Kurt Vonnegut was one of the most influential American writers of the 20th century. All signs point to the author holding the same place in the 21st century, despite the fact that he died April 11, 2007. The late Vonnegut has accomplished more dead than most of us will alive, from social media celebrity to indie film success. We’d expect nothing less from the ironic author who wrote in "Slaughterhouse Five,"“How nice—to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.”

1. RT @Kurt_Vonnegut

Vonnegut’s a Twitter star. The @Kurt_Vonnegut Twitter account (not verified, natch) tweets the late writer’s quotes and has 169,666 followers and counting. Meanwhile, he only follows @TheMarkTwain. (The two writers probably would’ve followed each other in real life, if they’d had the chance. Their work is frequently compared. Vonnegut called Twain an “American saint” and even named his first son after him.) Like any major celebrity, Vonnegut also has a few other Twitter accounts dedicated to him, including @Zombie_Vonnegut. If you think Vonnegut’s funny in 140 characters, you should read one of his books.

 2. Check Out the Vonnegut Library

Vonnegut said, “The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.” In fall 2010, his hometown of Indianapolis opened the Vonnegut Memorial Library in his honor. The building is part library/ part museum and showcases a replica of Vonnegut’s writing studio and some of those famous rejection letters he talked about. Writer Corey Michael Dalton recently lived, worked, and slept in the front window for “Locked Up with Vonnegut,” part of Banned Books Week. Guests can type messages on the late writer’s typewriter, which are then tweeted from the Twitter account @kurtstypewriter.

3. All Eyez on Kurt Vonnegut

Vonnegut’s the Tupac of America literature—the posthumous hits just keep coming. His latest book, "We Are What We Pretend To Be: The First and Last Works," contains one of Vonnegut’s first novellas and the establishing chapters of his last novel. Three other collections have been published since his death: a collection of short stories, drawings, and essays called "Armageddon in Retrospect" in 2008; the unpublished short story collections "Look at the Birdie" in 2009; and "While Mortals Sleep" in 2011. Back in April, Vonnegut’s writings from his college newspaper days were published in the Amazon e-book, "Kurt Vonnegut: The Cornell Sun Years 1941–1943." What’s next? "50 Shades of Kilgore Trout"?

4. Digital Luddite

Before the release of "Look at the Birdie," some of Vonnegut’s unpublished short stories were made available as e-books. Now you can access all of his work via e-reader. Vonnegut was a proud Luddite who wrote in longhand and used a typewriter long after most writers switched over to a computer. We wonder if the book-loving technology critic would have found the digitalization of his work—and books, in general—ominous, or a good use of “damn fool computers.”

5. The Third Adaptation’s a Charm

Vonnegut’s 1961 short story “Harrison Bergeron” is set in 2081 when all Americans are forced to be equal in not only rights, but also abilities. No one’s smarter, richer, or ahem, more prolific than anyone else. The dystopic work has been adapted for the screen three times. Vonnegut praised the short film version "Harrison Bergeron" released a year before his death. He might’ve liked the latest reworking even better: the 2009 short film "2081" is the closest adaptation of “Harrison Bergeron” yet. The sci-fi film runs 25 minutes and cost only $100,000 to produce, yet it’s one of IMDB’s most popular short films.

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Abridging classic novels for younger readers is nothing new. But in recent years, classic literature has been graphic novel-ized, making it more accessible for readers young and old while preserving the plot, themes, and sometimes even the author’s voice. English class will never be the same, thanks to these classics gone graphic.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Oscar Wilde’s only novel, about a man who sells his soul to maintain his beauty, was just begging for a more visual makeover. The 2009 graphic novel written by Ian Edginton and illustrated by I.N.J. Culbard abridges the text, but still keeps much of Wilde’s original prose. Marvel’s 2008 version has better graphics, but it reads more like a copy of SparkNotes. Both books are recommended as a supplement to—not a substitute for—the original work. In the words of Dorian Gray himself, “How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. If it were only the other way!” 

The Metamorphosis

The Incredible Hulk. Wolverine. Gregor Samsa. All of these characters undergo major transformations, but only one of them might appear on an AP English exam. Franz Kafka’s 1915 novella about a traveling salesman who wakes up to find he’s turned into a huge insect makes for a compelling graphic novel. Peter Kuper’s 2004 adaptation looks like an enjoyable read, but it goes against Kafka’s wishes. When the cover of the first edition was being designed nearly a century ago, the author asked that Gregor not be drawn as an insect. Instead, he hoped readers would conjure their own image of “horrible vermin” when picturing the creepy-crawly protagonist.

"The Trial," Kafka’s dystopian novel about the perils of bureaucracy, has also been adapted into a graphic novel. And if you want to learn more about the man behind the stories, check out Kafka’s graphic biography by R. Crumb and David Zane Mairowitz.

Ulysses

"Ulysses" is one of those works that comes with a few barriers to entry. For starters, the Penguin Classics version is 1040 pages long. Then there are the 18 unstructured chapters that James Joyce boasted “[have] so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant.” (Thanks, dude.) But Robert Berry’s “Ulysses ‘seen’” makes the modernist masterpiece more modern—and accessible—than ever. The graphic novel is available for free online or $7.99 on the iPad. Like the original, Berry’s adaptation is serialized and raised a few questions of obscenity—Apple required nude images to be removed. Unlike the original, each chapter comes with a handy reader’s guide.

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We’re not telling you not to vote. We’re just saying that these 10 people won’t be (or didn’t).

When “Poblano” began publishing his 2008 presidential election predictions and analyses on Daily Kos in 2007, people paid attention.

See the other political figures who don't vote >

Then “Poblano” moved to his own blog, FiveThirtyEight.com, where he later revealed he was really Nate Silver, the guy behind PECOTA, a system that predicts Major League Baseball players' performances.

After Silver accurately predicted the results of 49 of 50 states’ 2008 election results (and all 35 Senate races), FiveThirtyEight moved to The New York Times.

But none of the eyes on Silver this week will catch him at the polls: he has not voted since he moved to the Times and doesn’t intend to this year, though he told Charlie Rose that if he did, “it would be kind of a Gary Johnson versus Mitt Romney decision.”

2. Jim Lehrer

When Lehrer moderated the first presidential debate this year (you may remember it as the “Big Bird” debate), Politico dubbed him “the most trusted moderator in America.” Lehrer had moderated debates 11 times before, and according to “MacNeil/Lehrer Report” cohost Robert MacNeil, “He stays so far out of the political swamps that he doesn’t even vote.”

3, 4 and 5. Generals David Petraeus, George C. Marshall and William Tecumseh Sherman

Though he is registered as a Republican, General Petraeus stopped voting in 2002, when he became a two-star general “to avoid being pulled in one direction or another, to be in a sense used by one side or the other.” His voter abstinence follows a long military trend of non-voting generals, which includes both Marshall and Sherman. General Marshall famously disagreed with President Truman’s plan to recognize the state of Israel, saying, “If I were to vote in the election, I would vote against you.”

6. Leonard Downie Jr.

Len Downie worked in the Washington Post newsroom for 44 years, first as an intern in 1964. By 1991, he was the paper’s Executive Editor, overseeing coverage for every election from 1984 through 2008. In 2004, Downie revealed that he’d stopped voting years ago, “when I became the ultimate gatekeeper for what is published in the newspaper. I wanted to keep a completely open mind about everything we covered and not make a decision, even in my own mind or the privacy of the voting booth, about who should be president or mayor, for example.”

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As New York City Mayor Bloomberg gave numerous televised addresses about the preparations the city was making for Hurricane Sandy, and then the storm’s aftermath, he was joined at the podium by a sign language interpreter, who immediately became a twitter darling.

People watching the addresses tweeted that she was “amazing,” “mesmerizing,” “hypnotizing,” and “AWESOME.”

Soon, her name was uncovered—Lydia Callis—and animated .gifs of her signing were posted. A couple of hours later, a tumblr was born.New York magazine called her “Hurricane Sandy’s breakout star.”

Callis was great, but not because she was so lively and animated. She was great because she was performing a seriously difficult mental task—simultaneously listening and translating on the spot—in a high-pressure, high-stakes situation.

Sure, she was expressive, but that’s because she was speaking a visual language. Signers are animated not because they are bubbly and energetic, but because sign language uses face and body movements as part of its grammar.

In American Sign Language, certain mouth and eye movements serve as adjectival or adverbial modifiers.

In this example, Bloomberg is explaining that things will get back to normal little by little. Callis is making the sign INCREASE, but her tight mouth and squinting eyes modify the verb to mean “increase in tiny increments.” This facial expression can attach to various verbs to change their meaning to “a little bit."

Here, Bloomberg is urging people not to put out their garbage for collection because it will end up making a mess on the streets. Callis is making a sign for SPILL, while at the same time making what is known as the ‘th’ mouth adverbial. This mouth position modifies the verb to mean “sloppily done.” If you attach it to WALK, WRITE, or DRIVE, it means “walk sloppily,” “write messily,” or “drive carelessly.”

Movements of the head and eyebrows indicate sentence-level syntactic functions.

In this example, Bloomberg is warning people that the worst of the storm is coming. Callis signs WORST SOON HAPPEN. Her eyebrows are raised for WORST and SOON, then lowered for HAPPEN. This kind of eyebrow raise indicates topicalization, a common structure used by many languages. In topicalization, a component of a sentence is fronted, and then commented upon. A loose approximation of her sentence would be “Y’know the worst? Soon? It’s gonna happen.”

Bloomberg is urging people to use common sense and take the stairs instead of the elevator. Callis signs NEED GO-UP FLOOR USE STAIRS. During NEED GO-UP FLOOR her eyes are wide and her eyebrows raised. Then her eyebrows go down sharply and her eyes narrow for USE STAIRS. The wide-eyed eyebrow raise marks a conditional clause. It adds the sense of “if” to the portion it accompanies. The second clause is a serious command. She signs, “if you need to go up a floor, use the stairs.”

Body position is used to indicate different discourse-level structures.

Here Bloomberg is urging people to check on road conditions before they go anywhere. He says, “The FDR may be open or closed.” Callis signs OPEN while leaning to the left and CLOSED while leaning to the right. This shift in body position marks a contrastive structure. If Bloomberg were to continue making distinctions between the “open” and “closed” possibilities, she would use those same positions to maintain coherence while interpreting those other distinctions.

In this example, Bloomberg is saying that the worst will be over by tomorrow and that tomorrow when we look back “we’ll certainly be on the other side of that curve.” Callis signs DECREASE IMPROVE WEATHER POINT. On the first three signs she looks up and to her right. She turns back to the front on POINT.  Here her body shift marks the adoption of a role. She is being a hypothetical person saying “Ahhh, I see things are less intense, weather improving…” She then drops the role and turns forward to say (as Bloomberg does), “The point is, stay home.”

Of course, some facial expressions in sign languages are just facial expressions.

Here, Bloomberg is responding to a reporter’s question a little testily. Callis captures his bemused, impatient tone with her facial expression. In fact, Bloomberg captures it with his own facial expression. No one would call him animated, but he can also say a few things without words.

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Vidal Sassoon passed away this year at the age of 84.

He was an artist who  the way women dealt with their hair, created the “bob,” and believed that women should be able to just wash their hair and still end up with a great style, rather than needing to go to a salon constantly.

Starting in the 1950s, Sassoon opened a chain of salons and sold his hair products worldwide. In honor of him, here is a look at 11 other men whose famous brands they named after themselves.

Adolf "Adi" Dassler: Adidas Shoes

Adi and his brother Rudolph owned their own shoe company in Germany during the 1920s and 30s.

Their products were so popular, many of the German competitors in the 1928 Olympics wore Dassler Brothers shoes. But during WWII the brothers had a falling out. While both joined the Nazi party, Rudolph was more fanatical and went off to fight, leaving Adi to make shoes for the military.

After the war ended, Rudolph left and formed his own company, Puma. Adi then renamed the original company after himself, and Adidas was born.

King Camp Gillette: DIsposable Razors

King realized early on that people liked things they could use for a short time and then throw away.

Since constantly sharpening your razor was a pain, he decided to come up with a disposable one. After five years of work he finally succeeded, and founded the Gillette Safety Razor Company in 1901. King came up with the idea to give away the razor for free and charge men for the blades. He also believed in a socialist utopia, where all companies would be combined into one, which would be owned by the public.

He offered Teddy Roosevelt a $1 million salary to be head of this theoretical company, but was turned down. He also believed that everyone in the United States should live in one giant city called Metropolis, which would be powered by Niagara Falls.

Candido Jacuzzi: Hot Tubs

The seven Jacuzzi brothers emigrated from Italy to California in the early 1900s. Once there they started coming up with innovations for the big new craze: the airplane.

Their biggest hit was the creation of the first plane with an enclosed cabin, which the US Postal Service bought to deliver mail. According to legend, their mother was worried about her sons’ safety and eventually convinced the brothers to change jobs. They started concentrating on hydraulic pumps for irrigation and hospital use.

In the late 1940s, Candido’s young son Kenneth started suffering from arthritis. He received hydrotherapy at a hospital, but his father decided his son needed to have access to it at home as well. He filed a patent for his invention, but it wasn’t until another relative, Roy, joined the business years later that they started selling their Jacuzzi tubs to the public.

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Former Yankees’ standout pitcher Brien Taylor is widely accepted as one of the biggest disappointments in Major League Baseball history.

Now, he’s known as one of the game’s most notorious criminals.

This week, the former number 1 pick will be sentenced to between 5 and 40 years in prison after he pleaded guilty this summer to distributing crack cocaine.

Now 40, Taylor has been incarcerated since his March arrest.

What was once a promising start to a young career has turned into the latest tragic story of a former pro getting himself involved in the wrong side of the law.

Here’s a look back at 10 other players who are now serving time in prison.

Ugeth Urbina

The former closer was sentenced in Venezuela in 2007 to 14-plus years in prison for the attempted murder of five workers on his ranch.

The attacks by several men were particularly severe—involving machetes and pouring gasoline on their victims. Their crime? Urbina accused them of stealing a gun from him.

Dave Meggett

Meggett was sentenced to 30 years in 2010 for criminal sexual conduct and burglary stemming from an encounter he had with a college student the year before. His defense argued that the sex was consensual.

The three-time All-Pro and one-time Super Bowl champion’s legacy has been overshadowed by a series of troubling episodes during his playing days and afterward. In 2007, he was convicted of misdemeanor sexual battery and served a two-year probation period.

Lawrence Phillips

In 2008, the former running back was sentenced to 10 years (eventually reduced to 7) in prison on a charge of assault with a deadly weapon.

Three years earlier, he drove onto a field and struck three kids with his car. Reports indicated that he was upset after losing a pickup football game and then suspected them of stealing from his possessions. In 2009, Phillips was sentenced to 25 years in prison on the 2009 convictions, for a total term of more than 31 years.

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Last week, in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, readers @amyh914, @dauentina and ‏@TheRealYadiM all asked if we should expect a spike in birth rates along the East Coat nine months from now — a mini-baby boom caused by Sandy.

The idea that disasters and birth rates are correlated goes back at least to at least 1965, when a blackout plunged New York City into darkness for several hours one November night.

The following August, the New York Times noted a “sharp increase in births” in several of the city’s large hospitals, proclaiming in a headline “BIRTHS UP 9 MONTHS AFTER THE BLACKOUT.”

It seems plausible enough. TVs and telephones weren’t working, and the subway wasn’t running — what else were people going to do with their time but get it on? After many disasters since then, we’ve heard the same folk wisdom. “It is evidently pleasing to many people,” said Richard Udry, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina who studied post-blackout birth rates, “to fantasize that when people are trapped by some immobilizing event which deprives them of their usual activities, most will turn to copulation.”

The Evidence For … and Against

The actual evidence for hurricane/snow/tornado/whatever babies is mixed. A few studies have found that natural and man-made disasters can influence the birth rate and others haven’t. When disasters do come into play, the birth rate doesn’t always increase; the catalyst for conception is sometimes boredom and sometimes something more complicated.

Udry’s study found that the blackout babies of 1966 were nothing special. In 1970, he looked at NYC births over a several-year period and couldn’t find a statistically significant spike in births associated with the blackout. The number of babies born within the time frame where the day of the blackout could have been the date of conception was “not at all remarkable for 1966 when compared to the previous five years.”

In 2002, Catherine Cohan and Steve Cole, human development and family studies researchers at Penn State University, examined 22 years’ worth of marriage, birth and divorce rates from South Carolina. They found that in 1990—the year after Hurricane Hugo struck and caused about $5.9 billion in property damage in the state, killed 35 people and left 50,000 homeless — marriage, birth and divorce rates all shot up in the counties that were declared disaster areas.

With all three moving in the same direction, Cohan and Cole concluded that the stress and life-threatening danger from the storm provoked “significant and relatively quick action in [people’s] personal lives that altered their life course.”

In 2005, three psychologists from the University of Oklahoma wondered if the fear and stress caused by a man-made disaster might have a similar effect. They looked at birth data from Oklahoma City and its surrounding counties for the years 1990 to 1999—about five years of data before the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing would have any effect on births, and about four years of data afterward—and found a strong increase in birth rates in and around the city nine months after the bombing.

They thought that the increase happened either because people felt a threat to their own sense of mortality or considered the fragility of life after the bombing, and responded by strengthening their family.

Blame It On The Weather

For a 2010 study, economists from the U.S., Germany and China analyzed birth data and hurricane and tropical storm advisories in 47 counties along the United States’ Gulf and Atlantic Coasts from 1995 to 2001. They found that “low-severity” advisories correlated positively with birth rates nine months later and that “high-severity” advisories correlated negatively. Areas that experienced tropical storm or hurricane watches had a post-storm baby boom, but areas that had storm or hurricane warnings saw a decrease in births.

According to NOAA, watches mean the possibility of a storm and usually come approximately 48 hours in advance of it. During a watch, people should prepare their homes and then remain in them. A storm warning means a storm should be expected, and usually come about 36 hours in advance. In the event of a warning, people should finish storm preparations and be ready to evacuate.

The differing birth rates following the two events, the researchers reason, is tied to the perceived danger of the event and the things people do during them. During a storm warning, people might stock up on food and hunker down in the house. After a while, they might get bored watching TV, or maybe the power goes out, and they head to the bedroom—in line with the popular prediction. In a more severe warning, though, people might more concerned with gathering supplies, securing their homes and getting ready to leave the area. Even if they’re riding the storm out at home, the researchers think, they may be too worried or occupied to engage in romance.

So, will we see a lot of babies named Sandy next summer? Maybe, but certainly not in all areas and not always because of the exact same reasons. The ties between catastrophe and conception are more complex than we might think.

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While they may be one of the most well-known bands in music history, we bet there are still some things you don't know about this notorious British band. 

For example, do you know what inspired the song "She Said She Said"? Click through the slideshow to find out.

Before Lennon/McCartney there was McCartney/Lennon

If you pick up a Beatles album today, you’ll notice the songs are credited to Lennon-McCartney, in alphabetical order, thanks to a longstanding agreement between the two songwriters whereby each would get full credit no matter who came up with the tune or lyric first. But this alphabetical listing was not always the case. The credits on their first album, Please Please Me, list the eight original compositions to McCartney-Lennon. One reason for this could be that Paul McCartney wrote “P.S. I Love You” and “Love Me Do,” the first two songs on the album. The McCartney-Lennon credit would appear twice more on McCartney’s 1976 live album, Wings Over America, and once again on 2002’s Back in the U.S., albeit much to Yoko Ono’s disapproval.

The Ed Sullivan Show was not The Beatles’ American TV debut

For that matter, CBS can’t really claim bragging rights, NBC can. Yes, it’s true: NBC scooped CBS, as The Beatles made their American television debut on NBC’s evening news show, The Huntley-Brinkley Report, not The Ed Sullivan Show, nor Walter Cronkite’s evening news. Although virtually unknown in America at the time, the band was causing mass hysteria in England and all three U.S. television networks sent camera crews to film their November 16, 1963 concert in Bournemouth. NBC used the footage in a four-minute segment on November 18th, but CBS waited until November 22nd to air the story during its morning newscast with Mike Wallace. The network planned to air the story on its evening newscast as well, but just hours after the Beatles story was broadcast, Walter Cronkite broke the news that President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas. On December 10th, Cronkite aired the Beatles segment during prime-time, which set into motion the Beatlemania that culminated with their February 1964 performances on The Ed Sullivan Show.

Eric Clapton almost replaced George

And then there were three… For five days in January of 1969, the Fab Four were a lonesome trio. George Harrison, the “quiet Beatle,” as the media called him, decided to bow out after months of personal differences with his fellow bandmates. A serious songwriter who penned classics like “Something” and “Here Comes the Sun,” Harrison felt he was being ignored by Lennon and McCartney, who played his tunes with little enthusiasm. On January 10, 1969, Harrison finally had enough and quit the band. His announcement caused John Lennon to quip, “If he doesn’t come back by Tuesday, we get Eric Clapton.” Harrison, of course, came to his senses, and returned to the band on January 15th, allowing The Beatles to move forward with their recording of a little-know album called Abbey Road.

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Here’s the story of how a show started as a typical formulaic sitcom, but grew into a syndicated monster.

From the time Greg Brady got high to the reason Cindy Brady started balding, here’s a quick rundown of all things Brady you probably didn’t know.

In Real Life, Jan Gave Marcia the Complex

Maureen McCormick played Marcia, the eldest Brady daughter, and the object of lust of many a teenaged boy during the tenure of The Brady Bunch. What the public didn’t know, however, was that “Mo” always felt inferior to Eve Plumb, who played middle sister Jan. Eve had longer, blonder, more luxurious hair. Eve developed curves before Maureen did (and took pleasure in flaunting her blossoming physique by going braless under her tight-fitting tops in later seasons). The very slender Mo also felt that she had a bit of a tummy “pooch” and during the time the entire cast was en route to Hawaii for an exciting “on location” three-part episode, all she could think about was her horror at having to appear on camera in a bikini. Watch those Hawaii episodes when they rerun and you’ll see that Maureen always manages to hold a beach towel or robe in front of her lower torso in any bathing suit scenes.

Barbershop of Horrors: Why Cindy Started Balding

With the parents in place, the team of brown-haired boys and blonde girls made the final cut, with one exception. For the role of Bobby Brady, the youngest boy, producers favored Mike Lookinland, who had strawberry-blond hair. He was hired only after his parents agreed to let Miss Clairol do her thing on their son’s locks. Savvy viewers will note how Bobby’s hair color varied between dark brown and jet black before the make-up folks found just the right shade of hair dye for him. Susan Olsen had a different problem. She was a natural blonde, but producers felt the youngest Brady wasn’t blonde enough. They ordered eight-year-old Olsen’s hair to be bleached regularly to give her that adorable towhead look. When her hair began falling out in clumps during the second season, a tearful Susan complained to Sherwood Schwartz, who immediately ordered the staff to leave “Cindy’s” hair alone.

Gene Hackman Almost Played the Lead

The producers started testing kids to fill the roles of the six Bradley children. Since the parents hadn’t yet been cast, they had to have two full sets of kids at the ready – one set with dark-haired boys and blonde girls, and another set with the opposite coloring. The first choice to play Ma Bradley was character actress Joyce Bulifant (who would later go on to play Murray’s wife on The Mary Tyler Moore Show). However, once comedic actress Ann B. Davis was cast as Alice, the producers decided that a more “serious” actress was needed to play the mother. Florence Henderson ultimately got the job, but was forced to wear a wig during the first season because her own hair had been cropped short when she co-starred in an off-Broadway revival of South Pacific. For the role of Mike Brady (the family’s surname had changed by this time), producers were debating between a then-unknown Gene Hackman and Robert Reed. They finally chose Reed because he had marquee value from his co-starring role on the popular series The Defenders.

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In late October, Italian courts convicted six scientists and a government official — all members of the National Commission for the Forecast and Prevention of Major Risks — of manslaughter for giving “incomplete, imprecise and contradictory” information in the days leading up to an earthquake that struck L’Aquila on April 6, 2009.

Tens of thousands of buildings were destroyed, 1000 people were injured, and 308 people died, and the courts believe it was because scientists didn’t do enough to warn civilians of the risk of a devastating quake.

Thousands of tiny earthquakes occur every day; some, like the ones that recently hit off the coast of Guatemala, become bigger than others. And no matter what the Italian courts might say, they can’t be predicted. But why?

Earthquakes: How They Work

For centuries, people wondered what caused the Earth to shake. In the 1960s, scientists finally settled on the theory of plate tectonics (more on the origins of the theory can be found here), which posits that the Earth’s surface is built of plates — solid slabs of rock — that move relative to each other on top the hotter, molten material of the outer core.

As these plates move around, they slide past and bump into each other; on the boundaries of these plates are faults, which have rough edges and stick together while the rest of the plate keeps moving. When this occurs, the energy that would normally cause the plates to move past one another is stored up, until eventually, the force of the moving plates overcomes the friction on the jagged edges of the fault. The fault unsticks and releases that energy, which radiates outward through the ground in waves, causing an earthquake when the waves reach the surface.

To locate a quake’s epicenter — the place on the Earth’s surface, directly above the hypocenter, where the quake starts — scientists need to look at the waves produced by the quake. P waves travel faster, and shake the ground first; S waves come next. The closer you are to the epicenter of an earthquake, the closer together those two waves will hit. By measuring the time between waves on three seismographs, scientists can triangulate the location of the quake’s epicenter.

The Challenges of Prediction

Though scientists do create sophisticated models of earthquakes and study the history of quakes along fault lines, no one has enough of an understanding about the conditions — the rock materials, minerals, fluids, temperatures, and pressures — at the depths where quakes start and grow to be able to predict them. “We can create earthquakes under controlled conditions in a laboratory, or observe them close-up in a deep mine, but those are special situations that may not look very much like the complicated faults that exist at depth in the crust where large earthquakes occur,” says Michael Blanpied, associate coordinator of the USGS Earthquake Hazards Program. “Our observations of earthquakes are always at a distance, viewed indirectly through the lens of seismic waves, surface faulting and ground deformation. To predict earthquakes, we would need to have a good understanding of how they occur, what happens just before and during the start of an earthquake, and whether there is something we can observe that tells us than an earthquake is imminent. So far, none of those things are known.”

According to Blanpied, the current understanding is that quakes start — or nucleate — small, on an isolated section of the fault, and then grow quickly. “That nucleation can occur anywhere, and even when we have examples of repeated earthquakes, they may nucleate in different places,” he says. “If there is a process that occurs in the seconds — [or] minutes, hours, months? — before an earthquake, that process may be very subtle and hard to observe through miles of solid rock, especially when we don’t even know where to look.”

Another challenge: Big and small quakes might not start differently. “If all earthquakes start small, and some just happen to grow big, then prediction may be a lost cause, because we’re not at all interested in predicting the thousands of tiny earthquakes that happen every day.”

Prediction vs. Forecasting

Though pinpointing the exact time and size of an earthquake is currently impossible, scientists can estimate the probability of an earthquake occurring in a region or on a fault over a span of decades. “To do that, we need information about how fast the fault is sliding over the long term — typically a few millimeters to centimeters of slip per year — and how big the earthquakes are likely to be,” Blanpied says. “We calculate how much slip is used up in each earthquake, and thus how often earthquakes must occur, on average, to keep up with the long-term slip rate.”

Knowing the date of the last earthquake helps improve forecasting, because scientists can estimate whether they’re early or late based on the repeat time of earthquakes on that particular fault. At the Hayward fault, east of San Francisco Bay, for example, large quakes happen every 140 to 150 years. The last quake on the fault was in 1868, so scientists think that fault could produce another earthquake at any time. “Note, however,” Blanpied says, “that ‘any time’ could mean tomorrow or 20 years from now.”

Scientists learned this the hard way. In the 1980s, the USGS predicted that, within 5 years, there would be a magnitude 6 earthquake on the San Andreas fault near the town of Parkfield. “Many types of instruments were deployed in the area to observe the earthquake and also to try to predict it based on various types of precursory signals,” Blanpied says. “As it turns out, the earthquake didn’t happen until 2001, which put cold water on the idea of using the timing of past earthquakes to precisely predict future ones. Also, there were no observed precursors, which dimmed the hope that it would be possible to predict earthquakes from observing the ground.”

For now, forecasting is the best we’ve got, and although it’s imprecise, determining the probability of a quake does help developers make good decisions about where to build and what types of forces those buildings should be constructed to withstand. “If our buildings are strong,” Blanpied says, “then it doesn’t matter so much [if we can predict large earthquakes] because we’ll be safe no matter when the ground happens to shake.”

Prediction Research

Quakes pose a threat to 75 million Americans in 39 states, so despite the challenges, scientists at the USGS are working diligently to figure out how to better predict these events. They create quakes in the lab, have drilled boreholes in the San Andreas Fault Zone to get a look at the conditions at depth, and study ground deformation using GPS sensors to understand how stresses build up on faults. At the very least, this research will help create an early warning system similar to Japan’s, which would give people away from the quake’s epicenter some time — a few seconds to a minute, maybe — to get to a safe place, slow or halt public transportation, clear traffic off of bridges, and more. But there’s no promise that a solid earthquake prediction method will ever be discovered. “What we need is a prediction method that works better than random educated guessing, and despite decades of work on this problem, so far nobody has demonstrated that such a method exists and works,” Blanpied says. “I am dubious that we will ever be able to predict the time of large earthquakes in a useful way. However, we can predict a lot of things about earthquakes that are useful, other than the time of their occurrence, and we can use that knowledge to make ourselves and our communities resilient.”

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On November 10th, the U.S. Marine Corps celebrated its 237th birthday.

“The few, the proud” who serve are not only part of one of the most effective fighting forces in history, but also one of the most storied organizations in the world.

Here are 11 things you might not know about the Marines.

1. The first retired Marine to ever receive an honorary promotion was in a Stanley Kubrick movie.

In Full Metal Jacket, actor Tim Colceri is famous for his helicopter scene wherein he says over machine gun fire, “Anyone who runs is a VC. Anyone who stands still is a well-disciplined VC.”

He would have been even more famous in the part for which he was originally cast—as the strict and unrelenting senior drill instructor, Gunnery Sergeant Hartman. That role, however, went to R. Lee Ermey, who had been hired for the film as a technical advisor.

Ermey, a former Marine drill sergeant and Vietnam veteran, filmed a tense 20-minute reel of himself in character dressing down and squaring away the movie’s extras, without repeating himself, all while being pelted with tennis balls and oranges. When director Stanley Kubrick saw the video, he recast Ermey for the role on the spot.

Hartman became perhaps the most famous gunnery sergeant in the history of the Corps. Ermey, however, retired as a Staff Sergeant. In 2002, the Marine Corps granted him an honorary promotion in accordance with the rank for which he is most associated. He is the first retiree in the history of the Marines to receive such an honor.

2. Why they've fought 'From the Halls of Montezuma…'

The Marines’ Hymn famously begins, “From the Halls of Montezuma…” This refers to the Battle of Chapultepec in 1847, in which U.S. Marines conquered Chapultepec Castle in Mexico City, and subsequently occupied the city as part of the Mexican-American War.

The battle is also famous (according to Marine tradition) for the establishment of the “blood stripe,” a red stripe sewn into the trousers of the uniform commemorating the Marines killed at Chapultepec.

3. …'To the shores of Tripoli.'

In 1801, the United States decided to do something about piracy in the Mediterranean, and President Jefferson sent in the Navy. In 1805, the Marines finished the job. The Battle of Derne, on the shores of Tripoli during the First Barbary War, was the decisive action of the war, and the first overseas land battle fought by the United States military.

In 2011, the U.S. Marine Corps returned to Libya as part of Operation Odyssey Dawn.

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Some companies find their niche and stick to it. Others, though, have to adapt to changing markets in order to thrive. Here’s a look at some companies that switched industries at some point in their histories, usually for the better.

Avon once sold books.

David H. McConnell started Avon in 1886 without really meaning to. McConnell sold books door-to-door, but to lure in female customers he offered little gifts of perfume. Before long, the perfume McConnell was giving away had become more popular than the books he was selling, so he shifted focus and founded the California Perfume Company, which later became Avon.

Nokia once sold paper.

The telecom giant got its start in Finland in 1865, when Fredrik Idestam opened a pulp mill and started making paper on the banks of Tammerkoski. The company later bounced around a number of industries before getting serious about phones in the 1960s.

3M once sold minerals.

When the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company’s founders opened their business in Two Harbors, Minnesota in 1902, they weren’t selling Post-It Notes. The partners originally planned to sell the mineral corundum, an important ingredient in building grinding wheels, directly to manufacturers.

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If you just don’t get the Oliver Twist-esque street urchin look that defines hipster fashion, or the weird, two-tone hair (it’s called ombre!) that so many celebrities have, you’ll be downright mystified by these trends from around the globe.

Shippo, The Brain-Controlled Tail

All humans have tails. At least we do early on, about 3 to 4 weeks into our embryonic development.

But they evolve no further than that … until now. Japanese company Neurowear has recently unveiled the body-controlled Shippo (translation: tail). This fuzzy little backside duster tells the world if you’re happy or sad, bored or frisky. It does this via an EEG headset and a clip-on heart monitor that are wired to the fluffy appendage.

Shippo also features geotagging and smart phone sharing capability, which allows devotees to find each other and engage in mutual tail wagging.

Bagel-Shaped Forehead Injections

Though it looks like Botox gone wild, it’s saline, not botulinum toxin, that’s being injected into the foreheads of willing subjects.

Part of a Japanese “body modification” art scene, the procedure takes about 2 hours and 400cc of saline, injected via a crochet-sized needle. The resulting forehead-sized blob is then manipulated with the fingers into a bagel-like shape, with an indentation pressed in the middle (the effect brings to mind Worf from Star Trek: TNG) .

Fortunately, these injections aren’t permanent. They’re gone in about 16 hours, after the body absorbs the saline.

Yaeba Teeth

Maybe we’ve taken the ideal of perfectly straight, white teeth as far as it can go. That seems to be the message behind the trend of Yaeba, which means “double tooth” in Japanese.

Many women are choosing dental crowns that elongate their canine teeth and give the effect of dental overcrowding (not to mention a vaguely vampire-ish vibe). Why? Because in Japanese culture, young women with these kind of crooked teeth are considered cute and innocent. One does have to wonder if it makes flossing more difficult.

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With the first semester of the school year over half way over and Thanksgiving break looming, we know students may not be all that ecstatic about seeing their teachers – and the homework they assign.

Pay attention in class, though; you never know what hidden talents your teachers might have.

Your math or English teacher might one day become a famous actor, or who knows, even the next President. 

Gene Simmons

The tongue-flicking bassist of Kiss taught sixth grade in Harlem before he became the world’s most famous bass-playing demon. Simmons later revealed in interviews that his superiors canned him for replacing the works of Shakespeare with Spiderman comics, which he thought the students were more likely to actually read.

Alexander Graham Bell

The telephone pioneer got his start teaching Visible Speech at the Boston School for Deaf Mutes. He developed a bond with a student named Mabel Hubbard, and when she was 19 the two married.

Sting

Before he became a star with The Police, Sting taught English, music, and soccer at St. Catherine’s Convent School. Sting later said of working at a convent school, “I was the only man on the faculty. In fact, I was the only teacher not in a habit.”

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Forget Thanksgiving turkey, fellowship, and football; for a lot of shoppers, Black Friday is the week’s truly notable holiday. The unofficial start of the holiday shopping season is often referred to as the busiest shopping day of the year, but where did this tradition start and just how big is it? Here are the answers to a few frequently asked questions about Black Friday. Hopefully they’ll give you some good talking points as you line up outside Best Buy at 4 a.m. on Friday.

How did Black Friday became such a big shopping day?

It’s hard to say when the day after Thanksgiving turned into a retail behemoth, but it probably dates back to the late 19th century. At that time, store-sponsored Thanksgiving parades were common, and once Santa Claus showed up at the end of the parade, the holiday shopping season had officially started.

In those days, most retailers adhered to an unwritten rule that holiday shopping season didn’t start until after Thanksgiving, so no stores would advertise holiday sales or aggressively court customers until the Friday immediately following the holiday. Thus, when the floodgates opened that Friday, it became a huge deal.

So retailers were always hoping for an early Thanksgiving?

You bet. They weren’t just hoping, though; they were being proactive about it. In 1939, the Retail Dry Goods Association warned Franklin Roosevelt that if the holiday season wouldn’t begin until after Americans celebrated Thanksgiving on the traditional final Thursday in November, retail sales would go in the tank.

Ever the iconoclast, Roosevelt saw an easy solution to this problem: he moved Thanksgiving up by a week. Instead of celebrating the holiday on its traditional day—November 30th that year—Roosevelt declared the next-to-last Thursday in November to be the new Thanksgiving, instantly tacking an extra week onto the shopping season.

Brilliant! How did that work out?

Not so well. Roosevelt didn’t make the announcement until late October, and by then most Americans had already made their holiday travel plans. Many rebelled and continued to celebrate Thanksgiving on its “real” date while derisively referring to the impostor holiday as “Franksgiving.” State governments didn’t know which Thanksgiving to observe, so some of them took both days off. In short, it was a bit of a mess.

By 1941, though, the furor had died down, and Congress passed a law that made Thanksgiving the fourth Thursday in November regardless of how it affected the shopping day that would become known as Black Friday.

Why call it Black Friday?

If you ask most people why the day after Thanksgiving is called Black Friday, they’ll explain that the name stems from retailers using the day’s huge receipts as their opportunity to “get in the black” and become profitable for the year. The first recorded uses of the term “Black Friday” are a bit less rosy, though.

According to researchers, the name “Black Friday” dates back to Philadelphia in the mid-1960s. The Friday in question is nestled snugly between Thanksgiving and the traditional Army-Navy football game that’s played in Philadelphia on the following Saturday, so the City of Brotherly Love was always bustling with activity on that day. All of the people were great for retailers, but they were a huge pain for police officers, cab drivers, and anyone who had to negotiate the city’s streets. They started referring to the annual day of commercial bedlam as “Black Friday” to reflect how irritating it was.

So where did the whole “get in the black” story originate?

Apparently storeowners didn’t love having their biggest shopping day saddled with such a negative moniker, so in the early 1980s someone began floating the accounting angle to put a more positive spin on the big day.

Do retailers really need Black Friday to turn an annual profit?

Major retailers don’t; they’re generally profitable—or at least striving for profitability—throughout the entire year. (A company that turned losses for three quarters out of every fiscal year wouldn’t be a big hit with investors.) Some smaller outlets may parlay big holiday season sales into annual profits, though.

Is Black Friday really the biggest shopping day of the year?

It’s certainly the day of the year in which you’re most likely to be punched while grabbing for the latest Elmo doll, but it might not be the busiest day in terms of gross receipts. According to Snopes.com, Black Friday is generally one of the top six or seven days of the year for stores, but it’s the days immediately before Christmas when procrastinators finally get shopping that stores make the serious loot. Black Friday may, however, be the busiest day of the year in terms of customer traffic.

Snopes’ data shows the ten-year span from 1993 to 2002, and in that interval Black Friday was never higher than fourth on the list of the year’s busiest shopping days by sales volume. In 2003 and 2005 Black Friday did climb to the top of the pile for sales revenue days, but it still gets stiff competition from the week leading up to Christmas, particularly the Saturday right before the big day.

But Black Friday tells us how the holiday season will shake out, right?

Again, not necessarily. According to a 2007 Time story, even if Black Friday goes swimmingly for retailers, it doesn’t really tell analysts much about how the holiday season will look. The National Retail Federation told the magazine that since the bulk of holiday shopping still occurs in the week leading up to Christmas, those days are far more important for retailers’ bottom lines than Black Friday is. That week coupled with the steep discounts most retailers start offering on the day after Christmas end up determining how well the holiday season goes for retailers.

What’s the story on Cyber Monday?

It’s obviously a bit tough for online retailers to cash in on the retail bonanza that their brick-and-mortar counterparts enjoy on Black Friday; you can’t really have a doorbuster sale when you don’t have any doors to bust. In 2005, though, Shop.org, the online arm of the National Retail Federation, started promoting the Monday immediately following Black Friday as “Cyber Monday,” Black Friday’s tech-savvy cousin for online retailers.

So is Cyber Monday the biggest online shopping day of the year?

Like Black Friday, Cyber Monday probably isn’t quite the e-commerce boom that you’d expect. According to Snopes, the first few years of Cyber Monday looked a lot like Black Friday. Sales were certainly higher than normal, but the biggest e-commerce days were still usually a couple of weeks before Christmas. Basically, online shopping’s big days are governed by the same keep-putting-it-off impulse that shapes traditional retail’s best revenue days, only the online jackpots come a little earlier as procrastinators have to allow for shipping time.

More from mental_floss…

15 Companies That Originally Sold Something Else
The Origins of 7 Department Store Chains
Toilet Paper History: How America Convinced the World to Wipe
9 Muppets Kicked Off Sesame Street
Fordlandia: Henry Ford’s Ill-Fated Foray Into the Brazilian Jungle
13 Bizarre Stipulations in Wills
How 16 Consumer Electronics Giants Got Their Names
11 Offbeat College Essay Topics
11 Body Parts Named After People
31 Unbelievable High School Mascots

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A surprising number of military inventions have found their ways into our civilian lives.

Here are just a few military-turned-everyday items.

1. GPS

When you rely on the GPS app on that Android phone to keep yourself from getting lost, you’re using the same Global Positioning System satellites set up by the U.S. Department of Defense in the early 1990s.

At President Clinton’s behest, the system became available to civilian users in 1996.

2. Freeze drying

Dippin’ Dots, anyone?

The technology that’s now used to make freeze-dried ice cream was first used widely during World War II as a way of preserving medical supplies that otherwise required refrigeration.

3. EpiPen

EpiPens, the auto-injecting syringes that allow you to give yourself a quick shot of epinephrine to stave off an allergic reaction, sprung from a similar device designed to protect soldiers from nerve agents and chemical weapons.

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While Charlie Brown and his creator, Charles Schulz, share a first name, the character was actually named after one of Schulz’s art school friends, not after himself. Despite this, the big-headed character shares a lot more with his creator than a name.

In honor of what would have been Charles Schulz’s 90th birthday, let’s celebrate the man and his creation by considering how similar Schulz was to good old Chuck.

This story first appeared on Charles Schulz’s 88th birthday. 

They Both Had Terrible Valentine’s Days

We all know that Charlie Brown never receives Valentines even though he gives them out to everyone else, but he isn’t the only one that Cupid seemed to laugh at. Schulz was skipped ahead two grades as a child and was always shy and awkward around the other students in his classes. For his first grade Valentine’s Day, his mother helped him make up Valentines for everyone in class so no one would be left out. Unlike Charlie, who was ignored by everyone else, Schulz excluded himself. He was too shy to put the box of Valentines at the front of the class, so he held on to them throughout the day—and later brought them back to his mother.

They Mutually Loved The Little Red-Haired Girl

If you’re mostly familiar with the animated Peanuts classics instead of the comic strips, then you probably don’t realize just how unobtainable the Little Red-Haired Girl actually is—she’s never actually shown in the entire comic strip series. Charlie Brown talks about her and on rare occasion he gathers the muster to talk to her out of the frame, but she is never once shown in the strip.

The Little Red-Haired Girl and Charlie Brown’s obsession with her was based on a real-life obsession Charles Schulz had for a young redhead named Donna Mae Johnson. The couple met while working together at Art Instruction, an art correspondence school. Before long they had been together for three years, but when Charles asked her to marry him, she refused, only to marry another man in October of the same year. While the two remained friends, it seems Schulz never completely recovered from his broken heart. He once said of the ordeal, “I can think of no more emotionally damaging loss than to be turned down by someone whom you love very much. A person who not only turns you down, but almost immediately will marry the victor. What a bitter blow that is.”

They Both Loved Their Dogs

It isn’t too surprising to hear that Schulz had a black and white dog during his childhood that later served as the inspiration for Snoopy. Interestingly, the dog wasn’t actually a beagle though, it was a pointer named Spike. Charles’ first published drawing was of little Spike and it was featured in the newspaper comics feature Believe it or Not.

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The holidays are here again. That means family, and family means listening to insane, ill-informed debates over every subject imaginable.

But just because your relatives are old and probably a little crazy doesn’t mean everything they say is nonsense.

When it comes to some of that old down-home folksy wisdom, for example, they’re actually right.

1. You Can Predict the Weather From Joint Pain

Everyone’s related to someone who swears they can tell when it’s going to rain (or snow, or hail, or whatever) based on the pain in their joints.

“My knee is acting up!” your relative likely wails. “A storm must be coming.” And it’s not just their imagination: Joint pain really can be a good indicator of weather activity.

Shifts in barometric pressure can cause painful swelling in joints and ligaments, especially for those who have arthritis or have suffered previous injury.

Depending on a person’s sensitivity, even small shifts in barometric pressure can be noticeable; some sufferers claim that they can detect storms days in advance.

Of course, for those without arthritis or old injuries, there’s always a good old standard barometer.

2. Chicken Soup Can Help a Cold

While any kind of soup can be nice on a wintry day, chicken soup is our cultural go-to — and according to television, movies, and our dear old grandmas, that’s not all this soup is good for.

According to them, chicken soup doesn’t just warm you up; it can also cure a cold.

Sometimes those weird, spurious-sounding home remedies get passed down for a good reason, and this is one of them.

Chicken soup has properties that inhibit neutrophils, white blood cells that fight off bacteria in inflamed cells. One of their best defenses is the creation of mucus.

Unfortunately, they tend to work in a “better safe than sorry” mode, which is what leads to the extraneous amount of snot we get during a cold, making us feel like crap.

Chicken soup slows down mucus production and allows some of it to temporarily drain.

Most of the ingredients in chicken soup work together to give the meal its cold relieving powers.

It’s also worth noting that some varieties of chicken soup (even store bought!) seem to have a better effect than others. So if Mom’s recipe isn’t doing it for you, try a different one.

3. Sleep On It and Decide Tomorrow

This advice is probably older than the very concept of advice itself. Anytime someone’s on the verge of a big decision, someone will inevitably tell them to sleep on it before making up their mind.

This sounds like the kind of tip that would only be handy if you make all major decisions while severely sleep deprived, but even if you can knock out 8 hours a night without a problem, it seems that sleeping before deciding still has a huge benefit.

Because our brains work in ways that aren’t exactly rational even at the best of times, it seems that unconscious thought is far better at coming up with answers to complex decisions than conscious thought.

Even in studies where subjects were given a decision and then distracted for an hour (as opposed to picking something right away), the difference in the quality of decision-making was huge.

Since sleep is a built-in way to not have to think about … well, anything, really, for about 8 hours, it’s the simplest way to turn off the conscious part of our brain and outsource the decision-making to the unconscious.

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Actors’ relationships with TV jingles are sort of like that old riddle: What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon and three at dawn? (Or maybe more like how we start in Pampers and end up in Depends.)

Lots of well-known actors wind up paying the rent at the end of their careers doing commercials (think: Orson Welles “We will sell no wine before it’s time”), but just as many, if not more, get their first big breaks doing them, too.

The good news for us is, whether it’s hawking dish soap or expounding on the wonders of Castrol motor oil, these slightly embarrassing moments are never more than a click away.

Lindsay Lohan

Her career may have fizzled in recent years, but there was a time when Lindsay Lohan appeared in just about every commercial calling for a preteen girl with freckles.

Although she initially had little success landing roles, when it came time for an audition for a Duncan Hines commercial, Lohan told her mother that she would quit acting all together if she did not get the job. Her can-do attitude proved effective, and she was hired. She eventually went on to appear in over 60 commercials, including a Jell-O spot with Bill Cosby.

John Travolta

For a brief period in the early seventies, John Travolta seemingly made a living out of singing with men in the shower.

He starred in a pair of athletic-themed commercials, one for Safeguard and the other for Band Aids, which feature his grinning self enjoying a well-deserved rinse with his teammates. BTW: the famous Band Aid tune was penned by none other than Barry Manilow.

Farrah Fawcett

Like countless other starlets, the late Farrah Fawcett was discovered when a Hollywood publicist saw her photo in a magazine and urged her to move to Los Angeles.

It would be many years before she would receive a similar call from Aaron Spelling, producer of Charlie’s Angels. In the meantime, the only work the Texas native could find was in commercials.

And boy did she do plenty, from Ultra Brite Toothpaste to this now classic Noxzema shaving cream spot with Joe Namath.

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When you were little, your mom probably told you not to sit too close to the television, lest you irreparably harm your vision. But you can file this popular warning in the myth file, right next to “your face will get stuck that way”—in reality, sitting close to the TV won’t hurt your eyes. So why do parents the world over still say this to their kids? Because there was actually a very brief period of time where sitting close to the TV could damage your eyes—at least, if you owned a General Electric TV in the late 1960s.

In 1967, General Electric informed the public that many of their color televisions were emitting excessive x-rays due to a “factory error.” Health officials at the time estimated that the amount of radiation coming from these defective TVs was about 10 to 100,000 times higher than the rate considered acceptable. They recommended keeping children a safe distance away—but as long as you were a few feet away and didn’t watch TV for more than an hour at a time or so at close range, you were probably fine. General Electric recalled all of the defective TVs and fixed the problem by putting a leaded glass shield around the tubes, making up close and personal television viewing safe once again.

“It’s not an old wives’ tale; it’s an old technology tale,” Dr. Norman Saffra, the chairman of ophthalmology at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, told the New York Times. “Based on the world our grandmothers lived and grew up in, it was an appropriate recommendation.”

At worst, sitting excessively close to the television these days will give you a headache and possible eyestrain. This can sometimes be a problem for kids, who often watch TV while lying on the floor; looking up at the television this way causes more eyestrain than looking straight at the TV or down at it. (The same applies for computer monitors.) Eyestrain can also occur when watching TV or looking at a computer screen where the light level of the screen is very different than the light level of the surrounding environment. Thankfully, eyestrain isn’t permanently damaging, and is very easy to fix—just take a break from watching TV.

SEE ALSO: The 'Girls' Season 2 Trailer Was Just Released And Everything Is Different

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