Sure, bad blood and a shared border may be all two teams need to spark a rivalry, but a really bizarre trophy doesn’t hurt, either. Let’s find out how well you know which teams are fighting for giant axes and phones this fall.

Take the Quiz: College Football Trophies

In case you weren’t obsessively refreshing mentalfloss.com all week, here’s what you missed:

1. The Nautical Roots of 9 Common Phrases, by Mark Longo
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2. 9 Tasty Foods Named After People, by Ethan Trex
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3. Run Your Life With Flowcharts! by Miss Cellania
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4. 7 False Acronyms, by David K. Israel
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5. Why Are Barns Usually Red? by Matt Soniak
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6. 6 Multi-Purpose Wonder Bras, by Linda Rodriguez
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There’s a never ending supply of websites featuring pets doing silly, amazing, cute or preposterous things. Why? Because we obviously cannot get enough of them! (there’s a thesis paper in there somewhere, I can sense it). In any case, here’s another one, found by Whitney: Sad Pets in Costumes.
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Sleeping in your own bed after a long trip, being able to carry all the groceries from the car in one swoop, that miracle of science when the amount of toilet paper left on the toll is the exact amount you need – these are just some of the quietly awesome things in life, but here are a whole bunch more: 1000 awesome things.
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We can now officially say “there are plants who have more personality than you!” Apparently, plants have a social life, too
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A beautiful and haunting site: the Suitcase Exhibition: “When Willard Psychiatric Center in New York’s Finger Lakes closed in 1995, workers discovered hundreds of suitcases in the attic of an abandoned building.  Many of them appeared untouched since their owners packed them decades earlier before entering the institution.”
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Feeling fishy? Check out one of these 7 Over-the-Top Aquariums. I am chuffed to see my own Georgia Aquarium here in Atlanta is featured – and yes, those grouper really are that huge!
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When desiring to become an Evil Overlord, there are certain things you should remember: be sure your ventilation ducts are too small to crawl through; never utter the sentence “but before I kill you there’s just one thing I want to know” to the hero; if you have usurped your brother’s power and kingdom, dispose of him and don’t just keep him locked up in a dingy cellar that anyone could access! Of course, these are only a few of the 100 Things any good genre savvy overlord would do.
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I don’t know if anyone else remembers those commercials the NFL used to do toward the end of the season where they would feature fictional pre-season conversations about players who were “certain” to blow up (who turned out to be duds), or teams who were losers (but ended up going almost undefeated), but I loved them. In that same vein, Page 2 looks back at 12 of the least-prescient athletic predictions of the past half-century.
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If you’ve never seen the classic short “Powers of Ten,” I’ve got a treat for you. Created in 1968 for IBM by Charles and Ray Eames (yes, of Eames Chair fame), the film has a very simple premise: start at a static scene, then start zooming out, at one “power of ten” per ten seconds — for example, from 10² meters to 10³ meters. As we zoom out, we see the earth, the solar system, the galaxy, and so forth. Once we reach 10²⁴ meters (the size of the observable universe), the camera then begins a faster zoom-in…and goes beyond the original scene, into the microscopic scale and beyond.

For me, “Powers of Ten” is an educational touchstone — it’s a film I was shown several times in science classrooms, and to this day, I find it captivating in its simplicity and power. All you do is zoom way out and zoom way in — the universe is just a matter of perspective.

For more, check out “Powers of Ten” on Wikipedia, and the official “Powers of Ten” website.

(Thanks to Kottke.org for pointing to this YouTube clip!)

Each photo in this quiz contains two famous actors from one movie. You don’t have to ID the actors, or the characters they played, but you do have to name the movie.

Once you think you’ve got it, type the full name of the movie into the blank box under the photo. And, yes, we know a lot of these look pretty funny, lo-tech, and all that. It’s part of the fun of it! I hope you get as many laughs out of it as I did making it. Truly the most giggles I’ve had putting together one of these quizzes!

Take the Quiz: Movie Actor Mashup Time!

If you have any connections to Egyptology or mummies at all (work in a museum? Have an archaeologist ancestor?), be careful on Sunday. Sunday is the anniversary of the day King Tutankhamen’s tomb was opened, unleashing a powerful curse upon all who dared disturb his eternal slumber.

I mean, if you believe in stuff like that. Here are nine people who might make you believe, and one who should have been a direct recipient of Tut’s wrath but got off with nary a scratch. Now, like any good urban legend, the tale of Tut’s curse has expanded to epic proportions over the years. Some of these are probably exaggerated versions of what really happened… but that’s part of the fun, isn’t it?

1. Lord Carnarvon, the man who financed the excavation of King Tut’s tomb, was the first to succumb to the supposed curse. He accidentally tore a mosquito bite open while shaving and ended up dying of blood poisoning shortly thereafter. This occurred a few months after the tomb was opened and a mere six weeks after the press started reporting on the “Mummy’s Curse” that was thought to afflict anyone associated with disturbing the mummy. Legend has it that when he died, all of the lights in the house mysteriously went out.
2. Howard Carter, who discovered the existence of the tomb, gave a paperweight to a friend, Sir Bruce Ingham, as a gift. The paperweight, appropriately (or inappropriately, I suppose) consisted of a mummified hand wearing a bracelet that was supposedly inscribed with “Cursed be he who moves my body.” I’m sure “and severs my hand to use it as a trinket” was implied. Ingham house burned to the ground not long after receiving the gift, and when he tried to rebuilt, it was hit with a flood.

3. George Jay Gould was a wealthy financier who visited the tomb of Tutankhamen… and fell sick almost immediately afterward. He never really recovered and died of a high fever a few months later.

4. It’s said that Lord Carnarvon’s brother, Audrey Herbert, suffered from King Tut’s curse merely by being related to the financier. Herbert, having had no such problems before, became totally blind. It was mistakenly believed that his rotten, infected teeth were somehow interfering with his vision, and had every single tooth pulled from his head in an effort to regain his sight. Needless to say, it didn’t work. He did, however, die of blood poisoning as a result of the surgery, just five months after the death of his cursed brother.

5. Hugh Evelyn-White was so terrified of the curse that he killed himself before Tutankhamen could. Supposedly – I’ll tell you that I couldn’t find a super credible source to back this one up, so it’s possible that the story of his death has been embellished over the years. Evelyn-White was an archaeologist who helped during excavation. After seeing death sweep over his fellow crew members in 1923, Evelyn-White wrote “I have succumbed to a curse which forces me to disappear,” and hanged himself. One account says he wrote this in his own blood, but take it with a grain of salt. (more…)

Fifty years ago this week, the world was introduced to Rocket “Rocky” J. Squirrel and Bullwinkle J. Moose. An animated television series called Rocky and His Friends debuted on ABC at 5:30 pm on November 19, 1959. In 1961, the show moved to NBC, where it was renamed The Bullwinkle Show and ran until 1964. IGN calls The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show—the collective name for the two series—the 11th best animated series ever, but in my mind it’s second only to The Simpsons (the first 8 seasons anyway).  To celebrate the moose and squirrel’s half-century of existence, here are 11  things you should know about the show and characters.

1. The show was created by producer Jay Ward and cartoonist Alex Anderson, who had worked together on the Crusader Rabbit series. Their initial vision was a show called The Frostbite Falls Revue about a group of animals running a TV station, but the project never got beyond the proposal stage. The next attempt at a new series began with the pilot Rocky the Flying Squirrel. General Mills came on as a sponsor and Rocky and His Friends was born.

2. Instead of hiring animators when production of Rocky and His Friends got rolling, Ward convinced some friends at Dancer, Fitzgerald, & Sample, an advertising agency that had General Mills as a client, to buy the Mexican animation studio Gamma Productions so he could outsource the animation. The plan saved money and the Mexican studio churned work out quickly, but quality was an issue. In early episodes of the show, it’s not uncommon to see characters’ facial hair, costumes and skin tone change color.

3. Bullwinkle is named after Jay Ward’s friend Clarence Bullwinkel, a Berkeley landlord and owner of an Oakland Chevrolet dealership.

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Every Friday, I post a series of unrelated questions meant to spark conversation in the comments. Answer one, answer all, respond to someone else’s reply, whatever you want. Very casual. On to this week’s topics of discussion…

1. Earlier this decade, I had an interview with a big PR firm. The first person I met with asked me where I got my news—I think her exact question was, “What newspapers do you subscribe to?” I told her I read the New York Times and New York Post online. This immediately put me on her “no” list. “You can’t trust what you read online,” she told me. I stressed again that I was reading the same articles she was reading in the printed paper, but she wasn’t buying it. “People can fake those web addresses, you know,” she said. “You don’t know what you’re reading.” What’s the most irrational thing you’ve ever encountered in a job interview?

2. A couple years ago, David Israel asked you to share your favorite punny store names. (His entry: “The Merchant of Tennis.”) I think it’s time to ask again: what great/terrible punny store names have you seen or been to?

3. A couple months ago, for several long days, I had the Perfect Strangers theme song stuck in my head. Usually when that happens, if I listen to the offending song in its entirety, it goes away. But not that time. You know how I got it out of my head? I had to sing along. If someone had hidden a camera in my office, they’d have a YouTube sensation on their hands. The weird thing was, I haven’t seen an episode of Perfect Strangers in many years. What’s the strangest song you couldn’t get out of your head?
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Last week, after asking you to dream up a new theme restaurant chain, I offered a free mental_floss t-shirt to the most creative budding restaurateur. We have a tie. (more…)