While I was shopping online the other day, I found a Collective Soul concert DVD for $10. I thought that was a pretty good find. But it seems there are some other interesting things you can stumble across in Internet stores that are even more exciting than my little find.

Headline Reuters: Peru finds giant crocodile fossil in Amazon

But it turns out there is much more intellectually to them than at first seems.

Headline Reuters: Models predicted New Orleans disaster, experts say

Here’s some useful news for your next snowball fight

It is rather early in the season to be thinking about this, but what ends most snowball fights? It isn’t that a pacifist spirit comes over the combatants. No. That isn’t what gives them cold feet about snowball fighting. It’s actually cold hands. Literally. Who can keep throwing snowballs after your hands are so painfully cold from the snow? And so the fight ends.

But now science has come to the rescue. Researchers have found a way to help people continue the fight long beyond when they would have given up in the past. In laboratory tests they have actually doubled the time people would be able to participate in a snowball fight.

Headline Telegraph: Spiritual meditation ‘may reduce pain’

Meditation makes people more relaxed and able to withstand pain if it has a spiritual basis, say scientists.

Student volunteers were put into three groups, one asked to concentrate on a phrase such as “God is love” or “God is peace” as they meditated, another to focus on messages such as “I am happy” or “I am joyful” and a third were simply told to relax.

They were instructed to practise their technique for 20 minutes a day for two weeks. The researchers used psychological profiling to assess their mood at the beginning and end of each week.

They also tested pain tolerance by measuring the amount of time the volunteers could keep their hands in water cooled to 2C.

Those practising spiritual meditation showed greater reductions in anxiety than the other groups, and were able to hold their hands in cold water for nearly twice as long.

But based on another study, these researchers missed the opportunity to possibly further extend people’s ability to hold their hands in cold water, thus providing additional snowball fighting time:

Headline Telegraph: Virgin olive oil is the natural way to kill pain

Extra virgin olive oil relieves pain in the same way as ibuprofen and may explain the healthiness of a Mediterranean diet, researchers have found.

The oil contains a newly-found compound, oleocanthal, which suppresses the same pain pathway as non steroidal anti-inflammatory agents, such as ibuprofen, although the two chemicals are not related.

So it might be possible to get even more time in the snowball fight by meditating on olive oil.

Headline Telegraph: Blunders blight Disney’s Hong Kong park party

Disney has had to indulge in a monumental public relations campaign to overcome a series of gaffes before Hong Kong Disneyland’s lavish opening party next week.