Q: After swatting flies, is it best to clean up their corpses or leave them as a warning to their brethren?
A: Flies lack the mental capability to know what a "warning" is. You may note that if you repeatedly swat at, threaten butnever injure a particular fly, it will still happily dart for your food despite the repeated "warning". Consider that they can't even do this, and that recognising a corpse as a warning is a whole another level of intelligence.
Sleepover peril
"During school holidays there is often a reciprocal childcare deal that goes on between parents [well, mostly mothers]. A 'you have my kid for a sleepover and I'll have yours' kinda thing," writes Suzanne. "Well this was my first and last. I agreed to the sleepover for my 5-year-old boy and even though I was coming down with something I stuck to the plan. It all went well until the following morning. By the time I dragged myself out of bed, this is the scene that greeted me in the kitchen ... The smaller of the boys was standing on a dining room chair in front of the toaster with a too-hot piece of toast retrieved [skewered on a fork] and the other boy [mine] was also in the kitchen standing in front of a piece of firewood, with a hatchet above his head, ready to swing. FREEZE! They were a bit cold and hungry, they said. A serious talk about domestic safety followed, but I chose not to tell the boy's mother."
"A group of photographers and I were taking pictures of a then 17-year-old model, we had a bunch of old cameras as props that we were crazy about," writes Denise. "So, when my turn comes, I hand this model a vintage land Polaroid camera, my favourite in looks and the epitome of Polaroid photography: She grabs it, gets super hyped and goes: OH MY GOD, AN INSTAGRAM! I don't know what hit me harder; the facepalm or the reality check of how old I was." (Via Quora.com)
Marketing behind rise of the white wedding dress
The white gown is synonymous with weddings, a custom that's often assumed to be a nod to old-school values of purity and chastity, as embodied by the virginal bride. But in reality, the rise of the white dress is less a story of religious influence or puritanical mores than it is a tale of economics and marketing. The colour of the 20th century gown itself was an invented tradition, meaning that it evolved into something seen as unchanging and timeless, though it was not always so. Though considered a historic and time-honoured ritual, the white wedding is actually a somewhat modern phenomenon. (Via The Psresurfer.com)
List: British swear words ranked in order of offensiveness. (Go on, teach yourself a few new ones.)
Video: Last night I watched this beautifully understated 40 minute documentary about Yukio Shige, a retired Japanese police detective who patrols the Tojinbo Cliffs to stop people from jumping to their deaths. "He talks individuals away from the steep drop and takes them to a cafe, working with volunteers to help these individuals seek mental help. Gatekeeper is a remarkable and intimate 39-minute documentary that follows Shige as he monitors the sheer cliffs, which have become a notoriously popular destination for suicides in Japan. So far, he's saved over 500 people." Watch it here.
Video: Another mesmerising compilation of what the internet calls "oddly satisfying videos"...
