The title of this video project says it all: People In Order, Age 1 To 100. Each participant beats a drum, as a sort of ceremonial gong moving on to the next age. Simple idea, fantastic product!
*
Our parents and grandparents may often complain about how simple things used to be, and in one case they are right: crayons! This chart shows how the original color box has multiplied and expanded over the years to include such nuanced shades as Inchworm and, of all things, Jazzberry Jam.
*
Proclaimed as the “Best Optical Illusion EVER!” What do you guys think? It took me awhile to see it (and, truthfully, only AFTER I found out what it was I was supposed to be looking at!)
*
George Lucas is done messing with Star Wars, right? There’s nothing else he could do to the originals … oh wait, seems like there could be more. And it starts with a revision to the opening title sequence.
*
Plenty has been made of what is searched on Google, but what about a lesser known search engine, say … Dogpile? According to the data compiled, Dogpile users are mostly searching for ways to escape from the county jail and play piano for Santa, for starters.
*
We posted our own list of Conan memories last week, but the folks at Nerve have a great collection of clips exclusively from his Tonight Show stint.
*

Something I wish for my city: Dinosaurs unleashed in London as Oxford Street is transformed into prehistoric jungle. (I like how that guy is just kind of casually standing in the water). Flossers, what’s your favorite dinosaur? Mine has always been Stegosaurus.
*
“Doing more with less” – that seemed to be the motto for 2009. But some places have done so in a positive way, and rather splendidly. Take for instance this phone booth library. And for those unaware, the World’s Smallest Police Station is located in a phone booth in little Carrabelle, FL (and I have seen it with my own eyes!).
*
(more…)

In case you weren’t obsessively refreshing mentalfloss.com all week, here’s what you missed:

1. The Quick 10: 10 Weird Celebrity Phobias, by Stacy Conradt
*
2. Extreme Weirdness: Antarctica’s “Blood Falls”, by Ransom Riggs
*
3. 8 Stories of Vicious Man-Eaters, by Rob Lammle
*

4. The Quick 10: 10 People Pronounced Dead a Bit Prematurely, by Stacy Conradt
*
5. 10 Interesting Edibles From the Fancy Food Show, by Greg Sabin
*
6. Video Game Furnishings for Your Home, by Miss Cellania

*
7. The Ins & Outs of the Exotic Animal Trade, by Ethan Trex
*
8. The King of Boomeria (Coolest Science Class Ever?), by Miss Cellania
*
9. A Brief History of the State of the Union, by Ethan Trex
*
10. Dangerous Things Kids Should Do, by Jill Harness

Yes – the world’s most powerful woman (according to some reports, anyway) is celebrating the big 5-6 today. Even if you’re not a big fan, you have to admit, the woman’s done pretty well herself. Oprah hasn’t kept too many secrets about herself over the years, so I’m avoiding the big shockers that she has revealed on air – the child she had at 14, the sex abuse she suffered at the hands of relatives. These are just a few fun facts about O.

1. If things had been just a little bit different, she could have been Oprah Ebert. Doesn’t have a great ring to it, does it? The talk show host and the film critic went on a few dates in the ‘80s before deciding they worked better as friends. It’s Ebert who convinced Oprah she should syndicate her talk show, though. During a date at the Hamburger Hamlet (“My treat,” Ebert said) she asked his advice. He told her what he was making to do his syndicated show, then told her to double it, since she wouldn’t be using a co-host, then told her to double it again, because her show would be an hour instead of 30 minutes, then told her to multiply that by five since she would be on all week, then told her to double everything because her ratings would be better than his. That’s when Oprah decided to syndicate.

2. You’ve probably heard the story that Oprah’s name was supposed to be “Orpah” after a character in the Book of Ruth, but it was spelled wrong on her birth certificate, and so she became Oprah. Well, that’s not entirely true. According to Oprah herself, her birth certificate really does say “Orpah,” but no one could pronounce it. Somehow the “R” and the “P” always got switched, and eventually “Oprah” was just easier.

(more…)

You’d struggle to find backup quarterbacks more different than Mark Brunell and Curtis Painter. Brunell, the Saints’ number two QB, has been in the NFL since 1994, starting 150 games. Peyton Manning’s understudy is Curtis Painter, a rookie who’s played parts of two games. And five years from now, unless something unexpected happens next Sunday, you won’t remember that either one of them was involved in Super Bowl XLIV.

Or will you? Here’s an All Madden-level quiz for football enthusiasts. Can you recall the other Super second-stringers who were just a heartbeat (or anterior cruciate ligament) away from football’s biggest stage? How well do you know the men behind the men behind center? Here are fifteen questions to test your backup QB IQ.

Take the Quiz: Super Backups

Snow is just a bunch of ice crystals getting together, hanging out and having fun. So why is snow white when ice has no color?

First things first, why are different things different colors in the first pla­ce? Visible light is made up of different wavelengths of light—from the shorter, violet ones to the longer, red ones. When light hits different objects, the different wavelengths have different reactions. Objects absorb a certain amount of light, and absorb certain wavelengths more than others. The wavelengths that aren’t absorbed as much (or at all) reflect off the object, and we perceive them as color. When you look at an object, the color you see is the combination of the light frequencies that the object did not absorb.

(more…)

(Just in case you hadn’t seen the Cheers episode where Cliff appears on Jeopardy! that I referred to in this morning’s Friday Happy Hour, here’s a clip.)

I’m going on the record right now: I hate book jackets.* These thin paper protectors look pretty in the store, and they help to differentiate books visually. But practically speaking, I can’t stand them — too easy to tear, lose, or crumple! And if there’s one thing I hate, it’s a torn or crumpled piece of paper.

My friend Lyza recently asked the question of her readers: Do you remove book jackets? She included a survey in her blog entry, and the current winning answer, by a mile, is “Yes, Always.” Many commenters (myself included) say how they save the jacket, but during reading, it’s outta there. Lyza writes:

I find that, though decorative, book jackets get in the way. They fall off. Or they get squashed or bent, which makes me all tense. Sometimes I do like to use one flap of a book jacket as an ersatz bookmark, tucking it in to mark my page, but that’s its only functional purpose, and stops working so well if I’m any good distance into the book. Also, it gives me the clenches when the book I’m reading has a book jacket that is starting to migrate, get out of line, stick up above the edges of my book. Am I just weird? How do you deal with book jackets?

So How About You?

How do you handle book jackets? I encourage you to take Lyza’s survey, and let the discussion commence in the comments!

* = Library book jackets are one exception. Covered in protective plastic and physically attached to the book, I actually kinda like them.

(Image from Flickr user delgaudm, used under Creative Commons license.)

No matter how many hours you spend playing Halo, Call of Duty or Kid Icarus, it might not be enough to make you a world class gamer. Researchers have found that people with larger nucleus accumbens outperform others when it comes to video games.

Researchers from the University of Illinois, the University of Pittsburgh, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology recruited 39 people who played video games fewer than three hours a week. The scientists then asked the group of 10 men and 29 women to play two specially created video games—one game required participants to focus on one goal, while the other asked players to grapple with shifting priorities.

According to the paper, published in the journal Cerebral Cortex, the researchers then looked at MRI images of each person’s brain. Those with larger nucleus accumbens, which is the brain’s reward center, outplayed others within the first few hours. The researchers speculate that these players excelled because the “sense of achievement and emotional reward” fueled these subjects who yearn for reward.

However, subjects with larger caudate and putamen—located deep within the brain— excelled at the game with shifting priorities. Previous studies have shown that these areas help people learn new skills and adapt. And while this might help explain why someone is inept at video games, the researchers say these results will help them understand learning. Don’t despair if you’re a subpar gamer—the researchers note that the brain is elastic and certain parts have been shown to grow.

You know him as the man who sang “White Christmas” and co-starred in a slew of movies with Bob Hope, but what don’t you know about Bing Crosby? Here are five facts that might surprise you.

1. He Got His Name from a Comic Strip

The entertainer was born Harry Lillis Crosby, which doesn’t have quite the same ring to it. The nickname “Bing” found him when he was just seven years old. The Spokane Spokesman-Review ran a comic feature called “The Bingville Bugle,” which was a parody of hillbilly newspapers. The young Crosby thought the feature was a riot, and he would giggle uncontrollably when reading it. A neighbor noticed his laughter and started calling Crosby “Bingo from Bingville.” The “o” eventually went away, but the nickname stuck.

2. He Was Almost Columbo

When television fans think of Columbo, they probably envision Peter Falk starring as the title character. However, the job could have been Crosby’s. (more…)