Month: January 2017

The National Film Board of Canada produced this video (originally on film) in 1949 to show how igloos are made in far North Canada.

Using hard-packed snow, two Inuit men skillfully build an igloo as an overnight shelter. The operation takes roughly 90 minutes while their sled dogs patiently wait outside.

The video shows how the packed snow is used as building blocks. All the snow is taken from inside the circle, so the floor is much deeper than might be expected. By cutting the first row into a sloping shape, an upward spiral can be created. Interestingly, the right handed builder works counter-clockwise while a left handed one would work clockwise.

Nomadic Inuits would make igloos as temporary homes. They could take as little as 40 minutes to construct, using only a knife. When the home gets dirty or hunting becomes scarce, they can easily move on and rebuild.

[h/t: TheKidShouldSeeThis.com]

See Also: Name the Largest U.S. Cities by Timezone: Eastern

Nearly 40 years after his death, Elvis Presley remains a rock ‘n’ roll icon and has yet to be ousted from his position as “The King.” Yet the Tupelo, Mississippi-born, Memphis, Tennessee-raised superstar never took his fame for granted, nor did he forget his roots. On what would have been his 82nd birthday, here are 20 memorable quotes about Elvis’s life and legacy.

ON AMBITION

“Ambition is a dream with a V8 engine.”

ON MAINTAINING YOUR VALUES

“It’s not how much you have that makes people look up to you, it’s who you are.”

“Values are like fingerprints. Nobody’s are the same, but you leave ’em all over everything you do.”

ON THE MUSIC INDUSTRY

“I happened to come along in the music business when there was no trend.”

“I’ve never written a song in my life. It’s all a big hoax.”

“I don’t know anything about music. In my line you don’t have to.”

ON THE ARMY

“After a hard day of basic training, you could eat a rattlesnake.”

“The army teaches boys to think like men.”

ON TRUTH

“Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain’t goin’ away.”

ON THOSE LEGENDARY DANCE MOVES

“Rock and roll music, if you like it, if you feel it, you can’t help but move to it. That’s what happens to me. I can’t help it.”

“Some people tap their feet, some people snap their fingers, and some people sway back and forth. I just sorta do ’em all together, I guess.”

ON KEEPING POSITIVE

“When things go wrong, don’t go with them.”

ON STARDOM

“If you let your head get too big, it’ll break your neck.”

“I have no use for bodyguards, but I have very specific use for two highly trained certified public accountants.”

“The image is one thing and the human being is another. It’s very hard to live up to an image, put it that way.”

“The Lord can give, and the Lord can take away. I might be herding sheep next year.”

ON LOVE

“Sad thing is, you can still love someone and be wrong for them.”

ON THE PITFALLS OF HOLLYWOOD

“I sure lost my musical direction in Hollywood. My songs were the same conveyer belt mass production, just like most of my movies were.”

ON GETTING OLDER

“Every time I think that I’m getting old, and gradually going to the grave, something else happens.”

ON LEAVING A LEGACY

“Do something worth remembering.”

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.)

All images courtesy of The Fowndry.

[h/t Laughing Squid]

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 book Beautiful LEGO.

[h/t The Awesomer]

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.

For a bit more on this puzzle, check out this TED-Ed page.