Community ClicksWeird science
In July, a surgeon from Britain’s Oxford Radcliffe Hospital announced a cure for a 57-year-old man with a rare condition that made, in his mind, audible and ever-louder sounds whenever his eyeballs moved.
“Superior canal dehiscence syndrome” elevates the interior sounds of the body (such as heartbeat and the “friction” of muscles moving against muscles) to disturbing levels.
<<< Artificial meat (grown in a test tube from animal stem cells) has been theoretically planned for about 10 years, but a European Science Foundation audience in September heard predictions that lab-grown sausage might be available as soon as next year.
The meat is produced in sheets (“shmeat”) and would be prohibitively expensive at first, in that the largest specimen produced so far measures only about one inch long and a third of an inch wide. The biggest drawback facing artificial muscle tissue: that even lab-grown muscles require exercise to prevent atrophy.
<<< In an art-science collaboration in August, Dutch artist Jalila Essaidi and Utah State researcher Randy Lewis produced a prototype bulletproof skin — or at least skin that would limit a .22-caliber bullet to only about 2 inches’ penetration into a simulated human body. Genetically engineered spider silk (reputed to be five times stronger than steel) was grafted between layers of dermis and epidermis. Mused Essaidi, we “in the near future ... (may) no longer need to descend from a godly bloodline in order to have traits like invulnerability....”
Odd headlines
“Miami Invaded by Giant, House-Eating Snails” (up-to-10-inch-long snails that attach to, and slowly gnaw on, stucco walls).
<<< “Scientists Develop Blood Swimming ‘Microspiders’ to Heal Injuries, Deliver Drugs”
(spider-like “machines,” made of gold and silica, smaller than a red blood cell yet which can travel through veins carrying drugs and be directionally controlled by researchers).
DMV is a very dangerous place
The Department of Motor Vehicles office in Roseville, Calif., was closed for a week in July after a driving school student crashed into the building and left a five-foot hole in the wall.
<<< A young man taking a test at the drivers’ center in Brisbane, Australia, in August lost control of his vehicle and crashed into a bench outside the building, hitting his mother, who was waiting for him.
Least competent criminals
One would think the robber of a gas station would consider filling the tank before fleeing. However, Moses Gift, 47, was arrested in September in Winston-Salem, N.C., and charged with robbing the Huff Shell station — shortly before running out of gas a short distance away.
<<< In Winder, Ga., Micah Mitchell was arrested in October shortly after, according to police, he crashed through the front door of a BP station to steal merchandise. He was arrested minutes later a few miles from the station, where he had run out of gas.
Entrepreneurial spirit
Death is big business in Japan, with 1.2 million people a year passing away and overtaxing the country’s cemeteries and crematoriums. With the average wait for disposal at least several days, and space running short in funeral homes, “corpse hotels” have opened in many cities, with climate-controlled “guest rooms” renting for the equivalent of about $155 a night, with viewing rooms where relatives can visit the bodies daily until cremation is available.
<<< The world’s real economy may be flagging, but not necessarily the make-believe economy of online multiplayer games, according to reporting by The Wall Street Journal (July) and the website Singularity Hub (August). For example, entrepreneur Ailin Graef’s Anshe Chung Studios is worth “millions” of real U.S. dollars, earned mostly by managing rentals of make-believe real estate and brokering make-believe money transactions in the game Second Life. Graef commands top (real) dollar for her designs of make-believe fashions for players’ avatars. Two other companies are suing each other in federal court in San Francisco over the copyright to their lucrative business models of creating make-believe animals (horses, rabbits) that sell very well to players who take them on as game pets for their characters or breed them to make other make-believe animals.
Classic news
In April 1994, defendant Arthur Hollingsworth, despite previous recalcitrance, for some reason agreed, reluctantly, to waive his constitutional right of silence and to testify on his own behalf in his trial for armed robbery of a convenience store.
Prosecutor Jay Hileman first got Hollingsworth to admit that he was in the store at the time it was robbed and that he was armed.
Hileman asked, “Mr. Hollingsworth, you’re guilty, aren’t you?”
Hollingsworth replied, “No.” Hileman repeated the question: “Mr. Hollingsworth, you’re guilty, aren’t you?”
Hollingsworth: “Yeah.”
Hileman said he had no further questions.
