Wisconsin Garage Bites Wienermobile: Photos

"Wienermobile Crash"
WLUK FOX11 (July 18, 2009)

"The owner of a southern Wisconsin house might not be in love with the Oscar Mayer wiener right now.

"The Oscar Mayer Wienermobile crashed into a Mount Pleasant house around noon Friday...."


FOX11 (July 18, 2009)
video (sequence of still photos with narration) 0:29

That's not the sort of thing I'd prefer to come home to.

UPI had a bit more fun with this story:

"Wienermobile crashes into Wisconsin house"
UPI (July 18, 2009)

"The Oscar Mayer hot dog company probably didn't relish the apology it had to issue after its famed Wienermobile crashed into a Mount Pleasant, Wis., house.

"Sydney Lindner, a spokeswoman for the company, a division of Kraft Foods
based in Chicago, said Oscar Mayer would work with insurance companies after an unidentified 22-year-old driver of the hot dog-shaped vehicle managed to slam it into a home Friday while trying to turn around on a dead-end street, WLUK-TV, Green Bay, Wis., reported...."

I know: this is a serious matter. But still: "...didn't relish the apology...." I suppose the driver feels that she didn't quite pass mustard today. Hot dog, though: those are photos you don't see every day.

There. I've got that out of my system.

No: there's one more. The UPI story concludes:

"...A tow truck was used to dislodge the Wienermobile from its pickle, the station said."

What put the wienermobile part-way into that garage seems to have been mistaking a gas pedal for the brake. I suppose it's a natural enough error, sandwiched in a dead-end street like that.

There Weren't Many Neanderthals - Which is Why They Died Out?!

"Neanderthals Were Few and Poised for Extinction"
LiveScience.com (July 16, 2009)

"Neanderthals are of course extinct. But there never were very many of them, new research concludes.

"In fact, new genetic evidence from the remains of six Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) suggests the population hovered at an average of 1,500 females of reproductive age in Europe between 38,000 and 70,000 years ago, with the maximum estimate of 3,500 such female Neanderthals.

" 'It seems they never really took off in Eurasia in the way modern humans did later,' said study researcher Adrian Briggs of the Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany...."

Using DNA from six individuals from the Neanderthal population, DNA from modern humans, and applying what we've learned about genetics - a process very briefly outlined in the article - researchers came up with those numbers: about 1,500 Neanderthal women of childbearing age, with a maximum of 3,500.

Even assuming that they were about a third of the Neanderthal population, that would make a total of around 10,000 Neanderthals in Europe back then. That's not a lot of people.

Being so few in number would have made them very susceptible to "some event that made them go extinct...," as the article quotes researcher Adrian Briggs.

The LiveScience article points out that Neanderthals were not at all stupid. They apparently had - and used - the same hunting technology as the modern humans who lived at the same time.

Overall, this article is a pretty good look at what we know - and speculate - about Neanderthals and why they disappeared around 20,000 years ago.

The only big gaffe I found in this article was this cultural reference: "...Rather than the dumb cavemen characters starring in Geico car insurance ads...." I suppose the author, and the editors, had seen the 'so simple, even a caveman could do it' GEICO advertisements, but not the television commercials. GEICO is an acronym, by the way.

Or, possibly, the LiveScience.com staff see playing the piano, using a laptop, and saying things like, "that is really condescending" as "dumb" behavior.

Nah! More likely, they'd never seen the GEICO commercials.

"Geico Caveman Commercial"

xtabi89, YouTube (May 7, 2007)
video 0:30

Vaguely-related post:

• " 'The Dream - a Short-Short Story "
  Drifting at the Edge of Time and Space (June 28, 2009)

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Related posts, at

• "Change, American Culture, Trilobites, Humanity's History, and the Big Picture"

Want a Stress-Free Vacation? This May Help

"Seven tips to make your trip stress-free"
CNN (July 14, 2009)

"To some it's a vacation, to others it's a holiday. No matter what you call it, it's a time to relax.

" But with packed summer flights, ever-tightening budgets and scammers pulling fast ones on unsuspecting travelers, it's easy to make mistakes that could turn your hard-earned vacation into a nightmare. Before you go leaving on a jet plane here are some simple tips to insure happy trails.

"Internet finds deals, troubles. The old adage "if it looks too good to be true, it probably is" still applies, even in the Caribbean.

"Before you hand over your credit card for that inexpensive travel package, do your homework and find out exactly what's included...."

The article doesn't mention common sense all that much - although the phrase does show up in a heading - but that's what it's about. With helpful details.

Like making sure that your health insurance covers what you're planning to do. And dealing with sunburn before it happens.

This isn't the ultimate, covering-all-bases tome on how to avoid unpleasantness on vacation: but it looks like a good place to start.

Me? I'm staying home.