Early to bed, early to rise. Hamida Musulmani says, “I only eat what I grow. I am fine, it is only my eyes that cannot see properly.” The Lebanese woman has documents that put her age at 126. (The New Zealand version of the Reuters article adds: “Many titleholders [of the world’s oldest living person] […]

Green Rights. A new charter is up for vote in France that would make the right to live in a healthy environment a constitutional issue. By the look of things, it’s one of those deals where compromise has slightly mangled the original intention of both parties—the Green Party saying it’s disappointed with the final charter […]

Avifauna in the News: (1) Outside of Medina, North Dakota, 27,000 white pelicans mysteriously disappear from Chase Lake National Wildlife Refuge; (2) along a strip of road in western England, a buzzard (which, for AmE speakers, is a hawk) terrorizes passing motorists and cyclists; and (3) in London, researchers found, ducks are noisier than their […]

Somewhere, a headline-writer has earned her wings. So, the low-carb cult, yes it’s been beaten into the ground much in the same manner as a long-deceased equine. But the carbs of this diet aren’t the ones you’re thinking of, and it can’t really be called a diet. Nonetheless, a low-hydrocarbon “diet,” trimming energy use in […]

Blinded By The Internet. Apparently, some kiddies are frightened of the internet because they believe it “could put them at risk from bomb-making, blackmail, HIV, asylum seekers, aliens and blindness.” (Guardian: “Schools urged to smash internet myths” by David Batty [June 7, 2004]) Phantom Fat. Obesity researcher Dr. Jeffrey Friedman thinks the craze about Americans […]

Disfiguring Seafood Diseases. They don’t know what causes the dread ‘ugly lobster disease’ (which is actually called ugly lobster syndrome or black spot disease, if you can believe that), but at least they know it doesn’t harm the meat. Phew. (AP: “Baffling Disease Makes Lobsters Look Ugly” by Jay Lindsay [May 25, 2004]; CBC: “Lobster […]

Whispering Windows. As if Advertising weren’t already obnoxious enough, some company’s decided to go an invent a store window that talks to passers-by, coaxing them to enter the store, buy the product, etcetera. Yes, so talking shop windows will undoubtedly lure more people into stores, at least until everyone’s accustomed to the chatterpanes. But at […]

Nothing of particularly great import, but a few zany facts and oddities for you to file away in that spongy gray filing cabinet of yours. Less is more: “Smokers who pride themselves on successfully cutting back as a step toward quitting tobacco altogether may be caught in a haze of self-deception. New research shows smokers […]