Month: September 2016

Roanoke: The Real History of the Lost Colony and How Its Legend Haunts Pop Culture. Read up on the real story before you see the American Horror Story version.
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24 Delightful Beauty And The Beast Secrets. It’s hard to believe the film is already 25 years old.
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This Bride’s 15-Year-Old Dog Made It To Her Wedding Just Before He Died. His was a life well-lived.
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Who would you cast to play Andy Warhol in a movie about his life? And then see who got the role.
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10 Bizarre Moments in Presidential Elections. None of them are as bizarre as the 2016 race.
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How much does your vote count? While swing state votes count more than others, we’ll never know for sure until it’s all over.   
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Why are creepy clowns terrorizing America? Because there’s nothing more terrifying than clowns.
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5 Delightful Science Experiments From 100 Years Ago. You could do these today, if you can find the materials.

By some accounts, the average person owns 19 pairs of shoes. But it’s not just our closets that are overflowing with sneakers, loafers, pumps, and wedges. It’s also our vocabulary. Here are 10 words hiding a secret, etymological shoe obsession.

1. SLIPSHOD

In Middle English, if you wanted to say something was “wearing shoes,” you would say it was shod. Shod simply means “shoed.” This old past participle form of the verb to shoe has largely been worn out in the lexicon, but it does survive as a compound in some familiar adjectives, like slipshod. Slipshod literally means “wearing slippers.” Slippers are loose-fitting, which is how slipshod eventually came to describe something “sloppy” and “careless.”

2. ROUGHSHOD

When horseshoes are roughshod, the nails aren’t yet worn down. This helps keep the horse from slipping, but it also does a number on the terrain, hence the domineering disregard associated with the idiom to ride roughshod.

3. SCRUPLE

Someone who rides roughshod over someone else’s ideas or feelings certainly isn’t a very scrupulous fellow. Scruples, which niggle one’s conscience, derive from the Latin scrupulus, literally a “small pebble.” The famed Roman orator and statesman Cicero used scrupulus as a metaphor for a “cause of anxiety”—something that worries you, like a little stone stuck in your shoe.

4. SABOTAGE

Saboteurs aren’t deterred by any rocks in their footwear. Instead, they deliberately ruin—or sabotage—something with their boots. Way back when, in French, a sabot was a “wooden boot,” which inspired saboter, “to make noise with sabots.” Such clomping was employed as a metaphor for malicious destruction. Sabotage concerned a very specific destruction when English adopted the word in the 1910s: workmen destroying company property while on strike.

5. CIABATTA

Italians love their shoes and Italians love their food. Fortunately, they’ve found a way to bring those two loves together. Ciabatta literally means “slipper,” whose shape, as the story goes, lent its name to the Italian bread. The word ciabatta is related to Spanish for “shoe,” zapato, from the same root that gave French the sabot in sabotage.

6. CALZONE

The Italians don’t just eat their slippers. They also eat their trousers. While calzones can feature all sort of tasty fillings, etymologically the dish is stuffed with calzoni, “drawers” or “hose,” as the folded dough resembles folded clothing. The Italian calzoni is fresh out of the oven of calceus, the Latin for “shoe.” Discalceate, also from calceus, is a very fancy way of saying “take off your shoes.”

7. CAUSEWAY

One would think causeway, like the famed Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland, is a simple compound of cause and way. But the word actually joins causey and way. Causey is an obsolete word for “embankment” and might trek back to the Latin calciare, “to tread” or “stamp with the heels.” This verb is related to that same calceus, “shoe,” a word further grounded in calx, “heel.” A variant of Latin’s calx may also yield caligula, “little boot,” which became the nickname of the Roman emperor Caligula, reputed to have accompanied his father in war as a toddler, dressed in a military uniform fitted for his small size, including the boots.

8. BROGUE

Some think that this term for a distinctive, Celtic accent is named for “the speech of one who wears brogues,” or shoes. Brogue is from the Old Irish broce, “shoe,” from the same ancient root that gives English the word breeches.

9. REVAMP

Today, when we revamp something, we “renovate” and “improve” it. But if you revamped something before the early 1800s, you were providing a shoe with a new vamp. A vamp makes up the top part of shoe between the toe and heel. The word originally meant “stocking” or “sock” in Middle English, from the French avanpié, “the front (avant) part of the foot (pié).” Musicians will vamp when they are improvising, “patching together” a part on the spot much like a cobbler revamped an old, worn-down shoe.

10. WELT

Shoemakers will also be familiar with welt. Most of us probably think of welt as a swollen mark on the flesh caused by a lash or blow. But going back into 1400s, welts were strips of leather sewn above the sole of a shoe. Such strips were thus likened to the raised, ridge-like welts left on the skin. Ill-fitting shoes can cause blisters, but welterweight boxers cause welts, one theory for their name.

If you love the ambience of candlelight but dislike handling matches or lighters, Gizmodo reports that a company called LuDela has created a candle that can be lit and extinguished with a smartphone. The LuDela Smart Candle is made from wax, and its flame is real—but its wick is controlled by a downloadable app.

Here’s how the smart candle works: Each battery-powered purchase comes with a shell-like wax base and a smaller 30-hour candle that you stick inside. Simply tap your phone’s touchscreen to ignite or reduce the candle’s flame, and when the wax core finally melts, refill the base with a fresh one.

The LuDela Smart Candle costs $99. See how it works in the video above, or visit the company’s website for more information.

[h/t Gizmodo]

Banner image courtesy of LuDela.

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Forget bathrobes and Bibles—former guests at the Wayside Inn in Sudbury, Massachusetts have stolen valuable antiques like silverware and historic documents. The hotel first opened as Howe’s Inn and Tavern in 1716, and today advertises itself as the country’s oldest operating inn. Now, as part of the Wayside’s 300th anniversary celebration, The Boston Globe reports, the hotel is extending thieves an offer of reprieve: Return the goods, and you won’t be questioned—just forgiven.

Innkeeper Steve Pickford told The Boston Globe that he borrowed the idea from other hotels that provide guests with similar amnesty bargains. People can return missing items—which include dishes, pewter serving pieces, and even wall decorations, among other things—to the inn’s front desk, or deliver them to him, he says. They can return the goods at any time, even after the anniversary celebration ends.

Most notably, a mysterious guest once made off with a copy of the Declaration of Independence that belonged to original innkeeper David Howe’s son, Ezekiel. The document survived a fire in December 1955—but it disappeared soon after. Pickford hopes to recover it and display it inside the historic inn (hopefully near a burglar alarm this time).

[h/t Boston Globe]

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It’s easier than ever to get yourself to a pub—just order an inflatable one for the backyard. 

The inflatable Irish pub, spotted by Food & Wine, is the adult successor to the bouncy castle. All you have to do is stick it on a patch of grass or a driveway (it doesn’t have a floor) and get ready to party. 

Boston-based PaddyWagon is a full-service pub-themed party caterer, with a cozy inflatable bar that fits as many as 80 people. The company provides Irish food and menus, along with music and entertainment from the Emerald Isle, if you so desire. The pop-up pubs come in multiple sizes, in case you want to host a really intimate inflatable bar gathering in your backyard. 

The beer slingers at PaddyWagon aren’t the only ones who will deliver you a blow-up booze fest. Ireland’s Inflatable Pub Company rents 33-foot-long blow-up buildings that come in several different designs and are painted to look like traditional pubs—whether with musty brick or timber framing. The temporary saloons cost about $435 to rent and come with a bar counter, benches, and lights. And if you live outside the country, not to worry: If you’re willing to buy one outright, the Inflatable Pub ships worldwide. 

If inflatable isn’t your style, there’s also The Shebeen, a rentable Irish pub on wheels. 

[h/t Food & Wine]

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Banner image courtesy of iStock.

Americans are spending a lot and saving very little, according to a recent poll by GOBankingRates. Time reports that GOBankingRates recently asked 7000 Americans how much money was in their savings account, and the results were more than a little concerning: 69 percent of Americans polled reported having less than $1000 in their savings accounts, while a full 34 percent reported having $0 saved up.

Unsurprisingly, results of the poll varied by income and age: By and large, young Millennials (those between age 18 and 34) and people with lower incomes had saved the least, while seniors and people with higher incomes saved the most. For instance, while 37 percent of people making between $25,000 and $50,000 reported having no savings, only 6 percent of people making more than $150,000 reported the same.

Results of the poll were worrying across the board. Even for older adults and the relatively well-off, savings were surprisingly low. Certified financial planner Brandon Hayes speculates that this may be, in part, because cashless payment options make it too easy to spend money. “Our issue is we’re spending before we even save and then never look back,” he told GOBankingsRates. “With a cashless society, it’s tough to appreciate a dollar when you never see one.”

However, CFP Michael Hardy admits that part of the problem may be the myriad financial pressures Americans are currently facing. He explains, “Many people save too much for things like retirement, college savings, or investments and squeeze themselves too tightly financially, leaving little room for spending or building of their emergency fund.”

[h/t Time]

By now, you’ve likely heard about how much less expensive it is to forgo your cable package and fulfill your television needs with streaming services—heck, your friend/neighbor/cousin/chatty coworker has been droning on about it for months. You’re finally ready to take the plunge; but where do you start?

First, make sure your router is up to the task: Don’t invest time and money in setting up new subscriptions and gadgets only to wind up with buffering video. Look for routers with dual-band connectivity; Netflix recommends a download speed of at least 5 Mbps (Megabits per second) for HD quality video, and over 25 Mpbs for Ultra HD. Then, substitute your cable or satellite provider for one or a combination of these 12 options.

1. THE BIG THREE

Often referred to as “The Big Three,” Netflix, Hulu Plus, and Amazon Prime are considered the cream of the crop in online streaming because they offer outstanding original programming in addition to large catalogs of existing shows and movies. Subscriptions to all three start at around $25 per month total, which is cheaper than most cable packages available.

2. FLAT ANTENNAS

Since 2009, television stations have been required to broadcast exclusively in digital, rendering old-fashioned “rabbit ears” obsolete. Now, you can watch live shows on networks like NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox, PBS, The CW, and others by installing a flat antenna in your home. Models by Mohu (starting at $19.95) and Channel Master ($10) are affordable and easy to install.

3. OTHER-THE-AIR DVR

The one drawback to relying on a flat antenna is that you must watch your shows in real time, with no fast-forwarding, pausing, or rewinding. Solve this issue with an over-the-air (OTA) DVR. Services like Tablo or Plex DVR allow you to record live TV shows and then store them on an external hard drive for delayed streaming. (The catch is, some of these services require you to purchase a corresponding device—they won’t work with just any antenna.)

4. SLING TV

Want more TV channels than are available through your antenna? For $20 a month, you can subscribe to Sling TV to get 28 live-streaming cable channels, such as AMC, CNN, TNT, Comedy Central, and the History Channel. A $40 monthly subscription will give you access to over 40 channels, including ESPN. In fact, Sling TV is the easiest way to get ESPN without cable.

5. SPECIALIZED SUBSCRIPTIONS

If you have more unique tastes than even Netflix can account for, chances are there is a specialized streaming service that can give you what you want. Fans of British television should check out Acorn TV, which allows you to watch episodes of Jeeves and Wooster and the original Prime Suspect on your smart TV or mobile device for only $5 a month. If anime is your thing, Crunchyroll professes to be “one of the few legal, official anime and drama streaming sites out there,” with premium subscriptions starting at $7 a month. Cinephiles have a few choices for popular art house and indie movies: Check out Mubi and Fandor for starters, and keep an eye out for the Turner Classic Movies/Criterion Collection streaming service FilmStruck, which is launching soon.

6. CHROMECAST

Google’s Chromecast ($35) quickly turns any HD TV into a smart TV. Just plug the Chromecast dongle into your TV’s HDMI port and connect it to your home Wi-Fi network. Now you can stream various apps (including Netflix, Hulu Plus, HBO Now, YouTube, Pandora, Spotify, and more) onto the TV in your living room, while using your Android or iOS device as a remote control.

7. ROKU

Roku is a little black set-top box that connects your TV to the internet via Wi-Fi or Ethernet. It comes with a simple remote control and features more video streaming content than any other device or media streamer. You can even plug in a USB drive to play your own video and music files on your TV. Available in a number of models, including a USB stick version (starting at $49.95), many experts consider it the best and most reliable streaming device on the market today.

8. APPLE TV

If you’re an iTunes user who owns an iOS device and a MacBook, then Apple TV might be the best choice for you. Like Chromecast and Roku, Apple TV gives you easy access to the Big Three as well as HBO and Showtime; what sets it apart for Apple users is its seamless integration of iTunes and other Apple apps. It also comes with a nifty touch-surface remote that lets you swipe or use Siri to surf channels. With prices starting at $149, it’s the most expensive set top-streaming box for cord cutters, but it will be well worth the cost if you already live in the Apple ecosystem.

9. PLEX

If you already have a large digital movie, music, and TV library, you can use Plex to easily watch your media files from your computer or television. Sign up for and install the Plex Media Server (it’s free!) on your computer and it will catalog, organize, and label your files into a user-friendly interface that’s watchable on Apple TV, Roku, Chromecast, Android and iOS devices, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.

10. STANDALONE PREMIUM NETWORK SUBSCRIPTIONS

In the past, if you wanted premium cable networks like HBO and Showtime, you’d have to include it to your cable subscription package at an additional cost. But the networks have gotten hip to the cord-cutting trend and now offer standalone subscriptions. HBO offers HBO Now for $14.99 a month, while Starz recently introduced a streaming service for $8.99 a month that is compatible with Apple TV, Android, Roku, and Chromecast. Showtime offers streaming for $10.99 a month, or you can add Showtime to your Hulu Plus or Amazon Prime accounts for an extra $8.99.

11. DIGITAL NEWS OUTLETS

There are also great streaming options for news junkies. While CNN and MSNBC don’t have standalone streaming services, the cable news networks are available on Sling TV. News outlets like CBS News, Sky News, ABC News, Bloomberg TV, Fusion, and Newsy, meanwhile, all offer free live streaming services for Roku and Apple TV.

12. SPORTS PASSES

For some people, watching live sporting events has been one of the biggest barriers to completely canceling their cable subscriptions. But over the years, major sports leagues and entertainment venues have started to cater to the demands of cord cutters. Now you can watch live, out-of-market Major League Baseball games on MLB.tv, hockey with the NHL GameCenter Live, and basketball with NBA League Pass. The NFL and DirecTV are now offering NFL Sunday Ticket to non-DirecTV customers, so more people can watch live, out-of-market NFL games every Sunday. You can even subscribe to the WWE Network for $10 a month for access to an extensive back catalog library and every new pay-per-view event.

They may not look it, but pigeons are surprisingly smart birds. With a little help from humans, they can learn to deliver messages, spot cancer cells on a mammogram, and even distinguish between the paintings of Pablo Picasso and Claude Monet. Now, the latest study on pigeon intellect, published in the journal PNAS, finds that the remarkably bright birds can even distinguish between written words and nonsensical strings of letters.

Researchers from the University of Otago in New Zealand and Ruhr University in Germany trained pigeons to peck four-letter English words as they appeared on a screen, or peck a separate symbol when a four-letter nonsense term appeared. Over time, they trained four pigeons to build “vocabularies” of between 26 and 58 written words. They found that not only could the pigeons successfully identify the words they’d learned, they could often identify new words they’d never seen.

Though they lacked decoding skills, the study concluded that the birds were capable of processing orthographic information. That is, though the birds were unable to read and understand the words they saw, they were still able to successfully identify visual patterns (or “orthographic properties”) that defined words. For instance, researchers observed that the pigeons could recognize “bigrams” (letter pairs) that were associated with words. They learned to distinguish bigrams commonly used in words (for instance, “AL” and “EL”) in order to distinguish words from nonsense.

The findings are significant, not only because they show pigeons shouldn’t be dismissed as “bird-brained,” but because they reveal that orthographic learning isn’t unique to humans and other primates. In a statement, researcher Onur Güntürkün said, “That pigeons—separated by 300 million years of evolution from humans and having vastly different brain architectures—show such a skill as orthographic processing is astonishing.”

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June 20, 2007 was a landmark date in weather history. During a thunderstorm over Oklahoma, a lightning bolt extended 199.5 miles from outside Tulsa to the border of Texas. As Smithsonian reports, the spectacular phenomenon was recently confirmed by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) as the longest lightning streak on record.

This particular bolt of lighting wasn’t what meteorologists are used to seeing from thunderstorms. The vast majority of lightning can be classified as “negative lightning”—this occurs when a negative charge strikes the ground from a cloud, typically spanning 6 miles at most.

The record-breaking Oklahoma bolt belonged to the 5 percent of lighting created by a positive charge. Positive lighting contains 10 times the energy of a negative bolt and generally spans up to 25 miles. As the Oklahoma case shows, extreme examples are sometimes produced under the right conditions. When the 200-mile bolt lit up the sky, it could be seen from as far away as Colorado.

The super-sized lightning wasn’t the only record recently recognized by the World Meteorological Organization. They also named a 7.74-second flash observed over Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, France on August 30, 2012 as the longest lightning duration ever recorded.

These electrifying events mark the first time lightning has made it into WMO’s Archive of Weather and Climate Extremes. They’ve also changed the way the organization defines the phenomenon. According to the report from the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, the WMO committee has unanimously recommended revising the definition of lightning from a “series of electrical processes taking place within one second” to a “series of electrical processes taking place continuously.”

Better understanding what lightning is capable of can also help experts recommend more accurate safety guidelines in the face of extreme weather. The number of annual lightning deaths has been steadily declining since the 1940s, and that’s partly due to a raised awareness of weather safety. For now, the experts at WMO still recommend “when thunder roars, go indoors” as a universal rule of thumb.

[h/t Smithsonian]

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