Henry Heimlich Gone
Henry Heimlich, doctor who invented lifesaving anti-choking procedure, dies at 96
by Steve Chawkins
When he was a 21-year-old camp counselor, Henry Heimlich saved a life and had his first brush with fame.
On the way back to New York City from Massachusetts at summer’s end, his quick thinking in a train wreck helped save a critically wounded crew member. It also landed the handsome medical student on the front page of the New York Times. A month later, the Greater New York Safety Council gave him a gold watch.
Never one to shy away from the limelight, Heimlich would go on to a level of fame — and controversy — that astonished even him.
Heimlich, a thoracic surgeon who developed the lifesaving Heimlich maneuver after experimenting on anesthetized beagles, died Saturday in Cincinnati, his family said. He was 96.
Rock Beyoncé, Amadeus
Mozart Has Sold More CDs in 2016 Than Beyoncé
Jealous? JOHANN NEPOMUK DELLA CROCE/PUBLIC DOMAIN
The artist who sold the most CDs in 2016 hasn’t toured in over 200 years, but is still more famous than Drake. According to a report on Billboard, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart made a massive comeback this year with a career-spanning box set that left other CD sales look weak in comparison.
Released in October, Mozart 225: The New Complete Edition is a 200-disc collection of Mozart’s entire musical catalogue. From his symphonies to his concertos, down to little scraps and fragments of his work, the set is one of the most comprehensive collections of Mozart’s music ever released. And at just over $300, it’s not even that expensive (considering the amount of music it contains).
The box set itself is a fascinating collection, and now it has the modern honor of moving more CDs than Beyonce, Kanye West, Adele, or David Bowie. While the set has sold just over 6,200 units, thanks to the hundreds of CDs it contains, it means that Mozart has sold 1.25 million discs. Pretty damn impressive for a long-dead composer.
Rock, Paper, Holy Shit!
Japan’s Most Intense Rock, Paper, Scissors Competition
[GIF via Nippon Channel]
Leave it to Japan to make a friendly game of rock-paper-scissors into an event, complete with cosplay, cheering, and crying.
Since 2010, members of idol group AKB48 and its sister groups have duked it out in paper-rock-scissors competitions or “janken taikai” in Japanese.
“Janken” means paper-rock-scissors (“taikai” means “tournament”), and while I played this growing up in the U.S., I certainly never did as much as Japanese people do. Even grown-ups play janken, using it to decide trivial things among friends that people in the U.S. might decide with a coin toss.
Hidden City @ The South Pole
Shock claims massive ancient civilisation lies frozen beneath mile of Antarctic ice – and could even be Atlantis
Conspiracy theorists believe that there is a secret city which has frozen over – and it could even be the Lost City of Atlantis
BY JENNIFER HALE
An artist’s view of what an ancient civilisation could look like on the continent of Antarctica
THERE could be a hidden city frozen underneath Antarctica, according to shock claims.
The huge continent is an icy mass, and is currently only inhabited by scientific researchers and penguins thanks to its freezing temperatures.
Rumours of a hidden city have been floating about for years, as conspiracy theorists and even some scientists claim the freezing continent is actually the home of the legendary Lost City of Atlantis.
One scientific theory claims that once upon a time Antarctica was ice-free and home to an ancient civilisation.
Oldie But Goodie
National Asteroid Day decreed by QUEEN
Thanks to Queen’s Brian May, We Now Have “International Asteroid Day”
The fact that an asteroid could easily and suddenly obliterate Earth is something people usually try not to think about. But Queen guitarist and astrophysicist Brian May would caution against blissful disregard; thanks to him and three co-founders, the U.N. Committee On The Peaceful Uses Of Outer Space have approved an annual awareness campaign in the form of “International Asteroid Day.”
In regards to this cosmic threat, May has stated, “The more we learn about asteroid impacts, the clearer it became that the human race has been living on borrowed time.” He added that asteroids hit Earth “all the time.”
The Miracle Of The Can
They’re Talking To Us
Strange messages coming from the stars are ‘probably’ from aliens, scientists say
‘It is too early to unequivocally attribute these purported signals to the activities of extraterrestrial civilizations,’ a group of scientists looking for aliens have warned – but the signals are encouraging
Scientists have heard hugely unusual messages from deep in space that they think are coming from aliens.
A new analysis of strange modulations in a tiny set of stars appears to indicate that it could be coming from extraterrestrial intelligence that is looking to alert us to their existence.
The new study reports the finding of specific modulations in just 234 out of the 2.5 million stars that have been observed during a survey of the sky. The work found that a tiny fraction of them seemed to be behaving strangely.
And there appears to be no obvious explanation for what is going on, leaving the scientists behind the paper to conclude that the messages are coming from aliens.
“We find that the detected signals have exactly the shape of an [extraterrestrial intelligence] signal predicted in the previous publication and are therefore in agreement with this hypothesis,” write EF Borra and E Trottier in a new paper. “The fact that they are only found in a very small fraction of stars within a narrow spectral range centered near the spectral type of the sun is also in agreement with the ETI hypothesis,” the two scientists from Laval University in Quebec write.
Cool.
No More Hugging Your Awesome Uber Driver
Uber Introduces New Rules For The Road
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — Uber riders can rate their drivers on a five-star scale, but the assessment works the other way, too.
And now, the ride-hailing app has released new rules of the road, including five infractions that could get you banned.
Most of Uber’s guidelines are common-sense: be on time, buckle up, don’t leave trash behind.
‘Lay Off The Hamburgers’: North Carolina Santa Accused Of Fat-Shaming Young Boy
It’s when your good judgement goes out the window — sometimes when Uber comes in handiest — that you can get in trouble.
Damaging drivers’ or other passengers’ property will do it, including throwing up in the car after too much booze.
War In Space
Russia, USA and China are prepping for all-out SPACE WAR
SUPERPOWERS are preparing to dominate in a devastating space war, which could destroy life on Earth as we know it, experts have warned.
By Alex Hickson
DANGER: The blast trail of China’s heavy-lift rocket Long March-5 as it launches from Wenchang / GETTY
As countries seek to maintain control in outer-space, competition between nations will give rise to apocalyptic cosmic attacks, according to security officials.
Nightmare scenarios might leave vast swathes of the planet in the dark as intergalactic weapons knock out satellites and launch cyber attacks.
General John Hyten, head of US Strategic Command, told CNN: “As humans go out there, there has always been conflict. Conflict in the Wild West as we move in the West … conflict twice in Europe for its horrible world wars.
“So, every time humans actually physically move into that, there’s conflict, and in that case, we’ll have to be prepared for that.”
Nations in conflict might start to make plans to knock out an enemy’s space infrastructure such as satellites or space shuttles.
Attacks on satellites could have devastating consequences such as blacking out televisions, mobile networks and even the internet.
Everything from GPS, stock markets, bank transactions, traffic lights and railway switchboards could freeze causing utter chaos.
Daddy Hunter
Fear And Loathing In Fatherhood: Everything You Need To Know About Parenting in 7 Hunter S. Thompson Quotes
Hunter S. Thompson was a lot of things. Gun lover. Bucket hat wearer. A man who did enough cocaine to kill an entire species. You know him as The Godfather of Gonzo journalism, the man who inspired an entire generation of writers. One thing he wasn’t? Father of the year. Far from it. Thompson, father of 1, pretty much violated all contemporary ideas of safe and responsible parenting. Instead, he promoted a hedonistic, hell-raising existence that was based more on LSD and long-barrel shotguns than child-psychology books.
Or so it would seem. In his memoir, Juan Thompson, Hunter’s son, insists that his old man had another side, that of the patient, doting dad and grandfather. Either way, Hunter was full of wisdom. So buy the ticket, take the ride, and enjoy some his choicest words.
On Not Safe, And Not Sorry
“My life has been the polar opposite of safe, but I am proud of it and so is my son, and that is good enough for me.”
On Showing Signs Of Greatness
“Weird behavior is natural in smart children, like curiosity is to a kitten.”
Rocket Men
Rocket men: why tech’s biggest billionaires want their place in space
Forget gilded mansions and super yachts. Among the tech elite, space exploration is now the ultimate status symbol
by Dan Tynan in San Francisco
Richard Branson with a Virgin Galactic space aircraft at the company’s Mojave desert headquarters. Photograph: Barry J Holmes for the Observer
The explosion could be felt 30 miles away. At 9.07am on 1 September, a SpaceX rocket containing 75,000 gallons of liquid oxygen and rocket-grade kerosene ignited into a fireball that could be seen from orbit, billowing black smoke into the gray sky around its Cape Canaveral launch pad.
On board was a $200m, 12,000lb communications satellite – part of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s Internet.org project to deliver broadband access to sub-Saharan Africa.
Zuckerberg wrote, with a note of bitterness, on his Facebook page that he was “deeply disappointed to hear that SpaceX’s launch failure destroyed our satellite”. SpaceX founder Elon Musk told CNN it was the “most difficult and complex failure” the 14-year-old company had ever experienced.
It was also the second dramatic explosion in nine months for SpaceX, following a “rapid unscheduled disassembly” of a booster rocket as it attempted to land after a successful mission to the International Space Station.
Later that day, Nasa’s official Twitter account responded: “Today’s @SpaceX incident – while not a Nasa launch – reminds us that spaceflight is challenging.”
Yet despite those challenges, a small band of billionaire technocrats have spent the past few years investing hundreds of millions of dollars into space ventures. Forget gilded mansions and super yachts; among the tech elite, space exploration is the ultimate status symbol.
DRY Revived
THE ENTIRE PRINT RUN (1979-82) OF NYC PUNK MAGAZINE ‘DRY’ IS NOW ONLINE!
by Christopher Bickel
Wendy O Williams of the Plasmatics in ‘Dry’ magazine
Ryan Richardson is one of the United States’ foremost collectors, archivists, and dealers of punk rock records and ephemera, as well as being the Internet saint who created free online archives of Star, Rock Scene, and Slash magazines. He also runs Fanzinefaves.com, a repository of various early punk zines as well as the exhaustive punk info blog Break My Face.
We’ve written about Richardson’s punk altruism before here at Dangerous Minds. The last time was back in June when he uploaded the entire print run of excellent early San Francisco punk magazine Damage over at his site CirculationZero.com.
Richardson has done his Good Samaritan work once again, this time with the upload of the complete print run of the late ‘70s/early ‘80s NYC punk magazine Dry to Circulation Zero.
According to Richardson, Dry was conceived by art school students and titled as a reaction against Wet, “The Magazine of Gourmet Bathing.”
Dry is manic in its cut-n-paste layout and panicked in its reviews and reports. Eclectic coverage of punk, No Wave and eventually hardcore in the later installments.
Fourteen issues were published, all of which are available as a single pdf download HERE.
Moon Village Coming
‘Moon village’ plans winning worldwide support
Futuristic plans for a “moon village” proposed by the European Space Agency (Esa) are winning support from around the world.
The idea is to set up a permanent human outpost on the moon that will be a base for science, business, mining and even tourism.
Esa director general Jan Woerner said the moon village was discussed by member state ministers meeting in Lucerne, Switzerland to decide space funding.
At a press conference after the two-day meeting he said: “We are now having a list of actors worldwide who would like to participate in this moon village concept.
“There are ideas of companies – not only ideas, projects of companies – to go to the moon, and they want to be part of this community.
Inventor of General Tso’s Chicken Gone
Inventor of General Tso’s Chicken dies in Taipei at age 98
The inventor of General Tso’s Chicken and founder of famous Taiwanese Hunan-style restaurant chain Peng’s Garden died in Taipei on Wednesday
By Keoni Everington
General Tso’s Chicken(By Wikimedia Commons)<
Chef Peng Chang-kuei (彭長貴), the founder of the famous Hunan-style restaurant chain Peng’s Garden Hunan Restaurant (彭園湘菜館) and inventor of the world famous Chinese dish General Tso’s Chicken, died on Nov. 30 at the age of 98 from Pneumonia.
A native of Changsha, Hunan Province, Peng began training at the age of 13 under the tutelage of the famous Hunan chef Cao Jing-chen (曹藎臣), who was the family chef of Tan Yan-kai (譚延闓), the prime minister of the Nationalist government from 1926 to 1928. After WWII, he was put in charge of running Nationalist government banquets, and in 1949 he fled to Taiwan after the Kuomintang’s forces were defeated by the communists in the Chinese Civil War.
According to an interview with the China Times, Peng says that his most famous dish was created in 1952 during a four-day visit by U.S. Seventh Fleet commander Admiral Arthur W. Radford. After three days, he had served the guests most of his repertoire of dishes, so to try and mix things up a bit, he decided to chop some chicken into big chunks, fry it to a golden hue and then added a different combination of sauce and seasoning to create a new dish.
The admiral was so impressed with the dish that he asked Peng what it was called, he thought quickly on his feet and said “General Tso’s Chicken” (左宗棠雞).
The Farmer’s Daughter
How A Seedy Motel Called The Farmer’s Daughter Became A Boutique Hotel
“Flying Bacon” by Jessie Azzarin (Photo via Farmer’s Daughter Hotel)
The farmer’s daughter, in fiction, is an attractive, pure-hearted young woman who grew up on a bucolic farm. She’s Daisy Duke. She’s Dolores Abernathy of Westworld. She’s Mary Ann, stranded on an uncharted desert isle. Technically, she’s even The Walking Dead‘s Maggie Greene. She appears in songs, she’s a central character in crass tavern jokes, and she turns up in many an adult film. But in Los Angeles, Farmer’s Daughter is also a hotel.Peter and Ellen Picataggio bought the Farmer’s Daughter Hotel on Fairfax Avenue in 1997. At that time, Ellen said it already bore its peculiar name, but it was something of a “no-tell motel.” It’d been there since the ’60s, had its halcyon days through the ’70s, and fell into disarray thereafter. For a short period of time, it was a Best Western, but not when the Picataggios got their hands on it. Ellen described the owner they got the property from as “absentee.”
Looking at old photos supplied by the Picataggios reveals the kind of unremarkable, bland, yet oddly endearing decor of any mediocre American motel. The off-white bathroom with the hair dryer attached to the wall, the small closet stacked with unused phonebooks, the green carpeting you rarely see outside of motels and dated transit hubs, and the plain bed, dressed in pink and green patterned comforters, positioned beneath uninspired paintings of ambiguous landscapes. These pedestrian rooms served as the accommodation for many a CBS studio guest, including those who went to sleep dreaming of spinning The Big Wheel and winning a lump sum from Bob Barker. The sign was a big, yellow roadside eye-catcher, with a smaller marquee below that read, “Our Rooms Are Tops” on one side and “Extra Nice Rooms” on the other.
“Gotta love the cheap art on the wall,” Peter said of the old rooms. “I think I might have kept a piece somewhere just for fun and memories. Never forget where you came from.”
The original yellow sign, too, is now a part of the hotel’s office.
Inventor of Big Mac Gone
from FORTUNE
The Inventor of the Big Mac Has Died
Michael Delligatti, the man who brought you the Big Mac, has died. He was 98.
Delligatti, more affectionately known as “Jim,” was one of McDonald’s first franchisees. He first created the Big Mac in 1967 at his Uniontown, Penn. restaurant, Business Insider reports.
Almost 50 years later, it’s the same recipe served in chains today: two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions—on a sesame seed bun (for those of you old enough to remember the jingle). McDonald’s has been experimenting with the Big Mac’s size lately, offering both smaller and bigger versions of the sandwich.
AC/DC Live 1978
The Little Man In The Boat Has Really Long Legs
The Little Man In The Boat: How History Hates The Clitoris
by PONTA
What’s up, labia flaps. Today we’re talking about how everyone hates the clitoris and its surrounding sex organs. Or more specifically how all throughout history the sexuality of clit-owning people and their sex organs have been ignored because apparently those things scare people.
The clitoris (“clit,” “love button,” “bean,” “little man in the boat,” etc.) is that super fun little thing by the vaginal opening that has 8,000 sensory nerve endings. Wow wow wee wow, that’s a lot of feels.
If you have a vulva (the external genital organs—not to be confused with the vagina, which is the slippery inside tunnel-bit) then you should grab a mirror and check yourself out! Find your clit, poke around and find your urethral opening. You should know what your bits look like! And be proud of them!
Alien Invasion – Florida
FLORIDA FIREBALL: Massive fireball blazing through the skies sparks fears of an alien invasion
The super-bright meteor prompts calls from terrified locals to police
BY JON LOCKETT
A police squad car films the fireball as it flies overhead
A DAZZLING fireball spotted by hundreds of people as it streaked across the Florida skies sparked fears aliens could be landing.The super-bright meteor, which was filmed on phones and dashcams, prompted calls from terrified locals to police.
The American Meteorological Society and police received dozens of reports of a bright light in the sky at around 11 pm from Key West to the Florida Panhandle.
Some were from panicked locals fearing a UFO invasion with some taking to Twitter to admit they were terrified.
The shocking flash was captured on the dashboard cameras of several cruisers belonged to the North Point Police Department in west Florida.
Freddie Mercury Unmasked
Freddie Mercury: 10 Things You Didn’t Know Queen Singer Did
From sneaking Lady Di into a gay club to concealing his final resting place, read lesser-known tales of vocal legend’s life
“Lover of life, singer of songs.” The simple epitaph, penned by Queen bandmate Brian May, goes a long way in describing the complex figure known across the globe as Freddie Mercury. “To me that summed it up, because he lived life to the fullest,” remembered May in a BBC documentary. “He was a generous man, a kind man, an impatient man, sometimes. But utterly dedicated to what he felt was important, which was making music.”
Born Farrokh Bulsara in the British protectorate of Zanzibar, Freddie’s oversized talent was matched only by his flamboyance and exuberance. These qualities merged to create masterpieces of the group’s songbook, and some of the greatest live performances on record. In life, his four-octave voice – since studied by scientists in an attempt to unlock the secrets of its intricacies and awesomeness – raised the bar for what a rock singer could be. In death, he gave voice to the millions suffering from AIDS.
In honor of the 25th anniversary of his passing, here are some lesser-known elements of Mercury’s incredible legacy.
Giant Robot Panda
Ancient UFO Found
Experts believe mysterious aluminium object dating back 250,000 years ‘could be part of ancient UFO’
Metallic aluminium was not produced by mankind until around 200 years ago – but this appears manufactured making the object a baffling find
The aluminium piece looks as if it was a handmade object (Photo: CEN)
A piece of aluminium that looks as if it was handmade is being hailed as 250,000-year-old proof that aliens once visited Earth.
Metallic aluminium was not really produced by mankind until around 200 years ago, so the discovery of the large chunk that could be up to 250,000 years old is being held as a sensational find.
The details of the discovery were never made public at the time because it was pulled out of the earth in communist Romania in 1973.
Builders working on the shores of the Mures River not far from the central Romanian town of Aiud found three objects 10 metres (33 feet) under the ground.
Consensus
from The Christian Science Monitor
Why more than 100 scientists are backing an asteroid-deflection mission
Scientists have have voiced their support for a 2020 mission to do a test deflection of an asteroid to prepare for the possibility of a future collision with Earth.
NASA/AP
How do you stop an asteroid headed directly at Earth?
That’s the question that scientists have been asking for decades now. For most of human history, the only answer to such a question would be a shrug. But as asteroid detection continues to improve, scientists say they might be able to have enough time between spotting an incoming meteor and its impact to actually keep it from hitting our planet.
While scientists believe that asteroids like the kind that wiped out the dinosaurs are rare, smaller asteroids can still cause massive damage all over the world. In order to prevent these destructive collisions, more than 100 scientists published a letter in support of a joint NASA/ESA mission, set to launch in 2020, to study and ultimately deflect an asteroid. The mission would enable humanity to learn more about the threat posed by near-Earth objects and would mark the first time an asteroid has been deflected away from Earth in a dry run for planetary defense against near-Earth objects on a more destructive course.
“Of the near-Earth objects (NEOs) so far discovered, there are more than 1700 asteroids currently considered hazardous. Unlike other natural disasters, this is one we know how to predict and potentially prevent with early discovery,” reads the letter. “As such, it is crucial to our knowledge and understanding of asteroids to determine whether a kinetic impactor is able to deflect the orbit of such a small body, in case Earth is threatened.”
When Discussing Racism Could Be Funny
Sharon Jones Gone
A Queen Among Kings
Sharon Jones’ Soul Was Surpassed Only By Her Spirit
by OLIVER WANG
The first time I ever saw Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings perform was circa 2002 at the Elbo Room, a tiny venue in San Francisco’s Mission District. If you’ve ever been there, you know the Elbo Room doesn’t need many bodies to pack the floor, and with the Dap-Kings crowding the diminutive stage, the full intensity of their act filled the space from practically the first note. I was already familiar with the group through its early records, but hadn’t fully appreciated how much power Jones could pack into her stout, 5-foot frame as she sang, sweated, stamped, strutted, slayed.
Jones, who passed away last week after a long, public battle with pancreatic cancer, enjoyed one of the great second acts of American pop music history, one whose countless retellings never seems to diminish its wonder. She was born in Augusta, Ga., in the mid-1950s, which made her just a little too young to have made a go at a soul career in the heyday of the 1960s and early ’70s. The closest she got was at age 17, singing backup on tour with Long Island R&B girl group The Magic Touch. Fast forward 20 years and Jones was working as a corrections officer out of Rikers Island prison while moonlighting as a wedding singer on the weekends.
Tennis Is For Girls
Enigmatic Fast Radio Bursts
Mystery cosmic radio blasts come with side of gamma rays
By
NASA
BLASTS of radio waves from space may deliver a much bigger wallop than expected. For the first time, we have seen one of these enigmatic fast radio bursts occurring together with a spurt of gamma rays, meaning their joint source may be a billion times more energetic than we thought.
FRBs have proved baffling since their discovery in 2007. Each torrent of radio waves lasts no more than a few milliseconds and we have only spotted 17 of them so far.
Finding accompanying signals at other wavelengths may be the key to decoding their source. But to observe such a paired event, we would have to be watching the same area of the sky with a radio telescope and a telescope operating at different wavelengths when an FRB occurs there.
“We’ve been really unlucky so far: we’re almost always looking in the wrong places to be helpful,” says Emily Petroff at the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy.
Secrets of Blackstar
David Bowie’s Graphic Designer Says Blackstar Records Hold More Secrets
by Anna Gaca
CREDIT: Screenshot via DavidBowieVEVO on YouTube
In May, months after David Bowie released his final album ★ (Blackstar) and died unexpectedly, fans discovered a charming surprise: If you expose the record’s gatefold sleeve to light, it reveals an image of a galaxy. In an interview with BBC Radio 6 today, the record’s graphic designer, Jonathan Barnbrook, says that’s not all the records are hiding.
“There’s actually a few other things as well,” Barnbrook told host Mary Ann Hobbs. “Actually, there’s one big thing which people haven’t discovered yet on the album. Let’s just say, if people find it, they find it, and if they don’t, they don’t. And remember what Bowie said about not explaining everything.”
Of course, that doesn’t bring us any closer to discovering the secret, but at least we know to look. Personally, my guess is that Bowie might’ve built in some kind of stargazing aid. Listen to the relevant clip from Barnbrook’s interview here, and if you’ve found a big secret in your copy of ★, tell us at tips@spin.com.