A prince passes
Nov. 25 last year saw the death of "His Tremendousness Prince Giorgio I," the ruler-for-life of Seborga, a medieval town near the Italian Riviera that he and 300-odd followers declared a sovereign state. He was 73 and had Lou Gehrig's disease. Before he adopted his title after a 1963 election on independence, he was Giorgio Carbone, a flower merchant. Under his reign, the 13-square-kilometre Seborga adopted its motto: Sub umbra sede ("Sit in the Shade") and by 1997 attracted as many as 100,000 new tourists a year. Its standing army was Lt. Antonello Lacala. The daily Corriere della Sera newspaper reported: "When the [prince]died, the townspeople walked out of their houses into the narrow stone streets of Seborga and sang the song, music and words written by Giorgio I in honour of this strange town …" "More than 20 countries," adds the International Herald Tribune, "have recognized independent Seborga in some form or other. Except Italy."
The death cat
"A cat with an uncanny ability to detect when nursing home patients are about to die has proven itself in around 50 cases by curling up with them in their final hours, according to a new book," The Daily Telegraph reports. "Dr. David Dosa, a geriatrician and assistant professor at Brown University, said that five years of records showed Oscar rarely erring, sometimes proving medical staff at the New England nursing home wrong in their predictions over which patients were close to death." Oscar, now five and generally unsociable, was adopted as a kitten. The cat spends its days pacing from room to room, rarely spending any time with patients except those with just hours to live. If kept outside the room of a dying patient, Oscar will scratch on the door trying to get in. In his book, Making Rounds with Oscar: The Extraordinary Gift of an Ordinary Cat, Dr. Dosa suggests Oscar is able - like dogs, which can reportedly smell cancer - to detect ketones, the distinctly odoured biochemicals given off by dying cells.
Simpler investing
"Imagine that your stockbroker - or the friend who's always giving you stock tips - called and told you he had come up with a new investment strategy," Drake Bennett writes for The Boston Globe. "Price-to-earnings ratios, debt levels, management, competition, what the company makes and how well it makes it, all those considerations go out the window. The new strategy is this: Invest in companies with names that are very easy to pronounce. This would probably not strike you as a good idea. But, if recent research is to be believed, it might just be brilliant. … Psychologists have determined, for example, that shares in companies with easy-to-pronounce names do indeed significantly outperform those with hard-to-pronounce names."
Simpler name
"The leaders of the arts festival being planned for the 2012 Olympic Games are to ditch the name 'Cultural Olympiad' because they believe few people known what it means," the London Evening Standard reports. "Royal Opera House boss Tony Hall, who chairs the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad board, said: 'I think people find the two words really difficult to understand. People say to me, 'What is it?' We want to bring clarity to it.' "
Brutal honesty
"Ever want to know what people think of you, but are too afraid or embarrassed to ask?" Ki Mae Heussner writes for ABC News. "A new website is promising to offer you a way to help you find out. Now in beta [testing] Failin.gs is an online tool that lets users solicit anonymous feedback from people that they know. Once it's live in a couple of weeks, anyone will be able to create a profile, invite others to comment and then sit back as the (hopefully) constructive criticism pours in. 'As you know, nobody is perfect,' the website says. 'We all have our own idiosyncrasies and personality flaws. Just think of all the people you know. We are sure you can identify what they could improve upon. We bet your friends know a thing or two about you that you don't know yourself!' The founders, a pair of forthright friends with backgrounds in computer programming, say their site is intended to be a social experiment in brutal honesty."
From the frontiers of PC
"Bosses at a British recruitment firm said they were shocked when a government job centre rejected an ad for discriminating against people who aren't 'reliable,' " United Press International reports. "Nicole Mamo, 48, director of Devonwood Recruitment in Hertfordshire, said she was shocked when the government-run Job Centre rejected her ad for applicants who 'must be very reliable and hard-working,' the Daily Mail reported Tuesday. Mamo said she called the centre to find out why her advertisement was rejected. 'She said it was because they could have cases against them for discriminating against unreliable people,' Mamo said. 'I laughed because I thought that was crazy.' " "This is probably an instance," The Daily Express said in an editorial, "of clueless public servants misinterpreting the law - not even the Human Rights Act forbids companies from seeking dependable recruits."
Thought du jour
"A word to the wise ain't necessary, it is the stupid ones who need all the advice."
- Bill Cosby