Busted glasses, busted diets, lost manufacturing…no intention here to sound ominous. Sometimes the news just points you in a way and there’s no point in resisting it. But summer is here at last. Break out the white flannels. Soon. Just as soon as this small dark cloud passes over.

  • They’re pretty light, those glasses, so maybe you’d want to pack another pair: David Snider, 55, was airlifted out of of Olympic National Park earlier this month after spending four-and-a-half days trapped in a steep ravine. You’ve heard much of this story before: a “capable hiker” on a day trip decides to take a short cut. Runs into deep snow. Tumbles into a place he can’t get out of. What’s unusual about this one is that Snider was considerably hampered by the absence of his glasses, which he needs, which fell off in the tumble. And he was found not with dogs or trackers but with a helicopter-mounted infrared sensor. Luckily he was only “slightly hypothermic” or he might not have been found. Otherwise, he was in good condition.
  • We’re going to say this once and pretend we don’t remember any of it. According to U.K.’s Metro, “Within three hours of eating an average meal, about 10ml of fat – between two to three teaspoons – will have lodged itself around your waist, hips and thighs.” So, essentially, instantly. Researchers expected blood would move the fat around the body, where it could be “‘burned off’ by the muscles, with the excess slowly adding to our girth over time. Instead, they found the first fat from a meal entered the bloodstream about an hour after it was eaten.” And it went more or less directly where no one wants it to go. That said, we are skeptical of any reportage that contains lies like this: “Fat around the waist is used only for short-term storage.”
  • We like skiing, history and TV, so it’s unfortunate that we missed the appearance of Head Ski Company on a recent episode of Mad Men. As DCist points out in a winsome recap, founder Howard Head–who was working for an aircraft manufacturer–figured out that “the same aluminum and laminated plastic used in making planes” might be an improvement over then conventional wood skis. A decade later, during the Mad Men era, “the Head Standard was used by over 50 percent of skiers in both the United States and the United Kingdom.” Sadly, the skis are manufactured in Austria today.

Image: As a fisherman waits patiently for the fish to bite, Tavurvur (Papua New Guinea) belches ash and pumice into the twilight. From Dark Days Are Coming (2008), by Taro Taylor, via Wikimedia Commons.