Grounded lottery winner
"Eloise Hutchinson, who has won £1.3-million [$2.1-million] on the lottery has pledged to keep working two jobs despite her new-found fortune," The Telegraph reports. "Ms. Hutchinson, 19, from Colchester, Essex, bought the ticket for the New Year's Eve Lotto on Dec. 30 because she thought that winning big would be 'a good way to start the new year.' " She told the newspaper: "'I can now buy a house and will replace my old Ford Fiesta. I would love to take a holiday in Jamaica but not until later in the year. I have already been back to work and will continue doing both my jobs.' … The grounded teenager even drove to a celebratory meal with her boyfriend and two friends at Colchester gastro pub the Lexden Crown, and made him pick up the tab."
Buddhists on Facebook
"Walk down the tiny, colourful streets of Mcleod Ganj, also known as Upper Dharamsala – home to Tibet's spiritual leader, the exiled 14th Dalai Lama and thousands of his Buddhist followers – and one glimpse reveals what 21st-century Buddhism is all about," The Christian Science Monitor reports. "Internet cafés sprinkled around the Indian Himalayan town are filled with new Web users sitting hours every day trolling Facebook and other social networks while dressed in red robes. With Buddhism's embrace of the Internet, lamas and monks are increasingly 'adding' friends and family to their Facebook account, posting images, sharing videos and 'liking' Web pages."
Mercedes adds Facebook
"Mercedes-Benz USA is bringing Facebook to its cars, with a special version of the service that is built-in to a new in-vehicle telematics system that will be unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week," Reuters reports. "Accessing Facebook on the road is not exactly the same as using the social network on a personal computer or a smartphone. The version of Facebook offered in Daimler AG's Mercedes is stripped down to a limited set of features, specially designed for drivers and centred around the locations of friends and businesses."
Going to college in 2034
"New moms and dads [in America] with visions of Ivy League degrees dancing in their heads should be prepared to face a bill of $422,320 [U.S.] in today's dollars if Junior heads off to one of the country's priciest colleges as a member of the class of 2034," says The Daily, a tablet newspaper.
Keep the red rag flying
"China's most important communist newspaper is seeking capitalist investors," says BBC News. "The People's Daily intends to list its website on Shanghai's stock exchange in the hope of raising more than $80-million [U.S.]. The newspaper – the mouthpiece of China's ruling Communist Party – wants the money so the website can compete with its commercial rivals. It will upgrade technology and improve online services. … The People's Daily is not known as an easy read. … It feeds its readers with an often-dour daily diet of official visits and party meetings. The website suffers from a similar problem."
Dolphin on the menu
"Flipper for dinner? It's more common than you might think," says the New Scientist. "Though eating sea mammals is frowned upon in much of the world, the consumption of animals such as whales, dolphins and manatees is on the rise in poor nations. Declines in coastal fish catches have led people to look for other sources of meat. … Smaller cetaceans are making their way to dinner plates as other protein sources are dwindling in coastal areas of west Africa, Peru, Brazil, Colombia, Trinidad and Tobago, Madagascar, Sri Lanka, India, the Philippines and Burma. From 1970 to 2009, at least 92 species of cetaceans were eaten by humans."
Making yourself drunk
From Discover magazine's "20 things you didn't know about … alcohol:"
– Fermentation occurs when enzymes, typically produced by yeast, convert sugar molecules in grapes or grains into ethanol.
– That process can also happen in your digestive system, spiking every 100 millilitres of blood with 0.01 to 0.03 milligrams of alcohol.
– Japanese doctors have observed patients with "auto-brewery syndrome," in which high levels of candida yeast in the intestines churn out so much alcohol that they can cause drunkenness.
Thought du jour
"Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: 'What! You too? I thought I was the only one.' "
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963)
British novelist