mental_floss magazine - where knowledge junkies get their fix

mental_floss magazine - where knowledge junkies get their fix subscribe to mental_floss magazine subscribe now give a gift renew magazine what is it? current issue back issues blog blogger bios archive trivia most important questions vocab rehab quizzes fact library store t-shirts back issues books gifts gift certificates more wednesday, november 14th, 2007 caption contest #3 by david - november 13, 2007 - 7:51 pm we’re back with another caption contest! today’s cartoon was illustrated by regular _floss reader, the multi-talented robert bonotto. to repeat the rules, the idea here is quite simple: your job is to come up with a gag. make us smile, make us laugh, extra-points for those who are able to drop some interesting fact or trivia along the way. we’ll narrow down the entries to our favorites and then let you guys pick one winner. as with last time, when dropping your gag in the comments, also let us know which t-shirt you prefer in case your caption is selected the winner. (t-shirts can be found over in our store.) lastly, if you’re good with the pen and think you’d like to contribute a cartoon of your own for a future caption contest, or want to pitch me an idea for one, please leave a comment and i’ll be in touch with you via e-mail. click cartoon to enlarge 34 comments »send this post » suggest a topic/link » absinthe comes to america: welcome, old friend by becky - november 13, 2007 - 5:43 pm i’ve touched on absinthe before, but i’m going to revisit it in honor of a friend who is currently planning the la launch party of one of the two absinthes imported sans trouble into the u.s. one is the french brand, lucid (!), and the other, kübler, debuted just weeks ago from sweden. and neither are green! a party pumping kübler absinthe into the probably-planning-on-driving-at-some-point crowd, well, it makes me shudder. vehicle-free partiers in nyc are likely to party harder; indeed, the nytimes indulged in a salubrious meditation on the fairy and its new brands yesterday: one reason legal barriers have fallen is that, as the new yorker reported in 2006, the regulated chemical thujone, found in wormwood and once thought to have been the cause of absinthe’s lure and its dangers, did not show up in any significant quantities in analyses of historical absinthe. so these authentic replicas, despite containing wormwood, do not pose a legal challenge. and the alarmed pronouncements about absinthe made from the beginning of the belle Époque have been proved groundless, which was decisive, a kübler spokesman said, in swaying united states government regulators. has anyone tried these new brands? nymag does a taste test of the two here. even though absinthe is now legal here, and clear as any other high-proof ether, i feel like i’m going to be seeing pictures i don’t want to see in star soon–a gaggle of celebrities huddling in a booth somewhere, lighting up, bending down, and shooting the stuff. and hopefully quitting while they’re ahead. but maybe i’m overreacting: maybe a bit of vintage 1863 good stuff is harmless compared to downloading gallons of brew. what do you think? 5 comments »send this post » suggest a topic/link » feel art again: surrender of lord cornwallis by andréa - november 13, 2007 - 4:09 pm the past few days included veterans day (monday) and the anniversary of john trumbull’s death (saturday). in honor of both, let’s take a look at trumbull’s 1820 painting, “surrender of lord cornwallis,” which celebrated the end of the revolutionary war. 1. john trumbull’s artistic achievements are impressive, especially since, as a child, the artist lost the use of one of his eyes. 2. lord cornwallis claimed sickness and did not attend the surrender ceremony, though many believe he only feigned sickness because he was so upset at the loss. whatever his reason, his second-in-command, gen. o’hara (on foot, center), handed over the sword of surrender instead. george washington, meanwhile, had heard of cornwallis’ plan, and chose to send his own second-in-command, gen. lincoln (on horse, center), to receive the sword. although washington was not present at the ceremony, trumbull depicted him (on the right, on the brown horse) anyway. (more…) 3 comments »send this post » suggest a topic/link » the nintendo historian quiz redux by mangesh & jason - november 13, 2007 - 1:30 pm twenty-five multiple-choice questions covering the glory years of the nintendo entertainment system. put your useless knoweldge to the test. take brett savage’s latest challenge. the nintendo historian quiz 2: a masters-level sequel. then brag about your high score. (if you were absent the day of the first quiz, take a make-up here.) 12 comments »send this post » suggest a topic/link » walking the walk for breast cancer by ransom - november 13, 2007 - 10:11 am i don’t know what people with other diseases do to cope, but those who’ve been affected by breast cancer — they walk. a close relative of mine is a survivor, and last weekend my wife did the san diego breast cancer 3-day walk in her honor. it ain’t no walk in the park, neither: you walk 20 miles a day for three days, camp in tents at night and there are hills a-plenty. (but hey, blisters don’t need chemo. hence one of the 3-day’s official rules: “no whining!”) as someone who maybe walks 60 miles in a year, i was truly humbled watching 4,500+ women (and a few valiant dudes) walk, and sometimes hobble, across the finish line, many overcome with emotion, having collectively raised $12.3 million for breast cancer research. today i’m sharing some of my photos from the event, along with some facts about breast cancer. • women in the united states have a 1 in 8 chance of developing breast cancer during their lifetime, and a 1 in 33 chance of dying from it. • the patron saint of breast cancer is saint agatha of sicily. • william stewart halsted pioneered the mastectomy in 1882. his procedure, which became known as the halsted radical mastectomy, was performed regularly into the 1970s. (more…) 8 comments »send this post » suggest a topic/link » spam as art by higgins - november 13, 2007 - 8:45 am every time i check my spam folder, i’m amused by the subject lines. they seem to fall into two categories: first, there are human-edited lines that try to trick me into clicking; second, there are crazy nonsense subjects, presumably assembled through some algorithm (most appear to use markov chains). i can usually distinguish the randomized stuff from subjects written by a human — today i received the clearly human subjects: “customer notification,” “congratulations!!!!!,” “talk to me,” and so on. bor-ing. where it gets interesting is when the human-written stuff has some (unintentional) artistic merit, or when the randomized stuff borders on plausible. for example, i also received spam today with the subject “but gabe henderson,” which seems to imply much deeper content than the random pseudo-poem about “replica watches” contained in the message body. we’ve covered spamusement, an online cartoon based on spam subject lines (including the famous “you were wrong cabinet sanchez”), and before that spam poetry and eloquent spam. but as spammers continue to hit us with both randomized and handcrafted come-ons, the use of spam as art is also evolving. take linzie hunter’s spam one-liners, a flickr set featuring nice textual treatments of spam subject lines including: what to look for when buying a repl1ka watch, no more lonely nights for linzie, and you’ll love the new non obese you. nice. file spamshirt under ideas i wish i’d had — it’s a tee shirt company which prints spam subject lines on shirts. (check out the gallery.) there’s even an art exhibition devoted to spam-as-art. sónar 2007 will feature a bunch of spam artists, and provides links to their work online. (best bet: the spam letters.) all this art coming from something so crass and awful gives me great hope for humanity. as soon as someone finds a way to make robocalls into art, sign me up. comment »send this post » suggest a topic/link » 50 reasons to subscribe to mental_floss (#44, nicknames!) by the mag - november 13, 2007 - 8:29 am with the holidays just a few months away, we’re introducing a new feature where we sift through 6 years of print archives and give you a smattering of the best of the _floss. if you dig what you see, subscribe here. 9 nicknames for natives what to call elsewherians (and why!) by mark peters while the meanings of monikers such as ethiopian, hobokenite, and earthling aren’t hard to suss out, it’s a little tougher to guess where to find a moonraker or a zonie. and why the heck are oklahomans called “sooners,” anyway? we’re not sure when rand mcnally and noah webster teamed up to create these wild nicknames, but after hearing the origins, we’ll happily applaud their creativity. 1» moonraker so, how’d the residents of wiltshire, england, end up with this fancy nickname? legend has it that around 1787, some brandy smugglers were on the run from the five-0, so they dumped their booze in a pond. they narrowly escaped, but were later caught fishing for their brandy. when the cops asked them what they were doing, the creative bootleggers played dumb—pointing to the moon’s reflection and claiming (in all seriousness) they were fishing for cheese. apparently, the police bought it, and the name “moonraker” stuck. 2» zonie zonie is a derogatory term for the crowds of arizonans who descend upon san diego each summer, presumably to escape the ungodly heat in their zonie homeland. san diego newspapers feature plenty of references to the “zonie factor,” and many residents long for a “zonie-free” environment. regularly used in that area, it’s a good term to know. just don’t get it confused with a zonian, one who lives in the panama canal zone, or a bizonian—someone who lived in the post-wwii british/american zone in germany. 3» sooner most people know this term refers to an oklahoma resident, because of the state’s successful football team. but on the field, actual sooner-type behavior would result in a false-start penalty. fact is, a sooner is a too-early bird. it seems that many settlers entered oklahoma before the legal time for settlement in april 1889, thereby beating out any law-abiding suckers who followed the rules and moved in on time. soon after, “sooner” came to mean both an oklahoman and anyone who jumps the gun. hoosiers, knickerbockers, elsewherians and bunnies all after the jump! (more…) 13 comments »send this post » suggest a topic/link » tuesday turnip by david - november 13, 2007 - 2:40 am it’s time for another whimsical tuesday turnip search wherein i type a random phrase and we see what kind of interesting factoids “turn-up.” today i typed in “it has been said that” unearthing the following curious tidbits: it has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. i have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first. - ronald reagan it has been said that we need just three things in life: something to do, something to look forward to and someone to love. it has been said that arguing against globalization is like arguing against the laws of gravity. - kofi annan it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried. - sir winston churchill it has been said that the love of money is the root of all evil. the want of money is so quite as truly. - samuel butler it has been said that man is a rational animal. all my life i have been searching for evidence which could support this. - bertrand russell. it has been said that there is more caffeine in tea than in coffee, can that be true? it has been said that columbus was inspired to discover the new world after hearing a story in an irish port. what was the port, what was the story and did columbus really visit ireland? 4 comments »send this post » suggest a topic/link » november 13, 2007 by miss cellania - november 13, 2007 - 1:00 am what do you do when your boeing 767 runs out of fuel in midair? this is not a hypothetical question; it happened in 1983. top 20 logical fallacies. you know these by your common sense; now you‘ll be able to explain them. how to build your own folding table and/or sandwich sign. this will come in handy when you have a lot of company for the holidays. 12 financial retirement strategies for women. the best financial retirement tip of all is to plan way ahead. the weird world of body modification. if it can be changed, someone will change theirs. 3 comments »send this post » suggest a topic/link » inventions timeline quiz by david - november 12, 2007 - 9:33 pm for all those who enjoyed ordering scenes in when harry met sally, i bring you another in a series of timeline quizzes, this one dealing with inventions. think you know which came first, the hacky sack or the computer mouse? the safety pin or bi-focals? give this inventions timeline quiz a whirl and find out! 6 comments »send this post » suggest a topic/link » raelity check by becky - november 12, 2007 - 9:12 pm we have the raeliens to thank for so many things, not least of all the human cloning company, clonaid, and the sadly defunct raelien theme park, ufoland. the canadian park, before its recent closure, featured the largest hay structure in the world, along with the tallest dna structure–it measured 26 ft. rael (née claude vorilhon) is the founder of the religion; his initiation dates back to december of ‘73, when he was a sports journalist living and working in france. he was loitering in a crater one night when he was solicited by a small flying saucer, and the alien therein. besides his religious pursuits, he is a singer/songwriter (album pictured) and former professional race car driver! membership is estimated at 60,000, and when the wapo sat down with rael in 2003 he elaborated: they are not accepted until they read rael’s first book, “the message given by extra-terrestrials.” then they receive a raelian baptism, in which a raelian priest puts his hands in water and cleanses the new member. the group is nonprofit, he says, and no member gets paid a salary. and there is no commune — the members live among us. for instance, one of the men in the room is a bartender, another a composer, another a scientist. (more…) 3 comments »send this post » suggest a topic/link » stuff you don’t know about writers you might by mangesh & jason - november 12, 2007 - 2:55 pm last week, we discussed notable strikes in american history. today’s topic: notable tv writers. the idea came from newcomer matthew smith, who collaborated with mental_floss veterans stacy, david, becky and kara to dig up stories about some of tv’s greatest scribes. 1. j.j. abrams j.j. abrams, who is the co-creator, writer, director and executive producer of lost, has written for some very-unlost-like movies including armageddon, taking care of business and forever young. he also created and wrote for the tv show felicity. 2. shonda rhimes shonda rhimes of grey’s anatomy also wrote the script for britney spears’ bomb crossroads. she got the inspiration for grey’s from working as a candy striper in high school. 3. b.j. novak (===>) b.j. novak (ryan howard), writer/actor of the office, went to high school with fellow castmember john krasinski (jim halpert). krasinski acted in one of novak’s plays while in school. two of his on-screen co-workers are also writers: paul lieberstein (toby, hr director) and mindy kaling (kelly, ryan’s enthusiastic ex-girlfriend). three if you count steve carell, who wrote the season two finale. 4. marc cherry marc cherry, writer/producer/creator of desperate housewives, received his first major writing credits on the golden girls. his first job in the industry was as a personal assistant to dixie carter of designing women. ms. carter’s manageability came into question when cherry cast her on housewives as the wicked and maniacal gloria hodges. (more…) 9 comments »send this post » suggest a topic/link » cute animal videos: the trifecta by ransom - november 12, 2007 - 10:18 am youtube has become an invaluable resource to ‘net surfers (not to mention bloggers) everywhere, and while it may be an impressive storehouse of great short films, historic and ephemeral footage, sometimes-brilliant vlogs and bizarro scavenger hunts, the site’s crowning achievement has been its collection of cute animal videos. the temptation to aim video cameras at one’s pets, and then share the results with the world, must be impossible to resist — that’s the only way i can explain why pets are so overrepresented on the internet. but with great quantity, sometimes, comes occasional quality; the one benefit to having access to millions of cute animal videos is that some of them are actually pretty cool, and the cream tends to rise to the top. dramatic prairie dog this is like a full-motion lolcat. excerpted from a japanese tv show which is anything but dramatic, a little editing and music made this clip into internet magic. witness for yourself: (more…) 9 comments »send this post » suggest a topic/link » understanding your nerd by higgins - november 12, 2007 - 10:01 am nerd culture is ascendant: i recently covered the “tact filter” theory, an attempt to explain communication style differences between nerds and, well, normal people. becky asked what is a nerd, anyway? prompting a discussion of what makes a nerd. heck, we’ve even discussed nerdcore hip hop! now i bring you a wonderful find for those who know and love nerds, but need help understanding them. written as sort of a “nerds are from mars…” (actually, where would nerds be from? deep space 9? pluto?) guide for nerds’ significant others, the nerd handbook explains nerd habits and motivation. while the article seems focused on computer nerds specifically, many of the nerd behaviors described are applicable to the entire nerd spectrum. here are some samples: understand your nerd’s relation to the computer. it’s clichéd, but a nerd is defined by his computer, and you need to understand why. first, a majority of the folks on the planet either have no idea how a computer works or they look at it and think “it’s magic”. nerds know how a computer works. they intimately know how a computer works. when you ask a nerd, “when i click this, it takes awhile for the thing to show up. do you know what’s wrong?” they know what’s wrong. a nerd has a mental model of the hardware and the software in his head. while the rest of the world sees magic, your nerd knows how the magic works, he knows the magic is a long series of ones and zeros moving across your screen with impressive speed, and he knows how to make those bits move faster. your nerd has built himself a cave. i’ve written about the cave elsewhere, but here are the basics. the cave is designed to allow your nerd to do his favorite thing, which is working on the project. if you want to understand your nerd, stare long and hard at his cave. how does he have it arranged? when does he tend to go there? how long does he stay? read the nerd handbook (warning: some coarse language) for a nuanced, intelligent guide to the care and feeding of your nerd. if you like that, there’s lots more nerdy stuff at the author’s blog, rands in repose. (via daring fireball.) 3 comments »send this post » suggest a topic/link » 50 reasons to subscribe to mental_floss (#45, gary larson) by the mag - november 12, 2007 - 9:12 am gary larson is a huge hero of mine. we begged and begged his handlers to ask him to draw a mental_floss cover for us, and though he refused, the far works group agreed to let us run a bio on him, and they were happy to fact check it for us. (apparently, most of the other major bios on him on the web are filled with inaccuracies, including the piece i really loved from salon.) in any case, i figured there’d be a few of you out there who might enjoy this delicious work by kelly ferguson. just in case you’re unsure whether to read on, though, i’ve attached one of the two sidebars from the text here… sidebar 1: my bologna has a first name believe it or not, the dayton daily news has managed to switch the captions for “the far side” and “dennis the menace”—twice. in the more hilarious mix-up, both cartoons featured “kids” complaining about their food, but— because of the typo — “the far side” panel featured a young snake griping to his parents with the line: “lucky thing i learned to make peanut butter samwiches or we woulda starved to death by now.” meanwhile, dennis complained, “oh, brother! … not hamsters again!” larson was the first to note that both cartoons were vastly improved. gary larson’s full story, after the break. (more…) 6 comments »send this post » suggest a topic/link »   -  next posts »» karaoke and the tone deaf man who dreamed it up the amish love baseball: 5 true and unusual facts about amish culture confessions of a tv-holic: 5 stars who never wanted the part 14 strange tales about rfk (including his embarrassing debate with reagan?!) quiz: match the manly celebs to their girlie middle names the lassie experiment: will fido save you in an emergency or just let you die? japanese tv shows have the best pranks, like these from a ski resort. a new kind of rollerblade looks both dangerous and goofy. what $100 oil means for your wallet. how to build your own folding table and/or sandwich sign. what do you do when your boeing 767 runs out of fuel in midair? the oxford word of the year is "locavore." a short history of women inventors and scientists. top 20 logical fallacies. robot chicken: dinosaur armageddon. five tips for creating a decent password. 12 financial retirement strategies for women. scientists deleted long stretches of dna in mice and found ...it didn’t make any difference. how many famous faces do you recognize in this picture? human clones: new u.n. analysis lays out world’s choices. volkswagen test drives. w00t! insects look oh-so-gorgeous in the hands of the right photographer. 10 simple, sure-fire ways to make today your best day ever. research sites that simulate living and working on mars are in use in the arctic and in the desert. 10 black friday secrets retailers don’t want you to know. the most bicycle-friendly cities in the world. "monogamy" is much more interesting than it sounds. public housing for homeless alcoholics costs less than letting them live in the streets. are your cooking spices too old? evil bee, a cool animated music video. sites we likeadfreak american inventor spot arts & letters daily bbspot.com blogcritics boing boing bunnyshop cartoon brew collision detection cracked.com dealbreaker defamer defective yeti design*sponge digg dump trumpet etff.net eurekalert fark g4 gazpachot gawker go fug yourself happy scrappy how stuff works the huffington post idea festival ken jennings live science manolo's shoe blog mcsweeney's mediabistro neatorama new scientist ohgizmo! pennylicious popgadget popurls proceedings of the athanasius kircher society science daily seed shiny shiny slashdot slate snopes the cellar: image of the day the history channel the morning news the raw feed treehugger wired wonkette worth 1000 ze frank about contact us submissions advertise subscriptions press privacy policy

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