In 1929, a fish lodge owner was fed up with mosquito problems in the Lower Keys in Florida. So he decided to fight the bugs by bringing in their predator: bats.

But his cleverly hatched plan had a flaw:

In 1929 frustrated local businessman Richter Clyde Perky decided the time had come to rid his holiday resort of mosquitoes and the threat of both malaria and commercial failure.

His idea was to invest in a structure called a Bat Tower, the invention of a Texan ‘Bat Researcher’ by the name of Dr. Campbell who believed that the towers would provide an attractive home for bats, well-known gobblers of mosquitoes.

The plans in place, Mr Perky installed the huge wooden Bat Tower at great cost, shipped in hundreds of bats from Texas and Cuba and put the Champagne on ice. As soon as the bats were released they flew away, never to return.

The charming Bat Tower, minus the resort it was meant to save, can still be seen and photographed at mile marker 17 of Lower Sugarloaf Key. Watch out for the mosquitoes.

Read about this and other equally fascinating unfinished or abandoned structures in Florida here: Link - Thanks David!

A math theorem called the Road Coloring Problem, first conjectured by Benjamin Weiss and Roy Adler in 1970 was finally solved in 2007 ... by Avraham Trakhtman, a mathematician who worked as a night watchman after he immigrated to Israel:

“In math circles, we talk about beautiful results — this is beautiful and it is unexpected. Even in layman’s terms it is completely counterintuitive, but somehow it works,” says Stuart Margolis, a colleague who recruited Mr Trakhtman to Bar Ilan University near Tel Aviv. [...]

[Stuart] says the discovery was especially remarkable for two reasons. “Math is usually a younger person’s game, like sports,” he says. “Usually you do your better work in your mid 20s and early 30s. He certainly came up with a good one at age 63.”

Secondly, Trakhtman has an unlikely background.

“The first time I met him he was wearing a night watchman’s uniform.”

Originally from Yekaterinburg, Russia, Trakhtman was already an accomplished mathematician before he came to Israel in 1992, at the age of 48.

But like many immigrants in the wave that followed the breakup of the former Soviet Union, he struggled to find work in the Jewish state and was forced into stints working maintenance and security before landing a teaching position at Bar Ilan in 1995.

Link

Every day, 27 million people eat at McDonald's in the USA. Every year, this number grows by 1 million.

McDonald's (USA) have experienced 45 consecutive months of sales increases since 2002. The secret? More and more McDonald's are open 24 hours. (Source)

Talkin' bout fast food, German website Pundo3000 has a large list of photographs of fast food, snacks, canned goods, instant noodles and other
food as depicted in advertising as compared to real life.

You can see that "food stylists" really do earn their money! Link - via AQFL

Previously on Neatorama: Fast Food: Ads vs. Reality | Secrets of Food Stylists

Two reasons for this post:

1) Father-and-son scientific duo George and Peter Bubenik found that moose antlers act as amplifier:

Scientists have discovered that those cool, gnarly things that look so fabulous perched atop the furry freaks act as amplifiers, allowing Mr Moose to be able to hear things up to 2 miles away. Added to the animal's already acute hearing—it's to do with its large ears that rotate in almost every direction, apparently—antlers improve the beast's audio capacities by as much as 19 per cent.

2) The best moose pic EVAR!

Here's a neat Gizmodo article by Addy Dugdale: Link

Douglas A. McIntyre of 24/7 Wall St., a blog about stocks and other Wall Streets preoccupations, wrote an interesting post titled the Twenty Five Most Valuable Blogs.

The post attempts to attach value to the listed blogs by guessing their traffic and ad sales. From private conversations with other bloggers and Neatorama's internal traffic statistics, he's underestimating many of the blogs' traffic. But he's making it up in the valuations - they are stratospheric! ($48 million for PerezHilton? LOL!) Now I know why Wall St. gets in trouble with dot com bubble, subprime mortgage mess, etc.

Lo and behold, Neatorama's on it! While I'm not sure why this lil' blog is valued at $1.5 million (where do I cash out?), it's still nice to see that we're being talked about alongside some of the most famous names in blogs. :)

Link - via Weblog Tools Collection

Forgive the background music of Sinatra's I'm Going to Live Till I Die, but take a look at this video clip of near (VERY near) misses. Sort of makes you believe that there were guardian angels watching these, um, hapless individuals.

Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - via Surfplank

Japanese gravestone maker Ishi no Koe ("Voice of the Stone") is going to sell gravestones with embedded two-dimensional bar codes called QR code (common in Japan).

When scanned with a QR capable cell phone, visitors can view pictures, video and other information about the deceased: http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008/03/japanese-graves.html - via Tokyo Mango

This is a great game to play with your little kids: Math Popper challenges you to add, substract and multiply by "popping" the balloon with right answer.

Sure it's easy at first, but it gets harder ... and harder ... and harder ... Link [Flash game] - via Ursi's Blog

This Stilet triket looks like it just came out of a post-apocalyptic Escape from New York, but it's actually a very clever paint job by Luber Custom:

What looks like rusty metal body panels is really just an airbrushed effect; the body is molded from fiberglass. Powered by a 300 horsepower 5.7 liter V8 and automatic tranny of unmentioned origin (probably a Chevy 350), we imagine that this trike has no problem getting out of its own way.

Autoblog has more pics: Link | Original site (in Russian)

You may have seen this before (it's from way back in 2005), but it was new to me: the famous Kitty Cat Dance. Why? Why not (plus it's better than being rickrolled - kittyrolled!)

Hit play or go to Link [YouTube]

For his art exhibition, Michal Tatarkiewicz turned a room into the inside of a subway car! Link | Michal's website - via Core 77

Are Serena Williams and Rafael Nadal, two of the world's best tennis players, so great that they can walk on water?

Well, almost: they played tennis on water on a specially constructed tennis court on top of a swimming pool:

The water-covered court was constructed in the 110-foot swimming pool set in the Gansevoort's exclusive 22,000-square-foot rooftop retreat. A specialist underwater team took five days to construct two invisible platforms at either end of the pool using a combination of bespoke acrylic sheets and supporting acrylic tubes.

Serena and Rafael said this about playing on water:

Defending Sony Ericsson Open Champion, Serena Williams, commented: 'It was a once in a lifetime chance to play tennis on water and it was great to be involved in a true world first. Playing against Rafa was a new challenge, but I think the surface helped to level the playing field - particularly as he volunteered to play at the deep end!'

Rafael Nadal commented: ‘I love playing on all surfaces, but this was different and playing against Serena made it even more special. Playing a game on water was a first for me, and I also liked the setting here in Miami overlooking the ocean since I love the sea."

Link - more pics at newslite, thanks Charles Hodge!

Math major turned artist Kathleen Dustin makes purses - but not just any purses, her creations are nothing short of stunning. I love the "pod" series (above), where the purses are shaped like fruits and flowers, and the stone series (you guessed it - shaped like rocks).

http://www.kathleendustin.com/purseGallery.html

Practical Polly made this excellent Wonder Woman sweater. She even posted the tutorial on Crafster:

It took me 14 months to make, using 4ply wool, 3mm needles, a plain jumper pattern from the seventies, a ton of graph paper and pictures of Wonder Woman, and about a million bobbins for the intarsia.

Link