Friday, January 30, 2009

WEB BOHEMIAN (Friday, January 30, 2009)
(1)- ANOTHER SIDE TO SOMALIA -- There’s another side to Somalia. After visiting the country in 1854 disguised as an Arab, British explorer and orientalist Richard Francis Burton wrote in First Footsteps in East Africa that Somalis were “a fierce and turbulent race” yet also a race of poets. “It is strange that a dialect with no written character should so abound in poetry and eloquence,” he observed.

(2)- ROGET'S LISTS -- Peter Mark Roget, the future Linnaus of the English word, began compiling word-lists at the age of eight. Why was he not playing with other children, honing his social skills? The problem was his mother, a widow at 28, who drained her son of sympathy. Catherine Romilly gave birth to a wonderful, handsome, talented boy , but couldn’t let him be himself.

(3)- PLASTIC OCEAN -- A British millionaire will sail in a plastic raft to alert the world to a huge floating garbage dump drifting between Hawaii and California. David de Rothschild plans to set sail from San Francisco in April aboard a 60-foot raft of empty plastic water bottles. He goes to a becalmed region known as the north Pacific gyre where plastic waste covers an area five times the size of Britain.

(4)- PLANTS RULE -- New research could have put plants firmly back in the drug business. Scientists in the US have engineered plant cells to churn out several chemical compounds that organic chemists could only ever dreamt of getting bacteria and yeast to make. The plant-produced compounds include molecules similar to cancer drugs.

(5)- TRICKING THE LAMPREY -- A synthetic "chemical sex smell" could help rid North America's Great Lakes of a devastating pest. US researchers deployed a laboratory version of a male sea lamprey pheromone to trick ovulating females into swimming upstream into traps. The sea lamprey has parasitised native species of the Great Lakes since its accidental introduction in the 1800s.

(6)- ELVIS IMPERSONATION – A Collinsville man can officially claim he's The King. Bill Cherry has won the 13th "Annual Midwest Tribute to the King Competition" for his Elvis impersonating skills. He took home a $3,200 prize, beating out 14 other impersonators from Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio and Wisconsin.

(7)- UNCLE SAM WANTS YOU -- As the number of jobs across the nation dwindles, more Americans are joining the military, lured by a steady paycheck, benefits and training. The last fiscal year was a banner one for the military, with all active-duty and reserve forces meeting or exceeding their recruitment goals for the first time since 2004, the year that violence in Iraq intensified drastically.

(8)- MARRYING FROGS -- Bitter experience tells women they have to kiss a lot of green amphibians to find a prince, but two seven-year-old girls in India last week cut short the quest and married frogs. The ceremony has its roots in the story of the Hindu God Shiva who turned himself into a frog following a quarrel with his wife Parvati.

(9)- STILL A MYSTERY -- The new district attorney of Boulder County, Colorado, said he plans to take a fresh look at the investigation into the 1996 slaying of JonBenet Ramsey. The DA's office assumed responsibility for the investigation in 2002. But District Attorney Stan Garnett says he wants to decide during his first 30 days in office whether the case should be returned to Boulder police.

CARTOON COMMENTARY

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