October 2016 – Page 85

October 3, 2016

One-third of humanity (including 60% of Europeans and 80%…

One-third of humanity (including 60% of Europeans and 80% of North Americans) live in such light polluted areas that the Milky Way is not visible at night.

October 3, 2016

The eternal flame at Bullhead City, Arizona…

The eternal flame at Bullhead City, Arizona, only lasted until city officials received a US$961 gas bill. It has been relighted after complaints by veterans groups.

October 3, 2016

In 1963, an East German soldier named Wolfgang…

In 1963, an East German soldier named Wolfgang Engels stole a tank and drove it through the Berlin Wall at top speed to try and escape.

October 3, 2016

9 Unbelievable Movie Fan Theories That Turned Out to Be True

Rudie Obias

filed under: Lists, Movies, Pop Culture

Image credit:

YouTube

While most movie fan theories are outrageous and unbelievably bizarre, there are a few that have turned out to be true. Here are nine of them.

1. THE GENIE AND THE PEDDLER ARE THE SAME CHARACTER IN ALADDIN.

Since the release of Disney’s Aladdin in 1992, there’s been a very popular fan theory that suggests the Peddler who opens the film and the Genie are the same character. There are a number of clues that support this fan theory, namely that both characters are voiced by the late Robin Williams and are the only ones who address the audience directly. In an interview in 2015, co-directors Ron Clements and John Musker confirmed the truth about the Peddler and the Genie.

“I saw something that speculates that the peddler at the beginning of Aladdin is the Genie. That’s true,” Clements revealed. “That was the whole intention, originally. We even had that at the end of the movie, where he would reveal himself to be the Genie, and of course Robin did the voice of the peddler. Just through story changes and some editing, we lost the reveal at the end. So, that’s an urban legend that actually is true.”

The original workprint ending of Aladdin (above) included an additional scene of the Peddler revealing his true identity.

2. ROBOCOP IS A CHRIST STORY.

After the release of RoboCop in 1987, many fans speculated about the film’s hidden themes of Christianity and Jesus Christ. After all, the sci-fi movie follows a man who is brutally executed, then comes back from the dead to save the city of Detroit from evil. In 2010, director Paul Verhoeven confirmed the RoboCop as Jesus Christ theory.

“The point of RoboCop, of course, is it is a Christ story,” Verhoeven said. “It is about a guy who gets crucified in the first 50 minutes, and then is resurrected in the next 50 minutes, and then is like the supercop of the world, but is also a Jesus figure as he walks over water at the end.”

3. DUMBLEDORE IS DEATH IN THE HARRY POTTER SERIES.

In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Hermoine tells Harry “The Tale of the Three Brothers,” a fable that explains the origins of the Deathly Hallows. The story follows three brothers who come across Death while trying to cross a river. Death felt cheated that the brothers used magic to cross because people would normally drown in the water instead, so he congratulated them for tricking him and gave them gifts for their cunning.

The oldest brother asked for a powerful wand, which he was murdered for once he reached town. The next brother asked for a stone that gave him the ability to bring back his dead lover, whose ghost disappeared as soon as she was brought back from the dead. This led the second brother to kill himself to join her in the afterlife. The youngest brother, who was humble, asked Death for an invisibility cloak to hide from him until it was time to die as an old man. Once it was time, the youngest brother revealed himself to Death and willingly went with him as an old friend.

A theory emerged that the three brothers represented characters in the Harry Potter series: Voldemort is the first brother, who died for power; Severus Snape is the second, who died for his long lost love; and Harry Potter is the third, who “greeted death like an old friend” later in The Deathly Hallows. So who is Death? One fan theory suggested that Dumbledore Is Death, because he ends up meeting Harry in the afterlife and possessed the Elder Wand, the Resurrection Stone, and the Invisibility Cloak throughout the series.

Eventually, Harry Potter creatorJ.K. Rowling chimed in:

Dumbledore as death. It’s a beautiful theory and it fits. https://t.co/QqTQm2QnI0

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) August 21, 2015

4. DECKARD IS A REPLICANT IN BLADE RUNNER.

For more than 30 years, fans argued about whether Deckard (Harrison Ford) from 1982’s Blade Runner was a Replicant or not. There are a number of clues that support both arguments, but director Ridley Scott confirmed the truth for fans: Deckard is, indeed, a Replicant. In the interview above, from 2002, Scott revealed the truth about Deckard’s origins.

5. JESUS CHRIST WAS AN ENGINEER FROM PROMETHEUS.

Ridley Scott’s vision for Prometheus was something much more than a prequel to Alien. Scott conceived the idea that the Engineers created humanity on Earth and when mankind devolved into endless war and chaos, they sent another Engineer, Jesus Christ, to make things right again. However, instead of making a better world, humanity crucified him.

But as it turned out, the fan theory—which started on LiveJournal—is true. Scott just opted to make the Christ analogy more ambiguous than originally conceived because he believed it was “a little too on the nose.”

“If you look at it as an ‘our children are misbehaving down there’ scenario, there are moments where it looks like we’ve gone out of control, running around with armor and skirts, which of course would be the Roman Empire,” Scott told Movies.com. “And they were given a long run. A thousand years before their disintegration actually started to happen. And you can say, ‘Let’s send down one more of our emissaries to see if he can stop it.’ Guess what? They crucified him.”

6. FROZEN AND TARZAN TAKE PLACE IN THE SAME UNIVERSE.

Disney Wikia

While Rapunzel and Flynn from Disney’s Tangled appear briefly in Frozen, there is a rumor that suggests Disney’s Tarzan is also linked to Anna and Elsa. As the fan theory goes, the princesses’ parents were the same two people who were shipwrecked on a jungle island at the beginning of Tarzan. This would make the King of the Jungle the baby brother of Anna and Elsa.

During a Reddit AMA, Frozen co-directors Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck (Buck also directed Tarzan), jokingly added fuel to the fire and confirmed the fan theory. “According to Chris, they didn’t die on the boat. They got washed up on a shore in a jungle island. The queen gave birth to a baby boy. They build a treehouse. They get eaten by a leopard,” said Lee.

A year after appearing on Reddit, Buck double-downed on the theory in an interview with MTV News. “I said, ‘Of course Anna and Elsa’s parents didn’t die,'” he continued. “Yes, there was a shipwreck, but they were at sea a little bit longer than we think they were because the mother was pregnant, and she gave birth on the boat, to a little boy. They get shipwrecked, and somehow they really washed way far away from the Scandinavian waters, and they end up in the jungle. They end up building a tree house and a leopard kills them, so their baby boy is raised by gorillas. So in my little head, Anna and Elsa’s brother is Tarzan—but on the other side of that island are surfing penguins, to tie in a non-Disney movie, Surf’s Up. That’s my fun little world.”

7. SPIRITED AWAY IS AN ALLEGORY FOR THE SEX INDUSTRY.

While many people see Spirited Away as a children’s movie about a young girl who learns to embrace the spirit world to return to her parents, some fans view Hayao Miyazaki’s Academy Award-winning film as an allegory for prostitution in Japanese society during the 19th century. The film’s protagonist, Chihiro, is forced to work in a bathhouse for an evil witch after her parents foolishly ate food that was meant for the gods, which turned her mother and father into pigs. Chihiro works as a “yuna,” which is Japanese for “a woman who works with bathers,” or a bathhouse prostitute. According to Miyazaki, “I think the most appropriate way to symbolize the modern world is the sex industry. Hasn’t Japanese society become like the sex industry?”

Studio Ghibli also wrote one Spirited Away fan a lengthy letter explaining why Chihiro’s parents turned into pigs and what their transformation represents which, according to Miyazaki, is a metaphor for greed and materialism.

8. PRINCESS MONONOKE IS ABOUT LEPROSY.

YouTube

There is a longstanding urban legend in Princess Mononoke (1997) that suggests the workers covered with bloody bandages at the factory in Irontown have leprosy (or Hansen’s disease). In its original Japanese version, the characters are described as “gyobyo,” which means “incurable disease” or “suffering the consequences” in English. The word “leprosy” doesn’t appear anywhere in the original Japanese version, but the fan theory grew in popularity.

“While making Princess Mononoke, I thought I had to depict people who are ill with what’s clearly called an incurable disease, but who are living as best they can,” Hayao Miyazaki said during a conference for World Leprosy Day. He also met with patients at a hospital in Tokyo that treated people with Hansen’s disease during the film’s production.

9. ALL QUENTIN TARANTINO MOVIES TAKE PLACE IN THE SAME UNIVERSE.

YouTube

For years, fans would speculate about how Quentin Tarantino movies were connected. Aside from Red Apple Cigarettes appearing in almost all of the director’s movies, several of his characters share the same last names and traits: Sergeant Donny Donowitz (Eli Roth) from Inglourious Basterds and Lee Donowitz (Saul Rubinek) from True Romance are related, while Pete Hicox (Tim Roth) from The Hateful Eight and Lt. Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender) from Inglourious Basterds are also related.

In an interview on Australian TV, Tarantino admitted that all of his movies belong in a shared universe, but in a different way than you’d expect. “There are actually two separate universes,” Tarantino said. “There’s the realer than real universe, and all the characters inhabit that one. Then there’s this ‘movie’ universe, so From Dusk Till Dawn and Kill Bill take place in this special movie universe. Basically, when the characters from Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction go to the movies, Kill Bill and From Dusk Till Dawn is what they go see.”

October 3, 2016 – 10:00am

October 3, 2016

Don’t Miss Monday’s Best Amazon Deals and Bargains

Smart Shopping Team

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, October 3.

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!

October 3, 2016 – 2:22pm

Amazon Product Id:

B00YTYH1K0

October 3, 2016

High-Tech Cage Could Allow Scientists to Study Rats Without Touching Them

Shaunacy Ferro

filed under: engineering, medicine, science, technology

When it comes to scientific research, creature comforts matter, even if the subjects are rodents. A 2016 review found that experiments on mice in warmer or colder temperatures can lead to significantly different results, impacting studies on cancer, obesity, and other diseases. And cold labs probably aren’t the only uncomfortable situations that are impacting basic research.

With this in mind, a team at Georgia Tech is engineering a better rat cage that can allow rodents to move more freely while attached to sensors and electronic devices.

“Anything that is abnormal or unnatural may bias the experiment, no matter what experiment in any field,” explains Maysam Ghovanloo, the creator of the EnerCage, a system designed to improve scientific data gathered from moving rats. “That includes grabbing the animal to attach or detach wires, change batteries or transferring it from one cage to another.”

The clear cage is wrapped in strips of copper foil that can power electronics and sensors that are implanted or attached to the rodents’ bodies, instead of loading the rodents with bulky batteries or attaching a bunch of wires. It’s also capable of sending researchers data about the rats’ behavior wirelessly, so that the rats’ behavior isn’t impacted by people handling them or hovering over them.

Resonating copper coils create a magnetic field within the cage, and another resonator is attached to the rat’s head. A Kinect motion-sensing camera installed above the cage takes 2D and 3D images in infrared and visible light of the rat’s location and posture, and there are four microphones to pick up any sounds. With algorithms that can identify the rats’ various postures and activities (sleeping, standing, sitting, grooming, eating, etc.), the system can monitor rat behavior without introducing a human element.

The research was presented at the International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society in August, and the EnerCage is currently being tested as part of research on deep brain stimulation and depression.

The EnerCage is still in the early phases, and the Georgia Tech team is currently working on developing a network of multiple cages to house and study several animals at the same time—since no studies use only one rat. They are also designing implants that would be able to deliver drugs to the animals inside the cage without human interference.

All images courtesy Georgia Tech University

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

October 3, 2016 – 9:30am

October 3, 2016

Sun Memories Lamp Records and Replays the Day’s Sunlight

Michele Debczak

filed under: design

Image credit:

Olive Lab // Facebook

While artificial light is practical and reliable, sunlight is constantly changing. It’s the reason why you can spend half an hour sitting in front of a sunset without getting bored. Now a new lamp, recently spotted by inhabitat, aims to capture the feel of natural lighting and recreate it in an indoor environment.

The Sun Memories Lamp from the Italian creative agency Olive Lab lets owners relive the light from a specific day long after the sun goes down. A wearable device “records” the color temperature and brightness of the wearer’s environment for up to six hours at a time. An app then allows users to log their data to a “sunlight recordings playlist” and replay it on their LED lamp anytime they please. They can even share specific “sun memories” to special people in their lives who own Sun Memories lamps of their own.

The product isn’t just a tool that brings natural lighting into the home—it’s a new way to record memories. Olive Lab writes on their website: “Have you ever dreamed if you could record the light of a bright sunset, the sunlight of a road trip you have planned for years, or just a special day of your life, and then relive it whenever you want? We did, and we made it possible.”

The Sun Memories Lamp recently debuted at the London Design Festival and you can follow Olive Lab on social media for future product details.

Olive Lab/ Facebook

[h/t inhabitat]

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

October 3, 2016 – 9:00am

October 3, 2016

Beyond “Buffalo buffalo”: 9 Other Repetitive Sentences From Around The World

Paul Anthony Jones

filed under: language, Lists, Words

Image credit:

iStock

Famously, in English, it’s possible to form a perfectly grammatical sentence by repeating the word buffalo (and every so often the place name Buffalo) a total of eight times: Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo essentially means “buffalo from Buffalo, New York, who intimidate other buffalo from Buffalo, New York, are themselves intimidated by buffalo from Buffalo, New York.” But repetitive or so-called antanaclastic sentences and tongue twisters like these are by no means unique to English—here are a few in other languages that you might want to try.

1. “LE VER VERT VA VERS LE VERRE VERT” // FRENCH

This sentence works less well in print than Buffalo buffalo, of course, but it’s all but impenetrable when read aloud. In French, le ver vert va vers le verre vert means “the green worm goes towards the green glass,” but the words ver (worm), vert (green), vers (towards), and verre (glass) are all homophones pronounced “vair,” with a vowel similar to the E in “bet” or “pet.” In fact, work the French heraldic word for squirrel fur, vair, in there somewhere and you’d have five completely different interpretations of the same sound to deal with.

2. “CUM EO EO EO EO QUOD EUM AMO” // LATIN

Eo can be interpreted as a verb (“I go”), an adverb (“there,” “for that reason”), and an ablative pronoun (“with him” or “by him”) in Latin, each with an array of different shades of meaning. Put four of them in a row in the context cum eo eo eo eo quod eum amo, and you’ll have a sentence meaning “I am going there with him because I love him.”

3. “MALO MALO MALO MALO” // LATIN

An even more confusing Latin sentence is malo malo malo malo. On its own, malo can be a verb (meaning “I prefer,” or “I would rather”); an ablative form of the Latin word for an apple tree, malus (meaning “in an apple tree”); and two entirely different forms (essentially meaning “a bad man,” and “in trouble” or “in adversity”) of the adjective malus, meaning evil or wicked. Although the lengths of the vowels differ slightly when read aloud, put all that together and malo malo malo malo could be interpreted as “I would rather be in an apple tree than a wicked man in adversity.” (Given that the noun malus can also be used to mean “the mast of a ship,” however, this sentence could just as easily be interpreted as, “I would rather be a wicked man in an apple tree than a ship’s mast.”)

4. “FAR, FÅR FÅR FÅR?” // DANISH

Far (pronounced “fah”) is the Danish word for father, while får (pronounced like “for”) can be used both as a noun meaning “sheep“ and as a form of the Danish verb få, meaning “to have.” Far får får får? ultimately means “father, do sheep have sheep?”—to which the reply could come, får får ikke får, får får lam, meaning “sheep do not have sheep, sheep have lambs.”

5. “EEEE EE EE” // MANX

Manx is the Celtic-origin language of the Isle of Man, which has close ties to Irish. In Manx, ee is both a pronoun (“she” or “it”) and a verb (“to eat”), a future tense form of which is eeee (“will eat”). Eight letter Es in a row ultimately can be divided up to mean “she will eat it.”

6. “COMO COMO? COMO COMO COMO COMO!” // SPANISH

Como can be a preposition (“like,” “such as”), an adverb (“as,” “how”), a conjunction (“as”), and a verb (a form of comer, “to eat”) in Spanish, which makes it possible to string together dialogues like this: Como como? Como como como como! Which means “How do I eat? I eat like I eat!”

7. “Á Á A Á Á Á Á.” // ICELANDIC

Á is the Icelandic word for river; a form of the Icelandic word for ewe, ær; a preposition essentially meaning “on” or “in;” and a derivative of the Icelandic verb eiga, meaning “to have,” or “to possess.” Should a person named River be standing beside a river and simultaneously own a sheep standing in or at the same river, then that situation could theoretically be described using the sentence Á á á á á á á in Icelandic.

8. “MAI MAI MAI MAI MAI” // THAI

Thai is a tonal language that uses five different tones or patterns of pronunciation (rising, falling, high, low, and mid or flat) to differentiate between the meanings of otherwise seemingly identical syllables and words: glai, for instance, can mean both “near” and “far” in Thai, just depending on what tone pattern it’s given. Likewise, the Thai equivalent of the sentence “new wood doesn’t burn, does it?” is mai mai mai mai mai—which might seem identical written down, but each syllable would be given a different tone when read aloud.

9. “THE LION-EATING POET IN THE STONE DEN” // MANDARIN CHINESE

Mandarin Chinese is another tonal language, the nuances of which were taken to an extreme level by Yuen Ren Chao, a Chinese-born American linguist and writer renowned for composing a bizarre poem entitled “The Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den.” When written in its original Classical Chinese script, the poem appears as a string of different characters. But when transliterated into the Roman alphabet, every one of those characters is nothing more than the syllable shi:

Shíshì shīshì Shī Shì, shì shī, shì shí shí shī.
Shì shíshí shì shì shì shī.
Shí shí, shì shí shī shì shì.
Shì shí, shì Shī Shì shì shì.
Shì shì shì shí shī, shì shǐ shì, shǐ shì shí shī shìshì.
Shì shí shì shí shī shī, shì shíshì.
Shíshì shī, Shì shǐ shì shì shíshì.
Shíshì shì, Shì shǐ shì shí shì shí shī.
Shí shí, shǐ shí shì shí shī shī, shí shí shí shī shī.
Shì shì shì shì.

The only difference between each syllable is its intonation, which can be either flat (shī), rising (shí), falling (shì) or falling and rising (shǐ); you can hear the entire poem being read aloud here, along with its English translation.

October 3, 2016 – 8:00am

October 3, 2016

The 15 Highest-Paying Jobs That Require Only a Bachelor’s Degree

Anna Green

filed under: education, money, Work

Image credit:

iStock

Whether you’re choosing your major, entering your final year of college, or looking to start a new career, it’s good to know exactly what your bachelor’s degree can do for you. In order to show what kinds of doors your college education can open, Business Insider used the latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics to create a list of the highest-paying jobs that require only a bachelor’s degree (no grad school necessary).

They found that many of the highest-paying jobs were in engineering and managerial positions. Chief executives and architectural or engineering managers, for instance, took the top two slots. Check out the top 15 highest-paying jobs below.

1. Chief Executives (Median annual wage: $175,110)
2. Architectural and Engineering Managers (Median annual wage: $132,800)
3. Computer and Information Systems Managers (Median annual wage: $131,600)
4. Petroleum Engineers (Median annual wage: $129,990)
5. Marketing Managers (Median annual wage: $128,750)
6. Natural Sciences Managers (Median annual wage: $120,160)
7. Financial Managers (Median annual wage: $117,990)
8. Airline Pilots, Copilots, and Flight Engineers (Median annual wage: $117,290)
9. Sales Managers (Median annual wage: $113,860)
10. Computer Hardware Engineers (Median annual wage: $111,730)
11. Compensation and Benefits Managers (Median annual wage: $111,430)
12. Purchasing Managers (Median annual wage: $108,120)
13. Aerospace Engineers (Median annual wage: $107,830)
14. Systems Software Developers (Median annual wage: $105,570)
15. Human Resources Managers (Median annual wage: $104,440)

[h/t Business Insider]

October 3, 2016 – 7:30am

October 3, 2016

“4”-H Week

Questions:	5
Available:	Always
Pass rate:	75 %
Backwards navigation:	Forbidden

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quizzes

Kara Kovalchik

Why Do People Feel Phantom Cellphone Vibrations?

What’s the Real Origin of “OK”?

9 Saturday Night Live Movies That Were Never Made

4 Russian Travel Tips for Visiting America

quiz_type:

multichoice

Rich Title:

5 Questions: “4”-H Week

CTA Text Quiz End:

Monday, October 3, 2016 – 02:45

Schedule Publish:

1. THE GENIE AND THE PEDDLER ARE THE SAME CHARACTER IN ALADDIN.

2. ROBOCOP IS A CHRIST STORY.

3. DUMBLEDORE IS DEATH IN THE HARRY POTTER SERIES.

4. DECKARD IS A REPLICANT IN BLADE RUNNER.

5. JESUS CHRIST WAS AN ENGINEER FROM PROMETHEUS.

6. FROZEN AND TARZAN TAKE PLACE IN THE SAME UNIVERSE.

7. SPIRITED AWAY IS AN ALLEGORY FOR THE SEX INDUSTRY.

8. PRINCESS MONONOKE IS ABOUT LEPROSY.

9. ALL QUENTIN TARANTINO MOVIES TAKE PLACE IN THE SAME UNIVERSE.

GADGETS

KITCHEN

HOME

HEALTH AND BEAUTY

OFFICE, SCHOOL, AND CRAFTS

OUTDOORS, GARDEN, AND SPORTS

ELECTRONICS

TOOLS

1. “LE VER VERT VA VERS LE VERRE VERT” // FRENCH

2. “CUM EO EO EO EO QUOD EUM AMO” // LATIN

3. “MALO MALO MALO MALO” // LATIN

4. “FAR, FÅR FÅR FÅR?” // DANISH

5. “EEEE EE EE” // MANX

6. “COMO COMO? COMO COMO COMO COMO!” // SPANISH

7. “Á Á A Á Á Á Á.” // ICELANDIC

8. “MAI MAI MAI MAI MAI” // THAI

9. “THE LION-EATING POET IN THE STONE DEN” // MANDARIN CHINESE