Eddy's Good News: Stray dog finds a new home, a teenagers giant feet and AI designed buildings

Virgin Radio

8 Sep 2023, 09:50

Every day during his show on Virgin Radio, Eddy Temple-Morris brings you Good News stories from around the world, to help inject a bit of positivity into your day!

Be sure to listen each day between 10am and 1pm (Monday - Friday) to hear Eddy's Good News stories (amongst the finest music of course), but if you miss any of them you can catch up on the transcripts of Eddy's most recent stories below:

Friday 8th September 2023

Let’s give ourselves that Friday feeling with a news heart warming and paw-warming new pupdate from the US as a stray dog adopts an entire old people’s home.

Say hello to Scout, a stray a formerly abused doggo who’s only home to speak of was an animal shelter in Michigan but Scout decided he didn’t want to be there any more, so he escaped and the shelter soon got a call from an old people’s hospice down the road who were surprised that the pooch managed to scale the 10-foot fence, vaulted another 6-foot solid privacy wall, cross a busy motorway without being run over, go in through the front door undetected and curl up on the couch to sleep.

They took him back to the shelter but days later the persistent pooch escaped again and was found back on the same couch. When they took him back again and he made the same epic journey back to the couch for the third time they decided that the universe was sending them a sign. Scout is now a permanent resident, hugely loved by staff and customers, many of whom have dementia. He visits them all, checking in on every one, even the ones right at the end of their lives and giving them some unconditional love. 

Via: goodnewsnetwork.org

A heart warming and foot liberating story from the USA as we meet the record breaking teenager with feet so big no shoe company in the world made a shoe for him, not least the cleats he needed to play American football.

Eric Kilburn Jr was 8lb when he was born, so nothing prepared his parents or his sports coaches when he grew to six feet ten inches and by the time he was 15, his feet were size 22, the biggest size any shoe company makes. But still growing Eric was soon getting blisters and muscle deformations, so his mum had to get special orthopaedic shoes made which cost a staggering $1500, so one of his friends started a crowd funding page and soon Eric and his record teenage feet had gone viral and reached the eyes of sportswear companies Puma and Under Armour as well as basketball legend Shaquille O’Neal who’s a size 22 himself.

Representatives came to his school, measured him up and delivered four pairs of cleats and two pairs of trainers to the school. They’re even bigger than a 23 would be, because Eric’s feet are so wide so the shoe companies just called them ‘Eric Kilburn size’ :)

Via: goodnewsnetwork.org

I studied the history of architecture at school and university but I’ve never heard of neoclassical futurism - that’s because it hadn’t been invented until now.

Say hello to Tim Fu, a famous architect who used to work for the internationally renowned Zaha Hadid (they designed our spectacular velodrome for the London Olympics) but left the firm to pursue an idea that AI could be used in the design and engineering stage of buildings.

He argues that architects are hampered and compartmentalised by classically prescribed styles but AI can beautifully merge them or even create whole new genres, like neoclassical futurism. Imagine the ornamental aesthetic of a renaissance cathedral, seamlessly blended with the drama of a gothic cathedral then throw in a touch of Elvish castle from Lord Of The Rings and and Gaudi’s stunning Sagrada Famiglia in Barcelona.

The designs coming out of his studio are truly amazing. Tim reassures the AI paranoid that it’s just the design that AI is helping with, nobody can carve stone better than a stone mason, it’s a human art and a machine will never do that justice. He wants to move away from the minimalism of the Industrial Revolution to when buildings were artful and beautiful. To have machines design them but humans build them by hand, in the same way as the very first human handicrafts in the first societies.

Via: goodnewsnetwork.org