You may think you know it all now, but you also thought that years ago when you were young and dumb. You still can't imagine that you will be wiser in the future. That's pretty common, but terrifying to think about. It's even worse when you think about the possibilities of what can happen in the world around us. We may as well go one thinking optimistically, since the alternative just sucks. This is the latest comic from Owl Turd. Wait until you get a load of 2018!
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Can't we agree that there are some things worth arguing about and other things that aren't worth arguing about? Sure, but pineapple pizza could go into either column, depending on the strength of your opinions. I can live with it, as long as I don't have to eat it myself. Others aren't so tolerant. This is the latest from Chris Hallbeck at Maximumble.
The upcoming Fox TV series The Orville is a parody of Star Trek, developed by and starring Seth MacFarlane. It should premiere sometime in 2017.
You won't hear the words Star Trek or Starfleet in this trailer, but the ships, the aliens, the plot lines, and the aesthetics are all there. Whether the series can keep the comedy level up over time will be the key to The Orville's success. -via Geeks Are Sexy
Tattoos are highly personal -and permanent. Remember the movie that moved you as a young adult? What if you had some of the imagery from that film inked on your body? It's a way of telling the word what inspires you, or did at one time in the past. Enjoy forty tattoos inspired by movies in a gallery at TVOM, ranging from cool and clever to "Really? That movie?"
Almost everyone has a fairly unique genome, and occasionally an outlier is identified with a body that produces something unique and particularly valuable to science or medicine. My brother has an unusual "clean" type of blood that can easily be given to infants, so he gets a call from his local hospital every once in a while. Even rarer is a person who can make medicine with his blood, like Ted Slavin.
Born with hemophilia, a genetic disorder that impairs the blood's ability to clot, Slavin received blood transfusions repeatedly throughout his life. This never-ending process unfortunately exposed him to hepatitis B on countless occasions. Though Slavin's blood refused to clot, it demonstrated incredible resiliency to the viral hepatitis invaders. When his doctor tested his blood, he found a wealth of hepatitis B antibodies, Y-shaped proteins uniquely suited to fighting off the infection. The discovery blasted open a goldmine for both Slavin and scientists. They needed antibodies for research; he needed money. Slavin began charging as much as $10 for every milliliter of his blood. Pharmaceutical companies bought it wholesale. Slavin's body was now his business.
Not all unique genomes are a goldmine for the producer, though. You can read Slavin's story, plus that of a woman who willingly gives her blood away for research, and the tangled story of another person who was cut out of the profits from his own tissues, at Real Clear Science.
(Image credit: Y tambe)
Modern materials and building techniques have allowed us to erect tall skyscrapers that serve many people concentrated in cities. Architects come up with beautiful additions to a skyline in order to compete to have their designs built. But these innovative designs sometimes come with unforeseen consequences. Who knew architecture could be so dangerous?
In February of 1988, Chicago’s Sears Tower began shedding sheets of glass as wind speeds reached up to 70 miles per hour. For hours, some falling windows shattered other windows on their way down while others soared as far as a block away before crashing to the ground. This was not the first nor last time the building lost windows to wind.
Tall buildings are typically designed with wind loads in mind, making this structure’s woes rare and exceptional (even in the Windy City). But not all designs manage to factor the impact of winds on surrounding spaces, which can prove dangerous (even deadly) to pedestrians.
Falling objects aren't the only dangers of walking near tall buildings. Read about cases where pedestrians were blown down by diverted winds or even burned by buildings at 99% Invisible. -via Digg
My high school guidance counselor was always glad to see me because the bulk of his job was trying to keep delinquents out of jail. Helping me apply for college was a welcome diversion. Now schools employ people who spend all school year helping students with their college plans. Mental Floss spoke with several of those folks to get an idea of what goes on in their world (one counselor was responsible for 700 high school seniors every year). What they divulged can help parents and students negotiate that difficult period. Here's a sample.
4. HELICOPTER PARENTS ARE DIFFICULT …
According to independent educational consultant Deborah Shames, who counsels students and families in northern New Jersey, helicopter parents are a very real thing. “I have had many, many helicopter parents who I suspect (or know) are doing the work for their kids, whether it’s the research, filling out the applications, creating the resume, or even writing the essays,” Shames says. “I have called out parents on this, explaining that this is only hurting their kid. Sometimes that’s effective; other times, not so much.”
5. … BUT APATHETIC PARENTS ARE A BIGGER PROBLEM.
While helicopter parents can be problematic, [Mae] Greenwald explains that apathetic parents are actually more difficult to deal with than overinvolved ones. “Students are frequently embarrassed by their overeager parents, but they aren’t really a college counselor's problem,” she says. “Less involved parents are far more bewildering.” When parents are unwilling to participate in the college choice process or are unenthusiastic about their child’s future, students suffer and become less engaged in the process. “It strips the joy from exploring the future and students feel that in every ugly way,” Greenwald says. Parental involvement is also necessary when students fill out college financial aid forms, as they require information such as parents’ income and taxes. Failure to get this information from parents can become a big obstacle to students who might miss out on scholarship or financial aid funds.
Read plenty more of what college counselors see at Mental Floss.
(Image credit: Flickr user Pasco County Schools)
One of the big challenges of raising children is getting them to read. Reading is very hard when you're learning to do it, and the only thing that will make it easy is practice. Why would a kid want to practice something that's difficult and boring? Sure, we adults know they will love it when they master the skill, but they don't know that. The secret is to find some reading material your particular child can't put down. One father told me he'd let his son read porn if it would get him to read at all. I had to find something different for each of three girls, but they all eventually turned to reading for pleasure, which is the key to mastering the skill. For Moishe (and for many kids), comic books are the key. That lesson comes in the latest comic from Lunarbaboon.
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!
by Nan Swift, Improbable Research staff
Non-Italian hand gestures fascinate scholars, who labor to classify the gestures and grasp their meanings. Here is a very partial compendium of studies of non-Italian hand gestures, or, in two cases, of patents relating thereto.
Russian Hand Gestures
A Dictionary of Russian Gesture, B. Monahan, 1983, Hermitage, Ann Arbor, MI.
Hispano-American Hand Gestures
Diccionario de Gestos: España e Hispanoamérica (2 vols.), Giovanni Meo-Zilio and Silvia Mejía, Instituto Caro y Cuervo, Bogotá, 1980--83.
Catalan Hand Gestures
"Assaig de Dialectologia Gestual. Aproximació Pragmàtica al Repertori Bàsic D'emblemes del Català de Barcelona," Lluis Payrató, Ph.D. thesis, Universitat de Barcelona, 1989.
It is the season that we get to hear "Pomp and Circumstance" played at every graduation ceremony. The song was not written for a school commencement; in fact, the lyrics are quite warlike. So how did it became the tradition song for such ceremonies?
Vox look sat the history of Edward Elgar's march, and how it became associated with commencement. Bonus: we get to hear Dame Clara Butt sing the song. -Thanks, Phil Edwards!
Designer Olly Gibbs went to the art museum Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. There, he used FaceApp to put smiles on the more somber portraits. The results will put a smile on your face, too!
Went to a museum armed with Face App to brighten up a lot of the sombre looks on the paintings and sculptures. The results... pic.twitter.com/N0zYGAFgKW
— Olly Gibbs (@ollyog) May 11, 2017
I hear your calls for more #MuseumFaceApp art! Again all from the brilliant @rijksmuseum... pic.twitter.com/xXHNTu86eW
— Olly Gibbs (@ollyog) May 12, 2017
@GettyMuseum @LACMA @MuseeLouvre @metmuseum @smithsonian @britishmuseum Your wish is my command... #MuseumFaceApp pic.twitter.com/mBbqhADk5q
— Olly Gibbs (@ollyog) May 13, 2017
-via Laughing Squid
Despite the sheer size of Wikipedia, not everything submitted stays on the site. If an entry is judged too obscure, redundant, or has too little information, it gets deleted. And lots of entries get deleted because they are just too silly. Wikipedia has a saved list of the articles that were deleted, but had silly names worth remembering. Where else would you find articles titled Ohcrapistan, Nahhhhhh, Hippopotomontrosesquipedalian, Dafloopledestine, Yorgy fwambombolish, Fartsniffing Anklebiting Anteater Spawn, and Superbatflyingxray homosapiens? You won't find the entire entry, but there might be something available somewhere elsewhere the internet. Check out the extensive list here. -via Metafilter
William Garratt (previously at Neatorama) compiled quite a few of his short animated vignettes from his Instagram page into one video. If you don't care for one sequence, give it a few seconds and you'll probably love the next one.
Some are cultural references; some have a sort-of punch line, while others are just humorously inexplicable. -via b3ta
When do you become an adult? Kids think they are as smart as adults, and middle-aged people say they still don't "feel" adult. Maturity is a gradual process, a spectrum in which the amount of wisdom is hard to pin down. The question of when someone is mature "enough" for certain responsibilities has legal ramifications, so we set an age, whether it is applicable to everyone or not.
How does a culture set the age of consent? It depends on consent for what, then it depends on the culture, and on the real goal of setting a limit. In America, we legally allow 16-year-olds drive but not drink. In some European countries, one can drink at a much younger age than one can get a driver's license. It makes sense when you realize that Europeans can get around without driving, while in America, cross-country mass transit means buying an airline ticket. Simon Whistler of Today I Found Out tackles the question from several angles.
Thuận Hưng, Vietnam, is known as the "rice paper village," where thin, paper-like wrapping for rolls of sweet or savory fillings are made. Jürgen Horn and Mike Powell traveled ninety minutes by bus and then walked four kilometers to see the real craftspeople who produce rice paper to get a better feel of the work than was available from the factory tour for tourists in Saigon. Thanks to their dedication, they were treated like celebrities …or aliens.
If you’ve ever wanted to feel like a celebrity without the hassle of “getting famous”, then climb on a local Vietnamese bus and visit a far-flung village like Thuận Hưng. Within minutes of boarding, we had shaken the hand of every passenger, and taken selfies with half of them. And by displaying passable Vietnamese while paying the fare, we nearly sent the bus into a state of hysteria.
The rarity of their visit also meant that they were invited to eat plenty of paper from people showing off the quality of their goods. Read about their trip to Thuận Hưng and see plenty of pictures at For 91 Days.
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