• When summer storms hit, beware of your XBOX or Wii—apparently an increasing number of people have faced injury while playing hardwired video games indoors when there’s lightning outside.
• Spoon that irresistible raw cookie dough into your mouth at the risk of kidney failure and bloody diarrhea: Toll House has recalled its dough due to possible E. Coli contamination.
• Snakes in a station! About 400 cobras were expelled from a Sierra Leone police station using attack rifles and power hoses after snakecharmers failed to lure the reptiles from the building.
•It’s been a rough week for pets: Just ask the the week-old puppy that was flushed down the toilet, the cat that was shot 50 times, and the kitten that was abandoned in a public mailbox in Boston. Those furballs survived, but the cats and dogs that ate pet food tainted with melamine weren’t so lucky. The manufacturing company and its owners pleaded guilty this week to selling the contaminated food.
•Remember the rap about the LHC? Now there’s another one by the same, er, artist, tackling the subject of rare isotopes.
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• Don’t let unemployment put a wrinkle in your plans. Viagra isn’t the only treatment you can get for free—a spa has offered free Botox, too. Confused? Watch the video.
• Hear, hear! Severed your ear but don’t know where to store it? Consider copying this guy by having doctors attach it to your stomach. Then surgeons can use cartilage from your ribs to stitch it back onto the side of your head.
• A 15-year-old, two-foot-tall girl in India is the world’s smallest teenager. Doctors think she has a pituitary problem, but apparently they haven’t been able to pin down the problem.
• Check out this video of the blackbird that’s terrorizing people in San Francisco by dive-bombing their heads. (It’s ok to laugh…we won’t tell.)
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• Bees and their hives aren’t just for honey anymore: They might help farmers in Kenya deter elephant raids that threaten crops.
• It’s a nice day for a weightless wedding, at least for the Brooklyn couple that will get married in zero gravity later this month. They’ll tie the knot on a commercial weightless flight, with a price tag of $5,200 per person.
• Conservatives are more easily grossed out by bugs, blood, and guts than are their liberal counterparts, according to a study in the journal Cognition & Emotion.
• And, finally, a video of the world’s only pet hippo!
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• Forget Graceland: If you’re in Huntsville, Ala., be sure to visit the graves of spacemonkeys Able and Baker, the first monkeys to survive a space flight. You can find the graves easily—they’re strewn with bananas.
• If you’re reading this, you have a UFO to thank—at least according to a Russian scientist, who claims an alien spacecraft saved earth from an approaching meteorite by smashing into it a century ago.
• To test whether beer or a joint does more damage to driving skills, researchers got students drunk, or high on marijuana. The results? Stoned drivers drive significantly slower than drunk ones, but—surprise!—both groups drove less safely than their placebo’ed peers.
• Think you’re smart? Not compared to this 16-year-old Iraqi. It took him only four months to solve a math problem that had been baffling academics for 300 years.
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• According to British health chiefs, white is the new black…at least when it comes to keeping your house cool. They’re suggesting that all U.K. homes be painted white to combat global warming—a technique long used in hot Mediterranean countries like Greece.
• Turns out you’re not the only one who can prevent forest fires. Giant buzzsaw-wielding robots can do it, too!
• Don’t let the economy get you, er, down: Some jobless Americans are now eligible for a free year’s supply of Viagra and other drugs.
• Scientists are using human bile acids to make a replacement for mercury and plastic dental fillings. As if going to the dentist didn’t already leave a bad taste in your mouth.
• And lastly, check out what might be the world’s smallest cat. Itty bitty kitty committee, anyone?
Astronaut Mike Massimino is the first man to tweet from space. Now we know for sure that the “launch was awesome!!”
Now that the anxiety over swine-flu fears have receded somewhat, a virus that up to 99 percent of us have can cause high blood pressure.
There’s something in the air in Barcelona and Madrid. It’s not love, it’s drugs.
Who needs Gatorade when all you need is the Michael Phelps diet—corn flakes and milk—to perform well.
English rats have reportedly developed resistance to poison. Sometimes we wish evolution were not true.
• We all know the snows of Kilimanjaro are melting and Mt. Everest isn’t in great shape either. Now, Bolivia’s Chacaltaya Glacier, home to the world’s highest ski run, has melted.
• As if a treadmill in space weren’t enough, Stephen Colbert now has a species of diving beetle named after him: Agaporomorphus colberti. The beetle is known for having bristles on the males’ reproductive organs.
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• Video of the week: A dancing polar bear and a Daft Punk soundtrack with voiceover by Coolio took first prize at a student environmental film competition in England.
• Shocker of the week: Putting lithium in your water reduces your risk of suicide! And putting Viagra in your water increases your risk of…well, we’ll let you figure it out.
• Web-hosting company GoDaddy is using its .tv domain names to educate people about the sinking island of Tuvalu.
(more…)
• If you thought things were bad on Wall Street, zoo animals laid off at the Bronx Zoo may have it much worse.
• A family looking for relaxation at a Florida beach found adventure instead, when they discovered a one-eyed, three-legged alligator. (It was captured and returned safely to the wild.)
• A glowing frog became a charm on a string of Christmas lights, while the first transgenic puppy glows under ultraviolet light.
• The Telegraph reports that scientists have found, literally, a smiley-faced spider from Hawaii.
• Not so smiley, however, are horse fans around the world, after a group of 21 polo horses died from a supplement prepared at a Florida pharmacy with the wrong proportion of ingredients.
• Non-animal-related: but if you happen to find yourself at the top of Mount Everest, you may soon get decent cell reception.
• Greener cooking methods have been quite the craze lately, but the search for the perfect solution will (hopefully) continue until there is one. In Senegal, “green charcoal” is now being produced from agricultural waste materials to replace the black kind that has caused the destruction of so many trees.
• “Bell-bottoms and gas masks”: Check out National Geographic‘s slideshow of the first Earth Day, back in 1970. (And learn here about its history—why is it April 22, anyway?)
• Gotta pay some respect to history’s Earth Day heroes, whether they be from comic books or real life.
• Here’s the bad news first: Dow Chemical is sponsoring a fish festival near a polluted Michigan river where the (toxic) fish that are caught will be donated to the poor. But the good news: If you like SunChips, you can soon rest assured about their packaging—by 2010, it will be fully compostable.
Image: Flickr / kimberlyfaye
