Just like it says, Popcorn Shorts is about the kind of things we think are really interesting, but don’t really need a large article to explain them. From the sublime to the ridiculous, check in here for crunchy bits of info you’ll love to munch. By the way, much (but not all) of our delicious Popcorn comes from articles we’ve posted on our Facebook page. If you’re on Facebook, please stop by and “Like” us and we’ll keep a fairly-constant-but-not-frequent-enough-to-be-annoying stream of these coming to your virtual door!
Take a tour of the freakin’ SPACE STATION
Today’s world is the world of the future, yet we take it for granted. For instance, how often do you stop to realize that there is a permanent manned space station orbiting over our heads RIGHT NOW? It’s been a dream of every child since the 1950’s, yet on a daily basis we pay more attention to Kim Kardashian. Here’s an opportunity to look around this castle in the air… before ESA astronaut Samantha Christoforetti ended her 199 day mission on the station, she took up to 15 pictures of each room in the station. They’ve been stitched together through the magic of software, and now you can take a fully interactive tour through the entire thing. It’s fascinating and educational, but it also may not be exactly what you think…
The high cost of doing nothing
Some people deny the reality of climate change NOT because they aren’t convinced by the science, but because they think it would be too expensive to do anything about it. One of the basic flaws in this idea (and there are many) is that doing nothing has no cost.
A lefty/righty coalition of business, political, and scientific leaders (Hank Paulson, Michael Blomberg, Tom Steyer, and others) engaged an economic research group and the world’s largest catastrophe-modeling company for insurance to analyze and quantify exactly how much it costs to bury our heads in the sand. Here’s their report. Great fodder to talk about with your climate-change-denying uncle, especially if he’s the CEO of a large company…
Portland’s zombie apocalypse
The Portland Film Festival was going on over the Labor Day weekend culminating with “Zombie Day” on Labor Day Monday, and the highlight of Zombie Day was the filming of “The Zombie Day Apocalypse”. The apocalypse happened under the Morrison Bridge, where a couple thousand people got into their undead finery to be extras in the shoot. Not only was there movie fun, but it was a chance to beat the world’s record of 656 zombies in a movie. And now it’s not official: the estimated 3000 people who waited in the sun for 6 hours look like they ate the brains of the previous record. Here are reports from KGW, KOIN, the Oregonian, and a particularly good video from KPTV. BRAINS!
Gold-filled Nazi ghost train discovered?
Things were looking pretty bleak for Germany in early 1945. The Allies were on the march and the Nazis realized they were going to be on the losing end of the war. In a panic, they began hiding the gold, jewels, artworks, antiques, critical documents, and more that they had plundered from across Europe. Some went in homes and caves, others were loaded onto cars, and most of these caches were found by the war’s end. But one train in Poland, a legend in the local area, was lost. Until now. Polish treasure hunters using ground penetrating radar believe they have found the train in a tunnel in Poland. Relics from the site seem to back them up, but is it real? Stay tuned…
