While I’ve heard of everything from chocolate body wraps at Hershey Park, to nibble fish treatments in China (which we reported on last week), this is the first I know of a health resort that’s tried to recreate the experience of cooking up a bowl of Ramen noodles. According to TheCellar, bathers are expected to find the peppery aromas and brown water (intentionally colored that way to resemble pork broth) comforting. Of course, the Ramen noodle bowl is just one of the many unusual food-themed spa experiences you can have at Japan’s Hakone Kowakien Yunessun park. Other baths include a beer bath, a green tea bath, and a disturbingly red, red wine bath. Link via the always terrific TheCellar.

Bite Down to Change Songs

My least favorite part about the iPod is having to always stop running to pull it out to switch songs. The researchers at Osaka University must have had me in mind when they came up with a creative new way to control a music player- teeth. They’ve designed a piece of head gear that detects when the user is clenching their teeth, which can then be used to control a music device. Clenching on the left skips a song, while clenching on the right side makes a song start or stop. They say this dental technology could also be adapted for cell phones, slide presentations and wheelchairs. If it catches on, then temporomandibular joint disorder could be the new carpal tunnel.

Why Brad Pitt is hot

It’s commonplace for companies to use attractive people in their commercials; T-Mobile had Catherine Zeta-Jones, Coors Light had the Coors Twins and GEICO has those cavemen. What, you don’t think the cavemen are sexy? Actually, it turns out that ancient cavemen had facial structures like those of attractive men today. A group of researchers studied dozens of skulls from southern Africa and found that the males with a relatively small upper face (upper lip to brow) lived on in evolution and attracted the most mates. Ironically, this accompanied a decrease in the size of the canine teeth, so they looked less threatening. Among today’s men that fit the “hot caveman” facial structure: Kanye West, Brad Pitt, David Beckham and the granddaddy of the scrunched face, Will Smith.

Judge Not by the Color of One’s Skin

Martin Luther King Jr. once dreamed of a day when we wouldn’t judge people by the color of their skin, but I bet he never dreamed about the day when we would change the color of people’s skin. Scientists discovered skin cells called keratinocytes that can control how much pigment is present in a person’s skin. They think these cells can be manipulated to create more convincing cosmetics and skin grafts, making the new skin blend in well with a person’s original skin. Feel free to toss in any Michael Jackson joke you choose.

PLUS: Speedy T-Rexes and Why bees will help us live forever, all after the jump! (more…)

I’ve always been fascinated by orchestras and how each one has its own personality. It’s impossible, for example, to mistake the Philadelphia Orchestra for the Russian National Orchestra, especially if they’re both playing a Shostakovich symphony. This is partly due to traditions and customs, but also has a lot to do with the conductors that helped bring each orchestra to prominence.

Philadelphia has always been known for its lush string section and, at least in the past, would often slow bigger pieces down a little so the strings could really open up. Other orchestras, like the Boston Pops, largely due to its association with Maestro/composer John Williams, have become synonymous with film scores, especially of the Spielberg variety.

For reasons still unclear to me, The London Symphony Orchestra long ago decided it was THE rock orchestra and have recorded orchestral versions of Sting’s music, Frank Zappa’s, Led Zeppelin’s, Yes’, The Beatles, The Who, Genesis (!), the list is endless and a bit comical. For a while there, they were also the orchestra that did a lot of Bernstein musicals like Candide and On the Town. During some of those years, I had the privilege of working with the LSO and Maestro Michael Tilson Thomas and often asked the musicians what the deal was with the orchestra and rock’n’roll. The closest I ever got to a believable answer was that many of the best rock bands came out of London, so it only made sense that the LSO be the go-to group. To which I always wondered: well what about the London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO) or the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO), or any of the other wonderful ensembles they’ve got over there?

So.. as already noted, many orchestras have become connected with famous conductors—maestros who’ve helped shape not only the repertoire the orchestra has become known for, but the actual sound. Here’s a new quiz I put together where you have to match 10 of the most famous orchestras with 10 conductors who helped put them on the musical map. Get out those air-batons and give ‘em a tap, tap, tap. And then come on back and let us know if it was too easy.

Today’s John Tierney-authored Findings column discusses the evolution and significance of the upturned palm and its variants–the shrug, the downturned palm, etc:

That simple gesture, the upturned palm, is one of the oldest and most widely understood signals in the world. It’s activated by neural circuits inherited from ancient reptiles that abased themselves before larger animals. Chimps and other apes, notably humans, adapted it to ask not just for food, but also for more abstract forms of help, creating a new kind of signal that some researchers believe was the origin of human language.

Gestures as proto-language! Body language, in general, has always held my interest. Apparently, gesticulating wildly with your hands is supposed to make you a more articulate speaker (I swear this is true: I’ve participated in cruel games in which subjects were supposed to tell stories while sitting on their hands).

Recently, my company cast a body language expert on a game show, and he was rumored to give you an apt diagnostic reading after just a brief introduction. When I finally met him, I consciously tried to slacken my entire body and avoid any gestures that might leak out insight, but the man was stealthy, and charming, and after he offered me a cup of water and observed how I held it, I was had: by holding the cup in front of my heart chakra, he explained, I was guarding my emotions. He suggested if I wanted to better connect with people, I needed to be conscious of which chakras I was blocking. He also said the number one thing to do in job interviews was to mimic the interviewer’s body language. Has anyone ever critiqued your body language?

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We’ve talked before about our semi-thriving Facebook Group, “I Read Mental Floss,” which now boasts 414 members. I thought this was a lot. Then I found out 658 people belonged to a group called “It’s not a big deal. Like 8% of kids do it. When I was little I drew [male genitalia].”

So, we have some room for growth.

Mangesh and I have been kicking around ideas for _floss Facebook games or quizzes. So I’ve got a question for all you active members of the Facebook community: what are your favorite applications? Perhaps we can use those as inspiration. They don’t have to have anything to do with trivia.

Or if you’ve come across any crazy and ridiculous applications, those are also fun to share.

In middle and high school, I used to sit up late on Sunday nights to catch the best show on MTV, 120 Minutes. The show featured “alternative” music, and actually got better during the period (the early 90’s) when alternative went mainstream. As bands like R.E.M. and Nirvana hit the main MTV rotation, 120 Minutes remained committed to indie bands, which made it a must-watch for me, even though it was on at midnight on a school night.

Imagine my joy when a new blog began cataloging videos featured on 120 Minutes. Pointing to YouTube videos, the 120 Minutes archive has entertained me for hours. Some favorites: Yo La Tengo - Sugarcube (where the band goes to Rock School, taught by David Cross and Bob Odenkirk — I remember watching the night this debuted), The Replacements - Bastards of Young, Pixies - Here Comes Your Man, The Cowboy Junkies - Sweet Jane, and Sonic Youth - Bull in the Heather. Seriously, if you liked alternative or indie music in the 90’s, prepare to spend your afternoon watching videos.

For superfans, here’s an almost unbelievable archive of 120 Minutes playlists from 1986-2003. Got a favorite 120 Minutes story, or video you remember from the old days? Post it in the comments!

The title of this video, as per YouTube, is “Crazy Russian Lady Owns 130 Cats.” That really says it all. Watch her part the feline sea as she feeds them like one would seagulls at the beach.

Jaw-dropping, no? And you heard her right: at the end of the clip, she cries “give me more cats!” It’s a peculiar psychological phenomenon called “animal hording,” and can involve everything from chinchillas to mongooses, but most typically victimized are cats and dogs. According to the Hoarding of Animals Research Consortium (yes, really), crazy cat ladies and their obsessive ilk collectively hoard some 250,000 animals at any given time in the United States. Not only do the attendant smells and noises bug neighbors, but the inability for most hoarders to properly care for all their animals is a serious animal welfare issue. (A quick peek at this blog on animal hoarding reveals any number of news stories on pet hoarders being arrested for animal cruelty when dead and dying animals are found in their homes, uncared for — also those houses are frequently condemned.)

Portrait of a cat lady, after the jump.
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When Life Gives You Massive River Flooding, Make Lemonade
In a fit of early 1900s nature-subduing enthusiasm, the good people of California decided to turn Imperial Valley (a desert) into a vast agricultural paradise (not a desert). To do so, they started cutting irrigation channels from the Colorado River. When those filled up with silt, they cut a little deeper, digging out a large gap in the River’s bank to increase flow. Then, in 1905, the floods came, washing out the engineered canal and pouring thousands of gallons of water directly from the River into a previously dry below-sea-level basin. It took two years to get the flooding under control, by which point the basin had become a lake—the Salton Sea. In 1907 the first sport fish were imported and a tourist attraction was born.

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BREAKING NEWS: After reviewing all 360+ award names, and debating vigorously over which one was the so-called flossiest, we’ve finally (FINALLY) made our decision. Because the following entries all made us smirk, the clever cats behind them will be getting a free t-shirt of their choice (and size!) from the mental_floss store.

As for the winner, he’ll be getting a whopping mental_floss prize pack along with endless bragging rights that mental_floss relied on his brain power to name their super cleverly titled award. Of course, those rights will also be transferable to his parents should his mom or pop also feel the need to brag. While we can’t wait to reveal the full list of award winners to you guys in next month’s issue, we’re pretty sure you can’t wait to read who snagged a free shirt, so here goes:

Runner-Up 1: Rosalie, with the hilarious name, THE FLOSCARS. Very cute.

Runner-Up 2: Andy’s cleverly anagrammed title: The ATLAS FROWNS MEDAL (switched up letters from the mental_floss awards). If only you could have figured out how to fit that pesky underscore in there, we might have gone with it.

Runner-Up 3: Raymond N’s genius idea for THE MENTAL ‘WARDS. Really close, with this one, too.

And Runner-Up 4: Al’s really funny (and slightly kiss-uppy) play off the founders’ names THE WELL MANGLED AWARDS. (Al, if only you managed to include the names Neely, Jenny, Toby, Melanie, Sandy, Kara, Barry, Winslow, Lexi and Jason in there too, you would have had a chance!). We like your thinking though, and it’s exactly that sort of flattery that’ll get you a t-shirt.

And of course, the winning entry….
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Last week at the Presurfer I saw a video of Alabama potter Jerry Brown making a jug. It was interesting enough that I went to YouTube to grab the video, and found a whole series of videos of the same guy, each more fascinating than the one before. Especially this one:

I was afraid of what would come up when I Googled “ugly jugs”, but with safe search, I found just what I was looking for. Jugs with faces date back to antiquity, but became an American folk art tradition. The time and place this tradition began depends on your source, and the jugs had several purported purposes which could all be valid.

More ugly faces, after the jump.
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