A bumblebee in Great Britain recently set a record for the longest recorded flight (by a bumblebee) when scientists released it 8 miles away from its home and the bee still found its way back. The scientists still don’t know exactly how the bumblebee pulled off this stunt. Anyone else suspect performance enhancing nectar?

Link from Live Science.

What better way to end your workweek than with a dose of complete and utter slackitude? That is, if you’re even still at the office. Yeah, we saw you trying to sneak out early, but we know you were just trying to emulate these guys:

Famous Figures Who Never Held Day Jobs

Socrates: Aside from a possible brief stint as a sculptor, Socrates seems to have spent most of his hours ambling around the agora — the gymnasium where Athenians exercised, which was also Athens’ central public meeting place and marketplace. When he wasn’t milling about the town, the old philosopher could be spotted going to parties and loitering in taverns where citizens and foreign guests gathered. All this isn’t to say the poor guy enjoyed the lush life. Socrates lived and dressed simply, wore neither shoes nor shirt, and owned only one coat. He also ate poorly, lived hand to mouth, relied heavily on the charity of his friends, and refused gifts when they were offered. Like, for instance, the time his friend Charmides offered to give him slaves who could have made money to support him. He also refused to accept presents from powerful leaders of Greek cities, not wanting to ever compromise his integrity. When the great philosopher was put on trial for allegedly teaching sacrilege, Socrates tweaked the Athenian assembly by suggesting that far from being a criminal, he deserved free room and board at their expense. Unamused, they condemned him to death.

Two more three-toed edentates after the jump.

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What?! You haven’t been reading my Forbidden Friday posts all day? How could you?! Oh, you’re gonna regret this, mister, ’cause I’m so angry I could scream! I’m gonna hurt you! Just as soon as you finish reading about:

Historical Bar Brawls

Truckee, California: One of the best barroom brawl scenes isn’t plucked from an old classic or Western, but rather from a real-life saloon in Truckee, California. In 1891, Jacob Teeter was the constable and James Reed the sometimes deputy of Truckee. But over the years, their friendly rivalry (they always ran against each other for constable) escalated, and the constable-deputy feud finally exploded on November 6. That’s the day James Reed and a couple of his pals happened upon Teeter in the local bar. A fight ensued and Reed grabbed Teeter’s gun. Embarrassed, Teeter left the bar only to return later on a mission. As Reed walked by, the constable shot point-blank at his deputy. The problem was, he missed. He did, however, succeed in shooting a hole through the hat of a man sitting at the next table. Anyway, the stir set patrons diving in all directions, and Reed pulled his gun (actually the one he’d taken from Teeter) and shot him four times. Teeter died and Reed turned himself in to the law. Instead of being arrested, though, Reed was released and at the coroner’s inquest the next day was found innocent by reason of self-defense. However, it appears that Teeter got the best of old Reed in the end. His oversized gravestone lies prominently in the Truckee cemetery, while Reed lies quietly in the same cemetary, condemned to an unmarked grave.
Editor’s note: The brawl at Truckee was bad, but not nearly as bad as the pic implies — the photo is of the Truckee nuclear-bomb test that took place in 1962 on Christmas Island in the Pacific.

Two more raging fights after the jump.

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I thought I’d turn to the physical today and look at word fonts. Well, not so much the actual fonts themselves (because let’s face it, we’d be here all blog), but the word, font.

Our English word has its roots not in the Old English font, which comes from the Latin word for “fountain,” but the Middle French fonte, which means “melted” (what I’m feeling right now in this dreadful Los Angeles heat wave!).

But why melted? Because originally, typefaces were not available in convenient drop-down windows, but rather cast from molten metal. In the 1450s, when the invention of moveable type came along, they were cast from an alloy of lead, antimony, and tin.

For hundreds of years, the English-speaking world used the spelling fount, which we in the States eventually changed to font. Just as we lost the “u” their colour. (Sorry Brits!)

Thanks to computers, the American spelling is now generally accepted as the universal word for typeface.

As for the fonts themselves, check out this cool site where you can make a font from your own handwriting! Link via our reader, Marcy.

This weekend I just finished reading Jonathan Lethem’s Fortress of Solitude (which is messy, and poetic, and beautiful, and has a lot of great scenes featuring early hip-hop culture in Brooklyn in the 70s and 80s), and it made me think back on this clever/political British graffiti artist I read about in Esquire named Banksy. Anyway, this guy is too fascinating to ignore, so I figured I had to post about him.

Some facts (from Wikipedia): “Banksy (born 1974) is a prolific graffiti artist from Bristol, UK, whose artwork has appeared throughout London and other locations around the world… His original street art form, which combines graffiti with a distinctive stenciling technique, has achieved a certain underground notoriety and widespread coverage in the mainstream media. Despite this attention, he carefully manages to keep his real identity hidden.”

• At London Zoo, he climbed into the penguin enclosure and painted ‘We’re bored of fish’ in two metre high letters.

• In August, 2005, Banksy painted 9 images on the Palestinian side of the Israeli West Bank barrier, including an image of a ladder going up and over the wall and an image of children digging a hole through the wall. (note, I’ve posted a few below)

• In June 2006, Banksy stencilled an image of a naked man hanging out of a bedroom window on a wall in central Bristol, England. The image sparked some controversy, with the Bristol City Council leaving it up to the public to decide whether it should stay or go. After an internet discussion in which 97% (all but 6 people) supported the stencil, the city council decided it would be left on the building

He also has more than a few books out, with lovely, punny titles like “Wall and Peace” and “Existencilism.” Anyway, I’ve posted some of his work below, but here’s a link if you’re interested in seeing more.

If you haven’t eaten lunch by now, you might want to do that right now, because you’re certainly not going to want much to eat or drink after reading these thorougly unappetizing and cautionary tales from Forbidden Knowledge. Hey, don’t say we didn’t warn you:

Deaths Caused by Overindulgence

Henry I: Henry I wasn’t exactly given the throne. As the third son of William the Conqueror, Henry became king only after one of his older brothers died and he’d beaten the other out of the throne. He had quite a run of it, though, reigning for a good 35 years — that is, until he was toppled by one-too-many lampreys. If you’re not familiar, a lamprey is a nasty-looking beast of a fish with a round mouth that can reach three feet in length. And it’s as mean as it looks. Lampreys will attach themselves to other fish, rasp a hole in them, eat their flesh, then detach, leaving an often fatal wound. They are, however, reputed to be great eating (fit for a king, in fact), especially if you like meaty fish with a high fat content, which Henry clearly did. Sometime before Christmas, England’s king sat down to a heaping platter of the fatty fish, ate a few too many, and breathed his last.

Two more food fiends after the jump.

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Being a huge fan of old computer and video games (I used to use my Texas Instruments computer like a security blanket way before Tandys were popular), I saw this Andy Roddick commercial and thought it was too clever not to post. It’s like a thin slice of Nerdvana. Unfortunately, Roddick seems to have bad back injuries right now and I’m not sure if he’s going to be playing in the US Open. Still, if he uses this sort of cunning on the court, maybe he can play through the ailments. Click here to see the video (via Adfreak).

Reuters is reporting today that police have ordered a British woman to take down a sign from her front yard that reads “Our dogs are fed on Jehovah’s Witnesses.” And while her neighbor just recently complained that the sign was offensive (incidentally, the only dog the woman owns is a terrier puppy named Rabbit), she’s actually had the sign up for more than 30 years to keep door-to-door evangelists away. And while the sign story is somewhat interesting, I’m actually surprised that Reuters didn’t pick up on this instead: the most amazing strange sign gallery on the web. Dubbed the Hall of Technical Documentation Weirdness, it’s just a collection of bizarre (unPhotoshopped!) signs. I can’t tell you what most of them mean, but I can tell you I love them. Anyway, don’t thank me, thank the folks at Neatorama for the link.

Oh, the list of blogs we envy: Boingboing, Gawker, Engadget, the HuffPo… Cory, Jessica, Pete, Arianna, link to us! We’ll love you forever, when we’re not cursing you for being so huge!

Er, sorry, the following folks’ inferiority complexes must have rubbed off on us:

Musicians Who Always Felt Cheated

Big Mama Thornton: In 1953, while playing at New York’s Apollo Theater as part of the “Hot Harlem Revue,” Thornton was asked by composers Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller to record a song they had written for her. Thornton recorded “Hound Dog” and the single quickly sold nearly two million copies. As we all know, though, a young rockabilly recording artist with Sun Records named Elvis Presley also recorded said song and the rest is history. For her recording of “Hound Dog” and the two million copies sold, Thornton received one chek for a whopping total of $500. Of course, that wasn’t her only hit. Big Mama’s song “Ball and Chain” became a huge hit for her in the 1950s. However, most of us remember that tune as the version recorded in the 1960s by another booming voice — Janis Joplin’s. Like so many African American artists before her, Big Mama Thornton never received the financial and historical rewards she was due.

Two more nice guys who finished, well, not first after the jump.

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I know you’re all looking forward to the Weekend Word Wrap (wait for it!), but I thought I’d get Friday rolling with a new section I’m going to call IQ-Tips. (ed. note to Johnson & Johnson: we’re happy to lend you our brand name!)

In the end, these weekly tips might not increase your IQ all that much, but you’ll still probably be glad to have ‘em, if only to arm you with yet one more piece of trivia that’ll impress your friends.

Today’s IQ-Tip is simple: Wash your sponges.

Yes, I realize the implied silliness in the idea, but if you have a dishwasher, throwing your sponges on the top shelf every time you run it will not only increase a sponge’s “sinklife,” but will also have it smelling like new again.

My mother, who’s visiting from back east, is the one who suggested it when the condition of our sponges caused her to screw up her face like she’d just smelt spoiled milk.

Embarrassed, I tried it yesterday. And whaddaya know? It works!