flanerie.org

Apparently the economy is going to hell in a hand-basket. I learned this quaint phrase from a Canadian and I really should have asked him what it actually meant.

A hand-basket sounds like a slow method of transport. Is it a rickshaw or a picnic basket? Going to hell slowly sounds pretty reasonably.

Either way, according to the media, everything is bad.

And yet retail sales in August were 3.9% higher than a year earlier. Strip out inflation and they were still up a smidgen in volume terms. So if, as we are told, Rome is burning (surely endangering the entire hand-basket), man + dog are happily fiddling.

On Saturday I tried to park in my local town centre on a mission to drop my ladies at the theatre and drop some books at Oxfam. All car parks were full.

On Sunday I went to Bicester Village to add some much-needed invigoration to my wardrobe. The queue to get in was over half a mile.

Crisis? What crisis?

Today is the most popular day of the year for couples to file for divorce.

InsideDivorce.com surveyed 100 UK law firms and 2,000 people who were either married, divorced or separated.

The survey found that one in five of all marriages are near breaking point, reports The Sun.

Family lawyer Suzanne Kingston, of Dawsons Solicitors, said: "If you're not spending time together then the issues between you are not so apparent because they are disguised by what you are doing on a day-to-day basis.

"But over Christmas people are spending longer periods of time together. There is also the financial worry and the impact of relatives.

"And at New Year people often make resolutions and think about what they want for the future."

[from El Reg]
HM Revenue and Customs has enhanced its international reputation for mislaying things by allowing 1.5kg of cocaine to go walkabout from a HMRC depot near Coventry airport, the Sun reports.

Warwickshire Police have confirmed they're investigating the "complete one-off", which saw the Bolivian marching powder evaporate from a secure lock-up for which "less than 10 people" had the password.

While acting chairman of HMRC David Hartnett told a public accounts committee he would be "very worried" if the Colombian naughty salt had been half inched, he did not rule out the possibility that it "could have been sent to be destroyed, to a court for evidence or to a laboratory".

Hartnett said: "I am very concerned about what has happened in Coventry. All I know is that an amount of cocaine - 1.5kg - is missing from the place it should be in a secure lock-up.

"What I don't know at the minute is whether this cocaine has been sent for destruction, or to a court or to a forensic science laboratory and the paperwork has not been done properly or it has been stolen. I am very worried if it is the latter."

While Warwickshire's finest scour the countryside for the missing charlie, HMRC is still looking for the details of the 25m citizens contained on two discs which went awol back in November.

To save you the trouble, were HMRC to compensate the disc-outrage-affected citizens with a percentage of the street value of the rogue stash of nose Ajax, it would amount, by our reckoning, to a paltry 3.6 pence worth of toot per head - way short of the minimum required to numb citizens' faculties to HMRC's quite astounding track record of carelessness.

[from the Grauniad]
A four-year-old girl dialled 999 when her mother collapsed, fetched her medicine - and changed into a Cinderella outfit so she looked smart for the trip to hospital. When Hannah Lerego had an asthma attack at home in Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire, her daughter Olivia fetched her inhaler, stroked her hair to bring her round and described her symptoms to paramedics. Lerego, 30, said: "I don't think I would be alive without Olivia. When they asked if my lips were blue she said they were pink like hers but turning purple and she knew that for sure because purple is her favourite colour."

[from Ananova]
Malaysian doctors performed a 30-minute operation to free the testicles of a nine-year old stuck in a metal pipe after the boy slipped while bathing, a newspaper has said.

In response to a call from his brother in an adjacent room, the boy climbed up a partition in the bathroom, but slipped and fell on an uncovered metal pipe, trapping his testicles in the narrow tube, the New Straits Times said.

Medical staff answering the emergency call at the boy's home on the northern island of Penang were unable to remove the L-shaped pipe and had to call in firemen.

They used a hydraulic cutter to open both ends of the pipe before the child could be taken to hospital, shrieking in agony.

He was discharged after doctors performed a half-hour operation.

A dog swims more than 4km every day to nurse her newborn puppies who are stranded on an island.

The dog, already a celebrity in Chongqing city, is called Huahua by local people.

She gave birth to four pups at Shanhuba, which has become an island in the Changjiang River due to the heavy rains this summer.

Huahua swims 1.2 km to the island every day to nurse her four babies. Then she returns to the Changjiang River, following the flow of the water, to swim another 1.1 km to another part of the city to feed herself.

Each day Huahua does the whole journey twice, once in the morning, around 7 am, and again at 7 pm, at which point she stays with her pups on the island and returns to the city the next morning.

Huang Pingren, a pensioner who swims to the island everyday, says he discovered the amazing dog a few weeks ago.

"I was resting on the island, and found the unprotected litter of dogs. Then in the evening, around 7 pm, I saw a dog swimming to the bank and then running to the newborns."

Huang even published a story on the internet, describing the great deeds of the dog mother, and leading to an outpouring of enthusiasm from readers.

"Many citizens found me and said they wanted to do something, like contribute food or money, but I told them not to, since I was afraid too many visitors may scare the mom away."

Two days ago, the water rose again, and the mother has moved her children to a higher point on the island, reports Chongqing Evening News.

[from stuff.co.nz]
A German motorist surprised by euro notes swirling in the air around her car hit the brakes and collected a "substantial amount of money" before turning it over to police, authorities in Worms said.

A police spokesman in the small western town said the 24-year-old woman saw the money flying through the air in her rear view mirror late on Wednesday. She pulled over and tried to collect all the notes, unsuccessfully.

When police went with her to the scene they could not find any more cash.

A spokesman at Worms city hall said police were withholding details on the exact sum and location of the find in the hope of learning more about the money's origin.

According to Harvard Medical School, and why would they lie, sandcastles are more deadly than sharks, or at least in the USA. Frankly, it hardly matters since neither of them kills even a tiny fraction of the number that idiots-with-guns kill, but neither beaches nor sharks have clowns like the NRA batting for them, making them a soft fleshy target.
---

[Lifted from the New Scientist]
Sun, sand, sea and surf - the four Ss that spell the idyllic summertime vacation that most of us dream of. But wait, there's danger lurking in this gentle scene... No, it's not the scary shark fin cruising the ocean waves - it's the killer sandcastles.

Yes, research in the New England Journal of Medicine found sandcastles are more deadly than sharks - 16 deaths in the US since 1990 were caused by sandcastles, according to Harvard Medical School's Bradley Maron. Compare that to the measly 12 fatalities from shark attacks. Jaws is looking pitifully like a soft-touch.

The main hazard appears to be people lethally falling into holes they had dug - presumably for the moat - which means the sandcastles of America must be on a far more impressive scale than the ones I'm used to.

Alarmingly, in addition to the prospect of being consumed by their architecture, the bucket-and-spade brigade are at risk of infection from fecal matter. A study published this week in Environmental Science and Technology, found strains of E. coli bacteria that indicate unhealthy levels of fecal matter on US beaches and around Lake Superior. Yuck.

The researchers found two broad types of E. coli in the sand: those "deposited more recently", as team member Michael Sadowsky put it, and those "that have learned to kind of grow or reproduce in the sand," he said. Microbes survive longer in the sand than they do in water, they found, so you may want to wash after a day at the beach.

[Ripped from stuff.co.nz]
Holidaymakers who only say they plan to sightsee during a visit to Britain could find their tourist visa applications being refused, a monitoring body said in a report.

It is a standard reason given for not granting tourist visas, the Independent Monitor for Entry Clearance Refusals, Linda Costelloe Baker, found in her annual report.

Would-be visitors who have never before travelled abroad could also find it difficult to holiday in Britain.

Costelloe Baker cited one case where an applicant had been told by an officer: "You have never previously undertaken any foreign travel before and I can see little reason for this trip."

"This is a common reason for refusal," she added.

"Entry clearance officers can use some ridiculous reasons when refusing a visa for tourist visits," Costelloe Baker said.

She cited one case where an applicant who had previously travelled abroad was refused entry because the countries were "nowhere near the UK".

In another case the applicant was told he or she did not have a "sufficient command of the language for the purposes of tourism".

Costelloe Baker said in her report: "Well, if knowledge of the language was a requirement for travel, that would certainly stop lots of British citizens going on their hols."

Taking annual vacation in this country was not a good enough reason for one entry clearance officer, while wanting to visit friends near the seaside fell short for another applicant from St Petersburg because he had not said where he wanted to visit.

A would-be tourist who wanted to stay in a hotel in London while visiting friends in Surrey and Kent was turned down because the entry officer had misread it as Cirencester "far from his friends".

[Ananova.reports...]
A German bank manager has been jailed after he took £1.5m from rich clients' accounts and moved it to clients struggling with debts.

Bespectacled and balding, Peter Taubinger, 45, hardly fit the typical image of the glamorous hero robbing the rich to feed the poor.

But under his management, large sums were transferred from the bank, in the small town of Tauberfranken, after he decided poor people needed it more than the rich.

His efforts meant single mothers, pensioners, and even a young man made jobless by ill health suddenly found thousands of pounds credited to their accounts.

But he turned himself in after he realised he could not cover up what he had done any longer, and has now been sentenced to 34 months in prison on 168 counts of embezzlement.

Bauer said: "I felt for the unemployed and the poor and wanted to help them."

[the BBC surely dreamt that...]
A wheelchair user has been taken for a high-speed ride along a US highway after his handlebars became tangled up in the front grille of a lorry.

The back of the 21-year-old man's wheelchair was scooped up as he passed in front of a lorry leaving a petrol station, Michigan state police said.

The truck driver drove off, completely unaware that he had a new passenger.

Passing motorists told police, who found the man unhurt - but still attached to the front of the truck.

He had been kept in his wheelchair by a seatbelt.

Police in the town of Paw Paw, Michigan, said the unidentified man told them "it was quite a ride", but complained only that he had spilled his soda.

The truck reached speeds of 50mph (80km/h) as it drove down the Red Arrow Highway.

After several miles the driver pulled over at the depot of a trucking company where police then told him about the man on his front end.

He refused to believe there was a man in a wheelchair stuck to the front of his truck until he saw it for himself, police said.

[Sadly the BBC did not deem it in the public interest to name the perp...]
Bomb squad officers called in to blow up a suspicious package found it contained a packet of chocolate buttons and a vibrator.

Post Office staff in Hasland, Chesterfield called in police when they heard the package making a noise.

Mansfield Road was closed off for an hour and a half while the bomb squad carried out a controlled explosion.

A police spokesman said: "Officers had no way of knowing what was inside the package. But it gave us a giggle."

He added: "They had to act on the information available and had to do what they thought was right. Thankfully it was nothing more serious."

[the BBC, hopefully mistakenly, report...]
A virus contracted through oral sex is the cause of some throat cancers, say US scientists.

HPV infection was found to be a much stronger risk factor than tobacco or alcohol use, the Johns Hopkins University study of 300 people found.

The New England Journal of Medicine study said the risk was almost nine times higher for people who reported oral sex with more than six partners.

But experts said a larger study was needed to confirm the findings.

HPV infection is the cause of the majority of cervical cancers, and 80% of sexually active women can expect to have an HPV infection at some point in their lives.

It is important for health care providers to know that people without the traditional risk factors of tobacco and alcohol use can nevertheless be at risk of oropharyngeal cancer
Dr Gypsyamber D'Souza, study author

The Johns Hopkins study took blood and saliva from 100 men and women newly diagnosed with oropharyngeal cancer which affects the throat, tonsils and back of the tongue.

They also asked questions about sex practices and other risk factors for the disease, such as family history.

Those who had evidence of prior oral HPV infection had a 32-fold increased risk of throat cancer.

HPV16 - one of the most common cancer-causing strains of the virus - was present in the tumours of 72% of cancer patients in the study.

Risk factors

There was no added risk for people infected with HPV who also smoked and drank alcohol, suggesting the virus itself is driving the risk of the cancer.

Oral sex was said to be the main mode of transmission of HPV but the researchers said mouth-to-mouth transmission, for example through kissing, could not be ruled out.

Most HPV infections clear with little or no symptoms but a small percentage of people who acquired high-risk strains may develop a cancer, the researchers added.

Study author Dr Gypsyamber D'Souza said: "It is important for health care providers to know that people without the traditional risk factors of tobacco and alcohol use can nevertheless be at risk of oropharyngeal cancer."

Co-researcher Dr Maura Gillison said previous research by the team had suggested there was a strong link.

But she added: "People should be reassured that oropharyngeal cancer is relatively uncommon and the overwhelming majority of people with an oral HPV infection probably will not get throat cancer."

A vaccine which protects against cervical cancer caused by HPV strains 6, 11, 16 and 18, and also against genital warts is available and the researchers said the study provided a rationale for vaccinating both girls and boys.

But whether the vaccine would protect against oral HPV infection is not yet known.

Dr Julie Sharp, science information officer at Cancer Research UK, said: "There is conflicting evidence about the role of HPV, and this rare type of mouth cancer.

"As this was a small study, further research is needed to confirm these observations."

"We know that after age, the main causes of mouth cancer are smoking or chewing tobacco or betel nut, and drinking too much alcohol."

[New Scientist reports...]
HOW much pain would you put up with to help your friend? Less than you would for your close relatives, but more than you would for a charity, according to a study that looked at the basis of altruistic behaviour. For women, however, best friends rank higher than cousins, while men put all family members ahead of friends.

Psychologist Elainie Madsen of the University of St Andrews, UK, and colleagues asked 137 participants from various cultural backgrounds to inflict pain on themselves in return for a reward given to a specified person or charity. Subjects were required to squat against a wall in a sitting position, which caused pain in the thigh muscles. The longer they chose to hold the position the greater the pain, but the bigger the reward for the beneficiary. The more closely related the beneficiary was to the participant, the longer he or she held the position. Charities, however worthy, inspired the smallest sacrifice (British Journal of Psychology, vol 98, p 339).

There's an intriguing gender difference. Women tended to spread their efforts more equally among relatives than men did, as well as putting up with more pain for best friends than for cousins. This could be down to the fact that in many societies women tend to move away from their families. "Women have to get along with everybody - including their mothers-in-law," says Phyllis Lee of the University of Stirling, UK.

The other possibility, says co-author Robin Dunbar of the University of Liverpool, UK, "is that females are just more social".

Middle-aged, male, holding a senior position in the finance department. I guess that would be me....

[The BBC report...]
Middle-aged male senior company executives who have been employed for a long time are the main perpetrators of fraud, a survey suggests.

The international KPMG Forensic study found that white-collar company fraudsters often commit more than 20 separate frauds before being caught.

Instances of fraud could go on for years. Typically, it takes between one and five years to detect a fraudster.

Finance departments are the most prone to fraud, the accountancy firm added.

While building up a profile of a typical fraudster, the accountancy firm looked at 360 company fraud cases across the UK, Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

In 60% of cases, senior managers were the perpetrators; of which the overwhelming majority were middle-aged and male.

The perpetrators seniority allowed them to commit multiple offences over a long period of time before detection.

Over half the fraudsters actually committed more than 20 separate offences.

"Status in the company makes it easier for them to bypass internal controls and inflict greater damage on the company," Richard Powell, partner at KPMG Forensic in the UK, said.

"Given the repeated and extended nature of most frauds, companies need to work extremely hard to detect frauds earlier, through tighter internal controls, data analytical tools, and more widely publicised fraud reporting mechanisms," Mr Powell added.

Interestingly, it was more often a colleague blowing the whistle on fraud which led to the criminal being detected, rather than the triggering of internal anti-fraud measures.

Overall, KPMG branded many internal controls within companies as "weak" and called for them to be improved.

As for the scale of losses, among the cases examined by KPMG, the average fraud was 1m euros ($1.4m; £680,000).

Often firms had little prospect of getting this money back and had to bear the loss themselves, the group added.

[ananova report...]
Walt Disney has unveiled a range of 34 bridal dresses inspired by films like Sleeping Beauty and Beauty And The Beast.

The dresses by designer Kirstie Kelly were unveiled in New York and cost between £755 and £1,500, reports Metro.

Bridal couples can already choose a Disney-themed wedding with rides in a Cinderella carriage and appearances by Mickey and Minnie Mouse in formal attire.

Packages start at £2,000 but average about £13,500. Disney's new line of gowns is aimed at couples with a tighter budget.

"We are enticing them to step up without breaking the bank," said Jim Calhoun, executive vice-president for global apparel at Disney Consumer Products.

If successful, the wedding gown collection could be extended to include other Disney Princess-branded fashions and home furnishings for adults.

"If it really is the lifestyle opportunity we think it is, then it opens up possibilities beyond the day of the wedding," added Mr Calhoun.

According to a news item on the BBC, entitled "Sickies 'make up 12% of absences'", we are a bunch of slackers and it is costing the country dear.

"Overall workplace absence, including genuine illness, cost the economy about £13.4bn in 2006, the CBI added.

Workers took an average of seven days off sick in 2006, it said.

This was about half a day more than in the previous year and equated to the loss of 175 million working days."

Which just goes to show how lacking in imagination the BBC is. Not that it stops there, the entire news media ran the same shoddy statistics.

'Costing the economy' is an odd notion, since money just moves between different pockets.

Try this for a different spin, taking the flanerie.org approach to life:

Economy Boosted by Workplace Welfare
New figures show that 750,000 workers would lose their jobs if workplace sickness absence was reduced to zero, increasing the jobless rate from 5.5% to 8.0% of the workforce.

Economists warn that such a dramatic increase in unemployment could push the economy into deep recession by reducing retail sales and triggering a house price collapse.

See? It just takes some lateral thought rather than being solely focused on profit at the expense of common sense.

... buying scanty underwear.

[the BBC report that...]

There really is something in the way she moves, according to researchers.

An hourglass figure has long been perceived to be the ideal figure for a woman to have.

But New York University researchers have found that to be found attractive, a woman had to move in a feminine way - swaying her hips.

Men, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper found, were more attractive if they moved with a "shoulder swagger".

The waist-hip ratio has long been thought to be key to Western perceptions of attractiveness, with a small waist and bigger hips the ideal combination.

Marilyn Monroe, and now Beyonce and Jennifer Lopez are famous examples of women with that figure.

Its popularity may be down to media images, or because Western women do not need to have strong and muscular bodies in order to carry out manual labour, unlike women in developing countries.

But the US research, which was also published in the journal Psychological Science, suggests they would never have achieved their sex symbol status if they did not move in the right way.

Not just measurements

The team carried out a series of studies involving over 700 participants who were shown a variety of animations and videos of people moving.

Some showed shadow figures, where it was not possible to see if it was a man or a woman, while others obviously showed a man or a woman.

No matter which format was being used, the participants rated women or "female" figures as more attractive if their hips swayed as they walked, while men were more attractive if they had the characteristic shoulder movement.

The research also confirmed the waist-hip ratio assumption, with women's attractiveness being rated higher if their waist-hip ratio was small and men's being higher if their ratio was large.

The ideal waist-hip ratio for women is to have a waist measurement which is no more than 70% of their hip measurement.

But Kerri Johnson and Louis Tassinary who led the research, say their work shows attractiveness is not as simple as the difference between two measurements.

Writing in PNAS, the researchers said: "The body's shape and motion provoke basic social perceptions, biological sex and gender - ie masculinity or femininity respectively.

"The compatibility of these basic precepts predicts perceived attractiveness."

The team say their findings only apply to Western cultures, and other societies will judge attractiveness depending on their most prized feminine and masculine traits.

Dr George Fieldman, principal lecturer in psychology at Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College said: "This is quite plausible.

"It's the movement which attracts, and not just the waist-hip ratio per se."

He added: "It would be interesting to see what the ideal combination of measurements and wiggle is."

I guess this is some kind of school event although I have a lingering suspicion that it is a job interview at Google

Here is an interesting story from the New Scientist. Seems to make sense, although applying the same logic would mean that ginger people would have trouble getting laid.

----
Jealous man seeks partner for meaningful relationship. Tall, handsome, blue eyes, looking for blue-eyed women only.

Why? Because men with blue eyes are drawn towards blue-eyed women, and prefer to choose them as their partner because this can provide reassurance that the woman's babies are theirs too.

When surveyed, blue-eyed men find pictures of women with the same eye colour significantly more attractive than those with brown eyes, whereas neither brown-eyed men nor brown-eyed women show any preference for eye colour, Bruno Laeng of the University of Tromsø, Norway, and his team have discovered.

The effect is seen in real relationships, too. Blue-eyed men are more likely to be romantically involved with a woman of the same eye colour than they are with brown-eyed women, or brown-eyed men are with a partner of any eye colour (Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, vol 61, p 371).

Blue eyes are a recessive trait, Laeng explains, so two blue-eyed parents should produce a blue-eyed child, while a child with any other eye colour must have been fathered by another man. Blue-eyed men seeking a partner unconsciously know this, Laeng claims, and select women of similar eye colour to ensure they can more easily spot if they have been cuckolded.

NEW YORK: A three-year-old boy fell from the fourth-floor window of an apartment in New York City, but was caught by a passerby, police said.

The boy was caught by a 39-year-old man passing under the window, police said in a brief statement. The boy was taken to hospital with just minor cuts and abrasions to his head and face. Police are still investigating and gave no more details.

"This is the week of heroes in New York," New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said, when asked by reporters about the incident.

On Tuesday, New York construction worker Wesley Autrey jumped onto subway tracks to pin down a stricken stranger just in time to allow an oncoming train to pass over them.
[from stuff.co.nz]
----

A similar thing happened to me a few years ago. I was walking along the road on a crisp February morning and I caught a cold.

SEOUL: The South Korean government is handing out gifts for office workers who promise not to visit brothels this holiday season.

"If you promise yourself to make it a healthy night out at the end of the year, and if you recommend this to others, we are giving lots of prizes," the Ministry of Gender Equality said in an Internet posting.

The ministry is offering to pay companies whose employees pledge not to buy sex after what are typically alcohol-soaked, year-end parties.

A ministry spokesman confirmed the campaign but declined to answer questions about it.

But a ministry official told the Korea Times daily: "Korean corporate culture that includes heavy drinking is also what makes buying sex acceptable as a way for male-bonding, which is proving to be a hard-to-break ritual."

The ministry is offering movie tickets based on the number of employees who pledge not to visit prostitutes as well as a cash prize of 1 million won ($1077) for the company which enlists the most employees in the campaign.

Many South Koreans were bewildered by the plan, saying it was a waste of money and gave the impression that South Korean men cannot keep away from brothels.

"Do they really think men buy sex every time they have a dinner party?" wrote one Korean on a comment page of the South Korea's largest daily Chosun Ilbo.
[from stuff.co.nz]
----

A tragic story all round, with a supposed predilection for hookers amongst partying office workers balanced by the govt's reliance on promises. It does also seem somewhat stacked in the favour of big companies.

Anyway, the staff at flanerie.org have all signed up to a hooker-free end of year.

NEW YORK: Can't resist a quick shake and peep at that present under the Christmas tree? You're not alone, with a US survey finding one in five adults are present peekers.

The survey of 2,287 US adults by research firm Harris Interactive found the main culprits tend to be women, with 21 per cent unable to resist the temptation for a sneaky peep compared to 15 per cent of men.

The younger 18 to 34 crowd also have less self-control than the 35-plus crowd, with 32 per cent taking a sneaky look compared to 12 per cent, according to the survey that was conducted on behalf of Yahoo! Shopping.

Gift wrapping expert Christine Fritsch, author of the book "Gifted Wrapping", suggested hiding present for children up high and trying to disguise adult's presents.

For example put an electronics box on the outside of a non-electronics gift to throw off expert peekers.

"If you put a smaller box within a bigger box, you can curb a lot of peeking," she said.

She also suggested wrapping the present as soon as you get home and leaving off the gift tag until the last minute.

And don't use a gift bag.

"That's just way too easy to peek," she said.

---

Alternatively, be so disorganised that you don't get around to wrapping anything until Christmas morning. At least I have managed to buy some presents though, which is an improvement on previous years.

An angler has broken his own record for landing the world's heaviest carp - with the same fish he caught last time.

Gary Hagues, 34, hooked the 87lb 2oz fish while on a holiday he won for catching it last time, reports the Sun.

Derbyshire golf professional Gary battled for 30 minutes to land the carp at Rainbow Lakes in Bordeaux, France.

The fish had grown - it weighed 83lb 8oz the first time he caught it.

Gary said: "It was as strong-willed as it was the year before. Maybe it will get even bigger."

Experts said setting a new record twice with the same fish was a million-to-one chance.

---

Experts? Experts in what? I reckon if you fish in the same lake the chances of catching the same fish, and it being a bit heavier, aren't quite so remote.

More to the point, winning a holiday for catching a record fish, and the holiday being to the same place, seems a bit of a bum deal. Unless your idea of a quality holiday involves freezing your knackers off while chain-smoking and reading Razzle. In which case, start packing your waders.

The BBC reports that:

"A gunman has been found dead after storming a school in Germany, injuring a teacher and several pupils."

And it strikes me as rather tricky for one person to storm a large building. I guess if he screamed a lot he might have given the impression of storming, but it might well be that he merely ambled into the school and shot a few people.

Admittedly, "A gunman has been found dead after ambling into a school in Germany," doesn't make as exciting a start to a news story.

It reminds me of the British politician in the 70's who accused an opponent of 'going around the country whipping up apathy"

Scarborough is cancelling its ceremonial switching-on of the Christmas lights - because it's too popular.

Ten thousand visitors came in December 2005 - but fire officials say only 2,000 can safely attend, reports the Daily Mail.

So instead of turning families away - or face a compensation claim if someone was injured - council officials have cancelled the event altogether.

Penny Marsden, an independent councillor and shopkeeper, described the decision as 'a joke'.

"This is a joyous occasion when children come out to enjoy the start of Christmas - and we are going to rob them of it," she said.

But council chief executive Jim Dillon said: "A vast amount of hard work by all parties has been carried out in looking at ways of staging the event safely, but we all feel the risks are far too great."

The message appeared on all similar signs around Crawley at about 6.45am.

Thousands of motorists travelling into the town would have been subjected to the unsavoury advice.

The signs normally display the number of spaces available in the town's car parks and were installed about four years ago.

A spokeswoman for Crawley Borough Council said the authority had received no complaints from the public, just calls advising them what had happened.

She said: "It is disappointing someone would do this.

"The car park information system was hacked into.

"Crawley Borough Council officers took immediate action to remove the offensive words when this was brought to their attention.

"The system and network are not the council's and are maintained by a contractor. Measures have now been put in place to prevent any further attacks.

"Our apologies for any offence or distress caused.

"Nowhere is foolproof - if hackers can get into Pentagon computers then I am sure they would have no problem with ours."
[full local newspaper story here]

12 October 2006

TORONTO: An animal rights group has called for a North American theme park operator to cancel a competition in which people will try to break the world cockroach-eating record.

Theme park operator Six Flags Inc, based in New York, is staging the contest as part of a promotion leading up to Halloween in which it is also offering customers free entry or line-jumping advantages if they eat a live Madagascar hissing cockroach.

The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) said it had been flooded with calls from children, adults and even anonymous employees of Six Flags opposing the record-breaking contest and the overall promotion.

"Insects do not deserve to be eaten alive especially for a gratuitous marketing gimmick," PETA spokeswoman Jackie Vergerio told Reuters.

The competition to beat the world cockroach eating record is being held on Friday at a Six Flags park in Gurnee, Illinois. Anyone who beats the record will win a season pass for four people for 2007 with VIP queue-jumping status.

Competitors will try to break the current world record, which is held by Ken Edwards of Derbyshire, England, who devoured 36 Madagascar hissing cockroaches in one minute in 2001.

However Six Flags spokesman James Taylor said the only complaints the company had received were from people who did not have the opportunity to sign up and eat a cockroach because

only 12 of its 30 parks in the United States, Canada, and Mexico were participating in the promotion.

Taylor dismissed any health concerns, saying the cockroaches were raised in a sterile environment and were as safe to eat as shrimp or lobster with high nutritional value.

Madagascar hissing cockroaches are large, wingless cockroaches that can grow up to 7.6cm.

Taylor said no one who had indulged in this rare delicacy had complained.

"It's something that's supposed to be scary, it's icky, it's gross, it's Halloween fun and it's just one small part of the haunted houses and thrilling rides going on."
[liberated from stuff.co.nz]

A first aider suffering a suspected heart attack received a pager message sending him to his own emergency.

Roger Flux, 66, a volunteer community responder for Hampshire Ambulance Service, had chest pains in bed at his New Forest home.

Roger Flux an emergency first aider with Hampshire Ambulance Service at his home in Ashurst, New Forest, after being scrambled to attend his own suspected heart attack /PA

His wife called 999 as a precaution and paramedics were on the scenes within minutes.

It was then that Mr Flux got a pager message scrambling him to the emergency at his own house.

He said: "I was on call that evening and during the middle of the night I had severe chest pains right across my chest and jaw.

"In a couple of minutes the ambulance crews were here and investigating and in the meantime I asked my wife to get my response bag.

"While I was sitting down my pager went off, telling me to attend to a man with chest pains. Then I looked at the address - it was my own."

By the time cardiac specialists at Southampton General Hospital decided it had been a false alarm, Mr Flux saw the funny side of it.

"At least it shows the system works," he said.
[nabbed from ananova]

A Japanese speed-eater has crammed in another world record.

Takeru 'Tsunami' Kobayashi came out top in Boston's first-ever lobster roll eating challenge.

Kobayashi ate 41 rolls in 10 minutes - the previous world record was 22.

The other challengers managed 25 between them, reports the Boston Globe.

Speaking after the win he said: "I think I could eat some more."

Crazy Legs Conti, a Massachusetts native and 11th-ranked competitive eater in the world, said Kobayashi's edge is in his ability to stay focused.

He said: "He is tapping into something that the greats like Lance Armstrong and Tiger Woods know: the game is not on the field. It's in your mind".

Kobayashi is famous for holding the world record for eating 53 hotdogs in 12 minutes.
[teased out of ananova]
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This article just prompts questions. Not least of which, how did Crazy Legs Conti get his name?

Well, kind of.

News has reached flanerie central of hypoallergenic genetically-modified cats (BBC story here). I am all for a bit of kitten action but I think the boffins have focused their efforts in the wrong area this time.

Sure, some people are allergic to cats. These people are usually allergic to a whole range of other things too. These people are a menace and should be excluded from society.

Meanwhile, cats are predisposed to be run over by cars. I used to own 50% of a cat called Biggles, and he was run over twice. I am still bitter about the money I spent rebuilding him the first time. Bastard.

So what we need are cats with genetically modified street smarts, and quickly. Those hypoallergenic cats are $4,000 each and it will only be a matter of days before one of them looks like a discarded toupe on the highway.

Having a memory like a goldfish could actually be a good thing, according to a Sydney scientist who has spent 10 years proving fish are not as dumb as we think.

Fish are not the bowl-circling dimwits we imagine and could be as socially able as monkeys and elephants, Dr Culum Brown of Macquarie University says.

The biology lecturer has spent the past decade putting fish through learning and memory tests, which he says shows they are much deeper thinkers than they look.

For a start, Dr Brown says the three-second memory of goldfish is a myth: "It's completely ridiculous that an animal could survive without a memory."

Fish are so clever, Dr Brown says, that those schooled in survival skills can even teach their captivity-raised peers how to get by in the sea.

To help prove his theories, Dr Brown put rainbow fish into a tank with a mock trawler net with a single hole and watched how long it took them to find an escape route.

"Without any prior experience the fish learned where the hole was in about five runs," he says.

A year later, the same fish managed to find the hole on their first try, which Dr Brown says shows they easily recalled the skills they had learned.

In another study, Dr Brown scared intertidal gobies from a rock pool and as they dived for safety found they plopped precisely in surrounding pools.

"This suggests that fish are able to form mental maps similar to those people use when planning a route to a familiar destination," he says.

Dr Brown also studies "social learning" among fish, where fish trained to recognise predators and wild food teach captivity-bred fish how to survive.

"Fish can be trained en masse and then used to train other fish," he says.

"What we've found is the latter groups of fish learn more rapidly when ... placed with trained fish."

The research could prove useful to the aquaculture industry, Dr Brown says.
[found on stuff.co.nz]
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So I no longer have the memory of a goldfish, but not because my memory got any better.

A jogger who took a wrong turn during a lunch-time run in Florida ended up stuck in a swamp for four days.

Volunteers searching for Eddie Meadows, 62, eventually found him 'stuck like glue' in a bog, reports The Times.

Mr Meadows calmly asked his rescuers: "Do you have a phone? I want to call my wife."

He also asked for water and chocolate, before insisting that he should finish his run, jogging a short distance before he was helped to a waiting ambulance.

Police in Orlando said Mr Meadows had survived by sipping water from the swamp and avoided sun exposure because he was under a shady tree canopy.

Mr Meadows is in training for the Baltimore Marathon and leaves his desk at the University of Central Florida's research park every lunchtime to jog around the campus.

His wife, Ardis, and two grown-up sons appeared on TV to plead for help in finding him and 50 volunteers scoured the area.

Finally, Ron Eaglin was combing woodland on a remote corner of the university campus when he heard noises.

"I heard some sloshing off in the woods, it didn't sound like a deer, so I yelled: "Hello?" and then I heard: "Help, help, help, help"," he said.

"I said: "Are you looking for Eddie Meadows?", and he said: "I AM Eddie Meadows"."

This has to rank as the most unscientific scientific research of the week. Interesting though...

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A UK scientist claims he has evidence of what he calls "telephone telepathy" - the phenomenon by which you think about someone and, lo and behold, the phone rings...

According to Reuters, Rupert Sheldrake reported on Tuesday the results of experiments which "proved that such precognition existed for telephone calls and even emails".

Sheldrake's guinea pigs gave researchers the names and phone numers of four relatives or friends. One of these was contacted at random and asked to give the subject a bell. Forty-five per cent guessed correctly who was on the other end of the line, Sheldrake told the annual British Association for the Advancement of Science shindig - "well above the 25 per cent you would have expected."

Sheldrake further commented: "The odds against this being a chance effect are 1,000 billion to one."

A similar test involving email yielded the same result, although the researchers' limited pool of testees - 63 for the phone and 50 for the email - coupled to the fact that only nine subjects were filmed across the two tests, prompted "some scepticism".

Sheldrake has vowed to continue his experiments, however, to prove what he believes is the "interconnectedness of all minds within a social grouping". Next up for scrutiny is text message telepathy. ®
[from El Reg]

Aussies, of course. No news on the pigeon though.

---

Five people ended up in hospital in Australia after a fight over a pigeon.

Four others were treated for minor injuries and all nine were spoken to by police in Melbourne.

Police were called after a fight broke out between two neighbouring families disputing the ownership of the pigeon.

The fight ended with five men taken to hospital with scratches, cuts, bumps and bruises to their heads and bodies.

The men were of varying ages, the eldest in his 50s or 60s, an ambulance service spokeswoman said.

A police spokeswoman said investigations were continuing and nine people were being spoken to over the incident.