The rise of shopping malls and department stores as we know them began in Paris. Once upon a time, it was illegal for a shop to sell more than one kind of product. French vendors got around this by congregating different stores in one location to make purchases easier for the public, creating a prototype for the shopping mall. Eventually, it became possible for one entity to sell a variety of items, which led to the concept of the department store.     

The first on the market–and in the world–was Au Bon Marché. Founded in 1838, it survived the competition of the other novelty magazines by shrewd display tactics and remained the leader in innovations. The genius behind modern shopping science was Au Bon Marché’s next owner, Aristide Boucicaut who took over the magazine in 1852. He had many tricks up his sleeve, including placing related merchandise at the opposite ends of the store. You bought fabric in one corner, and to get a sewing thread to put the fabric together, you had to cross the store passing seductive displays of fashion accessories that would enhance the new dress. Nearly all the shopping strategies, including the orgiastic sales that influence us today, were invented by Boucicaut and his clever followers in these early days of mass shopping.

(Note the word “magazine” in this context means a retail store.) Being first had its rewards. When Boucicaut died 1887, Au Bon Marché was the biggest retail business in the world. Read about the development of mass shopping concepts at Victorian Paris. -via Strange Company

We all know that, every year, Trekkies gather around the yule log to hear Captain Picard sing "Let It Snow." But they also enjoy other traditional Trekmas carols remixed by John C. Worsley, such as "Enterprise Rock", a take on Bobby Helms's "Jingle Bell Rock" by the crew of the Enterprise NX-01 . . .

Once upon a time, Christmas trees were illuminated by burning candles. You can imagine how difficult it was to get candles to stand up on a tree branch, and how much supervision was necessary keep the house from burning down. So it was a real Christmas miracle when electric Christmas lights were introduced. The first Christmas tree with electric light bulbs was displayed in 1882 by Edward Hibberd Johnson in New York City. His tree caused such a sensation that the New York Times wrote about it.   

“The tree was lighted by electricity and children never beheld a brighter tree or one more highly colored than the children of Mr. Johnson when the current was turned and the tree began to revolve.

“It stood about six feet high, in an upper room, and dazzled persons entering the room. There were 120 lights on the tree, with globes of different colors, while the light tinsel work and unusual adornment of Christmas trees appeared to their best advantage in illuminating the tree.

“The set of lights were turned off and on at regular intervals as the tree turned around.  The first combination was of pure white light then as the revolving tree tree severed the connection of the current that supplied it and made connection with the second set, red and white lights appeared. Then came yellow and white and other colors.”

That may seem overly elaborate to you and me. After all, the electric lights alone would warrant a newspaper article. But it wasn’t just a family Christmas tree; it was a promotion. Johnson was a vice-president at the Edison Electric Company. They subsequently sold Christmas lights for a price that was equivalent to a week’s wages, but in 1882, the electric Christmas tree was to promote the idea of electric light bulbs as a concept that would spread far and wide. Read about those early electric Christmas tree lights at The Bowery Boys. Or listen to the podcast if you prefer. -via Strange Company

You might not recognize all of the themes in this overture, hey, you might not recognize any of them (though you should), but you certainly know the fanfare style of the tune that opens the show. This medley was conducted and arranged by Alan Williams and performed by musicians from London's West End. -Thanks, Tim Spellman!

Every year, the SnowVillage in northern Finland is reconstituted with a new theme. This year, winter is not only coming, but has arrived. The village is now styled after scenes and characters from the Game of Thrones television series. You can sleep peacefully at night as the Night King watches over you, or just visit the hotel to take a tour or dine at the restaurant.

You can see more photos of this wondrous facility at its Instagram page.

You might have heard of the morning person (also called the morning lark or early bird) and the night owl, but have you heard of the highly active type, daytime sleepy type, daytime active type, and the moderately active type? This is my first time hearing of other chronotypes, too. That’s right. This recent research suggests that there are six human chronotypes, not just two.

In terms of alertness and energy levels, morning types have high alertness in the morning, which proceeds to dip to medium levels in the middle of the day, then drops to low levels in the evening.

By contrast, evening types exhibit low alertness in the morning, which rises to medium levels in the middle of the day, then rises to high levels at night.

The four new chronotypes display different patterns: highly active types show high alertness throughout the day; daytime sleepy types start off high in the morning, dip low in the middle of the day, then rise to a medium finish; daytime active types start low, peak at high in middle, then finish the day on middle level alertness; while moderately active types experience low energy levels all day long.

Learn more about the research over at ScienceAlert.

Which type of person are you?

(Image Credit: RUDN University/ ScienceAlert)

Young children face two problems when learning a language. One, they need to know which sounds group together to form words, and what these words mean. Two, they need to know how these words go together in sentences.

These problems are interwoven, because to be able to acquire the meaning of words the child also needs to know what role they play in the sentence: is the word “teddy” about a thing, or what the thing is doing, or something else? And to figure out what a word’s role is, the child needs to already know what it means.

Professor Patrick Rebuschat likens these two problems to the chicken-and-egg problem. In this case, “which comes first, the word or the sentence?”

To find out, the researchers tested how people learned new words and [sentences] by giving adults an artificial language to learn. They invented a language spoken by aliens and showed people sentences in alien language alongside scenes showing aliens carrying out different actions.

Over time, learners were able to acquire the words’ meanings and their roles in the scenes — the names of the aliens, their colours, and the actions they were doing.

Learners do this by keeping track of all the associations between words and different aspects of the scenes across many learning trials before narrowing down to focus on those associations that are reliable.

In other words, we learn sentences and words at the same time.

Learn more about this study over at Neuroscience News.

(Image Credit: athree23/ Pixabay)

Meet Muff. According to a woman who runs a wildlife rehab with her mother, Muff was found “orphaned, cold, and floating down a rushing river by some friendly kayakers who decided to bring him to [them].” For the past two months, the woman and her mom brought Muff back to full health, and since beavers need at least two years of rehab, Muff will be staying with them for a little longer.

This video is of the beaver making little noises that sound similar to a human baby. He is not in danger or scared, just simply making little noises, as they do.

Cute!

(Image Credit: ViralHog/ YouTube)

The Trolley Problem is an ethical dilemma. A train is heading down the tracks toward five people. If you do nothing, those five people will die. If you switch the tracks, the train will kill only one person. What do you do?

Exploring this conundrum is what Dr. E. J. Masicampo, a social psychologist at Wake Forest University, does for a living. He enlisted the assistance of his two-year old son Nicholas, who offers a unique and fresh solution that had never occurred to me before.

-via Born in Space

If you’re the type who drinks coffee during work, then it’s likely that you prefer to have a warm cup of coffee by your side as you work. Novelty gift maker Just Mustard might just have the thing for you: a mug warmer that looks like a giant Oreo cookie.

But while the device looks like the iconic cookie made by Nabisco, the embossing says “Mustard.”

This mug warmer, which is USB-powered, is available over at Amazon for only $18.

Yum!

(Image Credit: Just Mustard/ Technabob)

Now isn't that a pretty sight?

Etsy seller Anna Robinson of Wales paints Bob Ross-inspired landscapes and other images on jeans. People will definitely appreciate the fine arts as you strut down the street in these pants, enjoying every detail of the scenic view you offer.

-via So Super Awesome

(Image source: wrud4d)

When you take your child to a photographer's studio, they spend the time necessary to get pictures you're happy with. On picture day at school, a photographer sets up and may have 500 kids to photograph before the day is over. There will be children who don't know how to smile on command, or don't feel like doing so. There will be children who are used to mugging for selfies. And there will be children who wear the same color as the green screen behind them. But you have to have a sense of humor about it. The parents of the boy pictured above still have the photo framed and on display twenty years later. In the images below, a little girl puts out her very best effort, but doesn't quite have it down.

See 40 priceless school pictures that didn't come out as expected at Bored Panda.

Back in 2015, researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) spotted three of these weird sea creatures in the underwater canyons of Puerto Rico, near the seabed of roughly 13,000 feet (over 3,960 meters).

Their bodies are small — about the size of a golf tee (just over 2 inches, or 6 centimeters, long) — but they're vibrant; when the creatures move and pulse, rows of tiny hair-like cilia refract light into a prism of shining colors.

Recently, the researchers identified these blobs as a new species of carnivorous comb jellies, with the scientific name Duobrachium sparksae.

While their wee bodies and shimmering cilia are traits commonly shared among the 100-plus known ctenophore species, the Puerto Rican party blobs still represent an exciting first in marine biology. According to the researchers, this is the first underwater species NOAA researchers have ever described from pictures alone; the team had no access to physical samples for their new study.

Learn more about them over at Live Science.

Nature sure is weird.

(Image Credit: NOAA/ Live Science)

Astronauts are human, too. And because they’re human, they are not immune to enjoying a good drink, and that is why some of them smuggle alcohol aboard the International Space Station. Astronauts are good at smuggling that kind of stuff, too.

According to a new book, a lot of astronauts have done the same thing. Routinely! According to a phenomenal rundown of the history of booze in space on Supercluster, astronauts are saucing in orbit all the time. For example:

“NASA will tell you there is no alcohol aboard the ISS,” NASA astronaut Clayton Anderson told [2019’s “Alcohol in Space” author Chris Carberry]. “As a person who lived there for five months, I’ll tell you that’s bogus.”

But it’s not just for fun that they smuggle alcohol in space.

For one thing, learning about the way booze behaves, at a chemical level, in a zero-g environment informs the scientific development of it down here (and there have been several cargo payloads containing alcohol used for experiments that’ve already made it into orbit).

What are your thoughts about this one?

(Image Credit: Openpics/ Pixabay)

Dinosaurs were reptiles, and so we often think of them as big lizards, soaking up the sun in tropical or at least temperate regions. But scientists are always learning more about dinosaurs, and find them more varied and adaptable than we ever suspected before. It turns out that dinosaurs lived in plenty of pretty cold areas.

The finds are coming fast and furious. A tiny jaw found in Alaska’s ancient rock record, and written about in July, indicates that dinosaurs nested in these places and stayed year-round. In 2018, paleontologists published a study describing how microscopic details of polar dinosaur bones show that some dinosaurs slowed their growth during harsh seasons to get by with less. The ongoing identification of new species, not found anywhere else, highlighted how some dinosaurs adapted to the cold. Each thread comes together to underscore how wonderfully flexible dinosaur species were, adapting to some of the harshest habitats of their time.

Read about the study of dinosaur environments and how they coped with cold weather at Smithsonian.