It's the time of year to pull out the movie Ghostbusters and watch it again! If you've done that already, you should do well on today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss. I scored only 64%, despite the fact that I wrote a post on the movie only a couple of months ago. You will, no doubt, do better. Link

It was only in 1995 that astronomers found measurable evidence of specific exoplanets, or planets outside our solar system. Now we have actual images of some exoplanets, as well as artist renderings of the data collected.

We know of nearly 500 other planets orbiting other stars. However, the methods of finding these exoplanets  are indirect. We measure their affect on their parent stars, but we didn't directly see the planets themselves... until 2005, when the first image of an actual world orbiting another star was announced.

As of October 2010, only 7 such planets have been imaged, but we'll soon have more. This gallery shows the best of these images, including the first alien solar system to have its picture taken.

The picture shown here is the star HR 8799 with three planets revolving around it! See a much larger image in the gallery. Link -Thanks, Phil!

(Image credit: Gemini Observatory)

The medicinal uses of powdered mummy
by A.S. Kaswell, Improbable Research staff

Nowadays, powdered mummy may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but for many years it was just what the doctor ordered. That’s one of the takeaway messages of Richard Sugg’s study “’Good Physic but Bad Food’: Early Modern Attitudes to Medicinal Cannibalism and its Suppliers.”

Dr. Sugg is a Research Fellow in Literature and Medicine at Durham University. He begins his monograph with an astute observation: “The subject of medicinal cannibalism in mainstream western medicine has received surprisingly little historical attention.”

Sugg tells us that mummy, generally in powdered form, “having originally been a natural mixture of pitch and asphalt, came in the twelfth century to be associated with preserved Egyptian corpses.” It then “emerged as a mainstream western medicine” and remained a standard-issue drug until “opinion began to turn against it in the eighteenth century.”

Physicians pre-scribed powdered mummy for diverse ailments. An English pharmacopeia published in 1721 specifies two ounces of mummy as the proper amount to make a “plaster against ruptures.” Ambroise Paré, royal surgeon to sixteenth century French kings, proclaimed mummy to be “the very first and last medicine of almost all our practitioners” against bruising.

Dr. Paré harbored doubts about the drug’s efficacy, lamenting that “wee are ... compelled both foolishly and cruelly to devoure the mangled and putride particles of the carcasses of the basest people of Egypt, or such as are hanged.” But Dr. Paré was an unusually driven doubting Thomas — he lamented having “tried mummy ‘an hundred times’ without success.”

The Sugg study explains that “mummy was an important commodity. It is often seen in long lists of merchants’ wares and prices.” The marketplace attracted counterfeiters. Sugg supplies an anecdote: “Tellingly, when Samuel Pepys saw a mummy it was in a merchant’s warehouse; while ‘the abuses of mummy dealers in selling inferior wares’ were especially widespread and notorious by the end of the seventeenth century.”

The best suppliers maintained high standards. The presumably admirable recipe used by 17th century German pharmacologist Johann Schroeder included: “the cadaver of a reddish man (because in such a man the blood is believed lighter and so the flesh is better), whole, fresh without blemish, of around twenty-four years of age, dead of a violent death (not of illness), exposed to the moon’s rays for one day and night, but with a clear sky. Cut the muscular flesh of this man and sprinkle it with powder of myrrh and at least a little bit of aloe, then soak it.” And so forth.

This study removes some, if not all, of the horror from the Stephen Sondheim musical “Sweeney Todd,” in which a London barber of yesteryear murders his customers and recycles them as stuffing for yummy meat pies. Thanks to Dr. Sugg’s research, the play’s main love song gains a soupçon of innocence, especially in its cheerful refrain: “The history of the world, my sweet, is who gets eaten and who gets to eat.”

Mummy Powder and Shakespeare

Louise Noble of the University of New England looked at how Shakespeare looked at mummy medicine. Her 2003 study “‘And Make Two Pasties of Your Shameful Heads’: Medicinal Cannibalism and Healing the Body Politic in Titus Andronicus” presents copious details and analysis.


Noble’s 2003 study about Shakespeare’s take on mummy powder.

Noble introduces her subject by reprinting this “astonishingly explicit” recipe from Oswald Croll’s 1609 book Bazilica Chymica and Praxis Chymiatricae or Royal and Practical Chymistry (translated by John Hartman in 1670), which no doubt inspired Dr. Schroeder:

Chuse the Carcase of a red Man (because in them the blood is more sincere, and gentle and therefore more excellent) whole (not maimed) clear without blemishes, of the age of twenty four years, that hath been Hanged, Broke upon a Wheel, or Thrust-through, having been for one day and night exposed to the open Air, in a serene time. This Mumy (that is, Musculous flesh, of the Thighs, Breasts, Armes, and other parts) from the two Luminaries, once illuminate and constellate, cut into small pieces or slices and sprinkle on them Powder of Myrrh, and of Aloes, but a very little (otherwise it will be too bitter) afterward by Macerating, Imbibe them for certain days in Spirit of Wine, hang them up a little, and again imbibe them, then hang them up to dry in the Air, this so dryed will be like Flesh hardned in Smoak, and be without stink.

At the end of her study—which after all centers on the play Titus Andronicus—Noble concludes that

The elaborate rhetorical juggling of medicine and cannibalism in the play is an inevitable consequence of a cultural behavior, wherein the socially accepted medical consumption of human bodies and the foreign, abjected, and forbidden act of eating human flesh are profoundly implicated in one another.

Acknowledgment

Thanks to the Chemical Heritage Foundation for bringing mummy powder to our attention.

References

“’Good Physic but Bad Food’: Early Modern Attitudes to Medicinal Cannibalism and its Suppliers,” Richard Sugg, Social History of Medicine, vol. 19, no. 2, 2006, pp. 225–40.

“’And Make Two Pasties of Your Shameful Heads’: Medicinal Cannibalism and Healing the Body Politic in Titus Andronicus,” Louise Noble, English Literary History, vol. 70, no. 3, Fall 2003, pp. 677–708.

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This article is republished with permission from the January-February 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.

(Image credit: Flickr user Mini Mookiy. This is not "Esther")

by Fiorella Gambale, Ph.D. Institute for Feline Research Milano, Italy

Cats have excellent balance, and are remarkably acrobatic. When turned upside down and dropped from a height, a cat generally has the ability to land on its feet. Until now, no one has systematically investigated the limits of this phenomenon. In this study, I dropped a cat upside down from various heights, and observed whether the cat landed on its feet.

Dropping a Cat Upside Down from a Height of 6 Feet

I dropped the cat from a height of six feet. I did this one hundred times. The cat always landed on its feet.

Dropping a Cat Upside Down from a Height of 5 Feet

I dropped the cat from a height of five feet. I did this one hundred times. The cat always landed on its feet.

Dropping a Cat Upside Down from a Height of 4 Feet

I dropped the cat from a height of four feet. I did this one hundred times. The cat always landed on its feet.

Dropping a Cat Upside Down from a Height of 3 Feet

I dropped the cat from a height of three feet. I did this one hundred times. The cat always landed on its feet.

Dropping a Cat Upside Down from a Height of 2 Feet

I dropped the cat from a height of two feet. I did this one hundred times. The cat always landed on its feet.

Dropping a Cat Upside Down from a Height of 1 Foot

I dropped the cat from a height of one foot. I did this one hundred times. The cat never landed on its feet.

Discussion

Popular belief is that "a cat will always land on its feet." My experiments show this to be true for drop heights ranging from six feet down to two feet. It is not true at a drop height of one foot.Does a cat land on its feet when dropped from a height of less than one foot? This preliminary study indicates that the answer may be no. However, further experiments, preferably with the same cat, are needed to settle the question.

Acknowledgments

I want to thank the cat, "Esther," for her initial cooperation in this experiment. Thank you, also, to Esther's owner, M.R. Young. And special thanks to the organization PFTAR (People For the Tarring-and-Feathering of Animal Researchers), whose indiscriminate yacketing inspired this project.

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This classic article is republished with permission from the July-August 1998 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.

Steven M. Johnson comes up with all sorts of wacky inventions in his weekly Museum of Possibilities posts, but something's missing from his strange gadgets: names. Can you come up with a name for this one? The commenter suggesting the funniest and wittiest name win a free T-shirt from the NeatoShop.

Contest rules: one entry per comment, though you can enter as many as you'd like. Please make a selection of the T-shirt you want (may we suggest the Science T-shirt, Funny T-shirt, and Artist-designed T-shirt categories?) alongside your entry. If you don't select a shirt, then you forfeit the prize. Good luck!

Update: Congratulations to winner NathanBBlu, who named the invention "Stalaglites," and explained why. And also to winner lolamouse, who came up with "Light in the Loafers" (used to tell interested observers which way you go). Both win t-shirts from the NeatoShop!

(YouTube link)

Neatoramanaut Algonquin recorded his sister showing off gymnastics moves on the porch. The descriptions reads: "Nadia Comaneci has serious competition towards this gifted gymnast." She's a good sport for allowing this to be uploaded.

Some mixed drinks are designed to taste bad, others are given gross names. Why? That's just what happens when people try to be funny in their mixology experiments. The result is something that you might not want to try unless you've already had a few drinks. Warning: the linked post may be considered NSFW or NSFLunch. Link

Minnesotastan found a delightfully thorough post about alphanumeric phone numbers that were in use through the biggest part of the 20th century. Remember the Glenn Miller song "Pennsylvania 6-5000"? That was a phone number, using a system set up to help callers find and remember ever-longer strings of numbers as the newfangled "telephones" became popular.

The amount of letters at the start of the exchange-name which stood for the exchange’s ID-number, varied from country to country, and even from city to city within a country! The number of letters was usually the first two or first three in any given exchange-name. In the United Kingdom, three letters followed by four numbers (3L-4N) was the rule. So ‘Whitehall 1212? would be “WHItehall 1212?, or 944-1212.In the United States, by comparison, phone-numbers followed the 2L-5N (two letters, five numbers) rule. This meant that the first two letters of the exchange-name stood for numbers. Notable exceptions to this rule were cities of New York, Philidelphia, Boston and Chicago, which followed the British example of 3L-4N. This brought up exchange-names like ‘PENnsylvania’, ‘TREmont’ and ‘ELDorado’. Since the rest of the country did 2L-5N, this could create some understandable confusion to people who weren’t from the US. East Coast. Eventually, these cities conformed with the rest of the nation, altering their phone-numbers so that instead of the above, they had numbers like: ‘PEnnsylvania 65000? or ‘ELdorado 51234, to avoid confusion.

Incidentally, PEnnsylvania 65000 is STILL the phone number of the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York, as it has been for over 90 years! Link -via TYWKIWDBI

(YouTube link)

Japanese kids bravely fight a zombie that invaded their home. Watch the subtitles for some adorable dialog. Give your opinion: child abuse, character building, or just plain fun? -via Metafilter

The connotation of the word "brunch" probably has more to do with who uses it than the timing of your meal. If you have "breakfast" at 10AM, no one would think anything of it, but if someone says they had "brunch", you will now think of the above picture. Does the possibility of landing a spot on Twaggies encourage people to be more creative in their Tweets? Who knows, I'm just glad someone is finding the funny ones for us! Link

For their song "Americanarama", the Canadian group Hollerado put together 24 friends on a scaffolding with flash cards. It took a lot of practice, but the final video sequence was recorded in one continuous take. Watch as they illustrate Space Invaders and Pong, and various parts of the song. Link

(YouTube link)

Now that all the miners and rescue workers are safely out of the collapsed copper mine in Chile, The Brothers McLeod turn their thoughts to bringing up whoever else might happen to be deep below the surface of the earth. -Thanks, Myles!

I just flew in from Vegas, and boy, are my arms tired! I've been at Blog World Expo 2010, a trade convention of sorts for bloggers this weekend, which you will hear more about when I collect my wits. Meanwhile, that's why this weekend roundup is late. We apologize for any inconvenience. Here's what happened at Neatorama this week.

I looked up some Neatolicious Fun Facts on Giant Pumpkin Contests, and found a world I never knew existed.

David Israel snagged an interesting interview with Spacevidcast.com's Benjamin Higginbotham.

Learn some interesting tidbits about the original Star Trek TV series in Neatolicious Fun Facts: Red Shirts.

New at the Museum of Possibilities: Covert Exercise Furniture, so you won't have unused equipment out where all can see.

This week's offering from the Annals of Improbable Research was Artificae Plantae: The Taxonomy, Ecology, and Ethnobotany of Simulacraceae. That means artificial plants.

From mental_floss magazine, we got The No-Budget Diner's Guide for help in eating things that cost nothing (but may make you feel a bit queasy).

There's nothing better to get you into the Halloween spirit than a movie! Enjoy I Was a Teenage Monster Movie from Uncle John's Bathroom Reader.

If you haven't tried our Neato-Puzzles yet, just click the link and give it at try!

The winner in this week's Mal and Chad's Fill in the Bubble Frenzy is Coolpersob who said, "I wonder how many licks it will take to get to the center?"

Steven Johnson brought us the Name That Weird Invention competition. We have winners! First place goes to Craig, who suggested the name "Glockets", and the second place name is "The Smitten", suggested by Abby. Both win t-shirts from the NeatoShop!

For more distractions, check out the Best Of Neatorama archives and the NeatoHub!

How did the sport of competitive giant pumpkin-growing get so big? I mean, it's really big!




1. Chris Stevens of New Richmond, Wisconsin grew a pumpkin in 2010 that weighed in at 1,810.5 pounds -considerably bigger than the previous world-record pumpkin that weighed 1,725 pounds. The big pumpkin was weighed at the Stillwater Harvest Fest in Stillwater, Minnesota. How did he grow a pumpkin that big? Stevens has a 10,000-square-foot pumpkin patch, in which he grows only one pumpkin per vine. He shades the fruit from the sun, and feeds the vines cow manure, fish emulsion and seaweed.

Update: In 2012, we finally achieved the Holy Grail of giant pumpkin competition, the One-Ton Pumpkin.

2. Competitive pumpkin growing really began with William Warnock of Ontario. He grew the Rennie's Mammoth variety of pumpkins, which were billed as capable of growing to over a hundred pounds. However, Warnock's pumpkins were much bigger. In 1900 and 1904 he produced fruits that weighed over 400 pounds! His 403 pound world record set in 1904 stood for 76 years. See Warnock's pumpkins here.

3. The most common variety of pumpkin grown for world-record competitions is the Atlantic Giant, which produces the largest fruit of any plant in the world. The variety was first cultivated by Nova Scotia farmer Howard Dill in 1976. It was Dill who finally broke Warnock's big pumpkin record in 1979, and grew record-setting pumpkins for several consecutive years afterward. The Dill family still sells the record-breaking seeds.

4. During the last few years of the 20th century, the competitive pumpkin community was rocked by cheating, scandals, and infighting -enough to power a soap opera. The main governing body of the competitions was the World Pumpkin Confederation. A split in the membership led to the creation of the Great Pumpkin Commonwealth, which now oversees official weigh-ins.

5. The first pumpkin that weighed over a thousand pounds was grown in 1996 by Paula and Nathan Zehr of Lowville, New York. Their record-breaking pumpkin weighed an astounding 1,061 pounds, which won the couple a $50,000 prize for reaching the 1,000-pound milestone. Since then, half-ton pumpkins have become "common". The world record for large pumpkins has been broken every year this decade, except for 2008.

From WebUrbanist, we have a list of cemeteries that made chills go up our spines while watching the movies. Some are purely fictional, some were filmed at real cemeteries, and some were based on real stories of cemeteries. Shown is a cemetery scene from National Treasure. Link