CULTURE/SOCIETY: Britian's Great Cookie (Or Biscuit) Danger

I heard about this on NPR's Wait! Wait! Don't Tell Me!. - OlderMusicGeek

Crumbs: half of Britons injured by their biscuits on coffee break, survey reveals

More than half of all Britons have been injured by biscuits ranging from scalding from hot tea or coffee while dunking or breaking a tooth eating during a morning tea break, a survey has revealed.

An estimated 25 million adults have been injured while eating during a tea or coffee break - with at least 500 landing themselves in hospital, the survey revealed.

The custard cream biscuit was found to be the worse offender to innocent drinkers.

It beat the cookie to top a table of 15 generic types of biccy whose potential dangers were calculated by The Biscuit Injury Threat Evaluation.

Hidden dangers included flying fragments and being hurt while dunking in scalding tea through to the more strange such as people poking themselves in the eye with a biscuit or fallen off a chair reaching for the tin.

One man even ended up stuck in wet concrete after wading in to pick up a stray biscuit.

Custard creams get a risk rating of 5.63, the highest of all.

This compared to 1.16 for Jaffa cakes, which was the safest biscuit of all in the evaluation.

Research company Mindlab International were commissioned by Rocky, a chocolate biscuit bar, to conduct the research.

It found almost a third of adults said they had been splashed or scalded by hot drinks while dunking or trying to fish the remnants of a collapsed digestive.

It also revealed 28 per cent had choked on crumbs while one in 10 had broken a tooth or filling biting a biscuit.

More unusually, three per cent had poked themselves in the eye with a biscuit and seven per cent bitten by a pet or "other wild animal" trying to get their biscuit.

Mindlab International director Dr David Lewis said: "We tested the physical properties of 15 popular types of biscuits, along with aspects of their consumption such as 'dunkability' and crumb dispersal.

Mike Driver, Marketing Director for Rocky said: "We commissioned this study after learning how many biscuit related injuries are treated by doctors each year."

I've used this clip before, but it fits here too! - OMGeek

CULTURE/SOCIETY: 10 Things You Didn't Know About Ireland

This is from Irish Central. I found it through Yahoo. - OlderMusicGeek

10 things you didn't know about Ireland
By Conn Corrigan, IrishCentral.com Staff Writer
Published Monday, March 16, 2009, 10:54 PM
Updated Monday, March 16, 2009, 6:19 PM

1. Technically, it is an offense to be drunk in public in Ireland
Technically, it is an offense to be drunk in public in Ireland. Regulations introduced last year allow the police to issue on-the-spot fines for anyone caught being drunk in a public place in Ireland.

2. An Irishman founded the Argentinean Navy
Irishman William Brown (known in Spanish as “Guillermo Brown”) is one of Argentina’s national heroes. He is commonly known as the “father of the Argentine navy” and was an important leader in the Argentinean struggle for independence from Spain.

Brown’s family left Foxford in Co. Mayo for Philadelphia in 1786 when he was aged 9 and his father died of yellow fever soon after they arrived in the U.S.

He led an adventurous early life: he fought in the Napoleonic wars, was taken prisoner-of-war, escaped to Germany, before somehow ending up in Uruguay, where he became a sea trader. He then founded the Argentinean navy, when it was at war with Spain.

Today there is a statute of Brown in his hometown of Foxford, Co. Mayo, which was unveiled in 2007, the 150th anniversary of his death. in Argentina, there are 1,200 streets, 500 statues, two towns, one city and a few football clubs named after him.

3. Only two members of U2 were born in Ireland
David Howell Evans, more commonly known as The Edge, was born in London, to Welsh parents. Garvin and Gwenda Evans moved to Malahide in Dublin when The Edge was aged 1. Adam Clayton, U2's bassist, was born in Oxfordshire, England. His family moved to Malahide in Dublin when he was 5, and he soon became friends with The Edge.

Only Bono and Larry Mullen Jr. were actually born in Ireland.

4. The British Embassy in Tehran is on a street named after an Irishman
In 1981, shortly after the death of IRA hunger-striker Bobby Sands, the Iranian government changed the name of the street where the British Embassy is located from "Churchill Boulevard" (after the British Prime Minister) to "Bobby Sands Street."

British Embassy Staff were then forced to route everything through a side door in the building to avoid showing their address as The British Embassy, Bobby Sands Street, Tehran.

5. Up until around the early 1990s, Ireland had a low per capita consumption of alcohol
When the word "Irish" comes up, "drinking" is never far behind. And today, Ireland alcohol's consumption is very high by international standards. A 2006 survey found that the Irish spend a higher proportion of their income on alcohol than anyone else in Europe. It also found that the Irish were the worst binge drinkers in Europe. So the recent evidence supports the old Irish drunkard stereotype.

But Ireland's alcohol consumption per population was moderate for much of the 20th century. There was a high level of alcohol abstinence in the country – something usually more associated with Protestantism – which was promoted by the Catholic Church.

As the Church's moral authority declined, however, and as the country became wealthier, the Irish started to drink a lot more - finally earning themselves that old heavy-drinking stereotype.

6. A Belfast hospital is a world leader in kneecap reconstruction
During the Troubles, the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast had one of the top trauma units in Europe. At one point as many as 100 victims of "limb executions" were being treated by the hospital every year, whose advances included external “limb scaffolding" that enables partial healing for bone damage too severe for reconstruction.

7. Ireland has the fourth largest stadium in Europe
Dublin's Croke Park, the headquarters of the Gaelic Athletic Association, is the fourth largest stadium in Europe. The 82,300-capacity stadium was redeveloped in 2005 and is now the fourth largest: only Camp Nou in Barcelona, Wembley in England, and Olimpiysky in the Ukraine, are bigger.

Rugby and soccer were banned from the stadium up until 2007 because of a long-standing rule banning “foreign” games. The rule was relaxed when the country’s main soccer and rugby stadium, Lansdowne Road, was closed for redevelopment.

8. In the summer of 2007, it rained in Ireland for 40 days straight
Even by Irish standards, 2007 was a wet summer. By August 24, it had rained in Ireland for 40 days - fulfilling an old Irish proverb that says it will rain for 40 days if it rains on St. Swithin's day (July 15). The rain usually takes a break in the summer for a couple of weeks and the rare sunshine sends the country pure mad!

9. Playboy was banned in Ireland until 1995
In 1995 you could get Playboy TV but you couldn't get the magazine, which was banned under the censorship laws.

10. More Guinness is sold in Nigeria than in Ireland
That's right: Ireland is the third largest market for Guinness. Nigeria is at second, and Britain is first.

A link to the original web page

CULTURE/SOCIETY and HUMOR: An Interesting Army Holiday Story

This is from my work newsletter. - OlderMusicGeek

One employee’s travel ordeal was so risky he asked that his name not be shared. Brock (not his real name) writes in an e-mail that his story began when his doctor told him, “If we can prevent infection, we won’t have to amputate.”

It was December 18, and Brock was serving in the U.S. Army in Europe. He had been evacuated to the U.S. military hospital in Landstuhl, in what was then West Germany. His injury was so serious it made one medic turn green but was not serious enough for him to be sent stateside for treatment. Much to his disappointment, Brock’s doctor wanted him to stay until December 28.

Brock did not want to spend Christmas in a military hospital. Landstuhl (Germany) Regional Medical Center pictured today.

Spending Christmas in a military hospital overseas was not a festive prospect for the young soldier. “I had to find a way back to my unit, now more than 120 miles away,” he says.

As he signed into Hospital Ward 4C and was issued his hospital pajamas, he noticed a small phone booth near the nurses’ desk. He also noticed he was the only patient who was not bed-bound and that none of the patients looked like they wanted to be spending Christmas in the hospital.

He received permission to call his unit. Brock pleaded with the staff duty officer of his unit to send someone to get him. A nurse overheard his attempted hospital break, and Brock says his uniform and boots were confiscated shortly afterward.

Looking forward to the change from Army C-rations to tasty hospital food, he was disappointed to be placed on a strict liquid diet as a potential surgery patient. “My fellow patients and I discussed our favorite holiday foods while I sank my teeth into lukewarm chicken broth,” he says.

On December 21, the duty nurse asked for suggestions to improve the patient morale in the hospital ward. After Brock suggested going to the Noncommissioned Officers (NCO) Club across the street for a beer or two, his hospital slippers were confiscated.

“The next day the nurses decided that if the patients weren’t in a festive spirit being in the hospital over Christmas, then they would make us happy and jolly,” he says.

After a nutritious breakfast of Jell-O, Brock was drafted into helping hang decorations around the hospital ward. After all, he was the only patient who could walk. “We had no Christmas tree; the best we could come up with was an IV pole with green paper and tinsel,” he says.

When the decorations failed to improve morale that afternoon, the nurses decided to try Christmas music. A scratchy tape of holiday songs recorded from the Armed Forces Network radio broadcasts was piped into the hospital ward, Brock says. The tape featured a small selection of songs, including “I’ll be Home for Christmas.” It was obvious none of the patients would be home for Christmas.

Brock and his fellow patients staged a protest after being forced to listen to “I’ll be Home for Christmas” and “Silver Bells” too many times.

The next day, Brock and his co-conspirators, “Stitches” (76 stitches in each leg from a jeep accident), “T-Bone” (fractured femur, same accident), “Halo” (in traction for a broken neck, and not much of a talker), and “Dewey” (hit by a DUI driver while in a crosswalk on base) worked out a plan to end their torment.

The next time Bing Crosby sang “Silver Bells,” they all simultaneously hit their call buttons for the nurses in perfect timing with the bells playing the melody line. When they told the angry nurses they were trying to get in the spirit of Christmas by participating in the song, the nurses decided to punish them by not playing any more Christmas music.

Brock’s morale improved even more when he learned his unit was sending a jeep for him and it would arrive by 8 p.m. that night. He could be back with his unit by the morning of Christmas Eve. “Surprisingly, the nurses did not wish me a Merry Christmas as I was signed out of the hospital ward to await my transportation,” he says.

A link to all my Christmas posts

Merry Christmas or whatever holiday you're celebrating!
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HUMOR and CULTURE/SOCIETY: The Purina Diet

Another joke from the clearing out of my emails - this one from Ernest T Spoon. - OlderMusicGeek

I have a Labrador retriever & I was buying a large bag of Purina at Wal-Mart and was in line to check out. A woman behind me asked if I had a dog.

On impulse, I told her that no, I was starting The Purina Diet again, although I probably shouldn't because I'd ended up in the hospital last time. However, I'd lost 50 pounds before I awakened in an intensive care ward with tubes coming out of most of my orifices and IVs in both arms. I told her that it was essentially a perfect diet and that the way that it works is to load your pants pockets with Purina nuggets and simply eat one or two every time you feel hungry. The food is nutritionally complete so I was going to try it again.

I have to mention here that practically everyone in the line was by now enthralled with my story. She then asked if the reason I was in the hospital was because I'd been poisoned. I told her no, I'd been sitting in the street licking myself and a car hit me!

SCIENCE: Study Warns of Spreading 'Superbug'

Another article I got on my netvibes.com homepage. This is from The L.A. Times. - OlderMusicGeek

Antibiotic-resistant bacterium that causes severe infections has migrated from hospitals and now kills more Americans than AIDS.
By Thomas H. Maugh II, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
October 17, 2007

The number of severe infections by a "superbug," known as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, isat least twice as high as researchers previously believed, and the bacterium now kills more Americans than AIDS, researchers reported today.

The antibiotic-resistant infections, commonly called MRSA, were once confined to a few hospitals, but a new study by the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that in 2005 they made an estimated 94,000 Americans seriously ill and killed almost 19,000, compared with 17,000 who died of AIDS.

The infections have been a growing concern, particularly over the last decade, as they have spread outside hospitals, popping up in prisons, athletic fields and locker rooms.

The study reported that nearly 14% of new antibiotic-resistant staph infections are not linked to hospitals or other medical facilities, indicating that the disease has become ingrained in parts of the wider community.

The finding, reported in the Journal of the American Medical Assn., is the latest evidence of a widespread pattern of increasing drug resistance among a variety of infectious agents, including multi-drug resistant tuberculosis, antibiotic-resistant Clostridium difficile and other once-innocuous organisms.

Most forms of the staph bacterium are easily killed with common antibiotics, such as amoxicillin. But beginning in 1968, researchers began to see variants that required treatment with stronger antibiotics.

Experts attribute the emergence of the superbugs to indiscriminate use of antibiotics, the failure of patients to complete their antibiotic regimens and the use of antibiotics in animal feed. In each case, incomplete eradication of the bacteria leads to mutations that have increased resistance to the drugs.

Confined to the surface of the skin, the bacteria do minimal damage. But in hospitals, nursing homes and dialysis centers, they can hitch a ride inside the body on needles and other invasive devices, spreading through the bloodstream and causing severe illness.

In the same fashion, they can be spread by tattooing and drug use in prisons and by cuts and abrasions on the athletic field.

Infection rates were highest among those older than 65, and African Americans were twice as likely as whites to suffer an infection. In both groups, Klevens said, the higher rates were most likely due to a higher incidence of chronic diseases, which both weaken patients and send them more often to the hospital, where they come in contact with the bacterium.

For infants younger than 1, the rate was four times as high in blacks as in whites.

Healthcare advocates argue that hospitals need to improve hygiene. Some studies, for example, show that hospital workers wash their hands only about half as often as guidelines recommend.

A link to the complete article