Wednesday, December 31, 2008

WEB BOHEMIAN
(1)-PURPLE SQUIRREL MYSTERY-We've all seen lots of grey squirrels and maybe the occasional red, but this chap is definitely going through a purple patch. He was spotted at Meoncross School in Stubbington, Hampshire, where pupils, staff and parents have all tried to solve the mystery of his unusual hue. One clue is that he frequently pops into a building where old printers are stored. TV wildlife expert Chris Packham said: 'It is possible he has been chewing on a purple ink cartridge and then groomed that colouring into his fur. Pete the purple squirrel has become a legend among staff and pupils at the school he visits in Hampshire.

(2)-PARADIGNM LOST– The deepening economic downturn has been hard on a lot of people, but it has been hard in a particular way for economists. For most of us, pain and apprehension have been mixed with a sense of grim amazement at the complexity of what has unfolded: the dense, invisible lattice connecting house prices to insurance companies to job losses to car sales, the inscrutability of the financial instruments that helped to spread the poison, the sense that the ratings agencies and regulatory bodies were overmatched by events, the wild gyrations of the stock market in the past few months.

(3)-TIME AFTER TIME-- Man has invented many ways to measure physical time, from ancient sundials to water and sand clocks, from the pendulum to the wind-up pocket watch, all the way to the modern atomic clock. An example of this latter-day timekeeper, introduced in 1950, measures a second as 9,192,631,770 cycles in the energy radiation of the Caesium atom. This produces an atomic second, which is one-86, 000th of a solar day, and is accurate to one second in three million years. Not bad, if you care about promptness.

(4)-THE BOOK IS PERISHING-- With book sales in a general free fall, bookstores -- large and small -- closing around the country, and library and school budgets slashed, the publishing industry is now feeling the same pain as the rest of the economy. Small presses and university presses are not exempt from the squeeze; in the end, it comes down to income and profit, and as consumers find themselves short of cash, publishers are discovering the hard way that the fat years are over.

(5)-DARWIN FOR PROFIT-- As the 150th anniversary of the publication of “On The Origin of Species” approaches, the moment has come to ask how Darwin’s insights can be used profitably by policymakers. Why, after 80 years of votes for women, and 40 years of the feminist revolution, do men still earn larger incomes? And why do so many people hate others merely for having different colored skin? Traditionally, the answers to such questions, and many others about modern life, have been sought in philosophy, sociology, even religion. But the answers that have come back are generally unsatisfying.

(6)-RISK IS SEXY-Men make up four-fifths of the world's skydivers and two-thirds of all rock climbers, and a new study suggests they do it for more than just the thrill. Men may flirt with risk because they think it will help them score women. Evolutionary psychologists have long believed that women are choosier about men than men are about women. It's not (just) because girls want to make life difficult for guys; it's because, at least historically, women have had to pick men who could provide for them and their children. This pressure forces males to work harder to prove their worth to females and out-compete other guys in the running.

(7)-LOTTA LOTKES--A 23-year-old mechanical engineering student has downed 46 of the potato pancakes in eight minutes to win a contest at a Long Island deli. Pete Czerwinski says he'd never eaten a latke before consuming about seven pounds of them Sunday at Zan's in Lake Grove. The Toronto bodybuilder says he's just "a power eater" whose brain never signals that he's full. Association of Independent Competitive Eaters Chairman Arnie Chapman says Czerwinski demolished the contest's previous record of 31 latkes, set in 2006.

(8)-LOTTA SCORPIONS-- Thailand's self-proclaimed 'Scorpion Queen' created a new world record by holding a live 18-centimetre scorpion in her mouth for more than two minutes. Kanchana Kaetkaew, 39, made her record attempt in front of a crowd at a shopping mall in Pattaya. She held the poisonous arachnid in her mouth for two minutes and three seconds before spitting it out. Kanchana then went on to begin her second world record attempt, entering a glass compound where she hopes to stay for 33 days and nights along with 5,000 scorpions in order to beat her record of 32 days set in 2002.

(9)-JUDICIAL WOES-- A convicted murderer says his Missouri guilty verdict should be thrown out because two of his jurors allegedly had sex while sequestered at a hotel. An attorney for Roberto Dunn, convicted eight years ago of killing his girlfriend's mother, is asking St. Louis Circuit Judge Julian Bush for a new trial because of the recently discovered alleged sexual escapades involving two jurors, the St. Louis Post Dispatch reported Monday.
ENDIT