Dog days in Iran
"Iranians have turned to the Internet to organize anti-government protests. Now they're flocking online to defy another Islamic Republic edict: buying and selling dogs," says The Wall Street Journal. "Pooch lovers in Iran are clicking on popular websites like Woof Woof Iran Digital Pets and Persianpet to pick their favourite canine, study dog grooming or swap pet tales. Buying and selling dogs is illegal in Iran, unless they are guard dogs or used by police. Dogs are considered 'haram,' or 'unclean' in Islam. … But access to satellite television – and American programs depicting families playing with pups – has turned dog ownership into a sign of social status in Iran."
Not your father's protests
"Street politics have lost their relevance in many former Soviet countries, as the political opposition has withered away," The New York Times reports. "But innovative forms of protest are popping up. … And the participants are proving very difficult to punish. Russia has the 'blue buckets,' activists who affix plastic sand toys to their cars (or their heads) in a protest against the traffic privileges accorded to government officials, whose cars are equipped with flashing blue lights. In Azerbaijan, where protesters are hustled away so quickly that even gathering is nearly impossible, small flash mobs have appeared out of nowhere to perform sword fights or folk dances. The more permissive political atmosphere of Ukraine has spawned Femen, a group of young women who address such non-sexy issues as pension reform by baring their breasts in public. A woman was arrested in April for walking up to a Second World War memorial in Kiev, Ukraine's capital, and frying eggs and sausages over the eternal flame."
Return of German siestas?
There's a growing trend in Germany to re-establish the tradition of midday napping, reports The Guardian. "The DGB confederation of trade unions argues that a short, lunchtime power nap makes sense for health and performance reasons. … The idea has caught on in Germany, where big German companies such as BASF, Opel, Hornbach and Lufthansa provide special rooms for their workers, and employers say they benefit from the increased productivity of well-rested employees." Germans used to take siestas up until the industrial revolution. But the labour needs of the manufacturing economies caused the custom to die out in much of northern Europe. It has been a diminishing custom in the south as well over the past two decades, though some people are trying to bring it back.
Speed trials for snails
The World Snail Racing Championships were held in Norfolk [England] on Saturday, The Telegraph reports. "Snails love rain – which is just as well, as a torrential downpour delayed the start by 20 minutes, leaving ideal conditions for molluscs to gather speed. … The racing track is marked with two concentric circles. Snails are placed along the inner circle, and the winner is the first to reach the outer circle. The distance is 13 inches (33 centimetres) if a snail travels in a straight line. Some do, some don't. … The champion, emerging from 120 competing snails, was Zoomer, owned by six-year-old Anton Lucas of Ashwicken, near King's Lynn. Anton said: 'It's lovely to win. I am going to set Zoomer free in the woods.'"
When teachers go bad
In Atlanta, "Teachers spent nights huddling in a back room, erasing wrong answers on students' test sheets and filling in the correct bubbles. At another school, struggling students were seated next to higher-performing classmates so they could copy answers," Associated Press reports. "Those and other confessions are contained in a new state report that reveals how far some Atlanta public schools went to raise test scores in the nation's largest-ever cheating scandal. Investigators concluded that nearly half the city's schools allowed the cheating to go unchecked for as long as a decade, beginning in 2001. Administrators – pressured to maintain high scores under the federal No Child Left Behind Law – punished or fired those who reported anything amiss and created a culture of 'fear, intimidation and retaliation,' according to a report released earlier this month, two years after officials noticed a suspicious spike in some scores. The report names 178 teachers and principals, and 82 of those confessed."
Thought du jour
"If you are young and you drink a great deal it will spoil your health, slow your mind, make you fat – in other words, turn you into an adult."
P. J. O'Rourke (1947-)
U.S. political satirist and author