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1. april 2005
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His Majesty King Harald V of Norway, age 68, had a successful heart bypass operation today.
"The operation ... went as planned," professor Jan Svennevig told a news conference at Oslo's main hospital after the almost four-hour operation. "His condition is stable and there were no complications."
The first Harald to rule Norway since Viking times and a great-great grandson of Britain's Queen Victoria, he also underwent surgery for bladder cancer in December 2003.
Doctors said that the king and Queen Sonja, 67, should cut down on their duties. "They have a high workload," said Halfdan Ihlen, the king's personal doctor.
The king's son, HRH Crown Prince Haakon, will act as a regent during the king's convalescence, and will probably also take over more of the royal duties later. Abdication is not discussed as an option.
A king, as they say, is either healthy or dead. Not unlike a pope.
7:39:35 PM 
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I could have sworn this story about Viagra causing blindness was the BBC News' April joke, but it appears to be real.
Researchers at the University of Minnesota Medical School in the US identified seven men who developed vision problems after taking Viagra.
The team, writing in the Journal of Neuro-ophthalmology,said it brought the total number of reported cases to 14.
But Pfizer, the makers of the drug which has been used by more than 20m men since its launch in 1998, said the cases were a coincidence.
The seven men, aged between 50 and 69 years old, had all suffered from a swelling of the optic nerve within 36 hours of taking Viagra for erectile dysfunction. [bold added]
Oh, the irony.
However, even if the results pan out, not everybody using Viagra need worry:
All affected individuals had pre-existing hypertension, diabetes, elevated cholesterol, or hyperlipidemia.
So if all is swell, you need not worry. But then, you will not need Viagra either, right?
5:15:42 PM
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The amount of biological material in tiny air pollutants called aerosols has been underestimated, writes Ruprecht Jaenicke of the Institute for Atmospheric Physics in Science.
Jaenicke reported that the percentage of biological materials in aerosol pollution topped 40 percent in Mainz in September and 30 percent in October. And a study at Lake Baikal, Russia, showed more than 30 percent in September.
He said he did similar studies of the air over ocean environments, on mountains and in ice cores.
There was no strong annual cycle, he said, although pollen was more abundant in spring while decaying cellular matter was more common in fall and winter.
He estimated that the amount of biological particles in the air, worldwide, annually is 1,000 teragrams. A teragram is somewhat more than a million tons.
By comparison, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, established by the World Meteorological Organization and the U.N. Environmental Program, estimated biological particles at 56 teragrams, compared with 3,300 teragrams of sea salt and 2,000 teragrams of mineral dust.
The new finding means researchers should take biological materials seriously in climate modeling, in cloud physics and in hygienic questions such as allergies, Jaenicke said.
Yes, my headline is sort of tongue-in-cheek here if not an outright april fool joke. But just in case, remember to wash your hair properly.
3:35:48 PM
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Black holes have been fascinating science fiction and science fact enthusiasts for decades. But George Chapline, a physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, is convinced that black holes cannot and do not exist.
George Chapline thinks that the collapse of the massive stars, which was long believed to generate black holes, actually leads to the formation of stars that contain dark energy. "It's a near certainty that black holes don't exist," he claims.
Us mere mortals have unfortunately little chance of actually weighing evidence pro and con in this instance, but I do suspect many physicists disagree strongly with him.
1:55:27 PM
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Hilarious Lebanese pictures, posters and photoshop creativity at Ya Libnan!
And, yeah, demo babes too, including one rather prominent Lebanese flag, close to heart.
2:03:04 AM
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Chrenkoff has been writing a lot about Russia lately. The outlook from Kremlin is not very good. First, Russia is facing the disintegration of its sphere of influence in eastern Europe and Asia. More serious, however, is the demography of the country. Russia's population is aging dramatically, and is also facing a dramatic surge in male mortality, much of it due to substance abuse (ie. vodka).
1:31:44 AM
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© Copyright 2005 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.05.2005; 01:54:40.
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