FORZA MOTORSPORT 4 – Video
| November 14, 2011
Category: News
Japan’s Ear-Cleaning Parlors
| November 14, 2011
Japanese associate ear-cleaning with their childhood and many of them are willing to pay to return to those carefree days if only for just a few minutes. That’s what makes ear-cleaning salons one of the most popular businesses in Japan, right now.
Ever since Japan authorities decided to deregulate ear-cleaning as a medical profession, making it available without a medical license, hundreds of salons offering the service started popping up all over the country. The vast majority of clients are men looking to relax their minds after a stressful day, and travel back to the days when they used to rest their heads on their mothers’ laps for the occasional ear cleaning session. Three out of four clients claim it’s so relaxing they actually fall asleep while the kimono-wearing cleaners excavate the wax out of their ears. Some say their wives clean their ears at home, but it’s just not the same without the traditional Japanese style room and the tatami mats.
Canada Starting to Switch Over to Plastic Currency
| November 14, 2011
Starting tomorrow, Canada will begin to replace its present paper money with more durable and security controlled polymer bills over a period of several years.
Apple Replacing First-Gen iPod Nano Due to Overheating Risk
| November 13, 2011
Apple is offering replacements for its first-generation iPod nano, which includes a battery that might overheat. Affected devices were sold between September 2005 and December 2006, Apple said in a note on its Web site. But according to Cupertino, the overheating has occurred only in “very rare cases.”
Other versions of the iPod are not affected. The first-generation devices have a black or white plastic front and a silver metal back.
In Photos: Spooky Deep-Sea Creatures
| November 13, 2011
The terrifyingly toothy anglerfish became a common occurrence in little kids’ nightmares ever since it chased Nemo and Dory in Pixar’s “Finding Nemo.” To attract prey, the scary-looking fish uses a bioluminescent “fishing pole” that hangs just above and in front of its toothy face. The lure is actually a piece of dorsal spine packed with millions of glow-in-the-dark bacteria.
Why Fingernails on Blackboards Sound So Horrible
| November 12, 2011
Previous research on the subject suggested that the sound is acoustically similar to the warning call of a primate, but that theory was debunked after monkeys responded to amplitude-matched white noise and other high-pitched sounds, whereas humans did not. Another study, in 1986, manipulated a recording of blackboard scraping and found that the medium-pitched frequencies are the source of the adverse reaction, rather than the the higher pitches (as previously thought). The work won author Randolph Blake an Ig Nobel Prize in 2006.
The latest study, conducted by musicologists Michael Oehler of the Macromedia University for Media and Communication in Cologne, Germany, and Christoph Reuter of the University of Vienna, looked at other sounds that generate a similar reaction — including chalk on slate, styrofoam squeaks, a plate being scraped by a fork, and the ol’ fingernails on blackboard.
