Beware of home repair
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that since 1991, nail gun injuries have risen about 200 percent. This rise is blamed on the increase in availability of inexpensive pneumatic nail guns in the 1990s.
The center reports that work-related nail gun injuries have stabilized since 1998, but consumer-related injuries have skyrocketed.
“During the 5-year period 2001-2005, an average of approximately 37,000 patients with injuries related to nail-gun use were treated annually in emergency departments, with 40 percent of injuries occurring among consumers,” the report stated.
Praying the wrong way – literally
A police station in The Hague tried to help its Muslim detainees in their prayers by painting arrows on the ceiling pointing at Mecca. Unfortunately, the arrows aren’t pointing in the right direction.
Muslims pray five times a day while facing east toward Mecca. The police station arrows pointed west, and have reportedly been corrected.
The idea for painting the arrows came from an Amsterdam hotel. Of the 16 million residents of the Netherlands, 1 million are Muslim.
Dickens gone Disney?
A Charles Dickens theme park has been built in the southeastern English town of Chatham’s naval dockyard where Dickens’ father worked as a clerk.
The park cost 62 million pounds ($115 million) to build and includes a “Great Expectations” boat ride and Ye Olde Curiosity Gift Shop.
Dickens World is confidently predicting it will see 300,000 visitors a year.
Leading up to its April 20 opening, critics have voiced their opposition to the park.
“There is a lot to fear here,” The New York Times said. “There is the prospect that characters from Dickens’ novels – Mr. Pecksniff and the Artful Dodger, Mr. Pickwick and Uriah Heep – will wander through Dickens World the way Goofy and Mickey walk the streets of Disneyland.”
Park developers insist that the attraction has an air of authenticity since they consulted experts from the Dickens Fellowship while building it.
Need for speed
An online poll run by Electronic Arts and AOL is finding out what music tracks get people in the mood to drive aggressively. While none of the tracks reached No. 1, the list spans 30 years of charting hits.
Some 1,700 voters have responded so far. The top tracks are Meat Loaf’s “Bat Out of Hell,” Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run,” Motorhead’s “Ace of Spades” and Guns N Roses’ “Paradise City.”
Other tracks were more modern, and included “You Will Be Under My Wheels” by The Prodigy, The Killers’ “When You Were Young” and Feeder’s “Buck Rogers.”