Passover is a Jewish religious observance to commemorate the Hebrews' exodus from Egypt. The name comes from the night the angel of death passed over their homes when killing the Egyptian's firstborn children. The traditional Seder is a meal in which every dish and every procedure has a story behind it, to teach and reinforce that history for the next generations.

However, this was a problem in the Soviet Union. Jews in Russia had suffered under many regimes, and the Bolsheviks were the least oppressive, considering their communist idea of equality. The communists wanted to welcome Jews into the fold, but they also wanted to stamp out religion. Their solution was to make Jews into an ethnic group instead of a religious group, by changing their religious traditions to suit the new ideology. That was the impetus behind the "Red Seder," in which the traditions were bent to reflect communist themes of throwing off the shackles of the capitalist bourgeois. Red Seders were promoted in the 1920s and '30s, after which they were deemed successful and then discarded under Stalin, who had his own feelings about Jews as an ethnic group. Read about the Bolshevik Red Seders at Atlas Obscura. 

(Image source: Hagadah far gloybers un apikorsim, 1923)

Francis Zuber was skiing through the trees at Mt. Baker in Washington state when he ran over an inverted snowboard. The board belonged to Ian Steger, who was still attached to it, but buried upside down in a tree well. Tree wells can have up to 20 feet of soft snow, and if you fall into one head first, you can disappear from sight forever. Steger was snowboarding with two friends, but they were ahead of him going downhill, and they might never have found him. When they called him, he couldn't reach his radio.

Zuber didn't know how long Steger had been buried, and frantically went to work finding his head so he could get air. This video contains NSFW language. Steger tells his side of the story and says he assumed he was going to die. He doesn't mention injuries, so we can assume he's okay now. -via Metafilter

Paleontologist Michael D'Emic found something interesting when he cut the bones of the Majungasaurus. He found that the dinosaur that measured up to 7 meters high grew "really, really slowly." The prevalent idea amongst paleontologists was that big dinosaurs became big through rapid growth spurts, so what D'emic found through his investigation was rather surprising, which prompted him to look further into other dinosaur bones to see if there are different growth strategies in them. What followed was a decade-long study, and with the time that passed came new knowledge of the distant past. As it turns out, the strategy of carnivorous dinosaurs to get big fast was less predominant than what paleontologists previously assumed.

Understanding an animal's growth strategy may seem trivial at first, but it is essential in understanding a creature's life and environment. Did the animal grow in a competitive environment? Was it a hot environment or a cold one?

Growth strategy also has a correlation to an animal's lifespan and number of offspring.

More about this over at Quanta Magazine.

(Image Credit: Skye McDavid/ Wikimedia Commons)

There had been previous attempts to extract genetic material from Beethoven's skull fragments in the past but to no avail. But thanks to modern advancements in DNA sequencing, we now have a better understanding of the composer's cause of death. A recent study suggested that the composer died from liver disease caused by several factors. Found in his DNA are two copies of a gene called PNPLA3, which is linked to liver cirrhosis. Also found are two variants of the HFE gene, which is a gene that can cause hereditary haemochromatosis. Finally, traces of Hepatitis B virus were found in his DNA. It also didn't help that Beethoven became a heavy drinker, especially in the year before his eventual demise.

Historical accounts of the composer's death seem to strengthen the findings from the recent DNA analysis. It is said that he developed jaundice, and his limbs swelled months before he passed away. Both conditions are telling signs of liver failure.

The loss of Beethoven's hearing remains a mystery, however. Perhaps a mystery that will probably be solved sometime in the future.

(Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Some people really enjoy conversations with their barbers. The rest of us would like to just get a haircut and move on to the next task of the day.

A chatty barber who doesn't pick up on social cues is annoying and Beyond the Pale Barbershop in San Francisco doesn't want to annoy its customers. The San Francisco Standard reports that this shop lets customers select "silent mode" from the beginning. The barber then knows not to even try to chat with the customer.

It's quite a shop. Owner Anthony Larrasquiti has designed his operation to be not just a business, but an experience for customers. You have a variety of haircut options, which might end up free. If you can hit a bullseye on the dartboard, your haircut is free and you get a beer.

It's popular: Larrasquiti says that he has about 350 regular customers who schedule appointments with him. That's especially impressive since Beyond the Pale has been open since only February.

-via Dave Barry | Photo: Beyond the Pale Barbershop

Animals are individuals. And because they are individuals, they also have personalities distinct from one another. Some animals are reckless, and others are shy.

Similar to how our personality affects the way we function and perform in daily life, the innate personality of an animal also affects its performance in an experiment.

If this is truly the case, does this imply that the findings from numerous animal behavioral studies are inaccurate and biased? For many scientists in the field, the answer is yes. Christian Rutz realized this problem years ago when he conducted a study on New Caledonian crows. Knowing this problem, how can we solve it?

Rutz and his colleague Michael Webster suggest this new framework in animal behavioral research: the STRANGE approach.

STRANGE is an acronym for factors that behavioral researchers should consider when they conduct studies. These factors are:

• Social background
• Trappability and self-selection
• Rearing history
• Acclimation
• Natural changes in responsiveness
• Genetic makeup, and
• Experience

While Rutz acknowledges that removing all biases in a study could be impossible, he still encourages his fellow researchers to ponder how these factors affect their studies. He also calls on them to be transparent with these said factors. In this way, the findings of animal behavioral studies can be more meaningful and reliable.

(Image Credit: Pixabay)

When I try to start conversations with strangers, one of my go-to questions is "What's the most surprising thing you've ever enountered in a colonoscopy?"

It doesn't have to be the person's own colonoscopy--just one that the person has experienced.

This gentleman (that's a man in the photo) had ladybug in his colon. A 2019 article in the medical journal American College of Gastroenterology Reports briefly describes the surprising appearance of a harmonia axyridis, one of 6,000 ladybug species in the world. If I understand the article correctly, the doctors assume that the patient swallowed the bug. His consumption of a full gallon of polyethylene glycol as part of the colonoscopy preparation may have protected the ladybug from digestion.

-via Science Girl

How do we know how hot our Sun is? How do we know the internal structure of stars and the type of fusion processes occurring inside them, despite not taking a single step into them? Believe it or not, the answer is seismology, the study of earthquakes.

The story begins with the development of the seismograph, which allowed us to record ground oscillations. With the power of science and mathematics, these oscillations became the key to mapping our planet's interior.

Fast forward to the 1960s, the decade of powerful telescopes. These tools not only allowed us to zoom in on the heavenly bodies, but they also allowed us to see them in finer detail. And with this advancement, scientists realized that the Sun oscillated, too. This gave them the revelation that the methods of seismology might also apply to our Sun. This gave birth to helioseismology. And if seismology applies to our Sun, then it would also work for other stars out there. This realization gave rise to asteroseismology.

Big Think tells more details about this fascinating story.

(Image Credit: Hinode JAXA/ NASA/ Wikimedia Commons)

In early September 2022, curious fishermen took a video of two megamouth sharks swimming together off the coast of San Diego. Little did they know that they were very fortunate to spot the shark species and how significant their footage is in the study of megamouth sharks.

Megamouth sharks are a very elusive species. Since its discovery some five decades ago, there have only been 273 sightings of the species, most of them spotted because they were caught in fishing gear. Of these sightings, only five are sightings of megamouth sharks swimming freely, so this new footage is a truly rare opportunity.

The footage in question was analyzed by a team of scientists led by Zachary Skelton, who described the video as humanity's only knowledge of the social lives of megamouth sharks.

Analysis of the footage suggests that one of the sharks was male and the other female, implying that the two were "engaging in courtship or mating behaviors." Furthermore, neither shark was seen attempting to feed, strengthening the claim that this was indeed a mating ritual. However, Skelton admits they heavily relied on other studies and species to make sense of the short footage.

This only shows how much we still don't know about megamouth sharks. As the director of the Shark Research & Conservation Program at the University of Miami — Neil Hammerschlag — puts it, the topic is a "black box to scientists."

(Image Credit: David Stabile/ Live Science)

The Tim Burton movie Beetlejuice opened nationwide on March 30, 1988. It seems like just yesterday. It flipped the script on the standard haunted house story by making the ghosts (Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis) good people who become entangled with a humorous but malevolent ghost-for-hire, Beetlejuice, played by Michael Keaton. The producers didn't much like the title Beetlejuice, and they suggested House Ghost to make the plot more clear. Burton offered a counter suggestion: Scared Sheetless. He was astonished that they took him seriously and even considered it. But it remained Beetlejuice, and upon release, quickly made back five times its budget. Meanwhile, young Winona Ryder hoped the film would raise her status at high school, but it only made the bullying worse. You'll find all kinds of trivia tidbits like that in a list at Cracked celebrating the movie's anniversary.

Back in 1667, medicine and philosophy were dangerously entwined. What physicians of the time didn't know about the human body was important- some organizations did not yet accept the theory of blood circulation. But French physician Jean Denis did, and after increasingly successful experimental blood transfusions between animals, he began giving the blood of lambs and goats to human patients. He figured that the blood of animals was cleaner and purer because they didn't drink alcohol and were free from sin.

Denis' first patient improved greatly, which may have been because he had already undergone many sessions of bloodletting and desperately needed the volume. His second transfusion patient was already healthy, but displayed renewed vigor. The third patient died. These transfusions sent the medical establishment into a frenzy. Things came to a head when he was sued over the death of his fifth patient in Paris, which ultimately turned out to be a murder. But that was the end of animal-to-human blood transfusions.

Denis was opposed to human-to-human blood transfusions because he assumed that the donor would not survive, which tells us something about how donor animals fared during his "successful" experiments. Read about Jean Denis' xenotransfusions and how they were received at The Public Domain review. -via Nag on the Lake

Mark Hamill has been working with United24, the official fundraising arm of the Ukrainian government, for months now. He's helped to fund their drone program in the defense against Russia, and serves as their ambassador to spread the word of how the rest of the world can help Ukraine. Another collaboration is between United24 and the mobile alert app Air Alert, to send warnings of attacks to citizens' smart phones. The app can be set to local areas and to any of several languages. Hamill is the English voice of the app in his Luke Skywalker persona. His voice will alert local users to missile attacks, shelling, street fighting, radiation, or chemical threat. Hamill's "all clear" announcements are infused with Jedi quotes. However, at no point does he say "I have a bad feeling about this."  -via Laughing Squid

The news service of Swedish national television brings us news of an innovative program to provide safety lighting for bicyclists at night. This system, which is being tested in the town of Skara, launches when the bicyclist requests the lights through a phone app. Drones with bright lights fly to positions along the path that the bicyclist is taking and hover.

This approach, the project managers have determined, will ultimately be cheaper than the cost of permanently illuminating a bike path with street lights. It will also be safer than having bicyclists rely entirely on lights mounted on their own vehicles.

-via Wrath of Gnon | Image: SVT

Once upon a time, recurring characters on Saturday Night Live would prove to be so popular that they would star in a feature film. It's astonishing that characters could go from two-minute television skits that were often pretty repetitive to a two hour movie, but sometimes it worked. That's how we got The Blues Brothers in 1980 and Wayne's World in 1992. The trend also gave us some pretty horrible movies, too, like It’s Pat in 1994, which was pulled from theaters after only a week.

Then there was Hans and Franz. Dana Carvey and Kevin Nealon portrayed two bodybuilders with Austrian accents who host a TV show called Pumping Up with Hans & Franz. It was an obvious parody of Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Schwarzenegger got a real kick out of it. He even appeared on the show with Hans and Franz a couple of times. And the three actors set about to make a feature film of the skit. It was a musical, believe it or not. But it was never to be. Read what happened to the proposed Hans and Franz movie at Cracked.

The monk and acclaimed cynic Benito Jerónimo Feijoo told the story of creature who was part man, part fish discovered the Spain's Bay of Cadiz. In 1679, as the story goes, fishermen saw a mysterious creature and managed to lure it out of the water with bread. The "fishman" was shaped like a man, but had gills and some scales. He had red hair and white skin and didn't speak a word. They took him to the local priest who interrogated him, but it was several days before he spoke just one word: “Liérganes.” When word got to the town of Liérganes, María del Casar told them it might be her son Francisco de la Vega Casar, a redhead who vanished five years earlier when he was swimming in the estuary at Bilbao. The fishman was taken to María for a glorious reunion, and lived with her for the next nine years. But he was never the same as when María last saw him in 1674.

If any of this tale is true, what could explain it? There are a couple of medical conditions that could fit the fishman's appearance, explained in the story at Amusing Planet.

(Image credit: Rafael Tello)