Not sure how one can pinpoint the exact 50-year anniversary of our illustrious Interstate system, but today seems to be the day. The ARTBA Transportation Development Foundation is hosting a gala, black-tie event down in D.C. tonight that will honor everyone from equipment manufacturers and labor organizations to state transportation departments.

Headliners will be Colin Powel and Willard Scott, two people I don’t think I’ve ever seen in the same room together.

It may be too late to buy in, but at $1000 per ticket (or $20,000 for 10), I’m not so sure you’d want to. Ah, I take it back; it’s for a good cause, right? There are, after all, some 50,000 miles of highway in America. The longest being the I-10, which runs from LA to Florida. According to this website, the I-10 even has an album of songs written about it featuring artists such as Willie Nelson.
Anyway, happy birthday Interstate! May your next 50 years be pothole free!

I found these new “Get a Girlfriend” ads from Axe Deodorant at ettf.net and thought they were too amusing not to post. Anyway, I figured I’d use the opportunity to throw some fancy arcade trivia your way:

1) Believe it or not, Pac-Man was originally called “Puck Man,” but the arcade game was rechristened when company execs realized how easy it would be for delinquents to vandalize the displays simply by scratching off part of the letter “P.” Somehow Fac-Man posed much less of a threat.

2) Noel Bushnell who started the Atari Corporation originally wanted to call his company Syzygy. Fortunately for the world, the name was already taken by a roofing company.

3) Somewhere between their stints as juvenile hackers and their co-founding Apple, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak found time to design the game “Breakout” for Atari.

Just yesterday the magazine staff was brainstorming on a “Where are they now?” cover story we’re doing later in the year and one of the topics that came up was Smellivision. So it was fun to read this morning that scientists in Japan are developing an amazing device with the ability to record odors.

Somboon’s system will use 15 chemical-sensing microchips, or electronic noses, to pick up a broad range of aromas. These are then used to create a digital recipe from a set of 96 chemicals that can be chosen according to the purpose of each individual gadget. When you want to replay a smell, drops from the relevant vials are mixed, heated and vaporised. In tests so far, the system has successfully recorded and reproduced the smell of orange, lemon, apple, banana and melon. “We can even tell a green apple from a red apple,” Somboon says.

This technology would be an interesting addition to the online shopping experience. People could smell perfumes, cleaning products, foods, etc. But something tells me teenage boys might be dangerous with these devices.

Frankly, I wasn’t sure what they could add to cel phones to make them any more helpful. Mine already comes equipped with a compass, a mirror, a toothpick and a shoehorn, so I figured companies were running flat out of ideas, until I saw this: the cel phone breathalyzer. The beauty of the LG Electronic’s LP4100 isn’t just that it analyzes your breath and determines whether you shouldn’t be driving (which it cleverly indicates by showing you a cute animated car swerving and crashing into things). More importantly, it actually prevents you from drunk dialing! You can preset the phone so that once you’ve imbibed more than you should’ve, the stubborn phone refuses to dial whatever numbers the sober you wasn’t looking to call: whether it’s your ex, your parents, your boss or your late night food delivery service. Anyway, the phone’s already a hit in Korea (where they have A LOT of exes, parents, bosses and late-night food deliverers), and should be coming stateside later this year.   Click here to read more (via ShinyShiny)

I adore SEED magazine, but this headline is just waaaay out of bounds for an article that doesn’t actually show any hoo-has:

PLANTS GO TOPLESS

Despite the lamentable lack of nudity, the article’s pretty interesting:

In a case of Greek mythology gone green, scientists in California have created a double-tailed plant: a mutant with a second root where its stalk would typically reside. … The scientists determined that a variant of the gene known as TOPLESS can cause the development of a root instead of a shoot during the development of the plant Arabidopsis thaliana, resulting in a young plant with roots at both ends. Arabidopsis is a wild mustard plant, widely used as a model organism in plant genetics. It was also the first flowering plant to have its genome sequenced.

I want to know who the scientist was that named that gene.

Now that the US is out of the World Cup, the US viewing results are in. While I didn’t find these numbers shocking, I was kind of surprised by the last two points. Keep in mind, 32 billion people the world over are expected to have watched the 64 World Cup matches on TV by the time the final is played on Sunday 9 July.
According to Rasmussen Reports:

Despite a high level of media coverage for the World Cup soccer tournament, three-fourths of Americans (78%) are not following the action very closely if at all.

Out of 1,000 adults surveyed just 6% are following the tournament very closely.

Nine percent (9%) of men are paying close attention along with 3% of women.

The Super Bowl remains the biggest sport championship in terms of fan appeal. Thirty-five percent (35%) of Americans say it’s their favorite championship to watch.

The World Series is the only other championship to reach double digits—12% of adults say it’s their favorite.

Despite the general lack of interest in the World Cup by the US audience, the soccer tournament is more popular than the NBA basketball championship and the NHL’s Stanley Cup hockey title. Both of those events were being held at the same time as the World Cup.

The survey was conducted before the U.S. soccer team was eliminated.

Darn, I knew I shouldn’t have eaten that baby a few years ago:

A British researcher, using a study of cannibals, warns that mad cow disease may eventually kill lot more humans than is known now. The findings, published Friday in the British medical journal The Lancet, were drawn from a study of cannibals in New Guinea who had enjoyed long lives until they fell victim to a brain-wasting disease. The research by the University College in London studied kuru, a disease that had taken a heavy toll of the cannibals.

Kuru and vCJD, the human version of mad cow disease, are both caused by “prions,” or abnormally folded proteins found in human (or cow) flesh. People actually have several genes that protect against prion diseases, and a few months ago, the journal Science argued that the presence of those genes was a clue as to our distant ancestors’ favorite food: each other. We wouldn’t have those genes, it said, unless there was a foodborne disease that made them necessary — and the British beef industry wasn’t exactly around then.

Today I saw a guy running past my house and I literally did a double-take. One of those cartoony ones. Why? Well, the guy wasn’t just running, he was running backwards!

I zipped to my computer and did some research: sure enough, backpedaling isn’t just for those occasions when you’ve stuck your foot in your mouth. People are doing it for fun and exercise!

According to Backward Running Backward, the “Chinese [have used] retro movements (backward running and backward walking) for thousands of years. In the Chinese Philosophy, forward running is Yang and backward running is Yin…”

Apparently it’s huge in Italy too, where more than 40 new Retro Running Races have been organized since 2001.

Here in the US, it seems the guy outside my house isn’t the only one getting in on the act either, as this recent article in the Chicago Tribune attests:

…backward runners supposedly burn a fifth more calories than traditional joggers. And blindly running glute-first can increase balance, hearing and peripheral vision,according to a story about Timothy “Bud” Badyna, who set Guinness World Record for fastest backward run in a 200-meter race (32.78 seconds).

Turns out, “Backward Bud” also held the record for completing the backward marathon in 3 hours 53 minutes, though he’s recently been edged out by Xo Zhenjun of China, who beat him by 10 minutes.

As for me, I’m looking forward to giving it a try, too, though maybe not on the treadmill at my gym.

Last week I was all about David Sedaris; this week it’s his sister Amy, whose home decor (”a collection of plaster meats, a few stuffed squirrels, books on skin disorders”) was recently featured in the New York Times and whose masterwork of a movie, “Strangers with Candy,” comes out today in New York and July 7 everywhere else. Amy’s character in ”SwC” was based on Florrie Fisher, a bizarre B-list star of the 60s and 70s who, according to Wikipedia,  

traveled to high schools in the United States, speaking about her past as a heroin addict and prostitute. … Fisher’s trollish appearance, thick Brooklyn accent, and larger-than-life tales of prostitution, botched abortions, and lesbian jailhouse encounters turned her into a cult figure in the late 1970s, with bootleg videos of her public service announcement becoming a collector’s item in the 1980s.

Wow. All my high school ever got was a sweaty Robert Louis Stevenson impersonator.

 Warren Buffett recently announced his $31 billion gift to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Certainly a generous gift but he should spend more time bragging about how he could’ve spent that money:

1) A fast food combo meal for everyone on the face of the Earth
2) Purchase the entire National Football League, including all 32 teams and players
3) Give a $100 bill to every man, woman and child in America
4) Buy enough gasoline to drive round-trip to Pluto three times
5) Order 2,393,822,393 copies of mental_floss: Cocktail Party Cheat Sheets from mentalfloss.com, making Mangesh and Will the next mega-billionaires. I promise we’d give some to charity.