DAVID ADAMS looks at the odder side of life…
• Following on from last week, we again cast our eyes to the Olympics and some of its odder moments. Firstly, to the mystery of the bright green pools and the poor officials who eventually had to admit that it was a chemical error which caused them to turn green (the chemical was apparently much loved by algae who grew at an incredible rate – you can find more techical details on what happened here). Then there was the moment when the American team decided to appeal the judges’ decision at the gymnastics following US competitor Laurie Hernandez’s beam routine and had to get their hands on some cold hard cash to pay for an inquiry to be launched (apparently that’s how it’s done in gymnastics). And there’s the strange tape that some athletes are wearing on their bodies – it’s apparently known as kinesiology or kinesio tape and is applied to help support muscles (and, of course, while we’re talking about alternate therapies, there’s the many sightings of weird circular bruises on US champ Michael Phelps’ body – it’s due to what is known as ‘cupping’).
PICTURE: Sergio Sanchex/www.freeimages.com
• Mosquitos are usually in the news for all the wrong reasons – malaria, Dengue fever and, more recently, Zika virus. In the Russian town of Berezniki, however, they’re reportedly the cause of celebration as people come together for an annual festival – the Russian Mosquito Festival – where awards are given out for people who attract the most bites and attendees usually (although not this year due to the lack of mozzies) engage in a mosquito hunt. There’s also a mosquito themed costume contest, a most horrible mosquito squeak contest and relevant music and eats. Oh, and the winner of this year’s ‘tastiest girl’ award was nine-year-old Irina Ilyukhina who was bitten 43 times while collecting berries in a nearby forest (well below the 2013 effort of 100 bites but still a winner!).
• Dogs, it seems are not our best friends after all. New research has found that they actually act mostly out of self-interest. Published in Plos One, the research reportedly involved 24 adult dogs and looked at how the dogs reacted when an object helpful to a human – a notebook – and an object of interest to the dog – a toy – were placed in separate corners of a room. Observations were recorded about the dog’s behaviour when humans came into the room and made a show of searching for the notebook (there was also a stapler placed as a control item). The study found that the dogs were most likely to approach the toy and that only if that was taken out of the experiment were they then most likely to approach the notebook. And here we were thinking they loved us!
PICTURE: Robert F. Tobler/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 3.0
• And this week’s odd church? The metallic, box-like Donau City Church of Vienna, Austria. Designed by Heinz Tesar, this Roman Catholic Church is formally known as Christus, Hoffnung der Welt (Christ, Hope of the World). Built in 1999, the church is clad with panels of chromium steel and has been described by the architect as “representing the 21st century”. The cold exterior opens to a warm, birch and Canadian maple lined interior.
