Spend every waking moment flipping through YouTubes, like The Hunter does for you, and patterns start to emerge. Grand Unifying Themes. See, a YouTube might be produced in isolation, but when you post it in with a community of others, they link together, they help to take the cultural temperature, they tell us things about ourselves we might not have known otherwise. More than anything so far, YouTubes impart this singular truth: we love us some indignity. Bloopers, flub-ups, gaffes, rakes in the... READ ON
With my Geico customer post in mind, this week's "Show Off Your Smarts" challenge is to share your favorite facts related to advertising - print, television, radio, billboards, anywhere. I know there are some great facts about celebs who got their starts in ads, commercials that didn't translate well into other languages, ads that backfired, etc. So go ahead and make us all a little smarter by sharing your facts in the comments... READ ON
If you haven't seen a Geico commercial in the last couple months, you haven't turned on the TV. And even though the ones with the caveman are my favorites, I thought it was pretty cool to learn that the "real customers" in the ads with Burt Bacharach, Verne Troyer, Charo, Little Richard and other celebs are in fact real customers. Fellow flosser Kara Kovalchik claims she "stumbled into" two articles about these customers. I'm not sure how that happened but I'm glad she did. Here they are: The man... READ ON
Sometimes our staff likes to sit around and challenge our brilliant research editors, Sandy Wood and Kara Kovalchik, by throwing out a topic and seeing how many interesting related facts they can come up with. I'm always amazed at how much knowledge they've got packed into those brains. Sandy and Kara are now sharing some of that brain power in a book called The Pocket Idiot's Guide to Not So Useless Facts. Here are a few facts I learned from the book: Coca-Cola wasn't the only soft drink to at one... READ ON
A new study finds that even after having surgery to remove early stage lung cancer, almost half of those who smoked before surgery eventually start smoking again. A third of those patients resumed smoking within a year of the... READ ON
15% off the mental_floss Trivia Game. When checking out, you'll see a space labeled "coupon code." Enter the word "game" in that field and you'll receive the... READ ON
This is a cool news piece on an inventor who has figured out how to manipulate water to power his car and is showing the potential of hydrogen power in doing many other things. Check out the video and give me your predictions on two things: 1) Will we one day operate our vehicles with water as the primary fuel source? 2) If so, how long will it take for this to be the... READ ON
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This reminds me of Steve Martin discussing the horrors of cat juggling in The Jerk. Apparently someone found cats walking on keyboards a big enough problem to create a program that could detect "Cat-like typing". When the program detects a cat walking across the keyboard it locks the keyboard functions and makes an annoying noise over the computer speakers to scare the cat away. There's even a helpful Q&A on the site, addressing questions like "What if my cat is deaf?" with part of the... READ ON
You guys sent in some great responses to last week's challenge on myths and urban legends. For this week's challenge, I'd like to see winter holiday-related facts. This will give you a chance to share facts about holiday traditions, movies, weird history, etc. I'll get it started with the following story about one of the most successful Christmas gag gifts in history: Ever wonder where pet rocks came from? Well the genius behind this moronic craze is Gary Dahl, a California ad exec. Gary came up with... READ ON
States That Need to Watch Their Language
5 Questions: Burger Time
Who Said It: Dr. Phil or Dr. Fünke?
After a 2011 vote, Toyota announced that the official plural of Prius was Prii.
