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Speaking of scaring the cats...

If killer whales lived on land, we’d be in trouble. Highly intelligent and social, the black-and-white marine mammals hunt in packs, launching coordinated attacks on other whales and sharks, and even wave-wash seals off Antarctic ice floats.

On April 18, a half-dozen orcas battled a pod of sperm whales off the southern coast of Sri Lanka. The unusual encounter is one of fewer than a dozen such recorded conflicts — and the first observed in the Indian Ocean.

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- read the full article (with more pics & video) Photographer Captures Dramatic Battle Between Orcas and Sperm Whales (from Wired)​
 
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After that, Brooks cast Wilder as Leo Bloom in "The Producers," a role that ended up securing him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Wilder would work with Brooks again six years later, on the Western comedy "Blazing Saddles," and then a third time, on "Young Frankenstein." For "Saddles," Wilder played the gunslinger Jim, or "The Waco Kid." However, that wasn't the original plan.

As Wilder tells it:

"Mel didn't want me to do that part; he wanted me to do Hedley Lamarr. I said, 'I wouldn't be any good doing that, Mel. What about The Waco Kid? He said 'No, no, I got two people who want that.' He brought in one of them -- I won't mention names -- but he had an outfit on, and Mel walked with him to the jail cell and foam started coming out of his mouth. Mel said 'Keep doing what you're doing' -- he thought he was a [method] actor -- and he kept foaming at the mouth. Eventually, Mel had to call an ambulance. Then he picked up the telephone and called me and said 'Can you come here right now?' A day later I was on a plane, and a day after that I was upside-down in a jail cell."
...
Wilder, of course, is best known for portraying chocolatier Willy Wonka in Mel Stuart's "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory." But he did not mince words about Tim Burton's take on the beloved Roald Dahl tale.

"I think it's an insult. It's probably Warner Bros.' insult," Wilder said. "Johnny Depp, I think, is a good actor, but I don't care for that director. He's a talented man, but I don't care for him doing stuff like he did."​
 

All week, Morning Edition has been examining how coffee fits into modern life, which led us to look into the many ways the drink's trembling tendrils have reached into popular music. With the Beastie Boys taking their "," Carly Simon finding "," and countless singers using black coffee as a metaphor for a life in need of a swift kick, it was actually tough to narrow a caffeinated playlist down to just 10 selections.

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Mississippi John Hurt
Album: Candy Man
Song: Coffee Blues
[song here]
Early-20th-century bluesman Mississippi John Hurt sang the praises of not just coffee, but Maxwell House-brand coffee in particular, as he opened "Coffee Blues" with a strangely endearing pitch for the product. "It's good to the last drop," he announces, "just like it says on the can." But the blues classic has had more influence than most songs that open with product placements: The song's repeated references to a "lovin' spoonful" gave the '60s rock band its name.

Squeeze
Album: Big Squeeze: The Very Best of Squeeze
Song: Black Coffee in Bed
[song here]
A sleeper classic featuring backup vocals from Elvis Costello and Paul Young, Squeeze's 1982 single "Black Coffee in Bed" finds a narrative use for coffee stains as the remnants of a failed relationship: "There's a stain on my notebook where your coffee cup was," Glenn Tilbrook sings. Helping to cement coffee's unexpected place as the most wistful of beverages, "Black Coffee in Bed" is one of many career highlights for one of the most reliably sturdy pop bands from the '70s, '80s and beyond.​

- see the full list Jittery Jams: 10 Songs For Coffee Lovers (from NPR)​
 
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"We have all these books, records, and art and are getting it all assessed; that’s what is taking so long," she says after ordering a glass of rosé. But both have moved on. Among her suitors are a restaurateur, an architect, and an actor. "It’s just weird," Gordon says of navigating new romance. "I can’t tell what’s normal." And Moore has regularly been seen with the same woman, fueling the rumor that his affair helped doom their marriage. (Thurston Moore declined a request for an interview.) "We seemed to have a normal relationship inside of a crazy world," Gordon says of her marriage. "And in fact, it ended in a kind of normal way—midlife crisis, starstruck woman."​
- read the full article Kim Gordon Sounds Off (from Elle Magazine)​
 
Ernest Bramah

The Wallet of Kai Lung (1900)

It is a mark of insincerity of purpose to spend one's time in looking for the sacred Emperor in the low-class tea-shops.
"The Transmutation of Ling"

When struck by a thunderbolt it is unnecessary to consult the Book of Dates as to the precise meaning of the omen.
"The Transmutation of Ling"

Although there exist many thousand subjects for elegant conversation, there are persons who cannot meet a cripple without talking about feet.
"The Transmutation of Ling"

When Ling was communicating to any person the signs by which messengers might find him, he was compelled to add, "the neighbourhood in which this contemptible person resides is that officially known as 'the mean quarter favoured by the lower class of those who murder by treachery'," and for this reason he was not always treated with the regard to which his attainments entitled him, or which he would have unquestionably received had he been able to describe himself as of "the partly-drained and uninfected area reserved to Mandarins and their friends."
"The Transmutation of Ling"

Before hastening to secure a possible reward of five taels by dragging an unobservant person away from a falling building, examine well his features lest you find, when too late, that it is one to whom you are indebted for double that amount.
"The Confession of Kai Lung"

In his countenance this person read an expression of no-encouragement towards his venture.
"The Confession of Kai Lung"

Should a person on returning from the city discover his house to be in flames, let him examine well the change which he has received from the chair-carrier before it is too late; for evil never travels alone.
"The Career of the Charitable Quen-Ki-Tong"

At the mention of the name and offence of this degraded being a great sound went up from the entire multitude – a universal cry of execration, not greatly dissimilar from that which may be frequently heard in the crowded Temple of Impartiality when the one whose duty it is to take up, at a venture, the folded papers, announces that the sublime Emperor, or some mandarin of exalted rank, has been so fortunate as to hold the winning number in the Annual State Lottery.
"The Vision of Yin, the Son of Yat Huang"
 
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I'm staring across the kitchen table at the cartoonist Alison Bechdel, filled with a vague sense of dread. I am trying not to dwell on the regrettable fact that I arrived almost 15 minutes late for our interview, which perhaps has not set the right tone. While I do not want to gush, or seem nervous, or stupid, it seems that I have just offered to make her tea, as though that were a normal way to respond to a host who has just offered to do the same. It is late afternoon, and it has been raining all damn day.

Two questions in, Bechdel gets down to brass tacks. "If I'm reading something that is marketed to me as a memoir, it fucking well better be true," she says. "I'm getting increasingly moralistic about this. Tell the truth! Don't we all know what telling the truth is?"

I don't know how to answer. If anyone knows what telling the truth is, it is surely this woman in front of me. Over the course of her two graphic memoirs, Fun Home and Are You My Mother?, she has been rigorously honest about her thoughts, words, and actions across a wide variety of intimate settings that include her therapist's office, her dreams, and her bedroom. I was "with" Bechdel when she realized she was a lesbian and when she found out that her father died. I even know about that terrible time her mother found the "tee-tee place" drawing she made when she was seven years old.​
 
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This is the undisputed domain of General Keith Alexander, a man few even in Washington would likely recognize. Never before has anyone in America’s intelligence sphere come close to his degree of power, the number of people under his command, the expanse of his rule, the length of his reign, or the depth of his secrecy. A four-star Army general, his authority extends across three domains: He is director of the world’s largest intelligence service, the National Security Agency; chief of the Central Security Service; and commander of the US Cyber Command. As such, he has his own secret military, presiding over the Navy’s 10th Fleet, the 24th Air Force, and the Second Army.
...
And he and his cyberwarriors have already launched their first attack. The cyberweapon that came to be known as Stuxnet was created and built by the NSA in partnership with the CIA and Israeli intelligence in the mid-2000s. The first known piece of malware designed to destroy physical equipment, Stuxnet was aimed at Iran’s nuclear facility in Natanz. By surreptitiously taking control of an industrial control link known as a Scada (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) system, the sophisticated worm was able to damage about a thousand centrifuges used to enrich nuclear material.​
- read the full article The Secret War (from Wired)​
 
SkAoUt said:
Funny as Roald Dahl held a similar opinion about the 1971 movie Wilder was in.
Click to expand...

Yeah, and I disagreed with Dahl and thought he was being a grumpy old man. I agree with Wilder, but truth is he's probably also just being a grumpy old man. :)
 
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He is a multi-media innovator, an app-creating visual sculptor and the intellectual guru to rock legends seeking inspiration.

Now Brian Eno is to help improve the nation’s health after designing an ambient “healing environment” which will be incorporated into new hospitals so that patients can recuperate to a backdrop of soothing light and sound.​
 
LavaWalk.jpg


So, there has been some buzz about a video of a fellow “running up a lava flow.” Now, normally I try to ignore videos of people doing things that are generally perceived as idiotic — and running up a lava flow fits nicely into that category. However, upon watching the video, I realized that although he sure did run up the lava flow, it actually wasn’t as crazy as it seems. DISCLAIMER: This isn’t to say you should ever do what this guy did. Don’t. There are many things you could do and survive but shouldn’t because there are very high probabilities that you’ll get hurt. This guy beat the odds.​
- read the full articlem and see the video Why It Is Possible to Walk on a Lava Flow (But You Still Shouldn’t) (from Wired)​
 
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Last month, a paper published in Nature reported on some water that had been trapped 1.5 miles below the Earth's surface in Canada for a long while. How long? Based on an analysis of the isotopes of natural gases in the water, scientists believe it to be the oldest isolated water ever studied, at least 1 billion years old and maybe as old as 2.64 billion, slightly younger than the rocks that encased it.* For maybe half as long as the Earth's entire existence, this water has been sealed away, unexposed to the atmosphere.

The next question: Is it drinkable? The answer: Not really, but a sip won't kill you. According to an interview in the Los Angeles Times, one of the paper's authors, Barbara Sherwood Lollar, has tasted it, and it was "terrible," she reports. "It is much saltier than seawater."​
- read the full article Confirmed: 1-Billion-Year-Old Water Tastes 'Terrible' (from The Atlantic)​
 
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Doug Rickard hasn’t yet played GeoGuessr, but he’s fairly certain he would do really well identifying American city scenes.

Rickard spent four years combing through Google Street View exploring images of cities either forgotten or symbolic of economic collapse to produce the series “A New American Picture,” one of the most talked about projects of 2012.

Rickard said the popularity of the work—and subsequent controversy—wasn’t unexpected.

“It has been pretty amazing,” Rickard said about reaction to the work. “When I started it, I had a feeling it would strike a chord on a lot of different levels, so in a strange way I had sort of anticipated everything that has come.”​
- read the full article A Portrait of American Life on Google Street View (from Behold/Slate)​
 
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Cyprus, the Mediterranean island nation just south of Turkey, took centuries to gain its independence. The Greeks, Assyrians, Egyptians, Persians, Romans, Ottomans, British and others all took their turns taking over the island, and each left their mark on the archeological record. But in a ruined chamber in a castle on the western corner of the island, it may be more apt to say the invaders left a smear.
...
As castles go, Saranda Kolones had a pretty poor run. But two University of Cambridge researchers recently realized that, precisely thanks to the castle’s short use, a priceless treasure had been left behind in the Saranda Kolones’ bowels. One of the centuries-old castle latrines (read: ancient toilet), they found, was still full of dried-up poo. That feces, they thought, could provide valuable insight into what kind of parasites plagued the former residents’ guts. And because only 30 years’ worth of waste clogged the ancient sewage system, those parasites could provide specific insight into what ailed medieval crusaders. The researchers rolled up their sleeves and collected samples from the dessicated cesspool.​
- read the full article This Castle’s Toilet Still Holds Parasites From Crusaders’ Feces (from Smithsonian.com)​
 
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[The Prometheia festival is] the most important annual festival for followers of The Return of the Hellenes - a movement trying to bring back the religion, values, philosophy and way of life of ancient Greece, more than 16 centuries after it was replaced by Christianity.

These people consider Greece to be a country under Christian occupation.

"People want to identify with something in the past - where they came from - so as to know where they are going," says Trivoulides. "If you don't know your past, you don't have a future.​
- read the full article The Greeks who worship the ancient gods (from the BBC)​
 
Laurel said:
...
As castles go, Saranda Kolones had a pretty poor run. But two University of Cambridge researchers recently realized that, precisely thanks to the castle’s short use, a priceless treasure had been left behind in the Saranda Kolones’ bowels. One of the centuries-old castle latrines (read: ancient toilet), they found, was still full of dried-up poo. That feces, they thought, could provide valuable insight into what kind of parasites plagued the former residents’ guts. And because only 30 years’ worth of waste clogged the ancient sewage system, those parasites could provide specific insight into what ailed medieval crusaders. The researchers rolled up their sleeves and collected samples from the dessicated cesspool.[/indent]
- read the full article This Castle’s Toilet Still Holds Parasites From Crusaders’ Feces (from Smithsonian.com)​
Click to expand...

Researchers have spent years analysing the contents of a short section of sewer in Herculaneum, destroyed by Vesuvius. The sewer ran from a couple of insulae (apartment blocks) with shops on the ground floor, in a poor part of town.

They were surprised at the range of foodstuffs that had been eaten and the quality of the rubbish that had ended up in the sewer. Although from a poor part of Herculaneum, the debris showed that the residents had a varied diet from a wide range of sources including spices from India.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13781202

They still have tons of material to sort: http://phys.org/news/2011-06-ancient-sewer-excavation-roman-diet.html
 
Laurel said:
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3.jpg.CROP.original-original.jpg


Doug Rickard hasn’t yet played GeoGuessr, but he’s fairly certain he would do really well identifying American city scenes.

Rickard spent four years combing through Google Street View exploring images of cities either forgotten or symbolic of economic collapse to produce the series “A New American Picture,” one of the most talked about projects of 2012.

Rickard said the popularity of the work—and subsequent controversy—wasn’t unexpected.

“It has been pretty amazing,” Rickard said about reaction to the work. “When I started it, I had a feeling it would strike a chord on a lot of different levels, so in a strange way I had sort of anticipated everything that has come.”​
- read the full article A Portrait of American Life on Google Street View (from Behold/Slate)​
Click to expand...

I read this and now I can't stop playing GeoGuessr.
 
oggbashan said:
Researchers have spent years analysing the contents of a short section of sewer in Herculaneum, destroyed by Vesuvius. The sewer ran from a couple of insulae (apartment blocks) with shops on the ground floor, in a poor part of town.

They were surprised at the range of foodstuffs that had been eaten and the quality of the rubbish that had ended up in the sewer. Although from a poor part of Herculaneum, the debris showed that the residents had a varied diet from a wide range of sources including spices from India.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13781202

They still have tons of material to sort: http://phys.org/news/2011-06-ancient-sewer-excavation-roman-diet.html
Click to expand...

Wow, that's pretty awesome.
 
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Mom and Dad supporting their favorite band, The Paramores

Here’s a surprising update on the Warped Tour: it still exists.

This might not seem all that shocking, but it actually came as news to me who—like most self-respecting fans of punk rock—has not been to the Warped Tour since Bill Clinton was in office. I think the last time I went was in 1999 when the featured acts included Anti-Flag, Dropkick Murphys, Blink-182, Bouncing Souls, H2O, Less Than Jake, Pennywise, and a pre-toilet-era Black Eyed Peas (before Fergie came along and boom-boom-powed the band into a meaningless corporate existence of Super Bowls and Best Buy ads).

But that was 14 years ago and I’ll probably never go again unless VICE sends me to cover it this year, in which case, I’ll need a bottle of sunscreen, a pair of industrial-strength earplugs, and in case things get really dire, a revolver with one bullet. And I’m sure that’s fine with founder Kevin ***** and the other Warped Tour organizers. They don’t care if my old ass would rather splatter my brains out than attend their shitty festival for shitheads, because the Warped Tour is not aimed at me. It’s aimed at high school kids and always has been.
...
The Warped Tour is fully aware that they are basically running a punk rock daycare service. They pretty much flat-out admitted it this year when they announced their new policy: any kid who comes to the Warped Tour can bring a parent for free. A brilliant move on their part. No longer will miserable dads need to circle the parking lot until Bleed the Veil (or whatever crapcore band their kid is into that week) is finished playing. Instead, they can come inside, where they are in prime position to buy their spoiled kids $9 Monster Energy Drinks and t-shirts from their favorite band, Horizon on the Dance Floor, to replace the One Direction ones they were wearing last year because OMG that’s totally gay now, dad! GOD!​
- read the full article The Warped Tour is Punk Rock Daycare (from Vice)​
 
The Icelandic population is very small and all Icelanders are related. But yet, it is big enough so everyone doesn't know one another. This means that each and every Icelander that is in a relationship, is dating a relative. In most cases those relations are distant. But not always. But how can they know?
...
We all derive from the same family tree. An online registry, Íslendingabók ('The Book of Icelanders') holds information about the families of about 720,000 individuals who were born in Iceland at some point in time. Today, the population in Iceland is just about 320,000. The database can be found on islendingabok.is and everyone registered in the database has free access to it.
...
"Am I sleeping with or dating my cousin?" an Icelander might ask. The answer is: Of course you are, but how closely exactly are you related?

The answer to that can be found in the online database, but people might not always have the opportunity to look that up when they are for example out partying.​
- read the full article App Prevents Icelanders from Sleeping With their Relatives (from News of Iceland)​
 
sorry for the screen-stretcher!

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Tucked away in a lower Manhattan back alley, the freight-elevator-sized, generically named Museum is one of New York City’s newest curiosities. While it’s only open 16 hours a week, during the day on Saturdays and Sundays, the museum’s contents are viewable 24/7, lit and sealed by glass doors.

Passers-by are encouraged to call a toll-free number to learn about the 15 collections, comprising 200 objects, inside, including a series of Disney-themed bulletproof backpacks; U.S. paper money and coins so mutilated the Fed has deemed them unfit for currency, gathered by artist and writer Harley Spiller, a.k.a. Inspector Collector; a selection of objects from a fake Mars excavation; and personal items fabricated by prisoners, such as dice made out of bread, collected by multimedia artist Baron Von Fancy. Museum also offers several unique ways to experience the world: You can compare industrial designer Tucker Viemeister’s collection of toothpaste tubes from all over the map, or potato chip bags from various countries (collected by an eighth-grade class), as well as a globetrotting fake vomit collection. And that’s just the beginning.​
- read the full article World's Smallest Museum Finds the Wonder in Everyday Objects (from Collector's Weekly)​
 
If Russian President Vladimir Putin is to be believed, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden is currently holed up in Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport, the home base of national carrier Aeroflot. Instead of boarding an expected flight to Havana earlier this week, Snowden reportedly stayed inside the airport's transit zone--the space inside the airport complex where flyers switch planes but do not go through immigration.

There's only one problem. Despite the hordes of journalists who descended on Sheremetyevo hoping to talk to the man at the center of the NSA story--not to mention the tens of thousands of flyers who pass through the transit zone daily--no one has actually seen Snowden there. While it seems likely that Snowden is staying under some sort of escort in a restricted area of the transit zone, or even being held off-site with extreme discretion, some people actually do live in airport transit zones. Sure, it sounds like a movie, but the Tom Hanks vehicle The Terminal was actually based on the real-life case of Mehran Karimi Nasseri, an Iranian refugee who lived in Charles De Gaulle Airport's transit lounge for 18 years. People have even lived in Sheremetyevo before: Zahra Kamalfar, another Iranian refugee, lived in their airport for four months while waiting for asylum from Canada.

If Edward Snowden is indeed in the Sheremetyevo transit zone and chose to make use of the local amenities, his life wouldn't be too bad for a internationally wanted man:​
 
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