Charlie Chaplin fans, Pastafarians, and home chefs wanting to wear their love of cooking on their sleeves and on their heads will appreciate this silly colander shaped like a bowler hat, sold by English online novelty store The Fowndry (and spotted by Laughing Squid). The flexible polypropylene kitchen tool costs £10 (around $12 US), and can be used for washing fruits and veggies, straining noodles, or as an impromptu accessory if you feel like emulating Chaplin’s famous “dinner roll dance” from silent comedy The Gold Rush (1925) in the middle of meal prep. (Just remember to rinse it off first.)
On January 8, 1968, The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau debuted on ABC. The show is vintage Cousteau, featuring the French adventurer-slash-scientist wearing a red cap, a skimpy bathing suit, and smoking like a chimney. In the first episode, Captain Cousteau introduced his crew, his research vessel Calypso, and proceeded to swim with sharks.
It’s easy to see the clear line drawn between this documentary and modern nature films. Cousteau mixed exploration with explanation, keeping audiences informed and excited at the same time. The technical aspect is impressive as well, with color filming on the ship and underwater.
If you’ve seen The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and you haven’t seen the Cousteau films, you’re in for a treat.
LEGO bricks aren’t just fun and games—they’re also the building blocks for some incredible works of art. (The company itself even has 13 LEGO Certified Professionals that treat LEGO-building as a full-time job.) LEGO wizard Mike Doyle created a series of plastic brick houses that look like they’ve fallen into serious decay. The ‘abandoned’ residences are made with monochromatic bricks, making the creations resemble homes that could be featured in an Alfred Hitchcock film.
Doyle has three crumbling houses in his Abandoned Houses series so far: ‘Victorian on Mud Heap,’ ‘Victorian With Tree,’ and ‘Two Story With Basement.’ Each creation has a similar old-timey, Halloween feel to it. Impressively, all the houses are made purely with LEGO, void of any foreign objects, paint, or glue. Our favorite of the bunch, Victorian With Tree, uses 50,000 to 60,000 pieces, and took about 450 hours to build. You can check Doyle’s website for details on how each structure was built.
For more of Doyle’s amazing creations, check out his bookBeautiful LEGO.
Mathematicians have long plagued humankind with a style of puzzle in which you must weigh a series of items on a balance scale to find one oddball item that weighs more or less than the others. They’re known collectively as balance puzzles, and they can be maddening…until someone comes along and trots out the answer.
Within the world of balance puzzles, the 12-coin problem is well-known (there’s also a nine-coin variant, and a horrendous 39-coin variant). There is in fact a generalized solution for such puzzles [PDF], though it involves serious math knowledge.
In the video below, we are presented with a version of the 12-coin problem in which we must determine a single counterfeit coin in a dozen candidates. The problem is, we’re only allowed the use of a marker (to make notes on the coins) and three uses of a balance scale. Here are the detailed conditions:
1) All 12 coins look identical.
2) Eleven of the coins weigh exactly the same. The twelfth is very slightly heavier or lighter.
3) The only available weighing method is the balance scale. It can only tell you if both sides are equal, or if one side is heavier than the other.
4) You may use the scale no more than three times.
5) You may write things on the coins with your marker, and this will not change their weight.
6) There’s no bribing the guards or any other trick.
So how do we solve this specific case? Watch the video to find out.
The legendary Harlem Globetrotters played their first game 90 years ago today, on January 7, 1927. In the near-century since, a select few people have been named “honorary Globetrotters.” While there are athletes on the list, most of them aren’t exactly people who can handle a basketball like Meadowlark Lemon.
1. HENRY KISSINGER
In 1976, Henry Kissinger was deemed the first-ever member of the honorary roster. “I’m not too good at the fast break, but I’m strong on defense, and despite my height, I’m a pretty good rebounder,” Kissinger said. “It is an honor to be associated with a group whose won-and-lost record was certainly better than my own. My only worry is how I will look in short pants.”
2. BOB HOPE
Hope was named an honorary Globetrotter in 1977, receiving jersey number 1. It’s no surprise that the legendary comedian’s acceptance letter was full of jokes:
“To be perfectly frank, I deserve to be a Globetrotter … In fact, I was recently given an award for completing my first million miles, and that was just to and from airports. The Trotters are famed for making baskets. I’ve been making baskets myself lately, and if the psychiatrists let me out for an hour, I’ll be there for your presentation.”
3. KAREEM ABDUL-JABBAR
The Globetrotters offered Abdul-Jabbar a reported $1 million to play basketball for them back in 1969, but he declined and went on to become the first pick in the NBA draft that year. They eventually added him to the lineup as an honorary member in 1989.
4. WHOOPI GOLDBERG
Comedian and actress Whoopi Goldberg also joined the team in 1989.
5. NELSON MANDELA
In 1996, the Globetrotters made history when they became the first professional basketball team to play in a free democratic South Africa. They also hosted clinics, made school and hospital visits, and honored President Nelson Mandela with his own number.
6. JACKIE JOYNER-KERSEE
Track and field Olympian Jackie Joyner-Kersee became the sixth member of the honorary squad in 1999. Though she’s known for her prowess around the track, Joyner-Kersee could hold her own if the Globetrotters ever asked her to jump in on the court: She briefly played for the Richmond Rage in the women’s American Basketball League.
7. POPE JOHN PAUL II
Pope John Paul II made the cut in 2000, receiving jersey number 75 in honor of the Globetrotters’ 75th anniversary.
8. JESSE JACKSON
The civil rights activist famously stood up for the Globetrotters when they were criticized for portraying African-Americans as buffoonish. “I think they’ve been a positive influence,” Jackson said. “ … They did not show blacks as stupid. On the contrary, they were shown as superior.” Jackson was inducted in 2001.
9. POPE FRANCIS
The Globetrotters have not one, but two holy rollers on their honorary lineup. Pope Francis was added to the honorary roster in 2015. “His tireless work for the well-being of the poor and elderly, his humanitarian efforts, and his commitment to bridge gaps between people of various cultures are ways the Harlem Globetrotters also aspire to touch lives around the world,” Globetrotters CEO Kurt Schneider said.
Globetrotters Hi-Lite Bruton, Ant Atkinson, Big Easy Lofton, and Flight Time Lang tried to teach the Pope the old trick of spinning a basketball on one finger, but as you can see from the video above, His Holiness should probably stick to recording albums.
10. ROBIN ROBERTS
Award-winning newscaster Robin Roberts joined the team in 2015, receiving jersey number 21—the same number she wore as a basketball player for Southeastern Louisiana University. “She used her platform as a journalist to selflessly make her personal health battle public in order to raise awareness of the need for bone marrow donors, and by doing so, she potentially helped save lives,” Schneider said. “Robin fully embodies the ambassadorial spirit the Globetrotters have exuded for 90 years.”
Stranger Things seemed to come out of nowhere to become one of television’s standout new series in 2016. Netflix’s sometimes scary, sometimes funny, and always exciting homage to ’80s pop culture was a binge-worthy phenomenon when it debuted in July 2016. Of course, the streaming giant wasn’t going to wait long to bring more Stranger Things to audiences, and a second season was announced a little over a month after its debut. Here are five key things we know about the show’s sophomore season.
1. WE’LL BE GETTING EVEN MORE EPISODES.
The first season of Stranger Things consisted of eight hour-long episodes, which proved to be a solid length for the story Matt and Ross Duffer wanted to tell. While season two won’t increase in length dramatically, we will be getting at least one extra hour when the show returns in 2017 with nine episodes. Not much is known about any of these episodes, but we do know the titles:
“Madmax”
“The Boy Who Came Back To Life”
“The Pumpkin Patch”
“The Palace”
“The Storm”
“The Pollywog”
“The Secret Cabin”
“The Brain”
“The Lost Brother”
Stranger Things fans should gear up for plenty of new developments in season two, but that doesn’t mean your favorite characters aren’t returning. A November 4 photo sent out by the show’s Twitter account revealed most of the kids from the first season will be back in 2017, including the enigmatic Eleven, played by Millie Bobby Brown (the #elevenisback hashtag used by series regular Finn Wolfhard should really drive the point home):
3. THE SHOW’S 1984 SETTING WILL LEAD TO A DARKER TONE.
A year will have passed between the first and second seasons of the show, allowing the Duffer brothers to catch up with a familiar cast of characters that has matured since we last saw them. With the story taking place in 1984, the brothers are looking at the pop culture zeitgeist at the time for inspiration—most notably the darker tone of blockbusters like Gremlins and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
“I actually really love Temple of Doom, I love that it gets a little darker and weirder from Raiders, I like that it feels very different than Raiders did,” Matt Duffer told IGN. “Even though it was probably slammed at the time—obviously now people look back on it fondly, but it messed up a lot of kids, and I love that about that film—that it really traumatized some children. Not saying that we want to traumatize children, just that we want to get a little darker and weirder.”
4. IT’S NOT SO MUCH A CONTINUATION AS IT IS A SEQUEL.
When you watch something like The Americans season two, it’s almost impossible to catch on unless you’ve seen the previous episodes. Stranger Things season two will differ from the modern TV approach by being more of a sequel than a continuation of the first year. That means a more self-contained plot that doesn’t leave viewers hanging at the end of nine episodes.
“There are lingering questions, but the idea with Season 2 is there’s a new tension and the goal is can the characters resolve that tension by the end,” Ross Duffer told IGN. “So it’s going to be its own sort of complete little movie, very much in the way that Season 1 is.”
Don’t worry about the two seasons of Stranger Things being too similar or too different from the original, though, because when speaking with Entertainment Weekly about the influences on the show, Matt Duffer said, “I guess a lot of this is James Cameron. But he’s brilliant. And I think one of the reasons his sequels are as successful as they are is he makes them feel very different without losing what we loved about the original. So I think we kinda looked to him and what he does and tried to capture a little bit of the magic of his work.”
5. THE PREMIERE WILL TRAVEL OUTSIDE OF HAWKINS.
Everything about the new Stranger Things episodes will be kept secret until they finally debut later this year, but we do know one thing about the premiere: It won’t take place entirely in the familiar town of Hawkins, Indiana. “We will venture a little bit outside of Hawkins,” Matt Duffer told Entertainment Weekly. “I will say the opening scene [of the premiere] does not take place in Hawkins.”
So, should we take “a little bit outside” as literally as it sounds? You certainly can, but in that same interview, the brothers also said they’re both eager to explore the Upside Down, the alternate dimension from the first season. Whether the season kicks off just a few miles away, or a few worlds away, you’ll get your answer when Stranger Things‘s second season debuts later this year.
If you’re heading out on Sunday and don’t know what to wear, stop thinking. January 8th is the 16th annual No Pants Subway Ride, the one day each year when the metro system is clothing-optional.
Getty Images/New York
Organized by Improv Everywhere, the first No Pants Subway Ride was in 2002 and featured seven pantless participants. According to the group, tens of thousands of people in more than 60 cities and 25 countries left their pants at home last year.
Getty Images/New York
What are the rules? According to Improv Everywhere, “Random passengers board a subway car at separate stops in the middle of winter without pants. The participants behave as if they do not know each other, and they all wear winter coats, hats, scarves, and gloves. The only unusual thing is their lack of pants.”
HENRY ROMERO/Reuters/Landov/Mexico
Though the event began in New York, people in cities from Portland to Paris to Prague are planning to participate this year. See the complete list.
ALY SONG/Reuters/Landov/China
In previous years, it has even spread to China—though it doesn’t look like anyone told this guy’s fellow passengers.
JOHN ANGELILLO/UPI/Landov/New York
GLEB GARANICH/Reuters/Landov/Kiev, Ukraine
BIMAL GAUTAM/Barcroft Media/Landov/London
FABRIZIO BENSCH/Reuters/Landov/Berlin
Getty Images/Berlin
Getty Images/New York
Chad Nicholson for ImprovEverywhere.com
Chad Nicholson for ImprovEverywhere.com
Here’s a recap of 2016’s No Pants Subway Ride festivities:
Duct tape (or “duck tape,” if you really prefer) is useful in almost any situation, from hitting the dance floor at prom to making a wallet to securing your broken car mirror … or lifting a car, as MythBusters once discovered. The powerful tape, however, isn’t easy to carry around, so should that side view mirror break off when you aren’t close to home, you’ll be heading to the nearest hardware store. But you might consider ditching your roll for a pocket pack, as Laughing Squid suggests.
To make duct tape easier to carry, RediTape makes portable packs of duct tape that can fit in a pocket. They’re folded instead of rolled, so they’ll fit in a tool box, too. They come in a variety of colors (including fluorescent ones in case you’re using it to stay visible at night). At just 5 yards, the tape inside isn’t that long, but most duct tape uses don’t require a whole 10-plus-yard roll anyway.
Neon signs are dying out. As LED and other options hit the market, neon signs have been making a slow exit from the cityscape, mainly because they are costly to make and maintain. But in this documentary, we visit neon sign makers in Hong Kong. They show us the artisanal process of building these signs, just as they’ve always been made. Each sign is a combination of artistry, glass-blowing, chemistry, and engineering.
Aside from the serene beauty of this film, there’s a lot to learn here. One fun set of facts is that the most common gases are neon (which glows red) and argon (blue). It’s possible to make most other colors by coloring the glass tubes themselves. Tune in, space out, and read the subtitles.
The poet E.E. Cummings wrote, “—listen: there’s a hell / of a good universe next door; let’s go.” And go we shall: NASA’s Discovery Program announced this week that two robotic spacecraft named Psyche and Lucy will be setting out for nearby asteroids within the next decade.
For all our exploration over the last half-century, we still have much to learn about our own solar system. The Discovery Program aims to help fill in those gaps.
“Lucy will visit a target-rich environment of Jupiter’s mysterious Trojan asteroids, while Psyche will study a unique metal asteroid that’s never been visited before,” NASA’s Thomas Zurbuchen said in a statement. “This is what Discovery Program missions are all about—boldly going to places we’ve never been to enable groundbreaking science.”
Lucy is scheduled to launch in 2021 and should arrive at her first stop, an asteroid in Jupiter’s main belt, four years later. The craft will then study six of the ancient Trojan asteroids, which may have formed a mere 10 million years after the Sun.
Harold Levison of the Southwest Research Institute is chief investigator on the Lucy mission. “Because the Trojans are remnants of the primordial material that formed the outer planets,” he explained in a statement, “they hold vital clues to deciphering the history of the solar system. Lucy, like the human fossil for which it is named, will revolutionize the understanding of our origins.”
The Psyche mission, directed by scientists at Arizona State University, will lift off in 2023. It will reach the metal asteroid, called 16 Psyche, between Mars and Jupiter by 2030, then orbit and observe it for another 20 months. The asteroid is made almost entirely out of nickel-iron metal similar to those at the core of rocky planets like Earth.
“The knowledge this mission will create has the potential to affect our thinking about planetary science for generations to come,” said ASU president Michael Crow.
