I remember the first time I watched DC’s 2013 film Man of Steel, and I was surprised at how the film portrayed the superhero that I loved when I was a kid. This wasn’t the Superman that I grew up with. And to be honest, the 2013 film was kind of boring compared to the 1978 Superman film, which starred the late Christopher Reeve. But what made Christopher Reeve’s portrayal of the superhero more likable than the more recent one portrayed by Henry Cavill? Cracked.com has this to say:

Well, common wisdom seems to dictate that if we're looking for the right kind of Superman, Christopher Reeve is about as perfect as you can get. He was strong when others weren't, kind when the world turned its back on him, and had an almost puppy dog sense of loyalty toward doing the right thing and being pleasant to everyone. And that's great and makes for a great Superman, but just having a guy who's nice all the time about everything doesn't make for a very interesting character. And that's why it's important to remember Christopher Reeve's most underrated talent when playing Superman: The ability to make the guy a charming little ****.

Check out their full analysis of Christopher Reeve’s Superman over at the site.

(Image Credit: DC Comics/ Warner Bros./ Wikimedia Commons)

Junji Ito is popularly known for his horror manga works, like the Enigma of the Amigara Fault. But unbeknownst to many people, he is also a cat manga author, and people have thought of him as a cat person, which he really is. He is a nice person, but can scare the soul out of you through his horror works.

Ito states that his fascination for cats started when his wife got a cat which lived with them. There, he saw that cats were cute and interesting beings.

But how will he find cats as portrayed in anime? Junji Ito rates them on this video by Crunchyroll.

(Video Credit: Crunchyroll Extras/ YouTube)

This video goes a long way to answer two very important questions: 1. How does gravity work? and 2. How did Albert Einstein become a celebrity? While the second question is more interesting in the moment, this video gives a really simple explanation of the difference between Newton's definition of gravity and Einstein's. And then it take us on an adventure to the Southern Hemisphere (and the cosmos) for proof. -via Digg

Even for the layman, the concept of timing in animation can be easily understood, as what we can see in reality can also be applied in animation — “fast things happen quickly”, which means that an action will take less time, and “slow things happen slowly”, which means that the action will take more time to perform. Despite it being a simple concept, timing is one of the fundamental principles when it comes to animation, as it basically influences everything in animation.

Dive into New Frame Plus’s video and learn more about this animation principle.

(Video Credit: New Frame Plus/ YouTube)

Now that social distancing (and social isolation, in some cases) will most likely be the world’s new normal, our social lives will be greatly affected. And, alongside our social lives, our survival and longevity will also be affected, as these things are connected.

A new paper published in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences explores the wide-ranging, negative consequences that social isolation has on our psychological well-being and physical health, including decreased life span. The paper was co-authored by Associate Professor Danilo Bzdok (McGill University and Mila Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute) and Emeritus Professor Robin Dunbar (University of Oxford).

Associate Professor & Canada CIFAR Artificial Intelligence Chair Danilo Bzdok, said, ‘We are social creatures. Social interplay and cooperation have fuelled the rapid ascent of human culture and civilization. Yet, social species struggle when forced to live in isolation. From babies to the elderly, psychosocial embedding in interpersonal relationships is critical for survival. It is now more urgent than ever to narrow the knowledge gap of how social isolation impacts the human brain as well as mental and physical well-being.’

Head over at Neuroscience News for more details about this study.

(Image Credit: Pixabay)

Have you ever had a moment of pure joy and peace in your life where you just had to close your eyes and put your hands on your back just to fully experience that moment. This bird might just have been in that kind of moment. That, or maybe he was drying himself in mid-air. Nevertheless, he looks so happy in this photo!

This photo was taken by Karen Munro, a photographer from Scotland.

Via The Wild Child

(Image Credit: kasmunro2/ Instagram)

Our beautiful "blue marble" with its accents of green and brown didn't always look the way it does now. Back in 2007, Professor Shiladitya DasSarma of the University of Maryland-Baltimore speculated that early life on earth may have been purple. And there is more and more evidence that this could be true.

The hypothesis is that Earth's earliest microbes were phototrophs, capturing photons from sunlight to produce energy for themselves. This isn't too surprising – the plants that dominate Earth today are also phototrophs. However, unlike modern plants, which utilize the pigment chlorophyll to capture light, these ancient microbes might have used a pigment called retinal. Chlorophyll absorbs red and blue light while reflecting green. Retinal does the opposite, meaning microbes making use of it would appear purple.

The San Francisco salt ponds pictured at the top of the article tease what Earth's oceans might have looked like billions of years ago. Back then, the planet was far hotter and bathed in copious ultraviolet light, with much higher concentrations of sulphur and methane. Modern retinal-using microbes call haloarchaea love these sorts of environments, and it could have been their descendants that dominated a purple planet.

So if that's the way it was, what changed along the way? Read how chlorophyll-producing plants took over in this speculative scenario at Real Clear Science. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: dro!d)

I managed to totally miss The Fifth Element when it came out in 1997. Years later, I finally heard of it and found out it was a French science fiction film with so much sexual innuendo it couldn't help but be a global hit. It looks like somewhat of a comedy, too. As Wikipedia explains, director Luc Besson began with the viewpoint of the target audience and worked on the movie for a long time.

Besson started writing the story that became The Fifth Element when he was 16 years old; he was 38 when the film opened in cinemas.

Now Screen Junkies tells the truth in an Honest Trailer for The Fifth Element.

Scottish Star Wars fans are circulating a petition to have a statue of "one of Scotland's best" actors, Ewan McGregor, in his role as Obi-Wan Kenobi installed at the peak of Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in the country. The statue would not only be a tribute to the actor, but would also draw Star Wars fans from all over the world. The petition says, in part,

"A statue of Obi-Wan Kenobi would be rather fitting, given the mountain's nickname, the volcanic past and its the highest ground of Ewan McGregor's home county. He would literally have 'the high ground,' watching over all of Scotland. It's poetic in a way."

When it comes to petitions started by Star Wars fans, this is one whose intentions seem most admirable. McGregor is often praised as an actor and he often shares his love of his home country. Fictional characters have previously earned statues in relevant locations, like the one-ton Captain America statue in his fictional home town of Brooklyn, New York.

Thousands of years from now, archaeologists will unearth statues and not know that some are historical figures, some are fictional characters, and some are fictional characters portrayed by real people. That this proposed statue is more of an homage to McGregor than to Kenobi might never occur to them. Read more about the petition at Comicbook.com. -via Mental Floss

The city of Manaus, on the Amazon River in Brazil, was once the epicenter of the rubber industry, because it was in that area that rubber trees grew. As the city's population increased, people began to build houses out on the river, connected by wooden planks. This became the Floating City, where eventually 11,000 people lived in 2,000 houses, supported by quite a few floating businesses.

“The poor people who wanted to remain close to downtown began to realize that living in a floating city was much more interesting for them than living in more distant areas,” says Leno Barata, a historian who wrote his doctoral thesis on the Floating City, in Portuguese. “And living on the river also had other advantages, such as not paying rent or city taxes.”

Initially there were only a handful of disconnected floating houses. But the number rapidly increased after World War II, following a temporary return of the Rubber Boom. With the Japanese occupation of Malaysia, the United States and the Allied Forces were cut off from their rubber supply and turned to Brazil for help. As a result, tens of thousands of Brazilians, mostly from the poor Northeast region, were sent to the Amazon region to relaunch the rubber industry. When the war ended, many of these “rubber soldiers,” as they became known, ended up in Manaus.

The Floating City became a tourism draw, offering lower prices for goods and illicit pleasures. Some people found it charming, and compared it to Venice. Others considered it a slum. The people who lived there called it home, and have fond memories of the neighborhood, which was dismantled in the 1960s. Read about the rise and fall of the Floating City of Manaus at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Eduardo Braga/Instituto Durango Duarte)

If there’s one thing that’s truly infinite in this world, it’s the 40-day trial version of WinRAR, as it doesn’t end. Because of this, most people no longer see the need to buy WinRAR, but there may be a few who did, and I think that they're the best people in the world.

Image via System32 Comics on Facebook

Zeltini, a design studio in Latvia, offers the Z-Triton. This tricycle camper can transport and sleep two people. Solar cells on the roof provide power for camping needs, such as lighting and a fan.

DJ Cummerbund is back with a mega-mashup featuring the music of Ram Jam, Oingo Boingo, Chumbawamba, Randy "Macho Man" Savage, Lead Belly, The Beatles, Soundgarden, Michael Jackson, and Tom Jones, along with assorted video clips. The result is really weird, but oh-so enjoyable. -via Laughing Squid

Because some bacteria develop immunity or some sort of resistance against antibiotics after a few generations, it has been the dream of scientists to discover or create an antibiotic that is extremely effective against these bacteria, while being immune to resistance, and safe for humans as well. An antibiotic compound of such a caliber has just been discovered.

A team of Princeton researchers reported today in the journal Cell that they have found a compound, SCH-79797, that can simultaneously puncture bacterial walls and destroy folate within their cells -- while being immune to antibiotic resistance.

[...]

The greatest weakness of antibiotics is that bacteria evolve quickly to resist them, but the Princeton team found that even with extraordinary effort, they were unable to generate any resistance to this compound…

More details about this amazing antibiotic over at ScienceDaily.

(Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

What did McDonald’s look like 30 to 40 years ago? Old photos of the said fast food company have been posted on the Nostalgia subreddit by people from both the US and the UK, giving us a glimpse of how it looked like from the past.

One user reminded us all of the burger-shaped stools the chain used to have as well as chairs shaped like packets of fries.

"I completely forgot about this," commented someone.

Mirror compiles some of the nostalgic photos from the subreddit over at their site. Check them out and have a blast from the past.

(Image Credit: sugarcain/ Reddit/ Mirror)