The Value of Dead and Rotting Trees

Over at TYWKIWDBI, Minnesotastan talks about natural tree fractures and what to do about them. You can trim a tree to promote scar tissue and recovery, but not all broken trees can be saved. Sure, you can just remove a broken tree, but there's a better solution. "Fracture pruning" and specifically "coronet cuts" are practices that promote rotting. But why would you promote rotting? It couldn't be good for the tree!

No, but it would be good for the tree's descendants, and other species of plants, animals, insects, fungus, and microorganisms. A dead tree, or a rotting log on the forest floor, is an entire ecosystem. Different kinds of fungus break down the hard parts of the wood, softening it enough for insects to move in. Birds, bats, and other animals come and eat the insects and the fungus. The softening tree provides shelter for some species and nutrition for others, including new plants that may take root there, from mosses to trees. Meanwhile, the decaying wood that isn't consumed becomes compost for the forest floor. Read about the crucial role of rotting wood in a forest ecosystem at Knowable magazine.

(Image credit: redditor narkotikahaj)


NASA Has a New, Quieter Supersonic Jet

NASA has released the results of its engine performance tests on the new X-59 research jet, which is not built for space, but has the potential to change air travel down here on earth. You might not know this, but civilian planes that travel faster than the speed of sound were banned in the US in 1973 because their sonic booms could shatter glass and frightened the daylights out of people on the ground. And that's why passenger jets cannot travel at 800 miles per hour. Even in Europe, the Concorde was phased out for being too expensive to operate.

But NASA intends to upgrade commercial flight with the X-59, bringing back airline travel at faster than the speed of sound. The X-59 not only has a quieter jet engine, it is mounted on top of the plane to reduce shock waves going to the ground. It also sports a slim fuselage that can slice through the air, again reducing shock waves.



They would have done much better getting their point across if they showed us the jet with natural sound. Read up on the advantages of the supersonic X-59 jet at Gizmodo.   

(Top image credit: Lockheed Martin/Gary Tice)


Books That Were Banned for Surprisingly Dumb Reasons

Children's books are under the gun, but it's been that way for a long time. Usually it's for content that may be too sexual for some tastes, or too violent, or because someone's feelings were hurt. Sometimes the most innocuous books get a ban because people read things into them that aren't there at all, which tells us more about the book critic than about the book itself.

If you were to read a line in a children's book that said a character licked his lips, a well-read person would know that means they were anticipating eating something tasty. But that went completely over someone's head, or quite a few someones, because that was the line that got James and the Giant Peach banned in Wisconsin once. A spider licked her lips and that was interpreted as being overly sexual. Read about that case and those of eight other books that were banned for the strangest reasons at Cracked. 


The Wild and Weird Flavor Known as Blue Raspberry

We all know that blue is not a natural color for food. The exception that proves the rule is blueberries, which have a delicate flavor that belies their dark and dramatic color and doesn't factor into junk food much at all. When we see bright blue candy or blue syrup, that's coded in our heads as raspberry flavor. Or more specifically, artificial raspberry flavor, which is actually pretty good even when it falls short of the real thing. Yeah, yeah, raspberries are red, except when they are black, or white, so how did that flavor become blue? I thought it was just a color assignment because red was already in use for cherry flavoring, but it's a lot more complicated than that. Blue raspberry is its own flavor, even though its artificial. Tom Blank of Weird History Food is glad to share the story of blue raspberry flavoring with us.


The Grave of Charlotte Temple, Who Never Existed

The cemetery of Trinity Churchyard in Manhattan had a stone slab engraved with the name of Charlotte Temple. People once made pilgrimages to the graveyard to lay flowers for poor Charlotte, a sympathetic character who died in poverty soon after childbirth, betrayed and forgotten in the city. But she was a character- a fictional character from the novel Charlotte, A Tale of Truth. It's not so well known these days, but it was America's best-selling novel between its publication in 1791 and the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin in 1852 -and remained quite popular for another hundred years.

Many people who read Charlotte, A Tale of Truth didn't realize it was fiction (the word "truth" in the title could have been confusing). Others knew it was a novel, but also knew that author Susanna Rowson said it was based on a real person. So who is buried beneath the stone slab in New York City? To learn the answer, Atlas Obscura goes into the history of the novel, the churchyard, and the stone, and explains a relatively recent investigation into the mystery of Charlotte Temple's grave.


Omen: Turkeys Circling a Grave

Storyful reports that Paul Eickhof recorded this video of three turkeys repeatedly circling a particular tombstone in a cemetery in North Dakota.

Why? Popular Science tells us that turkeys sometimes circle potential threats. Their circular motion on the ground reflects their practice of flying as flocks rather than individual.

But why this grave? What is it about the person buried here that the turkeys find so alarming?

-via Aelfred the Great, who understands the scope of the supernatural threat:


How to Communicate with Earthlings

They're random, and they don't make any sense. That makes them the perfect tool of communication. That's the idea behind crop circles. But let me back up a minute.

It's obvious to any observer that super intelligent aliens have been keeping an eye on Earth for a long time, trying to come up with ways to communicate with us. So far they haven't hit upon a clear method of letting us know they are there, much less that they are more intelligent than we are. But they are brainstorming. Now, the whole idea of brainstorming is to throw ideas out there, no matter how illogical, in the hopes that it may lead the group to come up with something feasible and effective. As Ryan George demonstrates, it wouldn't be logical to assume that super intelligent beings who could travel from distant galaxies to enslave Earthlings can't figure out a better way to tell us about their plans. This video is less than three minutes long; the rest is an ad.  -via Geeks Are Sexy


The Ant Bench

Mehdi Dakhli is a designer and art curator with a flair for creative furniture designs. His new Muravey Bench is designed to resemble a giant art scurrying through the home. It's an elegant form for a contemporary home that wants to attract the interest of guests without being gauche. Ants convey a sense of order and productivity to a society that cries out for bold new leadership.

And I for one welcome our insect overlords. I'd like to remind them that as a trusted blogging personality, I can be helpful for rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves.

-via Toxel


Mafia Boss Caught on Wiretap Complaining About Gen Z Recruits

Corporate bigwigs and mafia bosses in Sicily have something in common: they both complain about the "miserable" state of Gen Z recruits.

According to the Daily Mail, a Cosa Nostra don named Giancarlo Romano was caught by wiretap grumbling about how young criminals are too quick in agreeing to turn and become state witnesses when they got arrested. Apparently, the Italian carabinieri have been making these new mafia recruits an offer they can't refuse.

"If you watch The Godfather, the connections he had… he was very influential because of the power that he built at a political level. But us – what can we do?," Romano purportedly said, "'We're on our knees, guys. We think we do business, but these days it's others who do it. We used to be number one, now it's others… we're just Gypsies"

(Image: The Godfather/Paramount Pictures)


Whale Swallows Kayaker, Then Spits Him Out

There's a special kind of terror that a parent feels when they see their child in sudden mortal danger.

It is never far from your thoughts.

The Guardian reports that Adrián Simancas and his father, Dell, were kayaking in the Bahía El Águila in the Strait of Magellan in southernmost Chile. Dell was recording their trip at the moment when a humpback whale swallowed his son. After a brief moment, the whale spat out the young man and his kayak.

Hypothermia was a serious danger in these frigid waters, so the two went to shore immediately. Adrián was, thankfully, unharmed.

-via Nag on the Lake


The Anti-Theft Pocket Watch Chain

This watch is an example of of anti-theft pocket watch designs from the Victorian Era. Antique watch expert Dan Coatsworth explains that watches were so expensive at the time and so easy to steal that the spring-loaded spikes remain in place if the chain is pulled slowly, but project if the loop is pulled quickly. As in Dune, the slow blade penetrates the shield.

Some of the inventors took advantage of the cylindrical shape to craft charming acorn shapes. They all attempted to do harm or at least alarm to the would-be thieves.

-via Steampunk Tendencies


A Menu for a Week (Where Every Meal is the Same)

The UK organization Services Archaeology and Heritage Association posted this "average weekly diet" of a working class family in Oxfordshire in 1912. The graphic comes from the 1917 study "How the Labourer Lives: A Study of the Rural Labour Problem.” This family may have been rural, but they certainly weren't farmers. There are no eggs, fruit, milk, or cheese eaten in the entire week. Meat was included in exactly two meals per week, unless you were the head of the household, in which case you could have boiled bacon on a Friday evening. You really can't count suet pudding or lard as an entree. Most meals were bread, butter, and tea, which might fill you up but isn't conducive to great health. The "lard" mentioned would often be pan drippings saved from the Sunday dinner.  

Commenters who knew tell us that the biggest meal of the day ("dinner") was served at lunchtime, "tea" would be after work at five or six PM, and "supper" was more like a snack before bed. Not that it made much difference when every meal was practically the same. A diet like this should make you feel lucky to have refrigeration and supermarkets with a wide variety of food. -via Nag on the Lake


How Cup Stacking Became a Part of Your Gym Class

For about ten years in the early 21st century, there was a craze for competitive cup stacking, also called sport stacking or speed stacking. It consisted up stacking cups in certain forms and unstacking them as fast as you can, and it unleashed the competitive spirit among young people. My children did this in school, and I had no idea until today. Who in the world was responsible for the cup stacking craze? That would be Bob Fox.

Fox was a professional clown and theater teacher turned elementary physical education teacher. He did not invent cup stacking. In fact, Hasbro marketed the cups as a toy in the early '90s, but no one bought them. When Fox discovered cup stacking in 1995, he tried it out on his three children first. It turned out that what the activity needed was a demonstration by someone who knew what they were doing to get kids hooked. You can't just explain it; it has to be seen. Fox and his wife invested their life savings in 10,000 cups. To sell them, they went from school to school, with their three skilled kids showing what can be done with those cups. Kit Fox, former competitive cup stacker and the couple's youngest child, tells us the story of his father and the sport he brought to American schools. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: RogerAcr)


Curley the Crow: The Scout and the Con Man

In 1876, General George Custer met his end at the Battle of Little Bighorn. The armies of the Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho left no survivors among the US 7th Cavalry Regiment. It was days before the rest of the army knew what had happened, when a Crow scout who worked for Custer named Curley was found traumatized and broke the news. Curley became quite famous for surviving the battle, and later after the turn of the 20th century would travel from town to town in the West, telling the story of the Battle of Little Big Horn and Custer's dying words. As soon as his identity was known, the mayor and other prominent citizens would hurry to make him feel welcome. Curley also made deals that enabled white townspeople to buy fertile tracts of land on the reservation in Montana.

But that kind of activity couldn't last, especially since some of Curley's appearances made the papers. There were those who knew that Curley didn't speak English, and that he rarely ventured from the Montana reservation. Why, this guy, whose name was also Ben McIntosh, didn't even look like Curley the Crow! That was a particular shock for those who bought land and then went to Montana to claim it from Curley. Read the story of the real Curley and the fake Curley at CrimeReads. -via Damn Interesting


11 February 1938: The First Science Fiction Television Program Airs

Karel Čapek (1890-1938) was a Czech writer and early developer of the science fiction genre. He is credited with introducing the word "robot" into popular usage in his 1920 play R.U.R., which stands for Rossum's Universal Robots. It depicts a company that manufactures synthetic workers known as robots. These robots eventually develop self-awareness, then rise up and slaughter their human masters.

In 1938, BBC Television, which launched just six years previously, aired a 35-minute adaptation of the play. Only stills from the film survive to this day, but the film is regarded as the first science fiction television program in history.

-via Pulp Librarian


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