fact
A Brief History of the Chicken Dance
Today, “The Chicken Dance” can be heard on the dance floor at nearly every bar mitzvah and school party—but its ascent into the cultural mainstream definitely didn’t happen overnight.
The Empowerment Plan via Facebook
Like many metropolitan areas, Detroit continues to struggle with a significant homeless population. By one estimate, roughly 86,000 people in the city [PDF] have no roof over their heads. Many of the proposed solutions often involve mental health care, shelter, and job placement. But sometimes addressing the issue comes down to something as simple as making sure people stay warm.
As reported by designboom, the nonprofit Empowerment Plan’s EMPWR jacket uses upcycled automotive insulation to provide a waterproof exterior and heat-trapping interior. When it’s not being worn as a coat, it can be modified to function as a sleeping bag.
The jacket was the invention of Veronika Scott, who also spearheaded the idea to hire single parents from Detroit-area shelters to work in the factory constructing the coats. (Each costs roughly $100 in labor and materials.) The Empowerment Plan makes use of GED education and other resources to help employees transition into more stable living situations.
The coats are distributed nationally, with more than 15,000 currently in use. A similar idea, the Sheltersuit, is being distributed in the Netherlands.
[h/t designboom]
November 29, 2016 – 11:00am
The zero-G lifestyle does funny things to our bodily fluids. That’s the conclusion of one recent study, which may have found a reason for a common space travelers’ malady. The researchers presented their results [PDF] at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America.
If we’re going to start sending humans to Mars and other distant destinations, we’re going to need to know if we can survive the trip. So astronauts are an incredible scientific resource, not only for what they do while in space, but also for what they experience. Living in orbit can shrink astronauts’ hearts and stretch their spines. It can also damage their ability to see: Numerous travelers who left Earth with 20/20 vision have returned to find they need glasses just to read or drive.
“People initially didn’t know what to make of it, and by 2010 there was growing concern as it became apparent that some of the astronauts had severe structural changes that were not fully reversible upon return to earth,” lead author Noam Alperin of the University of Miami said in a statement.
Scientists call the phenomenon visual impairment intracranial pressure, or VIIP. The name is slightly misleading in its certainty. Researchers think the eye problems are the result of increased pressure inside astronauts’ heads, but they haven’t really been sure.
Alperin and his colleagues wondered if the problem might not be liquid—cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), to be precise. CSF is a crucial component of healthy brain and body function. It surrounds our brains and spinal cords and acts kind of like amniotic fluid in the womb, ensuring a flow of nutrients and removing waste. CSF is also somewhat adaptable and responds to changes in the position and angle of your body and head. It’s a good system, and it works.
At least where there’s gravity. The research team scanned the brains and eyeballs of seven different astronauts both before and after long stints aboard the International Space Station (ISS). They compared those scans with results from another nine astronauts who had only been on the ISS briefly.
There could be no doubt about it—longer stays in space were messing with the astronauts’ eyes. Their eyes were more flattened; their optic nerves showed more swelling; and, most interestingly, they had higher volumes of CSF in their eye sockets and in the CSF-producing part of the brain. The higher the CSF volume, the more trouble an astronaut had seeing.
“The research provides, for the first time, quantitative evidence obtained from short- and long-duration astronauts pointing to the primary and direct role of the CSF in the globe deformations seen in astronauts with visual impairment syndrome,” Alperin said.
Identifying the source of the problem is the first step to correcting it. Alperin and NASA are now working to simulate the conditions that cause VIIP so they can figure out how to protect astronauts’ eyes in the future.
November 29, 2016 – 10:30am
Spoiler alert! Sometimes TV shows shock their audiences with mind-blowing twists and surprises, but TV writers are often clever enough to foreshadow these events with very subtle references. Here are 10 of them.
**Many spoilers ahead.**
During season five of The Walking Dead, Glenn (Steven Yeun) picks up a baseball bat a few times in the Alexandria Safe-Zone. He was also almost killed by one at Terminus at the beginning of the season. Two seasons later, Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) brutally kills Glenn with his barbed-wire baseball bat (a.k.a. Lucille) during the season seven premiere.
In Breaking Bad‘s second season finale, a Boeing 737 crashes over Albuquerque, New Mexico. While the event was hinted at throughout the season during the black-and-white teasers at the beginning of each episode, the titles of certain episodes predicted the crash altogether. The titles “Seven Thirty-Seven,” “Down,” “Over,” and “ABQ” spell out the phrase “737 Down Over ABQ,” which is the airport code for the Albuquerque International Sunport.
In “The Mountain and the Viper,” a season four episode of Game of Thrones, Petyr “Littlefinger” Baelish (Aidan Gillen) tells his stepson, Robin Arryn (Lino Facioli), “People die at their dinner tables. They die in their beds. They die squatting over their chamber pots. Everybody dies sooner or later. And don’t worry about your death. Worry about your life. Take charge of your life for as long as it lasts.”
Throughout that same season, viewers see King Joffrey Baratheon (Jack Gleeson) die at a dinner table during his wedding and watch Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage) strangle his former lover, Shae (Sibel Kekilli), in bed, before killing his father, Tywin (Charles Dance), while he’s sitting on a toilet.
Throughout seasons one and two of Arrested Development, there are a number of references that foretell Buster Bluth (Tony Hale) losing his hand. In “Out on a Limb,” Buster is sitting on a bus stop bench with an ad for Army Officers, but the way he’s sitting hides most of the ad, so it reads “Arm Off” instead. Earlier in season two, Buster says “Wow, I never thought I’d miss a hand so much,” when he sees his long lost hand-shaped chair in his housekeeper’s home.
In season four of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Willow (Alyson Hannigan) comes out as gay and begins a relationship with Tara (Amber Benson). However, in the episode “Doppelgangland” in season three, a vampire version of Willow appears after a spell is accidentally cast. After Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Angel (David Boreanaz) capture the vampire Willow, the real Willow takes a look at her vampire-self and comments, “That’s me as a vampire? I’m so evil and skanky. And I think I’m kinda gay!”
In the very first episode of Futurama, “Space Pilot 3000,” Fry (Billy West) is accidentally frozen and wakes up 1000 years later. Just before he falls into the cryotube, in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment, you can see a small shadowy figure under a desk in the Applied Cryogenics office. In the season four episode “The Why of Fry,” it was revealed that Nibbler (Frank Welker) was hiding in the shadows. He planned to freeze Fry in the past, so that he could save the universe in the future. According to co-creator Matt Groening, “What we tried to do is we tried to lay in a lot of little secrets in this episode that would pay off later.”
American Horror Story: Coven follows a coven of witches in Salem, Massachusetts. When Fiona (Jessica Lange), the leader of the witches, is stricken with cancer, she believes a new witch who can wield the Seven Powers will come and take her place. Fiona then begins to kill every witch she believes will take her place until the new Supreme reveals herself.
During the opening credits of every episode in season three, Sarah Paulson’s title card appears with the Mexican female deity Santa Muerte (Holy Death), the Lady of the Seven Wonders. And as it turned out, Paulson’s character, Cordelia, became the new Supreme witch at the end of the season.
At the end of Mad Men‘s fifth season, ad agency partner Lane Pryce (Jared Harris) committed suicide by hanging himself in his office. While it was a shock to the audience, the show’s writers hinted at his death throughout the entire season.
In the season five premiere, Lane jokes “I’ll be here for the rest of my life!” while he’s on the telephone in his office. Later, in episode five, Don Draper doodles a noose during a meeting, while Lane wears a scarf around his neck in a bar to support his soccer club. Early in episode 12, Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser) mentions that the agency’s life insurance policy still pays out, even in the event of a suicide.
In How I Met Your Mother‘s season six episode, “Bad News,” Marshall (Jason Segel) and Lily (Alyson Hannigan) are waiting for test results that will tell them whether or not they can have children. While we’re led to believe the title of the episode reflects their test results, it actually refers to the news that Marshall’s father, Marvin Eriksen Sr. (Bill Fagerbakke), had passed away after suffering a heart attack.
Keen-eyed viewers knew this news already because the writers of How I Met Your Mother foreshadowed the death two seasons earlier in the episode “The Fight.” At the beginning of the episode, Marshall said that lightsaber technology is real and will be on the market in about three to five years from now. By the end of the episode, a flash forward reveals what Thanksgiving looks like at the Eriksen family’s home in Minnesota; Marshall’s father is not shown or referenced during the holiday meal.
During season one, Detectives Rust Cohle and Marty Hart are trying to solve a murder investigation, as they try to identify the mysterious “Yellow King.” The color yellow is used when the detectives are on the right track, but the detectives already met the killer in episode three, “The Locked Room.”
When the pair went to the Light of the Way Academy, posted on the school’s sign was a very clever hidden message that read “Notice King,” which pointed to the school’s groundskeeper as the killer.
November 29, 2016 – 10:00am
Razor blades are ludicrously expensive, and if you’re not buying your disposable razor blades from Amazon, you’re probably paying too much. Amazon normally has refill cartridges at rock bottom prices, and the world’s biggest store runs frequent coupons to make these deals even better. Today’s Deal of the Day on Gillette products takes the bargains to a whole new level with a 25% discount that stacks with a $6 instant on-screen coupon.
If you shave with a Mach3, a Fusion, or a Venus, stock up on the cheap today. You won’t regret getting 16 Mach3 Turbo blades plus an extra handle for just $17.99 or eight Venus Spa blades plus an extra handle for just $14.85. (To put that bargain in perspective, a pack of just 15 Mach3 Turbo blades is currently $27.93 on Walmart.com without the benefit of Prime shipping, while a six-pack of Venus Spa blades will set you back $20.99.)
Gillette Mach3 Bundle (1 handle + 16 refills) for $17.99 after on-screen coupon
Gillette Fusion Proshield Chill (8 refills + 2 shave gels) for $23.50 after on-screen coupon
Gillette Venus Swirl Bundle (1 handle + 8 refills) for $19.99 after on-screen coupon
Gillette Fusion ProShield Bundle (8 refills + 2 shave gels) for $25.15 after on-screen coupon
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!
November 29, 2016 – 9:42am
Most jigsaw puzzles present assemblers with a clear challenge: Arrange the pieces just right until you’ve recreated the picture on the box. If puzzles appeal to your logical side, you may have a hard time completing the Infinite Galaxy Puzzle. As Gizmodo reports, the pieces are specially designed to fit together in any direction with no boundaries to contain them.
The edgeless puzzle was made possible using “math, science, and lasers,” according to the creators. The geometric concept that inspired the idea is called a Klein bottle, a theoretical 3D shape that’s mathematically identical inside and out.
Because both sides of the puzzle feature a picture of the Milky Way’s galactic core, it has no fixed up or down. The image wraps around from one surface to the other making it impossible to see the whole thing at once. When putting the puzzle together, pieces on the outside can be flipped over and transferred to the opposite side of the image, giving assembly a never-ending effect.
One puzzle includes 133 pieces laser-cut from birch plywood and costs $100. If you prefer puzzles that leave zero room for creativity, this 1000-color monstrosity from German artist Clemens Habicht is just as maddening.
[h/t Gizmodo]
November 29, 2016 – 9:00am
Born on this day in 1832, Louisa May Alcott led a fascinating life. Besides enchanting millions of readers with her novel Little Women, she worked as a Civil War nurse, fought against slavery, and registered women to vote. In honor of her birthday, here are 10 facts about Alcott.
Louisa’s parents, Bronson and Abigail Alcott, raised their four daughters in a politically active household in Massachusetts. As a child, Alcott briefly lived with her family in a failed Transcendentalist commune, helped her parents hide slaves who had escaped via the Underground Railroad, and had discussions about women’s rights with Margaret Fuller. Throughout her life, she socialized with her father’s friends, including Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Although her family was always poor, Alcott had access to valuable learning experiences. She read books in Emerson’s library and learned about botany at Walden Pond with Thoreau, later writing a poem called “Thoreau’s Flute” for her friend. She also socialized with abolitionist Frederick Douglass and women’s suffrage activist Julia Ward Howe.
As a teenager, Alcott worked a variety of teaching and servant jobs to earn money for her family. She first became a published writer at 19 years old, when a women’s magazine printed one of her poems. For reasons that are unclear, Alcott used a pen name—Flora Fairfield—rather than her real name, perhaps because she felt that she was still developing as a writer. But in 1854 at age 22, Alcott used her own name for the first time. She published Flower Fables, a collection of fairy tales she had written six years earlier for Emerson’s daughter, Ellen.
Before writing Little Women, Alcott wrote Gothic pulp fiction under the nom de plume A.M. Barnard. Continuing her amusing penchant for alliteration, she wrote books and plays called Perilous Play and Pauline’s Passion and Punishment to make easy money. Alcott wrote about cross-dressers, spies, revenge, and hashish. These sensational, melodramatic works are strikingly different than the more wholesome, righteous vibe she captured in Little Women, and she didn’t advertise her former writing as her own after Little Women became popular.
In 1861, at the beginning of the U.S. Civil War, Alcott sewed Union uniforms in Concord and, the next year, enlisted as an army nurse. In a Washington, D.C. hotel-turned-hospital, she comforted dying soldiers and helped doctors perform amputations. During this time, she wrote about her experiences in her journal and in letters to her family. In 1863, she published Hospital Sketches, a fictionalized account, based on her letters, of her stressful yet meaningful experiences as a wartime nurse. The book became massively popular and was reprinted in 1869 with more material.
After a month and a half of nursing in D.C., Alcott caught typhoid fever and pneumonia. She received the standard treatment at the time—a toxic mercury compound called calomel. (Calomel was used in medicines through the 19th century.) Because of this exposure to mercury, Alcott suffered from symptoms of mercury poisoning for the rest of her life. She had a weakened immune system, vertigo, and had episodes of hallucinations. To combat the pain caused by the mercury poisoning (as well as a possible autoimmune disorder, such as lupus, that could have been triggered by it), she took opium. Alcott died of a stroke in 1888, at 55 years old.
In 1867, Thomas Niles, an editor at a publishing house, asked Alcott if she wanted to write a novel for girls. Although she tried to get excited about the project, she thought she wouldn’t have much to write about girls because she was a tomboy. The next year, Alcott’s father was trying to convince Niles to publish his manuscript about philosophy. He told Niles that his daughter could write a book of fairy stories, but Niles still wanted a novel about girls. Niles told Alcott’s father that if he could get his daughter to write a (non-fairy) novel for girls, he would publish his philosophy manuscript. So to make her father happy and help his writing career, Alcott wrote about her adolescence growing up with her three sisters. Published in September 1868, the first part of Little Women was a huge success. The second part was published in 1869, and Alcott went on to write sequels such as Little Men (1871) and Jo’s Boys (1886).
In the 1870s, Alcott wrote for a women’s rights periodical and went door-to-door in Massachusetts to encourage women to vote. In 1879, the state passed a law that would allow women to vote in local elections on anything involving education and children—Alcott registered immediately, becoming the first woman registered in Concord to vote. Although met with resistance, she, along with 19 other women, cast ballots in a 1880 town meeting. The Nineteenth Amendment was finally ratified in 1920, decades after Alcott died.
After the success of Little Women, fans who connected with the book traveled to Concord to see where Alcott grew up. One month, Alcott had a hundred strangers knock on the door of Orchard House, her family’s home, hoping to see her. Because she didn’t like the attention, she sometimes pretended to be a servant when she answered the front door, hoping to trick fans into leaving.
Although Alcott never married or had biological children, she took care of her orphaned niece. In 1879, Alcott’s youngest sister May died a month after giving birth to her daughter. As she was dying, May told her husband to send the baby, whom she named Louisa in honor of Alcott, to her older sister. Nicknamed Lulu, the girl spent her childhood with Alcott, who wrote her stories and seemed a good fit for her high-spiritedness. Lulu was just 8 when Alcott died, at which point she went to live with her father in Switzerland.
At 399 Lexington Road in Concord, Massachusetts, tourists can visit Orchard House, the Alcott family home from 1858 to 1877. Orchard House is a designated National Historic Landmark, and visitors can take a guided tour to see where Alcott wrote and set Little Women. Visitors can also get a look at Alcott’s writing desk and the family’s original furniture and paintings.
November 29, 2016 – 8:00am
“My word, I’m as old as the hills.”
Back in May, that was 116-year-old Emma Morano’s response to learning that the Guinness World Record for World’s Oldest Living Person had been passed on to her following the death of previous record-holder, Susannah Mushatt Jones. Today, Morano—the last living person who was born in the 19th century—is celebrating yet another milestone: her 117th birthday.
While other centenarians have attributed their longevity to everything from exercise to lack of exercise, Morano’s secret to a long life is pretty straightforward: two raw eggs a day. Morano, who was born in the village of Civiasco in northern Italy on November 29, 1899, has made a practice of eating raw eggs for nearly a century, ever since she was diagnosed with anemia at the age of 20. She also suggests eating a bit of minced meat regularly, and only has milk for dinner.
Of course, genetics can’t be overlooked: though Morano, the oldest of eight children, has outlived all of her siblings, several of her sisters lived to see their 100th birthdays (and her mother passed away at the age of 91).
Still, even Carlo Bava—Morano’s doctor of nearly 30 years—seems baffled. “Emma has always eaten very few vegetables, very little fruit,” he said. “When I met her, she ate three eggs per day, two raw in the morning and then an omelette at noon, and chicken at dinner.” Yet somehow, says Bava, she seems to be “eternal.”
Though Morano is only about three months older than Jamaica-born Violet Brown—the world’s second oldest living person, who will celebrate her 117th birthday on March 10—Morano remains “the world’s last living link to the 19th century.”
November 29, 2016 – 7:00am
| Questions: | 5 |
| Available: | Always |
| Pass rate: | 75 % |
| Backwards navigation: | Forbidden |
5 Questions: Square Dancing
Tuesday, November 29, 2016 – 01:45
St. Petersburg plans to become the first city in Florida to run on 100 percent renewable energy, according to Orlando Weekly and the Sierra Club.
The city received a total of $6.5 million in settlement money from BP for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, $1 million of which has been set aside for environmental projects. The city council just voted to allocate $250,000 of that money to an “Integrated Sustainability Action Plan” to begin moving St. Petersburg to a 100 percent renewable energy and zero-waste model. In addition, $250,000 will be put toward assessing the city’s energy efficiency, and $300,000 will go to evaluating and mitigating the area’s risks from sea level rise and hurricanes.
These aren’t the only moves the city has made toward sustainability. Earlier this summer, Mayor Rick Kriesman issued an executive order for the city to implement policies to eventually become a net-zero municipality, and this budget plan will further his goals.
St. Petersburg is the first city in Florida to commit completely to clean energy, and only the 20th city in the entire country to do so. However, the city has yet to create a timeline for when the transition will be completed. Around the world, many regions and countries—from Germany to Cape Verde to the Philippines—have already made such commitments, pledging to transition to clean energy by as early as 2020, though many places are operating on 20- to 30-year timelines.
[h/t Orlando Weekly]
November 29, 2016 – 1:00am
