The Sagan Series continues to surprise. Working with an extremely limited resource (Sagan’s reading of the Pale Blue Dot audiobook and portions of Cosmos), editor Reid Gower has continued to find lyrical passages from Sagan and combine them with imagery and audio from other sources. In “The Humans” (the ninth installment of the series), we see a lot of visuals from Koyaanisqatsi, music by The Album Leaf, a handful of other sources, plus of course Sagan’s narration. And it is wonderful. The kids have to see this.

I think there are good videos featuring Sagan and there are not-so-good ones — and I worry that the crummy stuff will overtake the good. So it’s encouraging to see such a shining example of good work here: Gower actually uses the video medium to add something to what Sagan was saying. He doesn’t just illustrate; he inspires. Good job, Mr. Gower.

More Sagan Series Videos

Check out a roundup of the videos from October 2011, which includes links to related Sagan/Feynman/Hawking/name-your-inspiring-scientist videos.

We’re currently about eight months away from the next presidential election, so today’s mentalfloss.com Brain Game Tuesday Test Time challenge focuses on a particular Commander-in-Chief of the past. Good luck!

John C. Calhoun was this U.S. president’s
second-in-command, making it the only
time that a president and vice president
shared the same first name.

Name this president.

This week’s 5 Questions quiz theme is John Travolta films, with the names of characters from those films appearing in the questions. (Can you find them all?) Tuesday: Grease.

Can Advertising Survive the Digital Age? One ad man says yes, but only if the entire concept is reinvented.
*
The BioShock feature film is nowhere, and may never be made, but fan films just get better and better. BioShock: New Year’s End by Jared Potter is a case in point.
*
Parents who stormed the field in previous years is the cited reason that the Colorado Springs Easter Egg Hunt is cancelled this year. Mom, Dad, this is why we can’t have nice things.
*
Avalanche Research Might Help Make Ice Cream Taste Better. Nestle is teaming up with the Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research in Switzerland to figure out how to keep ice crystals from clumping up in your Rocky Road as it gets older.
*
If you’re good at it, you can create music anywhere, anytime. Nicki Bluhm and the Gramblers perform a Hall and Oates cover while riding in a van.
*
Three months after he skewered himself with a pool cue, doctors found the tip of the cue still lodged in his brain. And that’s only the newest story in this gallery of odd x-rays.
*
Exploring the Glittering Crystal Caves of Mlynki. This cave system in the Ukraine sports gypsum crystals of various colors, all hidden underground.
*
Rodney Conradi and Lynse Rainford, both cancer patients, got married in a hospital just weeks before Rodney died. The 21-year-old kept saying the wedding was the best day of his life.
*
Bicycle Parkour is Extremely Difficult. I wonder how many bones Andrew Dickey broke learning to do this (vertigo warning).
*
You may argue about whether popcorn is a vegetable or a grain, but either way it’s good for you. It’s got fiber, few calories, and more antioxidants than you realized.
*
When Billboards Go Rogue. Street artists or vandals (call them whichever you prefer) change the intended meaning of advertising in clever ways.

I can still remember the terror that my stints on the mound in Little League and Pony League caused for me and for opposing batters in Western PA during the mid-50s and early 60s.

The good news: I had a wicked, natural curveball that struck fear into the hearts of my opponents as they never knew where the ball would go. The bad news: Unfortunately, I too never knew where the ball would go once it left my hand.

When I wasn’t busy refining my very limited athletic ability, most of my waking moments were spent following the fortunes of my favorite team: the Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers. Not sure why I chose the Dodgers as “my team” in a family that for years had season tickets for the Pirates. Perhaps an early sign of a lifelong tendency toward contrarian thinking?

In honor of those wonderful years when life was simpler and Duke Snider’s home run stats and Sandy Koufax’s wins were the daily measure of success and joy for one kid in a small town outside of Pittsburgh and millions of fans across the country, I offer a quiz for your enjoyment.

Take the Quiz: The Brooklyn-Los Angeles Dodgers

Note: Toby Maloney is our Senior Vice President for Business Development. He and his wife Melanie were the original investors in mental_floss. You can find him in the back of the mental_floss retail store in Chesterland, OH.

Artist Hillary White knows her classics… so well, that she’s able to mash them up with pop-culture references and characters. Some of the famous paintings I recognize below include: The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp, Les Coquelicots, Café Terrace at Night, The Garden of Earthly Delights, Christina’s World and The Execution of Lady Jane Grey. What other classics is she toying with below? Let us know in the comments! Have a favorite? Let us know that, too!

(more…)

Today is National Stuff That Was Popular When You Were a Kid Day! To celebrate, we’ll be posting quizzes all day about — you guessed it — stuff that was popular when various writers were kids. Keep checking back for more!

Those of us born near the end of the Baby Boom were a bit young to be hippies, war protesters, or racial rioters. But life was exciting all the same! America was accelerating its space program, Andy Warhol was elevating Campbell soup cans and Coke bottles to artistic heights, and moms across the country were impressing party guests with soufflés and flambés that made Julia Child proud. We had plenty of food fads to spice up our lives in the sixties and early seventies.

If you remember when McDonald’s boasted of having served one billion burgers, you should be a wiz with this quiz. For the younger set, the recent re-emergence of some of these trendy tidbits might help clue you in—and inspire your next trip to the grocery store.

Take the Quiz: Food Fads of the ’60s and ’70s

When you were a kid, did you wish your teacher was as wacky as Mrs. Jewls? Or that your school was as zany as Wayside? Here’s a quiz for young (at heart) readers who loved the Louis Sachar series, which kicked off with Wayside School is Falling Down.

Take the Quiz: Sideways Stories from Wayside School

Image credit: Michael Clinard

Syrian golden hamsters are—to put it mildly—the drunken uncles of the rodent world. In the wild, these hard-partying hamsters spend their summers gathering and storing fruit as a survival measure. By winter, when they need to break into the stash, the fruit has fermented. Over time, the Syrian hamsters’ appetite for alcohol only increases. Today, when given the choice between booze and water, these cuddly alcoholics choose the hard stuff every time.

Wilder still, the critters are impervious to hamster-ball DUIs. Because so much of their natural diet involves alcohol, Syrian hamsters have evolved to sport cartoonishly large livers that are nearly five times normal size (in relation to their other body parts). As a result, these hamsters rarely get sloshed.

While this biological quirk is great news for anyone who’s thinking of marketing cocktails to rodents, it’s even better for scientists. Researchers always need test subjects for alcohol studies, and Syrian golden hamsters are the perfect tipplers for any lab.

This article originally appeared in the March-April issue of mental_floss magazine. Get a free issue here!

Today is National Stuff That Was Popular When You Were a Kid Day! To celebrate, we’ll be posting quizzes all day about — you guessed it — stuff that was popular when various writers were kids. Keep checking back for more!

The Brady family had a cool house (with one bathroom?); the Partridges had the cool bus. Marcia went to the prom with Davy Jones; Laurie went a dance with Snake (Rob Reiner). How much do you know about these two staples from ABC’s Friday Night lineup?

Take the Quiz: The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family