Month: January 2017

It’s time to stop picking on the appendix. A new article published in the journal Comptes Rendus Palevol supports the theory that the much-maligned organ may serve as a “safe house” for beneficial bacteria.

Your appendix is a little tube connected to the cecum (a pouch at the end of your large intestine) on the right side of your abdomen. Most of us know two things about the appendix: that infection there is dangerous, and that the organ itself is useless. The first statement is definitely true. A burst appendix is nobody’s idea of a good time. But useless? Perhaps not.

One scientific paper published in early 2016 found that removing an appendix-like structure in mice made them more susceptible to infection and inflammation. Other researchers have argued that the little tube acts as a reservoir for beneficial gut bacteria, keeping them safe even when infection damages the rest of the gut’s bacterial ecosystem. When the dust settles, the good guys in the appendix can start afresh, repopulating the gut with protective microbes.

Heather F. Smith researches the evolution of our bodies at Midwestern University Arizona College of Osteopathic Medicine. For her latest study, she and her colleagues compared the developmental history of the appendix in 533 mammal species.

The researchers found that, far from originating once in a single common ancestor, the appendix evolved independently more than 30 different times—a fact that suggests that it must do something.

The data also showed that species that have an appendix also have a higher concentration of lymphoid tissue, which supports immunity and the growth of beneficial bacteria, in the cecum. Taken all together, these findings support the theory that your appendix is there to help keep you safe and crawling with the right kind of microbes.

So it’s useful, yes. But do we need it? Not entirely. “In general,” Smith told TIME, “people who have had an appendectomy tend to be relatively healthy and not have any major detrimental effects.”

There may be some minor effects, though. People who’ve undergone appendectomies are slightly more prone to infection. “It may also take them slightly longer to recover from illness,” Smith said, “especially those in which the beneficial gut bacteria has been flushed out of the body.”

When two highly paid creative visionaries work together, things don’t always go smoothly. Here are a few of the most memorable bust-ups between Hollywood directors and actors.

1. GEORGE CLOONEY AND DAVID O. RUSSELL

After reviewing the script for Three Kings, David O. Russell’s Iraq War action-comedy, George Clooney—who was angling for film industry legitimacy at the time—desperately wanted in. But the feeling wasn’t mutual. “Russell hated Clooney’s style of acting, which he considered a lot of head-bobbing and mugging for the camera,” Sharon Waxman wrote in Rebels on the Backlot. After Nicolas Cage—Russell’s first choice for the role of U.S. Army Special Forces Major Archie Gates—declined, and Warner Bros. nixed the director’s other choices (including Dustin Hoffman), Russell awarded the part to Clooney.

The relationship, which wasn’t great to begin with, deteriorated as the actor struggled with Russell’s constant coaching and improvisational directing style. Things finally came to a head when Russell, whose behavior toward the crew Clooney severely disliked, threw an extra to the ground (Russell would claim he was demonstrating how he wanted the extra to treat Ice Cube in the scene they were filming). The details that followed differ from one account to the next, but what’s certain is that the two ended up brawling and had to be dragged apart.

“It was truly without exception, the worst experience of my life,” Clooney would later say. Russell, for his part, said he would never again make a film with Clooney. In 2012, they reportedly buried the hatchet. In 2013, Russell told The New York Times that, “George and I had a friendly rapport last year. I don’t know if we would be working together. I don’t think we would rule it out. But the point is, much ado was made about things long passed.”

2. FAYE DUNAWAY AND ROMAN POLANSKI

Faye Dunaway, who vaulted to A-list status through a string of memorable roles in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s—most notably as Bonnie Parker in Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde—was used to having a collaborative relationship with directors. That wasn’t the case with Roman Polanski, who directed her in 1974’s Chinatown. In response to Dunaway’s inquiries about her character Evelyn Mulwray’s motivation, Polanski would bark, “Your salary is your motivation!”

If Polanski had a reputation for being a dictator on set, Dunaway was known for putting on airs. “She considered herself a ‘star,’ and did not go out of her way to ingratiate herself with the director or the crew,” wrote Peter Biskind in Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. The relationship took a hit after Polanski snuck up behind Dunaway and plucked a stubborn hair that he claimed was ruining his shot. And it went off the rails after Dunaway threw what was reportedly a cup of urine in the director’s face. The actress refuses to talk about the incident these days, while Polanski has called Dunaway “unhinged.”

3. MARLON BRANDO AND FRANK OZ

Even in his old age, the legendary Marlon Brando could deliver a great performance. But he’d put a director through hell to get it. Nobody knew this better than Frank Oz, who memorably clashed with Brando while filming the 2001 heist movie The Score. According to reports, Brando frequently tried to change the shooting schedule and stubbornly clung to his own interpretation of his character, an aging mobster named Max. The Godfather actor became so incensed with Oz, a Muppets veteran who was directing his first drama after several successful comedies, that he refused to take direction from him. He would also refer to Oz as “Miss Piggy,” in reference to the Muppets character Oz voiced.

Things would have deteriorated further if not for Robert De Niro, who took over in the director’s chair when Brando refused to work with Oz, and who soothed the actor’s ruffled feathers on numerous occasions.

4. SHELLEY DUVALL AND STANLEY KUBRICK

Shelley Duvall, who had scant formal training as an actress, spent her early career working with freewheeling directors like Robert Altman and Woody Allen. This did little to prepare her for collaborating with a perfectionist like Stanley Kubrick, who directed her in 1980’s The Shining. Duvall’s role as Wendy Torrance, who tries desperately to protect her son as her husband slips into madness, was a demanding one. And Kubrick’s antagonistic attitude toward her—captured in glimpses in the making-of documentary above, shot by the filmmaker’s daughter, Vivian—didn’t make things any easier.

“For a person who can be so likeable, he can do some pretty cruel things,” Duvall said in the documentary Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures. Kubrick shot scenes again and again—as many as 127 times, according to reports. Many believe Kubrick was intentionally wearing down Duvall in a way that would heighten her character’s desperation. But as Emilio D’Alessandro, Kubrick’s longtime assistant, recently recalled in an essay for Esquire, Kubrick was also annoyed with Duvall’s insecurities as an actress. “I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything,” said Duvall. “But I wouldn’t want to go through with it again.”

5. EDWARD NORTON AND TONY KAYE

Considering American History X was Tony Kaye’s first film directing gig, you’d think he would avoid ruffling too many feathers. Well, think again. Apparently Kaye didn’t want Edward Norton for the lead role—Joaquin Phoenix was his first choice—and only agreed to the actor because he didn’t have time to cast someone else. The shoot, which lasted a quick 45 days, went off amicably enough. Afterwards, Kaye produced a rough cut of the film that pleased Norton and the studio, New Line. But then things went south.

Norton, along with New Line, gave pages of notes to Kaye on how to make his cut better, which the director did not take well. The two sides fought so bitterly that Kaye was banned from the editing room. New Line let him back in for a year, but then gave the reins over to Norton after Kaye said he wanted to completely rework the film. “I was so staggered by what [Norton] was doing to my film, and by the fact that New Line approved, that I punched the wall and broke my hand,” Kaye wrote in an essay for The Guardian.

What Kaye did next is the stuff of Hollywood legend: He took out ads in trade publications disparaging the project, scuttled the film’s premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, and ultimately fought to remove his name from the picture altogether. Norton, for his part, was incensed. “Let’s not make any mistake: Tony Kaye is a victim of nothing but his own professional and spiritual immaturity,” Norton told Entertainment Weekly. In the years since American History X came out, Kaye seems to have mellowed. In a 2007 interview with The Telegraph, he owned up to his bad behavior. “I did a lot of very insane things,” he said.

6. KLAUS KINSKI AND WERNER HERZOG

There was likely no actor-director relationship more tempestuous than the one between Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski. Herzog was—and still is—an uncompromising filmmaker who gravitates toward risky projects, while Kinski was unstable and given to prolonged fits of rage. Put together, the two fought relentlessly. While filming Fitzcarraldo in the jungles of Peru, Kinski threatened to leave the set, and Herzog replied that he would shoot him dead if he tried. Later, an extra who was fed up with Kinski’s tyrannical behavior offered to kill the actor for Herzog. Their acrimony is the stuff of moviemaking legend, and yet both seemed to thrive off the energy it produced.

In an interview, Herzog said the actor’s rages were often his way of getting into character. After Kinski died in 1991, Herzog frequently expressed admiration for his acting skill and devotion. “I think he needed me as much as I needed him,” Herzog said in My Best Fiend, a 1999 documentary the director made about their relationship.

7. WESLEY SNIPES AND DAVID GOYER

Despite the success of the first two Blade films, audiences just couldn’t get behind the third installment in the series, Blade: Trinity. Many observers chalked up the movie’s blandness to a troubled production, which included a bitter feud between star Wesley Snipes and writer/director David Goyer. Details were difficult to pin down during filming, but became clearer in a $5 million lawsuit filed by Snipes a year after the film released. In it, Snipes claimed that he never approved of the director or the script, which he claimed had a “juvenile level of humor,” and that this was a breach of his contract. Snipes also claimed racial discrimination during the casting process. So Snipes was not a happy camper before filming started, and according to costar Patton Oswalt, things really went downhill during filming.

In a memorable interview with The A.V. Club, Oswalt said that Snipes choked Goyer after they had a disagreement on set. Goyer, in response, enlisted a biker gang to act as his security detail, which unnerved Snipes to the point that he refused to interact with the director. According to Oswalt, Snipes would only communicate with Goyer by Post-It notes, which he would sign, “From Blade.”

8. BRIGITTE BARDOT AND HENRI-GEORGES CLOUZOT

Although not well known these days, Henri-Georges Clouzot was a highly regarded director in the ‘50s and ‘60s. His suspense movies were so well-crafted, Alfred Hitchcock reportedly worried that Clouzot would unseat him as the “Master of Suspense.” Clouzot’s methods, however, were quite controversial. In one film, he made his lead actor undergo an actual blood transfusion. In another, he smacked an actress in order to get her angry for a scene.

In La Vérité (The Truth), Clouzot’s film about the trial of a woman accused of killing her boyfriend, the director slipped sleeping pills to an unwitting Brigitte Bardot in order to make her appear exhausted. He overdid it, and Bardot’s stomach had to be pumped. At another point, according to Jeffrey Robinson in his book Brigitte Bardot: Two Lives, Clouzot took the actress by the shoulders and shook her. “I don’t need amateurs in my films,” he said. “I want an actress.” Bardot slapped him. “And I need a director, not a psychopath!” she replied.

In later years, Bardot would say that La Vérité was her finest performance. But she still hated Clouzot, describing him as a “negative being, forever at odds with himself and the world around him.”

There’s no need to plan a trip to Hogsmeade to find yourself some magical grub. Fresh Fruits Lab opened their first Harry Potter-themed cafe targeted towards muggles in Pakistan in 2016, and they’ve recently expanded the concept to Singapore. According to Elite Daily, the newest location offers something extra magical: a blue “Goblet of Fire” drink that blazes with actual flames.

The menu at Platform 1094 is packed with wizard-friendly dishes. Diners can order the “Giant’s Breakfast,” for example, with eggs, sausage, roasted pumpkin, and bacon-wrapped pineapple, or the “Black Magic” dessert with black sesame panna cotta and squid ink profiterole.

But the main attractions are the drinks that resemble what you’d expect to see in Professor Snape’s Potions class. Their signature “Goblet of Fire” is made with lemonade, Bacardi rum, and blue Curacao liqueur to give it its spellbinding shade. The server lights the drink on fire and patrons can watch the flames spark and erupt when cinnamon is sprinkled on top. If that’s not enough to convince diners they’ve been transported to Hogwarts, wands, witch’s hats, and chairs upholstered with pictures of Harry’s Patronus further add to the ambiance. Platform 1094 is now open to muggles and wizarding folk alike.

[h/t Elite Daily]

Header/banner images: Warner Bros.

Just by looking at it, you wouldn’t know that this minimalist belt buckle holds a whole slew of tools inside. The SlideBelt, a survival belt, equips those who wear it with a number of items that help with tasks both indoors and outdoors.

Inside the ratchet belt buckle, wearers can find a knife, bottle opener, flashlight, and fire starter stick. And even the belt itself can be used as a tool—the durable material is made “of an internal webbing core coated in a durable TPU alloy protective shield” and can be used as a rope to bundle branches or pull heavy objects. At the moment, the survival belt comes in four colors: black, desert tan, olive drab, and classic brown.

The belt is heat resistant up to 214°F, making it a safe bet for sitting by the campfire. Continuous notches on the inside make it easy to adjust the length to any size, and the design lets you cut off surplus belt material if needed.

Gifs from SlideBelts, YouTube

Martha Matilda Harper, the Greatest Businesswoman You’ve Never Heard Of. She invented the beauty salon, the franchise, and the shampoo sink.
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A weird Japanese game show humorously recreates Street Fighter II. With real guys, sound effects, and all.
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The First Super Bowl. It was 50 years ago this weekend.
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Facebook is working on a way to read brain waves that could let you send your thoughts to people. Even if we can do it someday, who would want to?
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Walt Disney explains his studio’s multiplane camera technology in 1957. It had been in use for 20 years, but still impressed viewers as the wave of the future.
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Are the Marx Brothers Still Funny? Yes, and on Blu-Ray they look better than ever.
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How the World’s Smallest Birds Survive the Winter. Hummingbirds adapt to the conditions around them.  
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The myth of America’s invincible military. Reputation does not always equal reality.

Some people collect stamps or build models, but Clint Buffington has a more unusual hobby: He travels the world, hunting for messages in bottles, and then blogs about his discoveries. Over the years, Buffington has found 83 notes—among them, a letter from a couple named Ed and Carol Meyers. They tossed the missive into the ocean in 1999, while celebrating their first wedding anniversary at a resort in North Carolina’s Outer Banks islands. Eight years later, Buffington stumbled across their corked correspondence while exploring a beach in the Turks and Caicos Islands.

In the video above, Vox.com’s Zachary Crockett and Phil Edwards explain how the bottle made its way from the Outer Banks to the Caribbean, and how the random find forged a relationship among a group of virtual strangers.

[h/t Vox]

Banner image: iStock

New York is getting pickled. According to The Wall Street Journal, not one, but two new pickle restaurants are opening in the city. Two existing pickle outfits are expanding their wares to other locations.

The previously retail-focused Pickle Guys is moving to a new space with both a restaurant and retail shop, and they will be serving up fried pickles of all sorts. It’s expected to open early this year. (Presumably, they’ll still be selling their branded mousepad, because nothing says “computer work” like a good pickle.)

And an Upper West Side pickle restaurant, Jacob’s Pickles, is opening up a sister restaurant called Maison Pickle, opening on Saturday, January 14. The pickles will share a menu with several different takes on the French dip sandwich.

Here’s to hoping the city doesn’t sour on its pickle love.

[h/t The Wall Street Journal]

Many of us couldn’t imagine enduring these chilly winter months without down jackets—they keep us warm without weighing a ton. The outerwear was first patented in the U.S. in 1940 by Eddie Bauer; it would become his most iconic and successful product and change the nature of his business, taking it from a local storefront to a nationally known brand. But he might not have come up with the idea if not for a scary near-death experience that occurred 80 years ago this month.

The Little Shop That Could

Bauer was just 21 when he started his business in 1920, renting 15 square feet of space inside another man’s gun shop in downtown Seattle and stringing tennis rackets. According to company historian Colin Berg, Eddie Bauer’s Tennis Shop operated for about a year—just enough time for Bauer to save enough money to open his own storefront.

Bauer’s Sports Shop was a hunting, fishing, and sporting goods store, but Bauer was more than just a merchandiser, he was an outdoorsman, too, and developed gear based on his own needs and the needs of his clients. “If I didn’t trust the equipment, it wasn’t stocked,” he once said. “If I needed equipment that wasn’t available elsewhere, I developed it myself.” If you’ve ever played badminton, for example, you’ve used the shuttlecock Bauer developed and patented.

Bauer backed everything in his shop with a lifetime guarantee—a rare thing in the ‘20s, and something Bauer called “my greatest contribution to the consumer … that guarantee was part of what I sold”—and he only hired people who, like him, were adept at outdoor pursuits. “People knew that if something was in Eddie Bauer’s store, we had personally put it to a rugged test,” he said. His small shop was successful, with a reputation not just for quality goods but also a knowledgeable staff.

For someone who had a passion for hunting and fishing, owning an outfitting shop was the best thing ever: “My business was also my hobby,” Bauer said. “It was like one long vacation. I loved every bit of it.”

A Fateful Trip

The shop might have stayed a small but successful business if not for a fishing trip Bauer took with his friend Red Carlson, a trapper from Alaska, in January 1935. The pair headed to a canyon in the Olympic Peninsula, where they fished for steelhead. That cold, snowy January day, their haul was 100 pounds, and they stripped off their heavy wool mackinaw jackets, climbing out of the canyon in just their wool shirts and long underwear.

The car was a mile away, and the 200- to 300-foot climb out of the river canyon was steep. As they hiked, Bauer—wet from his bag of fish and sweating profusely—began to fall behind his friend. When he reached the top of the canyon, he stopped and leaned against a tree to rest. “He was literally falling asleep on his feet, nodding off,” Berg says. “All that moisture froze in the cold and the snow, and he was getting hypothermic. He was in a bad way.”

Thankfully, Bauer was carrying a revolver. He pulled it out and fired two shots to alert his friend, who came back to get him and helped him to the car. If Bauer had been by himself, he might not have survived. But despite the scary experience, “he wasn’t about to give up winter fishing or hunting,” Berg says. “He realized what he needed was a really breathable, warm jacket that he wouldn’t have to take off when he was working strenuously in the cold.”

Designing with Down

Inspiration struck when Bauer remembered the stories his Uncle Lesser had told him as a kid about his time in the Russian Army during the Russo-Japanese War in Manchuria, before he had emigrated to the United States. Russian officers, Lesser had told Bauer, wore feather-stuffed coats to keep warm in the bitter, bitter cold.  And now, Bauer would create a jacket that would allow American outdoorsmen to do the same.

Bauer had worked with feather merchants making flies for his store, so he knew where to get high quality goose down. “He made a pattern for a jacket that he thought would fit him,” Berg says, “and had a local seamstress assemble the prototype.” The resulting jacket was made of high-thread count cotton (which kept the down from escaping) with diamond quilting in the torso (which kept the down in place) and alpaca-lined sleeves.

Bauer took his new outerwear—which he called the Blizzard-Proof Jacket—to his friend Ome Daiber, “a well-known climber at the time, who had also developed some climbing gear,” Berg says. “As a mountaineer himself, he immediately knew the importance and value of it.” Daiber, who had a small manufacturing operation, created the first generation of the jackets for Bauer, who continued to tinker with the design. Then, in 1936, he released a new version of the jacket—he called it the Skyliner—and began to advertise in Field & Stream, American Rifleman, and other hunting and fishing magazines. “He didn’t have a catalog at that point,” Berg says, “so sales happened through mail order and in his shop.”

The jacket proved to be a hit right away, and in 1939, Bauer filed for a patent on his jacket, which he received in 1940. Interestingly, though, the patent didn’t mention down feathers at all. “It could have been insulated with anything as far as the patent was concerned,” Berg says. In fact, none of Bauer’s 11 patents relating to down jackets actually mention down: “They all happened to be insulated with goose down, but it was really the visual quilting pattern that was the patented element.”

Then, in 1942, Bauer made another down jacket that would change his business: the first down-insulated flight jacket of the U.S. Air Force, called the B-9. The jacket—along with the accompanying pants—could keep aviators warm for up to 3 hours at -70 degrees F, and allow them to float with 25 pounds of gear for up to 24 hours. The jacket’s label read “Eddie Bauer, Seattle, U.S.A.,” and when aviators returned home in 1945, they wrote letters asking where they could get more down gear. The servicemen became the company’s core customer base when it launched the catalog that same year.

The Skyliner was a key part of his collection from 1936 to 1986 (and was offered again in 1995, 2003, and 2010), and was included in the business’s inaugural 1945 catalog. Testimonials printed in the catalog heaped praise on the product: “I was so pleased with the down Blizzard Proof Jacket, I am ordering three more as presents for my duck hunting friends,” one NYC man wrote. “My husband thinks his down jacket is the best thing that was ever made,” wrote a New Hampshire wife. And, said Mrs. L.E. from Kodiak, Alaska, “I wear it everywhere out of doors. I didn’t buy any woolen underwear, but with this jacket on I certainly don’t need any.” Other satisfied customers say the jacket is “tops” and “worth its weight in gold.”

Lighter Than a Feather

Jackets weren’t the only thing Bauer created with down: In the 1940s, he made comforters, pillows, a “sleeping robe,” and a sleeping bag that was was guaranteed to keep people warm down to temps of -60 degrees F. And though one of Bauer’s early slogans was “Lighter than a feather, warmer than 10 sweaters,” because he wanted to make things as warm as possible, he packed in a lot of down. “The sleeping bag weighed 18 pounds,” Berg says. “The marketing tagline was ‘Built for service you’ll never require.’ But you’d need a dogsled to carry it around.” This was a pattern; the jacket Bauer designed for the 1963 American ascent of Mount Everest had so much down in it that it was rated to -85 degrees F. “I talked to Tim Hornbein from the expedition, and he said, ‘It was in our packs most of the time,’” Berg says. “They couldn’t climb in it, it was so warm.” 

Over the years, the designs of Bauer’s down jackets have changed, of course, as new materials became available: The company began blending cotton with nylon in the 1950s, and started using Ripstop nylon in 1958. “It was a little bit like pulling teeth to get Eddie to go that route, because he was afraid that lighter fabric wouldn’t stand up to the durability that was so important to him,” Berg says. (After all, this is a guy who believed that “there can be no compromise of quality when lives depend on … performance.”) His original down jacket, meanwhile, probably wouldn’t look out of place in modern retail stores. “Some of the jackets from the ‘70s and ‘80s seem much more dated, either because of the cut or the color,” Berg says. “But lots of people say you could just take the original off of the form and wear it today.”