There is an "i" in the middle of the word "hurricane."
At the Oxford University Press blog, Phil Mackowiak reviews the evidence for the cause of Beethoven's deafness (and for his multiple other medical problems).
A man who loved his guns (a Colt target pistol, two skeet guns, and a pristine Smith & Wesson Police .38 Special) reports his experience selling them.
A brief video documents a farm cat who breast-fed a group of ducklings.
A BBC website allows you to search through 212,790 paintings.
For those (few) people who have difficulty getting the shell off a hard-boiled egg, a video offers a handy trick. Dangerous Minds offers a gallery of photos of Victorian women of color (example at right).
More than you ever needed to know about the growth of fingernails (and why they grow faster than toenails).
"Porn watchers everywhere are being tracked, and if software engineer Brett Thomas is right, it would be easy to out them, along with an extensive list of every clip they’ve viewed."
The Powers of Ten video is a classic from the 1960s. "From a picnic blanket near [the lakefront in] Chicago out past the Virgo Cluster of Galaxies, every ten seconds the film zooms out to show a square a factor of ten times larger on each side. The video then reverses, zooming back in a factor of ten every two seconds and ends up inside a single proton."
Thomas Jefferson argued that because no generation has a right to bind subsequent generations, the Constitution should expire every 19 years.
Prior to his resurrection, Christ descended to the underworld -- a paradox most churches prefer not to confront.
A column at the Washington Post discusses gun deaths involving children.
The phrase "no, totally" means "yes." See also this discussion at Language Log.
Seven videos of dominoes falling.
Robert Reich offers the opinion that wealthy individuals and corporations who donate to universities, churches, and non-profit groups are "buying the silence" of those entities. "It’s a matter of big money influencing what should and should not be investigated, revealed, and discussed – especially when it comes to the tightening nexus between concentrated wealth and political power, and how that power further enhances great wealth."
Regulation has reduced motor-vehicle-related deaths, while gun deaths have continued to increase. The national numbers are about equal now, and in seventeen states, guns kill more people than cars do, even though 90% of people have cars, but only a third have guns.
Video of a spiral escalator.
The alley-oop basketball pass of the year (high-school, not pro).
How to debunk the 1%'s arguments about trickle-down economics, job creation, entrepreneurship, and the "deserving" of wealth.
A dead alkaline battery will bounce; a fully-charged one will not.
In 1856, an 18-year-old girl arrived at Fort Yuma, California. Her name
was Olive Oatman, and after years of captivity with the Mojave, she was
being traded to her brother
for beads, blankets, and a white horse. The white crowd cheered as she
reunited with her family. But Olive Oatman’s return was marked by
suspicion and doubt, just as her face was marked with a distinctive blue Mojave tattoo... [image cropped for size]Why I don't swim in the ocean.
Here's the logic puzzle about birthdays that recently went viral. When you give up, here is the answer.
A man tattoos anesthetized pigs with images of Disney princesses, then kills them to sell their tattooed skins. "The animals' skins were sold for up to £55,000 apiece, with one canvas featuring Disney characters sold to Chanel and made into two bags."
Two-minute video of a Canadian pulling off an "epic" curling kill shot in the tenth frame to give Newfounland a victory over Alberta.
Unanswered questions about the Oklahoma City bombing. "Despite the government’s insistence that the case has been solved, we don’t know the exact origin of the plot or how many people carried it out... We don’t know how McVeigh and Nichols learned to build a fertiliser bomb of such size and power... We don’t know the identities of the other people seen with McVeigh on the morning of the bombing – only that more than 20 eyewitnesses were unanimous in telling the FBI he was not alone... There is no ready explanation for a different Ryder truck seen by witnesses at McVeigh’s motel..."
The "most demanding first birthday invitation ever."
Top image: Scheelite and Fluorite on Muscovite - Mt Xuebaoding, Pingwu Co., Mianyang Prefecture, Sichuan Province, China. Via Minerals, Minerals, Minerals!