In this Lunchtime Quiz from mental_floss, you'll be confronted by quotes from Arnold Schwarzeneggar. He didn't come up with all of them himself -some are movie lines, and some are things he said as governor of California, or while he ran for the office. Can you tell which is which? I surprised myself by scoring 80%. Link

We fear piranhas and make jokes about them, but they have their place in the ecosystem. National Geographic sets us straight with some facts about the fish.

They’re good parents—at least initially. A mom may lay 600 eggs at once, dad promptly fertilizes them, and both parents guard the brood once it hatches. (Later, they might eat some of their young. But let’s not focus on the negative.)

Despite their scary looks, they’re actually cowards. Okay, that’s a bit unfair, but studies have shown that rather than congregating to hunt cooperatively, as was always believed, they join forces because they’re afraid of being eaten. They’re especially likely to band together—in schools as large as 1,000 fish— at times of year when predators such as caimans and dolphins are regularly present. Apparently, they’ve gotten the message (evolutionarily speaking) that there’s safety in numbers even if you yourself have really sharp teeth.

That's just a sample of the things you might not know about piranhas. Link -Thanks, Marilyn!

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What are these people in Moscow lined up for? Jobs? Cash? No, about 30,000 people lined up for the opportunity to eat at the first McDonalds to open in the city, in 1990. -via Buzzfeed

The Journal of Irreproducible Results held a contest to find the funniest graph ever. The winner is All Theories Proven with One Graph by Don Grace of Florence, Alabama. See a larger version at the magazine site. Link -via Everlasting Blort

A song lyric says: "When all you've got is nothing, there's a lot to go around." Researchers from the University of California at Berkeley conducted experiments that show poor people tend to be more generous than rich people.

In one experiment in particular, led by doctoral student, Paul Piff and his researchers, participants completed a questionnaire reporting their socioeconomic status  and a few days later were provided with $10 to share anonymously. The findings concluded the more generous of the income brackets were on the lower-income scale. A recent national survey
reiterates the results, revealing lower-income people give more of their hard-earned money to charity than the wealthy.

At a time when the richest one percent of Americans own more than the bottom 90 percent combined, Piff and his colleagues' findings are more than a little timely. "Our data suggests that an ironic and self-perpetuating dynamic may in part explain this trend," the study researchers write, to be published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. "Whereas lower-class individuals may give more of their resources away, upper-class individuals may tend to preserve and hold onto their wealth. This differential pattern of giving versus saving among upper--and lower-- class people could serve to exacerbate economic inequality in society."

Did anyone else think, "duh!" when they read the last line of that quote? Link -via Digg

(Image credit: Flickr user Kathryn Harper)

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Police raided a farm in Christina Lake, British Columbia to find that black bears had been enlisted to scare intruders away from the premises. Two people were arrested for running a marijuana plantation. The ten or so bears did not pose a threat to police.

"They were tame, they just sat around watching. At one point one of the bears climbed onto the hood of a police car, sat there for a bit and then jumped off," said Royal Canadian Mounted Police sergeant Fred Mansveld.

In Canada, feeding bears is illegal as it leads to bears associating food with humans and increases the likelihood of bears coming into towns and cities to look for food.

One has to wonder whether the bears were guarding the marijuana or helping themselves to it. Link -via Arbroath

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Dr. Phil Plait of the Bad Astronomy Blog has a TV series! Bad Universe premieres August 29th on The Discovery Channel. Congratulations, Phil! Link

"Rubber Duckie" by Jeff Moss Best Lyric: "Rubber duckie, joy of joys, when I squeeze you, you make noise."

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Not long after Sesame Street premiered in November 1969, staff writer Jeff Moss had a eureka moment. While soaking in his bathtub, Moss hit upon the idea for "Rubber Duckie", Ernie's ode to his favorite toy. The song quickly became a bathtime anthem and flew to No. 16 on the Billboard pop charts. As Sesame Street spread to more than 140 countries, the fame of "Rubber Duckie" grew with it. In 1996, Sesamstrausse's "Quietscheentchen" ("Squeaky Little Duck") invaded Germany, where a techno remix caught the nation by storm and helped sell 1.8 million copies worldwide. "Rubber Duckie" also popularized the toys, which are now raced in derbies and regattas around the world, and are even used by oceanographers to track sea currents.

Earworm Index: **** On a Loop

"Put Down the Duckie" by Norman Stiles & Christopher Cerf Best Lyric: "What good are flying fingers if they're wrapped around a duck?"

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Ernie's "Rubber Duckie" paved the way for another Sesame Street hit in 1986 with "Put Down the Duckie". The bluesy number taught kids to do one thing at a time, or as Hoots the Owl put it, "You've got to put down the duckie if you wanna play the saxophone." After the song was released, so many stars wanted to lend their voices to it that Sesame Street decided to produce two celebrity versions of the tune. Participants included John Candy, Pee Wee Herman, Wynton Marsalis, Paul Simon, Jeremy Irons, Pete Seeger, Rhea Perlman, Danny DeVito, and many more.

Earworm Index: ***** Stuck for Days

"Disco Duck" by Rick Dees and his Cast of Idiots Best Lyric: "There's no stoppin' a duck and his beat."

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Back in 1976, Rick Dees was just another morning DJ living in a rundown Memphis apartment. But one afternoon, while perched high on a chair trying to avoid a mouse, inspiration hit. In no time, Dees had written the dance classic "Disco Duck", about a guy at a party who's overcome by the urge to flap his arms and quack on the dance floor. Although it took three months to convince anyone to play the song, it eventually sold more than four million copies and reached No. 1 on the pop chart. People all across the country were shaking their tail feathers. Well, except in Memphis, where rival DJs refused to play Rick's song. Even Dees was forbidden from spinning it on his show because station managers claimed it would be a conflict of interest. Apparently, he wasn't even allowed to talk about the song, because when he did, he promptly lost his job. But his career wasn't derailed for long. By 1982, Rick Dees had become Southern California's most popular morning DJ.

Earworm Index: *** Catchy

"The Ugly Duckling" by Sergei Prokofiev Best Lyric: "Everyone wished him to be eaten by the cat."

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Sergei Prokofiev's opus "The Ugly Duckling" was pawned amid the tumult of youthful romance. In 1914, the 23-year-old Russian composer promised his lover and librettist, Nina Meshcherskaya, a song that represented their relationship. When he suggested basing it on Hans Christian Andersen's story of an awkward duckling, she thought he was joking. But there were many similarities between Prokofiev and an ugly duck, including his gangly figure, protuberate lips, and downy hair. Eventually she gave in and wrote the words, while he penned the music. Although the song was a hit, their love affair had no such fairy-tale ending. Soon after the piece debuted, Prokofiev and Meshcherskaya broke up under pressure from her parents.

Earworm Index: * Forgettable

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The article above, written by Megan Wilde, appeared in the Nov - Dec 2009 issue of mental_floss magazine. It is reprinted here with permission. Don't forget to feed your brain by subscribing to the magazine and visiting mental_floss' extremely entertaining website and blog today!

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The PBS series POV is airing a series of animations made from stories told to StoryCorps. You saw the first one here entitled Q&A last spring. The latest story involves Danny Perasa and his wife Annie, who have been in love since 1978. This animation was directed by the Rauch Brothers, on whose blog you'll find more about the work. Warning: this will tug at your heart. You can be the first to see other StoryCorps animations on POV with a schedule posted at StoryCorps. Link -Thanks, Ali!

For many of us, the first time we appreciated the art of math was when we played with a Spirograph. However, it's a long way from addition and subtraction to epicycloids, and very few of us actually study math that far. But those who do sometimes end up creating some very beautiful artworks based on mathematics and geometry.  

Sculpture

Sculptor Bathsheba Grossman creates metal and crystal artworks of forms found in math, physics, biology, and astronomy. Grossmen shows us Borromean rings, hypercubes, gyroids, fractals, Calabi-Yau spaces, and interlaced sculptures based on the five Platonic solids. I particularly like this Voronoi network wrapped onto a Möbius toroid, sculpted in white glass.

Grossman created this beautiful lamp from one of her Ora series sculptures. Available in several lamp styles from Materialise.

Jewelry

The Julia set is a fractal equation that produces a series of rather pleasing spirals. Designer Marc Newson took that fractal shape and designed a necklace of 2,000 diamonds and sapphires that took jewelry craftsmen 1,500 hours to put together. Note that the necklace is not symmetrical, but still has a sense of balance. See how the jeweler, Boucheron, advertises the necklace.

Drawing

Probably the best known artist to use math concepts in his works is M.C. Escher. Many of his 2-dimensional drawings turned 3-dimensional geometry on its head. The lithograph titled Waterfall illustrates the concept of the Penrose triangle, also called the impossible triangle. Escher also explored tessellations in many of his drawings.

Computer Imaging

Paul Nylander was one of the developers of the Mandelbulb that we saw in a previous math post. He is a computer engineer and an artist who renders math and science concepts into colorful images including animated .gifs to help us visualize their 3- or 4-dimensional structures. Shown is a Dodeca-Spidroball, a variation on the spidron, which was invented by Daniel Erdely in 1979.

Belgian mechanical engineer Jos Leys renders and animates all kinds of math concepts into beautiful forms that boggle the mind. His artworks include fractals, Kleinian groups, inversive geometry, recursions, tessellations, knots, and tilings in both images and video renderings to show 3- and 4-dimensional effects. The image above is called Indra200, an example of "Kleinian jewelry". Other artists rendering math images worth checking out include Torolf Sauermann, Brian Johnston, Mehrdad Garousi, and the late Titia Van Beugen.

Video

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Creating visual representations of math concepts became easier with computer rendering software and digital video capabilities. That doesn't mean it is simple. Homporgo, the artist who created this video of a Mandelbox zoom said in a comment:

Believe me Bill, I wanted to go further too, but at the end part a single frame took 18 minutes to render, and the whole 1:27 minute video needed 12 days nonstop rendering. I felt thats more than enough at the time.

Twelve days! The result looks worth it to me. How about you? See more fractals on video in this post.

Previously at Neatorama: A Non-Math Look at Math Objects and A Non-Math Look at Math Shapes.

Make a cone out of a piece of bread, line it with peanut butter, and top with a scoop of your favorite homemade jelly-flavored ice cream! Grathio Labs has the complete instructions. Once you get the cone made, the rest is simple. Link -via Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories

The first Fill in the Bubble Frenzy with boy genius Mal and his talking dog Chad last week had a great reception -98 comments! Let's see how you fill in the empty speech bubble this week. The best entry will win any T-shirt available in the NeatoShop -take a look around, pick one out and tell us what shirt you’d like with your submission in the comments. Enter as many times as you like, but leave only one entry per comment, please. Even if you have no idea what he's saying, check out the other entries! Also check out Mal and Chad’s comic strip adventures by Stephen McRanie at malandchad.com.

Update: We have a winner! Noah didn't use words, but he filled in the bubble. See his entry here.

Sometimes it's hard to tell from a musical act's name whether it refers to a person or the band as a whole. If you know, you'll ace today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss. It's harder than you might think, as the acts span many years. I scored 100% but that's only because I spent decades in broadcasting. Link

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Have you ever thought about building your own claw game? Winning is easier when you don't have to feed money into the machine! Will Gorman was inspired by Toy Story to construct one for his son out of Lego bricks. The complete instructions are posted at BattleBricks. Link

This detail won't give you much of a clue about the picture at NeatoGeek, but if you can come up with something awesome to say about it, you could win a free t-shirt from the NeatoShop in NeatoGeek's new caption contest. Be sure to put your t-shirt choice in your comment along with the caption. I can't wait to see what you creative folks come up with! http://www.neatorama.com/neatogeek/2010/08/17/caption-contest-7/