The Ohio State University marching band performed at the school's homecoming football game Saturday with a tribute to Michael Jackson's Bad album on its 25th anniversary. Here is a clip from the song "The Way You Make Me Feel," featuring the formation of Jackson doing a couple of steps of the Moonwalk. That can't be easy! I guess that's why they go by the name TBDBITL: The Best Damn Band in the Land. Continue reading to see the whole show. It was an awesome performance, but I still like last year's homecoming show, in which they did a tribute to video games, better. -via Viral Viral Videos
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I've always been in love with playpuses as they are pretty much the ultimate animal (combining ducks, beavers, and more all in one amazing, adorable package). But for whatever reason a lot of people just don't like them or think they're cute. If you're one of those people, then this video of a young platypus swimming in a pool, getting scratches and having all kinds of fun in general just might change your mind.
Of course, there is always the risk of accidentally bumping against their venomous spurs (if it's a male) and getting seriously sore just from playing with them, but I would be more than happy to accept that risk if it meant getting to play with one of these cuties. What about you?
Via Geekosystem
(Photo: Sky News)
Since 2009, James Creighton of Stevenage, UK has decorated his house for Halloween. He’s very serious about the work and uses it to raise funds for a charity. This year, he re-created a scene from classic horror movie The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, complete with disemboweled corpses that you can view here.
It was, perhaps, a bit much. Police informed him that they had received a complaint that it was too horrifying for neighborhood children. The officers asked Mr. Creighton to put a black tarp around his fence to block the line of sight of children passing by. He’s annoyed:
"I was shocked - more to the point that the parent couldn't come to the door themselves and speak to me personally, but had to get the police involved and waste their time.
"Police have asked me to put black tarpaulin along the fence so the kids can't see it, but why should I do that? It ruins the whole rest of the display for everyone else.
"All the other kids love it. It is just this one who doesn't like it.
"It is a bit gruesome, it's a bit gory, but that is Halloween, it is meant to be fun and scary. It is all for a good cause."
I can understand his frustration, but perhaps Mr. Creighton should take the complaint as a mark of pride. It’s not easy to create a Halloween display that terrifying.
-via Dave Barry
(Photo: Belfast Festival)
At 11 acres in area, this portrait of an anonymous young girl in Belfast is the largest in the United Kingdom. It’s entitled “Wish.” Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada, an American artist, composed it for an annual festival in that city. He and his crew used GPS transponders to lay out 30,000 wood stakes, then earthmovers to arrange 4,000 tons of soil, sand and glass. The entire project took 4 weeks to complete.
Gerada, who is the festival’s artist-in-residence, says that “Wish” reflects his experiences with the city. He told the Belfast Telegraph:
"Getting to know the city on multiple trips and letting the creative flow helped bring the image to me of what I wanted to do.
"I told them it was going to be based on what kind of feedback we got from the city.
"This is not a project I wanted to do based on throwing money at it, but based on a collaboration with the city, using different entities within the city, from major construction companies like McLaughlin Harvey to the fire brigade.
"It's a very large mix, a lot of people, a lot of volunteers, a lot of really dedicated workers that gave a month of their time."
You’ll need a helicopter to see the work for yourself. In the meantime, you can view more photos here.
-via Colossal
Just looking at this giant tribble rabbit is probably all the evidence you need to pronounce it as the world's fluffiest bunny, but that's why you're not a Guinness Book of World Records judge. Of course, even if this specific bunny isn't officially the fluffiest, he does have impressive hair volume. In fact, in this great round up of the adorable balls of fur called angora bunny rabbits, this little guy is still the fluffiest of the furriest bunnies on earth.
Oh and if you still were wondering, yes, these bunnies are where the yarn for your angora sweaters comes from -and as you can imagine, they are all too happy to be sheared for their wool.
Via io9
Here's a question I'd never thought to ponder before: which came first, the rainforest or the rain? One would suppose there was rain before the rainforest appeared, but was it as much as a rainforest normally gets? MinuteEarth explains the cycle of water moving through a tropical forest, and what happened millions of years ago to kickstart this cycle. However, mankind is doing extensive damage to the rainforest, which is already showing signs of disrupting the water cycle that was establioshed so long ago. This may have implications for global weather in the years to come. -via Viral Viral Videos
Broadway hoofers perform "The Cups Song," led by Christopher Rice of The Book of Mormon. It's an accomplishment when you learn how to perform the cup routine made famous by Lulu and the Lampshades and later featured in a movie, but try doing it with your feet -and then try doing it exactly the same as the the rest of the chorus line!
Or you could just put all that aside and enjoy the dance, the song, and the joy of the performers. The song is not nearly as long as the video indicates, but then you get to see each dancer show off a little in the credits. -via Viral Viral Videos
If you love movie theater popcorn covered in their delicious, delicious butter, but hate how only the top ends up getting loaded in orange, melty goodness, then you should check out this brilliant new hack by Tri 102.5. Just stick a straw in the dispenser and use it to direct the flow of flavor throughout different levels of your popcorn bag. For even salt distribution, just take a couple of the salt packets into the theater with you.
Alternatively, you can also get a cardboard box the theaters use to hold combo deals and just dump out your popcorn in a nice thin layer that can be evenly buttered and salted with no trouble.
Via Food Beast
Emily Graslie of The Brain Scoop, who also works at the Field Museum in Chicago, hosts this week's mental_floss video. When she talks about unusual animals, they're not all scary or weird -some are just as cute as can be! Meet the gerenuk, the pika, the binturong, and the shoebill, among others.
Artist Nickolay Lamm (previously at Neatoarma) took the information we have about cats' vision and reproduced it through photography to give us a glimpse of what they see, compared with how we see the world. Some of the differences are related to a cat's ability to see in low light (they cannot see in total darkness) and their ability to detect the quick movement of prey. When the eye specializes in these things, other visual gifts are sacrificed. For example, great night vision means the bright colors of daylight are muted. Read more about a cat's vision and see many more pictures at Lamm's site. -via Popular Science
(Photo: Andy Kovac/KDKA)
At some point, this deer’s layup drill went terribly wrong. Andy Kovac spotted this wild deer in his backyard in a suburb of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Deer frequent his yard and Mr. Kovac has seen as many as twenty-five at a time. He suspects that this one was nudging the ball with his head when it got stuck.
Don’t worry about our cervine basketball player! Mr. Kovac says that the ball looks like it is deflating, so it should fall out soon. Also, it doesn’t appear to interfere with his feeding ability.
-via Dave Barry
Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, has a long column of career development at The Wall Street Journal. It's brilliant. The entire piece is worth reading, but I’ll highlight just one part of it.
Have you ever heard the career advice “follow your passion”? It’s foolish. Adams argues that passion for an activity, rather than wealth-building, blinds a person to economic realities:
When I was a commercial loan officer for a large bank, my boss taught us that you should never make a loan to someone who is following his passion. For example, you don't want to give money to a sports enthusiast who is starting a sports store to pursue his passion for all things sporty. That guy is a bad bet, passion and all. He's in business for the wrong reason.
My boss, who had been a commercial lender for over 30 years, said that the best loan customer is someone who has no passion whatsoever, just a desire to work hard at something that looks good on a spreadsheet. Maybe the loan customer wants to start a dry-cleaning store or invest in a fast-food franchise—boring stuff. That's the person you bet on. You want the grinder, not the guy who loves his job.
Being passionate about something doesn’t lead to success, but being successful at something can lead to passion:
For most people, it's easy to be passionate about things that are working out, and that distorts our impression of the importance of passion. I've been involved in several dozen business ventures over the course of my life, and each one made me excited at the start. You might even call it passion.
The ones that didn't work out—and that would be most of them—slowly drained my passion as they failed. The few that worked became more exciting as they succeeded. For example, when I invested in a restaurant with an operating partner, my passion was sky high. And on day one, when there was a line of customers down the block, I was even more passionate. In later years, as the business got pummeled, my passion evolved into frustration and annoyance.
On the other hand, Dilbert started out as just one of many get-rich schemes I was willing to try. When it started to look as if it might be a success, my passion for cartooning increased because I realized it could be my golden ticket. In hindsight, it looks as if the projects that I was most passionate about were also the ones that worked. But objectively, my passion level moved with my success. Success caused passion more than passion caused success.
Much of my day job involves helping college students investigate and set career goals. Following your passion leads to things like doctorates in the humanities and other bad life decisions. So I phrase the same sentiment as “follow your interests while taking into account the likelihood that you will succeed and the outcomes, both good and bad, that you may encounter as a result of your decisions.” But that’s kind of wordy and thus hard to fit on a motivational poster.
-via Ace of Spades HQ
(Image: Eduardo Ferigato)
Traditionally, the Joker is Batman’s greatest foe and the focus of hundreds of Batman storylines. There's a common sequence of events: Batman captures the Joker and sends him to Arkham Asylum. The Joker escapes and commits terrible crimes. The cycle repeats.
So why doesn’t Batman just kill the Joker and break the cycle? Quora members pondered this question recently. Jesse Richards, an artist and web designer, responded that Batman’s commitment to not killing intentionally—his self-control—is his superpower:
Because the Joker wins if Batman kills him. That's what the Joker wants. Everything he does is to taunt Batman into killing him. In fact, the interesting part of their relationship, the real conflict of each story, is not to see if Batman will stop him (he will), but to watch Batman struggle with not killing him, because anyone other than Batman would of course kill him. This self-control is Batman's superpower.
The Joker and Batman are each trying to prove a point to society - and really to us, the readers. The Joker wants Batman to kill him because he perfectly embodies chaos and anarchy, and wants to prove a point to everyone that people are basically more chaotic than orderly. This is why he is so scary: we are worried he may be right. If the Joker is right, then civilization is a ruse and we are all truly monsters inside. If the Joker can prove that Batman - the most orderly and logical and self-controlled of all of us - is a monster inside, then we are all monsters inside, and that is terrifying. The Joker is terrifying because we fear that we are like him deep down - that he is us. Batman is what we (any average person) could be at our absolute best, and the Joker is what we could be at our absolute worst. The Joker's claim is that we are all terrible deep down, and it is only the law and our misplaced sense of justice that keeps us in line. Since Batman isn't confined by the law, he is a perfect test case to try to get him to "break". The Joker wants Batman to kill a person, any person, but knows that the only person Batman might ever even remotely consider killing would have to be a terrible monster, so is willing to do this himself and sacrifice himself to prove this macabre point. Batman needs to prove that it is not just laws that keep us in line, but basic human decency and our natural instinct NOT to kill. If Batman can prove this, then others will be inspired by his example (the citizens of Gotham, but again, also the readers), just as we are all inspired every day to keep civilization running smoothly and not descend into violence, anarchy, and chaos. This ability to be decent in the face of the horrors and temptations present all around us is humanity's superpower, the superpower of each of us. The struggle of Batman and the Joker is the internal struggle of each of us. But we are inspired by Batman's example, not the Joker's, because Batman always wins the argument, because he has not killed the Joker.
I’ve never found this view convincing. Batman has the reputation for striking terror into criminals, particularly while interrogating them. It’s not just that he’ll turn them in to the police and they’ll go to prison. They’re afraid that he’s going to kill them. But if Batman is widely known in underworld circles for his unwillingness to intentionally take a human life, then why would they be so afraid?
Criminals easily and frequently escape from Arkham Asylum. This, too, must be widely known. So when Batman refuses to kill the Joker, he knows—or must realize eventually—that the Joker will soon be free to commit terrible crimes again. The only reliable means of ending the menace that the Joker presents to the ordinary people of Gotham City is to kill him. So killing the Joker, far from being monstrous, is a civilized act. In fact, it’s the most civilized choice that Batman could make.
There are schools of pacifism that may disagree with me on that point, but I’d find it hard to place Batman within any pacifistic tradition.
The controversy over the debt ceiling is related to, but not the same as, the federal budget and government shutdown. The concept was created 115 years ago, and a look into the history of U.S. government debt can give you a better idea of what it's all about.
Writer Mike Duncan and illustrator Jason Novak put the short version into cartoon form, which makes it much easier to get through. In the small portion shown here, most Americans of a certain age would recognize President Lyndon Johnson even without the hat because of his colorful language, but relevant figures are labeled anyway, because the timeline starts at the beginning of the Spanish-American War. -via Digg
(Photo: Joe Songer/Al.com)
Superheroes made an appearance to entertain the young patients at the Benjamin Russell Hospital for Children in Birmingham, Alabama. Captain America, Spider-Man, Superman and Batman zipped down rappelling lines in front of the windows of the 15-story building. That’s normal for Batman, but really lazy of Superman, who can fly, and Spider-Man, who can simply adhere to the side of the building.
Joe Songer of Alabama Media Group reports that all four superheroes work for Squeegee Cleaning Services of Chelsea. It’s sad that in today’s economy, superheroes have to take on second jobs to make ends meet. Maybe it’s time to take in roommates at the Fortress of Solitude and the Batcave.
-via Tor
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