Kudos to New York Magazine‘s Dan Amira, who tracked down one of President John Tyler’s grandsons (not great-great-great-grandsons) to discuss the fact that he’s still living. Here’s a brief excerpt from Amira’s interview with Harrison Ruffin Tyler:

It’s a really interesting story that you’re still, you know, around. Could you just explain how this happened? How someone born in 1790 still has living grandchildren?

Well, he was a good man! [laughs] Both my grandfather — the president — and my father, were married twice. And they had children by their first wives. And their first wives died, and they married again and had more children. And my father was 75 when I was born, his father was 63 when he was born. John Tyler had fifteen children — eight by his first wife, seven by his second wife — so it does get very confusing. I really do not know — it’s amazing how families drift apart. When I was a child, I did know most of the descendents, but as you get more generations down the line, it’s hard to keep track of everybody.

Read the full interview here.

You’ve heard the songs thousands of times in movies and on the radio. But do you know who performed them? Some of the clips may give away the answer at the end, so unless you’re trying to cheat, don’t watch all the way through. When you’re done, let us know how you did, and tell us which song will be stuck in your head the rest of the day.

Take the Quiz: Name (the Artist Who Sang) That Tune!

This question was submitted by reader Lindsey. It also may have been part of a Starburst advertising campaign in the late-1990s.

ATM image via Shutterstock

So the visually impaired can use them, of course. People who are totally blind or severely visually impaired normally don’t drive, but they might have a friend drive them around to run errands, or take a cab. If a blind person is a passenger in a car, they ought to be able to take advantage of the convenience of the drive-up ATM, too.

That’s why the Americans with Disabilities Act’s Accessibility Guidelines for Buildings and Facilities require the ”instructions and all information for use” of ATMs, whether they’re walk-up or drive-up, “be made accessible to and independently usable by persons with vision impairments,” and that the machines provide the visually impaired with the “same degree of privacy of input and output available to all individuals.” Braille on the drive-up ATM complies with the law and allows a visually impaired person who might be in the back seat to use the machine just like a sighted person — independently and privately.

How would a blind person use an ATM in the first place, though, if they couldn’t see the on-screen instructions? (more…)

Most of us have heard of the international NGOs Doctors Without Borders and Engineers Without Borders, and you might know about Reporters Without Borders. But what about Monks Without Borders? Or Clowns? Here’s a list of borderless organizations you really should hear about.

1. Bikes Without Borders

Bikes Without Borders is a Canadian non-profit group that travels the world distributing bicycles to developing communities. They operate under the assumption that something really small – two wheels, two pedals and a set of gears – can help people do some really big things, like access health care, go to school and start businesses.

2. Astronomers Without Borders

The California-based group Astronomers Without Borders is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: a group of idealistic star-gazers who travel around bringing knowledge about the night sky to people all over the world, “regardless of earthly differences in culture, nationality or religion.” If we’re busy looking up, pointing and gasping appreciatively, we can’t start wars, right?

3. Burners Without Borders

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Artist Alex Gross rejiggers and reconfigures cabinet cards from the late 19th and early 20th century, altering them to portray a contemporary comic book Super Hero. Cabinet cards were a commercial printed portrait standard back in the day. They were thin photographs mounted on cards measuring 4¼ by 6½ inches. As snapshot and personal photography became more accessible, the cabinet card disappeared. Have a favorite? Let us know in the comments below.

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In this RSA Animate video, author and former Al Gore speechwriter Dan Pink discusses a series of studies about what motivates people — and more practically, what motivates workers. He takes apart the simplistic notion that monetary rewards result in better performance; such rewards do improve performance for purely mechanical tasks, but when you get into knowledge work, it’s not just about the money. In this talk, Pink lays out a simple set of guidelines that will help any worker or employer understand what actually improves performance — and that could lead to a better workplace for all of us. Have a look! Also, keep an eye open for an onscreen misspelling of “weird.”

Topics: what does and does not motivate people; lots of examples; Google, Wikipedia, Linux, and OSS.

For: anyone who works, especially managers.

Further Reading

Dan Pink wrote a book on this topic (boy, that’s really a theme with these lectures, isn’t it?) called Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. The Amazon reviews are mainly very positive, but the most popular is a 2-star review that distills the important parts of the book — and effectively says, if you watch a video of Pink giving his talk (like you did above), you’ve already got the gist of the book. Anybody in the audience care to comment on the book?

Transcript

There’s a good dotSUB transcript of the RSA Animate video above.

Bonus Points

The full forty-minute lecture by Dan Pink is below. He also gave a somewhat similar (but shorter) TED Talk.

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Bank Robber Shoots Himself in the Foot

Three armed men entered a bank in Parana, Brazil, and took 30,000 Brazilian reals ($16,000). Security cameras recorded three of the robbers, but police believe six were involved. The surveillance video clearly shows one of the men accidentally shooting himself in the foot. He limped away with the others, but was arrested at a hospital the next day.

Cat in Cockpit Delays Flight

Air Canada Flight 603 to Toronto was scheduled to leave Halifax International Airport on Wednesday morning, but a cockpit intruder caused a delay. A cat traveling with a passenger escaped from its cage while the plane was loading. The cat, named Ripples, hid in the cockpit and became stuck in the avionics systems. A maintenance crew was called out to disassemble part of the flight deck to extract the cat. Ripples was returned to the cage, and the flight took off four hours and twenty minutes late.

Nail Removed from Man’s Head

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Some of you will stay inside where it’s warm and play poker this weekend, so today’s mentalfloss.com Brain Game Free-for-All Friday challenge will give you something to discuss while you’re trying to bluff you way through. Good luck!

Not including straight-flushes or royal flushes,
how many different possible card combinations
result in a flush in a standard 5-card poker hand
from a single deck (no jokers or wild cards)?

This week’s theme covers musical acts that were popular in the 1980s. As usual, each question contains a word or phrase related to the theme (although the question itself will be unrelated). Today’s 5 Questions quiz: Public Enemy

Dance Moms and Toddlers & Tiaras are popular train wreck reality shows, which may verge on child abuse. Which is more exploitive: putting pressure on kids to perform, or recording their childhoods for an audience to ridicule?
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In an alternate timeline of history, Nazis colonized the moon in order to launch a new invasion of Earth. After years in development, Iron Sky will premiere at the Berlin Film Festival next month.
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Alibi aftershave products can make you smell like car trouble instead of smelling like the strip club you just left. If your wife knows what a strip club smells like, you’ll have to go all out to fool her.
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Imagine AMC’s series The Walking Dead as an ’80s family sitcom, complete with the proper theme music. Silly? Go see for yourself.
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Microwaves Ruin Everything shows you all kinds of things that shouldn’t be microwaved -in slow motion. I’d have to disagree about the Ivory Soap, that’s always a hoot.
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Jaipur’s Elephant Festival is like a big beauty pageant for pachyderms. They show up with painted faces, bejeweled clothing, and bells on their toes!
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Smitty the dog has found his favorite film. Don’t turn it off; you’ll break his heart.
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Historic new rules for school lunches will mean we can’t blame them for obese kids. Costs will go up, but no one knows whether kids will actually eat more fruits and vegetables.
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Boots and Cats and Bees and Beef.
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15 Noteworthy Nobel Prize Nuggets. These stories are obscure and strangely tangential but still fascinating.