Here’s what we got to the bottom of in our exploration of astrology in pop culture:

• There’s no scientific evidence to back up astrology in the sense of planets through constellations affecting events or people.
• In Chinese astrology, Holly is a metal pig, and I’m a something rabbit. (I tried to look this up and failed.)
• U.S. interest in astrology started gearing up in the ’60s
• Reasons why people tend to believe astrology: the Forer effect, aka the Barnum Effect, and confirmation bias/expectation confirmation
• Astrology vs. the Myers-Briggs type indicator
• The language of horoscopes and how they lure people into belief
• Birth month correlations with schizophrenia, MS and dyslexia (which doesn’t actually support astrology)
• Another thing I somehow believe while knowing it’s not real: ghosts
• When you get booed off stage, that’s just ghosts applauding, which is wisdom from Sharon Needles on “Ru Paul’s Drag Race“
• Precession and why that means the signs aren’t where they were when zodiac astrology was invented
• Conception astrology vs. birth astrology
• Free Will Astrology
• Listener mail! From Hannah in response to our episode Crazy Pet People
• How Horoscopes Work (from HowStuffWorks) or birthday astrology (from TLC)
• Episode link: Astrology: What’s PopStuff’s Sign?

My research:

• Komath, Manoj. “Testing astrology.” Current Science. Vol. 96, No. 12. June 2009.
• Munro, Geoffrey D. “Using Daily Horoscopes to Demonstrate Expectancy Confirmation.”
• Svensen, Stuart and Ken White. “A Content Analysis of Horoscopes.” Vol. 121, Issue 1. Feb. 1995.
• Truzzi, Marcello. “Astrology as Popular Culture.” Vol. 8, Issue 4. Teaching of Psychology. Vol. 7, Issue 2, 2000.

Holly’s research:

• Psychology of Astrology
• Science Confirms Astrology!
• Cross-Cultural Differences in the Acceptance of Barnum Profiles Supposedly Derived From Western Versus Chinese Astrology

You can follow PopStuff on Twitter at @PopStuffHSW, and you can keep up with us on the official PopStuff Facebook page.

A Modern Reproduction of the Mayan Calendar (Courtesy of Truthanado, via Wikimedia Commons.)

I don’t know about you, but I’m extremely skeptical when it comes to doomsday predictions.

After all, people have been predicting the end of the world since the dawn of recorded history. Now, I’m not talking about large-scale, gradual catastrophes like the looming threat of environmental damage or the consequences of overpopulation. I’m talking about the supernatural, near-instant stuff: Those old-school, the End is Nigh, Age of Aquarius predictions. These prophecies often share a few common factors. First, there’s the idea that, for one reason or another, this apocalypse will occur within our lifetimes. In the case of doomsday cults, we can equate this with the ‘hard sell’ tactics of telemarketers. “Act now,” the message goes, “or you’ll regret it soon.”

Second, there’s the idea that taking certain actions — whether joining a cult or stockpiling ammunition — will put you in a better position post-apocalypse. In cults, these preparations can include some real doozies, such as giving away all your worldly possessions or abandoning family members. Once someone’s taken these actions, their beliefs tend to strengthen in a sort of retroactive rationalization.

“Surely I’m doing the right thing,” says the newest member of the Manson family, “I mean, otherwise I’d be crazy.”

Riiiight.

But what about apocalyptic predictions that don’t rely on this manipulative 1-2 punch? They can take a very different path. In the age of the internet, they can even go viral. That’s what happened with the Mayan calendar. For years various people have claimed that it predicts the end of the world as we know it.

Here’s the gist: Based on our modern understanding of the Mayan calendar, loads and loads of people believe the world will either end or undergo a profound change on December 21st, 2012. Why? Because A) the Mayan calendar is a complex system, B) people often mistake complexity for accuracy, and C) that’s when the Mayan calendar ends: December 21st, 2012. Call your exes and apologize now, folks, because time is running out.

Or is it?

Not according to the Mayans. In 2010 a team of archaeologists from Boston University found a mural holding the oldest known example of the Mayan calendar. The experts agree that this thing looks legit. It also extends far past the now-infamous month of December, 2012. So the verdict is in: The Mayan calendar does not end on December of this year. How do we know? It all goes back to the b’ak’tuns.

A b’ak’tun is a time period comprised of 144,000 days, and the end of each b’ak’tun marks a significant turning point. Think of it more like the next chapter in a novel, rather than the end of the story. Most Mayan calendars have a 13 b’ak’tun span. This newly-discovered calendar goes up to 17. If you were planning a Mayan-themed ‘End of the World’ party, you may want to rethink the theme – but don’t trash your post-apocalyptic plans just yet: There are several other doomsday predictions for 2012, including fears of coronal mass ejections or the return of a mysterious hidden planet. Check out our video below to learn more about 2012′s doomsday scenarios:

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But that was years ago. Today Central Park is a place for residents to escape the hustle and bustle of the city, and it’s a wonderful spot for visitors to enjoy works of art and sculpture, monuments and fountains, and the natural beauty park designers Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux were hoping to achieve. We talked about a few of these in the podcast, but we wanted to include several more that are also worth a mention.

Monuments

• 107th United States Infantry — This monument is dedicated to the soldiers who fought in World War I. The sculptor, Karl Illava, was a sergeant with the 107th Infantry.
• Balto — Balto is the dog that led the final sled dog team that transported lifesaving medicine from Anchorage to Nome, Alaska, that prevented a deadly diphtheria outbreak in 1925. Newspapers and radio around the world followed the trek, and Balto quickly became a national hero.

Sculptures

• Charles B. Stover Bench — This 20-foot granite bench is also known as the “Whisper Bench,” because if you whisper into one end, you can actually hear it at the other side.
• Indian Hunter — This is the first sculpture in Central Park by an American artist, John Quincy Adams Ward. This sculpture shows a hunter, his bow and arrow in hand, restraining his faithful hunting dog.
• Osborn Gates — These cast-bronze gates at the entrance of the Ancient Playground were created by renowned sculptor Paul Manship and are considered one of the most important works of art in Central park.
• Vanderbilt Gate — This gate at the entrance to the Conservatory Garden originally stood in front of the Vanderbilt mansion at Fifth Avenue and 58th Street and is also considered one of the finest examples of wrought iron work in the city.

Bridges

• Eaglevale Arch — Sometimes referred to as the 77th Street Stone Arch, this is the park’s only double arch bridge.
• Gapstow Bridge — This iconic Central Park bridge spans the pond at 59th Street, and many think it resembles the Ponte di San Francesco in San Remo, Italy.

Points of Interest

• Azalea Pond — Restored by the Conservancy in 2004, Azalea Pond is flanked with century-old azalea plants on its southern shore. It’s one of the most popular spots in the park for bird watching.
• Conservatory Garden — The Conservatory Garden features three distinct gardens styles: Italian, French and English. It’s officially designated Quiet Zone and is ideal for taking photos, a laid-back walk or just relaxing.
• Seneca Village Site — Originally located from 81st to 89th Streets between Seventh and Eighth Avenues in what is now a section of Central Park, Seneca Village is important to the history of New York City because it may possibly have been Manhattan’s first prominent community of African American property owners.
• Hallett Nature Sanctuary — This section of the park was closed to the public in 1934 and set aside for wildlife; however, you can book a guided tour by reservation.

Recreation & Playgrounds

• Wollman Rink
• Victorian Gardens Amusement Park
• Tennis Courts
• Loeb Boathouse
• Carousel
• Handball Courts
• Heckscher Ballfields
• Abraham and Joseph Spector Playground
• Ancient Playground
• Billy Johnson Playground
• Robert Bendheim Playground
• Wild West Playground

Practical Info:

How to Get There: Central Park is located at 59th Street to 106th Street, and between Fifth and Eighth Avenues in Manhattan

When to Go: Central Park is open every day of the year from 6 a.m. until 1 a.m.

You can find the Coolest Stuff on the Planet podcast on iTunes and the RSS feed. To keep up with us daily, follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind,Julie and I discuss your survival plan. You’ll find that awesome HSW flight safety infographic right here (also embedded below) and the “Popular Mechanics” article we discuss resides on the other end of this link. And don’t forget the article “How to Survive a Plane Crash.”

So there you have it! You can find the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast on iTunes, Zune and the RSS feed. And don’t forget the free HowStuffWorks App!

Skull still intact? Follow Stuff to Blow Your Mind on Twitter and Facebook.

• The inspiration for this podcast: The Pop Culture Association/American Culture Association National Conference, and a paper I heard therein, “Geek for Sale: Commodification of Fan Identity“
• The steps of collecting, as described in “Collectors and Collecting: A Social Psychological Perspective“
• The psychology of collecting
• Madonna’s Frida Kahlo collection
• Beanie Babies
• Cabinets of curiosities
• Links between creativity and collection
• G.I. Joe collection and modification
• Virtual collections in video games, like World of Warcraft vanity pets or colors of wool in Minecraft
• Types of collectors and what motivates them
• TV shows of people who collect, and how the collecting is often depicted as a pathology
• Listener mail! It’s another message about our Swearing episode, this one from Robert
• How Comic Books Work
• Episode link: Collecting: PopStuff’s Cabinet of Curiosities

My research:

• Brown, Jeffrey A. “Comic Book Fandom and Cultural Capital.” Journal of Popular Culture.  Vol. 30, No. 4, March 2004.
• McIntosh, William D. and Brandon Schmeichel. “Collectors and Collecting: A Social Psychological Perspective.” Leisure Sciences. Vol. 26. 2004.

Holly’s research:

• Psychology of Collecting
• The Collection Connection to Creativity

You can follow PopStuff on Twitter at @PopStuffHSW, and you can keep up with us on the official PopStuff Facebook page.

Well, Liam, we’ve got some good news and some bad news. The good news: We’ve figured out the answer. The bad news? There’s more than one answer, and it depends on the type of engine we’re exploring. For instance, should we look at the world’s largest car engine, or simply the world’s largest engine? For the sake of brevity, let’s look at the world’s largest diesel engine. You can’t fit it in your car. Or your truck, for that matter. Heck, you couldn’t even squeeze this bad boy into the world’s largest aircraft. You see, the world’s largest engine is the Wärtsilä-Sulzer RTA96-C, and it’s built for boats. Check out the video for a closer look:

Really, really big boats. Cargo ships weighing thousands of tons use this enormous 14-cylinder, two-stroke diesel engine to move massive amounts of almost everything across the world’s oceans. This engine also comes in smaller varieties, with as few as 6 cylinders (but you still can’t fit in a Monte Carlo — I checked). The good folks over at Quality Junkyard have a great write-up on the engine’s specifications, but we’ll highlight the most impressive stuff here:

Length: 89 feet

Height: 44 feet

Total weight: 2,300 tons

Total horsepower: 109,000-114,000

At its most economical setting, it can still consume over 1,600 gallons of heavy fuel per hour. The Wärtsilä-Sulzer RTA96-C entered service in 2006, and as of 2011, there were 25 of these units in operation, with more than 50 others on order.

Thanks for writing in, Liam! We also appreciate your nickname recommendations (Scott “Super Bee” Benjamin and Ben “Big Block” Bowlin).

Want to ask us a question? Drop us a line at Twitter, or befriend us on Facebook. And one more thing: Let us know if you’ve seen this monstrous engine in real life!

But Frontage and Sony aren’t the only GPS-using, geoglyph-drawing artists out there, and you don’t really need a special nav device to draw a picture with your bicycle. For example, Atlantic Cities recently reported on an eighth-grade science teacher named Michael Wallace who’s been using the GPS tracking on his phone to cycle out geoglyphs in Baltimore, Md., since 2010. So far he’s mapped out and cycled 120 geoglyphs (see his gallery) and has plans for 50 more.

I’d imagine it makes for some interesting sightseeing on rides, since you’d probably wind up on some strange street in a desperate attempt to draw the eye of a gargoyle or the fin of a shark. And who says you have to bike it? You could run it. You could walk it. You could skate it. You could crawl it. Cities always look different when you’re going slowly. No telling what you’d witness while you draw.

Gargoyle (Michael Wallace)

Shark (Michael Wallace)

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The man himself: Timothy Leary. (Chip Simons/Science Faction/Getty)

Can psychedelic drugs help prepare terminal patients for death? Can substances like MDMA ease the dying through the ultimate transcendent experience? While the scientific study of psychedelic experience has been somewhat of a touchy subject since the 1960s, some researchers continue to seek out the beneficial aspects of these powerful, mind-altering substances. What actually goes on inside the mind during a “trip” and how might we use that to ease our passage through death?

In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Julie and I discuss what some researchers believe may be the future of end-of-life- care. We even discuss Timothy Leary somewhat, who is a far more fascinating figure that you might suspect.

Even as we were recording this one, my mind turned to the Tibetan Book of the Dead, which ensures that the dying consciousness moves safely through eight stages of death to the death point — and beyond. Discussion of this didn’t come up organically in our discussion, but if you’d like to explore that topic, I suggest reading my article “How Sky Burial Works.” For a deep dive, Robert Thurman’s translation of the book itself is worth a read.

So there you have it! You can find the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast on iTunes, Zune and the RSS feed. And don’t forget the free HowStuffWorks App!

Skull still intact? Follow Stuff to Blow Your Mind on Twitter and Facebook.

Titan’s entire musical selection. (Image via Amazon)

Travel to Saturn’s frozen moon of Titan and you’ll discover lakes of liquid methane, thick smog clouds and exactly 13 minutes and 46 seconds worth of Earth music.

Back in 1997, French musicians Julien Civange and Louis Haeri composed four tracks to place aboard ESA’s Titan-bound Huygens probe, which would in turn make the seven-year journey board NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. Dubbed “Music2Titan,” the EP breaks down as follows:

1. Lalala: A rock instrumental celebrating the scientists who made the trip possible.

2. Bald James Deans: Another rock track, this time marking the separation between the Cassini spacecraft and the Huygens probe.

3. Hot Time: Probably the best track on Titan, this psychedelic rock instrumental represents the mysteries of moon’s surface.

4. No Love: A melancholic, Philip K. Dick-inspired piece about humanity’s eventual exodus to other worlds.

“Music2Titan” landed in 2005, but still hasn’t found an audience among possible Titanian life forms. Earthlings, however, can sample the tracks and purchase them on Amazon and iTunes.

But  there are other musical means of exploring our future amid the stars. Let’s look at few couple of them…

“Possible Sounds of Möbius” by Sistema
Inspired by the likes of Boards of Canada, the Human League* and Tangerine Dream, Spanish electronic artist Manel Ruíz Lens AKA Sistema collects a decade’s worth of his sonic creations in this 2012 release. Tracks like “Observatorio de stars” take the listener on an escalating journey through the cosmos. Other tracks range from ambient and dreamy to dirty, retro electronica. You can stream the whole album through Spain’s Playground Magazine:

“Drokk” by Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury
We suffered one Judge Dredd movie back in 1995 and we’re slated to endure another one later this year. In the meantime Geoff Barrow (of Portishead fame) and composer Ben Salisbury have given us “Drokk: Music Inspired by Mega-City One.” Heavily inspired by the synthtastic sci-fi of such films as “Terminator” and “John Carpenter’s The Thing,” the album serves as dark, brooding soundtrack for a non-existent grim-dark “2000 AD” film. It’s wonderful background music you’re your latest sci-fi read, Dredd or otherwise. Fittingly enough for this post, one of the tracks is called “Titan Bound.” Preview the whole album via Band Camp:

The Sci-Fi Sounds of Alan Howarth
Ah, but why not go right back to the source? Barrow and Salisbury clearly have a rich appreciation for the work of soundtrack and sound design legend Alan Howarth. The man’s sound design credits include “Total Recall” and the first six “Star Trek” movies, but he’s most beloved for his soundtrack collaborations with John Carpenter on such films as “Escape From New York” and “Big Trouble in Little China.”

Howarth’s music is widely available for purchase online — including this excellent collection of various sci-fi blip and beeps from his sound design work. If you can find it, his Resident Adviser mix from 2010 is amazing.

Howarth also occasionally packs up his gear for a live performance or two. Here he is performing the “Escape From New York” soundtrack live at the 2011 Unsound Festival in New York:

* Did you know that The Human League took their name from a faction in the space war board game “Starforce: Alpha Centauri?”

So there you have it! You can find the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast on iTunes, Zune and the RSS feed. And don’t forget the free HowStuffWorks App!

Skull still intact? Follow Stuff to Blow Your Mind on Twitter and Facebook.

It takes place this weekend. So if you’re cat lover who can forgive the awful origins of this event, get yourself to Belgium to celebrate felines. Here’s a preview: a giant cat wearing a top hat …

Cieper the Cat at Kattenstoet in 2009 (David Edgar/Wikimedia Commons)

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