It's not every TV program that features a widower and his two sons living in paradise, seemingly without a care in the world. Oh, and the kids have a crime-fighting dolphin for a pet, this being Flipper. Back in the swinging sixties this was another must-see TV series for me, what with the gorgeous underwater photography and enviable lifestyle of a kid my own age. All I had was a dog.

Flipper was a TV series based on a pair of successful feature films, but due to budget restraints and the need to wrap things up quickly each week for a 30 minute program, great changes were made to its format. From the IMDb:

It's an entertaining show full of unending adventures and exciting plots, with the boys and their father partnering up with Flipper to save the day from danger and petty crooks. The series also highlights the close bond between the family and their heartwarming friendship with Flipper.

Flipper has saved the family from mishaps a number of times throughout the show, and the elements of innocence, family-bond and old-fashion morals make this a great TV series for the entire general audience - elements that are sorely missing in much of the so-called shows Hollywood throws out today.

I concur. They don't hardly make them like this no more, for whatever reason, but a more family-friendly series has never been on television. However, this series would never succeed in today's toxic social environment. Too bad for us.

YouTube offers many if not all episodes, two of which are embedded below, and they also seem to be available on Hulu. Parents - if you long for 'safe' television that you can watch with young children, this now-55 year old series may be the answer.

Woodstock 50 has been cancelled https://t.co/y2pTcYLPen#Woodstock50 pic.twitter.com/8jE3QXyheb

— billboard (@billboard) April 29, 2019

It appears that the music festival to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Woodstock is in trouble. The tickets for Woodstock 50 were supposed to go on sale on April 22, but they did not. There is as yet no new date for ticket sales, and no ticket price yet. On Monday, the festival's financial backer, Dentsu Aegis Network, announced they had decided the project was not worth it.

As a result and after careful consideration, Dentsu Aegis Network’s Amplifi Live, a partner of Woodstock 50, has decided to cancel the festival.  As difficult as it is, we believe this is the most prudent decision for all parties involved.

However, the festival's organizers said that Dentsu Aegis' statement was premature, and they are committed to the festival in August. A statement from Woodstock 50 LLC said, in part,

We are committed to ensuring that the 50th Anniversary of Woodstock is marked with a festival deserving of its iconic name and place in American history and culture,” Woodstock 50 LLC said in a statement. “Although our financial partner is withdrawing,  we will of course be continuing with the planning of the festival and intend to bring on new partners.

But that's all we know for now. Of course, Twitter users had a field day with the news, with many jokes comparing the project with the notorious Fyre Fest. You can see some of that at the Daily Dot.

To commemorate the 40th anniversary of the groundbreaking science fiction-horror film Alien, artist Serene Teh created flip book art to retell the story in hand-drawn animation -in shortened form, of course. It won't mean much to someone who hasn't seen the movie. Is there anyone who hasn't seen the movie? -via Laughing Squid

Mark Pain gives us here a funny little ironic comic strip, titled "Swear Jar", which is about someone who set out to swear less by putting up a swear jar to give him an incentive. The outcome of the exercise turns out to be quite bittersweet. Check out more of his material on his website. via Geeks Are Sexy

(Image credit: Mark Pain/Pain Train Comics)

As somebody who doesn't really think that the supernatural is something to be afraid of, I usually wouldn't know how to react to spooky tales and ghost stories. I don't dismiss them but I'm not sure whether to be afraid of them or not.

Readling or listening one can unsettle you though, and these interesting stories about Charterhouse, and the creature that supposedly resides in it, seems likely enough to pique someone's curiosity but at the same time compel them to take every precaution necessary not to encounter said creature or any other phantoms that lurk in the area.

As usual, there will be disappearances, hearing sounds or voices where there should be none, and finding yourself being interrupted in the middle of the night by an intruder who can pass through any barrier. These are the stories of Charterhouse. And it gives even the best of us the heebie-jeebies.

(Image credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Most of us work from Monday to Friday. At weekends, we get much rest that our bodies deserve in order to make up for the rest we did not get on the weekdays when we still work. And then comes Monday again — the day that most of us dread. And then we go back to this tiresome cycle, working again from Monday to Friday, and then getting rest or having fun on the weekends.

Oftentimes, when we work, we get tired at the middle of the week, and we get less productive and we perform not-so-well. We also neglect other duties aside from our job duties as we work on weekdays. An Australian company, tries to solve this problem, by dividing the whole week into two mini-weeks. Would you work in a company that gives you a 5-day pay for 4 days work? I will absolutely say yes to that.

A mid-week break lets staff go to the gym, get on top of house work, look after young children, schedule appointments, work on their start-up or just watch Netflix. Sometimes, they’ll catch up on work. Sick days are down, staff satisfaction is up... “You get that Monday feeling a couple of times a week.”

You might ask, “Why Wednesday?”

Professor Jarrod Haar isn’t surprised that dropping Wednesday has proven so successful for Versa. As professor of human resource management at Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand, as part of his own research Haar has interviewed employees on rotating four-day weeks, and found they most enjoyed the Wednesdays off.

For employers, shutting down mid-week gives “more bang for your buck”. he says. “The Wednesday break means you return to Thursday fresh, and this is when people feel most productive.”

More details at BBC.

(Image Credit: Daniel Hansen/ Unsplash)

Obesity and Type 2 diabetes cases have been growing in number worldwide within the past 3 decades. This is largely caused by overindulging in high-calorie foods such as eggs, pasta, chocolate, and cheese. Overeating impairs blood sugar control and insular levels. With these things in mind, it can be said that overeating is bad. However, overeating is not bad in itself. It is bad when overeating is done for long periods of time, as this research paper suggests.

Although the amount of visceral fat that surrounds internal organs increased substantially, short-term overeating did not have a significant effect on the men's weight or fat mass. In addition, fasting levels of blood sugar and C-peptide--an amino acid the body releases in response to increased production of insulin--did not change. This finding was surprising because fasting levels of endogenous glucose--new glucose the body produces in addition to what it has already stored for future use--increased during the short-term trial.

(Image Credit: Jonathan Pielmayer/ Unsplash)

With the world that we have right now, I can agree that books are no longer needed by people. Today, kids now use tablets in schools to study their lessons, instead of books. Universities strive for a paperless education. Exams are now done in front of a computer or online at home. Want to read a book? Go download it in digital format on the Internet. 

Buying a book is now considered a luxury — a fashionable accessory.

Last month, when supermodels Bella and Gigi Hadid were each seen carrying novels, the New York Post deemed literature the “hot new accessory.” Carry a book. Complete your look. Although some resisted this formulation and took to social media to mock the characterization of the model off-duty literary style, noting that books are not an accessory and that they are definitely not new, the newspaper did have a point.

Increasingly, reading old-school printed texts isn’t necessary. You can download any book onto a Kindle and carry a whole library with you anywhere. But books offer a sensuous pleasure, lovely covers, the satisfying sensation of flipping pages, the ability to measure one’s progress, to underline and annotate and fold paper, making these objects entirely personal. And it’s precisely because there are more efficient modes of consuming literature that the dated way is gaining appreciation.

See the full story on Quartzy.

(Image Credit: Nicole Honeywill/ Unsplash)

Life is colorful for this Amazonian parrot. Freddy Krueger managed to escape from three life threatening situations. Recently, Freddy was abducted by armed thieves, shot at, and bitten by a snake (thankfully not venomous). Two days later, he returned to the zoo bloody and mangled ... but alive.

Visit the Guardian to know more about Freddy’s exciting adventure. 

(Image Credit: Kevin Rushby/ The Guardian)

After the US airline industry was deregulated in 1978, suddenly everyone wanted to own their own airplane. Through the 1980s, small companies with a few planes sprung up like dandelions. Many were existing companies that has nothing to do with flight, but figured since they already had a brand, they could exploit it to make it in the passenger transport business. Like Hooters.

Hooters is best known as America’s original “breastaurant” chain, with waitresses wearing revealing clothes and regularly enduring sexual harassment from customers. In 2003, the restaurant tried to move their business to the skies, launching Hooters Air.

The Hooters brand ambassadors weren’t certified as flight attendants so their role was limited to drink and food service. Supposedly known for their wings, Hooters Air didn’t serve their signature dish, just soft pretzels and pigs in a blanket.

At its peak, Hooters Air flew to 15 different cities, many of them smaller markets like Allentown, Pennsylvania, and Columbus, Ohio.

Alas, Hooters Air only lasted three years. But it was far from the only bizarre airline born in the '80s. Read about some other mind-bending erstwhile airlines at Paleofuture.

Insurance companies rely heavily on data to predict future risk. A recent experiment by Łukasz Kidziński at Stanford University in California and Kinga Kita-Wojciechowska at the University of Warsaw in Poland tested predictive algorithms for auto accidents by collaborating with an unnamed Polish auto insurance company. Data from 20,000 insurance customers had already been mined thoroughly by the company, using demographics to predict future accidents. Could the researchers find a better way?   

To find out, the researchers entered each policyholder’s address into Google Street View and downloaded an image of the residence. They classified this dwelling according to its type (detached house, terraced house, block of flats, etc.), its age, and its condition. Finally, the researchers number-crunched this data set to see how it correlated with the likelihood that a policyholder would make a claim.

The results are something of a surprise. It turns out that a policyholder’s residence is a surprisingly good predictor of the likelihood that he or she will make a claim. “We found that features visible on a picture of a house can be predictive of car accident risk, independently from classically used variables such as age or zip code,” say Kidziński and Kita-Wojciechowska.

When these factors are added to the insurer’s state-of-the-art risk model, they improve its predictive power by 2%. To put that in perspective, the insurer’s model is better than a null model by only 8% and is based on a much larger data set that includes variables such as age, sex, and claim history.

While the results are impressive, and somewhat uncanny, they are also disturbing. Who is looking at your house now? And what can they predict from (in my case) a 12-year-old Street View picture taken before I moved here and remodeled? Read about the research at MIT Technology Review.  -via Digg

(Image credit: Google Maps)

What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. Though admittedly, there's much more happening in Las Vegas than just the glitz and glamour, fun and booze which people associate with it and the popular Vegas Strip where it all happens. It's not all sin city.

Allison Sanchez from Uproxx gives us another size of Vegas that many tourists might not know. Here are ten things that you can do in Vegas apart from the stereotypical casinos, luxurious hotels, and everything else Vegas is known for.

(Image credit: Daniil Vnoutchkov/Unsplash)

Some of the greatest and timeless music worthy to be included in a canon of music in history are said to be inimitable because they are so unique and ingrained in our memories that only the original artist or band can truly bring out everything special about the song.

But inevitably, even in this artistic aspect of life, AI begins to invade. With the use of deep learning software and just a few snippets from songs, computers can now recreate and create songs.

Dadabots is an AI band created by CJ Carr and Zack Zukowski using deep learning software. Real snippets of music by death metal band Archspire are fed through the SampleRNN neural network to create Relentless Doppelganger, a constant, livestreaming aural assault that is actually pretty listenable. If you like death metal.

You may hear a sample of the music that Dadabots created on Cult of Weird.

(Image credit: Franck V./Unsplash)

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Cookie and Science Lovers

Warning! Mother's day is Sunday, May 12th. Are you prepared!

It's not too late to get your sharp witted, scientifically minded, hardworking, and cookie loving Mom something fabulous to wear from the NeatoShop. We know this is a shirt that she sport more than periodically.      

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great gift ideas. New items arriving weekly. 

We specialize in curvy and hard to find sizes. We carry size inclusive apparel from infant size 6 months to adult size 10 XL. We believe that fun and fabulous people come in every size.