The Today Show has posted a photograph that shows St. Peter’s Square in 2005 and this year.
Being 6’6″ (198 cm), the 2013 view is pretty much how I see every event these days. It’s worse for whoever is stuck behind me.
Update: The Washington Post’s Nick Kirkpatrick found that the two photos are not from similar events, and therefore, should not be considered a fair comparison:
But the top photo, which shows an audience with far fewer gadgets was taken during the funeral procession of Pope John Paul II — a very different mood and event type. There was no one addressing the crowd from the balcony, for example. So, the comparison isn’t quite accurate.
The Ononeon is an updated collection of real news stories whose headlines could be The Onion headlines. For example, “Drinkers sue Anheuser-Busch for watering down beer”, and “Husband Fakes Robbery To Avoid Telling Wife He Blew $1K At Strip Club”.
Brilliant. Just brilliant.
Archaeologists from the University of Leicester have used DNA evidence to identify remains believed to be Richard III “beyond reasonable doubt”.
Speaking at the press conference at the University of Leicester, Dr Turi King, project geneticist, said there had been concern DNA in the bones would be too degraded: “The question was could we get a sample of DNA to work with, and I am extremely pleased to tell you that we could.”
She added: “There is a DNA match between the maternal DNA of the descendants of the family of Richard III and the skeletal remains we found at the Greyfriars dig.
“In short, the DNA evidence points to these being the remains of Richard III.”
Researchers may have figured out how homing pigeons get back home.
In 1969, a Cornell biology professor gave a talk to geologists at the school about the mystery of the lost homing pigeons. If the pigeons were taken to almost any locations, they headed straight home with amazing accuracy. But at one location, called Jersey Hill, the pigeons got completely lost, with each taking off in a random direction. At two other locations, the birds consistently headed in the same wrong direction. On a few trips, the birds would miraculously make it home, but then get lost the next day. [ The 10 Weirdest Animal Discoveries ]
United States Geological Survey geologist John Hagstrum heard the talk, and the question nagged at him for years. In the 1990s, he discovered that birds in European pigeon races were going astray on clear-weather days, when the Concord, the supersonic plane, was in the area. That led him to wonder whether the sonic boom from the Concorde plane disrupted pigeon navigation by interfering with the sound waves.
Not a big fan of pigeons.
Due to rising costs of corn and other feed, chicken wing production is down, right ahead of the Super Bowl.
Americans are serious about their chicken wings. Second only to Thanksgiving, Super Bowl weekend is the biggest eating day of the year, and chicken wings are the most popular dish. To give you a picture of just how many wings fan will chow down on, The National Chicken Council says if those 1.23 billion chicken wing segments were laid end to end, they would stretch between the San Francisco 49ers Candlestick Park and the Baltimore Ravens M&T Bank Stadium 27 times.
According to The Google, the distance between Baltimore and San Francisco is 2,817.3 miles. 27 times that is 76,067.1 miles. 76,067 miles is about one-third the distance to the moon!
That is a lot of chicken.
James Daily, a lawyer, provides a detailed analysis of Bilbo’s contract from The Hobbit.
Given the clauses describing ownership of the recovered goods, one might wonder whether the Company has a claim to the One Ring. After all, Bilbo has expressly agreed that he has only a right to 1/14th of the profits, to be paid in a form determined by the Company, and no right to the treasure itself. So could it be that the One Ring merely forms part of the treasure? The contract seems to indicate otherwise.
It only looked long because of how short Bilbo is.
A glitch in Sprint’s mobile phone location system is sending people to Wayne Dobson’s house.
He told her to call the police and invited her to come inside and search. In the meantime, he called the woman’s cellphone provider, Sprint.
A technician there explained the problem, but didn’t provide a solution, he said.
Dobson was told that cellphone GPS systems don’t provide exact locations – they give a general location of where to start your search. And for some reason his house is that location for his area.
“I knew then I had a problem,” he said.
That’s a really sucky problem to have.
Photographer Menno Aden takes pictures of rooms from above.
“For me as an artist, watching from a higher position on a small space is interesting because I can see someone’s ‘compressed personality,’ ” Aden wrote via email.
Amazingly different perspective. There’s many more at his web site.
Pubic lice are disappearing, and bikini waxes may be the reason.
“Pubic grooming has led to a severe depletion of crab louse populations,” said Ian F. Burgess, a medical entomologist with Insect Research & Development Ltd. in Cambridge, England. “Add to that other aspects of body hair depilation, and you can see an environmental disaster in the making for this species.”
In the spirit of the Pantone color reference guides comes Beertone, a beer color reference guide.
How was this not done sooner?
The piano that Dooley Wilson played in Casablanca is up for auction.
Now you are to be auctioned off at Sotheby’sby an auctioneer who has sold other famous movie props — the “Rosebud” sled from “Citizen Kane,” for example. Sotheby’s expects you to sell from $800,000 to $1.2 million in the auction on Friday. That is between 34 to 48 times what Bergman was paid for sharing top billing with Humphrey Bogart.
[...]
You were not on camera for long — only about 1 minute 10 seconds. And while you were seen, you were not heard. Dooley Wilson, who played Sam, moved his hands up and down your keyboard as he sang. But he was not hitting the notes. Somewhere off camera was a real pianist, performing on another piano.
Is there something wrong with me that I can recite just about every line from Casablanca and Star Wars?
The BBC investigates how many LEGO bricks would need to be stacked on top of each other to cause the bottom brick to fail.
And the load on top of the brick gets larger and larger. We reach 3,500 newtons (N) of force – the equivalent of having 350kg (770lbs) sitting on top of the brick – more than a third of a tonne.
The force climbs on, above 4,000N. And then…
Nothing.
Well, not much. There is no big bang. The brick just kind of melts.
It looks like a small square of warm camembert.
Someone (I’m looking at you Richard Branson) needs to build a LEGO tower to prove/disprove the findings.