Page 1761 – fakuto

December 10, 2016

The Aurora Ice Hotel in Alaska was made…

The Aurora Ice Hotel in Alaska was made entirely of ice. Ice walls, ceiling, beds, bar, barstools, even martini glasses were made of ice. It was closed by the fire marshall for not having smoke detectors. 00

December 10, 2016

You Need to See This Weekend’s Best Amazon Deals

Smart Shopping Team

filed under: shopping

Image credit:

amazon / istock

As a recurring feature, our team combs the Web and shares some amazing Amazon deals we’ve turned up. Here’s what caught our eye today, December 10.

Mental Floss has affiliate relationships with certain retailers, including Amazon, and may receive a small percentage of any sale. But we only get commission on items you buy and don’t return, so we’re only happy if you’re happy. Good luck deal hunting!

December 10, 2016 – 11:00am

December 10, 2016

14 Blockheaded Facts About ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’

Jake Rossen

filed under: cartoons, christmas, Lists, Television

Image credit:

ABC

More than 50 years since its premiere on CBS on December 9, 1965, A Charlie Brown Christmas remains one of the most beloved holiday specials of all time. Like Charlie Brown himself, the flaws—scratchy voice recordings, rushed animation—have proven endearing. Take a look at some facts behind the show that killed aluminum trees, the struggles to animate Chuck’s round noggin, and why Willie Mays is the unsung hero of Peanuts.

1. CHARLES SCHULZ WASN’T REALLY INTERESTED IN GETTING INTO ANIMATION.

Since the debut of Peanuts in 1955, Schulz and United Press Syndicate, which distributed the strip, had gotten a steady stream of offers to adapt the characters for film and television; the artist was also directly petitioned by young readers, who would write Schulz asking when Snoopy would come to some kind of animated life. His stock reply: “There are some greater things in the world than TV animated cartoons.”

He relented for Ford Motors—he had only ever driven a Ford—and allowed Charlie Brown to appear in a series of commercials for the Ford Falcon in the early 1960s. The spots were animated by Bill Melendez, who earned Schulz’s favor by keeping the art simple and not using the exaggerated movements of the Disney films—Bambi, Dumbo—Melendez had worked on previously.

2. WILLIE MAYS PLAYED A PART IN GETTING IT MADE.

Schulz capitulated to a full-length special based on the professional reputations of his two collaborators. The cartoonist had seen and enjoyed executive producer Lee Mendelson’s documentary on baseball player Willie Mays, A Man Named Mays; when Mendelson proposed a similar project on Schulz and his strip, he agreed—but only if they enlisted Melendez of the Ford commercials. The finished documentary and its brief snippet of animation cemented Schulz’s working relationship with the two and led Schulz to agree when Mendelson called him about a Christmas special.

3. CBS AND COCA-COLA ONLY GAVE THEM $76,000 TO PRODUCE IT.

When Coke executives got a look at the Schulz documentary and caught Charlie Brown on the April 1965 cover of Time, they inquired about the possibility of sponsoring an hour-long animated holiday special. Melendez felt the short lead time—only six months—made that impossible. Instead, he proposed a half-hour, but had no idea how much the show should be budgeted for; when he called colleague Bill Hanna (of Hanna-Barbera fame) for advice, Hanna refused to give out any trade secrets. Melendez wound up getting a paltry $76,000 to cover production costs. (It evened out: Schulz, Mendelson, and Melendez wound up earning roughly $5 million total for the special through 2000.)

4. IT WAS GOING TO HAVE A LAUGH TRACK.

ABC

In the ‘60s, it was standard procedure to lay a laugh track over virtually any half-hour comedy, even if the performers were drawn in: The Flintstones was among the series that used a canned “studio audience” to help cue viewers for jokes. When Mendelson told Schulz he didn’t see the Peanuts special being any different, the artist got up and left the room for several minutes before coming in and continuing as if nothing had happened. Mendelson got the hint.

5. SNOOPY’S VOICE IS JUST SPED-UP NONSENSE.

The early Peanuts specials made use of both untrained kids and professional actors: Peter Robbins (Charlie Brown) and Christopher Shea (Linus) were working child performers, while the rest of the cast consisted of “regular” kids coached by Melendez in the studio. When Schulz told Melendez that Snoopy couldn’t have any lines in the show—he’s a dog, and Schulz’s dogs didn’t talk—the animator decided to bark and chuff into a microphone himself, then speed up the recording to give it a more emotive quality.

6. SCHULZ HATED JAZZ.

ABC

The breezy instrumental score by composer Vince Guaraldi would go on to become synonymous with Peanuts animation—but it wasn’t up to Schulz. He left the music decisions to Mendelson, telling a reporter shortly after the special aired that he thought jazz was “awful.”

7. CHARLIE BROWN’S HEAD WAS A NIGHTMARE TO ANIMATE.

Because Melendez was unwilling to stray from Schulz’s distinctive character designs—which were never intended to be animated—he found himself in a contentious battle with Charlie Brown’s noggin. Its round shape made it difficult to depict Charlie turning around; as with most of the characters, his arms were too tiny to scratch his head. Snoopy, in contrast, was free of a ball-shaped cranium and became the show’s easiest figure to animate.

8. SCHULZ WAS EMBARRASSED BY ONE SCENE.

ABC

Careful (or repeated) viewings of the special reveal a continuity error: in scenes where Charlie Brown is standing near his tree, the branches appear to grow from moment to moment. The goof annoyed Schulz, who blamed the mistake on two animators who didn’t know what the other was doing.

9. IT ALMOST GOT SCRAPPED BY COKE.

Mendelson recently told USA Today that an executive from McCann-Erikson—the ad agency behind Coke—paid him an impromptu visit while he was midway through production. Without hearing the music or seeing the finished animation, the ad man thought it looked disastrous and cautioned that if he shared his thoughts with Coca-Cola, they’d pull the plug. Mendelson argued that the charm of Schulz’s characters would come through; the exec kept his opinion to himself.

10. CBS HATED IT, TOO.

After toiling on the special for six months, Melendez and Mendelson screened it for CBS executives just three weeks before it was set to air. The mood in the room was less than enthusiastic: the network found it slow and lacking in energy, telling Melendez they weren’t interested in any more specials. To add insult, someone had misspelled Schulz in the credits, adding a “T” to his last name. (Schulz himself thought the whole project was a “disaster” due to the crude animation.)

11. GOOD THING HALF THE COUNTRY WATCHED IT.

ABC

Viewers weren’t nearly as cynical about Charlie Brown’s holiday woes as his corporate benefactors. Preempting a 7:30 p.m. EST episode of The Munsters, A Charlie Brown Christmas pulled a 50 share, meaning half of all households with a television turned on were watching it. (That amounted to roughly 15 million people, behind only Bonanza.) CBS finally acknowledged it was a winner, but not without one of the executives getting in one last dig and telling Mendelson that his “aunt in New Jersey didn’t like it.”

12. IT KILLED ALUMINUM TREE SALES.

Aluminum Christmas trees were marketed beginning in 1958 and enjoyed fairly strong sales by eliminating pesky needles and tree sap. But the annual airings of A Charlie Brown Christmas swayed public thinking: In the special, Charlie Brown refuses to get a fake tree. Viewers began to do the same, and the product was virtually phased out by 1969. The leftovers are now collector’s items.

13. THERE’S A LIVE-ACTION PLAY.

Croswell

Up until 2013, anyone staging a live-action rendition of A Charlie Brown Christmas for their local school or theater had one thing in common: they were copyright infringers. The official rights to the story and characters weren’t offered until recently. Tams-Witmark fields licensing requests for the play, which includes permission to perform original songs and advertise with the Peanuts characters—Snoopy costume not included.

14. THE VOICE OF CHARLIE BROWN WAS ARRESTED.

Peter Robbins continued voicing Charlie Brown until he turned 13 years old, at which point puberty prohibited him from continuing. In November 2015, the 59-year-old Robbins pleaded guilty to making criminal threats against a mobile home park manager and a sheriff. According to CBS News, the troubled former actor claimed that schizophrenia and bipolar disorder led him to make the threats. He was sentenced to four years and eight months in prison.

Additional Sources:
The Art and Making of Peanuts Animation
Schulz and Peanuts
A Charlie Brown Christmas: The Making of a Tradition.

December 10, 2016 – 10:00am

December 10, 2016

Behind the Scenes With a Storm-Chasing Photographer

Shaunacy Ferro

filed under: photography, photos, travel, video

Image credit:

iStock

One of the most stunning weather phenomena in the world happens in northern Venezuela, where the Catatumbo River pours into Lake Maracaibo. The area sees almost never-ending lightning storms.

In a new video, The Weather Channel’s “That’s Amazing” profiles a 21-year-old photographer who’s on a constant search to capture the Never-Ending Storm on film. German storm chaser Jonas Piontek travels all over the world to capture the beauty of extreme weather, but he’s particularly interested in Venezuela’s Lake Maracaibo, which has the most lightning strikes of anywhere in the world—1.2 million a year. He braves not just the intense, frequent lightning storms, but also hurricane-force winds to do so. See some of his work in the video below. You’ll want to watch in HD.

December 10, 2016 – 6:00am

December 10, 2016

Watch: The Most Famous Teapot in Computing History

Chris Higgins

filed under: computers, History, video

Image credit:

Marshall Astor // CC BY-SA 2.0

In computer animation circles, the Utah teapot is legend. When I first installed a 3D rendering app in the dark ages of computing, this teapot was one of the models included with the software, and I rendered the heck out of it. But what’s so special about this teapot? And why is it on display at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California?

The Utah teapot was “digitized” by Martin Newell in 1975, using a piece of graph paper and a series of measurements. Newell was a mathematician working at the University of Utah, and he bought the teapot at a department store in Salt Lake City. By precisely defining the curves of its surface, Newell created a dataset that other 3D computing pioneers could use to render virtual versions of the teapot. It became ubiquitous in 3D computing, at least in part because there simply weren’t very many models like this in the early days—we didn’t have giant libraries of ordinary objects represented in 3D, so this teapot was a convenient starting point.

In the video below, join Tim Scott at the Computer History Museum explaining the history and significance of the teapot, as he stands with Newell’s original 41-year-old teapot.

For more on the teapot, check out this detailed post, which includes the original data set.

(Teapot photo by Marshall Astor (http://www.marshallastor.com/) – http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=352811902&size=o (http://www.flickr.com/photos/lifeontheedge/352811902/), CC BY-SA 2.0, Link.)

December 10, 2016 – 4:00am

December 10, 2016

When Political Signs Become Art: Monument to the Unelected

Stacy Conradt

filed under: politics

Image credit:

Getty

Though the election has been over for more than a month, yard signs still dot houses around the land. Trump/Pence. Clinton/Kaine. Humphrey/Muskie?

In November, the lawn in front of the Lefferts Historic House in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, looked a bit like it belonged to an extremely overzealous voter. In reality, Lefferts was the latest host of an art installation called “Monument to the Unelected,” a look at conquered candidates dating back to John Adams’s run against Thomas Jefferson in 1796.

Created by artist Nina Katchadourian, the 50-odd political signs have appeared in several locations around the country. Though many of the names are centuries old, the signs are designed to look fairly contemporary—Katchadourian creates them herself out of plastic sheets. That includes the latest addition to the collection, a blue sign emblazoned with “I’m With Hillary 2016.” And while you’d be forgiven for thinking the project is a response to the mania surrounding the 2016 election, Katchadourian created it in 2008 as a commission for the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art.

“Of course, it’s a project about politics and history, but it doesn’t take a position on who should win any given election,” Katchadourian told The New Yorker. The monument, rather, is “a statement of fact—it’s what we have collectively done, up until now.”

In an artist’s statement, she added, “At a time when the country was preoccupied with the ‘fork in the road’ moment of a major national election, the piece presented a view of the country’s collective political road not taken.”

“Monument to the Unelected” left Brooklyn shortly after the election, but will surely appear again in about three years. If you see an “Aaron Burr is my president” yard sign, you’ll know you’re in the right place.

[h/t: The New Yorker]

December 10, 2016 – 2:00am

December 9, 2016

9 Cool, Weird, and Wacky Wine Varieties

Kirstin Fawcett

filed under: alcohol, Lists

Image credit:

iStock

Wine can get weird. When planning your next soiree, skip the conventional vino varieties and opt for a type that’s made from unconventional (or straight-up wacky) ingredients or a unique hue. Sip on some inspiration below.

1. ROSE PETAL WINE

iStock

Located in West Sussex, England, the small, family-run Lurgashall Winery produces wines, spirits, and meads from fruit and natural ingredients like birch sap, brambles, honey, and walnuts. The Royal National Rose Society, a specialist plant society in England that focuses on rose care and cultivation, commissioned Lurgashall to make a rose wine from handpicked flower petals. The pink-hued vintage is reportedly aromatic and medium-dry. No word, however, on whether it tastes as fragrant as its parent plant smells.

2. METEORITE WINE

Getty Images

In 2012, Ian Hutcheon—who then worked as manager of Tremonte Vineyard in Chile’s Cachapoal Valley—merged his love of wine and astronomy: He released a Cabernet Sauvignon that was fermented in a vat with a 4.5-billion-year-old meteorite, believed to have crashed into the Atacama Desert around 6000 years ago. Fittingly, Hutcheon named the vintage “Meteorito.”

Originally, Hutcheon only sold the wine at his observatory, Centro Astronomico Tagua Tagua, which he opened in 2007. “The idea behind creating the wine was to blend astronomy with winemaking, and offer the wine as an entertaining product visitors to our observatory could take home as a souvenir,” Hutcheon told The Drinks Business in 2013. But the space-inspired wine ended up garnering international attention, and wine lovers from other countries—including the U.S.—clamored to try the celestial drink for themselves.

3. BLUE WINE

Gik Live

Wine is typically red, white, pink, or yellow. But thanks to a start-up composed of six young Spanish entrepreneurs, we’ll soon be able to drink a blue variety. The company—and its wine—is called GIK, and its founders (who have no prior wine-making experience) partnered with the University of the Basque Country and the food research department of the Basque Government to make the cerulean beverage.

Gik’s wine is made from a red-and-white grape blend, with a non-calorie sweetener added to the mix. Surprisingly, its vivid hue doesn’t come from dye—it reportedly is the result of a natural pigment found in grape skin, combined with indigo from the Isatis tinctoria plant. You can buy Gik online in Europe, and it’s also available for pre-order in the U.S.

4. COFFEE-FLAVORED WINE

Friends Fun Wine

Know that feeling near the end of the day, when you’re not sure if you need a cup of coffee to perk up or a glass of wine to unwind? Friends Fun Wine certainly does. The Florida-based company sells different types of canned wine, including what they bill as the world’s first coffee wine. Currently, it offers Cabernet Coffee Espresso and Chardonnay Coffee Cappuccino, as well as non-coffee beverages like sangria and moscato.

5. PUMPKIN WINE

Not into pumpkin spice lattes? Give its alcoholic cousin—pumpkin wine—a try. Maple River Winery in Casselton, North Dakota, makes the seasonal drink from local pumpkins. According to staff, the autumnal drink is so popular that it sells out quickly each fall (hence it’s not listed on their website). However, vineyard visitors can still sample other unusual flavors—including apricot, gooseberry, lilac, and strawberry-rhubarb—depending on their seasonality.

6. CAKE FLAVORED WINE

Birthday Cake Vineyards

Birthday Cake Vineyards’ name gets straight to the point. The New York-based company makes wine that, according to them, tastes like birthday cake. Customers can choose among a variety of white wines that taste like strawberry shortcake, cheesecake, and cake batter, and reds flavored like coffee cake and black forest cake.

7. JALAPENO WINE

Cardinal Winery

Brave enough to eat a jalapeno pepper whole? Try drinking an entire bottle of them. Located 30 minutes north of Philadelphia, Cardinal Hollow Winery in West Point, Pennsylvania makes more than 25 different types of wine—including strawberry, blackberry, and dandelion—but one of their best-selling creations is jalapeno wine. If the idea of sipping alcohol made from fiery chili peppers seems more terrifying than tasty, you can still cook with it. Cardinal Hollow Winery recommends using it to marinate meat, sprinkle on salads, and adding it to other types of wine for an added kick.

8. BEER-WINE HYBRIDS

Dogfish Head

Drinkers typically identify as either “wine” or “beer” people, but a handful of breweries have blurred this line (and confused everyone’s taste buds) by creating a variety of unique beer/wine hybrids. Brewers will add grape juice, whole grapes, and must (a blend of skins, seeds, stems, and other grape products) to their product, or ferment beer using wine yeasts.

One notable example is Dogfish Head Brewery, the craft beer heavyweight in Milton, Delaware. One of their beers, called Noble Rot, contains two white wine grapes: pinot gris and viognier grapes. (The latter are infected with a “benevolent fungus” called botrytis, a.k.a. “noble rot,” to reduce their water content and maximize their sweetness.) Another brew, Sixty-One IPA, is made with Syrah grape must. And Midas Touch is a hybrid wine/beer/mead beverage inspired by ingredients found in 2700-year-old drinking vessels that archaeologists discovered in the legendary King Midas’s tomb.

9. VODKA WINE

Un costume sur mesure pour Absolut Tune, mariage d’un sauvignon blanc néo-zélandais mousseux et de la célèbre vodka Absolut! pic.twitter.com/zuNW5TWA1a

— Artus Vinis (@ArtusVinis) December 5, 2016

In 2012, Absolut Vodka launched Tune, a sparkling Sauvignon Blanc spiked with vodka. (It reportedly had a 14 percent ABV, which suggests that the drink had relatively little actual hard alcohol in it.) The following year, Tune was recalled in 10 states after it was discovered that the brand didn’t disclose whether the wine contained sulfates. Eventually, Tune was discontinued, but a few online retailers still appear to sell it.

BONUS: WINE MADE FROM GRAPES GROWN IN SPACE (FORTHCOMING)

iStock

In the future, humans may enjoy wine made from grapes grown in a plant growth chamber on the International Space Station. In 2015, officials announced that the commercial spacecraft SpaceX Dragon would deliver wine grape seeds to the habitable satellite on its upcoming commercial resupply mission that April. Turns out, wine grapes are perfect for space travel: they don’t require much water, they produce strong fruit, and they yield little waste.

December 9, 2016 – 6:00pm

December 9, 2016

Need More Nerdy GIFs? NASA’s Got You Covered

Kate Horowitz

filed under: fun, NASA

Image credit:

NASA via GIPHY

However you pronounce GIFs, the little moving images have become an integral part of our modern vocabulary. And the futuristic minds at NASA are not about to be left in the past. The space agency has launched its own image collections on Giphy and Pinterest.

via GIPHY

Anticipating some confusion on the part of NASA diehards, the agency issued a press statement explaining what Pinterest is.

“Pinboards are often used for creative ideas for home decor and theme-party planning, inspiration for artwork and other far-out endeavors,” they wrote.

Over at Giphy, they continue, “Users can download and share the agency’s creations on their own social media accounts, and can be used to create or share animated GIFs to communicate a reaction, offer a visual explanation, or even create digital works of art.”

via GIPHY

The images are NASA at its best: sweeping shots of the cosmos, space walks, exuberance at Mission Control, and the wacky antics of astronauts aboard the International Space Station. So go forth, good nerds, and get your GIFs on.

December 9, 2016 – 5:30pm

December 9, 2016

See 500-Year-Old Miniature Boxwood Carvings in Toronto

Shaunacy Ferro

filed under: art, History, religion

Image credit:

1515 Netherlandish prayer bead via Art Gallery of Ontario

In the 16th century, the wealthy had more than just the average rosary at their disposal during their moments of worship. Coveted boxwood carvings depicting intricate religious scenes in miniature allowed the rich to fit religious art right in their hands. Until early 2017, the Art Gallery of Ontario is hosting an exhibition devoted entirely to these tiny hand-carved works of art, as CNN reports.

“Small Wonders: Gothic Boxwood Miniatures” features more than 60 boxwood miniatures, some of which have never been on display in North America before, like a rosary owned by King Henry VIII and his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. The wooden carvings have been part of a years-long, international study using scientific imaging to better understand how they were produced. The study uncovered some surprises, like a hidden portrait of a king and queen that went undiscovered for 500 years.

Prayer bead AGOID.29360. Image Credit: Courtesy AGO.

Art Gallery of Ontario

The collection includes prayer beads (one in the shape of a skull), a knife inscribed with biblical scenes, medallions, triptychs, rosaries, and even sarcophagi. Some date all the way back to the late 1400s.

The exhibition runs until January 22, but you can also see high-resolution images of the entire collection on the gallery’s website. For more information, watch a video with the curator below.

[h/t CNN]

December 9, 2016 – 5:00pm

December 9, 2016

Uber Releases a List of Behaviors That Could Get You Banned

Michele Debczak

filed under: technology, transportation

Image credit:

Adam Berry/Getty

For every Uber horror story you’ve shared, you can rest assured that drivers have plenty of their own. In an effort to encourage better behavior among passengers, the ride-sharing service recently released a list of actions that could potentially get users banned, VentureBeat reports.

The updated community guidelines don’t contain any major surprises: They’re mostly common sense rules that anyone who’s ever conducted themselves in public will hopefully be familiar with. The list of behaviors to avoid includes shouting, swearing, vomiting, carrying firearms, leaving trash in the car, allowing minors to ride unaccompanied, and flirting with drivers or fellow passengers. Uber makes that last part crystal clear for those who didn’t catch on the first time: “As a reminder, Uber has a no sex rule. That’s no sexual conduct between drivers and riders, no matter what.”

They also remind passengers that local laws still apply once they’ve climbed into the backseat. This covers obvious violations, like verbal and physical harassment, but also less serious misdemeanors like riding without a seatbelt or asking drivers to exceed the speed limit.

If most of these rules sound obvious to you, you might be more concerned with receiving less-than-stellar ratings than losing your riding privileges all together. Uber shared a few tips to help boost your rating as well. A big one is punctuality: Meeting your driver where and when they’re expecting you is ideal, but if you know you’re going to be late it helps to shoot them a call or text updating them with your E.T.A. Above all, Uber asks that you treat the people you share your ride with with respect. They write: “People who use Uber come from all walks of life. Please respect those differences in your conversations and behavior. We want drivers and riders to always feel welcome.”

5_tips_blog_header_1x

To find out if your good (or bad) passenger behavior is reflected in your rating, you can follow these steps to see how Uber drivers have scored you.

[h/t VentureBeat]

December 9, 2016 – 4:30pm

GADGETS, TOYS, AND MEDIA

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1. CHARLES SCHULZ WASN’T REALLY INTERESTED IN GETTING INTO ANIMATION.

2. WILLIE MAYS PLAYED A PART IN GETTING IT MADE.

3. CBS AND COCA-COLA ONLY GAVE THEM $76,000 TO PRODUCE IT.

4. IT WAS GOING TO HAVE A LAUGH TRACK.

5. SNOOPY’S VOICE IS JUST SPED-UP NONSENSE.

6. SCHULZ HATED JAZZ.

7. CHARLIE BROWN’S HEAD WAS A NIGHTMARE TO ANIMATE.

8. SCHULZ WAS EMBARRASSED BY ONE SCENE.

9. IT ALMOST GOT SCRAPPED BY COKE.

10. CBS HATED IT, TOO.

11. GOOD THING HALF THE COUNTRY WATCHED IT.

12. IT KILLED ALUMINUM TREE SALES.

13. THERE’S A LIVE-ACTION PLAY.

14. THE VOICE OF CHARLIE BROWN WAS ARRESTED.

1. ROSE PETAL WINE

2. METEORITE WINE

3. BLUE WINE

4. COFFEE-FLAVORED WINE

5. PUMPKIN WINE

6. CAKE FLAVORED WINE

7. JALAPENO WINE

8. BEER-WINE HYBRIDS

9. VODKA WINE

BONUS: WINE MADE FROM GRAPES GROWN IN SPACE (FORTHCOMING)