Stannous Flouride's Book of Truthiness

http://artdaily.com/news/74596/Play-it-Again-Sam—Casablanca–piano-sold-for–3-4-million-at-United-States-auction#.VHVp775GhlI

Bidding opened at $1.6 million and escalated rapidly before closing three minutes later at $3.4 million including taxes.

The piano was specially adapted to allow Bogart’s character to perform his sleight of hand with the transit papers, hiding them in plain sight of the clientele at Rick’s. The writers decided that the papers should be stashed in the top of the piano, but had to alter its lid to make it work on camera.

“The only way this works, however, is if the lid opens from the rear, otherwise Rick would have to reach over Sam’s shoulder to hide the papers, a hardly subtle move,” the auction house said.   “The solution to this staging problem was to have the prop department completely remove the top of the piano, leaving the piece secured by a hook and eye only.”

Chewing gum included Most likely made in 1927, the piano also has only 58 keys, 30 fewer than a classic piano. It had been owned by a dentist in Los Angeles since the 1980s.

Bonham’s said the painted Moroccan designs were restored about three decades ago under the direction of Warner Bros. The piano was offered for sale with a signed photograph of actor Dooley Wilson and a copy of “Casablanca,” and even came with a wad of petrified chewing gum found stuck beneath the keyboard. A faint outline of a fingerprint could be seen on the gum, but its owner was unknown.

A winner of three Academy Awards, “Casablanca” is ranked as the second greatest movie of all time by the American Film Institute, behind “Citizen Kane” and just ahead of “The Godfather.”

Items related to the film generated snappy business at Bonham’s, with a draft screenplay entitled “Everybody Come to Rick’s” fetching $106,250, well above its $40,000-$60,000 estimate. The doors featured in the entrance of Rick’s Cafe sold for $115,000, having been estimated at $75,000 to $100,000.  The famous letters of transit at the heart of the film, estimated at between $100,000 and $150,000, sold for $118,750. One of the chairs from Rick’s Cafe fetched $5,000.

How is THIS for a nightmarish critter?

Or THESE?

Fossil hunters have uncovered the remains of primitive crocodiles that “galloped” on land and patrolled the broad rivers that coursed through north Africa one hundred million years ago.

The skeletons of five creatures that walked with dinosaurs – and ate them – were unearthed in remote and rocky regions of what are now Morocco and Niger during a series of expeditions in the Sahara desert.

Three of the crocodiles are new species and include Kaprosuchus saharicus, a 6.5m-long beast with three sets of dagger-like tusks and an armoured snout for ramming its prey.

The meter-long “DuckCroc” had a wide, overhanging snout containing sensory areas that it used to sniff out prey in shallow waters.

Most of the fossils were found near the site where, in 2001, Sereno uncovered a 12m-long crocodile that lived 110m years ago. The beast, nicknamed SuperCroc, weighed around eight tons.
Sereno in the jaws of SuperCroc, holding the fossil head of DogCroc.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/gallery/2009/nov/19/zoology-evolution?picture=355815378

As the official airline of Middle-earth, Air New Zealand has gone all out to celebrate the third and final film in The Hobbit Trilogy – The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. Starring Elijah Wood and Sir Peter Jackson; we’re thrilled to unveil The Most Epic Safety Video Ever Made.

The doll, called Lamilly, was created in the image of the average young American woman – fuller, rounder, with acne, cellulite, stretch marks, and more!

Lammily is the brainchild of artist and researcher Nickolay Lamm, who had always been frustrated with the unrealistic proportions of Barbie dolls. One day, he decided to create a fun, appealing doll with natural makeup and a casual wardrobe.

“I feel that, right now, dolls are very ‘perfect’ looking, when, in real life, few of us have perfect skin,” he told reporters. “So, why not give dolls a ‘real treatment?’ Things like acne, stretch marks, and cellulite are a natural part of who we are.” Lamm wanted little girls to get used to the idea that these things are normal and not ‘flaws’ to be ashamed of.

Here’s a bunch of 2nd Grade children responding to her:

The best description I can come up with is that this Honda commercial is actually two film shorts in one. To see what that means you just have to watch and hit the ‘R’ key from time to time.

https://www.youtube.com/user/HondaVideo

Don’t get licked by liquor!

Don’t miss the PSA at the end.

Watch on full screen if you dare…

You have 2.5 years to get up the courage.

Ancient Greek vases have revealed the hidden names of Amazons, mythology’s warrior women, in a report deciphering ancient languages unspoken for millennia.

In the forthcoming study of pottery dating from 550 B.C. to 450 B.C., study lead author Adrienne Mayor and J. Paul Getty Museum assistant curator David Saunders translated Greek inscriptions into their phonetic sounds for 12 ancient vases from Athens. The inscriptions appear next to scenes of Amazons fighting, hunting, or shooting arrows.

They next submitted just the phonetic transcriptions without explanation to linguist John Colarusso of Canada’s McMaster University in Hamilton, who is an expert on rare languages of the Caucasus. On the Amazon vases, Colarusso found an archer named Battle-Cry, a horsewoman named Worthy of Armor, and others with names such as Princess, Don’t Fail, and Hot Flanks (that probably had erotic connotations).—without knowing the details of the pictures of Amazons.

The report in the journal Hesperia gives linguists unparalleled insight into languages last spoken more than 2,500 years ago around the Black Sea. This area was the realm of Scythian nomads, who fought and traded with the Greeks.

Essentially, the ancient Greeks seem to have been trying to re-create the sounds of Scythian names and words on the Amazon vases by writing them out phonetically, the study authors suggest. In doing so, the Greeks may have preserved the roots of ancient languages, showing scholars how these people sounded on the steppes long ago. The names were probably nicknames or heroic appellations given to Amazons, rather than real family names. Even today, Colarusso says, speakers of modern-day languages in the Caucasus region often use public, descriptive nicknames rather than reveal their real names.

“I am impressed, and I find the conclusions quite plausible,” says archaeologist Ann Steiner, an expert on ancient Greek vases at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania

Scientists, including researchers from the California Academy of Sciences, place turtles in the newly named group ‘Archelosauria’ with their closest relatives: birds, crocodiles, and dinosaurs.

A team of scientists has reconstructed a detailed “tree of life” for turtles. The specifics of how turtles are related — to one another, to other reptiles, and even to dinosaurs — have been hotly debated for decades. Next generation sequencing technologies in Academy labs have generated unprecedented amounts of genetic information for a thrilling new look at turtles’ evolutionary history. These high-tech lab methods revolutionize the way scientists explore species origins and evolutionary relationships, and provide a strong foundation for future looks into Earth’s fossil record.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/11/141124103225.htm

What would it look like to fly over Titan? Radar images from NASA’s robotic Cassini satellite in orbit around Saturn have been digitally compiled to simulate such a flight. Cassini has swooped past Saturn’s cloudiest moon several times since it arrived at the ringed planet in 2004. The virtual flight featured here shows numerouslakes colored black and mountainous terrain colored tan. Surface regions without detailed vertical information appear more flat, while sufficiently mapped regions have their heights digitally stretched. Among the basins visualized is Kraken Mare, Titan’s largest lake which spans over 1,000 kilometers long. Titan’s lakes are different from Earth’s lakes in that they are composed of hydrocarbons with similarities to liquid natural gas. How Titan’s lakes were created and why they survive continues to be a topic of research.