What is a Pingo?

I was playing Words with Friends the other day against my cousin. The word that I played was pin, then she played back pingo! I was in disbelief that such a word existed, so I accused her of making the word up, even though this would require collusion with the makers of Words with Friends and I was was reasonably certain that, a) She didn't know the makers of Words with Friends, b) They wouldn't change a word on her request, even if they knew her, and, c) That she wasn't likely to expend the level of effort and planning required to add this word into the game, just to score a few points. Nevertheless I challenged her to use pingo in a sentence, as I was sure that even if it was an accepted word, she was probably just playing around with letters and didn't know the meaning.

My cousin rose to this challenge and replied with the sentence, "the Eskimo swore as he tripped over the pingo." I had a good laugh as I read this, firstly assuming that she had just made the sentence up for a laugh, but then thought it was a bit obscure to add that it was an Eskimo, so perhaps she had actually looked up the meaning (a thing that I could have done myself instead of challenging her, but it would have been less fun). So I decided to check the meaning as well (at this stage the fun was over and I really needed to know if she was making things up, or had actually checked the definition), sure enough the meaning of the word pingo is, "a hill of soil-covered ice pushed up by hydrostatic pressure in an area of permafrost." So it would be reasonable to assume that Eskimos would see pingos all the time, and understandably might swear as they trip over them.  Obviously my cousin had looked up the definition and came to the same conclusions as myself. So I had to admit that pingo was an acceptable word, however I would still like to point out that my spell checker highlights pingo as a misspelt word, so I am not the only one in disbelief!

Check the definition of pingo yourself at dictionary.com.

What causes more deaths, vending machines or wolves?

I spent many hours during my holidays watching episodes of the West Wing. I love this show and I have picked up a few random facts, that I will share with you over the coming weeks. Today however, the fact that caught my eye happened whilst one of the characters, CJ, was listening to a group of people who were lobbying to have an Animals Only Highway built across the United States of America (USA) and into Canada (this has actually begun construction in real life, and is referred to as Y2Y). The group were using the example of a wolf, called Pluie (this wolf was also a real life wolf who was tracked, and provided inspiration for Y2Y), and in using this example stated that more people in the USA die from vending machines than wolf attacks. This is a statistic that is hard to find on the internet, and reminds me of another statistic which is equally hard to prove, 'that more people are kicked to death each year by donkeys than die in airplane crashes.'

These are two comparisons that are trying to make people think of the big picture, rather than focus on these facts in a small context, however from what I can find (in my 10 minute Google search), there are no statistics gathered around how many, if any, people are kicked to death each year by donkeys, however airplane fatalities are very well documented. Therefore I don't think that this statistic can be supported, although I am sure people will continue to use this comparison. As to the amount of wolf deaths versus that of vending machines, I think we may have a winner! Although I could not find statistics, from sources that were anywhere near credible, around the number of deaths per year by vending machine in the USA, I did find one Australian vending machine website that stated of the 15 injuries by vending machines recorded, only three resulted in death. Now there is not much detail around this statement, so it is my assumption these statistics are from all recorded incidences in Australia. I also found another website which stated that in North America (including Alaska and Canada) in the 100 years of the 20th century 20-30 wolf attacks were recorded and only three resulted in death, all due to rabies. Australia has a much smaller population than the USA, 20 million versus 300 million  so there are around 15 times more people in the USA. So if you calculate that Australia has had three vending machine deaths, you could reasonable multiply this number by 15 to get 45 deaths by vending machines in the USA (I know this is not exact, there are many other factors to consider, but lets just go with it). So based on this, you could reasonably state that more people's deaths are attributed to vending machines in the USA than to wolves!

I sourced many sites, Y2Y, the Yellowstone Insider around wolf attacks, Snopes, around the donkey deaths and SVA vending machines.