Fruit twist
IN FLORENCE, the Palazzo Strozzi has spent the last few months hosting two giant slides running from the upper floors to the ground level, part of an installation by German artist Carsten H枚ller. The Florence Experiment promises 鈥渁 reflection on the relationship between human beings and plants鈥�.
Specifically, visitors descend one of two chutes carrying a bean plant, which is then examined by a team of scientists who 鈥渁nalyse the photosynthetic parameters and molecules emitted in response to the sliding experience鈥�, and compare this with plants sent down the slide on their own, or not at all.
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This experiment, a flyer supplied by a colleague tells us, 鈥渆xplores all living beings鈥� ability to communicate and to experience emotions鈥�. It is being run in conjunction with Stefano Mancuso, Florence resident and a 鈥渇ounding father of plant neurobiology鈥�.
This prompts many questions. What is the emotional range of a bean? Can tomatoes feel regret? Are mangoes capricious? The experiment concluded on 26 August 鈥� we will keep our eyes peeled for the published results.
鈥淟ocals in St Petersburg have noticed a statue commemorating architect Jean-Fran莽ois Thomas de Thomon in fact depicts Scottish chemist Thomas Thomson. A mislabelled image on Wikipedia was blamed for the mix-up鈥�
No to noodle
THE highest court in the Netherlands has ruled that Pastafarianism is not a religion, stating that noodle worshipper Mienke de Wilde may not wear a colander on her head for her official ID photos.
The Church of the Flying Spaghetti monster was founded in 2006 by Bobby Henderson, to satirise genuine faiths. However, it continues to attract adherents, who promise to abide by its dogma of being nice to each other and eating lots of pasta.
鈥淚t is important to be able to criticise religious dogma freely through satire but that does not make such criticism a serious religion,鈥� authorities said.
It seems few women in Europe are safe from government interference when it comes to choosing their own headwear.
Not so macho men
POLICE in Parana, Brazil, are free to fall in love, now that 鈥渕asculinity鈥� has been removed from the list of entry requirements. The state of Parana listed 72 traits demanded of recruits, including masculinity, which they defined as the capacity to remain unmoved by violence and vulgarity, and not to become emotional or have any interest in romantic engagements.
Following criticism, the former are now listed under 鈥渆ndurance鈥�, while the latter have been discarded altogether. How鈥檚 that for brotherly love?
Atomic economics
SWITZERLAND has issued a new banknote that depicts the notably expensive Large Hadron Collider at CERN. The 200 franc note is part of a series telling stories about 鈥溾�� . Feedback is reliably informed that a secret design is hidden within: placing 65 million of them next to each other reveals the outline of the Higgs Boson.
Black holes
A VISITOR to the Serralves gallery in Portugal has been injured after falling into an artwork that consists of a deep hole in the ground. Anish Kapoor鈥檚 Descent into Limbo features a room containing a 2.5 metre hole, painted so uniformly black it appears to be drawn on the floor.
An Italian man discovered the hard way that this was not the case, and ended up in hospital with minor injuries, reports . The gallery closed the exhibit until a way to prevent more souls falling into limbo.
Sniff test
A PAIR of dogs trained to sniff out Clostridium difficile infections in a hospital have been given the sack after failing a performance review. The Michael Garron Hospital in Toronto, Canada, recruited two dogs from a rescue centre to guard against C. diff, a highly infectious bacterium that causes diarrhoea.
Previous tests had shown good results using a single dog, but when border collie Chase and German shepherd Piper worked side by side, they often disagreed about which samples contained C. diff and which did not. To make matters worse, they were easily distracted by the contents of patients鈥� breakfast trays, and 鈥渇ound it hard to pass a toilet without drinking out of it鈥�, according to one physician involved in the study.
Animal crackers
FOLLOWING on from the Cairo zoo that painted stripes on its donkeys to pass them off as zebras (4 August), a disappointed customer of the Yuhe Zoo in Hebei, China, has been publicising more instances of questionable curation.
Cages for tigers, owls and eagles instead contained dogs (thankfully unpainted), while the pen for long eared rabbits 鈥渉as just regular rabbits鈥�, reports NDTV. Managers understandably had trouble finding an 鈥淎ustralia Ostrich鈥�, given they are native to Africa, and the pen signposted as such instead contains some chickens.
The zoo responded to complaints by saying the larger animals had been shipped elsewhere, and the signs not yet updated. Feedback is reminded of visiting a zoo in our youth, where the enclosure for the South Asian fishing cat was empty. On asking where the fishing cat was, our father replied knowledgeably: 鈥淕one fishing.鈥�
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