news roundup

1. The reason everybody seems to have allergies this year in the extremely dry Southwest is that our mucous membranes are all dried out, leaving everybody susceptible to the minute amounts of pollens our practically-dead plants have managed to produce. The source quoted by the article goes on to briefly discuss the effects of positive ions in wind on people, and I understand you can get positive ions in flowing air from the effects of friction. So, you may ask, where the heck are the negative ions? My current theory is that they end up in the ocean or the ground, and then eventually there'll be a thunderstorm someplace to even things out.

2. Here's another article about soft drinks that'll kill you. (We originally learned that soft drinks'll kill you in March.) Also, Sunny D has lots of sugar and preservatives so it's not good for you, but it's really not good for fish (not that this is funny, but do not fail to enlarge the picture).

3. Speaking of spills, 100 gallons of sulfuric acid spilled onto the street near the U of A because a water pipe backed up. They use sulfuric acid to treat the water at the university's cooling plant. I have no idea how that works.

4. In other news, if people who don't believe in evolution are offended by the idea that we evolved from apes, suggesting that we interbred with chimpanzees, even 5 or 6 million years ago, is not going to make things any better.

Update: I missed a sewage spill in DC, so:
5. A regional sewage treatment plant in the DC area lost power for three hours, resulting in 17 million gallons of raw sewage getting into the Potomac River. The spill is apparently nothing to worry about because

EPA spokeswoman Terri White said the spill will be diluted quickly because of the Potomac's rapid flow. She said the size of the spill "is less than what you would typically get during a major wet weather event," when the city's combined sewer-stormwater pipes often overflow into waterways.

So, you know, nothing to worry about there.