-- hashtag: Twitter users know that by adding a # -- or a "hash" -- to a word they can then more effectively search for "tweets."
-- intexticated: Driving-while-texting.
-- funemployed: Making the best of losing a job by having some fun.
-- birther: Someone who doubts (despite the evidence) that President Barack Obama was born in the USA.
-- death panel: Made famous by former Alaska governor Sarah Palin and others who warn about health care rationing.
But unfriend won out over those and others because "it has both currency and potential longevity," says the dictionary's senior lexicographer, Christine Lindberg.
It seems as if "currency and potential longevity" depend on just how common the act of removing a "friend" from Facebook and similar sites really is. So:
We'll keep the question open until 1 p.m. ET on Thursday.
Later today, All Things Considered plans to have more to say about unfriend's newfound credibility with the lexicographers. Click here to find an NPR station near you that broadcasts the show.
Update at 12:55 p.m. ET: Feel free to use the comments thread to suggest other worthy candidates for "word of the year."
NPR's Shereen Meraji and Heather Murphy were there Sunday when dozens of pretty hip cyclists in Washington eschewed their Spandex in favor of good old fashioned tweed.
As Shereen is reporting on All Things Considered later today, the "tweed ride" is a trend that's catching on in Europe and the U.S. The idea: Sometimes it's cooler (fashion-wise) to dress up like a dandy or a quaintrelle than to be outfitted in more modern gear. Shereen says "it's part fashion show, part celebration of the bicycle."
Heather put together this photo gallery for us (NPR's The Picture Show, by the way, has many more such fine photo displays):
It's mid-November. We don't have many days left. It's time to come to a consensus:
What are we all going to call the year that begins on Jan. 1? (Assuming you use the Gregorian calendar, of course.)
As All Things Considered Host Robert Siegel says in a piece set to be on the show today, some folks think "twenty ten" sounds like a nickname -- not the grown-up way ("two thousand ten") to refer to something so important.
Let's see what The Two-Way community thinks.
Here's Robert saying "twenty ten":
And here's Robert saying "two thousand ten":
Your preference?
(The question closes at noon ET on Wednesday.)
Click here to find an NPR station year you that broadcasts ATC.
Update at 12:35 p.m. ET. Thank you, reader Renee Rico, for suggesting we also ask about what this decide should be called. So, here goes:
All dressed up. Obama with Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. (Pool/Getty Images)
By Mark Memmott
Every year at the summit of leaders from Asia and the Pacific Rim nations, the presidents and prime ministers put on shirts that reflect the host nation's sense of style and gather for what have become light-hearted photos.
President Barack Obama, attending his first annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, was in Singapore yesterday for this year's funny photos. The garb: Silk tunic shirts with mandarin collars, in a choice of red or blue-gray.
Of course, there's also been work to do at the summit. NPR's Scott Horsley, who's traveling with the president on Obama's 10-day trip across Asia, says Obama "became the first American leader in decades to sit in the same room with Myanmar's military ruler." According to one of Obama's national security advisers, Scott reports, the president took the opportunity to call for political reform in Myanmar, and specifically for the release of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and other pro-democracy political prisoners.
Obama also met with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and the two discussed the ongoing problem of Iran's nuclear ambitions. The leaders said they aren't satisified with the pace of talks with Iran and that "other options" might have to be explored.
As The New York Times writes, Obama also said that "the reset button has worked" to improve U.S.-Russian relations.
It's was announced that the 2011 APEC summit will be held in Obama's native state; Hawaii.
We suspect we know what type of shirt the leaders will be wearing in that year's group photo.
The 2009 class photo (Obama is ninth from the left). (Pool/Getty Images)
It seems that Canadian Transport Minister John Baird has ... er, had ... a cat named Thatcher.
Tuesday night, as Canada.com reports, while "2,000 or so Conservatives in black-tie" were at the Metro Toronto Convention Center, the minister sent a short text to a friend who was there. The message:
"Thatcher has died."
Today, the BBC picks up the story from there: "Confusion spread. ... Calls to puzzled officials in both 10 Downing Street and Buckingham Palace followed." A top aide to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper "started preparing an official statement mourning the passing of the Iron Lady."
And then the Canadians found out that 84-year-old former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, a favorite of conservatives around the world, is still with us.
If you've looked at a calendar, you probably noticed: It's Friday the 13th.
And as the Associated Press says, this is "a day when people rearrange travel plans, delay surgery or just pull up the covers and stay in bed until Friday the 13th turns into Saturday the 14th, convinced that even stepping out of the house would cause bad luck to find them the way an anvil finds the head of Wile E. Coyote."
Elizabeth Lampert of Alamo, Calif., (photo) tells the wire service that she would "absolutely, absolutely" delay something like surgery. "There are only a few Friday the 13ths, so why test fate?" Lampert added.
You may not want to admit it. But your parents were probably pretty cool in their day (and I bet many still are, for that matter!)
Mom, 1936. (Memmott family photo)
One guy's made it his mission to show the world that our parents were -- and are -- awesome.
Eliot Glazer talked with All Things Considered host Michele Norris this morning about My Parents Were Awesome, the blog he's running that so far has collected more than 3,000 photos of parents from "back in the day."
As it says at the blog, "before the fanny packs and Andrea Bocelli concerts, your parents (and grandparents) were once free-wheeling, fashion-forward, and super awesome."
So why not show the world by sending Glazer a photo?
He's careful to point out, by the way, that he isn't implying that parents somehow lose their "coolness" once they have kids:
By all means, check out My Parents Were Awesome when you have the time. As Michele says, it can be addictive.
For a taste, here's a photo gallery of shots from the blog that our friends at NPR's The Picture Show put together:
You can hear more from Michele's conversation with Glazer on today's ATC. Click here to find an NPR station near you.
And yes, those are my parents in the photos at the top of this post, before they married in 1939. That's dad -- Arthur Memmott -- on a fishing trip in Colorado in 1935, looking like he's a pal of Hemingway's. My mom -- Sara Memmott -- is looking to the future from her Elmira College yearbook in 1936.
Maybe this only applies to guys in Britain, but Reuters reports that a survey done for the U.K. retailer Debenhams shows that "men normally leave the purchasing of their underwear to their mothers until about the age of 19, relatively late when compared to women, who start buying their own knickers around 13."
Then, when guys do start choosing their own undies, they apparently buy them most often when they're trying to attract or impress new romantic partners. Other than that, they get along with what they've got.
So, as OK! says, "if you've noticed some new underpants working their way into your boyfriend's repertoire watch out -- he's probably on the hunt for a new partner."
They don't look a day over 4, much less 40. (Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images)
By Mark Memmott
Moms, dads, kids of all ages. Here's a question: Which Sesame Street Muppet is/was your favorite?
We ask because, as you might have heard, today is the show's 40th anniversary. As NPR's Robert Smith reports, "millions of kids can thank the program for the 1-2-3s and A-B-Cs". Here's the report he filed for Morning Edition:
Now, on to the Muppets. I'll be upfront and say my vote goes to Grover (that soup routine!). But I have to confess, the competition is tough -- and there are many characters I'd forgotten about (the tally below may help jog your memory too; I know the list is long, but it's fun to read through).
Now, you're probably thinking to yourself -- as I did -- that this must be a new hall of fame that's just inducting its first honorees. Surely The Ball was put in the Hall with the first class of inductees? Like Babe Ruth at the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
Who's been bigger than Ball in the world of play? Stick? ("You'll poke your eye out!") Cardboard Box? Barbie? Please.
But no. It turns out that the Toy Hall of Fame has been around in one form or another since 1998. Here it is 2009 and The Ball is just getting its due. Stick, Cardboard Box, Barbie, Lincoln Logs, Play-Doh -- they were already in.
So I called curator Nicolas Ricketts at the Toy Hall of Fame. He says, basically, that the competition's tough and The Ball's time just hadn't come around until now. "Since we only take in two or sometimes three toys a year and it is a relatively young institution -- the Hall of Fame -- it's taken a while for some of the classic toys to catch up."
That's why playing cards and sidewalk chalk still aren't in the hall, Ricketts adds.
As you might expect, Ricketts seems like a good guy. He is after all, an expert on fun.
Here's some of our conversation:
If you're interested in nominating a toy for next year's class of inductees, click here.
Clinton spokesman Matt McKenna says the event was canceled after an overeager promoter billed it as a debate. The spokesman says the Feb. 25 event had been planned as a moderated, serious discussion between the two former presidents.
Former presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton will "debate the most pertinent current events" on stage at Radio City Music Hall in New York next Feb. 25.
MSG Entertainment says:
Bush & Clinton. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)
The 42nd president of the United States, Bill Clinton, and the 43rd president of the United States, George W. Bush, will debate topics ranging from the economy, to foreign policy, to the current administration. The series will be formatted to allow for President Clinton and President Bush to each present their thoughts on a wide range of important current events and national issues through a moderated question and answer period during which the moderator can elicit information and insights into particularly pertinent topics of the day. The moderator for this highly anticipated event will be announced in the coming weeks.
Now, we wonder -- in this totally unscientific survey that's just for fun, is not meant to be a true measure of public opinion and will close in 24 hours -- what you think:
It turns out that the so-called DWI Recliner we've been telling you about the last couple weeks is not -- repeat is not -- a La-Z-Boy.
The Duluth News Tribune reports that the Proctor, Minn., Police Department was told by eBay that the infamous chariot -- in which a man was arrested for driving while drunk -- is not a motorized, soup-up La-Z-Boy. The furniture maker confirmed that news. According to the Tribune, Proctor Police Chief Walter Wobig "said the chair was custom-built and there are no markings or any manufacturer's name on it."
This could present a bit of a problem for the authorities. When it was being called a La-Z-Boy, the bidding topped $43,000. As of now, the high bid on "DWI Chair" is $5,200. The auction ends Thursday around 8 p.m. ET.
Proceeds will be split between the state of Minnesota, the local victims' advocacy fund, the prosecuting attorney's office and the Proctor police.
Macy's probably has Yankees ads ready too. (David J. Phillip/AP)
By Mark Memmott
At least it was an ad -- not a story in the sports section:
Editions of The Philadelphia Inquirer today include a Macy's ad that congratulates the hometown Phillies on being "Back to Back World Series Champions."
The only problem, of course, is that the Phillies trail the New York Yankees three-games-to-one in the fall classic. Game five -- which could give the Yankees the championship -- is scheduled for tonight in Philadelphia.
The three-quarter page ad on the back of Tuesday's front section features a T-shirt emblazoned with the Phillies logo, the Commissioner's Trophy and the phrase "Back To Back World Series Champions." ... Confident fans still anticipating a Phillies win may need to temper their purchasing expectations, however. The ad contains a small disclaimer at the bottom: "Advertised items may not be at your local Macy's."
Halloween greetings from the first couple. (Kristoffer Tripplaar for the pool/Getty Images)
By Mark Memmott
Rich Wolf of USA TODAY (full disclosure: he's a friend) was the "print pool" reporter last night as the president and first lady welcomed trick-or-treaters to the White House. Here's some of what Rich passed along to the rest of the White House press corps:
Don't forget: For most of us in the U.S., it's almost time to change the clocks.
"Fall back" an hour at 2 a.m. Sunday (we'll "spring ahead" next ... Spring).
As All Things Considered reported last March, there's reason to doubt that changing the clocks each Spring and Fall accomplishes what some had hoped -- saving energy.
But lots of folks like having the extra hour of evening light in the summer.
Oh, and a reminder: Those of you in Arizona and Hawaii don't have to do a thing. (One exception: The Navajo Nation in northeastern Arizona, does change its clocks.)
Some Utah teenagers learned a useful lesson: just because you see somebody do something goofy on YouTube doesn't mean you should try it too.
Four teens pulled up to a McDonald's drive-through window in American Fork, Utah (that's really the name) and one of them, copying a YouTube video that's gotten 6.3 million views, rattled off the food order in the form of rap lyrics, like the life of the average McDonald's employee isn't tough enough.
The employee obviously didn't appreciate the show as much the teens did. The worker got the manager involved. The manager was no fan either. And after the rap was repeated, the manager asked the young men to leave but made sure to write down their car's license plate.
The police were called and found the offending teens at the local high school where an officer wrote them up.
The motorized La-Z-Boy chair we told you about last week -- which a Minnesota man was not very steadily cruising down the road in when he was charged with driving under the influence -- is now for sale on eBay.
Go here to if you want to bid, or just want to see more pictures of the hot rod recliner. It starts at $500.
As we previously reported, proceeds will be split between the state of Minnesota, the local victims' advocacy fund, the prosecuting attorney's office and the police department in Proctor, Minn.
Remember, you're not just getting a chair. It's got a lawnmower engine, cup holders, a stereo system and National Hot Rod Association stickers.
We don't, however, suggest driving it home from the bar.
Later today, All Things Considered host Robert Siegel is due to speak with Lutz about how things went. In the meantime, here's the promotional video GM put together:
Game 1 of the 2009 World Series is scheduled to get going at 7:57 p.m. ET this evening. The games between the New York Yankees and the Philadelphia Phillies will be broadcast by the Fox Network.
As NPR's Mike Pesca said on Morning Edition, each team's "closer" will be key to what happens:
While all you fans wait for the game to get going, how about a little Phillies-Yankees World Series trivia? We've got nine questions, one for each inning:
His office swears (pun intended) that it's unintentional. But reading down the lines, it sure looks like California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger dropped an F-bomb on his critics in the California State Assembly.
San Francisco Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross show how, in a veto message, the guvernator's words line up so that if you read down the left side it spells out ... well, we can't write what it spells out. Let's just say it's a pretty common two-word combination in which the first word is four letters long and begins with "F" and the second word is three letters long and begins with "Y".
According to Matier and Ross, Schwarzenegger was vetoing a "rather mundane bill" sponsored by state Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, who earlier this month told the governor to "kiss my gay ---".
Schwarzenegger press spokesman Aaron McLear calls it a "weird coincidence."
The possibly profane message was first spotted by SFBG Politics, a blog by the San Francisco Bay Guardian. Fair warning: Its story does not shy away from the adult language.
Update at 3:25 p.m. ET: Well, All Things Considered host Melissa Block just got off the phone with a Goucher College professor who studies cryptological mathematics. The professor, Robert Lewand, told her the odds of those letters appearing exactly where they did are:
"About 5.5 in 1 trillion."
"It would be very, very unlikely that would happen by chance," Lewand added.
Another clue that tells him the letters didn't get where they did by accident: The word "kicks" at the start of the fourth line in the sequence. "There are relatively few words in the English language that begin with 'k'," Lewand said. "They really had to search for that one."
More from Melissa's conversation with Lewand is due on today's edition of ATC. Click here to find an NPR station near you.
Update at 4:05 p.m. ET. And here are two audio clips from that conversation. First, Lewand on the odds:
James Brown famously sang "I've got ants in my pants and I need to dance." And what kind of dance, one wonders, would he have improvised if it had been geckos in his pants instead?
Forrest Gump may have had our animal smuggler in mind when he said stupid is as stupid does. (SCANPIX)
Like the man who was stopped by Norwegian customs officials after he arrived from Denmark by ferry. Not only did he have geckos strapped to his legs under his pants, he had snakes in socks secreted around his body. Oh, and there was the tarantula in his bag. Yes, he was traveling with a large hairy arachnid in his bag.
According to Reuters:
OSLO, Oct 26 (Reuters) - A man was caught by Norwegian customs carrying a tarantula in his bag, and a further 14 royal pythons and 10 albino leopard geckos taped to his body, media reported on Monday.
The 22-year-old Norwegian was stopped in a routine check by Kristiansand customs after arriving on a ferry from Denmark, newspaper Faedrelandsvennen reported.
Customs found the tarantula, before deciding to give him a full body search that revealed 14 stockings -- one for each snake -- taped around his torso, top selling tabloid VG said.
Reptile smuggling is not uncommon in Norway, which prohibits people holding many reptile species as pets, but office manager Helge Breilid at Kristiansand customs was quoted by VG as saying customs officers had been "horrified" by Sunday's catch.
For "just" $19.99, what you really get is a miniature version of the infamous balloon. If you use the cardboard box it comes in as an additional prop, you can pretend to be six-year-old Falcon Heene hiding from the world.
As for actual news today about the "balloon boy" saga, The Coloradoan also offers an interesting look at the issue of whether it was right for the local sheriff to lie to the world when he initially said he believed the Heene family's story about little Falcon being trapped aboard their homemade weather balloon as it flew above Colorado last Thursday.
Charges have yet to be filed against either of the parents, Richard and Mayumi Heene. They have denied the sheriff's allegation that the whole thing was a hoax.
Last week, Saturday Night Live had "President Obama" admitting that so far he'd done "jack and squat." This week, the joke was that he's the luckiest guy in the world -- and won the Nobel Peace Prize "for not being George Bush" (as Frank also basically said on Friday):
Reading this story about a secretary in Germany who was fired after eating a hamburger that was supposed to go to her boss got us thinking about all the co-workers we've known over the years who've complained about missing slices of pizza or egg salad sandwiches that disappeared from the office fridge.
You know who you are, lunch thieves.
We suspect this kind of crime is all too common. So:
What do you do if you're a Gaza Strip zookeeper and your two zebras died, starved to death actually, during the Israel-Gazan conflict earlier this year?
New zebras are hard to come by in a place like Gaza. But paint is cheap and donkeys are plentiful. You know where I'm going with this.
A Palestinian zookeeper decided to paint a couple of donkeys to look like his deceased zebras. And guess what? They do resemble zebras.
Fortunately, they act like donkeys, which is critical since I doubt real zebras could tolerate the treatment doled out by some of the kids in this Associated Press video.
So, like, there were only five choices, you know? But "whatever" totally kicked butt when the dudes from the Marist Poll dialed up folks across the nation to get the 411 on which sayings really make them hurl.
Of the 938 people who were asked "which one of the following words or phrases do you find most annoying in conversation":
-- 47% chose "whatever."
-- 25% went with "you know."
-- 11% picked "it is what it is."
-- 7% thought it should be "anyway."
-- Just 2% really hated "at the end of the day."
All we can say is; yeah, right. That's whack.
Oh, and if you want to hear a really annoying "whatever", NPR's Shereen Meraji is your go-to gal:
Woe unto the president who finds himself on the receiving end of comedian Jon Stewart's barbs.
Stewart zinged President Barack Obama Wednesday night on The Daily Show for being the first president since 1991 to stiff arm the Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader. (Warning: The Daily Show video contains bleeped vulgarities towards the end.)
The comedian noted that Obama has long said he would meet with U.S. adversaries like Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Venenezuela's Hugo Chavez.
"There's no one that Obama won't be willing to try speak with, except for one exception... The Dalai Lama? The only person Obama draws the line at speaking with is the international prince of peace."
Stewart referred to reports that the Obama Administration was concerned a meeting with the Dalai Lama could offend the Chinese. What he didn't say is the administration is in a delicate dance with China, hoping to get it on board for serious sanctions against the Tehran regime if Iran doesn't fully cooperate with United Nations nuclear inspectors.
Anyway, back to Stewart:
"God knows, we don't want to upset China. Gosh, imagine what they'd put in our toys and toothpaste if we upset them."
Sure hope Stewart wasn't planning on taking a trip to China anytime soon.
The Texas Republican's last, probably painful, dance was Monday night. Here he is, with partner Cheryl Burke, doing the samba:
There's a good chance DeLay wouldn't have gone much further in the competition, which is three weeks old. He and Burke were in second-to-last place after Monday's dancing.
Nobel Prizes are rolling out. The latest was today's Prize in Physics, to three scientists who pioneered fiber optics and the digital transmission of data. Tomorrow, the Chemistry Prize is due. Thursday, it's Literature.
As always, though, the most attention goes to the Nobel Peace Prize, which will be announced Friday morning.
Think you know a bit about the Peace Prize? Test your knowledge with these 10 questions. The answers are all at the Nobel website (don't peek until you're done with the quiz):
(For the record, the Prize in Economic Sciences will be announced Monday.)
Dr. Elena Bodnar, winner of the Ig Nobel Public Health Prize, displays a bra she designed that converts into a pair of gas masks. (Steven Senne / AP Photo)
By Frank James
A bra that can be turned into two gas masks. Research into whether it's better to be hit over the head by an empty or full beer bottle.
This is the stuff of the Ig Nobel Prizes which were awarded Thursday night.
They are not to be confused with the Nobel Prizes, the world's most prestigious awards for intellectual achievement, which will be awarded next week in Stockholm.
As the name implies, the Ig Nobel prizes are dubious achievement awards and a spoof of the more famous prizes. They were handed out at Harvard University and actual Nobel laureates, like economist Paul Krugman, were on hand to take part in the now annual send-up sponsored by the Annals of Improbable Research, a science humor magazine. (No, that's not an oxymoron.)
Elena Bodnar, Raphael Lee and Sandra Marijan won in the public health category for "inventing a brassiere than can be converted into a pair of gas
masks."
The Associated Press says "journalists following the speech on a large screen flinched" on Saturday as Pope Benedict XVI addressed politicians and diplomats in Prague -- and a spider crawled up and over his shoulders and toward his face.
Here's some AP video of the creepy, crawly encounter. The wire service's story about the incident says the pope gave the spider a swat when it got near his ear. This video doesn't show that moment:
We tried something earlier and it didn't quite work (don't click here because that would be cheating).
But a good suggestion came in from reader Caitlin Jenkins, so we'll try something else.
Basically, with the so-called Group of 20 in the news today because of the gathering of world leaders in Pittsburgh, the question comes up: Who's in the G-20?
Here's a little test. We've thrown in 30 possibilities. See how you score:
The first person to correctly answer in this post's comments thread gets ... well, nothing but his or her name mentioned in The Two-Way and a virtual round of applause.
The home in the Surrey Hills of southeast England, which James May of the BBC's popular Top Gear program briefly lived in, has been taken apart. Apparently, the landlord (a winery) needed the property and no one could figure out a cost-effective way to move the structure to a Legoland park in Windsor.
The home was built, by more than 1,000 volunteers, in part for a new BBC2 show May will be hosting -- James May's Toy Stories. The Daily Mail says the pieces are now going to be donated to charities.
As this post at Top Gear's Telly Stuff blog says, however, the story isn't quite over. Someone took a Lego version of May's cat Fusker from the home and he wants it back. According to the blog:
If you know where he is and can help get him returned to the Top Gear office, there will be no questions asked. We might even view it as slightly heroic. But only slightly.
As Frank said last evening, when President Barack Obama stopped by CBS-TV's Late Show with David Letterman, a weirdly shaped tuber got much of the attention.
And as NPR's Don Gonyea reports, the president used some humor when a very touchy subject -- race -- came up:
Letterman asked about the shouting and anger at town halls this summer, and how some critics have vilified the president. He noted that former President Jimmy Carter said some of it is rooted is racism.
"Is he onto something there or is that just something to talk about?," Letterman asked.
"First of all," Obama began his answer. "I think it's important to realize that I was actually black before the election."
The audience roared with laugher.
Obama goes on to say that he doesn't blame racism for the anger and shouting. People always get "riled up," he says, when presidents push for major changes.
For those who want to see some of the video, here's what CBS has made available:
Here's a little panda break from all the hard news. And I do mean little panda.
You would have to have a heart of stone to not get a little warm and fuzzy while looking at this Associated Press video of the San Diego Zoo's newest panda which apparently doesn't have a name yet (at least not a human-provided one.) He's getting one of his regular checkups.
You can also catch glimpses of the new cub on Panda Cam. Very cool. When a baby panda squeals, it sounds a lot like air being let out of a balloon, doesn't it?
Because it doesn't hurt to end the work week with a laugh about a news story that's caused more than enough anger in recent days, here's how NBC-TV's Saturday Night Live Weekend Update Thursdays treated the "you lie!" saga last night (with some fun at the expense of Democratic political guru James Carville as well):
If it's news to me, I tend to think it might be news to others, although I grant that the story about Danish tourist board's misguided attempt to draw attention to the Scandinavian nation is old by Internet terms. It's so last week.
Still, I only learned of the controversial Danish ad last night so I thought I'd post it. For those who don't know, the Danish tourism agency put up on YouTube a video of a young blonde Danish woman holding a baby, August. She was supposedly seeking the father of the child, a tourist with whom she had a one-night stand.
But the woman was actually an actress playing a role with a borrowed baby. The controversial video got nearly million hits before the Danes took it down on Monday. As many critics pointed out, once the ad's origin became known, it appears the Danish tourism agency was selling the notion that the Danes are a nation of promiscuous women as much as anything else.
Today, All Things Considered co-host Melissa Block spoke with Canadian angler Sean Konrad about the 48-pound rainbow trout he caught earlier this month in Saskatchewan's Lake Diefenbaker. If certified by the International Game Fish Association, it will smash the record for a rainbow -- held by Sean's twin brother Adam -- of 43-pounds, 10-ounces.
One thing that's caused some controversy in the angling community is that it's likely the fish Sean caught was among a half-million genetically engineered rainbows that got into the lake from a local fish farm. Sean's position is that the genetic quirk (a third chromosome) that makes such "triploids" sterile, and more likely to grow big, also occurs in nature. And, as he tells Melissa, he's not responsible for how the fish got there:
The Konrad brothers are fishing guides and have a website that tracks their chases for world records.
That guy who's been praised around the nation for the loving way he hugged his daughter after she tossed away a foul ball he caught at a Philadelphia Phillies game says he should have realized that when three-year-old Emily "gets a ball from dad, she's going to throw it."
As for the hug that's been watched at least a million times by now on the Web and TV, Steve Monforto says "I just wanted to let her know it was OK."
The Philadelphia Inquirercalls it "the foul ball seen round the world". Monforto, a project manager with Lockheed Martin, tells the newspaper that he "would have been happy with a little blurb on the evening news."
Guy in the stands at Phillies-Nationals game catches a foul ball. He hands the prize to a little girl, who of course is pretty in pink.
And she throws it over the balcony back toward the field.
Perhaps the best part: The guy's wonderul, joyous reaction and hug for her. We're betting he's her dad -- and we like his style.
Update at 2 p.m. ET.Good Day Philadelphia, the local Fox station, spoke with Steve Monforto -- who says he's the dad. "I wanted to just let her know that she didn't do anything wrong," he says of three-year-old daughter Emily:
Dad says the Phillies gave the family another ball to replace the one Emily tossed.
Then listen to this clip from a piece coming up on today's All Things Considered. NPR's Margot Adler needs two tries to identify a certain cricket by its sound -- and she'd been studying for just such a test:
Margot's story is about the NYC Cricket Crawl, an effort conducted Saturday night to, as The New York Times puts it, do something of an insect census in the city. In particular, researchers were curious about whether the "classic katydid" can still be found in Gotham. As Margot reports, it can be.
Want to hear more cricket calls so that you can try identifying them yourself? Seven species' calls are online here.
What is the Difference Between Crickets, Katydids, and Cicadas?
OK, the simplest answer is that crickets and katydids largely call at night while Cicadas almost entirely call during the day time. Crickets are sweet sounding and musical while katydids and cicadas are buzzy, raspy, and often a bit harsh sounding. Biologically, crickets and katydids are closely related while cicadas come from an entirely different Order of insects.
Click here to find an NPR station near you that broadcasts ATC.
He wouldn't be able to catch Sarah, a cheetah from the Cincinnati Zoo. Yesterday, she set a world speed record for land mammals -- 100 meters in 6.13 seconds:
The world speed record attempts are meant to draw attention to the plight of cheetahs. The International Union for Conservation of Nature lists the species as threatened, the risk level just below endangered. The worldwide cheetah population is estimated at fewer than 10,000.
Cheetahs are the world's fastest land mammals, capable of reaching speeds up to 70 mph over short distances. In its natural habitat, the African savanna, it uses that speed to chase down prey.
In comparison, humans are a rather plodding species, at least when it comes to sprints. Jamaica's Usain Bolt holds the 100-meter record with a time of 9.58 seconds, which he set last month at the world championships.
There was mention made this morning on Capitol Hill of a subtle change in something that's very important to diplomats -- language.
During a House Subcommittee on National Security hearing about U.S. efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., noted that State Department Inspector General Harold Geisel kept saying "Pak-Af" (short for Pakistan and Afghanistan) instead of the abbreviation that in recent years has been so common -- "Af-Pak."
Flake wondered: Is this some sort of State Department shift in emphasis between the two nations?
At first, Geisel said he just likes the sound of "Pak-Af" better. Then he said that maybe his staff was "pulling a fast one" on him.
A bit later, Geisel came back with what he said is the real reason for the change: "Ambassador Holbrooke ... started using Pak-Af."
That would be Richard Holbrooke, who's latest State Department title is "special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan." (Hmm: Will he have the title changed too>)
Here's how the Flake-Geisel exchange sounded. We've taken two clips and combined them into one. There's a pause at the 56-second mark. Then Geisel's it-was-Holbrooke explanation follows:
(Our thanks to NPR State Department correspondent Michele Kelemen for the tip.)
"After months of preparations, yesterday's early morning switch from right to left went without incident and in an atmosphere of national celebration," the Associated Press says. No accidents were reported.
ITN News posted this video report, which makes the key point that alcohol sales were banned for three days running up to and including the switch:
We like this video that was posted last month by a young man named Harry who took part in the construction. "James May really isn't doing that much," the kid says. And, as he adds, to build a Lego house "you get lots of people to build the bricks for you":
Imagine if one day you were driving to work like always ...
Everybody on the right. (Elise Amendola / AP)
... and the next day you and everybody else had to switch sides of the road:
Everybody on the left. (Elise Amendola / AP)
That's what will happen Monday in Samoa and as the local Observer reports, there are many unhappy people:
The feeling of uneasiness is increasing throughout Samoa. TV ads depicting roadsides littered with crosses implying mass deaths air every night.
The reason the South Pacific island nation is doing this, the Associated Press reports, is that it wants to be in line with left-side driving Australia and New Zealand -- and because officials in Samoa want "encourage some of the 170,000 expatriate Samoans living in those nations to ship used cars (with steering wheels on the right) back to relatives." That could help reduce car prices in Samoa.
The impending switch, though, has inspired letters such as this to the Observer. It begins:
In eight more days, one of our loved ones will cease to be with us. This is not a premonition but based on what is happening with this road switch fiasco.
Correction at 6:10 p.m. ET: Our directions got crossed earlier. Folks drive on the left in Australia and New Zealand, as the post now states, not on the right.
If you're a ferret person, you probably already knew there are ferret shows that are just like dog and cat competitions. But forgive the ferret-free among us who had no idea such things existed.
Maybe there's a competition for albino ferrets at the Ferret Buckeye Bash? (CARL DE SOUZA / AFP/Getty Images)
That is until we heard the All Things Consideredsegment on the Ferret Buckeye Bash which starts Saturday in Columbus, Ohio, reputedly the largest ferret show in the U.S.
Scarlett Gray-Saling who coordinates the bash explained to NPR's Robert Siegel that judges at this large ferret show look for the same kinds of qualities judges at dog and cat shows do: Conformation, maintenance and disposition.
"You bite the judge you get disqualified," she said.
One competition is for best-dressed ferret. I kid you not.
"We dress them in costumes, much to their horror," Gray-Saling said.
Robert asked her to describe some of the most creative costumes she had seen.
I saw one a couple of years ago where they were a hula dancer. They had the little grass skirt, a little lei on and a coconut bra that consisted of six little coconuts.
She didn't say where hula-dancer ferret won.
As the comedian Yakov Smirnov would famously say: What a country.
On a day when the temperature outside was 92 degrees, it was 106 degrees on the uptown platform of the 1,2,3 line at Times Square. (Amy Pearl / WNYC)
By David Gura
Our friends at WNYC, NPR's member station in New York, have a great -- and exhaustive -- new piece on their news blog: "How Hot is it on NYC's Subway Platforms? So Hot..." Check it out, and listen to the accompanying radio story.
"Every summer, New Yorkers have one more thing to kvetch about: the heat on the subway platforms," it begins. "You know, that eighth circle of Hell where your clothes turn wet with sweat and you find yourself smelling way too many things you wish you didn't know about."
(You don't have to be a bonafide New Yorker to know what they're talking about. Visitors to The Big Apple have sweated that sweat. Non-visitors and non-New Yorkers alike can imagine smelling those smells.)
Thankfully, and without getting all religious about the experience, there is salvation once a train pulls up. All subway cars are air conditioned. And the difference between the heat of the platform and the chill of the train is so striking, you might wonder why storm clouds aren't forming in between.
Beth Fertig, a reporter for the station, and Amy Pearl, a web producer, went underground, to conduct some subway science. "We wanted to see how big a difference there really is by taking a digital thermometer down to the trains," Fertig writes.
They charted some unbelievable temperatures. In Times Square, on the uptown platform of the 1, 2, and 3 trains, it was 106 degrees Fahrenheit. On the 2 train, it was 73 degrees.
Everybody needs to chill, he says. (Alex Wong / AFP/Getty Images)
By Mark Memmott
Our NPR colleague Don Gonyea says he's been going to White House news briefings for about nine years and that an exchange at today's has to rank among the strangest he's ever heard.
Spokesman Robert Gibbs was asked what the heck the president meant yesterday when he laughingly told some of his supporters that "there's something about August going into September where everybody in Washington gets all wee-weed up."
Gibbs' explanation: "Wee-weed up is when people just get all nervous for no particular reason."
He went on to discuss how this has happened before, such as when many in the news media declared at various times in 2007 and 2008 that the Obama campaign was finished.
So, is it "bed-wetting" Gibbs was asked.
That, he answered, "would probably be the more consumer-friendly term." Here's the audio of Gibbs' exchange with reporters:
We told you yesterday to be afraid, very afraid, if there's an attack of the zombies.
Unless the undead are dealt with quickly, Canadian researchers have concluded, we living folks could be doomed.
A few minutes ago, All Things Considered co-host Robert Siegel spoke with one of those researchers -- professor Robert Smith? (the question mark is part of his name). They discussed all the serious reasons to do such research (it was partly an exercise for students of infectious diseases). But then they got to the "real" question. How do you wipe out the zombies?
Basically, Smith? said, call in the army:
More from Robert's conversation with Smith? will be on ATC later today. Click here to find an NPR station near you.
Now all us other husbands have to live up to this:
"A New Zealand man has been dubbed the Lord of the Ring after he searched and found his wedding ring more than a year after it slipped off his finger and sank to the sea floor," Reuters writes.
As New Zealand's Dominion Post reports, Aleki Taumoepeau was on a boat in Wellington Harbor in March 2008 when his wedding ring slipped from his finger and sank to the bottom, about 10 feet down.
He marked the spot with an old anchor and promised his wife Rachel that one day he would get it back. On a dive last year, he failed. His GPS coordinates weren't correct.
But, Taumoepeau told the Post, he came back a few weeks ago with better coordinates and dove again. The newspaper writes that:
After an hour, he stopped to catch his breath and, while doing so, asked for some divine intervention.
"I was getting cold and tired so I said to God it would be really good to find the ring about now."
He then looked down, spied the anchor and just centimeters away from it the ring.
Says Rachel: "I couldn't believe it. It was the power of prayer."
Don't give them time to multiply. (Pictorial Parade / Getty Images)
By Mark Memmott
There apparently is a serious reason for this research. Something about learning how to fight new, highly infectious diseases.
But who cares about that!? The real story is that researchers in Canada have used math to figure out what us living folks need to do when the zombies come out.
A zombie outbreak is likely to lead to the collapse of civilization, unless it is dealt with quickly. While aggressive quarantine may contain the epidemic, or a cure may lead to coexistence of humans and zombies, the most effective way to contain the rise of the undead is to hit hard and hit often. As seen in the movies, it is imperative that zombies are dealt with quickly, or else we are all in a great deal of trouble.
Who's done this ground-breaking study? As the BBC reports, the researchers are from the University of Ottawa and Carleton University. Among them is professor Robert Smith? (and like the BBC, we need to note that the question mark is not a typo -- it's part of the professor's name).
The report, as you might expect, has many formulas and lots of language that we without math doctorates can't decipher. There's no confusion about this warning from the researchers, though:
We show that only quick, aggressive attacks can stave off the doomsday scenario: the collapse of society as zombies overtake us all.
The experts, by the way, modeled their zombies on the "classic" movie model -- "slow moving, cannibalistic and undead."
But for this blogger, who was a kid back in '69, one of the best parts of today's Morning Edition report about that cartoon love triangle was hearing a good chunk of Sugar, Sugar. Starting at the 3:27 mark in this piece, you get about a full minute of the song. See if you agree -- it's not bad! Or, tell me I'm crazy.
"Nuts" is a Web star. (Melissa Brandts / National Geographic "Your Shot Photo of the Day.")
By Mark Memmott
If you haven't seen that photo, you were probably on vacation and not plugged in the past few days.
It's the squirrel now affectionately known around the world as "Nuts," who popped into the frame as a Minnesota couple sat by a lake in Canada's Banff National Park.
My husband and I were exploring Lake Minnewanka in Banff National Park, Canada, when we stopped for a timed picture of the two of us. We had our camera set up on some rocks and were getting ready to take the picture when this curious little ground squirrel appeared, became intrigued with the sound of the focusing camera and popped right into our shot! A once in a lifetime moment! We were laughing about this little guy for days!
The attention has been truly global, Jackson Brandts tells The Star Tribune. "We're received e-mails and phone calls from Canada, Australia, Italy, South Korea," he says.
Cars, buses, trailers, boats -- they all went soaring into the air last weekend in Turtle Lake, Wis., as KARE-TV in Minneapolis reports. It's can't-miss video (click the small "play" button at the bottom of the player):
(Our thanks to USA TODAY's John Riley for the tip)
Who's he calling bourgeois? In 2005, Chavez teed it up in India. (AP photo)
By Mark Memmott
It was "out of bounds" for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to label golf a "bourgeois sport," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley declared today in a pun-filled shot at one of the American government's least-favorite foreign leaders.
At the opening of State's daily news briefing, Crowley said he "wished to protest" Chavez's "unwarranted attack" on the game.
Golf, Crowley argued, is a "truly global sport." Here's his full statement:
According to The New York Times, Chavez' recent "brief tirade" about golf prompted officials "to shut down two of the country's best-known golf courses, in Maracay, a city of military garrisons near here, and in the coastal city of Caraballeda."
Our thanks to NPR's Michele Kelemen for the tip about Crowley's comments.
Quite a change. (Mark Tatem / The Royal Gazette/AP)
By Mark Memmott
From the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the "lush green fairways" of a championship golf course in Bermuda.
That's the unlikely turn of events for four Muslims from China -- ethnic Uighurs who were released from the U.S. facility after it was determined they were no threat.
Two months ago they were languishing in the world's most notorious detention camp -- but now Bermuda's Uighurs are tending the lush green fairways of a golf course with spectacular ocean views.
The former Guantanamo Bay terror suspects have been given permission to work at Port Royal as it prepares to host the PGA Grand Slam of Golf in October.
As Morning Edition's Steve Inskeep says, the Uighur men were once said to be among "the worst of the worst":
Now they're tending the fairways. (Mark Tatem / The Royal Gazette/AP)
Ancient Egyptian bust of a woman and/or Michael Jackson. ( Field Museum)
By Frank James
If you keep in mind that Chicago is the place where people once saw the Virgin Mary in a salt stain on the wall of a roadway underpass it should make sense that it's now the place where some are seeing the face of the late Michael Jackson in an ancient Egyptian sculpture.
The resemblance has caused a big buzz in the blogosphere, which led the Chicago Sun-Times to put a photo of the 3000-year old bust of an Egyptian woman on its front page yesterday and for its columnist Michael Sneed to write about it.
Anyway, it's hard to deny -- there's definitely an uncanny similarity, accentuated by the missing nose. Maybe I need to look at that underpass next time I'm in Chicago.
I'm a huge fan of Adam Carolla, the radio shock jock here in L.A. Don't tell Steve and Renee, but sometimes I'd cheat on them in the morning and tune into Adam when I drove to work
His show was cancelled around the same time the show I hosted was cancelled (last spring.)
Since then, we've both gotten into podcasting. His podcast is a little more successful than mine. In fact, he now has two podcasts in the top ten.
The latest is called Car Cast, and he told me it was inspired by NPR's Car Talk. I interviewed him for All Things Considered in a segment scheduled to air Thursday, Aug. 6, 2009.
(Madeleine is guest hosting on All Things Considered this summer. She hosted NPR's Day to Day program until it was discontinued.)
The Internet is wonderful, isn't it? (Hat tip to The TPM Blog.)
(Warning: Some commenters have rightly warned that one should always be wary about inputting personal information, especially your mother's maiden name which is one common answer to security questions, into a web form. So you might want to falsify some information to protect yourself. By all means, please be careful.)
Because there's almost never bad video when there's a building implosion -- and especially not when things go wrong (and, according to Sky News, no one gets hurt). This happened in Turkey over the weekend:
Note the satellite dish that remained in place on a nearby balcony. Whew!
Alabama doesn't want any images of naked flying nymphs hanging off bicycles on the labels of wine bottles sold in the state and that's just the way it is.
Might give people the wrong idea. Who knows what folks might start trying on bicycles?
So the state's liquor control board has banned a California wine called Cycles Gladiator because its label uses an Art Nouveau image that once graced the posters of a turn-of-the-century French bicycle manufacturer. So "Fat Bastard" wine is OK but if you think you're going to sell a wine with an artful nude on the label in Alabama, you're just whistling Dixie.
As for Hahn Family Wines in Soledad, Calif., the state's move has been a marketing godsend.
As the Associated Press reports:
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) - Alabama's ban on a wine that features a nude nymph on the label became a business opportunity for a California vintner who is preparing a marketing campaign to capitalize on being "Banned in Bama."
The Alabama Alcoholic Beverage Control Board recently told stores and restaurants to quit serving Cycles Gladiator wine because of the label. Board attorney Bob Martin said the stylized, art-nouveau rendition of a nude female with a flying bicycle violated Alabama rules against displaying "a person posed in an immoral or sensuous manner."
The subject is deadly serious -- whether the ongoing crisis in Sudan is still genocide or not.
Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, reportedly wasn't happy when President Barack Obama's special envoy to Sudan referred to what's happening there as the "remnants of genocide." Her worry: That Jonathan S. "Scott" Gration's comment would signal that the U.S. is less concerned about what's happening in that African nation, where hundreds of thousands have been killed and millions displaced.
But at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing today, Gration had a unique way of downplaying any intra-administration friction.
"There's few women in the world that I say 'I love you to.' Susan's one of them. I love Susan," Gration said, generating some laughs from those at the hearing.
"I'm heartened that people in the administration are fond of each other," said Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss.
Wicker's is the first voice on this audio clip:
Gration's prepared remarks, by the way, are posted here. He says at one point:
The great human tragedies that have occurred in Darfur and the rest of Sudan are deeply embedded in our memories. Many people in Sudan suffer terribly from the pain and loss brought by conflict, and it is these people who deserve our support.
We have made progress in recent months, but we have much work ahead.
(Our thanks to NPR's Michele Kelemen for telling us about that exchange.)
For those who absolutely must keep up with this news:
President Barack Obama plans to have a Bud Light -- not a regular Budweiser -- at tomorrow's let's-talk-this-over meeting with Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates and Cambridge, Mass., police Sgt. James Crowley.
At least that's what White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters on Air Force One a short time ago, NPR's Scott Horsley says.
When President Barack Obama, Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates and Cambridge, Mass., police Sgt. James Crowley get together Thursday evening at the White House for the much-talked-about beers and conversation they've promised to have:
Feel free to explain your reasoning in the comments thread.
Now, it's being reported by WBZ-TV that 29-year-old Brunelle (formerly known as Phillip Daggett) has a "sketchy past." The local Herald News says he's faced "accusations of deception and fraud."
State lottery officials say no one has stepped forward to make a claim on the $1 million ticket.
In the middle of Robert Krulwich's report on Morning Edition about "The Crow Paradox," a bit of politics pops up.
When researchers from Cornell University and the University of Washington decided to test whether crows can tell people apart, one wore a caveman mask while putting bands on crows. Then, he had volunteers wear the same mask as they walked across Washington's campus. The crows' reaction to the volunteers? Lots of cawing and angry flapping -- a sign that they recognized the "face."
Then, the researchers had volunteers walk across campus in a Dick Cheney mask.
Thomma jumped up when he shouldn't have. C-SPAN.org
But the president later gave Koff a second chance. C-SPAN.org
By Mark Memmott
There was an odd moment during last night's news conference at the White House when it was revealed that a reporter had stood up when President Barack Obama called on Steve Koff of The Plain Dealer -- but that it wasn't Koff who asked the question.
"Shame on you," Obama said to the mystery newshound when the mix-up was pointed out to him.
So who was that guy?
Turns out it was Steve Thomma of McClatchy Newspapers, who apologizes.
"I have to confess that I'm hard of hearing, and I thought I heard my name," Thomma writes.
And, he adds:
"I was mortified to see that I'd taken the question away from Mr. Koff, who, to his credit, jumped up after me to demand his time.
"All I can do is add my personal anecdote to the national health care debate: if insurance covered the hearing aid I so obviously need, I'd never have appeared to a national TV audience with a label underneath saying I was from Cleveland."
"Brawl Breaks Out In South Korean Parliament," the Associated Press headline reads.
And as usual in these time-honored stories from foreign capitals, the pictures are wonderful:
Lee Jin-man/AP
Lee Jin-man/AP
According to the AP, the debate was over "contentious media reform bills."
Contentious, to say the least. South Korea's Yonhap News Agency reports that:
The passage of the bills was strongly protested by DP (Democratic Party) lawmakers, with dozens of ruling and opposition party lawmakers and officials injured in violent clashes before and after the controversial votes. At least one opposition legislator was taken to hospital. ... (Opponents of the legislation) accuse the government of attempting to rein in domestic media organizations.
Loud, obnoxious and lethal? Lefty Shivambu/Touchline/Getty Images.
By Linton Weeks
Summery judgment: It's been another week of strange tales. President Obama sort of tossed out the first pitch at the 2009 Major League Baseball All-Star Game and Al Franken and Sonia Sotomayor bantered about attorney Perry Mason during her Supreme Court grilling. But wait, if you look under this rock, you'll find even more Whack Stories of the Week!
4) In Austria, vuvuzelas have been banned from professional soccer games. Not because the plastic noisemakers are deafening and obnoxious, which they are, but because they can be used as missiles.
5) It. Was. The. Best. Of. Times. Matt Stewart, a San Francisco-based writer, is publishing his novel on the French Revolution using Twitter. W
(Sorry, we hit the 140-character Twitter limit. We continue:)
The video game industry is down -- game sales fell in May for the third straight month, by $863 million, or 23 percent from the year before. But one particular segment of the industry is growing, in one very particular demographic.
Nintendo Wii has found an audience in retirement homes. Chris Bodenner of the Atlantic writes that Wii makes it easy to take up gaming. For older adults who might be feeling nostalgic for 1970s-era arcades, Wii offers a chance for everyone to gather around the digital campfire and ... bowl. Bodenner writes:
One elder-care company, Erickson Communities, recently coordinated a series of Wii Bowling matches among several of its retirement homes. For seniors whose glory days on the baseball diamond or tennis court are far behind them, even simulated sports can bring back fond memories. And what better way to get to the grandkids to visit than by offering video games? In fact, as game consoles and the Internet increasingly merge, loved ones will be able to play games with one another from across the globe.
Wii is also credited with helping people rehab injuries and prepping surgeons for their work, reports NPR's health blog. And then, says NPR's Monkey See, there's the unrelenting horror of Grey's Anatomy on Wii.
Poker America, behold your new folk hero. Laura Rauch/AP Photo
Darvin Moon was born on a mountaintop and raised by a bear. Or he will have been, by the time the World Series of Poker finishes in November. The local Las Vegas Sun headlines his story "Humble logger could become people's champion." Not convinced?
He is a 45-year-old pine forest logger who proudly displays scars caused by chainsaw accidents.
He is from such a small town that the entire population would barely take up half of the hotel rooms at the Rio.
He speaks fondly of his favorite pair of work boots and he always wears a New Orleans Saints hat despite living in the heart of Pittsburgh Steelers territory.
He is Darvin Moon and he could be the next World Series of Poker Main Event champion.
The Guardianasks today about which sport is more boring to watch -- cricket or golf?
It strikes us that so many more sports could have been added to the list, though it's probably not surprising that an English news media outlet wouldn't ask about soccer (or football, as the Guardian would say).
And maybe it's fair to toss in some politics, since it's something of a sport to many folks.
"Hamilton Burger," left, couldn't get much past Perry. AP/USPS.
By Mark Memmott
She's seemed to have an answer to every question about any case and any subject.
Leave it to the newest senator, Saturday Night Live veteran and one-time radio host Al Franken of Minnesota to finally ask Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor something she couldn't answer during her confirmation hearing.
"What was the one case in Perry Mason that Burger won?" Franken asked just a short time ago.
He was referring to Hamilton Burger, the long-suffering district attorney in the long-running TV drama of the '50s and '60s.
Both Franken and Sotomayor profess to be huge fans of the show and to have watched it when they were young. Yet neither of them know the answer:
That other voice toward the end -- who gets Franken to admit he doesn't know the answer to his own question -- is Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.
So what is the answer?
According to IMDB.com, the episode commonly known for being "the only time Perry Mason loses" was The Deadly Verdict, which was broadcast in 1963.
TV.com says that "Janice Barton is found guilty of the murder of her wealthy relative and sentenced to death." And, the website adds, "this was the only case in which Mason's client was found guilty, and sentenced to death. The outcry from the public was so severe that they never ventured down this road again."
But, as IMDB points out:
In the first-season episode The Case of the Terrified Typist, not only is Mason's client convicted of murder -- he turns out to be really guilty! (However, Mason figures out that the murderer was impersonating someone else, and since some of the prosecution's evidence was related to the actual person whose identity had been stolen, a mistrial is declared, meaning a second trial for the defendant, presumably without Mason's services.)
In the sixth-season closer, The Case of the Witless Witness, a respected judge rules against Mason in some civil matter; when the judge ends up falsely accused of corruption, then murder, Mason doesn't hesitate to defend him.
Update at 7:55 a.m. ET, July 16. On All Things Considered last evening, co-host Robert Siegel spoke with Barbara Hale, who played Mason's long-time assistant Della Street on the TV series. She jokingly makes the case that Perry never really lost any of his cases -- at least not when TV viewers could see:
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is said to be baffled by why his police department is spending nearly $1 million on typewriters. We suspect many of his constituents are puzzled too.
But the big bucks the city spends on equipment that hasn't been of much use in most offices for many years isn't the only surprise in the New York Post's coverage of this story. There's also this:
Tech-savvy Bloomberg, who built his media empire by employing the newest and fastest equipment, should take a trip to the Moonachie, NJ, headquarters of Swintec.
The company has been supplying the city with the otherwise outmoded equipment for years, sales manager Ed Michaels said.
Aside from cops, the company also does a brisk business selling typewriters to prison inmates who are not allowed to have computers.
Our line of Swintec electronic typewriters, portable typewriters, Word Processors and now Clear Cabinet typewriters and Clear Cabinet Word Processors especially designed for use in Correctional Facilities have been playing a major role in Prisons throughout the US. These clear typewriters and Word Processors provide a solution for inmates as well as the facility in giving the inmate a tool to use to communicate while at the same time help eliminate a problem that faces prisons every day, contraband!
It seems the message being beamed out from the top of Pittsburgh's Grant Building isn't quite right.
As All Things Considered's Robert Siegel reports, the Morse code message that's supposed to spell out P-I-T-T-S-B-U-R-G-H has gotten a bit jumbled.
Robotics graduate student Tom Stepleton has videos that show the message being sent recently was P-I-T-E-T-S-B-K-R-R-H and then T-P-E-B-T-S-A-U-R-G-H. He took his findings to the local Post-Gazette, which reports that the building's owners don't know how long the message has been garbled, but are aware of the problem.
Here are Stepleton's videos proving his point. The first was produced on July 5; the second on July 13
According to the newspaper, the Grant was Pittsburgh's first skyscraper (it was built in 1928) and:
Commercial air travel was still a novelty and regular air mail service was just a year-old experiment. Newspapers at the time said it was decided that the tower should have an aerial beacon flashing on it "to comply with the recent request of Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, so that aviators might recognize the city."
As if he needs the advice, President Barack Obama got plenty of it from the anchors at CNN after TOTUS (Teleprompter of the United States) crashed to the floor yesterday:
The wags at Wonkette wonder "who will run the country, now that this piece of glass is gone?"
Newsweek's The Gaggle blog, also playing off Obama's well-documented reliance on teleprompters, calls it a "tragedy at the White House."
A Colorado neighborhood, as KUSA-TV reports, seems to be covered with ladybugs. As Morning Edition's Renee Montagne notes, the town doesn't want the news media to give its exact location because it fears it would then be bugged by too many tourists.
When it comes to stories about this lucky infestation, we kind of like what Kids Talk Politics has done:
Hearing that the words added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary this year include frenemy, webisode, flash mob and staycation drove home to us how it sometimes seems like words and phrases have been around for quite a while before they get blessed with such official recognition.
What new word or phrase is just now on the rise and might end up getting Merriam-Webster's OK next year?
As the Journal explains, the city leaders in Laguna Niguel, Calif., are trying to prevent -- or at least curtail -- tomorrow's 30th annual "Moon Over Amtrak" It's an event that began with something of a bar bet and has grown to where it drew nearly 10,000 people last year.
And just what do folks do?
Well, they apparently drink a fair number of adult beverages and then whenever an Amtrak train passes by on the tracks near the Mugs Away Saloon they "drop trou".
The city and local sheriff's department, though, are advising would-be mooners to behave themselves.
"The Sheriff's Department will be enforcing applicable laws and ordinances to ensure our residents and the general public remain safe", Lieutenant Andy Ferguson, chief of Police Services for the City of Laguna Niguel, says in a statement.
According to KTLA-TV, fans of the annual event are refusing "to turn the other cheek":
One of the most amusing parts of correspondent David Greene's report today on Morning Edition about why people get lost is when his editor, Laura Krantz, easily corrects David and author Colin Ellard when they ... get lost.
Laura's victory over the guys comes in around the 2:20 mark:
Ellard, who just wrote the book You Are Here: Why We Can Find Our Way to the Moon, but Get Lost in the Mall, thinks men and women do navigate differently. Men depend more on compass directions (meet me at the northeast corner of Main and Broad), while women depend more on landmarks (let's meet at the statue in front of the art museum), he says.
Which leads to a question for the group:
Of course, many men may have another problem altogether -- refusing to ask for directions.
Egad! The British media are going to town over the news about some family photos and information posted on Facebook by the wife of Sir John Sawers, the new chief at the usually super-secret M16.
Sawers' identity was known. Of more concern than the photos (including him in a swimsuit) are Lady Sawers' notes about some of the couple's friendships and the location of the "flat" they use in London. She did not put any privacy protection on the Facebook page.
The photos, as well as some details about the Sawers' friends, have now been removed.
Watching continuous news coverage of the tragedies involving Michael Jackson, Billy Mays and Gov. Mark Sanford, it was hard this week to discern the truly strange stories. But we have done our best. So here are the Whack Stories of the Week.
Fortunately for NPR listeners, they were forewarned. Back in 2002, Liane Hansen reported about the "super ant colony" discovered in Europe. Then, in 2006, it was John Nielsen's turn: He looked at the spread of Argentine ants to the U.S.
But now, BBC News has taken ant reporting to the next level:
The line that really caught our attention: "The colony may be the largest of its type ever known for any insect species, and could rival humans in the scale of its world domination." (We added the bold to make things look scarier.)
Tomorrow at 10 a.m. ET, the Skydeck at Chicago's Sears Tower opens four glass-bottomed observation bays that let folks willing to pay $14.95 ($10.50 for kids) stand 1,353 feet above the city.
On a clear day, if you have the nerve to step on to the glass, you can see 40-50 miles.
On NBC-TV's The Today Show this morning, correspondent Kevin Tibbles went out on "the ledge":
We wrote yesterday about the winner of this year's Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, the annual competition to see who can write the worst first line of a novel.
And we challenged Two-Way readers to come up with their own bad prose. Many of you responded, and the results are so bad they're good.
Based on the "recommend" clicks for the more than 160 Two-Way entries, the "winner" is: Liz Lent (Marzipan).
Here's her contribution:
Hand gripped tightly around the gear shift, foot thunderously tamped down upon the accelerator, wind pounding him in the face like an angry child with a Whiffle bat, Manford Manly knew in his enormous man-sized heart that no one -- yes, no one -- could drive a golf cart the way he could and by God, that was something no one, not even the caddy, could take away from him.
We also asked for "bad" introductions to a story you might hear on Morning Edition or All Things Considered. My favorite comes from Adam Vlcek (AdamV):
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Robert Siegel. We're going to take a moment to talk about another important subject for these times, namely the issue of dry skin. Itching oneself on the back of the hand or the inside of the knee has cost many a second date or business promotion. Now two brothers from Cambridge, Massachusetts, have found a way to use eggnog, that beverage of holiday office parties and often mistakenly purchased by people who like half-n-half but aren't paying too much attention in the store, to undo centuries of scientific research. Mara Liasson has our story.
Thanks, all. If you have thoughts about other fun we could have, drop us a line.
Think it's easy to write badly? (Yes, yes, I know ... we make it look easy every day.)
Yesterday the winner of the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest ("where www means 'wretched writers welcome' ") was announced. It's David McKenzie of Federal Way, Wash., who came up with this:
"Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin' off Nantucket Sound from the nor' east and the dogs are howlin' for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the Ellie May, a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin' and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests."
McKenzie tells the San Jose Mercury News he sent in 20 entries to the parody contest, which San Jose State University has been staging annually since 1982. "I expected it," he says about winning.
Can you do even "worse"?
Write your own worst-possible first sentence of a novel -- in 50 words or less -- and put it in this post's comment thread. The trick is, it has to be so "bad" it's good. We'll spotlight some of the "best."
As for Bulwer-Lytton, who lived from 1803-1873, he has the distinction for being famous for some of the best lines in history (such as; "The pen is mightier than the sword") and some of the most-ridiculed ("It was a dark and stormy night.")
Or, here's an alternate challenge:
Write a "bad" introduction to a story you might hear on Morning Edition or All Things Considered. Think of a classic kind of NPR story you can have fun with.
Update at 3:40 p.m. ET. Here's audio of McKenzie reading his winning entry for Melissa Block of All Things Considered:
Tune into ATC later today for more from Melissa's conversation with McKenzie. Click here to find an NPR station near you that broadcasts the show.
Update at 9:30 a.m. ET, July 1: We asked and you delivered. Click here to see the "winner" of The Two-Way's bad writing challenge.
It's been another strange week in the news. We learned that: President Barack Obama still gets laughs from the press corps. The publishing world still thinks there is a market for Dick Cheney's memoir. And, somehow, the Appalachian Trail stretches from South Carolina to Buenos Aires.
But, wait, there's more! Here are several more Whack Stories of the Week from Around the World:
We've got his photo in this post. As for the back of the "card," it says:
Breed: Portuguese water dog.
Family: President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, Malia and Sasha Obama.
Unofficial title: First Dog of the United States.
Birth: Bo was born in the fall of 2008 in Texas.
First Day at the White House: April 14, 2009.
Hobbies: Playing on the White House lawn and going on walks with the Obama family.
Goal as First Dog: Make friends with foreign dognitaries.
Favorite exercise: Running (and then napping near the Obama girls).
Favorite food: Tomatoes -- or toys.
Did you know?
-- Bo's name came from two different places: Mrs. Obama's father's nickname was "Diddley" and Malia and Sasha's cousins have a cat named Bo -- and another cat named Diddley.
-- Bo was a gift to the Obama family from Senator Ted Kennedy and his wife, Vicki.
-- Even though Bo is a Portuguese water dog, he doesn't know how to swim.
It's been a busy week in Washington. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton engaged in arms negotiations -- concerning her own fractured elbow. In the White House garden, First Lady Michelle Obama minded her peas and cukes. And her husband, President Barack Obama, proved to be a fly guy. Fly averse, that is.
To bring you up to speed on what has been going on elsewhere, we present Whack Stories of the Week from Around the World:
1) In Sao Paulo, there's a movement to ban Happy Meal-esque toys because they encourage bad eating habits. Hey, this Ronaldo action figure could use some salt!
Oh yeah. That story we passed along yesterday about a guy who didn't take kindly to being questioned by airport security agents about the $4,700 he was carrying was an eye-opener.
But check out this report in The Financial Times: "Italian customs officers and ministry of finance police discovered a staggering $134 billion in U.S. Treasury bills" -- or, more precisely, counterfeit bills -- in a suitcase belonging to to men traveling by train from Italy to Switzerland.
According to the FT, authorities say there were 249 of the bills had face values of $500 million each. Ten bonds had face values of $1 billion each.
If the story wasn't already amazing enough, there's this: It seems the two men have since been released from custody. No one seems to know why.
So, you think your kid wastes too much time (and money!) on text messaging?
What if that kid won $50,000 for being really good at it? Fifteen-year-old Kate Moore of Des Moines did just that in the LG U.S. National Texting Championship. ITN News has video from the championship:
All we can say is, "OMG."
The champ. LG Mobile Phones
And how did she spread the news? The Des Moines Register says she wrote "I just won $50,000" in a text message to her friends. "I didn't want to sound too braggy about it," she told the newspaper.
Check in with All Things Considered later today 4 more ... er, for more, on the champ. Click here to find an NPR station near you.
Update at 3:45 p.m. ET. Here's a short clip from ATC's interview with Kate. She tells co-host Michele Norris that she developed her texting skills by ... well ... texting a lot. And, that she's going to save most of the money -- but will buy a few teenage girl "necessities":
British Navy Capt. Wayne Keble has banned brussels sprouts from his ship, the Telegraph reports. The captain says:
"They are the devil's vegetable and the only thing I do not like, and the only thing I hate. ... Brussels sprouts are absolutely banned on board HMS Bulwark. I do not eat them so I do not know what the after-effects are."
Question for the group: If you had the power, what vegetable would you ban? Express your distaste in the comments thread, if you wish.
This week's headline -- Trump Fires Miss California -- is not a natural disaster report. Sarah Palin gets into a feud over what's funny with David Letterman. And those aren't even counted among the Whack Stories of the Week.
Here then are seven Strange Tales from the Past Seven Days.
The Planet Money folks are at it again -- explaining a complicated issue with humor and easy-to-understand examples. This time, the subject is "cap-and-trade" and the fun part is how a cap-and-trade on the over-used word "dude" might work. Here's how Planet Money's David Kestenbaum explained it to Morning Edition's Steve Inskeep:
David tells us that among the other over-used words or acronyms the Planet Money team considered using in its hypothetical were:
-- "OMG" (oh my God, for those not in-the-know).
-- "My bad."
-- "You're fired."
We thought of "lol" (laugh out loud).
Anyone have some other examples of words, acronyms or phrases they'd like to see capped? Feel free to add them in the comment thread.
Getting the president of the United States to write a note for your teacher when you're not in school is quite a thrill. As the Green Bay Press-Gazette reports, 10-year-old Kennedy Corpus thinks President Barack Obama is "really awesome."
According to the newspaper, the note reads: "To Kennedy's Teacher -- Please excuse Kennedy's absence ... she's with me. Barack Obama."
Kennedy tells the Press-Gazette that she "plans to take it home and frame it, but she might make a few copies first, including one for her teacher."
Here's a photo of the note itself:
Cory Dellenbach/Shawano Leader/AP
And here's how it all came about at yesterday's town hall meeting in Green Bay:
As Morning Edition's Steve Inskeep asks -- what's the world coming to when a guy can't put a gorilla ballon on his roof?
He's talking about this story: A Houston balloon company is suing the city for restricting the display of giant balloons on rooftops. The city thinks they're too distracting to drivers.
But maybe there's even more to fear from giant gorilla balloons:
You know that static noise you always used to hear when a TV was first turned on?
OK, maybe you have to be of a certain age to remember. For younger folks, I'm talking about the "white noise" that HBO uses at the opening of its shows and movies. Somebody's put a sample on YouTube here.
Well, as All Things Considered plans to report tomorrow, come Friday that white noise is basically joining other sounds that once were familiar but aren't around anymore. With the switch to digital TV, snow and static will be part of the past for America's over-the-air TV viewers.
For me, the once-familiar sound I miss the most is a "real" telephone ring:
Frank, a guy who still has some newsprint in his veins, misses the clacking of a typewriter.
NPR's Linton Weeks suggests the classic thwackety-thwackety-thwack of a playing card hitting a bicycle spoke and the grinding of an old hand-cranked pencil sharpener.
What about you? Feel free to use the comment thread in this post to suggest sounds that you miss.
To find an NPR station near you that broadcasts ATC,click here.
There's "a frantic search" ('ya think so?) under way in Israel for a mattress that has cash equivalent to $1 million hidden inside -- but was mistakenly (we say again ... 'ya think so?) THROWN AWAY!
According to the Associated Press, the story is that a woman in Tel Aviv bought her mom a new mattress and then took the old one out to the trash -- only to discover later that mom had been stuffing her life savings into the bedding.
The BBC says mom "almost fainted" when she discovered what had happened (again, we gotta say ... 'ya think so?!).
What better way to start the day than with a laugh?
Here's the video of Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert getting his almost high-and-tight cut at the hands of Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of coalition troops in Iraq.
As Frank noted yesterday, that's also a pretty sharp suit Stephen's wearing. The Colbert Report is broadcasting from Iraq all this week.
Neal Wanless of Mission, S.D., now has millions of dollars to spend on his family -- and his horse.
The 23-year-old rancher stepped forward today to claim the latest Powerball jackpot.
He'll take the $232 million price as a $118 million lump-sum, which comes to $88.5 million after taxes.
"Winning the Powerball is something I've always dreamt about but didn't think would happen," Wanless said during brief comments about his big win, according to The Argus Leader. "I want to thank the Lord for this opportunity and blessing me with this fortune."
And according to the Associated Press, Wanless has some plans for the cash:
He said he recently told his horse, Eleanor, that "It'd be nice if we go for a longer ride than usual on a bigger ranch of our own."
The winning combination: 5-16-6-21-12 and the 7 Powerball.
Update at 3:25 p.m. ET:KSFY-TV says that Wanless wants to keep ranching. "I just want to go home and ranch and ride horse and check cows," he said.
Egypt, home of the original pyramid scheme, played host to President Barack Obama this week. In other news, General Motors shifted into low gear to get out of the bankruptcy ditch and Sacha Baron Cohen, looking like a winged Icarus at the MTV Movie Awards, didn't fly too close to the sun, but into the lap of Slim Shady. Another weird week goes into the books. Here are the 7 strangest stories we found:
1) In a valiant effort to cheer up the people of Latvia, scores of blondes -- dressed in pink and white -- parade through the capital city of Riga, accompanied by an orchestra and some dogs.
3) For more than a year, Jim Benson, 81, of Orlando, Fla., has been trying -- unsuccessfully -- to sell his $699,000 home. So he's tossing in a Rolls-Royce.
4) In Wellington, New Zealand, a man buys a $5,000 wedding ring for his girlfriend. When she spurns him, he buries the ring. Now he's offering clues, treasure hunt-style, via Twitter. Dig it.
7) His mom made him do it. John Garrity says he sliced his pinky finger because his mother startled him while he was using a miter saw. He sued mom for more than $200,000. The jury awarded him half of it.
Egyptian antiquities expert Zahi Hawass gave the president a tour. Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images
By Mark Memmott
Along with delivering a message to the Muslim World, President Barack Obama today visited Egypt's Great Pyramids. According to the Associated Press, he was suitably impressed:
As he stood in awe at the massive structures, he yelled "This thing is huge!!" -- his voice echoing off the stones of the largest of them.
Update at 11:42 a.m. ET: CBS News' Mark Knoller, who also likes to tweet, says the president is now on his way to Germany. Knoller says that when Obama saw a hieroglyph "of a face with big ears" during his tour of the historic sites, the president said: "That looks like me. Look at those ears."
So you're thinking ahead to retirement -- assuming, that is, there's still enough in your 401(k) or IRA or mattress to make the idea of not working more than just a dream.
Dan Prescher, publisher of International Living, tells NPR that there are still places overseas that aren't expensive, aren't boring and might be just right for many retirees.
Each year, International Living releases its Global Retirement Index of the best places to retire abroad on the cheap.
NPR spoke with him and he offered some updates since the list was last updated, in 2008 (Mexico took the No. 1 spot).
For a photo gallery tour of his suggestions, go here or just click on the photo below.
Then return to this post to tell us: Does Prescher have the right locations, or do you know of better places to retire to overseas? Add your suggestions in the comments thread below.
And be sure to check out All Things Considered's series on "Rethinking Retirement."
Going out for burgers is getting to be a habit for the nation's commander-in-chief.
Today, President Barack Obama made a run to a Five Guys hamburger place in Southeast Washington, USA TODAY's David Jackson reports (he's the "print" pool reporter for the White House press corps today; and contributes to The Oval, which I used to produce).
According to David, the president "ordered cheeseburgers for himself and members of his staff, and paid at least $80 in cash. The entourage included a NBC News crew that has been trailing the president for a 'day-in-the-life' documentary to air next week."
When Obama arrived on scene, there were screams of "O, my God! O, My God!" from some of the patrons.
Then, David writes, "Obama, sans jacket, walked up to the counter, scanned the menu posted above, and began ordering." Here's some of what that sounded like:
As Obama waited for his food, (taking order slip No. 41), he worked the crowd -- stopping to speak to several folks.
And when the order was ready, Obama went back to the counter to get the bag and pay. He then called on White House photographer Pete Souza so that a group picture could be taken with the Five Guys staff.
Update at 3:10 p.m. ET. This reminds us that The Daily Show with Jon Stewart had some fun at the president's (and the news media's) expense after Obama went out for burgers with Biden:
Though General Motors has been skidding toward bankruptcy this week, you'd never know it by the luxurious Cadillac Escalade being advertised during the NBA playoffs.
It was a week of weird stories as the stock market bounded up and down more than Kobe Bryant and President Barack Obama selected Judge Sonia Sotomayor to suit up and get on the court. Here are 7 of the week's strangest tales:
Fast-forward (groan) to the 1:30 mark for one of the best video moments of the week:
The full clip puts things somewhat more in context.
As The Washington Post explains, "speed reader" Douglas Wilder was hired by Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee to be available in case Republicans wanted a reading of all 900+ pages of the the bill capping greenhouse gases.
Amid all the talk this week of gas guzzlers, Guantanamo and guns in national parks (Yosemite Sam, call on line 1), lots of stories flew under the conventional radar. But they didn't get past us. Here then are seven of the strangest:
Soup would not seem to be a good choice for the victory banquet:
The World Beard and Moustache Championships are this weekend in Anchorage, and the Los Angeles Times has a must-read story about 2007 "full beard: natural" champion Jack Passion of Walnut Creek, Calif. Check out what the Times says life is like for the champ:
When he enters a coffeehouse in the mini-mall, part of a tour of local haunts, baristas gape in wonder and drinks are on the house. When he walks down the streets of his hometown, passersby greet him with smiles and slaps on the back.
It's all because the 25-year-old musician sports a cascading corn silk of red hair that tumbles to his belt and makes him look like Elijah Wood grafted to a ZZ Top beard.
Think you'd have a chance at winning? The championships' official website is here. Our take: If you haven't already started to grow some sort of facial feature, it may take a few years to be competitive.
Update at 11:30 a.m. ET. Saturday on Weekend All Things Considered, Passion speaks with NPR's Jacki Lyden. Here's a clip (pun intended) from that interview:
Go here to find an NPR station near you that broadcasts WATC.
Passion celebrates his 2007 win. The championships were held that year in Brighton, England. Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images
(In case you were wondering: "Moustache" is the championship's preferred spelling -- we would usually go with the more common "mustache.")
The topic was very serious -- national security. But we can't pass up noting that before delivering his much-anticipated speech this morning, President Barack Obama got his Defense secretary's name wrong. Here's how Obama began his remarks:
The Pentagon chief, as the president surely knows, is Robert Gates. This isn't the first such mix-up involving Gates this week. According to the Associated Press, he was introduced at a Pentagon ceremony on Tuesday as "Ronald" Gates.
From the Department of Silly But Really Interesting News:
Want to know when it's safe to go, so-to-speak, during a long movie? After all, $10 or so is a lot to spend. You don't want to miss a key moment because you're in the bathroom.
That's where RunPee.com comes in.
New York magazine's Vulture blog says it's "a user-generated wiki site that catalogs the best possible moments to excuse yourself during the latest Hollywood blockbusters."
We wish we could tell you exactly what the Run Pee site looks like and how it works, but we keep getting an error message when we try to call it up. Perhaps someone important there is ... away from their desk?
Judging from Run Pee's Twitter page, though, it looks like it started up last July and that it has "PeeTimes" posted for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Terminator Salvation and other new flicks.
Dare we ask? Do you have any preferred "PeeTime" when listening to NPR?
(Tip of the hat to All Things Considered's Art Silverman for bringing RunPee to our attention.)
When to go? Help is available. Philippe Lopez/AFP/Getty Images
When Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed about white and black children one day holding hands together, maybe he was envisioning something like the TV ad that's the subject of this Associated Press story:
By MARTHA WAGGONER
Associated Press Writer
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - The catchy jingle for The Red House
Furniture Store says it all, but doesn't totally do it justice:
"Where black people and white people buy furniture."
It's helped make The Red House an Internet sensation thanks to a
campy YouTube ad that's gotten nearly a million views by using
racial harmony to sell sectional sofas and grandfather clocks.
The commercial is so low-budget and off-beat that some people
can't believe it's real.
"For a while, we couldn't do anything but answer the phone.
'Yes, we're a real store. Yes, that's a real ad,"' said vice
president and manager Steve Patalano...
This may be another example of the Obama effect, the way the president has changed so much of the conversation around race in the nation.
Then again, it may just be crass attempt to move some La-Z-Boys in a slow economy.
This is NPR's news blog. It's a place to come for breaking news, analysis and for stories that are just too interesting — or too entertaining — to pass up.
It's also a place for conversation about the news; we're counting on you to keep us honest. But please read the discussion rules before diving in.
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