Ready for a Tuesday Brain Game? Yeah, me too. See if you can solve the following:

Click here for the answer.

Over the past couple of decades, recycling has become the right thing to do. It is both fashionable and responsible to reduce our consumption and waste. In areas where there is less cash for consumer goods, recycling has always been a way of life. Raised in southeast Kentucky by parents born during the Great Depression, I know a thing or two about recycling. I’ve never gone as far as to keep an overstuffed sofa on the front porch or swim in a truck bed, but I never buy something new if I can use something I already have.

Years ago, a local group offered me a yard sign for a referendum vote that I would never support, but hey, free sign! Good quality, too, made of plastic and metal. So I painted over the political message and used electrical tape for my own message. It’s visible and effective if not artistic. I’ve used it over and over.

After a recent room remodel, I saved the good long planks and pieces of old paneling from the scrap heap before the workers hauled it off. Along with leftover siding and various other things I’d stashed over the years, I had enough material to build my kids a playhouse. The story of how I did it is in this post.
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Here at the _floss, we love to blog about the Nobel Prize. From Mangesh’s 7 Geniuses and 1 Entire Science That Never Won the Nobel, to Jason’s 15 Award-Winning Facts About The Nobel Prize and many others.

The tradition continues today with a very special guest, David Pratt, who’s recently put out a book called The Impossible Takes Longer: The 1,000 Wisest Things Ever Said by Nobel Prize Laureates, a stunning collection of witty and wise quotes, most of which have never been anthologized previously.

Check out my interview with him below and be sure to tune back in tomorrow for you chance to win a FREE copy of this awesome collection.

DI: How long have you been collecting quotations?

DP: I’ve been collecting quotes almost as long as I remember. Other kids collected stamps—I collected quotations.

DI: When did you decide they should be published in a book and what was the publishing process like for you?

DP: I started collecting quotations by Nobel Prize Winners after reading Winston Churchill’s saying “A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.” I submitted the manuscript to some 50 publishers in three countries without success, but eventually found an agent who had faith in the project, and after two years of submissions, she found a publisher.

DI: Of all the Nobel winners, who do you think was the most deserving?

DP: The most deserving was one who never got the Nobel—Mahatma Gandhi. Of those who did receive it, one of the most deserving was certainly Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the democracy movement in Burma, who has maintained her Buddhist belief in non-violence, despite being under house arrest for most of the past 20 years, unable to see her sons while they were growing up or her British husband when he was dying of cancer.

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Everything you need to know about film can be learned in ten minutes. Director Robert Rodriguez gives students tips on becoming a filmmaker.
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Is There a Cure for the ‘Distraction Virus’ of the Internet? I sure hope not, because your distraction is my business.
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10 Innovative Shipping Container Homes and Offices. Living in a box just became chic.
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Vehicle crash tests are necessary for the development of safety innovations for consumers. And they are a lot of fun to watch when you’ve got dozens of them all smashed together.
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The New York Times named its profile of webcomic xkcd “This Is Funny Only if You Know Unix”. I beg to differ, since I don’t know Unix and I find the comics hilarious almost all the time.
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Baby sloths are adorable. Slow and weird-looking, but still adorable.
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Six ways to stretch a tank of gas. My favorite tip, “just stay home” is curiously absent.
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8 Smooches That (sort-of) Shook the World. A kiss is just a kiss, unless it makes headlines the way these did!

Swallowing food involves a series of muscle contractions, both voluntary and involuntary. Swallowing a sword requires no actual swallowing, but the complete opposite: the deliberate relaxation of the upper gastrointestinal (GI) tract.

First, the sword swallower tilts their head back and extends their neck to line up their mouth with their esophagus and straighten the pharynx. Relaxing their throat, they line the sword up with the path of their GI tract and move the blade into and through the mouth, pharynx and upper esophageal sphincter and into the esophagus. As the sword makes its way through the GI tract, it straightens out esophagus’ curves and sometimes, if an especially long sword is used, passes through the gastroesophageal junction (lower esophageal sphincter) and into the stomach.
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We’re in reruns with the Lunchtime Quiz today. If none of these are new to you, you can always try to better your score. Or check out our entire quiz archive. Or wait until tomorrow.

Memorial Day is more than just a three-day weekend and a chance to get the year’s first sunburn. Here’s a handy 10-pack of facts to give the holiday some perspective.

1. It started with the Civil War

Memorial Day was a response to the unprecedented carnage of the Civil War, in which some 620,000 soldiers on both sides died. The loss of life and its effect on communities throughout the North and South led to spontaneous commemorations of the dead:

• In 1864, women from Boalsburg, Pa., put flowers on the graves of their dead from the just-fought Battle of Gettysburg. The next year, a group of women decorated the graves of soldiers buried in a Vicksburg, Miss., cemetery.

• In April 1866, women from Columbus, Miss., laid flowers on the graves of both Union and Confederate soldiers. It was recognized at the time as an act of healing sectional wounds. In the same month, up in Carbondale, Ill., 219 Civil War veterans marched through town in memory of the fallen to Woodlawn Cemetery, where Union hero Maj. Gen. John A. Logan delivered the principal address. The ceremony gave Carbondale its claim to the first organized, community-wide Memorial Day observance.

• Waterloo, N.Y., began holding an annual community service on May 5, 1866. Although many towns claimed the title, it was Waterloo that won congressional recognition as the “birthplace of Memorial Day.”
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Congrats to our two latest contest winners!!

Despite that the waiter is doing the talking, the following caption beat out all the others in popularity because it was just so darn clever (perhaps when we put out a book of _floss cartoons we’ll have to get Robert to redraw the cartoon so the patron is speaking? Robert?)

“Waiter, I asked for a steak, medium. This is just a hare undercooked.”

And our second contest last week – Historical Figure Shopping Lists – the popular vote went to:

Emily Dickinson:
(first and last visit to corner store)

crackers, dry
eggs -
wry, oh, rye bread
truth, beauty - heart!

Oh! flour, 1 bag, large

We’ll be in touch about your prizes. Tune in later this week for another great book giveaway!

Here’s a tangentially related followup to the article on Polaroid photographer Jamie Livingston earlier this week. Some commenters asked about the quality of the photos — many images seem to be better than what we think of as Polaroid snapshots. How did Livingston achieve advanced effects like changes in depth of field, double exposure, fixed-point focusing, and closeup photography with a Polaroid camera?

The answer (in addition to Livingston’s skill as a photographer) is his Polaroid SX-70 camera. It was an extremely complex SLR camera developed by Edwin Land’s team in the late 1960s and early 1970s, released in 1972. The SX-70 folded into a pocket-sized form factor — assuming your pockets were huge. Employing a number of amazing technologies (it was the first Land camera to use the now-famous Polaroid film packs), later models included a sonar autofocus system — the first autofocus capability available in a mass market camera. The camera also supported clip-on wide angle and telephoto lenses.

The SX-70 was a remarkable camera, so much so that Charles and Ray Eames produced an eleven-minute advertisement/explainer film for it in 1972. The film starts with a discussion of Polaroid’s history and goes into a surprisingly technical description of the camera’s operation and even its manufacturing process. Have a look:

Congrats to Kevin Howk who solved this week’s HDYK? in about 9 minutes!
The final answer was:
The only aves that can use their wings to fly in reverse are: hummingbirds
I would have taken backwards for “in reverse” as well as Trochilidae for hummingbirds, but the facts remain the same.
Here’s Kevin’s logic as well as his answers from the rest of the week:
Monday: All played in reverse

* We Will Rock You, Queen, 1977
* When Doves Cry, Prince,1984
* Vogue, Madonna, 1990
* Don’t Stop Believing, Journey, 1981

Clue for tomorrow is an 1864 lithograph of the Boston Tea Party…also reversed
Tuesday: “Hail Flutie,” Boston College vs. Miami, November 23, 1984

* Doug Flutie
* Boston College

Clue for tomorrow is a photo of a Beatles-era Paul McCartney
Wednesday: Songs by Paul McCartney & Wings

* Band on the Run, 1974
* Listen to What the Man Said, 1975
* Silly Love Songs, 1976
* With a Little Luck, 1978
* Coming Up, 1980

Clue for tomorrow is the video for The One That You Love by Air Supply
Thursday: Album Covers

* Animals, Pink Floyd, 1977
* In Utero, Nirvana, 1993
* Led Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin, 1969
* License to Ill, Beastie Boys, 1986
* The One That You Love, Air Supply, 1981

Friday: Ave maria = hail mary