Couldn't Pass This Up

A giraffe got hit by lightning. I know it's not funny, but it does make for an interesting observation about what sometimes happens when you stand out in the crowd. I bet his neighbors were happy he was the tall one.

And a cruise ship caught on fire, stranding 4500 people. Not funny at all, this is one of my big fears, that some Titanic-type disaster would happen out in the ocean beyond the reach of help. Fortunately it all worked out well for them so far.

Another person is missing in the search for Noah's Ark. At some point in time, you're going to have to figure that God doesn't want his boat found. Anyhow, I hope they find him and he turns out to be ok, and the sooner the better.


Lastly, and the source of the feature picture today, they finally collided lead ions in the search for what exactly happened during the supposed "big bang". I bet if you found the Ark, you could get that answered for you too. Don't you wonder what they might plan to explain the random acceleration or creation of these elements which then created the world? Long shot.

Flash/Bang Method

For those of you who thought so, the flash/bang method here is not talking about a weapon. I'm in first aid class and they're lecturing about the importance of avoiding lightning injuries. After seeing lightning, then count until you hear corresponding thunder. Each 5ish seconds is a mile. Once the count has reached a frequency of 30, you should already be inside. Thinking back over my past, I have to say I've been in some crazy unsafe situations (like 2 summers ago when the lightning hit while the thunder blasted my ears - probably a little close... since I lost my vision and fell over.). However, 30 seconds seems like some severe overkill. I've felt perfectly safe down to 5-6 seconds.

Anyhow. Of related interest is the fact that this year Westerville put in lightning alarms at their parks. I think that's a pretty cool idea, and will be interested to see sometime how that works firsthand. But apparently it alerts parkgoers when the risk of lightning strike is high. Pretty cool.