The Federal Trade Commission is currently reviewing new guidelines for product endorsements. Their major beef? Advertisements that show “extreme” benefits of a product with a tiny, fine-print disclaimer. The new rules will force advertisers to show the typical or average results consumers can expect after using their product. And many companies are already sweating over the impact this may have on sales. As one rep put it, “Someone who can’t fit in an airline seat is not going to pick up the phone for a 10-pound weight change.”

Some of the celebrity spokespersons who might find their contracts affected by the new rules include:

Jillian Barberi’s “Before” Shots

Nutrisystem spokesmodel Jillian Barberi boasts of losing 41 lbs. on the plan. What the fine print fails to mention is that in her “before” photos, Jillian is pregnant. Alert viewers in the Los Angeles area spotted her wearing the same dress (in the same physical shape) on a local morning TV show while gushing about her expected baby. Once baby Ruby was born, Barberi not only went on the Nutrisystem plan, she also hired a personal trainer (according to an interview in People) to get herself back in shape.

The Osmond Way

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Play for your chance to WIN a $100 shopping spree in our store!

If you missed any of last week’s challenges, you can find them here: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4.

The final puzzle will be posted tonight at 8pm ET. And remember: we’re giving away a $50 shopping spree to one random winner who has all the answers correct; so it pays to play whether you’ve unearthed all your answers by 8pm or not.

We’d love to hear feedback about the new format so we can continue to refine and sharpen the game. As you saw during the week, we changed some of the flow of the pages, hopefully making it easier to move from one question to the next. We’ll continue to tweak and improve the game, so your experience is better. But we can’t do that unless we hear from you! Which challenges were fun? Which felt too much like work (hopefully none, but still!). Which were too easy? What would you like to see more of? What do you miss from past puzzles? Please, take a moment and let us know: TriviaHunt@Gmail.com

See you later tonight for the conclusion of the 5-day trivia hunt!

Seat belts have been mandatory in cars for more than 40 years, so why aren’t school buses equipped the same way? According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, it’s because school buses don’t need seat belts to be safe. The bulkiness of a bus makes it about seven times safer than a passenger car. In the event of a collision, a bus can easily absorb the force of impact. Plus, kids riding in buses are doubly protected because the seats are designed to cushion children almost like eggs in a carton. The accommodations might not provide much legroom for unruly 8-year-olds, but the high seatbacks and heavy padding work to form a protective cocoon around them. If Junior is thrown forward in a crash, he won’t get far before the cushy seatback absorbs his momentum.

Of course, none of this will help if the bus flips over. But the chances of that are so slim that most state legislators don’t think seat belts are worth the added expense. Still, some states would rather be safe than sorry. New York and California, for example, now require all new school buses to come equipped with lap-and-shoulder belts.

Neatorama published these gorgeous art pieces last week, and I couldn’t help but republish them here. The artist, Erika Iris Simmons, specializes in using “old books, cassettes, playing cards, magazines, credit cards… Things that have a mind of their own.” I fell in love with the Bob Dylan portrait, but she has some other great stuff on her site (a cassette that turns into the Beatles walking across a road, a film reel that drips out Marilyn Monroe with its excess film). Be sure to check out her flicker page, where she posts as iri5.

Wallace and Gromit are national heroes in the U.K. The cheery, if absent-minded inventor/baker/pest control expert and his faithful Dostoyevsky-reading canine companion have starred in some of the most fun and inventive adventures in stop-motion ever committed to film. And now, British fans of the Plasticine pair will get the chance to wander around a life-size version of their 62 West Wallaby Street home, at the London Science Museum’s latest exhibition, Wallace & Gromit present A World of Cracking Ideas.

Drawing its inspiration from Wallace’s amusing inventions, the exhibit is designed to introduce kids (and kid-like adults) to the creative process around inventions and ideas. It’s the result of a partnership between Aardman Animation, the studios behind Wallace and Gromit, and Britain’s Intellectual Property Office, so in addition such Wallace-inspired inventions as the karaoke shower, it also includes somewhat heady information on intellectual property rights. The exhibit opens on March 28 and runs through November 1 (the link contains one of the most time-consuming games to cross my desktop since TextTwist).

In the spirit of inspiration, we decided to compile a list of a few facts about Britain’s favorite stop-motion adventurers. Here a few things you might not know about Wallace and Gromit:

1. Wallace and Gromit Save Dairy

Wallace’s influence over Britain is significant – at least when it comes to cheese. As a tastemaker, his preferences have been credited with saving several kinds of cheese of extinction. The makers of Wallace’s particular favorite, Wensleydale cheese, were struggling throughout the 1990s, but when Wallace and Gromit’s popularity skyrocketed, so did sales of the cheese. Wensleydale now offers a cheese in a Wallace and Gromit packaging, further cementing the relationship between the characters and the cheese. The Daily Mail reports that when Curse of the Were-Rabbit featured Stinking Bishop cheese, sales of the famously smelly cheese rose 500 percent.

2. The Truth about Cats and Dogs

Nick Park has said that neither character was exactly based on anyone he knew, although the ever-cheerful Wallace had often been compared to his father and the much put-upon Gromit compared to Park himself. Park has also said that Wallace and Gromit’s adventures are a bit of a pastiche, inspired by other films and genres, including Hitchcock and Laurel and Hardy films, as well as a real-life Lancashire, Britain 1950s, ‘60s, and ‘70s aesthetic. And one more thing: Gromit was originally going to be a cat.

3. Honing his skills with a Sledgehammer

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Your cat probably knows it as Catnip or Catmint. But the stuff that drives your kitten crazy goes by the Latin name Nepeta cataria, and it’s a member of the genus Nepeta (derived from Nepete, the Italian town where catnip was first cultivated).

When a cat smells catnip it usually licks, chews, rubs against and rolls around on the plant, as well as salivates and meows. This reaction lasts for about 5 to 15 minutes, and then the cat loses interest and needs about two hours of “reset” time before it can have the same response. Amazingly, catnip doesn’t hold power over all felines. Response to catnip is genetically inherited, with about 70 to 80 percent of cats exhibiting the typical response to the plant. Of those, kittens younger than six months and very old cats are less likely to respond.

But why does the plant hold such power over your cat? The secret to catnip is nepetalactone, a volatile oil stored in tiny bulbs on the leaves, stems and seedpods of the plant. When nepetalactone enters a cat’s nasal tissue, it binds to olfactory receptors at the olfactory epithelium. Sensory neurons are stimulated and cause neurons in the olfactory bulb to send signals to the brain. Once the brain gets involved, things get a bit murky because we still don’t have a complete neurological explanation for cats’ behavioral reaction, but the prevailing theory is that nepetalactone mimics a cat pheromone.

Besides amusing our pets, is there any use for catnip?

Research from the early 1960s suggested that a mouthful of nepetalactone for insects that bit into the plant kept them away. Later experiments found that catnip oil had the same repellent effect as 10 times the amount of DEET, sparking the emergence of several “natural” insect repellants using nepetalactone.

Catnip also has a mild calming effect on people, and folk medicine prescribes it as a treatment for migraines, indigestion, insomnia, colic and toothaches.

[Image credit: icanhascheezburger.com]

Reader Jason, from Tumwater, Washington sent this question in. If you’ve got a burning question that you’d like to see answered here, shoot me an email at flossymatt (at) gmail (dot) com. Twitter users can also make nice with me and ask me questions there. Be sure to give me your name and location (and a link, if you want) so I can give you a little shout out.

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I am planning a major home renovation this year. I would like to make a time-lapse video of the process. I don’t have a tripod, and even f I did, it doesn’t seem feasible to anchor one in a neighborhood full of curious kids and free-range pets. So when I saw the Timelapse Garden Video Camera, my interest meter went off the chart.
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This little camera does all the work for you to make a time-lapse video of growing plants. Stick it in the ground and focus it on the area you wish to record. You can set it to take a picture every five seconds, once every 24 hours, or several intervals in between. A light sensor will keep it from taking pictures in the dark, which makes editing easier or even unnecessary. The camera will assemble the still images into video form for playback. It has a 2GB removable flash drive that will take up to 18,000 pictures! Four AA batteries can run the Timelapse Garden Video Camera for up to four months. The danger here is forgetting that you set it out. It appears to blend in with the foliage, but if you don’t trust your neighbors, I wouldn’t trust its camouflage.

The description doesn’t say anything about distance focus. What we know is that you can set it as close as 18 inches from your subject, or back it up to use its 54 inch field of vision. The product page doesn’t specify how far it will focus, but it does say that you can watch your house being built! It would be a lot of fun to record your morning glories opening up, or your flower garden growing and blossoming. You could record a sunrise! If I were to spend $159.95 on the Timelapse Garden Video Camera, I would come up with more ways to get a lot of use out of it.

(via Neatorama)

Your intrepid Brain Games composer turned 42 years old on Sunday. You Douglas Adams fans tell me – does that mean I should understand the meaning of life, the universe, and everything? Anyway, I went looking for a puzzle that included “42″ in the mix, and I found one that’s perfect for Math Monday. Good luck!

What’s the next number in this sequence?

1, 2, 6, 42, 1806, …?

Here is the SOLUTION.

The idea that having children will make you happy is an illusion. However, the pursuit of happiness is not the only reason we reproduce. (via Metafilter)
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Lucky’s Funeral. Who knew a flushing ceremony could be this adorable?
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99 Seinfeld references in one poster ought to keep you busy for a while. If the original artist’s website comes back online, here’s a key.
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A new meaning for the term hyperopia: not simple farsightedness, but the inability to enjoy the present because one is overly worried about the future. It can lead to regret about lost opportunities.
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Yellow Fever: One of Five Infamous Epidemics We Hope We Never See. An epidemic in 1793 was so bad it caused our government to disband!

M.C. Escher (1898-1972) has been requested at least 6 times for “Feel Art Again.” Since yesterday marked the 37th anniversary of Escher’s death, it’s only fitting that today’s “Feel Art Again” post is devoted to the Dutch printmaker. (Shown above are Escher’s “Hand with Reflecting Sphere” and “Old Olive Tree, Corsica.”)

1. At the School voor Kunstnijverheid (School of Applied Arts) in Haarlem, M.C. Escher studied under Samuel Jesserun de Mesquita, who left a lasting impact on the artist’s life. Escher was so influenced by de Mesquita that he kept a photo of his teacher on his cupboard for his whole life. During World War II, after de Mesquita and his family were taken to a concentration camp, Escher visited the deserted de Mesquita house and salvaged what prints he could find.

2. Although his father was a civil engineer, Escher considered himself to be “absolutely innocent of training or knowledge in the exact sciences” and “extremely poor at arithmetic and algebra.” Escher even repeated two grades and failed several of his initial classes at the School of Applied Arts (though those may have been more due to his many health problems than his scientific or mathematical ineptitude). Yet Escher published a math paper, “Regular Division of the Plane with Asymmetric Congruent Polygons,” for which many scholars consider him a research mathematician.

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