7 Awesome Acts of Nature (That Science Can't Explain) When you think of getting caught in the rain, you typically worry about things like "Will my socks get wet? " and "Do I have time to restraighten my hair? " Unless you lived in the Kerala region of India back in 2001, when the universe douched Kool-Aid all over the subcontinent. From July to September, Kerala experienced a prolonged period of red rainfall (there was also some black, green and yellow rain, but scientists agreed that the red was way more extreme).
As the summer progressed, colored rain continued to fall from the sky in well-delineated areas, sometimes in places directly adjacent to areas with normal, non-terrifying precipitation. The ground was stained, linens were ruined and numerous little league games were canceled in the red rain's wrathful wake. So, What Do the Smart People Think is Happening? For centuries, people have reported seeing animals falling from the sky in places all over the world. Good milk comes from happy cows. Spontaneous Human Combustion. 6 Great US Presidents and Their Crimes Against Humanity. History books tend to be kind to American presidents, often overlooking some pretty dick-ish behavior. It's a pretty tough job, so they probably deserve a break once in a while. But some historical anecdotes seem like they were omitted to avoid classrooms full of weeping, terrified children.
In fact, it turns out that even the greatest presidents have some scary-ass skeletons in the closet. John Adams, Founder of (and Enemy of) Democracy Why He's Awesome: This charming founding father was the second president. Oh, did we mention that he started violating the Constitution before the ink even dried on his signature? Wait, What the Fuck? When Adams found himself in the middle of an undeclared war with France in 1798, he did what any president would have done: built up the army, oversaw the construction of warships, and raised taxes. Adams, with his brand new Constitution Toilet Paper. Abraham Lincoln Screws Habeas Corpus, Never Calls Back "Arrest that man, he is incredibly dangerous! " 8 Online Fads You Didn't Know Were Invented Decades Ago.
Hacking... yeah, we've all been there, right guys? Breaking into some poor bastard's CPU, flooding his library scripts, remotely exploding his water heater... OK, we have no idea what hacking really is, but we are fairly sure it has something to do with computers and the Internet. Hacking! Actually Been Around Since... As it turns out, what we today understand as "hacking" started as far back as the fucking 1950s, and they called it Phone Phreaking. Phone Phreaking exploited a flaw in the computerized switch boards of the time, which transferred calls via a single sound frequency of 2600 Hz. Later on another "phreaker" named John Draper discovered that he could produce the Hacking Tone of 2600 Hz through a toy that came free with Captain Crunch.
In the 1970s, phone companies switched from single frequency to multiple frequency technology, so phone phreakers became more sophisticated as well. The Blue Box, which here is black for some reason. Oh, wait... Without pizza, there is chaos. "What? 7 Modern Dictators Way Crazier Than You Thought Possible. Mobutu -- Dictator of the Democratic Republic of the Congo Born Joseph-Desire Mobutu, the Congolese general seized power in 1965. Mobutu thought of himself as some sort of demigod and forced the evening news to begin with a scene of him descending from the clouds -- and forbade the newscaster to mention anybody but him by name.
Partly cloudy with a chance of narcissism. Mobutu prohibited anybody else from wearing leopard-print hats and carried around a wooden cane that he claimed took the strength of eight men to carry. "Just wait until I flex. You aren't even going to believe it. " Furthermore, Mobutu imprisoned people who did not have African names and changed his own name to Mobutu Sese Seko Nkuku Ngbendu Wa Za Banga ("The all-powerful warrior who, because of his endurance and inflexible will to win, goes from conquest to conquest, leaving fire in his wake"). This is a nice way of saying that Mobutu spent $10 million on something that costs about 50 bucks to watch on pay per view. 6 Reasons North Korea is the Funniest Evil Dictatorship Ever. Some country has to be worst one on Earth, and based on the conversation they heard you having in your hotel room last night, North Korea is really worried that you might think it's them. Unfortunately for North Korea (and fortunately for us) they're just as bad at looking good as they are at being good, and their attempts to not make their country appear to be a festival of horrors usually end in laughable failure.
For instance... The Official North Korea Website Appears to be the Work of a Lone Middle School Child The Problem: Kim Jong-il is a self-proclaimed expert on the Internet, but understandably, Kim was having a hard time getting other people who were not otherwise required by law to believe this. No problem. He would just change their minds with the greatest Democratic People's Republic of Korea website... The Ridiculous Solution: ... that 1998 can buy! We'll understand if you're feeling a bit like a kid who's just been set loose at a carnival. Wait, it Gets Worse... Painforest. "... The 5 Miserable VFX Jobs That Make Movies Possible. Basically It's: Staring at a progress bar on a computer monitor. Then occasionally the phone rings and somebody screams at you. So picture the actual VFX artists, drawing the CG Garfield riding his skateboard. They are inputting this into software and telling it how they want Garfield to look and move.
But rendering photorealistic fames of CG takes a gigantic amount of computer horsepower, so it's at this point when the render farms get busy. Render farms are literally piles of computers gathered in some room that turn data files into images. This brings us to the Render Wrangler. That is, when people aren't yelling at you. All of that angst lands on the Render Wrangler. Everyone in the industry knowing they will almost certainly be out of a job soon. But rest assured, it's gonna happen. So I talk a lot of shit about how VFX studios are built on the backs of these hard-working peons, but it's only fair to step back and look at the bigger picture. 7 Scientific Reasons a Zombie Outbreak Would Fail (Quickly) They Can't Take the Heat It's generally accepted by zombie experts that they're going to continue to rot, even as they shamble around the streets.
What the movies fail to convey, however, is the gruesome yet strangely hilarious effect the hot sun has on a rotting corpse. The first concern is putrefaction. Thanks to the plethora of bacteria we use in our colon for digesting plant matter, called gut flora, our bodies are ripe for decay the second our heart stops. Dead bodies bloat because of the gases created by the bacteria, meaning that in warmer areas even Abercrombie Zombies are going to start getting fat in the first few days. At the other end of the heat spectrum is dry heat. So they'd better hope the outbreak happens during the winter, right? 5 Insane Ways Words Can Control Your Mind. On some level we already know that language shapes the way we think. We're automatically more afraid to fight a guy named Jack Savage than somebody named Peewee Nipplepuss, even if we've never seen either of them before.
It's totally illogical, but you probably run into an example of that every day, and don't notice it. While we tend to think words are just sounds we make to express ideas, science is finding that language is more like a fun house mirror, warping what we see in mind-blowing ways. For instance ... Speaking English Makes Us More Likely to Blame People Let's say your roommate Steve is jumping on your bed. How will you answer? Keep in mind, Steve pulls this shit all the time.
The answer largely depends on what language you speak. Stanford scientists did experiments on this, by having speakers of various languages watch videos featuring, in various situations, people breaking eggs or popping balloons, sometimes on purpose, sometimes on accident. Will nothing stop his madness? 6 Popular Monsters Myths (That Prove Humanity Is Doomed) Please note that this article is not resolving the question of life after death, but specifically the idea that after death you come back and wander around your house or cemetery as a translucent version of yourself.
Been Around Since... Now here's a phenomenon even more universal than the zombie or the vampire. Dig into folklore from ancient China, ancient Europe, ancient Egypt, ancient anywhere, and you find ghosts. Humans have believed in ghosts for as long as we've had the brain power to believe anything. For the Love of God, Why? The whole idea of the deceased appearing as a blurry, pale form is thought to go back to cave men seeing a person's frosty breath on a cold day and thinking that was the magical stuff that kept them alive (after all, when a man dies, that pale stuff stops coming out).
Granted, that theory also means ancient man thought that a bowl of soup had a soul, as well as dog turds. Thankfully that tradition has passed. The "People are Dicks" Factor: Too late. The 6 Raunchiest, Most Depraved Sex Acts (From the Bible) What happens when you take a really skanky sex story and dress it up in a lot of flowery words? You get the Bible. Or large chunks of it, anyway. Sure, rather than using phrases such as "reverse frog squat," or "slinging manjam," Biblical sex is referenced almost exclusively as "coming in unto" (a phrase still used by porn stars who tend to drop the "in unto").
But once you get past the unimaginative verbs, the Bible has some nasty, nasty stories. Such as: #6. Sunday school lessons tend to focus on God turning Lot's wife into a pillar of salt like she's starring in one of Sarah Connor's nightmares from T2. Something tells us Lot's daughters would lose any drinking game centered around "Never Have I Ever. " "Say, I've got a neat idea. " They were so eager to secure some seamen that they nearly polluted the genetic pool for all who came after them. To Make it Even Weirder... #5. In Genesis 29: 21-28, Jacob had taken a job where he was to be paid entirely in woman. . #4. Painting by Amy L. The 5 Most Unintentionally Gay Horror Movies. At some point, possibly in the 80s, Hollywood decided that a good horror movie needed to be built on a strong foundation of homoerotic subtext. We're not saying it's a bad thing, this is 2009, after all.
What we are saying is that their strenuous efforts to both cram in as much homoeroticism as possible, while avoiding actual gay characters or storylines, is the stuff unintentional comedy is made of. For example... Summary: A handsome young man is targeted by vampires. After moving to the flamboyant new town of Santa Carla, Michael falls in with a crowd of bad dudes after being attracted by the gang's sole female member, Star. Michael follows Star back to the vampires' lair, where the leader of the pack, David, tricks Michael into swallowing some of his bodily fluids. Pretty soon, Star is nowhere to be seen, and Michael demonstrates his loyalty to vampire-Jack Bauer by jumping off a bridge.
That's Rob Lowe, folks. Best Quote: "My blood is in your veins! " Look, it was a different time. The 5 Greatest Things Ever Accomplished While High. A Coke Addict Makes a Coke-Flavored Cola and Calls it Coke The Accomplishment: The invention of Coca-Cola might not seem to belong on a list next to things like DNA. After all, way more people drink Coke than have heard of the double helix. Coca-Cola is simply the most well known brand in the history of the world. Sure, it's mostly just soda water and sugar. Pretty impressive for a drink that routinely gets beat in taste tests by Pepsi. The Drug: Coke has it right there in the name. John Pemberton, the Atlanta pharmacist that invented Coca Cola, claimed that the ingredient it was named after, the Coca leaf, cured everything from depression and nervousness to morphine addiction.
But surely he wouldn't go so far as to stake the claim of his fledgling business on an unproven drug, right? Why It Makes Sense: Like Freud, Pemberton practiced what he preached. Before You Go Trying It... Moses Takes 'Shrooms, Shits Out Ten Commandments Mushrooms. Drugs weren't invented yesterday, you know. 1. Or 2. 6 Famous Geniuses You Didn't Know Were Perverts. Since it seems like every movie star, athlete and politician is just a sex scandal waiting to happen, you could almost think that it's not possible to be a prominent person without also having an utterly depraved sex life behind the scenes.
And looking back at the great men of history... we're starting to wonder if that's right on the money. Albert Einstein, Time magazine's man of the century, is simply the most famous scientist in the history of the planet. He was the first to postulate the theory of relativity, he convinced FDR to build the atomic bomb, he was offered the chance to be the first president of Israel and is considered the father of modern physics. You wouldn't automatically think of a physics geek as getting more ass than a toilet seat, but... But Behind Closed Doors... When he wasn't sciencing the shit out of everything, Einstein spent his time postulating his wiener into as many women as possible. "Pipes, however, are to be expected. " "See those women down there?
"Harder. 5 Things You Won't Believe Aren't In the Bible. The image of an angel is so recognizable that you can immediately spot one if somebody makes its shape in some snow. They're sparkly people with two white wings and occasionally swords, who sit on clouds ripping out awesome harp solos while protecting humans from harm. So basically, the protagonists of the next Stephenie Meyer novel. The sex scene will be as unsettling as it is improbable. The Only Problem Is ... Now, there are angels in the Bible. But if you encountered some of the angels it describes, you'd probably need a shotgun under your bed to sleep soundly for the rest of your life *NOTE: that is a joke. There are several kinds of angels in the Bible and you've probably heard about some of them, like archangels, cherubim and seraphim.
This is a seraph, trying with all its might not to burn you alive. Then there are the thrones, which are described in the Bible as "wheels within wheels," the rims of which are covered in eyes. Whatever it is, we're pretty sure it can see. Whaddya know?