FEAST OR FAMINE

So I Hit Him: Surviving life as an institutionalised alien (2013) is a powerful memoir of growing up in foster care and institutions. Whatham is writing at the age of 60, reflecting on his journey through life. Whatham begins in Manchester, England, on the day of his birth in June 1952. He was told that his mother died during childbirth – with him and his twin brother – and that his father walked out of the hospital, never to be seen again. ‘I know now this to be a lie.’ His parents had other children: Joyce (1948) – still living, Jeanette (1950) who died just before her third birthday, Kenneth (1951) who died a month after birth, and the twins (1952). He learned that his mother, Evelyn, died in 1953 when she was 28 years old. And he learned that he had a twin later in life. Mick (Michael) was born with Ausperger’s syndrome and cerebral palsy, having to wear calipers on his legs to enable him to walk. By the age of 17 he had been placed in more than 30 institutions...

There is a parasitic vine called a vampire vine. It sucks the sap out of feral weeds, and it is being hailed as a new agent for biocontrol. The vampire vine helps to destroy European (alien) weeds in Australia (New Scientist, 22 April 2016). Actually the real name is not vampire vine. It is devil’s twine – Cassytha pubescens . Robert Cirocco of the University of Adelaide in South Australia says the vampire vine kills a variety of European weeds, such as gorse, Scotch broom, and blackberry. The vampire vines – the devil’s twine – attach small suckers to the stems of the weeds and sucks out their water and nutrients, leaving the weeds bloodless – well, sapless. Plants don’t have blood.   Cirocco says that the vampire vines will save farmers and the government millions of dollars, which is the money it takes to eradicate the invasive weeds that kill native plants. For example, gorse ( Ulex europaeus ) costs more than US $5.5 million a year to eradicate from farmlan...

Why do so many socks go missing in a household? Even in a household of one person. Two scientists have devised a formula for predicting sock loss. Note though – the announcement of the formula is a clever and comical advertisement strategy for the launch of Samsung’s new innovative washing machine that has a compartment for loose socks (it’s called the Addwash ecobubble) – so that socks can be washed during any part of the washing cycle. The scientists reveal that each person loses, on average, 1.3 socks per month, which is 84 million lost socks in the United Kingdom every month! Per person, it amounts to 1,264 socks over a lifetime, costing 2,528 British pounds in losses. Psychologist Dr. Simon Moore and statistician Dr. Geoff Ellis collaborated to determine the formula for sock loss (Mirror, 24 April 2016). Factors take into account the type of wash, laundry load, the number of people in a household, the number of socks washed, the degree of attention to the task, and ...