The Martlet

In 2009 there were many stories that grabbed people’s attention and yanked hard — especially the recession and the first year of President Obama’s administration. But in the melee, some stories got lost. Here’s a recap of a few of the stories that got lost in the didn’t received huge attention in 2009.

Killer tomatoes

This past December researchers at the Royal Botanical Gardens in the United Kingdom reclassified tomatoes as carnivorous after it was discovered that they consume small insects.

The researchers discovered that tomatoes posses hairs that capture small insects and only release them when the insects die. The insects then rot and serve as a rich fertilizer.

Dr. Mike Fay, a plant geneticist who works at the Botanical Gardens, says that there are 650 carnivorous species of plants with another 325 probable species waiting to be researched.

Men love porn

On Dec. 2, The Daily Telegraph reported that researchers at the University of Montreal attempted to compare views of men in their 20s who consumed pornography regularly with those who didn’t, but ran in to a major problem: they couldn’t find any men in their desired demographic who had never been exposed to porn.

As a result, assistant professor Simon Louis Lajeunesse changed the project. He interviewed 20 heterosexual university students, all of whom admitted to watching pornography, and found that 90 per cent of the material came from the Internet and that single men watched three times as much porn as those in relationships.

According to Lajeunesse, the men interviewed showed no disorders, and all had “normal sexual practices.”

China inflates economy

According to Al Jazeera sources, the Chinese government is spending almost $200 billion US a year to build cities that are empty.

The project is allegedly part of a massive attempt to create jobs and forestall a recession; the only problem is that no one wants to live in the new cities.

One example is New Ordos in Inner Mongolia, an empty ultra-modern city with everything. The reason it’s empty is because the apartments and business taxes are unaffordable to the residents of nearby Ordos, a city of 1.3 million people who were supposed to move into New Ordos.

World Trade Organization officials believe these mega-construction projects are a cause of China’s eight per cent annual GDP growth, and the resulting real-estate speculation could lead to housing bubbles in Shanghai and Beijing similar to the Tokyo bubble that sent Japan into recession from 1991-2000.

Canada’s most hated premier

Premier Gordon Campbell is the most hated premier in the country, according to a December poll by the Globe and Mail and Canada Press measuring the popularity of Canada’s premiers.

While information was not provided about the BC Liberal Party itself, their leader polled a 66 per cent disapproval rating against a 21 per cent approval rating.

The most popular Premier was Danny Williams of Newfoundland, who had an amazing 78 per cent approval rating.