Putting out dad
“A [British] man who accidentally set himself on fire while using petrol to light a bonfire was saved when his teenage son sprayed him with a bottle of Coca-Cola,” The Daily Telegraph reports. “Andrew Wythe, 52, was completely engulfed in flames when a spark ignited fumes from the petrol bottle, causing it to explode and setting his arms, chest, neck and ears alight. But he was saved when his son Nicholas, 15, shook up a two-litre bottle of Coke, aimed it at his father and opened the lid, using the force of the fizzy pop erupting from the bottle to put out the flames.”
Enjoying volcanoes
“ ‘May you live in interesting times,’ has long been quoted as a Chinese curse.… While there is actually no such saying in Chinese, the sentiment certainly rings true for many Icelanders these days,” Gunnar Jonsson writes for BBC News. In recent years, the island has seen economic collapse and political turmoil. “Enter Eyjafjallajokull.… When the initial eruption began, people were, for the most part, elated. The news broadcasts and newspapers were full of amazing images. People drove up to the site of the eruption by the thousands and many risked the dangerous trek through treacherous terrain and deadly weather just to reach … well, an even more deadly volcano. Certainly there will be more eruptions of varying intensities over the coming years and decades. Right now, however, people are just taking a welcome respite from worrying about their financial security and their children’s futures. A volcano, at least, is something we’re used to. Something we know how to deal with.”
Can’t see it for looking?
As airport security employees scan luggage for a large variety of banned items, they may miss a deadly box cutter if they find a water bottle first. According to new research from Duke University, identifying an easy-to-spot prohibited item such as a water bottle may hinder the discovery of other, harder-to-spot items. The idea of missing items in a complex visual search is not new: In the medical field, it has been known since the 1960s that radiologists tend to miss a second abnormality on an X-ray if they’ve found one already. The concept – dubbed “satisfaction of search” – is that radiologists would find the first target, think they were finished, and move on to the next patient’s X-ray.
Source: e! Science News
It was bound to work out
In Britain, a former university lecturer has told how she flew to Los Angeles for an impulse holiday, met a homeless man – and married him nine days later, Orange UK News reports. “Even more incredibly, Joanne St. Clair from Nelson, Lancashire, is still with Daniel Orlick after seven years and expecting their second child. Joanne, now 37, had a good job, her own home and a car but felt something was missing in her life so decided to take a break. After two days, she met Daniel in a Venice Beach hostel, where he had formerly worked, and they began arguing – about The Simpsons. Eventually, he told her he was living rough and busking because he dreamt of making it as a singer-songwriter and played her some of his songs.” After five days, he told her, “You know we will get married,” and she replied, “Yes, I know.” They are now living happily in Britain. Ms. St. Clair is now Mr. Orlick’s manager and they also run a record label together. “That chance meeting changed my life beyond my wildest dreams,” she said. “People will always tell you to do the sensible thing but letting your heart rule may well be worth a try.”
The funny papers
Two graduate students, Meredith Carpenter and Lillian Fritz-Laylin, from the molecular and biology department at the University of California-Berkeley, have compiled some absurd-sounding titles of research papers at Ncbirofl.com. They include:
– Effects of cocaine on honeybee dance behaviour (Journal of Experimental Biology).
– Swearing as a response to pain (NeuroReport).
– The “booty call”: a compromise between men’s and women’s ideal mating strategies (The Journal of Sex Research).
– Intermittent access to beer promotes binge-like drinking in adolescent but not adult Wistar rats (Alcohol).
– Are full or empty beer bottles sturdier and does their fracture-threshold suffice to break the human skull? (Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine).
You’re no egghead, sir
“Male pattern baldness and the mysteries of human sexuality are no puzzles for the president of Bolivia, who has declared they are caused by eating chicken,” a Guardian news blog reports. “Evo Morales has claimed that both homosexuality and baldness can be caused by the humble chicken. Speaking at an environmental conference [last] Tuesday, Morales said chicken producers injected fowl with female hormones and insisted that ‘when men eat those chickens they experience deviances in being men.’ The Bolivian president since 2005 added that eating chicken could make men go bald.… The dubious potential effects of hormone-infused chicken aside, Morales’s warning may be out of date anyway, as chicken producers in Europe, the U.S. and many other countries abandoned the use of hormones in poultry several decades ago.”
Thought du jour
“Self-pity is easily the most destructive of the non-pharmaceutical narcotics; it is addictive, gives momentary pleasure and separates the victim from reality.”
– John William Gardner
