by Ian Punnett
A week away from Halloween! I love it when Halloween falls on a Friday or Saturday night, makes the world of spooky possibilities seem all the more real.
Do you dress up in costume anymore? Does your dog?
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My dog, Jack, will be in costume for my blog next Saturday but I won’t tell you what just yet.
Here’s a hint: Jack cannot stop himself from biting the throat out of stuffed animals.
The latest victim was some teddy bear that had come with a “get well” package for my wife, I think. When nobody was looking, Jack attacked and when we came back into the room there he was trying to look all innocent while the poor little teddy bear had his neck punctured and most of the stuffing pulled out of its head, left for dead.
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There’s the photo of the accused and his latest victim who, I’m afraid, had to be put down.
And by that I mean I had to put the teddy bear down because all the stuffing was coming out.
Next Saturday will be a party. Don’t forget the Fentiman’s.
Fentiman's Victorian Lemonade is at the center of an underage drinking debate in Maine after a teen at Houlton High School brought to school a bottle of the lemonade that he'd purchased from a store.
The Bangor Daily News reports officials from the Aroostook Substance Abuse Prevention Coalition and the Maine Alliance to Prevent Substance Abuse are investigating because the naturally fermented beverage contains less than 0.5 percent alcohol. The incident has other officials proposing the lemonade -- brewed since 1905 -- be reclassified as "imitation liquor," which can't be sold or consumed by minors -- a move that Fentiman's officials are fighting.
The company acknowledges that some alcohol is left in the beverage.
"We remove some components of the product during that process and also add flavoring," Greg Warwick, the president of Fentimans North America, told the paper. "What we end up with is a product that is a mixture of less than 1/2 percent alcohol because of the fermentation process. The FDA [Food and Drug Administration] has deemed this safe for all ages. There should be no restrictions on the distribution or sale of the product."
The school's principal said the student turned in the half-consumed bottle of lemonade after he read there could be alcohol in the soda. (www.slashfood.com)
Thank you, Martin Prince, for making Houlton High School just 0.5 percent safer.
No wonder older people think young people today have lost their senses. According to Pew Research:
Asked if young people today have as strong a sense of right and wrong as they did, say, 50 years ago, only 18% say yes, while 79% say no according to a 2005 Pew Research poll. This is about the same margin recorded in surveys since 1998.
Was there ever time when the older generation thought the one succeeding had half a brain?
In a June 1952 survey, for example, nearly six-in-ten respondents judged that youth of that era were as sharply attuned to right and wrong as their forebears. (Pew Research)
Must be all that Victorian Lemonade all those kids are drinking these days.
So how can we clean up our act? Apparently a little Windex will do:
People are unconsciously fairer and more generous when they are in clean-smelling environments, according to a soon-to-be published study led by a Brigham Young University professor.
The research found a dramatic improvement in ethical behavior with just a few spritzes of citrus-scented Windex.
The researchers see implications for workplaces, retail stores and other organizations that have relied on traditional surveillance and security measures to enforce rules.
"This is a very simple, unobtrusive way to promote ethical behavior,” the study indicates.
The study titled "The Smell of Virtue" was unusually simple and conclusive. Participants engaged in several tasks, the only difference being that some worked in unscented rooms, while others worked in rooms freshly spritzed with Windex. (Physorg.com)
Funny, but wasn’t that the theory in the movie “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”? Didn’t the main character’s father believe that a spritz of Windex could cure everything?
Maybe we’ll learn that someday Windex can make the world a less scary place.
Live Science has new survey of the top ten things that frighten us and scary spaces (elevators or any place where escape becomes difficult) actually comes in at #3. Horrible things like poisonous spiders, killer snakes and dentists all made the list (although not in the order that I would have put them).
At #8 on our Countdown, “Frightful Flights.” Live Science says:
There's no such thing as "the friendly skies" for the 25 million or so people in the United States who suffer from some form of flying fear. Such fears range from just a bit of anxiety to an extreme flying phobia called aviophobia that can keep a person off airplanes at any cost.
These frightful fliers fall into two evenly split groups: those who are afraid of plane crashes and those who are claustrophobic and risk a panic attack inside a plane's tight cabin quarters . . .
Like other phobias, reason plays little role in calming such crash fears. For instance, the lifetime odds of dying in an air travel accident are 1-in-20,000 compared with 1-in-100 for an auto accident and 1-in-5 from heart disease (based on 2001 statistics) or a 100% chance of being killed by a Boston Terrier named Jack if you are stuffed animal.
Think twice about dressing up as Winnie the Pooh if you’re coming trick-or-treating at my house.
You’ve been warned.