Oh, Germany. You Make Our Job Easy.
Dr. Marie-Catherine Klarkowski has taken a unique approach to renovating her Relax & Smile dental practice in Munich, Germany. It’s been converted into an “Alpine-style” clinic complete with wooden benches, antlers on the wall, and a fireplace. But more importantly, boobs. Dr. Klarkowski and her ten nurses now wear dirndls, the cleavage-bearing dresses often seen at Oktoberfest. Business at the Relax & Smile clinic has risen by a third, all of the new patients being men who are clearly fans of wooden benches and fireplaces. Connoisseurs of the Alpine style, obviously. The doctor justifies the new uniforms, pointing out that the sight of cleavage distracts patients from pain. And yet when we flash people at the hospital to distract them from their pain we get arrested. So unfair.
A radio station in Germany offered a Mini Cooper worth $32,000 to the listener who suggested the craziest stunt they’d be willing to do to get the car. Andreas Muller, 39, was the winner with his offer to have the word mini tattooed on his penis while a female DJ from the station watched. One contest organizer stated, “There were a lot of crazy stunts put forward by listeners, but Andreas won by a short head.” I see what you did there. During the tattooing, Muller commented, “Once I’m sitting in the car, it won’t matter anymore. Then the pain will be gone and it’ll be all right.” Yeah, things could be worse. He could have found out afterward that he only won 100 Grand.
To The Internets!
Google no longer autocompletes search terms related to file sharing. If you type in the word bittorrent, for example, you can search for it as usual, but if you type in bittorren, Google no longer gives suggested search terms, nor does Google Instant show any results. It’s not surprising that they would stop giving suggestions about something that could be used illegally, but by that logic they should stop autocompleting several other search terms. A blogger at Techi noticed they still autocomplete searches for kidnapping a child, making mustard gas, stealing from Walmart, cheating on your taxes, threatening the president, making meth, and building a bomb. Because downloading “Play That Funky Music” by Vanilla Ice is worse than kidnapping kids. Actually, they may have a point there.
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- Dental staff at an “Alpine-style” German clinic wear dresses reminiscent of Oktoberfest to distract patients from the pain. (Metro)
- German man tattoos “Mini” on his penis to win a Mini Cooper from a radio station. (Arbroath, possibly NSFW)
- Google won’t autocomplete search terms related to file sharing, but here are seven horrible things they will autocomplete. (Techi via BoingBoing)
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[news-morenews]
- In a study conducted by Maria Elizabeth Grabe and Lelia Samson at Indiana University, 400 subjects watched one of two mock news broadcasts read by the same woman. In one she wore plain clothes and no makeup; in the other she wore a tight outfit and red lipstick. Women remembered more of the headlines when read by the sexier version of the anchor, while men remembered significantly fewer headlines when distracted by an “Alpine-style” anchor. (Newslite)
- Police have taken surveillance video of drug smugglers using a catapult to launch 4.4 pound bales of marijuana across the Arizona-Mexico border. Wile E. Coyote sought for questioning. (ABC, with video)
- 400 Rabbis agree: Glenn Beck needs to stop referencing the Holocaust. (GOOD)
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[news-stats]
- The number of internet users worldwide just passed the two billion mark. The number of mobile phone subscriptions has grown to 5.38 billion. (France24)
- Between 2000 and 2010 the number of internet users worldwide grew from 361 million to just under 2 billion. LOLcat stock at an all-time high. (VisualLoop)
- In a survey of 755 Internet users, 65% reported paying to download or access content on the internet, with the most common purchases being music, software, and apps. Only 2% reported buying adult content. Wait, that’s not free? (Mashable)
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