Save water, stay organized, and clean blinds quickly with these inexpensive items.
Also: 
Abbey Fleck was 8 when a greasy mess sparked her idea for the popular Makin' Bacon Dish.
Also: 
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Indoor farms: The future?
Sunlight isn't necessary and rainfall is irrelevant in this novel approach to crop growth.
Also: 
The Flappers' Dictionary
Jim Lewin received a stack of old magazines at his used bookstore that included some issues of The Flapper from the 1920s. A July 1922 issue contained “The Flapper’s Dictionary,” a glossary of hot slang terms of the time, which he posted in its entirety.Here’s a small sample:
Absent Treatment—Dancing with a bashful partner.Ask your grandmother (or great-grandmother) if she remembers some of these words.
Airedale—A homely man.
Alarm Clock—Chaperone.
Anchor—Box of flowers.
Apple Knocker—A hick; a hay-shaker.
Apple Sauce–Flattery; bunk.
Barlow—A girl, a flapper, a chicken.
Bank’s Closed—No petting allowed; no kisses.
Barneymugging—Lovemaking.
Bee’s Knees—See “Cat’s Pajamas”
Bell Polisher—A young man addicted to lingering in vestibules at 1 a.m.
Bean Picker--One who patches up trouble and picks up spilled beans.
Berry Patch--A man's particular interest in a girl.
Berries--Great.
Biscuit--A pettable flapper.
Big Timer--(n. masc.)--A charmer able to convince his sweetie that a jollier thing would be to get a snack in an armchair lunchroom; a romantic.
Hidden art in Woody Woodpecker
Did animation pioneer Shamus Culhane secretly slip his own abstract paintings into 1940s Woody Woodpecker cartoons? Apparently so, according to cartoon historian Tom Klein writing in the new issue of Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal.
From the New York Times:
“Culhane essentially ‘hid’ his artful excursions in plain sight, letting them rush past too rapidly for the notice of most of his audience,” Mr. Klein writes in the 15-page article, titled “Woody Abstracted: Film Experiments in the Cartoons of Shamus Culhane.” In the article Mr. Klein describes Mr. Culhane, who was credited in his work then as James Culhane, as a devotee of the avant-garde. He was influenced by the writings of Russian theorists like Sergei Eisenstein and Vsevolod Pudovkin, Mr. Klein writes, and spent evenings at the American Contemporary Gallery in Hollywood. There, he watched films by Fritz Lang and Jean Renoir, might have seen paintings by Oskar Fischinger and definitely “was inclined to wear a beret.”
Mr. Klein writes that one of (Culhane's) experiments was a two-second piece of an explosion in “Woody Dines Out,” from 1945. He finds the frames “improvised like visual music” in what Mr. Culhane acknowledged in his autobiography, “Talking Animals and Other People,” was an Eisenstein-inspired moment.
The longest such experimental sequence was in the seven-second steamroller smash-up in “The Loose Nut,” also from 1945. And, later in that cartoon, Woody is blown into an abstract configuration that Mr. Klein, in his article, calls “the convergence of animation and Soviet montage.”
Man Discovers That The Old Cup That He's Been Using as a Plinking Target Is Worth $99,000
When he was a boy, John Weber, 70, was given an old cup by his grandfather. He assumed that it was just a worthless piece of brass and occasionally used it for target practice with his air rifle. Eventually, Weber decided to have it appraised, and experts concluded that it was a 2,300-year old Persian gold cup of enormous value. It sold at auction for £50,000 in 2008.
Memo reignites UFO claims
A declassified FBI file provides an intriguing account of the New Mexico legend.
Also: Maine man teaches legal pot growing techniques
Truly creepy mansions
Ghastly rumors and notorious former owners haunt these empty, once-regal U.S. estates.
Also: The Eleven Most Neglected Deities in Teutono-Norse Mythology
Edward Wozniak latest work is a rundown of lesser-known members of the Scandinavian pantheon.
For example, you might not be familiar with the goddess Hel.
For example, you might not be familiar with the goddess Hel.
The goddess who ruled over the land of the dead which shared her name, the name which by some accounts evolved into the common word Hell. She was the daughter of Loki by the female Jotun Angerboda and her siblings from that union were the Fenrir Wolf and the Midgard Serpent. She ruled the land of her namesake from her castle, called Sleetcold, and was often pictured with a body that was half light and fair and half dark and decomposed. Hel was assigned her position by Odin himself and, as a reflection of the hard Viking world-view those sent to her were the souls of any who died of sickness or old age. Their miserable existence in her gloomy realm was in stark contrast to the joyous existence of the brave souls who died in combat, who feasted and drank nightly with Odin in his dining hall Valhalla.
Counting Sheep 2.0
The simplest cure for insomnia: get comfortable and close your eyes, and then replay your day in your head, in every detail possible, from the moment you woke up.
The Paris Syndrome
Ah, Paris, the City of Lights. Every year, more than 45 million people visit the city but roughly about 1 million of those starry-eyed tourists (mostly Japanese) fall sick with what has been dubbed the Paris Syndrome – what could cause such a strange effect?
Dan Lewis of Now I Know (That’s Half the Battle!) explains:
Paris Syndrome is marked by a psychiatric breakdown suffered by the visitor, often including physiological side effects such as dizziness, an increased heart rate, and otherwise unexplained sweat. Extreme cases come with increased anxiety, a sense of persecution, and even hallucinations. Most of those affected are Japanese, but on occasion, a non-Japanese tourist will fall prey to the syndrome.
The cause? Most likely, it’s a mix of a few factors: jet lag from the long trip; elation (similar to Stendhal syndrome) from taking a once-in-a-lifetime vacation; the language barrier; and, most critically, culture shock. As the BBC noted in its discussion of Paris Syndrome, "[m]any of the visitors come with a deeply romantic vision of Paris [but the] reality can come as a shock. An encounter with a rude taxi driver, or a Parisian waiter who shouts at customers who cannot speak fluent French, might be laughed off by those from other Western cultures. But for the Japanese – used to a more polite and helpful society in which voices are rarely raised in anger – the experience of their dream city turning into a nightmare can simply be too much." And, also according to the BBC, the Japanese embassy there takes culture shock seriously, staffing a 24-hour hotline for citizens and expats who suffer culture shock while in La Ville-Lumière.
Strange Addictions
Alcohol, drugs, nicotine, caffeine … You can get addicted to a lot of stuff, but how about "tanorexic’s" addiction to tanning, addiction to nasal spray and even an addiction to reading?Clinical psychologist Jeff Gardere of Healthguru lists some of the world’s most unusual addictions: here.
School bans homemade lunch
A Chicago public school adds a strange new twist to the growing battle over what kids eat.
Also: Tea 'is key weapon' against Taliban
Drinking chai - tea - is a key weapon in the fight against the insurgency in Afghanistan, a senior Army officer has said.Stress wrecks intestinal bacteria
Stress not only sends the human immune system into overdrive – it can also wreak havoc on the trillions of bacteria that work and thrive inside our digestive system. Culinary DeLites
A Hardee's 2/3 lb. Monster Thickburger has a diet-destroying 1,320 calories.
Also: Denny's Offers Bacon Sundaes
Bacon makes a classic ice cream sundae even more awesome. We start with maple-flavored syrup, and a scoop of rich, creamy vanilla ice cream and then a generous sprinkle of our diced hickory-smoked bacon. Add another sweet layer of syrup and vanilla ice cream topped with even more bacon and a drizzle of syrup.
New hot pepper trumps rivals
A fiery breed with a name worthy of pro wrestling sets a blistering mark on the Scoville scale.
Also:
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
