Lava flow has shaped the landscape for billions of years, but in human times lava has been a destructive force. Basaltic lava flows can contain enough building materials for the foundations of an entire city that would rise in a few weeks. The Lavaforming project is a story of a world that has recognised that traditional building materials such as concrete and steel that have huge environmental impact are no longer usable to build the cities that are needed.

The Trukese allow sexual experimentation among young people, provided it is kept discreet. To arrange for an evening rendezvous, a young man used to insert a 'love stick' through the thatch of the hut where a young girl slept. The girl recognized the suitor by the carving on the stick and then either pushed the stick out to signal 'go away,' wiggled it to indicate 'come back later,' or drew it inside to signify 'come right in.'

Verdev said she suffered nearly $90,000 in injuries when a 300-pound board fell off the stage at a bingo night in 1990. She also claimed that she found herself sexually attracted to women and experienced spontaneous orgasms, sometimes in clusters.

After the war, Helmuth Aschenbrenner continued on as secretary general of the International Association for Scientific Tobacco Research. In the March 1964 issue of the London journal World Tobacco, the Bremen tobacco apologist is cited suggesting that "before reports on smoking and health are taken seriously [the reference is to the 1964 U.S. surgeon general's report], those making the reports should have psychiatric certification that they are not suffering from pyrophobia (fear of fire)." Aschenbrenner is taken to have proven that "tobacco antagonism often springs from a morbid (and often unconscious) pyrophobia—a phenomenon whose many manifestations include suppressed fear of the 'big fire' or atom bomb." See "International Perspective on Smoking and Health," World Tobaco, March 1964, pp. 19-20.