Kevespada

November 1, 2015

When the announcement was put out that this foreign born A list movie/television actor’s stalker was leaving red ribbons, it was actually to distract from the fact that they were leaving blue hankies. There’s a subset of Tumblr stalkers who have gotten his addresses, notate what cars they drive and tell their followers that whenever he wears a blue hankie, it’s a secret message to and from him so the stalkers are encouraged to go into his neighborhood and carry/wave/gift blue hankies to show him that they’re in on his supposed secret message.

Benedict Cumberbatch

To Post Secret, a project that collects personal secrets written artistically onto postcards, someone recently sent in the following bombshell: “Ever since we started getting married and buying houses,” she writes, “my girlfriends and I don’t laugh much anymore.”

Her personal secret is, in fact, a national one.  It’s part of what has been called the “paradox of declining female happiness.” Women have more rights and opportunities than they have had in decades and yet they are less happy than ever in both absolute terms and relative to men.

Marriage is part of why. Heterosexual marriage is an unequal institution. Women on average do more of the unpaid and undervalued work of households, they work more each day, and they are more aware of this inequality than their husbands. They are more likely to sacrifice their individual leisure and career goals for marriage. Marriage is a moment of subordination and women, more so than men, subordinate themselves and their careers to their relationship, their children, and the careers of their husbands.

Compared to being single, marriage is a bum deal for many woman. Accordingly, married women are less happy than single women and less happy than their husbands, they are less eager than men to marry, they’re more likely to file for divorce and, when they do, they are happier as divorcees than they were when married (the opposite is true for men) and they are more likely than men to prefer never to remarry.

The only reason this is surprising is because of the torrent of propaganda we get that tells us otherwise. We are told by books, sitcoms, reality shows, and romantic comedies that single women are wetting their pants to get hitched. Men are metaphorically or literally drug to the altar in television commercials and wedding comedies, an idea invented by Hugh Hefner in the 1950s (before the “playboy,” men who resisted marriage were suspected of being gay). Not to mention the wedding-themed toys aimed at girls and the ubiquitous wedding magazines aimed solely at women. Why, it’s almost as if they were trying very hard to convince us of something that isn’t true.

But if women didn’t get married to men, what would happen? Marriage reduces men’s violence and conflict in a society by giving men something to lose. It increases men’s efforts at work, which is good for capitalists and the economy. It often leads to children, which exacerbate cycles of earning and spending, makes workers more reliable and dependent on employers, reduces mobility, and creates a next generation of workers and social security investors. Marriage inserts us into the machine. And if it benefits women substantially less than men, then it’s no surprise that so many of our marriage promotion messages are aimed squarely at them.

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A Canadian couple has been convicted of letting their toddler son die of bacterial meningitis by failing to seek proper medical treatment for him. David and Collet Stephan gave their 19-month-old son Ezekiel a variety of naturopathic remedies, herbs and supplements, only calling an ambulance after he stopped breathing.

The Stephans’ case has sparked a larger debate in Canada about whether naturopaths, who are not exactly real doctors, should be allowed to treat children at all. The other issue is the conduct of the Stephans themselves, who, as the jury heard, tried seemingly everything short of taking their son to the hospital before his death in March 2012. From CBC:

In a bid to boost his immune system, the couple gave the boy — who was lethargic and becoming stiff — various home remedies, such as water with maple syrup, juice with frozen berries and finally a mixture of apple cider vinegar, horse radish root, hot peppers, mashed onion, garlic and ginger root as his condition deteriorated.

Court heard the couple on tape explaining to the police officer that they prefer naturopathic remedies because of their family’s negative experiences with the medical system.

The toddler was sick for nearly two and a half weeks before his death. David Stephan told police that natural remedies had worked in “every single scenario” in the past. He’s vice president of Truehope Nutritional Support Inc., a supplements company.

CBC reports that there were gasps in the courtroom when the Stephans were convicted of “failing to provide the necessaries of life” to the boy. A Facebook page supporting the couple, Prayers for Ezekiel, is full of claims that the government and/or the medical establishment are attacking the family for their beliefs. Another page set up to support them, Stand 4 Truth, accuses the court system of “censoring” testimony that would exonerate them. The case has been covered on virtually every anti-vaccination and “natural health” blog, from the perspective that the Stephans are being crucified for opposing the medical establishment.

The couple will receive a date for their sentencing hearing on June 13.

The Stephans with their surviving children and a photo of Ezekiel. Screenshot via Stand 4 Truth

Rose, an Oakland resident, will celebrate her first Mother’s Day this weekend. She’ll probably start with breakfast and a morning swim. She’ll dunk her babies underwater and wrestle them for awhile, then perhaps an afternoon nap.

Rose, a river otter at the Oakland Zoo, gave birth to three fuzzy pups in January. Her mother, Ginger, welcomed her fourth litter of pups in December. The proud father of both, resident Oakland Zoo stud Wyatt, completes the river otter family exhibit at the Wayne and Gladys Valley Children’s Zoo.

As your own mother can attest (and maybe she’s reminded you on a few occasions) babies are demanding little miracles. Newborns are nearly helpless and need constant attention. River otters are no different.

“They literally can’t do much besides find the teet and nurse,” says Margaret Rousser, zoological manager at the Oakland Zoo.

Rose doesn’t have to worry about predators, but wild river otters are making a comeback in the Bay Area, and wild otter moms have a lot to worry about. Raccoons and dogs can dig up their natal dens. And a mom needs to be sure she can get food and keep her pups warm.

In order to give their young ones the best chance at survival, river otters and other mammals have evolved a way to time their pregnancies so babies come when the habitat has ample resources for the new family.

Pregnancy’s Pause Button

Some mammal mothers can press the pause button on an embryo’s development—it’s a process called delayed implantation.

Unlike the choice human females can make to use birth control or freeze eggs to time a pregnancy, delayed implantation is unconscious. The animal mamma’s body responds to environmental cues that tell her the habitat will support her young ones. A physiological call to action: It’s go time!

Delayed implantation has some obvious benefits. Babies literally suck up tons of energy by breastfeeding. Waiting until conditions are ripe gives the baby and the mother a better chance at survival.

It helps mate selection, too. Some animals are alone most of the year; a female can go long stretches without seeing a desirable male. Delayed implantation allows her to mate when she finds a good one, and then hold onto the embryo, perhaps for months, until the timing is right for birth. If only humans were so lucky.

What Is Delayed Implantation?

Rose’s and Ginger’s pregnancies began just like your own mother’s did. The male’s sperm fused with their eggs to form a single-celled zygote. The zygote divided into a bundle of cells called a blastocyst. Here’s where human and otters diverge.

At this stage, otter development just stops. In river otters, the blastocyst can hang out in the uterus for seven to 10 months until just the right time… BOOM. An environmental signal triggers a spike in hormones that jolts the embryo back into action to implant into the uterine wall.

Rose and Ginger both mated with Wyatt last spring. About 9 months later, the handlers noticed Rose acting strange. In the wild, female otters only tolerate males during mating season. At the zoo, Wyatt, Rose and Ginger are the best of buddies but during pregnancy, instinct kicks in.

“Rose started being cranky with Wyatt,” says Rousser. “She didn’t want anything to do with him.”

Zoo staff, ready to monitor Rose’s pregnancy, wanted to be sure her embryo had actually implanted.

So they shipped Rose’s frozen poop to Cincinnati.

Reading Hormones in Otter Poop

If you’re Helen Bateman’s mail carrier, you really hope those packages are frozen, because you’re delivering a lot of poop to her lab.

Every winter, zoos from all over the country send frozen otter feces to Bateman — she’s a research associate at the Center for Conservation and Research of Endangered Wildlife at the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden. Bateman ‘reads’ the poop for a spike in progesterone, the hormone that tells her when implantation occurred.

“For a lot of carnivores, it’s in the poop,” she says, adding that it’s difficult to get urine samples from water-loving otters. “They’re not so good at peeing on cue.”

Bateman gives the zoos a 10-day window for the birth. River otters are predictable— they give birth 63 to 74 days after implantation.


A Scientific Mystery

Delayed implantation pops up across the mammal spectrum, including in species of marsupials, rodents, and mustelids, like river otters. But we still don’t know exactly how it works.

Most of what we do know is from experiments on the mink, courtesy of the fur coat industry, Bateman says. These experiments show that seasonal light cues trigger implantation. This makes sense—at high latitudes, longer days signal the passing of winter. As the snow melts, a mink mother has access to the nutrition she needs to grow a healthy pup.

Day length also seems to be a trigger for polar bears. For some bats and seals, rainfall and temperature seem to be other factors in implantation. There’s also a genetic component. Probably, it’s a mix of all of these.

For endangered species populations researchers are trying to breed in captivity such as polar bears and giant pandas, delayed implantation makes the process complicated, Bateman says.

She points out that scientists can’t manipulate endangered species to test what works best.

Scientists think that the widespread existence of delayed implantation in mammals is evidence that a common ancestor of all mammals was probably a delayed implanter. As evolutionary branches diverged over millions of years, groups dropped the trait.

So actually, humans might be the strange ones. Our ancestor lost the ability long ago.

And perhaps the best General Tso's chicken in LA

Hawthorne, a tiny city southeast of LAX, is probably best known for producing the Beach Boys, and more recently, Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX. When it comes to food, the South Bay hamlet has been short on innovation, apart from a small Pakistani community. But since February, Hawthorne has housed Chubby Rice, a modern Chinese-American restaurant that skips gloppy sauces and heavy batters in favor of flavorful cooking.

The plate that best exemplifies their approach is their rendition of General Tso’s chicken. The famous dish, synonymous with Chinese-American cooking, actually has roots in Taipei and was the subject of a documentary called "The Search for General Tso." Chubby Rice’s version may be L.A.’s best, featuring dark meat tossed with onions, scallions, garlic, white button mushrooms, and a savory soy-rich sauce that gets smoky from the wok.

Joshua Lurie

Each plate comes with a choice of two sides. Clearly a restaurant called Chubby Rice calls for a mountain of fried rice stir-fried with egg and dime cuts of lap cheong sausage. You also have the opportunity to snag an egg roll here, which just might be the pinnacle of Chinese-American egg rolls in Los Angeles. Blistered wrappers cradle crumbled pork and vegetables in a ratio you won’t find many other places. A larger version listed under the "Bite Me" section as Chubby egg roll on the menu is the size of a small burrito.

Chubby Rice took over a Korean restaurant called Pojang and shares a strip mall near Hawthorne High School with a nail salon, insurance office, and Mexican restaurant. The glass-fronted space features white and orange walls and wood tables dressed with small succulents.

Jason Lau and wife Helen originally hail from Hong Kong. They ran a restaurant called Golden Crown for 30 years in Mountain Home, Idaho, an Air Force town outside of Boise with 120 seats and 150 menu items. They retired a couple years back and got bored, so they relocated to Los Angeles and resurfaced with their greatest hit dishes. Daughters Linda and Alice, and Alice’s wife Joe Fang, now run the show.

Fang said of the Laus, "They cook for guests like they cook for their own family." That means less oil, no MSG, and a mix of soybean and vegetable oils. For instance, Chubby wings are fried chicken drumettes, with meat scraped down the bone to resemble meaty lollipops, but they sport especially thin, crispy sheathes.

Joshua Lurie

The family makes dumplings in-house, filling thin skins to produce spicy pork and shrimp wontons submerged in chile oil and showered with scallions. Pan-fried dumplings feature rosy cores crafted with pork, cabbage, and bok choy. Dip in the aforementioned chile oil or a tangy blend of soy sauce and vinegar.

To start, it’s also worth considering the crab rangoon — bat-shaped wontons filled with oozing cream cheese, crab, and minced vegetables. Dip the golden results in house-made amber-hued sweet and sour sauce.

Fang is particularly proud of his family’s pork chop sandwich, which features a crispy boneless Taiwanese-style chop piled with tangy vinegar-based slaw and rich chile aioli on a massive roll that’s buried in an avalanche of French fries.

Joshua Lurie

Unlike at many Chinese-American restaurants, you won’t have to play hide and seek with the meat when ordering Mongolian beef. This version projects transparency, with thin strips of juicy beef sporting noticeable sears and judicious saucing. Orange chicken features a touch of citrus, but isn’t drowned in viscous sauce and peels.

Salt and pepper is another preparation does Chubby Rice’s protein section justice. Scored tubes of calamari come lightly battered, sporting crisp coats, soft cores, and a shower of chopped chilies, garlic, and scallions.

You won’t have to play hide and seek with the meat

Another stop forward with Chubby Rice’s approach is their packaging. Every entree comes in a three-compartment container, but instead of Styrofoam or plastic, Chubby Rice opts for compostable cardboard, an eco-friendly update on tradition.

Is Chubby Rice changing the direction of Chinese food in Los Angeles? No, but the family has applied 30 years of lessons learned to bring a fresh, thoughtful take to fast casual cooking. The food might not be space age, but based on the crowd at a recent lunch, they’ve clearly already captured the imagination of aerospace engineers and rocket scientists.

Chubby Rice, 12836 Inglewood Ave., Hawthorne, 424.456.4341

Pregnancy wasn’t always something women did in public. In her new book, Pregnant with the Stars, Renée Ann Cramer puts public pregnancies under the sociological microscope, but she notes that it is only recently that being publicly pregnant became socially acceptable. Even as recently as the 1950s, pregnancy was supposed to be a private matter, hidden behind closed doors. That big round belly was, she argues, “an indicator that sex had taken place, [which] was simply considered too risqué for polite company.”

Lucille Ball was the first person on television to acknowledge a pregnancy, real or fictional. It was 1952, but it was considered lewd to actually say the word “pregnant,” so the episode used euphemisms like “blessed event” or simply referred to having a baby or becoming a father.

Almost 20 years later, in 1970, a junior high school teacher was forced out of the classroom in her third trimester on the argument that her visible pregnancy would, as Cramer puts it, “alternately disgust, concern, fascinate, and embarrass her students.” So, when Demi Moore posed naked and pregnant on the cover of Vanity Fair just 21 years after that, it was a truly groundbreaking thing to do.

Today being pregnant is public is unremarkable. Visibly pregnant women are free to run errands, go to restaurants, attend events, even dress up their “baby bump” to try to (make it) look cute. All of this is part of the entrance of women into the public sphere more generally and the pressing of men to accept female bodies in those spaces. The next frontier may be breast feeding, an activity related to female-embodied parenting that many still want to relegate to behind closed doors. We may look back in 20 years and be as surprised by intolerance of breastfeeding as we are today over the idea that pregnant women weren’t supposed to leave the house. Time will tell.

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Channing Tatum, a man who could easily get by on his looks alone, somehow has a heart, too. He did an interview with Carly Fleischmann, who cannot communicate verbally due to her autism and instead relies on a keyboard, as part of her web series Speechless With Carly Fleischmann. And boy, Carly goes for the tough questions: What does Channing's wife do that he doesn't understand? How many girls would he leave work with when he was a stripper? Would he date a 21-year-old with autism? It's almost as if she has an ulterior motive. Jenna better watch out.

A New Zealand high school’s production of Sweeney Todd went wrong (or, from another angle, completely right) when two students suffered real neck cuts from a prop razor during their opening night performance.

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Native Brazilians sing and dance during the Indigenous Youth Games of Pataxos nation in Santa Cruz de Cabralia, Brazil. | (REUTERS/Roosevelt Cassio)

A chimpanzee screams after escaping from Yagiyama Zoological Park in Sendai, Japan. | (REUTERS/Kyodo)

Lemi Berhanu Hayle of Ethiopia celebrates after winning the Boston Marathon. | (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)

Greek actress Katerina Lehou lights a torch during the dress rehearsal for the Olympic flame lighting ceremony at the site of ancient Olympia in Greece. | (REUTERS/Yannis Behrakis)

A rowing team practices on the Potomac River in Washington, D.C. | (AP Photo/J. David Ake)

Louis Marquez carries his dog through floodwaters in Houston, Texas.| (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

A Buddhist monk sleeps while other monks and novices gather to receive alms at Wat Phra Dhammakaya temple in Pathum Thani, Thailand. | (REUTERS/Jorge Silva)

Prince William and Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge, pose in front of the Taj Mahal in Agra, India. | (REUTERS/Money Sharma/Poo)

Wild bluebells form a carpet in the Hallerbos, also known as the "Blue Forest," near Halle, Belgium. | (REUTERS/Yves Herman)

An abandoned breakfast is seen in a tea shop after a suicide bombing at a nearby government building in Kabul, Afghanistan. | (REUTERS/Mohammad Ismail)

Kenya Wildlife Service rangers stack elephant tusks, part of an estimated 105 tons of confiscated ivory to be set ablaze at Nairobi National Park in Kenya. | (REUTERS/Thomas Mukoya)

Prince's star adorns a wall in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where the pop super star often performed. | (AP Photo/Jim Mone)

**See last week's best photojournalism**

Who says the grizzly bear has vanished from California? On the contrary, it’s nearly ubiquitous in the Golden State—on everything from the state flag to T-shirts and coffee mugs.

Of course, the bears themselves have been absent for nearly a century.

Before the Gold Rush, the best guess is there were probably 10,000 grizzlies in California. But in the space of about 75 years, they were trapped and hunted into extinction. Though no one can say with certainty when the last bear expired, by 1930 even unconfirmed sightings had winked out.

“They can be brought back,” insists Noah Greenwald, conservation director for the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity. In 2014, it petitioned the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to expand areas for grizzly recovery into California.

That petition was denied. The agency said it didn’t want to divert resources from its efforts to rebuild the brown bears’ populations elsewhere in the Lower 48. Currently wildlife officials estimate there are no more than 2,000 grizzlies spread across Montana, Wyoming, Idaho and Washington (with a much larger population in Alaska).

“Certainly in Yellowstone National Park, which gets more than three million visitors a year, grizzly bears are a tremendous draw there and a real source of joy,” observes Greenwald.

And yes, they can be a source of danger. A female grizzly with cubs killed a hiker in Yellowstone last year—but bear attacks are exceedingly rare. So the Center for Biological Diversity is betting on taking its case directly to the public. It’s gathered about 13,000 signatures on an online petition, and is about to launch the next phase of a web and social media campaign under the banner, “Bring Back the Bear.”

“I do think it’s something—with some education and with further study—something that people could and will rally around,” Greenwald speculates.

Hollywood hasn’t exactly advanced the cause, doing for Grizzlies more or less what “Jaws” did for sharks—last year’s Oscar nominee for best picture being only the latest example. Leonardo DiCaprio’s violent encounter with a mama grizzly was likely the most talked-about scene in “The Revenant.”

There Are Bears—And Then There Are Grizzlies

Right now, the only encounter possible with a native California grizzly, is at the California Museum in Sacramento, where Monarch, the bear that served as a model for the state flag, stands stuffed behind glass walls.

Clearly some prefer their grizzlies that way and they’re not alone. State wildlife officials are, to say the least, skeptical of the bid to reestablish the bears in California.

Listen to the Story:


Yellowstone grizzly recording by Bernie Krause/Wild Sanctuary

Marc Kenyon is a bear biologist; a big, bearded bear of a guy himself, Kenyon heads the state’s Human-Wildlife Conflict Program.

“That grizzly would turn this thing into a tin can in a hurry,” says Kenyon, showing me the trailers his agency uses to trap and transport injured or wayward black bears.

Kenyon’s agency puts the number of black bears in California at somewhere between 30,000 and 60,000—but clearly black bears are not grizzlies, which can easily be twice the size, a thousand pounds or more. And even though the bears would be placed in remote areas, there’s no guarantee they would stay put.

“One thing I can tell you about bears is that bears roam,” says Kenyon. “And they’ll roam a long distance.”

The Center for Biological Diversity has identified nearly 8,000 square miles of potential habitat in the remote Sierra Nevada, with a smaller area near the Oregon border. Kenyon’s not sure it’s enough.

“I can only imagine how far a grizzly bear in California might roam,” he says, “in search for food, in search for mates, in search for its own habitat, its own territory.”

Source: Center for Biological Diversity (Teodros Hailye/KQED)

Even advocates, like nature journalist Jason Mark, concede that this wouldn’t be an easy lift.

“I don’t want to at all underestimate the challenge of something ambitious like this,” says Mark, author of “Satellites in the High Country: Searching for the Wild in the Age of Man.”

He says the hardest part might be “changing the way that we think of what wild nature is good for.”

“Is it good, for us, just as a place to go recreate and watch and look at, or does wild nature have some intrinsic rights of its own?” he asks. “And in that sense the bear does have a right to return to what was once its homeland.”

Mark says the large carnivores could have ecological benefits, aiding in seed dispersal and balancing populations of smaller prey animals.

But Kenyon isn’t convinced that it’s the best thing for species like California’s declining deer population, or even for the bears themselves at this point.

“For a stable grizzly bear population, we’re looking in excess of 200 animals—that can find each other,” says Kenyon. By comparison, the Yellowstone grizzly population numbers about 700.

“If you get down to a density where the animals can’t find each other, you’re lessening the chance for them to breed,” he says, “and then you’re lessening the chance for the species to survive in the long term.”

Grizzlies … in Oakland?

Which brings us to the Oakland Zoo, where construction crews have started work on its California Trail project. The exhibit will feature the state’s iconic critters from big cats to condors, and the centerpiece will be a three-acre grizzly “habitat.”

“You know, unfortunately they tell sort of the sad history of humans and wildlife here in California,” says Colleen Kinzley, who directs animal care, conservation and research at the zoo.

“We want people to be aware of that,” she says. “I mean, despite the fact that the grizzly bear is on our flag and our state seal, many people don’t know that grizzlies existed in California and are really a part of this habitat and environment.”

The zoo is preparing for its first bears-in-residence sometime next year. And Kinzley says the best way to “bring back the bears” in the wild would be to let them come back on their own.

“You can’t just plop a large predator into a location and say, ‘Alright, everybody just get along,'” she says. “The bear will lose if you don’t have complete buy-in from all the different constituencies.”

It would be a long shot, to be sure, but it’s theoretically possible that, say, the tiny population of grizzlies in the Washington Cascades might work their way down into California, much as wolves have drifted down from Oregon.

“It would be a long way off but I think probably easier than getting everyone to agree to bring bears from somewhere and put them in California,” says Kinzley. Kenyon agrees.

In any case, it’s likely that for a long time to come, the only way to see live grizzlies in California will be with a big fence around them.

Featured art by Laura Cunningham, author of A State of Change and co-founder of the desert conservation group Basin and Range Watch.

While sculpture and the study of anatomy have always worked in tandem, models of the human—specifically female—form took a specific turn during the 1800s, when anatomical wax sculptures of women’s bodies became a source of public curiosity and entertainment. A model of this kind was called an “anatomical Venus.”

“For most of the 19th century, at least one anatomical Venus was on display at any given moment,” writes Gaby Wood of the Telegraph. She continues:

Presented as marvels, puzzles and objects for popular education, these models came apart to reveal the layers beneath the skin. A word sometimes used to describe them was “Florentine,” not just because the most intricate example had been made in Florence, but also because there was something exotic and erotic about them. This totally naked woman could be undressed still further: right down to her arteries and intestines.

One possessor of three widely circulated female wax models (called the Sleeping Beauties) was a woman named Marie Gresholtz, who had grown up teaching wax art to French royalty and, as the monarchy violently fell out of popularity, would later produce wax models of the aristocracy’s decapitated heads. In 1802, Gresholtz fled to London, where she became known by her more popular moniker: Madame Tussaud.

Upon her arrival in England, Wood states, “Madame Tussaud now found herself directing a strange theatre of female objectification and male fantasy.”

While the models served an educational purpose (the model featured up top, created by Italian sculpture Clemente Susini, remains on display at science museum in Bologna), they were also often posed in expressions of ecstasy—a parted mouth, clenched fingers and curled toes, eyes half closed. But with these sexy wax broads, you could also remove their skin and play with their organs. Hot?

Of this kind of wax model (supposedly built to educate the medical community and the public about the human body), Wood—promoting Morbid Anatomy Museum founder Joanna Ebenstein’s upcoming book The Anatomical Venus—wonders:

Why would one bother to decorate it with ribbons and pearl necklaces? If the organs are made of wax, why should the hair and eyelashes be real? Why engineer it so that the fake woman can cry or bleed?

Let’s all read Ebenstein’s book to find out. (Suspected answer: Men are pervs.)

Image via Wikipedia Commons.

Great news, sunshines: you can now start every morning with a motivational alarm clock app from none other than Dwayne Johnson himself. It’s called, of course, “The Rock Clock.”

That’s according to the Verge. Johnson announced the move with a black-and-white Instagram video of himself smashing an analog alarm clock with a sledgehammer.

Upon downloading, you set a goal for yourself, so that the Rock can periodically encourage you to reach your goals—“I’m gonna be checking in with you guys,” he says, in the first video uploaded for subscribers, “I’m gonna be reading your goals daily, because I have access to everything because I am a secret ninja.” Then you can select from a wealth of ring tones:

There are 25 in all, and apparently The Rock has “created” each one. He personally recorded some of them, like an acoustic guitar-backed “Good Morning Sunshine” and a mashup of sounds that comes from his dog, Hobbs. There are also a couple where he just incessantly repeats the words “beep” and “ring ring,” or another where he smashes a harp as it plays the sort of melody you’d hear in other alarm apps. Johnson is a master at appealing to his various audiences; the “Old School” ringtone pulls in his WWE catchphrases, and “Let’s Ride” is surely meant for the Fast and Furious crowd.

You can even choose to sync your clock with the Rock’s personal timetable, which is presumably very hardcore.

The app is now available in an app store near you. Best of luck.

Photo via Getty Images.

In 2012, after moving to London from the U.S., photographer Daniella Zalcman found herself in professional limbo, unable to work while awaiting her visa. Setting out to find a creative, personal project that might also help her settle into her new surroundings, she happened across the weird world of historic reenactors and felt strangely at home.

Private leauan Joe Smith at the Victory Show in Leicestershire, England. | (Daniella Zalcman)

A "Salute to the 40s" event at the Chatham Dockyards. | (Daniella Zalcman)

"I grew up in Maryland/Virginia [where] Civil War reenactment is very popular," Zalcman said in an interview. "I have always liked the spirit of historical reenactment."

British historic reenactment groups, of which there are many, gather mostly on summer weekends, and the events are open to the public. For two years, when the weather got warm, Zalcman traveled around southern England, with the occasional trip to Normandy, France, to photograph these rather meticulous European hobbyists.

"I'm a bit of an obsessive person myself, so I like seeing what others get obsessive about. And boy, do they obsess — I've overheard so many friendly arguments over whether this button is the right color or that patch is sewn in the right place," she said. "They really want to make sure they're getting it right."

Squadron Sergeant-Major Nick Gibson, Royal Engineers. | (Daniella Zalcman)

French reenactors run drills as German Wehrmacht soldiers at the Merville Battery in Normandy, France. | (Daniella Zalcman)

Zalcman focused on World War I and World War II groups. And the events she attended ranged from live battle scenes rich with authentic uniforms, weaponry, and play-by-plays, to living history displays where curious observers and participants are encouraged to walk through and ask questions about each set-up.

To photograph these weekend warriors, Zalcman chose one of her favorite cameras — a twin-lens reflex (a manual from the 1950s) — that not only captured beautifully warm photos with a vintage feel, but also happened to be the same type of technology World War II photographers would have used at the time. “I think the reenactors definitely appreciated that I was using a camera that was more or less from the right period," she said. "I feel like they thought I was approaching the project with the same spirit of traveling back in time."

Italian reenactor Pierantonio Farina takes a photo on Omaha Beach in Normandy, France, while doing an impression of a U.S. press photographer. | (Daniella Zalcman)

Lois Banyard, Women's Auxiliary Air Force ground crew, at the War and Peace Revival in Folkestone, England. | (Daniella Zalcman)

Ieuan Joe Smith during a live battle reenactment in Leicestershire, England. | (Daniella Zalcman)

Couple. | (Daniella Zalcman)

Red Army encampment at an event in Leicestershire, England. | (Daniella Zalcman)

D-Day. | (Daniella Zalcman)

German prisoner, World War I, at the War and Peace Revival in Folkestone, England. | (Daniella Zalcman)

Jason Hopkins, Royal Air Force aircraftman, at the War and Peace Revival in Folkestone, England. | (Daniella Zalcman)

**To see more of Daniella Zalcman's work, visit her website, Twitter, and Instagram**

Does Slytherin House have a ground game? Asking for a friend.

Combat sports in general appeal to people from all walks of life. Every so often, combat sports tend to attract people from the world of the arts (the non-martial kind, of course). After the utter demolition display we witnessed during Mickey Rourke's performance in Russia, now we have another thespian taking the plunge into the world of competitive fisticuffs.

As Us Magazine reports, an actor known for his role in the Harry Potter films has now begun to dedicate himself to MMA.

Actor Josh Herdman played the character Gregory Goyle in the massively successful films, and after the conclusion of the franchise, took his experience in training Japanese Jiu-Jitsu and segued that into MMA training. The 28-year-old has been training for some time, and even recently had his first fight, which he won at welterweight via unanimous decision, against Polish fighter Janusz Walachowski, in London this past weekend.

After performing in all eight films in the Harry Potter franchise (Seriously? When did all of this happen?), Herdman cited a desire to move on to combat sports partly due to his background. His father Martin was a boxer and tried his hand at acting, as well. The actor also expressed his displeasure with the process, as he explains:

"I still have an agent and still go for auditions. It's just a little bit like playing the lottery for a living."

Seeing as how the entertainment industry is a fickle one, it certainly is easy to find yourself disillusioned with things if you don't find projects to work on. At least Herdman has the opportunity to channel his focus elsewhere for the time being. You know you've made it in the MMA world when you have a Tapology profile, and here's the one for Herdman. No plans have been announced for any future fights and he has no inclination to abandon his acting career.

A small mammal has sabotaged the world’s most powerful scientific instrument.

The Large Hadron Collider, a 17-mile superconducting machine designed to smash protons together at close to the speed of light, went offline overnight. Engineers investigating the mishap found the charred remains of a furry creature near a gnawed-through power cable.

“We had electrical problems, and we are pretty sure this was caused by a small animal,” says Arnaud Marsollier, head of press for CERN, the organization that runs the $7 billion particle collider in Switzerland. Although they had not conducted a thorough analysis of the remains, Marsollier says they believe the creature was “a weasel, probably.” (Update: An official briefing document from CERN indicates the creature may have been a marten.)

The shutdown comes as the LHC was preparing to collect new data on the Higgs Boson, a fundamental particle it discovered in 2012. The Higgs is believed to endow other particles with mass, and it is considered to be a cornerstone of the modern theory of particle physics.

Researchers have seen some hints in recent data that other, yet-undiscovered particles might also be generated inside the LHC. If those other particles exist, they could revolutionize researcher’s understanding of everything from the laws of gravity, to quantum mechanics.

Unfortunately, Marsollier says, scientists will have to wait while workers bring the machine back online. Repairs will take a few days, but getting the machine fully ready to smash might take another week or two. “It may be mid-May,” he says.

These sorts of mishaps are not unheard of, says Marsollier. The LHC is located outside of Geneva. “We are in the countryside, and of course we have wild animals everywhere.” There have been previous incidents, including one in 2009, when a bird is believed to have dropped a baguette onto critical electrical systems.

Nor are the problems exclusive to the LHC: In 2006, raccoons conducted a “coordinated” attack on a particle accelerator in Illinois.

It is unclear whether the animals are trying to stop humanity from unlocking the secrets of the universe.

Of course, small mammals cause problems in all sorts of organizations. Yesterday, a group of children took National Public Radio off the air for over a minute before engineers could restore the broadcast.

Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

The body of a gray whale that washed up on shore will be chopped into pieces and taken to a landfill

A gray whale carcass washed up on shore at San Onofre State Beach over the weekend, giving curious visitors a rare opportunity to see one of the largest animals in the world up close. Now, however, it's getting pretty smelly, and the Orange County Register reports that the remains could lure sharks to the popular surf spot. Don't worry, though, state parks officials have a plan: just cut the whale into pieces and haul them off to a landfill.

If this sounds more like something a murderer would do on an episode of Forensic Files, know that state parks Public Safety Superintendent Kevin Pearsall isn't thrilled about the idea either. "If that is what ends up being done to it, it's going to be very messy," he tells the LA Times. "It's going to be probably upsetting to kids." Marine biologist and research boat captain Mike Bursk agrees, telling the Register that the whale will soon reach a point in the decomposition process "where an indescribable muck will come out. It will be just hideous... like a stew."

Why have officials chosen such a revolting method for removing the whale? Well, mostly it's because they don't have much choice in the matter. "It couldn’t have washed up in a worse place," state parks Superintendent Rich Haydon tells the Register. Because the beach is very small, burying the whale in the sand (a common option for carcass removal) is not an option. Pulling it back out to sea probably also won't work; tides are likely to bring it back onto shore. The Register notes that in the 1970s, Oregon state highway officials learned the hard way that blowing up a whale carcass with dynamite is not an effective removal technique.

Officials are expected to start removing the whale as soon as tomorrow, dropping the pieces off at a nearby landfill. "It's not the greatest thing," Pearsall tells the Times, "but it's unfortunately where these large animals end up at some point, due to their size and lack of space for them."

• 'It's going to be very messy': Whale carcass to be cut up and trucked away [LA Times]
• Why there's such a hurry to remove smelly, decomposing 30-ton beached whale [Orange County Register]
• Inside the Natural History Museum's Stinky, Awesome Whale Warehouse in Vernon [Curbed LA]

Former UFC heavyweight Shawn Jordan has signed with WSOF. He discusses the UFC opting to not re-sign him, fighting for the WSOF title in the future, and the possibility of him retiring prior to the new deal with WSOF.

Heavyweight mixed martial arts fighter Shawn Jordan decided to test the free agency waters last year prior to an October UFC fight with Ruslan Magomedov, which he would lose by decision. Following the loss, which snapped a three-fight winning streak (all knockouts), the organization quietly did not re-sign Jordan (18-7).

"Yes, they did not re-sign me," Jordan told BloodyElbow.com on Monday. "No real reasoning. Most likely because I didn't re-sign before the loss.

"The division is shallow and all my fights are good. Yet they let me go."

The former Louisiana State University football player has sought a new contract ever since he was informed the UFC was no longer interested in his services, and has been out of luck -- until now. Jordan announced on his Twitter that he has signed with World Series of Fighting (WSOF).

So, @SugarRaySefo cleared things up, & I've cleared space for the #WSOF Belt in my trophy case. Yes, I'm back...
You've waited long enough

— Shawn Jordan (@savageshawn) April 26, 2016

"I'm excited to have the opportunity to compete for the WSOF now," Jordan told BloodyElbow.com. "It's a great opportunity to make some waves in a new pool of heavyweights. I look forward to fighting for their heavyweight strap soon.

"The good thing about signing with the WSOF is now we can make up some income through sponsors. It's a new champ tee in my career and I'm ready to prepare for an opponent."

Jordan did not share the specifics of WSOF's offer, although in a back-and-forth exchange on social media on Sunday, WSOF president Ray Sefo revealed what could be Jordan's purse.

I cant take my children to the doctor, let alone Disneyland, and you want me to be greatful to fight and be paid poverty level wages?!#wsof

— Shawn Jordan (@savageshawn) April 25, 2016

Shawn this was the offer 15/15, 18/18, 21/21, 24/24 I didn't know people that live in poverty made this kinda money https://t.co/xTN3h0fHsl

— Ray Sefo (@SugarRaySefo) April 25, 2016

Without confirming whether or not the above numbers are accurate, Jordan said that his purse with WSOF is lower than what he was making as a UFC fighter.

"Well, it's pay, but it's less than I was making," he said.

Prior to getting signed to WSOF, Jordan was considering stepping away from the sport and pursuing another career. He graduated at LSU with degrees in Kinesiology (human movement) and chemistry.

Jordan's first fight with WSOF has not been confirmed at this time.

In a poignant piece for The New York Times, former U.S. Sen. Harris Wofford (D-Pa.) announced that 20 years after his wife's death, he is getting remarried, this time to a man he felt an "immediate spark" with 15 years ago.

After losing his wife of nearly 50 years, former senator #HarrisWofford finds love w/ a man https://t.co/8FASgsP0nJ pic.twitter.com/YBNVVKMw2U

— The Advocate (@TheAdvocateMag) April 24, 2016

Wofford writes that his wife of 48 years, Clare, died of leukemia in 1996 at the age of 70. He was "sure I would never again feel the kind of love Clare and I shared," and assumed he was too old to find someone else. During a trip to Ft. Lauderdale five years later, he met Matthew Charlton, then 25, and he was struck by his "inquisitive and thoughtful manner and his charm." The pair were decades apart in age, "yet we clicked," Wofford wrote, and a friendship was formed. Wofford and Charlton enjoyed traveling together, and as time went on, "we realized that our bond had grown into love," Wofford wrote. "Other than with Clare, I had never felt love blossom this way before."

It took him three years to tell his sons and daughter about his new relationship, and his children have welcomed Charlton into the family (Charlton's parents have also embraced Wofford). Their bond "is entirely natural" to some, while others view it as a "strange surprise," and now, 15 years after meeting, Wofford, 90, and Charlton, 40, are getting married on April 30. "Too often our society seeks to label people by pinning them on the wall — straight, gay, or in between," Wofford writes. "I don't categorize myself based on the gender of those I love. I had a half-century of marriage with a wonderful woman, and now am lucky for a second time to have found happiness." Read Wofford's entire essay at The New York Times.

Did you know that there was a Star Wars hair contest on Instagram? Which is cool all on it's own, ammaright? But did you also know the winner of the Star Wars hair contest was one of our very own Offbeat Bride, Anya? She of the amazing Australian rainbow wedding!

Man, do we have talented readers…

You can check out more Star Wars hairstyles by checking out the Star Wars Pop Locks hashtag on the 'grams. Or you can get a happy rainbow fix by checking out Anya's wedding photos on Offbeat Bride. Either way… these are the dose of awesome you're looking for.

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• Sarah E Brewer: Wow!! I looked through the rest of the hashtag and the rest are mostly (truly gorgeous) balayage in sci fi… [Link]
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Flocks of confused, gawping tourists notwithstanding, it's typically pretty easy to find any address in Manhattan, where streets are aligned to a grid. But in most of the world, this isn't the case. Indeed, nearly 75 percent of the world, especially in developing countries, lacks a precise street address. This can pose an enormous challenge, and not just for mail delivery. Consider aid organizations sending food and water to people who desperately need it, or firefighters rushing to the site of an emergency. It's critical that they be able to easily find the place they're going to.

That's where what3words comes in. The London-based company, founded by Chris Sheldrick and Jack Waley-Cohen in 2013, uses a novel approach to make locations around the world easier to find.

Here's how it works: what3words' global map divides the world into 57 trillion 9-square-meter areas, and assigns a unique, three-word name to each square. For example, the White House sits at engine.doors.cubs, while the Taj Mahal can be found at according.gloom.broads. (By virtue of their size, places like these actually have more than one set of names associated with them.) Just type in the three words on what3words' site and it shows you where to go. Or vice versa, if you want to learn the words; just pick a spot on the map or enter a street address or latitude and longitude coordinates.

"The idea is that it's more specific than postcodes, which were invented when posting letters was the main form of communication, and simpler than GPS coordinates, which are too complex for the average person to remember," wrote Jeff Parsons in the Mirror.

An algorithm generates each three-word phrase. It filters out profanity, avoids homophones to reduce the chances for mistakes when an address is spoken (hear vs. here), and safeguards for slip-ups with singular and plural words. If you accidentally type engine.door.cubs instead of engine.doors.cubs, you'll get a location halfway around the world — your mistake should be obvious. The system comes in nine languages, including Portuguese, Swahili, and Turkish. It's available on its own as an app, but is also integrated into an array of other companies' and apps' mapping systems.

Poor address systems are a widespread problem, and the implications for people without an address are vast: "This cohort of 'unaddressed' can’t open a bank account, can’t deal properly with a hospital or an administration, let alone get a delivery. This is a major impediment to global development," Frederic Filloux wrote in Quartz.

Shipping companies have been aware of the problem for quite some time. Sheldrick, the company’s CEO, says that UPS estimates it could save $50 million a year if its trucks drove one mile less every day. Getting lost less would certainly help. “That's an incredible statistic that we're trying to fix," he says.

The concept for what3words arose from a gripe Sheldrick had in his previous job as an events promoter: he consistently had trouble directing musicians to the proper entrances at large venues. "In that instance, you can't just give a generic address," Sheldrick says. A mathematician friend of his came up with the concept of dividing the map into squares with easy-to-memorize names.

It was initially a challenge to get companies on board: "A lot of people are scared to take the risk of being first," Sheldrick says. But what3words found a supporter in Navmii, a London-based company that makes a navigation app for smartphones. Navigation-tech companies, says Sheldrick, field many complaints from users about GPS glitches, which often arise from incorrectly tagged locations. "That's been our strategy since day one: Find the organizations that really struggle with addressing, so that they become our advocates," Sheldrick says.

What3words is now used in more than 170 countries across every continent except Antarctica. In addition to navigation companies, its customers include NGOs, online retailers, and travel companies, which pay to integrate what3words into their internal mapping systems. The World Bank has used what3words in Tanzania to track and maintain public water access sites throughout the country. The company has received $5 million in funding from investors such as Intel Capital, reports TechCrunch, and last year, it won the Innovation Grand Prix at Cannes.

It's key that the three-word phrases are easy to memorize, because many of the people who are served by what3words' system don't have a smartphone to look them up. Instead, Sheldrick says, once they've been given their address by an aid worker, or a neighbor who has a smartphone on hand, they can simply make note of the phrase for future reference. He gives the example of Rocinha, a slum in Rio de Janeiro, where residents are beginning to use what3words as an alternate address system to receive mail.

Next up, says Sheldrick, is adding more e-commerce and transportation companies as customers. The company will also soon finalize its first partnership with a national postal service.

Another technology what3words is keenly interested in: drone delivery. There's been talk for years of companies like Amazon using drones to ship packages, and most recently, the drone manufacturer Zipline has contracted with Rwanda's government to deliver medical supplies. It's an ideal application for what3words, and one that may prove to be quite lucrative, Sheldrick says: "People will have to start thinking far more precisely about location when it comes to drones dropping things."

You’re looking at assemblywoman March Fong Eu smashing a porcelain toilet on the steps of the California capitol building on April 26, 1969. She was protesting pay toilets in public buildings.

Once upon a time, wrote Pacific Standard in 2014, many of the publicly accessible restrooms in America—think rest stops and airports—cost a dime to enter. But the practice collapsed over the course of the 1970s, thanks to concerted lobbying efforts.

It wasn’t just women who opposed the pay toilet. The Committee to End Pay Toilets in America, or CEPTIA, managed to generate quite a lot of press and attention for the cause and three of its four founders were men. Eu’s bill—which would be defeated the day after her toilet-smashing, according to the Eugene Register-Guard—was supported heavily by F.L.U.S.H, Free Latrines Unlimited for Suffering Humanity, which was founded by Sacramento Union columnist Tom Horton. You don’t stop having to go just because you don’t have the correct change in your pocket.

But there was a feminist case against the practice, too, and that’s the argument March Fong Eu was making. Urinals were oftentimes free, meaning the financial burden fell disproportionately on women. And as the momentum for women’s lib built, pressure grew against the practice of charging for access. NOW sometimes joined the fight. For instance, a February 1975 issue of The Cumberland News reports on hearings before the Maryland state Senate that, “‘The practice of installing and utilizing pay toilets is sexually discriminatory in that women are usually discomforted by them and men are not,’ said Naomi Mestanas of the National Organization for Women.”

There was a fair bit of cheeky performativity to these protests, obviously. (I mean, CEPTIA was founded by a bunch of high schoolers and called “CEPTIA.”) But the push worked. (It didn’t hurt that, as Pacific Standard points out, ensuring free public access to shitters was, generally, an uncontroversial and popular move for local politicians.) Eu continued to lead the charge and in 1974 California would ban pay toilets in public buildings. In 1975, the Associated Press covered what was by then a full-on trend:

The argument against pay toilets is linked to the drive for equal rights for women. Opponents of pay toilets argue that women are unfairly handicapped by the locks on booths in public restrooms.

The publication State Government News, issued by the Council of State Governments in Lexington, Ky., reported that legislatures in 20 states were considering measures to abolish, or at least restrict, the pay toilet.

Something to think about the next time you find yourself fishing frantically for a quarter to put in the tampon machine at the airport.

Photo via AP Images.

In the early morning hours of April 26, 1986, the Chernobyl nuclear plant in the Soviet Union exploded. Radiation fumes were released into the air traveling northwest, across the nearby town of Pripyat, up to the border with Belarus, and beyond.

A 1986 aerial view of the Chernobyl nuclear plant. | (AP Photo/Volodymyr Repik)

In the wake of the explosion in what is now Ukraine, the Soviet Union was painfully slow to react, calling the "radiation situation" merely an "accident." Residents in Chernobyl and Pripyat (which numbered more than 60,000 combined) weren't told to evacuate for 36 hours. It was only three days after the explosion, when radiation alarms were triggered at a nuclear plant in Sweden more than 600 miles away, that officials were forced to admit the severity of the disaster. Thirty-one people died as an immediate result of the explosion, but there are likely thousands of cases of cancer linked to the radiation exposure, though the precise number is impossible to calculate.

A few hundred people did return to their homes, despite the radiation exposure. And the plant continued to run until 2000 when it was finally shut down for good.

Today, 30 years after the Chernobyl disaster, while the rotting towns surrounding the nuclear site remain largely abandoned, Chernobyl has welcomed some new breeds of residents. The dense woodlands are now home to thriving populations of bison, wolves, boars, eagles, and other animals. Defying scientific expectations, these animals are reproducing. Indeed, there are more animals living there now than before the explosion. Scientists are studying the animals to see if people could eventually safely repopulate the site of the world's biggest nuclear disaster. Below, a look at the eerie beauty of the wild Chernobyl.

A white-tailed eagle sits on an abandoned school's roof just 19 miles from the exclusion zone in Tulgovichi, Belarus, on Jan. 29, 2016. The Chernobyl exclusion zone is an officially designated area that spreads out approximately 1,000 square miles from the nuclear site. | (REUTERS/Vasily Fedosenko)

Wild boars walk in the forest of the state radiation ecology reserve in the exclusion zone near the village of Babchin, Belarus, on Feb. 22, 2011. | (REUTERS/Vasily Fedosenko)

A white-tailed eagle lands on a wolf's carcass in the exclusion zone in the abandoned village of Dronki, Belarus, on Feb. 15, 2016. | (REUTERS/Vasily Fedosenko)

Elk peek through the brush near the abandoned village of Dronki, Belarus, on Jan. 28, 2016. | (REUTERS/Vasily Fedosenko)

Birds nests dot the trees in a park outside the village of Babchin, Belarus, on Jan. 26, 2016. | (REUTERS/Vasily Fedosenko)

Wolves walk in the exclusion zone in the abandoned village of Orevichi, Belarus, on Feb. 25, 2016. | (REUTERS/Vasily Fedosenko)

Bison meander in the exclusion zone near the abandoned village of Dronki, Belarus, on Jan. 28, 2016. | (REUTERS/Vasily Fedosenko)

A white-tailed eagle picks the carcass of a fox near the village of Babchin, Belarus, on Jan. 12, 2009. | (REUTERS/Vasily Fedosenko)

An elk runs in the exclusion zone near the village of Babchin, Belarus, on Jan. 27, 2016. | (REUTERS/Vasily Fedosenko)