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April 10, 2008
FORGET MARCH MADNESS
Another group of collegians works out amidst coaches' whistles, endures bloody, 12-hour practices and cheers on teammates preparing for the national championship in meat-judging, in which about 40 colleges compete, according to a March Wall Street Journal report. Coaches at powerhouses like Colorado State and South Dakota State say skills such as evaluating T-bone cutting and spotting whether a pig has too much back fat come with determination and concentration (and, of course, practice, as one coach said it all comes down to time spent in the meat locker). Pro scouts—representatives of U.S. meat companies—even watch from the stands, seeking talent.
ITALIAN LAW ROCKS!
Italy's highest appeals court ruled in March that it's legal for a woman to lie in a police investigation if the reason is to cover up her adulterous affair. Court of Cassation judges said that her honor is more important than providing intimate information about her lover.
THE ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT
When Johnny Diablo's year-old vegan restaurant failed to catch on in Portland, Ore., last year, he converted the space into Casa Diablo's Gentlemen's Club, which is what he believes is the world's only vegan strip club. He has no rule against meat-eating dancers, he told Willamette Week in February, but won't permit leather, fur, silk or wool outfits on stage (no "murder victims" in the club, is how he put it).
CUTTING EDGE SCIENCE
A team of researchers from the University of Calgary and the Tokyo Institute of Technology proudly announced in February that they had successfully stored "nothing" inside a puff of gas and then had managed to retrieve that same "nothing." That "nothing"is called a "squeezed vacuum" and the physicists tell us that a light wave can be manipulated so that its phases are of uncertain amplitude, then the light itself removed so that only the "uncertainty" property of the wave remains.
LEADING ECONOMICINDICATORS
To feed the fast-growing women's hair-extension business, brokers in India scour the countryside for Hindu temples that encourage female worshippers to shear themselves as good-luck offerings to the temples' gods, according to a February dispatch in Germany's Der Spiegel. Historically, the hair was used to make mattresses, but because the celebrity-driven extension business is so large, salons around the world pay $125 to $250 per pound for strands of never-chemically-treated hair of desirable hues. Shaving is a Hindu tradition, and one donor told Spiegel she had long prayed for her husband to stop drinking and that when that "miracle" happened, she felt compelled to offer her hair.
REAL BAD TIMES
In the worst slums of Port-au-Prince, Haiti (where 80 percent of the people live on less than $2 a day), rice sells for 30 cents a cup (double the price of a year ago), according to a January Associated Press dispatch. This leaves the poorest of the poor to subsist almost entirely on "cookies" made from dirt. Choice clay from the central plateau is at least a source of calcium and can be baked with salt and vegetable shortening. Unfortunately, the APreporter noted, the price of dirt has so far risen about 40 percent in the La Saline slum. MTW
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