Cheese Rolling: It's Not Just for the British Anymore

The second annual Käserollmeisterschaft der Berufskäser was held yesterday in Bern, Switzerland, in indirect competition with the famous Cooper's Hill Cheese Rolling races in Gloucestershire, England. (How long will it be before there is an international cheese rolling association?)

The cheese rolling competition was only part of the Emmentaler 2009 event put on by Emmentaler AOC - that would be the folks who bring you Swiss cheese (The King of Cheeses). The event also included performances by Natacha, MatterLive and the young comedian Michael Elsener (that's Elsener, not Eisner).

Victory this year belonged to Andreas Küttel (pictured), who can now add cheese rolling to his resume, just below the entry for World Ski Jump Champion, thus making him a true two sport athelete, just like Bo Jackson (I wonder if Bo knows cheese rolling...?). Said Küttel:

Dieses witzige Plauschrennen hat grossen Spass gemacht. Und getreu meinem Wettkampf-Naturell habe ich natürlich auch beim Käserollen einen gewissen Ehrgeiz entwickelt.

A silver tongued lad, indeed.

For those of you who couldn't attend the event, you can still play the online cheese rolling game (in German, registration required).

Update: The Second Annual Canadian Cheese Rollling Festival was held in Whistler, British Columbia on August 15th. Whistler plays host to the 2010 Winter Olympics, which begs the question: will there be Nordic cheese rolling next year to go along with the Alpine competitions?

Update part deux: The 7th Annual Cheese Rolling Festival takes place in San Velentino, Italy NEXT WEEKEND (September 13). But where is the international cheese rolling association to regulate the competitions and test for performance enhancing drugs? And, by God, where are the Americans?

Sources:
Yahoo News Canada
Emmentaler
Cheese Rolling UK
Schweizerbauer
Pacific Northwest Cheese Project
Italian Feelings
Canadian Cheese Rolling

They Could Smell It a Mile Away

There was so much marijuana in the truck that Edmonton police officers could smell it from half a block a way.

Dihn Xuan Luu, 44, and Deng Zuan Dihn, 51, were arrested earlier this week when a driver following their truck called police to report an overwhelming odor of freshly cut weed. Officers estimated there to be between 1000 and 1500 plants, weighing up to half a ton.

The strong odor of freshly cut marijuana is apparently difficult to disguise, judging from the advice this woman got when her husband brought home a friend's  mattress. It's not clear why the two men would drive around without trying to hide the odor at all.

In other marijuana news, the police destroyed about half the hemp plants from a Wageningen University research project, mistakenly believing them to be marijuana. Wageningen U. in the Netherlands is a highly respected school specializing in life science studies, including plant research.

This particular project was studying the use of hemp as a source of fiber for textiles and paper, the way cotton is commonly used today. Though hemp and marijuana plants are in the same family, the THC content in industrial hemp is 25 to 100 times less than marijuana, making its street value as a drug roughly zero. The plants can be distinguished visually because the hemp is grown for its stalk, while marijuana for its leaves, so the hemp plants are significantly taller, with leaves only at the top.

You would think that police officers in a country like the Netherlands, where it is legal to possess up to 5 grams of cannabis, would know the difference between the two plants. And that it was in a huge open field on university land might have given them a clue as well.

The university is busy talking to police about recovering costs.

Sources:
Yahoo News Canada
Edmonton Sun
Leader-Post
Edmonton CTV
Telegraph (via Fark)
NAIHC
Star Tribune
Wageningen University
Top Universities
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