Woman escapes drink driving conviction by proving that her body is a brewery

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/woman-escapes-drink-driving-conviction-by-proving-that-her-body-is-a-brewery-a3146351.html

A New York woman escaped a drink driving conviction after proving that her body is a brewery.

The woman was arrested after she was caught with a blood-alcohol level more than four times the legal limit. 

She insisted she had had no more than three drinks in the six hours before she was pulled over for erratic driving October 11, 2014. 

However, the woman was charged with driving while intoxicated when a breath test showed her blood-alcohol content to be 0.33 per cent.

The legal limit in New York is just 0.08.

The arrest led the woman to discover she has a rare condition called “auto-brewery syndrome”, where her digestive system converts ordinary food into alcohol.

She bought home a breath test kit and blew into it every night for 18 days,  each time registering around 0.20 per cent...............>

(surely she should be permanently banned from driving if she is permanently sloshed?)

The human body has everything required to naturally produce alcohol, albeit in small amounts. In fact the breathalyzer instrument is calculated to account for it. This woman's body is an anomaly & it has opened up a whole new defense in court.

Tdog

The blood sausage was named among the top foods to eat in 2016, thanks to its high levels of protein and low carb count.  

Black pudding is also rich in iron and zinc – two minerals that modern diets often lack.

Michael Gale, from Kensington-based C Lidgate butchers in Holland Park Avenue, said he was expecting a surge in sales - at least in the short-term.

He told the Standard butchers were expecting an "upturn in trade for a few weeks."................>

An "intelligent" toilet that opens when you approach it and self-cleans with every flush is on display at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

It also cleans the user with an aerated wand, which delivers warm water and warm air "from a seated position", a spokeswoman said.

Despite a $9,800 (£6,704) price tag, more than 40 million earlier versions of the Neorest toilets have been sold.............>

Stick with serious posts, Katie. Yours are far funnier.

Tdog

Emirates A380 makes longest non-stop flight between Dubai and NZ

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-35710969

2 March 2016

An Emirates Airbus A380 jet has made what is believed to be the world's longest non-stop scheduled commercial flight by distance.

The plane had covered a distance of about 14,200km (8,824 miles) when it touched down in Auckland in New Zealand on Wednesday.

The return flight to Dubai left at about 19.30 local time (08:30 GMT).

Both flights were around the 17 hours and 15 minutes mark, although the return could be a few minutes longer.

Qantas' Dallas-Sydney flight was believed to be the previous current longest flight, at 13,800km and clocking in at about 16 hours, 55 minutes.

The Dubai-Auckland flight duration record is not expected to hold for long, as Emirates is launching a Dubai-Panama City service later in March that will take 17 hours, 35 minutes.

Singapore Airlines used to fly Singapore-New Jersey, which took 19 hours. The firm announced in 2015 it was planning to bring back the service in 2018.

The new non-stop Emirates route between Auckland and Dubai reportedly reduces the current travel time by three hours.

The inaugural Dubai-Auckland flight was made by an A380 but the regular service will reportedly be carried out using the Boeing 777.

Commuters who shun car travel keep slimmer, study concludes

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-35812984

17 March 2017

People who cycle, walk or catch the train or bus to work keep more weight off than commuters who travel by car, a large UK study has found.

The results come from 150,000 UK adults aged 40 or older who agreed to be measured and weighed and fill in a survey about their typical journey to and from work.

Cycling came out as the best activity for staying trim, followed by walking.

But even those who used public transport were leaner than car users.

The authors of the Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology study say the findings show even a little physical activity is better than nothing at all.

They reached their conclusions by comparing the bodyweights and lifestyles of the 72,999 men and 83,667 women in their study.

Even when they factored in differences such as leisure-time, exercise, diet and occupation, the trend between commute method and bodyweight remained..............>

Archbishop of Canterbury learns real father was Churchill's private secretary

Leaving it a bit late to come out as a slag but we can all do with a laugh now and again;

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-36002621

9 April 2016

The Archbishop of Canterbury has said a DNA test result revealing the identity of his real father has come as a "complete surprise".

The Most Reverend Justin Welby, 60, has discovered he is the son of Sir Winston Churchill's last private secretary, the late Sir Anthony Montague Browne.

He had believed his father was whisky salesman Gavin Welby, who died in 1977.

His mother, Lady Williams of Elvel, has confirmed she had a "liaison" with Sir Anthony just before she wed in 1955.

She said the news had come as an "almost unbelievable shock", and although her memory of the time was patchy, she recalled sleeping with former colleague Sir Anthony after "a large amount of alcohol on both sides"............>

But Lodenice is home to one of the world's largest producers of vinyl.

GZ Media is now pressing two million records a month. We were given a tour of the site ahead of Record Store Day, which has helped fuel the vinyl comeback.

"Vinyl is back. People love vinyl," CEO Michal Sterba told Newsbeat at his factory, set up in 1951.

"Record Store Day is a celebration. It's an opportunity to think how beautiful the product is."

The production of vinyl is something that's hardly changed here in four decades................>

German city puts traffic lights on pavements for smartphone users

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/36153741/german-city-puts-traffic-lights-on-pavements-for-smartphone-users

A German city has put traffic lights on pavements so smartphone users don't have to look up from their screens.

Officials in Augsburg were worried pedestrians were so addicted to their mobiles, they weren't paying attention to their surroundings.

The lights, which are red like typical stop signals, mean even when people are looking down, they will still see when it is not safe to walk.

The death of a 15-year-old prompted the trial, local media reports.

She had been hit by a tram while distracted by her phone as she crossed the tracks, police said.

Town planners took into account where people who frequently used smartphones, such as young people and commuters, were likely to be walking, said city spokesperson Stephanie Lerman.

They then placed the lights appropriately, she added.

Those who walk while using their phones have been christened smombies - as in smartphone and zombie.

The word is especially popular in Germany, where it was declared youth word of the year in 2015.

The Machine Stops: Did EM Forster predict the internet age?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-36289890

18 May 2016

The futuristic world portrayed in The Machine Stops is an eerily familiar one - people mostly communicate with each other via screens, the rarity of face-to-face interaction has rendered it awkward, and knowledge and ideas are only shared by a system that links every home.

Yet that world was imagined not by a contemporary writer but by the Edwardian author Edward Morgan Forster.

Best known for his novels about class and hypocrisy - Howards End, A Room With A View and A Passage To India - The Machine Stops was Forster's only foray into science fiction.

Published in 1909, it tells the story of a mother and son - Vashti and Kuno - who live in a post-apocalyptic world where people live individually in underground pods, described as being "like the cell of a bee", and have their needs provided for by the all-encompassing Machine.............>

Some people (Guardianistas for example) just have to have their little dig;

The world's largest cruise ship and its supersized pollution problem

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/may/21/the-worlds-largest-cruise-ship-and-its-supersized-pollution-problem

Saturday 21 May 2016 08.00 BST

...............Daniel Rieger, a transport officer at German environment group Nabu, said: “Cruise companies create a picture of being a bright, clean and environmentally friendly tourism sector. But the opposite is true. One cruise ship emits as many air pollutants as five million cars going the same distance because these ships use heavy fuel that on land would have to be disposed of as hazardous waste.”

Has the age of quantum computing arrived?

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/22/age-of-quantum-computing-d-wave
Sunday 22 May 2016

Ever since Charles Babbage’s conceptual, unrealised Analytical Engine in the 1830s, computer science has been trying very hard to race ahead of its time. Particularly over the last 75 years, there have been many astounding developments – the first electronic programmable computer, the first integrated circuit computer, the first microprocessor. But the next anticipated step may be the most revolutionary of all................Back in 1971 the first Intel processor was made up of 2,300 transistors. Intel now produce microprocessors with more than 5bn transistors. However, they’re still limited by their simple binary options. But as Trudeau explained, with quantum computers the bits, or “qubits” as they are known, afford far more options owing to the uncertainty of their physical state............ Brownell is dismissive of these critics, claiming that the “question has been largely settled”. He cites Google’s comparative test last year in which its D-Wave quantum computer solved certain problems 100m times faster than a classical computer............“You go to these big web properties and they have data centres that are installed next to hydroelectric plants because they consume so much electricity,” says Brownell. “They’re the second-largest consumers of electrical energy on the planet.”D-Wave’s vision, he says, is for a green revolution in computing, in which everyone will have access to much more energy-efficient quantum computers through the cloud. In a few years, he thinks, we’ll be able to access quantum computing from our phones.........>

Why smartphones don't add up to an industrial revolution

Since the late 19th Century pretty much every aspect of our lives has changed. The invention of trains, television, cars, and medicine saw an unbelievable transformation in daily life all across the globe.

But have we got complacent with innovation? Tyler Cowen, a global thinker and Professor of Economics at George Mason University, argues that over the past two decades the world has been innovating less, and that we are changing lives at a slower rate than any time in the last century.

(video in link)

Construction of world's largest dam in Congo could begin within months

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/may/28/construction-of-worlds-largest-dam-in-dr-congo-could-begin-within-months

Saturday 28 May 2016 

...........But subsequent phases, together costing about $100bn, could eventually span the Congo river, the world’s second largest by volume. It is expected to have an electricity-generating capacity of nearly 40,000MW – nearly twice as much as the Three Gorges dam in China or 20 large nuclear power stations...........>

WRS10, we could use some of your "Just Fancy That!" updates.

It was reported on Tuesday that a North Korean diplomat in London, Thae Yong Ho, had defected to a third country. The BBC's Korea correspondent, Steve Evans, has pleasant memories of Mr Thae - who, he says, always seemed unusually at home in the suburbs of West London.

The last time I saw Thae Yong Ho we were eating a curry in his favourite Indian restaurant in Acton, in West London. He was eating a curry without rice, actually, because we had been discussing pre-diabetes, a condition which middle-aged men who enjoy food come to think about a lot, usually at the suggestion of their doctors.

His GP had told him that he should think of diabetes as a monster running towards him. He could slow it down or he could speed it up, but towards him it was coming. Rice and other carbohydrates would bring the monster closer faster..........>

US pastor, who believes floods are God's punishment, flees flooded home

Pity about the co-lateral damage but at least there is one ray of sunshine through the gloom;

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/37116661/us-pastor-who-believes-floods-are-gods-punishment-flees-flooded-home

Shocking footage from Baton Rouge in Louisiana shows dramatic rescues in the ravaged state............>

At one time or another before man the earth was completely covered by water.  Who was God punishing then?