You know the pairs, but do you know which is which? That's the challenge of today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss. You'll be given eleven famous duos, and all you have to do is determine which one is one the left. Simple? No! Some of these pairs made me realize that I never bothered to learn one from the other. I scored 64%, which is about the average. No doubt you will do better! Link
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Image: U.S. Navy
Ever heard of the whale that speaks human? Meet NOC, a white beluga whale that "talks" just like you and me:
For years, NOC was part of the U.S. Navy's Marine Mammal Program in San Diego, which was aimed at studying whether whales, dolphins, seals and other marine mammals could do underwater reconnaissance or perhaps even disable mines. NOC was captured in 1977 in Canada's Hudson Bay and brought down to California to work with researchers and divers. (He was the smallest of the pack, and Ridgway says that led to the nickname "no-see-um," or NO-C for short.)
Seven years later, the researchers noticed that NOC spontaneously started making unusual sounds — "as if two people were conversing in the distance just out of range for our understanding," they reported in the journal Current Biology. One time, a diver came to the surface outside NOC's enclosure and asked his colleagues, "Who told me to get out?" They soon concluded it was the whale, which must have been saying "Out, out, out."
Alan Boyle of NBC News' Cosmic Log has the story: Link (with sound clip of NOC singing "dum-diddy-dah" tune)
When Sampson the corgi has to go up stairs, he transforms into bunny mode and hops.
One thing that I learned from owning dogs and rabbits at the same time: dogs love the taste of rabbit poop. So much so that buying real dog food is almost a waste of money.
-via Daily of the Day
Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website.
Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer was the most famous and popular member of the Little Rascals comedy shorts series. Several generations grew up watching these funny, talented kids in dozens of short subjects in the 1930s. (Note; the series was originally called Our Gang and was later changed to The Little Rascals, which is how most fans refer to it today.) These black-and-white films enjoyed a whole new life in television in the '60s, '70s, and '80s, and even now the classic shorts are seen by countless new generations on video and DVD (Image left: Wikipedia)
Producer Hal Roach (who also produced the classic Laurel and Hardy films) produced dozens of Little Rascals and Our Gang comedy shorts throughout the depression years of the 1930s. They starred very talented kids with names like Spanky, Buckwheat, Froggy, and girl heroine and sometimes love interest for the boys, Darla Hood.
Like Curly of the Three Stooges, Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer quickly rose above his young co-stars in terms of popularity. Alfalfa received fan mail from kids all over the world. According to one "Hollywood legend," Alfalfa was once mobbed by a big group of fans, while nearby, Clark Gable stood by unnoticed.
With his too-tight suit, freckles, and slicked-down haircut (complete with high cowlick), Alfalfa became a true Hollywood icon. Although he played an immensely likable character in the comedy shorts, in real life Alfalfa Switzer was no angel. According to co-star Darla Hood, "Alfie once put fish hooks in Spanky's back pockets and poor Spanky had to have stitches placed on his tush."
Another time, "Alfie put an open switchblade in his pocket and tricked Darla into into putting her hand in his pocket on the pretense that he had a ring for her from a Crackerjack box. She almost lost her fingers." On one occasion, to get back at a rude cameraman, Alfalfa had the kids all chew big wads of gum. then he took the combined wads and put them inside the man's camera.
According to other kids in the Our Gang cast: "Alfie would not pay attention to his school lessons in Mrs. Fern carter's class. He'd be kept after school often and kept everyone waiting on the set of the films."
Spanky told of Alfalfa's most dangerous prank: "We were filming one day and the scene called for the kids to show their own movie on a process screen. The rear projection system and the lights (with a thousand watts per bulb) were taking a long time to set up, so Alfie decided to use his time by going behind the screen and peeing on the bulbs. This is extremely hazardous, for even spitting on those bulbs is tantamount to setting off a series of bombs. The lights exploded and filled the studio with a tremendous stench. Everyone had to be taken off the set as the crew and director fixed the bulbs and cleaned up the mess Alfalfa created that day."
You know Bill Nye -he's the Science Guy! But he wasn't always. It was a series of what might appear to be happy coincidences that landed him in the position of pop culture science teacher. But happy coincidences are often just the result of someone who leaps at the right opportunities. Fast Company has an interview with Nye in which he tells how he worked as an airplane engineer while his friends thought he should be the next Steve Martin. At one time he was working with a radio DJ.
Time to time, he’d have questions, and you could answer to win free tickets or what have you. One of them was a question that refers to the Back to the Future movie. And in the answer, he says“jigawatts.” So I called him, and I said, "Ross, you can say jigawatts, but really, we prefer gigawatts.”
[From then on] I called him every day at 4:45 and answered a listener question. And that went on for a few months. And then in January of 1987, we needed six minutes on the comedy show [because a guest cancelled].
I did this bit, "The household uses of liquid nitrogen." Because we all have liquid nitrogen around. So this was just reminder of some tips. I know normally you use it by fitting up your close-fitting machine parts, by getting one part really cold, but you can also use it for straightening out limp celery. You can slice onions with it, when you hit them with a knife, it’s really satisfying. It sounds like breaking glass. It’s a really striking sound. Striking, ah! Hilarious pun. Now the payoff, what I spent a lot of time doing, is you cook or roast marshmallows in liquid nitrogen and then you chew them and steam comes out of your nose. It’s really good.
Link -via mental_floss
(Image credit: Tyler Gray)
Oh, humiliation - they name is ... Food on My Dog, a Tumblr blog by Andrew J. Small, featuring his dog Tiger (who, on the plus side, gets to eat most of the food that got put on her head): Link - via Lost in E Minor
Brothers Bailey Leonard and Meyers Leonard grew up close, especially after their father died. Bailey joined the Marine Corps. Meyers grew a foot taller and became a basketball player. What you see here is older brother Bailey coming home from Afghanistan. The younger Leonard now plays for the Portland Trailblazers. Read more about his family's story at ESPN. Link -via Viral Videos
It's all speculative, of course. Humans have never engaged in a space naval battle...that we know about. Star Trek and the like aren't real, but physics is. So Foreign Policy interviewed naval analyst Chris Weuve about the real science behind interplanetary combat in science fiction:
FP: What about ships turning in space like airplanes?
CW: Babylon 5 was closer in that it understood that there is no air in space and you don't bank. But even on that show, the ships would be under thrust, and then they decide to go back the way they come, they would spin around and almost immediately start going in the opposite direction. That doesn't work. They ignored the fact that acceleration is cumulative. But I do like that they can rotate in flight and fire sideways. Babylon 5 and the new Battlestar Galactica are far and away the best in trying to portray vector physics. There are a lot of problems with the way they do it, but I'm willing to give them an A for effort.
FP: Which are the most realistic sci-fi movies in portraying space warfare?
CW: There isn't any show that does a really good job across the board. Some do better at different parts. For example, the new Battlestar Galactica is probably the best at depicting life on board a ship. That ship is very spacious compared to a U.S. Navy warship, but the inside of it looks correct. One of my all-time favorite TV shows is Star Trek, especially Star Trek: The Next Generation. But one thing that drives me crazy is that on Star Trek, you're either on watch or off duty, when a real naval officer has a whole other job, such as being a department or division head. So he's constantly doing paperwork. Most shows don't get that right at all.
And which science fiction franchise is the worst in terms of the physics of flight? Star Wars. Read why at the link.
Among the Queen's talents was a gift for art. Victoria filled her notebooks with sketches and watercolors:
From her subtle yet rich watercolors to her seemingly austere but remarkably expressive black-and-white ink sketches (with a style reminiscent of Wendy MacNaughton’s), the drawings complement her observations of daily life and capture everything from members of the Royal Family to foreign military uniforms to the people and places the Queen encountered during her travels, and even her faithful dog.
Pictured above is Victoria's watercolor of her beloved Prince Albert.
Usually, AXE deodorant body spray takes the low road of advertising. Their ads - humorous and effective as they are - can be summed up simply as (boobs) "use this to get chicks" (boobs).
But not this one.
Check out the "Susan Glenn" ad, as narrated by Kiefer Sutherland, and tell us if it's a better form of "macho" advertising than the usual: Hit play or go to Link [YouTube]
Well, of course! Our national anthem began as a drinking song. That's the stock we come from. Behold our awesomeness:
Analysts at UBS, a Swiss bank, have calculated that it takes a German earning the national median wage just under seven minutes of work to purchase half a litre of beer at a retail outlet. At the bottom of the pint glass, low wages and high taxes mean that boozers in India must toil for nearly an hour before they have earned enough to quench their thirst.
Link -via Dave Barry
The dance is goofy enough when one person does it. The Ohio University Marching 110 performed "Gangnam Style" Saturday before a huge crowd, and nailed it. Do not miss the "elevator scene." -via Daily Picks and Flicks
Photo: Ethan Pines/The New York Times
Quick: what industry uses 30 billion watts of energy (the equivalent of the output of about 30 nuclear power plants), wastes 90% of that and pollutes the environment by belching diesel exhaust, all while cloaked in near total secrecy?
You're using it, actually. Behold the data centers that power the Internet:
“It’s staggering for most people, even people in the industry, to understand the numbers, the sheer size of these systems,” said Peter Gross, who helped design hundreds of data centers. “A single data center can take more power than a medium-size town.”
Energy efficiency varies widely from company to company. But at the request of The Times, the consulting firm McKinsey & Company analyzed energy use by data centers and found that, on average, they were using only 6 percent to 12 percent of the electricity powering their servers to perform computations. The rest was essentially used to keep servers idling and ready in case of a surge in activity that could slow or crash their operations.
A server is a sort of bulked-up desktop computer, minus a screen and keyboard, that contains chips to process data. The study sampled about 20,000 servers in about 70 large data centers spanning the commercial gamut: drug companies, military contractors, banks, media companies and government agencies.
“This is an industry dirty secret, and no one wants to be the first to say mea culpa,” said a senior industry executive who asked not to be identified to protect his company’s reputation. “If we were a manufacturing industry, we’d be out of business straightaway.”
James Glanz of The New York Times has the story: Link
Photographer Tom Wilkinson snapped a photo of this apology van, parked up next to a busy roundabout outside Shildon, County Durham, England, with the text:
Linda I'm sorry
I'm a fool and an idiot sometimes.
I love you with all my heart!
Please come home and put this right
We miss you!! I miss us.
I want to grow old with you,
Will you marry me?
No words of a reply from Linda: Link
The European supermarket chain Billa uses a slogan urging more "common sense." Then at least one store in Austria offered bananas for sale as you see here: peeled and packaged in styrofoam trays with plastic wrap.
But the stunt by the German-owned Billa supermarket chain - part of the Rewe group that has thousands of stores in 9 European countries, has caused outrage among users after it was posted on the firm's Facebook page.
Last night staff moved to distance themselves from the sale of ready-peeled bananas and apologised for the "one off" mistake, saying it would not happen again.
I guess someone explained to them that bananas come in their own nature-made packaging that's even safer than plastic wrap. Link -via Arbroath
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