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June 26, 2008
FUNNY, BUT NOT
Faced with its Alzheimer's residents' tendency to wander away, the Benrath Senior Centre in Dusseldorf, Germany, came up with a novel approach: a fake bus stop (an exact replica of a real one) out front. Straying residents might be attracted to the familiar colors and design of the kiosk (because long-term memory is typically still robust) and wait there for a bus instead of trying to "go home" on foot. But short-term, the resident is typically unaware of how long he has been waiting and will remain until a Centre employee sees him and can guide him back into the home (which often is easy because the resident has by then forgotten why he is sitting there, according to a June dispatch from Berlin in London's Daily Telegraph).
BRIGHT IDEA
Car dealer Walter Moore of Max Motors in Butler, Mo. (an hour south of Kansas City), announced in May a free premium to every car purchaser: either $250 worth of gasoline or a gift certificate for a handgun. He told KMBC-TV that 80 percent of customers choose the gun.
PANDAS GONE WILD
BBC filmmakers announced in June that they had captured, for perhaps the first time ever, an episode of pandas mating in the wild, for the "Wild China" TV series. A male is shown fighting off other males to coax a female down from a tree. What follows that, said producer Glenn Maxwell, are "loud calls which will make viewers think instantly of the Wookie character from the 'Star Wars' movies. I liken it to Chewbaccas in a pub brawl." Eventually, the female descends, and the pair get to work, "breathing hard and panting," said Maxwell. "You can see the steam coming out of their mouths."
WEIRD SCIENCE
Technically, Macie McCartney was born on May 3 of this year in Laredo, Texas, but that appearance outside the womb was actually her second. When a large tumor showed up on Macie six months into her mother's pregnancy, surgeons actually pulled the fetus almost completely out of the uterus so they could excise the growth and then re-inserted the fetus. Following that rare procedure, the birth was normal, according to Dr. Darrell Cass, who explained it in June to viewers of NBC's "Today" show.
ISN'T IT IRONIC?
Evolution scientists at Switzerland's University of Lausanne reported in June that over the course of 30 to 40 generations, ordinary flies tend to live longer if they're stupid. The researchers guessed that heightened neural activity overtaxed their systems. In other news, cardiologists at Hartford (Conn.) Hospital, writing in the June Annals of Emergency Medicine, described a patient suffering from irregular heartbeat whose rhythm was restored to normal following a Tasering by police.
DUMB PEOPLE
Sharon Platt allegedly stole about $5,000 from her employer, Murphy Motors of Williston, N.D., recently and left town. She was apprehended in Pittsburgh in May after she applied for a job and listed Murphy Motors as a reference, and her old employer alerted Pittsburgh police. In other news,Charles Ray Fuller, 21, was arrested in Fort Worth, Texas, in April after he took a blank check belonging to his girlfriend and wrote it out to himself for $360,000,000,000.00, which he presented to Chase Bank. He remained in character after his arrest, assuring police that the check was legitimate, offered by the girlfriend's mother to help him start a record label.
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| Entertainment and lifestyle news for Maui, Hawaii and the surrounding Islands. Maui Time Weekly is Mauis only independent and locally owned newspaper.
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