At one with the trees

Did you know …

That the famous naturalist John Muir was an avid tree climber? It’s true!

It’s probably no surprise that a man so at home in nature would be interested in getting up into the canopy like that, but the way he did it may surprise you: Muir would bring a backpack full of sharpened screwdrivers whenever he went tree climbing. He created each hand and foothold by jamming a screwdriver into the tree’s trunk, and simply left them there when he was finished. Many trees across northern California still bear the rusted shafts of Muir’s climbing tools, although just as many of his arboreal conquests have disappeared; Muir would also regularly light campfires on wide branches.

"Mother, I am become Death, destroyer of worlds."

Did you know …

That Robert Oppenheimer, head of the Manhattan Project, didn’t consider himself a “true man” until the day he killed a squirrel in his backyard with a shovel? It’s true!

Of course, R.O. used a shovel to kill the squirrel; he didn’t kill a squirrel who had a shovel. According to his memoirs, he and the squirrel somehow cornered each other, each of them both feeling as though the easier option of “fight or flight” had been removed by circumstance (a fence and a pond, I believe). At any rate, if anyone can truly win in a shovelfight with a squirrel, Oppenheimer was the victor in this battle, and the experience was (apparently) formative.

As far as I know most ceremonies of manhood around the world don’t end with a tearful phone call to one’s mother, but who are we to judge.

Prove them wrong

Did you know …

That pomegranate seeds are blue until the fruit is opened? It’s true.

How do we know this? Tiny cameras. Tiny cameras and guesswork.

Wild oats

Did you know …

That for a year and a half in Stephen Hawking’s mid twenties, he ate only horse meat? It’s true.

The horse’s name was Napoleon, and the physicist described him as “a dear, dear childhood friend . . . as well as my greatest enemy.” He said of the experience, “it was perhaps the greatest challenge of my young adulthood, the greatest honor, and an ingredient I never once tired of, not even when the frozen gelatin of his hooves was all that remained of wild Napoleon. Huzzah, Napoleon, huzzah and victory. Clomp clomp, chomp chomp, you son of a bitch.”

"Ladies?"

Did you know …

That Sir Isaac Newton was both the first person to diagnose and the first person to be diagnosed with “sexual mania”? It’s true!

The details aren’t exactly clear on how and when this happened, but it seems that Newton once acted as an expert witness in a trial. Primarily known for his expertise as a mathematician and physicist, Newton nonetheless testified as a “sexpert,” and the trial was his own. Again, the records are spotty, but Newton had been arrested either for attempting to seduce a sow, or for attempting to get a sow to seduce a boar; in either case, someone put a wig on a pig, and Newton was there.

England had pretty strict laws against this sort of thing at the time, but such were Newton’s credentials and general public respect that the jury accepted his testimony that “anyone can just get going, you know, and anything can happen, and sometimes there are pigs there and sometimes not, but that basically doesn’t matter. Also, do you like gravity or not, because I could take it back if you aren’t into it. Look, I’m a maniac. A sexual maniac. Ladies?”

Newton was released without punishment.

Wild and Free and Normal

Did you know …

That some studies suggest that as much as 7% of the population will, on occasion, “play dolphin,” and just spend a really fun, relaxing evening squeaking around in the bath tub? It’s true!

Chance are you either know someone who has played dolphin, or you play dolphin yourself sometimes, so, really, it’s not even that weird. Real scientists say that it’s a harmless way to feel carefree, graceful, and, yeah, maybe a little sexy. It’s no biggie, say the scientists, so why would you even act like “Hey, this part of the pool is for senior water aerobics” or “I thought I had an adult son, not a dolphin, you can’t stay here if you get fired again,” etc.

You can’t argue with science.

Where things invent YOU

Did you know …

That Russia has historically been a hotbed of scientific invention? It’s true!

I only bring it up because the DSF has been really huge in Mother Russia lately. Not, like, a free trip to Leningrad huge, but there have been literally dozens of Russian clicks on the blog in the last week or so. Presumably these are coming from tiny Russian robots, not actual Russian human beings, but a click is a click, and it’s a real privilege to educate those lil’ ‘bots. So I thought I’d turn the milky eye of science toward the Rus for a moment.

Some things invented by Russians in Russia in the last two hundred years:

-Misery

-Cybernetic limbs

-Bear massage

-Bear wrasslin’

-Necrotic frostbite

-Vidka (like vodka, but with fewer calories)

-The Ford Model T

-Roast horse

-Krump dancing?

The Bear

Did you know …

That the National Park Service’s anti-forest fire mascot, “Smokey the Bear,” is actually named “Smokey Bear”? It’s true!

While many people are in the habit of referring to Smokey as “the Bear,” it’s more like his last name is “Bear.” So don’t say “the” unless you have inside information on Mr. Bear’s middle name. (And if you do have that information . . . pass it on!)

Also, Smokey Bear is always depicted with a full erection. The artists and naturalists who designed Smokey understood that a bear on its hind legs, and one that is feeling threatened (as a bear would be when confronting a fire or a man with a shovel), would absolutely be fully tumescent, and they insisted that Smokey be portrayed accurately. This is why a pantsless version of Smokey only ever appeared in print from 1947 to 1949. It took a couple of years for the public to catch on because bear penes are very strange and mysterious, but once understanding caught on the outcry was tremendous. Smokey’s original creators apparently still held some sort of control over his depiction, and would only agree to the compromise of putting the helpful bear in a pair of dungarees. Officially, however, the erection is still there.

Happy Birthday, Nikola

Did you know …

That a couple weeks ago, on July 10, it was Nikola Tesla’s birthday? It’s true!

In honor of Big T’s B-day, it’s time for another fact about everyone’s favorite “Croat on the Spectrum”!

Did you know . . .

That Tesla was afraid of birthday celebrations? It’s true!

It’s perhaps more accurate to say, however, that Tesla feared birthday parties because he feared the cakes they invariably contained. And he feared cakes because of the Thomas Edisons they invariably contained. You see, once a year, every year from when Tesla first went to work in Edison’s workshop until 1931 when Edison died, Edison would have himself baked into a large birthday cake for Tesla. And every year, just as Tesla was blowing out the candles, Edison would erupt from the cake, naked as a baby and grinning like a jack-o-lantern, and coldcock the poor birthday boy.

Presumably Tesla began to expect the attack after the first few times, but his sense of personal propriety wouldn’t allow him to turn down the cake, or refuse to blow out its candles. It wasn’t until the very final occasion, after receiving nearly 50 birthday concussions, that the 75-year-old Tesla was heard to whisper to his cake, “Please, Thomas, I wish you would not.” Of course, only Edison’s death three months later would stop him from striking Tesla, and the aged inventor popped out of the cake and knocked Tesla in the head with a claw hammer (Edison was 84 at this point, and several birthdays earlier he had begun to augment his failing strength with hammers and blackjacks).

There’s a famous etching (which I can’t seem to find now) of Edison, waste deep in cake and licking frosting from the head of a hammer, saying to the unconscious Tesla, “Tesla, you don’t understand our American humor.”

Great apples

Did you know …

That the apple is one of nature’s most perfect foods? It’s true!

The humble apple makes my Nature’s Perfect Foods List for several reasons.

1) Apples are edible. Unlike many of nature’s foods, such as rocks, logs and clouds, apples can be inserted into the mouth as food and your digestive system is able to treat it as such. Try doing that with sand or, like, copper. I didn’t think so!

2) Apples fit well in the human hand. Again, many rocks and logs are too big to hold in your hand, but apples are just right. This is assuming that you have hands. Other foods also fit in your hand, like berries and pudding, but many people find berries to be too small for a satisfying hold, and pudding is far too sloppy.

3) Apples can also be little houses for worms and bugs. This doesn’t do much for people, but I have to give credit where credit is due. It’s a neat idea, and if I were small enough I would definitely try living in an apple for a while.

4) Supposedly apples keep doctors away. I’ve written about this before, I think, but I can’t recall the details. At any rate, we obviously need doctors sometimes—to pull splinters out of our bottoms, to palpate our rashes, to apply scalp salves, etc.—but there are also bad doctors out there (e.g., Doctor Giggles, Josef Mengele, Patch Adams, and so forth), and it’s a good idea to have an apple on hand in case they come calling.

Apples: Trey ‘em!

The mixed-up files of Charles E. Babbage

Did you know …

That one of Charles Babbage’s first attempts at building a computer consisted entirely of tying together several file cabinets with string, and then setting them on fire? It’s true!

While the experiment was a mitigated success at best, it did give us the common computer programming expression, “My word box is on fire!” Also, it put Babbage into fairly significant debt, as the cabinets he burned belonged to his neighbor, who was a lawyer or something.

Bonus fact: No one knows Babbage’s middle name! I just put the “E” in there for fun! Babbage himself refused to tell anyone his full name, on account of the vulnerability to sorcery he believed the dissemination of that information would cause him.

Mybrows

Did you know …

That humans have been genetically modified? It’s true!

This genetic modification took place in the first half of the 20th century, and without our consent. Until the early 1920s, eyebrows do not appear in any photographs or depictions of humans. In 1922, you start to see eyebrows popping up here and there. By 1924, pretty much everybody has eyebrows. These days it’s exceptionally rare to see a baby born with no eyebrows.

Who did this to us? We don’t know. Probably the Railroad Illuminati or the Lizardmen. We simply don’t know. I have to admit, though, that however much an invasion of our genetic autonomy it was . . . it was probably for the best. Before we were genetically gifted with eyebrows, we all basically looked like seal people. Not the musician Gerhart Seal, but pinniped seals. Also, it was harder to tell when we were surprised. With actual seals, you pretty much have to rely on context to tell whether they’re surprised or not; based on its face alone, a seal relaxing on a warm rock looks pretty much the same as a seal being tossed into the air by a great white shark. Eyebrows are useful tools for beings as emotional as we are, particularly because context clues like shark attacks are less common for us than they are for seals.

Thanks, Lizardmen!

The Secret

Did you know …

That paper—common, everyday paper—is made out of . . . trees?! It’s true!

I know. I know! Soft, white, flexible, foldable paper . . . made from trees. Who would have thought? But I have it on good authority that this is the case.

Exactly how paper is made from trees is a closely guarded industry secret, but the answer is fairly obvious to anyone with a keen, scientific mind. Clearly, each sheet of paper is carefully shaved from the stout trunk of a tree, not unlike the way potato chip makers make potato chips. Unlike potato chips, of course, the tree slices are then trimmed into rectangular shapes, sometimes dyed for use by children, and rarely eaten.

You heard it here first!

Down where it's better

Did you know …

That in 50 years, we’ll all be living in underground homes? It’s true!

Trends in architecture and increasing environmental degradation make it clear that by the year 2054, the only people living on the surface of the Earth will be outcasts, mutants, and mutant outcasts.

What’s more interesting is that projections from the same model indicate that in 55 years we’ll all be living in underwater homes! Those five years underground will probably be pretty bleak, but everything suggests that life in our domed, seafloor homes will pretty much be like the Little Mermaid (the Disney version with the singing fish, not the 19th century Danish suicide fantasy.)

Three more for Muster Mark!

Did you know …

That quarks come in flavors? It’s true!

Quarks are, of course, the itty-bitty subatomic particles that make up hadrons, which make up protons and neutrons, which make up atoms, which make up molecules, which make up cells, which make up you and your friend, which make up the tall, beer-buying, trenchcoat clad man with a suspiciously small head, which makes up the fabric of our society. And those little quarks come in varieties called “flavors.”

Until recently, quarks were known to come in six different different flavors: up, down, strange, charm, bottom and top. (How evocative!) Recent research, however, has uncovered three more flavors of quark: crunchabunch, sparkle, and heinie. Crunchabunch and sparkle are found in many of the atoms and molecules that make up breakfast cereals and craft materials, while heinie . . . well, you can probably guess.

Angry Bird

Did you know …

That the eagle is the angriest of birds, you son of a bitch? It’s goddamn true, prove it’s not.

This post was guest-written by an eagle . . . in a dream I had! I held the pen, but he said the words, and when I woke up my sheets were covered in birdrunes, written by my hand with my own saliva. Powerful, angry birds, eagles.

The Songs of Science

Did you know …

That the famous physicist, Almond Einstein, was a pop musician long before he invented the atomic bomb? It’s true!

After he was a clerk, but before he was an atom-smasher, Einstein had a brief career as a writer and performer of middling success. His most popular song, “Tonight we’ll dance (all day long)” made it to #52 on the top 100. Also, years after his death, his single “Atomic Bong” was sampled by a Christian Rap group.

Thicker, stronger, more luxurious!

Did you know …

That hair conditioner was originally made from the tears of elephants? It’s true!

Lord knows how we first discovered it, but rich, viscous elephant tears are extremely nourishing to all hair types. So what do we use to make hair conditioner today? Elephant tears still! Try as they might, chemists and hair scientists simply can’t replicate the wonderful qualities of genuine elephant tears. On the plus side, the collection process is quite harmless; twice a day, captive elephants are led into a “sadness chamber,” where harvesters are attached to their tear ducts and they are shown computer-generated imagery of elephant families falling into lava.

The Alligator Fallacy

Did you know …

That alligators and crocodiles are exactly the same? It’s true!

Apparently the misconception regarding separate species of crocodilians had something to do with branding and splitting the Crocodile Dundee franchise into an additional moneymaking film series (i.e., Alligators Dundee) and also because there was a strong public desire for a simple way to tell the crocodiles that would eat you from the crocodiles that apparently weren’t interested in eating you.

Neither idea panned out—Alligators Dundee was removed from the Dundeeverse in the official Crocodile Dundee animated series when he was eaten by a hippopotamus, and it turned out that pretty much any alligator/crocodile would try to eat you after a while—but the ersatz classification stuck.

Get it right

Did you know …

That the Permian period’s sail-backed dimetrodon was, in fact, not a dinosaur? It’s true!

I bet you didn’t know that, you buffoon. You should have, though. There were no dinosaurs in the Permian. And just look at its teeth! Look at its stance! It’s a mammal-like reptile. Come on. It’s more closely related to you than it is to a dinosaur.

Other things you’re wrong about:

-Mayflies

-Lyme disease

-Financial strategy for retirement

-Shower frequency

-Pringles

Thirty-one white horses

Did you know …

That today I am exactly ten million seconds old? It’s true!

Oh, but wait! Today I am also exactly ten million minutes old! How is that possible?!!? It’s a riddle! (Hint: Napoleonic units!)

Bonus fact: in ancient Sparta, each child was asked on his or her fourteenth birthday a series of geometry questions. If the teen was unable to answer every question correctly, their left pinky finger would be removed and tucked behind their ear (this was known as “the pencil of shame,” except in Greek), and then they were pushed off a cliff. Sparta!

nothing's As chewy

Did you know …

That the active ingredient in chewing gum (the one that makes it chew) is arsenic? It’s true!

Of course, we all know that arsenic is a deadly poison on its own, but it’s pretty much harmless in the gum compound. In the same way that chlorine gas would form hydrochloric acid in your lungs and kill you and metallic sodium would explode your head on contact with saliva, but together they just make your food taste better, arsenic alone would cause fatal organ failure, but in gum it just makes things chewy and gives you tooth cancer.

So chew on, gumchews, and know that science is protecting you!

Cherish your bees

Did you know …

That if all the bees on the planet were to disappear, humans would die out within ten minutes? It’s true!

Noted bee expert Albert Einstein was quoted years after his death as having said, “If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would have only four years of life left.” Unless there’s a caveat hidden in that statement—that bees, perhaps, would continue to thrive, but only deep underground—modern research suggests that Professor “I love bees” Einstein was being extremely generous with his numbers. All evidence indicates that humans would have much closer to four minutes to live. Ten at the most.

Scientists at the University of Idaho proved this with an experiment that placed a healthy human and a bee in a refrigerator-sized lead chamber. Monitoring equipment was placed inside the box, but all contact with outside bees and humans was cut off, effectively creating a little model of a human-bee-Earth ecosystem. When the researchers opened the box one hour later, they discovered both the bee and the human dead! The bee looked normal dead, and the person looked puffy dead. The chamber’s “black box” revealed that the bee died several minutes before the human, whose vital signs spiked in the moments after the bee’s death, and then quickly declined to nothing in the following minutes.

Scientists are still sorting through the data, but the current hypothesis is that after the bee died (for whatever reason), the human died of sadness. His body, after all, was a dull blue (the color of sadness) and all puffed up like a balloon (the metaphor of sadness). Imagining this phenomenon on a global scale is truly horrifying.

Shhhh

Did you know …

That the turtle is one of the most secretive of the animals? It’s true!

Scientists believe that turtles keep secrets in their shell, or “vault,” and are physically slowed by the terrible weight of the horrible things they know.

You may have noticed that I wrote “one of the most secretive of the animals”; which are the most secretive animals? The turtle knows, but that son of a bitch isn't saying.

Duper

Did you know …

That “superfoods” are like regular foods, except with greater powers and responsibilities? It’s true!

While a normal food might just, for example, fill you up and then make you poop, a superfood might fill you up and then make you poop really hard. Or a normal food could give you healthy, glossy skin and hair, while a superfood might make your skin and hair so vital and lustrous that they constantly make you feel as though you are covered in burning phosphorus. It all has to do with vitamins and stuff.

Here’s a short list of some common superfoods, and what you might expect from consuming them:

-Blueberries: no more tears

-Cranberries: back hair

-Cherries: the power to attract turtles

-Mulberries: the inability to digest mulberries

-Gooseberries: total wisdom of gooselore

-Raspberries: protection from ice

-Blackberries: eternal sleep

-Grapes: the enmity of apes

-Kumkwats: visual perception of gamma radiation

Professor Squeaker

Did you know …

That the mammal with the second largest brain (after Dall’s porpoise) is the common black rat, Rattus rattus? It’s true!

Wait! How does such a big ol’ brain, larger than a human brain, larger than a zebra brain, even larger than the brain of a blue whale, fit into the lil’ skull of a rat? Not even a Norwegian brown rat!

Ha ha! There’s no trick to it! No quantum or anything; it just goes in there like a sleeping bag, all jammed up in that little boney brain satchel. This, of course, is the main reason why you shouldn’t smash a rat in an enclosed space. I mean, you shouldn’t be smashing rats in general, unless you’re some kind of sociopath, but if you smash a rat in a too-small space, the brain, once released from the skull, will rapidly expand to it’s natural volume, and you could end up injuring yourself.

Devilfruit

Did you know …

That scientotheologians of the last century believed that lemons were “the Devil’s fruit”? It’s true!

According to their literature, there is clear evidence that Satan favors the lemon because a) the Devil’s face looks like a cat’s butthole (that sour pucker!), b) the Devil is bright yellow, and c) the Devil just likes that sour, sour taste.

All current evidence seems to suggest that the lemon is indeed favored by the Lord of Lies and Putrefaction, but, of course, the lemon isn’t a fruit! It’s actually a variety of tropical nut! Those dummies.

Dad Freedom

Did you know …

That it was none other than George Washington himself who invented freedom? It’s true!

That is to say, President Washington didn’t invent total freedom for women, poor people, or anyone who didn’t have relatives in Europe; he invented the freedom to light off fireworks and get blackout drunk in your backyard. It’s a limited segment of freedom, sure, but nothing to sneeze at. Wave a flag and shed a tear for Poppa G.

Tables . . . turned!

Did you know …

That in some species, it’s the male parent that gives birth? It’s true!

Sea horses, hyenas (spotted and striped), pygmy elephants, stone fish, and eastern brown bats all have male pregnancies and births. What good fathers, huh? Actually, not really; after a baby or larvae is forced through the birth canal, the father’s penis is typically so damaged that he dies of shock, or, at the very least, resents his child for the rest of its life.