Talk about a mammoth appetite, when most of the world’s large mammals went extinct roughly 10,000 years ago, the vast majority of the vanished species were herbivores. This of course meant that they were no longer around to eat the plants they otherwise would have, and - according to Christophers Doughty and Field from Oxford and Stanford Universities respectively – this freed up an extra 1.4 trillion kilos of food, roughly 2.5% of the net product of all Earth’s dry land. However, the researchers add, this excess had been ‘used up’ by burgeoning human numbers by around 1700 and today we consume six times as much as the Pleistocene critters ever did while simultaneously driving down land productivity by 10% (Nature)(PDF).
That’s not to say that our massive consumption doesn’t have it’s upside, As Vangelis Kapatos of Manhattan discovered when he attempted suicide by jumping from his ninth floor flat, only to survive when his fall was broken by a pile of uncollected garbage. Mr. Kapatos’ timing, from his perspective, couldn’t have been worse, the unusually large garbage pile was due to collections being suspended because of snow. They were due to resume the day after his impromptu dumpster dive (Today Online).
Mind you, we’re not the only animals prone to excess. After finding the bodies of dozens of starlings near the city of Constanta in Romania, locals were concerned that the cause might be bird flu, instead post-mortems of the birds have revealed that they in fact died of alcohol poisoning, having ‘drunk’ themselves to death on the discarded leftovers of the local winemaking industry. A least they died happy (BBC News).
Better than dying happy, though, is living happy, and the secret of that, says the UK’s Office for National Statistics, is having a job. But it’s not the pay but the job security that counts, say the government statisticians, which ironically are facing staff cuts themselves due to the economic downturn. Other key happiness factors, according to the preliminary report, are good personal health and a decent family life. What will we do without these people (Telegraph)?
I might have mentioned it before, but I'm planning on getting married this summer. To that end, I've been browsing the web, looking for stories about wedding related disasters, hoping to learn from the mistakes of others. Just this evening I found a bit of advice that had not occurred to me - think about what your new name will be, especially if you are considering whether or not to hyphenate. And here's why.
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I'm not going to make a joke about male chastity belts, or anything like that. via
Nominative Determinism is the term for people whose last names have apparently influenced their destiny. One of the most famous instances is Cardinal Sin of the Phillipines.
But the obituary pages this week bring perhaps the supreme example. Please go read about the death of William Headline, news editor for CNN.
Back in March I wrote an article for Smithsonian magazine about pseudo-scientific terms that have gone out of fashion. For instance, it used to be all the rage to affix "electro-" to everything, as in "electro-lumps" (one marketers inspired term for coal).
A term I definitely could have included in my article is "radiation." Once upon a time it didn't have the negative connotations it does today. Witness the "Radiation Cookery Book" from 1934. It didn't actually use radiation for the cooking (except in so far as heat itself is a form of radiation). Instead "Radiation" was the name of the company that made the gas cooker for which the recipes were designed. (via Apothecary's Drawer)
I love the singing and musicianship and general personal integrity of Nat King Cole. Hearing him immediately brings me back to my childhood in the late 1950's, the height of Cole's popularity.
Of course, like many popstars of the 1950's, Cole's star was eclipsed with the rise of rock 'n' roll, and the hippies, in the 1960's.
But curiously enough, Cole played a tiny self-defeating part in that very movement, with his song "Nature Boy."
The tale behind that song involves one of the first proto-hippies--a beatnik, I suppose--named eden ahbez.
Ahbez is one of the twentieth century's bonafide wonderful weirdos, but pretty much forgotten these days.
Why not listen to "Nature Boy" to commemorate ahbez and King?
You might even want to pick up one of ahbez's CD's!
Shaft clamping collars have many uses:
Category: Anthropomorphism, Television, Weird Names, Surrealism, 1960's