The formation of communities in ancient history seems pretty straightforward: families grew and became tribes, and when they found a good place to live, they settled down and became towns. But how, why, and when did nations, kingdoms, and other state entities emerge? It's much harder to trace the history of civilization in the era before writing was invented, so from what we know now, the first state came about in Mesopotamia more than 5,000 years ago, and was followed by Egypt which took the idea to the extreme. 

Someone somewhere came up with an idea to consolidate different communities in the same general area and form a government over them. This offers some benefits to all by building infrastructure, imposing laws, and regulating trade between communities. But you won't be surprised that, according to the latest theories, it began with a profit motive. After all, ancient history is full of people paying tribute to a king. Read about the reasons and mechanisms behind the rise of states at the Conversation. -via Damn Interesting   

(Image credit: Prof. Mortel) 

Holidays are all about tradition. The wider culture builds some core traditions, but each family or group that celebrates together also builds their own unique traditions. "We always have orange danish rolls on Thanksgiving morning." Why, Grandpa? "Because your great-great-great grandpa liked them. It's tradition." There's an old story that illustrates this phenomenon. 

Then there are the lesser-publicized but goofier things that go into Thanksgiving that arose in order to accommodate a great number of family members and to liven up the celebration. Penn Holderness wrote a little song about these common Thanksgiving memories, and has photographic evidence. You'll probably recognize some of them from your own experience. Rickety folding table for the kids? Hide an overcooked turkey with gravy? Lawn chairs at the table? Take pictures in funny hats? Mac and cheese because the kids won't eat anything else? These are the things we do to get everyone together. We may pretend the holiday is about gratitude, or the food, but it's the company that makes Thanksgiving.

  

Otters are pretty smart. They're quite cute, too. And you'll be surprised by this, but otters can smell underwater. How does an air breathing mammal do that? They manipulate the air bubbles in their noses and analyze them after the bubble has been exposed to water. When Michael Hadsel learned this fact, he went out and bought some otters. 

Hadsel has a search and rescue company. He's trained dogs for this work for years, but always wanted to find a way to locate bodies that were hidden in water. His work with the first two otters convinced him that they could do this work, and then he got a young orphaned otter pup he named Splash. Splash was trained from a young age, and is now the nation's first search and rescue otter. In his first professional search, he located a weapon that had been used in a murder 25 years earlier. Splash has since participated in 20 other recovery missions and has found four bodies. Read about Splash and his talents at Outside Online, or here if you are out of free articles. -via Metafilter 

Frankenstein was in theaters for only three weeks and made less than half a million dollars in ticket sales. To be fair, that limited run in select theaters was just enough to make the movie eligible for awards, because it's a Netflix movie. Guillermo Del Toro spent years imagining a Frankenstein film that stayed closer to Mary Shelley's original story, and this is it. Still, "closer" is a relative term. As this Honest Trailer points out, the philosophical questions of life and death and playing God are contemplative in the book, but screamed out in the movie, because who has time for subtlety these days?  

Frankenstein looks closely into Victor Frankenstein's background and upbringing, but doesn't try to make him into a sympathetic villain. The creature he creates is sadly immortal. And the one woman in the main cast has romantic connections to three of the men, including the creature. Screen Junkies finds plenty to pick on in this Honest Trailer, but it still leaves me wanting to see the movie. Just not enough to pay for Netflix. 

Variety has posted their list of The 100 Best Comedy Movies of All Time. Oh yes, it's full of funny movies, but ranking them as the best of all time is a venture fraught with peril, unless the purpose is to start a fight in the internet forums. First off, is it really fair to include stand up specials in a ranking of movies? Next, how does one define a comedy movie? I never thought of Pretty Woman as a comedy. Or Everything Everywhere All at Once, or Broadcast News. That in itself is subjective- others are just as baffled, but by different movies. 

The real trouble with such a list is that it doesn't include the funniest movie you've ever seen, which is different for everyone. The discussion at Metafilter is full of other films that should have been included. Really, how did Ace Ventura make the list but not Raising Arizona or Ghostbusters? And where are the foreign films? But honestly, if you cared less about the ranking and used the list to find something new to watch (at both links), you'd be way ahead. 

(Image credit: Variety) 

A few months ago, Julien Cohen brought us a flashmob performance of "Bohemian Rhapsody" in Paris. For Christmas, he's produced an even bigger show. This is not what you'd normally think of as a flashmob, since the crowd had gathered for the official lighting of holiday decorations of the Comité du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. They were expecting a ceremony and maybe some entertainment, but they weren't expecting this. The music starts with angelic children's voices from the upper windows, gradually augmented with violins, horns, guitar, singing voices emerging from the crowd, and Cohen on the piano playing "Carol of the Bells." Five-year-old model Elsa has the honor of turning on the lights. 

The one hundred or so musicians included Violin Phonix, Guitar Olly, and even a marching band from the French Garde Républicaine. The musicians are listed at the YouTube page with their Instagram links. Alas, there's no sign of Les Fo'Plafonds, the French group in the video beneath this one, but this song should get you in the holiday spirit! 

Les Fo'Plafonds is a French musical ensemble that makes instruments with found objects and plays them masterfully with covers of popular songs. In this video, they recreate Henry Mancini's iconic jazz theme for The Pink Panther film series. They use plastic pipes, rubber chickens, steel drums, and an impressively large number of plastic pink pigs.

The other covers by Les Fo'Plafonds include the theme to The Smurfs, AC/DC's "Thunderstruck" featuring a refrigerator door and a toaster, the Simpsons theme with bottles, PVC pipe, and a steam iron.

-via The Awesomer

Black Friday is coming. Although the crowding and violence has been assuaged somewhat in recent years by expanded schedules and Cyber Monday, it's still an opportunity for over-the-top sales promotions. One such promotion is for a gift that you never thought about giving for Christmas (unless it was a gift to a food bank). Introducing the 65-Inch Mac Friday Box from Kraft. It's a huge box that contains 65 regular boxes of Kraft macaroni and cheese. 

The kicker is that the box itself is the size and shape of one that would contain a flatscreen TV. Wrap this up, put it under the Christmas tree, and everyone is going to assume that's what it is. Imagine their surprise when they open it! Yeah, it sounds like a cruel prank, but underneath, it's a really good deal. The price is only $19.37, which means each regular-sized box is under 30 cents. For someone who loves macaroni and cheese, that's between a two-month and a year's supply. 

Don't count on getting your hands on one of these. They will only be available through Walmart, starting at midnight on Friday. You can imagine that stores will have a very limited supply, and cameras will be trained on them for promotional purposes. -via reddit 

A scheme to control the invasive European Green Crab in British Columbia was knocked for a loop when many of the traps were found to have been dragged back to shore. Cameras set up to catch the culprit found it was a wolf. The wolf knew what was in the trap situated out in the water, and took deliberate and obviously practiced steps to retrieve the buoy, then use it to drag the trap to shore. Then the wolf disabled the trap and helped herself to the bait inside.  

Is this an example of tool use? It is the first such intricately planned behavior observed in a wild wolf, but psychologists are arguing over whether the wolf was using a tool to achieve a goal. That comes down to the definition of "tool use." The wolf deliberately used the buoy and rope to bring the trap in, but the animal did not change the orientation of the rope to get it done. However you look at it, this is a clever wolf. Did she figure this out on her own, or are there many wolves that pass this technique to each other? While complicated, it's easier than catching a free-swimming fish. 

When you think of a box office bomb, two big films from the '80s come to mind. In 1980, the Western Heaven's Gate cost around $40 million to make, an enormous budget at the time, and only sold $3.5 million in tickets. The loss was so bad that the studio was sold. The 1987 movie Ishtar starred Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman, so you'd think it was destined to be a hit. It was not. The budget of $55 million only returned a box office of $14.4 million. 

Movie budgets have only risen since then. It may cost hundreds of millions to make a movie, and quite a few more million to market it. Sometimes this pays off, such as when John Cameron directs, but it's not uncommon for a movie flop to lose $200 million dollars these days. Cracked has a list of 15 of the biggest movie bombs of the past 30 years, and the preposterous amounts of money they lost. You'll look at these and say, "I've heard of that one, but I never bothered to go see it." 

In the cold and mountainous regions of Europe, winter is dark and full of monsters, and the festivals are extremely metal. This video from last year has been making the rounds, although it is often mislabeled- this version identifies it as a Nordic Krampus parade. What we are seeing is a Perchten parade in Austria, usually held on January 5th or 6th. The role of the Perchten is to drive away the old year and the evil spirits that inhabit it. The huge jingle bells on their butts help. You also see the witch Frau Perchta at the beginning. Perchten are not to be confused with Krampus, another Austrian winter demon, who parades on December 5th. But they have a lot of company. 

A similar festival in Croatia features the Zvončari. In Hungary, they have Busójárás. In Slovenia, the monsters are Kurenti. In Bulgaria, it's the Kukeri that chase away evil spirits. These monsters were once part of the winter solstice celebrations, but now are more often associated with Christmas, Carnival, Lent, or Easter. -via Everlasting Blort 

Although I prefer to attribute the origin of the Reuben sandwich to divine intervention into the fallen human world, a more historical acknowledgment belongs to a man named Reuben who invented the sandwich for his weekly poker games at the Blackstone Hotel in Omaha, Nebraska.

The Crescent Moon Alehouse across the street from that hotel produces its Reubens in the classical style. It also holds an annual ReubenFest that celebrate's America's greatest sandwich. Featured variants of the Reuben include the Reuben Chimichanga and Reuben Pierogi.

This is one of sixteen restaurants that Takeout insists are the best in the country for Reubens.

My fondest memory of the Reuben is a now long-defunct Greek restaurant named The Oven on Dolly Ridge Road in Birmingham, Alabama that served Reubens on pumpernickel buns the size of footballs. They were, alas, too good for this world.

Photo: Crescent Moon

How much do you really know about Antarctica? It's cold, icy, has penguins, and it's dark for half a year at a time. Oh yeah, and it's where the South Pole is. Neatorama readers know that the American science station is McMurdo, Scott Base is for New Zealand, and the Russians have Vostok Station near the pole. That's more than most people know, but certain "factoids" have snuck into what people say about the continent. Frankly, I have never heard any of these misconceptions, but that may be because of the company I keep. No, polar bears do not live in Antarctica. The name comes from the North Pole. 

But even if you never believed any of these misconceptions, you'll learn some interesting things about Antarctica, like how it was discovered, how it came to be shared between nations, and why penguins can't fly. You'll even learn about polar bears, even though they have nothing to do with Antarctica. Read the truth about those five misconceptions at Mental Floss. 

(Image credit: ravas51)

Nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon, and clove are spices we mainly associate with autumn and Christmas because they are used in various combinations in gingerbread, egg nog, fruit cake, and pumpkin pie. Well, okay, cinnamon is used year round, but you get my drift. Before the 21st century, you rarely saw these spices outside of the kitchen. There were some soaps and candles with those spices, but they weren't labeled as pumpkin. There was McCormick's pumpkin pie spice, but no one used it for anything besides pie. 

Then in 2003, Starbucks introduced their Pumpkin Spice Latte, and suddenly the term "pumpkin spice" was everywhere, despite the fact that the Starbucks drink contained no pumpkin at the time, and neither did the other products. The scent became so popular that we had jokes like the pumpkin spice oil change and pumpkin spice condoms. 

Still, the scent of those spices and the memories they evoke are pretty powerful. Pumpkin may be American, but the spices that go into it have a bloody colonial history. Read about how those components came together in a history of pumpkin spice at BBC Travel. -via Nag on the Lake 

The latest collaboration from Playing for Change (previously at Neatorama) is the 1975 song by War "Why Can't We Be Friends?" The theme is bringing disparate people together fits right in with the organization's ethos of connecting people from around the world through music through their Song Around the World series. The song consists of couplets, some of which illustrate why people are not friends, followed by the chorus which repeats the title, offering to bridge the gap. It's the chorus that sticks with you, and may be your earworm for the day.   

Also, this is a 50th anniversary celebration of the song and the album of the same name. That's what makes it astonishing that they were able to include seven surviving members of the band War among the featured musicians. The players in this collaboration are listed at the YouTube page. You can learn more about this song and see other videos from the Song Around the World series at their website.