Month: March 2017

What’s your favorite Disney Channel Original Movie? It might depend on where you live. CableTV.com looked at state-level data on Google Trends to find out which Disney Channel movies people in each state are searching for.

The list isn’t as intuitive as you’d think. Johnny Tsunami is popular in Hawaii, where the beginning of the movie takes place, but there’s no obvious reason why Nevada residents would be more curious than anyone else about Mom’s Got a Date With a Vampire.

Unsurprisingly, more than one state is filled with fans of the Lindsay Lohan gem Get a Clue. Plenty of people are searching for The Ultimate Christmas Present, a 2000 movie starring Disney Channel darling Brenda Song. Zenon, however, is only appreciated to the extent that it truly deserves in Minnesota. It’s the 21st century, people! Watch more Zenon! You can see the full list on the CableTV site.

Why do cats have scratchy tongues? In this Deep Look video, the channel goes deep (ahem) on the functions of cat tongues. The video is presented in Ultra HD, and we get lots of ultra-closeup slow-motion cat material.

Getting back to the core question, there are lots of reasons. First, cats use their tongues to groom their coats. Their tongues have “papillae” that operate as grooming brushes, doing an effective job of removing surplus hair. Cats want to be super-clean because they are ambush predators—an errant whiff of cat scent might tip off their prey. Plus, as illustrated in the video below, the structure of a cat’s mouth and tongue make lapping up liquids a rather complex process.

Make this fullscreen and learn all about cat tongues:

If video isn’t your thing, or you’re curious about the making of this video, check out KQED’s blog post. If you just love watching animals drinking, dig this video roundup of animals drinking in slow motion.

Whether or not you’re artistically inclined, there’s a good chance that you, like millions of others, have been captivated by Bob Ross’s instructional landscape paintings and soothing voice.

In fact, it was his dulcet tones that caught Annette Kowalski’s attention. Kowalski—credited as the woman who “discovered” Bob Ross—took a five-day instructional course with Ross in 1982. The classes had originally been the brainchild of Bill Alexander, an Emmy Award-winning TV painter who used a more exuberant version of Ross’s positive patter. When Alexander stopped teaching, he tapped Ross, his protégé, to take over.

Though Kowalski had originally hoped to take the course with Alexander, she quickly became enamored with Ross’s calming voice and positive messages. In addition to newfound painting skills, Kowalski left the class with a new client—she became Ross’s manager, helping him broker the deal for The Joy of Painting television show with PBS, and later, a line of Bob Ross art supplies.

Though Ross’s shows seemed effortless, the paintings didn’t come as easy as they appeared to. Though he liked to talk about “happy accidents” on camera, Ross was a perfectionist. He recreated each painting on his show at least three times: One was used off-camera as a reference for the seemingly impromptu painting he did on-air; he painted the second one during the show; and he created a third, more detailed version for his instruction books.

His lines about happy trees and friendly clouds weren’t ad-libbed, either. “He told me he would lay in bed at night and plan every word. He knew exactly what he was doing,” Kowalski has said.

The careful planning paid off. A hit with artists and non-artists alike, The Joy of Painting ran for an impressive 403 episodes over 31 seasons. Ross knew his pieces weren’t exactly Van Goghs, but that was never the goal. Most people, he said, didn’t watch the show with the goal of learning to paint like the masters—they simply watched to unwind: “We’ve gotten letters from people who say they sleep better when the show is on.”

The Happy Painter had more up his sleeve—a non-painting children’s show was in the works, for one—when he was diagnosed with lymphoma in 1994. The Joy of Painting was canceled in order to give Ross time to focus on his health, but he passed away the following year, at the age of 52.

If you’d like to pay your respects—maybe with some cheerful little woodland creatures like the ones above—you can find Bob Ross at Woodlawn Memorial Park in Gotha, Florida. While his headstone may be understated and unassuming, there’s no doubt who it belongs to.

Chaim Dauermann, Head Bartender at New York City’s The Up & Up, explains the wild circumstances of this cocktail’s birth and offers some expert advice on how to make your own. We’ll drink to that.

In 1911, the Canadian government commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to design a visitor center for Banff National Park, the country’s oldest national park. The Banff Pavilion was finished in 1913, but due to frequent flooding in the area, it was demolished in the late 1930s. Now, the Frank Lloyd Wright Revival Initiative wants to bring it back, as Dezeen reports.

Led by filmmaker Michael Miner, who has covered the renowned architect’s work extensively, the volunteer organization is devoted to promoting Wright’s work, in part by rebuilding designs of his that were demolished. The Banff Pavilion will be its pilot project.

Ideally, the organization wants to rebuild demolished Wright buildings on their original sites, choosing designs that are particularly exemplary of the architect’s unique style. The Banff Pavilion was one of Wright’s only completed projects in Canada, and a prime example of his famous Prairie style. The project has gotten preliminary approval from the local city council, and will be built entirely with donated materials and funds.

If the Banff Pavilion is successful, Miner tells Architect magazine that he hopes to move on to adding to Wright’s Pilgrim Congregational Church in California, which was only partially completed during the architect’s lifetime.

[h/t Dezeen]

Although Japan’s cuisine is complex and diverse, for most Americans, Japanese food is synonymous with sushi. There are nearly 4000 sushi restaurants across the United States today, grossing over $2 billion annually. But 50 years ago, most Americans had never heard of sushi; if they ate Japanese food at all, it was more likely to be sukiyaki (beef and vegetables cooked hot-pot style in a soy-based broth) or tempura. If fact, many Americans would have thought the idea of consuming raw fish appalling. It took a smash-hit TV show and a boom in immigration from Japan to turn sushi into an everyday “American” food.

In the 1950s many Americans were somewhat resistant to Japanese food and culture, in part because they had lived through World War II and still perceived Japan as “the enemy.” But by the 1960s, the tide had started to turn: Food journalist and restaurant critic Craig Claiborne, writing for The New York Times dining section during that decade, was excited by international dining and kept tabs on the city’s numerous Japanese restaurants. He declared Japanese food a trend in New York after two establishments opened in 1963, noting that “New Yorkers seem to take to the raw fish dishes, sashimi and sushi, with almost the same enthusiasm they display for tempura and sukiyaki.” However, he admitted, “sushi may seem a trifle too ‘far out’ for many American palates” [PDF].

According to The Story of Sushi: An Unlikely Saga of Raw Fish and Rice by Trevor Corson, Los Angeles was the first American home of authentic Japanese sushi. In 1966, a Japanese businessman named Noritoshi Kanai brought a sushi chef and his wife from Japan, and opened a nigiri sushi bar with them inside a Japanese restaurant known as Kawafuku in LA’s Little Tokyo. The restaurant was popular, but only with Japanese immigrants, not with American clientele. However, as more sushi spots opened in Little Tokyo, word got back to Japan that there was money to be made in America. Young chefs, tired of the rigorous and restrictive traditional culture of sushi making in Japan, struck out on their own in LA.

The first sushi bar outside of the Little Tokyo neighborhood popped up in 1970, next to the 20th Century Fox studio. Named Osho, it began attracting a fashionable, celebrity clientele—including Yul Brynner, a lunchtime regular. As Hollywood began to embrace sushi throughout the 1970s, the food also got a boost as Americans were encouraged to eat more fish for better health. According to Corson, “In 1977, the U.S. Senate issued a report called Dietary Goals for the United States, that blamed fatty, high-cholesterol foods for the increasing incidence of disease. The report recommended greater consumption of fish and grains. Around the same time, health experts also began to promote the benefits of omega-3 fatty acids, abundant in fish. Many Americans discovered sushi as a healthful alternative.”

And then came Shōgun, an epic television event that would change America’s cultural relationship with Japan. Based on James Clavell’s 1975 novel, Shōgun is a work of historical fiction depicting the story of a British sailor’s rise as a political player in 17th century Japan. The Shōgun miniseries, which aired over five evenings in mid-September 1980, was a smash hit—watched by more than 30 percent of American households and earning three Golden Globes and three Emmys. The show was also notable because it was filmed entirely in Japan and all the Japanese roles were actually played by Japanese actors. (Previously in American films and television, Asian roles were often played by American actors in yellowface—think Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.) Shōgun depicted Japanese dress, culture, and food with a level of authenticity that was previously unparalleled on the American screen. A surprising amount of academic research has since been done of Shōgun and its cultural influence, and the series was required viewing in many high school history curriculums throughout the 1980s. Corson credits the show with sparking “a nationwide interest in all things Japanese, including sushi.”

The launch of the Shōgun series coincided with an economic boom in Japan that brought many Japanese businesses to the United States in the late ’70’s and early ’80s. This, in turn, encouraged a new wave of Japanese immigration. The combination of gastronomically homesick Japanese and Americans enraptured by Japanese culture created a wave of interest in Japanese food, particularly sushi.

In 1984, what is probably the oldest continually operating sushi restaurant in New York, Hasaki, opened. The eatery was founded on East 9th Street in the Little Tokyo section of the East Village by a Japanese immigrant named Bon Yagi, who wanted to avoid the unfocused, pan-Japanese restaurants that had been more common in America’s past. Hasaki was the result of the boom in Japanese immigration—it provided a comforting dose of home for expats. But it survived and thrived because of the growing American interest in Japanese cuisine.

Yagi capitalized on Hasaki’s success by opening over a dozen other restaurants within a few blocks, all focusing on Japanese specialties—including a soba noodle restaurant with soy-soaked dashi broths, a ramen joint, a casual curry place, and a small shop for takoyaki fried octopus balls, among others. His restaurants became the heart of the Little Tokyo neighborhood, which still attracts Japanese immigrants as well as curious Americans with roots in other cultures.

Outside of New York, it can be hard to find the varied Japanese specialties Yagi has brought to the East Village—but it’s very easy to find a sushi restaurant. Sushi has become as ubiquitous in America as Chinese take-out, and has experienced much of the same transformative evolution as Chinese-American food. It’s changed as a result of being made by Americans without Japanese heritage, and also while its creators focused on local, American ingredients.

Corson credits the invention of the California roll with making sushi accessible to Americans. The roll evolved in Los Angeles in the 1960s, and used local avocados paired with crab meat to replace hard-to-find fresh, fatty tuna. But its real innovation came many years later, when a chef decided to make the roll “inside out”—with the seaweed hidden in the middle. (The first genius to make an inside-out roll is unknown.) The California roll used ingredients familiar to Americans and hid the seaweed, which was seen as foreign and challenging.

Another classic example, the spicy tuna roll, was invented in Los Angeles in the early 1980s by mixing tuna scraps with chili sauce and rolling the result with seaweed and rice. Today, the tuna roll is usually sauced with sriracha, which is produced in the nearby suburb of Irwindale, California. The result is a mix of Japanese and “American” flavors.

In the past half-century, it’s not just Americans who have become fascinated with Japanese culture; the feeling is often mutual. As a result, American-style sushi has begun to make its way back to Japan. According to an article in The Asia-Pacific Journal, “The sushi that is served in these new-wave American sushi restaurants (mostly roll sushi with ingredients other than raw fish) is both similar to, and distinctively different from most sushi available in Japan.” In one restaurant in Tokyo, Genji Sushi New York, the signage and menu are partly in English and they serve California rolls; Philadelphia rolls with salmon, cream cheese, and cucumber; and Rainbow rolls, a variation on a California roll that is wrapped in multicolored sashimi. All are American creations. The Journal explains the Japanese consumption of these hybrid-sushi rolls is both playful and ironic, and seen as something cool and hip.

Today, meeting friends for sushi is almost as American as going out for a beer and a pizza. It’s proof positive that when we leave our hearts—and plates—open to other cultures, good things often come of it.

As far as action (and Christmas) movies go, John McTiernan’s Die Hard is damn-near perfect. It says a lot about a Bruce Willis movie when Bruce Willis isn’t the one delivering the worst one-liners (that honor belongs to Clarence Gilyard Jr., who plays computer nerd Theo—a.k.a. “The quarterback is toast!” guy). Which isn’t to say that the movie is flawless, or without plot holes. But thanks to Steven E. De Souza, the film’s co-writer, we now know the answer to one of the questions that has been nagging us for nearly 30 years.

In one of the movie’s most memorable scenes, Willis—as NYPD detective John McClane—stumbles upon criminal mastermind Hans Gruber (played by Alan Rickman, in his feature film debut) who puts on a pretty good American accent to try and earn the trust of McClane, who is messing up the whole hostage situation Gruber has created. The two men kick back, smoke a cigarette, and chat it up like Nakatomi Plaza isn’t in the midst of a terrorist takedown. But at some point in the conversation, McClane realizes that Gruber is not good ol’ “Bill Clay” from the 29th floor.

After McClane hands Gruber a gun, it becomes clear to the audience that the wily detective knew he was being played. But what tipped him off? Gruber’s watch! What watch? Well, that’s a good question.

At a screening event for The Running Man, De Souza explained that a deleted scene would have made that clear. “There was originally a scene at the beginning of the film where Hans Gruber and his team all synchronize their watches, and the audience sees that every one of them is wearing the exact same watch,” wrote CinemaBlend’s Dirk Libbey. “As John McClane begins taking down the bad guys in the building, he notices this fact when searching the bodies, so when he sees Hans Gruber’s watch, when handing him a cigarette, he knows he’s dealing with another one.”

For total Die Hard diehards, the reason why the scene was scrapped is interesting, too: The ambulance that appears at the end of the movie as Gruber’s planned getaway vehicle was a last-minute decision on the set. Had the deleted scene played out as shot, the ambulance would be nowhere in sight—thus confusing viewers. So McTiernan opted to cut McClane’s timepiece revelation instead. Can we get a yippee–ki–yay?

[h/t: CinemaBlend]

It was warm this winter. Freakishly warm, in fact. It was warm enough that we probably should have felt guilty for enjoying it so much. After all, any time you can open your windows when you’re supposed to be shivering and watching travel shows for warmth is a strange situation. Most of the United States just lived through one of the warmest Februarys on record to close out one of the warmest winters on record. Here are some statistics that will show you just how unusually balmy it’s been for the past three months.

1. THIS FEBRUARY WAS WARMER THAN NORMAL.

 
It shouldn’t come as any shock that February’s temperatures were above-average when you crunch the numbers. Out of 888 weather observing stations across the lower 48, a solid 60 percent of those stations (or 534 locations) saw their top-10 warmest February on record this year. Even worse is that 186 of those locations—scattered from the depths of Texas to the Canadian border—recorded their all-time warmest February, with some records stretching back more than 100 years.

2. THE WHOLE WINTER WAS WARMER THAN NORMAL.

Not only was this past February a record-breaker, but the whole winter was warm on average. Data from the Southeast Regional Climate Center shows that over half of those 888 weather observing stations in the contiguous United States saw this winter place among the top ten warmest winters ever recorded, with almost all of the toasty stations residing east of the Rocky Mountains. Most of the all-time warmest winter records were set in the southern part of the country, including cities like Houston, Texas, and Raleigh, North Carolina.

3. THE WARMTH KEPT MOST OF THE SNOW AT BAY.

 
As you can imagine, you’re not going to find very much snow when it’s relatively toasty out there. There have been other winters with less snow than most places saw this year, but the differences are negligible. Take Washington D.C., for example. Washington National Airport, which sits just across the Potomac River from the capital city itself, typically sees about 15 inches of snow every year. They’ve recorded just over an inch of snow this year. On the list of least-snowy winters in the nation’s capital, this winter ranks fourth since records began in 1940.

4. CHICAGO SAW NO SNOW IN JANUARY OR FEBRUARY.

Even more unusual is the fact that Chicago went through the entire months of January and February without seeing one lick of snow cover the ground. According to the city’s National Weather Service office, this was the first time in the city’s 146 years of recording weather observations that they didn’t see any snow on the ground during the dead of winter. The city saw a foot-and-a-half of snow spread out over several storms during the month of December, but all of that snow melted by Christmas. The most they’ve seen since then is a “trace” of snow, which is snow that falls but instantly melts when it hits the ground.

5. THE GREAT LAKES WERE RELATIVELY ICE-FREE.

While we’re looking toward the Midwest, it’s worth noting that the Great Lakes were surprisingly ice-free this season. The five lakes only saw about 15 percent of their surface covered by ice during the season’s maximum extent on February 8, and what little ice did form this year is rapidly melting as warm air continues to bathe the enormous bodies of water. Since NOAA began keeping records back in 1973, a typical winter sees a little more than half of the Great Lakes covered with ice during the peak of winter, but the coverage has been as low as 11 percent, a record achieved in 2002.

6. THE LEAVES LOVED IT, THOUGH.

Humans aren’t the only organisms enjoying the reprieve from winter’s grip. The USA National Phenology Network tracks the extent of trees budding and growing leaves as spring begins to set in. According to their observations, almost every part of the United States that has leaves on its trees right now saw those leaves appear a full three weeks ahead of schedule—what it calls “very large anomalies.” This is welcome news for the birds and the bees, but if there’s a sudden cold snap in March—which isn’t unheard of—it could do some serious damage to any plants that are suddenly more vulnerable than normal.

7. THE WARMTH LED TO SOME SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS.

When you put an active weather pattern together with warm and unstable air, it’s almost inevitable that you’ll wind up with strong thunderstorms at some point. We saw several rounds of severe weather this spring, resulting in at least three fatalities on the last day of February. Severe weather is fairly common in the southeast due to its proximity to muggy air over the Gulf of Mexico, but severe weather stretched unusually far north this year. A tornado that touched down in western Massachusetts on February 25 was the only tornado ever recorded in the state during the month of February, and quite possibly the farthest north we’ve ever seen a tornado since reliable records began in 1950.

8. SO WHY HAS IT BEEN SO WARM?

Why has it been so warm in the east and so cool and active out west? It has to do with the jet stream. For the past couple of years, there’s been a huge ridge in the jet stream over the West Coast that kept them warm and dangerously dry, while the jet stream dipped south and brought cooler, more active weather to the rest of the United States. That pattern broke this year, essentially reversing itself and keeping the warmth-inducing ridge out east while the jet stream in the west keeps dipping south and bringing them a steady stream of rough weather. One theory as to why the pattern flipped is the disappearance of the infamous “Blob,” a nickname given to an unusually warm area of water in the northeastern Pacific Ocean. That water cooled off, which may have allowed the jet stream to readjust itself into the pattern we’ve seen this winter.

In honor of Women’s History Month in March, the Brawny Man is again giving up his place on the paper towel roll. For the second year in a row, Brawny is celebrating inspiring women by adding a strong lady to its packaging and highlighting notable women on its #StrengthHasNoGender site. Welcome, Brawny Woman.

Because no one really needs an extra reminder that women are as equally capable as men of cleaning up tough messes around the house, Brawny’s contribution to Women’s History Month goes a little deeper than new paper towel packaging (which is only available at Walmart during the month of March).

The company has chosen to highlight a range of accomplished women in STEM fields: Vernice Armour, the first black female combat pilot in the U.S. military; Dr. Anna Kornbrot, the first woman to graduate from Columbia College and now an oral surgeon; Brittany Wenger, a college senior who taught herself to code and invented Cloud4Cancer, an artificial intelligence program for breast cancer detection; and Dr. Patty Lopez, a veteran computer scientist and advocate for minorities in STEM.

The four women share their stories in the videos below.

In the movies, U.S. ambassadors often appear to come to the aid of jailed foreigners in inhospitable prisons. In the press, they’ve been vilified for not spending all of their time in the country they’ve been assigned to represent or for not being fluent in the language. Some critics have even referred to their appointment as a kind of payola scheme, with positions being awarded in exchange for campaign contributions to the sitting president.

Ambassadors for the United States seem to wear a variety of faces, but which of them is accurate?

“It varies widely from country to country,” Dennis Jett, a former U.S. ambassador to Peru and Mozambique and current professor of international affairs at Penn State University, tells mental_floss. “France will be very different from Russia. But generally, ambassadors have two functions, one internal and one external.”

The internal function is managing the U.S. embassy itself and all of its employees, which can number from one to 1000 and involve several representatives from the Treasury Department, the CIA, and other government branches. The external function is dealing with the native government, missionaries, and local press in representing the President of the United States.

“You explain what Washington is thinking,” Jett explains, “and explain to Washington what the other government is thinking. You have a lot of people wanting a lot of your time.”

For Jett, that meant getting involved in Mozambique’s highly volatile civil war that resulted in the country’s first free and democratic election in 1994. He had to live up to his diplomat label, encouraging democracy while being careful not to agitate the sitting government with criticism as the press swarmed around him.

On one occasion in Peru, Jett arrived for a social engagement and left early. A half-hour later, terrorists from the country’s Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement stormed the event and kept hostages—including several of Jett’s embassy employees—for 126 days.

Those incidents cast a long shadow over the stereotype that ambassadors do little but arrange parties and entertain foreign dignitaries. “The Middle East is hard,” Jett says. “Pakistan, places like that.” Depending on the conditions of the territory in question, ambassadors may even be eligible for danger pay on top of their regular salary. “It can be as little as 5 percent [extra] or up to 40 percent. If you’re going into a place with malaria or what’s called a ‘hardship post’—a place with a threat of terrorism—you’ll be paid more than if you were going to the Caribbean.”

Jett was a career foreign affairs officer, rising through the ranks of the U.S. Foreign Service as a diplomat and later a Senior Director of African Affairs before securing a post as an ambassador, the top-ranking diplomat. Traditionally, career employees will make up roughly 70 percent of the 180-odd ambassador posts at any given time, with the remaining 30 percent filled by political appointees who contributed to a presidential campaign or have another personal connection to the president.

While these individuals typically get assigned low-risk posts in cushy, tourist-friendly places like Europe or the Caribbean and the standard free lodging, there’s still opportunity for them to risk embarrassment. Mark Austad, Ronald Reagan’s appointee to Norway, was fired for overt womanizing; other appointees quizzed by the Senate before their official hiring have expressed only minimal fluency in the requisite foreign language. In one instance, one wannabe Ambassador to Argentina admitted he had never actually been to the country.

The argument for such reciprocation is that donors are typically wealthy and can afford to bolster weak Congressional spending when it comes to an embassy’s “representational entertaining”—the bureaucratic term for “lavish parties.” But Jett feels that it’s a poor excuse for a tired and unfair system. “We need capable, competent people who speak the language and can carry out the job, regardless of whether they’re rich,” he says.

Ambassadors typically resign following a new president taking over the Oval Office. Appointees typically slip back into the private sector, while career diplomats either return to Washington or consider another ambassadorship.

As for those dramatic interventions on behalf of jailed Americans: Don’t expect to see Jett or his peers stage a spirited rally on your behalf.

 “We don’t have the ability to bring that kind of pressure,” he says. “You’re subject to the laws of that area. We can get you the names of some lawyers. Maybe some better food. That’s about it.”

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