Chit chat fodder...gone wild!

I no longer experience the heady thrills of Reading Week, which is taking place right now at the educational institute that I work for. Instead, I provide random bits of information from my former customs broker that will make anyone look interesting and "in the know" at foam parties down in Florida.

Cactus with chicken, cactus with beef
A global network of agricultural research centres is warning that famines lie ahead unless new crop strains adapted to a warmer future are developed. New forecasts say warming will shrink South Asia's wheat area by half and there are now plans to accelerate efforts aimed at developing new strains of staple crops including maize, wheat, rice and sorghum. The most significant impact of climate change on agriculture is changes in rainfall. Increasing temperatures can also affect crops. Photosynthesis slows down as the thermometer rises, which also slows the plants' growth and capacity to reproduce.

Public Edutainment
A new British science textbook for schools claims that polar bears eat penguins, even though they live in separate hemispheres.

Private Edutainment
It is estimated that last Christmas, parents spent a small fortune on high-technology toys that claim to lift the intelligence of their young. The world-wide market for "edutainment" toys reached US$1.7-billion in 2005 and could total $5.5-billion by 2010. Other studies say that more than 50-per cent of all money lavished on toys during the holiday season was spent on preschool products that purport to enhance specific motor skills.

Motion sickness is the new cachet
In another first for the Gulf emirate of Dubai where the world's tallest skyscraper is now being built, plans have been unveiled to construct a 30-floor building that moves with the power of the sun to become the only rotating residential structure on the planet. Solar energy will be stored and used to drive the rotation mechanism to provide 360-degree views to every resident moving 52-degrees in 24 hours. A Dubai developer has also announced plans to build a new Russian city on 17,800 hectares near Moscow at a cost of US$11-billion.

Porn pipe fulfils all needs
A third of British Internet users watch less television once they have broadband, while 27-per cent read fewer national newspapers and almost a fifth switch off their radios according to new research. The picture is similar across France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the U.S., highlighting the threat posed by the web to traditional media. This same survey shows that Britons pay less for mobile phone, TV and internet services than their counterparts in Europe and the U.S.

Magnets for trouble
Experts are now warning that newer types of fridge magnets could be a killer of those with weak hearts. A stronger type of magnet used in many new commercial products can interfere with pacemakers and implanted heart devices with deadly consequences. The culprits are very strong magnets made from neodymium-boron which have only recently become available and are being used in computer hard drives, headphones and hi-fi speakers, as well as toys and jewellery.

Global warming provides seafood buffet
Russian trawlers are being built to exploit the Arctic seas opened up as the sea ice shrinks as a result of global warming. Industrial trawlers are already mopping up new fisheries stimulated by the lack of summer ice. Inuit communities on the east side of Greenland have banned all outside fishing for shrimp stocks that are growing in the absence of summer ice and have decided to exploit them themselves.

Watering eyes on the rise
With 42-inch flat-panel TVs flying off US retailers' shelves now that prices have dropped below US$1,000, experts predict that the 72-inch TV will be the norm by 2009 at a cost of around $3,000. An old 34-inch tube TV used to weigh around 90 kilograms: a 57-inch flat-panel LCD TV weighs only 55 kilograms.

Screw the electric car
The world's oil supply won't begin to run out for at least another 24 years, contrary to some theories that suggest production has already peaked and supply is now in a terminal decline. The Cambridge Energy Research Associates estimates remaining global supply at 3.74-trillion barrels compared with 1.2-trillion estimates by other theorists.

68% of workers chillax on the job
In a recent survey, 32-per cent of U.S. workers polled admitted to calling in sick when they felt well at least once a year and 10 per cent said they do it three or more times a year. The most popular motivator for missing work was the need to relax cited by 48-per cent of workers. For another 24-per cent it was a chance to catch up on sleep.