Execution by elephant

For thousands of years, elephants were used to crush captives by placing the victims' heads and/or bodies under the animal's foot. It was primarily done in South and Southeast Asia. European settlers in the 18th and 19th centuries eventually got rid of the practice.

Norman Rockwell's method

I only marginally heard of Norman Rockwell and his paintings. He painted works that depicted everyday American lives. But what most people might not know, although he didn't keep it a secret, is that Rockwell had a cast of photographers who snapped pictures for him before each painting. Here's The Runaway:



Check out more of his work vis-a-vis the actual photos taken beforehand.

Nancy Witcher Astor

Nancy Witcher Astor was the first woman to serve as a Member of Parliament in Britain (although she wasn't the first woman to win a seat; that title belongs to someone who won an election but didn't serve), elected on this day in 1919. Here are a few interesting things about Astor:

- She was born in Danville, Virginia, where her father had been a slave owner.
- She moved to England at about the age of 26.
- She converted to Christian Science from Catholicism.
- She won her seat in a special election as a member of the Conservative Party pretty much by default. Most of her suffragette opponents were in jail, and she was known to have ridiculous political views (her fierce resistance against alcohol consumption) and say outlandish things.
- She had an unimpressive run as an MP but did have some influence outside of politics.
- She hated Jews and didn't mind the Nazis wiping them out.
- The Tories (Conservative Party members) felt she was becoming a liability to the party, and her husband strongly discouraged her from seeking re-election in the final years of WWII. So she quit.
- During her retirement from politics she went around the U.S. making speeches and spewing hatred toward black people and Jews. She suggested to a group of black students that they should grow up to be more like the servants she remembered in Virginia. To another group she said that they should be thankful for slavery because it's what allowed them to convert to Christianity.
- She had a gay son.

So at least in some respect, Nancy Astor was kinda like Sarah Palin before Palin was even born.

Cyber Monday

Cyber Monday is the Black Friday equivalent for online shoppers. It falls on the Monday after Black Friday. The name was coined in 2005, and although the day isn't the biggest for online shopping (that would be a week or two before Christmas), it's quickly becoming so.

100% Canadian turkey

In the first half of 2009, 99.3% of U.S. imports of live turkeys came from Canada, at a value of $9.2 million.

The Plot Against FDR

The Plot Against FDR in 1933 was a plan discussed among the business elite to overthrow the president using half a million war veterans. The businessmen wanted to institute the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the Great Depression. One of the notable businessmen was Prescott Bush, grandfather of George W. Bush. Major General Smedley Butler, the man being considered to head the coup, testified a year later in Congress and confirmed that people had met with him regarding their plan.

Listen to the BBC Radio 4 documentary on this.

Homo floresiensis is a distinct species

We had just learned about Homo floresiensis in school and were supposed to write a two-page single-spaced paper formulating our own hypotheses on its possible origins. So how fortuitous it is that researchers have now confirmed that the ancient Hobbits of Indonesia are a separate species, and not diseased or deformed descendants of Homo sapiens.

Homo floresiensis lived in and around the area of Indonesia approximately 94,000 to 13,000 years ago. The species has confused scientists on where to put it on the evolutionary tree because of the members' diminutive size (three and a half feet tall) and the fact that they lived isolated from the rest of civilization.

This should help me on my paper.

Update 06.27.10; Watch the fairly recent NOVA episode "Alien from Earth" to learn more. It's damn good.

Calendar Lake

Lake Malawi gets its name "Calendar Lake" because it is 365 miles long and 52 miles wide at its widest point.

52% of Republicans think Obama stole the election...

...with the help of ACORN.

Unbelievable. Only 27% of them think Obama actually won the election. That makes it 26% of the American people who think Obama enlisted the help of ACORN to steal 9.5 million votes.

I usually try to stay away from the political fray, but when I see polls like this I go berserk. Like I've said before, you can thank the TV media for inviting people representing both sides of the issues and not doing a damn thing to actually say which side is correct. And thanking Fox News is a gimme, of course.

When crocs ate dinosaurs

I just watched the special dubbed "When Crocs Ate Dinosaurs" on the National Geographic Channel. Pretty amazing stuff. I can't possibly give you all the details but you can click the link and watch this three and a half minute synopsis.

Yakuza

The Yakuza are the Japanese mafia. Debut author Jake Adelstein has a new book out called Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan, in which he describes his dealings with the Yakuza.

Chimps really do use their left brains

I had learned previously that chimpanzees were ambidextrous in their daily activities. Now that's been erased from my memory and replaced with this remarkable revelation.

A new study shows that chimps predominantly use their right hands when communicating, hinting to the strong possibility that they use the left half of their brains, as is true for humans. This is a breakthrough because it buttresses the hypothesis that speech evolved as our ancestors pointed to objects (see: Bouba/kiki effect).

Subserve

Subserve means "to be useful or instrumental in promoting."

World's largest CPR class

The world's largest CPR class was held this morning at Cowboys Stadium. The city of Arlington's 4,526 eighth-grade students packed the new stadium as they learned how to do CPR, while an official with Guinness World Records stood alongside. The record demolished the previous one by nearly 1,000 people, set in Oslo, Norway.

Shisha

Shisha, more commonly known here as the hookah, and one of the cultural staples of Egypt, was actually brought to there from the Ottoman Empire 200 years ago.

Japanese waistlines

In Japan, the state requires men to have waistlines no bigger than 33.5 inches, and women can't have waistlines bigger than 35.4 inches. This law came into effect around April 2008, and it calls upon companies and local governments to annually measure the waistlines of people between the ages of 40 and 74.

Those in violation, if they don't lose the weight after three months, will be given dieting guides. After six more months the offenders will be "re-educated." This is all to decrease the overweight population by 10% over the next four years and 25% over the next seven years. The companies face financial penalties if their employees, the employees' families, and the companies' retirees are above the waistline limits.

I think we can all agree that 33.5 inches for guys is insane, but I don't care what anyone says, I love the overall idea of this plan. It would sure get the 30% of jackasses here who are obese to slim down, which would ultimately bring down the costs of health care anyway. It's called preventing shit before it happens (quite literally) so we won't have to throw money at our problems when we get diseases related to obesity.

Here's a quote from the NYT article:

“Nobody will want to be singled out as metabo [a word for overweight],” Kimiko Shigeno, a company nurse, said of the campaign. “It’ll have the same effect as non-smoking campaigns where smokers are now looked at disapprovingly.”

And to that I say, thank God.

This inspired me to measure my own waist: 32.5 inches!

Jersey Devil

The Jersey Devil is the Bigfoot of New Jersey, flying around in the Pine Barrens.

Legend has it that in 1735, a mother who was just about to give birth put a curse on her coming child. She made a deal with the devil to trade her infant for her freedom from a loveless marriage. The baby is born, and within an hour grows into a gruesome creature that is as tall as two men, with huge wings and a tail. Then he flew up to the Pine Barrens to live all these years. Of course, stupid people have to believe stupid things, especially if they live close to an area with a centuries-old myth. There are people who claim they saw the Jersey Devil, blah blah blah.

The creature was the inspiration for the name of the state's NHL team, the New Jersey Devils.

Ten-year rule of mastery

The ten-year rule states that it takes about ten years of intense labor to master any field.

Robert Wadlow

Coelacanth

The coelacanth is a fish that was once thought to have gone extinct 65 million years ago. But a South African woman discovered it in 1938. The animal might be a link in the evolution from fish to land animals. The most interesting characteristic is its paired lobe fins that extend away from its body and move in an alternating pattern, representing what would later be the legs of the amphibians and reptiles.

Watch the NOVA episode on the coelacanth, entitled "Ancient Creature of the Deep":
part 1
part 2
part 3
part 4
part 5
part 6

Sesame Street

Sesame Street has won 97 Emmy Awards. That’s the most Emmys won by any television show.

Zamboni

Zamboni is a trademark for ice resurfacers.

Tear down this quote

From On the Media.

Verbal adhesion

Verbal adhesion is the term used to describe a savant's ability to remember huge quantities of words' without comprehension. This phenomenon is not evident in Kim Peek, however, the world's most famous savant who was the inspiration for the 1988 movie Rain Man.

Manichean

Manichean means "of or relating to a dualistic view of the world, dividing things into either good or evil, light or dark, black or white, involving no shades of gray." It's named after the third century Persian prophet Mani, who went crazy one day and started believing in the same concept.

Physiognomy

Physiognomy is the notion that a person's face reflects his or her character. The idea was put forth by Johann Caspar Lavater in the 1700s, who gathered together all the previous writings on physiognomy.

In 1831 a young Charles Darwin had the interview of his life with Captain Robert FitzRoy, concerning his post as naturalist on the H.M.S. Beagle. Darwin almost didn't make it because FitzRoy, as a physiognomist, thought Darwin's nose had a shape associated with lack of energy and determination. Which is why the theory of physiognomy should have died right there.

But apparently it's making some sort of comeback, while still getting disproved.

Tower of Hanoi

The Tower of Hanoi is a math game usually used in computer science. It involves three rods and a number of disks which can slide onto the rods. The disks vary in size -- the smallest is stacked on the top and the largest at the bottom, so it would look similar to a step pyramid. The purpose of the game is to move all the disks that are assembled on the left rod to the right rod. The middle one is used as a temporary place holder. But you have to follow these rules:

1. Only one disk can be moved at a time.
2. A disk can't be placed on top of a smaller disk.
3. All disks have to be slid on a peg while being moved.

The Tower of Hanoi got its name from a legend involving Vietnamese priests moving 64 golden disks in the same manner described above. That would have taken them 2⁶⁴ - 1 moves, or 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 turns, to finish.

First words on a hard drive

The first words successfully stored on a hard drive were "This has been a day of solid achievement," on February 10, 1954.

NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo, short for National Novel Writing Month, "is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30."

One of the subscribers to this blog, Penny Roberts, has gone insane and is participating in this marathon. So I'm ordering all 2 people who read this blog, including Penny, to wish her luck this month. Plus I want the book for free.

Here's her NaNoWriMo profile.

And I wrote this post because I didn't have enough time to learn something better today. I got tests to study for and I'm tired as hell. But at least the Phillies keep fighting.

Ironing clothes inside out

I'm relatively new when it comes to ironing clothes. Today I decided to read those labels on my shirts and pants I never bother to read and found that the instructions said to iron them inside out. I had gotten done with most of my clothes doing it the usual way -- on the front -- so I only had about two garments left. And it turned out ironing inside out was actually better.

Here's how HowStuffWorks explains it:

To keep from giving your wash-and-wear garments a sheen when you do touch-up ironing, turn the clothing inside out and iron the wrong side.

I can't wait to use this fact next weekend.