Fun_People Archive
25 Oct
WhiteBoardness - L.A., Cambridge, & Canberra

Date: Wed, 25 Oct 95 23:22:50 -0700
From: Peter Langston <psl>
To: Fun_People
Subject: WhiteBoardness - L.A., Cambridge, & Canberra

Excerpted-from: WhiteBoard News for October 25, 1995

This item comes by way of Dean Elzinga:

Los Angeles, California:

It wasn't the Mazda RX-7's speed that caught the eye of Redondo Beach Police
Officer Joseph Fonteno early Sunday. It was the hood ornament -- the 9-foot
light pole draped across the hood and roof of the white car on Pacific Coast
Highway about 1:00 AM.

Minutes earlier, the car's driver allegedly had jumped a center divider at
Sepulveda Boulevard and Rosecrans Avenue, clipped a three-phase traffic
signal from its concrete base and proceeded about seven miles to where
Fonteno pulled him over after a short chase. Fonteno reported that the
driver, a 49-year-old Torrance man, appeared "dazed and confused."

When the officer asked about the traffic signal, the driver replied: "It
came with the car when I bought it."

The motorist was booked on suspicion of "drunk-driving, hit-and-run, and
excessive sarcasm," said Police Captain Jeff Cameron.
==========

Cambridge, Massachusetts:

Mechanical engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are
putting their skills to good use:  designing gizmos that print words on
pancakes.

They recently unveiled the "Flip-It," an automatic pancake cooker and
flipper.  It dispenses batter from a self-contained tank into three metal
dishes, cooks the pancakes and then lowers dishes embedded with raised
mirror-image writing over the pancakes and flips them.  The words toast into
the pancakes.

The designers say the machine could be customized to toast in whatever
phrases you want and could work in restaurants and at home.
==========

Canberra, Australia:

An Australian university plans to use tear-wrenching novels to teach student
nurses, increasingly mesmerized by high-tech gimmickry, how to be kinder to
suffering patients.

First-year nursing students at Griffith University in northern Queensland
state will be asked to sob their way through novels such as Emily Bronte's
"Wuthering Heights" and Janet Frame's "An Angel at My Table" to help them
learn about death and loss, said coordinator Wendy Moyle.

"It makes them more compassionate -- that's what we want, that's what we
hope for," she said.

"Wuthering Heights" is a 150-year-old classic tale of love and separation.
"An Angel at My Table" is an acclaimed modern autobiography of grief, loss
and mental suffering.

Combined with standard scientific texts and lectures, the university will
use novels, poetry and music to deepen student's learning, Moyle said.

"Nursing education and health is generally so focused on the technical side
of things, but being a good nurse is not just about being able to push a
button.

"We have to refocus the profession on human beings."

The university program, due to begin next year, followed research that found
nurses' technical skills were excellent, but their ability to make patients
feel good -- often just as important in the healing process -- was lagging.
==========

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© 1995 Peter Langston