If you, like me, learned everything you know about football from Friday Night Lights (the TV series, not the movie. Duh.), you probably watch the Super Bowl for the commercials. Whether it was famous frogs, talking babies, thirsty supermodels or something a little more outrageous, advertising during the big game has become almost as relevant as the football. Here’s six of our favorite classic Super Bowl ads. Did we forget yours? Tell us in the comments.

1973

In 1973, Master Lock ran a famous ad where one of their locks survived being shot by a sharpshooter. For years, the company continued the tradition and ran a similar ad, spending almost the entire annual marketing budget on the single commercial.

1992

Remember this iconic Pepsi commercial starring supermodel Cindy Crawford? (more…)

You know what they taste like, but how well do you know your favorite cheeses’ backgrounds? In this quiz, we’ll give you a cheese, and you’ll tell us where it originated. (You might want to go grab some cheese now to help ward off any mid-quiz cravings.)

Take the Quiz: Cheese Origins

Roughly 3,500 years ago—right about the time the Ancient Phoenicians were hitting their stride—a tiny cypress tree, no bigger than a fist, sprouted in the swamplands of Central Florida. 3,500 years later, on January 17 this year, that very same cypress burned to the ground.

Joe Burbank/MCT/Landov

Known as “The Senator,” this majestic, 118-foot tall tree was one of the oldest organisms in the world. Over the course of its long life, it survived hurricanes, disease and logging sprees, serving as a landmark for Seminole Indians, a tourist attraction for curious Victorians, and a spiritual epicenter for pilgrims hoping to bask, literally, in the shade of history.

Investigators don’t know exactly what caused the ancient tree to burn down two weeks ago, but arson and lightning are both possibilities. In tribute to The Senator, here is a list of some of the world’s oldest and most amazing remaining trees.

1. Old Tjikko (Sweden)

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In 1979, Philip Glass wrote a solo piano piece called “Mad Rush” (a piece of “indefinite length”) in honor of the 14th Dalai Lama’s visit to North America. I find the piece very moving — there’s something simultaneously contemplative and urgent about the music. I listen to it a lot while writing, in its 13-minute version from Glass’s album Solo Piano — the whole album is terrific, and nerds may recognize one piece from its appearance on Battlestar Galactica (apparently Kara Thrace’s dad was Philip Glass!).

Today is Philip Glass’s 75th birthday, so I thought I’d close out January’s lecture series by sharing a brief (three-minute) selection from “Mad Rush,” as performed by Glass in Two Moon July. In the end, perhaps the most moving lecture is one without words.

Topics: social change through nonviolence; repetition.

For: everyone.

Further Listening

Check out Solo Piano for a much longer version of the piece. You may also enjoy this performance from 2008 in which Glass introduces and explains the piece, then plays a medium-length version. The audio isn’t perfect, but you get the idea. If that’s not enough Glass for you, try the Koyaanisqatsi soundtrack, or check out Philip Glass’s Music on Sesame Street.

Transcript

Sheet music is available.

Closing Remarks & Suggest a Lecture

Although this is the end of my first January lecture run, I’ve got more in the works — in a few weeks we’ll see what Lectures for a New Year turns into. If you missed a lecture in this first series, check out the roundups of week 1, week 2, week 3, and week 4. If you’ve got a favorite lecture, share it in the comments and I’ll have a look. Thank you for watching this month, and stay tuned!

These terms either refer to fictional currency or actual birds. Can you tell which is which?

Take the Quiz: Sci-Fi Currency or Exotic Bird?

After several ballots, we have a winner in last week’s Name Our New Printer contest. I pushed hard for Jody’s Will.i.Jam, and there was support for many of the wonderful Prints puns (Freddie Prints, Jr., The Fresh Prints, Prints of Darkness, The Little Prints). But the split vote allowed Caroline’s suggestion of Sade (“Because I’m sure this new device is a Smooth Operator”) to break through, James A. Garfield style. Since none of us can actually use Sade yet, we had to print out the nametag at the old printer — which we’re now calling The Old Printer.

So I’m up in Seattle this week, staying at a hotel some blocks from the original Starbucks (which, it turns out, isn’t REALLY the original, but rather the second location, which was situated better for marketing purposes, but who’s counting). So I bought some ground coffee, took it back to my hotel room and threw it in the French press at my coffee station, just above the mini-bar with the lasers that detect even the slightest movement – as if tiny Ninjas are going to descend and try and make off with a Snickers bar.

When the coffee was ready, I reached for the little half and half creamers and then stopped dead in my tracks: Seattle is cold this time of year, but how long have these things been sitting out here at the coffee station and what if they’ve soured? So I did a little research and this is what I discovered:

The average little half and half has a shelf life of about 6 months or more. That’s because, in essence, the dairy has been “canned.” All bacteria is killed during the canning process (heating it up, mostly) and then they seal it up quickly, so it can sit on your shelf for half a year before it starts to solidify. If you open up one and it’s a little chunky, probably best to toss it.

Now then, any requests for the busker when I go back to Starbucks this morning? Yesterday, he was doing a mean version of “U.F.O.” by Coldplay – not a song I would have thought made it into the busker repertoire yet. I’ll leave you with one other shot I took, of the interior of the Starbucks, which, as you see, looks nothing like the 9 zillion other Starbucks that came after this one.

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Some knowledge of the 50 state capitals will go a long way toward solving the Tuesday Test Time challenge for today’s mentalfloss.com Brain Game. Good luck!

What U.S. states have capital cities with
names that are obviously of French origin?

This week’s 5 Question quizzes all feature questions that contain the names of dog characters on television. Today: TV K9s, Day 2

Who parks a car better, men or women? A new study suggests what you’ve known all along.
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The annual Animal Planet Puppy Bowl on Superbowl Sunday will feature a kitten halftime show. See a series of adorable photographs taken during the taping of the halftime show.
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The film One For the Money managed to get exactly one sort-of-favorable critic’s review. The best lines of MovieBuff’s review stand alone as comedy gold.
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Obama’s Lean, Mean SEAL Machine. The Navy commandos pulled off another high-profile raid last week, illustrating the president’s vision for the military.
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A college student found cocaine in a textbook she ordered from Amazon. And she didn’t even have to pay extra for it!
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A new Sweded version of The Phantom Menace was produced in honor of the new 3D theatrical release of the old movie. But it’s better because it’s free, it’s not 3D, and George Lucas isn’t responsible for it.
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Remote-control “flying people” are released over New York City. Makes you wish you could be one of them, doesn’t it?
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Matthew Broderick reprise his role as Ferris Bueller in a Super Bowl ad. Watch the full-length version and note that the product is prominently but not obnoxiously displayed.
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You’ll soon be able to invest in Facebook as the company prepares for its IPO (initial public offering). Its value may soar as high as $100 billion, but is that real, or just a number?
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Masters of Food Art. Their mothers never told them to stop playing with their food.