News roundup

Thing going on in the world:

• Griddle riddle solved: NYC investigators say mysterious maple-syrup odor came from New Jersey. "City investigators have tracked down the source of a maple syrup smell that has puzzled New Yorkers several times in recent years. No offense, New Jersey, but it was you."
  
  
• The Transit TV company has filed for bankruptcy, which is good news for bus riders. These are the people who installed the (often broken) TV monitors which sometimes (if working) display the next stop, and which run endless ads for lawyers, ads for companies that will take the settlement the lawyer in the other ad got you and give you a tiny fraction of it up front if you "NEED CASH NOW," ads from people who will sell you a low-end computer at and inflated price on credit even if your credit history is so bad that credit card companies (who will issue cards without regard to income or even species) won't touch you, and so on. Due to some contractual obligation to run something other than 100% ads, they also ran incomprehensibly shortened news stories, with just the introductory first sentence or two but without the actual news. Good to see them go. (In the USA, of course, we can't spend the kind of money it would take to install a next-stop-display without the ads.)
  
  
• Some of you live in or near places with amazing local landmarks. In the suburbs of Milwaukee, things are different. The Golden Arches might have to relocate because of planned reconstruction to State Highway 100. "Village President Robert Ruesch wants McDonald’s to stay where it has been for nearly 50 years. Ruesch was in high school when the fast-food eatery opened in Hales Corners. 'I don’t want to say it’s an icon, but it is sort of a landmark,' Ruesch said. 'It’s a destination spot that provides good food and entertainment for the kids.'"
  
  
• Mequon company helps smash subatomic particles "John DeFord has a red-blooded American boy's dream job: He helps people get things going really fast so they can smash them and watch what happens. In a bland suburban office building shared with an accountant, a lawyer and a psychic adviser, DeFord maintains a remote outpost in the quest to understand the most fundamental forces and structure of nature." They write software used in particle accelerator design. Fascinating that they share a building with a psychic.
  
  
• Mice on Mount Everest. Science! "Dr Khurana and his team carried mice contained in heating chambers up Mt Everest to about 28,000 feet in their backpacks." "The mice were carried past the “dead zone” of Mt Everest (altitudes higher than 26,246 ft), where no mice have ever gone before."