xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx
Matthew and Elaine Sweetapple recently invented a “game of skill, power, speed and endurance,” consisting of a biodegradable ball (smaller than a golf ball) placed in a urinal, to be disintegrated by a urinator (either alone or in “competition”). The product, Peeball, was launched for sale (equivalent of $1.70) late in 2002 by Great Britain’s Prostate Cancer Charity, which hopes the novelty will call attention to its cause, in that players with prostate problems are typically poor at the game. Player strategies, basically, are (1) direct stream and (2) intermittent stream.
Two British zoologists and a psychologist started a business consulting firm in November to teach executives to handle risk based on lessons from animal behavior. Founders Alex Kacelnik and Sir John Krebs (University of Oxford) said it was their work with starlings and crows that told them that animals, including humans, approach risk in similar ways (e.g., a petroleum company exploring for oil is similar to a bird foraging for food).
In December, the British subsidiary of the German firm Condomi selected 10 men from among 10,000 college students across Great Britain to be condom testers, paying them a rate of about $170 per term to test for comfort and convenience, with unlimited supplies (of condoms, not partners). Newcastle University law student Dave Chapman, one of the 10, told a reporter in December that he thinks the assignment is “to get through as many as humanly possible.”
Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679 or [email protected]
Copyright © 2001 by Chuck Shepherd
NEWS OF THE WEIRD
