This guy has an impulse to write an email to his 7th grade teacher, but what would he say? Would the teacher even remember him after all those years, considering how many kids he's taught? This video from Cracked contains NSFW language.
The moral of the story is, don't pass up an opportunity to make someone's day. Most teachers put their heart and soul into their profession in order to make a difference in a child's life. How would they ever know if they were successful if you don't tell them? -via Digg
Where do comic artists get their ideas? Some adapt real life incidents from their family or work life, some do intense research, some just go with the flow, and some have a system. In his latest comic, Chris Hallbeck of Maximumble steps out of his regular cartoon world to answer the most common question he hears. It must be a common question, because he gave almost the same answer when he gave Neatorama an interview a couple of years ago, except for the part about the worm. He wasn't yet ready to give credit to his collaborator back then.
Two cheetahs, a mother and daughter, gave birth to large litters in the same week at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in Front Royal, Virginia, an adjunct of the National Zoo. One was a litter of five; the other cheetah gave birth to seven cubs, but the smallest two did not survive. The remaining ten cubs are doing just fine, and will spend the next 18 months in Virginia. After that, they'll go to other zoos or breeding programs.
The sound on this video begins about halfway through, but even then you'll have to listen closely to hear the tiny cubs hiss. Learn more about the National Zoo's cheetah breeding program at Smithsonian.
Caitlin PenzeyMoog grew up in her grandparent's store, The Spice House. Her mother worked there, and so did she, eventually. Of course, this meant her childhood memories are particularly aromatic.
This is where my grandparents would call my brother, sister, and me back when the rush of customers slowed, to read Gurdjieff out loud or mix cinnamon sugar while reciting the poem “Desiderata.” We’d do this while making a blend, which we’d stir in an enormous metal bowl exactly 111 times. My grandfather would make us pork chops on a George Foreman grill, seasoned with some unknowable pepper mix. The air was perpetually thick with the commingling of hundreds of spices, herbs, sugars, and salts, blending into a distinctive smell that lingered on your clothing and in your hair all day. It formed thick dust motes that floated in the sunlight coming through windows.
You’d think that spending a lot of time here would numb your olfactory senses, but the opposite was true. My nose learned to cut through the background smell to identify specific spices within the store—a good thing when replacing the apothecary jars with their correct lids, which is easily done when you can discern oregano from parsley and garlic from ginger.
From her lifetime of experience, PenzeyMoog offers us some simple advice about using spices, which is almost as interesting as her description of growing up in The Spice Shop.
Tommy Edison (previously) routinely makes videos to answer questions about what it's like to be blind. Some things he doesn't know, because he hasn't experienced them, like vision. Christine Ha (previously), on the other hand, went blind later in life. Here they discuss their experiences.
There's a big difference between the two. Once you know what sight is like, you can miss it terribly. But you can remember it, too. Also notice the difference in how they use their eyes. Edison keeps his shut just about all the time, while Ha is very aware of what she looks like on camera and what it means to follow someone's eye gaze, even when you know it's not working. -via Laughing Squid
Two young people stumble upon a mysterious volume of coded writing. Is it a book of spells? Ancient wisdom? Should they even read it? It turns out that even demons have secrets they don't want revealed.
Young people, especially aspiring writers, always have something hidden that they never want anyone to read, yet they keep them because it's part of their literary history. I was lucky enough to have my house burn down when I was 17, so my most embarrassing secrets are safe. -via Tastefully Offensive
In the belief that nature documentaries shouldn't be restricted to the wilderness, David Johns has produced a sketch of the Australian bin chicken. This parody features narration by Rupert Degas, a pretty good David Attenborough soundalike.
Aside from parodying regular Planet Earth episodes, this is some pretty good coverage of the way that animals adapt to what humans have done to their environment. Read more about bin chickens here. -via Boing Boing
This is an extreme case, but it's nice to know that people can take pride in a job well done, no matter what that job is. On the other hand, it's sad how little others appreciate those efforts. Let's not belittle the dedication of the many folks who make our systems work as well as they do. But if Amazon starts intergalactic deliveries, you don't want to answer the ad for drivers. This is the latest comic from Death Bulge.
If there were any doubt that telescopes with the ability to see beyond our solar system would change everything, this is it. Planet GJ 1132b is 39 light years from earth, yet we are learning a lot about it. It is slightly larger than earth, and revolves around a small, relatively dim sun. Dr. John Southworth of Keele University explains the latest discovery about the planet.
Using a telescope at the European Southern Observatory in Chile, the researchers were able to study the planet by watching how it blocked some of the light of its host star as it passed in front of it.
"It makes the star look a little bit fainter - and it's actually a very good way of finding transiting planets - it's how this one was found," said Dr Southworth.
But different molecules in a planet's atmosphere - if it has one - absorb light in different ways, allowing scientists to look for their chemical signatures when the world transits its star.
The observations of planet GJ 1132b suggest that it has a thick atmosphere containing either steam and/or methane.
"One possibility is that it is a 'water world' with an atmosphere of hot steam," said Dr Southworth.
While the atmosphere is this particular planet is unlikely to sustain life, the bigger takeaway is how its atmosphere was detected, and the possibility that many other planets of similar size and stars could also have an atmosphere. Read more about the discovery at BBC News. -via reddit
This TED-Ed puzzle reminds me of The Andromeda Strain, except the answer isn't fed to us like in the book or movie. You're in a contaminated virus lab, and you have to save the world by figuring out the puzzle. No pressure at all.
We see beautiful and creative chess sets on the internet, and then we go home to use a plastic set with abstract pieces that are as simple as they can be. But through the history of the game, there have been many chess sets made purely as works of art, with actual playability a low priority. The history of chess is even more complicated than the rules of the game. Of course, that game has changed over time, and is even played differently from place to place.
As the game moved across the globe, different patterns and rules became popular in different regions. “The Chinese version of chess is called xiangqi and there is sittuyin in Burma,” Crumiller says. “In Thailand and in Cambodia, there’s makruk. You can use those sets to play a game of chess, but those games are played with different rules.”
While some of these varieties included detailed figural chess pieces, so-called “Muslim sets” relied on more abstracted, geometric pieces whose size and shape indicate their roles. Crumiller explains that despite the name, scholars have found evidence that the style predates the existence of Islam in Persia. Regardless, the religion and popular game became linked, and chess often spread to new areas hand-in-hand with Islam.
In Persia, a piece known as the king’s advisor or “vizier” was also incorporated, which would later morph into the more powerful queen. “In 1283 there was a book published in Spain by Alfonso El Sabio, or Alfonso the Wise, called The Book of Games,” Crumiller explains. “The book still used the old chess rules, where bishops can only move every other square along the diagonal, or two squares, period. The queens were the weakest pieces—they had to stay near the king and could only move one square at a time.
“At the end of the 15th century, the rules changed dramatically. That’s when the queen became ‘La Rabiosa,’ or the Mad Queen, and the rules for bishops changed, too. At that point, it became more recognizable as our modern game, and several books were published that included both the old rules and the new rules, so clearly it was in a transition state.”
If you do a Google search for "uromycitisis," the results make it clear that this "disease" only happens on TV, specifically on the sitcom Seinfeld. Soon, those search results will include a scientific paper written by John McCool. McCool is not a medical doctor. He owns a freelance scientific editing company, and is very concerned about "predatory scientific journals," the kind that will publish your paper if you pay them. Since published papers are the real currency of one's reputation as a scientist, these journals are flourishing. So McCool wrote a paper about uromycitisis for The Urology & Nephrology Open Access Journal.
This was inspired by the classic 1991 episode, “The Parking Garage,” in which Jerry Seinfeld can’t find his car in a mall lot, has to urinate, does so against a garage wall, is caught by a security guard, and tries to get out of a citation by claiming that he suffers from a condition called uromycitisis. Seinfeld argued that, due to his illness, he could die if he doesn’t relieve himself whenever he needs to.
I went all out. I wrote my report as “Dr. Martin van Nostrand,” the physician-alter ego of another Seinfeld character, and listed more show-inspired names as bogus coauthors. I made an email account for “Dr. van Nostrand” and created a fake institution where the authors worked: the Arthur Vandelay Urological Research Institute. In the acknowledgements section of my report, I thanked phony physicians including Tor Eckman, the bizarre holistic healer from “The Heart Attack,” giving him a “Doctor of Holistic Medicine (HMD)” degree. Basically, I wrote the manuscript in a style as close to a real case report as I could, except that it was 100 percent fake.
The folks at the Bad Lip Reading channel give us the video we didn't realize we were waiting for: a nonsense interpretation of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The new dialogue goes from almost-makes-sense to make-no-sense-at-all at whiplash speeds. And this one comes with a celebrity guest voice: renowned voiceover artist Mark Hamill as Han Solo!
We also get Chewbacca the pickup artist, Finn the whiner, and Admiral Ackbar's language barrier. -via Uproxx
Update: the Bad Lip Reading channel was hit with a bogus takedown order, but that's been sorted out now. We are reposting this because I'd hate for anyone to miss out.
If you're the star of a one-man specialty act, particularly in the traveling show days before TV, you have to be a little ruthless to remain number one. So it was with magicians who competed for audiences, or who just didn't like each other for one reason or another. Some of these rivalries went down in history, although it's a somewhat obscure history. For example, Ching Ling Foo was enraged that an imposter was trying to steal his thunder.
Renowned Chinese magician Ching Ling Foo had success traveling the world with his act, but was surprised to find that his arrival in England in 1904 had been preceded by an imposter: "Chung Ling Soo" was the stage name of William Robinson, an American who had audaciously pretended to be Asian. While both were performing in London, Foo challenged Soo to a magic duel where Soo would have to successfully perform at least 10 of 20 chosen tricks. Soo (a.k.a. Robinson) performed the following day for newspapermen, but Foo declined to appear, insisting Soo first provide proof of his Chinese heritage. Most of Foo’s protests went unheard: Soo had been there first, and his persona was so convincing that many believed it was Foo who was the inauthentic one.
The American upstart’s career was derailed for good in 1918, when he died while unsuccessfully performing the “bullet catch” trick on stage.
On April 6, 1917, the United States declared war on the German Empire. For Americans, that was the beginning of World War I, even though the war had been going on for years in Europe. That set up a dichotomy in how Americans treat the history of that war, reflected in how it's taught in history classes. Michigan State University professor Kyle Greenwalt looks at the differences.
In an academic sense, history is not simply the past, but the tools we use to study it – it is the process of historical inquiry. Over the course of the discipline’s development, the study of history became deeply entangled with the study of nations. It became “partitioned”: American history, French history, Chinese history.
This way of dividing the past reinforces ideas of who a people are and what they stand for. In the U.S., our national historical narrative has often been taught to schoolchildren as one where more and more Americans gain more and more rights and opportunities. The goal of teaching American history has long been the creation of citizens who are loyal to this narrative and are willing to take action to support it.
Meanwhile, the map of Europe has changed many times in the last hundred years. The story of World War I as a world history subject has a different focus.
World history curricula do not deny the importance of nations, but neither do they assume that nation-states are the primary actors on the historical stage. Rather, it is the processes themselves – trade, war, cultural diffusion – that often take center stage in the story. The line between “domestic” and “foreign” – “us” and “them” – is blurred in such examples.
