Back in the 1930s, Chinatowns had acquired a reputation for drugs, prostitution, and gang violence that was largely undeserved. Tired of trying to fight for their good name, many residents decided to play into the stereotypes and make some money. In San Francisco, Chinatown tour guides spun tales of underground tunnels filled with opium dens and sex slaves. They even set up a few fake dens and leper colonies. Meanwhile, tour guides in New York went so far as to hire locals to put on knife fights between opium-crazed men over ownership of prostitutes. Suddenly, visitors who had "seen it firsthand" were spreading legends about Chinatowns' debauchery. Ironically, violence and crime rates were on the decline in Chinatowns during this same period.
CLEANING UP
In the early days of San Francisco, wealthy residents would ship their dirty laundry to Hawaii because there were no cleaning services in California. But that changed in 1851, when a Chinatown resident named Wah Lee opened the first Chinese laundry in the United States. It flourished, and so did the many others like it that followed. In fact, the success of Chinese laundries allowed immigrants to move east, establishing new Chinatowns across America.
Frank Mickadeit, a columnist for the OC Register, is staying in a monkey cage at the Santa Ana Zoo in California. He's been there three days, and is scheduled to come out at 4PM PDT (7PM EDT) today. Mickadeit joined the monkeys as a human exhibit. The sign attached labeled his species as Columnist horribilis. While they observed him, Mickadeit in turn observed the zoo visitors.
For seven hours, I was entertained and, I hope, moderately entertaining, as a parade of moms with strollers, grandparents with charges, art students from Santa Ana College, biology students from Fullerton College, friends, regular readers and media types wandered up.
If they had no idea a human being was on loan from the Register, the look on their faces said, "What the ..." If they did know, they wanted to know, "Why the ..."
"Three days, and you're getting paid?" one woman asked, as I regaled onlookers with a variety of tricks that included blowing smoke rings and figuring out how to extract tiny bits of papaya from a hollow ball my keeper tossed at me.
"Well, uh, yeah, I guess I am getting paid," I replied indignantly.
"Paid just to sit in a cage three days a week," she said, shaking her head.
"Oh, no!" I said, finally realizing where she was going. "I'm not here three days every week!"
The zoo has a live webcam trained on their "human exhibit." Link
Woot, the discount website that sells one item a day, has been bought by Amazon, which they are quite happy about. In addition to the above video posted at their blog, CEO Matt Rutledge wrote the most awesome memo ever announcing the acquisition to Woot employees.
We are excited about doing this for all sorts of reasons. One, our business model is so vague that there’s no way Amazon can possibly change what it is we’re truly doing: preparing the way for the rise of the Lava Men in 2012. Also, our deal means that Jason Toon will finally be released from that Mexican jail owned by Zappos honcho Tony Hsieh. No, don’t lie, Tony, we’ve seen the paperwork. And we need a powerful ally in case Steve Jobs finally breaks down and comes after us for all our Apple jokes over the years. Don’t think of it as a buyout; think of it as NATO!
I'm Remembering is a blog of "Pop-Culture Nostalgery From The 80's & Early 90's." That seems like just yesterday to me, but if it was the period of your childhood, you'll enjoy the photographs, toys, TV shows, and other blasts from the past. Link
You don't have to be a Twilight fan to enjoy this 8-bit interactive YouTube game. Just make a decision on which way the adventure should go, and enjoy the silliness along the way! Produced by The Station, animated by Doc Octoroc.
Belgian scientist Olivier Lambert has discovered a new species of whale, a prehistoric sperm whale that was a real killer. Leviathan melvillei was the size of modern sperm whales, with a very big difference:
Today’s sperm whale has no functional teeth in its upper jaw and only small ones in its lower jaw (which are mostly used in fights). It feeds through suction, relying on a rush of water to carry its prey into its open mouth. But Leviathan’s mouth was full of huge teeth, the largest of which were a foot long and around 4 inches wide. This was no suction feeder! Leviathan clearly grabbed its prey with a powerful bite, inflicting deep wounds and tearing off flesh as killer whales do, but with a skull three times bigger.
Leviathan was at the very top of the food chain and it must have needed a lot of food. While modern sperm whales mainly eat squid, Lambert thinks that Leviathan used its fearsome teeth to kill its own kind – the giant baleen whales. At the same point in prehistory, baleen whales started becoming much bigger and they were certainly the most common large animals in the area that Leviathan lived in. Lambert thinks that the giant predator evolved to take advantage of this rich source of energy. He says, “We think that medium-size baleen whales, rich in fat, would have been very convenient prey for Leviathan.”
This whale swam off the coast of Peru 12 million years ago. There's lots more about Leviathan melvillei at Not Exactly Rocket Science. Link
Way back in 2007, we posted an item about how cell phones might be responsible for Colony Collapse Disorder, which is affecting the world honeybee population. Now, scientists in India have published results of an experiment that corroborates the theory.
In a study at Panjab University in Chandigarh, northern India, researchers fitted cell phones to a hive and powered them up for two fifteen-minute periods each day.
After three months, they found the bees stopped producing honey, egg production by the queen bee halved, and the size of the hive dramatically reduced.
It's not just the honey that will be lost if populations plummet further. Bees are estimated to pollinate 90 commercial crops worldwide. Their economic value in the UK is estimated to be $290 million per year and around $12 billion in the U.S.
The Mobile Operators Association in England, which represents British cell companies, disagrees with the results. Link
The Telegraph has more reactions to this report. Link
In the movie Caddyshack, Bill Murray ruined a golf course trying to get rid of gophers. Landscapers at Aronimink Golf Club in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania have a better idea. They've brought in bluebirds, swallows, and a border collie to manage the unwanted wildlife! The birds eat pesky insects, and the dog chases away a flock Canadian geese and any animals that would interfere with golf.
The low-tech, wholly organic approaches to pest control are likely to draw little notice from the up to 40,000 golf fans who show up to check out Tiger Woods and other PGA luminaries at the show, though a closer look will reveal the birdhouses sited amid the fescue of the roughs.
Course regulars fondly swap stories about Charlie, the black-and-white canine called "part of the staff" by course superintendent John Gosselin for her help with geese and other critter interlopers - including foxes and, two summers ago, a coyote.
"She's just prepared to chase anything that moves," assistant superintendent Ben Little said. "Never actually caught anything, but she has fun with it."
The birds were attracted by nest boxes that the staff installed. Golfers love seeing the birds at work, and they adore Charlie. Link
An unnamed woman in Colorado backed her car into a canal near the town of Fruita Sunday night. She told police that she saw a vampire in the road and was so scared she put her car into reverse and backed away, ending up in the canal.
She was not injured. Her husband arrived on the scene and took her home. Troopers do not suspect alcohol or drugs to be factors in this accident.
They added that they found no evidence of a vampire.
When laws forbid people from transporting something from one place to another, there will be those who try to do it anyway. Smuggled drugs, guns, cash, stolen goods, and immigrants are seized every day. However, some things that people try to sneak through security make you scratch your head in wonder.
1. Turtles and Snakes
(Image credit: Antara/Ismar Patrizki)
Officials at the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Jakarta, Indonesia saw shipping containers labeled "fresh fruit" bound for Hong Kong this past February. What they found inside were two tons of live reptiles! They seized 25 bags of Chinese rat snakes and 3,492 pig-nosed turtles. Export of these species from Indonesia is not illegal, but is regulated and the exporter apparently wanted to bypass quarantine laws. The snakes and turtles would most likely have been used to make soup and sex-enhancing drugs at their destination, according to officials.
2. Chihuahua
A man traveling from Bulgaria arrived at the Dublin airport after changing planes in Madrid. He looked nervous, so inspectors in Ireland selected him for a spot check. When they x-rayed his hand luggage, the image of a dog showed up. Screeners thought it must be a toy or statue, as the dog was standing up. But when they opened the bag, they found a live chihuahua! The dog had been in a small cage inside the bag throughout the trip. The traveler had planned to give the chihuahua to a friend in Ireland as a gift, but intended to bypass quarantine laws. The dog was seized and placed in quarantine.
3. Fish
The Asian arowana, commonly called the dragon fish, is considered lucky in many Asian cultures. However, the species is on the endangered list and is illegal to sell or import. Some people will pay a thousand dollars for a small specimen, or up to $20,000 for a large adult, which can grow up to two feet long. A 2005 sting operation by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service led to the arrest of Andree Gunawan on charges of smuggling and selling endangered wildlife from Indonesia. Gunawan and six other people were also recently indicted in connection with the case.
4. Songbirds
In April of last year, a man named Sony Dong was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport for bringing in live songbirds from Vietnam. Dong had been under investigation for a year after airport official found an abandoned bag containing 18 birds, five of which had died. This time, customs official were waiting for him to arrive on a flight from Vietnam. Observing that Dong had bird droppings on his shoes, they found he had swaddled 14 Vietnamese songbirds in cloth and attached them to his lower legs under his pants. All the birds survived the trip. Dong pleaded guilty and was sentenced to four months and ordered to pay $4,000 for the care of the birds.
Soccer fans have invaded South Africa -and they won't go home! Local authorities had no choice but to segregate them and confine them to an area that came to be called District 11.
David and Ashley Marasco of Bridgeville, Pennsylvania were driving away from their wedding reception when a motorist pointed out a photo album that had been left on top of their trunk. An envelope containing $3,600 in cash was missing from it! Meanwhile, a a real estate appraiser named Brennan Breene was driving home from a visit with his mother. He saw an envelope in the middle of Washington Pike with money visible. Breene cautiously retrieved the envelope.
"If nobody claimed it, I guess I would've kept it," he said, a thought he barely entertained after he took the package home and counted it. "I figured, in a couple of days, I'd go to the police with it."
So, he said, he looked for news reports about lost money. Scanning the Internet Monday morning, he found a report on the WPXI-TV website about the lost wedding money.
"I come from a big Irish Catholic family, and my parents kind of instilled in us to do the right thing," said Mr. Breene.
Within minutes of having read the news report, Mr. Breene went to Bridgeville police to turn it in.
The bride's mother was at the police station, and was very thankful to see the money. She couldn't believe such an honest person had found it. Link -Thanks, Tiffany!
The Bakemono Zukushi scroll was painted in Japan sometime in the 18-19th centuries by an unknown artist. There are 24 legendary Japanese monsters depicted on the scroll. Pink Tentacle has scans of them, including the Rokurokubi (a long-necked woman) and the Inugami (dog spirit) shown here. Link
