Diana Wolf of mental_floss asked "When you think of 7-Eleven, the Chrysler Building, and Budweiser, what country comes to mind? "

If you answer the United States, of course - then you're in for a big surprise. The icons this country holds dear are not owned by Americans. Case in point, Budweiser's maker Anheuser-Busch:

1. Anheuser-Busch, Inc.
You’ve likely seen the Anheuser-Busch commercials that were shown during the Olympics. You know, the ones that are oozing with everything American – football, tailgating, the Statue of Liberty, riding motorcycles, playing in a garage band, and, of course, a fat slice of apple pie. In case you didn’t get the hint, they’re reminding you that their All American Ale is still All American. But it’s not American at all! Earlier this year, Anheuser Busch Inc was bought by InBev, the Belgian brewer. The deal, soon to close, will make the new combined company “Anheuser Busch InBev” the largest beer company in the world.

Read more about the 10 (un)American Icons at mental_floss: Link

Dr. John Brigande of the Oregon Hearing Research Center in Portland and colleagues succeeded in regrowing hair cells in the inner ear through gene therapy. Their technique may one day cure deafness from aging, disease and listening to overly loud music:

Named for the hair-like projections on their surfaces, hair cells form a ribbon of vibration sensors along the length of the cochlea, the organ of the inner ear that detects sound.

Receiving vibrations through the eardrum and bones of the middle ear, hair cells convert them to electrical signals carried to the brain.

People, like all mammals, are not able to regenerate hair cells when they are damaged or lost. Dr Brigande and colleagues show in Nature that by implanting a gene that regulates hair cell growth, Atoh1, into the mouse inner ear while the mouse is still in the womb, new hair cells are made.

Many Deaf people born without hearing, however, may not want their deafness cured:

He said that some deaf people will reject the offer of gene therapy. "If a person is born without hearing, they are "Deaf" and that is a unique culture into itself. Many Deaf individuals highly value their deafness and do not wish to be hearing.

Link

Students in Kunming, China, are getting new school uniforms ... that are decked out in ads! The stylish orange jackets are covered with the logos of Marlboro, Ferrari, Vodafone and Shell:

The parents were shocked to see that their children now looked like they were part of a Formula One pit crew, but in China there is little the parents can say or do about the situation.

The kids don’t seem to mind the logo placements and even if they did get a little stressed out, they now know which brand of cigarette will help calm their nerves.

Link | Story at sina.com.cn [in Chinese]

This is going to be controversial, but bear with me for a second. Kevin Myers of the Irish Independent News of Ireland wrote an opinion piece baitingly titled "Africa is giving nothing to anyone - apart from AIDS."

In it, Kevin wrote how Ethiopia (and other basket case African countries) are actually hurt in the long run - not helped - by the Western generosities:

[Other countries] -- one way or another -- virtually all giving aid to or investing in Africa, whereas Africa, with its vast savannahs and its lush pastures, is giving almost nothing to anyone, apart from AIDS.

Meanwhile, Africa's peoples are outstripping their resources, and causing catastrophic ecological degradation. By 2050, the population of Ethiopia will be 177 million: The equivalent of France, Germany and Benelux today, but located on the parched and increasingly protein-free wastelands of the Great Rift Valley.

So, how much sense does it make for us actively to increase the adult population of what is already a vastly over-populated, environmentally devastated and economically dependent country?

How much morality is there in saving an Ethiopian child from starvation today, for it to survive to a life of brutal circumcision, poverty, hunger, violence and sexual abuse, resulting in another half-dozen such wide-eyed children, with comparably jolly little lives ahead of them? Of course, it might make you feel better, which is a prime reason for so much charity. But that is not good enough.

For self-serving generosity has been one of the curses of Africa. It has sustained political systems which would otherwise have collapsed. It prolonged the Eritrean-Ethiopian war by nearly a decade.

So. Are we doing Africa a favor by helping it feed its starving population, or are we actually prolonging their suffering? Link

Steven Jetley from Shrewsbury, England, had a falling out with Lloyds TSB bank, so he decided to have his password reflect his feelings towards the bank:

A man who chose "Lloyds is pants" as his telephone banking password said he found it had been changed by a member of staff to "no it's not". [...]

Mr Jetley said he first realised his security password had been changed when a call centre staff member told him his code word did not match with the one on the computer.

"I thought it was actually quite a funny response," he said. "But what really incensed me was when I was told I could not change it back to 'Lloyds is pants' because they said it
was not appropriate.

"I asked if it was 'pants' they didn't like, and would 'Lloyds is rubbish' do? But they didn't think so.

"So I tried 'Barclays is better' and that didn't go down too well either.

"The rules seemed to change, and they told me it had to be one word, so I tried 'censorship', but they didn't like that, and then said it had to be no more than six letters long."

Link - via reddit

(Why is "pants" an objectionable word? Here's the explanation)

One day you're minding your own business ... and the next day the earth opens up and swallows your home - literally!

WebEcoist lists 13 of the biggest, strangest, and most devastating sinkholes on Earth. The one on the left is in Guatemala City:

Residents of a Guatemala City heard strange rumblings for weeks but weren’t sure what was happening beneath them. Then, in late February 2007, a near-perfect circle of earth dropped some 30 stories almost instantly. It’s amazing how neat the hole is. Two people died and over 1,000 had to be evacuated; the sinkhole resulted from a corroded sewage system deep beneath the surface (apparently the odor coming from the hole was intolerable).

Link

(Photo: Reuters/STR New)

Photo: joeng [Flickr]

One of my fave blogs, deputy dog, has done it again with this really neat list of 9 of the world's neatest bridges. This one above is the Henderson Wave bridge, a pedestrian bridge in Singapore:

‘henderson waves’ is singapore’s highest pedestrian bridge and can be found at the southern ridges, a beautiful 9km stretch of gardens and parks which has frequently drawn comparisons to new york’s central park. the bridge itself is absolutely stunning. the deck is made from thousands of balau wood slats, perfectly cut and arranged, and along the length of the deck a huge snaking, undulating shell cleverly forms sheltered seating areas on every upward curve. if i was to make sweet love to a bridge, this would be the one. (Ed: yes, his shift key is busted. That's my theory anyhow)

http://deputy-dog.com/2008/08/26/9-amazingly-unique-bridges-you-may-not-have-seen/

Things aren't getting any better for the US economy. And now the FDIC, which insures bank deposits up to $100,000, has added 117 banks on its "troubled bank" watch list:

Thanks to a collapsing housing market and a weak economy, a growing number of banks are struggling to stay afloat, with not enough cash on hand to cover losses from bad loans.

At the beginning of the year, 90 banks were on the FDIC watch list. There are now 117, FDIC chairwoman Sheila C. Bair announced at a news conference this afternoon. That is the highest number in five years, but some analysts expect the list to grow even more in coming months.

"I think there's going to be a steady drip, drip, drip of bad news," said Sean Ryan, a banking analyst with Sterne Agee. "We've only seen the very tip of the iceberg in terms of bank failures."

Even though only nine banks have failed so far this year, Ryan expects that to quickly climb with more than 100 failures before the end of 2009.

"I would be quite surprised if we didn't reach triple digits," he said. "Most of them are going to be relatively small institutions, but they will add up."

The FDIC doesn't name the banks, because if the list were known, then customers would pull their money out of the troubled banks and cause them to fail: Link

No, that's not photoshoppery - Chinese artist Liu Bolin covers his subjects head to toe with paint to camouflage them almost perfectly into the background.

Link | Exhibition at Gelerie Bertin-Toublanc - Thanks Jon Jason!

Previously on Neatorama: Désirée Palmen's Camouflage Art

It's all in the name of "fighting poverty" or so said Tyrone Freeman, the boss of the Service International Employees Union in Los Angeles. That's all fine and dandy, except the problem is he's fighting poverty by spending $300,000 tab on golf tournament, cigar club, and steakhouses!

Paul Pringle of the Los Angeles Times broke the story with this investigation:

The Los Angeles-based union, which represents low-wage caregivers, also spent nearly $300,000 last year on a Four Seasons Resorts golf tournament, a Beverly Hills cigar club, restaurants such as Morton's steakhouse and a consulting contract with the William Morris Agency,
the Hollywood talent shop, records show. [...]

Based on documents filed with the Labor Department and Internal Revenue Service, the Guidestar nonprofit database, business records submitted to several state and local agencies and numerous interviews, a Times investigation has also found that:

* Payments to the company owned by Freeman's wife were among the local's largest single expenses last year. Payments by the charity, the Homecare Workers Training Center, to his mother-in-law's firm represented more than 10% of the nonprofit's total annual expenditures. [...]

* The local's nearly $10,000 tab at the Grand Havana Room, a cigar lounge known for its celebrity clientele and invitation-only memberships, was for "lodging," according to the union's annual financial report. A Grand Havana spokeswoman said the club does not provide accommodations. Freeman declined to characterize the expenditure, and after The Times inquired about it, he said he had refunded it.

Link | Continuing coverage at the LA Times

(Photo: Lawrence K. Ho / LA Times)

Photo: Peter Rosemann

Now that is a chair sculpture - you're looking at "Black Whole Conference" by Michel de Broin (2006). It was sculpted out of 72 chairs, and is a part of the Québec Triennial "Nothing is Lost, Nothing is Created, Everything is Transformed" exhibition at the Musée d'Art in Montreal, Canada: Link - via Chair Blog

Dear reader: If doing fun stuff usually involve an adrenaline rush, then this post is for you! Here's AirKick, a "sport and adventure device" that sends you hurtling into (hopefully) the pool:

It propels participants through the air in a pre-calculated parabolic trajectory using a special combination of air pressure and water recoil technology. The participant sits in a specially constructed seat at the back end of the catapult arm and 3,2,1…Liftoff. He sets the device in motion himself by pushing a button. Approximately 60 Liters of water are then forced through a rocket nozzle under the seat. This pressurized water (8 to 10 bar of air pressure) propels the participant 8 meters (Ed note: 26 ft) though the air for a cool and refreshing splash down in a swimming pool.

Link - via Tell Me Something I Don't Know

That, my friends, is the most awesomest lamp ever: MYBrain, the table lamp by Alexander Lervik. It's based on the artist's real brain as taken by an MRI scan, then processed through a 3D printer.

Link - via Modern Urban Living

Bigger Pic at NASA

The Apollo 11 travelled more than 200,000 miles to the moon - but did you know that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, the first men on the moon went all that distance only to hop about the area smaller than a soccer field?

If you have no idea how big a soccer field is, then perhaps this is a better comparison:

Bigger Pic at NASA

Perhaps Armstrong & Aldrin were right: once you've seen one patch of moon dirt, you've seen 'em all!

Via Strange Maps and Sleeping in My Head

Andrea Hale of The Retro Blog has a neat post about what The Golden Girls did before they were famous.

Betty White (left), for instance, did a Fantastik Disinfectant cleaner; Bea Arthur starred in Mame with Lucille Ball; Rue McClanahan did a risque striptease in Hollywood After Dark in 1968.

No Estelle Getty (RIP) though - but Andrea did find a clip of her workout
video remix: Link