1) To paraphrase Spock's "Live Long and Prosper" "To Live Long Drink Coffee." A research project in Britain involving a half million adult coffee drinkers showed that, over a ten year period, they had a slightly lower risk of death. In the past we knew drinking coffee didn't help to sober a person up. It just made them a wide awake drunk. Also, coffee might help keep a person awake longer. But this is new, the lower risk of death was the same for instant, ground or decaf. Lattes didn't do diddly.
2) These are troubling times for honeybees.
The last honeybee refuge in the US is disappearing. The country's hot spot for beekeeping is the Northern Great Plains of the Dakotas and neighboring states. One million bee colonies spend their summers feasting on pollen and nectar from wild flowers and plants. From 2006 to 2016 half of this land has been converted to raising crops like soybeans and corn. If this keeps up the land of milk and honey will just be the land of milk and corn.
3) Here are five questions, according to experts, you should ask yourself before getting married. 1. Is the relationship fair? 2. How did my parents instill certain expectations. 3. Do I want children? 4. What are my goals in life and are they compatible with my partners? 5. What am I going to do to prepare for marriage? The experts missed this important one. Do I agree that being married by an Elvis Impersonator in Vegas would be great? Unfortunately, for some, these expert's questions came way too late.
4) There are two plans to use a supertanker tanker to tow an iceberg from Antarctica to the UAE and cost between 50 and 60 million. There is another plan to tow an iceberg, rapped in textile insulation to keep it from melting, to drought stricken to Cape Town. While both of these plans are thought to be possible it might be two years before they can happen. Sadly, in two years, the Antarctica ice will have melted.
5) Americans read an average of 16.8 minutes per day and spend 168.2 minutes watching T.V. It might useful to learn, in addition to the time spent reading and watching, to know what was being read and watched. It also could be very depressing, not to mention scary, to find that out.
(Tom Murphy is a writer, humorist, actor, disc jockey and an occasional contributor to CityWatch. He lives in Los Angeles.)
-cw
