There is a certain style that companies in the mid-20th century have. The vintage or retro look is pretty recognizable as compared to the modern-looking designs we have today.

Reagan Ray has collected an abundant list of classic airline logos from defunct airlines. And he has even gone further by looking at regional versions of different brands of airlines.

-via Kottke

(Image credit: Adam Moreira/Wikimedia Commons; CC by SA 4.0)

Canadian astronaut Dr. David Saint-Jacques, who is currently on board the International Space Station, puts his scientific training spanning decades of intense labor to work by playing with a tub of honey in zero gravity.

Maple syrup could not be reached for comment on the incident.

-via Marilyn Terrell

Kevin Parry made a stop-motion video by slicing thin layers off various produce to show us what they're like inside. Yeah, you've seen the insides before, when you eat them, but this is super cool. That part goes by pretty fast, then he shows us how it was done, which is cool, too! -via Boing Boing

Several islands in the Bahamas are home to the same species of iguana, the endangered Allen Cays rock iguana. The species only came to Allen Cay in the 1990s, but for some reason, the iguanas on Allen Cay are enormous, compared to their cousins on U Cay, Leaf Cay, and the other islands they inhabit. Biology professor John Iverson wanted to find out why they became so big in a relatively short span of time. It had to be something special about the environment of Allen Cay.

He puzzled over how this tiny island could have turned its resident iguanas into Goliaths. In certain ways, it’s just like the other islands the subspecies inhabits. All are essentially predator-free (save for herons that will occasionally snatch a baby iguana). And all of the islands grow similar shrubs, grasses, and flowers for the plant-loving reptiles to eat.

At the same time, Allen Cay boasts far fewer white sand beaches than its neighbors. Instead, most of its surface is heavily pockmarked due to the honeycomb limestone that covers it. “There are holes everywhere. Some folks call it razor rock because the holes are like razors,” says Iverson. The cavities make the island treacherous for human visitors, but ideal for nesting seabirds. That’s why Allen Cay attracts a dense colony of brown and white Audubon’s shearwaters. Until recently, the island was also overrun with house mice that had been introduced by humans.

Iverson began to suspect that these so-called vegetarian iguanas might be supplementing their diets with seabirds and mice. The scenario seemed to add up: If you take animals that eat plant matter and give them animal protein, they’ll grow faster, he reasoned.

The idea made sense, but where was the evidence? Read about the experiment that solved the puzzle, and the unintended consequences of the hypothesis itself at Atlas Obscura. 

(Image credit: Kristen Richardson)

I was looking on YouTube hoping to find the old Tim Conway western comedy Rango, circa 1968, and found this instead. It'll have to do.

Another of the films from my childhood, The Time of Their Lives is a good family film and will let the young'uns see Abbott and Costello up close and personal, since they may have seen only their caricatures up till now. From the IMDb:

The film is set in the Revolutionary War period and then in 1946, with Costello playing the same role in both parts, and Abbott playing different roles (although the characters are related, just spread over 170 years!). There are a lot of funny sequences, but the historical angle makes the rest of the film very interesting in its own right. With appearances by such b-movie stalwarts as Kirk Alyn and Rex Lease, a fine supporting cast, and good-looking historical settings,the film is handsome looking and holds up well today. THE TIME OF THEIR LIVES is a nice change-of-pace for the Abbott and Costello fan, and once again shows that Costello was capable of carrying an entire feature film himself--and that Bud Abbott was excellent in character roles, not just as half of a comedy team.

My father told me that this was the first film that he saw with my mother after they were married, so it holds some personal significance, but it is certainly worth watching on its own. Two thumbs up.

It's summertime for all practical purposes (technically not until the summer solstice in late June, realistically the Memorial Day Weekend, and essentially, now, since it is already 88-feels-like-97 in the Houston area) and you know what that means. I mean besides kids out of school, hot weather, vacation plans, hurricane threats (in Gulf Coast states), crowds (everywhere), decent watermelon (at last), baseball, and water parks. I mean grilling.

Delish has offered up 71 grilling recipes that do indeed look delish, alright. Here in Texas we are partial to grilled beef, pork, chicken, seafood, veggies (especially corn and peppers), fruit (especially pineapple), and even desserts. Delish has us covered and so they will probably have your needs covered too. Beautiful photos, great recipes, and wild imaginations; what are you waiting for?

The Dodge City Peace Commission. Wyatt Earp is sitting, second from left. Bat Masterson is standing on the right.

Dodge City has long been a metaphor of the lawless Old West. You'll not be surprised to find that it is a rather normal Kansas town, and has been for most of its existence. Dodge City was founded in 1872 along the new railroad. The town's reputation was made quickly, and then stuck.

Newspapers in the 1870s crafted Dodge City’s reputation as a major theater of frontier disorder by centering attention on the town’s single year of living dangerously, which lasted from July 1872 to July 1873. As an unorganized village, Dodge then lacked judicial and law-enforcement structures. A documented 18 men died from gunshot wounds, and news­papers identified nearly half again that number as wounded.

But the newspapers didn’t merely report that news: They interwove it with myths and metaphors of the West that had emerged in the mid-century writings of Western travelers such as Frederick Law Olmsted, Albert D. Richardson, Horace Greeley, and Mark Twain, and in the “genteel” Western fiction of Bret Harte and its working-class counterpart, the popular yellow-back novels featuring cowboys, ­Indians, and outlaws.

In other words, Dodge City was the victim of fake news. That resulted in a struggle between residents who wanted to promote Dodge City as an upstanding place to do business, and those who wanted to capitalize on the publicity, however lurid. Learn more of the history of the real Dodge City at the Saturday Evening Post. -via Damn Interesting

For a while, we were oversaturated with article about how companies can market products to Millennials, who don't care about brands and don't have money anyway, until those articles were replaced by the same questions about Generation Z. That's really nothing new. Big companies are always looking for a way to tap into the zeitgeist of their biggest target demographic. In the 1990s, that was Gen X, and Coca-Cola thought they were onto something.  

No one quite knew what to do with Generation X (born from the late 1960s to the early ’80s), but marketers were especially stumped at how they could appeal to this new, generation of globalisation that was disillusioned with the status quo. The heart of the matter was, and remains, incredibly subversive – a challenge to dive head-first into a risky marketing ploy that raises eyebrows even today: could such a blatant anti-advertising message be profitably used by advertisers? In 1993, Coca-Cola tried with a new, intentionally drab soft drink called OK Soda. “It underpromises,” Coke’s projects manager said, “It doesn’t say, ‘This is the next great thing.’ It’s the flip side of over-claiming.” It was supposed to be the marketing world’s greatest reverse psychology triumph, a mastery of consumerism over postmodern disillusion. But things didn’t quite work out at planned, and retracing the lifespan of OK Soda is reveals not only an embarrassing snapshot from Coke’s past, but a window into what consumers really (don’t) want to hear.

OK Soda was remarkably short-lived, but exceedingly strange. Read the story of OK Soda at Messy Messy Chic.

(Image credit: TeemPlayer)

A woman goes to her mother for a little help with her job. Turns out that Mom is a bit over-extended herself. Sometimes you have to consider how much is too much and how good is good enough. -via Laughing Squid

In the early 1980s, the gay community was learning about the horror of AIDS. There was no treatment, nor even a test to determine if you were infected with HIV. It took years to know if you had it, and years to die of it. Mark Olmsted watched his brother Luke get sick and fade away for years before he died. Luke used those years to become a doctor, treat HIV patients, and experiment with a cure. Mark had the virus, too, but he wanted to spend what time he had left enjoying himself. And he did, first by cashing Luke's disability checks, then by credit card fraud, and eventually by selling drugs. However, the more crimes he committed, the more HIV research was advancing. Antiretroviral drugs were developed. And although Mark got sick off and on, he kept on living. Eventually he even tried to fake his own death -several times. Read the story of Mark Olmsted and the death sentence that never came. -via Digg

(Image credit: NIAID)

Two hundred years ago, Thomas Malthus worried about overpopulation, when the world had a billion people. A hundred years ago, that had doubled to two billion people. Now we have seven billion. Is the world overpopulated? That question was posed to a variety of scientists, economists, and ethnographers. Each one had to clarify the meaning of the question, and explained how societies and technology have managed to expand our available resources to accommodate more people than Malthius could imagine. Raywat Deonandan, a Health Sciences professor at the University of Ottawa, says, in part.

When we talk about “overpopulation” we’re really talking mostly about food, since that’s the rate-limiting step. Insufficient food would be a crisis clearly noticeable well before ecological collapse manifests, I would think. When fears of global overpopulation were at a fevered pitch back in the 1970s, the prediction was that we would be beset by constant famines by now. Instead, even in the poorest areas of the planet, the food supply typically exceeds the recommended 2000 calories per day. This is mostly due to improvements in food production practices and technology. In fact, the FAO (Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN) estimates that 1.3 billion tonnes of food produced for human consumption goes wasted each year. This is approximately 1/3 of all food produced. Most of the loss is caused by improper storage and transportation. This means that we actually have a huge calorie buffer for greater population growth, assuming that food management can be made more efficient.

However, many of them mentioned the human impact on the environment. Read what the experts say about overpopulation at Gizmodo.

(Image credit: Monocletophat123)

Researchers have generated what could most likely be the loudest possible sound that can be created. Registering at 270 decibels, the sound was created by firing tiny jets of water through an x-ray laser.

Now, this is an interesting feat as we may not actually hear such a sound within normal circumstances. The only reason why it hit 270 dB was because they blasted the jets in water.

Oddly enough, in air, a sound can't get any higher than about 194 decibels and in water it's around 270. This is because sound is an example of something where the measurements break down at either end of the scale.

There is an upper limit to the sound that can be created through any medium. The reason is that, as sound travels, it breaks down the medium until the medium has reached its threshold and it can no longer produce a louder or more intense sound.

This is what happened when the researchers zapped micro-jets of water (between 14 and 30 micrometres in diameter) with an X-ray laser. When the short X-ray pulses hit the water it vaporized and generated a shockwave. This shockwave then traveled through the jet and formed copies of itself in a "shockwave train" made of alternating high and low pressure zones. In other words, a very loud underwater sound.

(Image credit: Linus Nylund/Unsplash)

Named after the Chinese goddess of the moon, China’s lunar lander Chang’E 4 landed on the far side of the moon and was the first to do so. This historic event went a long way in probing the mystery of the far side of the moon, and might help clarify how the moon evolved.

A theory emerged in the 1970s that in the moon's infancy, an ocean made of magma covered its surface. As the molten ocean began to calm and cool, lighter minerals floated to the top, while heavier components sank. The top crusted over in a sheet of mare basalt, encasing a mantle of dense minerals, such as olivine and pyroxene.

As asteroids and space junk crashed into the surface of the moon, they cracked through the crust and kicked up pieces of the lunar mantel.

"Understanding the composition of the lunar mantel is critical for testing whether a magma ocean ever existed, as postulated," said corresponding author Li Chunlai, a professor of the National Astronomical Observatories of Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC). "It also helps advance our understanding of the thermal and magmatic evolution of the moon."

The evolution of the moon may provide a window into the evolution of Earth and other terrestrial planets, according to Li, because its surface is relatively untouched compared to, say, the early planetary surface of Earth.

Li and his team landed CE-4 in the moon's South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin, which stretches about 2,500 kilometers—about half the width of China. CE-4 collected spectral data samples from the flat stretches of the basin, as well as from other smaller but deeper impact craters within the basin.

Find out more on phys.org.

(Image Credit: NAOC/ CNSA)