Test Your Knowledge of 8th Grade Science With This Quiz

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When you’re a few decades out of school, it’s easy to forget even the basics of the U.S. education curriculum. What’s the quadratic formula, again? What’s the Fifth Amendment all about? Only two people have ever won Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader’s $1 million 5th Grade curriculum question, after all.

Eighth grade science curriculum is, needless to say, even harder. The experts at STAT recently put together a quiz that can dash all your hopes of helping your 8th grader with science homework, testing your knowledge of middle school biology in 10 simple (ish) questions.

Unless you’ve taken a refresher on basic cell biology recently, you may not do so well. For instance, I got seven out of 10 answers correct, putting me on the edge of having all of my science writing assignments yanked away from me. Enjoy having your self-esteem dashed!

Take the quiz over at STAT.


November 30, 2016 – 1:00am

How Do Robotic Vacuums Work?

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iStock

Of all the game-changing innovators over the past century, the engineers who have eliminated the need to sweep and vacuum manually deserve special recognition for their ingenuity and, dare we say it, heroism. (Pet owners: You know what we’re talking about.) Small, intelligent vacuum bots can navigate living rooms, avoid bumping into furniture, and know better than to try and suction up your cat’s tail. But how do they work?

Although their exact behavior depends on the manufacturer, robotic vacuums generally operate by cleaning as far as they can go in one direction until they bump into an object, turn around, and continue cleaning randomly around a room in shapes resembling the ones your spiral toy used to draw. Robotic vacuums also utilize sensors to help them determine where to clean, as well as which areas to avoid (the top of a staircase, for example).

More intelligent robotic vacuums can actually map out a room to plan out a methodical cleaning path and avoid obstacles before running into them. Some do this using cameras, while others use lasers to navigate. These robots detect reflections on the laser to determine where obstacles are in 360 degrees, allowing the robot to both create a map, and know where it is within the map. These robots track what has been cleaned and what is left to clean until they’ve finished that particular section of your home.

These robots may also boast dirt-detect functions that allow them to take note of how much dirt is being kicked up by their brushes, and give more attention to cleaning those areas. (If you’ve managed to knock over a potted plant, for example, the machine would clean that area more thoroughly.) Many robots also have a wall-following capability; using this method, the robot continues cleaning alongside an obstacle, using an infrared sensor to detect how close to the obstacle the robot can get without bumping into it.

Still on the fence about a robot vacuum? In the future, the carpeting industry may help convince you. Plans are underway to embed sensors under floor padding that will help these machines clean with even greater accuracy.

Don’t sweat the small stuff—leave that to NEATO. The smart robot vacuums from Neato Robotics make light work of messy floors, thanks to their laser navigation technology, powerful suction, and D-shape that gets into and cleans corners. The best part? While they clean, you can get on with the things that really matter. Visit Neato Robotics to learn more about their line of Botvac Connected robot vacuums.


November 30, 2016 – 12:00am

9 Macabre Auctions of Celebrity Memorabilia

filed under: death, Lists, weird
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Getty Images

Throughout the year crowds of the faithful flock to holy relics, like the supposed preserved umbilical cord of Jesus in Rome or the blood of St. Januarius in Naples. Such reverence for objects associated with the departed extends beyond the world of religion, though, and into the market for celebrity memorabilia. Like the corporeal remains of saints, even everyday celebrity possessions can become the focus of intense attention long after their owner has died. These items—and in rare occasions, the physical remains of stars themselves—are highly sought-after when they appear at auctions. Below are nine examples of death-related celebrity memorabilia that have emerged in public sales over recent years.

1. THE GUN THAT ENDED VERLAINE AND RIMBAUD’S AFFAIR

It was poetry that brought Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine together, but violence that eventually tore their passionate but turbulent romance apart. The poets’ nearly two-year relationship ended, literally, with a bang: in 1873, a very drunk Verlaine unsuccessfully attempted to kill his 18-year-old lover with a revolver in a Brussels hotel room, tired of Rimbaud’s capriciousness and longing to return to his wife and child. On November 30, 2016, that 7mm gun—pictured above on display in 2015—is being sold at Christie’s. (A serial number on its case ties it to Verlaine, as documented in a gunsmith’s records; it’s previously been in a private collection.) The gun fired two bullets, wounding its victim’s wrist and sending its shooter to jail for two years. Later that year, Rimbaud published Une Saison d’Enfer, a collection of poems partially inspired by his fraught times with Verlaine. For French literary enthusiasts, this may represent more than a weapon, encapsulating the emotions that led to some of the most celebrated works of 19th century French poetry.

2. A SCRAP OF WALLPAPER FROM THE ROOM WHERE LINCOLN DIED

The obsession that Civil War veteran Osborn Oldroyd had with memorabilia tied to America’s 16th president is perhaps unparalleled. A renter of Lincoln’s Springfield home, Oldroyd transformed the space into a museum after the politician’s assassination and was rumored to have cut off bits of curtain, wallpaper, and even flooring to sell as souvenirs. It seems he made similar incisions in the bedroom of the Petersen House, where Lincoln died, preserving a fragment of wallpaper in a book. That scrap sold at auction for $1000 in August 2016, evidently still an object of intrigue 150 years from that tragic day.

A much more grisly auction lot was the rocker in which the president was sitting when John Wilkes Booth shot him. Owned by the theater’s treasurer, it was sold in 1929 by his widow and purchased by Henry Ford for the price of $2400.

3. NAPOLEON’S DEATH SHIRT

When Napoleon lay dying in 1821, he was perspiring profusely from a fever. His sweat-stained nightshirt was saved by his stablemaster Achille Archambault, who had remained by the exiled emperor’s side during his illness. In 2014, the garment was headed to an auction in Fontainebleau, where it was estimated to sell for up €40,000 (about $42,000 USD). But it proved too precious for an auction: Archambault’s descendants obtained an injunction at the last minute to halt the sale of the nightshirt and other possessions of Napoleon’s, worried that the items would go overseas and deprive their country of objects of its heritage. (Other, more private, parts of Napoleon have been repeatedly sold at auction—his penis is currently said to be in storage in New Jersey.)

4. TRUMAN CAPOTE’S ASHES

Portions of Truman Capote’s ashes have long been in demand. In September 2016, some of the famed writer’s remains, kept in a beautifully carved Japanese wooden box, were sold in a Los Angeles auction. They had belonged to Joanne Carson, who apparently said that owning the ashes brought her great comfort. That may now hold true for someone else: whoever it was that bought them for $43,750.

5. A DROP OF RONALD REAGAN’S BLOOD

When a vial purportedly containing a drop of President Reagan’s blood hit the auction block in May 2012, it received bids up to $30,086. But the sale was also heavily condemned, most notably by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, whose executive director threatened a lawsuit, saying that it violated Reagan’s privacy as a patient. The blood had been drawn at George Washington University Hospital after an assassination attempt in 1981, and had been kept by a lab worker. The blood remained in her possession until her son decided to sell it following her death in 2010. The individual who bought it then—for $3550—eventually decided to withdraw it from the May 2012 sale and instead donated it to the Reagan Foundation.

6. BONNIE PARKER’S BLOODSTAINED STOCKING

Among the trove of rifles, pistols, and rounds of ammunition found in the Ford driven by Bonnie and Clyde during their final shootout was a woman’s silk stocking. Stained with blood, it is believed to have belonged to the outlaw herself and was auctioned off in 2012 as the only item worn by Bonnie Parker that had ever been sold. The garment was part of a single lot of macabre Bonnie and Clyde memorabilia to emerge from that “death car”—in total, the lot fetched $10,800.

7. A LOCK OF THOMAS JEFFERSON’S HAIR

Though it seems macabre today, hair collections were a frequent feature of the 19th century. When Thomas Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, his doctor, Robley Dunglison, snipped off a lock of hair as a memento. The 14 short, tawny strands were preserved for nearly two centuries in a glassine envelope, and in May 2016, someone placed a winning bid of $6875 for the hairs. They came, as one would expect, with a signed letter of provenance.

8. THE WATCH LIKELY USED TO CALL JFK’S TIME OF DEATH

Many questions still linger around the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, but we at least know for certain the time of his pronounced death: 1 p.m. That time was called by the neurosurgeon Dr. Kemp Clark, who likely observed it on the wristwatch he was wearing that day—a rare, 18k gold Patek Philippe that was fitted with a pulsometer. Christie’s offered up the gleaming timepiece in 2013, and it sold for $161,000.

9. MARILYN MONROE’S FINAL SIGNED CHECK

Marilyn Monroe’s death also continues to raise speculation and breed conspiracy theories. Was it suicide? A check for $228.80, believed to be the last the star ever signed, may suggest not: dated to the day before her body was found, the document—which emerged at auction in 2012—was made out to a furniture company that delivered Monroe a new chest. As the folks at Heritage Auctions put it, “Would one be concerned with new furniture on the last day of one’s life? Probably not!” The slip of paper sold for $15,000—certainly a unique example of one of history’s most desired autographs.


November 29, 2016 – 8:00pm

The Two Qualities Female Leaders Need to Get Ahead

filed under: Work
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As of 2015, women are more likely to hold a college degree than men, but men are still filling the boardrooms, making the decisions, and running our country. After interviewing more than 50 trailblazing executive women for her book Earning It, Joann Lublin says there are two traits that set apart the women who do make it to the top: resilience and persistence.

Lublin, who is also The Wall Street Journal‘s management news editor, says she has had many experiences similar to the women she interviewed for the book, which was why she was motivated to write it in the first place. When she made interview calls early in her career, she says, she was often mistaken for a subscription saleswoman rather than a journalist. But now, at the top of her career, she’s able to share ways other women can make it to the top, too.

RESILIENCE

If you’ve run to the bathroom in tears after receiving a talking down from your boss, you’ve got some work to do. But the great thing about resilience is it’s a learned quality—and you can fake it until you make it. “Resilience is the persistence to bounce back in the face of setbacks [in your] career and and personal [life],” Lublin says. “If you can’t have resilience, you can’t make any headway.”

Lublin shares Drugstore.com CEO and former Charles Schwab CIO Dawn Lepore’s story by way of example. In 2010, two years after Lepore beat a rare cancer of the appendix, her husband was diagnosed with multiple myeloma. This made Lepore the sole breadwinner for her family. She would work all day and then stay in the hospital until 2 a.m. “Her co-workers didn’t think she should keep working, and she considered giving up her board seats,” Lublin says. “She considered giving it all up to be with her husband.” But Lepore’s husband convinced her not to quit—neither of them wanted the cancer to win.

In 2013, Lepore told SUCCESS of her climb to the top, “I do think you need a lot of resilience and commitment, and I’ve always been a sucker for a challenge. There must be something innate to my personality—if you tell me I can’t do something, I want to prove I can.”

PERSISTENCE

“It’s the idea that it doesn’t matter what life throws at you—you turn it into lemonade and you keep pushing,” Lublin says.

As a 29-year-old high school English teacher, Abbe Raven was desperate to break into the television industry, Lublin says. So she joined dozens of other women at the lingerie department of Macy’s, where A&E TV executives were hosting a recruiting event. But when she saw all of her competition, Raven headed toward the door. With no applicable experience, she thought she’d never get a television job.

But as the event wound down, Raven told herself, “No, this is your shot,” Lublin says. So she turned around and introduced herself to the head of programming, who recommended that she call the vice president of the television studio. And that’s where Raven’s persistence finally kicked in. “She called him five times a day,” Lublin says. On the 10th day, she said she’d do anything to get a job, even if it was just photocopying scripts. Raven was hired as an entry level employee and worked her way up through the ranks of the company. In 2005, she was named A&E Networks’s second CEO, and in 2013 she became its Chairman (she retired in early 2015 after 33 years with the company).

In the retirement memo she sent to her employees, Raven perfectly encapsulated her persistence:

When I started out xeroxing scripts and answering phones as a few dollars an hour assistant in 1982—I would never have imagined I would become a manager, director, and senior executive—not to mention the President and CEO and then Chairman of a major media company. That was never my goal. My goal was to find something I would love to do, something I could contribute to in my own waysomething to be part of.

Raven’s and Lepore’s stories are obviously extreme examples of persistence and resilience. But if you’ve ever negotiated a raise you deserved, applied for a competitive job, or leaned in to a new challenge, you already have a bit of their grit.


November 29, 2016 – 7:00pm

Live Inside One of England’s Largest Cemeteries

filed under: death, Europe
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Moving to England, and looking for a quirky apartment to call home? An inexpensive studio flat inside a charming stone gatehouse in Birmingham is currently up for rent, The Daily Mail reports. The only catch? It’s in a cemetery.

The studio apartment is located on the grounds of Witton Cemetery, one of Britain’s largest graveyards. It opened in 1863, but its plots filled up in 2013, and the site is now closed for burials. The cemetery’s Gothic-style gatehouse building was converted into living facilities, and today, its rooms and apartments (including this one) are rented out to public residents.

Presumably because of its location, the apartment’s monthly rent is pretty low, at least by British standards: £520 per month, or $650. This sticker price includes local government taxes and utility bills; no security deposit is required, though there is an “administration fee” of £175 ($218). The residence includes an en-suite bathroom and a kitchenette, and it comes fully furnished with a bed, chest of drawers, fridge, microwave, and a kettle. As for the flat’s location, it’s close to Villa Park, a large city soccer stadium, and only a few miles from Birmingham’s city center.

If you’re intrigued—but a bit spooked—by Witton Cemetery’s flat, keep in mind that cemeteries aren’t always just for the dead. In some crowded cities, they’re a cheap and practical place for the living to establish communities. Other people live in cemeteries for religious reasons, like the Aghori ascetics of India. And for some, living in a graveyard is simply part of their job: Ken Taylor, who serves as vice president of operations for Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York, calls the burial ground his home.

The Birmingham graveyard flat is currently listed on retailer site Zoopla. Learn more details there, or check out some pictures of the apartment below.

All images courtesy of Zoopla.

[h/t The Daily Mail]


November 29, 2016 – 6:30pm

10 Grammatically Correct Gifts for Language Lovers

Image credit: 
Etsy

Have a friend or relative who’s quick to correct your typos? Give them a gift that celebrates their love of (grammatically correct) language.

1. THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE ILLUSTRATED; $14

William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White’s extensive—and sometimes snarky—guide to grammar was published in 1920, but it’s still considered a go-to for writing purists who are wary of change. The bookshelf staple, with a foreword by Roger Angell and updated with 57 colorful illustrations by Maira Kalman, is sure to offer up hours of education (which is entertainment to the language lover in your life).

Find It: Amazon

2. PENCILS; $9

These pencils will help keep common homophones straight. The retro sets of five are decorated with gold foil letters hand-pressed onto the sides. The Etsy store also offers up a set of red pencils that feature short, grammar-positive statements.

Find It: Etsy

3. QUOTE EARRINGS; $10

High marks: The delicate metal earrings are less than an inch tall, making them a subtle but charming choice for any punctuation lover.

Find It: ModCloth

4. *YOU’RE NECKLACE; $22 AND UP

The pendant, which comes in the material of your choice, is dedicated to a well-known pet peeve amongst the literate.

Find It: Etsy

5. PUNCTUATION POSTER; $36

Everyone knows about the question mark and the semicolon, but what about the interrobang? This simple poster, available in three different sizes and 60 different colors, celebrates the punctuation that really helps writers get their point across. It’s printed on satin luster paper with ChromaLife 100 inks, creating a long-lasting piece of artwork.

Find It: Etsy

6. SHADY CHARACTERS; $16

Keith Houston’s book offers up a thorough look at the history of the written word. Readers can learn about the rich stories behind punctuation marks, including tales that cover everything from Ancient Roman graffiti to George W. Bush.

Find It: Amazon

7. AMPERSAND MARQUEE; $20

The ampersand is a divisive punctuation mark in writing, but it’s widely loved in design; the attractive logogram can be found everywhere from wedding invitations to tattoos. This metal light stands at almost 10 inches, making it a nice statement piece in any home.

Find It: Amazon

8. POP CULTURE PARTS OF SPEECH; $29

Grammar is even more accessible with the help of beloved pop culture characters. ET, Robocop, Holly Golightly, Walter White, and more all come together to help teach tricky grammar terms. The poster is broken down into seven basic parts: nouns, verbs, adjectives, pronouns, adverbs, prepositions, and conjunctions.

Find It: Pop Chart Lab

9. OWL SHIRT; $15

Do you have a friend who’s always correcting everyone with a stern “whom?” With the help of two owls, this shirt pokes light fun at two counterparts to the oft-neglected word. The lightweight, cotton shirt comes in a classic white with sizes for men, women, and children.

Find It: Amazon

10. MOBY DICK SENTENCE DIAGRAM TOTE; $22

This large, 16-inch-wide tote bag features the opening and closing lines from the classic book, Moby Dick. The diagrammatic words follow the Reed-Kellogg system (a parse tree that breaks down the grammatical structure of a sentence). The thick canvas bag is screenprinted on both sides and has a collapsible gusset for storing.

Find It: Pop Chart Lab

Mental Floss has affiliate relationships with certain retailers 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. Thanks for helping us pay the bills!


November 29, 2016 – 6:00pm

Find Guilt-Free Products Online With an Ethical Shopping Browser Extension

filed under: internet
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Virtual storefronts are minefields of dubious labor and environmental practices. You may not know of a guilt-free brand to support off the bat as you’re looking for dress shirts or kitchen products (though looking for goods with a lifetime guarantee is a good start toward assuaging some of those environmental concerns), but a new Chrome extension called DoneGood is here to help you safely navigate to the checkout. It recommends ethical companies to shop with when you’re searching for products online, according to Co.Exist.

Download the Chrome extension for your browser, and when you Google things like “baby products,” the results will either come up with a “DoneGood Approved” checkmark or a suggested alternative. It works when you visit specific retail websites, too. For instance, if you’re looking at the Brooks Brothers website, you’ll see something like this:

DoneGood

And if you’re digging through Amazon listings, you’ll get brand recommendations to help you pick an ethical product. (Though buying from Amazon comes with its own ethical quandaries.) The extension will also show you discount codes, which may come in handy since ethically made goods can understandably have steeper price tags than sweatshop products.

 

DoneGood bases its approval on a plethora of feel-good characteristics about a brand, from environmental efforts to cruelty-free or made-in-the-USA guarantees to whether they “support diversity.” Compared to big companies, DoneGood says its picks are “cool people making stuff built-to-last,” “using natural materials and ingredients,” “paying their employees well,” and “preserving the planet.” It uses established criteria like Fair Trade certified or certified B Corps (meaning the company is a for-profit but meets certain sustainability standards) and independent research to find its featured brands.

You can download the Chrome extension or use the associated iOS app.

[h/t Co.Exist]


November 29, 2016 – 5:30pm

The Lure of Laudanum, the Victorians’ Favorite Drug

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Elizabeth Siddal. Via Wikimedia // Public Domain

“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Down to a sunless sea”

Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s most famous poem, “Kubla Khan,” was written after an intense laudanum-induced dream; poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning largely depended on laudanum to function; and Lord Byron’s daughter, the celebrated mathematician Ada Lovelace, claimed laudanum calmed her overactive mind. The fact that many writers and artists of the Victorian period used laudanum is clear—but what was it about this heady drug that ensnared so many creative people?

Opium has been known since at least 3400 BCE, when the Sumerians produced the first written reference to the drug. The power of opium to dull pain while allowing the user to remain functional meant it was the drug of choice for those suffering both mental and physical anguish. In the 16th century, the alchemist Paracelsus created laudanum (possibly named from Latin words meaning “something to be praised”) by mixing a tincture of opium with alcohol. By the 17th century, the physician and medical pioneer Thomas Sydenham had simplified and standardized the recipe, marketing it as a cure-all. (Today the word laudanum refers to any alcoholic tincture of opium.)

By the 1800s laudanum was widely available—it could be easily purchased from pubs, grocers, barber shops, tobacconists, pharmacies, and even confectioners. The drug was often cheaper than alcohol, making it affordable to all levels of society. It was prescribed for everything from soothing a cranky infant to treating headaches, persistent cough, gout, rheumatism, diarrhea, melancholy, and “women’s troubles.”

 

Laudanum became widely used throughout Victorian society as a medicine, and soon many writers, poets, and artists (along with many ordinary people) became addicted. Bram Stoker, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, and many others were all known to have used laudanum. Some managed to take it briefly while ill, but others became hopelessly dependent. Most famously, the English writer Thomas De Quincey wrote a whole book—Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821)—on his use of opium and its derivatives. The book proposed that, unlike alcohol, opium improved the creative powers, an opinion that only served to make the drug more appealing to those searching for artistic and literary inspiration. A number of other writers also played on the perceived glamor of the drug, praising its ability to enhance the imagination.

Laudanum’s association with the Romantic poets likely stems from Coleridge’s addiction. Like many of his contemporaries, the poet suffered from poor health, and resorted to laudanum as both a painkiller and a sedative. Coleridge famously admitted that he had composed “Kubla Khan” after waking from an opium-induced reverie. But the drug that was at first inspiring soon became enslaving, and Coleridge’s addiction and resultant health issues plagued him for the rest of his life. The once-vibrant young man became listless and wan, and suffered terribly from withdrawal if he did not get his fix. In an 1814 letter to his friend John Morgan [PDF], Coleridge admitted it was not just the physical effects of the drug that grieved him, but its effects on his character: “I have in this one dirty business of Laudanum an hundred times deceived, tricked, nay, actually & consciously LIED. – And yet all these vices are so opposite to my nature, that but for the free-agency-annihilating Poison, I verily believe that I should have suffered myself to be cut in pieces rather than have committed any one of them.”

The poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning first took laudanum at the age of 15 after suffering a spinal injury. After that, she used it for various ailments, including hemorrhaging of the lungs. When she began corresponding with the poet Robert Browning, who would later become her husband, she revealed to him that she took 40 drops of the drug a day—a pretty substantial dose even for an addict.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Image credit: Lewis Carroll via Wikimedia // Public Domain

 
Golden-haired Elizabeth Siddal was another famous laudanum user. The muse, and later wife, of the great pre-Raphaelite painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti, she suffered from poor health and became hopelessly addicted to laudanum. For years she continued to function despite her addiction, until she lost a baby daughter in 1861—a tragedy that deepened her desire for the mindless oblivion offered by the drug. In 1862, when she had become pregnant once more, her husband returned from dinner one night to find her unconscious after an overdose. Rossetti called for a doctor, but when the physician sadly announced he could do nothing for her, Rossetti refused to believe the diagnosis and sent for three more doctors, who all confirmed Siddal’s untimely death.

Another famous victim of laudanum addiction was Branwell Brontë, the brother of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne. Together the four siblings shared the same tragic and lonely upbringing, which in the sisters unleashed a creative spark that kindled into some of the greatest works in English literature, including Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. Yet Branwell, who seemingly shared the same potential talent as a poet and artist (he created respected juvenilia alongside his sisters), instead descended into alcohol and laudanum dependency, his sensibilities seemingly too delicate to take the constant rejections an artist must endure. Branwell died a penniless addict at 31 years old in 1848, just a year after his sisters’ most famous novels were published.

An ad for laudanum in the Sears catalog. Image credit: Mike Mozart via Flickr // CC BY 2.0

That so many writers and artists were known to have taken laudanum is perhaps unsurprising considering that this was an era before aspirin, anti-depressants, or effective sleeping pills. But as the negative effects of laudanum became better-documented—the euphoria it provided was followed by crashing lows, restlessness, torpor, and sweats—it became clear that the drug needed to be better regulated.

Accounts by addicts helped sway public opinion: in one influential piece published in the Journal of Mental Sciences in 1889, a drug-addicted young girl revealed her anguish during withdrawal:

“My principal feeling was one of awful weariness and numbness at the end of my back; it kept me tossing about all day and night long. It was impossible to lie in one position for more than a minute, and of course sleep was out of the question. I was so irritable that no one cared to come near me; mother slept on the sofa in my room, and I nearly kicked her once for suggesting that I should say hymns over to myself, to try and make me go to sleep. Hymns of a very different sort were in my mind, I was once or twice very nearly strangling myself, and I am ashamed to say that the only thing that kept me from doing so was the thought that I would be able to get laudanum somehow. I was conscious of feeling nothing but the mere sense of being alive, and if the house had been burning, would have thought it too much of an effort to rise.”

By 1868 laudanum could only be sold by registered chemists in England and, in a nod to its dangers, had to be clearly labeled as a poison—the first restrictions on its use. In 1899 pure aspirin was developed, a far safer painkiller, heralding an era of better-regulated medicines. And although the tortured writer self-medicating with laudanum became a thing of the past, many other illicit substances soon stepped into the breach—leaving the trope of the drug-addled creative genius safely intact.


November 29, 2016 – 5:00pm

The Literary Man Hotel in Portugal Is Home to 45,000 Books

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Guests planning a trip to the Literary Man Hotel in Obidos, Portugal can leave their books at home. With over 45,000 publications lining the walls, there’s more than enough reading material to keep them occupied for the duration of their stay.

According to Travel and Leisure, the hotel opened in the historic village last October. Their extensive collection includes a variety of books, from textbooks to poetry compilations. Most of the tomes they have on site are for sale, with some rare titles priced at over $550.

After spending the day curled up with a good read, guests can retire to the hotel’s gin bar, which offers literature-inspired drinks like the F. Scott Fitzgerald (a gin rickey), the Catcher in the Rye (an Old Fashioned), and the Moby Dick (a Salty Dog). The hotel’s restaurant features leather chairs and a fireplace, making it a cozy spot for reading as well as eating and drinking.

Bookstore-themed hotels are turning into a travel fad—the Book and Bed hostel, with its cushioned reading nooks and book-themed decor, opened in Tokyo last year. The Literary Man aims to have at least 100,000 books on the premises by the end of the year, making it a must-visit destination for globetrotting bookworms.

[h/t Travel + Leisure]


November 29, 2016 – 4:30pm

5 Totally Innovative Takes on Activity Trackers

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iStock

Activity trackers have been a hugely popular way for people to monitor their daily steps, workouts, and sleep habits for a few years now (see: the rubber strap of a FitBit or Jawbone on the wrists of all your friends). In fact, about one fifth of Americans own one of these kind of wearables [PDF], and the American College of Sports Medicine named it the top fitness trend to watch in 2017. And the smart accessories of tomorrow feature incredibly cool, innovative new functionalities. Read on to see how one of them might help you boost your fitness, health, and mental wellness.

1. LVL; $150

BSX Technologies

 
Do you drink enough water? Chances are you don’t, according to BSX Athletics, the company launching the new LVL hydration monitor. The brand says a whopping 70 percent of people are chronically dehydrated. This wrist-worn gadget keeps tabs on your level of hydration to help ensure you’re always drinking enough water—so you’ll have more energy, be less likely to overeat, and sidestep headaches. But LVL also measures your heart rate, how many calories you burn, how much you move throughout the day, and how well you sleep.

Find It: BSX Insight, available summer 2017

2. UA SPEEDFORM GEMINI 2.1; $150

Under Armour

 
The wearable market is really stepping in a new direction with the emergence of smart sneakers. You don’t have to wear a wristband with these running shoes from athletic brand Under Armour; they have a built-in chip in one of the soles that syncs with MapMyRun for GPS tracking and stores data about your workouts—like steps taken, distance covered, interval splits, and route. And good news: You don’t have to carry your phone with you while you jog for the shoes to record all your stats.

Find It: Under Armour

3. ALTRA TORIN IQ; $220

Altra

 
With the sensors in each foot bed of the Altra Torin IQ sneakers, you can track your distance covered and cadence when you run. Plus, you can learn about your foot strike (if your forefoot or heel touches down first with each step) and get audible cues about small changes you can make to improve your form on the go so that you can move more efficiently.

Find It: Altra Running, available March 2017

4. LEAF URBAN; $139

Leaf

 
Like other trackers on the market, this device from Bellabeat counts your steps, sleep, overall activity, and calories burned as well as alerts you to move when you’ve been still too long. Unlike some of the others, the Leaf Urban also monitors how stressed you are and includes built-in breathing exercises to help you relax. Plus: With its period tracking and fertility calendar, female users can get a close look at all aspects of their reproductive health.

Find It: Bellabeat

5. CAEDEN SONA; $179

Caeden

 
This bracelet is another tracker that’s not just about counting steps and calories you burn (though it does that, too): The Sona follows your heart rate closely to see how various activities spike your stress levels. It also provides guided resonance meditation sessions so that you can maintain focus throughout the day.

Find It: Caeden


November 29, 2016 – 4:00pm