pileofcrapola

Where did the inflatable dancing man come from? You know what we mean: the tall fabric puppets that you attach to a fan and let loose to dance in the air, capturing the attention of people passing by. Where did the air dancer come from? They’ve been around for less than 18 years, and have an origin story involving three countries and the Olympic Games.

The immediate ancestor of the air dancer that we know and love from the modern roadsides are massive inflatable puppets that were part of the opening ceremonies at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia. The project had a true international spirit, originating in fabric dancing puppets that are part of celebrations in the Caribbean. An Carnival parade artist from Trinidad, Peter Minshall, came up with the original concept for humanoid marching puppets filled with air. Israeli artist Doran Gazit, who specializes in inflatable forms, figured out the practical side, and the ancestors of the Air Dancer…Tube Guy…whatever you call them, was part of the opening ceremonies at the 1996 Olympics.

From there, the story develops complications: Gazit patented the men without Minshall’s permission, but they ultimately did not fight this out in court. The air-dancer technology has been licensed to a variety of companies, eventually devolving into the distracting balloon-puppet things that we see on roadsides to this day.

Episode 143: Inflatable Men [99% Invisible]
Biography of an Inflatable Tube Guy [Re:form]

The next time I find myself suddenly without any cash, I’m now going to be convinced that it was a hypnotizing thief lightening my load. Because yes, that can apparently happen: Police in London believe a shopkeeper might’ve been put in a trance by a guy caught on CCTV who then picked his pockets.

Yes, this is a thing people are believing, after a wine merchant found himself “stunned” by the theft of hundreds of pounds in cash, reports the London Evening Standard.

In the video, a man brushes past the shopkeeper and taps him on the arm. He then goes through a series of motions and gestures, ostensibly to put him into the hypnotic state. The shop owner does appear dazed and stands very still in the video, while the thief reaches inside his pocket and pulls out his wallet before walking out.

The shopkeeper then appears to snap out of whatever waking snooze he was having, and runs out after him.

Scotland Yard released the shop’s CCTV footage this week, showing the bizarre Sept. 11 incident in a search for the suspect.

“The victim remained motionless and unable to stop the robbery taking place. He said that he was momentarily unaware of what had happened to him,” a detective sergeant said.

“The suspect’s distraction tactics appeared to have worked as he robbed the victim of cash from his pocket.“

A BBC magician weighed in, saying the man might’ve previously been hypnotized by the suspect in order to implant “trigger” words into his subconscious, making it easier on this subsequent trip to get him into a trance.

“You can never hypnotize someone on the first go, you warm them up,” he explained to the paper. “I would have thought he has already gone in there before and done some pre-suggestive stuff.”

Maybe this means that the hypnotist I allowed to fake hypnotize me onstage at a tourist resort in Mexico wasn’t actually a total sham and is now going to reappear and rob me. That’s what this story has taught me. Never get hypnotized on vacation and later brag that it didn’t work (it didn’t) because it might just be an elaborate set-up.

Shopkeeper ‘placed in trance by hypnotist’ during theft in north London [London Evening Standard]

Electric cars might not be great for gas companies, but they feel like a net win for the electric utilities: after all, if you’re plugging in a Tesla in the garage every night, that’s a little more juice they can charge you for using. Tesla’s goal, though, isn’t just to make cars less environmentally hostile, but to make everything else that way too. And that might just be a huge problem for existing electric utilities.

Most electric utilities aren’t quite caught up to what Tesla’s doing, but the ones that have should probably be scared, Bloomberg reports.

The electric-car company is breaking ground on a battery “gigafactory” in Nevada. The factory itself is being designed to have essentially zero emissions and be as eco-friendly as possible. It will not draw power from the electric grid, instead generating its own wind and solar power on site — making the Nevada desert a perfect location.

The factory will not only be making batteries for use powering Tesla’s current and future lines of all-electric cars, but also for the “storage market.” That storage line gets thrown in quickly and then passed over in most press releases and media stories but, Bloomberg says, it’s actually a huge deal.

Those batteries can be paired with home solar panels, which are also getting less expensive every year. A homeowner who installs solar panels (also conveniently made by an Elon Musk company) and can store the excess energy for later use in a rainy week, using one of Tesla’s batteries, suddenly doesn’t even need to be connected to the local grid even for backup.

One analyst told Bloomberg that battery storage is “the Holy Grail for renewables,” because “the energy is intermittent. Finding a way to store that is very powerful.”

Another consultant described the potential to Bloomberg as a “mortal threat,” saying, “That [battery and solar panel package] is an unregulated product you can buy at Home Depot that leaves the old business model with no place to hide.”

Of course, just because people can go installing new energy systems at home doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily going to do it… but they certainly might.

About 40% of all plug-in electric cars sold in the U.S. go to Californians, Bloomberg says. And in California, roughly half of all those 100,000 people who have electric cars either already have solar power at home, or have plans to install it.

California has over 38 million residents, so the 50,000 homeowners who want to use solar power aren’t exactly an existential threat just yet. And Tesla’s factory won’t be online and operational for years yet to come.

But the future can come quickly. Right now, at $70-$100k, Teslas are too pricey for most folks. But with a $30,000 model launching in a few years, electric cars will become more accessible to millions more families. And economies of scale are a real thing: the more widely a technology gets adopted, the more efficiently a company can manufacture it, and the less expensive and more widespread it can continue to become.

Analysts think that the industry is drastically underestimating just how far Tesla has already come, Bloomberg writes. They quote Morgan Stanley analysts, who said “There is not sufficient appreciation of the magnitude of energy storage cost reduction that Tesla has already achieved, nor of the further cost reduction magnitude that Tesla might be able to achieve once the company has constructed its gigafactory.”

Ultimately, Bloomberg concludes, the landscape is changing. So far, electric utilities can do what they like because most consumers don’t exactly have a way to make their own electricity at home. But soon, many of us might. At that point, utilities are going to have to change somehow… whether or not they want to.

Why Elon Musk’s Batteries Scare the Hell Out of the Electric Company [Bloomberg]

Do you need a warm and waterproof pair of boots so you can tromp through serious snow, slush, and ice this winter? If so, you really should have planned ahead. L.L. Bean reports that their duck boots (which are not made out of actual ducks) for men and women alike are pre-ordered so far in advance that for some sizes, you’ll be waiting around until mid-March to get your boots.

Like most trends that are making people miserable, the experts blame millennials. Specifically, high school and college students and urban-dwellers who have suddenly decided that classic waterproof footwear is back in style. The boots cost $139, but are one product that L.L. Bean still manufactures in the United States, so it was a decent choice of footwear to suddenly make trendy again.

It’s not like the company can just hire more workers and crank out enough boots to feed the trend until Christmas is over, either. “Making more boots is also a slow process given the specialization needed to produce the hand-crafted boots,” a company spokesperson explained to Yahoo Style, presumably while strapping on some snowshoes to go visit the boot warehouse. It takes a new boot-maker 26 weeks to master the stitching, so those darn kids really should have given the company at least nine months’ notice before turning the boots into a hot item. So rude.

Yahoo reports that the company is on track to sell about 450,000 pairs of boots this year, and the waiting list stands at 100,000 right now.

L.L. Bean’s Already Sold Out of Snow Boots [Yahoo Style] (via Racked)

The operators of a now-defunct for-profit college in Florida allegedly told its admissions directors to do whatever it took to sell the school to potential students. Among the tactics used by the school is one straight out of a wacky, low-budget, late-night college movie you might see on Cinemax.

According to a lawsuit [PDF] filed earlier this week by Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida against the operators of the FastTrain chain of colleges, the school used exotic dancers to entice young males to apply to the school.

“FastTrain employed female exotic dancers as admissions representatives… to lure young male students,” reads the complaint, which says that admissions directors then “encouraged them to dress provocatively while they recruited young men in neighborhoods to attend FastTrain.”

The goal, alleges the suit, was to get as many students enrolled in the school as possible in order to get these students to take out federal student loans. That money would go to the school, and the student is left on the hook whether or not they graduate, get a decent education, or ever have the ability to repay.

Before it closed in 2012, FastTrain operated seven campuses in Florida’s Miami-Dade, Broward, Hillsborough, Pinellas and Duval counties.

According to the complaint, starting as far back as 2009 FastTrain “knowingly submitted, or caused to be submitted, numerous false claims” for payments through the U.S. Dept. of Education’s student aid programs.

FastTrain allegedly lied about students’ eligibility for aid, claiming these students had high school diplomas (or equivalents) when they did not.

The government says that FastTrain admissions personnel coached prospective ineligible students to lie on their Free Application for Federal Student Aid form “in order for FastTrain to secure more federal funding for students than the students were eligible to receive.”

FastTrain allegedly took in more than $4.3 million in federal student loans and another $2.21 million in Federal Pell Grants that shouldn’t have been given.

“Federal financial student aid programs are designed to assist students obtain an education. Those who misuse federal funds will be brought to justice and held accountable,” said U.S. Attorney Ferrer.

While Florida AG Bondi says that “Taking advantage of students in order to exploit federal financial aid programs is reprehensible, and we will continue to work with our federal partners to protect Florida students and the integrity of federal financial aid.”

The school’s owner, Alex Amor, and other individuals associated with FastTrain were charged earlier this fall in a 15-count indictment with conspiracy to steal government funds.

[via Local10.com]

If you don’t have a female relative over the age of 50 who can conveniently provide you with a glittery, puffy landscape of giant snowflakes and bedazzled Christmas trees, it’s understandable that you don’t want to drop the big bucks on an ugly holiday sweater you’ll never wear again after that Ugly Holiday Sweater Party you’ll inevitably be invited to at some point in your life. As an alternative, now you can rent one. And never see it again, like that other mistake you made last holiday season.

The folks who rent designer dresses with hefty price tags at Rent the Runway have launched an Ugly Holiday Sweater collection to help those in need of an atrocious item of clothing on the cheap.

Sweaters vary by your location, for a total of 12 in the collection whose sole purpose is to make you look as fashionably idiotic as is possibly this holiday season.

You want a bunch of teddy bears? Got’em. A creepy 3D Christmas clown sewn onto your chest, adorned with a red tinsel fringe? Okay then, wear that and try not to have nightmares later.

Sweaters only come in one-size-fits all size, at a four-day rental cost of $15.

Anyone who has worked in retail — especially foodservice — is familiar with pesky customers who have to repeatedly be told to leave the store. But one such standoff in Seattle apparently escalated quickly to the point where at least two adults and a cat were all doused in pepper spray.

It all occurred yesterday around lunch time, when a man and his cat — which he described to news outlets as a service animal — entered a McDonald’s.

Employees at the store tell KOMO News that the man was identified as someone that had previously been banned from this McDonald’s, so he was asked to leave.

This started an argument between the customer and employees, and then things got physical between the banned man (whose cat was on his shoulder at the time) and another man in line.

You can see it play out in the security camera footage above, but there is no sound and the actual pepper-spray incident occurs out of camera range.

KOMO reports that the pepper spray belonged to the banned man, but the Seattle Times writes that it was the other customer who used the pepper spray.

What is known is that the banned customer, his cat, and the other customer were all hit by the spray.

The other customer — who allegedly sprayed the stuff — got the worst of it and had to be treated at the hospital.

The McDonald’s had to be closed for a short while following the incident, and firefighters later returned to the scene to treat employees for what may have been residual effects of the spray.

Police tell the Times that no arrests will be made.

Last week, we shared an updated version of a list naming 109 Kmart and Sears stores reported by employees or local media outlets to be closing by early 2015. While Sears still won’t confirm or deny these reports on a company-wide level, the company did tell investors as part of its quarterly earnings report this week that it plans to close 105 more stores by the beginning of next year.

Closing stores that aren’t profitable is part of any turnaround plan when a retail chain is in trouble, and as Sears finds itself in need of more cash to stay in business, the company is picking up the pace of store closings. The company is considering forming a real estate investment trust and selling some stores to it, has borrowed a large amount of money from its own CEO with store buildings as collateral, and has been been working out deals to rent or sublease all or part of any store in which other retailers show interest.

Still, some experts believe that the retailer remains in a death spiral, and that efforts to sell or spin off Sears Holdings assets that still have value (like store buildings and the Lands’ End brand) are only an attempt to salvage something from the pieces of a company that was once a global retailing icon.

Sears Holdings Reports Third Quarter 2014 Results [Sears Holdings]

Cable and telecom companies love to sell you on the convenience and affordability of bundles combining phone, TV and Internet service onto one bill. But what they don’t tell you is that shedding that bundle could end up in a billing nightmare.

Over at Credit.com, columnist Bob Sullivan writes about one AT&T customer who previously had a phone/TV/Internet bundle through AT&T U-Verse. Then in 2011, she dropped the phone and pay-TV services and went with only U-Verse broadband.

Shortly after dropping the bundle, AT&T alerted the customer to the fact that there was a balance of around $70 remaining on the bundled service. She sent in payment for that amount, which appears to be the last thing upon which she and the telecom titan agree.

AT&T says that it — inexplicably and without telling the customer — applied that payment to her new account that was in good standing, rather than the account for which it was intended.

And yet it sent three different collections agencies after the customer. Each time an agency contacted her, she’d write them back to show them proof of the $70 payment from 2011 and she’d never hear from the same collector again.

But they continued to come after her. When Sullivan got involved, the reason why this bogus debt refused to die became slightly more clear.

Apparently, AT&T had not sold the debt to the agencies, but merely assigned it to these third parties. At some point, AT&T recalled that debt — again, without explanation — so the collectors just stopped trying to pursue it.

See, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act requires that collectors provide proof of a debt when challenged by an alleged debtor — but only if the collector intends to continue pursuing the debt.

If the company believes the consumer — or has the debt recalled by the company that assigned it — there’s no requirement to respond.

And even though AT&T recalled the debt from the most recent collections agency, it still maintains that the customer owes the $70… because it apparently screwed up and applied it to the wrong account.

After Sullivan got involved the Death Star is suddenly willing to work with the customer. Luckily, since the collections agencies were working on behalf of AT&T the disputed debt had not been reported to the three major credit reporting agencies, which would have stained her credit report.

But let her story be a lesson to anyone who is changing plans within the same company. Check to see if you’ve been given a new account number, and to make sure that all accounts are settled. Just because you send in a payment doesn’t mean it’s going to the right account.

How can a milkshake lead to a heart attack? Not through the arteries in the long run, but by way of a maraschino cherry, according to one Chick Fil-A customer’s new lawsuit.

A woman who visited a Texas Chick Fil-A in May claims in a lawsuit filed in a State District Court in Dallas County that biting into an “improperly de-pitted” maraschino cherry that came on top of her milkshake, reports the Houston Chronicle.

She says biting the pit caused damage to two of her teeth, fracturing them below the gum line. An unspecified short time later, she developed gum infection and sepsis, followed by a heart attack that she claims is related to the tooth trouble. The teeth in question were recently removed.

She’s also suing the company that provided the cherries, a New York businesses, claiming that the company, “as a producer, supplier and distributor of maraschino cherries to restaurants or food establishments throughout the United States, including Texas, failed to use that degree of care that would be used by a marschino cherry de-pitting owner or company of ordinary prudence under the same or similar circumstances.

She’s seeking damages between $200,000 and $1 million.

Chick-Fil-A milkshake blamed for woman’s heart attack [Houston Chronicle]

Have you placed an online order from a store while you were standing in one of their brick-and-mortar locations? In an interview with CNBC (Warning: auto-play video), Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said that the company’s analysis shows something interesting about how customers shop using their smartphones. 10% of orders placed on mobile phones are actually placed while customers are standing inside the store. Is it because the items they really want are out of stock? Are online prices lower? McMillon doesn’t say. [CNBC]

There are many bad things in the world, things that make you sad and upset and tempt you to throw large, breakable things against the wall and rail against whatever it is that’s bringing you down. In those moments, grab hold of the fact that a cat’s owners say she survived 30 days trapped in a box that traveled cross-country, without food or water to sustain her.

Her owner says it all started in Suffolk, V.A. in September, when movers were packing up the family home as they prepared to move to Hawaii, reports WAVY.com. Mee Moowe the cat went missing at some point while the movers were there.

The family thought maybe she’d just run away, scared by the movers and all the noise they were making, and decided to delay the move for three more nights. They stayed in the empty house, hoping Mee Moowe would come back.

Finally, they were forced to leave, and abandon hope of finding the beloved cat.

“It made me sick. It was heartbreaking,” her owner said. “My girls were devastated trying to tell me that I couldn’t leave without Mee Moowe.”

It took 36 days for the family’s stuff to travel from Virginia to Hawaii, from packing day to unpacking time. Movers were unloading boxes at the new home when Mee Moowe’s owner says she heard a faint meow for help. Or at least, that’s how I’d translate it.

“The guy goes, ‘what was that sound?’ and my heart just kind of sunk for a minute and I thought, ‘no, no way.’ And then we heard it again. And the guy said, ‘was that a cat?’” she said.

It was Mee Mowe, weak, anemic and half her former size, with her eyes crusted shut, inside a box. She wasn’t in good shape, but her Hawaii vet says she’s going to make it, despite surviving without food or water for more than a month.

“I was in shock,” her owner said, adding that the cat went right up to her daughters and won’t let them leave her. “I couldn’t believe it. I think I was grateful that she was alive, but I was furious this happened to her.”

WAVY.com spoke with the veterinarian’s office that treated Mee Moowe in Hawaii. They said she exhibited classic symptoms of starvation, but somehow, she survived more than a month without food or water.

But there’s another snarl before she can curl up at home with her humans — Mee Moowe was supposed to stay in Virginia with a family member so she could get all the vaccinations she needed to move to Hawaii. Now she has to stay in quarantine at the vet in Hawaii for three months, at a cost to her family of $4,000.

The family is happy to be reunited, despite that, in light of the seemingly impossible trip their cat made to get back to them. Vets say it’s not likely a cat would survive such an ordeal, but a lot depends on the health of the feline before undergoing such a hellish trip.

“I’m just as shocked as they are,” her owner said. “I have no idea how she did it.”

Owner: Trapped cat survived 30-day trip in moving box [WAVY.com]

Is Google Books a useful tool for finding exactly the book that you need and driving sales, or a copyright infringement on a massive scale? That’s been the longtime argument (in court) between Google and some of the authors whose work appears in the search engine. At stake are billions of dollars that Google would owe the Authors Guild and individual authors who are parties to the suit.

Google Books is now a decade old. The project began with the scanning of university book collections. Google Books reproduces pages from these books and scanned them using optical character recognition, making every word of the text searchable. The collection also includes vintage magazines, something that we’re very fond of mining to mock advertising from the past.

While there’s no legal issue with scanning and reproducing books that are long out of print and that are now in the public domain, authors do take issue with their books sitting in their fully-indexed entirety on Google’s servers. A federal judge dismissed the authors’ case at the end of 2013, and the parties are currently arguing the case in a federal appeals court. While the authors claim that scanning books and making them searchable is a potentially money-making infringement, Google contends that the database is really intended to make books easier to find and buy. Pages for each book do provide links to purchase the book that a surfer is looking at, or to locate it in a nearby public or university library.

Google should pay authors for scanned books, U.S. appeals court told [Reuters]

Prince William County crime report Washington Post These were among incidents reported by Prince William County police. For information, call 703-792-7245. BRISTOW AREA. THEFTS/BREAK-INS. Dunstable Loop, 8700 block, 4:45 to 8 p.m. Nov. 24. Cash was stolen from a residence entered through an ... and more »

Costco warehouses pack some serious deals, but some things just aren't the most bang for your buck. We've covered some of the things you should and shouldn't buy at the bulk buying super store , but here's four more items you can cross off your list.

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Your dishes are starting to pile up in your sink and forming into a formidable opponent. Instead of putting off washing them because it seems like too much work, just clean as many as you can with one soapy sponge.

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With most business being done digitally, you might think that business cards don't matter anymore. But they can offer a lot. Here's why they're still important for business and how you can get the most out of yours.

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You might not think you need a non-contact thermometer in your tool box, but they're a ton of fun to mess around with , and can really come in handy for everything from cooking to home energy savings . If you want one for yourself, or you just want to start your holiday gift shopping, you can order one today for just $14.

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Many of us don't pay much attention to how the economy works, because it seems confusing and difficult to understand. But it affects us, so it's good to at least know the basics. A new film series explains how the economy works in a simple, entertaining way.

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When you're sent to prison, you're stripped of basic comforts the rest of us take for granted—things like having many food options or a way to light contraband cigarettes. Necessity is the mother of invention, so those who have been in prison have had to come up with some creative life hacks for when resources are limited. Here are a few of them.

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In honor of Evil Week , we're switching up the Hive a little bit. Normally we look for the five best, but this week we're looking for the five worst—specifically the worst airlines in the skies. The ones that should be grounded, or have fees so high, customer service so terrible, planes so uncomfortable, or routes so horrible you'll spend more to avoid them entirely—based on your nominations of course.

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Regardless of your opinion on handguns, you probably want to know how to spot someone carrying one. This graphic illustrates some tips from the New York City Police Department.

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No matter what you call them—myths, urban legends, old wives' tales, or misconceptions—this video tackles some of the more popular cooking and food related ones you've probably heard at some point.

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You don't have to be a suit-wearing CEO to apply for a business credit card. In fact, you can have as little as a social security number and an Amazon Affiliates account to be eligible for lower interest rates or other perks of business cards.

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Not all companies are out to get us, but not all have our best interests at heart either. Some industries are particularly happy to take advantage of our misfortunes to make a profit. Here's how to fight back.

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Here for sharing far and wide is a collection of the most common myths and misconceptions surrounding flu vaccines , debunked point-by-point with lucid, thoroughly referenced explanations.

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After going through the hassles of interviewing, not getting an offer sucks. Your first assumption is you weren't qualified, but that's not always true. You also could have failed any number of hidden tests, some of them very evil.

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You're driving along and you notice your fuel gauge is on E. You stop at a gas station and fill 'er up – and instead of gasoline you get a tank full of water. It happens. But if you paid cash and didn't get a receipt, your day just got uglier.

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Car salespeople have a reputation for trying to squeeze every cent from their customers, and they're often very good at their jobs. They are experienced negotiators and you need to know how to find leverage to make a deal in your favor.

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At a glance, the laws of the United States seem pretty straightforward. After all, you probably can't keep a flamethrower around or have a pet tiger, right? Actually, in some states, you can. With that in mind, let's make a list of some of the things you've always thought were illegal but are actually totally okay to do.

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