Oil spills were all over the news last year, when the blowout of BP’s Deepwater Horizon spewed more than 780 million litres of crude into the Gulf of Mexico. “Every year, an estimated 760 million litres of human-produced oil fouls the world’s oceans,” says the New Scientist. “That’s one Deepwater Horizon every year. This vast amount stealthily builds up from smaller spills that never make the headlines, as well as from everyday activities: people riding jet skis or motorboats, or ships dumping bilge oil at sea. And it’s not just the oceans that are affected. One hundred oil spills occur in the United States every day, roughly three-quarters on land and the rest in water.”
Artist fixes Monday
“An artist has given thousands of yellow balloons to Kenyan commuters to take to work and counter their Monday-morning blues,” reports BBC News. “… [P]ople getting off minibus taxis at Nairobi’s central station looked somewhat bewildered to be handed the balloons. Yazmany Arboleda, the U.S. artist behind the stunt, told the BBC Monday mornings were usually a heavy moment for people. He said he wanted to give away 10,000 balloons to change this perception. ‘The big idea is to insert the iconography of celebration … [into]the habitual nature of working life.’ ”
Warrior females
“People tend to think all insects are male,” says biologist Marlene Zuk, author of Sex on Six Legs: Lessons on Life, Love & Language From the Insect World. She tells Discover magazine: “With social animals, it’s particularly funny, because most people have never seen a male. All the ants raiding your sugar bowl are female. And yet my students always find this puzzling, especially when you talk about army ants being vicious fighters. People want to see their own ideas played out in insects, and insects cheerfully shatter our preconceptions about gender roles just as they do for many other things.”
How long an occupation?
“Looking to the stars for guidance is considered dodgy these days,” says The New York Times magazine. “As recently as the 19th century, though, it was deemed science and in the Middle Ages, Chaucer depicted it as the province of intellectuals. AstrologyZone.com’s Susan Miller posts predictions, tweets, clarifications and continues to emphasize the math. She contends that Occupy Wall Street is a result of a harsh aspect between Uranus and Pluto that will recur into 2015. ‘I don’t see the demonstrations stopping any time soon,’ she says.”
Touchy teens and violence
“Dr. Tiffany Field, director of the Touch Research Institute at the University of Miami School of Medicine, … and her team conducted studies comparing teens in Paris and Miami to measure how much they touched one another during social interactions – in this case, while hanging out at McDonald’s,” reports Brain World. “The results showed that French teens of both genders engaged in all sorts of affectionate touch – from stroking and back rubbing to holding hands or just throwing their arms around one another’s shoulders. ‘In this country,’ says Dr. Field, ‘we found more self-stimulating – flipping the hair, cracking knuckles and stroking knees.’ Tactile stimulation increases serotonin, which counters aggressive behaviours, says Dr. Field. The implication, she says, is that a lack of pleasant social touch among U.S. teens may be a contributing factor in school violence.”
Unsocial networking
“Facebook spats have turned into campus brawls,” says California’s Contra Costa Times, “and administrators at one East Bay high school are asking parents to get their children to use social networking more positively. Fights earlier this year at Oakley’s Freedom High School that began on the popular social networking site led Principal Erik Faulkner to seek parents’ help. Of nine on-campus fights during the first five weeks of school, at least seven began when a teen used the website to post an insult. … The fights included one in which two girls had a disagreement over hair extensions. In another, two boys on Facebook disagreed over a biblical interpretation and the conflict boiled over onto campus, where one of them suffered injuries needing stitches.”
Thought du jour
“Most gods throw dice but Fate plays chess, and you don’t find out till too late that he’s been playing with two queens all along.”
Terry Pratchett (1948-), English novelist
