A German nursing home got tired of having to call on the police to retrieve Alzheimer's patients who ran away (to their often non-existent homes and families), so they came upon a brilliant idea: install a fake bus stop outside!
"It sounds funny but it helps," said Franz-Josef Goebel, the chairman of the "Old Lions" association.
"Our members are 84 years old on average. Their short-term memory hardly works, but the long-term memory is still active.
"They know the green and yellow bus sign and remember that waiting there means they will go home."
The result is that errant patients now wait for their trip home at the bus stop, before quickly forgetting why they were there in the first place.
"We will approach them and say that the bus is coming later and invite them in for a coffee," said Richard Neureither, Benrath's director. "Five minutes later they have completely forgotten they wanted to leave."
Why did the poodle cross the road? To get away from the groomer, of course!
We've posted about Sandy Hartness' extreme pet grooming before, but to our delight, we found a gallery of her past creations at the Daily Mail. (This one to the left is the Cock-a-Doodle Poo, where Cindy the Poodle is groomed to be a little rooster)
Psst, wanna free £5 notes? That's the experiment that Tim Moss of loan price comparison website moneysupermarket.com ran in England one day. Surprisingly, he found that most people actually couldn't be bothered to claim free money!
Representatives from price comparison website, www.moneysupermarket.com wandered the streets this morning wearing sandwich boards offering a free £5 note to anyone who asked. Despite encountering over 1800 people, only 28 passers by bothered to take advantage of the offer.
The experiment also found a stark difference in the attitudes of men and women. On the streets of London and Manchester, all but 7 of the people who claimed the free cash were men and the research backed this up further. In a poll of 2000 people almost two thirds of women (64 per cent) said they would not claim the free fiver, compared to 41 per cent of money-shy men.
Additionally, the experiment found that Londoners were more reserved than their Manchester counterparts. Whilst just 1.2 per cent of people took advantage of the offer in London, this figure increased to 3.1 per cent on the streets of Manchester.
The research also found that the older the person, the less likely they would be to act on the free offer. Whilst some two thirds of under-twenties say they would claim the free cash, this steadily drops the older we get, declining to only a third (35 per cent) of over 70s who claim they would ask for a free fiver.
Because our online shop was down for part of the time, I'm extending the Tokyoflash Treasure Hunt contest by one more day.
Here's your chance to win a free Tokyoflash watch. How awesome is that? Simply answer these three easy-peasy questions:
1. Which Tokyoflash watch has 27 multi-colored LEDs that pulsate and move like cells across the watch’s curved surface?
2. How many "freckles" are on the greenest creation of Adam "Ape Lad" Koford on Neatorama’s Online Store?
3. Back to Tokyoflash, which watch has a "multi-color mode" that rotates through all the colors and a custom engraved wristband?
There are over 150 people who got it right, but since some of you are having trouble, here are some additional clues:#1 and #3 are some of Tokyoflash's newest watches. There are 2 watches that fit the answer to #3 (mea culpa), so try them one by one if you don't get it right.
Now, this is important: the answers will make a URL on Neatorama.com, simply type "http://www.neatorama.com/answer-answer-answer" and hit enter. If you see a 404 Error page, then you don't have it right. All words are lower case, and the number is spelled out ("one" instead of 1).
Good luck!
Update 6/9/08: We have a winner! See who it is at the answer page.
LiveNewsCamera is a new website from My Fox Chicago that aggregates live streaming newscast videos from (mostly) TV news stations from around the world. Right now, they have about 150 live streams, so that'll keep news junkies busy for a while!
My favorite, which I'm listening to in the background as I type up this post, is the one from NASA: Link (the website is still in beta, so expect bugs and a little slowness) - Thanks Andrew Finlayson!
Today is the 64th anniversary of D-Day, the Allied Powers' invasion of Normandy, France, during World War II. The military operation was the largest single-day operation of all time, with 130,000 troops landing on Normandy coast.
National Geographics magazine has the fascinating article by Thomas B. Allen on the untold stories of D-Day ... some stories are so secret that they've just recently been declassified:
For Joe Vaghi and tens of thousands of other Americans stationed in England in the spring of 1944, France was the Far Shore, the place where they would finally meet the Nazis in a fight to the death. To prepare, they trained along a stretch of English coast that had been cleared of civilians. It was called Slapton Sands, a tranquil beach that was chosen for its geographic similarity to the coast of Normandy. Their most realistic training was Exercise Tiger, a live-ammunition D-Day rehearsal that involved some 300 ships and 30,000 men in April 1944, six weeks before the invasion.
Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, supreme commander of Operation Overlord (Allied code for the invasion itself), was aboard an observers' ship on April 27, when Exercise Tiger went terribly wrong—failed air cover, late landing craft, confusion on the beachhead. Amphibious tanks, heading to shore, misaimed their guns and wounded soldiers on the beach. At least one of the tanks sank in choppy seas while its frantic crew managed to escape. Furious, Eisenhower returned to his headquarters, deeply worried about what the exercise augured for D-Day.
The mortgage crisis is so bad, it's now claiming celebrities as victims: Evander Holyfield's $10 million home in Fayette County, Georgia; Jose Canseco's home in Encino, California; and Ed McMahon's $4.8 million home in Beverly Hills, California are being foreclosed.
One guy that averted foreclosure was Michael Jackson: his Neverland Ranch auction was cancelled when an investment company bought the loan.
Ed McMahon even went on Larry King's show to explain how he got into financial hot water:
King: And the payments, you can't make -- what's the problem?
Ed McMahon: Well, if you spend more money than you make, you know what happens. And it can happen. You know, a couple of divorces thrown in, a few things like that. And, you know, things happen. You want everything to be perfect, but that combination of the economy, I have a little injury, I have a situation. And it all came together. [...]
King: But, Pam, the assumption is that the McMahons are multimillionaires and multimillionaires -- how much behind are you, $644,000, right? That's what's reported? ... If you're a millionaire, shouldn't you be able to pay $644,000?
Pam McMahon: I think over the years, you know, it's just a kind of a combination of maybe Ed working so hard and not kind of looking at proper management, which happens a lot. ... Because you're a celebrity, people think you have a lot more than you have. And you always want to take great care of all of your friends and your family and everybody, and you do. And you don't, and I think, you know, we didn't keep our eye on the ball. We made mistakes.
Transcript of Ed and Pam McMahon's interview with Larry King: Link
I love this whale flower vase concept from Alessandro Bêda! He's looking for a way to produce it, so if you want to get one, you've gotta wait. http://www.behance.net/Gallery/Untitled-Flower-Jar/95348
A specially designed video camera installed in the jungles of Indonesia captured the rare (and tiny!) Javanese Rhino momma and her calf ... right before she attacked it!
After just a month in operation, specially designed video cameras installed to capture wildlife footage in the jungles of South East Asia have twice recorded remarkable images of a mother and child pair of the world's rarest rhino.
But the success was not without incident as after a short inspection, the rhino mother charged the camera installation in Ujung Kulon National Park and sent it flying.
I know, I know, oil prices are stratospheric (new high today of $136 per barrel as I write this) and it's hard to see how it will go back down with increased worldwide demand and finite supply, but just read what Richard Rainwater has to say about the oil bubble about to burst.
Who's Richard Rainwater and why you should listen to him? It's all explained in this article about Justin Fox for TIME magazine:
Eleven years ago, after doing a lot of studying and a lot of thinking, Richard Rainwater convinced himself that the long decline in oil prices that had begun in the early 1980s was about to end. As a billionaire who had made his name and fortune steering the Texas oil riches of Fort Worth's Bass family into lucrative nonenergy investments like Disney stock, Rainwater had the wherewithal to act on his conviction. So he plunked down about $300 million of his own money on energy-company stocks and oil and gas futures.
For a while it looked like a boneheaded move. At the end of 1998, the price of oil fell below $10 per bbl. Regular gas sold for 90¢ a gal. While Internet billionaires were being minted to the right and left of him, Rainwater was getting poorer by the day.
You can guess the rest of the story. The dotcoms imploded; the price of oil climbed, climbed and climbed some more--and Rainwater's energy bet came to look like one of the better investment calls of our time. It has netted him about $2 billion, vaulting him from the mid-200s on Forbes magazine's 1999 list of the 400 richest Americans to No. 91 last summer (with $3.5 billion overall).
So guess what Rainwater did a few weeks ago, right after oil prices topped $129 per bbl. for the first time? "I sold my Chevron," he says. "I sold my ConocoPhillips. I sold my Statoil. I sold my ENSCO. I sold my Pioneer Natural Resources. I sold everything."
Problem: You're in the middle of a golf course, and you really gotta pee. The club house is far away, and you don't want to go in the bushes (they frown on that sort of behavior ...)
Solution: Pee into your golf club ... the UroClub, that is: the "club" is actually a hollow cylinder that will store your pee. You can then empty it at the nearest bathroom or at home. It even includes a towel for privacy :)
I really shouldn't make fun of this, since Neatorama is typophilic, but here it is anyhow:
The easy way out would have been to tell the graduates of Westlake High School that the misspelling on their diplomas was a final test.
A test. Yeah, that's it.
Instead, Principal Timothy Freeman fell on his red pen, shouldering responsibility for the diplomas issued to 330 Westlake graduates at the Wolstein Center in Cleveland on Saturday that read board of "educaiton," not "education."
Velcro Scanning Electron Microscopy images by Jim Ekstrom
When a Swiss engineer stumbled into a bunch of burs, it became a delightfully sticky situation for the world:
THE BUR TRADE
You surely know the famous story about George de Mestral's 1941 hunting trip in Switzerland - while walking his dog in the mountains, he accidentally brushed up against some cocklebur plants, and by the time he got back home, dozens of the round, spiky seeds were clinging to his wool trousers (and his poor dog's fur).
What you don't know is how hard it was for de Mestral to translate that natural stroke of genius into man-made one. He quickly figured out why the seed were so sticky by examining them under a microscope - the spikes each ended in tiny hooks that grabbed onto fabric and fur and wouldn't let go. (Photo: Francoise and Charles de Mestral, aps.org)
But it wasn't until 1952 that de Mestral made a serious effort to mimic the cockleburs' hooks using different types of fabric. He quit his day job and raised $150,000 in venture capital, an enormous sum at the time. He also joined up with a textile weaver from Lyon, France - the only weaver who thought the idea would actually work. The pair's first attempt, using cotton, was a failure. But nylon, sewn into tiny hooks under bright infrared light, worked much better. He dubbed it "Velcro" after velvet and "crochet," the French word for "hook."
JUST PLAIN STUCK
De Mestral seemed to be on his way to a huge success, and large-scale production finally began in the mid '50s. But the fabric didn't actually make it to market until a decade later, and when it did, it flopped. It was extremely useful but also extremely ugly - a hard sell given that de Mestral mostly envisioned it being used on clothes. High-end designers wouldn't touch the stuff.
The only group that found it appealing was the burgeoning aerospace industry - astronauts didn't want to fiddle with zippers and laces while trying to get in and out of their spacesuits, and they also needed a way to keep their various personal items and food from floating away in zero gravity. (The association with NASA later popped up in the 1997 movie Men in Black, which short-shrifts de Mestral by claiming Velcro was actually invented by aliens and adapted for Earth use.)
By the time people figured out that Velcro could also be hugely useful on everything from kids' shoes to watchbands, de Mestral's patent was close to expiring, and factories in Taiwan and Korea were churning out similar stuff. Today, if you use Velcro as a generic term, you'll make some Velcro executives very unhappy. The word has been Xeroxed, or if you prefer, Kleenexed - the company would much prefer that you use the generic "hook-and-loop" unless you're referring specifically to their brand.
De Mestral, by the way, wasn't just the inventor of Velcro. He also received a patent for a toy plane at age 12 and went on to design a hygrometer (which measures air humidity) and an asparagus peeler not unlike the kind that's "As Seen on TV."
Forget Van Gogh; he only lost an ear. It was the great catrato Farinelli who made the ultimate sacrifice for art: he gave up his nuts! Carlo Broschi was a man who really suffered for his music. Known to the world as the great opera singer Farinelli (1705-1782), he was castrated as a young boy to prevent his exquisite singing voice from ever breaking. But before you start feeling too sorry for the songsmith, it's worth bearing in mind that Farinelli was showered with wealth and adulation throughout his career. And even with a couple of pieces missing from his repertoire, he still managed to make beautiful music with the ladies.
THE UNKINDEST CUT OF ALL
The practice of castrating men (making them into eunuchs) arose around 3,000 years ago. Castration was usually inflicted on slaves who worked in the harem of a king or powerful ruler; the object was to ensure that they could not father children. It involved the removal of the testicles only (!), and a castrated singer like Farinelli, though sterile, was often able to perform in a lady's boudoir as well as on the stage. Eventually, the demand for castrated men ran out, except in one area: music. The 17th and 18th centuries were a golden age of eunuchs in classical music. Especially in Italy, where boys became castrati, or "the castrated ones." The special thing about these little fellas was that they were altered just before reaching puberty, so that their voices never broke. Boys who were promising singers were selected, given the snip, and then sent to special schools for vocal training.
THE CUTTING EDGE OF FAME
From 1599, castrati were allowed to sing in the papal choir. They proved to be so popular that a whole type of music theater was invented for them, known as opera seria, from which modern opera partly developed. While a castrato's voice always kept its high, childlike pitch, it was delivered with the power of a fully grown man. A castrato could soar effortlessly up and down the vocal registers, belting out tunes like a diva on helium. Castrati could also perform all manner of vocal tricks, such as holding a single note for a full minute. Audiences loved it, and the castrati were the rock stars of their day, complete with rampant egos, fawning flunkies, adoring fans, and obliging groupies. And the biggest star of all was Farinelli.
Farinelli, unlike many other castrati, was not from a poor background. Indeed, his father, Salvatore, was the governor of the region around Naples, in southern Italy. Young Carlo displayed vocal talent as a child. And so, some time between his seventh and eighth birthday, little Carlo said goodbye to part of his anatomy - and hello to a singing career. After studying with the greatest vocal masters of the day, Carlo, now renamed Farinelli after one of his patrons, made his debut in 1720, aged 15. From then on it was nonstop fame and fortune for the next 17 years. After conquering Italy with triumphant performances in Naples, Rome, and Bologna, Farinelli toured Europe in his early 20s, billed as "the Singer of Kings," due to his having performed for most of Italy's many princes and minor royalty. King Louis XV of France fell under his spell, as did the British public. Farinelli was paid huge fees to perform, either onstage or in private audiences. All in all, life was pretty good for our hero.
THE REIGN IN SPAIN
But then, Farinelli gave it all up. Maybe life on the road with wealth, adulation, and amorous women isn't all it's cracked up to be; but in 1737, at the age of 32, Farinelli announced he was quitting the stage to become the private court singer to King Philip V of Spain. Farinelli had originally visited Spain as part of his European tour, but he was so affected by the king's emotional response to his singing that he decided to stay on. It turns out that he got much more than he bargained for. Philip V was a manic-depressive, and once he'd latched onto Farinelli and his singing, he wouldn't let go. The king claimed that he could only get to sleep if Farinelli serenaded him.
So, the castrated crooner was hired to sing the same set of songs to his patron every night for the next ten years. Farinelli was at the Spanish court for 25 years in total, outliving two monarchs. In that time he acquired great wealth and even more political power: Philip trusted the Italian artist so much that Farinelli eventually became one of the king's most trusted advisors. In 1759, Farinelli quit Spain and retired to Bologna, Italy, where he lived out his remaining years composing and playing music, receiving famous guests, such as Mozart, and using his great wealth to fund many charitable causes.
GETTING THE AX
In 1870 Italy finally outlawed the creation of castrati. In 1902, and again in 1904, phonograph recordings were made of Alessandro Moreschi, the last surviving Italian castrato, but he was by then old and ill and his voice was shot. We will probably never know what a true castrato in his prime sounded like - something that young Italian boys should praise the Lord every day of their prepubescent lives.
The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges Into History Again. The book is a compendium of entertaining information chock-full of facts on a plethora of history topics. Uncle John's first plunge into history was a smash hit - over half a million copies sold! And this sequel gives you more colorful characters, cultural milestones, historical hindsight, groundbreaking events, and scintillating sagas. Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. Check out their website here: Bathroom Reader Institute
