OLD AGE isn鈥檛 what it used to be.
Rachel MacKinley lives close to her 83-year-old mother Dorothy in the small
Suffolk coastal town of Aldeburgh, and pops in to see her each day to make sure
she is getting on all right. Summoned away on a business trip recently, she
decided it would be best to put Dorothy in a care home for the fortnight she was
abroad.
On her return, her mother seemed healthy and happy, but the bill she had run
up for sundries and extras was surprisingly steep. One particular item puzzled
her daughter: the cost of a daily taxi ride to and from her house.
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Rachel, who was paying the bill, challenged her mother about these trips. 鈥淢y
dear, pleasant as the care home might be,鈥� Dorothy explained, 鈥渋t is not online.
I had to return home each day to check my e-mail.鈥�
SORRY GUYS. It turns out that being nagged is good for you.
A recent survey of nearly 3000 husbands and wives in the US revealed that if
a wife works full-time, her husband鈥檚 chances of being in good health decline by
more than 25 per cent. The main reason: lack of 鈥渉ealth nagging鈥� by the
exhausted women.
More subtle factors, such as the wife having less time for organising social
contacts with friends and family, were also to blame. Meanwhile, whether the
wife was working or not, her own health remained the same.
Make of that what you will, but Ross Stolzenberg of the University of
Chicago, who conducted the study, thinks that gender roles learned in childhood
are to blame. He says that boys are taught to soldier on regardless, while girls
develop nurturing tendencies鈥攂oth for themselves and others. Or, to put it
another way, men are brought up to be hopeless at looking after themselves.
Feedback, who prefers to steer clear of the sex war, refuses to comment.
HOW MUCH do Americans know about science? Not much, the US National Science
Foundation鈥檚 biannual survey of scientific knowledge has revealed鈥攜et
again.
According to the latest survey, more than half of those who failed to finish
high school don鈥檛 know that the Earth goes around the Sun. Perhaps that鈥檚 not so
surprising, but the figures for those who go on to further education aren鈥檛 much
better.
Nearly one-third of respondents with graduate or professional degrees don鈥檛
know that it takes the Earth one year to orbit the Sun. In fact, more people
believe in extrasensory perception than understand what a year means, and more
than a third of adults agree that astrology is 鈥渧ery scientific鈥� or 鈥渟ort of
scientific鈥�. A comparable proportion believes in UFOs and that aliens have
landed on Earth鈥攎ore people than know what the big bang was.
The results, which are similar to previous years, are of course skewed by the
possibility that the people completing the survey forms are themselves aliens.
Intergalactic education standards, so our extrasensory perception informs us,
are even worse than here on Earth.
ONE OF our correspondents is now recovering from weeks of woe over his skin,
which readers will be interested to know has been covered with pus-filled
blisters, and some intensely itchy red lesions.
This affliction drove him to a dermatologist, who decided the blisters were
mere eczema, and prescribed pills and creams for it. But the other sores
mystified the doctor. 鈥淭hey look like bites to me鈥�, he said, before taking two
biopsies and sending them off to a pathologist.
A week later the pathologist backed him up, declaring in his report that the
lesions 鈥渁re not inconsistent with an arthropodal assault鈥�. We hope they are not
from either the Argentine ants or the killer bees mentioned in recent New
杏吧原创 articles. Meanwhile, the next time this happens, our
correspondent says he intends to open the window and scream: 鈥淗elp, I鈥檓 the
victim of an arthropodal assault.鈥�
GOOD ADVICE is worse than useless when it comes at the wrong time.
Reader Tristam Newhey writes to tell us that he and his wife received a teak
bench from the DIY store B&Q as a wedding present. The bench had to be
assembled, so they diligently followed the instructions, starting on page 1.
After a couple of hours of gluing and hammering they had put it together.
They turned with relief to the last page of the assembly instructions, where
they were told, in the very last paragraph: 鈥淭o ensure best protection against
weathering, the bench parts should be treated with one coat of teak oil prior to
补蝉蝉别尘产濒测.鈥�
For a few seconds, they contemplated dismantling the bench, then went to buy
a bench cover at the local garden centre.
FINALLY, for van drivers who leave their brains behind when they go for a
drive, here is some helpful advice from the manual for the Nissan Cargo Van:
鈥淩efill the fuel tank before the gauge registers empty.鈥�