Back to tech posting

Source: National Post A story from Rick Mercer's blog. Although not a tech story, it is rather interesting. A Calgary woman is demanding recompense for being told by two different bus drivers that her perfume was too strong. In the first instance, the bus drive eventually refused to let her board, claiming that her perfume aggravated his allergies. The second time a different bus drive announced that he was opening the windows because someone one the bus was wearing strong perfume. She assumed it was her, although the bus drive never said anything directly to her. Having been driven out of places by strong perfumes, I'm interested in seeing how this turns out.

Source: Ananova Another story from Rick Mercer's blog. Apparently men who share a bed get poor sleep, resulting in impaired mental ability the next day. Women were found to be generally unaffected because they tended to sleep more deeply than the men. Take note that the study used young unmarried couples so the results may not apply to long-term married couples. We hope.

Source: CNN A last one from Rick Mercer's blog. A British study has ranked tobacco and cigarettes more dangerous than many illegal drugs in terms of "...the physical harm to the user, the drug's potential for addiction, and the impact on society of drug use." Even if the findings are refuted, the researchers hope that the study will be an impetus to reexamine Britain's drug classification system and, perhaps, a move to a system based on more on evidence.

Source: Improbable Research Differential equations allow you to do a lot of things, even... calculate the value of prostitution. Specifically, they found partial differential equations served as the best model for calculating the value of prostitution in an economy. For those interested in reading the report (I haven't yet), it can be found at http://www.child-centre.it/papers/child16_2005.pdf in PDF format.

Source: Space.com A Chilean Airbus en route to New Zealand had a close encounter of the flaming kind. The pilot reported seeing flaming debris falling approximately 8 kilometres away from the plane along it's planned route. This might seem like a long distance, but at the speed of an Airbus, the distance is covered in less than one minute. The debris was discovered to be an empty Russian resupply ship released from the International Space Station and had been expected to descend through that area 12 hours later, at which time planes would not be in danger.