Eleganza Soul

Those who grew up in the '70s have certain movies and tv shows burnt into their memories. Bruce Lee, Starsky and Hutch...and all that great music!

Smooth mutha-****!

With so much black funk running through the grooves, it was a sound we weren't familiar with here in NZ...but man, was it cool!
At the start of that decade came the Isaac Hayes' chart-topper Shaft, with shock-horror lyrics like "He's a bad mutha...shut your mouth!" Young white teens, adding new phrases to their lexicons, never had it so good.
Shaft of course was really The Theme from Shaft - one of the first blaxploitation films. It starred Richard Roundtree as the ultimate in suave black detectives. John Shaft was like the James Bond Of Da 'Hood.
The US blaxploitation scene saw numerous clothing outlets selling what today looks so naff but, back then, was top-funk clothing for the debonair black man...opps, African-American.
We saw the groovy gear in movies and wondered if it was all just prop-clothing. No, bro...if y'all wanted to strut the streets, the turned-out turkeys would check out ads like these...!

US Nuke Spanish Clean-up

The good ol' US of A has finally agreed to clean up its own mess... namely a nuclear spill!
The southern Spanish coastal resort of Palomares was the scene of the worst nuclear accident in US military history nearly 50 years ago.

Death from above

On 17 Jan.1966, a B52 bomber with four nuclear bombs collided with a refuelling aircraft in mid-air. Three bombs fell near Palomares, failing to explode but contaminating the soil with radioactive material, and the 4th fell into the sea, lieing undiscovered for more than 2mths.
USA and Spain said last week they 'intended to...clean up the Palomares site and organise the storage of the contaminated soil at an appropriate site in the United States.' The contaminated soil is expected to be buried in a secure area in the Las Vegas desert in an 2yr.operation. A Spanish Govt spokesman said the agreement was a "...symbol of friendship between the two countries, who are allies and partners who trust one another and have lots of things to do together." What - even it takes 50 years???

The mayor of the nuked area claims he's not been told a damn thing about the deal: "I'm annoyed we haven't been officially informed. We're the victims, the ones who've suffered this for the last half-century and the ones who now have to suffer the clean-up." He said he'd continue to fight for proper compensation, and funding for a tourism campaign to protect its image while lorries carrying radioactive material warnings roll through the area.
The area where the bombs fell, in the province of Almeria, SE Spain, has been dubbed the Costa del Armageddon. In the aftermath of the crash, the US and Spanish tried to convince the world there was no danger. US Ambassador Biddie Duke even joined a Spanish minister for a swim off Palomares in front of cameras, saying: "If this is radioactivity, I love it!"
Environmentalists have accused the two govts of secrecy about residents' health checks. The Spanish govt claims only small levels of radiation have been detected, though in several cases plutonium has reportedly attached itself to bones.

Flossing: Little Benefit?

The importance of flossing is sold as an essential step in getting rid of harmful plaque, the bacteria that can lead to tooth decay and gum disease.
But what if flossing wasn't so important after all - what if it made no real difference to dental health?
That's the suggestion emerging from a new body of research.
Flossing is aimed at helping rid our mouths of bacteria. Just 1ml of saliva is thought to contain about 100 million microbes. The mouth is a warm, acidic environment that's perfect for them to flourish. While some of these bacteria are bad, turning food sugars into tooth-eroding acid, others actually prevent tooth decay by releasing chemicals that counteract harmful acid.
But the latest evidence suggests flossing has little impact on reducing tooth decay or preventing gum disease. British Dental Association researchers looked at the long-term effect in people who brush and floss and others who only brush, and found no difference in terms of reducing plaque, bleeding or subsequent gum disease.
A recent review in the Journal of Clinical Periodontology concluded that 'despite being widely advocated...the majority of available studies fail to demonstrate that flossing is generally effective in plaque removal and in reducing gingival (gum) inflammation'.
So although flossing may be good for removing food from between teeth, it's not successful in removing the biofilms causing problems. Researchers believe the best way to overcome biofilms and prevent tooth decay is to master your brushing technique.
They are confident that most people with normal teeth and normal gaps do not need to floss at all!