And now . . . this - Jan. 28/05

Beer: Not just for breakfast anymore

Who says drinking is bad for you? From the home of one of my favourite lagers, or at least near it:

A Slovak man trapped in his car under an avalanche freed himself by drinking 60 bottles of beer and urinating on the snow to melt it.

Rescue teams found Richard Kral drunk and staggering along a mountain path four days after his Audi car was buried in the Slovak Tatra mountains. . . .

He had 60 half-litre bottles of beer in his car as he was going on holiday, and after cracking one open to think about the problem he realised he could urinate on the snow to melt it, local media reported.

[Full Story]

This does raise an important question. Since beer looks like urine, how come the more beer you drink, the less your urine looks like beer?

I knew I liked Stolichnaya for a reason . . .

Another heartwarming story of a life-saving adult beverage:

A 30-year-old Muscovite fell out of the window of his friend's apartment on the fourth storey of an apartment block. The man stood up on his feet and returned back to the apartment as if nothing had happened.

According to the information from the Moscow Rescuing Service, the man named only as Oleg, came to see his friends on Friday night to have a friendly discussion. The company of men finished with two bottles of vodka rather quickly. No one of them saw Oleg leaving the party. They noticed that Oleg did not return to the apartment from the balcony, where he went out to have a smoke and take a breath of fresh air.

[Full Story]

I suspect the vodka had little to do with saving his life so much as numbing the pain of the sudden stop at the bottom. I'm reminded of one Friday night in university when one of the engineering frosh, in an extreme state of chemical-induced merriment, launched himself out of our second-story window. He enjoyed it so much he came back for another jump. (God bless you, Skippy, wherever you are!)

Screw you!

Friends don't let friends drink and ice-fish:

A man is accused of attacking a friend with an ice auger after the two argued over where to drop their fishing lines during an ice-fishing outing.

Michael Olson, 25, suffered cuts on his arm and had to be taken by ambulance to St. Cloud Hospital, where he was treated and released, the Stearns County Sheriff's Department said.

[Full Story]

You know, you can really do some damage with one of those things, if you can get your enemy to stand still for about five minutes.

Torpedoes away, Keptin!

The story is a bit old, but the rumour mill only brought it to my attention today:

The U.S. Air Force is quietly spending millions of dollars investigating ways to use a radical power source - antimatter, the eerie "mirror" of ordinary matter - in future weapons. . . .

The energy from colliding positrons and antielectrons "is 10 billion times ... that of high explosive," Edwards explained in his March speech. Moreover, 1 gram of antimatter, about 1/25th of an ounce, would equal "23 space shuttle fuel tanks of energy." Thus "positron energy conversion," as he called it, would be a "revolutionary energy source" of interest to those who wage war.

[Full Story]

Yeah, but the thing is, they're also going to have to spend gazillions on R&D for the kick-ass vehicle they're going to need to deploy this puppy: