As part of the celebration of Canada's 150th anniversary, the Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN) Botanical Garden planted their Canada 150 Celebration Tulip Garden. The bulbs were planted last fall to bloom this spring, and included white tulips, red tulips, and the special Canada 150 tulip, developed to resemble the flag of Canada. As the tulips were about to bloom, a moose came through and ate them.

The moose munched on the entire red and white tulip display - Canada's 150th maple leaf design and all! Our garden staff survey the damage and will begin to clear the leftovers. While the moose completely ruined the display, how bloomin' Canadian is that, than to have moose 'garden experience'?!

The display won't be what they had planned, but considering how much he ate, the moose must have loved his dinner. -via Atlas Obscura

(Image credit: MUN Botanical Garden)

The latest comic from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal explains why the old trope of tying a damsel to the railroad tracks will no longer work the way it used to. Since this is an image, the button going to information about artist Zach Weinersmith's book won't work, but you can find it here. You'll have to go to the comic page to see the bonus hover text punch line.  

Biologists Young-Hui Chang and Lena Ting had an epiphany while studying a dead flamingo. There was nothing about their anatomy that gave them the extraordinary ability to balance on one leg for hours at a time. He picked up the dead bird by its leg and, bizarrely, the leg stood upright just as if it were alive. 

Standing on one leg “is a challenging yoga posture, and a test of coordination that people use,” says Ting. To maintain our balance, we constantly use our muscles to make tiny adjustments to our posture. Flamingos have no such problem. When they raise a leg, their body weight shifts in a way that naturally stabilizes the joints of their standing limb, so they can remain upright without any muscular activity. They can sleep like that. And as Chang and Ting found, they can even keep balanced when dead. You can pose a flamingo cadaver on one leg, and leave it there.

To understand how a bird can balance on one leg, you have to know that bird legs are not how we humans normally think of them. The upright part that supports the flamingo are analogous to our shins and feet. The thigh and knee are hidden under the feathers, and provide a platform of sorts for the flamingo to sit on. The explanation is at The Atlantic, where Ed Yong helpfully draws on a photograph to make it clear.

If you've been itching to see the next Star Wars movie, you'll have to wait until December. But that doesn't mean there's no Star Wars now. Vanity Fair talked to the cast and crew about The Last Jedi, as well as writer and director Rian Johnson. There's a lot of information here, ranging from the overall moviemaking system to specifics about The Last Jedi.   

Part of what makes Lucasfilm’s new system work is that [producer Kathleen] Kennedy has set up a formidable support structure for her filmmakers. Upon her arrival, she put together a story department at Lucasfilm’s San Francisco headquarters, overseen by Kiri Hart, a development executive and former screenwriter she has long worked with. The story group, which numbers 11 people, maintains the narrative continuity and integrity of all the Star Wars properties that exist across various platforms: animation, video games, novels, comic books, and, most important, movies. “The whole team reads each draft of the screenplay as it evolves,” Hart explained to me, “and we try, as much as we can, to smooth out anything that isn’t connecting.”

What the story group does not do, Hart said, is impose plot-point mandates on the filmmakers. Johnson told me he was surprised at how much leeway he was given to cook up the action of Episode VIII from scratch. “The pre-set was Episode VII, and that was kind of it,” he said. If anything, Johnson wanted more give-and-take with the Lucasfilm team, so he moved up to San Francisco for about six weeks during his writing process, taking an office two doors down from Hart’s and meeting with the full group twice a week.

Among Johnson’s inventions for The Last Jedi are three significant new figures: a “shady character” of unclear allegiances, played by Benicio Del Toro, who goes unnamed in the film but is called DJ by the filmmakers (“You’ll see—there’s a reason why we call him DJ,” Johnson said); a prominent officer in the Resistance named Vice Admiral Holdo, played by Laura Dern; and a maintenance worker for the Resistance named Rose Tico, who is played by a young actress named Kelly Marie Tran (and who is the sister of Paige, the character I witnessed in the scene with Poe Dameron). Tran’s is the largest new part, and her plotline involves a mission behind enemy lines with Boyega’s Finn, the stormtrooper turned Resistance warrior.

We also learn about Carrie Fisher's expanded role in the new movie, and the how her death affected the rest of the cast. The article is accompanied by gorgeous photographs by Annie Leibowitz. See it all at Vanity Fair. -via Digg

(Image credit: Annie Leibowitz)

(Image credit: Katie Carey)

You’d never confuse them for the Rockefellers. But you also wouldn’t have curling without ’em.

1. THE ROSENWACHS

Power: Hydrating Wall Street, Broadway, and the media 

(Image credit: Flickr user Colin Poellot)

Look up in New York City and you’ll no doubt see a wooden water tower topping a roof. Resembling rustic grain silos, the towers are an iconic part of the cityscape and quietly keep millions of people alive. (Normal pipes can’t pump water more than six stories, and these barrels help hydrate higher floors.) The whole industry is run by just three families, but the Rosenwachs reign supreme. They made their first barrel in 1894 and have built more than 10,000 since. The technology hasn’t changed much: Each tank lasts 30 to 35 years, at which point it will be replaced … likely by a Rosenwach.

2. THE KAYS

Power: Keeping the World Stoned

(Image credit: Felix)

An uninhabited 240-acre slab Keats once called an “ocean-pyramid,” Ailsa Craig in Scotland is the only known source of common green and blue hone granite, the crucial ingredients for Olympic curling stones. The granites’ molecular structure sits in a Goldilocks zone: Water can’t soak in, but a hint of elasticity stops the stones from cracking when they bump on the rink. Thanks to a 200-year-old agreement, the Kay family has exclusive rights to quarry these magical rocks, making them the world’s largest—and nearly only—supplier of curling stones.

3. THE FRELINGHUYSENS

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All over the world, you'll find buildings that are one-of-a-kind, often designed and built by people who aren't architects. John Green points out many of those buildings and the stories behind them, fascinating even when doled out in tidbits of trivia. Unique architecture is the topic on this week's episode of the Mental Floss List Show.   

Remember the ten kittens who were supposed to pose for a portrait? They belong to Natalya and Evgeny Mishukovi, who are busy enriching their lives with things to play with. Here, they shower the kittens with a bunch of paper scraps to create a indoor pile of wonderfulness.

(YouTube link)

You can see more of the kittens' adventures at their YouTube channel. -via Laughing Squid

Superheroes give children something to dream about and aspire to: magical superpowers are fun, but the comic book heroes' dedication to justice can stay with them forever.

Artist Jason Ratliff illustrates those dreams in images of children with their favorite superhero shadowing them in his art series Super Shadows and Super Shadows 2. Some of them may be surprising to you. See a selection of those images at TVOM. 

You know where facehuggers come from, don't you? From xenomorph eggs, of course! We can skip the middleman and just ingest the eggs first without all that face-hugging unpleasantness, when the eggs are made of cake.

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Rosanna Pansino of Nerdy Nummies shows us how to recreate the eggs from the Alien movie series in delicious mint chocolate cake. This would be perfect for that Alien marathon party you've planned to prepare your crew for the new movie Alien: Covenant. Just don't blame us when they want to re-emerge from your chest. -via Geeks Are Sexy 

It sounds like the beginning of a joke, but there's no punch line, just a group of new friends. TigerLily is a drag performer in Beijing. Four monks who had traveled all the way from Tibet heard music and laughter and wandered into his venue and had a wonderful time. That may sound weird, but one commenter said that Buddhist monks "always seem to approach life as it were the funniest joke ever told." TigerLily posted an album of more pictures from the same night. A good time was had by all. -via reddit

Evan Kowalski of Wyandotte, Michigan, saw the 1993 Robin Williams movie Mrs. Doubtfire with his family and loved it. He thought it was a the funniest thing ever. Months later, when his mother asked what theme he wanted for his 4th birthday party, Evan immediately said Mrs. Doubtfire. You can buy party supplies from a lot of movies, but Mrs. Doubtfire is not one of them, so Evan's mother Laura Kowalski went to work to make it happen.

“I was thrown for such a loop when Evan said he wanted a ‘Mrs. Doubtfire’ party, so I quickly posted on a local Facebook page, Downriver and Friends looking for a baker. That’s how I found Angie Claxon (Cakes by Sweetypants), who made the amazing cake.”

Evan loved every minute of the party, but his favorite part was definitely the cake, which featured several elements from the movie ― including the infamous face cream scene. “It met ALL of his expectations,” the mom said. Evan’s 7-year-old sister, Allison, and 12-year-old brother, Ethan were also big fans.

Family members made decorations and treat bags. Mrs. Doubtfire touches were added to the food and games. And Evan was delighted. The internet was delighted with the pictures, which you can see at HuffPo. -via The Daily Dot

(Image credit: Cakes By Sweetypants)

Screen Junkies' 200th Honest Trailer is for the relatively recent movie Logan. First, let me warn you, this is full of spoilers. I didn't know what Logan was about at all, except that it was a Wolverine movie, but now I feel like I've seen the whole thing. Second (and this is a spoiler for the video), they couldn't find anything bad to say about it. So if you haven't already seen the movie, you might want to sip this Honest Trailer until you do.

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However, if you have seen Logan, you'll enjoy the Honest Trailer with a special surprise guest critic.

The agony and the angst. The loss and the longing. As someone who is now seeing the dentist way too often to make up for years of neglect, I can attest to the truthfulness of this tale related in the latest comic from Alex Culang and Reynato Castro at Buttersafe. But no matter how weird it makes me feel, I am thankful for nitrous oxide and novocaine. The lasting ache I could do without.  

Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website or at Facebook.

 The most famous show business performers in history are no different than the unknowns, the obscures and the lesser knowns. Every performer has one thing in common- they all made their debut somewhere or other, whether auspicious or less so. Like they say, everyone has to start some place. Let's take a look at the show biz debuts and earliest performances of twenty stars.

1. Groucho Marx   

Groucho (pictured at right) had an early gig singing in a protestant church choir. This worked out well until they found out he was Jewish and fired him.

2. Harpo Marx

Groucho's older brother Harpo (on the left) made his debut at Coney Island at the age of 19. He was hijacked from his safe job as a piano player in a nickelodeon movie theater and tossed on stage to accompany his brothers, Groucho and Gummo (and another  singer named Lou Levy), as one of the Four Nightingales. Harpo was so scared he wet his pants. Harpo called it "the most wretched debut in the history off show business."

3. Sylvester Stallone

Sly got his first acting gig playing Smokey the Bear in a school play.

4. Elvis Presley

Elvis Presley's first-ever performance as a singer was in a singing contest at the Mississippi-Alabama Fair & Dairy Show. He was ten years old at the time. Dressed as a cowboy and wearing glasses, Elvis stood on a chair to reach the microphone. He sang Red Foley's "Old Shep" and won fifth prize in the contest. His prize was $5.00 plus a free ticket to all the rides at the fair.

5. Orson Welles

Orson's earliest public performance happened before he was ten years old. He appeared dressed as Peter Rabbit in the store window of Marshall Fields department store in Chicago. He was paid $25 a day.

Fifty years ago today, the US and the USSR came close to World War III. That was both due to and saved by modern technology. See, a solar storm began on May 18 with solar flares, coronal mass ejections (CMEs), and sunspots. These phenomena can cause real problems with radio signals on earth, and radio signals were extremely important in the Cold War.

On May 23, 1967, the sun fired off a flare so powerful that it was visible to the naked eye, and began emitting radio waves at a level that had never been seen before, study team members said.

That same day, all three of the Air Force's Ballistic Missile Early Warning System radar sites in the far Northern Hemisphere — which were located in Alaska, Greenland and the United Kingdom — appeared to be jammed.

Air Force officials initially assumed that the Soviet Union was responsible. Such radar jamming is considered an act of war, so commanders quickly began preparing nuclear-weapon-equipped aircraft for launch. (These newly scrambled aircraft would have been "additional forces," according to the study authors; the U.S. kept nuke-bearing "alert" planes aloft pretty much continuously throughout the 1960s.)

The geomagnetic storm that followed the flare disrupted radio signals for about a week afterward. But, as you can probably guess, World War III was not instigated. That was due to our government's early embrace of weather technology and space research, which you can read about at Sky and Telescope. -via Metafilter