Month: October 2016

Who says that listening to vinyl has to be old school? Holographic records and vertical players have shown us that the medium can be remixed to feel downright futuristic. The latest product to follow this trend is MAG-LEV Audio, a “levitating” turntable first spotted by the Vinyl Factory.

The project, currently seeking funding on Kickstarter, uses magnetic levitation to bring the far-out concept to life. According to the Slovenian design team behind MAG-LEV, the hovering platter serves more than just an aesthetic purpose. As they write on their Kickstarter page, “Air is the smoothest medium with [the] least amount of friction, which further elevates this project into a truly unique listening experience.”

With more than $250,000 raised so far and over a month left to go, the campaign is well on its way to meeting its $300,000 goal. The MAG-LEV Audio is expected to retail for $1390 to $1490, but vinyl enthusiasts can reserve a levitating turntable for their collection today for a pledge of $880 or more. Delivery is estimated for September of next year.

[h/t Vinyl Factory]

All images courtesy of MAG-LEV Audio
 
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Why do chimpanzees have such wrinkled faces?

Suzanne Sadedin:

It’s not just chimps. Other apes and their babies are wrinkly, too. And baby monkeys. You know who else has a lot of wrinkles? Premature human babies. During the last month of gestation, babies don’t develop much neurologically or physiologically. They just fatten up. Even full-term babies are still kinda wrinkly, but within a few months, they get nice and chubby.

So the question shouldn’t be, why are chimps so wrinkly? That’s easy: they have lots of facial muscles for signaling complex expressions. The question should be: why are humans so strangely smooth? And the obvious answer is: fat. We have a layer of soft, pillowy subcutaneous fat which billows under our skin, making us pleasantly smooth and rounded and hiding our facial muscles.

Compared with other apes, we store a huge amount of fat and have small muscles. The average female chimp has ~3.6 percent body fat; a newborn human infant has ~13 percent, and the average woman has 24 to 31 percent. The sheer amount of fat we store is astonishing; in particular, no other mammal has such chubby babies. Fat storage is thought to be an adaptation that supports our brains. Brains are hugely expensive to build and run. As infant brain development passes through some critical stages, it’s vital that they have enough stored fat to support their growing brains even if their family goes through a temporary food shortage.

But we also store our fat differently. Apes keep their fat internally, mostly beneath the muscles in their torso, so all you can see externally are their big scary muscles. But we humans store a layer of blubber right under our skin. The other mammals who do this are mostly marine mammals trying to keep warm, a fact that led some researchers to speculate that our lineage went through an aquatic phase. However, most researchers don’t think this is likely.

So why do we store fat on our faces? It’s most likely a scam.

If you’re storing fat, you have more food than you need. That probably means you and your family are healthy and good at procuring and using resources. Importantly, you have nutritional resources to support brain development and maintenance. Our big brains are remarkably costly, metabolically. You’re likely to survive the next famine, and maybe, since you obviously have so much bounty, you’ll share some with your friends. And you’re likely to be fertile: up to a point, fat stores are highly attractive in women. In short, having some stored fat means you’re probably a good social partner. The more our evolution revolved around egalitarian social partnerships instead of ape-like dominance hierarchies, the less we needed big muscles to scare our enemies, and the more we needed fat stores to impress our friends.

Once people started looking at fat as a social cue, it would have made sense for evolution to shift the storage location. Instead of hiding our fat beneath bulging muscles, we started to hide our muscles beneath prominent fat stores. When we lost our body hair, our fat stores became even more visible.

Human facial fat in particular overtly advertises good health. It’s highly visible, and impossible to fake. Hollow-cheeked, sunken-eyed, bony-faced, gaunt, wasted, haggard, shrunken, or emaciated—all these terms suggest chronic illness resulting in loss of facial fat stores.

Indeed, it appears fetuses spend the final month of gestation simply preparing for their grand debut. They consume more resources than ever, but instead of maturing during this time, they just get fatter and fatter. Then after birth, they pile on even more fat in the most visible way possible. They’re saying, “Look, mom, my metabolism is awesome! Invest in me!” and “Look, everybody, my family is awesome! Cultivate social ties with us!”

Since we’ve co-evolved with our babies trying to convince us to invest in them via highly-visible facial fat, we respond quite automatically with kindly and nurturing feelings toward chubby-faced entities. We can’t help it. It’s cute. Even older children and adult females retain high levels of facial fat, again eliciting gentleness and empathy from potentially dangerous adversaries. Actually, our whole species shows a suspicious trend toward neoteny, which some researchers have described as a self-domestication process. So much for survival of the fittest: we got survival of the sweetest, cutest, chubbiest munchkins.

And thus evolution, in addition to all the other awful things it’s done, can be blamed for the blobbiness of emojis.

This post originally appeared on Quora. Click here to view.

Every incarnation of the titular character on the BBC’s long-running Doctor Who has had their own fashion sense, from bow ties to leather jackets to the occasional fez. No accessory has been more memorable, however, than the seemingly endless scarf sported by fourth doctor Tom Baker from 1974 to 1981.

Naturally, kids wanted one of their own—and apparently wrote in to the network with enough regularity that the BBC decided to strike up a standard memo in order to have something to send them.

An image on Deviant Art—via Open Culture—reveals the company’s response to a fan’s plea for knitting instructions for the scarf, likely sent off in the early 1980s. Reflecting the majestic appearance of the warmer (which even has its own fan page), the sheet calls for 26 balls of wool in seven different colors, knitted in a very specific order, and of course, a precise needle gauge. While you can buy replica scarves anywhere, Who fans with some knitting skill might now be tempted to craft their own. Just try not to trip on it.

[h/t Open Culture]
 
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Hogwarts letter got lost in the mail? Don’t worry: You can still experience Halloween the Harry Potter way by visiting one of these events. From fast-paced Quidditch tournaments to frothy mugs of butterbeer, these community festivals and private events will help you celebrate the most magical night of the year the way Dumbledore would have wanted you to.

1. WIZARDING WEEKEND // ITHACA, NEW YORK

Press Bay Alley in Ithaca, New York transfigures into Diagon Alley from October 28 to 30 this year, and you don’t even need to tap any bricks with a wand to get there. In fact, it’s free, so it’s extra easy for muggles to attend. Wizarding Weekend started last year as a one-day trick-or-treat route for the community, but blew up like a game of Exploding Snap and drew nearly 8000 attendees. This Wizarding Weekend will be just as magical as the last, with Quidditch matches (on electric bikes instead of broomsticks), advanced potions (a.k.a. cocktails) classes for adults, Horcrux scavenger hunts, Dark Arts coffee tours, and more.

2. HARRY POTTER HALLOWEEN // SCOTTSVILLE, VIRGINIA

If your permission slip is signed, visit Valley Street in Scottsvilla, Virginia from noon to 10 p.m. on October 29 for a day in Hogsmeade. Local stores transform into their wizarding world alter egos, like Honeydukes and Ollivanders, and host Harry Potter-themed activities.

3. POTTERPALOOZA // NORMAL, ILLINOIS

Adults (21 and over) take over the Children’s Discovery Museum on October 21 from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. Get sorted into your Hogwarts house and take classes like divination, herbology, and potions. Admission is $25, but includes food and a free drink ticket. Come in your finest wizarding attire or dressed as your favorite character from the series.

4. GREAT HALL HALLOWEEN FEAST // CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

The Ada Street restaurant gives Hogwarts a run for its galleons on October 28 to 30. The restaurant will serve guests a four-course dinner complete with firewhiskey dessert; each course is paired with Harry Potter-themed cocktails, like Pumpkin Juice and the Dementor Antidote. Diners will also enjoy a pre-dinner butterbeer at the Three Broomsticks, as well as house sorting and Quidditch beer pong on the patio. Tickets are $75 and include tax and tip.

5. A HAUNTING AT HOGWARTS // OMAHA, NEBRASKA

Hogwarts alums get to dust off their robe uniforms on October 22 at the Omaha Children’s Museum. Activities at this adults-only event include Harry Potter trivia and a costume contest, plus a special “potions class” science show. Appetizers and drinks, including nonalcoholic butterbeer, will be served. The museum’s permanent exhibits will remain open for this event as well. The event is sold out, but you can have your named added to the wait list by calling the museum.

6. HARRY POTTER FESTIVAL AND QUIDDITCH TOURNAMENT // PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA

This festival, held from October 21 to 22, is more expansive than the underground vaults at Gringotts, spanning a full 10 blocks of Philadelphia’s Chestnut Hill neighborhood and drawing in thousands of attendees. Attendees can have a cup of tea at Madame Puddifoot’s, explore the Triwizard straw maze, try hands-on activities at Horcrux stations, see live owls, ride thestrals, and more. There’s also a ticketed Potter Pub Crawl complete with glasses of butterbeer, and a Harry Potter conference with an academic bent, but admission is free to both the festival and the Quidditch tournament.

7. HARRY POTTER FESTIVAL // EDGERTON, WISCONSIN

From October 21 to 23, witches and wizards young and old celebrate all things Potter at this pay-as-you-go community festival. (Guests also have the option of paying $25 for the entire weekend.) There are plenty of Hogwarts classes on the roster, like Defense Against the Dark Arts and Potions, as well as house sorting, live raptor demonstrations, wizard roller-skating, and Horcrux hunts. All the activities and events are laid out on the festival’s version of the Marauder’s Map; just solemnly swear you’re up to no good.

8. HARRY POTTER AND THE TRANSFIGURED TOWN // GODERICH, ONTARIO

The Huron County Museum gets Potter-fied on October 29 from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. with activities like a costumed photo booth and face painting. The museum’s stationary train becomes the Hogwarts Express for the night, and Ministry of Magic officials have volunteered their services for misguided museum tours. Sweet tooths will be satisfied with a Honeydukes candy trolley and (nonalcoholic) butterbeer. Admission is $20 for adults and $10 for kids, with proceeds to support local food banks.