The Realm Of Bizarre News 1: Meet Our Theoretical Nuclear Physicist
Get your weird on! Enjoy the unique insights of Theoretical Nuclear Physicist, Dr. Franklin Ruehl, as he explores each week's stranger
side of the news.
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Welcome once again, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, to the amazing Realm of Bizarre News. I'm your host, Dr. Franklin Ruehl.
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Let's start off with a trivia question. Let me extricate it here from its paper prison. The question: “The hedgehog is the European cousin of which American critter?” This is multiple choice, inverse-alphabetical order. “Is that the puma, the possum, the porcupine, or the pig?” The prize, the only prize, is one pat on the back that you'll have to give to yourself. It's a heck of a lot better than a slap on the belly with a wet chop.
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Speaking of hedgehogs, over in England they're having an unseasonably warm winter and the poor little hedgehogs are running around in the wild instead of hibernating, injuring their paws. But at the Tiggywinkles Animal Hospital in Buckinghamshire they're putting little booties on their feet to help them heal. Isn't that nice.
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Now back to the trivia question. Here are the four choices again. The hedgehogs American cousin: is that the puma, the possum, the porcupine, or the pig? Is that your final answer, the porcupine? You're absolutely right! Too easy! For the record, porcupines are actually rodents, and the Porcupine River is up in the Yukon Territory of Canada.
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Over in Hunan Province in China a crematorium is only burning the bodies partially, then dumping the remains on the roadside in plastic bags. However, people have noticed the terrible stench emanating from those bags and the crematorium has been ordered to to burn the bodies fully. They've been trying to save diesel fumes by only burning them partially.
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An Australian professor argues that cremation is actually eco-unfriendly. Each cremated body adds about a hundred and ten pounds of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, promoting global warming. He suggests instead that you be buried in a cardboard box placed under a tree. When your body begins to rot you'll provide nutrients for the tree, which will then draw down CO2, combating global warming. Yes!
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Here's Billy Ray Cyrus, well-known country singer. He's just revealed that when he was attempting to become a baseball player an inner voice, a disparate voice, told him to sell his catcher's mitt and buy a guitar. He heeded that inner voice and of course the rest is music history, know for such hits as “Harper Valley, USA” and “Achy-Breaky Heart”.
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Speaking of hearts, I have some bad news to deliver. Peter Houghton, the longest-living man with an artificial heart has died at the age of 66 in Birmingham, England. He got the heart back in 2000--actually a Jarvik 2000 heart. However, even though he suffered massive organ failure at the time of his death, his heart was still beating. Indeed, it had to be disconnected so that he could officially be declared dead. How about that?
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Here's a potato. Down in Nicholson, Georgia a husband and wife got into a spat and she hurled a potato right at him, hit him in the nose, knocked him unconscious. She was arrested, but he's not going to proffer chargers.
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My recommendation is instead of tossing the potato, you perform the famous straw-in-the-potato experiment. Take a straw, pinch it, and say the magic word “kayi!” Right through, you see that! Let's try that once again. Kayi! You see that. Let's try that one more time. The principle at work here is as follows. We're all surrounded by air, which acts downward with a pressure of 14.7 pounds per square inch. When I pinch the straw I'm trapping air in it, converting it to something akin to an... If I were to perform this on the surface of the red planet Mars, where the atmosphere is much thinner, it would not work quite as well. Contrarywise, if I were to perform it on the surface of Venus where the atmosphere is 90 times that on Earth it would work even better. Let's try one more time, and one more, and one more. Do you see that? One potato, ten straws. Beyond belief! Now, until next time may the power of the cosmos be with you. Yes! Yes! Yes!