Month: November 2016

Between the early morning walks, the chewed-up furniture, and the trips to the vet, dog parenting is hard work. But at the end of the day, the payoff is worth it: Canine owners report that their pets make them a better person in more ways than one, a new survey finds.

BarkBox, the monthly subscription box for dogs, recently conducted its first-ever BarkBox Dog Parent Study. They hired a research firm to ask more than 1000 adult, dog-owning Americans how their relationship with their furry friends affects their lives.

In total, 93 percent of respondents said their relationship with Fido inspires them to become a better person in at least one way. Seventy-one percent of people said their dogs make them happier, and nearly 80 percent said getting up in the morning is easier knowing that their canine companions are there to greet them. More than half of participants said their pups make them more patient and responsible (and just under half said their pets make them more affectionate).

According to BarkBox’s survey, your furry friend can also help with your physical fitness: 83 percent of dog owners said that their four-legged companions make them more physically active, with 72 percent reporting that their pet influenced their workout choices.

Most of these findings aren’t likely to shock dog owners—or scientists, for that matter. Studies have found that interacting with dogs can improve mood and reduce anxiety; that children who grow up with animal companions might be more empathetic than their pet-less peers; and that dog owners get more exercise than people without dogs.

That being said, BarkBox’s survey revealed a few surprising details about pet ownership that canine parents probably won’t confess to their dog-less friends. For one, nearly half of dog owners said their dog “always or frequently” sleeps in their bed—and 36 percent said they were willing to sleep in an uncomfortable position to keep their dog next to them. And privacy seems to be of little concern to pet parents: A third reported having  “gotten intimate” with someone while their pooch was present, and 43 percent said they typically let their dog wander into the bathroom while they are using it.

Most importantly, 85 percent of subjects said their dogs have helped them weather a tough time in their lives, and 97 percent said they’d do something to make their pups happy, too. And on average, they tell their pets “I love you” six times a day. (Awww.)

Curses! They’re fun to say, but not fun to deal with. But the lifting of the curse of the Cubs is a reminder that being cursed—whether by witchcraft, voodoo, or just some jerk—is an unavoidable, timeless part of life. Here are some older, out-of-use words for the next time you need to put the whammy on somebody. Use these imprecations with diabolical care.

1. DODGAST

This term—which is very similar to terms such as dadblasted and dagnabbit—is one of many euphemistic terms for blasphemous thoughts. The idea is that saying “God damn!” would just be wrong, but “Dodgast!” is just fine, because I guess God can’t decode euphemisms for some reason. An 1888 use from the Detroit Free Press voices a common sentiment: “It’s a dodgasted funny thing … but it’s a fact.”

2. WILLER

A willer wills something to happen—sometimes that involves ill will. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) records a few examples from around the 1500s that make the diabolical aspect of the word clear: evil-willer and cursed willer. Still, an evil-willer is better than an evil-doer.

3. AND 4. PIG-FACED LADY AND HOG-FACED GENTLEWOMAN

Now let’s take a break from causes and move to effects, the kind of effects that sound plausible if you believe a few evil words can produce an animal-human hybrid. As the OED puts it, a pig-faced lady is “a legendary woman of noble birth said to have been born with a pig’s face as the result of a curse; also known as the hog-faced gentlewoman.”

5. SAILOR’S FAREWELL

Since sailors are known for their salty language, it’s no surprise this is a euphemistic term for what is actually more of a fare-ill. This one has been around since at least the 1930s.

6. FLEMISH COMPLIMENT

Here’s a similarly understated term that’s insulting to a particular nationality. If you give someone a Flemish compliment, you’ve done just the opposite: cursed them, or at least buried them with verbal abuse. A dry use from 1847’s Settlers and Convicts shows this term in action: “The other hands never fail to pay the blunderer some very Flemish compliments.”

7. PLAGUEY

Though it sounds like a product of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, this (originally) quite literal term has been around since the 1500s. Anything plaguey caused the plague, was infected by the plague, or had a whole bunch of plaguiness going on. Then it gradually softened, not always referring to plagues but operating as a synonym for goddamn or confounded. This one turns up in the recent past, as seen in a 1990 use from Brisbane’s Sun newspaper: “Have someone pick a quarrel with the plaguey, superfluous little rascal.”

8. PUT THE BLIND ON

Green’s Dictionary of Slang—now available online—records this term in the 1990s. When you put the blind on, you put a curse on someone. Why blind? It appears to be a euphemism of bloody. Since the late 1900s, to blind was to swear, and there’s also the expression “Blind me!”

9. AND 10. GOOFER AND GOOFER DUST

A goofer is far from a goofball. The word, believed to derive from the Kikongo word kufwa, has meant “witch doctor” since the late 1800s. A goofer could also be a curse, and there’s a curser’s tool too: goofer dust, a powder used in hoodoo to cast a spell that can harm an individual.

Earlier this week, Oreo’s parent company Mondelez International delighted sugar lovers everywhere with the news that the beloved cookie would now be in chocolate bar form. The cookie is teaming up with German chocolate company Milka to bring fans two new candy bars this winter. The chocolate is hitting shelves nationwide in January, but if you can’t wait that long (we know we can’t) you can buy them on Amazon. 

There are currently two Oreo chocolate bars available, which have been selling in Europe since last year: a chocolate bar filled with vanilla creme and cookie chunks, and a “Big Crunch Bar,” which Thrillist describes as “an inside-out Oreo stuffed into a chunk of German chocolate.” 

Currently, Americans can already find 10.5-ounce Big Crunch Bars at select stores like Walmart, Kroger, ShopRite, and Albertsons. It’s very likely your local Walmart is completely sold out of these coveted sweets, so it’s a good thing we have the internet. Currently you can buy both varieties of the chocolate without having to fly to Germany or to fight off other patrons at the grocery store. The original chocolate bar sells in packs of three or five and the Big Crunch Bars are sold in single, 300 gram bars. 

If you’re still looking for more creative ways to satisfy your cookie fix, Milka also makes Chips Ahoy! chocolate bars that look pretty darn good.

What’s a modern, abstract sculpture in honor of an obscure American balloonist doing in the capital of Estonia? Good question. The man in question was named Charles Leroux, and though you probably have no idea who he was, he once found fame in the U.S. and abroad demonstrating something that seems commonplace today: parachutes.

Leroux was rumored to be the grandson or great-nephew of Abraham Lincoln (he wasn’t). He wasn’t even named Leroux—his birth name was reportedly the rather more prosaic Joseph Johnson. He appears to have been born in Connecticut in the 1850s. At some point, Leroux must have realized that it would be more profitable and exotic to take on a French-sounding name—especially because he adopted a French-seeming sport that had been making waves worldwide since the late 1700s.

By the time Leroux started tinkering with parachutes and balloons around the 1880s, the French were the undisputed kings of aviation. From the Montgolfier brothers, who invented the first hot air balloon anyone could actually use, to Jean-Pierre Blanchard, who managed to cross the English channel by balloon in 1785, the French had pioneered early flight.

Parachutes, though, were another story. Leonardo da Vinci designed an early prototype, but it took until the early 20th century for the modern version to get a patent. Meanwhile, parachuting was anyone’s game—and, like balloons before it, it was a game for daring showmen.

With a spiffy new name and an apparent daredevil streak, Leroux began to test a parachute of his own design. He was already an accomplished East Coast trapeze artist and gymnast, and he designed a breathtaking parachute to top off his performances. In 1886, for example, he shut down traffic in Philadelphia (performing as “Prof. Charles Leroux”) by climbing 100 feet up the Dime Museum, clad in “light blue silk tights and satin trunks.” Before a packed and terrified audience, he jumped off of the building holding a 16-foot-wide parachute and nearly running into a lamp post (a nearby man wasn’t so lucky—Leroux ran right into him instead). The New York Times report of his feat notes that it was Leroux’s 38th ascent, and that his other accomplishments included jumping off of New York’s High Bridge.

 
That was just one of Leroux’s leaps. His feats took him all over the world. In 1889, for example, he demonstrated the parachute he had designed—complete with backpack-style straps—to a group of impressed German officers. (Given that he jumped 1000 meters from a balloon, the equivalent of about 3280 feet, they had reason to be dazzled.) And in 1887, Leroux lent his design to Charles Broadwick, who would become one of the most famous parachutists of all time.

But eventually, Leroux’s derring-do got the best of him. On September 24, 1889, he braved a difficult jump from an airborne hot air balloon in front of an audience of onlookers in Tallinn, Estonia, which was then called Reval. An errant wind swept him away toward the Baltic. A woman supposedly died of heart failure just watching the tragedy. Leroux died, too—his body was recovered by fishermen two days later. Today, a modernist monument in his honor stands in Tallinn, a strange and little-known testament to a man who managed to withstand 238 jumps before his untimely death—and whose daredevil acts with a parachute helped inspire interest in more modern versions of the lifesaving invention.

Lexus delivered one hot car for the Los Angeles Auto Show. According to Eater, the auto manufacturer teamed up with Huy Fong Foods to create the 2017 Sriracha Lexus IS, a hot sauce-inspired, entry-level luxury car.

Designed and created in just about three months, Lexus turned to the world-famous West Coast Customs to create the one-off custom car in order to spice things up for the event. Lexus promises that the car has “Sriracha in everything,” from its red-hot paint job with green accents to its “Hot Handling” steering wheel.

The hot chili sauce car also features a temperature control dial that goes from cool to “Sriracha Hot,” along with leather seats embroidered with the iconic Huy Fong Foods rooster logo. If that’s not enough hot sauce for you, it even comes equipped with 43 bottles of Sriracha in its trunk and a Sriracha-dispensing key fob for an emergency spice kick.

“We wanted to work with the original and were pleased that David Tran at Huy Fong Foods was open to collaborating with us,” Mariko Kusumoto, Lexus’s national marketing communications manager, said. “If you’re a fan of Sriracha, you know that the rooster bottle, green cap, and pure spiciness can’t be replicated and fans of the rooster sauce won’t settle for anything bland. It was a perfect pairing. This is our first food-inspired car and don’t have any other foodie cars planned right now.”

The Sriracha Lexus IS will be on display at the Los Angeles Convention Center from November 18 to 27, but the car company has no plans to sell or put the car up for auction at the moment.

[h/t Eater]

Very rarely does a movie completely nail its story on the first draft, and that’s especially true when you’re bringing a whole new world to the big screen. In 1974, George Lucas finished a rough draft for what would eventually become Star Wars, with multiple other drafts to follow, including one titled Adventures of the Starkiller, Episode I: The Star Wars.

Though fans like to think of Star Wars as a sprawling saga that was meticulously thought out from day one, it turns out Lucas made numerous changes to his core story, not only before the 1977 release of A New Hope, but all the way through the final film. Here are eight notable changes from those early drafts.

1. HAN SOLO HAD GILLS // STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE

Han Solo, everybody’s favorite suave smuggler, originally wasn’t going to be played by a young, handsome Harrison Ford. In fact, he wasn’t going to be very human at all. In an early script for Star Wars, Solo was described as a tall, reptilian creature with green skin, no nose, and a hefty set of gills. As the drafts evolved, Star Wars slowly transformed from niche sci-fi/fantasy to a more relatable brand of space western; inevitably Han Solo turned into the space cowboy everyone knows today.

2. THE STORY OF MACE WINDU // A NEW HOPE

Despite what you’ve been led to believe, the Star Wars saga didn’t just appear to Lucas in a fever dream one strange night—in fact, the first couple drafts of A New Hope are basically unrecognizable from what we know today. One of the biggest omissions in those first few attempts is Luke Skywalker himself. Instead, the movie originally involved a character named Mace Windu, with the script beginning with the impenetrable intro “The Story of Mace Windu: a revered Jedi-Bendu of Ophuchi who was related to Usby CJ Thape, Padawaan learner to the famed Jedi …”

The problem was that no one understood a word of it, and rightfully so. As the drafts evolved, Mace Windu was replaced by Kane Starkiller, who was eventually turned into the far more relatable Luke Skywalker. The character of Mace Windu did live on in the prequel trilogy, though all that “Jedi-Bendu of Ophuchi” nonsense was left on the cutting room floor.

3. FAMILIAR NAMES, NEW FACES // A NEW HOPE

Luke filled the typical Joseph Campbell hero mold in the first Star Wars trilogy, but the character was originally much different from the farm boy who left home to take on the Empire. In those early drafts, Luke Skywalker was a battle-worn war hero and one of the last surviving Jedi (called the Jedi-Bendu at first).

Vader was there, too, but without the trademark mask, cape, and intergalactic asthma—he was even known as General Vader at one point. In the beginning, he was conceived as an evil henchman for Prince Valorum, a masked Sith Knight tasked with hunting down the remaining Jedi-Bendu. Eventually Vader became an amalgamation of several characters throughout different drafts, with his signature mask coming from artist Ralph McQuarrie, who thought it necessary since Vader would literally be traveling from ship to ship in the vacuum of space.

Delightful. #McQuarrieMonday #StarWars #SWNN https://t.co/q68Lr7kz8M pic.twitter.com/wqWE7rbZoH

— SWNN (@StarWarsNewsNet) September 19, 2016

4. NELLITH SKYWALKER// THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

The Skywalker family tree has more branches than a Colorado spruce, but the original draft for 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back would have rattled the clan’s genealogy even further. Written by Leigh Brackett, the first go-around at the movie’s story did introduce the idea of Luke having a sister, but it wasn’t Leia. Instead, the Princess remained a born-and-bred Organa, while Luke’s twin was revealed to be a woman named Nellith.

At the same time Luke was training under Yoda, Nellith would also be learning the ways of the Force on the road to becoming a Jedi Knight. How this all was going to pan out is unknown, as it was supposed to be resolved in a third movie. But when this draft was rejected, so too was the story of Nellith.

5. ENDOR: HOME OF THE WOOKIEES // RETURN OF THE JEDI

It wasn’t until 2005’s Revenge of the Sith that fans finally got a glimpse of a full-fledged Wookiee army going into battle, but the original idea for 1983’s Return of the Jedi had it happening nearly 20 years earlier. Instead of a battalion of teddy bears taking on the Empire for the final installment in the trilogy, Lucas wanted Endor to be the home of the Wookiees, culminating in a climactic battle between the two factions.

However, Lucas eventually felt that the Wookiees would be too technologically advanced for his vision of the story. He wanted to showcase a primitive species besting the evil Empire (a veiled metaphor for Vietnam), and apparently the Wookiees were a bit too tech-savvy for that to work. 

6. THE (ORIGINAL) DEATH OF HAN SOLO // RETURN OF THE JEDI

At this point, pretty much everyone knows that 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens doesn’t go according to plan for Han Solo. But before he was gutted by Kylo Ren, Harrison Ford and screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan wanted Solo to sacrifice his life for the Rebel squad early in Return of the Jedi. Ford hoped that this would add some depth and gravitas to a movie that featured an elephant playing the keyboard. Plus, the actor has gone on the record to claim that Solo was never that interesting to him.

However, Ford said, “George didn’t think there was any future in dead Han toys,” so Solo was left amongst the living (for the time being). 

7. HAD ABBADON, ABANDONED // RETURN OF THE JEDI

The first two installments in the Star Wars trilogy showed the Empire’s mammoth space stations and star cruisers littered throughout the galaxy, but Return of the Jedi was going to one-up that visual with an up-close look at the Empire’s homeworld of Had Abbadon. This proposed city-planet was going to be the location of much of the film’s action, including a lightsaber battle between Luke and Vader in the Emperor’s fiery throne room.

So what happened? Logistically, putting a city-planet on film just wasn’t feasible in the ’80s. The massive sets, models, and matte paintings would be too cost-prohibitive, and even with a small fortune at his disposal, the technological advancements simply weren’t in place to get the idea off the ground. The idea was revised in the Prequel Trilogy, though, with the introduction of the global metropolis of Coruscant.

8. TWIN DEATH STARS // RETURN OF THE JEDI

#McQuarrieMonday – A concept depicting a network of multiple Death Stars. pic.twitter.com/naEUSZOEn9

— Star Wars (@starwars) December 22, 2014

As interesting as the planet surface of Had Abbadon sounds, what’s even more intriguing is what was set to orbit the Imperial capital: two massive Death Stars. Instead of the lone moon-sized space station from the final film, there were going to be twin destructive globes under construction around the planet.

Concept artist Ralph McQuarrie even produced some paintings of what the Death Stars were going to look like. While they never actually saw the light of day, elements of them seem to have inspired the look of the Starkiller Base from The Force Awakens.

The 2013–2016 West African Ebola outbreak claimed at least 11,325 lives and caused a recorded 28,652 infections before finally burning out.
 
What if we missed a quarter of those actually infected?

A new paper, published in the journal PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, lends further support to the idea that a significant number of individuals can become infected with Ebola but not show symptoms. The research team investigated Ebola virus survivors and their contacts, who often were quarantined together, between October 2015 and January 2016 in a village in Sierra Leone. Thirty-four cases of Ebola virus disease had been diagnosed before the research study began. Using antibody tests to identify potential infections lacking symptoms, an additional 14 potential infections were identified. Twelve of those—a full 25 percent of the 48 total infections—reported no symptoms at all. Two additional cases identified by antibody testing reported a fever but no other symptoms of disease.

We have recognized since 1989 that there is a species of Ebolavirus called Reston virus that can infect humans but appears to cause no symptoms. But even with the pathogenic species of Ebolavirus, it is becoming increasingly clear that the virus causes a spectrum of infections in humans, ranging from symptomless infections to death. This is not particularly surprising; though popular culture examples featuring Ebola–like pathogens, such as 12 Monkeys or Outbreak, suggest that almost 100 percent of those infected with their virus of choice will die, in reality, the severity of infection is a combination of many factors. If the host is generally healthy, usually they will be more likely to survive (though healthy hosts can, occasionally, make an infection more dangerous, as happened with the 1918 influenza pandemic). A host that has previously suffered a similar infection may have some immunity, and the disease will typically be less severe. Other chronic conditions, such as diabetes, may result in a more serious infection.

Prior work has come to similar conclusions with harmful species of Ebolavirus as well. Sixteen years ago, Ebola virus antibodies and low levels of viral RNA were detected in individuals exposed to body fluids from infected patients during outbreaks of the virus in Gabon. These individuals never themselves showed any symptoms of Ebola virus disease. During the first known Ebolavirus outbreak in 1976, reports suggested that 19 percent of the contacts of patients had also been infected, but with a very mild or asymptomatic infection.

However, studying Ebolavirus antibodies in the context of an epidemic is relatively easy—you have confirmed cases who have documented infections, so the timeline of exposure can be detailed even for those who were exposed and infected but did not develop symptoms. What has been more difficult to prove scientifically is that Ebolavirus antibodies in areas where there were not active outbreaks were a real phenomenon rather than a laboratory artifact.

A 1982 paper found evidence of Ebolavirus antibodies in Liberia—32 years before a full-blown outbreak surfaced there. A similar study of samples collected from 2006 to 2008 in Sierra Leone also suggested that 8.6 percent of those tested had antibodies to Ebolavirus. More than 5 percent of those tested in the Central African Republic, another country that has never seen an active Ebolavirus outbreak, also had antibodies. We can’t be sure these antibodies were due to asymptomatic cases—they may have been survivors of Ebolavirus infections that were misdiagnosed as Lassa fever, malaria, or other more common infectious diseases—but if this research had been accepted and circulated decades prior, perhaps additional surveillance could have identified the 2013–2016 outbreak earlier and responded appropriately before it spiraled out of control.

These studies suggest that the true burden of Ebolavirus infections is significantly underestimated. During an epidemic, many more people may be infected than is currently understood. An understanding of how commonly asymptomatic infections occur is critical, as an unrecognized population of immune individuals could alter the dynamics of the infection and modify mathematical models used to predict spread.

Indeed, when Reston virus was discovered, it was hoped that a virus that caused these asymptomatic infections could be used to create an effective and safe vaccine. That hasn’t worked in experimental work, but there is still hope that if we could understand why some individuals do not become ill from the pathogenic Ebola viruses, we could use that information to inform additional studies of vaccines or treatments.  

The recognition of asymptomatic infections also raises questions regarding long-term complications after Ebolavirus disease. Many survivors report chronic health problems years after the acute infection; could this happen in asymptomatic survivors too? We don’t know now because they’ve not been followed in these long-term studies.

Perhaps most importantly, can asymptomatic survivors transmit the virus to others? This seems unlikely given that when measured, the asymptomatic cases had much lower levels of virus than patients with symptoms. Furthermore, decades of epidemiological studies have repeatedly shown that the highest risk of acquiring Ebolavirus comes from contact with infected body fluids from a sick patient.

Finally, the increasing evidence for asymptomatic Ebolavirus infections suggests the need to test for the virus even in locations where no documented outbreaks have occurred. We were decades behind the ball looking for Ebolavirus in West Africa, and the result was the largest Ebolavirus outbreak on record by several orders of magnitude. Rather than playing catch-up, these findings should encourage us to get ahead of the curve and track more cases of Ebolavirus infection irrespective of symptom severity, before we end up with a repeat of the West African outbreak.  

It’s expensive to get a pet. Adoption fees, vaccinations, spaying/neutering costs, and microchips add up—so to encourage more people to adopt rescue cats and dogs, WPTV reports that a Sacramento woman has offered to foot the bill for every animal adoption at a local shelter through December 31.

Relator/animal lover Kim Pacini-Hauch adopted a terrier named Teddy from Sacramento’s Front Street Animal Shelter in 1984. Now, she wants others to follow her lead. According to the shelter, they are nearly at capacity, and an uptick in adoptions will help them make room to take in more pets. Pacini-Hauch hopes that paying the $85 adoption fee for dogs, and $65 for cats, will speed up the process.

So far, Pacini-Hauch’s generous scheme is working. According to The Sacramento Bee, the Front Street Animal Shelter posted Pacini-Hauch’s offer on Facebook on Tuesday night. When the shelter opened the next day, more than 250 people were waiting in line—and by mid-afternoon, all of its cats had been adopted, and 21 dogs had found new homes. Around 650 animals are still in foster care, and the shelter will take them in as the facilities become less crowded.

Live in the Sacramento area, and have an interest in adopting a furry companion of your own? Visit the Front Street Animal Shelter’s website or Facebook page for more information. (Keep in mind that adoption fees are waived, but you will still need to pay for your new pet to get fixed and vaccinated, among other costs.)

[h/t WPTV]