News

Give the air a scrub

The scientist who coined the term "global warming" in the 1970s has proposed a radical solution to the problem of climate change, BBC News reports. Wallace Broecker is advocating millions of "carbon scrubbers" - giant artificial trees to pull carbon dioxide from the air. He said some 20 million of the scrubbing devices would be required to capture all the carbon dioxide currently produced in the United States; 60 million of the devices would be needed worldwide at an estimated cost of $600-billion (U.S.) a year. "Okay, you say that's enormous," he says. "But we make 55 million cars a year, so if we really wanted to, we could. Over 30 or 40 years we could easily make that number."

Stay out of the pool?

Office pools to bet on sports and Oscar contests are fun, right, ScienceDaily asks. Not according to the Journal of Consumer Research. A recent study suggests that betting on the outcome actually reduces people's enjoyment of the events. Authors Naomi Mandel and Stephen Nowlis of Arizona State University explain: "Nobody likes to be wrong. Once a person has committed to a predicted outcome, he's set himself up for the possibility of looking like a fool. In other words, the fear of losing [known as] 'anticipated regret' may actually feel worse than losing itself." People's

worry about losing the bet tends to spoil the event for them. Win or lose? The authors found it didn't really matter. "Among those who made predictions, participants who were correct enjoyed the event no more than those who were

incorrect."

Make up a lullaby

" 'Outwit your kid' [Social Studies, June 4] lists several ways of lulling a toddler to sleep - all of them create pollution and use non-renewable resources because they require power," contends reader Suzanne M. of Toronto. "That's so 20th century. For the 21st century we need to think of what grandma did: She sat in her rocking chair, singing a lullaby and holding baby in her lap. ..." [Yes, indeed. The environment should always be a priority, even at 3 a.m. during a sleepless night, and who doesn't enjoy singing? But you might avoid grandma's old lullabies with their disturbing imagery - cradles plunging from trees and so on. Why not improvise a lullaby to match your whimsical mood at the time? Give it an ironic title such as Go to Sleep, You Little Rat - one of my mother's favourites - and then have a creative and bonding experience.]

Look what's a verb

Word mavens have noticed these coinages, Jan Freeman of The Boston Globe writes:

to office (to work out of a business location or branch);

to beverage (to serve drinks to airline passengers);

to blasé (to act cool, unimpressed);

to lump-sum (lump together);

to truss up (in fashion, a specialized variant of "to tart up");

to homage (to copy blatantly).

Who are the weirdos?

"Scientists want us to eat insects - for the sake of our health and that of the planet," Geoffrey Lean writes in The Independent on Sunday. "They say that scoffing spiders and gobbling grasshoppers - or entomophagy, to use its proper name - provides essential nutrients, keeps down pests and puts much less strain on the planet than eating conventional meat. Researchers from Ohio State University have described insects as 'micro-livestock,' while the UN Food and Agriculture Organization earlier this year held a special conference on their benefits. 'Insects are the most valuable, underused and delicious animals in the world,' says David George Gordon, a Seattle-based naturalist and author. The West 'is one [of] the few cultures' that doesn't eat them,

he adds. 'Maybe we are the weirdos.' "

Toe dancing and pain

"Step off, football jocks. The ballerina needs the physical therapy table more than you do," Sam McManis of McClatchy Newspapers writes. "According to a recent study in the Journal of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy, the annual injury rate at classical ballet companies ranges from 67 per cent to 95 per cent. 'And those are just the injuries in which (dancers) had to take a day off,' says Dr. Nancy Kadel, an orthopedic surgeon at the University of California, San Francisco, and a former

ballet dancer. 'That's not counting the pain they dance through daily.' " Brett Raphael of the Connecticut Ballet said women tend to have foot, ankle and hip problems, while men have back and knee injuries because of the jumping and lifting. The concentration on one side of the body - much of the standard repertoire tends to be done on the right leg, he said - is also a problem.

Looking daggers at doc

"Been patronized or fobbed off by a doctor? It may have made you angry, but hopefully not angry enough to want to kill your physician," the New Scientist says. "Yet it turns out that the urge is not uncommon, especially among patients who are in pain, undergoing physical rehabilitation or seeking legal compensation for disability. So say David Fishbain and colleagues at the University of Miami in Florida, who surveyed some 2,000 Americans on their interactions with doctors. Few doctors are actually killed by their patients, but thousands are attacked and injured."

Thought du jour

"When a person tells you, 'I'll think it over and let you know' - you know."

- Olin Miller