Luke Pickman is a musician who calls himself the "Instrument Maniac". He has an astonishingly vast collection of musical instruments from around the world. To call him a "multi-instrumentalist" is a huge understatement.
Last year, we shared Pickman's video in which he played "The Lick" on 92 instruments. Since then, his collection has grown. In 1 minute and 51 seconds, he performs a complete composition with 111 instruments. Some are ones I've never hard of, including an otamatone, a flexatone, and two different types of stylophones.
With each instrument, Pickman lists the manufacturer. Amusingly, for the musical saw, that's just his garage. For a conch shell, Pickman identifies the ocean as its creator.
Is it Hanukkah or Chanukah? I have used both, usually going with the spelling used in whatever I am linking to. Both are correct, but in various places and eras, the holiday has been spelled
That's due to the difficulty of translating חנוכה from Hebrew, which has its own alphabet. But Christmas has a similar history of various spellings, which include
Oh yeah, there's also Xmas, which some folks objected to in recent years because they believe it takes Christ out of Christmas, yet the real story is exactly the oppposite. How did any of those odd spellings enter the lexicon? Find out in a history of holiday spelling at Grammarphobia. The article is about English spelling; there are plenty of other ways to say Christmas, from Noel to Navidad. -via Strange Company
The classic tale of a women who lost her shoe and gained a prince has been told for centuries in many different parts of the world. Those tales vary, but are mostly really gruesome compared with the 1950 Disney animated movie. They involve murder, adultery, cannibalism, mutilation, resurrection, and a massive dose of family dysfunction. The one version that creeped me out the most is not included in this video. The tale from China has the Cinderella character leaving her shoe behind at a banquet, and the king becomes obsessed with the owner of the tiny shoe, and vows to marry her even though he had never met her or had even seen her. That only makes sense in the context of the old tradition of binding a woman's feet to make her more attractive to men. It's creepy because it reflects historical reality. You may be more disturbed with the cannibalism in this video from Weird History.
If you have experienced severe exhaustion, the inability to do activities which you had no problem doing previously and which cannot be relieved through sleep or rest, sleep problems, brain fog, and some form of generalized pain, and if you notice that these symptoms get worse after doing some physical or mental activity, then you might be having myalgic encephalomyelitis or chronic fatigue syndrome.
According to a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as many as 3.3 million Americans are experiencing CFS, but they have mostly been told that they are either hypochondriacs or are misdiagnosed with anxiety or depression.
The study has also shown that the condition was more common in women than in men, and in white people than in other ethnic groups. However, it does debunk the notion that the condition was a "rich white woman's disease".
The gap between men and women was only slight, and the difference between white and Black people was small or negligible. The study also indicated that poor people reported having the syndrome more than rich people, and this could be due to lack of access to health care.
Dr. Brayden Yellman believes that CFS may be similar to long COVID, or the presence of chronic health problems experienced over a protracted period of time. Since there is no cure as of yet, a mix of infusions and medications have been found to relieve the symptoms.
So, if you feel that you are experiencing symptoms of CFS, one of Yellman's patients suggests to tell the ER that you have long COVID, instead of CFS. It will make it faster to get treatment that way.
These clicks can be thought of as analogous to human vowels and diphthongs, and chaining these clicks together form codas, which could be thought of as words. In particular, they observed a high frequency of a pair of coda vowels, the a-vowel and the i-vowel.
In cracking the code for whale language, the researchers took hints from a deep learning AI model, programmed to imitate these sperm whale codas. From an analysis of a dataset containing 3,948 sperm whale codas, the researchers further found that, apart from the two vowels, the whales also varied their use of formants, or the frequencies at which they speak.
It is possible that with the different factors involved in how whales communicate, they might have a more developed and complex means of conveying information, similar to how tonal languages can express different meanings based on tones and pronunciation. -via The Daily Grail
Some people organized their books by topic and then alphabetically based on the author's last name, others arranged their books alphabetically based on the title of the book, others did it by function (i.e. "working" books, childhood books, books borrowed from the library, etc.), and one reader sorted their books by country of author.
One couple even had serious discussions about the "right" way of organizing their books. And their system involved arranging the books based on category, and depending on the category, they either arranged them alphabetically by author, topic, or name of the subject, and for history books, chronologically. They also have an interesting way of grouping art books by style and photography books by type.
The above photo is from Beverley Kort who had a picture of her father's old library. She shared that he was a chemist and generally organized his books by topic and then, alphabetically by author. Her own library is also organized by topic.
(Image credit: Beverley Kort; submitted to The Globe and Mail)
Cillian Murphy, the Stone of Scone, Karl Lagerfeld's cat Choupette, and the Popocatepetl volcano. These were only some of the words that Babbel, a language learning company, had revealed as the most mispronounced words this year. Don't worry if you've been pronouncing them wrong. Unless you have some background knowledge of those words or their origins, you're probably saying it the same way everybody is.
Babbel listed several UK and US words which many people found tricky to pronounce. In the UK list, we have the Stone of Scone (pronounced SKOON), that slab of stone present at King Charles' coronation. We might have all been tempted to pronounce it like the pastry, since it would have a nice rhyme to it, unless you're British and you pronounce it as SKAHN.
In the US list, we have the name of the Oppenheimer star, Cillian Murphy. It's an Irish name and just like the word Celtic, it's pronounced with a K. The Boston Celtics are an exception. We also have the US singer who has been making rounds for her Grammy nominations, SZA (pronounced SIZ-uh).
Choupette (pronounced SHOO-pet), Karl Lagerfeld's pet Birman cat, is probably the easiest if you're familiar with French. And finally, we have the Mexican volcano, Popocatépetl (pronounced Poh-poh-kah-TEH-peh-til). For the rest of the words, you may check them out on Sky News.
Guitars have a circular hole so that the sound made by the strings can resonate inside the hollow body of the guitar and be amplified as it bounces back. Violins, on the other hand, have F-holes, those squiggly things on either side of the string.
They're called F-holes because they look like the cursive small f. However, the holes on either side of the violin weren't always shaped like that. Its earliest ancestor was the fithele (where the word "fiddle" came from) in the 10th century which had circular holes on either side. The design eventually evolved through the centuries, until Renaissance craftsmen found that the cursive f-shape produced the best sound for the violin.
The video above proposes that the reason for the F-holes was because of the obsession of Renaissance masters over perfection such as the fibonacci sequence or the golden ratio. And possibly, while somebody had been peeling a clementine, they found that it produced the shape of a cursive f.
However, other researchers, such as Nicholas Makris and his colleagues at MIT, say that 16th century violin makers most likely came upon the shape through trial and error, whether or not they understood the mathematical principles behind the design.
The researchers have found that elongated sound holes allow more sound to be produced by the violin and that explains why the design has remained the same for 500 years.
Established in 1612 by Pope Paul V, the Vatican Secret Archive houses thousands of historical documents, manuscripts, and artifacts, some of which date as far back as 809 AD.
Despite bearing the word "secret" in its name, it didn't refer to the archives being unknown or hidden. Rather, the Latin would have been properly translated as "private" as the archive is regarded as the personal property of the current pope until his death or resignation, when the new pope will inherit the archive. It has since been renamed to the Vatican Apostolic Archive by Pope Francis in 2019.
Although unofficial, it is considered as one of the largest archives in the world, and has been strictly closed off from the general public until the late 19th century, when Pope Leo XIII gave access to researchers who wanted to study materials from the archive.
Today, gaining entry into the archive involves an arduous process and requires an applicant to fill out a form, attach a recommendation letter from a reputable scholar, and specify the document or artifact that they want to study. However, this is where we might have a Catch-22 problem, because we don't know much about what the archive holds.
Some items have been disclosed to the public and those include the Papal Bull issued by Pope Alexander VI granting King Ferdinand II and Queen Isabela I the right to rule over the New World, the documentation to Galileo's trial by the Inquisition, and letters from Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis to Pope Pius IX.
The Altai people live in Mongolia, China, and Russia. Here's Altai Kai (Altai Band) from the Altai Republic within Russia. For more than twenty years, the group has performed traditional music and favorite popular songs with traditional instruments, such as the stringed topshur. Their vocals come from the haunting throat singing found among the cultures of Central Asia.
Altai Kai recorded this version of "Jingle Bells" that begins with unfamiliar sounds, but soon becomes a clearly recognizable adaptation of the classic Christmas carol.
In 1960, the Soviet Union began the Vostok space program, a series of unmanned satellites carrying various equipment. The first such satellite was Korabl-Sputnik 1, launched in May of 1960. The West called this satellite Sputnik 4. The descent module separated from the equipment module, but did not "descend" as planned. Instead, the descent module orbited for two years, then burned up on reentry. A piece of it fell in the United States.
Two policemen in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, encountered a chunk of something that was too hot to touch. They didn't think much of it until they heard on the news that Sputnik 4 had burned up in space. They went back to retrieve the 20-pound chunk of metal. NASA analyzed it thoroughly, then offered it back to the Soviets. Meanwhile, in Manitowoc, the historic chuck of metal was memorialized in the street where it was found, on the sidewalk nearby, and in two museum exhibits that have been there for decades. Read about Manitowoc and the satellite at Amusing Planet.
Brenda Lee's 1958 song "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" is enjoying a surge of popularity this holiday season, but what it really needs is some rock lyrics. Bill McClintock is here to remix the song in a way you'd never expect, which is what he does. Imagine the Christmas tune with the lilting voice of Bon Scott, the late singer for AC/DC, singing their 1976 song "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap." Concrete shoes, cyanide, TNT, neckties, contracts, high voltage -how festive! I am always surprised to hear isolated vocals from a familiar tune, and curious as to how they are available, and I'm even more surprised to hear them mesh so well with another song that is so different. This one is destined to become a Christmas classic. And don't they all look so impossibly young in the video? Scott was only around 29 when the video was recorded, and the other band members were pretty close in age.
In September, Rosemary Hayne expressed her displeasure at the service that she was receiving from Emily Russell, an employee of a Chipotle restaurant in Parma, Ohio. She threw (1) a temper tantrum and (2) a bowl of food at Russell.
This incident was recorded and soon went viral. Police arrested Hayne for misdemeanor assault. Last week, CNN reports, Judge Timothy Gilligan sentenced Hayne to 180 days in jail. He suspended half of that sentence, leaving her with 90 days. She could choose to serve either the full 90 days in jail or just 30 days in jail and 60 days of working in a fast food restaurant. Judge Gilligan suggested that Hayne personally experience what it's like to work in the high pressure environment of the food service industry.
Hayne humbly accepted the offer and is now looking for a job to fulfill that requirement.
Would you like a slice of Merry Glizzmas Pie? This is a holiday dessert from The Vulgar Chef (previously at Neatorama) who brings us constant abominations like the Twinkie hot dog, Spam cookies, and gravy pancakes.
His recipe for Merry Glizzmas Pie is so simple that it's just shown in a video. Lay your pickles and hot dog pieces in a pie crust and glue them all together with plain gelatin. Garnish with Reddi Wip and crushed candy cane. It even shows him eating it! If you find yourself, like me, obligated to cook for a dozen events during December, bringing this would be a good way to insure you'll never be asked for a cooked contribution ever again. Just be warned that you'll be bringing the whole thing home with you, because it's "clear" what's in this pie, so no one will want to try it. -via reddit
It all started in July, when a few parked cars had their tires slashed. Since it happened more than once, people thought somebody must have run afoul with the mafia or neighbors were having a nasty spat with one another.
When another tire-slashing incident happened in late October, the police decided to intervene. They installed surveillance cameras to catch the culprit in the act. Just last week, the footage revealed who was slashing people's tires. It was a dog named Billy.
According to the vets, this may be a sign that Billy has a severe case of gingivitis, and biting at the tires relieved him from the pain it caused. If it is proven that Billy had done all the tire-slashing since July, his owner will have to compensate the car owners who have been inconvenienced by Billy's behavior. -via Boing Boing
