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- 14 Great Examples of Thanksgiving Food Art
- Eleven Heads on 11/11/11
- Exquisite Alice In Wonderland Photos
- Fantastic Crochet Taxidermy Animals
- Cartoon Characters In Cute Felt Forms
- The True Inspirations For Snow White
- Album Covers Re-Imagined With Kittens
- The Clock That Dances The Time Away
- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney-The Movie Trailer
- Bolivia's Day Of The Skulls
- Are Older Siblings Smarter?
- Calendar Systems
- Lawyer Complained that Catholic University is Too Catholic
- Spot-On My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic Cosplay Re-enactment
- Gifts For Veterans
- The World's Only Twin Jet Engine Motorcycle
- Albert Einstein's Letter to a Grieving Father
- The Garden Tunnel
- Wonder Woman Stand Mixer Sends a Subtle Message
- The Evolutionary Advantage to Eating Burgers
- "Oh, My Love, My Darling, I've Hungered For Your Touch..."
- The Dog Toy's Point of View
- One-Molecule Nano Car Powered by Electrons
- Keeping Up with the Cardassians
- Moustair
- Serious and Not-so-Serious Recycling in Antarctica
- Ones Upon A Day
- Space Station Reboost
- Han Solo in Carbonite Ice Tray
- What Is It? game 201
- Parrot Protects Premature Puppies
- 15 Beautiful Women Who Played Cleopatra
- The Truth about Violence
- 10 Massive Screw-Ups in Paleontology
| 14 Great Examples of Thanksgiving Food Art Posted: 11 Nov 2011 05:08 AM PST Sure anyone can eat their Thanksgiving meal, but it takes a truly creative mind to ignore the temptations of such delicious treats and instead turn their food into a work of art. Here are a few creators that know just how truly tasty a great work of art can be. The Entire MealWhile there are tons of artists who work with food out there, Jason Mecier is the only one I could find that actually created a portrait using aspects of a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. Using turkey, sweet potatoes, corn, mushrooms, onions, green beans, cranberries and more, Mecier was able to construct a portrait of Sarah Hale, the woman largely considered responsible for the creation of a national Thanksgiving holiday. Personally, I couldn't think of a more appropriate subject for a Thanksgiving meal artwork. It might not be as artistic as some of the other creations on this list, but the Meta Turkey was the winner for Best Conceptual Turkey in the 2008 Turkey-shaped Jell-O Mold Competition. So what makes a turkey mold become a Meta Turkey? It must contain aspects of all parts of a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, including turkey, cranberry sauce, gravy, stuffing and mashed potatoes. Sweet Potato CasseroleThis entrant into the 2008 Turkey-shaped Jell-O Mold Competition might just be the only artwork on this list that you would actually want to serve at your own Thanksgiving meal. That's because aside from its strange turkey shape, the sweet potato pineapple casserole adorned with marshmallows and pecans looks simply delicious. Of course, I would recommend toasting the marshmallows before serving, but that's just me. Potatoes
Flickr user ReRe is quite the artist when it comes to photographing fruits and vegetables. In fact, she has two different potato artworks that are both so cute, I couldn't choose which one to include –the red potato hippo or the white potato elephant. (So I included them both.) Which is your favorite? CornArtists Akiko Ida and Pierre Javelle specialize in shooting tiny people interacting with the surface of regular-sized food. In their Paris Roubais piece, we see a few cyclists racing along corn on the cob, with the leader flying off his bike after apparently hitting too big of a kernel. RiceNot everyone eats rice on Thanksgiving, but those that do are certain to appreciate Carl Warner's farm-styled foodscape featuring rice, thyme, parsley, almonds and other common ingredients of a more modernized Thanksgiving dinner. ButterWhile Jim Victor has made tons of butter sculptures throughout the years, perhaps the most appropriate Thanksgiving artwork is the one featuring cow cheerleaders. After all, not only is there plenty of football on Thanksgiving Day to satiate cheerleaders of any type, but I'm sure cows are happy to celebrate any holiday where turkey tends to be the meat of choice. BreadIf the rolls on the dinner table looked like this angry bread man by Bella Tamas, I'm guessing we'd all be a little more cautious about slicing them open and spreading them with butter. Then again, if he's using the knife to threaten us, then it might come down to a battle of human versus roll, in which case, you'd be a fool not to slice his head open. OnionsFlickr user Stereomind's cleverly carved onion artwork is something I think we can all relate with, especially when prepping up the onions to use for our traditional turkey stuffing. For me, just looking at this piece gets my eyes watery. SquashThis little guy by Carl Kleiner might not be ready to eat, but that's just fine since he's too darn cute to even imagine roasting in an oven. For more food that's simply too precious to munch on, including zebra eggplants and smiling watermelons, be sure to check out this fantastic gallery on Juxtapoz. When it comes to stunning centerpieces, Francesco Scravaglieri's Rassegna Calabria should certainly take center stage. Between the delicate and detailed bird feathers and the amazingly intricate squash flowers, every inch of Scravaglieri's squash carving is simply stunning. PomegranateThere might not be any food as close to a grenade as a pomegranate both in looks, taste and likelihood of exploding into a huge, stain-filled mess. That's why Sarah Illenberger's take on the fruit is just so perfect. Just make sure you don't put any of these around the table if you are expecting to have one of those drama-filled family holidays. CakeOf course, it's not Thanksgiving without some kind of sweet treat and while you might choose to make your whole dinner into a cake, or make a giant cake with two pies baked inside of it, if you prefer just plain cake that has an artistic Thanksgiving flair, then try making your own turkey cake like this one by Geri of Joshua, TX. There are instructions to make your own over at Cake Decorating Ideas free, but if you make one, just make sure you don't get it mixed up with your real turkey when it comes time to serve dinner. The closest I've ever come to food art is making a snowman with my mashed potatoes and once designing a blueberry pie with an American flag crust. But I'm sure some of you are better artists than I am. That being said, have any of you ever done something creative with your Thanksgiving leftovers or cooked your dinner into an interesting design?  |
| Posted: 11 Nov 2011 03:10 AM PST The Koren Ensemble has an ode to today’s date: 11-11-11. The Koren Ensemble is eleven copies of Daniel Koren. -Thanks, Daniel! |
| Exquisite Alice In Wonderland Photos Posted: 11 Nov 2011 12:16 AM PST |
| Fantastic Crochet Taxidermy Animals Posted: 11 Nov 2011 12:08 AM PST If you like taxidermy artwork, but hate the idea of real dead animals being used for their creation, then you’ll love the wonderful crochet taxidermy animals of artist Shauna Richardson. Of course, if your favorite aspect of taxidermy is the dead animals, then you probably won’t be a fan. |
| Cartoon Characters In Cute Felt Forms Posted: 11 Nov 2011 12:02 AM PST These character interpretations, pictured above Cringer and Battle Cat from He-Man, Chewbacca, and Splinter from the Ninja Turtles, are not only creative in terms of design, they also look super cuddly! Made from felted fabric by Justin Alan Volpe, these figures have a cartoony style that rarely comes across properly in soft sculpts. I hope he mass produces these figures some day, I want them all! Link –via ComicsAlliance |
| The True Inspirations For Snow White Posted: 10 Nov 2011 11:57 PM PST
That’s right, the mirror, the dwarves and the poison (although not served in an apple) are all here in these two fascinating stories. |
| Album Covers Re-Imagined With Kittens Posted: 10 Nov 2011 11:38 PM PST Kittens can make anything better, from artwork to home videos, and if the record companies had any marketing savvy they would have used kittens on as many album covers as possible! Aym Visuals decided to show the world how kittens can be used to replace all sorts of people and objects to make the music world a cuter place. Link –via DesignTAXI |
| The Clock That Dances The Time Away Posted: 10 Nov 2011 11:37 PM PST This kooky yet innovative clock features a masked figure that contorts into the shape of numbers throughout the day, so your clock face becomes a miniature stage for interpretive dancers. Called the Hone Hone clock, it is mesmerizing to watch, and will bring a sense of life to your boring old clock. Now, you’ll want to watch the seconds tick by all day! Link –via Geekosystem |
| Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney-The Movie Trailer Posted: 10 Nov 2011 11:34 PM PST This production of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is not a fan film, nor is this a parody trailer meant strictly for the interwebs. This is a big budget motion picture, directed by Takashi Miike (Ichi the Killer, Audition) and based on the Nintendo DS game series by Capcom. Maybe the Japanese can make a decent movie adaptation of a video game series, since Hollywood never seems to get it right. –via ComicsAlliance |
| Posted: 10 Nov 2011 11:26 PM PST
They are decorated with flowers and coca leaves, given cigarettes and sunglasses to make them look stylish, and lavished with praise by citizens who believe this celebration makes their afterlife more enjoyable. A celebration of life that centers around the skulls dead loved ones, sounds like a strange way to par-tay! Link –image via Reuters/David Mercado |
| Posted: 10 Nov 2011 08:19 PM PST
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| Posted: 10 Nov 2011 07:31 PM PST Well, maybe. But I never could get used to the metric system. All those easily-divisible units…. Link -via Christopher Jobson |
| Lawyer Complained that Catholic University is Too Catholic Posted: 10 Nov 2011 06:04 PM PST
That's what law professor John Banzhaf thought and he's filing a human rights complaint against the school:
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| Spot-On My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic Cosplay Re-enactment Posted: 10 Nov 2011 05:22 PM PST (Video Link) (Video Link) YouTube user LuluPopVampire and her waifu (you can Google that term to learn what it means, but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it) arranged this re-enactment of a scene from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic for a cosplay competition. It’s completely convincing, despite the absence of hooves. -via Fashionably Geek | Previously: The Brony Phenomenon |
| Posted: 10 Nov 2011 05:14 PM PST
But that’s just the beginning. Check out the list at Kiplinger. Link (Image credit: Flickr user Garry Wilmore) |
| The World's Only Twin Jet Engine Motorcycle Posted: 10 Nov 2011 05:03 PM PST In a lovely design juxtaposition, this custom motorcycle features a pair of jet engines mounted to a frame modeled after a 1929 Harley-Davidson design. It can reach 200 MPH, and in truly Harley fashion, does so loudly. This bike, which the owner claims is the only one in the world powered with two jet engines, is currently for sale on eBay. |
| Albert Einstein's Letter to a Grieving Father Posted: 10 Nov 2011 04:52 PM PST In 1950, the young son of Robert Marcus died of polio. Albert Einstein wrote this short metaphysical exposition to help him through the pain. Is it philosophically sound? I don’t know. But when someone is mourning the loss of a child, that’s not really important. Read a transcript at Letters of Note. |
| Posted: 10 Nov 2011 04:25 PM PST Photographer Oleg Gordienko captured images of an amazing train tunnel in Ukraine. As you can see from his portfolio at the link, he’s used it as a romantic backdrop for wedding pictures. Link -via My Modern Met |
| Wonder Woman Stand Mixer Sends a Subtle Message Posted: 10 Nov 2011 04:07 PM PST Kitchen Aid’s Brazilian division offers this Wonder Woman-themed stand mixer. My wife likes Wonder Woman. Maybe I should get her one of these — provided that I can find a matching vacuum cleaner and toilet brush. They will no doubt be well-received. Link -via Comics Alliance Be sure to check out our Wonder Woman products in the NeatoShop! |
| The Evolutionary Advantage to Eating Burgers Posted: 10 Nov 2011 04:04 PM PST
Here's how researchers at Harvard University subjected mice to delicious food in order to find out the evolutionary advantage to eating cooked versus raw meat:
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| "Oh, My Love, My Darling, I've Hungered For Your Touch..." Posted: 10 Nov 2011 03:29 PM PST Scott Campbell reminds us of a scene that was thankfully removed from the final version of Ghostbusters. Also: Patrick Swayze was the actor best suited to play Slimer in the Broadway musical version of that film. Yet it was not to be. Gallery Website -via Popped Culture |
| Posted: 10 Nov 2011 03:20 PM PST (Video Link) YouTube user Lorduss1 attached a GoPro camera to a stick and chased his dog around the yard. Watch the world spin as you become a plaything to a retriever. -via Say Uncle |
| One-Molecule Nano Car Powered by Electrons Posted: 10 Nov 2011 02:02 PM PST
Link (Image: Randy Wind and Martin Roelfs) |
| Keeping Up with the Cardassians Posted: 10 Nov 2011 12:01 PM PST
Sadly it's not a clever Dominion plot to weaken the spirits of the inhabitants of Cardassia Prime. A fan of Star Trek actor George Takei actually sent him this clever parody, inspired by a meld of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine with a certain Terran celebrity famous for her long and lasting marriage. |
| Posted: 10 Nov 2011 09:36 AM PST When you take the idea that a mustache can double for hair on the head, you get Moustair. It’s weird, I know. The tumblr site has quite a few examples of both famous men and submitted pictures. This one makes Hulk Hogan look a little bit like Captain Kangaroo, don’t you think? Link -via Breakfast Links |
| Serious and Not-so-Serious Recycling in Antarctica Posted: 10 Nov 2011 09:23 AM PST There are no landfills for garbage in Antarctica, at least none near McMurdo Station, the American research outpost. Therefore, recycling is a serious endeavor, with a very extensive list of items to be recycled. Still, the residents have a sense of humor and added some “extra” bins for even more stuff to be recycled! See more at Boing Boing. Link (Image credit: Henry Kaiser) |
| Posted: 10 Nov 2011 07:41 AM PST Tomorrow is Veteran’s Day (also known as Armistice Day or Remembrance Day) because the armistice that ended World War I was signed on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month (in 1918). However, tomorrow’s date even has the 11th year! Ron Gordon’s hobby is drawing attention to “calendar holidays,” meaning days that are notable because of their date numbers. He held contests in honor of Odd Day and Square Root Day. Now he’s doing the same for 11-11-11, the date he calls “Ones Upon a Day.” The pun in the name is also the theme for the contest:
Get all the details at his Ones Upon A Day website. Link |
| Posted: 10 Nov 2011 07:36 AM PST The International Space Station (ISS) occasionally has to boost itself into a higher altitude to counteract the effects of microgravity drag. Recently, the ISS boosted itself about two miles up, and video cameras caught what happened inside to Commander Mike Fossum and Flight Engineers Satoshi Furukawa and Sergei Volkov. The physics of the process are explained at Bad Astronomy Blog. Link -Thanks, Phil! |
| Han Solo in Carbonite Ice Tray Posted: 10 Nov 2011 06:37 AM PST Han Solo in Carbonite Ice Tray – $9.95 Do you fear that your Thanksgiving meal is doomed? Don’t surrender to the dark side. Use the force and the Han Solo in Carbonite Ice Tray from the NeatoShop to distract your guests from your terrible cooking. The Han Solo in Carbonite Ice Tray is made from food-safe silicone. Do or do not make other things in this Ice Tray. Mmm. Make Han Solo in Carbonite butter patties, I will. Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more fantastic Star Wars and cool Ice Trays. |
| Posted: 10 Nov 2011 06:30 AM PST It’s once again time for our collaboration with the always amusing What Is It? Blog. Can you guess what the pictured item is? Or can you make up something interesting? Place your guess in the comment section below. One guess per comment, please, though you can enter as many guesses as you’d like in separate comments. Post no URLs or weblinks, as doing so will forfeit your entry. Two winners: the first correct guess and the funniest (albeit ultimately wrong) guess will win T-shirt from the NeatoShop. Please write your T-shirt selection alongside your guess. If you don’t include a selection, you forfeit the prize, okay? May we suggest the Science T-Shirt, Funny T-Shirt and Artist-Designed T-Shirts? For more clues, check out the What Is It? Blog. Good luck! |
| Parrot Protects Premature Puppies Posted: 10 Nov 2011 06:29 AM PST
Sam is 18 years old and is able to mimic several of the family member’s voices. Link -via Arbroath |
| 15 Beautiful Women Who Played Cleopatra Posted: 10 Nov 2011 06:27 AM PST I didn’t know it, but there have been more than 50 movies that featured the character of Cleopatra! Unreality magazine looked up some of the best-looking actresses in their portrayals of the Egyptian queen, and presented them in a gallery for your enjoyment. Pictured here is Claudette Colbert in the 1934 film Cleopatra. Link |
| Posted: 10 Nov 2011 06:25 AM PST
Of course, there’s a lot more to consider, but you won’t have time to think these things through if the situation arises, so read the whole thing and think about it ahead of time. Link -via Metafilter (Image credit: Flickr user Pensiero) |
| 10 Massive Screw-Ups in Paleontology Posted: 10 Nov 2011 05:42 AM PST  Megalonyx jeffersonii Fossils rarely do scientists the courtesy of showing up intact, so putting them together is like solving a jigsaw puzzle. A tough one. Without a picture on the box to go by. It’s no wonder a few old bones have made some of the world’s smartest scientists look so stupid. 1. All the President’s Sloths In decades past, American presidents apparently had hobbies other than playing golf and eating at McDonald's. Thomas Jefferson, for one, was an avid paleontologist. As early as the 1790s (before it was cool), he kept an impressive fossil collection at his home in Monticello. So when a group of confused miners came upon some unidentifiable bones in a West Virginia cave, they sent them to Jefferson. Judging from the long limbs and large claws, the president suspected they belonged to a giant cat "as preeminent over the lion in size as the mammoth is over the elephant" and that the animal might still exist somewhere in the unexplored West. Jefferson got the size right. The description? Not so much. The animal he named Megalonyx (giant claw) was actually one of the giant ground sloths that very slowly roamed America during the last ice age. And while Jefferson later agreed with this alternative diagnosis, his error wasn't a complete waste. The Megalonyx marked one of the first important fossil finds in the United States, and it prompted the first and second scientific papers on fossils published in North America. In honor of the president's contribution, the sloth's name was later formalized to Megalonyx jeffersonii. 2. A Bone-headed Approach To this day, the Brontosaurus remains one of the most popular and recognizable dinosaurs in history – an impressive feat for an animal that never existed. The confusion started in 1879, when collectors working in Wyoming for paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh found two nearly complete – yet headless – sauropod dinosaur skeletons. Wanting to display them, Marsh fitted one specimen with a skull found nearby, and the other with a skull he found in Colorado. Voila! – the Brontosaurus was born.
Unfortunately for Marsh, the skeletons were later exposed as adult specimens of a dinosaur already discovered, the Apatosaurus. The error was formally corrected in 1903 by Elmer Riggs of Chicago's Field Museum, and scientific papers haven't called the animal Brontosaurus since. Seventy more years passed before researchers determined that the skulls Marsh borrowed really belonged to the Camarasaurus, a discovery of his archrival, Edward Drinker Cope. Pop culture, however, missed the memo altogether. 3. Getting Your Head Screwed on Right Paleontology's version of the Hatfields and the McCoys, Marsh and Cope had a nasty and long-running professional rivalry. Although they'd actually started out as friends (with each even naming a discovery after the other), by 1870 their relationship had taken a turn for the worse. A year earlier, Cope had assembled a skeleton of the sea reptile called Elasmosaurus. However, in his rush to publish his discovery, he placed the head on the wrong end, giving everyone the impression that the animal had a very long tail instead of a very long neck. Marsh poured ample salt in that wound by making fun of Cope's error in print (suggesting he rename the animal "twisted lizard") and constantly ridiculing it at parties and exhibitions. Given the stakes, he might as well have slapped Cope across the face with a glove and insulted his mother. As it was, all Cope could do was try and buy up all the published examples of his posterior-backwards construction.  Incorrect image of Elasmosaurus published by Cope. The feud only grew from there. The two men fought over allegations that, on a tour of Cope's digging operations in New Jersey, Marsh bribed collectors to send key fossils to him. And in 1877, a part-time collector in Utah incited a whole new string of cutthroat arguing by trying to sell bones from his site to both of them. Other feud highlights included a series of snippy "he said, he said" pieces in the New York Herald and the time the Smithsonian confiscated much of Marsh's fossil collection after Cope accused him of misusing tax dollars to hoard fossils for himself. 4. Pulling Teeth Henry Fairfield Osborn was a giant in the field of paleontology, but he also has one giant mistake to his name. In 1922, while serving as president of the American Museum of Natural History, Osborn received a fossil of a tooth found in Nebraska. Suffering from a bout of overconfidence, the normally careful scientist published a paper announcing (based on one tooth, mind you) that he'd discovered Hesperopithecus haroldcookii, the first anthropoid ape unearthed in North America.  Amédée Forestier's illustration of Nebraska man Taking into account that all of this was happening just three years before the Scopes Monkey Trial, word of a missing link was a pretty big deal. Add to that British anatomy professor Sir Grafton Elliott Smith touting the discovery as a potential breakthrough, and artist Amedee Forestier drawing a famously speculative picture of the "Nebraska Man" (and Woman) in the widely read Illustrated London News. Although Osborn never hypothesized where (or if) his ape fit into the evolutionary chain, he used the discovery to fuel his war of words with anti-evolution blowhard William Jennings Bryan. Osborn made sure to note the irony of the tooth having come from Bryan's home state, and even suggested calling the ape Bryopithecus in honor of "the most distinguished primate which the state of Nebraska has thus far produced." Unfortunately, in this particular case, said distinguished primate got the last laugh. Upon further examination, it was determined that the tooth belonged to a millennia-old peccary – otherwise known as an ancient pig. In fairness to Osborn, the similarities between human and peccary teeth had already been noted in scientific literature, so it wasn't that wild a guess. Of course, that didn't stop creationists from pouncing on the mistake. 5. Creating a Monster Long before there was a science called paleontology, people were trying to come up with explanations for giant bones found in the ground. And often, those explanations pointed to mythological creatures. Of all the fairy-tale creatures accused of inhabiting the ancient world, the griffin might claim the most direct connection to actual fossils. Usually depicted in folklore as a lion with an eagle's head and wings, the griffin was said to fiercely guard its gold. The hybrid animal appears consistently in the art of ancient Rome, Greece, and Persia, and its legend apparently originated with Scythian nomads who wandered east toward Mongolia's Gobi desert.  Griifin (left) and Protoceratops fossil So how do fossils fit in? The Gobi is filled with the fossils of both the Protoceratops, a lion-size dinosaur with a birdlike beak, and of the similarly beaked Psittacosaurus. And while there were no massive hoards of gold around, the skeletons were often found guarding something arguably more valuable – hoards of eggs. The ancients were wrong about griffins, but that may have had more to do with misdiagnosing evidence than with legend or superstition. 6. Talk About Your Stale Food Herodotus is considered the world's first historian, but he came this close to also being the world's first paleontologist. While traveling in Egypt, he noticed that the bricks used to build the pyramids had unusual, circular shapes petrified in them. What he saw were the sediment-preserved remains of ancient single-celled organisms. Of course, what he thought he saw were the remains of lentils eaten by the pyramid builders after a hard day of lugging around 2-ton pieces of stone. Herodotus was pretty far off, but he redeemed himself later in his book Histories. In it, he noted that he saw shells in Egypt's mountains, and rather than attribute them to a shellfish feast for pyramid builders, he correctly surmised that the animals lived in a sea that once covered the desert. "The Delta," he wrote, "is formed of the deposits of the river, and has only recently, if I may use the expression, come to light." Regardless, by overlooking the importance of the organisms he found, Herodotus unintentionally delayed for centuries the discovery of one of science's most important fields. He made his observations in the 5th century BCE, and it took until the 1700s for serious thinkers to realize they were looking at extinct animals. We're just saying, he could have saved us all a lot of time. 7. Lady in Red  Reverend William Buckland When it comes to the battle between faith and science, it's hard to be more conflicted than William Buckland. Both an ordained Anglican priest and a top-notch anatomist, Buckland holds the claim to fame for finding the oldest human remains on record – only he didn't believe that's what he'd found. As a Biblical literalist, Buckland strongly supported the notion of Noah's flood. So, when he made a groundbreaking discovery by digging up prehistoric elephant and hyena bones in a Yorkshire cave in 1822, he concluded that they simply belonged to animals that had perished in the flood. But that wasn't all. A year later, while excavating a Welsh cave full of prehistoric animal remains, Buckland found a human skeleton deep in the sediment. Stained red by the surrounding iron and wearing ivory beads, the "Red Lady of Paviland" was, according to Buckland, a woman of ill-repute linked to the nearby remains of a Roman camp (as it couldn't possibly be as old as all the other bones around it). Later research identified it as a 27,000-year-old man, but Buckland was too caught up in his religious devotion to accept the idea of ancient people in his homeland (or that a man would wear such extravagant jewelry). 8. A Tender Subject  An illustration of Scrotum humanum and the book containing it. The first time a scientist attributed a fossil to an actual dinosaur was 1677, when museum director Robert Plot identified a bone fragment found in Oxfordshire, England, as part of the thigh bone of a (human) giant. Nearly 100 years later, scientist Richard Brookes gave the unknown species the unfortunate name Scrotum humanum because, well, the fossil did resemble a giant man's nether regions when positioned a certain way. Naturally, it was (drum roll, please) William Buckland who found other pieces of the dinosaur nearby and gave the specimen the more suitable name Megalosaurus. Don't worry, though. Buckland didn't abandon his flood theory; he just figured this was a really big lizard that had drowned. He did, however, make the fossil the subject of the first-ever formal scientific paper on dinosaur remains. 9. Iguana Fix This After its discovery in 1822, the Iguanodon became one of the first dinosaurs to achieve celebrity status. Depending on whom you believe, the massive plant-eater's tooth was found by either Dr. Gideon Mantell or his wife. Regardless, Gideon was the one who realized the fossil came from an extinct category of reptile much larger than any still around. Thanks to Mantell's obsessive drive to find more bones, Iguanodon turned into a bit of a sensation, helped along by sculptor Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, who made life-size models of Mantell's animal. Most famously, at an 1853 dinner at London's Crystal Palace, 21 prominent scholars dined inside Hawkin's scale model of an Iguanodon.  The Crystal Palace Iguanodon These sculptures were true to Mantell's description of the animal. Unfortunately, that vision was terribly, terribly wrong. Among the mistakes? The animal walked on all fours (it turned out to be a biped) and had a horn on its nose (the hornlike bone was actually a spiked thumb). The Iguanadon has since undergone a massive makeover, as did Mantell. After his wife left him, he moved to London and became a full-time paleontologist. In 1838, he sold his fossil collection for the then-massive sum of 4,000 pounds (about $20,000). 10. For the Birds  Archaeopteryx fossil photographed in 1880. There've been plenty of hoaxes in paleontology, from Piltdown man to the Cardiff Giant. Yet what makes the story of the Archaeopteryx so painful is that it wasn't a fake at all. The animal's crime? Sharing features with both birds and dinosaurs, and being discovered around the time that Darwin's On the Origin of Species was stirring up so much trouble. The first Archaeopteryx fossil was found in 1860, and it was nothing more than an impression of a feather. Though initially skeptical, German paleontologist Hermann von Meyer verified that it was an ancient feather – but maybe not from a bird. So, a month later, when the same limestone quarry yielded a headless reptilian skeleton with the imprints of attached feathers, von Meyer looked pretty smart. While a number of key scientists needed to see it for themselves before believing the thing was real, other anti-Darwin paleontologists (most notably Andreas Wagner of Germany and Sir Richard Owen of Great Britain) jumped at the chance to dismiss the animal as a full-on reptile rather than a step on the evolutionary path to birds. But they were wrong. Later, when the clear reptile-bird link became indisputable, anti-evolutionists went from nitpicking the classification to calling the whole thing a hoax. As recently as 1990, physicist Lee Spetner famously (and falsely) claimed that the feathers were added to a reptile fossil by making impressions in cement and adding it to the mix. Despite efforts to smear their good name, six Archaeopteryx skeletons have now been found, all with the same bird-reptile blend. _______________________________ The article above, written by Jeff Fleischer, is from the July-August 2007 issue of mental_floss magazine. It is reprinted here with permission. Don’t forget to feed your brain by subscribing to the magazine and visiting mental_floss‘ extremely entertaining website and blog today! |
With two Snow White movies coming out in theaters next year, it seems like an appropriate time to explore the original story itself. As it turns out, there are two true inspirations for the tale, both covered in detail over on Mental Floss. A lot of the details you recognize are included, for example:
The remains of Bolivia’s dead get to see the light of day once more during the Day of the Skulls, when the skulls of the loved ones are dug up and paraded around town.
Apparently so, according to a new large-scale study that found older brothers, statistically speaking, actually have higher IQs than their younger siblings:
Can a Catholic university that's so Catholic that it's actually called Catholic University of America, be too Catholic?
Many businesses will be offering free stuff or discounts to veterans and active duty military on Friday the 11th -Veterans Day. If you are, or know a veteran, don’t let the day slip by without taking advantage. You deserve it! Most will require proof of service. Some participating restaurants include:
Ah, the sacrifices that lab mice made. All that perfectly seared tiny organic burger that they have to eat. You know, for science.
"Smaller is better" is a hot automotive trend these days, but if you think your Mini is small, take a look at these one-molecule "nano-cars" than run on electron fuel:
Suzanna Bolton of Darwen, Lancashire, England, has an African Grey parrot named Sam and a Pomeranian named Sally. Sally was due to deliver puppies in a week when she went into premature labor in the middle of the night. Sam responded by jumping into Bolton’s bed and saying “Come on, come on,” in Bolton’s voice.
Author Sam Harris writes about the possibility of violence and how one should respond to it. Real-world crime is different from what we are used to seeing on TV dramas. The article lines out three principles of self-defense, with the overreaching goal being to avoid violence if at all possible.
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