Also on today’s menu:
He Shot Himself 192 Times
Time Is An Illusion
World’s Tallest Man?
Porto’s former Imperial Cafe in Portugal is now known as “the most beautiful McDonald’s in the world.” McDonald’s opened its restaurant in 1995 in the space previously occupied by a famous Portuguese coffee shop, which had been an icon in the 1930s. The building retained many of the original Art Deco features, including the ornate ceilings, chandeliers, and a large stained glass wall.
He Shot Himself 192 Times
Iranian-American writer, director, and producer Ramin Bahrani has released 2nd Chance, a documentary about Richard Davis, the inventor of the Kevlar vest. In the film, Davis rolls up his sleeves, turns a gun on himself, and fires it into his chest. Indeed, he has shot himself point-blank 192 times to prove that the vest works.
Davis is an intriguing figure — a Marine, a bankrupt pizzeria owner, and a born showman. He also has a dark side: During a shooting competition on his personal range, a stray bullet ricocheted through the woods into an elderly woman’s home. Davis allegedly tried to bribe and then intimidate a teenager into taking the blame (“Listen, if you tell anyone, I will kill you”). One year, an explosion at a fireworks show killed one man and injured at least 15 people; again he refused to take responsibility. He describes the stray bullet incident as “an inglorious misstep”.
Bahrani recounted, “I thought he was going to reflect upon some of the mistakes he had made, some of the moral improprieties that he had been involved in. But he didn’t seem to even accept that they had happened in his narrative. In his narrative, he was either the victim or the hero at all times. For instance, the episode where there’s some fireworks and people get killed and he’s at the centre of that: He blames some unknown factory in China.”
Time Is An Illusion
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, a theoretical physicist at the University of New Hampshire, maintains that what we think of as time is a government construct; true time, according to Einstein’s general theory of relativity, is linked to space, and space-time can bend and curve. In some areas of the universe, space and time can stretch and slow and even break down completely.
Prescod-Weinstein says that, in places with strong gravity, such as the edge of black holes, time slows dramatically, and upon crossing the black hole’s point of no return, known as its event-horizon, space and time flip.
For now, though, humans rely on the National Institute of Standards and Technology for keeping track of time so we can catch trains and navigate. NIST uses 21 clocks to generate the official time by measuring the decay of atoms, and by averaging a subset of the 21 clocks, the institute can measure time to within one quadrillionth of a second.
World’s Tallest Man?
A hospital in northern Ghana told 29-year-old Sulemana Abdul Samed during one of his recent check-ups for gigantism that he had reached the height of 9 feet, 6 inches, making him a contender for the world’s tallest man. The problem is that he had grown taller than the measuring rod.
Officially known as Marfan syndrome, a genetic disorder affecting the body's connective tissues, the condition has left him with an abnormally curved spine, long limbs, and heart defects. Doctors say he needs a surgical procedure in his brain to stop the growth. He also is trying to raise money for plastic surgery to deal with a serious skin complaint on one leg, ankle, and foot caused by the excess growth of the limb.
“That is how Allah chose it for me, I am OK,” he said. “I don't have a problem with the way God created me.”
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