Screen grab from U.S. Discovery Channel’s ‘Eaten Alive’
BIG GULP
For those viewers who truly believe they've seen it all on television, get ready to watch a man swallowed by a snake.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the U.S. edition of Discovery Channel will take the food chain to the next level with the upcoming special Eaten Alive, in which, as the title suggests, a man will be swallowed by a massive anaconda.
But before you start fretting for the welfare of the man in question, it's worth noting that the snake's intended repast – naturalist Paul Rosolie – will wear a special suit for the stunt and will remain harnessed to the outside world with a wire.
In the just-released promo for the special, Rosolie says the purpose of his experiment is to draw attention to the snakes and their "unique eco-system that no one has explored before."
The promo shows Rosolie and the Discovery crew piloting their boat through murky waterways in the Amazon in search of Eunectes murinus, the largest anaconda species that can reach six metres (18 feet) in length.
Rosolie is also shown donning a special suit to protect against any chomping from the great snake's fangs or stomach acids that could prove injurious.
According to Rosolie, the suit has been covered in pig's blood and is designed to make him look as appetizing as possible to the anaconda, which has been known to swallow and digest deer and other mammalian creatures in a matter of hours.
Says Rosolie: "We're gonna make me as appealing as possible so the snake just goes, 'Well, I've got this big thing here. I might as well get a free meal."
And for those people who might be concerned for the snake's safety, the Discovery release for Eaten Alive assures us the snake does not die during the filming process.
Regardless of such promises, within hours of Discovery announcing the special, there was already a petition on Change.org titled "Stop the airing of Eaten Alive - Boycott Discovery Channel." So far, it's got 5,956 supporters and counting.
Eaten Alive is currently scheduled to air on the Discovery Channel on December 7. No word yet on whether the Canadian edition of Discovery plans to simulcast the special.
AH-CHOO!
Your paranoid delusions were true: One person really can infect an entire airplane cabin with a single sneeze. At the behest of aviation industry and health official, the engineering software firm ANSYS recently created a video to show how sneezes can travel through a plane. The simulation demonstrated that sneeze particles can travel up to 50 feet in distance within the confined space. The same simulation showed that a person sneezing in the middle of the plane is the most contagious, since air circulates from the overhead fans to the lower vents. And the study concluded that passengers sitting in the same row or the row behind the sneezer were at the highest risk of catching their germs.
Source: The Daily Mail
LATTE BACKTRACK
The people have spoken, and they will receive their festive beverages from Starbucks. The coffee chain has reversed its decision to the split the availability of eggnog and gingerbread lattes this upcoming holiday season in response to a flood of phone calls, e-mails and social-media requests to make them available. In Starbucks' original game plan, the gingerbread latte was not available to customers in Western Canada and the eggnog latte was not on the menu anywhere east of the Manitoba-Ontario border. On Wednesday, Starbucks announced the eggnog and gingerbread lattes would be available in all their Canadian outlets starting the week of November 17. "We heard you, and we're taking action," said a Starbucks spokesperson.
Source: CTV News
STILL PHOEBE
Lisa Kudrow is more than game for a Friends reunion. Earlier this week, the 51-year-old took part in a Reddit 'Ask Me Anything' session and said that she only has marvellous memories of the NBC sitcom. "I loved doing Friends," said Kudrow. "I would have been fine if we did it ten more years, and it was great that we finished when we did, because I've loved everything I've done since." In the same session, Kudrow dished on the creative process behind the song Smelly Cat, which was performed on several occasions on Friends by her ditzy character, Phoebe Buffay. "The writers wrote it, I wrote the tune and had a little help from [The Pretenders vocalist] Chrissie Hynde. She was amazing!" said Kudrow.
Source: People
SNIFF TEST
It's true: Women really do have a superior sense of smell compared to men. A recent Brazilian study employed a device called an isotropic fractionator to determine the olfactory detection abilities of both sexes. After examining the post-mortem brains from seven men and 11 women, all over the age of 55 at the time of death, researchers calculated the number of cells in the olfactory bulbs of the subjects and determined that women on average have 43 per cent more cells than men in the brain structure. The scientists concluded that female olfactory superiority was cognitive or emotional, rather than perceptual.
Source: Daily Mail