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2016/06/24

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A Stormy History of Weather Reporting

Posted: 24 Jun 2016 05:00 AM PDT

Over the years we’ve relied on talking sheep, girls in nighties, and glorified car salesmen to deliver us the weather. But behind the gimmicks, forecasters have always mattered. And today, we need them more than ever.

(Image credit: Pete Gamelin)

With a wide smile and an even wider tie, John Coleman was your consummate 1970s TV weatherman. Throughout the decade, he could be found cracking jokes and doing his signature little boogie in front of a hand-drawn weather map on WLS-TV in Chicago. His leisure suits, swooping side hair part, and booming voice made him a celebrity—first in the Midwest, and then, starting in 1975, as Good Morning America’s first weather forecaster. Coleman was a real-life Ron Burgundy in many ways, but he was no ditz. His best idea put him on track to become one of the most important weather journalists of all time.

Even while delivering two weather reports a day, Coleman wasn’t satisfied with weather’s place in the news. He didn’t think the short time devoted to weather on TV—typically 15 minutes a day—was enough. So, in his spare moments, he began hatching a plan: a national cable channel devoted to the weather 24 hours a day. It sounded like an impossible dream—or a ridiculous idea. But weather forecasters are used to the impossible. Every day, after all, we ask them to tell us the future. They sift through reams of data, applying the principles of physics, chemistry, and dynamics to predict the behavior of what is essentially layers of gas floating miles over our heads. Layers, mind you, steered by unstable jet streams that move 100 miles an hour or more.

While today’s weather reports are constantly improved by data culled from Doppler radar, precipitation-measuring satellites, and supercomputers crunching millions of weather observations worldwide, the atmosphere is ultimately chaotic and impossible to nail every time. We love to complain when the weather report gets it wrong, but we’d be lost without it. Coleman understood that better than anybody.

He also knew that, throughout the 300-year history of weather journalism, we’ve turned to weather reports for much more than data. We’ve always needed the human touch—trusted interpreters to explain the science, reassure us in the face of uncertainty, and entertain us along the way. Their story, which starts long before Coleman, is plenty entertaining itself.

The first weather report—some scholars consider it the first work of modern journalism—was issued by Daniel Defoe, author of Robinson Crusoe. On November 24, 1703, Defoe was walking in his London neighborhood when he noticed a change in the air: “The Wind encreased, and with Squalls of Rain and terrible Gusts blew very furiously.” Tiles flew from the rooftops, tree limbs and entire trunks snapped, and chimneys toppled, one of which nearly crushed him.

For two more days, a 300-mile-wide storm—the largest and most destructive ever to hit the British Isles—swept from the southwest, violently flinging bricks and stones down the streets. When Defoe looked at his barometer on the 26th, the mercury was as low as he’d ever seen it. He assumed his kids had messed with the tube.

At the time, Defoe was a poet and pamphleteer. He was also fresh out of prison, convicted of satirizing religious intolerance. He had been fined, locked in an elevated public pillory—the old wooden chokey with holes for head and hands—and jailed for four months. Now bankrupt, he was desperate for paid work. On the morning of the 27th, when the worst of the storm had passed, Defoe looked over the destruction and saw salvation in a new genre.

While neighbors checked on friends and relatives, Defoe took notes, collected eyewitness accounts, and gathered grim facts. Hardly anyone had slept through the storm: “The Distraction and Fury of the Night was visible in the Faces of the People,” he wrote. He ventured to the Thames to witness the 700 or so ships that had been tossed in heaps. He estimated that the storm had drowned 8,000 people at sea, including a fifth of the Queen’s navy. It flattened 300,000 trees, destroyed thousands of homes and 400 windmills, and blew away countless church steeples, turrets, and lead roofs, including the one atop Westminster Abbey.

Of course, humans had been trying to divine the weather for thousands of years, and telling stories about it for even longer. The Babylonians could predict short-term weather by looking to the clouds. In Greece, skeptics rolled their eyes at the prevailing belief that rain was sent by Zeus and based their predictions on the four elements instead. Democritus was so good at predicting the weather he convinced people he could see into the future. Meanwhile, Theophrastus’s On Weather Signs gave us weather proverbs that persist to this day. (“When the sky has a reddish appearance before sunrise ... this usually indicates rain within three days, if not on that very day.”) They all understood that the more you know about the weather of the past, the better you can predict the weather of the future.

Until Defoe came along, most contemporary weather studies were just data from rain gauges, wind vanes, thermometers, and barometers. Few writers recounted action as it happened. Defoe did—and his timing could not have been better. Journalism was brand new. London’s Daily Courant had recently launched as the first English language daily newspaper.

With The Storm, Defoe combined his own eyewitness accounts with harrowing details mailed to him from sources all over England. He wasn’t just delivering facts. He was helping his readers understand the storm, how and why it happened, and what it meant for life itself—weaving atmospheric science with moral philosophy. “I cannot doubt but the Atheist’s hard’ned Soul Trembl’d a little as well as his House, and he felt some Nature asking him some little Questions,” he wrote. “Am I not mistaken? Certainly there is some such thing as a God—What can all this be? What is the Matter in the World?”

Over the next century, new technologies would make the weather report a part of our daily lives. By the mid-1800s, thanks to the telegraph, the first government meteorology chiefs could share weather information at lightning speed, helping citizens and ship captains prepare for disasters. In Victorian England, the idea of “forecasting” was controversial. Some considered it akin to voodoo. But Americans had no such qualms: By 1860, 500 weather stations were telegraphing weather reports to Washington.

When that network crumbled during the Civil War, a frustrated astronomer named Cleveland Abbe established a private system of daily weather bulletins. Culling reports from volunteers across the country, Abbe and a team of telegraph clerks transferred the data onto maps. They added special symbols, showing wind direction, areas of high and low pressure, and marking “R” for rain. With the publication of their first bulletin on September 1, 1869, the daily weather report was born.

Newspapers—like Niles’ Weekly Register, the most popular publication in the nation before The New York Times debuted in 1851—had already been devoting ink to the weather. But Abbe’s weathercast made it a must-read: For the first time, Americans had access to statistics on the days to come. The public saw that predictions could save crops, ships, and lives. Abbe, just 30 at the time, became known as “Old Probabilities” or “Old Prob,” and his work rippled out. Before long, a petition from the Great Lakes region—which suffered 1,914 shipwrecks in 1869 alone—urged Congress to establish a national weather service. Congress approved.

Americans couldn’t get enough of the predictions—or the infographics that came with them. The New York Times began running a weather map in 1934, and the next year, the Associated Press started to transmit a national map to member papers. Early maps were more complex than today’s, showing isotherms and areas of high and low pressure. Over the course of the next century, the maps were dumbed down to carry little besides temperature—and, of course, rain. Americans still loved their weather data, but something was shifting in the air. The daily forecast was about to become a source of not just information but entertainment too.

The same year the Times launched its weather map, Jim Fidler, a student at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, took to the air as “radio’s original weatherman.” He wasn’t the first person to read the weather. In 1900, the U.S. Weather Bureau set up the first radio weather broadcasts at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. But Fidler was different. He was a personality.

When a handful of experimental television stations began broadcasting in the early 1940s, radio forecasters like Fidler were quick to the screen. From the start, it was an oddball enterprise, writes weather journalist and historian Robert Henson. A New York City weathercast that debuted in 1941 and lasted seven years starred an animated sheep named Wooly Lamb, who introduced each segment with a song. Sonny Eliot in Detroit turned the weather into a variety show, making forecasts like “The storm is as suspicious as a dermatologist with acne.”

In 1952, the FCC inadvertently encouraged even more cheeseball TV when it opened up competition for local licenses. Most major cities expanded from one station to two or three. Now, vying for audiences, news managers found the weather report was the easiest to liven up. No gimmick was too outlandish. Nashville poet-forecaster Bill Williams read the weather in verse. In New York, a puppet “weather lion” gave one nightly forecast; a sleepy bombshell in a nightie gave a midnight forecast as she tucked herself into bed.

So began the love-hate relationship between real meteorologists and weather forecasters with little science background. The American Meteorological Society tried to rein in the antics. “Many TV ‘weathermen’ make a caricature of what is essentially a serious and scientific occupation,” complained Francis Davis, a physics professor and Philadelphia weathercaster, in a 1955 TV Guide piece titled “Weather Is No Laughing Matter.” The Society wanted everyone to have scientific credentials. A young forecaster named David Letterman never got the memo. Delivering the weather in Indianapolis, Letterman joked about “hailstones the size of canned hams” and, Henson writes, cited statistics for made-up cities.

Beauty also trumped know-how. Raquel Welch got her start doing morning weather in San Diego as a “Sun-Up Weather Girl.” Diane Sawyer landed her first job out of Wellesley in 1967 as “weathergirl” for her hometown TV station in Louisville. Sawyer wasn’t allowed to wear glasses on camera and couldn’t tell whether she was pointing to the West or East Coast on the map.

The profession wasn’t so much a platform for experts as a stepping stone for TV-stardom hopefuls. Wheel of Fortune emcee Pat Sajak, Marg Helgenberger (of CSI fame), and comedian Gilda Radner all got their starts reading the weather. None were degreed meteorologists—nor was the Chicago weatherman John Coleman. But that wasn’t going to stop him from upending the weather report once again.

Though he lacked scientific training, Coleman knew that scientific cred would be as essential as verve. Setting out to build a brand-new weather genre, he wanted only trained meteorologists beamed into American living rooms. He also worked feverishly to develop new technologies to fit local forecasts and weather alerts into national programming. But first he had to find a deep-pocketed partner to bankroll his idea.

Most venture capitalists were skeptical; even those who loved weather reports figured 24 hours’ worth was too big a risk. Finally Coleman found his patron in Frank Batten, a Norfolk, Virginia–based mogul who had made a fortune turning Landmark Communications (primarily a newspaper company) into one of the nation’s largest media conglomerates. Batten had a personal attraction to the subject matter: He’d been gobsmacked by weather since age 6, when he and his uncle rode out a ferocious storm, the Chesapeake-Potomac Hurricane of 1933, in the family’s oceanfront cottage on Virginia Beach.

Batten and Landmark invested $32 million, and the Weather Channel launched on May 2, 1982. It was a rocky start. Early technology garbled local forecasts. Critics dismissed the channel as a joke. Newsweek called it a “24-hour-a-day exercise in meteorological overkill.” In its first six months, viewership was too low to qualify for Nielsen ratings. In its first year, the channel lost $10 million. While Coleman was a brilliant weatherman, Batten felt he was a poor CEO; a bid to oust him escalated into an epic legal battle. By 1983, the board and Batten were ready to shut the project down. Coleman eventually settled with the company, handing over his 75,000 shares of stock. The Weather Channel was insolvent at the time, so Coleman, for all his efforts, walked away empty-handed.

Even though Americans didn’t sit around watching the channel—not yet—they liked having it around, and cable operators knew it. Ultimately, the operators saved the channel by agreeing to subscriber fees. Starting in 1984, the fees coincided with the huge growth in cable TV through the mid-1990s. The channel also started selling spectacularly goofy infomercials: a “Heat Wave Alert” for Gatorade, a “Cold Wave Alert” for Quaker Oats, and “Weather and Your Health”—sponsored with no apparent irony by the fake-bacon condiment Bac-Os.

Still, viewers weren’t yet won over. Coleman was gone, but his policies lived on. He had banned live broadcasts from the field because the technology was poor and expensive, so forecasters had to stay inside. The lack of pizzazz became obvious only in hindsight. As video equipment became better and cheaper, the channel’s meteorologists began flipping the formula: They got out into the rain, while viewers stayed dry in their living rooms. The role reversal proved incredibly appealing. Reporting from the field was a “sea change in our understanding of the emotional connection” people have with weather, said then-president and CEO Deborah Wilson.

In 1992, reporting on Hurricane Andrew from his Baton Rouge hotel room with rain gushing in, meteorologist Jim Cantore, who’d spent six years stuck behind a desk, expressed a love for storm drama that infected viewers. “It was awesome, the wind and the rain,” he remembers.

(YouTube link)

Viewers were hooked—the Weather Channel streamed into the homes of 50 million Americans during Andrew. Soon viewership swelled to 96 million. By 2008, when the channel was acquired by NBC, it was a $3.5 billion powerhouse built on the same premise Daniel Defoe had discovered 300 years before: The most riveting weather reports come from people who venture outside to see and feel the conditions in real time.

In its March from Defoe’s ruminations to telegraphs to TV to smart phones, today’s weather report has grown not only more convenient but more accurate. Thanks to cutting-edge forecasting models, our four-day rain outook is as precise as the one-day forecast was 30 years ago. Satellites and supercomputers have sharpened predictions for tropical storms; the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration nailed Hurricane Sandy’s southern New Jersey landfall five days out.

Lately, digital giants like Verizon have tried to push out the human forecasters at the Weather Channel, arguing that apps make them irrelevant. Just the opposite is true: Massive amounts of digital data make human interpretation more crucial than ever before. We see it in our compulsion to talk about the weather in the spaces between other conversations—often with strangers. We see it in our need for the science to tell us more. We want the forecast to tell us which coat to wear, but also to explain by the hour how the weather will act tomorrow, and what this brutal winter says about next year— and the next 50 years.

Climate change is not only the weather story of our time, but the story of our time. Just as the great storm of 1703 swept in at the dawn of newspapers, so anthropogenic climate change and its impacts are coming into focus during another profound shift, from print and TV to ubiquitous screens. While some of the weathermen of yesterday—Coleman among them—are outspoken climate-change deniers, professional meteorologists generally agree with the scientific consensus that Earth’s warming is unequivocal—and unnatural. “It is clear from extensive scientific evidence,” say the men and women of the American Meteorological Society, “that the dominant cause of the rapid change in climate of the past half-century is human-induced.”

Today’s revolutionary weather reporters are those who see it as their role to educate audiences on weather and climate science. These include Columbia, South Carolina, WLTX chief meteorologist Jim Gandy, who airs a segment called “Climate Matters,” and Mashable’s Andrew Freedman, who explains major weather stories in the context of the changing climate. This new generation of reporters can explain the science and, equally important, our shared role in the future well-being of the planet.

(YouTube link)

The history of weather reporting is at turns funny and fraudulent. But underlying the talking sheep and girls in nighties, our need to understand has always been serious. We’ll continue to rely on interpreters like Defoe and Abbe to document the storms and to help us see our place in the larger swirl of the atmosphere. They ask us to consider—and discuss—the same questions Defoe asked more than three centuries ago: “What can all this be? What is the Matter in the World?”

__________________________

The above article by Cynthis Barnett is reprinted with permission from the June 2015 issue of mental_floss magazine.

Don't forget to feed your brain by subscribing to the magazine and visiting mental_floss' extremely entertaining website and blog today for more!

Playing Jenga on Fire

Posted: 24 Jun 2016 04:00 AM PDT


(Video Link)

Jenga is a fun party game. But perhaps you'd like for it to be a bit more exciting. The guys at Vat19 found a great way to do exactly that. They got a set of giant Jenga blocks and set them on fire. Then they played the game.

This was challenging, as the pieces had to be handled quickly. They were, you know, on fire.

It's a thrilling game and the basic principle could be used elsewhere. I'd like to try Twister on fire and Candy Land on fire.

-via 22 Words

Who Needs a Magic Mirror?

Posted: 24 Jun 2016 02:00 AM PDT

Even as a child, I had this same idea. I saw Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and then played all the parts in the privacy of my bedroom, and the mirror always showed me the answer to the question. The real magic, I figured, was in asking the right question. If the Evil Queen had asked who was the most evil person in the kingdom, she would have gotten the same answer when looking in a mirror. This is the latest comic from Alex Culang and Raynato Castro of Buttersafe.

Street Artist Hangs Gravity-Defying Shoes over City Streets

Posted: 24 Jun 2016 12:00 AM PDT

(Photo: Gary Van Handley)

You may seen shoes tied together and hanging over steet lamps and poles in urban environments. But never like this! Pejac, a street artist from Spain, left 4 sculptures on London streets that look like hanging shoes, but they face the wrong way. He hopes to inspire child-like leaps of imagination. Street Art News quotes him:

You do not have to be an artist or a child to have a different view of reality. This work is for those who are looking to let their imagination drift away with gravity. Or possibly more for all those who have forgotten to do so.

-via Colossal

How To Train Your Drogon

Posted: 23 Jun 2016 11:00 PM PDT

YouTube user Darth Blender refreshed the trailer from the 2010 animated movie How to Train Your Dragon by replacing the video with clips from the HBO series Game of Thrones, while retaining the original audio. Let’s see how that turned out.

(YouTube link)

It’s a mashup that should have been done long ago, but waiting this long meant that more video footage was available from Game of Thrones. It also means that kids who watched How to Train Your Dragon six years ago may be grown up enough to enjoy Game of Thrones now. -via the A.V. Club

The Bayonax

Posted: 23 Jun 2016 10:00 PM PDT

Instructables member Bart Goemaere is a man of genius. In the past, we examined his boomerang axe, which is a throwing axe that returns to you if your miss your target. Now he's back with an essential survival tool: the Bayonax.

Recently, there was heavy flooding where Goemaere lives in northern France. He had to drive home, but a tree had fallen across the road he had to travel on.

Goemaere had only his metalsmithing tools and survival knife with him. He didn't have a saw or axe. But he found a solution: Goemaere wrapped duct tape around his knife and a hammer, giving his knife greater leverage and weight in a swinging motion. 15 minutes later, he had cut up the tree and unblocked the road.

Now he's offering a more finished version of his improvised tool. For this Bayonax, Goemaere cut the head off a cheap carpenter's hammer, then secured a knife to it with twine. You can find complete instructions on how to build your own here.

Burglar Runs Afoul of the Law

Posted: 23 Jun 2016 09:00 PM PDT

A pun-filled Facebook post from the Martin County (Florida) Sheriff's Office tells of an investigation into a report of an intruder. A homeowner called and said she returned home from walking her dog and the front door of her house was open. She could hear noises inside, so she called police.

Deputy Becky Brady and Deputy Erick Day entered the home and immediately located the suspect.

Deputy Brady advised that the suspect tried to duck out on her several times, but they were able to apprehend him wihtout ratteling any feathers. Despite a fowl attitude, the univited house guest was released and not charged. Another MCSO case quacked.

Yes, it was a duck. Its motives in the home intrusion were not disclosed. -via Arbroath

(Image credit: Martin County Sheriff's Office)

Malgorzata Chodakowska's Ethereal Fountains

Posted: 23 Jun 2016 08:00 PM PDT

Malgorzata Chodakowska is a sculptor in Lodz, Poland. She makes enchantingly beautiful fountains shaped like human figures (content warning: artistic nudity). The flow of the water completes the images, making them look alive.

-via Fubiz

Good Cluck - By The Power Of Poultry

Posted: 23 Jun 2016 07:00 PM PDT


Good Cluck by Sophie Corrigan

Chickens are the most underrated of all magical creatures, and even though we eat their eggs and then eat the chicken when we're tired of staring at their beaky faces and beady little eyes we still don't see them as that big a deal. But an old lunatic from the Ozarks once told me that if you pick up a chicken and it doesn't cluck all day long you'll have good luck...or maybe it was pick it up and have good cluck, I dunno, it was a long time ago and there aren't many chickens where I'm from...

Spread the word about the power of poultry with this Good Cluck t-shirt by Sophie Corrigan, it's sure to make people want to pick up chickens wherever you go!

Visit Sophie Corrigan's Facebook fan page, Twitter, Tumblr and official website, then head on over to her NeatoShop for more delightfully geeky designs:

ChimpanteaPugflowerBirdnana

Pint Of Bear

View more designs by Sophie Corrigan | More Funny T-shirts | New T-Shirts

Are you a professional illustrator or T-shirt designer? Let's chat! Sell your designs on the NeatoShop and get featured in front of tons of potential new fans on Neatorama!

Flying a Wingsuit over an Active Volcano

Posted: 23 Jun 2016 06:59 PM PDT


(Video Link)

Roberta Mancina is a world record-holding skydiver, BASE jumper, and wingsuit pilot. In her spare time, she also works as a model and stuntwoman. She's pretty much amazing, so this is just another day at the office for her.

For a lark, Mancina decided to strap on a wingsuit and jump out of a helicopter directly over an active volcano in Chile. Villarrica has a lava lake that's clearly visible from the GoPro cameras that Mancina and her colleagues wore on their helmets.

-via Laughing Squid

14 Secrets of U.S. Postal Carriers

Posted: 23 Jun 2016 05:59 PM PDT

 

How you feel about the Postal Service depends on whether they brought you a check or bills today. But these couriers keep their appointed rounds no matter what they are delivering. And they deliver 154 billion pieces of mail every year! On an individual level, you might know your postal carrier’s name, but probably not a lot about his or her job. For example,

1. YOUR MAILBOX IS HOME TO HIDDEN DANGER.

Cliches are clichés for a reason, and most postal workers will admit to having some concern over unfriendly dogs on their route. But a smaller, equally painful danger remains under-publicized. According to Kenny, a carrier in the Midwest, reaching into a mailbox to deposit your letters can sometimes be hazardous to his health. “Wasps like to get into mailboxes,” he says. “Especially if they have an outgoing mail slot. They build a nest in there. I’ve been stung quite a few times.”

2. THEIR SATCHEL HAS A HIDDEN PURPOSE.

The shoulder-slung sack of mail on a carrier’s shoulder isn’t just to tote credit card offers. During carrier orientation, workers are taught that the satchel is their first line of defense against aggressive dogs. (They can also use parcels to parry attacks.) “There’s a whole training program on it,” Kenny says. “You try to keep it between you and the dog.” Carriers are also issued pepper spray. “I hate to use it, but sometimes you have to,” Kenny admits. He estimates he’s been bit nine or 10 times. “I’ve never needed stitches, but I’ve known carriers who have.”

Read a dozen other secrets about your mail carrier’s job at mental_floss.

Sunburned Toast

Posted: 23 Jun 2016 05:00 PM PDT

Enjoy the summer sun, but be sure to put a lot of sunblock on! Don't let your skin get too toasted. Instagram member konel_bread, who previously showed us surprise bread loaves, offers this cheeky piece of toast.

Action Movie Kid Demonstrates How To Draw A U.F.O.

Posted: 23 Jun 2016 04:00 PM PDT

Kids who draw chalk pictures on the driveway know those drawings will only come to life in their imagination...unless you're Action Movie Kid.

He draws far out U.F.O. designs on his driveway and then his wizardly father uses digital effects magic to bring those drawings to life.

But, as his latest video proves, it's easy to get carried away when you have so much imaginative power at your disposal.

(YouTube Link)

-Via Laughing Squid

Woman Wakes up with a 16-Foot Snake in Her Bedroom

Posted: 23 Jun 2016 02:59 PM PDT

(Photo: Trina Birrell)

This is Monty. He's a Scrub Python.

Monty lived on the roof of a house in Misson Beach, Queensland, Australia. For 15 years years, he had been a fairly quiet resident of that roof owned by Trina Hibberd. But early on Monday morning, he decided to pop in and visit his neighbor.

Hibberd's friend Julie Birrell was visiting. She had been asleep in bed when she noticed that there was a 16-foot long snake exploring the room. ABC News quotes Hibberd:

"We walked into the bedroom and it was hanging from the curtain drapes down to the bedside table — and that was only a third of him," he said.

"It was a good monster.

"We locked ourselves in the bedroom and grabbed him around the neck. He coiled around my arm but we managed to put him a container."

This is not the first time that Monty has had boundary issues. Hibberd first met him 15 years ago when he poked his head into her bathroom while she was taking a shower.

But Monty probably won't be a problem anymore. A snake catcher captured him and released him into a nearby water treatment plant.

-via Marilyn Bellamy

SpotMini from Boston Dynamics

Posted: 23 Jun 2016 02:00 PM PDT

Boston Dynamics’ newest robot is a mechanical pet! Watch it go for a walk, crawl under a table, and extend its neck for a petting. But did you ever see a dog load the dishwasher and straighten up the kitchen?

(YouTube link)

SpotMini is a new smaller version of the Spot robot, weighing 55 lbs dripping wet (65 lbs if you include its arm.) SpotMini is all-electric (no hydraulics) and runs for about 90 minutes on a charge, depending on what it is doing. SpotMini is one of the quietest robots we have ever built. It has a variety of sensors, including depth cameras, a solid state gyro (IMU) and proprioception sensors in the limbs. These sensors help with navigation and mobile manipulation. SpotMini performs some tasks autonomously, but often uses a human for high-level guidance. For more information about SpotMini visit our website at www.BostonDynamics.com

SpotMini can trip and fall, but they had to put out a banana peel to demonstrate it. -via Geeks Are Sexy

2,000-Year-Old Blob Of Butter Found In A Bog- And It's Still Edible

Posted: 23 Jun 2016 01:00 PM PDT

I feel weird eating butter that has been sitting in a dish on the table all day, so I can't even begin to imagine sampling a massive blob of butter that's been sitting in a bog for 2,000 years.

But the 22-pound orb of butter seen in the photo above is theoretically still edible thanks to the preservative effects of the bog, although the guy who found it in Co Meath, Ireland isn't ready to try it out.

The butter is thought to have been buried in Emblagh bog as an offering to the gods, and since the area is a "no-man's-land" it was left undisturbed for over two thousand years.

Now it's on display in the Cavan County Museum, where it will sit until somebody uncovers a 200-pound loaf of bog bread.

-Via Gizmodo

Iceland is Taking Over Euro 2016

Posted: 23 Jun 2016 12:00 PM PDT

#Dagsson does #Euro2016. Pick up one of his books in any Icelandic book store pretty much. #ISL #RonaldoTears

A photo posted by Reykjavik Grapevine (@rvkgrapevine) on Jun 21, 2016 at 9:47am PDT

Iceland has become the media darling of Euro 2016. The team from the tiny country was one of the expansion teams added to this year’s tournament, and has overcome the odds to advance to the round of 16. After tying with Portugal and then Hungary, Iceland went on to defeat powerhouse Austria 2-1 in the last second on Wednesday. The reaction of the Icelandic announcer is one for the books.

(YouTube link)

The full video and a translation is at the Reykjavík Grapevine:

“It’s all open! Theodór Elmar is alone here on their side of the pitch. They are three on two! Emmi (short for Elmar)! Go into the box! Go into the box! EMMI! Ahhh… Yes… yaaaaa… yaaaaaaaaa… JAAAAA… JAAAAA… Jarghaah… we are winning this! We are through to the final 16! We are through to the final 16! We are winning Austria! The voice has gone! But that doesn´t matter! We have qualified! Arnór Yngvi Traustason scores! Iceland two Austria one! Þvílíkt og annað eins*! Þvílíkt og annað eins! What? The final whistle has been blown here, and never, ever have I felt so good! Arnór Yngvi Traustason securing our first victory! Never lost! Don’t forget… never lost! But the first victory a fact! Iceland two Austria one! Thanks for coming Austria! Thanks for coming!”

The Reykjavík Grapevine, an English language magazine that’s always a treat, is following the saga on its Twitter account with some awesome Tweets, from before the tournament started to trash talking the next opponent.

The image at the top is from the Reykjavík Grapevine Instagram account, featuring the art of Hugleikur Dagsson. The Grapevine has been pointing much of its trash talk toward Cristiano Ronaldo of Spain’s Real Madrid and the Portuguese national team, the biggest soccer star of the day …so far. Iceland plays England next, on June 27th.

A Collection Of Hilariously Terrible Photoshopped Images

Posted: 23 Jun 2016 11:00 AM PDT

(Image Link)

Failing to create realistic looking composite images in Photoshop is a natural part of the learning curve, as you discover how to use selections, layers and tools to create a believable fake.

But if you decide to share your utter failure of a Photoshop with the internet while claiming the image is legit prepare to be eaten alive by jerky commenters.

(Image Link)

Photoshop is a powerful tool capable of outputting extremely realistic, high resolution images in any size you want, yet bad Photoshoppers somehow manage to turn the mighty Photoshop into a glorified MS Paint.

(Image Link)

But the best thing to do when you're new to Photoshop is soldier on, continually tweaking the tools and exercising your options until you get the incredible visual results you were looking for.

(Image Link)

See 15 Terrible Photoshops That Will Make You Laugh Every Time here

The Strandbeest Bike

Posted: 23 Jun 2016 10:00 AM PDT

Dutch artist Theo Jansen is most famous for his Strandbeests--walking kinetic sculptures that look like alien machines. They inspired Blaine Elliot of Santa Barbara, California to build this bicycle which locomotes similarly. It's called the Walking Bike.


(Video Link)

Elliott and his colleague JP built a 3d model to test the functionality of Jansen's leg linkages on the bike. Then, over 6 months, they assembled about 670 pieces into the finished machine. You see more photos and specs here.

-via Core77

TRAP - He's Running On A Pure Trap Platform

Posted: 23 Jun 2016 09:00 AM PDT


TRAP by inkOne Art

Politicians do all kinds of promising and talking about solutions and strategies, but take it from the most famous Mon Calamari in the galaxy- if you think of everything as a trap you'll never get caught in a trap. Admiral Ackbar may seem like an unlikely candidate for the Galactic Council, but he knows how the minds of the Imperial commanders and their Sith overlords think, and what they're thinking 9 out of 10 times has something to do with a trap. So you can throw away your vote on some other Rebel rabble rouser or crackpot in a helmet, or you can vote for Ackbar and keep the Alliance from getting caught in a trap!

Vote for the fishman you believe in most, wear this TRAP t-shirt by inkOne Art and cast your vote on the side of it's a trap!

Visit inkOne Art's Facebook fan page, official website and Twitter, then head on over to his NeatoShop for more geek-tastic designs:

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The Emile Berliner Musée des Ondes

Posted: 23 Jun 2016 09:00 AM PDT

A small museum in Montreal is dedicated to preserving the memory of early sound recording and aerospace engineering. If those two things sound widely divergent to you, that's understandable, until you learn a little bit about electrical genius Emile Berliner.

In 1887, Berliner patented the Gramophone, which used a stylus to produce sound waves by following a horizontally-modulating line on a disc. Thomas Edison might have invented the phonograph, but it was Berliner who first put recordings on a flat disc. After losing the American sales rights to his invention, he moved to Montreal in 1904, and established the Berliner Gramophone Company in the neighborhood of Saint-Henri.

The old factory has undergone a lot of changes during the past century. Berliner Gramophone eventually would become RCA-Victrola, memorable for its logo of the little dog “Nipper” transfixed by the sound of his master’s voice emanating from a gramophone. Eventually, RCA would be drafted into the space race, and Montreal saw the dawning of its involvement in the aerospace industry, which continues today.

Juergen Horn and Mike Powell got to visit the museum, which is still unpacking after losing its exhibition space. Still, they were treated to a look through the museum plus the private storage areas in the old RCA factory and the attached recording studio as well. Learn more about the the Musée des Ondes and the history of audio you never knew at For 91 Days.

A New Video Series All About Gender Swapping Famous Movie Scenes

Posted: 23 Jun 2016 08:00 AM PDT

It's surprising how many movies would still be totally watchable, and generally every bit as good, if the genders of the main characters were switched.

Hollywood knows this trick well, and they like to pull it out of their bag when creating a sequel or rebooting a franchise, because it somehow manages to make the story feel fresh again. (Barely NSFW due to language)

(Vimeo Link)

Dani Leonard's new video series "SWAPPED" focuses on remaking iconic movie scenes with a gender flip, and asks the question "How does a story change if you change the hero's gender?"

-Via The Mary Sue

The Evolution of Shipping Container Homes

Posted: 23 Jun 2016 07:00 AM PDT

The shipping container as we know it was developed by Malcolm McLean in the 1950s. It standardized global cargo shipping and made the industry more efficient. A whole slew of different people noticed them and had other ideas. The big sturdy boxes showed up for different purposes in trade shows, in fiction, and in war. And, of course, by people who saw the possibility of living in them. Read how shipping containers went through these iterations on the way to becoming an eco-friendly building material for both emergency shelter and high-end architecture at Housely.    

This Hilarious Video Sums Up Every Japanese RPG Ever

Posted: 23 Jun 2016 06:00 AM PDT

There's a reason Japanese roleplaying games are set apart from the rest- it all starts with a character who doesn't talk, typically with spiky hair and extremely fashionable clothing.

Then we encounter some pointless expositional dialogue while running around a town that's all blocked off for some reason before being railroaded to the tragic event cutscene that begins our quest. And then we get to the naming...

(YouTube Link)

This expertly pixelated video from CollegeHumor truly encapsulates all the sameness found in Japanese role-playing games, and for some strange reason it really made me want to play Chrono Cross again...

-Via Geeks Are Sexy

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