Elephant husbandry in the Western Isles of Scotland
PLOUGHING through the paperwork issued by his local council, one of whose tasks is to administer the movement of pigs between crofts on Lewis in the Western Isles of Scotland, Brendon Harty came across an unexpected instruction regarding the import of livestock onto his croft.
Under the heading “Schedule 2, Movement of pigs from a farm, Form of declaration”, the document asked him to declare that: “No cattle, sheep, goats or other ruminating animals or elephants have been moved onto the premises below from which the said pigs are to be moved or onto premises in the same occupation or business… except in accordance with articles 3, 4 and 5 of the Diseases Control (Interim Measures) (Scotland) Order 2002.”
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Brendon hadn’t realised that elephant farming is an option on Lewis, so long as disease control regulations are adhered to. However, before branching out into this new line of animal husbandry, he wants to know if elephants make good sausages.
NASA makes a surprisingly small mistake
MISTAKES happen, as they say, and on the NASA scale of mistakes it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could get. Sending out a press release with the wrong headline doesn’t rank with those serious “oops!” moments like assuming insulating foam couldn’t hurt the space shuttle’s wing, or failing to convert imperial units to metric and crashing into Mars rather than going into orbit around it. Even so, press releases going out to thousands of reporters with the wrong headline do invite sarky comments of “it isn’t rocket science”.
That’s especially so when they run an interesting news story – about the two Martian rovers still exploring the Red Planet after five years – under the ho-hum headline “Strategic communications chief Hopkins leaving NASA”, an event that happened six months ago.
Could it have been a smart move by someone stuck in the press office over the recent holidays to see if any reporters were paying attention?
Do cellphones make people drink too much?
TRY this as an example of a questionable statistical correlation. Adam Quantrill tells us that according to conducted by the US Centers for Disease Control, using a cellphone instead of a landline appears to double your chances of binge drinking: “The prevalence of binge drinking (i.e., having five or more alcoholic drinks in 1 day during the past year) among wireless-only adults (37.7 per cent) was twice as high as the prevalence among adults living in landline households (17.2 per cent).”
Researchers looking for cause and effect here may like to ponder another finding of the study: “Compared with adults living in landline households, wireless-only adults were more likely to report that their health status was excellent or very good.”
So does this mean that using a cellphone makes you drink more alcohol, and this in turn gives you excellent health? Or is this study really telling us something rather different: that people who use cellphones tend to be younger than those who rely on landlines and their drinking habits and state of health reflect this.
“A sign spotted by Jack Wood in a jeweller’s window in Northampton, UK, reads: “Eternity rings and half-eternity rings.” How long do the latter last?”
FOLLOWING on from our story about the rain gauge that is suitable for use indoors (6 December 2008), people whose houses are inside out will be pleased to hear about Linda Melsom’s discovery of the gutter hooks sold by Asda supermarket – in a packet labelled simply “indoor”.
Loveable old Microsoft screws up
THOSE folks at Microsoft, doncha just love ’em? When Anne Hickley was clearing the web browser’s cache on her PC, she accidentally cleared a number of passwords, including her Hotmail password. She clicked on the “Forgotten password?” link and was asked to input her Windows identity so that Windows could send her the password. This she did. Windows then informed her that the password had been sent… to the Hotmail address that she was unable to access because she didn’t have the password.
What Darwin didn’t say – competition
FINALLY, don’t forget to send in your entries to our competition in honour of the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth. Feedback invites readers to provide 50 words on the thought-provoking theme of: “Things you would never have heard Charles Darwin say about evolution.” The editors will reward what we judge the wittiest non-Darwinism with the framed original of the beautiful artwork in “Uprooting Darwin’s tree” on page 35 of our 24 January issue, signed by the artist Yulia Brodskaya.
You may enter the competition by email – with the subject line “Darwin Competition”, please – or by fax or post or by going to www.newscientist.com/article/dn16399. The competition closes on Monday 16 February and no entries will be accepted after that date. The winning entry and the best runners up will be published here on 7 March.
