Britons Bring Bowel Bacteria Onto Buses

by Mike Barish on

I’ve never been much of a germaphobe. I don’t carry Purell with me. I don’t wash my hands obsessively. And I don’t walk around with a mask on. But then I come across a story like this one on the BBC News website and I start to question whether I should live in a bubble. A recent recent study by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (is there a better location for the study of tropical medicine?) has discovered that more than one in four commuters in the UK has bacteria associated with fecal matter on their hands.

Dr. Val Curtis, director of the Hygiene Center at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said, “If any of these people had been suffering from a diarrhoeal disease, the potential for it to be passed around would be greatly increased by their failure to wash their hands after going to the toilet.” That, quite frankly, is more than I need from my daily commute. I’m just looking to get from Point A to Point B. Point D(iarrhea) is not part of my plan.

I ride the New York City subways to work everyday and I will admit that I avoid holding onto the bars/poles in the trains as much as possible. If I have to hold on, I typically wrap my arm around the pole so as to keep my hands clean. But sometimes you just have to grab on. However, I’m fairly certain that I don’t have fecal matter all over my hands. Because I wash them after I use the toilet. It’s everyone else who is apparently wiping their asses barehanded and then touching everything.

So, as we approach cold and flu season, perhaps it’s time to remind ourselves to wash our hands often. And use toilet paper instead of just our hands. It’s a great big world out there but it’s the tiny bacteria that will kill you. Or at least ravage your GI tract. Be sure to wave at me when I pass by in my bubble.

Text messages on London’s Trafalgar Square go up in smoke

by Jeffrey White on

Are you bored with just plain text messaging?

In London, it seems that plenty are. Recently an experimental architecture and design firm called Minimaforms unveiled a new communication model inspired by smoke signals, according to the blog PSFK.

It’s called Memory Cloud, and it is dubbing itself a “media art project.” How it works is that you send an SMS to a certain number, which then somehow translates your message into artificially created smoke.

PSFK quotes the artists behind Memory Cloud explaining the project, which strikes the same kind of vague chord that most types of participatory art seems to these days.

“Memory Cloud creates a dynamic hybrid space that will project personal statements as part of an evolving text, animating the built environment through conversation. The method of textual inscription works with light as virtual ink that perceptually writes and erases through a cinematic interplay with the external environment. Memory Cloud aims to motivate social interaction through the construction of an environment that is given form through a collective act of writing space.”

So, if you want your messages read by strangers walking through Trafalgar Square, this could be for you one day.

You can see some of the messages that Memory Cloud captured during its Oct. 8-10 unveiling at Minimaforms’ Web site.

For sale – one underground bunker in London

by Scott Carmichael on

Feeling a tad paranoid? Is the downward spiral of the economy becoming too much to handle? Why not relocate to London and move into your very own underground bunker complex!

The Kingsway tunnel bunker complex was originally built as an air raid shelter and as a spare war room for the British government.

After the second world war, the tunnels were handed over to the Post Office who used it as a telephone exchange. When the phone exchange switched to automated dialing system, the bunker became obsolete again and has been on the market since 1996.

The bunker is a whopping 77,000 square feet, which is more than enough for your average bachelor pad. In its original state, it was large enough to provide shelter for 8000 people. Unfortunately you’ll need a spare 5 million pounds (almost 9 million dollars) before you can move in.

Some of the ideas being floated around for the bunker include a car showroom (HUH?), a snooker club or a firing range.

According to the current owners (British Telecom), the structure is unsuitable for conversion to a hotel or office, so that rules out that concept. Personally, I think it would make a fantastic museum.

If you are interested in buying the complex, or if you just want to learn more about the Kingsway tunnel and other underground structures, I suggest checking out the fantastic site of Subterranea Britannica who have been documenting the Kingsway tunnel for years.

Wearing a political T-shirt can get you shot if you happen to come across a nutcase

by Jamie Rhein on

The U.S. election is heating up–even in Great Britain. Earlier this week [UPI.com reported the story on Oct. 7}, a man in London was shot three times because he was wearing a T-shirt in support of Barack Obama.

At the time of the shooting, the man was buying a cell phone and minding his own business when a guy came up to him and shouted racial slurs about the Obama T-shirt.. Not comfortable with the barrage of verbal abuse, the man zipped up his jacket and got into his car.

At that point, the nutcase pointed a gun at him and shot him–not just once once, but two more times for good measure. After being shot, Dube Egwuatu drove to call for help and was taken to a hospital. He said that the gunman had tried to get him to go somewhere with him.

Good thinking Egwuatu. As everyone ought to know, you never, ever, ever, ever, go with a person who is pointing a gun at you. That’s what I’ve read anyway. You have a better chance of survival if you immediately try to get away.

The gun, a gas-powered ball bearing pistol, left a piece of metal in Egwuatu’s jaw.

Personally, I’d say the gunman has a few screws loose, and is using the T-shirt as an excuse to go all vigilante on someone who happens to be black. Still, it’s unfortunate that cases like this one points out that freedom of speech can have dangerous consequences if one happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time–although, I’m betting that such instances are very, very rare. Although, I was living in India during September 11 and was very uncomfortable driving in any car that had a U.S. government license plate. After awhile, the feeling lessened.

The story did not say if the gunman was caught. I sure hope so.

Just yesterday, as I was driving through a neighborhood with both McCain and Obama signage peppering its yards, I thought how great it is that neighbors can have differences of opinion and still rake their leaves together, say “hello” and lend cups of sugar if asked.

Oktoberfest can be expensive… especially if you take a £2,000 cab to get there

by Anna Brones on

Have you ever missed a flight? It’s a stressful and frustrating situation, especially if you have a carefully planned out itinerary that requires your presence in certain places at certain times. When a man named Dave missed his flight from Portsmouth to Munich — where he was to celebrate his friend’s bachelor party by drinking beer at Oktoberfest — he decided to forgo the airlines. Instead he hailed a cab.

“I thought he was having a laugh to start off with or it was one of my cabbie mates doing a wind-up on me but he was deadly serious,” says Mick Hogan, the cab driver who was hailed down by Dave. Hogan explained that the cab ride would cost £1,950 plus £250 for the English Channel tunnel and a hotel for the night, but the high price didn’t stop the passenger; it was Munich or bust.

The drive from Portsmouth to Munich certainly isn’t a short one, but Hogan didn’t find the task so boring after all, “It’s not something I’d want to do every day but it beats taking a few pensioners out to the shops.”