California desert and emerging without a scratch.
An article at Digg follows Moreno's fall and recovery, and those of other fall survivors. It also looks into the physics and statistics of falling, with some advice on how to best avoid and minimize the damage of falls.
(Image credit: Mark Ahsmann)
The school has a special "Drive In Movie" day for the last day of school, where kids bring in a homemade cardboard car to sit in while they all watch a movie. Redditor PoorKidstoys built a snowspeeder, used on the ice planet Hoth in the movie The Empire Strikes Back, for his 6-year-old daughter this year. She was tickled pink!
See a gallery of the vehicle's construction at imgur. You can also see it at school, next to the X-wing fighter he made a few years ago for his son. The school still uses it. I can imagine the kids fighting over who gets to sit inthe X-wing, and next year in the snowspeeder. -via Laughing Squid
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!
(Image credit: Flickr user Susan Sermoneta)
compiled by Emil Filterbag, Improbable Research staff
Research about nose blowing in the Roaring Twenties in Britain
A tense drama played out over a brief period in 1925, in the pages of one of Britain’s most august medical journals. We look here at the three most shocking skirmishes.
Traditional British Techniques for Blowing the Nose (1)
“Hygiene of the Nose and Naso-Pharynx,” unsigned, The Lancet, vol. 205, no. 5294, February 14, 1925, pp. 342-345.
[A]s soon as the child is old enough, he should be taught how to blow the nose. The proper method of performing this simple act is to close one nostril with the finger and to blow steadily and strongly down the other, and then to repeat the process through the opposite nostril. Both nostrils should never be closed at once during the blowing; this is obviously ineffectual in clearing the nose, and may blow discharge through the Eustachian tubes. Sniffing is an unpleasant and unsocial habit; but if a child cannot blow the nose properly, it is better even that he should sniff and swallow stagnant secretion than leave it in the nostrils....
Traditional British Techniques for Blowing the Nose (2)
“How To Blow The Nose,” A.D. Sharp, The Lancet, vol. 205, no. 5303, April 18, 1925, p. 844.
In a leading article in your issue of Feb. 14th you give a timely reminder of the hygiene of the nose, and you give careful instructions in, what you consider to be, the proper method of blowing the nose. Although you are in agreement with most text-books, nevertheless, in my opinion, it is not the proper method nor the safest method....
For many years I have urged that there is but one safe and efficient way of blowing the nose, and it is as follows. Take an inspiration through the mouth, close both lips, and blow down both nostrils. Repeat until the nose is clear. This should be the method after all douching. When a handkerchief is used it should be held loosely round the nose-no pinching of the nose.
Flat screen TVs have opened up a whole new world for cats and dogs and other pets. The older cathode-ray-tube TVs never held their interest. But now we are seeing our pets experience movies as if they were real life. For example, see how a bulldog named Kahleesi is really getting into watching a horror film.
Just as she would if it were real, Khaleesi keeps an eye on everything. When something is out of the ordinary or threatening, she barks a warning to the humans on the TV. That's a good dog. Brave, too! -via Tastefully Offensive
The Japanese company Samurai Age now offers samurai armor for cats and small dogs as well as samurai armor for humans. Armor for larger dogs must be custom made, as sizes vary so much. The armor they design is fashioned after real armor worn by the various warlords of feudal Japan. See more pictures at Bored Panda. -via Geeks Are Sexy
We sometimes lament the loss of real-life sociability now that we have cell phones and internet. But looking at it from the other side, there have always been people who avoid face-to-face interaction at all costs. The newer technology gives them a happy medium, a way to be sociable within their comfort zone. Susan might not get any birthday hugs or visits at all, but she'll receive a call or a text or an e-card from more people than she would have otherwise. This is the latest from Cujko Comics. Follow them on Facebook. -via reddit
Professional wrestler and actor André the Giant stood nearly seven feet tall and weighed over 500 pounds. You've probably heard stories about him, although many of the best known tales are showbiz embellishments to further his wrestling career. Yet the true facts of André Roussimoff's life were amazing enough without any embellishment at all. For example, he left home at an early age and kept growing until his own family didn't recognize him.
When Andre turned 14, he left home to seek employment and opportunities outside the boundaries of his rural farm community in France. At 19, he visited his parents for the first time, having already broken into the professional wrestling business. According to a 1981 Sports Illustrated profile, André had grown so dramatically in the interim, stretching to nearly 7 feet tall, that his parents did not recognize the stranger who knocked on their door. As André explained his career choice, they realized they had even seen him wrestle on television under his alias, Jean Ferré, without ever knowing they had been watching their own son.
Read more fun facts about André the Giant at Mental Floss.
(Image credit: Brandonseigler)
Jacob Miller fought for the Union in the Civil War. He was at the Battle of Chickamagua in 1863, where he was shot in the forehead. Right between the eyes. His compatriots understandably assumed he was dead.
"When I came to my senses some time after I found I was in the rear of the confederate line. So not to become a prisoner I made up my mind to make an effort to get around their line and back on my own side. I got up with the help of my gun as a staff, then went back some distance, then started parallel with the line of battle. I suppose I was so covered with blood that those that I met, did not notice that I was a Yank, (at least our Major, my former captain did not recognize me when I met him after passing to our own side)."
Yeah, Miller received the Medal of Honor, but that was for valor shown months before he was shot. It was amazing that Miller survived the battle, and the war, and lived for another 54 years. But what about his wound? Pieces of lead kept falling out of it for the next 31 years! Read the peculiar story of Jacob Miller at History Buff.
The medical series House aired from 2004 to 2012, and in 2008 was the most-watched TV show in the world. The series broke new ground by featuring a main character who wasn't all that likable, and people liked it, so much that many series using the same scheme came afterward: Breaking Bad, Sons of Anarchy, 24, House of Cards, etc. And House varied from the usual TV drama in other ways.
Hugh Laurie (Gregory House): It’s strange, but there was very, very little sex in the show—which is why it was sexy. Once people actually start having sex, it rapidly ceases to become interesting. On television, sex is unsexy. I can just see that being a quotation, but you know what I mean. The camera is in a situation the camera would never be. I don’t want to be in the room with two people when they’re having sex. I hardly want to be in the room when I’m having sex. The sex on House was rare and unspoken and often unseen, and I thought that was better. But that makes me sound like a repressed Englishman.
***
Anne Dudek (Amber Volakis aka Cutthroat Bitch): We’re in what people are calling “the Golden Age of TV.” There’s so much good TV, and so much good writing for TV right now. But during the era of House, there wasn’t a lot of entertaining television that was shooting so high in terms of its quality, its writing, and dealing with complicated issues. They really trusted that the audience was smart and looking for smart content. It wasn’t escapist television so much as thought-provoking. Of course, that’s Hugh Laurie 100 percent. He anchored the show and its ability to address deep things people wanted to think about and be moved by. Who else can play that character and have you love him and hate him so passionately?
The cast and crew of House got together to reminisce and tell us all the story of how House came about, and why it was such a hit. Read it all at GQ. -via Digg
You know that movies telegraph their intent by mood music. Editing and the proper music can turn any movie into something completely different. Folks on the internet have made a cottage industry of changing an existing movie's genre with a little editing and a very different soundtrack. You can see five comedies, even family films, turned into horror movies with recuts at TVOM. Admit it, Willie Wonke and the Chocolate Factory would be a great horror film. But you haven't seen anything until you've seen the horror of Dumb and Dumber.
