5 Things - Thursday edition
So, I decided that it might be fun to talk about 5 things that interested me in the news today, again!!!
1. A 10 year old gave birth in Spain last week. What???? This is a little insane, I mean I think I may still have been wetting the bed and giving myself the cootie shot when I was ten, not to mention how tiny my hips were. But apparently, the grandmother is very happy about the birth and doesn't understand the sensation that this is causing. The family, and the 13 year old father, all belong to a small segment of the Romanian population who practise the Gypsy lifestyle. And, in the gypsy culture, it is very common to arrange for the marriage of your children as soon as they reach puberty (even though those marriages are not recognised by the State of Romania). So, this then gets me wondering, if the birth was the product of a marriage, why are the child, mother, and grandmother currently living in Spain while the father is still in Romania???
2. The Pope is visiting Barcelona this Sunday, and to "welcome" him to the country, Spanish gays and lesbians will gather to stage a kiss-in. The plan is to congregate outside the city's gothic cathedral and begin kissing the moment the Pope steps outside. There will be no other actions by the protesters other than the kissing - no signs, shouting, flags, etc. The whole event was planned as an event on facebook - power to the social networks!
3. San Francisco has banned Happy Meals. Well, not explicitly, but they have passed an ordinance which bans restaurnts from giving away toys with meals that have more than a certain number of calories, fat, and sugar, which Happy Meals have. The ordinance also requires that all restaurants giving away toys must include fruits or vegetables with those meals.
Personally, I think this is great. I know that as a child I would always beg my parents to go to McDonalds solely because I wanted the toy - The food actually made me physically sick for about 12 hours after I consumed it, but I would suck that up if it meant I could get the "awesome toy". So, removing the toy temptation will help parents make better choices, since they won't have to give-in to their children's, now non-existent, tantrums and pleadings. So way to go SF!
4. A team of doctors in Germany have successfully restored at least some vision in 9/11 blind trial patients. They have done so by implanting a device under the retina of the patients which records images seen through the eye and then sends the images to a receiver in the visual cortex at the back of the brain. The resulting sight is not perfect, but it is better than what the patients had to begin with. However, the researchers have found that if the nerve damage is such that less than 25% of the cells remain then the implant will be unsuccessful.
5. Did you know that a Komodo Dragon's bite can kill you in three different ways? 1)Its mouth contains 60 razor sharp serrated teeth, 2)its saliva contains 50-80 different kinds of deadly bacteria that enter the prey's bloodstream when bitten, and 3)its venom, which is stored in special glands in the lizard is secreted when it bites. These last two features help to explain why most of the Komodo's prey dies 1-2 days after it has been bitten.
1. A 10 year old gave birth in Spain last week. What???? This is a little insane, I mean I think I may still have been wetting the bed and giving myself the cootie shot when I was ten, not to mention how tiny my hips were. But apparently, the grandmother is very happy about the birth and doesn't understand the sensation that this is causing. The family, and the 13 year old father, all belong to a small segment of the Romanian population who practise the Gypsy lifestyle. And, in the gypsy culture, it is very common to arrange for the marriage of your children as soon as they reach puberty (even though those marriages are not recognised by the State of Romania). So, this then gets me wondering, if the birth was the product of a marriage, why are the child, mother, and grandmother currently living in Spain while the father is still in Romania???
2. The Pope is visiting Barcelona this Sunday, and to "welcome" him to the country, Spanish gays and lesbians will gather to stage a kiss-in. The plan is to congregate outside the city's gothic cathedral and begin kissing the moment the Pope steps outside. There will be no other actions by the protesters other than the kissing - no signs, shouting, flags, etc. The whole event was planned as an event on facebook - power to the social networks!
3. San Francisco has banned Happy Meals. Well, not explicitly, but they have passed an ordinance which bans restaurnts from giving away toys with meals that have more than a certain number of calories, fat, and sugar, which Happy Meals have. The ordinance also requires that all restaurants giving away toys must include fruits or vegetables with those meals.
Personally, I think this is great. I know that as a child I would always beg my parents to go to McDonalds solely because I wanted the toy - The food actually made me physically sick for about 12 hours after I consumed it, but I would suck that up if it meant I could get the "awesome toy". So, removing the toy temptation will help parents make better choices, since they won't have to give-in to their children's, now non-existent, tantrums and pleadings. So way to go SF!
4. A team of doctors in Germany have successfully restored at least some vision in 9/11 blind trial patients. They have done so by implanting a device under the retina of the patients which records images seen through the eye and then sends the images to a receiver in the visual cortex at the back of the brain. The resulting sight is not perfect, but it is better than what the patients had to begin with. However, the researchers have found that if the nerve damage is such that less than 25% of the cells remain then the implant will be unsuccessful.
5. Did you know that a Komodo Dragon's bite can kill you in three different ways? 1)Its mouth contains 60 razor sharp serrated teeth, 2)its saliva contains 50-80 different kinds of deadly bacteria that enter the prey's bloodstream when bitten, and 3)its venom, which is stored in special glands in the lizard is secreted when it bites. These last two features help to explain why most of the Komodo's prey dies 1-2 days after it has been bitten.