September 2016 – Page 30

filed under: shopping

Image credit:

amazon / istock

As a recurring feature, our team combs the Web and shares some amazing Amazon deals we’ve turned up. Here’s what caught our eye today, September 22.

Mental Floss has affiliate relationships with certain retailers, including Amazon, and may receive a small percentage of any sale. But we only get commission on items you buy and don’t return, so we’re only happy if you’re happy. Good luck deal hunting!

September 22, 2016 – 11:57am

Amazon Product Id:

B000CPI5GO

September 22, 2016

Activity Trackers May Not Help You Lose Weight, Study Finds

Anna Green

filed under: exercise, health, science, technology

Image credit:

iStock

Activity trackers are a fun way to keep track of steps walked, miles biked, or calories burned—but don’t expect them to automatically help you lose weight. According to a recent study in JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association, activity trackers may be less effective as a weight loss aid than previously believed. In fact, the study found that participants who did not use an activity tracker actually lost, on average, more weight than those who did.

In order to study the effectiveness of activity trackers, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh enlisted a group of 471 volunteers who wanted to lose weight. For six months, all volunteers followed the same diet and exercise regimen—and all lost some amount of weight. After that, volunteers were broken up into two groups: Members of one group were given wearable activity trackers to monitor their physical activity, while the other group was asked to record their daily exercise progress on a website. After 18 months, researchers weighed volunteers and observed their progress. They were surprised to find that the activity tracker group lost an average of 7.7 pounds, while those who did not use the wearable devices lost an average of 13 pounds.

Researchers are still unsure why those who wore activity trackers lost less weight than those who did not. Lead researcher John Jakicic told The New York Times he believes participants may have placed too much responsibility on the technology to help them lose weight, or became demoralized when they failed to reach their daily fitness goals. However, he says more research is needed to determine why activity trackers were ineffective, and whether they can be usefully used by some as a weight loss device.

“The findings of our study are important because effective long-term treatments are needed to address America’s obesity epidemic,” Jakicic said in a statement. “We’ve found that questions remain regarding the effectiveness of wearable devices and how to best use them to modify physical activity and diet behaviors in adults seeking weight loss.”

[h/t The New York Times]

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September 22, 2016 – 12:00am

September 22, 2016

A Man Forged 31 Boarding Passes, Spent 18 Days at the Airport

Anna Green

filed under: aviation, current events, travel, weird

Image credit:

iStock

For most of us, the airport is just the first stop on the way to a relaxing vacation—not the vacation destination itself. But one man recently embarked upon a luxurious 18-day vacation without ever leaving Singapore’s Changi Airport, Atlas Obscura reports.

A former business developer, Raejali Buntut was returning to Malaysia after a trip abroad when he overslept in the Changi Airport lounge and missed his flight home. Instead of booking a new flight, Buntut inexplicably spent 18 days—from August 21 to September 7—living in the airport. For more than two weeks Buntut bounced from transit lounge to transit lounge, using his computer to forge boarding passes for different airlines. Buntut, who is apparently savvy in both forgery and Photoshop, added his name, fake flight numbers, and fake destinations onto mobile boarding pass images he found online, according to The Straits Times.

But like all vacations, Buntut’s airport adventure eventually came to an end: An airport lounge employee finally noticed that Buntut had entered the lounge for the fourth time in just 10 days—a highly improbable event for even the most frequent flyers—and Buntut was arrested. It’s still unclear why he decided to spend weeks living in the airport instead of returning home, though it should be noted Changi Airport has no shortage of amenities. It has been dubbed both the “World’s Best Airport” and “The Best Airport For Leisure Amenities” by Skytrax and provides travelers with everything from shops and video games to a butterfly garden, and even a swimming pool with a Jacuzzi.

[h/t Atlas Obscura]

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September 22, 2016 – 10:30am

September 22, 2016

The Origins of 25 Fall Traditions

Stacy Conradt

Image credit:

Getty

If your fall bucket list includes carving jack-o’-lanterns, sipping apple cider, and toasting s’mores over a bonfire, you’re in good company. But when you stop to think about it, many of our autumnal traditions—like scooping out pumpkin guts, asking strangers for sugar, and wandering aimlessly through cornfields—are pretty bizarre. Here are the reasons behind some of our favorite fall pastimes.

1. OKTOBERFEST

This suds-filled celebration, which starts the third weekend of September and ends the first Sunday in October, was created to commemorate the wedding of Bavarian Crown Prince Ludwig to Princess Therese of Saxony-Hildburghausen on October 12, 1810. Citizens celebrated again the following year, and the year after that, and the year after that. The party grew as the years passed—and by 1896, the beer stands had given way to beer tents.

2. CORN MAZES

Wandering through a confusing crop configuration is a relatively recent tradition. The first corn maze was created in 1993 at Lebanon Valley College in Annville, Pennsylvania. Its creator, Don Frantz, has also been responsible for producing Super Bowl halftime shows and Broadway musicals like The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast.

3. SUPER TUESDAY

When Americans first started voting, they had a 34-day period in which to get it done—but when Congress eventually designated a specific Election Day in 1845, they did so with farmers in mind. Many people had to travel up to a day to reach their voting locations, so Congress had to keep a two-day window open. Weekends were out because of church, and Wednesdays were no good because many farmers went to market that day. Tuesday basically won by default. We also have farmers to thank for the month in which we vote—November was post-Harvest, but pre-snow.

4. HOMECOMING

Several colleges claim to have held the first homecoming, but whether it was the University of Missouri, Baylor, or the University of Illinois, the tradition dates from the early 1900s and was invented to encourage alumni to come back to visit (presumably infusing the community with cash from their newfound paychecks).

5. TRICK-OR-TREATING

Going door-to-door for food on specific holidays dates at least back to the Middle Ages. It became popular in the United States in the 1920s and ‘30s, but had to be put on hold during WWII due to the sugar rations. When the war was over, the practice returned with a vengeance. UNICEF latched on to the tradition in 1950, and “Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF” has since raised more than $175 million.

6. BEGGAR’S NIGHT

Believing that holding activities on Halloween night increases the chance of vandalism and mischief, some communities choose to hold their annual trick-or-treat night on nearby dates in October instead. One of the first cities to adapt “Beggar’s Night” was Des Moines, Iowa, which switched to an alternative date after a rash of petty crime in 1938.

7. APPLE BOBBING

Trying to grab a Red Delicious with your teeth wasn’t always an autumn tradition. It was once a British courting ritual, where each apple was assigned the name of an eligible bachelor, and each woman would try to grab the apple representing the man she was interested in. (Cringe.) Getting it on the first try meant a “happily ever after” ending. Snagging the apple on the the second attempt meant the couple would get together, but their love wouldn’t last. And three tries was a no-go. Though the game waned in popularity during the 1800s, a version of it was revived at the end of the century by Americans remembering their cultural roots.

8. PUMPKIN SPICE

As you might have suspected, Starbucks gets the credit for making people lose their minds over the blend of common household spices—after all, “pumpkin spice” is really just a combination of spices found in autumn fare like pumpkin pie and apple cider. Mixing flavors such as cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, and mace is certainly nothing new. But in 2003, the Seattle-based coffee company did a heck of a job marketing their new Pumpkin Spice Latte, and ever since then, consumers have clamored to buy anything with the magic label.

9. THE WORLD SERIES

Wikimedia Commons // Public Domain

In 1901 and 1902, baseball’s American League and National League were bitter rivals, stealing each other’s players and even taking the beef to the off-season. Things had mostly settled down by 1903, and to bury the hatchet, the leagues decided to face off in a friendly competition. The Boston Americans beat the Pittsburg (that’s not a typo—there was no “h” at the time) Pirates, but by 1904, the rivalry had reared its ugly head again. John McGraw, the manager of the New York Giants, the National League champs, refused to let his team play against the American League Boston Americans, and the 1904 World Series was canceled.

10. HAUNTED HOUSES.

The idea of an attraction designed specifically to creep people out has been around since 19th-century London, when Madame Tussaud exhibited eerily accurate wax replicas of famous French people getting their heads lopped off by the guillotine. But walkthroughs of macabre mansions filled with all manner of spooks and scares was first popularized in 1969: “A lot of the professional haunters will point to one thing, and that’s Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion. It’s the start of the haunted attraction industry,” says Lisa Morton, the author of Trick or Treat: A History of Halloween. Within a few years, copies had popped up all over the country.

11. MOVEMBER

As many great ideas do, Movember started in a pub. In 1999, a group of guys in Adelaide, South Australia, came up with the idea to raise money and awareness for charities by growing their moustaches out for a month. The idea quickly caught on, and by 2003, other organizations had adopted the practice. Since then, the Movember Foundation has raised more than $710 million for men’s health causes such as testicular cancer, prostate cancer, mental health, and suicide prevention.

12. BLACK FRIDAY

If getting up in the middle of the night to fight crowds and snag deals on electronics and cookware is your idea of a good time, thank the good people of Philadelphia. Philly police used the term “Black Friday” to refer to the day after Thanksgiving, when the city would be awash with rowdy fans attending the Army-Navy football game. Local retailers took advantage of the crowds by having sales and calling the day “Big Friday,” but the police term for it stuck. By the 1980s, the discounts and super sales started creeping across the nation.

13. S’MORES

We can’t point to a single inventor of the s’more, but the concept of melting the gooey concoctions over a campfire dates to at least 1927, when a recipe for “Some mores” was published in a handbook called Tramping and Trailing with the Girl Scouts. The delicious combination of chocolate, marshmallow, and graham cracker was nothing new—the Mallomar was invented in 1913—but there’s something to be said for the smokiness and warmth that come from the fire.

14. CANDY CORN

Love it or hate it, candy corn is here to stay. Invented in the 1880s by George Renninger, a candymaker at the Wunderle Candy Company, the tricolor treat was originally called “Chicken Feed” when the Goelitz Candy Company brought it to the masses by the end of that century.

15. GUY FAWKES NIGHT

After Guy Fawkes’ Gunpowder Plot to blow up British Parliament was foiled in 1605, the government declared November 5 a day to celebrate. Even now, more than 400 years later, November 5 is earmarked for fireworks and large bonfires where effigies of Fawkes are burned.

16. BONFIRES

Building giant fires for fun instead of necessity started as a Fourth of July tradition, when towns in New England used to compete to see who could build the tallest pile of flaming debris. Fall bonfires were also a custom, in part because many of the colonists weren’t that far removed from participation in Guy Fawkes Night. George Washington hated the tradition due to its anti-Catholic sentiment—another byproduct of the association with Guy Fawkes—calling it a “ridiculous and childish custom” in 1775.

17. TAILGATING

There are a few different theories as to where and when people first gathered to break bread before watching the pigskin get tossed around. The first is that it happened at the very first college football game in 1869, when Princeton played Rutgers. People sat at the “tail end” of their horses to eat and drink. We can also fast-forward to 1904, when people started traveling to games by train. Hungry after a long journey by rail, famished fans brought pre-game snacks to enjoy before kickoff.

Finally, there’s the Green Bay Packers theory, which jibes most with how we tailgate today: Starting in 1919, fans backed their trucks up right to the edge of the field to serve as makeshift bleachers—and, of course, they noshed as they watched.

18. NANOWRIMO

Every November, thousands of writers vow to spend the month hunkering down and finally finishing that novel that’s been bouncing around in their brains. The phenomenon, known as National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, is the brainchild of Chris Baty. In 1999, Baty and 21 of his friends vowed to get 50,000 words down on paper during the month of November. Only six of them succeeded. But word spread, and the next year, 140 people participated. The third year, they surpassed 1000 writers. Last year, 431,626 people completed the challenge.

19. CARVING JACK-O’-LANTERNS

Why do we carve pumpkins? The short answer: Because it’s better than carving turnips.

The long answer: As far back as the 1500s, Irish people told a story about Stingy Jack, a blacksmith who made a deal with the Devil to never claim his soul—but when he died, God wouldn’t let him into Heaven, either. So Jack was doomed to walk the Earth for all eternity, with only a burning coal to light his way—which he carried in a turnip he had carved out. He roams the world to this day as “Jack of the Lantern,” or “Jack-O’-Lantern.” Irish immigrants eventually brought the tale to the U.S., as well as the related tradition of turnip-carving. Since pumpkins were plentiful in the U.S. and allowed more room for candles, they quickly became the veggie of choice.

20. DETROIT LIONS AND DALLAS COWBOYS FOOTBALL ON THANKSGIVING

The Detroit Lions have taken the field for a Thanksgiving game since 1934, when the team moved to Detroit from Portsmouth, Ohio. To get the city excited about the franchise—the second in Detroit—the owner came up with the idea of having a game on Thanksgiving. Because he was well connected, the owner managed to convince NBC to broadcast the game on 94 stations across the U.S. It worked: The Lions filled the stadium to capacity and had to turn fans away at the gate.

When the Dallas Cowboys picked up on the marketing scheme in 1966, fans broke the attendance record. Both teams have upheld the Turkey Day tradition nearly every year since.

21. TURKEY PARDON

Speaking of Turkey Day, the President of the United States has the distinct honor of issuing pardons to a pair of birds every year. The tradition may date back to Abraham Lincoln, who is said to have pardoned a turkey named Jack that his son had befriended. But no real documentation for the turkey pardon exists until John F. Kennedy, who let a turkey given to him by the National Turkey Federation roam free.

22. BUY-NOTHING DAY

If Black Friday isn’t your thing, you can take the opposite tack and participate in Buy Nothing Day, where consumers are challenged to—you guessed it—buy nothing for 24 hours. Founded by artist Ted Dave, the first BND took place in Canada in 1992. In 1997, it was changed to directly counteract the ever-growing madness of Black Friday in the U.S.

23. MACY’S THANKSGIVING DAY PARADE

Actually, when the spectacle debuted in 1924, it was the Macy’s Christmas Parade, and was mainly meant to create publicity for the expansion of Macy’s flagship Manhattan store, which would now cover an entire city block and became the self-proclaimed “World’s Largest Store.” The parade was such a hit that they decided to make it an annual event, switching to a Thanksgiving day celebration in 1927.

24. NEW FALL TV

Autumn’s arrival also means the end of summer reruns. That’s because New York-based radio productions used to shut down for the summer so industry folks could escape to the Catskills or Cape Cod for refuge from the summer heat wave. When many radio stars made the switch to TV, the tradition continued. It works out for the best—most people tend to watch less TV in the summer anyway.

25. PUNKIN CHUNKIN

Sick of all things pumpkin? Chuck them! The World Championship Punkin Chunkin Contest in Bridgeville, Delaware, claims it’s the oldest and largest event of its kind, with the first one taking place in 1986. It’s said that Delawarean Bill Thompson invented the strange sport, which started out as a small group and grew when a local radio station became interested in the squashed squash. Today, more than 50,000 spectators show up to watch contestants pitch pumpkins using trebuchets, catapults, centrifugal machines, and other contraptions.

All images courtesy of Getty unless otherwise noted.

September 22, 2016 – 10:00am

September 22, 2016

Scientists Discover World’s Oldest-Known Fishhooks in Okinawa, Japan

Kirstin Fawcett

filed under: science, technology, archaeology, Stones Bones and Wrecks

Image credit:

Fujita et al. in PNAS, 2016

Archaeologists have discovered the world’s oldest known fishhooks—23,000-year-old implements carved from sea snail shells—inside a cave on Japan’s Okinawa Island, Science reports. The findings, recently published in the journal PNAS, provide new insights into both Okinawa Island’s history of human habitation and the early use of maritime technology in the Asian Pacific. They suggest such tool use began in the region far earlier than experts had believed.

Humans moved to Okinawa Island and its surrounding sister islands around 50,000 years ago, but scientists used to think that the region’s resources were too scant to support early people for prolonged periods of time. According to CNN, this notion was challenged by a group of Japanese archaeologists, who have been excavating Sakitari Cave, a limestone cave that sits a little over a mile inland from Okinawa Island’s southern coast, since 2009.

Long ago, fishermen hung out in the cavern to catch crabs and freshwater snails migrating downstream. Archaeologists discovered the fishhooks—one finished, the other unfinished—along with other artifacts including beads, tools, human remains, and the burnt residue of foods including frogs, birds, and eels. Thanks to these findings, the researchers propose that humans may have continuously lived on Okinawa Island for 35,000 years now.

These ancient inhabitants were also sophisticated enough to know that certain foods taste better seasonally, The Guardian points out. The burnt crab remains suggest that the crustaceans were caught during their fall migratory period, when they’re largest and tastiest.

Perhaps most importantly, the fishhooks help reshape the timeline of maritime technology. Experts knew Paleolithic people had created and adapted tools to exploit marine resources in Australia and Indonesia, but until now, they had no evidence that they did so in other geographical regions.

[h/t Science]

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September 22, 2016 – 9:30am

September 22, 2016

Art Exhibit in San Francisco Is Meant to Simulate Synesthesia

Michele Debczak

filed under: art, design, music, neurology

Image credit:

Onformative//YouTube

Synesthesia, or the phenomenon of blending together different senses like hearing colors or tasting words, is experienced by roughly 4 percent of the population. Artists and scientists have come up with some pretty creative attempts at making the experience accessible to the rest of us. Now a new San Francisco exhibit aims to simulate the condition by combining a massive light display with blaring background music, Co.Design reports.

Collide is the work of the digital art and design studio Onformative. Their first step was creating a 62-foot wrap-around screen for displaying abstract imagery. From there, the designers had an audio track custom-composed for the installation. Members of the cellist trio kling klang klong were outfitted with virtual reality headsets and tasked with playing music to match the visuals. In the realized exhibit, audio fills the room through a 54-channel speaker system.

Booking a trip to San Francisco isn’t the only way to test out the synesthesia-inspired art piece. Onformative shared a 360-degree video of Collide that can be turned to an immersive experience by anyone with a VR headset. If you’re more interested in the making of the project, footage of the musicians’ composition process is also available to view.

[h/t Co.Design]

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September 22, 2016 – 9:00am

September 22, 2016

The ‘Hamdog’ is The Burger and Hot Dog Hybrid of Your Dreams

Caitlin Schneider

filed under: Food, inventions, fun

Image credit:

Hamdog // Facebook

Hybrid foods are all the rage these days, but Australian Mark Murray was way ahead of the trend. Back in 2004, he came up with the idea of the Hamdog—a hamburger with a hot dog nested inside of it, all encased in a one-of-a-kind bun—and 14 years later, it’s finally available for purchase.

“I had the idea on holiday when I was leaving a bar in Nashville. I grabbed a burger and a hot dog as I was really hungry. I was sitting in the car eating them both at the same time and my wife was looking at me like I was an idiot,” Murray told CNBC.

Murray patented his meaty masterpiece in 2009 and presented it to judges on Australia’s Shark Tank in 2015. However, he failed to secure funding for the venture after the investors literally laughed in his face. (To be fair, the “party in your mouth” concoction does look a bit insane.)

Australians can now find the Hamdog at sporting events and markets, and according to CNBC, Murray is looking to bring it to the U.S. in 2017. The culinary creation comes with lettuce, tomato, pickles, cheese, ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise, and costs about $6 U.S.

It’s over folks, shut it all down. The #Hamdog is here. pic.twitter.com/JFxFd2Z6DV

— Jess Wheeler (@wheelswordsmith) September 20, 2016

The Hamdog empire is still in its infancy, and Murray told news.com.au that a company is currently developing a way to semi-automate the bun-making process; as of now, all the bread is baked by hand. He’s also looking for “resellers” (much like a franchisee), so if you’ve got $10,000 and a passion for newfangled meat delivery systems, your future is calling.

[h/t BBC Newsbeat]

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September 22, 2016 – 8:30am

September 22, 2016

17 Books That You Should Drop Everything To Read Right Now

mentalfloss.com

filed under: books

Image credit:

iStock

Now that fall is here, the idea of wrapping up in a comfy fleece blanket with a cup of cider and a good book is all-encompassing. From lesser-known works by the masters, to deep historical dives, to required source reading before new TV shows debut, let this list serve as a fall book club guide. Happy reading!

1. MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL, BY JOHN BERENDT

When magazine editor John Berendt moved to Savannah, Georgia, he had no idea that the town’s real-life residents—most notably eccentric art dealer Jim Williams and transgendered drag queen The Lady Chablis—would be such fully-realized characters that they’d provide a true-crime murder plot and witty dialogue so compelling that they’d propel his 1994 non-fiction novel based on them to set New York Times bestseller records. In honor of The Lady’s passing earlier this month, pick up the book that made her a national name. “She had a great repartee,” Berendt told the Times after her death, “and she had a way with words … And she also knew she was everybody’s favorite.”

2. TO THE LIGHTHOUSE, BY VIRGINIA WOOLF

The end of summer might be the perfect time to read Virginia Woolf’s 1927 Modernist masterpiece, To the Lighthouse. The novel follows the Ramsay family over the course of a decade on their visits to a vacation home in the Scottish isles—and its stream-of-consciousness style, with shifting narrators and a nonlinear plot is a journey unto itself. Get wistful, consider life’s big questions, and curl up with the work that Woolf herself described as “easily the best of my books.”

3. ALEXANDER HAMILTON, BY RON CHERNOW

How did Alexander Hamilton, the first secretary of the treasury—and the “bastard brat of a Scottish peddler,” as John Adams called him—get his own musical on Broadway? It all started with Ron Chernow’s incredible 2004 biography, which Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda picked up on a whim at the airport. Alexander Hamilton covers the founding father’s less than illustrious beginnings in the West Indies, where he was born; how he escaped to America by writing one epic letter; his time as George Washington’s aide-de-camp; how he created our national bank; his family life and scandalous affair, which was one of the first sex scandals in American political history; and the circumstances that led to his infamous duel with Aaron Burr. A must read for fans of the musical and of history.

4. LAFAYETTE IN THE SOMEWHAT UNITED STATES, BY SARAH VOWELL

If you’ve memorized every song on the Hamilton cast album and found yourself particularly taken with “America’s favorite fighting Frenchman,” your next move should be to devour Sarah Vowell’s 2015 biography of the Marquis de Lafayette. America’s secret weapon proves to be as fascinating as his friend Alexander Hamilton. And even if you’ve never seen Hamilton (and are perhaps a little sick of people talking about it), Lafayette in the Somewhat United States is still a captivating (and brutally honest) retelling of early American history.

5. REAL FOOD/ FAKE FOOD: WHY YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE EATING AND WHAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT, BY LARRY OLMSTEAD

Olmstead’s expose on the rampant counterfeit food industry will have you seriously reconsidering your grocery list. Name-brand olive oil that’s been diluted with vegetable or peanut oil; “lobster” that’s made up of unidentifiable sea creatures; wheels of “authentic” Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese that never rolled out of Italy. Olmstead paints a disturbing portrait of black market foods that each of us unknowingly consume every day and offers tips on how to find the real thing. You’ll never walk the supermarket aisles the same way again.

6. THE HUNTER, BY RICHARD STARK

True crime television may be all the rage right now, but this 24-novel series about fictional career criminal Parker will have you putting down the remote. His first appearance in The Hunter sets the table: former allies owe Parker money, and he won’t stop until everyone gets what’s coming to them.

7. THE HIKE, BY DREW MAGARY

The latest book (released last month) from Deadspin columnist and GQ correspondent Drew Magary is an ambling tale about a man who gets lost in the woods. The quirky story mixes traditional folklore with contemporary video game themes to create a story that’s truly hard to tear away from. For what is a relatively short read for a fantasy novel, Magary does an a excellent job of building out an elaborate world with its own monsters, landscapes, and rules that is simultaneously horrifying and hilarious.

8. THE HANDMAID’S TALE, BY MARGARET ATWOOD

With the new Hulu adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale (starring Mad Men’s Elisabeth Moss) slated for an early 2017 release, now is the perfect time to dive into—or revisit—Margaret Atwood’s classic dystopian novel. It may be set in a futuristic United States, but Atwood’s story of female oppression under a theocratic regime—one in which women’s bodies are rigorously policed—is especially chilling in today’s political climate.

9. HAROUN AND THE SEA OF STORIES, BY SALMAN RUSHDIE

Packed to the gills with exuberant wordplay, silly puns, oceans of notions, and bizarre creatures of all shapes and sizes, Haroun and the Sea of Stories isn’t just Salman Rushdie’s joyful first foray into children’s fiction—it’s also the perfect introduction to the legendary author for readers of all ages. Rushdie wrote the novel, about a young boy who has to rescue his storyteller father from “the arch-enemy of stories,” for his son Zafar in 1990, and it’s as much a love letter to storytelling, itself, as it is a children’s adventure novel.

10. A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES, BY JOHN KENNEDY TOOLE

If you’re waiting for the movie version of this cult-turned-contemporary classic to hit a theater near you, you’ve got some time to kill—certainly enough to make it through Toole’s sizeable tome, which won a Pulitzer Prize 35 years ago. Ever since the New Orleans-set novel, which follows the tragicomic exploits of pop culture-hating “slob extraordinary” Ignatius J. Reilly and his mom, was published in 1980, its film rights have passed through some of Hollywood’s biggest names. But the book, partly because of its picaresque style, has proven impossible to adapt. Yet the novel’s long road to publication might be worth a film all its own: It was Toole’s mother who found the manuscript, shortly after the author committed suicide in 1969. She spent more than a decade trying to get it published; ultimately, it was novelist Walker Percy—author of The Moviegoer, another classic Louisiana-set novel—who helped bring it to the masses.

11. SEX AND DEATH: STORIES, EDITED BY SARAH HALL AND PETER HOBBS

This recently released anthology of stories highlights the essential themes that drive all of humanity—survival and reproduction. Some of the short stories included are darkly serious, and others lighthearted, but they all explore either one or both of the topics at hand from an honest, illuminating perspective.

12. THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN, BY THOMAS MANN

Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain might take quite a while to read through, but it’s worth the time. For over 700 pages, Mann chronicles how his young protagonist’s quick visit with a cousin in a mountaintop tuberculosis sanatorium stretches into a years-long exposure to illness, political philosophy, art, and everything in between. You’re unlikely to find another novel that can make tuberculosis feel this funny.

13. WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE, BY SHIRLEY JACKSON

With a movie in the works for next year and a new biography of author Shirley Jackson due out later this month, now is the perfect time to pick up We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962). Deceptively slim, it packs a mordant (and morbid) punch: there’s a creepy old house, twisted family relationships, possible psychopathy, and something terribly wrong with the sugar. Though some readers know Jackson only for her short story The Lottery, her sweetly charming brand of evil deserves to be far more widely appreciated—and her indelibly spooky images are perfect to put you in the October mood.

14. SEVEN BRIEF LESSONS ON PHYSICS, BY CARLO ROVELLI

Clocking in at 78 pages, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics can be blown through in a single sitting. But readers shouldn’t equate the book’s slim package with the ideas inside—the essays in the collection explore hefty topics like quantum mechanics, elementary particles, and the fabric of the universe. Rovelli’s enthusiastic prose prevents the material from ever veering into textbook territory.

15. LILA, BY MARILYNNE ROBINSON

Robinson’s 2004 novel Gilead dazzled readers and Pulitzer Prize judges alike with its lyrical prose and quiet-yet-powerful storytelling. Four years later, Home explored the same loving, hurting, small-town families from a new perspective. But Lila (2014) may be Robinson’s best tale yet, leading readers through its fierce heroine’s pitiable past and into the unexpected blessings of her present.

16. LETTERS FROM THE EARTH, BY MARK TWAIN

You likely studied The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn or The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in high school English class, but Mark Twain’s lesser known short stories and essays are also worth a read. In the years preceding his death in 1910, the iconic American author wrote an assortment of humorous (and occasionally deeply cynical) works, which were published posthumously in 1962 in a volume called Letters From the Earth. Some of the vignettes lampoon Christianity; others question mankind’s intrinsic goodness. Most of them, however, present Twain at his most introspective—and his most hilarious.

17. THE GREENLANDERS, BY JANE SMILEY

Written in the dry, matter-of-fact style of an Icelandic saga, Jane Smiley’s 1988 novel The Greenlanders is a 700+-page epic covering several generations of a settler family and their community as they forge lives in the often harsh world of medieval Greenland. It sounds esoteric, but it’s highly compelling—historical fiction that transports you to a very specific time and place where the human struggles are nevertheless timeless and universal.

September 22, 2016 – 8:00am

September 22, 2016

AI System Composes Beatles-Style Pop Song

Anna Green

filed under: music, technology

Sony CSL Research Laboratory has taken a major step towards making human musicians obsolete. Inverse reports that researchers at Sony have released a catchy pop song inspired by The Beatles but composed by an artificial intelligence system called Flow Machines.

In order to create the song, which is called “Daddy’s Car,” researchers set up a database of sheet music by a range of musicians, in a range of styles. A human composer selected the style of the song—in this case, the 1960s pop stylings of The Beatles—while Flow Machines composed the melody and harmony. A human musician then produced and mixed the song. Sony plans to officially release “Daddy’s Car,” which can be heard above, on a pop album composed entirely by artificial intelligence sometime in 2017.

[h/t Inverse]

Banner Image Credit: Getty

September 22, 2016 – 7:30am

September 22, 2016

Why Computer Scientists Created a Database of 10,000 Torsos

Anna Green

filed under: technology

Image credit:

iStock

Computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University are building a database of human torsos in order to teach computers about the topography of the human body, Atlas Obscura reports. This week, project creators Adam Milner and Ben Snell teamed up with a group of volunteers to organize and classify about 10,000 shirtless selfies.

The so-called Torso Computer Club has a few goals: Milner and Snell hope they can use their selfie collection to teach computers to differentiate between belly buttons and nipples—a task that may sound simple, but is still difficult for computers to achieve. The two are also interested in teaching computers to identify a range of physical characteristics (freckles and hair, for instance) and even poses.

Milner originally began collecting torso selfies on Grindr and other dating apps. By teaching computers to classify elements of the torso photos, they believe they can not only teach computers more about human physiology, but learn a little more about human behavior, themselves. Already, they’ve used a computer to identify a range of selfie archetypes, like profile shots and mirror selfies, based on their torso selfie database.

Part of the goal of the Torso Computer Club is simply to provide a dataset for other researchers. As Snell notes, “There aren’t open source data sets of torsos just lying around the internet.” However, both Snell and Milner hope to use their torso photo collection to pursue research of their own. Snell tells Atlas Obscura, “We want to continue mining this collection for the potential it has, though less as a tool and more as a form of provocation and speculation.”

Like #machinelearning? #torsos? #dumplings? Help label 1000s of nipples & navels this Tuesday 9/20 @creativeinquiry! pic.twitter.com/HGF26dV0qF

— Golan Levin (@golan) September 17, 2016

[h/t Atlas Obscura]

Know of something you think we should cover? Email us at tips@mentalfloss.com.

September 22, 2016 – 7:00am

GADGETS

KITCHEN

HOME

HEALTH AND BEAUTY

OFFICE, SCHOOL, AND CRAFTS

OUTDOORS, GARDEN, AND SPORTS

ELECTRONICS

TOOLS

1. OKTOBERFEST

2. CORN MAZES

3. SUPER TUESDAY

4. HOMECOMING

5. TRICK-OR-TREATING

6. BEGGAR’S NIGHT

7. APPLE BOBBING

8. PUMPKIN SPICE

9. THE WORLD SERIES

10. HAUNTED HOUSES.

11. MOVEMBER

12. BLACK FRIDAY

13. S’MORES

14. CANDY CORN

15. GUY FAWKES NIGHT

16. BONFIRES

17. TAILGATING

18. NANOWRIMO

19. CARVING JACK-O’-LANTERNS

20. DETROIT LIONS AND DALLAS COWBOYS FOOTBALL ON THANKSGIVING

21. TURKEY PARDON

22. BUY-NOTHING DAY

23. MACY’S THANKSGIVING DAY PARADE

24. NEW FALL TV

25. PUNKIN CHUNKIN

1. MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL, BY JOHN BERENDT

2. TO THE LIGHTHOUSE, BY VIRGINIA WOOLF

3. ALEXANDER HAMILTON, BY RON CHERNOW

4. LAFAYETTE IN THE SOMEWHAT UNITED STATES, BY SARAH VOWELL

5. REAL FOOD/ FAKE FOOD: WHY YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE EATING AND WHAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT, BY LARRY OLMSTEAD

6. THE HUNTER, BY RICHARD STARK

7. THE HIKE, BY DREW MAGARY

8. THE HANDMAID’S TALE, BY MARGARET ATWOOD

9. HAROUN AND THE SEA OF STORIES, BY SALMAN RUSHDIE

10. A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES, BY JOHN KENNEDY TOOLE

11. SEX AND DEATH: STORIES, EDITED BY SARAH HALL AND PETER HOBBS

12. THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN, BY THOMAS MANN

13. WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE, BY SHIRLEY JACKSON

14. SEVEN BRIEF LESSONS ON PHYSICS, BY CARLO ROVELLI

15. LILA, BY MARILYNNE ROBINSON

16. LETTERS FROM THE EARTH, BY MARK TWAIN

17. THE GREENLANDERS, BY JANE SMILEY