Friday, November 20, 2009

Sitting On Tha Toilet


I got this from the Tosh.o show. I found it funny, and thought ... well ... to share.


Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYW6C44zo24

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Thursday, November 19, 2009

Comic - Client Base


Happy Thursday - Comic:  Client Base

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Wednesday, November 18, 2009

SC Man Convicted of Having Sex with Horse, Twice !!


This story is about two weeks old, but the fact that it took place TWICE landed this on Weird Wednesday.

Barbara Kenley in the case of the SC man convicted of having sex with her horse Sugar.
By Steve Jessmore, The Sun News, via AP

It's only fair to mention up front that the man involved in this, 50-year old Rodell Vereen, has had some mental / medical issues. So what's the scoop? Well, in July of 2008, Vereen pleaded guilty to having sex with the same horse on Thanksgiving 2007. He was declared a sex offender, sentenced to three years of probation, ordered to stay away from Barbara Kenley's Lazy B Stables in Horry County, S.C.

Kenley told police she had videotaped Vereen having sex with her 21-year old mare "Sugar," staked out the stable and then caught him at gunpoint behind her barn.

A family member, back in late July of this year, told The Sun News of Myrtle Beach that Vereen was diagnosed with a "mental disease" more than 10 years ago and may not have been taking his medication.

According to MSNBC:
Vereen has had mental problems for several years, but seemed to get better after getting court-ordered treatment last year, said his brother, the Rev. James Vereen, in earlier interviews. The brother lives just down the street from his brother and the stables.


"He's done all right when he was on the medicine. I don't know if he is still taking it," said James Vereen in a July interview.

The fact that the man got caught twice doing the same thing, to the same horse, with medications deemed necessary by the judge should have raised a flag, and questions on whether this man should or should not go to jail should've been asked.

The serious stuff aside, it was funny reading many of the titles associated with this story. My favorite ... "Love for Sugar lands 'stud' in jail"
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Tuesday, November 17, 2009

The Mosquito Ringtone


I remembered reading about this a couple of years ago when I was describing it to a couple of people who have not heard or knew about it at all. But I couldn't remember what the name / reference of this "teenagers-only could hear" audio. So I started to look it up, and wanted to write about this technological ingenuity, its history, etc.

This technology was marketed back in 2005 as an ultrasonic teenager repellent, an ear-splitting 17-kilohertz (17.4KHz, to be exact) buzzer designed, by British inventor Howard Stapleton with Welsh security company Compound Security Systems, to help shopkeepers disperse young people loitering in front of their stores while leaving adults unaffected. Basically, the idea was meant to drive away teens through ultra high frequency sounds much like how a dog whistle would affect dogs.

“The Mosquito”, as the product was named, took advantage of a curious medical fact that most people are unaware of. The principle behind it is a biological reality that hearing experts refer to as presbycusis (a more accurate source here), or aging ear.

Hearing High Tones
While most human communication takes place in a frequency range between 200 and 8,000 hertz (a hertz being the scientific unit of frequency equal to one cycle per second), most adults' ability to hear frequencies higher than that begins to deteriorate in early middle age.

"It's the most common sensory abnormality in the world," said Dr. Rick A. Friedman, an ear surgeon and research scientist at the House Ear Institute in Los Angeles.

But in a bit of techno-jujitsu, someone — a person unknown at this time, but probably not someone with presbycusis — realized that the Mosquito, which uses this common adult abnormality to adults' advantage, could be turned against them.

As with any inventive good idea, sooner or later someone is going to use it for something other then the original intended purpose. In this case, some equally inventive teens in the inventor’s hometown (Birmingham) caught on to what the company was doing and decided to put turn the idea into something they could use. They took the ultra sonic frequency and converted into to a cell phone ringtone which they aptly named “Teen Buzz”. As such, the “adult proof” ringtone known as the mosquito ringtone was born. The ringtone immediately caught on like wildfire in the UK, and has since quickly spread throughout the reaches of the Internet to teens everywhere. Teens learned they could hear each others phones ringing at school but their teachers couldn’t. The ringtone goes by many different names including Teen Buzz, Mozzy Tone, Mosquito Ringtone, Ultra Sonic Ringtone, and others. It has been used in several TV series here in the United States as well as in this (below) very clever KFC TV Commercial.

In April of 2007, KFC Featured the Mosquito Ringtone in a type of viral interactive commercial. They were giving away (1000) $10 gift cards to the first thousand people that could correctly state at what point in the commercial the ultra sonic sound was played. I don’t know if it is part of the YouTube conversion process, but it’s pretty obvious where the sound is played.


Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMWqIeb7b6g


"Our high-frequency buzzer was copied. It is not exactly what we developed, but it's a pretty good imitation," said Simon Morris, marketing director for Compound Security Systems, the company behind the Mosquito. "You've got to give the kids credit for ingenuity."

Since then, Mr. Morris said his company has received so much attention — none of it profit-making because the ring tone was in effect pirated — that he and his partner, Howard Stapleton, the inventor, decided to start selling a ring tone of their own. It is called Mosquitotone, and it is now advertised as "the authentic Mosquito ring tone."

To many, this whole notion of a group of people being able to hear something while another older one cannot is all hard to believe. But I assure you it's real. Here's a video that demonstrates this:


Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrewnzQYrPI


This ring tone comes in different KHz. Some are designed to not be heard by those above 50, or those above 40, or those above 30 and so on and so forth, give or take a few years. Its applications may go beyond teenagers and their cellphones at school. Can you think of an application or two? Share them with us in the comments.  ▣

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Monday, November 16, 2009

Autistic Basketball Player


This kid never complained about being left off the roster showing us all that attitude is everything.


Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngzyhnkT_jY

Autistic basketball player Jason McElwain spent most of his high school days cheering his team on as a special ed. coach assistant / team manager. That is, until the final 4 minutes of his senior year final game.  ▣

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