The swine Flu

A new kind a flu has been going around, called Swine Flu, originating from a virus that infected pigs. It hit Mexico hard, killing around 80 people, and causing Mexico to close down public schools and other public events. This flu has been declared a "public health emergency" making it of some concern. Some scientists believe that it will not be too long before a Pandemic Status to be reached, where travel may be banned to and from infected countries. Cases of this flu have been spotted in California, New york city, and Texas, meaning that it has reached the United States. In other places, detention of possible cases are more severe. China has made so that anybody with a fever over 100.4 degrees must be put in detention immediately to avoid further spread. Even worse is that this virus is constantly mutating and evolving, making it very difficult to get immunization from. Currently, the flu is not extremely serious, however these strains of influenza are very unpredictable.

Futuristic Car

There is a new futuristic car, the Aptera 2e, for sale this October for a price between $25000 - $40000 dollars. This new car is electric, and has three wheels. It has got a top speed of around 90 mph, and has around a range of 100 miles, and you can charge it overnight with a 110 volt outlet apparently. It seems to drive around fine even with its odd shape and design, with plenty of room inside. The car weighs in total around 1700 pounds.

Is the car safe? This car includes frontal and side air bags. Its framework doesn't seem to be too fragile as well, despite the car's fragile appearance. The roof of the development shell managed to support 8 workers on top of it, even after the shell went through the government roof-crush testing.

Groundhog Day

February 2nd, 2009 is groundhog day, and thus Punxsutawney Phil comes out to see, or not see, his shadow. If he sees his shadow, it means that winter will continue for six more weeks. In the end, Phil ended up seeing his shadow, thus signaling more weeks to the current winter. In Phil's long record, he has seen his shadow 97 times and hasn't seen it 15 times. Even though I don't mind winter too much, I think we need a blinder groundhog.

In other groundhog day related news, another groundhog in New York seemed unhappy to be wakened from hibernation. "Chuck" went and nicked at Mayor Bloomberg during the annual celebration. The bite drew blood from the Mayor, but he did not get rabies.

Are you lucky?

One professor named Richard Wiseman preformed an experiment that he hoped would lead to the understanding of why people are lucky and why some aren't as lucky. His experiment involved placing an ad for people who felt either very lucky or unlucky and monitoring them. The result? Although the people do not really realise it, the behavior and thoughts of these people determine their own luck. The so called "lucky" people would be able to spot out and encounter promising opportunities, while the "unlucky" ones would not be able to spot them. In the end, most parts of luck may deal with just having the ability to sense and see good opportunities at which good things are likely to happen to you.

I also posted this at 11:11 pm

Why Yawn?

Yawning is an odd activity that happens every once in a while to everybody. However, the true reason behind yawning was always arguable, and new studies reveal a new explanation to why people yawn. Some say people yawn because they are tired, and others say people yawn out of boredom. However, it seems that you also will yawn to cool off your brain. Yawning helps cool down your brain when it is "overheating". One researcher compared the brain to a computer, saying that the computer may need to cool down, and yawning happens to be how our brains control their temperature.

Dr. Seuss

Dr. Seuss, whose real name is Theodore Geisel, is a famous book writer. He wrote children stories such as The cat in the hat, Green eggs and ham, and many others. However, what was the real story behind his children stories? For example, the story green eggs and ham was made off a bet. Dr. Seuss' editor bet him that he would not be able to create a story that had 50 words or less. However, Dr. Seuss was able to, and created the story green eggs and ham using exactly 50 words. The fifty words are a, am, and, anywhere, are, be, boat, box, car, could, dark, do, eat, eggs, fox, goat, good, green, ham, here, house, I, if, in, let, like, may, me, mouse, not, on, or, rain, Sam, say, see, so, thank, that, the, them, there, they, train, tree, try, will, with, would, and you. Quite an accomplishment to have made an awesome book that only used 50 words, and I always loved green eggs and ham.

A car that runs on air

A company called Zero Pollution motors is setting a price tag of $20,000 dollars on a car that runs on nothing but air, and a little salad oil/alcohol/pint of gasoline. The car can go 35 mph for around 60 miles with its tank of compressed air. Although those numbers may seem very low, it also has a small motor that compresses outside air to keep the tank filled for a much longer amount of time. The car can also be recharged by plugging it into a socket.

This technology isn't relatively new, compressed air engines have been around and known about for a long time. Yet the main reasons of the car finally being built is mainly because of the rising gas prices. As the gas prices reach high costs, the reason to manufacture the car grew as well. However the car does have one major problem, it may not pass crash test. The car plans to be built in 2011.