Judging from Maggie’s How To Get Out of Jury Duty & David’s dispatches from jury duty (maybe: “How to Get Into Jury Duty”?), we at mental_floss definitely haven’t shied away from how to cope with the litigious life. I haven’t actually had to/had the pleasure to serve on a Los Angeles jury yet, but I did cast the syndicated “Jury Duty” television show last year…Maybe there’s some viable conflict of interest there that would get me off the hook.

But at least I haven’t yet encountered “emergency jury duty”–as the people of Greeley, CO have recently: (more…)

On the subject of the greatest football dynasties of all-time – and yes, the New England Patriots have already cemented their place in this discussion – the 1970s Pittsburgh Steelers, 1980s San Francisco 49ers, and 1990s Dallas Cowboys likely all come to mind. You would be remiss, however, if you failed to mention a less heralded and, uh, less human team that dominated its competition in, quite frankly, unbelievable fashion: Budweiser.

From 1989-1997, the self-anointed “King of Beers” dominated Anheuser-Busch’s Bud Bowl, the yearly clash between animated bottles of Bud and Bud Light that was featured in a series of commercials during the Super Bowl. The advertising campaign, which persists today in the form of Bud Bowl-themed packaging and promotional events, remains one of the most popular ever.

The Bud Bowl Architect

Grant Pace wrote the six original Bud Bowl ads that appeared in 1989 while working at D’Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles. Pace said he developed the ads under the assumption that Bud Bowl would be a one-year phenomenon, but Anheuser-Busch representatives liked the prototype so much that Pace actually changed the original ending to leave open the possibility for a sequel. (To see the ending that never aired, go here and click on the third white box from the left).
(more…)

This past Sunday marked the 203rd anniversary of Samuel Palmer’s birth. The British Romantic painter had visionary experiences as a child, which influenced his works. “In a Shoreham Garden” is different from most of his other paintings, with a more modern, less mystical, feel. For today, I’ve prepared a few ­_flossy facts about Samuel Palmer.

1. First exhibiting at the Royal Academy at age 14, Samuel Palmer could be considered a prodigy. He taught himself to paint, receiving little formal training and no formal schooling, and had only begun seriously painting 2 years prior to that first exhibit.

2. Palmer is most well-known for his Shoreham years, “the happiest and most creative period of [his] life,” during which he painted mysterious paintings that presented his “Valley of Vision” as a paradise of sorts. His home during those years was the run-down cottage “Rat Abbey.” (more…)

Last summer I found myself with a dozen pumpkins and no plans for what to do with them. I ended up giving some away, and using the rest for porch decorations. After a couple of hard freezes, they were ready for the compost heap from which they sprouted about a year ago. I retrieved some seeds (a messy job after the pumpkins go soft) because I have real plans for them this year. I’m going to experiment with geometric pumpkins!

The first time you see square watermelons, your instinct may shout “Photoshop!” but they are really square. Not a genetic variant, these are made the old-fashioned way. They are grown in boxes, and take the cubic shape gradually as they grow. It’s a labor-intensive process, but the end result fits nicely in a refrigerator, and wastes no space in the truck. And they won’t roll around! They’ve been growing them in Japan for years, because space is at a premium. The watermelons are at premium prices, too.

To achieve such results, you have to have a proper box, made of tempered glass or durable plastic. Transparent boxes are best, or else you won’t know exactly when to harvest, or even worse, waste your equipment on a rotten fruit! K-mac Plastics sells boxes especially designed to grow watermelons in, complete with proper drainage.

Keep reading for even stranger shapes

(more…)

Slate recently ran an article asking Who is Grady Harp? — the short answer is, he’s one of the top “customer reviewers” on Amazon. But the long answer is a good deal more complex. Grady Harp is one of just a few Amazon reviewers who reach the Top 10, reading excessive numbers of books and handing out lots of five-star reviews. The reviewers seem to scratch each others’ backs by voting on each others’ reviews, and some of them seem just a bit nutty. Here’s a bit from Garth Risk Hallberg’s Slate article:

I had imagined Amazon’s customer reviews as a refuge from the machinations of the publishing industry: “an intelligent and articulate conversation … conducted by a group of disinterested, disembodied spirits,” as James Marcus, a former editor at the company, wrote in his memoir, Amazonia: Five Years at the Epicenter of the Dot.Com Juggernaut. Indeed, with customers unseating salaried employees like Marcus as the company’s leading content producers, Amazon had been hailed as a harbinger of “Web 2.0″–an ideal realm where user-generated consensus trumps the bankrupt pieties of experts. As I explored the murky understory of Amazon’s reviewer rankings, however, I came to see the real Web 2.0 as a tangle of hidden agendas–one in which the disinterested amateur may be an endangered species.

More after the jump.

(more…)

Here’s a cool idea realized: a Sydney, Australia-based art collective called The Glue Society has re-created scenes from the Bible as if captured by Google Earth’s ubiquitous satellites. Says Glue Society’s James Dive: “We like to disorientate audiences a little with all our work. And with this piece we felt technology now allows events which may or may not have happened to be visualized and made to appear dramatically real. As a method of representation satellite photography is so trusted, it has been interesting to mess with that trust.” Let’s see what they created!

Parting of the Red Sea
(more…)

It’s Zach Kanin week here at mental_floss, and I’m so excited about it, I’m going to lock the Caps and type that all over again: IT’S ZACH KANIN WEEK HERE AT MENTAL_FLOSS!

Zach’s responsible for many of the hilarious cartoons over at The New Yorker and has a funtabulous new book out called The Short Book: Tall Stories, Freakish Facts, & the Long & Short of Being Small in a Great Big World.

If you’re short, if you’re friends with someone short, married to someone short, in love with someone short, envious of someone short, sympathetic to someone short, or just plain short on time, you really want to pick up a copy of this little gem, right over here. Tomorrow, Zach will be sending us our own cartoon for the caption contest, which he’ll personally judge. And then Thursday, well, you don’t even wanna know what’s coming Thursday…

Look, I’m so excited about it, I’m getting ahead of myself. First, a little background on the little man: in addition to working for The New Yorker, at 5’ 3”, Zach was the shortest president ever of The Harvard Lampoon.

And now, the interview! Click on through to find out how Zach came up with the idea for his book and other fun things like why Romans used to starve children and constrict their growth. And for more great Kanin cartoons, check out this page at the Cartoon Bank.

(more…)

Top 60 Little-Known Technology Web Sites (actually 63). I found True Films to be fascinating; you may find something else that’s right up your alley.
*
Most strokes occur when blood vessels in the brain get clogged. Doctors now have a tiny little vaccuum cleaner they can send in to unstop them.
*
5 Nastiest U.S. Presidential Elections in History. If we’d only had TV back then, the ratings would have been through the roof.
*
An ad to be aired during the Superbowl that will make you laugh and think. Don’t adjust your speakers. It was created by deaf artists for Pepsico.
*
Where are they now: the Cast of M*A*S*H. Hint: they are either dead, painting pictures, or have a new movie coming out.
*
Puppy vs. Robot. Not just a cute video, this is 8-bit style videogaming.
*
Six Musicians With Pasts They Hope You’ll Forget. No, not criminal records, just records that gave them a strangely different image.
*
How To Get Detained By Airport Security. Several cases that may surprise you. Or may not.

Every time all my favorite people leave town, you’re liable to find me whining about how “this place is a ghost town,” etc. That feeling either fades or it doesn’t, but if ghosts were sandmen, they’d be all over this town:

Kolmanskop is a ghost town in southern Namibia, a few kilometres inland from the port of Lüderitz. In 1908, Luederitz was plunged into diamond fever and people rushed into the Namib desert hoping to make an easy fortune. Within two years, a town, complete with a casino, school, hospital and exclusive residential buildings, was established in the barren sandy desert.

But when diamond sales floundered post WWI, the exodus began, and by the fifties the dunes started repossessing what had been left behind. I wonder if there’s a way to get a modest dune installation in my bedroom. It’s dramatic, sure, but it also looks terribly comfortable, and isn’t the Tempur-Pedic  craze just about passé now, anyway? Link via Fogonazos.

In case you missed our first twenty-four volumes or the greatest hits edition, let me explain. Every Monday, we head into the archives of The New York Times to find first mentions worth mentioning. If you have a suggestion for next week, leave us a comment.

‘Politics of Fear’

September 29, 1968

Johnson Decries Politics of Fear
President Johnson called today for an end to hate and fear as vote-gathering tactics in a plea for unity in this “season of bitter debate.”

Without mentioning by name any of the Presidential candidates, Mr. Johnson said, “When feelings are so deep and emotions are so high, it is tempting for some to play upon the fears and uncertainties of their countrymen.”

Death of a Salesman

July 17, 1947

Miller Rejects Hollywood’s Bid
Arthur Miller has rejected a Hollywood writing offer and is hard at work on two new dramas, hopping from one to the other because “both seem equally urgent.” At the moment the author of the prize-winning All My Sons is devoting himself to one of the scripts, still nameless, that tells a love story of working people in an industrial city. He thinks it may be ready for the coming season.

The other play, which Mr. Miller has left danging “in the middle,” does have a working title, The Death of a Salesman, but the playwright is unwilling to commit it to a thumb-nail synopsis for fear that he may be misleading. It would take about ten pages of exposition, he says, to ensure that he isn’t misunderstood.
* * * * *
Mr. Miller resisted the film offer after serious consideration. It involved a one-picture deal, and the product would have been directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

Keep reading for Regis Philbin, Valentine’s Day and Randy Moss.
(more…)