Dutch inventors Bart Jansen and Arjen Beltman struck again recently when Pepeijn Bruins, 13, called on them to help him grieve over his pet rat, Ratjetoe, who had to be put down because of cancer. Having heard of the inventors' work, Pepeijn asked if they could please have Ratjetoe stuffed and turned into a radio-controlled drone. Jansen and Beltman, who had previously created an "ostrichcopter" and are now working on a "turbo shark," created Pepeijn's rat-copter, but remain best noted for their epic taxidermied cat, "Orvillecopter," created in 2012 (which readers can view at nydn.us/1r0WmmA).
Updates
- How to Confuse an Arizonan: In August, a state appeals court overruled a lower court and decided that Thomas and Nancy Beatie could divorce, after all. The first judge had determined that their out-of-state marriage was not valid in Arizona because they were both women, but Thomas has had extensive surgery and hormone therapy and become a man - although he is also the spouse who bore the couple's three children, since he made it a point to retain his reproductive organs.
- In August, for the 12th straight year, a group of Japanese adult-film actresses has volunteered their breasts to raise money for an AIDS-prevention charity event shown on an X-rated cable TV channel from Tokyo. The 12-hour-long "squeeze-a-thon" ("Boob Aid") sold individual fondles to men for donations of at least (the equivalent of) $9, with donors required first to spray on disinfectant. In all, 4,100 pairs of hands roamed the nine actresses.
- Regulatory filings revealed in August that AOL still has 2.3 million dial-up subscribers (down from 21 million 15 years ago) paying, on average, about $20 monthly. Industry analysts, far from rolling on the floor laughing at the company's continued success with 20th-century technology, estimate that AOL's dial-up business constitutes a hefty portion of its quarterly "operating profit" of about $122 million.
- Commentators have had fun with the new system of medical diagnostic codes (denominated in from four to 10 digits each) scheduled to take effect in October 2015, and the "Healthcare Dive" blog had its laughs in a July post. The codes for "problems in relationship with in-laws" and "bizarre personal appearance" are quixotic enough, but the most "absurd" codes are "subsequent encounters" (that is, at least the second time the same thing happened to a patient) for events like walking into a lamppost.
