This video is a hoot: If Buying Condoms Were Like Buying Birth Control

Friday links

A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse! Richard III was born 562 years ago, and there's been a lot of news since his remains were discovered recently.

Caffeinated Underpants Won’t Make Your Butt Smaller.

Better living through Chemistry: These Scientists Want to Bring You Civet-Poop Coffee Without the Civets.

Star Wars recut into a Guardians Of The Galaxy style trailer is excellent, and/or there's a three minute Too Long: Didn't Watch review of the 1st trilogy.

What It's Like To Be Struck By Lightning: there are a lot of strange, poorly-understood aftereffects. Related - What Should I Do If I’m About to Get Struck by Lightning?

Disney characters in their Halloween costumes.

ICYMI, Wednesday's links are here, including weird don't-do-drugs PSAs, the mites that are having sex on your face, vintage bad-guy trapping patents, and the death of Saturday morning cartoons.

Beethoven's Ode To Joy played on a pan flute made from tampon applicators

Bet this is the first time today you've seen this:

And here are the instructions for making your own.

Richard III is back in the news: he drank a bottle of wine per a day

A study of the teeth and bones of Richard III towards the end of his life suggests that he drank around a bottle of wine a day. 

The research, by the British Geological Survey and University of Leicester, revealed that the monarch described by Shakespeare as a "poisonous bunchback'd toad" enjoyed an extremely rich diet after ascending to the throne in 1483."We know he was banqueting a lot more, there was a lot of wine indicated at those banquets and tying all that together with the bone chemistry it looks like this feasting had quite an impact on his body in the last few years of his life," Angela Lamb, a University of Leicester geochemist, told the BBC.

The team carried out of isotope analysis of the samples to measure the levels of certain chemicals, such as strontium, nitrogen, oxygen, carbon and lead, which can indicate the kind of foods a person ate.

The king's diet was far richer than that of even similarly high-ranking individuals for the period, said the team, whose findings were revealed last night in a new documentary, Richard III: The New Evidence, on Channel 4.

High alcohol consumption was, however, not unusual in the 15th century, when beer and wine were safer to drink than water. Such drinks also tended to be weaker than today.

Richard III, who was was killed at the Battle of Bosworth in August 1485, is far from the only English monarch to have enjoyed a tipple.

At Hampton Court Palace, Henry VIII spent £3,000 (equivalent to £900,000) a year replenishing his cellar, while Queen Anne was nicknamed ‘dramshop’ for her gin consumption. Even prudish Queen Victoria enjoyed a claret – usually with a splash of malt whiskey in it, much to prime minister William Gladstone's disgust.

Via Telegraph, Daily Mail.

Star Wars recut into a Guardians Of The Galaxy style trailer, plus a 3 minute review of the 1st trilogy

Lucasfilms (or Disney, if they own the previous films) should hire the guy who did this, because it absolutely makes you want to watch Star Wars again (and Guardians)...

Music is from Guardian's awesome mix tape.

If, however, you don't want to bother watching Star Wars and it's sequels (are there really people out there who haven’t seen the original Star Wars movies yet?), or if past viewers just want to review the popular space opera, Mashable has this Too Long; Didn’t Watch episode.

Previous post: Peter Quill from GOTG teaching an alien warrior about the Legend of Footloose and the great hero Kevin Bacon.

Wednesday links

Are mites having sex on your face?

John Lennon’s nearly-forgotten 1974 Broadway flop Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band on the Road.

A Requiem for Saturday Morning Cartoons - they've been dying off for a long time but now have ceased to exist.

Weird (and funny) anti-drug PSAs.

Advances in Miscreant Trapping: patents from the struggle between good and evil.

12 mesmerizingly informative GIFs. Have you ever seen how an ant walks before?

ICYMI, Monday's links are here, including why coffee makes you poop, people who managed to screw up their one job, and Lego versions of Peter Quill, Mal Reynolds, and Han Solo (from Guardians of the Galaxy, Firefly and Star Wars, respectively) debating "Who shoots first?".

Are mites having sex on your face?

Apparently, per this NatGeo video, the answer is yes, absolutely. They have an article that goes into more depth, but it's grossing me out to write about this stuff so go to NatGeo and read it yourself. I need to go take a shower, or maybe two.

Microscopic mites are having sex on your face, and researchers from North Carolina State University are eager to study them. The "Meet Your Mites" program is collecting samples from ordinary citizens to learn more about the life cycle of these microscopic creatures that live on all human adults.

Marvelous animated video: Ex-Prisoners Take Priority Under ObamaCare Medicaid Expansion

I haven't read enough about the claims made in this video (and by the group behind it) to be sure that what they're saying is accurate - it makes sense to me on the surface but there's a whiff of agenda-driven interpretation about the whole thing. That said, I like the video quite a bit.

Put out by the Foundation for Government Accountability's Uncover Obamacare project:

“The entire idea of Medicaid expansion would be absurd if it weren’t so terrifying. Not only does expansion ruin a state’s financial future, it also sends the elderly and children to the back of the line while the criminals go to the front.” - Tarren Bragdon, CEO of The FGA

The DOJ Claims 35 percent, 1 in 3 of the expanded Medicaid population has a criminal history.

The expansion of state Medicaid programs have been funded by new taxes and $716 billion in payment reductions for seniors on Medicaid Advantage plans, meaning the one third of seniors who are on these plans will bear 43 percent of the cuts to Medicaid funding and services.

To find out more about who is on the ObamaCare chopping block, read our full report here.

via @Jim Eltringham

Monday links

Lego versions of Peter Quill, Mal Reynolds, and Han Solo (from Guardians of the Galaxy, Firefly and Star Wars, respectively) debate "Who shoots first?".

Wonderful Foreign Words With No English Equivalent, Illustrated.

Excerpts and illustrations from an 1895 book entitled Dog Stories from The Spectator.

It's International Coffee Day. So, Why Does Coffee Make You Poop? Here's the science, confirmed by questionnaires and anal probes.

15 Of the Most Magnificent Comb Overs You Will See.

34 People Who Managed To Screw Up Their One Job.

ICYMI, Friday's links are here, and include the Night of the Flaming Ballerinas, who accesses your car's black box, and a 1912 test for eighth graders in Kentucky.

Why Does Coffee Make You Poop? Here's the science, confirmed by questionnaires and anal probes

Here's more than you ever wanted to know on the subject.

The short, somewhat boring answer is that coffee stimulates muscle contractions along the last couple of stops on the #2 Metro that is your large intestine (a terminal stretch of bowel that science calls the rectosigmoid colon). Way more interesting are the details behind the study that helped bring this quivering canal to light, not to mention questions that have been raised about the mechanisms linking coffee to its contractions.

For these, we turn to "Effect of coffee on distal colon function" — a research paper with an encouragingly no-nonsense title published in the April 1990 issue of Gut, a scientific journal dedicated to the digestive system. The paper recounts the findings of a study in two parts: a relatively painless questionnaire portion, and a second, somewhat more inquisitorial section involving anal probes.