Guilt-free Xmas trees
The idea of cutting down a tree each year then discarding it after Christmas grates on many green-minded people. In California, the Los Angeles Times reports, a start-up company offers a solution for guilt-free Christmas trees. "The Living Christmas Co., founded by landscape architect Scott 'Scotty Claus' Martin in 2008, rents out live potted holiday trees to households in the South Bay and Los Angeles area. Customers can choose from a range of trees, including two-foot baby sequoias, hardy blue cedars and fragrant seven-foot Monterey pines. The rentals cost between $25 and $125, plus delivery charges of $30 to $60. The company delivers the trees, picks them up and returns the potted plants to their nursery in Carson. And it can bring back the same tree to your home the following Christmas. It's not just a tree company; it's an adoption service."
Tadpoles speak up
"When frogs are just teensy tadpoles, they're already croaking like adults, researchers have observed for the first time," LiveScience.com reports. "They not only croak when attacked, but when they cannibalistically attack members of their own species as well, scientists find. … Frogs are well known for croaking, with each species having its own unique call. Now researchers are discovering that tadpoles can speak up as well (albeit much more softly)."
First out of the nest
"Voyager 1 is one of the most successful space missions of all time," says a Discover Magazine blog. Launched in 1977, the spacecraft is now 17 billion kilometres from the sun. The probe is still moving outward at 60,000 kilometres per hour. "In a few more years, it'll leave the heliosheath [where the solar wind stops]behind, and when that happens it will truly be in interstellar space, the vast and nearly empty region between the stars. At that moment it will be the first human device ever to truly leave the solar system and enter the great stretches of the galaxy beyond. … It was launched before personal computers were everywhere, before cellphones, before the Internet! … And now, in just a few more years, it will have left our nest forever."
How we lie
"Let's be honest: everybody lies. The question is whether people believe what you say," says Time.com. "… In this month's Journal of Language and Social Psychology, Marilyn Boltz and colleagues delve into the intersection of gender, speech patterns and deception. 'We found that people perceive women to lie less than men and that they perceive men and women to tell different kinds of lies,' says Boltz, a professor of psychology at Haverford College. … Diary studies - in which participants are trusted to record their own falsehoods - have shown that men and women both admit fibbing in 20 to 35 per cent of their social interactions. They've also shown that men tell - and are told - more 'self-lies,' those that benefit the liar. Women, meanwhile, tell and are told more 'other-lies,' those contrived for the benefit of others. It's the difference between 'You have a zit? I can't even see it' and 'That woman? I've never seen her before in my life.' "
The new-car defence
" 'New-car smell' might have contributed to the driver losing consciousness in a hit-and-run accident," the Vail (Colo.) Daily reports. The driver was behind the wheel of a new 2010 Mercedes sedan on a July afternoon when he rear-ended a bicyclist, who suffered serious injuries. The driver's attorneys said their client suffers from sleep apnea and fell asleep at the wheel before driving off the highway and onto the shoulder. An accident reconstructionist found that the month-old sedan was emitting new-car fumes, court documents said, and that might have been a contributing factor.
Frosty the postman
- "It is the ultimate badge of honour during the cold snap: knees cruelly exposed to the elements," The Guardian says. "Postmen at the Royal Mail depot in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, have continued wearing their summer uniform of shorts as snow has fallen and ice has followed in a knee-trembling battle to see who can tough it out the longest."
- "A Wisconsin postal carrier says he simply wanted to cheer up a woman on his rounds who seemed 'stressed out' when he decided to deliver mail in the buff. But upon further review, the worker told police that delivering mail while completely naked probably wasn't a good idea," Associated Press reports. "A police report says the 52-year-old man told the 21-year-old woman he would deliver the mail in the nude to her office in Whitefish Bay to make her laugh. The report says that on Dec. 4 he brought the mail wearing only a smile."
Thought du jour
"Brave men are all vertebrates; they have their softness on the surface and their toughness in the middle."
Lewis Carroll (1832-98), English author and mathematician