Speedy sperm: Among the reality TV series being batted around in London, according to recent reports in the Daily Telegraph and The Independent, is “Make Me a Mum,” in which a woman reduces a field of men to the two whom she believes will make her the genetically best offspring. At that point, producers will inseminate the woman with sperm from both men and, using intravaginal micro technology, will attempt to record a “race” to see which sperm gets to the egg first. Said Remy Blumenfeld, creative director for the Brighter Pictures production house, “[This show is] much more about the rule of science than the rules of attraction.”
That sounds like a joke: British surfboard designer Jools Matthews, working with Intel Corp., built an Internet-ready surfboard with an 80-gigabyte, wireless laptop, powered by solar panels and housing a video camera, for exhibition in June in Devon, England. The waterproofed circuitry adds about 5 pounds to the 9-foot-long board and is carefully placed so as to retain surfers’ balance points.
Leading economic indicators: McDonald’s franchisees in Cape Girardeau, Mo.; Brainerd, Minn.; and Norwood, Mass., recently began outsourcing their drive-thru order taking to a call center in Colorado Springs, Colo. Thus, a Big Mac order shouted into a microphone in Missouri gets typed into a computer in Colorado (and a digital photograph of the customer’s car is taken to reduce errors) and then clicked back to the originating restaurant’s kitchen, which has the order ready in less time (30 seconds less, on average, with fewer errors) than the average McDonald’s order takes.An econometric study of “happiness” by professors David Blanchflower (Dartmouth College) and Andrew Oswald (Warwick University, England) announced in July found that a successful marriage brings such a level of joy that those without it would need an additional $100,000 to compensate. They conclude: Money can buy happiness (but each unit of it is very expensive); increasing the frequency of sex from monthly to at least weekly brings the same happiness as a $50,000 raise; and those who must buy their sex are the least happy of all.
Punk science: A U.S. Army laboratory in Natick, Mass., has developed a lightweight, dried-food meal that can be safely hydrated by adding virtually any kind of liquid, from dirty swamp water to a soldier’s own urine, according to a July report in New Scientist. A membrane with ultra-tiny gaps allows only water molecules to pass, filtering out “99.9 percent” of any bacteria and most chemicals. (While urine will theoretically work in a pinch, the developers discourage its use since urea is not blocked and will build up in the kidneys over time.)
Least competent animals: Police in Yuba City, Calif., responded to a motorist’s call and freed a chicken that had flown onto a car and become tangled in its windshield wipers (August). And a black bear drowned in the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania after he resisted several attempts by Samaritans to remove the plastic jar that had become stuck on his head after he had raided a camper’s food supply (July). And organizers of a 93-mile homing pigeon race, between the Swedish cities of Ljungby and Malmo, let 2,000 go on a perfectly clear day, but only 500 found their way home (July).
Unclear on the concept: A New Hampshire judge was suspended and the state’s attorney general resigned, both over allegations of sexual misconduct stemming from their after-hours behavior (in separate incidents) at the same conference, which had been called in May as a workshop on preventing sexual and domestic abuse. Five women complained of being groped by Judge Franklin C. Jones, 55, and one woman complained that Attorney General Peter Heed had touched her inappropriately on the dancefloor. (The local prosecutor later said there was not enough evidence to file a criminal charge against Heed.)
2004 CHUCK SHEPHERD
This article appears in Sep 8-14, 2004.
