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2012/06/06

Neatorama

Neatorama

The Size of a Jelly Molecule as Estimated by Jelly Electrophoresis

Posted: 06 Jun 2012 05:11 AM PDT

Toast with jam
(Image credit: Flickr user Brandie Kajino)

by Gregory J. Crowther
Department of Physiology & Biophysics, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington

 

Despite the importance of jelly as a sandwich ingredient, its molecular structure remains poorly understood. We therefore attempted a preliminary characterization of the jelly molecule using a novel technique we call “jelly electrophoresis.”

Jelly electrophoresis is a methodological cousin of gel electrophoresis, in which a molecule's size is estimated from its speed of travel through a porous matrix. In the case of jelly electrophoresis (see Figure 1), the matrix, in addition to being porous, is generally edible. Details are presented below.

Figure 1. In jelly electrophoresis, the electrophoresis box doubles as a transparent toaster, allowing data to be generated and “cooked” simultaneously. (NOTE: the author's camera lens was covered with a thin layer of jelly.)

Methods

Three samples were placed in separate “lanes” atop a slice of multigrain bread: a tablespoon of jelly, a tablespoon of water, and a small piece of turkey (see Figure 2B). The samples were allowed to migrate vertically through the bread while the experimenter ate lunch, a period of approximately 20 minutes. The bread was then removed from the experimental apparatus for further analysis (see Figure 3).

The water and the turkey, being of known composition, served as molecular weight markers against which to compare the jelly. The molecular weight of water is 18, while turkey is composed primarily of actin and myosin filaments of molecular weight 42,000 and 520,000, respectively.1

Figure 2. Raw data for (A) gel electrophoresis on a mouse muscle extract and (B) jelly electrophoresis on a slice of multigrain bread. Note the slight migration of the jelly down from the top of the bread.

Results

The distances traveled by the samples through the bread are reported in Table 1. The molecular weight marker results were used to construct the standard curve shown in Figure 4, which the author neglected to send to the editor. Based upon this curve, the migration distance of the jelly (0.2 cm) indicates that its molecular weight is approximately 90,000.

Figure 3. A post-electrophoresis piece of bread. (NOTE: the author's camera lens was covered with a thin layer of jelly.)

Discussion

Jelly molecules are surprisingly large. Nevertheless, they migrate through bread at a measurable speed — roughly 0.6 cm/hour, permitting them to pass all the way through a 1.5-cm-thick slice of bread in 2.5 hours. To prevent such behavior, a “crustless sandwich” design, in which the jelly is surrounded by a layer of impenetrable peanut butter,2 should be employed whenever possible.

——-

——-

References

1. Muscle Contraction, C. Bagshaw, 1993, London: Chapman & Hall.
2. For an example of this kind of device, see “Plucked From Obscurity: Crustless Sandwich,” M. Tsipis, Annals of Improbable Research, vol. 8, no. 2, March/April 2002, p. 30.

Acknowledgments

M. Lambeth, D. Marcinek, E. Shankland, and R. Stuppard contributed and/or consumed materials used in this study.

_____________________

This article is republished with permission from the July-August 2002 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. You can download or purchase back issues of the magazine, or subscribe to receive future issues. Or get a subscription for someone as a gift!

Visit their website for more research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK.

13 Weird Facts About Animal Brains

Posted: 06 Jun 2012 04:20 AM PDT

Did you know there is a spider whose brains spill into its legs, that some leeches have 32 brains and that the giant squid eats through its brain? Well then, head over to WebEcoist to learn more about the brains of 13 different creatures.

Link

Watch This Polar Bear Learn to Crawl

Posted: 06 Jun 2012 03:10 AM PDT

(Video Link)

It looks more like an animatronic teddy bear than a baby killing machine. I want one!

Via Cute Overload

Rainbow Unicorn Piñata Gun Shoots Planet-Destroying Confetti out of Its Butt

Posted: 06 Jun 2012 03:00 AM PDT


(Video Link)

It’s all fun and games until a planet gets obliterated. So be careful. Go ahead and make a rainbow unicorn piñata gun by following the instructions at the link, but always observe the four rules of rainbow unicorn piñata gun safety:

1. All unicorns are always loaded.
2. Always keep your unicorn’s butt pointed in a safe direction.
3. Keep your finger off the gullet until the butt is on the target.
4. Be sure of your planetary target.

Link -via The Mary Sue

A Dinner Fit For A Dovahkiin

Posted: 06 Jun 2012 02:09 AM PDT

Mmmm…grilled leeks, grilled chicken breast, baked potatoes and boiled creme tarts, who could resist? Kotaku reader S Galinsky sent in this great Skyrim-inspired meal he made at home. It does look like it was pulled right out of the game.

Link

A Paper Version Of The Prometheus Trailer

Posted: 06 Jun 2012 01:15 AM PDT

(YouTube Link)

If you find the trailer for the upcoming Ridley Scott film Prometheus a little too good looking, maybe this paper version will suit you better.

With some extremely lackluster special effects and a drawing style that would make a five year old feel better about their own scribbles, this is the least spectacular trailer for Prometheus that you’ll ever see!

–via Geek Tyrant

HBO Selling $30,000 Office Chair

Posted: 06 Jun 2012 01:00 AM PDT

The Iron Throne from Game of Thrones is not designed in accordance with modern ergonomics. People have even been known to cut themselves on the thousand swords that were used to make it. Still, everyone seems to want it and is willing to pay enormous costs to get it. Specifically, that’s $30,000 plus shipping.

Link -via Geekologie | Photo: HBO

What Your Favorite Drinks Look Like Under A Microscope

Posted: 06 Jun 2012 12:16 AM PDT

Photographer and beverage enthusiast William LeGoullon decided to explore his love of the liquids on a microscopic level, and these fascinating photos of your favorite beverages are the result.

Pictured above is the beautiful, leaf-like structure of beer, and William’s series includes the other four most consumed beverages- tea, coffee, wine and cola.

It’s like a tour of the wet stuff from an ant’s perspective, and the differences in texture are compelling, but don’t take my word for it-hit the jump and see what you’ve been sipping on!

(previously on Neatorama-Microscoic Views Of Alcoholic Beverages–LINK)

Link  –via DesignTAXI

Scream in Public Without Disturbing People By Using the ScreamBody

Posted: 06 Jun 2012 12:00 AM PDT


(Video Link)

I’ve been reliably and repeatedly informed that it is considered socially inappropriate to scream out in rage and frustration while in public settings. For the moment, let us put aside the debate on that subject and assume that it is indeed so. How can a person trapped in this world release toxic emotions without having unpleasant encounters with law enforcement officers? Kelly Dobson of MIT has provided an answer: the ScreamBody.

The ScreamBody is a polyurethane chamber that you wear around your body. When you scream into it, it absorbs the sound of your despair so that other people do not discover the emptiness and hopelessness of your life.

But there’s more. The ScreamBody also records your screams. Squeeze the device in private and it plays back your wailing so that you can experience your own agony again.

Link -via Swiss Miss

Comedy Short – Reset Your Password

Posted: 05 Jun 2012 11:18 PM PDT

(YouTube Link)

It seems like websites get some kind of sick pleasure from making us change our passwords on a regular basis, and the qualifications for an effective password are becoming more ridiculous every day.

This comedy short from UCB Comedy stars Caitlin Downing as a gal who gets no love when it comes to choosing a new password.

I feel your pain Caitlin, and I hope you have your new password written down somewhere, ’cause that sucker is gonna be hard to remember!

–via Lauging Squid

The (Mass) Transit of Venus Is Less Impressive Than I Thought It Would Be

Posted: 05 Jun 2012 11:00 PM PDT

So it’s the last transit of Venus across the sun in our lifetimes.

I dunno. Kinda of…boring, actually. There are cat videos on YouTube. I think that I’ll go back to them.

Link -via Gizmodo | Photo: Mario R.

Transit of Venus

Posted: 05 Jun 2012 10:55 PM PDT

The Interweb is abuzz over the 2012 transit of Venus, and there are tons of gorgeous images coming out, but my favorites are these two below from NASA.


Image: NASA/SDO,HMI over at NASA Goddard Photo and Video/Flickr

From NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory:

On June 5-6 2012, SDO is collecting images of one of the rarest predictable solar events: the transit of Venus across the face of the sun. This event happens in pairs eight years apart that are separated from each other by 105 or 121 years. The last transit was in 2004 and the next will not happen until 2117.

Links: Venus Transit 2012 page over at NASA | NASA Venus Transit Observing Challenge group pool at Flickr

Joss Whedon, Stan Lee And Other Geek Overlords As HeroClix Figures

Posted: 05 Jun 2012 10:17 PM PDT

If you’re a fan of the tabletop battle game HeroClix then you’re going to love these geek overlord edition figures coming out exclusively with a special edition of the Comic Con documentary- Comic Con Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope.

The set features Joss Whedon, Stan Lee, Morgan Spurlock and Harry Knowles as mighty mini HeroClix figures complete with powers appropriate for each creator.

For instance, Stan Lee can Wade Through Autograph Seekers, and Morgan has the power of Surprise Interview, both very fitting powers eh?!

Look for this special edition boxed set to come out July 2012. Until then get psyched, because Comic Con 2012 is just around the corner! Woohoo!

–via Super Punch

 

Ewok Dress

Posted: 05 Jun 2012 10:00 PM PDT

Some irresponsible hunters eat just the best parts of the Ewok–rump roast, drumsticks, flank steak–and throw the rest of the carcass away. But not Etsy seller Crissy Baker, who made full use of several Ewok hides to create this lovely dress. It even comes with a matching hood so that you can almost look like a real Ewok.

There’s also Chewbacca’s bandoleer. No explanation of how she got that. Presumably she didn’t let the Wookiee win.

Link -via Walyou

Short Film – The Ventriloquist

Posted: 05 Jun 2012 09:16 PM PDT

(YouTube Link)

Being a ventriloquist is a tough gig because people assume you have a few screws loose, and the dummy gets most of the acclaim.

For some, ventriloquism allows them to say whatever’s on their mind, for others it’s just a way to pay the bills, and for a select few the dummy actually becomes their best friend.

This awesome short film stars Kevin Spacey as a man and an obnoxious dummy who are having a hard time relating to humanity.

(barely NSFW due to one bad word)

–via Viral Viral Videos

Runner Helps Falling Competitor across the Finish Line

Posted: 05 Jun 2012 09:00 PM PDT


(Video Link)

Arden McMath started to black out on the track toward the end of the 3,200-meter race. Her competitor, 17-year old Meghan Vogel of West Liberty, Ohio, saw her struggling. Vogel could have passed McNath, but instead she put her arm around her and guided her to the finish line. Vogel’s spontaneous act of sportmanship has won her widespread praise:

It's an honor and very humbling," Vogel said in a telephone interview from her West Liberty home. "I just thought I was doing the right thing, and I think others would have done the same."

But McMath, 16, of Findlay, said in a telephone interview from her northwestern Ohio home that she's not so sure.

"I' really don't think just everyone would have done that," she said. "I just couldn't believe what she did — especially pushing me in front of her — and I'm so grateful."

Link -via reddit

10 Uses for a Survival Tampon

Posted: 05 Jun 2012 08:00 PM PDT

No matter where we go, we should always have tampons with us. Yes, fellas, even we men should do so. It may keep us alive. Creek Stewart, an expert on wilderness survival, has thought of ten practical uses for tampons in the wild. They can be used to make animal snares, blow darts, fire tinder, water filters, fishing bobs and more. So put a tampon in your pocket and make it a part of your everyday carry.

Link

Floating Houses by Laurent Chehere

Posted: 05 Jun 2012 07:00 PM PDT


Photo: Laurent Chehere

It's like the flying house from the movie Up! except the house isn't so cute ... and oh, it's on fire.

You're looking at part of a series called Flying Houses, in which photographer Laurent Chehere took suburban homes and urban apartments and photoshop them flying high up in the clouds.

My Modern Met has the pics: Link

World Shin-Kicking Championship

Posted: 05 Jun 2012 06:00 PM PDT

The Olympics too high brow for ya? Try the Cotswald "Olimpick" then, which features The World Shin-Kicking Championship:

All that is required to enter this event is courage, two feisty feet and as much straw as competitors can shove in your trousers, say event organisers. The idea is to kick opponents' shins until one competitor is brought down, the harder the kick the better.

There are few rules, but competitors are not allowed to simply perform a sweeping manoeuvre as used in Judo. This is very much a full contact sport and stamina is just as important as speed and agility.

Link

How a Mosquito Survives Collision with Raindrops 50 Times Its Weight

Posted: 05 Jun 2012 05:00 PM PDT


[YouTube Link]

A raindrop weighs 50 times a mosquito, so how does the lowly insect survive a collision with it? Mechanical engineer David Hu of Georgia Institute of Technology and colleagues investigated:

The team constructed what it calls a "flight arena," a 20-centimeter-high acrylic cage covered with a mesh top that allowed water in but kept the mosquitoes from escaping. In an initial round of experiments, the researchers shot jets of water into the cage to simulate raindrops falling 10 meters, the height at which they achieve their maximum velocity. Six mosquitoes placed in the cage were then filmed with a high-speed video camera that captured 4000 frames per second.

It was like a game of insect pinball. All six mosquitoes were able to recover from drop impacts without crashing to the bottom of the cage. In one typical example, a mosquito hit by a water drop tumbled a distance of 13 body lengths before separating itself from the drop and flying laterally to land on the side of the arena. To better picture what was happening, the team subjected 20 mosquitoes to drops that were falling more slowly. The videos showed that most of the collisions were glancing blows on the wings and legs rather than on the insects' bodies. The impacts caused the mosquitoes to pitch, yaw, or roll depending on where they were hit.

Link 

Doctor Who Sonic Screwdriver Keychain & Flashlight

Posted: 05 Jun 2012 04:36 PM PDT

Doctor Who Sonic Screwdriver Keychain & Flashlight – $14.95

Father’s Day is June 17th. Are you still looking for the perfect gift for your Doctor Who loving Dad? You need the Doctor Who Sonic Screwdriver Keychain & Flashlight from the NeatoShop. This great little item is shaped like the 11th Doctor’s Sonic Screwdriver.

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Father’s Day gift ideas and amazing Doctor Who items!

Link

 

Zero Day Attack

Posted: 05 Jun 2012 04:00 PM PDT

Charlie Miller spent five years at the National Security Agency where he hacked into foreign computer systems, so hacking the Apple iPhone is cakewalk to him:

Miller’s iPhone offensive showed how anything connected to networks these days can be a target.

He began by connecting his computer to another laptop holding the same software used by the iPhone. Then he typed a command to launch a program that randomly changed data in a file being processed by the software.

The alteration might be as mundane as inserting 58 for F0 in a string of data such as “0F 00 04 F0.” His plan was to constantly launch such random changes, cause the software to crash, then figure out why the substitutions triggered a problem. A software flaw could open a door and let him inside.

“I know I can do it,” Miller, now a cybersecurity consultant, told himself. “I can hack anything.”

After weeks of searching, he found what he was looking for: a “zero day,” a vulnerability in the software that has never been made public and for which there is no known fix.

It's a good thing that Miller actually hacked the iPhone to discover its security flaws so it can be fixed, but "zero day attack" is fast becoming a real nightmare for cyberspace.

The Washington Post has fascinating series of special reports on Zero Day, the first of which is by Robert O'Harrow Jr.: Link

A Future With Superhumans

Posted: 05 Jun 2012 03:30 PM PDT


(YouTube link)

Remember the video How to Survive a Robot Uprising? The guys at Epipheo Studios have again talked with author Daniel H. Wilson, PhD, this time to get his take on new high-tech neural implants and how they will make us super human. -Thanks, Blake!

Babe Magnet School

Posted: 05 Jun 2012 03:00 PM PDT

Some men are born babe magnets, others have to go to school to become one. Oddity Central has the story of one unusual school in Israel that teaches men how to woo the ladies of their dreams:

Courses tackle a variety of topics, from flirting and teasing, charisma, dating, locations for hooking up, to women and money, how to turn a friend into a lover, sex and sexuality, and of course, getting your ex back. Every base is covered at Babe Master, from how to ignore the girl you’re actually trying to get the attention of, to how to walk naturally so not to look stiff and talking to a girl in gradual stages, instead of showering her with words from the start.

Link

Or perhaps you can just watch Will Smith in Hitch instead! 

Eulerian Video Magnification

Posted: 05 Jun 2012 02:30 PM PDT

This one is pretty amazing: a team of MIT researchers have created a technique to amplify small changes in a video clip that enables us to see minute changes that otherwise would've been unnoticeable (see 3:20 where they made a person's arterial pulse visible). They called it Eulerian Video Magnification:

Our goal is to reveal temporal variations in videos that are difficult or impossible to see with the naked eye and display them in an indicative manner. Our method, which we call Eulerian Video Magnification, takes a standard video sequence as input, and applies spatial decomposition, followed by temporal filtering to the frames. The resulting signal is then amplified to reveal hidden information. Using our method, we are able to visualize the flow of blood as it fills the face and also to amplify and reveal small motions. Our technique can run in real time to show phenomena occurring at temporal frequencies selected by the user.

Hit play or go to Link [YouTube]

Hermit Crabs Queue Up To Trade Shells

Posted: 05 Jun 2012 02:00 PM PDT

Biologists studying hermit crabs in a tiny island in the Caribbean Sea discovered something interesting: they're quite civilized!

When a lone crab encountered one of the beautiful new shells, it immediately inspected the shelter with its legs and antennae and scooted out of its current home to try on the new shelter for size. If the new shell was a good fit, the crab claimed it. Classic hermit crab behavior. But if the new shell was too big, the crab did not scuttle away disappointed—instead, it stood by its discovery for anywhere between 15 minutes and 8 hours, waiting. This was unusual. Eventually other crabs showed up, each one trying on the shell. If the shell was also too big for the newcomers, they hung around too, sometimes forming groups as large as 20. The crabs did not gather in a random arrangement, however. Rather, they clamped onto one another in a conga line stretching from the largest to smallest animal—a behavior the biologists dubbed "piggybacking."

Only one thing could break up the chain of crabs: a Goldilocks hermit crab for whom the shell introduced by Lewis and Rotjan was just right. As soon as such a crab claimed its new home, all the crabs in queue swiftly exchanged shells in sequence. The largest crab at the front of the line seized the Goldilocks crab's abandoned shell. The second largest crab stole into the first's old shell. And so on.

Link (Photo: Grook Da Oger/Wikimedia Commons)

Willow Glass: Bendable Ultra-Thin Glass

Posted: 05 Jun 2012 01:30 PM PDT

Corning, the maker of the super-strong Gorilla Glass, has another invention: a new type of flexible ultra-thin glass that may one day be used in your smartphone.

Dubbed Willow Glass, the product can be "wrapped" around a device, said the New York-based developer Corning. [...]

The prototype demonstrated in Boston was as thin as a sheet of paper, and the company said that it can be made to be just 0.05mm thick - thinner than the current 0.2mm or 0.5mm displays.

Link

The Fall of Pinterest

Posted: 05 Jun 2012 01:00 PM PDT

Pinterest may be the Internet's latest darling, but the last safe haven for girls to post wedding gowns and craftsy creations is under attack ... by the rest of the Internet.

See if the castle of Pinterest can repel the attack of the trolls and the memes: Hit play or go to Link [College Humor] (A bit NSFW language)

There’s a Bank Robber in One of 19 Cars in the Intersection: What Would You Do?

Posted: 05 Jun 2012 12:30 PM PDT

There's a bank robber in one of 19 cars at an intersection in Aurora, Colorado. Problem was, the police didn't know exactly which car. So they did something a bit unusual:

Police said they had received what they called a “reliable” tip that the culprit in an armed robbery at a Wells Fargo bank committed earlier was stopped at the red light.

“We didn’t have a description, didn’t know race or gender or anything, so a split-second decision was made to stop all the cars at that intersection, and search for the armed robber,” Aurora police Officer Frank Fania told ABC News.

Officers barricaded the area, halting 19 cars. [...] From there, the police went from car to car, removing the passengers and handcuffing the adults.

“Most of the adults were handcuffed, then were told what was going on and were asked for permission to search the car,” Fania said. “They all granted permission, and once nothing was found in their cars, they were un-handcuffed.”

Even though the police did catch the bank robber, people are now asking whether handcuffing everyone on the spot was a breach of civil rights.

What do you think? Did the police do the right thing? Was it a case of guilty until proven innocent? Or was it a lawful investigative detention?

Erin McLaughlin of ABC News has the report: Link [auto-playing video]

200 Years of Election Art

Posted: 05 Jun 2012 12:00 PM PDT

A new book, Presidential Campaign Posters: Two Hundred Years of Election Art has 100 U.S. political posters that are suitable for framing, going back, well, 200 years. See a sampling of 18 of the posters at Brain Pickings. Shown here is an 1856 poster for Republican presidential candidate James Fremont. Link -via Nag on the Lake

Cat Shenanigans

Posted: 05 Jun 2012 11:30 AM PDT


(YouTube link)

The best laid plans of cats and kittens do oft go awry, or in a word, FAIL. Manouche and Cachou are apparently recreating a cartoon sequence as they play hide and seek. -Thanks, Bicycle Bill!

The Brain Phone Booth

Posted: 05 Jun 2012 10:00 AM PDT

I don’t know what’s more remarkable: that this phone booth is shaped like a brain, or that there is a public phone still existing somewhere. This is an art installation in Sao Paulo, Brazil, where there are at least 100 phone booths. All of them are part of an art project in which 100 artists were invited to make something of them. The stunt is part of a transition phase by the telephone company that is rebranding and repainting the public phone facilities, which will all eventually look the same. The brain phone is the work of artist Carla Pires de Carvalho Fernandes. Link -via Laughing Squid

Perry The Platypus Hydro Canteen

Posted: 05 Jun 2012 09:56 AM PDT

Perry The Platypus Hydro Canteen – $13.95

Summer vacation is starting! Do you know what you are going to do today? Well, whatever you do make sure it includes drinking plenty of water. Building a rocket, climbing the Eiffel Tower, or giving a monkey a shower is thirsty work. Make sure you stay properly hydrated with the Perry The Platypus Hydro Canteen from the NeatoShop. This great water bottle  has double wall insulation to prevent sweating and condensation.

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Water Bottles!

Link

 

Mark Malkoff’s Netflix Challenge

Posted: 05 Jun 2012 09:22 AM PDT


(YouTube link)

Since you pay for Netflix by the month, how low can you bring the price-per-movie down by watching as many as you can? Mark Malkoff tried to find out, by devoting a month to the experiment. I don’t see how he did it, because I couldn’t find anywhere near that many movies I’d care to watch. There’s a list of the films he saw at My Damn Channel. Link -Thanks, Mark!

Previously: Other stunts by mark Malkoff.

Credit Card Survival Tool

Posted: 05 Jun 2012 08:40 AM PDT

This Father's Day, tell your dad that you're proud that he has survived fatherhood with this: the Credit Card Survival Tool from the NeatoShop.

The compact tool the size of a credit card (but a wee bit thicker) packs a lot of functionality into a very small space. Screwdriver? Check. Wrench and ruler? Check and check. It even has a sun compass (whaa?), though honestly, your dad will probably use the bottle opener function the most.

It's a tool every man needs to have! Link | More Tools and Father's Day gift ideas from the NeatoShop!


[YouTube Clip]

Laziest Walrus Colony Ever!

Posted: 05 Jun 2012 08:00 AM PDT


(YouTube link)

This nature clip is less than a minute long, but it pretty near made me fall asleep. These walruses have it made! -Thanks, Marc Ostrick!

Domain Squatting as an Art Form

Posted: 05 Jun 2012 07:00 AM PDT

The Charlotte Bobcats don’t win many basketball games, and they didn’t get much attention nationally until they won the first round draft pick in the NBA lottery. Now a lot of people are looking to find out more about the team, and it’s paying off for Austin Saya and Rickey Kim, the absurdist comedy video team that runs the website CharlotteBobcats.com. Back in 2003, Saya and his father guessed which name the city’s basketball team (formed to replace the Hornets) would select, and registered the domain. It took eight years for Saya to do something with the domain. And it has nothing whatsoever to do with basketball.

In 2011, after finishing his master’s at the Savannah College of Art and Design, Saya and Kim finally met in downtown Los Angeles. They shared an experimental approach toward art and a love for pranks and absurdity. By April, they began making films together. Saya had already flirted with the idea of putting content on CharlotteBobcats.com; he saw the amount of traffic it received, even in its neglected state, and began to consider the possibilities. In early 2011, he filmed a man in an empty room attempting to open a suitcase. There was just one camera angle, and no dialogue, and it lasted 25 minutes.

“We put that video on loop on the website, and it got like 15,000 hits in a few days,” he said. “And later on we discovered on a bunch of sports blogs that people were talking about it, and they were wondering, ‘What’s going on with the Charlotte Bobcats website?’ And it was awesome, because eventually as you went down on the message boards, you’d see they were actually talking about the video, and some of the people would watch it all the way through. All 25 minutes. And the guy doesn’t do anything!”

As Rickey and Austin began making experimental films, they put them on the site. They even designed a logo, a white windowless monolith in a black box. There was an appealing practical aspect to using the site, which was the instant, unwitting audience that came to the site every day in large numbers. But Saya and Kim are pranksters at heart, and they delighted in the artistic absurdity of the situation.

CharlotteBobcats.com is getting a lot of recognition, but the site still makes no money. Saya and Kim are happy with the exposure. Read the rest of the story at Grantland. Link -via Metafilter

The View Over San Francisco

Posted: 05 Jun 2012 06:00 AM PDT


(YouTube link)

Where’s the best place to mount a camera? On a remote-control airplane, of course! How else are you going to get these gorgeous POV shots? This video is part of a series called “Team BlackSheep USA Road Trip,” in which the same technique is used for various awesome locations. Link -via I Am Bored

The Top Ten Strangest Self-Experiments Ever

Posted: 05 Jun 2012 05:12 AM PDT

The following is a guest post from author Alex Boese. It is adapted from his newest book Electrified Sheep: glass-eating scientists, nuking the moon, and more bizarre experiments, which is being released in the U.S. today!

Electrified Sheep tells the tales of some of the most weird and wonderful experiments ever conducted in the name of science. Packed full of eccentric characters, irrational obsessions and extreme experiments, it’s the follow-up to the bestselling Elephants on Acid. Watch as scientists attempt to nuke the moon. Wince at the doctor who performs a self-appendectomy. And catch the faint whiff of singed wool from an electrified sheep.

There’s a long tradition among scientists of using themselves as subjects in their experiments if they can’t find anyone else to volunteer — or if they feel it would be unethical to ask another to take the risk. Self-experimentation can be extremely heroic, but at times may also appear slightly mad. The following self-experiments display more of the latter quality than the former.

Dr. Stapp decelerating

10: The Decelerating Doctor

After World War II, the US Air Force needed to know if pilots could eject from supersonic jets without facing certain death because of the shock of rapidly decelerating from the speed of sound to a near standstill. The transition exposed pilots to forces of over 40 or 50 Gs. (One G equals the force of gravity at the surface of the earth; 40 Gs is like a 7000-pound elephant falling on top of you.) Many doctors believed that 18 Gs was the most a human body could endure, but no one knew for sure. Flight surgeon John Paul Stapp volunteered to serve as the guinea pig in a series of physically brutal experiments to find out.

At Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico, Stapp designed a rocket-powered sled that blasted down a 3500-foot track at speeds up to 750 mph before slamming into a pool of water that brought it to an abrupt halt. It went from 750 mph to zero in one second. Strong restraints made sure that the passenger didn't continue their forward trajectory, though the restraints didn't always work. One test dummy came free of the harness and was catapulted 700 feet through the air.

For his inaugural rocket sled ride, in 1947, Stapp went at a gentle 90 mph. The next day he advanced to 200 mph. And subsequently he kept signing up for more rides, upping his speed, probing the limits of human endurance. Over a period of seven years he rode the sled twenty-nine times.

Each time he rode the sled, the force of the deceleration hammered his body. He repeatedly endured blackouts, concussions, splitting headaches, cracked ribs, dislocated shoulders, and broken bones. One time, in a show of bravado, he set a broken wrist himself as he waited for medics to arrive. The greatest danger was to his eyes. Rapid deceleration causes the blood to pool with great force in the eyes, bursting capillaries and potentially tearing retinas. Even more disturbingly, when a human body comes to a stop that abruptly, there’s a real possibility the eyeballs will simply keep going — popping out of the skull and flying onwards.

An early version of the rocket sled

On Stapp’s final ride on 10 December 1954, this almost happened. Nine rockets propelled him to 632 mph, faster than a .45 calibre bullet. He outran a jet flying overhead. And when the sled hit the water, Stapp experienced a record-breaking 46.2 Gs of force.

Stapp survived, but he later wrote of the experience, “It felt as though my eyes were being pulled out of my head… I lifted my eyelids with my fingers, but I couldn’t see a thing.” He feared he’d permanently lost his vision, but thankfully his eyesight gradually returned over the next few days. However, on account of that final ride, he suffered vision problems for the rest of his life.

9: Self-Surgery

Dr. Evan O'Neill Kane

On 15 February 1921, as the American surgeon Evan O'Neill Kane lay on a table in a hospital waiting to have his appendix removed, he decided to conduct an impromptu experiment — to find out whether it would be possible to remove his own appendix. So he sat up and announced that everyone should step back because he was going to perform the operation himself. Since he was the chief surgeon at the hospital, the staff reluctantly obeyed his strange command.

Kane propped himself up with pillows in order to get a good view of his abdomen. He injected cocaine and adrenalin into his abdominal wall, and then he swiftly cut through the superficial tissue, found the swollen appendix, and excised it.

The entire procedure took thirty minutes. There was only one slight moment of panic when part of his intestines unexpectedly popped out of his stomach as he leaned too far forward, but he calmly shoved his guts back inside his body and continued working. Kane noted he probably could have completed the operation even more quickly if it hadn’t been for the air of chaos in the operating room as the hospital staff milled around, unsure of what they were supposed to do.

Kane enjoyed a full and swift recovery. Fourteen days later he was back in the hospital operating on other patients. He later explained that he had performed the self-experiment both to know how a patient feels when being operated upon, and to better understand how to use local anaesthesia to best advantage.

Dr. Kane operating on himself in 1932

Emboldened by his success, when he needed a hernia operation eleven years later, at the age of seventy-one, he decided to self-operate again. Unfortunately, this second surgery proved more problematic. He never fully regained his strength, came down with pneumonia, and died three months later.

8: Death by Hanging

During the first decade of the twentieth century, while employed as a professor of forensic science at the State School of Science in Bucharest, Nicolae Minovici undertook a comprehensive study of death by hanging. Inspired by his research, he decided to find out, first-hand, what it would feel like to die in this way.

Minovici began his self-hanging experiments by constructing an auto-asphyxiation device — a hangman’s knot tied in a rope that ran through a pulley attached to the ceiling. He lay down on a cot, placed his head through the noose, and firmly tugged the other end of the rope. The noose tightened, his face turned a purple-red, his vision blurred, and he heard a whistling. He lasted only six seconds before consciousness began to slip away, forcing him to stop.

Minovici experiments with auto-asphyxiation

For the next stage of his research, Minovici brought in assistants. He placed the noose around his neck, then the assistants pulled the other end of the rope with all their might, lifting him several metres off the ground. Immediately his eyes squeezed shut and his respiratory tract pinched close. He signalled frantically to be let down.

In this first effort, Minovici lasted only a few seconds in the air before having to signal to be let down, but with repeated practice he eventually managed to endure twenty-five seconds of swinging by his neck.

Minovici hangs by his neck

But one final experiment remained — hanging from the ceiling by a constricting hangman’s knot. Minovici tied the knot, again placed his head through the noose, and gave his assistants the signal. They pulled. Instantly a burning pain ripped through his neck. The constriction was so intense that he frantically waved the men to stop. He had only endured four seconds, and his feet hadn’t even left the ground. Nevertheless, the trauma to his neck made it painful for him to swallow for an entire month.

Minovici's later career wasn't as masochistic. He developed an interest in Romanian folk art and founded a museum that exists to this day.

Johann Wilhelm Ritter

7: The Man Who Married His Voltaic Pile

In 1800, Alessandro Volta announced his invention of the Voltaic pile — the world's first electric battery that allowed for a continuous, steady, and strong flow of electric current. A young German physicist named Johann Wilhelm Ritter (most famous for his discovery of ultraviolet light) took advantage of this discovery to apply the poles of a Voltaic pile systematically to every part of his body.

Ritter applied current to his tongue where it produced an acidic flavor. Shoving the wires up his nose made him sneeze. Touching them to his eyeballs caused strange colors to swim in his vision. Ritter also applied the current to his genitals.

The latter experiment proved rather pleasurable. He wrapped his reproductive organ in a cloth moistened with lukewarm milk, then applied the current. Swelling soon occurred, followed by climax. He had become a pioneer of electro-orgasm. This experiment was made stranger by the fact that Ritter would occasionally tell people he was marrying his Voltaic pile, such as when he wrote to his publisher, “Tomorrow I marry — i.e., my battery!”

A Voltaic pile

If this were the entirety of Ritter’s electrical self-experimentation, it might have been considered only slightly odd. But Ritter kept pushing onward — increasing the current to dangerous levels, forcing himself to endure longer periods of time, and using opium to dull the pain. As a result, his health suffered. Repeated electrocution caused his eyes to grow infected. He endured frequent headaches, muscle spasms, numbness, and stomach cramps. His lungs filled with mucus. He temporarily lost much of the sensation in his tongue. Dizzy spells overcame him, causing him to collapse. A feeling of crushing fatigue, sometimes lasting for weeks, often made it difficult for him to get out of bed. At one time, the current paralysed his arm for a week. And yet he continued on, boasting, “I have not shrunk from thoroughly assuring myself of the invariability of their results through frequent repetition.”

His bizarre self-experiments shocked his colleagues. One reviewer of his work commented, “Never has a physicist experimented so carelessly with his body.” Eventually the abuse took its toll. His weakened condition is believed to have contributed to his death from tuberculosis at the age of thirty-three.

Frederick Hoelzel (age 27) following a 15-day fast

6: Eating Glass

As a teenager, Frederick Hoelzel adopted a strange method of weight-loss. He curbed his appetite by eating non-caloric food substitutes such as corn cobs, sawdust, cork, feathers, asbestos, rayon, and banana stems. His favorite meal was surgical cotton cut up into small pieces, which became part of his daily diet.

Later in his life, during the 1920s, while working as a researcher at the University of Chicago, Hoelzel put this talent for eating unusual substances to scientific use by ingesting a variety of inert materials in order to measure how quickly they passed through his intestines.

He scooped up gravel from the walkway outside the lab, swallowed it down, and recorded that it rattled out into his toilet fifty-two hours later. Steel ball bearings and bent pieces of silver wire each took approximately eighty hours to pass through him. Gold pellets moved at a leisurely pace through his intestines, only emerging after twenty-two days. Glass beads proved far quicker, speeding through his alimentary canal in a mere forty hours. His intestinal speed record was set by a piece of knotted twine that zipped through him in a mere one-and-a-half hours, aided along by a violent bout of diarrhea.

Hoelzel continued these unappetizing experiments daily for many years, well into the 1930s. In fact, Christmas was the only day of the year he took a break from this grim fare, to allow himself a small, but plain meal of entirely digestible food.

Frederick Hoelzel in 1955, age 65

(via Life Photo Archive)

The extreme diet left him skeletally thin. An unnamed reporter who visited the lab in 1933 wrote, “His hands are like those of an invalid, white, blue-linen and bony, his Adam’s apple stands out from a scrawny neck, and his skin is colourless except for a network of fine blue lines, especially under his eyes.”

Hoelzel never became a full professor, only attaining the rank of “Assistant in Physiology” at the University of Chicago. He was more widely known by the nickname the press gave him: The Human Billy Goat.

5: Stung by a Spider

Dr. Allan Walker Blair

In November 1933, University of Alabama professor Allan Walker Blair used a pair of forceps to place a female black widow spider against the index finger of his left hand. Immediately the spider sunk its chitinous claws into his skin, twisting its body from side to side as if to drive them in deeper. Blair held the spider in this position for ten seconds, as its venom entered his body.

Blair later explained his actions as part of an experimental study of the effects of the bite of the female black widow on man. A curious aspect of this experiment was that the effects of the bite were already known. As Blair himself noted, a fellow entomologist, William Baerg, had conducted a similar self-experiment twelve years earlier. Baerg had been rushed to the hospital nine hours after being bitten, where he spent three days tossing and turning, wracked by nightmarish, feverish pain. Blair was not only aware of this, but decided to allow the spider to bite him for twice as long as Baerg had risked. As a result, his suffering was proportionately greater.

Within minutes after the bite, Blair began to experience severe muscular cramps that made it difficult for him to breathe. Two hours later, he was writhing on the floor, perspiring profusely, and had to be rushed to the hospital. By the time he reached it, his blood pressure had dropped dramatically. The attending physician later commented, “I do not recall having seen more abject pain manifested in any other medical or surgical condition. All the evidences of profound medical shock were present.”

A black widow and its cocoon

Despite the agony he was experiencing, Blair insisted the hospital take electrocardiograms to determine the effect of the venom on his heart. He told the staff that it felt like torture to lie still as they hooked up their equipment, but somehow he forced himself to suffer through it, and the measurements were found to be normal, not differing significantly from ones taken two days before he was bitten.

Blair’s agony didn’t let up for several days. At one point, he became so delirious that he feared he was losing his mind. Thankfully, after a week the worst was over and he was allowed to return home. However, he continued to experience an itching sensation all over his skin for several more weeks.

Based on this self-experiment, Blair concluded what may have seemed rather obvious to everyone else — that the bite of a female black widow spider is indeed “dangerously poisonous for man.”

4: A Cold Excursion

Throughout his career, Cambridge physiologist Joseph Barcroft conducted self-experiments in which he pushed himself to the very edge of insanity and death. He referred to these as his “borderland excursions”.

Some of Barcroft’s early excursions included volunteering to be exposed to hydrocyanic acid gas (aka prussic acid) during World War I. A dog in the gas chamber with him died in ninety-five seconds, but Barcroft waited ten minutes before stumbling out with the dog in his arms.

Sir Joseph Barcroft in his lab

A decade later Barcroft sealed himself inside an airtight glass chamber to test the effects of living in a low-oxygen environment. After six days in an atmosphere equivalent to that found at an altitude of 16000 feet, his entire body turned blue.

However, Barcroft’s most dramatic excursion occurred in 1931 when he decided to investigate the effects of freezing on mental functioning. He stripped naked and lay down on a table in a refrigerated chamber in the Woods Hole Research Center. At first he shivered and curled up to stay warm. He found it difficult to maintain the willpower to remain in the room. He kept thinking, “I could just walk out of here now,” but he persevered, and after about an hour a strange mental change occurred. All sense of modesty disappeared. Suddenly he didn’t care if someone unrelated to the experiment might walk in and find him naked. The cold had turned him into a flagrant nudist.

But even more strangely, as he described to an audience at Yale University in 1936, “the sense of coldness passed away, and it was succeeded by a beautiful feeling of warmth; the word ‘bask’ most fitly describes my condition: I was basking in the cold.”

Barcroft was probably fast approaching a state of potentially lethal hypothermia. Thankfully a research assistant outside the chamber noticed something was amiss and rushed in with a blanket and warm drink to save him. Barcroft survived his ordeal without ill effect and lived to be seventy-four, at which age he dropped dead while riding a bus.

3: Death Diary

Cocaine was the first local anesthetic used in medicine. Its use brought many benefits by allowing surgeons to avoid having to rely on more dangerous general anesthetics. Nevertheless, occasionally patients had bad reactions to the drug. In an effort to find out why this was the case, the Nebraska proctologist Edwin Katskee gave himself a large injection of cocaine on the night of 25 November 1936. He then recorded the clinical course of his symptoms in notes written on the wall of his office. As it turned out, the amount of cocaine he gave himself was so large it proved fatal. The media described his note-filled wall as his “death diary”.

A portion of Katskee's 'Death Diary'

Katskee scrawled the notes in no apparent order, but it was possible to piece together their chronology by the decreasing legibility of his handwriting. An early note recorded: “Eyes mildly dilated. Vision excellent.” The cocaine caused bouts of paralysis and convulsions that came in waves. In between one of these bouts he wrote, “Partial recovery. Smoked cigarette.” High up on the wall he scribbled, “Now able to stand up.” And elsewhere, “After depression is terrible. Advise all inquisitive M.D.’s to lay off this stuff.”

In one spot, in a shaky hand, he recorded his “Clinical course over about twelve minutes”. This ended with the word “Paralysis,” which tapered off into a wavy scrawl descending to the floor. It was probably the last word he ever wrote.

The press debated whether Katskee was the victim of a self-experiment that went wrong, or whether he had simply committed suicide. His family argued it was clearly medical research gone wrong, pointing out that investigators found an antidote at the scene, which, for some reason, Katskee had failed to give himself — perhaps the effects of the drug prevented him from doing so.

Or perhaps Katskee had hoped to end his life in a way that would benefit science. In which case, his death was even more tragic, because when his notes were subsequently examined by one of his medical colleagues, the doctor concluded they were so incoherent as to be of no scientific value whatsoever.

Giovanni Battista Grassi, Worm Incubator

2: A Diet of Worms

On 10 October 1878, the Sicilian doctor Giovanni Battista Grassi was conducting an autopsy when he found the large intestine of the corpse to be riddled with tapeworm (Ascaris lumbricoides) and their eggs. Grassi immediately realized he could ingest some of the eggs and prove it was possible to infect oneself with tapeworms in this way.

However, in order to conduct his experiment properly, Grassi first needed to determine that he wasn't already infected. So he fished the eggs out of the intestines and placed them in a solution of moist excrement, where he could keep them alive indefinitely. Then he microscopically examined his own faeces every day for almost a year to confirm his lack of infection.

Finally, on 20 July 1879, he felt confident he was free of worms, so he spooned 100 of the eggs out of their faecal home and swallowed them down. A month later, much to his pleasure, Grassi experienced intestinal discomfort and then found tapeworm eggs in his stool. His experiment was a success. Having confirmed his infestation, he treated himself with an herbal anti-worm medicine, and flushed the immature parasites out of his body.

Ascaris lumbricoides and eggs

After the example set by Grassi, self-infection with worm eggs became something of a gruesome rite of passage among parasitologists. In 1887, Friedrich Zschokke and his students at the University of Basel ingested tapeworm eggs and grew worms up to six feet in length in their intestines. In 1922, the Japanese paediatrician Shimesu Koino set a record by consuming 2000 mature Ascaris lumbricoides eggs, giving himself such a full-blown infection that he began coughing up larval worms from his lungs. And as late as 1984, the Soviet researcher V.S. Kirichek reported sampling worm eggs he found in the brains of arctic reindeer.

1: The Sensitive Testes

In 1933, either Herbert Woollard or Edward Carmichael had weights stacked on his testicles for the sake of science. It’s not possible to say exactly which one of these London-based doctors bore the unusual burden, because while both participated in the experiment, only one of them lay on a table and suffered the scrotal compression. The other one did the stacking. They never revealed who served in which capacity — nor how they chose who was to be the unlucky one.

Herbert Henry Woollard (left) and E.A. Carmichael

Their motive for this self-experiment was to better understand referred pain — the mysterious phenomenon in which injury to an internal organ causes pain to be felt elsewhere in the body. For instance, a heart attack may cause the sensation of pain in the arm. The two doctors noted that, of all the internal organs, the testicles were the most “accessible to investigation” and therefore seemed ideal for a study of referred pain.

During the experiment, the subject lay spread-eagled on a table, exposing his genitals. His colleague stooped over him and gripped the other man’s scrotal sac, drawing it forward and gently cradling it in his hand. He then rested a scale pan on a single testis, and carefully piled weights onto the pan, recording the reaction of the subject with each increase of weight.

One of Woollard and Carmichael's charts of testicular pain

Their results, which appeared in the journal Brain, were rather spare on colorful details. They described the agony of the victim only in dry, clinical details. For instance, they reported that 300 grams of weight produced slight discomfort in the right groin, while 650 grams caused severe pain on the right side of the body. However, they did confirm that injury to the testicles does cause pain to be referred throughout the body. For instance, as the weight on the testicle increased to over two pounds, the subject reported pain “of a sickening character” not only in his groin but also spreading across his back.

Woollard and Carmichael conducted a number of variations of the experiment, in which they numbed nerves leading to the testes in order to determine how this would alter the sensation. This produced the interesting finding that, even though they eventually numbed what they believed to be every nerve leading to the testes, they couldn’t entirely abolish the pain of compression. The testes are highly sensitive organs!

Their results remain the definitive word on this subject since no other scientists have ever repeated the experiment.

If these stories fascinate you, you’ll want to read about many more strange experiments in the book Electrified Sheep: glass-eating scientists, nuking the moon, and more bizarre experiments by Alex Boese. It is available starting today at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and at a book store near you.

Also visit Alex at his website, The Museum of Hoaxes.

Previous posts from Alex Boese on Neatorama: Hippo Eats Dwarf: Phony Technology, Eleven Days Awake, and The Lassie Experiment: Will Fido Save You in an Emergency Or Just Let You Die?
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