Yeah, They're Different Alright


A study conducted by the University College of London shows that people with the ability to learn other languages easily have differently structured brains and more "white matter". The part of the brain called Heschl's Area is larger and oriented differently. Tell me about it! Generally, we think that the more "cables" and "connections" in the brain the better. Well, that's true, but if your cable for strawberry ice cream is hooked up to the word for master cylinder in papiamento, what good does it do you? I'm just sayin'.

A Bullet to the Back of the Head Would Have Been Better

Joseph Lewis Clark was to be executed by lethal injection in Ohio, but it didn't happen as planned. Mr. Clark had used drugs so much in his past that the executioners couldn't find a vein strong enough to put the IV in. Witnesses said that the executioners had to try over and over to get the IV in. The entire thing took an hour and a half to carry out, which is much longer than usual. Witnesses said Mr. Clark grimaced, cried, and made guttural noises. Hmmm...don't give us Texans any ideas.

Special Tasting Rum


Construction workers in Szeged, Hungary who were renovating a house discovered a barrel of rum while the were working. They would pour themselves a drink every once in a while. The said the rum had a "special taste" but that was okay. They drank 300 liters of the rum and were preparing to throw the barrel. But, it's not really possible for Hungarians to throw out a barrel until the make sure that it's really empty. They opened it up and oops! There was the body of a dead man inside. The man, who was a Hungarian diplomat, had died some 20 years earlier in Jamaica. Eeeuuww! Just think, drinking an entire barrel full of rum with a 20 year old dead body in it! I'm feeling a little queasy just imagining it.

It turns out that sending a body to Hungary was quite difficult and expensive. The man's wife, who had recently died herself, had him shipped back to Hungary in a rum barrel to save money. Okay, but she just left him there. She didn't bother to bury him.

Prohibida la Fotografia

Back in the days of the Soviet Union, tourists and anyone else for that matter couldn't take photos of police, military personnel or bases, bridges, etc. Well, that was then. In 21st century Germany it is prohibited for journalists to take pictures of prostitutes or their places of business. Huh? Yes, it's all in an effort to keep the hookers safe during the World Cup. See, prostitution is legal there, so they want to have a safe work place. Is sexual harrassment of prostitutes illegal as well?

A New Operatic Low


Don't you wish you had thought of it? Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding have really arrived. Their "problems" have become the subject of an opera. No, not a soap opera, an opera. Abigail Al-Doory, a music student, needed something for her master's and she found it with Tonya and Nancy: The Opera. Al-Doory said that her advisor told her she should make it for a string quartet, but she went for the whole thing. Later she said, "I should have followed the advice, and made it for a string quartet." Uh, how about not doing it all?

Callado y Hablarona

According to British sociologist Dianne Hale a woman says about 23,000 words per day, while a man says about half that many. This carries over into the world of work too. Women bosses tend to use the subjunctive when giving orders like, "The next step would be...", "I would suggest..." Men on the other hand don't understand those things to be orders, and therefore they don't get done. Women do much more nodding and murmuring when listening to confirm understanding than men do.

May Day, 2006

Today is International Workers' Day all over the world. Here in America it's just another day. Somehow, even though this day commemorates a police riot in Chicago's Haymarket Square in 1886 that killed people on both sides. Funny how our Labor Day is the first Monday in September, and there's virtually no mention of May Day at all.

Except this year it's more in line with the rest of the world. Immigrants are staging a work stoppage for this day. I don't know yet the amount of participation, but I expect it to be significant. So, perhaps our immigrants remembered what we've forgotten: That May Day is an American day for workers to demand respect.