Miss Cellania's Blog Posts
Remember the story of the eccentric Frenchman Louis Mantin, who ordered that his opulent mansion and estate be turned into a museum 100 years after his death? National Geographic has a gallery of photographs from inside the mansion, showing the decor and some of Mantin's possessions, like these battling frogs. Link -via Boing Boing
(Image credit: Jérôme Mondière)
This pelican in Namibia caught a snack in mid-air! Of course, you are wondering how a fish can jump that high. It had a boost from the guy who threw it. The result is the National Geographic Photo of the Day. http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photo-of-the-day/pelican-walvis-bay-namibia/ -Thanks, Marilyn Terrell!
(Image credit: Romula Rejon)
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This kitten looks like he's impersonating Maneki Neko {wiki}! Why are Scottish folds in Japan so well behaved? -via The Daily What
The Hammersmith and Fulham Council in England is in the process of selling off a building to make room for the West London free school. Twenty community aid organizations are being evicted. One of them is the Afghan Council UK, which advises refugees from Afghanistan.
Link -via Arbroath
The report suggested that refugees who use the centre could instead contact the Southern Afghan Club, reports The Mirror.
The Afghan Council UK offers support to Afghan refugees - while the Southern Afghan Club is a dog appreciation society which organises shows in the south of England.
Labour's Hammersmith MP Andy Slaughter said: "Not only are the Tories selling for a song centres that are a hub for their communities but they're doing so in an ignorant and cynical way."
Link -via Arbroath
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The chair is excited to see its owner in this Brazilian ad for a furniture design center. As much as I laugh at my dog, I laughed at this even more. -via Laughing Squid
This beetle is named Onymacris unguicularis, or the ‘tok-tokkie’ beetle. Why does he look as if he's trying to stand on his head?
He’s developed a rather nifty way of getting a drink. As a sea fog rolls in of a morning the beetle presents himself to it. This is where things get clever, his carapace is made up of a series of peaks and troughs. The peaks are very attractive to water and the fog settles on them, the troughs however are waxy and hydrophobic and the water rolls off the trough and begins to form droplets. The water naturally runs down the inverted beetles body and into his mouth, smashing!
The beetle derived its English name from his drinking habits. Read more at Ever So Strange. Link -Thanks, Danny!
While many folks are dealing with unemployment, those who still have jobs are putting up with more and more cutbacks. Little by little, our personal space at work is shrinking.
However, big offices are not the status symbol they used to be. Now it is a sign of status when a worker can do at least part of his job completely outside the office. Link -via J-Walk Blog
According to the International Facility Management Association, the average American office worker had 90 square feet of work space in 1994, but by 2010, that same worker was down to just 75 square feet of personal space in which to stretch out on the job.
Nor are office drones the only casualty of this spacial downsizing trend. Senior company officials have seen their offices shrink as well, from an average of 115 square feet in 1994 to 96 square feet in 2010. Oh, the humanity!
However, big offices are not the status symbol they used to be. Now it is a sign of status when a worker can do at least part of his job completely outside the office. Link -via J-Walk Blog
(Image credit: Flickr user Martin LaBar)
SUPREME WISDOMTechnically, green peppers, zucchini, cucumbers, and tomatoes are all fruits. But don't try telling that tot he U.S. Supreme Court. Per the 1893 case Nix vs. Hedden, the court decided tomatoes were veggies and therefore subject to the vegetable tariff. What was the Supreme Court's reasoning? Tomatoes have to be vegetables, because they're usually served with dinner, not dessert.
DEATH BY APPLE SEED
Turns out that when Mom told you not to eat apple seeds, she had good reason. From peaches to cherries, many fruit seeds contain cyanogenic glycosides, which turn into cyanide gas during digestion. In the last 50 years, at least nine people in Turkey have died of cyanide poisoning from gorging on apricots. The bitter almond, however, is the most lethal fruit. Experts estimate that eating 50 bitter almonds in one sitting will kill an average-size adult.
EASY AS PIE
When Sony Music complained that Warrant's 1990 sophomore album didn't have a radio-friendly single, lead singer Jani "The Name and the Haircut Say Woman, but I Swear I'm a Guy" Lane wasted no time correcting the problem. Within 45 minutes, Lane had written that great ode to double entendres, "Cherry Pie". In a damning indictment of early 1990s taste, it quickly rose to No. 10 on the Billboard Hot 100. As of 2006, you'll be surprised to learn that Warrant is still a band. [ed note: the band is still recording, but Jani Lane is no longer a member.]
THIS SCRIPT IS BANANAS!
According to David Niven's book Bring on the Empty Horses, when screenwriter Charles MacArthur asked Charlie Chaplin for some advice, it went something like this:
"How, for example, could I make a fat lady, walking down Fifth Avenue, slip on a banana peel and still get a laugh?" he asked. "It's been done a million times. ...What's the best way to get a laugh? Do I show first the banana peel, then the fat lady approaching, then she slips? Or do I show the fat lady first, then the banana peel, then she slips?"
"Neither," Chaplin responded. "You show the fat lady approaching, then you show the banana peel, then you show the fat lady and the banana peel together. Then she steps over the banana peel and disappears down a manhole."
PUN FOR THE ROAD
Talk about your gallows humor. In 1928, condemned killer George Appel was strapped into New York state's electric chair and asked if he had any last words. His parting remarks? "Well, gentlemen, you are about to see a baked Appel."
W.C. FIELDS FOREVER
Actor and comedian W.C. Fields was nothing if not charming about his drinking. He once asked, "What contemptible scoundrel has stolen the cork to my lunch?" Fields was known to drink two bottles of gin a day -while in rehab. He didn't brag about his drinking on movie sets, though. Instead, he referred to the martini in his thermos as "pineapple juice." One day, someone on the set decided to play a prank. After taking a swig from his thermos, Fields shouted, "Somebody put pineapple juice in my pineapple juice!"
YOU CAN'T ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU WANT
Before Stanley Kubrick got his hands on Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange, Burgess optioned the novel's movie rights to Mick Jagger for a few hundred dollars. Jagger wanted to make the film with the Rolling Stones playing the roles of the "droogs." Fortunately for Kubrick, Burgess, and all of humanity, Jagger later dropped the idea.
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The article above was published in the July - August 2006 issue of mental_floss magazine, reprinted here on Neatorama with permission.Be sure to visit mental_floss' extremely entertaining website and blog!
What if social media were a high school? That's the question Ethan Bloch tries to answer by slotting in the "types" of networks into his "yearbook". Where would you fit into this system? http://www.flowtown.com/blog/class-of-2011-if-social-media-were-a-high-school?display=wide -via Monkeyfilter
Previously: The Cliques of Social Networking
Even for Buenos Aires, the Ateneo Grand Splendid is a big name for a business. From the looks of it, this bookstore is both grand AND splendid! Yes, it was built as a theater, in 1919. The conversion to a bookstore in 2000 was done with care to preserve the grandeur of the original theater. See more pictures at 91 Days. Link -Thanks, Juergen!
Four-year-old Andrei Pavlov was feeding ducks near his home in Krasnoyarsk, Russia, when he fell through the ice into the freezing water of a pond. A stray dog named Naida immediately began barking frantically.
Andrei spent a few days in the hospital recovering, and is now in satisfactory health. Naida has been adopted by a family that lives 500 km away. The canine adoption was arranged before the near-drowning incident, and the new owners are particularly proud of Naida's heroism. Link -via Arbroath
“She’s not just a dog,” Tatiyana Balashova told Komsomolskaya Pravda. “She’s not a pure bred, but she’s still very special.”
Balashova who usually feeds stray dogs in Krasnoyarsk was the person who reacted to Naida’s alert.
“I heard Naida barking on the pond bank, like she was calling for help. She saw me, ran up, looked at me and ran back to the pond…”
Balashova quickly realised that a child had fallen into the water and rushed to find help from utility service workers, who were luckily close at hand.
“Because of the fact the boy was taken out of water pretty quickly and due to medics’ professionalism, this story had a happy end for Andrei, without any serious consequences,” Vladimir Fokin, the chief doctor at the hospital Andrei was admitted to, told KP.
Andrei spent a few days in the hospital recovering, and is now in satisfactory health. Naida has been adopted by a family that lives 500 km away. The canine adoption was arranged before the near-drowning incident, and the new owners are particularly proud of Naida's heroism. Link -via Arbroath
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A short fan film by veteran Disney animator Robert Pratt. After the credits, he explains how this cartoon came about. http://web.mac.com/robbpratt/robbpratt.com/Superman_Classic.html -via Metafilter
The Gippsland Lakes are a chain of lakes in eastern Victoria, Australia. A combination of fire and floods changed the conditions of the water and led to the proliferation of Synechococcus, a photosynthetic cyanobacteria. But that wasn't what knocked everyone's socks off.
As summer took hold at the end of 2008, what happened surprised everyone – a new species called Noctiluca Scintillans began to prosper, by feeding on the Synechococcus.
In contrast to the widespread bright green of the Synechococcus, Noctiluca Scintillans was visible during the day as localised murky red patches, often building up on sections of shoreline facing the wind during the day. At night though, Noctiluca Scintillans produced a remarkable form of bioluminescence (popularly referred to as ‘phosphorescence’) – the water glowing brightly wherever there was movement – in the waves breaking on the shore, in ripples in the water and wherever people played in the water.
See more pictures of this phenomena at Phil's Blog. Link -via Monkeyfilter
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