Firefighters wearing protective breathing apparatus were called to D'Arblay Street, Soho, after reports of noxious smoke filling the air. Police closed off three roads and evacuated homes following the alert. Specialist crews broke down the door to the Thai Cottage restaurant at 1900 BST on Monday where they discovered the source - a 9lb pot of chillies. The restaurant had been preparing Nam Prik Pao, a red-hot Thai dip which uses extra-hot chillies which are deliberately burnt.
Reminds me of the time when me chinese flatmate made some spicy stuff in the kitchen and the Europeans were horrified with the smell!!!
And here is the list of the 2007 Ig Nobel prize winners (my favourite is the linguistics one):-
2007 Ig Nobel Winners
Medicine - Brain Witcombe, of Gloucestershire Royal NHS Foundation Trust, UK, and Dan Meyer for their probing work on the health consequences of swallowing a sword.
Physics - A US-Chile team who ironed out the problem of how sheets become wrinkled.
Biology - Dr Johanna van Bronswijk of the Netherlands for carrying out a creepy crawly census of all of the mites, insects, spiders, ferns and fungi that share our beds.
Chemistry - Mayu Yamamoto, from Japan, for developing a method to extract vanilla fragrance and flavouring from cow dung.
Linguistics - A University of Barcelona team for showing that rats are unable to tell the difference between a person speaking Japanese backwards and somebody speaking Dutch backwards.
Literature - Glenda Browne of Blue Mountains, Australia, for her study of the word "the", and how it can flummox those trying to put things into alphabetical order.
Peace - The US Air Force Wright Laboratory for instigating research and development on a chemical weapon that would provoke widespread homosexual behaviour among enemy troops.
Nutrition - Brian Wansink of Cornell University for investigating the limits of human appetite by feeding volunteers a self-refilling, "bottomless" bowl of soup.
Economics - Kuo Cheng Hsieh of Taiwan for patenting a device that can catch bank robbers by dropping a net over them.
Aviation - A National University of Quilmes, Argentina, team for discovering that impotency drugs can help hamsters to recover from jet lag.
And thank goodness for politicians who in their zeal to try to appear knowledgeable and take every opportunity to get themselves air time in the papers, but end up most of the time with their foot in their mouths!!! Here's my favourite last week:-
A new identity or even new look can be arranged for the person or persons who took the controversial video of a prominent lawyer allegedly brokering the appointment of judges, said Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Mohamed Nazri Aziz.
He said such measures were defined under the Witness Protection Act to ensure the person's identity was protected.
“Under the Act, they will not only be protected but can also undergo (plastic) surgery to change their look,” he told reporters after handing out duit raya and goodies to old folks in Lubuk Merbau here yesterday.
“My assurance is that we have an Act to protect them (the witnesses) ... if we don’t believe in the Government, who would we trust?"
A couple of days later - after everyone were scratching their heads over this apparently phantom Witness Protection Act - this appeared:-
Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz will push for the Witness Protection Bill to be tabled in Parliament as soon as possible and for it to be made retrospective.
So, back to Nazri's question on whether can we believe in the Government - in the light of the above, can we? At least we know now who we can't trust.
*Peaked in #3 in the UK, this was used in most of his concerts at that time as the opening number.
No comments:
Post a Comment