NY brothers promote toilet paper ads
RYE BROOK, N.Y.: Two brothers from a New York City suburb have an advertising concept that’s on a roll — a roll of toilet paper. Bryan and Jordan Silverman are creators of toilet tissue printed with ads, and sometimes with coupon codes that can be read by cellphones. The Journal-News says in a story Sunday that the brothers expect their product to appear this fall in the Port Chester-Rye Brook Public Library. Twenty-two-year-old Jordan Silverman came up with the idea for Star Toilet Paper in 2010. His 18-year-old brother tells the newspaper that he was initially skeptical but came to see it as advertising to “a really captive audience.” The brothers from Rye Brook have entered their concept in a contest run by Entrepreneur magazine.
Driver avoiding moose hits bear
OSLO: A Norwegian driver who swerved his car on a rural road to avoid running into a moose hit a bear instead, authorities said on Thursday. The driver spotted the moose on a country road near Hanestad, 225 kilometers north of Oslo, around midnight on Wednesday, and tried to go around the animal, not realizing that a bear was also nearby. “The driver had lost a bit of speed as he tried to avoid the moose before hitting the bear,” said Svein Erik Bjorke of the local wildlife authority, who was out in the forest searching for the wounded animal. “We are currently tracking the bear and we have found traces of blood indicating internal injuries,” he said. The driver escaped uninjured while his car suffered some damage. Norway’s rugged mountains are sparsely populated and full of wildlife. The country, nearly the size of Germany but home to just five million people, has around 100,000 moose and 150 brown bears, authorities said.
Family of five switches to Mars time
LA CANADA FLINTRIDGE, California: One California family of five is learning what it’s like to live on “Mars time” this summer. NASA flight engineer David Oh had to switch to Martian time after the rover Curiosity landed on Mars earlier this month. His wife and three children decided to tag along to see what it is like. A day on Mars is about 40 minutes longer than an Earth day, so they’ve been waking up, sleeping and eating at odd hours. One day last week breakfast was at 3 p.m. Every mission to Mars, hundreds of NASA scientists and engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory make the time change for three months. But it’s unusual for an entire family to join in. The kids will be on Mars time for about a month.
