Neatorama

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• Margie’s Meatloaf Mecca
• Medieval Cover of Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance"
• Could Solar Storms Destroy Civilization?
• A New Weapon Against Malaria-Carrying Mosquitoes
• What We Need To Do If We Want To Colonize Mars
• The Small Protein That Has A Great Impact
• For Nine Years, One Man Has Been Receiving Pizzas That He Never Ordered
• Sunlight May Help You Sleep More At Night

Margie’s Meatloaf Mecca Posted: 08 Jun 2020 04:46 PM PDT Margie's Meatloaf Mecca is the talk of Athens, Ohio. The restaurant serves only meatloaf and strawberry milk. On the restaurant's website, proprietor Margie Pandora boasts of three kinds of meatloaf ("moist, dry and drier") and strawberry milk that uses a half cup of strawberry powder for each glass. A billboard in Athens says the restaurant is "coming soon," but the sign has been up since October, and there is no restaurant at the address. And there never will be. OU alumni John Sammon and Steve Dimatteo are the geniuses behind this enormous prank. According to Sammon, his friend, Margie Pandora, got married in December, and he decided he wanted to surprise her when she came to her bachelor party in Athens. "I do marketing, and a couple of my other friends who were in on this are in marketing as well," Sammon said, adding he is now an owner of an advertising agency. "So we basically created a fake business and put up a billboard to kind of just have some fun with her ahead of the wedding because she's our good friend." Sammon and Dimatteo worked together to come up with the most ridiculous business they could think of, and they decided on Margie's Meatloaf Mecca, a restaurant that only sells 'moist,' 'dry,' and 'drier' meatloaf alongside strawberry milk. "Because it's in Athens, it's like … it's gotta be fake, but there's also an element to it where it could be real, so that's the fun of all of it," Sammon said. The pranksters only paid for one month of billboard space, but the advertising company sees no reason to take it down ...until they are completely out of inventory, we suppose. It certainly draws attention, and the website draws traffic. You can even buy merchandise with Margie's Meatloaf Mecca on it, including face masks. Read the story of Athens' totally fictional restaurant at The Post. -via Metafilter

Medieval Cover of Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" Posted: 08 Jun 2020 11:04 AM PDT Hildegard von Blingin' (not Saint Hildegard of Bingen, 1098-1179) is a musician of the bardcore style. She takes modern songs back in time to the middle ages. Her discography includes "Pumped Up Kicks" by Foster the People and "What Is Love" by Haddaway. -via Nag on the Lake

Could Solar Storms Destroy Civilization? Posted: 08 Jun 2020 10:11 AM PDT The sun is the source of all our energy, in one way or another. Could it also be the source of our eventual destruction? This is the latest apocalyptic question presented by Kurzgesagt. However, the earth has some reassuring protections. The giveaway in the title is "civilization," which doesn't mean human life, but the technology we depend on. We've gotten along without it before.

A New Weapon Against Malaria-Carrying Mosquitoes Posted: 08 Jun 2020 10:11 AM PDT With malaria claiming around 400,000 lives annually in the African region, the battle against the carriers of this disease, mosquitoes, still rages on. In this new study, a new material has been proven to be an effective insecticide against these tiny yet deadly creatures. What's more, it's even more effective than the regular pesticide, which the mosquitoes are becoming more and more resistant to. The volcanic glass material used in this new intervention is perlite, an industrial mineral most frequently used in building materials and in gardens as a soil additive. The tested insecticide created from perlite, called Imergard WP, can be applied to interior walls and ceilings—and perhaps even inside roofs—as an indoor residual spray. The spray contains no additional chemicals, is not toxic to mammals and will be cost effective. Early results show that mosquitoes do not appear to have resistance to the perlite spray. More details about this study over at PHYS.org. (Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

What We Need To Do If We Want To Colonize Mars Posted: 08 Jun 2020 10:11 AM PDT Colonizing astronomical bodies, such as our neighbor planet, Mars, as well as our very own Moon, has been humanity's dream for decades now. Countless novels and films have already imagined what this would look like, should it happen. But before this dream could be fulfilled, some scientists say that we may need to do something first if we really want to settle down on other places other than Earth — we may need to tweak our DNA. Crewed missions to Mars, which NASA wants to start flying in the 2030s, will be tough on astronauts, exposing them to high radiation loads, bone-wasting microgravity and other hazards for several years at a time. But these pioneers should still be able to make it back to Earth in relatively good nick, agency officials have said. It might be a different story for those who choose not to come home, however. If we want to stay safe and healthy while living permanently on Mars, or any other world beyond our home planet, we may need to make some tweaks to our species' basic blueprint, experts say. Of course, this would probably be a controversial topic, as this would lead to bioethical discussions. More about this over at Space.com. What are your thoughts about this one? (Image Credit: geralt/ Pixabay)

The Small Protein That Has A Great Impact Posted: 08 Jun 2020 10:11 AM PDT If there's a place where we wouldn't be able to say "it's just a small thing, don't worry about it," it would be in the microscopic world, where even the smallest of changes could cause the worst of effects. This statement is demonstrated by a protein used by meningococci bacteria, which causes deadly diseases like meningitis and sepsis. The said protein is called ProQ. The RNA-binding protein ProQ is involved in the activation of more than 250 bacterial genes. ProQ ensures that meningococci can better repair their DNA if damaged and it makes them resistant to oxidative stress. Both these factors contribute significantly to the bacteria's pathogenic properties. [...] "We were surprised that a comparatively small protein can have such a great influence on bacterial gene regulation," says Christoph Schoen, professor at the Institute of Hygiene and Microbiology at Julius-Maximilians-Universität (JMU) Würzburg in Bavaria, Germany. ProQ only consists of about 120 amino acids. By comparison, many other proteins are usually made up of several hundred amino acids. More details about this study over at EurekAlert. (Image Credit: Alexandra Schubert-Unkmeir / University of Wuerzburg/ EurekAlert)

For Nine Years, One Man Has Been Receiving Pizzas That He Never Ordered Posted: 08 Jun 2020 10:11 AM PDT In the beginning, Jean Van Landeghem of Turnhout, Belgium assumed that the pizza delivery driver had the wrong address. That made sense for the first pizza. Then the pizzas kept coming over and over again, even from different restaurants, like a specter in a bad horror movie. The Bussels Times reports: "It can be on a weekday or during weekends, and at any time of day. [The orders come from] delivery services in Turnhout, but also from the surrounding area. I have even had orders delivered to me at 2:00 AM," Van Landeghem said. "I cannot sleep anymore. I start shaking every time I hear a scooter on the street. I dread that someone will come to drop off hot pizzas yet another time," he added. One day in January 2019, Van Landeghem said, ten different delivery men showed up at his house, one of which had 14 pizzas with him. Van Landeghem has sworn revenge against his mysterious foe: He reported the false deliveries to the police several times, he said, but he still has no idea who the person harassing him is. "I cannot take it anymore. When I find out whoever has been bothering me for the past nine years, it will not be their best day," he said. Unrelated photo by ms.askr

Sunlight May Help You Sleep More At Night Posted: 08 Jun 2020 08:12 AM PDT Sunlight may just be one of the best gifts that you can receive daily in life for free, provided that you don't take too much of it. One of the best-known benefits of sunlight is that it helps us synthesize vitamin D, which helps us in maintaining enough calcium levels (calcium homeostasis) as well as skeletal integrity. The vitamin also helps in brain development. Aside from the sunlight triggering the vitamin D synthesis in the human body, it also helps in cancer prevention, as well as in treating several skin conditions. Now, new benefits from sunlight have been suggested: it helps people sleep more at night, and it also helps them perform better on cognitive tests. Check out the study over at MedicalXpress. (Image Credit: International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (2020). DOI: 10.3390/ijerph17093219)

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