Carbon Monoxide Law

Found on KHQA Online

By Chad Douglas
Around 500 people die every year from Carbon Monoxide poisoning in the U-S.

But having a detector in your home could save your life…and after the first of the year, it’s state law in Illinois.

The Quincy Fire Department says the only exception is if you have an all electric house with a *de* tached garage.

The symptoms are flu like and will affect everyone in your home because C-O robs your body of oxygen.

The fire department recommends getting a detector with a digital readout.

 Assistant Chief Keith Frank says a normal home will have a reading of two or three parts per million.

Anything over that should be cause for concern.

FireWatch: Avoid fire when ‘making spirits bright’

Found on Daily Nonpareil

“‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse”
- Clement Clarke Moore

Those famous words, permanently ingrained into almost everyone’s memory banks, should help to serve as a reminder about holiday fire safety. What a glorious Christmas season this would be if we could all manage to stay safe and healthy through the season!

But another quote, perhaps not so famous or well-known, could be adapted as a guide for the season: “A Christmas candle is a lovely thing; It makes no noise at all, But softly gives itself away; While quite unselfish, it grows small.”

I am sure Eva K. Logue, who wrote the above, had no intention for her quote to serve as a guide for holiday fire safety, but it seems as though it might just work. Contrary to her observation that the flame grows small, an unattended candle can do just the opposite and grow quite large and out of control. Statistically, the incidence of fires caused by unattended candles grows almost exponentially during this oh-so-busy time of the year.

Last week, we had at least one fire caused by an unattended candle and Omaha had several.

With all of this in mind, I am simply asking everyone to be a little more careful with their candles this holiday season.

The Top 20 Weirdest gadgets of 2006

Found on Reg Hardware

It’s been one of those years when technology came on in leaps and bounds. Around the world, thousands of pointy-headed scientists and product designers beavered away in high-security laboratories, investing time, money and effort to create… more silly USB gadgets.

1. Gupi the robot guinea pig Complete with his animatronic carrot and 30 different sounds (most of which are presumably a variation on “WeeEEEeeeEE!”). Read more

2. The BeerBelly Released in time for the World
Cup, this gave football-loving men a false beer-belly full of, yes,
beer. Complete with a rubber tube to suck the booze through. Read more

3. Solar-powered insect theatre This eco-gadget
isn’t that silly, actually. It stores power in the day, then lights up
at night to attract moths and butterflies for you to watch. Their
version of Hamlet is a bit rubbish, mind. Read more

MIT Scientists Create One-Sided Mobius Pizza

Read the rest on BBspot

Cambridge, MA: Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have finally succeeded in creating the long sought after mobius pizza, a one sided pizza completely covered with toppings.

Mobius PizzaScience has long been aware that pizza lovers prefer toppings more than a bare crust. “We’ve attempted to solve this problem by adding flavorings and or cheese to outer crust or to make a deep dish styled pie filled with toppings,” stated MIT’s Chief Scientist of Foodology, Dr. John Jacobs. “Of course such actions did nothing regarding the pizza’s long ignored side, the bottom side.”

Pizza scientists, philosophers, and theologians have long theorized of the existence of a one sided pizza completed covered with rich gooey toppings for the utmost in pizza pleasure.

Back on December 18th

Working on a program coding deadline for ISO improvement.  I’ll be back next week.

Bargain-hunters unafraid of smoke

Found on United Press International

MENTOR, Ohio, Dec. 8 (UPI) — Firefighters responding to a blaze at an Ohio department store had more trouble getting bargain-hunters out than they did extinguishing the fire.

The fire at the Dillards South store in the Great Lakes Mall in Mentor was under control within 8 minutes of the firefighters’ arrival. But the smoke was another matter.

“It was amazing,” Battalion Chief Joe Busher of the Mentor Fire Department told the Willoughby News Herald. “Even though there was heavy smoke in there, they all wanted to stay and shop. We even had to put people at the door to keep people from coming in.”

Georgia erases 519 places off the map

Found on Pioneer Times Journal

CHATTOOGAVILLE, Ga. - Poetry Tulip has vanished. So have Between and Climax. Cloudland and Roosterville are gone, too.

Georgia‘s Department of Transportation, which drew the new map, said that the goal was to make it clearer and less cluttered and that many of the dropped communities were mere "placeholders," generally with fewer than 2,500 people. Some are unincorporated and so small they are not even recognized by the Census Bureau .

Gone are such places as Ty Ty, Centralhatchee, Deepstep, Gay, Good Hope, Gum Branch, Talking Rock, Young Harris and Chattoogaville, a spot in far northwestern Georgia that consists of little more than a two-truck volunteer fire department, a few farmhouses and a country store where locals fill up their gas tanks.

That doesn‘t ease the snub to the people who live in those places.