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Blbar Singh, a Sikh man in Bakersfield, California, was looking up a package that he sent to his son’s home on the UPS website. He was surprised to see that the delivery was signed by "terrorist":
Anant Singh, Blbar’s son said, “All of my community who wears a turban and belongs to the Sikh faith are not terrorists. We are a peace-loving people and are part of the community.”
Teg Sidhu, Singh’s friend, said, “Most people may not understand the difference between Sikhs and Muslims, but at least they don’t label every turban-wearing person a terrorist.”
UPS is looking into the matter: Link – Thanks Tiff!
Neatorama reader Mark Schuette told us of his invention: a new mode of transportation powered by … dogs!
Though dog mushing is an old sport, Mark’s new twist lets you have your own urban Iditarod on a dog-powered scooter, trike, or skateboard.
Link – Thanks Mark!
Hey, it’s a win-win scenario. It’s exercise for the dogs and fun for you (Better than this form of doggie exercise!)
There’s an intriguing trend afoot: men – both gay and straight – are turning to surrogacy to become single dads.
Surrogacy experts say because the practice is not regulated, many surrogacy arrangements are handled privately by individuals. Precise figures are hard to come by, but experts say there’s no doubt the United States is experiencing a surrogacy baby boom. [...]
Surrogacy experts say gestational surrogacy has increased steadily since the advent of in vitro fertilization in the early 1980s, because it provides an extra layer of emotional and legal protection for the client. The egg donor usually does not even know the client, and unlike the legally contentious "Baby M" case from the 1980s, the surrogate is not giving birth to her genetic child.
"It rises as an issue far less frequently with gestational surrogacy, because women never see it as their child to begin with," said John Weltman, president of Circle Surrogacy. [...]
Although most of their single male clients are gay, surrogacy providers say a smaller but growing number are straight. Steven Harris, a New York malpractice and personal-injury attorney, says he gave up trying to get married when he realized his primary motive was to start a family.
advertisementHarris, 54, says he knew he made the right decision after 21-month old Ben was born. "I thought getting married was the only way to go, because I did want a family. But having Ben, I feel complete now," Harris says.
It’s fatherhood without all the hassles of a marriage – is that a good thing? Ronni Berke of CNN has the story: Link – Thanks Tiff!
Just how do sumo wrestlers bulk up for their sport? Turns out, it’s by eating soup!
Here’s a neat article by Tania Kadokura of Saveur magazine about chanko-nabe, a hearty, protein-rich one-pot meal that has been the staple of sumo warriors for over a century:
Today’s wrestlers train and live at heya (stables) run by former sumo champions, where everything from their grooming to their diet is carefully controlled. Because strength and size are factors key to success in sumo, what and how much a wrestler eats are of particular importance. No wonder, then, that the staple dish of the sumo world is a hearty, filling one-pot meal, consisting of broth, vegetables, and meat or seafood, called nabemono, or nabe for short. (Nabe, pronounced nah-bay, means pot; nabemono means things in a pot.) The dish likely dates to the Jomons, who inhabited Japan a dozen millennia ago. The inventors of pottery, they were apparently the first people to cook food in pots.
When nabe is prepared by sumo wrestlers, it’s called chanko-nabe, a name whose origin is unclear – although since chan means father and ko means child, some believe the term refers to a stable , master and his apprentices. The tradition of sumo wrestlers’ eating nabe supposedly began in the early 1900s, when star wrestler ~ turned stable master Hitachiyama ~ (sumo wrestlers traditionally go by a single ring name) made a batch for his charges one day. He quickly realized that the meal ~ usually cooked over a gas burner set on the table with diners gathered around-was not only nutritious and inexpensive but also easy to prepare and eaten in a way that reinforced the communal aspect of the stable. It wasn’t long before other stable masters were serving chanko-nabe, too.
Link – via grow-a-brain
(Photo: Christopher Hirsheimer)
At first I thought this was a tongue-in-cheek photoshopped book cover, but How to Profit From the Coming Rapture: Getting Ahead When You’re Left Behind is actually a real book.
Well, actually make that a fake real book. It’s a made up, satirical how-to book by Steve and Evie Levy, who wrote:
Are the end times near? Is the Rapture really just around the corner? Could Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson possibly be right? About 1 billion people among us believe, yes, absolutely.
And that means one thing: investment opportunities!
For those who are not as expertly versed in the Book of Revelation, Ellis Weiner and Barbara Davilman, authors of the bestselling Yiddish with Dick and Jane, helpfully offer both illumination and advice: What exactly is the Rapture, anyway? How is it different from the Tribulation? Who are the Antichrist, the Four Horsemen, and the 144,000 male virgins, and what do they want? And, most important, how can I make money during the 7 years of societal breakdown before Armaggedon?
Taking the familiar form of a how-to investment guide, HOW TO PROFIT FROM THE COMING RAPTURE instructs those readers who will certainly be left behind (Jews, Catholics, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, less ardent Protestants, and many more) on how to exploit the inevitable demise of the world in order to make a tidy profit. Sure, the rivers and seas will run with blood, locusts will swarm, mountains will move all over the place, and famine will strike. But for the five billion of us left behind, the post-Rapture world will be a time of even more unique investment opportunities.
Link
The folks over at 2pie blog have a pretty neat idea: make a snow print by pushing their faces into fresh powder on cars. The images are all concave, but make for an optical illusion of 3D sculptures!
I saw this circulating on the Net a few days ago, but didn’t get the chance to post it till now. Better late than never! Link
New Scientist has a neat article about Elektro, the world’s first celebrity robot, and Jack Weeks, who is trying to rebuild the golden robot he found in the basement of his childhood home:
Elektro was built in 1937 at Westinghouse’s plant in Mansfield, Ohio, as a promotional aid to advertise its household products. By pouring all its electrical know-how into the robot, the company created a machine that could walk, talk, smoke and perform counting tricks. Elektro rapidly became a star, and received a rapturous welcome at the New York World’s Fair in 1939.
The incredible ingenuity of Elektro’s design was topped off by his sleek exterior. There was no remote control. Instead, the robot relied on a combination of motors, photoelectric cells, telephone relays and record players to perform 26 preprogrammed routines, each one initiated by voice commands from a human co-star. These were spoken into a telephone connected to the robot’s chest, where circuitry converted each syllable into a pulse of light and transmitted it to a photoelectric cell. A second circuit added up the syllables and triggered relays to operate the corresponding electromechanical functions: a command with three syllables, for example, would start the robot’s routine, and four syllables would stop it. As part of these routines, Elektro would raise and lower his arms, turn his head, move his mouth, count on his fingers and even smoke a cigarette and puff out smoke.
The robot could also respond to questions by using relays to switch between a bank of phonographs playing 78 rpm voice recordings that were hidden behind a curtain. This gave Elektro a vocabulary of 700 words and an extensive repertoire of banter: "I am a smart fellow as I have a very fine brain of 48 electrical relays," he would tell the crowd. "It works just like a telephone switchboard. If I get a wrong number I can always blame the operator. And by the way, I see a lot of good numbers out in our audience today."
Link – via Gizmodo (who has a video clip of Elektro at the 1939 New York World’s Fair)
Photo: Colorado Uerling
Dark Roasted Blend has a neat post about all sorts of weird cloud formations. This one above is a Punch Hole Cloud:
Punch Hole Clouds may appear as a circular or oval holes in a layer of supercooled clouds; sometimes they assume a form of a perfect circle and persist for quite a long time, drifting together with the cloud layer. One explanation seems to blame the air traffic (the jet contrail intersections) combined with a thermal inversion (a circular motion of a rising warm air).
Competitive eater Takeru Kobayashi {wiki} has won awards for eating hot dogs, hamburgers, dumplings, bratwurst, lobster rolls, cow brains, and rice balls. But he completely gave up on the world record at a fruitcake eating competition!
With only a 1/2 pound to go at 8 minutes, Kobayashi began crumbling the nutty cake before jamming it into his mouth, a technique that seemed effective.
“Koby! Koby! Koby!” the crowd of about two dozen shouted, as his pace quickened.
By 8 minutes and 35 seconds, Sonya Thomas’ 2001 record was still almost a pound out of his reach. In the end, Kobayashi managed to eat 4 pounds and 8 ounces.
“It was very difficult to eat because it was so dense,” Kobayashi said through a translator, admitting that he had never eaten the cake before.
The fruitcake record remains at 4 pounds 14 ounces, eaten in ten minutes. The event held Friday raised funds for a food bank in New York City. Link -via Unique Daily
(image credit: Handschuh/News)
29-year-old James Joseph Cialella was arrested in Philadelphia Thursday night for shooting another patron at a movie theater because the man and his family were talking during the movie.
Police said Cialella told the man’s family to be quiet, then threw popcorn at the man’s son. The victim, whom television reports identified as Woffard Lomax, told police that Cialella was walking toward his family when he stood up and was shot.
Detectives called to the United Artists Riverview Stadium theater in South Philadelphia found Cialella carrying the weapon, a .380-caliber handgun, in his waistband, police said.
Lt. Frank Vanore called the incident “scary that it gets to that level of violence from being too noisy during a movie.”
The 31-year-old victim was released from the hospital and had no comment. Cialella faces six charges, including attempted murder. Link -Thanks, Geekazoid!
(image credit: Philadelphia Police Department)
