iPods and lightning don't play nicely

Pretty gnarly reading about what happened to this dude. Walking along happily listening to some tunes and the next thing you know SMACK ruptured jaw and burst eardrums.

clipped from www.newscientist.com A man in Vancouver, Canada, has discovered the hard way that listening to earphones in a thunderstorm can be a very bad idea. He was jogging while listening to an iPod, when he was struck by lightning. The earphones conducted the electricity through his head, bursting his eardrums and fracturing his jaw. However, people are surprisingly resistant to the electricity itself, because the skin has a high resistance. Normally the current passes over our bodies in a "flashover" – unless a conductor, such as excess sweat or metal, directs the flow of electricity into our bodies. That is what happened when the man’s earphones "directed the current to and through his head", Heffernan and his colleagues found. The violent contraction of his jaw muscles dislocated and fractured his jaw.

iPhone envy

I got to play with an iPhone today. I am jealous. Can hav plz? KThx.

clipped from icanhascheezburger.com