Week of July 16 — People, Nature, and Place. Each Friday the team at sociecity finds all the news you might have missed this week, and compiles it into a short column you can read in five minutes. Don’t miss it! Sign up to get Around the World in Five Minutes in your inbox each week!
Yearly ‘Weed Dating’ Connects Idaho Singles
Marijuana (photo courtesy of United States Fish and Wildlife Service)
“So, were you on a pot farm?” quips weed dating participant Joe Peraino. Well, not exactly. Each year, reports Jessie Bonner for Associated Press, on a small farm in the northwest of Boise, Idaho, several dozen single men and women gather in the fields for a whole new brand of speed dating. It’s called ‘weed dating,’ an activity that sees participants moving down rows of plants, pulling weeds, and sparking conversation.
Casey O’Leary, owner of Earthly Delights Farm, says that she first heard of the idea from a farm in Vermont, and since has taken to playing matchmaker, once a year, on her own farm.
An Attempt to Tally Radioactivity Deaths in Japan
After an intense study by Stanford University researchers, findings suggest that an additional 15 – 1,300 deaths could be expected on account of radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi plant meltdown. The rather wide ‘estimate’ by researchers John E. Ten Hoeve and Mark Z. Jacobson is uncertain, mainly due to irratic statistical data from the Japanese government on just how much radiation leaked from the plant, reports the New York Times. Jacobson remarked that deaths might have been higher if winds had not blown most of the radioactive material out to sea.
Glacier Twice the Size of Manhattan Breaks from Greenland
Although debate continues — will it ever end? — as to the significance of the latest city-state-sized iceberg to break from Greenland, this week’s new iceberg marks the second ice-sheet anomaly in Greenland in three years, according to a Fox news report. “It’s dramatic. It’s disturbing,” said University of Delaware professor Andreas Muenchow, who was one of the first researchers to notice the break. “We have data for 150 years and we see changes that we have not seen before.”
Nelson Mandela’s Birthday Marked by Nationwide Public Service
Nelson Mandela, 1998 (Photo: Arquivo/ABr | Agência Brasil)
After being charged with treason, Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison before becoming South Africa’s first black president. Former President Bill Clinton remarked this week “I saw in him something that I try not to lose in myself, which is no matter how much responsibility you have, he remembered you were a person first.”
Mandela’s 94th birthday was celebrated Wednesday, and marked by South Africans participating in good deeds nationwide to honor the legacy of the famous statesman, CNN reports.