(YouTube link)

How do you make a Nerf gun fight into something special? Special effects, that's how! -Thanks, Chris M!

Collin wanted a badass costume for DragonCon and built this epic recreation of the Executioner from the movie Resident Evil: Afterlife. He worked on it for the better part of a year! The extra couple feet in height come from drywall stilts. The axe is homemade from metal. See more pictures, including some of the creative process at Unreality magazine. Then imagine him showing up at your home for Halloween! Link

(YouTube link)

Experimental musician Diego Stocco passes in front of a dry-cleaning establishment almost every day. The sounds that came from the machinery there fascinated him, so he got permission from the owner to turn those sounds into a song. There are more details in his making-of post. http://www.behance.net/gallery/Music-from-a-Dry-Cleaner/2161629

Previously: Music from Sand and Bassoforte.

All day, every September 19th, we celebrate Talk Like a Pirate Day by basically saying "Arrrr!" But that sort of language is from another time and place (mainly Hollywood) -modern day pirates don't talk like that. Real pirates in the modern world are liable to speak Somali, or other languages heard around the Horn of Africa.

The Horn of Africa is without question the hotbed of piracy today. A quick glance at the International Maritime Bureau’s Piracy Reporting Centre Live Piracy Map shows a dense thicket of attacks, and even though some analysis indicates that the areas of attacks may be decreasing in size, and that the frequency of successful attacks is decreasing, the density of attack is increasing and the risk  of attacks remains high. And the focus of this activity remains Somalia. What languages are these pirates saying? Based on the IMB’s reported risk zones, and country data for Somalia from the CIA’s World Factbook, they are probably speaking in Somali, Arabic (probably a Yemeni dialect), Italian (a vestige of Somalia’s colonial heritage) or English.

Wired's Danger Room blog has a handy chart with common phrases you may need if you encounter these pirates, in English, Somali, and Yemeni. Link -via Boing Boing

(YouTube link)

In yet another episode of the ongoing battle between cats and printers, a kitten is evicted from its comfy perch by a tactless printer. -via The Daily What

Once again, it's time for our collaboration with the always amusing What Is It? Blog! Do you know what the object in this picture is?

Place your guess in the comment section below. One guess per comment, please, though you can enter as many as you'd like. Post no URLs or weblinks, as doing so will forfeit your entry. Two winners: the first correct guess and the funniest (albeit ultimately wrong) guess will each win a T-shirt from the NeatoShop.

Please write your T-shirt selection alongside your guess. If you don't include a selection, you forfeit the prize, okay? May we suggest the Science T-Shirt, Funny T-Shirt and Artist-Designed T-Shirts?

There are several additional pictures at the What Is It? Blog. Good luck!

Update: the mystery object is a corn sheller. There's more information about it at the What Is It? Blog. Berhard was the first in with the correct answer. The funniest answer came from sandyra, who said:

It's an Amish 'electric' razor for taking off the moustaches on the men (and some women, if you know what I mean). Since the Amish don't use 'electricity' they get it to rotate by hooking it up to a giant waterwheel.

*note: The older versions tended to rip off the upper lip. This 'newer' model has a wood safety bar to prevent such mishaps."

Both win t-shirts from the NeatoShop!

(Image credit: Flickr user Diana Kathrina Leomo)

by Ursula Majors

A constellation is a group of stars that form a particular pattern. The celestial sphere is traditionally divided into 88 such constellations. Most are arranged to resemble characters from Ancient Greek mythology, and all have Latin names. Examples include Aries, Cygnus, Pisces and Virgo.

[caption id="attachment_53203" align="alignleft" width="250" caption="Figure 1. The constellation Cassiopeia transformed into Handgun."][/caption]

These archaic descriptors and their associated myths are usually lost on today’s youth. Adolescents have difficulty relating to outdated objects such as harps, herdsmen and flying horses, as they are enamored with modern-day conveniences such as cars, computers and coffee shops. It should come as no surprise that fewer and fewer young people show any interest in astronomy.

[caption id="attachment_53204" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Figure 2. The constellation Gemini transformed into Cell Phone."][/caption]

I have devised a comprehensive restructuring of constellation naming conventions as a means of attracting more students. Along with radical design changes, it also forsakes Latin names in favor of modern English.

For example, consider Cassiopeia, which depicts the mythological queen sitting in a chair. I believe that this constellation would be much more palatable to today’s youth if it were reoriented and renamed Handgun, as illustrated in Figure 1.

[caption id="attachment_53205" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Figure 3. The constellation Taurus transformed into Electric Guitar."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_53206" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Figure 4. The constellation Leo transformed into Motorcycle."][/caption]

Likewise, Gemini, which portrays twin brothers Castor and Pollux, would be better served if it were transformed into Cell Phone, as shown in Figure 2.

Two additional examples are Taurus refurbished as Electric Guitar (Figure 3) and Leo modernized to become Motorcycle (Figure 4). These are but a few of the possibilities. If my constellation reformation is embraced by the scientific community, I will supply others.

_____________________

The article above is republished with permission from the January-February 2008 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. You can download or purchase back issues of the magazine, or subscribe to receive future issues. Or get a subscription for someone as a gift!

Visit their website for more research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK.

A casual look at a complex problem
compiled by Ernest Ersatz, Improbable Research staff

(Image credit: Flickr user Ari Moore)

The Lazy Bureaucrat Scheduling Problem is of recent vintage. Here are some of the earliest reports.

A Lazy Bureaucrat Problem
“The Lazy Bureaucrat Scheduling Problem,” Esther M. Arkin, Michael A. Bender, Joseph S.B. Mitchell, and Steven S. Skiena, Algorithms and Data Structures, vol. 1663, 1999, pp. 773–85. The authors, at State Universityof New York, Stony Brook, report:

We introduce a new class of scheduling problems in which the optimization is performed by the worker (single “machine”) who performs the tasks. The worker’s objective may be to minimize the amount of work he does (he is “lazy”). He is subject to a constraint that he must be busy when there is work that he can do; we make this notion precise, particularly when preemption is allowed. The resulting class of “perverse” scheduling problems, which we term “Lazy Bureaucrat Problems,” gives rise to a rich set of new questions
that explore the distinction between maximization and minimization in computing optimal schedules.

Another Lazy Bureaucrat Problem
“New Results for Lazy Bureaucrat Scheduling Problem,” Arash Farzan and Mohammad Ghodsi, 7th CSI Computer Conference (CSICC 2002), Iran Telecommunication Research Center, March 3–5, 2002, pp. 66–71. The authors, at Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, Iran, report:

In this paper we studies several versions of the lazy bureaucrat scheduling problems. In this new class of scheduling problems there is a lazy worker whose main objective is to be as inefficient as possible, in contrast to traditional scheduling problems in which the main objective is to be as efficient as possible.

And Another Lazy Bureaucrat Problem
“Common-Deadline Lazy Bureaucrat Scheduling Problems,” Behdad Esfahbod, Mohammad Ghodsi,    and Ali Sharifi, 7th Workshop on Algorithms and Data Structures (WADS 2003), vol. 2748, 2003, pp. 59-66.  The authors, at Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, Iran, report:

In this paper, we studied a new class of the Lazy Bureaucrat Scheduling Problems (LBSP), called common-deadline LBSP, where the deadlines of all jobs are the same.

(Image credit: Flickr user Roger H. Goun)

One More Lazy Bureaucrat Problem
“On Lazy Bureaucrat Scheduling with Common Deadlines,” L. Gai and G. Zhang, Journal of Combinatorial Optimization, vol. 15, no. 2, February 2008, pp. 191–9.  (Thanks to Matthias Ehrgott for bringing this to our attention.) The authors, at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China, say that:

“In this problem, the bureaucrat wants to do things as little (or easy) as possible… Of course there is… the busy requirement, that the bureaucrat must keep working as long as there are some executable jobs, otherwise… the optimal strategy for the bureaucrat would be just stay idle without doing anything.”

[Ed. note: pictures of Zora and Owen were used for illustrative purposes because cats are not as offended by the term "lazy" as human bureaucrats would be.]

_____________________

This article is republished with permission from the September-October 2009 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. You can download or purchase back issues of the magazine, or subscribe to receive future issues. Or get a subscription for someone as a gift!

Visit their website for more research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK.

There have been three movies (so far) in Disney/Pixar's Toy Story franchise. Can you distinguish quotes from each film? This Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss might be confusing if you've seen all three movies in a short period of time. I had a slight edge in that I haven't seen Toy Story 3, so I scored 75% (better than expected). Link

The bird known as the greater honeyguide got its name because it will lead people to beehives. You may have also heard that honeyguides will lead honey badgers to beehives. There was even a wildlife documentary that illustrated this behavior. The problem is... its not true!

The myth of the badger-guiding honeyguide began in 1785 with a man called Anders Sparrman, who had heard the story from local people. He never saw the actual behaviour first-hand. Neither had anyone else. In 1990, three ornithologists – Dean, Siegfried and Macdonald – wrote a paper debunking the honeyguide/honey badger story. In it, they wrote, “Naturalists and biologists have been active in Africa for more than 200 years. During this period, to the best of our knowledge, no biologist or naturalist, amateur or professional, has observed a Greater Honeyguide leading a Honey Badger to a beehive.”

Since 1990, Spottiswoode says that there still isn’t any evidence for badger-guiding, “despite some extensive studies of honey badgers in perfect honeyguide habitat in Mozambique.”

And the documentary? It was staged! Science writer Ed Yong was just as surprised to find this out as you are. Link

Cartoonist Kevin Coffee illustrated a Tweet from @Boymeeetsworld to produce this Twaggie for the modern world. Link

Fifteen years ago, Paul Lukas came into possession of school records for 395 students who attended the Manhattan Trade School for Girls in the 1920s. The records are more than just grades; they are snapshot of what like was like for young women in New York at the time, mostly daughters of poor immigrants.

Students did not receive their diplomas until they demonstrated a proficiency in their trade. The school helped them achieve this by establishing a job placement office that arranged employment for the girls after they finished their training. The girls were instructed to report back to the schoolabout their work experiences, and the employers were encouraged to report back on performance of the girls, and all of this information was recorded in the card packets. So these aren't just scholastic records—they're also employment records. Much like the teachers' assessments, comments from the students' employers run the gamut from encouraging ("Thank you for sending me such a smart little girl—she is all I would desire and does your school credit in every way") to heartbreaking ("Terrific odor of perspiration, have to lay off").

Lukas is in the process of finding the families of the women to share the information. In the first article of a series at Slate, he gives an overview of the records and the story of how he got them. Future installments will tell the stories of twelve of the women in the records. Link

United Nuclear is always a fun place to shop for high voltage equipment, chemicals, and radioactive supplies (you know, mad scientist stuff). Here's something to impress your guests -colored flames! The kit contains boric acid, calcium nitrate, lithium carbonate, copper chloride, and copper acetate, along with complete instructions for creating a rainbow in your fireplace or campfire. http://unitednuclear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=29_54&products_id=856 -via @LettersofNote

What do Maurice Sendak, Dr. Seuss, and Shel Silverstein have in common? Yes, they all wrote bestselling children's stories and they all have new books coming out soon, but the secret to their success is that their writing was once considered inappropriate for children!

Once upon a more staid time, the purpose of children’s books was to model good behavior. They were meant to edify and to encourage young readers to be what parents wanted them to be, and the children in their pages were well behaved, properly attired and devoid of tears. Children’s literature was not supposed to shine a light on the way children actually were, or delight in the slovenly, self-interested and disobedient side of their natures.

Seuss, Sendak and Silverstein ignored these rules. They brought a shock of subversion to the genre — defying the notion that children’s books shouldn’t be scary, silly or sophisticated. Rather than reprimand the wayward listener, their books encouraged bad (or perhaps just human) behavior. Not surprisingly, Silverstein and Sendak shared the same longtime editor, Ursula Nordstrom of Harper & Row, a woman who once declared it her mission to publish “good books for bad children.”

Read more about it at the New York Times. Link -via @Marilyn_Res

(YouTube link)

The train station in Osaka, Japan has a computerized fountain that spells out the time, announcements, and pictures in falling water. If you spend too much time waiting for the clock to display, you'll realize what time it really is ...time to find a restroom! See more pictures and video at the uploader's site. Link -via Everlasting Blort