Heart in the right place
"The heart sign has entered the Oxford English Dictionary as the first graphical symbol to signify a word in the reference work's 127-year history," The Daily Telegraph reports. "Readers looking up the word 'heart' will find the symbol listed as an entirely new usage, as a verb meaning 'to love.' … Its earliest recorded use is on a car bumper sticker printed in the U.S. in 1984, which read: 'I [heart]my dog's head.' Researchers believe the use of the heart symbol in this way is the first time a typographical innovation developed through such bumper stickers and T-shirts has entered mainstream language use."
Coal v. nuclear
"Relative to watts produced, coal kills 4,000 times more people than nuclear power," Grist contends. "Our pervasive sense that nuclear is more dangerous, when the opposite is so clearly true, comes at least in part from a cognitive bias called the 'availability heuristic' - memorable events that are easier to think of, like nuclear disasters, tend to seem more common."
Cheating at chess?
"The French chess federation has suspended three top players for violating sporting ethics at a chess olympiad in Siberia last September," BBC News reports. "The trio are alleged to have used an elaborate scheme involving text messages and computer software to help beat opponents at Khanty-Mansiysk. Federation head Laurent Verat said it was the first case of its kind. The players - Sébastien Feller, Cyril Marzolo and captain Arnaud Hauchard - all deny cheating at the tournament. … According to the French federation, while international grand master Sébastien Feller, 19, was involved in a game, Cyril Marzolo followed developments over the Internet and used computer software to establish the best next move. The answer was then sent by means of a coded text message to the third member of the team, Arnaud Hauchard. The third member would then sit himself at a particular table in the competition hall. Each table represented an agreed square on the chess board. This, according to French media reports, was the most delicate part of the operation."
Drinks the drunks drank
In an article about acting drunk on the stage, The Guardian asks: "So what actually is in the concoctions actors have to drink? 'We've been using Kaliber, which tastes like real lager and does make you a bit sick,' [actress Sinead]Matthews says. Real alcohol is prohibited by most theatre contracts, however, so alternatives have to be found. Gin and vodka are simple to simulate, as most actors welcome regular sips of water. Fruit juice is less popular, as it can lead to a thickening of the vocal cords. And, contrary to popular belief, cold tea is almost never used - the typical substitutes for Scotch and brandy are sugar solutions."
Why Odyssey Dawn?
Wired explains how the U.S. military action over Libya got its name: "Each command within the vast Defense Department apparatus is given a series of two-letter groupings that they can use for their operations' two-word sobriquets. Under the system, the U.S. Africa Command, nominally in charge of the Libya strikes, was given three sets of words that it could begin the operation with. 'These words begin between the letters JF-JZ, NS-NZ and OA-OF, and those three groups give about 60 some odd words,' explains Africom spokesman Eric Elliott. 'So, the folks who were responsible for naming this went through and they had done recent activities with NS and they went to O.' Using the O series of letters, Africom officials picked out 'Odyssey' for the first word. The second word is picked 'as random as possible because that's the goal of these operational names,' says Elliott. Africom pulled out 'Dawn' for its second word and the resulting combination, 'Odyssey Dawn,' is devoid of any intended meaning, Elliott insists."
Baboons help fruit farmer
"It was an annual mystery that baffled [South African]fruit farmer Alwyn van der Merwe," The Christian Science Monitor says. "Each June, when his oranges began ripening, a troop of baboons would descend from the mountains … and target one particular tree among thousands, stripping it of all its oranges. Year after year it happened, until Mr. van der Merwe decided to inspect the lone tree and discovered that it was a different variety from the others, sweeter and ripening three weeks earlier. 'We couldn't believe it. The one tree was different from the thousands of others and the baboons knew it,' he says. Samples of the tree were sent to be tested by the Citrus Growers Association, which confirmed it was a new variety of Mineola orange."
Our new, blue world
"It's some kind of milestone: Three of the Top 10 hits on last week's pop-music chart have choruses that can't be played uncensored on the radio and won't have their original lyrics quoted in this family newspaper," The New York Times reported March 15. "All three use variations on a familiar, emphatic, percussive four-letter word. … Of course, it's not exactly forbidden. It's all over books, movies, comedy, cable TV shows, Twitter feeds and schoolchildren's conversations. Chalk it up to post-Second World War realism, demographic changes, bravado, freedom, permissiveness, the Beats, the 1960s, hip hop, the Internet, the decline of Western civilization or all of them at once. Cussing in public has become more the rule than the exception, sometimes even on formal occasions."
Thought du jour
"History is a vast early warning system."
- Norman Cousins (1915-1990), U.S. editor and professor