1. The Size of Our Books Was Determined By The Size of the Average Sheep in the Middle Ages
[M]edieval books are no bigger or smaller than modern books, generally speaking. Gutenberg and the other early printers didn’t invent a whole new format for books, they just copied what people were already using.The question then becomes, I guess, why were medieval books the size they were? And the answer to that is simple: medieval books were the size they were because medieval sheep were the size they were. Remember, paper wasn’t the original medium for page-creation. Medieval books were constructed of parchment, which is a fancy word for sheep or goat skin (and primarily sheep skin, because there were a lot more of them around).
(Via: Wired )
2. Deep-fried beer invented in Texas
3. Does Religion Explains Why Americans Love White Cars?
In general, when color theorists talk about white, they talk about religion. White is a very important color for Christians — liturgically speaking, it’s the color of joy and celebration; in the Catholic Church, it’s the color worn by the pope. . . . It’s not unreasonable to expect that, however subtly, churchgoers would be influenced by their belief to think favorably of white and white things. Buddhists and Hindus associate white with truth and immortality. So does the high rate of religious belief in the United States influence choice of car color? To be sure, in Europe, where there are far fewer churchgoers, people are less likely to buy white cars.
(Via: Atlantic Wire )
4. Are Your Pants Lying to You? An Investigation
The pants manufacturers are trying to flatter us. And this flattery works: Alfani’s 36-inch “Garrett” pant was 38.5 inches, just like the Calvin Klein “Dylan” pants — which I loved and purchased. A 39-inch pair from Haggar (a brand name that out-testosterones even “Garrett”) was incredibly comfortable. Dockers, meanwhile, teased “Leave yourself some wiggle room” with its “Individual Fit Waistline,” and they weren’t kidding: despite having a clear size listed, the 36-inchers were 39.5 inches. And part of the reason they were so comfy is that I felt good about myself, no matter whether I deserved it.However, the temple for waisted male self-esteem is Old Navy, where I easily slid into a size 34 pair of the brand’s Dress Pant. Where no other 34s had been hospitable, Old Navy’s fit snugly. The final measurement? > em> Five inches larger than the label. You can eat all the slow-churn ice cream and brats you want, and still consider yourself slender in these.
5. Weird News of the Week (Part I): Tylenol-loaded mice dropped from air to control snakes
6. Weird News of the Week (Part II): South Korean Woman Passes Driving Test At 960th Attempt
7. Advice for Young Girls from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast
8. Quote of the Week: “For Christians, Jesus is the word of God. For Muslims, the Quran is the word of God. Imagine someone burning Jesus.” — Emad El-Din Shahin , a religion professor at the University of Notre Dame.
9. Forget What You Know About Good Study Habits
Every September, millions of parents try a kind of psychological witchcraft, to transform their summer-glazed campers into fall students, their video-bugs into bookworms. Advice is cheap and all too familiar: Clear a quiet work space. Stick to a homework schedule. Set goals. Set boundaries. Do not bribe (except in emergencies).And check out the classroom. Does Junior’s learning style match the new teacher’s approach? Or the school’s philosophy? Maybe the child isn’t “a good fit” for the school.
Such theories have developed in part because of sketchy education research that doesn’t offer clear guidance. Student traits and teaching styles surely interact; so do personalities and at-home rules. The trouble is, no one can predict how.
Yet there are effective approaches to learning, at least for those who are motivated. In recent years, cognitive scientists have shown that a few simple techniques can reliably improve what matters most: how much a student learns from studying.
10. How to get into 20 classic science fiction shows: The ultimate guide
11. Whiskey from diabetics’ urine
Introducing Gilpin Family Whisky, a project of James Gilpin, a UK- based designer and researcher focusing on new biomedical technologies, who has created a “public engagement tool” distilling diabetic whiz into “single malt whisky.”
(Via: Boing Boing )
12. Image of the Week: Madhuri the Indian elephant was getting bored with grazing the grassy plains of Corbett National Park, in India, until she spotted a monitor lizard .
(Via: The Presurfer )
13. 5 Important Fifties Events Nobody Noticed in the Fifties
Another player named Rick Fothergill had almost beaten Billy to the mark, but he fell short by nine dots, or 90 points. Fothergill is Canadian, and his challenge made Billy redouble his efforts, because Billy thinks of his Pac-Man prowess as a patriotic symbol, a matter of national pride not unlike like the space race. Billy was so determined to beat Canada that he forgot to eat for several days. He had set out on his quest July 1 — Canada Day — and eventually executed 30,000 precisely calculated turns for a perfect run just in time to celebrate America’s own Day of Independence on July 4. “It’s like Neil Armstrong walking on the moon,” he told reporters afterward. “No matter how many people accomplish the feat, it will always be Armstrong who will be remembered for doing it first. And, best of all, it was an American.” To emphasize the point, Billy began using a new set of high-score initials: U S A.
15. 8 Old Wives’ Tales That Are Actually True
16. Infographic of the Week: A Soda By Any Other Name
Ever since “Ms.” emerged as a marriage-neutral alternative to “Miss” and “Mrs.” in the 1970s, linguists have been trying to trace the origins of this new honorific. It turns out that “Ms.” is not so new after all. The form goes back at least to the 1760s, when it served as an abbreviation for “Mistress” (remember Shakespeare’s Mistress Quickly?) and for “Miss,” already a shortened form of “Mistress,” which was also sometimes spelled “Mis.” The few early instances of “Ms.” carried no particular information about matrimonial status (it was used for single or for married women) and no political statement about gender equality. Eventually “Miss” and “Mrs.” emerged as the standard honorifics for women, just as “Mr.” was used for men (“Master,” from which “Mr.” derives, was often used for boys, though it’s not common today). While “Miss” was often prefixed to the names of unmarried women or used for young women or girls, it could also refer to married women. And “Mrs.,” typically reserved for married women, did not always signal marital status (for example, widows and divorced women often continued to use “Mrs.”). The spread of “Ms.” over the past forty years both simplifies and complicates the title paradigm.
(Via: Neatorama )
18. 13 of the ugliest animals on the planet
As Dan Fogarty says:
There is no better way to teach a little kid how life works then by maliciously dunking on them, then letting out a primordial roar right in their face. It tells the tiny human that there are laws in this jungle, and they must be followed.
Click here for all the videos. Below is my favorite.
21. 15 Unusual And Creative Shoes
22. HistoricalLOL of the Week
23. 10 Most Valuable American Coins
24. Snakes in the MRI Machine: A Study of Courage
You are in an MRI machine. Your head is fixed in a round cage. Your body is rolled into a narrow tube. Magnetic pulses are beamed into your brain. A meter-and-a-half-long snake is strapped with Velcro atop a small box on a conveyor belt just inches behind your head. Your eyes meet the snake’s beady gaze through a tiny mirror above your head. You can’t move.Why would Uri Nili and Yadin Dudai, two scientists from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, want to put a snake in the MRI scanner with you? Obviously, not to scan the snake’s brain (although this might be an interesting possibility). They wanted to scan your brain while you perform an act of courage.
25. 6 Unique uses of Morse code
26. You’re Stretching Wrong Before Workouts
Researchers believe that some of the more entrenched elements of many athletes’ warm-up regimens are not only a waste of time but actually bad for you. The old presumption that holding a stretch for 20 to 30 seconds—known as static stretching—primes muscles for a workout is dead wrong. It actually weakens them.
27. How-To of the Week: Delete Yourself from the Internet
28. The REAL ‘Stuff White People Like’
We selected 526,000 OkCupid users at random and divided them into groups by their (self-stated) race. We then took all these people’s profile essays (280 million words in total!) and isolated the words and phrases that made each racial group’s essays statistically distinct from the others’.For instance, it turns out that all kinds of people list sushi as one of their favorite foods. But Asians are the only group who also list sashimi; it’s a racial outlier. Similarly, as we shall see, black people are 20 times more likely than everyone else to mention soul food, whereas no foods are distinct for white people, unless you count diet coke.
29. 5 Worries Parents Should Drop, And 5 They Shouldn’t
30. What Is the Best Way to Learn a Foreign Language at Home?
As a linguist, I get a letter or message about once a month asking me what the best way is to learn a foreign language at home. I always answer “The Magic Books,” by which I mean the wonderful Assimil series. I’ve been giving people Assimil sets for 20 years now. It’s the With Ease series you may have seen — Russian with Ease, Dutch with Ease , and so on.These are some of my favorite Christmas gifts because they’re the only self-teachers I know that work. In just 20 minutes a day — if you do exactly what they tell you to with the books and accompanying recordings — then presto! You will be talking like, roughly, an unusually cosmopolitan three-year-old. No, you won’t be “conversing like a native” the way the ad copy says, unless you already are one, which would presumably make one’s use of the set somewhat peculiar. And, they can only give you so much vocabulary. But the magic is that you will be able to carry on a decent conversation, instead of just being able to count to 100 and say things like “My uncle is a lawyer but my aunt has a spoon.”
(Via: Justin Taylor )
31. Martin Scorsese Picks the Best Gangster Movies
32. Another 33 Things
33. A team of British and German researchers have turned the wondrous eye of science towards a most perplexing problem: What dance moves do women like?
Woman-attracting dancing looks like this:
Woman-repelling dancing looks like this:
(Via: Geekosystem )
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For this week only, a generous supporter has offered to fully match all new and increased donations to First Things up to $60,000.
In other words, your gift of $50 unlocks $100 for First Things, your gift of $100 unlocks $200, and so on, up to a total of $120,000. But if you don’t give, nothing.
So what will it be, dear reader: double, or nothing?
Make your year-end gift go twice as far for First Things by giving now.
