Month: November 2016

The world’s bees are in crisis, beset by a daunting variety of threats. Humans are at least partially responsible for the bees’ decline, but we’re also hoping to be responsible for their rescue. Now scientists have found one way to protect them. Writing in the journal PLOS One, they report that treating hives with red light can help bees recover from pesticide exposure.

About ten years ago, beekeepers began reporting mass die-offs and disappearances from their hives. In many places, it appeared as though the bees had simply been raptured; hive boxes were empty but there were no bodies to be found.

One of the first suspects in Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), as it came to be called, was a parasite called the varroa mite. But even the ravenous, invasive mite couldn’t make bees disappear, so scientists began looking for other clues. Their search led them in a number of different directions, including toward a class of pesticides called neonicotinoids. All pesticides are, by design, bad for bugs, but neonicotinoids have an especially nasty effect on bees, causing them to forget to eat and even where they live. They also curtail the production of an energy-carrying molecule called adenosine triphosphate (ATP), weakening the bees and keeping them from flying.

In light of this information, environmental agencies in some countries have banned neonicotinoid pesticides altogether. Others are holding out and leaving the bees to fend for themselves.

But they’re not completely alone. Researchers at University College London (UCL) have been developing a treatment that may help bees bounce back from pesticide exposure. They knew from previous studies that infrared light could help slow and heal cellular breakdown, so they decided to try it out with sick bees.

They set up four hives. For 10 days, the researchers exposed two of the colonies (let’s call them A and B) to a neonicotinoid called imidacloprid, while the other two (C and D) were left alone. During the same period, they exposed hives A and C to infrared light twice a day for 15 minutes.

As expected, the poisoned bees in hive B did not fare well. Their survival rate and ATP levels dropped. With no poison and no light treatment, the unmolested inhabitants of hive D were just fine. But so were the bees in hive A. They were hale and hearty, moving around and living their lives as though they’d never been poisoned. The light was clearly doing them good. It also offered a boost to the healthy bees in hive C, whose survival rates were even higher.

Co-author Glen Jeffery is a visual neuroscientist at UCL’s Institute of Ophthalmology. He and his team were encouraged by their results, and say a simple infrared light in hive boxes could be all that’s needed. Not only does the light help damaged bees heal, but it can even protect those who have never been exposed. It’s “an effective means of preventing loss of life in case a colony becomes exposed to neonicotinoids,” Jeffery said in a press statement. “It’s win-win.”

If you’re looking to tap into some fond childhood memories, look no further than the triumphant return of the Nintendo Entertainment System. The new console—called the NES Classic—is just like the original, but smaller and pre-loaded with 30 games. While this piece of throwback technology is in high demand (most of the 8-bit consoles sold out immediately), Walmart still has some in stock, and they’re selling them in tiny batches each night.

According to their Facebook page, the retailer will be selling the NES Classic each evening starting at 5 p.m. EST for $59.96 until Friday. That means rabid Nintendo fans can hang around this page and refresh until the consoles come back in stock. Currently, the price listed shows how much they cost from third-party sellers, which gives you an idea of just how in demand these puppies are.

The NES Classic comes with 30 games (listed here) and a single controller. At the moment, extra controllers are completely sold out, but who knows, maybe Walmart will have a flash sale for those too.

[h/t Polygon]

On July 11, 1958, five weeks after being married, Richard and Mildred Loving awoke to flashlights and uniformed policemen hovering over their bed. An anonymous tip had led police to the couple for violating Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act. Richard was white; Mildred was black. In 24 states, including Virginia, interracial marriage was illegal.

The Lovings’ fight against that supreme injustice is the subject of Loving, a new feature from director Jeff Nichols. Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga portray the couple whose love was against the law, and who were forced to flee Virginia and face criminal charges for having wed. (The two were married in Washington, D.C., one of the places that recognized mixed-race unions.) Labeled felons, they were told never to return to their home while they were still together.

It would be years before the Lovings made progress, thanks in large part to the assistance of the American Civil Liberties Union and volunteer lawyer Bernie Cohen. The case was eventually brought before the United States Supreme Court. Their 1967 ruling would break down the last of the legal barriers in the racial segregation that had divided the country for much of the decade.

Loving is currently in limited release. To check and see if it’s playing in a theater near you, go here. To get a glimpse into the making of the film, check out the video below.

You don’t have to wait for Black Friday to get a hefty discount on a tablet. For a limited time, Amazon is knocking an extra $20 off the price of the Fire HD 6 tablet when you use promo code FIREHD6 at checkout. The Fire HD 6 lists for $99.99, and Amazon usually sells it for $69.99. With this deal, you can drop the price all the way to $49.99, a bargain price for a high-definition tablet with eight gigabytes of memory and front- and rear-facing cameras. The Fire HD 6 tablet lets you tap into all your favorite apps, browse the web, and watch video through Prime, Netflix, HBO Go, Hulu, and more. It also features a seamless Kindle Reader integration, and you can even stock up on books when you try Kindle Unlimited for free for 30 days. If you’re looking for a handy tablet that won’t break the bank, it’s hard to pass on this deal. 

Buy at Amazon: Fire HD 6 Tablet, 6″ HD Display, Wi-Fi, 8 GB – Includes Special Offers, Black for $49.99 with promo code FIREHD6 (list price $99.99)

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!

In every big city, there are a handful of restaurants where it can be tough to land a reservation, but a select number of world-class eateries take exclusivity to the next level; no matter how hard you try, you’ll probably never get in, even if you can manage to foot the bill. Seats and Stools, a company that makes restaurant seating, found 11 restaurants where it’s nearly impossible to get a table. If you think the world-famous Noma is hard to get into (it fielded 20,000 reservation calls a day before announcing its imminent close in February 2017), try getting a table at the Walt Disney-founded Club 33, a private club where membership initiation costs $40,000, annual fees run you $12,000, and the waiting list is 14 years long.

Other restaurants have shorter wait times—meaning a year or so—but require reservations to be placed at very specific times (like when the restaurant empties its voicemail box), or at midnight on the first day of the month. Some, like New York’s Damon Baehrel, have waiting lists that are so long, they’ve stopped taking reservations altogether (to the point that some people have questioned that particular restaurant’s myth altogether). Check out some of the world’s most sought-after restaurants below. 

In 1991—long before the term “gritty reboot” came into this world and lost all of its meaning—Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro teamed up to make a gritty reboot of J. Lee Thompson’s 1962 thriller Cape Fear. De Niro played Max Cady, a vengeful sex offender who, once out of jail, attempts to torture his lawyer, Sam Bowden (Nick Nolte), who he blames for his 14-year imprisonment. Juliette Lewis made what was for many a first impression for the ages as Sam’s daughter, Danielle. The impressive supporting cast included Jessica Lange as Leigh, Sam’s wife, and cameos from actors who were in the original, including Robert Mitchum and Gregory Peck (in what would be his final film). Here are 15 facts about Cape Fear in honor of its 25th anniversary.

1. STEVEN SPIELBERG TRADED THE MOVIE TO MARTIN SCORSESE FOR THE RIGHTS TO SCHINDLER’S LIST.

Martin Scorsese was apprehensive about making Schindler’s List after the controversy surrounding his previous two films, Goodfellas and The Last Temptation of Christ. Steven Spielberg, on the other hand, said he “wasn’t in the mood” to make a movie about a “maniac.” So, once Scorsese promised Spielberg that the Bowdens would survive in the end, they traded. Spielberg had Bill Murray in mind to play Max Cady. Scorsese had other ideas.

2. THE SCREENWRITER PASSED ON THE PROJECT, BUT SPIELBERG DIDN’T NOTICE.

Spielberg had originally contacted screenwriter Wesley Strick (Arachnophobia) about adapting the original 1962 screenplay by James R. Webb, which was based on John D. MacDonald’s 1958 novel The Executioners, but Strick wasn’t interested. “They sent me the original movie and I watched it and didn’t like it very much,” Strick admitted. “It seemed like sort of a failed Hitchcock, which doesn’t really turn me on. And also I didn’t like the vigilante implications of the story—you know, there comes a point when a man’s gotta be a man with a gun and shoot this guy down. It’s not a message I ever wanted to send in a movie.”

Strick planned to pass on the project, but found himself unable to say no to Spielberg when they met in person. “I didn’t want to insult him and tell him I didn’t think it was a good movie idea, but I wanted to convince him that I wasn’t the writer for it, in a sort of polite [way],” Strick explained. “So we sat there and we talked. Actually I did most of the talking; I kind of explained what aspects of the story bothered me, and he listened, and then when it was all over he stood up and said, ‘Well, I’m really glad that you’re coming aboard.’ And he shook my hand, and as I shook his hand back my mouth moved, my lips moved and I said ‘Me, too.’ It was like, in person, I was unable to say no to him, and I remember driving home thinking, What have I done?”

3. SCORSESE MADE THE SCREENWRITER TAKE OUT THE PARTS THAT WERE “TOO CLEVER.”

When Scorsese took over, he kept Strick, but made him take out all of the overly clever dialogue. “Anything that smacked of television, all the dialogue he perceived as being ‘clever,’ everything that was too well reasoned, too neat, too clean, with ideas that were somewhat predigested—he wanted it gone,” Strick told The New York Times. Strick’s new boss insisted on 24 drafts before filming began.

4. IT COULD HAVE STARRED HARRISON FORD AND ROBERT DE NIRO.

Scorsese asked De Niro to ask Harrison Ford to play Sam. Ford told De Niro he would only be interested in working on the film if he played Cady and De Niro played Sam. De Niro said no to that.

5. NICK NOLTE REALLY WANTED THE PART.

Nick Nolte wore a blazer and tie to the Goodfellas premiere, with the hope that Scorsese would see he could play the part of Sam Bowden. “He had played this bear-like man, very big and rough, and I didn’t think he would be right for Cape Fear,” Scorsese admitted. Only after “several” discussions between the two did Nolte win the role. For research, the actor spent many weeks in public defenders’ offices. For the climatic scenes in Cape Fear, he channeled the primates in the opening scene of 2001: A Space Odyssey because, according to Nolte, the cast and crew were “all trying for a very primal image.”

6. REESE WITHERSPOON BLEW HER AUDITION TO PLAY DANIELLE. SO DID DREW BARRYMORE.

“It was my second audition ever,” Witherspoon said in 1999. “My agent told me I’d be meeting Martin Scorsese. I said, ‘Who is he?’ Then he mentioned the name Robert De Niro. I said, ‘Never heard of him.’ When I walked in I did recognize De Niro, and I just lost it. My hand was shaking and I was a blubbering idiot.”

Drew Barrymore auditioned for the role, too, but believed she overacted for one of Scorsese’s assistants. In 2000, she called the audition “the biggest disaster” of her life and said that Scorsese thinks she’s “dog doo-doo” because of it.

7. JULIETTE LEWIS WAS THE FIRST ACTRESS TO BE INTERVIEWED BY DE NIRO FOR THE ROLE OF DANIELLE.

Juliette Lewis first met De Niro for an interview in a room at the Beverly Hills Hotel. “It was to my advantage because I knew that was not a normal situation for [De Niro], interviewing young girls,” Lewis said. “I could tell he was a little uncomfortable. I mean, all the other girls came in with their moms.” Lewis had herself declared as an adult at 14 to be free of child actor labor laws. “So I said something to put him at ease. I summed everything up very quickly, meaning I didn’t tell him an elaborate story of all the pieces of [crap] work I’d done. I said, ‘If you want to see if I can act, just look at this movie-of-the-week I’ve done.'” Moira Kelly, Fairuza Balk, and Martha Plimpton also auditioned, but Lewis won out.

8. DE NIRO BECAME A GYM RAT.

To prepare for the role, six months before shooting began De Niro and his longtime trainer began hitting the gym six days a week, for two to three hours per day. Once filming started, he worked out for five hours a night. De Niro suggested that Scorsese hold off on shooting any scenes that showed off the actor’s muscles until the very end of production, so that he could be as fit as possible, and the director agreed.

De Niro also reportedly paid a dentist $5000 to grind down his teeth, then another $20,000 after filming wrapped to have them fixed.

9. DE NIRO AND LEWIS DIDN’T REHEARSE THEIR MOST FAMOUS SCENE.

Scorsese put one camera on De Niro and one on Lewis for the long scene, which was filmed three times. The first take was the one used in the final cut. Lewis did not know De Niro was going to stick his thumb into her mouth before kissing her. She only received a nonchalant warning from her director that De Niro was “going to do something.”

10. ILLEANA DOUGLAS BASED HER CHARACTER ON THE PREPPY KILLER’S VICTIM.

In the early morning hours of August 26, 1986, 18-year-old Jennifer Levin was murdered in Central Park by Robert Chambers, who came to be known as the “Preppy Killer.” Illeana Douglas had that infamous crime in mind when preparing to play the role of Lori Davis. “I was the one who suggested my part,” Douglas said of her role in Cape Fear. “The original part was called ‘The Drifter.’ She didn’t even have a name. I was in school when Jennifer Levin was murdered in Central Park by Robert Chambers, and I was profoundly affected by that … In the back of my mind, 100 percent it was based on Jennifer Levin. I tried to put myself in the position of somebody who’s new to New York, who’s young, who doesn’t see anything bad coming.”

11. DOUGLAS’S TORTURE SCENE TOOK TWO VERY LONG DAYS TO SHOOT.

Filming the scene in which Cady tortures Douglas’s Davis was no small task. It took two days to complete the scene, and the first day lasted 17 hours. “It really hurt,” Douglas told The AV Club. “My arms really were quite banged up. At one point, De Niro hopped off the bed and started whispering to Marty, and I thought, ‘Oh my God, they’re going to fire me! I’m terrible!’ I’d been crying for hours on end; I’ve never cried so much in my life. Then De Niro hopped back on, and Marty came and said, ‘Bob says you’re done.’” It was like Stephen Boyd in Ben-Hur—like, ‘Just take him off. He’s done.’ I could barely walk, and my arms were all cut up from thrashing around, and then De Niro complimented me. He said that Charles Grodin was a p*ssy, because he couldn’t take the handcuffs when they did Midnight Run. I thought that was a supreme compliment.”

12. GEORGE C. SCOTT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE IN IT.

George C. Scott was scheduled to appear in Cape Fear, but ended up needing an angioplasty after a heart scare while shooting another movie. He never made it to the Fort Lauderdale set.

13. THE HOUSEBOAT SCENES WERE SHOT INDOORS.

Cape Fear‘s houseboat scenes were shot indoors, on a soundstage made just for the production, and featuring a 90-foot water tank. Rain and wind machines helped capture the torrential storm. “It was hard making that commitment to build something so big,” producer Barbara de Fina said. “In the overview, I guess the amount of money we spent to build the tank we’ll save by not having to worry about things like weather and tides and alligators.” In post-production, miniatures of the houseboat were shot in England.

14. ELMER BERNSTEIN RECYCLED SOME MUSIC.

Composer Elmer Bernstein adapted Bernard Herrmann’s 1962 score from the original Cape Fear, even though Bernstein admitted that Herrmann probably would have hated the idea. “He would have killed me,” Bernstein said. “He would have yelled and screamed with no question.” Bernstein said he was in a state of depression for weeks working on the score because the movie was “so depressing.” When Bernstein needed music for scenes not from the original, he “did something else which Herrmann would have hated. As part of the music for scenes for we which didn’t have … appropriate music in the original, we used some of [Herrmann’s] rejected music to Torn Curtain in the score, which was also very effective.”

15. PREVIEW AUDIENCES WERE CONFUSED.

After Scorsese noticed a lot of preview screening audience members wrote that the movie “skips around a lot” on their comment cards, he added shots to connect some of the dots, including one of Max’s arm grasping a rope off of the houseboat. Originally, Cady fell off the boat and got back on with no explanation as to how.