When museums house exhibitions on the Titanic, they normally don’t include an interactive element. A new building planned for Niagara Falls, Ontario will go beyond timelines and artifacts in order to bring visitors into the Titanic on the night it sunk.
As Global News reports, the local group Lex Parker Design Consultants Ltd. hopes to open a new museum called “Experience Titanic.” The ocean liner-shaped building will contain several rooms modeled after ones on the original ship, including a boiler room, an engine room, a third-class cabin, and a first-class cabin. Boarding passes with personal information about actual passengers will be distributed, and as the exhibit progresses, guests will learn more about each person.
In addition to showing how the ship would look after leaving its port, the team also wants to recreate the moment that tragedy struck. “We’ll put you on the deck of the ship just as it hits the iceberg,” project leader David Van Velzen told Global News. Audio clips would simulate the sound of the incoming iceberg, while a refrigerated wall would capture how it felt outside during the event.
Lex Parker Design isn’t the first group with the idea to offer an immersive Titanic experience. Australian billionaire Clive Palmer has been attempting to build a seaworthy Titanic replica for years (though some authentic elements would hopefully be left out from that voyage). If you’re interested in experiencing the Titanic without leaving land, the new museum is expected to open in the spring of 2018.
Netflix’s offline viewing option is great for catching up on your favorite shows one episode at a time, but committed binge-watching requires more storage space than many smartphones have to spare. Now Android owners have the option to download a lot more of their favorite Netflix content than they were able to before. As The Verge reports, a new update to the Netflix app allows Android users to store their downloads on an external SD card.
The Netflix app had previously given users one offline viewing option: saving movies and shows to a device’s internal storage drive. Android owners with microSD cards are now free to use that extra space to store Orange is the New Black, The Crown, Narcos, and other popular Netflix content for a limited time (expiration dates vary from title to title).
Not every movie or TV show that’s available to stream is available to download, and the feature doesn’t work with every Android device with a microSD slot. If you aren’t able to take advantage of the update, there are still plenty of tricks you can try to make your regular streaming experience more enjoyable.
Traveling in and out of airports in Australia could get a little easier by the end of the decade, thanks to new developments in biometric technology. As The Telegraph reports, Australia plans to replace physical passports with face recognition and fingerprint scanning by 2020.
The Australian Department of Immigration and Border Protection recently announced the new project, which would also make in-person immigration officers obsolete. Instead of having their passports scanned by an employee at an immigration desk, travelers would pass through electronic stations that would use face and fingerprint readings to verify their identities. By 2020, the Australian government expects to process 90 percent of travelers using this kind of biometric technology.
Nations around the world are starting to give their passports a high-tech upgrade. A long list of countries, including Australia, currently use biometric passports with embedded computer chips that contain facial, fingerprint, iris, or other identifying information. Now Australia is looking to progress things even further by doing away with paper passports altogether. The details on how exactly the system will function are still hazy, but will be made clear soon enough: Officials plan to test a pilot version at Canberra Airport this July before coming to the Sydney and Melbourne airports in November. The government hopes to have the technology in place in airports around the country by March 2019.
It may not be the cutest, cuddliest, or the most exotic animal to have in your home, but there’s something about the goldfish that appeals to pet owners around the world. These descendants of the Prussian carp were first domesticated in China 2000 years ago. Mutations produced fish with brilliantly colored scales, and after years of breeding, the pet store staple we know today was born. Here are some facts about the iconic pet worth knowing.
Goldfish come in many shades, but it’s the orange variety that’s most closely associated with the species. This may not have been the case if it wasn’t for a rule enforced during the Song Dynasty. By 1162 CE, goldfish ponds were en vogue, and the empress at the time had her own built and filled with the colorful creatures. She also forbade all non-royals from keeping fish that were yellow, the color of the royal family.
2. THE GOVERNMENT HELPED MAKE THEM POPULAR IN AMERICA.
Goldfish became the go-to fish for American pet owners in the late 19th century, and that’s partly thanks to Washington. According to The Atlantic, the U.S. Commission on Fisheries received an import of Japanese goldfish in 1878 and decided to give them away as a publicity stunt. D.C. residents could submit requests for glass bowls of goldfish, and at the program’s peak, 20,000 pets were handed out a year. The campaign lasted through the 19th century, and at one point, a third of all households in the city owned a government-provided goldfish.
3. THEY’VE OCCUPIED THE WHITE HOUSE.
One notable D.C. resident to hop aboard the goldfish craze of the late 1800s was President Grover Cleveland. Among the hundreds of fish he had imported to Washington were Japanese goldfish. And he’s not the only president to keep a pet goldfish. After Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981, a 10-year-old from New York sent him a goldfish named Ronald Reagan the Second with the note, “I hope you get better and to help you get better, here is a companion … Just feed him daily and he’ll be fine.” (White House staffers put the goldfish in a former jelly bean bowl.) President Nixon’s dog Vicky became famous for chasing the goldfish in a White House pond.
It may be the most recognizable one, but the common goldfish isn’t the only member of the species worth noting. Goldfish come in dozens of breeds that vary in color, shape, and size. Some varieties are known for the lumpy growths on their heads, while others are prized for their mottled scales. A few spectacular varieties include lionheads, pompoms, veiltails, bubble-eyes, and shubunkins.
5. YOU CAN TEACH THEM TRICKS.
Having trouble teaching your dog to fetch? Maybe you’ll have better luck with a goldfish. The species can be trained to perform tasks like recognizing colors, retrieving items, and swimming through mazes. The R2 Fish School offers a whole training kit, complete with a miniature sports field designed to transform your fish into a star athlete. One of their graduates currently holds the world record for knowing the most tricks of any fish.
6. THEY HAVE AN EAR FOR MUSIC.
Partly because they’re easily trained, goldfish make for popular test study subjects. In one such study conducted by Keio University, goldfish were taught to distinguish between the music of two classical composers. One group was trained to nibble on a ball of food when they heard pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach. A second group was taught to do the same but with Igor Stravinsky. When scientists swapped the composers the fish no longer showed interest in eating, suggesting they could tell the difference between the two styles.
7. GIANT GOLDFISH ARE A HUGE PROBLEM.
Murdoch University
Your goldfish may look cute and tiny in the tank, but in the wild, they can grow to monstrous proportions. Specimens living in Australia’s Vasse River have the fastest growth rate of any goldfish species, reaching up to four pounds. Their growth spurts might be impressive if they weren’t so disastrous for the environment: Goldfish are an invasive species and they’re sometimes responsible for harming local animal populations and spreading disease. So if you have a sick fish at home, make sure it’s really dead before you flush it. Or better yet, bury it in your garden (it’s more dignified anyway).
8. THE OLDEST GOLDFISH LIVED TO BE 43.
Buying a goldfish isn’t supposed to be a lifelong commitment. You may hope for it to last a few years at the most, but with proper care and good genes, a goldfish can live to be much older. The world’s oldest goldfish, a carnival prize named Tish, died in 1999 at the age of 43. According to his owner, the secret to his longevity was occasional sunlight and being fed in moderation.
9. FISHBOWLS ARE BANNED IN PARTS OF ITALY.
iStock
It’s hard to think of goldfish without picturing the classic, glass fishbowl, but animal welfare groups say we should rethink the vessel as a pet habitat. According to the Humane Society, first-time fish owners should buy a tank of 20 gallons or more to give their aquatic companion suitable swimming space. In 2004, the northern Italian city of Monza banned pet owners from keeping fish in round bowls and Rome passed a similar law a year later.
The NFL has made an unprecedented move to make this year’s Pro Bowl more inclusive to a group of spectators who may normally be stuck watching from home. As the Orlando Sentinel reports, the Sunday, January 28 game will include several “autism-friendly” features designed to accommodate young fans on the autism spectrum.
Families interested in taking part can pick up “Sensory Sacks” inside Orlando’s Camping World Stadium once they arrive. Each bag will contain noise-canceling headphones, squeezable stress relief toys, and optional identification tools. Wristbands listing children’s row and seat numbers are meant to keep them safe in case they get lost, and lanyards holding A-OK badges (the name of the autism group that helped organize the program) are meant to promote better understanding from strangers. The stadium is also offering a quiet “safe room” for kids who feel overstimulated and security and staff are being trained on how to treat the young fans on the autism spectrum.
Sensory overload—which is brought on by hypersensitivity to sound, light, touch, and other outside information—is a common symptom many people with autism face. Other public spaces are striving to be more welcoming to visitors with autism. In 2016, an Asda grocery store in England launched an autism-friendly quiet hour, and later that year an entire toy store designed for kids with autismopened in Chicago. The upcoming football game will mark the first time the Pro Bowl has made such accommodations.
In order to create vibrant, seamless sound effects for film and television, Foley artists have to get creative. This can mean using cinder blocks, musical instruments, or, as Eater illustrates in their latest episode of Gut Check, the contents of their kitchen.
Food is a popular tool in the industry because it produces organic sounds that can be easily manipulated. Marko Costanzo demonstrates how crushing a head of lettuce mimics the sound of an actual head being crushed in Dead Man (1995), and how twisting a stalk of celery creates the spine-crunching effect we hear in the 1998 film The Big Lebowski. (For the sound of breaking bones and spraying blood, Foley artist Gary Hecker first wraps his celery in a damp cloth.)
Food items also played a large role in one of the more gruesome scenes from Silence of the Lambs (1991). When Hannibal Lecter sinks his teeth into his victim’s face during the film’s climax, we’re treated to a skin-crawling sound engineered from apples and chamois. Edible props can also be used to enhance less violent scenes: Shredded coconut on lettuce sounds like falling ash and crunching potato chips stands in for footsteps in the woods. You can watch the full video below.
1984 Georgia O’Keeffe portrait by Bruce Weber. Image credit: Bruce Weber and Nan Bush Collection, New York
When discussing Georgia O’Keeffe, it’s impossible to leave out the colorful florals and southwestern imagery that dominated her work, but a new exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum puts some of the focus on the less-explored facets of the painter’s life. As The Creators Project reports, “Georgia O’Keeffe: Living Modern” includes portraits of the artist, and, for the first time in an art show, pieces from her wardrobe.
According to the Brooklyn Museum, O’Keeffe used fashion and posed photographs as tools for molding her public persona. The description page says that the exhibition “confirms and explores her determination to be in charge of how the world understood her identity and artistic values.”
The installation includes pieces from the artist’s early years, her time in New York in the 1920s and ’30s, and the period in New Mexico that shaped her signature style. Her stark, self-made clothing can be seen both in person and in the portraits selected for the exhibit. Ansel Adams, Annie Leibovitz, Andy Warhol, and O’Keeffe’s husband, Alfred Stieglitz, are a few of the photographers whose work is on display.
1927 Georgia O’Keeffe portrait by Alfred Stieglitz. Image credit: National Gallery of Art, Washington, Alfred Stieglitz Collection
Suit circa 1960s. Image credit: Gavin Ashworth
Georgia O’Keeffe portrait by Alfred Stieglitz circa 1920–22. Image credit: Gift of The Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation, 2003.01.006. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum
Padded kimono circa 1960s/70s. Image credit: Gavin Ashworth
“Georgia O’Keeffe: Living Modern” is part of an ongoing program at the Brooklyn Museum titled “A Year of Yes: Reimagining Feminism.” Focusing on the artist’s fashion decisions may seem like an odd move for a feminist art show, but her clothing choices helped O’Keeffe communicate power in a male-dominated field. Her androgynous style made a bold statement in the early 20th century, and modern designers like Calvin Klein, Victoria Beckham, and Céline continue to cite the icon as inspiration today. The exhibition opens March 3 and runs until July 23; discounted tickets go on sale January 24.
The kitchen is a great place to apply the principles you learned in school in real life. Ever wonder how you can keep a day-old cake from drying out? Or how to slice your bagel for optimal cream cheese coverage? Some of the hungriest minds in the fields of math and science have got your back.
1. SLICE A CAKE FOR MAXIMUM MOISTURE
Leftover birthday cake should be one of life’s greatest pleasures, but instead it becomes vulnerable to moisture-zapping air the moment you slice into it. Fortunately, this problem can be avoided with some simple geometry. In the video above, mathematician Alex Bellos outlines an alternative cake-cutting method he found in a 1906 issue of Nature magazine written by Sir Francis Galton. Rather than eating away at a round cake one wedge at a time, he suggests cutting one big sliver spanning the cake’s diameter. The center cut means that instead of having a giant exposed area that will dry out two future slices of cake at once, one rubber band can be used to hold the pieces together, exposing none of the soft interior to the air. This keeps the interior nice and moist until the cake is ready to be sliced into again (although it should be noted—rubberbanding a frosted cake rather than the fondant-covered ones shown in the video could get really messy really fast).
2. COAX KETCHUP FROM THE BOTTLE
As long as ketchup has been packaged in glass bottles, diners have struggled to set it free. If you’ve ever been the victim of a flash ketchup flood after minutes of fruitless shaking, you can blame physics. Ketchup is a non-Newtonian fluid, which in this case means it behaves like a solid sometimes (like when it refuses to leave its bottle) and like a liquid other times (when it all comes pouring out at once).
According to Heinz’s team of scientists, ketchup is meant to flow at 147.84 feet per hour, so hitting the bottle with full force isn’t your best bet. Anthony Stickland of the University of Melbourne’s School of Engineering instead recommends doing the majority of the work while the cap’s still secure. On the University’s website he instructs readers to “briefly invoke your inner paint shaker” and evenly distribute the solid particles throughout the bottle. Next, with the cap still on, flip the container upside down and thrust the contents towards the neck. After that you’re ready to get the ketchup on your plate: Remove the cap and use one hand to aim the bottle at the plate at a 45 degree angle while gently tapping the bottom with the other, tapping harder and harder until you find the correct strength for that particular ketchup. If you still can’t get the hang of it after all that, perhaps a plastic squeeze bottle is more your style.
3. CREATE A MÖBIUS BAGEL
In math, a möbius strip is a twisting, continuous plane that has one surface and one edge. The shape has a handful of practical uses in the real world, like achieving optimal bagel-to-schmear ratio. Research professor and mathematical sculptor George Hart came up with this ingenious application several years ago. To produce the perfect cut, he makes four separate incisions into a bagel after first marking the key points with a food-safe marker for guidance. The final result pulls apart into two separate halves linked together like a chain. In addition to the impressive presentation, the möbius bagel offers more surface area for spreading. Now you can get more cream cheese on your bagel without slathering it on in gobs.
4. DUNK BISCUITS WITHOUT GETTING CRUMBS IN YOUR TEA
Dunking biscuits in tea is a popular British pastime, but it comes at a price: a mug full of sad, soggy crumbs. Scientists at the University of Bristol in England offered a solution to this problem in the late 1990s in the form of a mathematical formula. Instead of turning the cookie sideways, the researchers recommend dipping it into the tea broad-size first. Once the bottom surface is sufficiently moist, dunkers should flip the biscuit 180 degrees to allow the dry side to support the wet one. Apparently the snack is worth the effort: According to the study, biscuits are up to 10 times more flavorful dunked than dry.
Slicing a pizza into wedges works well enough at first, but there will inevitably be at least one person who wants only cheesy goodness and tosses the crust, while another person just can’t get enough crust. In 2016, researchers at the University of Liverpool proposed a brilliant alternative: dividing the pie into manageable, equal-sized pieces according to the monohedral disc tiling formula.
The basic design produces 12 slices. To start, the server slices the pie end-to-end along a curving path. They do this three times to create six, claw-shaped slices, then they cut each slice in half at an angle to make the full 12. Instead of floppy, skinny slivers, diners have their pick of funky-shaped pieces from any part of the pizza. In their study [PDF], researchers demonstrate how this concept can be taken even further. As long as the shapes have an odd number of sides, the monohedral disc tiling method can theoretically go on forever (though the authors specify that nine-sided slices are where things start to get impractical. You may want to spring for a second pie at that point).
6. FOLLOW THE FORMULA FOR A PERFECT GRILLED CHEESE ON TOAST
Many people have their own ideas of what constitutes an excellent grilled cheese, but the Royal Society of Chemistry’s recipe is based on science. In 2013, they teamed up with the British Cheese Board to devise a formula for the optimal cheese on toast. Society science executive Ruth Neale said in a press release:
“As the result of tests we carried out in our Chemistry Centre kitchen, we found that the perfect slice can be made by melting 50 grams of sliced hard cheese, such as cheddar, on a slice of white bread, 10 millimeters thick, under the grill. The cheese on toast should sit at a distance of 18 centimeters from the heat source […] and needs to cook for four minutes to achieve the perfect consistency and taste.”
The full equation, which includes variables for bread thickness and cheese mass, is available on the Royal Society of Chemistry’s website.
7. POUR CHAMPAGNE WITHOUT LOSING THE BUBBLES
Whipping up a meal based on complex algorithms can be exhausting. If you plan to reward yourself with a glass of post-dinner bubbly, just make sure to serve it the correct way. According to scientists from the University of Reims in France, that means pouring champagne into a tilted glass the same way you’d pour a pint of beer. Those effervescent CO2 bubbles that make champagne so pleasant to drink are also clamoring to escape into the atmosphere the moment you pop the cork. Their study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry suggests pouring your beverage at an angle to retain as many bubbles as possible. This method is less turbulent than pouring liquid into an upright glass, thus giving the carbon dioxide less opportunity to break free. To maximize the amount of bubbles per glass, the researchers also recommend chilling the champagne before serving.
If you do a lot of shopping online, taking advantage of your browser’s autofill setting may seem like a smart choice. Instead of digging your credit card out of your wallet every time you want to buy something, all the information you need appears automatically. But a new discovery made by a Finnish developer shows why the extra time you save per purchase may not be worth it: Hackers have found a sneaky way to retrieve your stored info.
As Thrillist reports, anyone can fall for the scam by submitting a couple basic pieces of information. Web users think they’re just entering their name and email address, but “hidden” text boxes are automatically filled in with more sensitive data like address, phone number, and credit card number. Viljami Kuosmanen illustrates what this might look like in the Tweet below:
Even if you’re extra careful about where you use the autocomplete feature, disabling it altogether is probably your best course of action. Saved credit card info could mean a free shopping spree for thieves if your laptop were to get stolen. Some browsers like Chrome save personal information by default: To deactivate the feature in Chrome, go to Settings, Advanced Settings, and uncheck the boxes beneath Passwords and Forms.
Fans of Singin’ in the Rain are in for a treat when they sit down to watch La La Land. The 2016 movie musical is peppered with references to the 1952 film, from subtle allusions like the use of red and yellow to more obvious nods, like Ryan Gosling’s swing around a lamp post à la Gene Kelly.
The tribute definitely wasn’t lost on YouTube user The Unusual Suspect. In his trailer mash-up, spotted by Entertainment Weekly, Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds laugh, dance, and look wistfully into each other’s eyes to the tune of La La Land’s “City of Stars.” Though it takes place in modern-day Los Angeles, composer Justin Hurwitz’s music is a perfect fit for the old-school Hollywood classic.
In addition to the success of La La Land, Singin’ in the Rain has been back in the news for a bittersweet reason: the death of Debbie Reynolds at the end of last year. Whether or not you made it to theaters this week to revisit the film on the big screen, it’s worth checking out the fan trailer below.
