Month: November 2016

Why We Vote on a Tuesday, and Why Weekend Elections Might Make More Sense. There are plenty of ways we could make it easier.
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Men of Steel: 11 Actors Who Have Played Superman. And they all look just like him.
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A Chameleonic History of Tilda Swinton Looking Like Other People. The woman of a million faces.
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Is the Biological Clock a Real Thing? Not in the way it’s been depicted in pop culture.
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22 Stories From Funeral Home Employees. These are the things you aren’t supposed to see.
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Here’s What You Should Know About The Dakota Pipeline Protest. It could be a long winter at Standing Rock.  
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Her best friend died. So she rebuilt him, using artificial intelligence. Guaranteed to be a movie plot someday.
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7 Fugitives who Became Folk Heroes. Sometimes we can’t help but root for the bad guy.

Marjorie Tahbone isn’t your typical tattoo artist. She’s trying to revitalize the ancient art of traditional Inuit tattooing, which her ancestors practiced for thousands of years until colonial missionaries arrived and the custom began to die out. In the Great Big Story’s video above, you can learn how Tahbone creates her colorful designs, and why they’re so significant to her culture.

[h/t Great Big Story]

Banner image: Ren Buford via Flickr // CC BY-ND 2.0

Banner image courtesy of iStock.

Conceptual artist Marta Minujín is building a life-size replica of the Parthenon, but she’s using banned books instead of marble blocks. As Smithsonian reports, the artist has issued a public call for people to donate 100,000 prohibited titles toward her project. Next spring, the final product will stand in a public square in Kassel, Germany, where Nazis once burned thousands of “un-German” books.

Minujín is creating the large-scale installation for documenta, a global arts exhibition that’s held in Kassel every five years. This year’s title is “documenta 14: Learning From Athens.” Keeping with the theme, the show will kick off in Athens on April 8 and open in Kassel on June 10.

This isn’t the first time Minujín’s work has challenged the repression of knowledge and free speech. In 1983, she created a similar public work, El Partenón de Libros, after Argentina’s military dictatorship fell apart. Made from 20,000 books forbidden by the junta, it stood along a central street in Buenos Aires. Instead of simply dismantling it, Minujín had two cranes tip it sideways and instructed onlookers to collect and keep the books.

Marta Minjuin’s Parthenon of books will be on display for 100 days starting on June 10, 2017 in Kassel, Germany…. https://t.co/wx17mVstDy

— SCS (@scsclassics) November 4, 2016

Minujín’s new Parthenon will be larger and more ambitious than her last. It will also recall a different political injustice—when German Nazis burned around 2000 books on May 19, 1933, during the “Aktion wider den undeutschen Geist” (Campaign against the Un-German Spirit).

Still, the underlying theme remains the same. Like the original 1983 work, Minujín’s new Parthenon will set “an example against violence, discrimination, and intolerance,” said Adam Szymczyk, artistic director of documenta 14, in a press statement quoted by the American Library Association.

The new Parthenon of banned books will go on display in Athens on June 10, 2017. After 100 days, it will be dismantled, and the books distributed among onlookers. Want to contribute a title? Documenta 14 posted instructions online for donating once or currently banned works.

[h/t Smithsonian]

Whether you savor the extra sunlight in the summer or dread the jarring time jump, Daylight Saving Time is inevitable (at least in most parts of the country). Here are 10 things you should know before making the biannual change.

1. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN WAS HALF JOKING WHEN HE SUGGESTED IT.

More than a century before Daylight Saving Time (DST) was adopted by any major country, Benjamin Franklin proposed a similar concept in a satirical essay. In the piece, published in 1784, he argued:

All the difficulty will be in the first two or three days; after which the reformation will be as natural and easy as the present irregularity […] Oblige a man to rise at four in the morning, and it is more than probable he will go willingly to bed at eight in the evening; and, having had eight hours sleep, he will rise more willingly at four in the morning following.

In one prophetic passage, he pitched the idea as a money-saver (though at the time people would have been conserving candle wax rather than electricity). To enforce the out-there plan Franklin suggested taxing shutters, rationing candles, banning non-emergency coach travel after dark, and firing cannons at sunrise to rouse late-sleepers. While his essay clearly brought up some practical points, Franklin may have originally written it as an excuse to poke fun at the French for being lazy. He wrote that the amount of sunlight that goes wasted each morning would likely come as a shock to readers who “have never seen any signs of sunshine before noon.”

2. OFFICIAL CREDIT FOR THE IDEA GOES TO A BUG COLLECTOR.

The first serious case for DST came from a peculiar place. While working at a post office by day, an etymologist who did most of his bug hunting at night soon became frustrated by how early the sun set during the summer months. He reasoned that springing the clocks forward would allow more daylight for bug collecting—along with other evening activities. The clocks could be switched back in the winter when people (and bugs) were less likely to be found outdoors.

When the idea was proposed to a scientific society in New Zealand in 1895 it was panned for being pointless and overly complicated. Just two decades later, Daylight Saving Time would begin its spread across the developed world.

3. WWI PUSHED DAYLIGHT SAVING INTO LAW.

In 1916, Germany became the first country to officially adopt Daylight Saving Time. It was born out of an effort to conserve coal during World War I, and Britain, along with many other European nations, was quick to follow the Germans’ lead. It wasn’t until 1918 that the time change spread to the U.S. A year after entering the war, America began practicing DST as an electricity-saving measure. Most countries, including the U.S., ceased official observation of the switch following wartime. Until, that is …

4. IT GAINED RENEWED POPULARITY DURING THE ENERGY CRISIS.

The U.S. reconsidered DST in the 1970s, when, once again, the argument pivoted back to energy conservation. The oil embargo of 1973 had kicked off a nationwide energy crisis and the government was looking for ways to reduce public consumption. Daylight Saving Time was imposed in the beginning of 1974 to save energy in the winter months. Not everyone was enthusiastic about the change: Some of the harshest critics were parents suddenly forced to send their children to school before sunrise.

5. IT MAY ACTUALLY BE AN ENERGY WASTER.

Despite Daylight Saving Time’s origins as an energy saving strategy, research suggests it might actually be hurting the cause. One 2008 study conducted in Indiana found that the statewide implementation of DST two years earlier had boosted overall energy consumption by one percent. While it’s true that changing the clocks can save residents money on lighting, the cost of heating and air conditioning tends to go up. That extra hour of daylight is only beneficial when people are willing to go outside to enjoy it.

6. IT’S ALSO A HEALTH HAZARD.

Even if DST was good for your energy bill, that wouldn’t negate the adverse impact it can have on human health. Numerous studies show that the extra hour of sleep we lose by springing ahead can affect us in dangerous ways. An increased risk of heart attack, stroke, and susceptibility to illness have all been linked to the time change.

7. BUT THERE ARE SOME BENEFITS.

Though people love to complain about it, Daylight Saving Time isn’t all bad news. One notable benefit of the change is a decrease in crime. According to one study published in 2015, daily incidents of robbery dropped by seven percent following the start of DST in the spring. This number was heavily skewed by a 27 percent dip in robberies during the well-lit evening hours.

8. IT’S NOT OBSERVED NATIONWIDE.

DST has been widely accepted across the country, but it’s still not mandated by federal law. U.S. residents resistant to springing forward and falling back each year might consider moving to Arizona. The state isn’t exactly desperate for extra sunlight, so every spring they skip they time jump. This leaves the Navajo Nation, which does observe the change, in a peculiar situation. The reservation is fully located within Arizona, and the smaller Hopi reservation is fully located within the Navajo Nation. The Hopi ignores DST like the rest of Arizona, making the Navajo Nation a Daylight Saving donut of sorts suspended one hour in the future for half the year.

9. IT STARTS AT 2 A.M. FOR A REASON.

Daylight Saving Time doesn’t begin at the stroke of midnight like you might expect it to. Rather, the time change is delayed until most people (hopefully) aren’t awake to notice it. By waiting until two in the morning to give or take an hour, the idea is that most workers with early shifts will still be in bed and most bars and restaurants will already be closed.

10. THE CANDY INDUSTRY LOBBIED FOR AN EXTENSION.

Until recently, losing an hour of daylight in the fall presented a problem for the candy industry. That’s because Daylight Saving Time traditionally ended on the last Sunday in October, a.k.a. before Halloween night. Intense lobbying to push back the date went on for decades. According to one report, candy lobbyists even went so far as to place tiny candy pumpkins on the seats of everyone in the senate in 1986. A law extending DST into November finally went into effect in 2007.

As the history of Daylight Saving shows, light matters—a lot. You might not be able to control what’s happening outside, but you can harness the power of light inside. Click here to see how reveal’s clean, beautiful light can transform every room of your home.

U.S. nickels have been made from a mix of metals—nickel (75%) and copper (25%)—since 1866. The U.S. Mint is currently looking into ways to make the nickel less expensive to produce. But what if we go back to 1866 and explore what the nickel looked like then? What were early American five-cent pieces actually like?

THE HALF-DI(S)ME

The U.S. first minted a 5-cent coin in 1792. Congress called it a half-dime. (Technically it was a “half-disme,” but see below for more on the spelling.) That coin was only briefly made, and had an odd design. Numismatists also disagree about whether it was even intended to circulate. The more common design looks like the image above—starting in 1794, the “flowing hair” half dime ruled, though it too went through a series of design changes in 1796 and 1800.

One of the strangest things about the half-dime was its lack of a numerical value statement. Nowhere on the observe or reverse does the coin say what it’s worth. The designs were very similar to half-dollar and dollar coins, just much smaller. (This was typical for U.S. coins at the time; the 1790s-era dime also lacked an indication of value in cents.)

Fun fact: In the Coinage Act of 1792, the dime was referred to as the “disme,” and that term is printed on the 1792 copper disme…er, dime.

THE PAPER NICKEL

The Civil War had a radical effect on U.S. currency, for various reasons (not least that half the country didn’t recognize its value). In 1884, the U.S. issued and immediately recalled five-cent paper notes. The design was overseen by Spencer M. Clark, who supervised the Currency Bureau. Guess who’s on the note? Yep, it’s Spencer M. Clark. Congress promptly passed legislation preventing the depiction of living people on U.S. currency, as the Clark incident came just after Salmon P. Chase put himself on the dollar bill.

This five-cent note was accompanied by a couple of new coins: two- and three-cent pieces. These are worthy of mention here, but they’re not nickels, so let’s move on.

BIG NICKEL GETS ITS COIN

The aforementioned three-cent piece contained a mixture of nickel and copper, which excited industrials who controlled nickel production. Through good old-fashioned lobbying, Big Nickel interests managed to secure the 75% nickel/25% copper formula for a five-cent piece, and the rest is history.

The first true “nickel” appeared in 1866, and bore a shield design based on the previous two-cent piece. It was a very handsome coin, and it even said “5 CENTS” on the reverse! Good job, U.S. Mint.

FURTHER READING

For more on early U.S. currency: What the Original $1 Bill Looked Like; The First U.S.-Minted Penny Was Horrific; and Where Do U.S. Coin Names Come From? You might also enjoy this history of the nickel, or this beautifully-illustrated nickel story.

(All images public domain via Wikimedia Commons. For details, see the five-cent note, half-dime obverse, half-dime reverse, and shield nickel.)

The Forest Green Rovers are about to get even greener. As Dezeen reports, the British National League soccer team is getting a new 5000-seat stadium constructed entirely from wood.

The unique idea was chosen from over 50 entries in an international competition. The firm behind the winning design is the London-based Zaha Hadid Architects. ZHA has been approached to build ambitious stadiums in the past, including the Aquatics Center for the London 2012 Olympics and the arena for the upcoming 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. This new project will be among their most impressive: Powered by sustainable energy and built from natural timber, the stadium will be the greenest of its kind.

Forest Green Rovers chairman Dale Vince told Dezeen, “The importance of using wood is not only that it’s a naturally occurring material, it has very low carbon content—about as low as it gets for a building material. Our new stadium will have the lowest carbon content of any stadium in the world.”

The plan is part of a larger Eco Park development project which will also include a public transit station, a nature reserve, and the restoration of Stroudwater canal. According to Express, construction is expected to take anywhere from two to three years.

[h/t Dezeen]

All images courtesy of Zaha Hahid Architects.

In the Peruvian rainforest, a mutualistic relationship thrives between Inga tree saplings and native ants. The young trees need the ants as defense, so insects don’t eat their leaves. The ants get “paid” for this defensive role using nectar provided by the tree.

In this beautiful Ultra-HD video from Deep Look, we see how this relationship works—and how it breaks down when clever Riodinid caterpillars come along!

The moral of this story? Never trust ants to protect you.

For more discussion, read this KQED article. Also fascinating is this paper by Suzanne Koptur (PDF link) describing the same ecosystem. There’s also a nice It’s Okay To Be Smart video on ant/tree mutualism.

And if you enjoyed this, watch another Deep Look video: What Do Ants Do With the Leaves They Carry Around?

(Photo courtesy of Josh Cassidy/KQED.)