Funny Bone

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Last weekend saw the 150th anniversary of the birth of Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of the world's most celebrated fictional detective. So what's kept him at the top for 122 years?

In 1887, appearing in print for the first time, Sherlock Holmes set out his purpose in life. The declaration in "A Study in Scarlet" would also come to dictate much of the subsequent career of Holmes' creator, Arthur Conan Doyle - not always to his pleasure. "There's the scarlet thread of murder running through the colorless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it." He went on to define the archetype of the brilliant but troubled detective. Even today the character of Holmes defines what we expect of great fictional detectives. We want them to accept that "duty" to do good - but also to be personally flawed.

The 28 year-old author wasn't the first to spot the narrative potential of an incisive but troubled detective. Conan Doyle himself acknowledged the influence of Edgar Allan Poe's Auguste Dupin and of Lecoq, created by the now largely forgotten Emile Gaboriau. But almost every fictional detective stands in Holmes' shadow - from Kurt Wallander back to Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe. Chandler once wrote: "Sherlock Holmes is mostly an attitude and a few dozen lines of unforgettable dialogue." This may or may not have been a compliment.  read more »

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The German Office Chair Racing Championship was held in Bad Koenig-Zell, Germany, on Saturday, April 25, 2009. Seventy participants took a chance and brought their office chair out into the sunshine and put it through its paces. The race down Odenwaelder street was mainly downhill and involved starting on a steep ramp and racing over another ramp.

The only uniform rule was a crash helmet, which many participants needed. Dozens of racers fell off their chairs, and many chairs didn't make it to the end of the 170-meter race.

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Photos courtesy of demonicious.com

Original Source: Cave News and Reuters (with video)

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From his gleaming headplate to his immaculately groomed whiskers, Lance Corporal William Windsor looked every inch the proud old soldier as he left camp for the last time yesterday. He has seen service overseas, met royalty and led every battalion parade, but after eight years on the job, it is time for William Windsor to retire. But unlike other old soldiers, this veteran will be spending his final days in a zoo - because he is the regimental goat, better known as Billy.

His send-off came with full military pomp and ceremony - befitting-his lifetime's service with the 1st Battalion the Royal Welsh. Cheering comrades lined the route from his pen to the trailer waiting to take him to the Whipsnade Zoo in Bedfordshire, where the Army veteran informally known as Billy the Goat will spend his honorable retirement.

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This astonishing woman - who studied medicine, survived Fascism and prejudice, and went on to win the Nobel Prize in 1986, who still takes an active part in politics in the Senate, is planning another book and campaigning for the rights of women in Africa.

In her autobiography she writes that she and her twin sister Paola (an artist who died in 2000 and whose artworks decorate her office walls) were born to Adamo Levi, “an electrical engineer and gifted mathematician”, and Adele Montalcini, “a talented painter and an exquisite human being”. There were two older siblings, Gino and Anna, also both now dead. “The four of us enjoyed a most wonderful family atmosphere,” she writes, “filled with love and reciprocal devotion. Both parents were highly cultured and instilled in us their high appreciation of intellectual pursuit. Her father “was a person of great intellectual and moral value, but he was a Victorian. As a child, I saw him as a person who dominated everything I did.”  read more »

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While Indonesia's bird flu death toll climbs to 119, deadly strain (a nasty mash-up of swine, avian, & human viruses) of swine flu gets under radar of the immune system and pushes death toll in Mexico to 152 and climbing. "Residents [of La Gloria, Perote Municipality, Veracruz State, Mexico] believed the outbreak had been caused by contamination from pig breeding farms located in the area. They believed that the farms, operated by Granjas Carroll, polluted the atmosphere and local water bodies, which in turn led to the disease outbreak. According to residents, the company denied responsibility for the outbreak and attributed the cases to ‘flu.’ However, a municipal health official stated that preliminary investigations indicated that the disease vector was a type of fly that reproduces in pig waste and that the outbreak was linked to the pig farms. It was unclear whether health officials had identified a suspected pathogen responsible for this outbreak."  read more »

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Jobless compete at unemployment Olympics

The increasing ranks of the unemployed today aren't just sitting around the house feeling sorry for themselves. A group of the recently job-deprived gathered in New York City's East Village on Tuesday, March 31 2009, for an event described as the Unemployment Olympics.

Rather than an expensive stadium and firework display, the inaugural jobless games took place in an appropriately low-budget concrete playground decorated with hand-painted cardboard signs. Events included "Pin the Blame on the Boss," a dash to the "unemployment office" and a content in which participants tossed an office phone at targets. A planned competition to see who could throw a fax machine the farthest was sadly canceled at the last minute due to safety concerns.  read more »