Calvin Wright of Athens, Georgia went to a hospital for bronchitis and received a thorough examination. A nurse found something stuck in his ear. It was removed and found to be a pearl that Wright didn't know was there!
The pearl got stuck in his right ear when Wright was 5 and roughhousing with his sister, Regina. The family lived in Chicago at the time.
"She had broken my mother's pearl necklace," Wright said. "I can remember (our baby sitter) picking them up off the floor - except for two, of course."
Regina stuck those two missing pearls - either by accident or because kids do weird things - into her older brother's ear.
A doctor retrieved one of the pearls from the child's ear, but missed the other. Wright has undergone ear exams in the years since, but the pearl was never discovered until the nurse at St. Mary's Hospital found it. http://www.onlineathens.com/stories/121810/new_758269052.shtml -via Arbroath
They look like a floating Christmas trees! These are mobiles: tree ornaments suspended from above by invisible filament. So easy to put gifts underneath! Link to pictures. Link to instructions. -via Laughing Squid
The Engineer Guy, Bill Hammack (previously at Neatorama) explains why standing in line at the checkout counter is so frustrating, especially during Christmas shopping season. He also tells of a better idea, if we will only accept it. -Thank, Bill!
A naked mole rat named Old Man was found dead last Thursday at his home at the Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies in San Antonio, Texas. He was believed to be 32 years old. Old Man spent three decades assisting researchers in studying the process of aging. University of Texas at San Antonio physiology professor Rochelle Buffenstein knew him best.
Old Man was thought to be 11/2 to 2 years old in 1980 when he and 75 of his naked mole rat brethren were captured in a Kenyan sweet potato field — sweet potatoes being one of the mole rat's favorite dishes.
Buffenstein brought him first to Cape Town University in South Africa, and then to City College of New York in Harlem. The pair arrived in San Antonio in 2007.
Naked mole rats are noted for their longevity with an average lifespan of 26 years. Other rodents live for two to four years. This makes them particularly useful for aging studies. Naked mole rats do not develop cancer. They develop plaque in their brains as they age like Alzheimer's patients, but they do not display cognitive decline like humans do. Scientists are trying to find out why. Among the long-lived research subjects at the institute, Old Man stood out from the rest.
Even in his old age, Old Man remained an alpha male in his colony. Come feeding time, Old Man was served a special cereal that he loved and that Buffenstein imported from South Africa.
“He'd wrap his body around the bowl and eat until he was full,” she said. “The other rats would wait until he was finished before they ate.”
He also continued to mate with the colony's breeding female right to the end. About the only outward sign of his advancing age was the sarcopenia, or loss of muscle mass, he developed about five years ago.
Tissue samples will be studied to determine the cause of death. Buffenstein is sure of one thing -it wasn't cancer. Link -Thanks, Richard Marini!
It's time for the Name That Weird Invention! contest. Steven M. Johnson comes up with all sorts of crazy ideas in his weekly Museum of Possibilities posts. Can you come up with a name for this one? The commenter suggesting the funniest and wittiest name will win a free T-shirt from the NeatoShop. Have fun, and good luck!
Update: Congratulations to Madam Atom, who named the boots Ankle Biters, and Carolyn Bahm, who called them Moc Martens. Both win t-shirts from the NeatoShop!
Allie at Hyperbole and a Half tells about the time she decided to rewrite the story of Jesus' birth to give it more pizzazz. The production included a flying baby Jesus, two drunk wise men, and Kenny Loggins. And although it was supposed to be serious drama, her family rolled on the floor, as you can see here. Link
Matthew Inman of The Oatmeal has us pegged. A series of comics details how celebrations differ by age and family composition. Since I am always 20 years behind, I fit exactly in the "30-somethings with kids" category, which is "pretty damn awesome". Link -via Digg
This monster art project situated in the city square of Ljubljana, Slovenia (with tentacles trailing down the streets) was created from 40,000 plastic bags and 7,500 discarded plastic cups collected from the local schools. It's a statement about consumerism and waste. Pretty scary! Link -via RightBrainTerrain
Most folks know Rudolph, the Red-nosed Reindeer from the 1964 Rankin-Bass TV special, or from the 1949 version of the song sung by Gene Autry. But Rudolph was born as a coloring book.
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer first appeared in 1939 when Montgomery Ward department store asked one of its copywriters, 34-year-old Robert L. May, to create a Christmas story the store could give away to shoppers as a promotional gimmick.
The retailer had been buying and giving away coloring books for Christmas every year; and it was decided that creating its own book would save money. In the first year of publication, 2.4 million copies of Rudolph’s story were distributed by Montgomery Ward.
Read the rest of the story at the Smithsonian Institution. Link
Esperanza was a stray dog at a reserve in Alberta, Canada who got hit by a car. Her rear leg was badly injured, but she kept right on with her family responsibilities. She had six babies, after all -five puppies and a kitten- to nurse.
Criss Gerwing, who runs a small animal rescue group, discovered the dog earlier this month and couldn't believe it when the canine led her to her blended brood.
"I cried because she was in such bad condition with her leg, but she was obviously nursing her puppies and this kitten," Gerwing told a media outlet.
Gerwing took the entire family to the Edmonton Humane Society, where veterinarians thought they'd have to amputate the mother dog's bad leg.
But local vet Dr. Milton Ness volunteered to do a special surgery that saved Esperanza's hind quarter. He calls her a "special soul."
That's a good dog. http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/canada/injured-dogs-selflessness-draws-tears-112174059.html -via Arbroath
In case you couldn't stay up all night and watch it, or you are someplace where it wasn't visible, here is the video of last night's lunar eclipse. Four hours of moonlight are compressed into two minutes. The video was captured over Gainesville, Florida by professor William Castleman. -via The Daily What
By Eric Schulman1,2, Eric Schulman3,4, Eric Schulman5, and Eric Schulman6
Figure 1. Eric Schulman, nearby disk galaxy expert
Introduction
Saving for retirement can be an arduous task. The galactic fountain model predicts that energetic stellar winds and supernovae in OB associations produce superbubbles containing hot gas that breaks out of the galactic disk, cools radiatively as it rises upward, and recombines and returns to the disk ballistically. Time travel has occurred when the separation between the time of departure and the time of arrival does not equal the duration of the journey. Open book management theories include teaching employees the rules of the game, giving them the information needed to play the game, and making sure that they share in the risks and the rewards.
Figure 2. Eric Schulman, open book management expert
Methodology
The most popular and widespread methods for obtaining a nest egg are in stocks and bonds. The hot gas was observed with X-ray telescopes, while the cool returning neutral hydrogen was observed through 21-centimeter emission from high-velocity clouds. There are three major paradoxes within time travel: reverse causation, casual loops, and the time traveler’s ability to alter the past. In modern day Corporate America, this unpretentious set of principles applies to every business.
Results
Figure 3. Eric Schulman, time travel paradox expert
Both equities offer a wide array of sectors in which to put your money and can be extremely profitable when playing the market correctly. High-resolution X-ray images of M33 revealed two possible superbubbles, while sensitive 21-centimeter observations found high-velocity neutral hydrogen in 10 of 14 nearby disk galaxies. It does not matter if getting into the time machine produces arrival in the past, because the personal time of the traveler does not depend on the external time. Employees can be taught to play this game, but they are also required to have the information needed in order to play successfully. This entails trading when you have a liquid derivative in the height of demand or conversely obtain the derivative at the beginning of the ascent. Galaxies with high-velocity neutral hydrogen have more dust-enshrouded far-infrared sources and an average star formation rate an order of magnitude larger than galaxies without it. Time travel can still occur without the existence of causal loops, and their removal eliminates a major paradox. Information should not be something that is used as a method of domination or power.
Figure 2. Eric Schulman, open book management expert
These two types of savings plans are geared for investors who plan to continue making money for an elongated period of time and can afford to take a loss and recover. Both of these results are expected if a substantial fraction of the high-velocity clouds are produced in galactic fountains. The second, and far more satisfying and clever resolution of this dilemma, comes with the possibility of branching timelines. Open book management is not for everyone, but for a radical change, it may be just what a company needs.
Discussion
As Figure 5 shows, it is of vital importance when planning for retirement to ensure that employees have all the information necessary to support managers when they use high-velocity gas to go back in time in order to kill their grandfathers, thus creating a new temporal branch in which hands-on training leads to increased profits from the recirculation of the galactic fountain in nearby disk galaxies and therefore a steady star formation rate later in life when your risk should be lower.
Figure 5. The operational risk in each of the Basel II event type categories measured in solar masses per galaxy per year as a function of the number of grandfathers killed after having gone back in time.
Conclusion
In this paper we conclusively demonstrated the utility of planning for retirement by solving time travel paradoxes using open book management in nearby disk galaxies.
The Authors
1Alexandria, Virginia; 2The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan; 3Johnson & Wales University, Providence, Rhode Island; 4Saint Leo University, Saint Leo, Florida; 5Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts: 6Economic Analysis Group Ltd., Washington, DC
_____________________
This article is republished with permission from the March-April 2008 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research.
You can download or purchase back issues of the magazine, or subscribe to receive future issues. Or get a subscription for someone as a gift! Visit their website for more research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK.
It's time for our giveaway collaboration with the always amusing What Is It? Blog! Can you guess what this is a picture of?
Place your guess in the comment section below. One guess per comment, please, though you can enter as many as you'd like. Post no URLs or weblinks, as doing so will forfeit your entry. Two winners: the first correct guess and the funniest (albeit ultimately wrong) guess will win T-shirt from the NeatoShop.
Update: Congratulations to commenter Just a guess who won for knowing these are for the ends of bulls horns -supposedly for decorations during a show, but common sense tells us they should be a safety feature as well. No one else came close by the time the What Is It? Blog announced the answer. Okkent wins for funniest guess when he said, "My wife requested this as her engagement bracelet. The attachment of my jewels was a condition of us getting married." Both win t-shirts from the NeatoShop!
Jack Kennedy was president of the United States from January 1961 to November 1963. Jack Donaghy is a character on the TV show 30 Rock. In today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss, you'll be given quotes, and you decide which Jack said it. It's not as easy as you think -especially for someone who either hasn't seen the TV show or can't remember the presidency. I scored 67%, because I haven't seen the TV show. Link
