A month ago, YouTube member TrainDozer edited an introduction for an imaginary 90s-era sitcom using footage from Star Trek: The Next Generation. This hugely popular video inspired TrainDozer to create a 12-minute episode using selected scenes from the episode "The Naked Now" and a laugh track. It ends perfectly.

-via Geek Tyrant

Fountain pens were in use for hundreds of years, but they had frustrating drawbacks- mainly they were messy. The ballpoint pen changed all that. The invention of the ballpoint pen is usually attributed to László Bíró, but he wasn't the first to stop up an ink pen with a rolling ball bearing. The development of the modern ballpoint pen took decades, with each step adding necessary improvements.    

An American, John J Loud, received the first patent for a ballpoint pen back in 1888. Loud, a lawyer and occasional inventor, wanted an ink pen which would be able to write on rougher materials such as wood and leather as well as paper. His masterstroke was the revolving steel ball, which was held in place by a socket. In his 1888 patent filing, he wrote:

“My invention consists of an improved reservoir or fountain pen, especially useful, among other purposes, for marking on rough surfaces-such as wood, coarse wrapping-paper, and other articles where an ordinary pen could not be used.”

Loud’s pen was indeed able to write on leather and wood, but it was too rough for paper. The device was deemed to have no commercial value and the patent eventually lapsed.

Much later, Bíró made the ballpoint pen useful, and others after him made it affordable. Read the history of the ballpoint pen at BBC Future. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Samsara)

Astronomers believe they’ve detected a free-floating planet roughly the mass of the Earth roaming through the gut of the Milky Way. Out of the billions of possible ‘rogue’ planets in the galaxy, only a few have been spotted. The discovery could help prove a long-standing theory, as Live Science details: 

According to the study authors, this little world could be the first real evidence that free-floating, Earth-sized planets may be some of the most common objects in the galaxy.

"The odds of detecting such a low-mass object are extremely low," lead study author Przemek Mroz, a postdoctoral scholar at the California Institute of Technology, told Live Science in an email. "Either we were very lucky, or such objects are very common in the Milky Way. They may be as common as stars."

Image via Live Science

It seems that Apple wants to replace Google on their devices. Or something along those lines. Financial Times claims that the company has begun to ramp up its efforts to build a search engine for its devices. Google is reportedly using illegal tactics to protect its place in Apple devices, as Mashable details: 

The New York Times reported that the Justice Department has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google, with prosecutors saying that the search giant is using illegal tactics to protect its monopoly in search. The report also unveiled that Google pays Apple an estimated $8 to $12 billion per year to get its search engine built into Apple products.

The DoJ lawsuit might mean that the exclusive agreement between Google and Apple is going away, giving Apple a new incentive to focus on building its own search product. For a company that loves to control most aspects of its products, it sounds like a no-brainer, especially given Apple's vast resources. But copying a successful Google product isn't easy, as Apple learned from its initial Apple Maps launch. This especially goes for search, which Google has ruled for two decades with very few competitors making a dent in its market share.

Image via Mashable

In colonial America, people who didn't fit into the the male/female binary were pretty much ignored as long as they kept any anomalies to themselves and dressed and lived as one consistent gender. In other words, if you were intersex, you were expected to "choose a side" and stick with it. To mark Intersex Awareness Day (which was October 26), Colonial Williamsburg looked at the case of Thomas/ine Hall, an indentured servant in the Virginia settlement of Warrosquyoacke who was reported to dress as a man on some occasions, and as a woman on others. When asked, Hall replied they were both male and female. When examined, conclusions varied, so the case was sent to the General Court in Jamestown.

The clerk of the court documented the attempts by the members of the Warrosquyoacke community to gender Hall by examining their body. He also recorded Hall’s own narrative history and description of their body, which Hall described as ambiguous and having both male and female anatomy. Statements recorded by the clerk document that Hall was born and christened as a girl going by the name Thomasine in England. At the age of 22 they “cut of his heire and Changed his apparel into the fashion of man” to join the military and serve under the name Thomas after their brother was pressed into service. Hall fought with or for their brother as an English soldier at the Isle of Rhe, considered to be the opening conflict of the Anglo-French War of 1627-1629. When they returned from their military service, they resumed feminine life as Thomasine before immigrating to Virginia and entering into an indenture contract as a man under the name Thomas again. While living in Virginia, they were noted for alternatively dressing in men’s and women’s clothing, something that went directly against English social norms.

While it is unclear exactly what the charges were, the court handed down a punishment, which may have been regarded as benevolent at the time, but still restricted Hall's freedom. Read about the case and what the conclusion was at Colonial Williamsburg. -via Metafilter

This massive sculpture of a hand carved from a tree stump was made using a chainsaw. The sculpture, called the Giant Hand of Vyrnwy, was made by Simon O’Rourke. O'Rourke was commissioned by the Natural Resource Wales after the tallest tree in Wales was damaged by a storm, as My Modern Met details: 

“I was really excited at the prospect of carving this giant and creating a memorial for such a well-known landmark,” O’Rourke explains. “I began researching the area and found the area of woodland that contained the tree was known as the Giants of Vyrnwy. This got me thinking and I decided on a giant hand, symbolizing the giants, and the tree’s last attempt to reach for the sky!”

To craft such an impressive piece required the right tools and a strong work ethic. “A scaffold was needed to make it safe to work on, and the terrain was such a difficult one that it took two days to erect the scaffold,” the artist recalls. “Six days of intense work followed using chainsaws and grinders. I needed to add two pieces for the thumb and little finger, as the tree wasn’t wide enough to form the whole hand.” Once complete, O’Rourke coated the sculpture in tung oil, which is a natural plant-based oil that’s safe for the environment.

Aside from being an incredible work of art, the process was a valuable reminder for O’Rourke. “I loved working on the hand sculpture, it reminded me just how small we are compared to some of the living organisms on this planet,” he says. “All in all, a humbling experience!”

Image via My Modern Met 

Looking at a map of the Unites States, you can see that state borders are quite irregular in the east, where mountains, rivers, and early settlers decided where they would be. However, the country does love straight lines, as every state has at least one- except Hawaii. In the west, Colorado and Wyoming stand out as rectangles. As you might assume, that’s because we already had a federal government when they were settled. But a lot happened between the time that Colorado’s borders were defined by Congress in 1876 and when surveyors marked the actual borders. While Colorado may look as if it is composed of four straight sides, there are actually 697 sides!

Only in 1879 did the first boundary survey team get around to translating Congress's abstract into actual boundary markers. The official border would not be the delimited one, but the demarcated one. Unfortunately, 19th-century surveyors lacked satellites and other high-precision measurement tools.

Let's not be too harsh: considering the size of the task and the limitation of their tools — magnetic compasses and metal chains — they did an incredible job. They had to stake straight lines irrespective of terrain, often through inhospitable land.  

Even the famous Four Corners marker is 560 feet from where it was originally supposed to be! These aberrations became the legal border over time. Read how it all happened at Big Think.  -via Kottke

(Image credit: Cwolfsheep)

During the Cold War, the US built a huge secret bunker under the Greenbrier Resort in West Virginia where the government could function during a nuclear war. It lasted from 1958 until it was exposed in 1993, by which time the Cold War was over. Canada had a similar scheme in Ontario called the Diefenbunker, although its purpose was a secret during just a blip on the timeline of history.

Officially called the Emergency Government Headquarters, the Diefenbunker took its nickname from Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, who authorized its construction in 1959. A truly massive structure, the Diefenbunker stands four storeys deep, covers an area of 9000 square meters, and was poured from 32,000 tons of reinforced concrete. Designed to shelter the Prime Minister and 564 Cabinet members, staff, and military personnel for up to a month without resupply, the facility is equipped with its own Diesel generators, air filtering equipment, decontamination facilities, a three-bed hospital with surgical suite, a dentist’s office, a TV broadcast studio for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation or CBC, a jail, and even a vault to store the Bank of Canada’s gold reserves. The whole structure is suspended on massive springs to damp out shock waves while the 1-meter-thick steel entrance doors are built into the wall of a long tunnel running through a hill, allowing the blast wave from a nuclear explosion to blow harmlessly past. As-designed, the Diefenbunker was intended to withstand a nuclear blast of up to 5 Megatons 2 kilometres away.

As you can tell from the headline, toilets gave away the secret. Read how that happened, and what has become of the Diefenbunker since then, at Today I Found Out.
(Image credit: Z22)

If you find it difficult to write icing on cakes, then this might be just for you: an icing syringe made to look like an oversized pencil. You just hold it like how you would hold a pencil. Just that easy, and voila! You’ve successfully added clean writing to the cake.

Via The Awesomer

(Image Credit: The Awesomer)

Japan — Earlier this month, the Kobe City Medical Center General Hospital received an enormous monetary donation from an unknown donor. Thinking that there might have been a mistake, they decided to return the package, which contained 5 million yen (over $47,700), on the return address provided in it. Days later, however, they received the same package again, this time with no return address. After consulting their lawyers, the hospital then decided to accept and keep the donation.

So, after some initial awkwardness, all was well that ended well. It’s understandable too, as it was probably the sender’s first time doing something like this, and Kobe City Medical Center told [the] media that it was definitely the first time they’d ever received an “anonymous” donation.

More details about this story over at SoraNews 24.

(Image Credit: kobeshinbun/ Twitter)

Because accidentally spilling your drink on the computer mouse can lead to a messy situation, SteelSeries has developed the Aerox 3 and the Aerox 3 Wireless, which are water-resistant computer mice. Yup, even with those holes, the Aerox 3 will keep out all that liquid, and not only that, but also dust, oil, and other grime.

The Aerox 3 costs $60 and the wireless version is $100. Both will be available on November 10th.

Cool!

(Image Credit: SteelSeries/ Engadget)

Between the mighty leaf blower and Charlie the cocker spaniel, who would win in a battle of strength? Both are aggressive, and both are unwilling to back down. Will the leaf blower successfully defend his title, or will the underdog snatch it away from him?

What do you think?

Via Laughing Squid

(Image Credit: Laughing Squid)

For almost 90 years, filmmakers have been using the method called chroma keying (using blue or green screen) to layer images. That says a lot about how effective the method is. However, it takes a lot of time, especially for the post-production team, to put all the elements together to make a single seamless image, and sometimes, they go frame by frame just to make everything smooth. Creative roadblocks are also another problem with this method.

And here enters The Volume — a combination of high resolution LED panels. This technology has the green screen’s flexibility, but without its drawbacks. Could this be the replacement for the green screen?

Learn more about The Volume through this video by Vox.

(Image Credit: Vox/ YouTube)

Baby Schuyler-Mai loves imitating her dad. Whenever she sees her father Anthony with the phone in his ear, she would grab it and put it to the back of her head. But when the phone rang, the 11-month baby had the shock of her life.

The startled little girl begins kicking her legs and waving her legs in panic - leaving the room in hysterics.

Mother Aileen Codd, 22, captured the moment on October 21, and her father Anthony, 34, said that they're still laughing about the 'perfectly timed' video.

[...]

'The phone was on loud and vibrated - I don't think she was expecting it to happen - it was priceless.'

He added: 'It was the first time that she'd reacted like that to the phone ringing - usually she just looks at it and thinks "what's this?"

Check out the video over at Daily Mail.

What are your thoughts about this one?

(Image Credit: Kennedy News and Media/ Daily Mail)

In the late 1680s, Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens wrote the book Cosmotheoros, which speculated on the existence and nature of life on other planets. It was the first such book written by a scientist based on observations of outer space. Huygens had established a reputation by discovering Titan, the first moon of Saturn observed, and figuring out that planet's rings. He was also an inventor and mathematician. While he wrote the book in Latin for an educated audience, it was quickly translated and became quite popular.

Huygens' ideas about plants and animals were based on reasonable projections of what was then known to exist on the Earth, recently expanded by news of exotic species brought back to Europe by explorers' ships. Marvelling at the richness and fitness of species “so exactly adapted”12 to life on Earth, he argued that if we were to deny this abundance to other planets, then “we should sink them below the Earth in Beauty and Dignity; a Thing very unreasonable.”13

What form might this life take? Based on new information that American species are different, but enough like those of the Old World, Huygens presumed a general similarity with terrestrial species. But he did give some consideration to the different physical conditions that may prevail on other planets. The atmosphere might be thicker, for example, which would suit a greater variety of flying creatures. Gravity might be different, too, although he did not provide estimates of the comparative gravitational force on each of the planets, and in any case he rejected the notion of a simple correlation between the size of a planet and the scale of its flora and fauna. “We may have a Race of Pygmies about the bigness of Frogs and Mice, possess'd of the Planets,”14 he wrote, although he thought it unlikely.

For Huygens, though, “the main and most diverting Point of the Enquiry is . . . placing some Spectators in these new discoveries, to enjoy these Creatures we have planted them with, and to admire their Beauty and Variety”. Remarkably, he suggested that these intelligent observers might not be men, but other kinds of “Creatures endued with Reason”.15 Some planets, indeed, might be capable of accommodating several species of “rational Creatures possess'd of different degrees of Reason and Sense”.16

If Huygens had been born a century earlier, he might have been burned at the stake for such ideas that went against the teachings of the Church. But Cosmotheoros was only published after his death, and he leaned into the scientific principle of uncertainty. As it was, the book gave 17th-century readers something to think about. Read more about the life and writings of  Christiaan Huygens at the Public Domain Review. -via Damn Interesting