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Alex Santoso's Blog Posts
When his co-worker went on vacation, Neatorama reader Howard and his co-workers turned his office into ... a bathroom! Here's the prank in all its YouTube-goodness: Link - Thanks Howard!
After I chuckled heartily at Dan Piraro's depiction of the Fairy Gothmother in his awesome comic strip Bizarro, I wondered how goth today differs from the goths of yore. After a little research, I present to you this:
Goth (of yesteryear) |
Goth (of today) |
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| Who | 3rd and 4th centuries East Germanic tribe. | Kids dressed up like undertakers, complete with black eyeliners, nail polish, white face powder and so on |
| Origin | Scandinavia. | Early 1980s in the UK in the gothic rock scene |
| Feared by | The Romans and later, the Huns | Their parents, who feared social ostracism and high cosmetics bill, and the Russians government |
| Conquered by | The Byzantine Empire | Mean bullies at school |
| Likes | Warfare, sacrificing their vanquished to their god Tyz | Listening to gothic rock, playing dress ups, watching The Crow |
| Dislikes | The Romans and Huns | Tanning, being mistaken for Emo |
| Fashion accessories | Chain mail, swords, big axes and other weapons | Coffin-shaped things, piercings, pagan and Egyptian symbols, crosses, etc. |
| Similarity | Both have nothing to do with gargoyles and Gothic architecture (though they both may like the building style). At first, Gothic architecture was called "French Style" (Opus francigenum) by the Germans - I presume that was some sort of an insult. In the 1500s, the term "Goth" is a pejorative, meaning rude and barbaric. The Renaissance architects, who disliked the style, started calling it "Gothic" and the name stuck. |
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The California RaisinsWho They Are: The Marvin Gaye-crooning, raising-selling, 1980s-defining claymation rock band that became the ultimate in fad-driven ad icons. They first appeared in 1987 and became an immediate hit. They quickly landed a CBS Christmas special, their own Saturday morning cartoon, and even TV ads for takeout pizza. (After all, nothing tops a pizza quite like clay raisins.) Who They Shill For: The California Raisin Advisory Board, which, not surprisingly, reported a spike in raisin sales in the late 1980s and early 1990s. You May Not Know: Raisin creator and claymation pioneer Will Vinton won an Academy Award in 1975 for "Closed Mondays," a short about a drunk walking around an art museum. Amazingly, this isn't the only Oscar won by a fruitspokesperson pioneer. Fruits of the Loom
Who They Are: First appearing in 1975, the fruits of this loom included humans dressed as oversize produce - two grape clusters, a fig leaf, and an apple. (The gooseberries in the actual logo are left out.) Who They Shill For: Fruit of the Loom underwear - a company owned by no less a genius than Warren "the Oracle of Omaha" Buffett, the billionaire famed for rarely making a poor investment. You May Not Know: F. Murray Abraham, the widely lauded actor who won an Oscar for his role as Salieri in "Amadeus," played the original Fig Leaf. But you probably do know what the creators of the ad clearly don't: A fig leaf is not a fruit. Mr. PeanutWho He Is: With his dapper top hat, cane, and monocle, Mr. Peanut screams sophistication. Who He Shills For: The Planters Company, which was founded in 1906 by Italian immigrant Amedeo Obici and brother-in-law Marion Peruzzi. Today, it is still owned by a hard-working, mom-and-pop company known as Kraft Foods North America. You May Not Know: In 1916, Planter's held a contest in search of an advertising mascot. THe winner, 13-year-old Antonio Gentile, submitted a prototype Mr. Peanut, for which he was paid five whole dollars. nbsp; Miss Chiquita BananaWho She Is: The fruit equivalent of a mermaid or satyr, Miss Banana was originally a cartoon drawing with the legs of a woman and the body of, well, a banana. Her initial job was to teach Americans about "exotic" fruit through song ("Bananas like the climate of the very, very tropical equator / So you should never put bananas in the refrigerator"). Who She Shills For: Chiquita, once known as United Fruit. More than a little political, the company used its ships to help overthrow the Guatemalan government in 1954 and provided support for the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961. You May Not Know: The original Miss Chiquita was drawn by Dik Browne, who created the comic strip "Hägar the Horrible." The syndicated stirp, starring an irascible, rotund Viking, manages to appear in 1,900 papers every day, even though it's the only comic less funy than "Hi and Lois." Of course, Browne created that one, too. (Image: TV Acres) |
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The article above was published in the July - August 2006 issue of mental_floss magazine, reprinted here on Neatorama with permission. Be sure to visit mental_floss' extremely entertaining website and blog! |
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Taking a break from weighty stuff like finding a cure for cancer and the like, scientists have discovered that dogs, jus tlike humans, find yawns contagious:
A team from Birkbeck College at the University of London wanted to know whether canines - known to be highly skilled at reading human social cues - could read the human yawn signal, reports the BBC.
The team found that 21 out of 29 dogs yawned when the stranger in front of them had first. By contrast, no dogs yawned during the test where the person did not yawn.
Yep - that's a giant crop-circle ad for Papa John's Pizza (whole wheat crust pizza ad in a field of wheat? My, what a metonymy! Wait, or is it metaphor?). Anyways, here's The Fire Wire blog has the story:
Look, it’s a bird, it’s a plane - it’s a pizza?
That’s right, it’s a pizza. If you’re flying in or out of Denver International Airport, look out the window and you’ll see a pizza cut into a wheat field near West 128th Avenue and Pena Boulevard. The crop circle, designed by artist Stan Herd, is a promotional vehicle for Papa John’s Pizza.
The pizza’s “pepperoni” is made of cedar mulch, with cornstalks standing in for green pepper, black mulch for olives, and flattened wheat stalk for cheese. It will be completed in time for the convention and will remain in place until the first snowfall.
Blog aggregation is a crowded field - but Regator, a new website that features the best bits of the Internet, hand-picked and organized into nearly 500 categories, is pretty neat (fast and easy to use).
Why, Neatorama made it as one of the main sources of the What the? channel (alongside great blogs like mental_floss and Boing Boing) - and so far, in just under a minute, I found me some really neat post material (see below)!
Check it out: http://regator.com/ - Thanks Kimberly Turner!
When you gotta go, you gotta go - but what if you have to poop in the middle of nowhere and you forgot your Bumper Dumper? Well, fret not with this lightweight portable cardboard toilet, aptly named the Sh-t Box, made by The Brown Corporation: http://www.thebrowncorporation.com/ - via The Inquisitr and Regator
When it came to her dog, death didn't stop Bernann McKinney. When Bernann McKinney's pit bull Booger - who saved her life when she was attacked by another dog - died two years ago, the California woman decided to clone the dog:
Her quest to have Booger live on in puppy clones raised eyebrows and also raised the ire of ethics activists. But McKinney doesn’t see what the fuss is about. “Actually, the cloning process isn’t much different than in vitro fertilization,” she says. “Basically, DNA is taken out and the DNA is inserted into a surrogate mother dog, who then has the babies very normally.”
The five little canine clones cost McKinney dearly — she sold her home to pay the $50,000 fee for the process. And that was actually a bargain-basement rate: RNL offered McKinney a discount from the $150,000 it planned to charge for the service, believing her case will be a boon for business. The firm expects to clone up to 100 dogs in the next year.
(Photo: Jin Han Hong / AP)
The following is reprinted from The Best of Uncle John's Bathroom Reader. FLY OFF THE HANDLE Meaning: Get very angry, very quickly. Origin: Refers to axe heads, which, in the days before mass merchandising, were sometimes fastened poorly to their handles. If one flew off while being used, it was a dangerous situation ... with unpredictable results. HIGH ON THE HOG Meaning: Luxurious, prosperous. Origin: The tastiest parts of a hog are its upper parts. If you're living high on the hog, you've got the best it has to offer. PULL THE WOOL OVER SOMEONE'S EYES Meaning: Fool someone. Origin: "Goes back to the days when all gentlemen wore powdered wigs like the ones still worn by the judges in British courts. The word wool was then a popular, joking term for hair ... The expression 'pull the wool over his eyes' came from the practice of tilting a man's wig over his eyes, so he couldn't see what was going on." HOOKER Meaning: Prostitute. Origin: Although occasionally used before the Civil War, its widespread popularity can probably be traced to General Joseph Hooker, a Union soldier who was well-known for the liquor and whores in his camp. He was ultimately demoted, and Washington prostitutes were jokingly referred to as "Hooker's Division." LET THE CAT OUT OF THE BAG Meaning: Reveal the truth. Origin: Refers to a con game practiced at country fairs in old England. A trickster tried to sell a cat in burlap bag to an unwary bumpkin, saying it was a pig. If the victim figured out the trick and insisted on seeing the animal, the cat had to be let out of the bag. STEAL SOMEONE'S THUNDER Meaning: To preempt; to draw attention away from someone else's achievement in favor of your own. Origin: English dramatist John Dennis invented a gadget for imitating the sound of thunder and introduced it in a play in the early 1700s. The play flopped. Soon after, Dennis noted that another play in the same theater was using his sound-effects device. He angrily exclaimed, "That is my thunder, by God; the villains will play my thunder, but not my play." The story got around London, and the phrase grew out of it. PAY THROUGH THE NOSE Meaning: To pay a high price; to pay dearly. Origin: Comes from the ninth-century Ireland. When the Danes conquered the Irish, they imposed an exorbitant Nose Tax on the island's inhabitants. They took a census (by counting noses) and levied oppressive sums on their victims, forcing them to pay by threatening to have their noses actually slit. Paying the tax was "paying trough the nose." CHARLEY HORSE Meaning: A muscle cramp. Origin: In 1640, Charles I of England expanded the London police force. The new recruits were nicknamed "Charleys." There wasn't enough money to provide the new police with horses so they patrolled on foot. They joked that their sore feet and legs came from riding "Charley's horse." NOT UP TO SCRATCH Meaning: Inadequate, subpar. Origin: In the early days of boxing, there was no bell to signal the beginning of a round. Instead, the referee would scratch a line on the ground between fighters, and the round began when both men stepped over it. When a boxer couldn't cross the line to keep a match going, people said that he was not "up to the scratch." CAUGHT RED-HANDED Meaning: Caught in the act. Origin: For hundreds of years, stealing and butchering another person's livestock was a common crime. But it was hard to prove unless the thief was caught with a dead animal ... and blood on his hands. GIVE SOMEONE "THE BIRD" Meaning: Make a nasty gesture at someone (usually with the middle finger uplifted). Origin: There are many versions. The "cleanest": Originally "the bird" referred to the hissing sound that audiences made when they didn't like a performance. Hissing is the sound that a goose makes when it's threatened or angry. LAY AN EGG Meaning: Fail. Origin: From the British sport of cricket. When you fail to score, you get a zero - which looks like an egg. The term is also taken from baseball, where a zero is a "goose egg." BURY THE HATCHET Meaning: Make peace with an enemy. Origin: Some Native American tribes declare peace by literally burying a tomahawk in the ground. CHEW THE FAT Meaning: Chat; engage in idle conversation. Origin: Originally a sailor's term. Before refrigeration, ships carried food that wouldn't spoil. One of them was salted pork skin, a practically inedible morsel that consisted largely of fat. Sailors would only eat it if all other food was gone... and they often complained as they did. This (and other) idle chatter eventually became known as "chewing the fat." TO THE BITTER END Meaning: To the very end - often an unpleasant one. Origin: Surprisingly, it has nothing to do with bitterness. It's a sailing term that refers to the end of a mooring line or anchor line that is attached to the bitts, sturdy wooden or metal posts that are mounted on the ship's deck. HAVE A SCREW LOOSE Meaning: Something is wrong with the person or mechanism. Origin: The phrase comes from the cotton industry and dates back as far as the 1780s, when the industrial revolution made mass production of textiles possible for the first time. Huge mills sprang up to take advantage of the new technology (and the cheap labor), but it was difficult to keep all the machines running properly; any machine that broke down or produced defective cloth was said to have "a screw loose" somewhere. SPEAK OF THE DEVIL Meaning: Someone appears after you mention them. Origin: People once believed that you could actually summon the Devil by saying his name. BORN WITH A SILVER SPOON IN YOUR MOUTH Meaning: Pampered; lucky; born into wealth or prosperous circumstances. Origin: At one time, it was customary for godparents to give their godchild a silver spoon at the christening. These people were usually well-off so the spoon came to represent the child's good fortune. TO CLOSE RANKS Meaning: To present a united front. Origin: "In the old-time European armies, the soldiers were aligned side by side, in neat rows, or ranks, on the battlefield. When the enemy attacked, officers would order the troops to close ranks; that is, to move the rows close together, so that the enemy faced a seemingly impregnable mass of men." (From Fighting Words, by Christine Ammer) FOR THE BIRDS Meaning: Worthless. Origin: According to Robert claiborne in Loose Cannons and Red Herrings, it refers to city streets as they were before cars. "When I was a youngster on the streets of New York, one could both see and smell the emissions of horse-drawn wagons. Since there was no way of controlling these emissions, they, or the undigested oats in them, served to nourish a large population of English sparrows. If you say something's for the birds, you're politely saying it's horseshit." BEYOND THE PALE Meaning: Socially unacceptable. Origin: "The pale in this expression has nothing to do with the whitish color, but comes originally from the Latin palus, meaning a pole, or stake. Since stakes are often used to mark boundaries, a pale was a particular area within certain limits." The pale that inspired this expression was the area around Dublin in Ireland. Until the 1500s, that area was subject to British law. "Those who lived beyond the pale were outside English jurisdiction and were thought to be uncivilized." (From Getting to the Roots, by Martin Manser) I'VE GOT A FROG IN MY THROAT Meaning: I'm hoarse from a cold. Origin: Surprisingly, this wasn't inspired by the croaking sound of a cold-sufferer's voice, but by a weird medical practice. "In the Middle Ages," says Christine Ammer in It's Raining Cats and Dogs, "infections such as thrush were sometimes treated by putting a live frog head first into the patient's mouth; by inhaling, the frog was believed to draw the patient's infection into its own body. The treatment is happily obsolete, but its memory survives in the 19th century term frog in one's throat." SOMETHING FITS TO A "T" Meaning: It fits perfectly. Origin: Commonly thought of as a reference to the T-square, which is used to draw parallel lines and angles. But this phrase was used in the 1600s, before anyone called it a T-square. "A more likely explanation is that the expression was originally 'to a tittle.' A tittle was the dot over the 'i,' so the phrase meant 'to a dot' or 'fine point.'" (From Why Do We Say It, by Nigel Rees) X X X Meaning: A kiss, at the end of a letter. Origin: In medieval times, when most people were illiterate, "contracts were not considered legal until each signer included St. Andrew's cross after their name." (Or instead of a signature, if the signer couldn't write.) To prove their sincerity, signers were then required to kiss the X. "Throughout the centuries this custom faded out, but the letter X [became associated] with a kiss." This is also probably where the phrase "sealed with a kiss" comes from. (From I've Got Goose Pimples, by Martin Vanoni) READ BETWEEN THE LINES Meaning: To perceive or understand a hidden meaning. Origin: In the 16th century it became common for politicians, soldiers, and businesspeople to write in code. To ordinary folks, this writing was unintelligible. They concluded that the meaning was not in the lines of gibberish, but in the space between them. YOU'RE NO SPRING CHICKEN Meaning: You're not young anymore; you're past your prime. Origin: Until recent generations, there were no incubators and few warm hen houses. That meant chicks couldn't be raised during winter. New England growers found that those born in the spring brought premium prices in the summer market places. When these Yankee traders tried to pass off old birds as part of the spring crop, smart buyers would protest that the bird was "no spring chicken." SON OF A GUN Meaning: An epithet. Origin: In the 1800s, British sailors took women along on extended voyages. When babies were born at sea, the mothers delivered them in a partitioned section of the gundeck. Because no one could be sure who the true fathers were, each of these "gunnery" babies was jokingly called a "son of a gun." PUT UP YOUR DUKES Meaning: Raise your fists and get ready to fight. Origin: In the early 1800s, the Duke of York, Frederick Augustus, shocked English society by taking up boxing. He gained such admiration from boxers that many started referring to their fists as the "Dukes of York," and later "dukes." HAVE AN AXE TO GRIND Meaning: Having a hidden agenda. Origin: The expression comes from a story told by Benjamin Franklin. A man once praised Franklin's father's grindstone and asked young Benjamin to demonstrate how the grindstone worked. As Franklin complied, the stranger placed his own axe upon the grindstone, praising the young boy for his cleverness and vigor. When the axe was sharpened, the man laughed at Franklin and walked away, giving the boy a valuable lesson about people with "an axe to grind." UPPER CRUST Meaning: Elite. Origin: In the Middle Ages, the highest-level nobility and royal were served the choice part of a loaf of bread, the "upper crust," before it was offered to other diners. MEET A DEADLINE Meaning: Finish a project by an appointed time. Origin: The phrase was born in prisoner-of-war camps during the Civil War. Because resources were scarce, the prison camps were sometimes nothing more than a plot of land surrounded by a marked line. If a prisoner tried to cross the line, he would be shot. So it became known as the "deadline." TOE THE LINE Meaning: Behave or act in accordance with the rules. Origin: In the early days of the British Parliament, members wore swords in the House of Commons. To keep the members from fighting during heated debates, the Speaker of the House of Commons forced the Government and Opposition parties to sit on opposite sides of the chamber. Lines, two sword-lengths plus one foot apart, were drawn in the carpet. Members were required to stand behind the lines when the House was in session. To this day, when a member steps over the line during a debate, the speaker yells: "Toe the line!" SECOND STRING Meaning: Replacement or backup. Origin: You might have caught William Tell without an apple, but not without a second string. In medieval times, an archer always carried a second string in case the one on his bow broke. IN THE LIMELIGHT Meaning: At the center of attention. Origin: In 1826, Thomas Drummond invented the limelight, an amazingly bright white light, by running an intense oxygen-hydrogen flame through a lime cylinder. At first, the bright light was used in lighthouses to direct ships. Later, theater began using the limelight like a spotlight - to direct the audience's attention to a certain actor. If an actor was to be the focal point of a particular scene, he was thrust "into the limelight." FLASH IN THE PAN Meaning: Short-lived success. Origin: In the 1700s, the pan of a flintlock musket was a part that held the gunpowder. If all went well, sparks from the flint would ignite the charge, which would then propel the bullet out of the barrel. However, sometimes the gun powder would burn without igniting a main charge. The flash would burn brightly but only briefly, with no lasting effect. HAM ACTOR (HAM) Meaning: Someone who enjoys putting on a show, or who plays rather obviously to an audience (though not necessarily on stage). Origin: An American phrase originating in the 1880s. Minstrel shows, the mass entertainment of the time, often featured less-than-talented performers who overacted. They frequently appeared in blackface, and used ham fat to remove their makeup. Thus, they were referred to as "ham-fat men," later shortened to "hams." WHIPPING BOY Meaning: A scapegoat, or something who is habitually picked on. Origin: Hundreds of years ago, it was normal practice for a European prince to be raised with a commoner of the same age. Since princes couldn't be disciplined like ordinary kids, the commoner would be beaten whenever the prince did something wrong. The commoner was called the prince's "whipping boy." GO BERSERK Meaning: Go crazy or to act with reckless abandon. Origin: Viking warriors were incredibly wild and ferocious in battle, probably because they ate hallucinogenic mushrooms in prebattle ceremonies. They charged their enemies recklessly, wearing nothing more than bearskin, which in Old Norse was pronounced "berserkr" or "bear-sark." PULL SOMEONE'S LEG Meaning: Fool someone. Origin: Years ago back-alley thieves worked in pairs. One thief, known as a "tripper up," would use a cane, rope, or piece of wire to trip a pedestrian, knocking them to the ground. While the victim was down, the second thief would rob them. Pulling your leg originally referred to the way the "tripper up" tried to make someone stumble. Today it only refers to tripping someone figuratively. RAINING CATS AND DOGS Meaning: Torrential rain. Origin: In the days before garbage collection, people tossed their trash in the gutter - including deceased housepets - and it just lay there. When it rained really hard, the garbage, including the bodies of dead cats and dogs, went floating down the street. PIE IN THE SKY Meaning: An illusion, a dream, a fantasy, an unrealistic goal. Origin: Joe Hill, a famous labor organizer of the early 20th century, wrote a tune called "The Preacher and the Slave," in which he accused the clergy of promising a better life in Heaven while people starved on Earth. A few of the lines: "Work and pray, live on hay, you'll get pie in the sky when you die (That's a lie!)." HACK WRITER Meaning: Writer who churns out words for money. Origin: In Victorian England, a hackney, or "hack," was a carriage for hire. (The term is still used in reference to taxi drivers, who need their "hack's licenses" to work.) Hack became a description of anyone who plies their trade strictly for cash. LONG IN THE TOOTH Meaning: Old. Origin: Originally used to describe old horses. As horses age, their gums recede, giving the impression that their teeth are growing. The longer the teeth look, the older the horse. STOOL PIGEON Meaning: Informer, traitor. Origin: To catch passenger pigeons (now extinct), hunters would nail a pigeon to a stool. Its alarmed cries would attract other birds, and the hunters would shoot them by the thousands. The poor creature that played the traitor was called a "stool pigeon." BEAT AROUND THE BUSH Meaning: Go about things in a circuitous manner, go around an issue rather than deal with it directly. Origin: In the Middle Ages, people caught birds by dropping a net over a bush and clubbing the ground around it to scare the birds into flying into the net. Once a bird was caught, you could stop beating around the bush and start eating. |
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| The article above is reprinted with permission from The Best of Uncle John's Bathroom Reader. Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. If you like Neatorama, you'll love the Bathroom Reader Institute's books - go ahead and check 'em out! | |
Hello, Neatoramans! I'd like to take a minute and update you on the status of the blog. A lot of things happened on the blog in July 2008 - and that was with me gone on a trip for about a week (betcha you didn't know, huh?).
We've added some awesome new T-shirt designs to Neatorama's online shop:
| Why?
Because I Said So T-shirt combo |
I
Heart, Heart, Heart Neatorama |
The
Dangers of Teleportation by Mike Jacobsen |
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Chicken
Oops by Kevin Cornell (New Artist!) |
Type
Bike by Matt Sutter |
I
Heart Biology from our new Science
section (it's a bit lonely there now) |
We've also added some extra color options for some of our best selling shirts. They're also now available in ladies' fit t-shirts (the very comfy Bella shirts):
| Neatoramanaut,
now in black & dark grey |
NEW! Neatorama
Lolcat, in natural |
Neatoramabot,
now in black and dark grey |
The extra income from our fledgling online shop allowed us to eliminate an ad unit on Neatorama. As of the end of July 2008, we no longer have those double underline, in-text ads on the blog's permalink pages. You may also notice that we've taken off one text link ad group on the front page.
It's my goal to further reduce the amount of ads on this blog (when we started, Neatorama had no ads whatsoever!). Hopefully, as the business grows, we'll be able to take out more ads from the blog (at the moment, though, we still need that revenue to help offset Neatorama's high bandwidth costs). So if you see a T-shirt you like, please buy one! Your business helps support this blog: Link
9 BEST NEATORAMA POSTS
We added 452 posts and got more than 6,800 legit (non-spam) comments.
That's a lot - and unless you read the blog every day (and even if you
did), it's easy to miss some great posts. So, to re-cap, here are my favorite
Neatorama posts from July 2008, in no particular order:
10
Richest Men of All Time |
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Really
Bad Royal Marriages |
Who
Owns TV? |
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8
Strange Patron Saints |
Thomas
Paine (in the Butt) |
MOST CONTROVERSIAL / COMMENTED:
- Was
it Self Defense or Murder?
- Why
Conservatives Are Happier Than Liberals
- Which
is Better: Charcoal or Gas Grill?
- Is
the "Men at Work" Sign Sexist?
- Why
Do Asian Students Perform Better in School than Latinos?
- Replate:
Share Your Leftovers with the Homeless
As always, please tell your friends about us and thank you for reading Neatorama!
Remember the Idea Machine / Fun-O-Meter / Funulator story we posted on Neatorama before? Jake Bronstein of Zoomdoggle, the originator of the whole thing is now asking YOU, dear Neatorama readers, for ideas.
The idea (heh!) is to suggest fun things that can be done right now - anything, really - Jake's favorites include combing your hair like Donald Trump (he has the diagram), take a high jump picture (like this how-to he wrote), and so on.
So. Here's your chance: what fun ideas would you suggest to Jake for his next installment of the Fun-O-Meter?
Environmental Graffiti has a really neat post about 30 of the weirdest-looking clouds in the sky.
There's something fishy about this cloud to the left. The photo was taken by Gavin Tobin, a cloudspotter for the Cloud Appreciation Society, over the skies of The Blasket Islands, County Kerry, Ireland.
Check out the entire gallery: Link - Thanks Linda!
Ugandan males in pre-op waiting to get circumcised!
To help reduce the risk of contracting HIV, Godfrey Kigozi of the Rakai health center in Uganda is promoting ... circumcision! And he's even got a song to encourage men (both boys and adults) to get circumcised:
Isaak Simba and his band mates call themselves the Circ Squad. Simba says they all got circumcised last summer and they wrote this song to answer some common questions.
"Everyone asks you the question, so doesn't it hurt, so what, I have to put on a dress, and the thing is, everything is in the song. If you take your time, and listen carefully, you'll get everything there, because we advise you accordingly (heh heh)"
"It can be painless, harmless, and brother you know what? You can be right back at your job, with your pants on like you ...., but best of all, you don't need a sick holiday....
Link - Thanks Tiffany!
German doctors have successfully completed the world's first double arm transplant surgery:
Reiner Gradinger, medical director at the Munich University Clinic where the operation involving 40 doctors, nurses and assistants took place over 15 hours last week, said: "The reattachment appears up to now to have proceeded optimally."
Surgeon Edgar Biemer said the greatest challenge was establishing blood flow between the farmer's body and muscles in the new arms because the muscles have a limited lifespan.
And he said: "We discussed with the patient that he would have to deal with the fact that his hands were from somebody else.
"But this was discussed before the first heart transplant, and in reality nobody really cared about that."
Link - Thanks amanda!
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