A collision eons ago between the earth and another celestial body throw vaporized rock into the atmosphere, some of which eventually became the moon. If this is true, you'd think that the earth and the moon would share the same basic materials, but there is more iron on the moon and more magnesium on earth.
Now researchers have an answer, and it's completely awesome. Magma rain would resolve the mystery, as rising rock vapor would see its magnesium oxide start to condense into droplets and fall back onto the planet's surface. The iron oxide inside the rock vapor wouldn't have condensed as easily, meaning far more of it got mixed into the disc that became the Moon.
Which evokes some interesting mental pictures resembling heavy metal album covers. Link -via Geekosystem
We've had fun with facetious Amazon customer reviews for a number of odd products, like the TSA Security Checkpoint toy, the Three Wolf Moon Shirt, and the Table That Attaches to Your Steering Wheel (which has the world's greatest customer images). But the granddaddy of all customer-reviewed Amazon products is Tuscan Whole Milk, which we featured back in 2006.
One should not be intimidated by Tuscan Whole Milk. Nor should one prejudge, despite the fact that Tuscan is non-vintage and comes in such large containers. Do not be fooled: this is not a jug milk. I always find it important to taste milk using high-quality stemware -- this is milk deserving of something better than a Flintstones plastic tumbler. One should pour just a small dollop and swirl it in the glass -- note the coating and look for clots or discoloration. And the color -- it should be opaque, and very, very white. Now, immerse your nose in the glass and take a whiff. Tuscan transports you instantly to scenic hill towns in central Italy (is that Montepulciano I detect?) --- there is the loamy clay, the green grass of summer days, the towering cypress.
Of course, the attraction was the novelty of a mail-order vendor selling fresh milk -which they don't do anymore, but the product is available from "other sellers", starting at $48.09. And now there are 1,240 reviews! Don't miss the eight-stanza poem one reviewer left, along with five stars. http://www.amazon.com/Tuscan-Whole-Milk-Gallon-128/dp/B00032G1S0/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top -Thanks, Joe Kooman!
TopTenz has a list of ten (of course) photojournalists whose names you might not know, but they brought us pictures you will always remember. Many of them risked their lives for those photographs -David Seymour, for example.
In 1933 he landed his first job as a freelance journalist and from there his career took off. He was able to capture moments during the Spanish Civil War as well as during unrest in Czechoslovakia. In 1939 he took photographs of Loyalist Spanish refugees who journeyed to Mexico. When WWII began, Seymour was in New York but enlisted in the army in 1940 where he worked as a photo interpreter in Europe. In 1942 his parents were killed by Nazis, which lead him to help UNICEF document the plight of refugees, especially children.
Even though he was well known for his war photographs of orphans, he later got into photographing celebrities. While covering the 1956 Suez War, Seymour and fellow photographer Jean Roy were killed by machine-gun fire.
If you played a good amount (some may say bad amount) of video games in the 1980s and '90s, you know classic Nintendo games. Of course, if something sells well, any company will capitalize on that by offering a sequel -some of those Nintendo sequels became hits; others did not. If you remember the sequels, you'll probably do well on this Lunchtime Quiz from mental_floss. You have to do better than my dismal 20%! Link
This snow vehicle is an example of a screw-propelled vehicle.
In the 1920s the Armstead Snow Motor was developed. When this was used to convert a Fordson tractor into a screw-propelled vehicle with a single pair of cylinders, the combination became known as the Fordson Snow Devil. A film was made to show the capabilities of the vehicle as well as a Chevrolet car fitted with an Armstead Snow Motor.[6] The film clearly shows that the vehicle copes well in snow. Steering was effected by having each cylinder receive power from a separate clutch which, depending on the position of the steering gear, engages and disengages; this results in a vehicle that is relatively maneuverable. The promotional film shows the Armstead snow motor hauling 20 tons of logs.
Topless Robot uses the terms nerd and geek interchangeably in this list of foods that easily allow someone to stay at their work desk all day and night without having to cook or wash dishes.
Now, this is not to suggest that we nerds don't enjoy a night at a gourmet restaurant or a nice home-cooked meal as much as the next person. But so much time, money, and effort goes toward nerdy fandoms and hobbies that we've become notorious for our reliance on cheap, quick, easily prepared, and convenient meals. Essentially, anything that takes us away from our computers, TVs, novels, comics, and games for the least amount of time -- and leaves us with the most money in our pockets to fuel our obsessions is highly regarded.
Note that although this list contains one Japanese product, it is aimed toward the US audience. I know a lot of geeks who would argue all day that the ultimate nerd food is poutine. Link -via mental_floss
Alesia Newman-Breen sculpts dolls as characters from movies, TV, and literature. Each doll is one-of-a-kind and captures the look of the subject in a way no mass-produced doll can.She also does custom dolls that look like people you know! Link -via Nag on the Lake
Stanford University has an ongoing study of how children learn language. Part of that study is how they learn color names. They found it to be difficult for a lot of children -in fact, their parents worried that they might be colorblind!
As it happens, English color words may be especially difficult to learn, because in English we throw in a curve ball: we like to use color words “prenominally,” meaning before nouns. So, we’ll often say things like “the red balloon,” instead of using the postnominal construction, “the balloon is red.”
Why does this matter? It has to do with how attention works. In conversation, people have to track what’s being talked about, and they often do this visually. This is particularly so if they’re trying to make sense of whatever it is someone is going on about. Indeed, should I start blathering about “the old mumpsimus in the corner” you’re apt to begin discretely looking around for the mystery person or object.
Kids do the exact same thing, only more avidly, because they have much, much more to learn about. That means that when you stick the noun before the color word, you can successfully narrow their focus to whatever it is you’re talking about before you hit them with the color. Say “the balloon is red,” for example, and you will have helped to narrow “red-ness” to being an attribute of the balloon, and not some general property of the world at large. This helps kids discern what about the balloon makes it red.
When the researchers switched the color and noun, they found a significant improvement in performance over the children's baseline performances, compared to the children who received prenominal training. Link -via TYWKIWBI
Ready to brush up on your science? Don't worry -it's fake science. Here are the names and properties of various chemicals, elements, and other substances ...that exist only in books, movies, and TV shows.
Dilithium: Crystalline mineral used in the operation of the warp drive on the U.S.S. Enterprise on Star Trek. It controls the "anti-matter" used to power the warp drive. which somehow allows the ship to travel through space faster than the speed of light. Dilithium is in the "hypersonic" family of elements.
Energon: Highly radioactive and extremely unstable, this substance is found throughout the universe, but in its liquid form it's both fuel and food for the giant robots from space in the Transformers cartoons and movies. The search for energon is what leads the evil Decepticon robots to earth, where the chemical is abundant.
Beerium: In Yahoo Serious's Young Einstein (1988), Albert Einstein turns out to be an Australian who, in addition to his many scientific pursuits, invented rock music and beer. He invents beer by splitting the beerium atom, which releases carbonation.
Byzanium: In Clive Cussler's 1976 novel (and the 1980 movie) Raise the Titanic!, the Pentagon begins work on a secret defense system that uses sound waves to deflect missiles. But it requires tremendous power, which can only be produced by a rare, radioactive element called byzanium. And the world's only store of it is locked in a vault on board the sunken Titanic, requiring the book's protagonist, explorer Dirk Pitt, to go get it.
Adamantium: A metal alloy that covers the skeleton of Wolverine in the X-Men comics and movies. It's what allows him to have metal claws protruding from his hands.
Ice-nine: This substance drives the plot of Kurt Vonnegut's 1963 novel Cat's Cradle. Ice-nine has such a high melting point that any substance that comes into contact with it instantly freezes. In the novel, scientists fear that since ice-nine could freeze everything on Earth, it could bring about the end of the world.
Carbonite: A Star Wars substance in which living things could be frozen and suspended indefinitely. Most notably, it's how Han Solo was imprisoned for delivery to his nemesis, Jabba the Hut.
Unobtainium: In the movie Avatar (2009), earthlings go to the distant planet of Pandora to mine this fuel source, worth $20 million per kilogram. Writer James Cameron actually took the name from real life: scientists have long used "unobtainium" to describe rare or possibly non-existent materials.
Vibranium: A recurring substance in Marvel Comics, it first appeared on earth 10,000 years ago, when a meteorite made out of it crashed in Africa, causing natives to mutate. In the 1940s, a scientist named Dr. Myron MacLain obtained some while developing iron alloys for military tanks and used it to create an indestructible shield for the Nazi-fighting super-soldier Captain America.
Eitr: According to Norse mythology, this bright-blue liquid is the source of all life, from which the first creature, the giant Ymir, first emerged.
Amazonium: In the comics, Wonder Woman's lightweight armor-like bracelets are made of this metal, found only on her native "Paradise Island". (On the TV show, her bracelets are made of "feminum".)
Melange: The much sought after spice from Frank Herbert's Dune (1965), it's a drug than can both extend life and bend time. Unfortunately, it's extremely rare and extremely addictive. Once you've started taking it, you can't stop -or you'll die.
Deutronium: Found on various planets throughout the universe on the '60s TV series Lost in Space, it's combustible in liquid form, making it the fuel of choice for the Robinson family's Jupiter 2 spaceship.
Cavorite: Making appearances in novels by H.G. Wells (War of the Worlds, First Men on the Moon), it's a rare element that, when heated into a liquid and then cooled, can block the effects of gravity.
Nitrowhisperin: From Get Smart, it was invented by scientist Albert Pfitzer in an attempt to create silent fireworks. It's exactly like nitroglycerin, except that it explodes in silence. The evil KAOS organization tries to use it to destroy the world in a 1968 episode of the series.
Chemical X: In the 1990s cartoon The Powerpuff Girls, the Professor attempts to concoct the "perfect girls" out of "sugar, spice, and everything nice", but accidentally drops in Chemical X, which gives the three little girls super powers.
Mithril: A rare metal in J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth of the Lord of the Rings, it looks like silver but is lighter and stronger than steel. When a cave troll stabs Frodo in the Mines of Moria, the hobbit is saved by his vest made of mithril.
Upsidaisium: From the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons, this mineral floats in the air, unbound by gravity. Its only known source: Mt Flatten, a mountain that hovers in the sky. (Bullwinkle inherited the mine from his Uncle Dewlap.)
Flubber: In the 1961 Disney film The Absent-Minded Professor, Medfield College chemistry professor Ned Brainard (Fred MacMurray) botches a calculation and accidentally creates an elastic substance that absorbs energy when it hits a hard surface, causing it to bounce sky-high. He names it 'flubber" (a contraction of "flying rubber"). First Brainard uses it to help basketball players jump higher, which helps them win the big game, and then he charges the flubber with radioactive particles, enabling his Model T to fly.
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The article above was reprinted with permission from the Bathroom Institute's newest book, Uncle John's Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader.
Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.
If we don't have visual cues to guide us, people tend to walk in circles. Many theories have been put forth for why this is so, but experiments that control for variables such as right-handedness, brain-side dominance, and more strength on one side come up with the same results: we tend to go in circles. Read more about it at NPR. http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2010/11/03/131050832/a-mystery-why-can-t-we-walk-straight -via Metafilter
An unnamed man broke into a funeral parlor in Vienna, Austria, found a bottle of wine, drank it, and fell asleep in a coffin where the undertaker found him in the morning!
The man, whose identity was withheld by police in Vienna, broke into an undertakers in Penzing district on Tuesday night. Undertaker Heinrich Altbart discovered the man fast asleep in one of the coffins the next morning. The 25-year-old intruder reportedly nodded off after having emptied a bottle of red wine he discovered in a wardrobe.
Altbart, who took a picture of the napping would-be robber, said today (Thurs) the man caused "substantial damage" by smashing the front door of his office.
No word on what the intruder was actually looking for. http://austrianindependent.com/news/General_News/2011-01-06/5860/Burglar_nods_off_in_coffin -via Arbroath
First, watch the video. Then come back and read the rest of this description. J.W. Suchow and G.A. Alvarez studied how motion affected awareness of color change in their research on change blindness. Try it yourself!
Keep your eyes fixed on the small white mark in the center. At first, the ring is stationary and it's easy to tell that the dots are changing. A few seconds later, the ring begins to rotate and the dots suddenly appear to stop changing.
But play the movie again, this time looking directly at one of the dots and following it as the ring rotates. You will see that, in fact, the dots had been changing the whole time, even during the rotation—you just didn't notice it. This failure to detect that moving objects are changing is silencing.
The findings were published in the journal Current Biology, with an abstract available online. Link -Thanks, Rob Hartmann!
Ani is an abandoned city in Turkey near the Armenian border. At one time it had 200,000 residents, but no one has lived there for 300 years. Huge empty ancient buildings remain, all alone in their magnificence. The history of this city is long and bloody, and the remaining archaeological site is in danger of disappearing completely. See lots more pictures at Kuriositas. Link
Augustin Zamora was walking his Great Dane Scooby in Chicago Thursday afternoon. Meanwhile, another man was following a 14-year-old girl.
The girl had just gotten off a Diversey Avenue bus near the 2800 block of North Whipple street and was walking home when she noticed a man following her, the Chicago Tribune reported. The man grabbed her as she ran up the stairs to her home, threw her to the ground and began to undress her.
Startled when Scooby and Zamora approached them, the attacker ran into an alley at George Street where he was corner by the team until police arrived.
Smell the buttercream flavor of this box of three cupcakes! But these sweet treats aren't for dessert -they're for bathing, or showing off in your guest bathroom. Cupcake Soaps come in a clear gift box for easy display. Newly available at the NeatoShop. Sweet!
