Suitable for extremely hot air?
DOES the John Deere company know something we donāt about global warming? The for the small tractor that Graham Worthington bought advises him: āThe recommended John Deere greases are effective within an average air temperature range of -29 to 135 Ā° C (-20 to 275 Ā° F). If operating outside that temperature range, contact your Servicing dealer for a special-use grease.ā We know that engine temperatures can get this high, but we wonder, with Graham, what part of the world experiences air temperatures anything like this high, let alone higher.
One colour too many? John Doran reports seeing an advertisement on Sky Gold TV for āKrave, white chocolate browniesā
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Schoolkids campaign for relevant geography
FEEDBACK extends greetings to Esha Marwaha, who is annoyed that climate change is no longer among the teaching topics in geography specified in a in England. āI am a secondary school student from The Heathland School,ā opens the petition she started from Hounslow in Greater London.
The government Department for Education protests that climate change is covered in the science curriculum, but Esha pre-empted them by referring to the difference between the āhowā of science and the āwhat to do?ā of the humanities. āGeographyā¦ inspired me enough to realise that not only is the earth a beautiful place, but one that is in desperate need of our help,ā she writes. āThe beauty of geography is the fact that it enables us to express frankly the problems earth and humanity faces.ā
When we checked, the petition was gaining about 500 signatures an hour at .
FROM the depths of our piling system we unearth an article published in Science News on 15 December 2012 entitled āTelomere length linked to risk of dyingā (). The article notes that telomeres ā caps on the ends of chromosomes ā shorten with age. It discusses ways in which this might relate to mortality figures.
Reader Pat Zura says: āAbout halfway through the article this line jumped out: āThe researchers donāt yet know the health status of the people who diedā.ā
Could anyone hazard a guess?
Geologists take on the minister
FOR those who enjoy governmental discomfort: the UK Court of Appeal found in February that the rules of a government back-to-work scheme ā under which Cait Reilly, a currently unemployed geology graduate, was pressured to work for free stacking shelves ā were a gigantic bureaucratic mess (not the judgesā exact words). So is she entitled to claim back the unemployment benefits docked under the rules? Not if Parliament overrules the court.
This takes us back to a lovely press release, forwarded by Sarah Day. Work and Pensions minister Iain Duncan Smith reacted to the case by suggesting that some people felt they were āaboveā shelf-stacking. He : when they canāt find the food they want on the shelves, āwho is more importantā¦ the geologist, or the person who stacked the shelves?ā.
The Geological Society of London responded in its press release: āWithout geologists, there would be no way to supply supermarkets with produce, no transport for customers or staff ā no shelves, in fact.ā
DODO ELECTRICITY & GAS wrote to John Graves in New South Wales, Australia, suggesting he could āreceive the same electricity you have always enjoyed PLUS a generous discount off your usage when you pay on timeā. He wants to know about the implied different type of electricity. Would he enjoy it more, or less?
MONGOLIAāS government has decided to convert the disused Lenin Memorial Museum into the Central Museum for Dinosaurs. Dinosaur fossils are particularly abundant in Mongolia, says the , so the government wants to āprotect this national heritageā.
The Mongolian Peopleās Party, which has been occupying the building since the Lenin museum was closed, is upset about the change. Feedback suspects the governmentās association of Leninists with dinosaurs may be entirely deliberate.
In Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, dinosaurs have not fared so well. reports that in January āgovernment-salaried vigilantes, a bearded auxiliary police force familiarly known to Saudis as the Hayaa, had marched officiously into an educational exhibit featuring plaster models of dinosaurs, turned off the lights and ordered everyone out, frightening children and alarming their parentsā.
Saudi citizens are apparently mystified as to why the police suddenly took against dinosaurs, which have often featured in previous exhibitions. Has someone linked dinosaurs with Leninists again?
Operation that makes men pregnant
FINALLY, thanks, possibly, to Ian Napier for alerting us to Wikipediaās comments on a male condition known as . We read that one method used to treat this āis transurethral resection of the ejaculatory ducts. This operative procedureā¦ has some severe complications and led to natural pregnancies in approx. 20 per cent of affected men.ā
āIād say that was a pretty severe complication,ā says Ian.
