Was it a sign that while flossing last night, my gums started bleeding? No but really: as of tomorrow I’ll be handing in my mental_floss jersey, perhaps to resurface at some point, in some avuncular (why not?!) capacity. So to celebrate the new era, here’s a pensive shot of my parents’ husky (who is looking for a home if you live in MI–and preferably on a lot of land) & here are some random “final blog entries” still glimmering somewhere out there:

Wednesday, May 9th

Final blog post…recap time.

Wow, this semester has flown by fast! I’ve had fun maintaining this blog and exploring different aspects of internet marketing… I hope you’ve enjoyed reading and following this blog (all 4ish readers of you…) over the course of the semester – hopefully you found something interesting along the way.

*****

9/27/07

Since I’m leaving, I would like to give out “awards” to those who actually have a place with this userpage:

Nicest Member: xdude81: He and I wouldn’t get in fights and he actually was a nice guy all the time. (more…)

UPDATE: Well, that’ll teach me to blog about physics I don’t fully understand! I have researched the issue and edited the post below, now that I understand the explanation from The Straight Dope.

Last night the Discovery show Mythbusters settled a longstanding debate: whether an airplane on a conveyor belt (running in the opposite direction as the plane) can take off. The short answer, as liveblogged by Jason Kottke:

HELL YEAH THE PLANE TAKES OFF

It’s a curious problem. As a thought experiment, it seems (at least to me) like the plane shouldn’t take off, since it wouldn’t gain takeoff velocity relative to the ground. But according to, you know, SCIENCE, the plane will still reach takeoff velocity — the wheels will just spin twice as fast. This is because the wheels aren’t providing any thrust, it’s the engines (propellors) that are pulling the plane forward through the air. It’s the velocity of the air relative to the wings that counts, which is generated by the action of the engines pulling the plane forward. So the conveyor belt will only stop the plane from gaining takeoff velocity if it creates enough friction to counteract the forward thrust of the engines (or propellor).

Despite explanations of this sort by physicists, the issue wasn’t really settled until last night’s Mythbusters episode — they replicated the experiment on a small scale, then with a real airplane (albeit an ultralight), using a huge tarp dragged by a truck as the “conveyor belt.” Even the plane’s pilot thought the plane wouldn’t overcome the power of the conveyor belt, and thus wouldn’t gain takeoff velocity. When Jason Kottke first blogged about the issue last February, his comment thread was hot with controversy. So Kottke tuned in to Mythbusters last night and liveblogged the event, with results visible above. His exuberance over the plane’s liftoff has resulted in a “HELL YEAH THE PLANE TAKES OFF” tee-shirt available starting at $18. Wow.

Watch the Mythbusters clip in question below…. (Note: if this clip is pulled down, I’ll try to dig up another.)

Keep in mind that the issue here is partly semantic, and has to do with how you explain the theoretical problem. I explained it poorly in my first post, since I (like apparently many) assumed that air would flow over the wings as a result of the propellor spinning, and that would be enough to make the plane take off, even if it was stationary. This is not the case — the plane is going to need to move air over its wings in order to take off. The point of the experiment is simply that yes, the plane will move despite the conveyer belt underneath it. And that movement (at least in this experiment) provided sufficient lift to get the plane off the ground.

By “classic,” I mean “not new.” But while you wait for the Monday launch of our new daily lunchtime quiz, here are three from the archives you might enjoy.

If you’re curious whether or not you should be indulging in the communal cheese dip at this year’s Super Bowl party, one scientist has some answers for you.

Whether or not the infamous George Costanza “double-dipping at a funeral scene” had an impact on your snacking habits, according to this terrific NY Times piece, the clip definitely affected Prof. Paul L. Dawson. A food microbiologist at Clemson University, Dawson commissioned a study on double-dipping largely because he was skeptical that redipping a chip could be bad for you. The results surprised him.

According to the study, “three to six double dips transferred about 10,000 bacteria from the eater’s mouth to the remaining dip.” Dawson’s conclusion: that while double dipping won’t kill you, you should take a look around the room before bathing your tortilla in party sauce. Said Dawson, “The way I would put it is, before you have some dip at a party, look around and ask yourself, would I be willing to kiss everyone here? Because you don’t know who might be double dipping, and those who do are sharing their saliva with you.”
So, beware readers. If you want to see more on the study, or Dawson’s other Seinfeld related insights, click here. Thanks Lizzie!

Kara and I have had an impossible time picking a winner for our most recent Weekend Genius Challenge, where we asked you to chime in with your more unusual (but easy-to-make) sandwich concoctions. Here are three things I have to say to all of you sandwich-makers out there:

1. There are other flavors of jelly besides grape.

2. I’m not very happy to see that someone other than my grandfather eats fried bologna sandwiches. I’ve long been saving that as an excuse to say genetics make me “why I am the way I am.”

3. Snack chips belong on the side of a sandwich, not on the sandwich itself. They may be tasty, but they sure make a lot of crumbs.

Reading the hundreds of recipes made us alternately ill and hungry. There was lots of “Why on earth would anyone put ________ on a sandwich?” (fill in the blank with “oatmeal,” “condensed bean-with-bacon soup,” and so on. Anyway, we’ve pulled ten of our favorites. We ask you to vote on which one you think is best, and we’ll reveal a winner this weekend. Please vote by commenting to this post with the letter corresponding to your choice. Here they are:

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Many of today’s crime dramas owe a debt to Dragnet and its creator, Jack Webb. This week, let’s take a closer look at the man, the legend.

1. It started with a documentary (sort of)

John Rudolph “Jack” Webb became fascinated by the intricate, behind-the-scenes details of police investigations while working on the 1948 film-noir He Walked by Night. The movie was based on a real-life murder case, and Webb was cast as a crime lab technician. The quasi-documentary style of the film gave him an idea for a police drama series with a similar feel. With the cooperation of Chief William H. Parker of the Los Angeles Police Department, he created Dragnet and its protagonist, Sergeant Joe Friday.

2. There was no time to memorize lines

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The Super Bowl is a magical time for sports fans. The NFL crowns its champion, and if we’re all very lucky during the commercials, we might get to see Jay Mohr address a Diet Pepsi can like it’s a person. However, it’s also a wonderful time to love any sort of TV programming. Since Fox’s first major counterprogramming of In Living Color in 1992, other networks have been airing content to try to lure away some of the year’s biggest TV audience. Although none of the major networks have risked their relationship with the NFL by aggressively counterprogramming since NBC’s 2003 Weekend Update segment with Jimmy Fallon and Tina Fey, cable channels still do whatever they can to steal the big game’s viewers.

The basic idea of counterprogramming is simple. Around 100 million people are watching the Super Bowl, and some of them are bound to get bored with the game broadcast at some point. Come up with a program that can swipe away even 5% of them, and you’ve pilfered yourself a huge audience, especially by cable standards. Most of these efforts are concentrated at halftime, since many diehard football fans probably don’t care about watching Tom Petty sing “American Girl” even if they’ve heard some awesome urban legends about it. With that in mind, we give you some of the brightest, most bizarre moments in Super Bowl counterprogramming history:

WWF Halftime Heat (1999)

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Have you ever heard a super-repetitive joke that seemed kinda funny at first, but the longer you watched it, the funnier it got? When I first noticed this principle at work in a certain kind of (generally absurdist) comedy years ago, I invented a little pseudo-academic classification to explain the phenomenon: I call it the sine wave of funny. Here’s how it works:

There’s a certain ineffable thing about jokes that operate according to the sine wave of funny that make them work; not just any joke repeated over and over will work. It takes a special kind of joke to really engage the sine wave of funny. When this happens, though, it’s like magic — it’s like the joke goes into hyperdrive, and you never want it to end. And the really amazing thing about these kinds of jokes is that, at first, they don’t really seem that funny at all. They’re chuckle-worthy, at best. (In fact, you might invert the sine wave on this graph — initially, your patience is tested by the joke … then it becomes funnier and funnier. Then not so funny. Then even funnier than before. And so on.)

Time for some examples. Here’s a classic one from The Simpsons: (more…)

Today is “Inspire Your Heart with Art” day, perfectly coinciding with our Thursday edition of ‘Feel Art Again.’ To inspire your hearts, I’ve chosen a drawing, “An Enchanted Cellar with Animals,” by the Dutch artist Cornelis Saftleven.

1. The Saftleven family was a family of artists. Cornelis’ father and his two brothers were also painters. While Cornelis was, at one time, a pupil of his father, Herman Saftleven the elder, it is likely that Herman the younger, Cornelis’ brother, was a pupil of Cornelis.

2. Enchanted animal scenes like “An Enchanted Cellar with Animals” were popular in the 1600s, which was lucky for Saftleven, as he excelled at painting animals. (more…)

As you know, it’s Zach Kanin week here at the _floss. Here’s a wonderful excerpt from his new book, The Short Book, that looks at the last 15 elections in feet and inches. (Winning presidents are in bold.)

U.S Presidents and Their Opponents Since the Ubiquity of Television

1948
Harry S. Truman (D) 5’ 9”
Thomas E. Dewey (R) 5’ 8”
Difference 1”

1952
Dwight D. Eisenhower (R) 5’ 10 1/2”
Adlai Stevenson (D) 5’ 10”
Difference 1/2”

1956
Dwight D. Eisenhower (R) 5’ 10 1/2”
Adlai Stevenson (D) 5’ 10”
Difference 1/2”

1960
John F. Kennedy (D) 6’ 0”
Richard M. Nixon (R) 5’ 11 1/2”
Difference 1/2”
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