Mayo Buckner, the man who was sane

Back in 1890, when Darthula Buckner was pregnant with her son Mayo, she saw a blind piano player named Blind Boone perform. She found it frightening the way Blind Boone rolled his eyes, and she grew to believe that somehow Blind Boone had imprinted his influence on the child inside her. Because as Mayo was growing up, sometimes he too rolled his eyes. Mayo was also a bit shy, and he ate his food fast. This was too much for his mother, who decided he needed "special management" and took him, at the age of 8, to the Iowa Home for Feeble-Minded Children.


An official at the institute (but not a doctor) took one look at Mayo and declared he was a "medium-grade imbecile." And so began Mayo's new life as an inmate in a mental institute.

When he reached adulthood, Mayo frequently told the doctors that he felt he was perfectly sane and would like to leave. But this request was always denied. And since he was so often told he was feeble-minded, he eventually came to believe it.

Until a new superintendent arrived at the school, tested Mayo, and told him that not only was he perfectly sane, but he also had a higher-than-average IQ of 120. So he was free to leave.

But by that time it was 1957 and Mayo was 67 years old. He had nowhere to go, so he decided to stay. He died there in 1965.

Read more about the strange life of Mayo Buckner in this Life magazine article from Mar 24, 1958.

Posted By: Alex - Wed Feb 20, 2013 - Comments (6)
Category: Hospitals, Intelligence

Dog Changes Expression on Command

Attack dogs are trained to look fierce on command. According to the post, this dog is responding to "Let's Go Outside" and "Give It Back" in Russian. The best part starts about 13 seconds in.



Any Russian speakers who can verify he's not being told to smile and frown?

Posted By: gdanea - Tue Feb 19, 2013 - Comments (4)
Category: Animals

Tattooed Apples

Ediblegeography.com delves into the history of apple tattooing. The concept is simple. You place a stencil on the fruit so that part of the skin isn't exposed to the sun, leaving a permanent image when the stencil is removed. However, getting it right is time consuming, so it's not a practice commercial farmers are likely to adopt. Pity, since I'd much prefer an apple tattoo over those obnoxious stickers that all the supermarket apples have on them. See more images of tattooed apples at the Société Régionale d’Horticulture de Montreuil.

Posted By: Alex - Tue Feb 19, 2013 - Comments (6)
Category: Food

Master Charles Cannon

There's 99 more like this on YouTube, if you want some sleeping aids.

His homepage.

Posted By: Paul - Tue Feb 19, 2013 - Comments (5)
Category: New Age, Synchronicity, Video

13 Star Wars Costumes in 4 Minutes

The song's not bad. It has a good beat and I feel like I could dance to it.

But the greatest thing about the video is the change into 13 different costumes during the song -- ALL FROM STAR WARS!!



Bonus light sabre action at the end!!

Sadly, I cannot name them all. Can you?

Posted By: gdanea - Mon Feb 18, 2013 - Comments (5)
Category: Pop Culture

Who Dat Say Chicken in Dis Crowd?

I learned of this song during a musical celebration of Black History Month on radio station WQXR. Certainly an artifact of its time.

You can mentally combine the instrumental music in the player with the words below.

Who Dat Say Chicken In Dis Crowd

There was once a great assemblage of the cullud population,
all the cullud swells was there,
They had got them-selves together to discuss the situation
and rumours in the air.
There were speakers there from Georgia and some from Tennessee,
who were making feather fly,
When a roostah in the bahn-ya'd flew up what folks could see,
Then those darkies all did cry.

Chorus:
Who dat say chicken in dis crowd?
Speak de word agin' and speak it loud--
Blame de lan' let white folks rule it,
I'se a lookin fu a pullet,
Who dat say chicken is dis crowd.

A famous culled preacher told his listnin' congregation,
all about de way to ac',
Ef dey want to be respected and become a mighty nation
to be hones' Fu' a fac'.
Dey mus nebber lie, no nebber, an' mus' not be caught a-stealin'
any pullets fun de lin',
But an aged deacon got up an' his voice it shook wif feelin',
As dese words he said to him.

Chorus:
Who dat say chicken in dis crowd?
Speak de word agin' and speak it loud--
What's de use of all dis talkin',
Let me hyeah a hen a sqauwkin'
Who dat say chicken in dis crowd.

Posted By: Paul - Mon Feb 18, 2013 - Comments (1)
Category: Food, Music, Stereotypes and Cliches, Nineteenth Century

Speed Painting

On his website, speedartman.com, D. Westry calls himself a "speed art pioneer." He also says that his "upside down" performance art technique (see the video below... I probably just spoiled the surprise at the end) is "one of the most influential art expressions of this generation." I have no idea what that means, but it sounds impressive.


(via Deceptology)

Posted By: Alex - Mon Feb 18, 2013 - Comments (4)
Category: Art

A Sticky Situation

In this day and age if you are going to make maple syrup you should probably let the neighbors know about it. Otherwise they may misconstrue all the containers and paraphenailia for a meth lab. Giving SWAT some homemade syrup was a nice touch.

Posted By: Alex - Sun Feb 17, 2013 - Comments (4)
Category: Confusion, Misunderstanding, and Incomprehension

Follies of the Madmen #200

50 Jahre Orion (TV Ad) from MovieBrats Films & Animation on Vimeo.

200 dumb and/or silly ads! How did we get here? What did we learn? Where are we going? Will the public ever wise up? The answers remain enigmatic.

But this over-the-top ad seems his fitting for such a milestone.

Posted By: Paul - Sun Feb 17, 2013 - Comments (4)
Category: Anthropomorphism, Business, Advertising, Products

Please Poop, Mr. Cow!

Although modern science has been able to send a man to the moon, it has not been able to make cows poop on command. An effort to solve this shortcoming is described in a recent issue of Applied Animal Behaviour Science.

The thing is, it would be really nice, for the purpose of general hygiene, if farmers could convince cows to stop pooping wherever they felt like it. So researchers devised a series of tests to see if prompts such as walking through a footbath, or being exposed to blasts of air or water, could stimulate bovine defecation. No such luck. The researchers concluded, "None of our tests reliably stimulated defecation, which seemed to occur most when cows were exposed to novelty."

Posted By: Alex - Sun Feb 17, 2013 - Comments (7)
Category: Science, Experiments, Farming, Cows, Excrement