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Pizza Vending Machines Are Now Operational in Florida

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Would you buy pizza from a vending machine? 

An Italian company is betting just that, testing out a couple of the machines near Orlando, Florida, as well as one in nearby Lakeland, according to News13.

The pizza costs $6, and is made by the machine in about two minutes. For now, the company, called Pizza Touch, is testing out the concept, with plans to expand if it proves successful. 

“It's not bad," one customer told the outlet. "It could use a little more sauce. But it's not bad.”

What may seem like a bad idea at first blush might in fact be a very good idea. By the end of the video above, it becomes very clear what one should do with that pizza. One should eat it. 

Which seems like a good idea, since it's probably still true that the world needs pizza faster. 


From Waxed Canvas To Movie Screens, the History of the Air Mattress

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A "hipster mattress." (Photo: iris/CC BY-ND 2.0)

A version of this post originally appeared on Tedium, a twice-weekly newsletter that hunts for the end of the long tail.

Nine months ago, I made a lot of people mad for the dumbest reason. I criticized something that a lot of people surprisingly hold dear: Mattresses.

Specifically, I pondered why the "hipster mattress," as I controversially called it, had become such a prominent, widely advertised phenomenon online. People got grumpy. I was surprised.

But not as surprised as I was when I stumbled across the airweave, a product whose selling point is that the mattress is mostly air supported by fancy fiber. Its "high rebound airfiber core" makes good marketing copy, but it got me wondering about another kind of lightweight mattress that people sleep on—you know, the kind that don't cost $1,000 in a twin size.

Here's how we got the air mattress, the sixth man of bedding.


If you've ever done any sort of research on the modern mattress—not the hipster kind, but the standard kind that pokes into your back and makes you sore every single morning—you know that mattress design has evolved very quickly in a relatively short amount of time.

The air mattress, for the most part, is part of that trajectory, but it's long been unclear exactly where it came from. Mental Flosspins down the invention of the device to the 1889 date when the Pneumatic Mattress & Cushion Company started floating on air, but there is evidence that there were people working on air mattresses long before that. For example, Margaret Frink, a woman who made the trip to California in the midst of the gold rush, offered clear evidence of prior art from way back in 1850:

After putting in our provisions, and other baggage, a floor was constructed over all, on which our mattress was laid We had an India-rubber mattress that could be filled with either air or water, making a very comfortable bed. During the day we could empty the air out, so that it took up but little room. We also had a feather bed and feather pillows.

The earliest patent I can find related to the air mattress comes from 1853, when a man named John Scott combined the benefits of a fabric mattress with the firmness of a giant air bubble. (Scott was onto something: This approach is very similar to that used by the modern-day bed-maker Sleep Number.)

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Not everyone was convinced that India rubber was the way to go, though. In a somewhat disturbing 1859 letter to the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, a man named William Edward Coale recommended using a surgery-like solution to get the ideal air cushions for the treatment of pain:

Get from a butcher a few yards of intestines, thoroughly cleansed; make a number of small pillow-cases or bags of cotton cloth, closed by a drawing string at one end. These should be of various sizes and shapes. Cut the intestines into lengths suitable for filling these. Tie one end of each piece of intestine, turn it wrong side out, blow it up till about three-fourths full, and tie the other end. Introduce this bag of air into its pillow case, and tie the string of it firmly. In this wav, at the cost of not more than half a dollar, two dozen air cushions can be furnished, of all requisite sizes and shapes, adapted to any part of the suffering person.

(To each their own, I guess.)

But this sort of, uh, ingenuity nonetheless showed a lot of progress from the earliest days of the air mattress, which didn't come from the 19th century … but the 16th—about 200 years before the spring mattress became a thing.

And the invention didn't come from a rubber-maker or an inventive butcher/surgeon, but an upholsterer. William Dejardin, a French man, came up with the idea of what he called a "wind bed" by using waxed canvas as the material for the mattress. Problem is, according to American Heritage's Invention & Technology, waxed canvas doesn't last very long. It's a bad material for a gigantic bubble of air—which meant that Dejardin's bubble burst quickly.


Most modern air mattresses that you'll run into these days are made of polyvinyl chloride (PVC), a material that has become one of the most commonly used plastics. (Vinyl airbeds were made as far back as 1948, according to U.S. patent records.) But because PVC is produced using vinyl chloride, a known carcinogen, people tend to freak out a bit.

Air mattress companies have adjusted by creating more eco-friendly options that don't use PVC.

Mattress companies have adjusted to the modern day in a lot of other ways as well—including by making better air pumps. The pump on an AeroBed, for example, was a game-changer when it first came out, and its parent company patented the hell out of it.

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(Photo: Public domain)

That patent came in handy a decade later, when the firm Intex Recreation Corp. was selling similar mattresses at Wal-Mart for a lower price. Aero Products International sued them both—and won a $12 million judgment.

Fittingly for a company that makes air mattresses, corporate stability is not a thing that AeroBed is particularly known for. The company that's perhaps the most well-known modern manufacturer of air mattresses has been passed around like one.

Prior to Coleman's 2010 purchase of the firm, the company had spent time under the wing of a company once known for manufacturing parts for vinyl record players, a private equity firm, and … uh, another private equity firm.

Air mattresses are hugely popular, but if you're a little on the heavy side, a sack filled with air might not be a good option. According to Coleman, which produces air mattresses under both its own brand name and via its AeroBed subsidiary, a twin air mattress can only hold about 300 pounds—though queen and king sizes are a bit better.

(This issue isn't just limited to air mattresses, by the way: For bigger folks, thicker mattresses are always better.)

One air mattress that is unlikely to run into problems of weight limits isn't an air mattress at all. The Airscreen, the massive inflatable screens often used for outdoor movie nights, aren't cheap, running for thousands of dollars depending on size, but they are fairly innovative and a good way to watch a movie on a lawn chair.

“The screen is like an AeroBed, but vertical,” Robi Blumenstein, a giant screen owner, told the New York Times in 2006.


Modern air mattresses carry a reputation that’s hard to shake: they're the sleeping hub for the transient. Either you’re sleeping on one because you don’t want to commit to buying a bed, or you’re traveling.

Wesley Schultz, the lead singer of the Lumineers, knows a thing or two about the glory and pain of the air mattress: When his band was just starting to become famous, it was how he went to sleep after a show.

"I remember joking with the band: 'I'm almost 30, and I'm hauling around this AeroBed that keeps popping.' I don't know if this is going to work when I'm 40. Something's gotta give here," he told Rolling Stone earlier this year.

Eventually, as Schultz sounds like he's about to, people tend to outgrow them, ensuring that Casper always has millions of potential millennials ready to buy its piles of pre-shaped foam. Additionally, it helps that air mattresses are the ultimate vessels for people who hate making their beds.

But even if people do outgrow the air mattress, there's always a place for them in modern society. Just ask Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia, and Nathan Blecharczyk, the founders of Airbnb.

The trio started renting out their own personal air mattresses in their San Francisco apartment back in 2007. It was the spark of their multi-billion-dollar idea. (That's right, the "air" stands for air mattress.)

"So, we always have extra accommodations, you know, just in case. This opportunity allowed us to actually monetize those extra airbeds that we had in the extra space that we’re already paying for," Gebbia explained in a 2010 Mixergy interview. "See, we’re already paying rent for this space. So, what this idea allowed us to do is actually use that space to help pay off our rent."

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(Photo: Chilli Productions/Shutterstock)

Air mattresses have a lot of benefits over traditional beds. For one thing, they're a lot cheaper; for another, they're easy to get out of the way in small spaces, which makes them desirable for city dwellers or touring folk bands.

But they have two big problems that make them frustrating to use: First, they are susceptible to the prick of a pin, a nail, or any blunt object that might be hiding in your pocket as you lay on one of these gigantic pillows. But second, and most frustratingly, they seem to lose air even if they're otherwise fully operational—something immortalized in this Onion article from last year.

We know what causes the former, but what causes the latter? According to a mattress-comparison site called The Sleep Judge, it all comes down to a variety of factors, among them your weight, the elevation where you're staying, the temperature of the room, and your mattress' flexibility. The flexibility? Yes, that's right: the thing that makes an air mattress great is also the thing that takes away its life force.

"No air mattress is airtight," the website states. "Any mattress that was perfectly airtight would burst the moment you sat down for the evening. Your air mattress must have a bit of room to breathe, and you will lose a small amount of air just by laying down."

In other words, your mattress will falter. It's inevitable. If you sleep in one of these things, you will eventually find yourself in a sea of vinyl, trying to pull yourself to shore using whatever's nearby.

And you will feel pathetic, but on the other hand, everyone else who uses one of these things will be in the same position at some point.

Hey, at least it's not "high rebound airfiber core." 

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A version of this post originally appeared on Tedium, a twice-weekly newsletter that hunts for the end of the long tail.

The Centuries-Old Shrine Where Indians Pray for U.S. Visas

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Statues at the front gate of the temple depict the unearthing of the god's image from the anthill. (Photo: Tim Williams)

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Every year, thousands of pilgrims travel to a small temple in the Indian village of Chilkur to ask for United States visas.

In a shady courtyard, they circumambulate a shrine 11 times. Those who receive their visas come back and make 108 more circuits, marking each lap on a pink chit and leaving bundles of holy basil in front of the god’s image.

It’s not just visas: visitors to the temple also ask for spouses, children, property, and even government postings—according to a priest there, a minister came and made 108 grateful circuits shortly after getting his job. But immigration documents have become the temple’s signature wish. Around the shrine to Balaji—an incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu—tradition mixes with globalization, and the bureaucratic and the divine intersect.

At first glance, Chilkur is an unlikely place for a booming Vishnu shrine with a national reputation. It is an unremarkable agricultural village on the western edge of Hyderabad, a city with a significant Muslim minority. The area is better known for its mosques than its Hindu temples.   

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The gate to the temple. (Photo: Tim Williams)

But Hyderabad is also an emerging hub of India’s tech industry. Dell, Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Amazon all have major offices there. Hyderabad is a college town, too, with a number of big engineering schools. A 2014 Brookings Institution report found that the city sends more people to study in the United States than Delhi and Mumbai combined, and more than almost any other city in the world.

In other words, it’s a hotbed of ambitious young people who may be looking for F-1 (student) and H-1B (skilled employment) visas to the United States. And there, right in the neighborhood, sits a temple with a reputation for granting wishes.

The whole phenomenon—wishes, visas, crowds of pilgrims—is fairly new. According to legend, the Chilkur Balaji temple was originally founded in order to help someone avoid making a long journey.

Around 500 years ago, a local man grew too old to make his annual pilgrimage to the temple city of Tirupati, some 400 miles away. One day when the man, feeling depressed, fell asleep, the god appeared to him in a dream and said that he didn’t need to go all the way to Tirupati to worship. The deity then directed him to an anthill in the jungle.

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A statue at the Chilkur Balaji Temple. (Photo: Ritu Manoj Jethani/shutterstock.com)

When the man and other villagers went into the forest and began digging up the anthill, their tools struck a hard object, and the mound began to bleed. A voice told them to pour milk over the hill, and the image of Vishnu that now sits in the Chilkur Balaji temple emerged from the mound.

Today, the temple is surrounded by avenues of stalls selling toys, candy, snacks, and divine images, as well as flowers, coconuts, and strongly scented tulsi leaves for ritual offerings. On Saturdays, thousands of people come to Chilkur, forming a queue that stretches deep into the village. When I visited the temple earlier this year, it was a quiet weekday morning. Inside, approximately 200 worshippers walked around a courtyard that’s roughly the size of two basketball courts. In the middle sits the small building that houses the inner sanctum of the temple.

A full circumambulation takes a bit less than two minutes; the 108 circuits of a successful visa-holder can take hours. Entering the circuit feels like jumping into a quick-moving creek; all of a sudden there’s motion, and when you finally reorient yourself, you’re already downstream, bobbing along with the flow.

Sitting outside the inner sanctum, holding a microphone, a priest spoke to the pilgrims in Telugu. Occasionally he would chant a Sanskrit mantra or shout “Govinda!”—a name for Vishnu—to which the worshippers would respond with a loud “GOVINDA!” Many of them looked to be in their 20s. Some were elderly. A few seemed tired. One young man was wearing a t-shirt that read “I ♥ Math.” 

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A pink chit is used to mark each lap around the temple. (Photo: Michael Schulson)

When I went up to ask the priest—whose name is Rangarajan—if he had time for an interview, he agreed. Then he decided to multitask. Rangarajan told the pilgrims that a reporter was going to interview him, and that, in the interest of education, we would conduct the interview using the microphone, in the middle of the 200 circling worshippers, so that those among them who spoke English could learn a little bit more about the temple’s history.

I hadn’t expected an audience. Rangarajan invited me to sit down. A cord was wrapped around his bare torso like a sash, and he had a tapering U-shape—characteristic of Vishnu worship—painted on his forehead, arms, and chest in yellow and white strokes. Rangarajan explained that the temple, unlike most Hindu shrines in India, does not accept cash donations or fees, exempting it from government regulation—and quite a lot of potential income. He spoke passionately about the values of a pluralistic society. He told me that two Catholics nuns had recently visited and said that they were “finding a divine experience here.”

Then he explained how the temple had come to attract so many hopeful worshippers. The first wish was for water. In the early 1980s, Rangarajan’s uncle Gopalakrishna, another priest at the temple, decided to drill a borewell. While the well-diggers drilled into the earth, he began to circle the Balaji shrine, asking for success.

“And guess what, it started working! The moment he walked 11 times around the temple, the water was found,” Rangarajan said. Gopalakrishna continued to walk, and the well continued to pump out fresh water. On the 108th lap, though the pump sputtered to a halt.

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Lining up at the temple. (Photo: Ritu Manoj Jethani/shutterstock.com)

But when Gopalakrishna left the temple, it kicked back on. “So this is the indication from the god, enough of your rounds,” Rangarajan explained.

Word about the incident got out, thanks in part to Gopalakrishna himself. “He did not keep quiet,” Rangarajan said. “He started telling people, so they started knowing.” People began visiting to ask for favors from Balaji, making 11 circuits around the shrine to ask for help, and 108 to give thanks.

And then, around the mid-1990s, students from the engineering colleges started showing up asking for visas.

When I asked how often people come specifically for visas, Rangarajan switched to Telugu and asked the circling worshippers to indicate if they were there because of a visa request. Nearly half of the people raised their hands. A young man passing by even held up his passport, showing the H-1B visa inside.

Later, I caught up with him in his 44th lap, and he paused for a quick conversation. Reddaiah Kovuru is a software engineer from the neighboring state of Andhra Pradesh (until the state was divided in 2014, Chilkur was part of Andhra Pradesh).

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Looking in through the gate. (Photo: Tim Williams)

He first heard about the temple from friends in Hyderabad, and he came in 2009 to ask for a visa. “I wanted to have the global exposure, so that's the reason I wish to have a U.S. visa. So I prayed here.” 

Kovuru’s first application, for a student visa, was denied. He went to work in Bangalore instead, and he recently received a one-year H-1B visa after sitting through a 45 minute-long interview with an American official in Chennai. “I had so many struggles to get this,” he said, showing me the crisp document in his passport.

I asked Kovuru why Vishnu helps people with visas and other requests. The question seemed to make him uncomfortable. “I mean, our forefathers believed, and we are also following the same,” he said. He had traveled all the way from Bangalore to Hyderabad—some 350 miles—in order to fulfill his promise to the god.

As anyone who has ever applied for a U.S. visa can probably tell you, the process is intimidating and opaque. In the age of modern states and closed borders, bureaucracy can come to feel like a peculiarly capricious supernatural power: vast, inscrutable, and extraordinarily powerful. In the face of this new force, it might be wise to enlist some more traditional help.  

For Kovuru, Chilkur was among his final stops in India. Just a few days later he would board a flight to Newark, and then begin his new job in New Jersey. He told me he was excited, not nervous, about what lay ahead. Then he headed back into the flow, with 64 laps and a few thousand miles to go. 

A Map of the Last Remaining Flying Saucer Homes

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Futuro at the WeeGee Exhibition Centre in Espoo, Finland. (Photo: J-P Kärnä/CC BY-SA 3.0)

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The Futuro House, in all its space age retro splendor, is like a physical manifestation of 1960s optimism. Shaped like the Hollywood idea of a flying saucer, the Futuro is a plastic, prefabricated, portable vacation home built to easily adapt to any climate or terrain, from mountain slopes to the seaside. After enjoying a heyday in the late '60s and early '70s, the remaining Futuros are now scattered across all parts of the globe, from the Australian beaches to the mountains of Russia, like secluded relics of midcentury technoutopianism.

The Futuro was a product of its times: when Finnish architect Matti Suuronen designed the little alien-looking abodes in 1968, the postwar economic boom was in full swing, time-saving home gadgets promised a leisure-filled vision of the future, and society was transfixed by the Space Race. Spaceship architecture was in vogue, but nothing hit the nail on the head quite like these UFO houses. Ironically, that may be what ultimately led to the Futuro’s failure.

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A woman reclines in the living room of a modern portable house called 'Futuro', 1969. (Photo: Keystone/Stringer/Getty Images)

The portable structure was originally conceived as a ski cabin (at least one Futuro is still operating as such), but the experimental design was soon hyped as the home of the future. It includes a hatch entrance in place of a door, which opens into a common space that featured six plastic lounge chairs encircling a fireplace, plus a small kitchen, bathroom and bedroom. (There are some great photos of the early prefabs here and here.) The ellipsoid is comprised of 16 individual parts that are bolted together, or sometimes were airlifted in place fully assembled by helicopter—a sight that would surely have helped reinforce the UFO connotation.

Outer Banks Futuro House

FRISCO, NORTH CAROLINA

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Futuro House in Frisco, North Carolina. (Photo: Elizabeth/CC BY 2.0)

The trouble was, these spaceship structures stood out like a sore thumb in the rural wilderness for which they were built. There was immediate backlash after the first UFO houses went up: some U.S. towns banned Futuros outright; other Futuros were destroyed or vandalized. Then in 1973 the oil crisis hit and drove the cost of plastic way up, putting the final nail in the Futuro House’s coffin. Fewer than 100 Futuros were erected before they were taken off the market by the mid-1970s.

Today—as far as anyone knows—there are roughly 60 Futuro Houses still kicking around. Thanks to a renewed, nostalgic interest in the space-age homes, some have been preserved and put on display, including the very first edition, cabin number 001, which you can tour at the WeeGee Exhibition Centre outside Helsinki. The more ill-fated Futuros, however, were left abandoned and now sit in various states of ruin around the world.

Abandoned Futuro House in Texas

ROYSE CITY, TEXAS

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(Photo: Atlas Obscura User Doddmelcher)

Many of the remaining bubble homes have been tracked down and catalogued by the wonderfully thorough website thefuturohouse.com, which keeps meticulous tabs on the whereabouts and status of the homes. There are also lists of existing Futuros at Google Sightseeing, futuro-house.net, and ArchInform.

And now, to aid you in your retrofuture dream vacation, below is a map of every known Futuro House left in the world. You can check out thefuturohouse.com for more details on any of these unusual pods. Note that there may be others lurking out there (“I want to believe”) that have yet to be discovered. If you know of any Futuros we left off the map, let us know by adding it to the Atlas!

We Asked 32 Trekkies How They Would Create a Perfect Future

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(Screenshot by Eric Grundhauser/Netflix)
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Forget all of the spiritual gurus and ambitious cult leaders, maybe no one in history has given more thought to the concept of utopia than Star Trek fans.

For 50 years, since the debut of the original Star Trek series, fans have been looking to the utopian ideals of the United Federation of Planets as an example of a (mostly) peaceful, unified future. The Earth had survived World War III, and joined together with a coalition of alien species to travel the galaxy and achieve the true potential of humanity. There was no money (sort of), and no one wanted for anything. Star Trek's gleaming vision of the future still stands as one of the most indelible visions of utopia ever created. Gene Roddenberry himself once said, "Perhaps one of the primary features of Star Trek that made it different from other shows was, it believed that humans are improving—they will vastly improve in the 23rd century."

To find out how we might one day achieve such a utopian future, we went right to the source: Trekkies. (Or as some have it, Trekkers.) We hit the floor at the recent "Star Trek: 50th Anniversary: Mission: New York" convention in New York, and found out what these utopia experts thought it might take to create a perfect world.


Nicholas

Rank/Character: Emergency Medical Hologram

Favorite Captain: Janeway

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What would it take to make a future utopia? 

An end to corruption. In the Star Trek format, we need a limitless supply of energy, we need space travel, and an end to currency. Once we have a limitless supply of energy, everyone more or less can get what they need, no one has to fight for anything. [They can] travel, visit different cultures. And that makes a utopian future.


Meghan

Rank/Character: Federation Lieutenant

Favorite Captain: Picard

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What would it take to make a future utopia? 

We all gotta get along. You’ve gotta make friends. You’ve got to give and take. It’s up to people. Not even the technology. We have to get along before anything.


Glen and Matt

Rank/Character: Federation Chief Science Officer, Federation Commander

Favorite Captain: Picard

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What would it take to make a future utopia? 

Matt: You need something that unites all of humanity.

Glen: I have no idea.

Matt: Technology would help. Money is the root of all evil. A post-currency society, I’m into it.

Glen: I gotta be honest, I don’t feel like a utopia is possible. I just don’t think that there’s gonna be one thing to unite all of humanity together. But I also think that’s a good thing. Having that diversity is a good thing.

Matt: Once you don’t have to fight over resources anymore, then maybe getting along becomes a bit easier. We need replicators.


Billy and Jeannine

Rank/Character: Commander Riker(ish), Lieutenant Jadzia Dax

Favorite Captain: Picard (Billy), Janeway (Jeannine)

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What would it take to make a future utopia? 

Billy: Cultural understanding. Drop capitalism. Just for the sake of my laziness, give me a transporter.

Jeannine: I would definitely want to focus more on exploring space, the final frontier. And focusing more on science.  


Jay

Rank/Character: Lieutenant Commander Data

Favorite Captain: Picard

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What would it take to make a future utopia? 

I definitely think replicators would do a lot to make a great future. Unlimited supplies. Pleasantries are always wonderful.

I think the mentality to unify, just one planet would be absolutely fantastic. In the Star Trek universe we’ve unified galaxies, but we could start small and just gather together as a planet.


Alan

Rank/Character: Klingon Thought Admiral

Favorite Captain: Kirk

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What would it take to make a future utopia? 

I think we have to realize that as much as Star Trek showed a possible future, it may not be the only future. There was a line, I think in Star Trek IV, where there was a thing about, “we don’t use money in the future.” But jump forward a little bit into Deep Space Nine, and almost every episode featured something called gold-pressed latinum. They had money. And the Ferengis went from being a nothing character to being the guys who invented everything. So commerce was there. So clearly the future is with the free market.


Nayavi and Marjorie

Rank/Character: Federation Captain (on shore leave), Federation Lieutenant 

Favorite Captain: Picard (Nayavi), Kirk (Marjorie) 

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What would it take to make a future utopia? 

Nayavi: [A future that is] unified. Where all people, regardless of political views and race and religious views come together. Another thing, as cheesy as it sounds, end world hunger.

Marjorie: Being able to explore different galaxies. Someday, have an actual warp speed, and be able to visit different universes and see what else is out there beyond Earth.


Dustin and Andrew

Rank/Character: Young Sybok, Federation Fleet Admiral

Favorite Captain: Picard (Dustin), Kirk (Andrew)

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What would it take to make a future utopia? 

Dustin: Better communication. I think a lot of our human disputes happen because of a lack of communication from both sides. And second, more of an open mind to try new things. Trying different cultures and trying to sink your mind into new things.

Andrew: Better diplomacy. People actually getting along and making strides to do so. And not necessarily using technology to advance, but trying to solve problems that we’ve previously created that we could probably get rid of. Like, global warming, issues with hunger and things like that.


Marjorie and Shannon

Rank/Character: Dr. Beverly Crusher (from the TNG episode, "Sub Rosa"), Redshirt 

Favorite Captain: Picard

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What would it take to make a future utopia? 

Marjorie: More compassion. More volunteering. And better community education.

Shannon: Empathy. That’s the thing I think is different about the Star Trek universe, is way that they seek to understand all of the other cultures that they encounter.


Lawrence and Darlena

Rank/Character: Federation Captain, Losira (from the TOS episode, “That Which Survives”)

Favorite Captain: Sisko

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What would it take to make a future utopia? 

Lawrence: When I was a kid and I was watching this stuff, I looked forward to it being a symbol of a more positive future. [But] it seems like we’re going in the opposite direction really, really fast. Rampant capitalism [is an issue]. On paper, mankind is very altruistic, but then when human nature takes hold, the first people to get to the top want to stay up there so bad that they don’t want anyone else there.

And it’s not just financially. Intellectually it’s created a society where if we dumb down the masses, it’s easier to keep them financially dependent on us. It’s a bad cycle that isn’t leading to utopia. In the Federation, we’ve evolved beyond money. We really need to do that.  

Darlena: The first thing is to change the mindset. There has to be group of people that says, enough is enough. Everyone will have what they need, everyone will have a purpose. We will encourage people to uplift each other and talk with one another. Get rid of money, and start to intelligently find out how many resources we have, how many people there are on Earth, and how to distribute those resources.

Make everyone feel they’re special and that there’s a need for them. There’s no one better than anyone else, and we all have differences that help encourage and empower us as a planet of people. You start from there and everything else will fall into place.

Lawrence: From the beginning, it should be ingrained that there are no differences, that we’re all here on the planet, trying to get to the same place, which is for everyone to be happy, everyone to be healthy, and everyone to be prosperous. Once that’s ingrained right from the beginning, then no one should ever accept that anyone on this planet, whether they’re down the block in New York, or across the planet in Africa, has less than they need. A global mentality.


Desiree

Rank/Character: USS Enterprise

Favorite Captain: Janeway

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What would it take to make a future utopia? 

More implementation of strategy and unity. When things work well as a machine, like in an operating room, when everyone is one the same page and bringing a different set of skills to the table, you work together, and it gets goals achieved much faster. 

The second thing is curiosity. Rather than just thinking you know it all, or thinking you’re the best at something, to actually want to learn, to want to explore, and to further explore your interests.  


Isabel and Pavlos

Rank/Character: Federation Lieutenant-In-Command, Federation Science Officer

Favorite Captain: Janeway (Isabel), Kirk (Pavlos)

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What would it take to make a future utopia? 

Isabel: In [Star Trek:] First Contact, there was a World War III, so maybe there doesn’t have to be a World War III to get to where we want to be. Maybe we need to have a society without money as well.

Pavlos: I think we need to take a page out of what Roddenberry inspired, and maybe try to stop defining ourselves in terms of different religions and the things that divide us, and focus on the things that bring us together.


Emily, Matthew, and Adam

Rank/Character: Federation Science Officer, Harcourt Fenton Mudd, Abraham Lincoln

Favorite Captain: Kirk (Emily, Matthew), Sisko (Adam)

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What would it take to make a future utopia? 

Emily: Everyone should treat their tribbles really nicely.

Matthew: The government has to stop all the BS with all the Tesla engines, and all the death rays. If we can get Tesla coils all over the place, because that energy’s going around us all the time, it’s free energy for everybody. 

Adam: If the country could come together and abolish slavery, that’d be great.


Chris and Christine

Rank/Character: Cadet Peter Quill w/ Ensign Rocket Raccoon, Lieutenant Gamora

Favorite Captain: Kirk

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What would it take to make a future utopia? 

Chris: Everybody should start getting along. Especially in this day and age. Right now in the world, it’s the biggest problem. 

Christine: I’m gonna be a poster child right now, and say, go green! We’re wasting too much. There’s so many things that we could reuse. Junk that people aren’t using in their house, see if somebody else needs to use it, you know?    

Chris: And more galactic expansion. I know it sounds cliche, talking about Star Trek, but that’s how they got there. There’s a whole big galaxy out there, and we may not be able to get along down here, but who’s to say we won’t be able to find someone out there who can teach us a better way?


Evelyn, Julia, and William

Rank/Character: Federation Science Officer, Lieutenant Saavik, Captain James T. Kirk

Favorite Captain: Kirk (Evelyn and William), Picard (Julia)

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What would it take to make a future utopia? 

Evelyn: Down with the big companies that are destroying the Earth.

Julia: More concern for the environment, and more women in charge.

William: We’re at a point where corporations are literally people, and as we go on, they’re becoming more important than people, and people are becoming cattle basically. There are a lot of progressive steps we’ve made on paper, but they’re not really happening. We need to walk our talk.


Ines

Rank/Character: Klingon Thought Admiral

Favorite Captain: Kirk

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What would it take to make a future utopia? 

We have to stop looking at each others’ differences and focus more on where we’re the same. I think in the past year, we’ve made it clear that we’d rather focus on the differences and that’s a big stumbling block.


Emily

Rank/Character: Garek (from the DS9 episode, “Our Man Bashir”)

Favorite Captain: Sisko

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What would it take to make a future utopia? 

Obviously, where everyone, no matter their situation, race, or disabilities would be equal, and anything would be accessible to anyone.


David

Rank/Character: Khanye West

Favorite Captain: Picard

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What would it take to make a future utopia? 

It starts with a big focus on the sciences. Both from our government, and from a focus on that in beginning level education. Get kids interested in that and start the future innovation that way. Also, giving everybody a chance, and setting aside all the terrible things Star Trek predicts are going to happen before we can get there.


Max

Rank/Character: Federation Commander

Favorite Captain: Picard

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What would it take to make a future utopia? 

The first thing that springs to mind is, a few thousand more years. I’m a little negative based on today’s political climate. I do think we’ll eventually get there, but sadly, not in the time frame Star Trek suggests we might.


James

Rank/Character: Federation Andorian Female

Favorite Captain: Archer

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What would it take to make a future utopia?

Fairness at the job site, and opportunity at the job site. Consistent and frequent availability of jobs for people. To have an opportunity to work, and be paid well, and live a good lifestyle.

The Bonkers Real-Life Plan to Drain the Mediterranean and Merge Africa and Europe

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An artist's rendering of what Atlantropa—a plan to partially drain the Mediterranean—might have looked like. (Photo: lttiz/CC BY 3.0)

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Later this year, Amazon Studios will release the much-anticipated second season of The Man in the High Castle, a story set in a grim alternative future, where the Axis Powers have won World War II. The United States is cut up in three parts, with a Nazi puppet state in the West, a region under Japanese occupation in the East, and a neutral buffer zone between them. The series is loosely based on a sci-fi classic written by Philip K. Dick. In the original novel, published in 1962, Dick describes how the Axis Powers have drained the Mediterranean, in order to reclaim vast swaths of additional farmland.

The story is widely seen as an allegory on Fascism. But somehow, the most farfetched of this complicated plot is the one closest to reality: the part about emptying the Mediterranean. 

In fact, the plan was a very seriously considered proposal, mapped out a few decades earlier by the German architect Herman Sörgel who devoted his whole life to promote his grand scheme to drain the Mediterranean and unite Europe and Africa into one super continent. 

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Herman Sörgel, in 1928, who conceived of Atlantropa. (Photo: Public Domain)

Back in 1929, Sörgel wrote a book on his ideas under the title The Panropa Project, Lowering the Mediterranean, Irrigating the Sahara. Three years later he rebranded his project in another book, called Atlantropa, the name by which his utopian project is still remembered. Persistence must have been one of Sörgels main character traits, because until his death in 1952, he kept on defending Atlantropa in four books, over a thousand publications and countless lectures, enough to fill up a special section in the archive of the Deutsches Museum in Munich.

Not hampered by any sense of reality or modesty, Sörgel's Atlantropa design envisioned three gigantic dams which dwarf contemporary superstructures like China’s Three Gorges Dam. The biggest barrage would be built across the Straights of Gibraltar between Spain and Morocco, separating the Mediterranean from the Atlantic Ocean. A second dam would block the Dardanelles and shut off the Black Sea. As if that were not enough, a third dam would stretch out between Sicily and Tunisia, cutting the Mediterranean in two, with different water levels on either side. 

The Mediterranean is fed by several rivers, but the main body of water flows in from the Atlantic Ocean, so lowering the sea level would not have been a difficult task, once the Straights of Gibraltar had been sealed off. The benefits of Atlantropa were numerous, according to Sörgel and his followers. Each of the dams could provide enormous amounts of hydroelectric energy, supplying Europe with all the electricity needed. Lower sea levels would create vast stretches of new farm land along the current coastline, offering Europe's nations space to expand. 

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A central component of Atlantropa was to dam the Straights of Gibraltar, shown here from a satellite. (Photo: ESA/NASA)

As weird as it sounds, Atlantropa was Sörgel's answer to the doom and the gloom that clouded over Europe after the First World War. Mass unemployment, poverty and bitter strife between Europe's leading nations made the future look dark and uncertain. Sörgel shared the worries of his time and looked for answers, not only for Germany, but for the whole of Europe. Being an avid pacifist, Sörgel claimed that building Atlantropa would guide Europe into a brighter future, away from war and poverty. Because of its scale, Atlantropa required cooperation between countries, creating an interdependence that would rule out future armed conflicts. The amount of labor required to build Atlantropa could keep the unemployed masses busy for decades, and cheap energy would boost the economy to unprecedented levels of growth.

The German public loved the plan. Media doted on Sörgel, and he attracted a fair share of followers. He founded the Atlantropa Institute to promote his visionary worldscape.

But despite the idea's popularity and the tireless efforts of Sörgel, Atlantropa never took off.

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A map showing the location of various Atlantropa projects. (Photo: Devilm25/CC BY 3.0)

Once the Nazis seized power in Germany, Sörgel took the idea to them. But unlike Philip K. Dick's novel, the new rulers were not interested in building dams. Instead, the Nazis looked to conquer the much-needed Lebensraum the old-fashioned way, by invading and occupying neighboring countries. The Allies briefly picked up the idea after the defeat of the Third Reich, but quickly dismissed it as completely unrealistic, especially given the fact that Europe needed to be rebuilt. The rise of nuclear power diminished the appeal of hydroelectricity as well.

Although the Atlantropa Institute lingered on until 1960, Atlantropa died with Sörgel in 1952. But the idea lived on, not in the minds of ambitious engineers, but as a science fiction theme. The Man in the High Castle is just one example. In his novel The Flying Station, Soviet sci-fi writer Grigory Grebnev imagines yet another alternative future where not the Axis Powers but the Socialist Revolution has triumphed and build the dam. In Grebnev's story, a small band of Nazis conspires to destroy this glorious achievement of the revolution from their hideout at the North Pole. And Gene Roddenberry's book version of Star Trek depicts Captain Kirk standing on a huge dam in the Straights of Gibraltar. It might only be a scant comfort to Sörgel, but his dream dam lived on in a fictional universe.

The World's Oldest Snowshoe Sat in an Italian Cartographer's Office for 12 Years

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A very old snowshoe. (Photo: Provincia di Bolzano)

Thirteen years ago, Simone Bartolini was mapping Italy's border with Austria. High up in the mountains, at more than 10,000 feet, he found a wooden object—birchwood rounded into a snowshoe. It was obviously old, and he decided to take it with him. 

For years, the snowshoe sat in his office in Florence, the Telegraph reports, as a curiosity. He thought it might be a century old, until he started to wonder. Could it be even older?

He gave the shoe to archaeologist to study, and the answer came back: it was much, much older. The archaeologists dated the object back to 3,700 B.C. 

That makes this the oldest snowshoe ever found. It comes from the same area Ötzi, a famous mummy dated back to about 3350 B.C., which was discovered in 1991. The snowshoe, at 5,800 years old, predates the mummy by a few generations.

Bartolini won't be keeping it in his office anymore; it's going to the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, where Ötzi also resides.

Dolphins Have Human-Like Conversations Underwater, Says Science

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Blah, blah, blah... (Photo: David B./CC BY-SA 2.0)

We may be getting one step closer to figuring out what dolphins are always gossiping about. According to the Telegraph, for the first time ever, researchers have recorded a human-like “conversation” between two dolphins, using specific “words” to form what seem like sentences.

It’s no secret that dolphins and whales have a complex and robust system of communication, that coincidentally makes for great new age relaxation albums. But for the first time, scientists at Russia’s Karadag Nature Reserve have now employed a special microphone to record the vocalizations of a pair of dolphins, and separate the tones from each by identifying their voices, as they talked directly to one another.

The scientists observed two Black Sea bottlenose dolphins, Yasha and Yana, in a pool, and determined that their rhythmic clicks could be broken down into something similar to human speech patterns. After one dolphin would emit a series of clicks, which the researchers said could be identified as sentences consisting of up to five “words,” the other dolphin would wait to reply, never interrupting the other, much like two people having a polite conversation. Judging by this behavior, and the timed cadence of the vocalizations, it appears that they were talking to each other about… something.

Unfortunately, the content of the dolphin’s conversation remains a mystery. If their conversations are anything like our own, they were probably just gabbing about the price of fish.    


The New York Cosmos Are American Soccer’s Past. Are They Its Future?

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Pelé in a game against the Dallas Tornados. (Photo: Focus on Sport/Getty Images)

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Many fans on a warm June night at Belson Stadium in Jamaica, New York were clad in strangely dated gear for a soccer game in 2016: a number-10 jersey worn by Pelé, the most celebrated soccer player who ever lived. Pelé became famous in Brazil’s golden era of soccer, winning three World Cups between 1958 and 1970.

But fans weren’t wearing the superstar’s national team shirt, but one from the bookend of his career: Pelé’s brief, if flashy stint at the New York Cosmos, which, for a few short years in the late ‘70s, was the most famous team in the world.

That version of the Cosmos burned a little too brightly, folding in 1985 after winning several North American Soccer League (NASL) titles, but a new version of the team—same colors, vastly lower profile—launched earlier this decade, and, on that evening in June, some of its fans gestured toward their glory years for easy inspiration.

The stakes were high: it was the U.S. Open Cup round of 16, and the Cosmos, a team in the second-tier NASL, were taking on the New England Revolution, a team in the top-tier Major League Soccer (MLS).

The Cosmos had already beaten an MLS team to get to the round of 16, and a second victory would put them into the quarterfinal of a competition that includes 91 teams across the American soccer spectrum. The U.S. Open Cup , in short, is a big deal. Its champion could credibly say that they are the best in the U.S, a claim that might draw snickers from soccer fans in other countries, but for a fledgling team like the Cosmos, and a fledgling league like the NASL, it would be an accomplishment with real meaning.

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(All photos by Erik Shilling unless otherwise noted.)

The team's ultras—the strongest supporters—understood this, banging on drums and singing throughout the game, having shuffled into the game some minutes after kickoff, following a minor uproar at the entrance. Authorities initially wouldn't allow a massive bass drum and a smaller snare drum to pass through the metal detector.

"Every time," one (likely less than sober) fan grumbles, before his speech deteriorated into an obscene rant. This is where the Cosmos—who once filled Giants Stadium—have ended up.

This isn’t rock bottom, either. This is a story of hopeful ascendency.


The original Cosmos, the ones you probably remember, peaked in 1977, and attracted global superstars, who came to New York not necessarily for the competition that the NASL offered, but for the glamour. The city might have been broke and crumbling, but in Giants Stadium, during a Cosmos game, the seats were filled. And the crowd roared.

Still, soccer then, in America, wasn’t much more than what it is today: probably sixth or seventh on a list of sports that we would rather be watching, just ahead of things like golf and competitive bowling.

A game of indeterminate origins—some say it was invented in China, others England—the first World Cup was held in 1930, laying the foundations for what is now a worldwide obsession.

Except here, where baseball and football continue to dominate the sports landscape. Among a certain demographic, soccer is still thought of as a sport for "commie pansies," as an editor at the New York Daily Newstold soccer writer David Hirshey in the mid-'70s.

Hirshey, who until recently was the executive editor at HarperCollins, was, then, a cub sportswriter. He covered soccer at the News in a time when “American soccer writer” wasn’t really a job. But that also meant he was in pole position to break what was then the biggest story of his journalism career: Pelé, Hirshey reported, was coming to New York.

“Suddenly, I was the envy of my colleagues, covering the biggest sports star in the world and being interviewed by other American journalists about this fellow ‘Peeley,’” Hirshey wrote of the experience.

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During a regular season game in July.

In a country obsessed with coach Don Shula’s Miami Dolphins, Pelé became an overnight star. The soccer player’s signing also gave instant credibility to the Cosmos and the NASL, both of which had gotten off to rocky starts just a few years prior.

For Pelé, it was an opportunity to spread the gospel of soccer, while also being an opportunity to spread the gospel of Pelé.

There was also Henry Kissinger.

“He invited me to go to the cafe with him,” Pelé told Esquire earlier this year, “and there he said, ‘Listen. You know I'm from the United States, and I'm in politics there. Soccer is coming along there—they're playing it in the schools. Would you like to help us promote soccer in the United States?’ And I said, ‘My God.’”

And there was also the money, which amounted to $1.4 million a season, a large amount for a soccer player in America even today. What the Cosmos got for their money was no spring chicken: Pelé was then on the cusp of 35, having already spent 18 years in the Brasileirão, the top Brazilian league. He was well past his prime, but team and player suited each other’s needs well. And in New York, Pelé was a legitimate star, going to Studio 54 at night, mugging for the adoring press corps during the day, and drawing massive crowds at Giants Stadium, where the team played its home games.

Other top players, like the German defender Franz Beckenbauer and the Italian striker Giorgio Chinaglia also soon joined, helping to cap Pelé’s career with one final championship in 1977, one final game against his home club, and then—still on top of the world—retirement.

"There will never be another Cosmos. Big names may come over here eventually — Beckham, Ronaldo, Zidane — but they'll all be past their prime," Chinaglia told Hirshey. "We had guys who were at their peak — Beckenbauer, myself, [Johan] Neeskens — and we were on a mission."

The team became champions of the NASL four times from 1977 to 1982, a dominant stretch in which it was possible to agree that somehow New York had become a soccer town.

Just a few years later, though, in 1984, with the stars gone, the league—struggling at this point—folded. The Cosmos themselves would fold a year later after spending a single season playing indoor soccer.

Professional soccer in the U.S. was dead.


The origins of the modern version of the Cosmos can be traced back to a deal struck four years after the NASL’s demise. In 1988, FIFA agreed to let the U.S. host the 1994 World Cup under the condition that U.S. Soccer again establish a top-tier professional soccer league, what would become the MLS, officially bringing pro soccer back to American soil. In 1996, the league officially started play.

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The stands filled at a recent match.

By the turn of the century, soccer in the U.S. had regained much of the foothold it lost when the foreign stars decamped and the money ran out. Broader access to European soccer on television, for one thing, has made the sport more popular than ever, while the MLS, after years of losing money, has in the past decade become stable and profitable.

That league, while remaining the U.S.’s top tier, has also always attracted criticism from fans of soccer across the world. There was an NFL-style playoff system, for one thing, and then there were the sad and cheesy team nicknames: the MetroStars, the Earthquakes, the Fire. The league also lacked promotion and relegation to the lower leagues—and it remains a closed system.

Since the NASL first started to play in 2011 as the second-tier league, it has quietly become the most watchable soccer league in the country. While in the MLS you might get a chance to see the last kicks of a washed-up European superstar, in the NASL you get to see a competitive game without the crowds, egos, or tired bodies. You see flowing soccer, in other words.

This is mostly by design, since the league itself—like its most prominent team, the Cosmos—have embraced the past and focused on providing a product that more closely resembles what’s found in Europe, not the NFL.

"The MLS will throw every gimmick they can at you,” one Cosmos ultra puts it. “They’re trying to play to a very different audience than the NASL.”


From the beginning of the modern era, it was clear that the Cosmos were going to be a far cry from what they used to be. They wouldn’t primarily be going after foreign superstars, for one thing, instead choosing to build their team around the dominant personality of a coach, Gio Savarese.

And, so far, so good. In their first full season in the league, 2013, they won the Soccer Bowl—the NASL's championship match. They also won it in 2015, and they currently sit atop the league standings, dominating teams that didn't have much more of head start than they did. With his own strong vision, Savarese has built a team that might have even competed with the old version.

"A friend of mine said once, 'You get paid to train, and stepping on the field is your bonus.' That's your reward,” says goalkeeper Jimmy Maurer of playing under Savarese. “Your job is to show up in training and the coach decides who plays."

Savarese has reason to be inspired. In 1981, he tells me, he came to New York from Venezuela for a soccer camp. He was 10 years old, and during the trip, also made it to a Cosmos game.

"Sold out stadium," says Savarese with a bit of awe. "So many stars."

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Leading up to James M. Shuart Stadium. 

Pelé was gone, and so was Beckenbauer, but there was still the star Dutch midfielder Johan Neeskens, as well as players like Julio César Romero, who is one of the best Paraguayan players of all time.

"It was a tremendous experience for me as a child," Savarese says.

These days, the Cosmos are dealing with considerably more headwinds. They are one of three soccer teams vying for fans' loyalties in the New York metropolitan area, along with the Red Bulls and N.Y.C.F.C., a satellite club of English Premier League power Manchester City. Further, Cosmos games, which are mostly played in Hempstead, New York, are difficult to get to without a car, and, perhaps because of this, their attendance—an average of around 3,700 fans a game—ranks among the lowest in the league.

They have also been trying and failing for over three years to build their own stadium, a $400 million privately-financed field in nearby Elmont, New York. But that proposal has been stalled with state authorities, with the club’s chief operating officer saying recently that he hadn’t heard from the state in months.

None of this, of course, mattered in the heat of the moment at the U.S. Open Cup game in June. The Cosmos initially started brightly, opening the scoring in the 38th minute of the game. Six minutes later, though, the Revolution scored to tie the game. But 10 minutes into the second half, the Cosmos scored again, sending the ultras into a frenzy, and again prompting them to lift a flag that said, simply, "We want the Cup."

Five minutes later, however, the ultras had reason to worry, as the Revs turned to their bench, and one man, specifically: Kei Kamara. a troubled but hugely talented striker that the team acquired earlier this year.

A few fans groaned upon Kamara's arrival, and, a few minutes later, their fears were realized: Kamara scored, leveling things at 2-2 with a dramatic strike in front of the Cosmos goal. With 15 minutes to go, the game was now anyone's to win, and the fans—a few thousand in the stands—began to fret.

Cosmos supporters range from small children, to families, to European-style inebriates, who, like their counterparts across the pond, can be loud, coarse, and on occasion a bit terrifying. One such fan at a game declined my interview request because my "jeans are way too tight,” while others shouted angrily into the void, sometimes clashing with authorities who tried to control them.

"[The players] always feed off of our energy," Jacob Semcken, of West Islip, New York, says.

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The ultras standing and singing during a recent game. 

The Cosmos, Semcken explains, have at least three groups of fans following them at any one time or game. The ultras sit in an area known as the Five Points, and include the Cross Island Crew, which primarily consists of fans from Long Island; the Borough Boys, which comprise fans from New York City; and La Banda Del Cosmos, the guys with the drums who do the music.

Unlike American sports, which are defined by their statistics, soccer is called the beautiful game perhaps because it defies statistics, other than the one that matters, which is goals. There's no way to calculate a perfectly timed pass, or how a player was able to curl the ball into the sidenetting.

They are just moments of genius, each as fleeting as the last. Games are 90 minutes of waiting for a moment that will raise the hair on your forearm.

For the Cosmos fans, on that night in June, that moment never came.

With 10 minutes to play and the score 2-2 in the round of 16 in the U.S. Open Cup game, the Revolution suddenly looked rampant and the Cosmos, like they might be toast.

At the 83rd minute, the Cosmos finally broke, turning the ball over sloppily and allowing Teal Bunbury, who had scored the Revolution's first goal, to get into the penalty area and score. The fans groaned, and around 10 minutes later, it was all over. The Oasis song "Wonderwall" played on the stadium loudspeakers as fans began to leave, and, for once, the loud din of the ultras singing and drums was stopped.

The Cosmos were not going to be champions of the U.S. this year, losing to a team that would make it all the way to tonight's final. Yet, that seemed like an extraneous detail to some fans.

"They could be down 8-0 and we will still be singing," declares Semcken. "These guys have something to prove every year."

Correction: Some photo captions misidentified the stadium pictured. 

Polar Bears Are Staking Out Some Russian Meteorologists

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A pair of area polar bears. (Photo: National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration/Public Domain)

Meteorologists at a remote Russian weather station are having trouble with the neighbors. For two weeks, they've been under siege from polar bears, reports NBC News.

The five scientists, who work at a station on one of the Izvesti Tsik Islands in Russia's Kara Sea, are used to a few bears hanging around. But this year, there are about a dozen, including four cubs, and they've been cozying up.

They started things off by eating one of the scientists' dogs, writes Agence France-Presse. Lately, they've been napping right outside the outpost's windows. The meteorologists have had to give up on some of their tasks, because they can't go outside.

They've also used up all of their flares—though a boat is on its way with another shipment, and they still have a shotgun in case of (even more) emergency.

If this particular nightmare seems familiar, it may be because it also happened last year around this time, when three Russian scientists were trapped by a couple of bears on Vaygach Island.

Thus far, this team has been understanding. "The bears live in the Arctic, you know," station supervisor Vasily Shevchenko told NBC News. "We can't ban them from hanging around."

Every day, we track down a fleeting wonder—something amazing that's only happening right now. Have a tip for us? Tell us about it! Send your temporary miracles to cara@atlasobscura.com.

Why Thousands of Catalytic Converters Are Stolen from Cars Each Year

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(Photo: Public domain)

Catalytic converters have been standard in most cars since 1975, when the Environmental Protection Agency mandated stricter emissions regulations for automobiles. 

They're a part of your car that, like an alternator or water pump, you don't think too much about. Most drivers are only vaguely aware of what exactly it does. 

That is, of course, until the catalytic converter breaks. Or, as has been the case lately, gets stolen. 

Thieves across the country stole nearly 4,000 catalytic converters last year, according to statistics compiled by the National Insurance Crime Bureau and released last week. 

In addition, some 25,394 catalytic converters were stolen between 2008 and 2015, a large number of which were in California. 

Thieves are attracted to the platinum, palladium, and rhodium found in catalytic converters in low amounts. According to the NICB, one can fetch up to $240 per converter at scrap metal yards, providing a valuable incentive.

"An aggressive thief can easily collect 10-15 or more converters in a single day," the NICB said in a press release. "They often target sport utility vehicles (SUVs) because their ground clearance is sufficient for the thief to gain access to the converter without having to deploy a jack. And that saves time."

So, what to do? The NICB says that etching your car's vehicle identification number (VIN) can be a deterrent, while also considering things like beefing up the way the converter is attached to the car. 

Thieves are interested in stealing, but usually only if you make it easy for them. 

Watch Five Alarmingly Calm Men Stand Under an Exploding Atomic Bomb

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In 1945, the first atomic bomb was set off during the Trinity Test in the New Mexican desert. This marked the birth of the Atomic Age, a period of nuclear experimentation that would alter the world on a sociocultural level, not to mention an elemental one.

Today we know the danger of exposure to atomic bombs. First there is the initial fiery explosion, caused by the splitting of an atom. However, the arguably more dangerous effect of the atom bomb is its radiation, both from the original blast and the residual radioactivity left in its wake. This can spread over a miles-long diameter, but is most concentrated at ground zero, the point directly underneath the detonation. Hence why this video of five men standing directly beneath an atomic bomb test is a bit disturbing. 

On July 19th, 1957, Col. Sidney Bruce, Lt. Col. Frank P. Ball, Maj. Norman "Bodie" Bodinger, Maj. John Hughes, and Don Luttrel all volunteered to stand beneath the bomb. As the video shows, they stand next to a sign, intended to be humorous, which reads: "GROUND ZERO Population 5". The men are huddled together, their hands shading their eyes, wavering in anticipation as a radio voice counts down from 10. 

At 0:55 we see the bomb released from the plane. At 0:59 a a burst of white light illuminates the volunteers' faces. They wince at the brightness, though Major Bodinger, who thought to wear sunglasses, keeps his eyes trained at the sky the whole time. He is equipped with a microphone, and narrates the experience live. "We felt a heat pulse," he says, "a very bright light, a fireball, it is red, the sky looks black about it, it is boiling above us there, it is wrapped in–"

At this point, about 10 seconds after the blast, the sound wave hits. The men, who had been looking at mushroom cloud above them, duck and cover, then stumble about. Major Bodinger's voice swells in excitement while his companions can be heard shouting in the background. "There is the ground wave! It is over folks, it happened. The mounds are vibrating. It is tremendous, directly above our heads. It worked! It worked!" 

The test was one of hundreds conducted by the U.S. military at this point in time, and the bomb detonated was relatively small—a mere two kilotons. The purpose of having the men stand at ground zero was simply to observe what the explosion was like from such a close perspective.

So what happened to them? It's complicated. George Yoshitake, the cameraman who did not volunteer, reported that many of his fellow atomic cameramen had died of cancer, presumably as a result of exposure to radiation. Over the years the government has paid upwards of $150 million to onsite participants in atomic tests, not to mention those unwittingly exposed by being downwind of radioactive explosions. Reporters have attempted to find the men who took part in the 1957 test, but to no avail. Military records indicate they are all dead, but with no word on whether their fatality was linked to radioactive exposure.

It must have been exciting, if not a little terrifying, to take part in such a grand experiment, one that literally changes the elemental makeup of the world around you. Major Bodinger ends his transmission sounding moved: "This thing went off with a white flash. It was just beautiful."

Every day we track down a Video Wonder: an audiovisual offering that delights, inspires, and entertains. Have you encountered a video we should feature? Email ella@atlasobscura.com

6 New Entries Added to Oxford English Dictionary in Honor of Roald Dahl

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Roald Dahl in 1982. (Photo:  Hans van Dijk/CC BY-SA 3.0)

Entries for scrumdiddlyumptious, human bean, golden ticket, oompa loompa, the "witching hour," and Dahlesque have each been added to the Oxford English Dictionary, the OED said yesterday, making permanent a few of beloved author Roald Dahl's contributions to the English language. 

The words will be familiar to anyone who's read The BFGCharlie and the Chocolate Factory, or other classic works from Dahl's oeuvre. Each will now be added to the OED, or, in the case of "golden ticket," a new sub-entry in an existing entry. (The first documented golden ticket was given to the 18th-century English painter William Hogarth, in exchange for perpetual admission to the Vauxhall Gardens.)

The words were added in honor of Dahl's centenary, as the author was born on this day 100 years ago. 

For the uninitiated, some of the entries are reasonably self-explanatory—scrumdiddlyumptious indeed means delicious, and a golden ticket is indeed a special and rare prize—while others might need more explaining. The OED defines the witching hour as:

"Usually with the. Midnight, with reference to the belief that witches are active and magic takes place at that time. More generally: the time, esp. the dead of night, when bad or sinister things are believed to be most likely to happen."

Human bean, meanwhile, is what the BFG calls human beings; oompas loompas are Willy Wonka's little factory workers, and Dahlesque is, as the OED defines it:

"Resembling or characteristic of the works of Roald Dahl. Dahl's writing, particularly his children's fiction, is typically characterized by eccentric plots, villainous or loathsome adult characters, and gruesome or black humor."

All true, and now, thanks to the OED, definitional. 

Watch These Buildings Ripple Gently in the Wind

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On particularly gusty days in Pittsburgh, the exterior of the Pittsburgh Children’s Museum becomes alive with undulating ripples.

The museum’s watery-wave installation, that environmental artist and sculptor Ned Kahn calls “Articulated Cloud,” is a made of thousands of plastic squares that flutter in the wind. Kahn uses different moveable materials, from plastic to aluminum panels, to make wind visible. The 2004 Articulated Cloud in Pittsburgh is one of several of Kahn’s futuristic and wind-inspired architecture artworks seen around the world.

Wind Veil

In 2000, Kahn transformed this parking garage in Charlotte, North Carolina to make it look like it’s covered in silver, gauzy linen. The 260-foot-long and six-story tall structure is covered with 80,000 hinged aluminum panels that reflect and filter light. Whether a gentle breeze or whipping wind, the façade of the gleaming building turns into a metallic field of waving grass.

Wind Arbor

Half a million aluminum panels swing on this 6,800-square-meter cable net structure that covers the glass panels of the Marina Bay Sands hotel in Singapore. At the beginning of the clip, you get a close-up look at the individual materials bobbing in the breeze. The “Wind Arbor” is not only beautiful, but it also serves to block out heat and sunlight from the lobby.

Every day we track down a Video Wonder: an audiovisual offering that delights, inspires, and entertains. Have you encountered a video we should feature? Email ella@atlasobscura.com.

Ask Zardulu: How Do You Know If You Owe Someone a Soul?

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(Illustrations by Matt Lubchansky)

Welcome to the first installment of Atlas Obscura's new advice column, Ask Zardulu. If you have a life, love, money, family, spiritual, moral or myth-based dilemma, please email your question to askzardulu@atlasobscura.com, and specify if you want your name to be used. (For more information on Zardulu's mysterious work, look here.) Questions are edited for length and clarity. 


HELLO MYSTIC CONFESSIONAL: My name is Bruce Guariglia. When I was about 13, a group of friends and I were sitting around the lunch table in school trading objects, comic books, cards, insults etc. I didn't have much with me at the time, and I wanted my friends collection of "monster in my pocket" trading cards. He jokingly said "give me your soul and they are yours". Super excited to get the good end of this deal, I quickly wrote out an I.O.U. for one soul and the trade was complete. 

A few short years later his life was tragically ended in an auto accident.  

My question to you is, do I have my soul back now? If not, who's property is it? His next of kin? The state? I'm worried I may need this back in another 40 years to continue "being". 

DEAR SOULLESS: First of all, I am sorry for the loss of your young friend. May his soul rest in peace. As for yours, that is another matter. Fortunately, I don't believe your friend took it with him on his journey into the afterlife. It's right where it's always been—with you.

You see, it's not as easy to give up your soul to your friend as you attempted in exchange for his "Monster-In-My-Pocket" trading cards; souls tend to stick with us. Every individual who has bartered their soul has done so with a character of supreme, supernatural evil. One of the most famous souls bartered, that of Father Urbain Grandier, actually required legal documentation for the transaction.

In 1632 a group of nuns and other clergy (who didn't much like the priest) provided a piece of parchment to a local judge in which the priest signed over his soul to the infernal powers of hell, complete with autographs by Lucifer, Satan, Astaroth, Leviathan and Elimi. So, unless Leviathan was in your school's cafeteria to co-sign the deal, as I said, I believe that soul is still safe with you. 

Blessed Be


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DEAR ZARDULU: I am a writer who has not just hit a roadblock, but a wall made of pure titanium. Could the lack of passion in other aspects of my life be behind that wall and how do I knock that wall down?

Walled In and Wanting Out

DEAR WALLED IN: Being an artist, I've found myself in your situation and it's almost always because I've exhausted my source of inspiration. I could go searching for a new one but, as you know, the problem with being a creative professional is that you're not always drawing from the well, you're digging it. So, it may not be as simple as finding your next muse.

I'd suggest, before you find yourself in an expensive Tony Robbins seminar, try using a magic spell. When it comes down to it, magic spells aren't all that different from the self-affirming, personal dialogues peddled by self-help gurus.

So, I'll give you one to try. First, gather a paper, pencil. Then, make yourself comfortable, close your eyes and imagine a protective, circular energy surrounding you. You will now call upon the god Cadmus, the first King of Thebes and creator of the alphabet, for his assistance. As you speak the following words to him, write them on the paper before you, and while you're doing it, release all of the writing-related frustration you've been having. Repeat this process until the paper is full and then fold it up and destroy it. Do this whenever the problem reoccurs. 

"Cadmus, god of writing with this spell I call, to you for the words to bring down this wall."

Blessed Be 


DEAR ZARDULU: I don't know what to do with myself for the rest of my life. I enjoy the fruits of honest labor (i.e. money), but I have come to loathe the labor portion of that equation. I don't mind working, you understand. I just am exhausted by self-centered co-workers, bad bosses, and punching someone else's time clock. People wear me out.

I'm not gifted. I have no great talent. I just want to be left alone to read, travel, and create. What middle-aged women do in my situation is give in or give up. I want to live. 

Suggestions? 
Bored in the Midwest

DEAR MIDWEST BOREDOM: To represent your journey through the past, present and future I have drawn from the tarot the Knight of Pentacles, Two of Wands, and Strength cards. Your journey starts with the knight who, like you, is successful in his career and enjoys hard-earned rewards. He holds out a coin, forcing the consideration of finances while plotting his course, but as the reading moves into the present, we find the man in the Two of Wands holding a small globe instead. For some, a gain in material comforts is enough to keep them motivated, but for him (and for you) this gain is no longer the same driving force it once was. This tells me that there is some other passion that has taken your focus. As we move into the future, we see an image of a woman leaning over a lion, the very symbol of passion, holding it gently in her hands. She is neither carelessly embracing or forcing it into submission. This tells me that you have the strength to focus more energy on what you're passionate about without losing control of your life and your career.

You should move forward without any apprehension, whether its one of the activities you've mentioned or something new you've been waiting to begin. 

Blessed Be 


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DEAR ZARDULU: I have two best friends, called Richard and Mary (not real names). The past couple of months, Mary has been extremely distant and doesn't respond at all to calls or text messages. She has occasionally had contact via text message with Richard (he told me) but it wasn't anything too intense. We have confronted her a while back (via text message, she didn't respond to mine but did respond to Richard) with her strange behavior and she has said it is because we don't invite her to anything we (Richard and me) do. We try to involve her with anything we do together, but she often (almost always) says she can't make it/is sick, so sometimes we don't ask her anymore. 

This has been happening for a year, maybe two. The last couple of months she just doesn't even respond anymore and I don't know what to do. She is a very isolated person and doesn't have any other friends, and sometimes I worry about her mental (and physical) health. She has been my best friend for almost 9 years now and I'm scared I've lost her forever. Do I let her go and hope she will eventually come back (or not)? I hope you can help me because this has really been bothering me a lot, I dream about the situation pretty much every night and I miss her a lot.

Kind regards,

Anne

DEAR ANNE: It troubles me that your search for Mary has lead you away from the comforting arms of Morpheus, the god of dreams. It's time to find your way back before you drown in the river, Oblivion, that flows through his world. We've all had people leave our lives abruptly, and while it may take some time, we've evolved the psychological mechanism needed to cope with those situations: we grieve. However, when that someone leaves in the context of a friendship, like with Mary, it's often over a long period of time, making it difficult to know when the friendship has ended and, in turn, when to should start grieving. This breakdown of the grieving process has left you with unreconciled emotions that are having a negative impact on your life, like the troubling dreams.

By letting go of your friendship and allowing yourself to grieve, you can begin to handle your negative emotions and it can become a positive force in your life. You'll be better able to open yourself to new friendships while learning from and fondly remembering the one you shared with Mary.

Blessed Be


 ZARDULU PLEASE HELP: I have a two year old named Luca who wakes up every two hours during the night.

I love him dearly but my wife and I are struggling with the broken sleep.

Thanks,

Andrew 

DEAR ANDREW: To represent your son's journey I have drawn from the tarot the King of Wands and Justice cards, symbolizing the present and future. Being that he is just two years old, I did not draw for his past.

The King of Wands tells me right away that your son is quite good-natured and garners a lot of positive attention from those around him. I find it significant that the king is depicted wearing a robe emblazoned with lizards and a small lizard even sits by his side. Just as lizards change their skin, your son changes as he passes through the stages of his development and, with any change, there is a period of adjustment that can be difficult. As we move into the future, we have the Justice card that depicts a woman sitting on a throne holding a sword and a scale. This is a clear indication that your son’s restless nights will soon pass, as Justice represents the ability to adjust and achieve equilibrium in life.

Unfortunately, there is no immediate resolution. It’s just going to take a little more time. 

Blessed Be


DEAR ZARDULU: How can I more gracefully adjust to the coming of old age?  I have always been a rebel, refusing to grow up and conform but things that used to be tolerated by others with affection and amusement now are merely seen as irritants.  

I guess I need to finally bid youth adieu and learn to welcome the next stage. (I am 75).

Peace on earth,

Twiga

DEAR TWIGA: Never stop being you, ever. Don't change a single thing. I'm sure the people in your life have good intentions but they are undoubtedly wrong. There has been a dramatic shift in the way our culture views older adults, and it's not for the better. Throughout human history, they have been revered for their wisdom and consulted on all important matters. Now, there's a growing tendency for the younger generation to view this wisdom as antiquated and to disregard it. It's a real tragedy. Next time it’s suggested that you make changes in your life, just smile and remember, no one has more wisdom to make decisions for you than you. 

Blessed Be.


This Woman's Ongoing Fight for the Right to Live in a Treehouse

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For 25 years, Shawnee Chasser has lived in a series of dream houses. They were not designed by fancy architects, and they've been small, but they had one very important feature. Since the early '90s, Chasser has only lived in treehouses.

Now, as the Miami Herald reports, she may have to move.

Chasser's first treehouse was on Miami's Earth n Us farm, which belongs to her brother, Ray. After Chasser decided she didn't want to live within four traditional walls anymore, her brother built a treehouse for her, which grew to become the farm's "legendary three-story, 24-foot Treehouse." (You can rent a room there, via Airbnb, if you like.) Later, Chasser moved onto property that belonged to her son, who died of a heart attack in 2009. The treehouse here is two stories—one planted solidly on the ground and a second story bedroom up in the tree. 

From this abode, which Chasser calls Shawnee's Paradise, she rented out space on the property, via services like Airbnb and Craigslist. It's an unusual set-up for a property in this area, and eventually someone—Chasser thinks it was someone who had stayed on the property, but it could also have been a neighbor—complained to authorities.

The city now says the treehouse does not conform to zoning codes and its electricity and plumbing lack the proper permitting. Chasser is trying to raise money to cover the fines, lawyer's fees, and costs of renovations, in order to stay in her treehouse. 

City zoning codes are often unfriendly to less traditional construction; people living in tiny houses often have to keep them on wheels because zoning codes don't conscience such small structures as permanent homes. If living in a treehouse is your dream (and shouldn't it be?), consider sorting out the legal and permitting tangles on the front end. 

The Doomed Mouse Utopia That Inspired the 'Rats of NIMH'

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Calhoun inside Universe 25, his biggest, baddest mouse utopia. (Photo: Yoichi R. Okamoto/Public Domain)

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On July 9th, 1968, eight white mice were placed into a strange box at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. Maybe "box" isn't the right word for it; the space was more like a room, known as Universe 25, about the size of a small storage unit. The mice themselves were bright and healthy, hand-picked from the institute's breeding stock. They were given the run of the place, which had everything they might need: food, water, climate control, hundreds of nesting boxes to choose from, and a lush floor of shredded paper and ground corn cob. 

This is a far cry from a wild mouse's life—no cats, no traps, no long winters. It's even better than your average lab mouse's, which is constantly interrupted by white-coated humans with scalpels or syringes. The residents of Universe 25 were mostly left alone, save for one man who would peer at them from above, and his team of similarly interested assistants. They must have thought they were the luckiest mice in the world. They couldn't have known the truth: that within a few years, they and their descendants would all be dead.

The man who played mouse-God and came up with this doomed universe was named John Bumpass Calhoun. As Edmund Ramsden and Jon Adams detail in a paper, "Escaping the Laboratory: The Rodent Experiments of John B. Calhoun & Their Cultural Influence," Calhoun spent his childhood traipsing around Tennessee, chasing toads, collecting turtles, and banding birds. These adventures eventually led him to a doctorate in biology, and then a job in Baltimore, where he was tasked with studying the habits of Norway rats, one of the city's chief pests.

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Calhoun displaying scarring on the tail of a color-coded Universe 25 mouse. (Photo: Youtube)

In 1947, to keep a close eye on his charges, Calhoun constructed a quarter-acre "rat city" behind his house, and filled it with breeding pairs. He expected to be able to house 5,000 rats there but over the two years he observed the city, the population never exceeded 150. At that point, the rats became too stressed to reproduce. They started acting weirdly, rolling dirt into balls rather than digging normal tunnels. They hissed and fought.

This fascinated Calhoun—if the rats had everything they needed, what was keeping them from overrunning his little city, just as they had all of Baltimore?

Intrigued, Calhoun built another, slightly bigger rat metropolis—this time in a barn, with ramps connecting several different rooms. Then he built another and another, hopping between patrons that supported his research, and framing his work in terms of population: How many individuals could a rodent city hold without losing its collective mind? By 1954, he was working under the auspices of the National Institute of Mental Health, which gave him whole rooms to build his mousetopias. Like a rodent real estate developer, he incorporated ever-better amenities: climbable walls, food hoppers that could serve two dozen mice at once, lodging he described as "walk-up one-room apartments." Video records of his experiments show Calhoun with a pleased smile and a pipe in his mouth, color-coded mice scurrying over his boots.

Still, at a certain point, each of these paradises collapsed. "There could be no escape from the behavioral consequences of rising population density," Calhoun wrote in an early paper. Even Universe 25—the biggest, best mousetopia of all, built after a quarter century of research—failed to break this pattern. In late October, the first litter of mouse pups was born. After that, the population doubled every two months—20 mice, then 40, then 80. The babies grew up and had babies of their own. Families became dynasties, carving out and holding down the best in-cage real estate. By August of 1969, the population numbered 620.

Then, as always, things took a turn. Such rapid growth put too much pressure on the mouse way of life. As new generations reached adulthood, many couldn't find mates, or places in the social order—the mouse equivalent of a spouse and a job. Spinster females retreated to high-up nesting boxes, where they lived alone, far from the family neighborhoods. Washed-up males gathered in the center of the Universe, near the food, where they fretted, languished, and attacked each other. Meanwhile, overextended mouse moms and dads began moving nests constantly to avoid their unsavory neighbors. They also took their stress out on their babies, kicking them out of the nest too early, or even losing them during moves.

Population growth slowed way down again. Most of the adolescent mice retreated even further from societal expectations, spending all their time eating, drinking, sleeping and grooming, and refusing to fight or to even attempt to mate. (These individuals were forever changed—when Calhoun's colleague attempted to transplant some of them to more normal situations, they didn't remember how to do anything.) In May of 1970, just under 2 years into the study, the last baby was born, and the population entered a swan dive of perpetual senescence. It's unclear exactly when the last resident of Universe 25 perished, but it was probably sometime in 1973.

Paradise couldn't even last half a decade.

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Universe 25, forboding from the outside. (Photo: Youtube)

In 1973, Calhoun published his Universe 25 research as "Death Squared: The Explosive Growth and Demise of a Mouse Population." It is, to put it lightly, an intense academic reading experience. He quotes liberally from the Book of Revelations, italicizing certain words for emphasis (e.g. "to kill with the sword and with famine and with pestilence and by wild beasts"). He gave his claimed discoveries catchy names—the mice who forgot how to mate were "the beautiful ones"' rats who crowded around water bottles were "social drinkers"; the overall societal breakdown was the "behavioral sink." In other words, it was exactly the kind of diction you'd expect from someone who spent his entire life perfecting the art of the mouse dystopia. 

Most frightening are the parallels he draws between rodent and human society. "I shall largely speak of mice," he begins, "but my thoughts are on man." Both species, he explains, are vulnerable to two types of death—that of the spirit and that of the body. Even though he had removed physical threats, doing so had forced the residents of Universe 25 into a spiritually unhealthy situation, full of crowding, overstimulation, and contact with various mouse strangers. To a society experiencing the rapid growth of cities—and reacting, in various ways, quite poorlythis story seemed familiar. Senators brought it up in meetings. It showed up in science fiction and comic books. Even Tom Wolfe, never lost for description, used Calhounian terms to describe New York City, calling all of Gotham a "behavioral sink." 

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Calhoun in 1986, nearly forty years after his first experiments. (Photo: Cat Calhoun/CC BY-SA 3.0)

Convinced that he had found a real problem, Calhoun quickly began using his mouse models to try and fix it. If mice and humans weren't afforded enough physical space, he thought, perhaps they could make up for it with conceptual space—creativity, artistry, and the type of community not built around social hierarchies. His later Universes were designed to be spiritually as well as physically utopic, with rodent interactions carefully controlled to maximize happiness (he was particularly fascinated by some early rats who had created an innovative form of tunneling, where they rolled dirt into balls). He extrapolated this, too, to human concerns, becoming an early supporter of environmental design and H.G. Wells's hypothetical "World Brain," an international information network that was a clear precursor to the internet.

But the public held on hard to his earlier work—as Ramsden and Adams put it, "everyone want[ed] to hear the diagnosis, no one want[ed] to hear the cure." Gradually, Calhoun lost attention, standing, and funding. In 1986, he was forced to retired from the National Institute of Mental Health. Nine years later, he died.

But there was one person who paid attention to his more optimistic experiments, a writer named Robert C. O'Brien. In the late '60s, O'Brien allegedly visited Calhoun's lab, met the man trying to build a true and creative rat paradise, and took note of the Frisbee on the door, the scientists' own attempt "to help when things got too stressful," as Calhoun put it. Soon after, O'Brien wrote Ms. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH—a story about rats who, having escaped from a lab full of blundering humans, attempt to build their own utopia. Next time, maybe we should put the rats in charge.

Naturecultures is a weekly column that explores the changing relationships between humanity and wilder things. Have something you want covered (or uncovered)? Send tips to cara@atlasobscura.com.

The Commune in Ethiopia Where Feminism is the Law

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The village center of Awra Amba. (All Photos: Zac Crellin)

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Tucked away between the rugged gorges and valleys of the Ethiopian highlands is an egalitarian commune that defies the norms of traditional society. Awra Amba, founded in the utopian mold 44 years ago, has managed to thrive where so many other attempts have failed.

Awra Amba could be described as communist, puritanical, pantheistic, feminist, or even cult-like, but its 450 residents are wary of such descriptors. They believe their philosophy, as dictated by the community’s soft-spoken founder Zumra Nuru, is too easily distorted by cultural and linguistic differences to be labeled accurately by outsiders.

Nevertheless, four tenets do underpin the community’s way of life: respecting women’s rights, respecting children’s rights, caring for the elderly and vulnerable, and avoiding antisocial behavior. Today Awra Amba is governed by 13 democratically-elected committees, which cover everything from education to conflict resolution, taking care of orphans to village security. 

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Zumra Nuru’s quotes are displayed in English and Amharic in the visitor reception building.

Much of the philosophy’s credibility stems from Nuru’s life story. It is said that at the age of two he began asking questions about inequality that were beyond the capacity of his family. Although he never received a formal education, by the age of four, the precocious child had formulated the four main principles of his belief system through observing the world around him.

“My mother and father were farmers,” Nuru writes in his manifesto. “In farming the land, they worked together. In the evening, when they returned home, my father was done for the day. But my mother’s work continued into the house. My mother’s duties were cooking wot, baking injera, collecting firewood, fetching water, nursing babies, washing my family’s feet, grinding grains by hand and more. These house tasks were my mother’s regular duties.”

Nuru left home and became a vagabond at 13, embarking on a desperate search to find like-minded people who sought to abolish cultural practices such as gender roles and child labor. He traveled from district to district, giving speeches to anyone who would listen. He says that for the next five years, people dismissed his ideas as idealistic and unfeasible.

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A man herds cattle through the village.

Eventually, Nuru met a group of farmers in the lakeside district of Fogera who were receptive to his ideas. After meeting several times over many months, Nuru and the farmers established Awra Amba in 1972.

In a society which, like most, promotes rigid gender roles, Awra Amba is different. Gender equality is non-negotiable. Men are accountable for half the housework and child rearing, while women make up half the workforce in otherwise male professions such as plowing fields and weaving.

There is no shame or awkwardness for those performing these jobs. Customs dating back millennia have been eradicated in a single generation. One saying of Nuru’s is often repeated throughout the community: “Doing a ‘women’s job’ does not change my maleness—it changes my ignorance.”

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The nursing home in Awra Amba. Rooms and care are provided free of cost, and the facility is the responsibility of the whole community.

Awra Amba functions using a two-tier membership system. Residents may choose to live by the village’s progressive social values as a community member, while others choose to go a step further and share their labor and income equally as a cooperative member.

Incorporating the farmers, weavers and miscellaneous jobs, the cooperative assigns work based on ability and divvies up its earnings annually. Everyone is welcome to participate in the cooperative, and the oldest worker is a cattle herder in his 90s. Each member receives the same income regardless of what job they do, and the remaining money is reinvested into the community’s industries. Around 150 of Awra Amba’s 450 inhabitants are cooperative members.

The equality promoted in Awra Amba was considered taboo by farmers in the surrounding region. They reported the villagers of Awra Amba to the authoritarian Derg regime, the communist military junta that ruled Ethiopia, accusing them of being members of the underground opposition. The villagers were eventually forced to flee in 1988.

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A man weaves in Awra Amba’s textile factory.

The villagers were only able to return in 1993, two years after communist rule ended in Ethiopia. By that time, their farmland had been liquidated by the same people who had pushed them out. Starvation and disease crippled the community, and the death rate surged.

The community turned to textile production as a new source of income. This proved to be another exercise in gender equality, as weaving is traditionally a man’s job. The women of Awra Amba operate looms and traditional weaving tools alongside their male counterparts inside the village’s lone factory as well as at home.

One of the town’s strongest initiatives is its elder care. As a child, Nuru witnessed people collapse while working from health problems and old age. “These people are human beings just like we are,” he writes. “If we leave them behind when they need us, then perhaps in the future we may also be in their situation.”

The village’s elder care facility is the collective responsibility of the community. People who are unable to work are provided with free housing, food and care. The quarters are modest, but they provide safety, independence and dignity for those who live there. The project has been so successful that two members from outside of the village have been taken in as if they were the community’s own. 

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The kindergarten classroom in Awra Amba.

The rights of children are similarly respected in the community. Unlike some surrounding areas, no child is made to work and every child is entitled to an education. At the free, community-run school, children are encouraged to find both creative and logical solutions to social problems. They are also taught the community’s principles and expected to uphold them. At the end of each school day students recite a pledge not to steal, to be sympathetic towards one another, and to always work collaboratively.

Meanwhile, children's ideas are respected and treated as equal to those of adults. Children may head fortnightly group discussions between families and neighbors which seek to resolve conflicts between individuals. Anyone can be elected to chair the meeting, and children are taught how to facilitate discussions in preparation for this. Zumra Nuru attributes his notions of equality to all humans being related:

“Humans have created the idea that we are not related if we are not from the same family. This notion brings about hostility; and hostility brings about quarrels. Human beings frighten other human beings just like ferocious animals. I thought if we could live by considering all human beings as sisters and brothers, there would not be any difference among human beings.”

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The rooms inside Awra Amba’s nursing home.

As a village Awra Amba is humble, but the people take immense pride in their self-sufficiency, total equality and harmony. Nuru’s rigid social philosophy calls for the complete eradication of lying and insults alongside violence and murder. “Instead we should promote collaboration, honesty, love, compassion, humbleness, good heartedness, truthfulness, and peace,” he argues in his manifesto.

Keeping with this total commitment to harmony, sex before marriage is prohibited, as is the norm in rural Ethiopia. Drugs and alcohol are also banned, including such mainstays of Ethiopian culture as tej (honey wine) or khat (a natural stimulant). Divorce is allowed, and it is not restricted to exceptional circumstances.

Despite this deep sense of morality, the community is not underpinned by religion, but rather shuns it altogether. Instead, villagers adhere to a vague yet inclusive pantheistic spirituality, and don’t organize or express their spirituality in public. “I couldn’t understand why I should build a house in one particular place, where I could go inside to meet the creator if he was to be found everywhere,” Nuru writes, of why there is no church or mosque in the village.

Under this system, certain religious cultural practices have still persisted: some women wear loose hijabs while some men wrap themselves in white blankets worn by Ethiopian Orthodox churchgoers and pilgrims.

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Awra Amba as seen from a hill.

Homes are modest in Awra Amba. Built in the traditional style of adobe walls with a wooden scaffold, they consist of two rooms: a kitchen and a living area. Fittings and furniture are made from a combination of one-part mud and three parts ash. Many homes house private looms, and while some residents can afford electricity or running water, most go without. This disparity is one side effect of the two-tier membership system.

Angelic photos of the “far-sighted honorable doctor” Zumra Nuru in his trademark green beanie adorn several buildings. His quotes are repeated as gospel, and villagers passionately refer to the founder as a genius. Residents are in awe of the fact that even when Nuru was a toddler, “his thought was concrete.”

However, Nuru does not exercise total control over the community. While most committee decisions respect the founder’s wisdom, there have been several occasions when community members have voted against his proposals. Positions on the village’s 13 committees are unpaid and elected triennially.

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The library in Awra Amba largely consists of textbooks for students.

The key to Awra Amba’s success is its provision of freedom. While social rules are strict, villagers may come and go as they please and can opt-out of financial commitment. They are also encouraged to leave the village upon adulthood to broaden their horizons. Nevertheless, most residents return after only a few years to start a family.

Zumra Nuru hasn’t read Das Kapital, The Second Sex or the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child; he’s illiterate and completely self-taught. Awra Amba may closely resemble the ideas of philosophers and theorists from around the world, but its ideology has not been imported.

Instead, Nuru came up with pragmatic solutions to local problems, which are continuously developed and perfected through the combined effort of the community. People live humbly but harmoniously, and it is through this tradition that Awra Amba continues to flourish. 

Food Forests, Fairy Tales, and Other Upcoming Utopia-Themed Events

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(Photo: Beacon Food Forest)

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For Utopia Week at Atlas Obscura, we’ve compiled a list of upcoming themed events taking place around the country. From touring a historic fairy tale village to walking through the century-old ruins of an abandoned utopian colony, here are four opportunities to explore the worlds of idealized and harmonious living.

They’re listed here in chronological order, so stretch your limbs and get exploring!

1. Obscura Society DC: Silver Spring's Fairy Tale Village

Silver Spring, MD

September 17

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(Photo Courtesy of Save Our Seminary)

Join us in exploring this hidden gem just outside DC in a specially curated tour led by Save Our Seminary's Bonnie Rosenthal. The National Park Seminary has lived multiple lives—as resort hotel, private school, rehabilitation center, and individual residences. Rosenthal will take us all behind the scenes through this fairy tale-esque historic landscape.

2. Obscura Society Seattle: The Beacon Food Forest and a Utopian Vision

Seattle, WA

September 18

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(Photo: Beacon Food Forest)

Is there anything quite as utopian as a communal seven-acre edible food forest? Come find out for yourself on our tour of Seattle's Beacon Food Forest with permaculture designer Jackie Cramer. Community driven and located on public land, it seems like an ecological utopia. 

3. Obscura Society LA & Cartwheel Art Tours: Lincoln Heights Studios

Los Angeles, CA

September 24

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(Photo: Michael Torquato DeNicola

Join us in Los Angeles at Lincoln Heights Studios for a tour of utopia reimagined through art. We'll tour spaces belonging to an enclave of artists in the city's North Industrial District, meet several artists, and explore their artwork and inspiration throughout the visit—in what is one of the largest art colonies in the world. 

4. Obscura Society LA: The Remnants of a Failed Desert Utopia

Llano, CA
September 25

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(Photo: Avoiding Regret)

The ruins of the most important non-religious Utopian experiment in Western American history are located in Llano, California—and we're inviting you to come explore them. Join us with Field Agent Sandi Hemmerlein to investigate these crumbling vestiges of a utopian colony built in 1914—that never turned out as luxurious as had been promised to its utopia-seeking settlers.

America's Oldest Lighthouse Has Turned 300

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Boston Light, which turns 300 years old today. (Photo: Massachusetts Office of Tourism/CC BY-ND 2.0)

Three hundred years ago today, a lighthouse keeper made his way across Boston Harbor to Little Brewster Island. He climbed the winding staircase inside Boston Light, at that point a brand new building. And using a tallow candle, he lit the lighthouse lantern for the first time.

Today, Boston Light is still going strong—and is celebrating its tricentennial in style, reports WBUR.

Sally Snowman, the lighthouse's official keeper since 2003, is dressed up for the occasion, in a homemade Revolutionary-era dress and bonnet. Then again, she's often dressed that way. As Yankee Magazine reported in 2009, Snowman is the country's last lighthouse keeper, and spends weeks at a time on Little Brewster Island, where she gives historical tours, hangs out with picnickers, and, well, keeps the lighthouse.

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Boston Light circa 1878, on a stereoscope slide. (Photo: Boston Public Library/CC BY 2.0)

The lantern itself is now a massive glass and brass contraption, mounted on a series of gears that spin it every 10 seconds. "Because it's an 1859 optic, and we're in 21st-century electronics, there's glitches for the two centuries to talk to each other," Snowman told WBUR. She often gets calls from nearby Winthrop and Nahant, made by concerned citizens frantic that the light is out. (She always already knows.)

To be fair, the lighthouse is not, itself, three centuries old—most of its components have been replaced several times, and the whole structure was destroyed by the British in 1776, and was later rebuilt on the same foundation. For this year's tricentennial, the Coast Guard spiffed it up appreciably.

But save for a few interruptions due to war and technology, the light itself has been shining out for 300 years—and that's something. Happy birthday, lighthouse.

Every day, we track down a fleeting wonder—something amazing that's only happening right now. Have a tip for us? Tell us about it! Send your temporary miracles to cara@atlasobscura.com.

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