1. FIRST world problem: bad hair after a sweaty session at the gym.
First world solution: the $1500 Blowtox.
That’s right: Botox injections straight into the scalp, to stop excessive sweating, leaving you with great hair even after you’ve done Crossfit.
Fast Company magazine reports on the trend, saying Botox has long been approved to treat excessive underarm sweating.
‘If strategically shot into the scalp—a treatment that lasts anywhere from three to nine months and can cost up to $1,500—a woman can emerge from even the sweatiest of workouts with her hairdo still dry and intact,’ the report says.
Fast Company quotes Dr. Paul Jarrod Frank, who has a cosmetic practice in Manhattan, saying that he got his first request for Blowtox five years ago, but “this summer the treatment has been more popular than ever.”
In response to the question: ‘Isn’t getting a medical procedure to protect your hairstyle ridiculous?’ the magazine says, well, no, because it will save you time.
‘For many women, their hair is a sort of handcuff,’ the report says, ‘Women spend on average 55 minutes every day working on their appearance. … and 23 minutes a day blow-drying and styling their hair (men spent 12 minutes getting ready total) and the frizzier the hair, the longer it takes, plus, ‘skipping a beauty routine can have professional and personal consequences. Study after study shows that attractive people have easier lives.’
Alternatively, women could just do as blokes do: tie it up, or cut it short, and go.
2. WHEN should you start talking to your children about alcohol? How about nine?
NBC reports on new guidelines by the American Academy of Pediatrics, which says it’s important to have the first chat about the dangers of excessive drinking before the children turn 10.
‘Surveys indicate that children start to think positively about alcohol between ages 9 and 13 years,’ the report says.
‘Therefore, it is very important to start talking to children about the dangers of drinking as early as 9 years of age.
‘The more young people are exposed to alcohol advertising and marketing, the more likely they are to drink.’
Lest you think they’re going to do it anyway, the report also says that 80 percent of teenagers say their parents ‘are the biggest influence on their decision whether to drink.’
3. CHILDREN from the slums and rural villages of India are being ‘paid to poo’ in proper toilets, rather than going out in the open.
The BBC reports on the scheme to give children one rupee (it’s less than a cent) or chocolates, if they use the government toilets.
The report quotes Dr Bhavin Solanki saying: ‘Open defecation is a practice where people relieve themselves in fields, bushes, open spaces and into open bodies of water.’
It poses a serious threat to the health of children, but in India, nearly half of the population – more than 590m people – relieve themselves in the open.
‘For many it’s a daily ritual and often something they do even when public facilities are available, the report says.
In part, it’s because that’s the way it’s always been done; in part, it’s because some state councils in India charge people to use the loo; in part, it’s because of crazy superstitions about witches hiding in the facilities.
The state council in the Gujarati city of Ahmedabad hopes that by paying children to use the loo, they will cut down diseases such as diarrhea, which kill about 200,000 children every year.
4. A lunch menu from the doomed Titanic has been put up for auction.
AP reports that the menu was saved by a passenger who climbed aboard Lifeboat 1 shortly before the luxurious liner sank.
It is estimated to bring $50,000 to $70,000 at auction.
The menu was reportedly saved by a first-class passenger, Abraham Lincoln Salomon, who boarded the lifeboat, also known as the Millionaire’s Boat, because of rumors that one of the people aboard bribed the crew to sail away from the sinking ship rather than try to save more people.
The menu lists corned beef and dumplings, and it is signed on the back in pencil. The auction lot will also include a printed ticket from the Titanic’s opulent Turkish baths, ‘which recorded a person’s weight when seated in a specially designed upholstered lounge chair’ which bears the names of three other first class passengers who survived by climbing into Lifeboat 1.
