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Strange News for the Day... - Fairiedust - 07-07-2005

If the wine talks to you, maybe it's time to stop

Wed Jul 6,12:06 PM ET



Who needs a sommelier? A "talking" wine label could soon tell consumers in Italy everything they want to know about a particular bottle -- from its production history to the kind of food it should accompany.

"The idea is to bring the oenologist to the table so that each wine can explain itself in the first person," said Daniele Barontini, whose Tuscan company Modulgraf is putting the final touches on the product to be launched in November.

"We envision our talking wine label in restaurants, wine stores and at vineyards that offer wine tasting," he told Reuters Wednesday.

The new "label" would consist of a chip implanted in the bottle that could be listened to with a small device about the size of a cigarette package in the wine shop or the restaurant.

"It could tell you how to enjoy the wine, where it came from, everything you'd hear from a sommelier," Barontini said. "You could even have music."

He said producers of some of Italy's finest wines, like Brunello, had already expressed interest.

Modulgraf, a company specialized in wine labels and products aimed at preventing counterfeit, plans to launch the "talking wine label" -- which still doesn't have an official name -- at Milan's prestigious wine fair in November.

The label was patented by German engineer Florentin Doring, who works with Modulgraf. It could also help prevent counterfeiting, say its creators.

Strange News for the Day... - Fairiedust - 07-07-2005

If You Really Want A Drink...



CANBERRA (Reuters) - Alcohol has been banned in two small Australian Aboriginal communities to stop young people from a nearby alcohol-free township from risking their lives by swimming a crocodile-infested river to get a drink. Aboriginal elders from the communities of Perrederr and Nardirri, about 270 km (168 miles) southwest of the tropical northern city of Darwin, asked for the ban, which was granted by the Northern Territory Licensing Commission.

"In the recent past ... young people had been known to swim across the Moyle River from a restricted area in order to drink at Nardirri," the commission said after a petition by Felix Gumbaduk, a traditional owner of land covering the two communities.

"The Moyle River has a healthy population of crocodiles and it was a real concern to him not only that someone may be killed but that his family might be blamed," the commission said.

Perrederr and Nardirri are home to about 40 people.

Australia's 400,000 Aboriginals and Torres Strait islanders, who make up two percent of the 20 million population, remain the most disadvantaged group, dying 20 years younger than other Australians amid high rates of unemployment and alcohol abuse.

Since 1979, Northern Territory Aboriginal communities have been able to have areas declared alcohol-free with penalties including forfeiture of cars or boats used to transport alcohol, fines of up to A$2,000 ($1,500) and up to two years in jail.

Crocodile attacks make headlines in Australia, yet only about a dozen people have been killed in the past 20 years. But the Northern Territory's population has exploded to around 70,000 animals in the wild with another 18,000 in six crocodiles farms. ($1=A$1.33)

Strange News for the Day... - Fairiedust - 07-07-2005

Man Lights Himself on Fire to Propose (Idiot)

Wed Jul 6, 8:02 PM ET



To prove his love, a 38-year-old man set himself on fire before getting down on one knee and asking his girlfriend to marry him.

About 100 people gathered to watch Todd Grannis perform the flaming stunt on Monday, which involved wearing a cape soaked in gasoline.

Grannis climbed up a 10-foot scaffold, was set on fire and then plunged into a swimming pool, dousing the blaze. Emerging unscathed, he got down on one knee and proposed, as a friend standing nearby slipped him the engagement ring.

"Honey, you make me hot," he told his sweetheart, Malissa Kusiek. "I hope I'm getting the point across that I'm on fire for you."

Kusiek, who has been dating Grannis for several years, said "yes," but added that she was a little angry because of the danger.

"At first I was mad, because I thought, 'He's not a stuntman,'" Kusiek said. "Then, of course, the tears started flowing. Of course I said yes. I was so thrilled."

Grannis said he came up with the stunt through the help of his friend, professional stuntman Eric Barkey. Barkey pulled out a photo of himself on fire and said, "You could do that," Grannis said.

Grannis met Kusiek, the owner of a local hair salon, when she cut his hair.

"I kept telling her sometime before I'm 50," said Grannis, who co-owns an Internet wholesale company. "She wasn't expecting it. She had no clue."

___

Strange News for the Day... - Fairiedust - 07-07-2005

Burgers from a lab? Study says it's possible, (this isn't right..)

Thu Jul 7, 8:04 AM ET



Laboratories using new tissue engineering technology might be able to produce meat that is healthier for consumers and cut down on pollution produced by factory farming, researchers said on Wednesday.

While NASA engineers have grown fish tissue in lab dishes, no one has seriously proposed a way to grow meat on commercial levels.

But a new study conducted by University of Maryland doctoral student Jason Matheny and his colleagues describe two possible ways to do it.

Writing in the journal Tissue Engineering, Matheny said scientists could grow cells from the muscle tissue of cattle, pigs, poultry or fish in large flat sheets on thin membranes. These sheets of cells would be grown and stretched, then removed from the membranes and stacked to increase thickness and resemble meat.

Using another method, scientists could grow muscle cells on small three-dimensional beads that stretch with small changes in temperature. The resulting tissue could be used to make processed meat such as chicken nuggets or hamburgers.

"There would be a lot of benefits from cultured meat," Matheny said in a statement. "For one thing, you could control the nutrients."

Meat is high in omega-6 fatty acid, which is desirable, but not in large amounts. Healthful omega-3 fatty acids, such as those found in walnuts and fish oils, could be substituted.

"Cultured meat could also reduce the pollution that results from raising livestock, and you wouldn't need the drugs that are used on animals raised for meat," Matheny said.

Raising livestock requires million of gallons of water and hundreds of acres of land. Meat grown from tissue would bypass those requirements.

The demand for meat is increasing worldwide, Matheny said. "China's meat demand is doubling every ten years," he said. "Poultry consumption in India has doubled in the last five years."

Writing in this month's Physics World, British physicist Alan Calvert calculated that the animals eaten by people produce 21 percent of the carbon dioxide that can be attributed to human activity. He recommends people switch to a vegetarian diet as a way to battle global warming.

"Worldwide reduction of meat production in the pursuit of the targets set in the Kyoto treaty seems to carry fewer political unknowns than cutting our consumption of fossil fuels," he said in a statement.

The Kyoto treaty is a global agreement aimed at reducing production of so-called greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide that help fuel global warming.

Strange News for the Day... - Flumper Barflusterbutt - 07-07-2005

How do you lock these fucking threads?