Here's the third and final Tokyoflash Treasure Hunt question you've been waiting for:
How many LEDs are featured in the Pimp Star Performer watch design?
Got all three answers? Then string 'em together (all lower case, numbers are all in numerals) for the answer URL. Be sure to follow the instruction there to put your name down for a chance to win a Free Tokyoflash watch!
If you don't know what this post is all about, I suggest you read this post (then hunt around for the second post). Good luck!
Update 5/11/08: Congratulations to knox52 who won a free Tokyoflash watch! Check out the answer page here: Link.
W00t! Congratulations for guessing the right answer, folks! The hour LEDs on the Tokyoflash Kyokusen design are yellow, the watch with 4 color options is the Tibida, and there are 44 LEDs on the Star Performer.
One of you will get a Free Tokyoflash watch - all you have to do is say which watch (and what color) you'd like in the comment. You can pick any watch, with the exception of the Casio, Citizen, or Independent brands.
One entry per person, please (duplicate entries will disqualify you forever on this game - we'll watch closely, pardon the pun). Please login and use your Neatorama username (if you don't have one, you can register here).
Update 5/11/08: Congratulations to knox52 who won a free Oberon, courtesy of Tokyoflash!
Got a big bottom? Well, take heart, as scientists found something good about that: it protects you from diabetes!
A type of fat that accumulates around the hips and bottom may actually offer some protection against diabetes, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday. They said subcutaneous fat, or fat that collects under the skin, helped to improve sensitivity to the hormone insulin, which regulates blood sugar.
Mice that got transplants of this type of fat deep into their abdomens lost weight and their fat cells shrank, even though they made no changes in their diet or activity levels.
"It was a surprising result," said Dr. Ronald Kahn of Harvard Medical School in Boston, whose study appears in the journal Cell Metabolism. "We actually found it had a beneficial effect, and it was especially true when you put it inside the abdomen," Kahn said in a telephone interview.
Neatorama pal Dan Piraro is auctioning off original Bizarro comic arts on Heritage Auction Galleries. If you love Bizarro, this is the perfect opportunity to own your very own original comic strip: Link - Thanks Dan!
(And the comic above, "Return to Oz" is so true: just ask any graduate student!)
Automobile makers usually try to find the best way to build a car, but Mazda had the unenviable task of finding the best way to destroy over 4,700 brand new cars:
It all started about two years ago, when a ship carrying 4,703 shiny new Mazdas nearly sank in the Pacific. The freighter, the Cougar Ace, spent weeks bobbing on the high seas, listing at a severe 60-degree angle, before finally being righted.
The mishap created a dilemma: What to do with the cars? They had remained safely strapped down throughout the ordeal -- but no one knew for sure what damage, if any, might be caused by dangling cars at such a steep angle for so long. Might corrosive fluids seep into chambers where they don't belong? Was the Cougar Ace now full of lemons?
The Japanese car maker, controlled by Ford Motor Corp., easily could have found takers for the vehicles. Hundreds of people called about buying cheap Mazdas. Schools wanted them for auto-shop courses. Hollywood asked about using them for stunts.
Mazda turned everyone away. It worried about getting sued someday if, say, an air-bag failed to fire properly due to overexposure to salty sea air.
It also worried that scammers might find a way to spirit the cars abroad to sell as new. That happened to thousands of so-called "Katrina cars" salvaged from New Orleans' flooding three years ago. Those cars -- their electronics gone haywire and sand in the engines -- were given a paint job and unloaded in Latin America on unsuspecting buyers, damaging auto makers' reputations.
Joel Millman of The Wall Street Journal has the story (and video): Link - via Look At This
Now this is a time-lapse video! Andrew Curtis stitched over 2600 photos he took in the Cinco De Mayo Carnival in Waterfront Park, Portland, Oregon to make this neat video:
Shooting 1 second exposures every 2 seconds A total of 2683 images in this video, played back at 12fps. Shot on 2 consecutive nights. First night was the panning tripod. While we were shooting, a guy called me back about an ad on craigslist for his Peleng 8mm fisheye. We went and picked it up at midnight and brought it along the 2nd night, when we did all the still shots.
Oh, to be Travis Pastrana: bored by motocross/supercross, freestyle motoX,
rally racing, doing
a double backflip and jumping
out of a plane without a parachute, he invented the new sport of Hydrojump:
basically hydroplaning and then launching a bike off a floating ramp.
By late afternoon we headed back to the Hydrojump and Jim was ready
to get this one over with. He geared up and let 'er rip! The tricky
part on this one was the run up, there was a 90 degree turn at the top
of the hill you came down then you had to line up with not a lot of
time to hit the water after the 90, also having to keep your momentum
for a great amount of speed to reach the ramp, not to mention it had
been rain off and on all day and it was slick as heck! A lot to think
about as your coming up to a 110 foot long hydroplane off a 4 foot wide
freestyle ramp. Just thread the needle boys!
Cigarette smoking may be bad for your health, but it's great for the
wildlife! Brian Klaus of Nothing Else Better To Do Than Read This Blog
wrote:
I opened the door and went onto the patio to ask Gabriel what he
wanted. I haven't been out on this patio since I quit smoking (I would
never smoke in the house). I guess I prefer my patio on the ground.
Now here's the embarrassing part. I used to dump my ash tray into
a trash can that was on the patio. I guess since I haven't been on the
patio in so long I've forgotten to empty the trash can which is filled
about 2/5's of the way up with cigarette butts. Pretty gross, I know.
I'm a slob, I admit it.
Just as I was about to shout down to Gabriel I noticed the trash
can and a bird that made it's nest inside of it!! I can't tell if there's
eggs in the nest of butts and twigs that the bird had made for itself,
but I don't have the heart to chase the bird away.
After decades of US investments in China, it seems that the pendulum is swinging back. Today, many Chinese firms are pleasantly surprised to find that land, energy, and operating costs are actually cheaper in the United States as compared to China!
Liu Keli couldn't tell you much about South Carolina, not even where it is in the United States. It's as obscure to him as his home region, Shanxi province, is to most Americans.
But Liu is investing $10 million in the Palmetto State, building a printing-plate factory that will open this fall and hire 120 workers. His main aim is to tap the large American market, but when his finance staff penciled out the costs, he was stunned to learn how they compared with those in China.
Liu spent about $500,000 for seven acres in Spartanburg -- less than one-fourth what it would cost to buy the same amount of land in Dongguan, a city in southeast China where he runs three plants. U.S. electricity rates are about 75% lower, and in South Carolina, Liu doesn't have to put up with frequent blackouts.
About the only major thing that's more expensive in Spartanburg is labor. Liu is looking to offer $12 to $13 an hour there, versus about $2 an hour in Dongguan, not including room and board. But Liu expects to offset some of the higher labor costs with a payroll tax credit of $1,500 per employee from South Carolina.
"I was surprised," said the 63-year-old president of Shanxi Yuncheng Plate-Making Group. "The gap's not as large as I thought."
What do you get when you combine sheet music with a roller coaster? This neat award-winning ad from the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, by Euro RSCG Zurich. Looks like the ad people played RollerCoaster Tycoon!
Quick: what image comes to mind when I say "Oreo"? The sweet round cookie with a creamy center that you dunk in milk?
Apparently, that's not the image that comes to mind in China: The iconic cookie is a long, think thick, four-layered water wafer coated in chocolate... and it's not so sweet. Here's why:
Oreos were first introduced in 1912 in the U.S., but it wasn't until 1996 that Kraft introduced Oreos to Chinese consumers. Nine years later, a makeover began. Shawn Warren, a 37-year-old Kraft veteran who had spent many years marketing the company's cookies and crackers around the world, arrived in Asia in 2005 and noticed that Oreo's China sales had been flat for the previous five years.
Back then, Kraft was selling the U.S. version of Oreos in China. Albert Einstein's definition of insanity -- doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results -- "characterized what we were doing," says Mr. Warren, vice president of marketing for Kraft Foods International. [...]
Mr. Warren assigned his team to a lengthy research project that yielded some interesting findings. For one thing, Kraft learned that traditional Oreos were too sweet for Chinese tastes.
Here's an interesting article by Julie Jargon of The Wall Street Journal on how food giant Kraft finally got nimble by trusting local managers: Link - via Beyond Madison Avenue
