Watching the World

Sick Videos

Open-heart surgery in which the patient dies of cardiac arrest, executions of revolutionaries by firing squads, a convict dying in the electric chair, and a park ranger mauled to death by an alligator are but some of the actual death scenes now available for viewing on rental videotapes. A three-volume series entitled Faces of Death gruesomely shows explicit motion-picture footage of people dying. How is the public reacting to this video series? “We can’t keep it on the shelf,” one video-store clerk in Virginia Beach, Virginia, told The Virginian-Pilot and the Ledger-Star, a Virginia newspaper. “As soon as it comes in, someone checks it out.” One angry viewer objecting to the film’s contents has mounted a campaign to have local shops remove the videos. Commenting on the film, she said: “It’s violently pornographic.”

Costly Protection

With shoplifting costing retailers in the United States about $30 billion a year, it is no wonder that there is a growing industry producing antishoplifting devices. Among these are EAS (Electronic Article Surveillance) products called targets. They are either plastic disks that are attached to items like clothing, a magnetic fiber as “fine as a human hair,” or “an electronic circuit that is built into a disposable price tag.” The “targets” can be removed or deactivated by employees at the time you pay for your purchases. The customers of the stores that use these devices have to exit through or past a unit that gives off a signal if the “target” has not been properly deactivated. Sales of these devices have already reached $150 million.

New Cold Cure?

Why is it said that Norwegian lumberjacks rarely catch a cold? According to Dr. Olav Braenden, the answer lies in the woodsmoke they inhale, reports The Times of London. A cold virus needs a good supply of oxygen to reproduce. However, it can be inhibited by vitamins B and C and also, it is believed, by polyphenols. These substances, found in Norwegian woodsmoke, restrict the supply of oxygen to the mucous membrane of the nose. It is reported that nose drops containing these three ingredients have been tested on 300 Norwegian air force personnel with a claimed cold-cure success rate of 82 percent. “The important thing is to take the drops at the first signs of a cold,” stresses research director Dr. Anton Rodahl, “before the virus has done any damage to the mucous epithelium [lining] in the nose.” Commercial sale of the medication started in Norway this year.

Facsimile Worship

Japanese schoolchildren, anxious to get into good schools, use technology to approach their gods. How so? According to Asahi Shimbun, a Tokyo newspaper, a pupil enters his name, address, school year, and the name of the hoped-for school into a facsimile unit attached to a telephone. This information is then relayed to a Shinto shrine where a priest reads it out and makes supplication at a cost of 3,000 yen ($20, U.S.). Shrine authorities say, “Worshiping before the altar yourself is of course preferred.” However, a priest of Dazaifu Tenmangu in Kyushu, Japan’s most popular shrine dedicated to education, explained that shrewd people living near the shrine have been charging up to 20,000 yen ($140, U.S.) to represent worshipers. The priests objected to having worship made into a business by people not connected with the shrine. They decided: “Facsimile also conveys the feelings of the heart. The effect is the same,” and they offered a service at a cheaper rate.

Survival Cards

Finding avalanche victims has long been the concern of skiers and mountaineers alike. Although various types of transmitter-receivers exist, few people use them because of their cost and the relative weight and bulkiness of some battery-powered models. However, a team of French researchers are working on a new idea​—survival cards. Carried on the chest and back of each skier or mountaineer, they would cost just a few dollars, require no batteries, and would be about the size of a credit card. How do they work? The French daily Le Figaro reports that they would act like mirrors, reflecting part of a radio signal back to the rescue team equipped with a fairly powerful transmitter. In tests made with prototypes, researchers have already succeeded in detecting people buried under as much as 30 feet (9 m) of snow.

Stealing From the Government

A recent audit of Canadian government assets revealed losses of from $3 million to $4 million in government property annually. Although the goods are officially described as missing, it was admitted that they were “probably stolen.” The Toronto Star reported that among the things missing are liquor, color TV sets, typewriters, desk lamps, dictaphones, 35-mm cameras, overhead projectors, calculators, an outboard motor, and a freezer. Another form of theft from the government showed up in almost $60 million taken from Canada’s unemployment insurance by persons who tried to beat the system. “There were 180,458 incidents of fraud,” according to the newspaper The Globe and Mail. Happily, of that loss, “$32.3-million was recovered.”

Distinctive Cries

Can a mother identify her own baby’s cries from those of other infants? Yes, reports The Sunday Times of London. But motherly intuition goes even further, according to the findings of Dr. Alain Lazartigues, a child psychiatrist at La Pitié Salpetrière Hospital in Paris. From the pitch of the cry, she can also determine the reason for it, whether the child is hungry, wet, angry, or sick. Hunger, the most common cause for a baby’s cry, has a high-pitched tone between 270 and 450 hertz and ranges between 80 and 85 decibels. Cries of pain, rage, frustration, and pleasure, the doctor claims, likewise have their own unique acoustic characteristics. He noted that for certain illnesses, the cries of the child can prove helpful in diagnosis.

Veterans and TV War

Violence and war are regularly featured on television and news programs. Movies, especially, tend to present warfare in a glorified way. War veterans, however, who have experienced its bitter horrors often fail to find such televised events entertaining. Stan Knorth, a World War I veteran, now 90 years old, told the St. Louis Magazine: “When I see all that shooting and stuff on TV, I turn it off.” The reason? “I can’t take it. I don’t want to remember it,” Knorth explained.

Chronic Insomnia

A man suffering from chronic insomnia went nine months without sleep and then he died, reports the Evening Press of Dublin, Ireland. Describing the cause of death, Professor Elio Lugaresi, neurologist with the University of Bologna Medical School in Italy, explained that the rare disease affects the thalamus, a cerebral nerve circuit that passes messages between the brain and the body. When communications were interrupted, “the brain centre acted like a motor that could not be switched off.” Though the victim endeavored to resist the disease, he became the 14th member of his family to die, since 1822, from lack of sleep. Lugaresi’s report on the case has alerted other scientists to the apparent role genetics and the thalamus play in severe insomnia cases. Lugaresi explains: “We know the mechanics of the disease, but we have no way to stop it.”