During a sumo tournament yesterday, Mayor Ryozo Tatami of Maizuro in the Kyoto prefecture was making a speech in the sumo ring when he suddenly collapsed from a subarachnoid hemorrhage. Women and men from the spectator seats rushed to help, and in the video below it looks like it was a woman who was giving him CPR.

But then an announcement over the loudspeaker by a referee said, "Ladies, please leave the dohyo." Apparently, the ladies were in the sumo ring, of which they are barred from entering. Even saving a man's life wasn't a good enough reason to let the inferior sex into the sacred space.

According to The Asahi Shimbun:

At least two women climbed into the dohyo and administered cardiac massage to Tatami.

During the emergency, the women were ordered to leave at least three times in announcements made over the public address system.

The gyoji also said, “Gentlemen, please climb up (to the dohyo),” according to municipal government sources and others.

The Japan Sumo Association chairman later apologized for the referee's idiocy, but only after public criticism. “We would like to offer a profound apology. This instruction was inappropriate under such life-and-death circumstances. The gyoji did it because he was upset.”

The mayor was taken to the hospital, where he'll undergo surgery, and was "conscious and talking," thanks at least in part to the women who rush to help him.

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People tend to avoid sick people, even if they don't consciously now that they are sick, according to a new study published in PNAS.

Snip:

In the perpetual race between evolving organisms and pathogens, the human immune system has evolved to reduce the harm of infections. As part of such a system, avoidance of contagious individuals would increase biological fitness. The present study shows that we can detect both facial and olfactory cues of sickness in others just hours after experimental activation of their immune system. The study further demonstrates that multisensory integration of these olfactory and visual sickness cues is a crucial mechanism for how we detect and socially evaluate sick individuals. Thus, by motivating the avoidance of sick conspecifics, olfactory–visual cues, both in isolation and integrated, may be important parts of circuits handling imminent threats of contagion.

David DiSalvo from Forbes has more:

Researchers injected one group of people with a harmless bacteria that triggers an immune response for a few hours, causing mild fever and fatigue, but without any really obvious signs of being sick... The researchers exposed the smell samples, photos and videos to another group of people, along with the same set of samples from healthy people... The brain scans showed a signaling effect cutting across the senses when someone looked at a photo or video of a sick person, along with being exposed to the smell samples. The overall effect is a multi-sense brain alarm telling us that someone is sick and should be avoided.

Cooties are real. Apparently, "cootie" comes from the Malay word "kutu," meaning "dog tick." Fortunately, you can easily make a cootie catcher wit the added benefit that the device doubles as a fortune teller, chatterbox, whirlybird, salt cellar, etc. Read the rest

Last one to follow RUBEN BOLLING on TWITTER is a rotten egg. No except-me's. No bounce-backs. No opposites. Starting now. For full rules, visit the TOM THE DANCING BUG WEBSITE. Read the rest