When people talk about literary loves, they mention Rhett and Scarlet, Heathcliff and Catherine, or Romeo and Juliet. It's about time some more modern love stories joined them. The Best Damn Creative Writing Blog assembled a list of modern novels with great love stories. If you haven't read these, this might be the nudge you need! For example: The Solitude of Prime Numbers.
When Alice and Mattia first meet in grade school, they realize that they have one thing in common–they are not yet ready for love. Both have been shaped by profound childhood tragedies that crippled their trust in the world around them. But years later, they eventually learn to trust each other enough to overcome their awkwardness. The Solitude of Prime Numbers is an absolutely flawless literary debut from one of Italy’s most promising new authors and the romance between Alice and Mattia–unconventional though it may be–is one for the history books.
Meet the lovers of nine more modern novels you may want to explore. Link
January 3, 1942: After ringing in the New Year, the five Sullivan brothers from Waterloo, Iowa, enlisted in the Navy. The brothers were George, 28; Francis, 27; Joseph, 24; Madison, 23; and Albert, 20.The brothers all joined the Navy, which (along with the rest of the military) discouraged family members from serving together in a highly dangerous area. It was not forbidden, though, and the brothers wanted to stay together. So they requested permission to serve on the same ship, the USS Juneau, a new light cruiser. It first took them to fight in the North Atlantic and the Caribbean, and then set off for Guadalcanal in September.
FIGHTING SPIRIT
The Battle of Guadalcanal was one of the most important fights of World War II. Japan wanted control of the island to build a strategic base, and U.S. and Allied forces waged a campaign to stop them. The entire battle lasted two months, and the USS Juneau was just one of the ships involved.
The illusion comprises a morphing sequence between two faces. The observer has to fixate a dot superimposed on the morph. When the dot is moving, morphing can hardly be seen. However, when the dot suddenly stops, the morphing appears surprisingly strong. Subtle differences in, e.g., the shape of the eyes, the color of the skin, and even gender characteristics are ‘blown-up’ perceptually. Apparently, such differences between faces are easily overlooked when following a moving-dot, but are highly salient when our eyes rest at a single point on the morphing faces.
This illusion by Rob van Lier and Arno Koning is one of the ten finalists in the Best Illusion of the Year 2011 contest. See them all at the contest site. Link
Holgate Windmill in York, England was a working grain mill for over a hundred years before it was shut down 70 years ago. It was never torn down because of its historic charm, and a neighborhood grew up around it. Now, thanks to The Holgate Windmill Preservation Society, it will begin to mill grain once again.
By 2008 the Society had secured £250,000 in grants, prizes and donations – and in winning the People’s Millions award in November 2010, they finally have the money to rebuild the sails.
After decades of neglect, this mill will mill. Using locally produced grain, the Society will provide bakers with specialty flours milled in the traditional way, allowing them to make specialty breads with a 250-year-old heritage. Any profits will be reinvested in the mill so it pays for its upkeep by doing what it does best.
Read all about the project at ecosalon. Link-Thanks, Sara!
You know about Lenin's body and Mao's body, embalmed and on display to inspire the citizens of their countries. But there are plenty of other communist leaders in the same boat, and they all have a story behind them. Atlas Obscura has the stories of the mummies of the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Vietnam, North Korea, and even a couple of non-communists who remained above ground many years after their demise. Joseph Stalin is one who is no longer on display.
Seen now as one of the worst dictators in history, in his personal life Stalin lived like he meant it; a heavy smoker and drinker, most historians and specialists agree that vice-induced atherosclerosis led to a series of debilitating -- and ultimately fatal --strokes. Others claim that Stalin was assassinated by means of warfarin, an odorless and tasteless poison that causes strokes.
Regardless of the cause, Stalin's dead body was embalmed and placed along side Lenin's mummy immediately after his death in 1953. Mourners could gaze up on both of the Republic's founding fathers in conjunction until Halloween of 1961 when Stalin (sort of) rose from the dead. Officials had him buried next to the Kremlin as part of the process of de-Stalinization. Lenin has been lonely ever since.
Stalin is only one of ten corpses profiled at Atlas Obscura. Link
In the days before the internet (actually 1912-1963), Bostonians could get news headlines at a glance by dropping by the storefront office of The Boston Globe. Handwritten signs and blackboards had the top stories, breaking news, and even sports stats in big print as fast as they were available. And of course, if you wanted to read more, you could buy a paper. Shown here is the big map of Europe installed for the D-Day invasion in 1944. See more pictures of the hand-lettered "homepage" at The Boston Globe. Link -via Metafilter
Scientific Illustration is a Tumbler blog with 66 pages of scientific drawings and paintings from many linked sources. Find what you're particularly interested in seeing by scrolling through the archives -keep scrolling and watch yet more pictures load. Shown is a 1904 illustration by German biologist Ernst Haeckel. Link -via Nag on the Lake
Zazzle has a generator in which you can create custom pet cartoons that look like yours, or like a pet you'd rather have. The cats you see here are mine: Biscuit, Savannah, Marshmallow, and Gogo, although they aren't to scale. You can also customize a dog, fish, reptiles, birds, and some others. Link
According to police, Mark C. Sirben of Spring Hill, Florida, was so drunk that he went home, made himself a snack, and passed out on the couch. But it wasn't his home. It wasn't even in Spring Hill -the home was in Palm Harbor! The sleeping woman who actually lived there heard someone coughing in the middle of the night.
The woman went to investigate and found Sirben asleep on her couch. She woke up her husband, who went to the living room and confronted Sirben. Sirben argued with the husband, telling him that he lived there, before he passed out again.
"They had no idea who this guy was," said Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Cecilia Barreda.
When a deputy arrived, Sirben was still asleep on the couch with a plate of food at his side. The couple said Sirben must have cooked something for himself before he fell asleep.
They found food in a frying pan they had not prepared. Sirben, who has a record of DUI convictions, was jailed for trespassing and criminal mischief. Link -via Arbroath
We don't often post recipes here at Neatorama, but this post is worth your time even if you never intend to cook any of these! Have you ever heard of Chinese lasagna? Lasagna cupcakes (pictured)? Bacon and egg lasagna? Deep-fried lasagna? See a dozen of these strange dishes at FoodieBlog. Link-Thanks, Danny!
I have solved a longstanding mystery: why skunks have their characteristic stripes.
Striped skunks (Mephitis mephitis) are among the most familiar yet least understood of North American mammals. For example, people commonly think of these vividly marked animals as denizens of forests, prairie, swamps, and virtually any other terrestrial habitat, and many scientists argue that the skunk’s contrasting black and white dorsal stripes purposely advertise the skunk’s presence but simultaneously “warn” potential predators not to tangle with it. If a potential predator approaches a skunk too closely the skunk typically sprays an obnoxious musk that is commonly believed to deter further attack, but since there is no guarantee that the “musking” will actually protect the skunk some kind of advance warning might benefit the skunk (and the predator).
All of this sounds good but is not supported by the facts. I’m prepared to show that in reality, striped skunks are virtually confined to an entirely different type of habitat than woods and fields and that far from being an advertisement the vivid white stripes enable skunks to occupy this habitat in almost total secrecy.
How it Works
Figure 1. Good and not so good highway behavior in the striped skunk. Figure prepared by Emily Barry.
This paper rests on a few simple, easily verified facts. First, if the number of live and dead striped skunks we see on highways versus those we see elsewhere is any indication, it’s clear that most striped skunks actually spend their entire lives on the highways, not in forests, prairies, or swamps. And I don’t mean along the edges of the highways or on the medians, I mean right on the highways. Now and again you might see a skunk in a public park or housing development, but these skunks are just dispersing and always find a road sooner or later.
Second, the highway is obviously a difficult place to live unless you (the skunk) are well adapted to survive in the midst of pervasive hazards. Such adaptation might include great speed or agility, neither of which the skunk has, or it might involve concealment while on the highway through cryptic coloration. A simple comparison of skunks and highways shows that cryptic coloration is the correct interpretation. Skunks survive and reach great abundance on the highways because the white dorsal stripe is an incredibly precise “mimic” of the painted highway lane divider stripes (Fig. 1A). Rather than advertise the skunks’ presence, the skunks’ stripes blend right in with the highway stripes and no one sees the millions of skunks that populate the lane dividers. All a skunk has to do is to stay on the white lane divider line and it becomes extraordinarily difficult for any predator to detect.
What else factors into skunk/highway adaptation?
Well, for one thing, skunk survival on the highways is linked directly to skunk behavior. As long as the skunk stays longways on the painted lines the animal is relatively protected from any kind of attack (Fig 1A) but if the skunk moves off of the stripe (Fig. 1B) its visibility and vulnerability increase. If the skunk turns sideways (Fig 1C) the entire crypsis system breaks down and then the skunk is extremely vulnerable to any of a number of predators. In fact it is most often taken instantly by the most efficient skunk predator of all, the automobile. As common as these casualties are they are still several orders of magnitude below the millions of skunks that thrive for years on the highways just by staying longways on the stripes.
Likewise, life on the highway is in itself an efficient selective force that maintains striped skunk color pattern phenotypes within very narrow limits. Normally patterned striped skunks (Fig 2A) are, as previously noted, cryptic when positioned longways against the highway stripes (Fig 1A). However, crosswise striped (Fig 2B) and offset striped (Fig 2C) skunks are easily detected especially when positioned longways on the highway stripes. Consequently, these aberrant crosswise and offset color patterns are so rare in the striped skunk population that the only place I’ve ever seen them is in Fig. 2. Thus, only normally patterned, normally behaving striped skunks benefit maximally from life on the highway.
Figure 2. Adaptive and maladaptive striped skunk pattern phenotypes in the Wainwrightian context. Figure prepared by Emily Barry.
Earlier Progress on This Question
The only reference I could find regarding a cause and effect relationship between skunks and highways is Wainwright (1972),1 but although the fundamental observations that Wainwright reported were correct as far as they went, that author overlooked the cryptic coloration that is the foundation of this new paper. Nevertheless, in recognition of Wainwright’s seminal contribution to this research I propose the term “Wainwrightian Adaptation” for the newly discovered phenomenon reported here. Further investigation will probably show that other animals such as magpies and garter snakes also demonstrate Wainwrightian Adaptation and may even interact trophically with skunks in the same type of habitat. Research into Wainwrightian Adaptation shows great promise for investigators with the requisite speed, agility, and insurance.
Acknowledgements Emily Barry prepared the two figures. I also thank Loudon Wainwright III, who likely has no idea why.
Literature cited 1. “Dead Skunk (in the Middle of the Road),” Loudon Wainwright III, Sound recording on Album III, Columbia KC 31462, 1972. A first edition copy of Wainwright’s 1972 study of skunks.
This article is republished with permission from the September-October 2010 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. You can download or purchase back issues of the magazine, or subscribe to receive future issues. Or get a subscription for someone as a gift!
Visit their website for more research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK.
People love a race. They began to race cars before any of the kinks in such an undertaking were worked out. Consider the 1903 Paris to Madrid road race:
As a result of the constant, unremitting horror that unfolded on the first day, the race officials just drew a new finish line in Bordeaux.
Given the nascence of car manufacturing, not many people understood yet the inherent danger of traveling that fast in a wood and steel shell filled with explosives. All day, cars crashed into trees, burst into flames, careened into groups of spectators or just straight up disintegrated. Out of all the hundreds of racers that started, more than half crashed out in that first day, at least eight people died including one of the founders of Renault.
But that was just one race. Things got considerably worse in the next, when locals shot at passing vehicles! Read all six stories at Cracked. Link -via Buzzfeed
Rick Hill of Lunenburg, Massachusetts went on vacation to Hawaii and took an unplanned visit to Waikiki Beach. There he met resident Joe Parker, who went on an unplanned errand to the beach as part of his job. Parker recognized Hill's accent and made an offhand remark that led them to a discussion about how they both grew up in the same area of Massachusetts.
And then the name game began. Parker threw out several, including Dickie Halligan. Hill responded, “That’s my father!’’
Standing in the glistening white sand, Parker lowered his sunglasses, squinted at Hill, and declared, “That’s my dad, too!’’
A flood of emotion hit everyone like the high-arching waves crashing nearby, they said. Tears flowed down Howe’s cheeks as the two men studied each other’s face and hugged.
“I can’t really put it into words,’’ Parker said yesterday in a telephone interview from Hawaii, describing the feeling of meeting his half brother for the first time, some 6,000 miles from where they grew up. “If I had to, I would say it was chilling, paralyzing, and an out-of-body experience all at once.’’
The two men spent a week becoming acquainted. Link -via reddit
Ars technica published a post about a hot button issue entitled "Guns at home more likely to be used stupidly than in self-defense." After a couple of dozen comments came in, the fifth-to-the-last paragraph was edited to say:
That's the bad news. In the limited scope of the review, the primary positive effect assigned to guns is deterrence, and, more specifically, deterrence against violence. Although, "Results suggest that self-defense gun use may be the best method for preventing property loss," this doesn't count from a public health perspective. And that's only the start of the problems; as the National Academies of Science noted in a report quoted by the author, "self-defense is an ambiguous term." As Hemenway himself puts it, "Unlike deaths or woundings, where the definitions are clear and one needs to only count the bodies, what constitutes a self-defense gun use and whether it was successful may depend on who is telling the story." If you have read this far, please mention Bananas in your comment below. We're pretty sure 90% of the respondants to this story won't even read it first.
Finally, on the third page of comments, someone mentioned bananas. Redditor metageeek took a screenshot of the comments. Things got even sillier after that, with some readers mentioning bananas used as weapons, and other commenters totally confused. How about you? Do you ever comment without reading an entire post? Link -via reddit
Remember the video of the impossible waterfall? Even after you saw how it was done, you were still impressed. Now Instructables has step-by-step instructions for you to make your own 3D version of the famous illusion! It's not exactly simple, but it can be done. And if you can pull it off, you'll flummox everyone who sees it. Link -via Boing Boing
