hey fattie...

it's not glandular, it's the government!






We’ve all heard the figures. We know that meat production uses significantly more land and fossil fuel resources than a vegetarian diet. But, then, why on earth is it cheaper to eat meat than fresh fruit and vegetables?

Almost 75% of U.S. government subsidies go into meat and dairy production, but less than half a per cent goes into fruit and vegetable production.

source: http://www.celsias.com/2008/02/22/why-eating-a-big-mac-is-cheaper-than-eating-a-salad/

are you having a laugh?

a short essay by ricky gervais about the day he became an atheist.
link: http://www.rickygervais.com/bestlife.php

fish walks on land, then eats a human!

A SAVAGE fish that eats everything it comes across, including people, has been hooked by a British fisherman — sparking fears of a deadly invasion.

The giant snakehead, originating from South-East Asia, has a mouth crammed with teeth.

It’s deadly in the water, but it can also “crawl” on land and survive out of water for up to four days.

The discovery of the fish in Linconshire, northern England, has caused widespread panic amongst conservationists and anglers.


source: http://www.news.com.au/mercury/story/0,22884,23245195-5005940,00.html

"you're all a bunch of fukin idiots" - c. darwin 1850

florida aint so dumb no more.




The word "evolution" is to be used in Florida's science classes for the first time.

Many people in the state oppose the teaching of evolution as scientific fact, proposing instead that teachers offer "alternatives" such as creationism or "intelligent design", which claims to be a rival theory purporting that life on Earth is so irreducibly complex that the random processes of evolution could not explain it.

Despite Darwin's ideas being overwhelmingly accepted in the scientific community and backed by a century's worth of compelling evidence, a recent Gallup poll showed that roughly half of all Americans do not believe that evolution is a fact.

source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/earth/2008/02/19/sciflorida119.xml

for an ass-handingly good argument against intelligent design, creationism, or any other fairy tales read the blind watch maker by richard dawkins.
link to amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Blind-Watchmaker-Evidence-Evolution-Universe/dp/0393315703/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1203635278&sr=8-1

reanimated...

The Reanimation Library is a small, independent library based in Brooklyn. It is a collection of books that have fallen out of mainstream circulation. Outdated and discarded, they have been culled from thrift stores, stoop sales, and throw-away piles across the country and given new life as resource material for artists, writers, and other cultural archeologists.






tons of great photos at source.
source: http://www.reanimationlibrary.org

fish know shit!

stop throwing ping pong balls at them at carnivals!

Rory Stokes, from the Australian Science and Mathematics School in Adelaide, conducted an experiment to test the commonly held theory that goldfish have short memory spans.

Rory's experiment involved teaching a small group of fish to swim to a beacon by establishing a memory connection between the beacon and food.

He was also keen to open people's minds to the cruelty of keeping fish in small tanks.

Rory's experiment involved teaching a small group of fish to swim to a beacon by establishing a memory connection between the beacon and food.

Over a period of three weeks, he placed a beacon in the water at feeding time each day, waited 30 seconds and then sprinkled fish food around the beacon.

The time taken for the fish to swim to the beacon reduced dramatically, from more than one minute for the first few feeds to less than five seconds by the end of the three weeks.

Following the initial three-week period, Rory removed the beacon from the feeding process.

Six days later, he once again placed the beacon in the water and despite not seeing it for almost a week, the fish swam to the beacon in 4.4 seconds, showing they had remembered the association between food and the beacon for at least six days.

"My results strongly showed that goldfish can retain knowledge for at least six days," Rory said.

"They can retain that knowledge indefinitely if they use it regularly."

Rory also conducted a number of sub-experiments which showed that goldfish were capable of negotiating a simple maze, having them move onto a second beacon if they found no food at the previous one.

"My experiments showed that goldfish have the mental capabilities to learn and remember fairly complex concepts and they can retain that knowledge for at least a number of days," he said.

source: http://www.livenews.com.au/Articles/2008/02/18/SA_schoolboy_explodes_fishmemory_myth

great white sharks learn how to fly

verdict: you're fucked!



source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/11/17/eashark117.xml&CMP=ILC-mostviewedbox

thank you hallmark

At around 10:30 a.m. on St. Valentine's day, four members of the Burke gang drove to the warehouse in two cars; a Cadillac sedan and a Peerless, both outfitted to look like detective sedans. Two men were dressed in police uniforms and two in street clothes. The Moran Gang had already arrived at the warehouse. However, Moran himself was not inside. One account states that Moran was supposedly watching the warehouse, spotted the police car, and fled the scene. Another account was that Moran was simply late getting there.

Byron Bolton confused one of Moran's men for Moran himself; he then signaled Burke's men they approached the warehouse. The two phony police, carrying shotguns, exited the Peerless and entered the warehouse through the two rear doors. Inside they found members of Moran's gang, a sixth man named Reinhard Schwimmer who was not actuallly a gangster, but more of a gang "hanger-on" and a seventh man, John May, who was a mechanic fixing one of the cars, and not a gangster at all. The killers told the seven men to line up facing the back wall; there was apparently no resistance, as the Moran men thought their captors were real cops, and it was likely a "show" bust merely to garner good press for the police department.

Then the two "police officers" let in two men through the front door facing Clark Street. This pair, riding in the Cadillac, were dressed in civilian clothes. Two of the killers starting shooting with Thompson sub-machine guns. All seven men were killed in a storm of seventy machine-gun bullets and two shotgun blasts according to the coroner's report.[2]

To show by-standers that everything was under control, the pair in street clothes came out with their hands up, led by the two uniformed cops. The only survivor in the warehouse was John May's German Shepherd, Highball. When the real cops arrived, they first heard the dog howling. On entering the warehouse, they found the dog trapped under a beer truck and the floor covered with blood, shell casings, and corpses.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentines_Day_Massacre

(zombie) god is love

Scattered throughout Northern Japan are two dozen mummified Japanese monks known as Sokushinbutsu. Followers of Shugendô, an ancient form of Buddhism, the monks died in the ultimate act of self-denial.

For three years the priests would eat a special diet consisting only of nuts and seeds, while taking part in a regimen of rigorous physical activity that stripped them of their body fat. They then ate only bark and roots for another three years and began drinking a poisonous tea made from the sap of the Urushi tree, normally used to lacquer bowls. This caused vomiting and a rapid loss of bodily fluids, and most importantly, it killed off any maggots that might cause the body to decay after death. Finally, a self-mummifying monk would lock himself in a stone tomb barely larger than his body, where he would not move from the lotus position. His only connection to the outside world was an air tube and a bell. Each day he rang a bell to let those outside know that he was still alive. When the bell stopped ringing, the tube was removed and the tomb sealed.

source: http://www.kirchersociety.org/blog/2007/06/27/sokushinbutsu-the-self-mummified-monks-of-japan/

ow my balls!

scientists make testicles into irrelevant flappy things.



Prof Karim Nayernia, professor of stem cell biology at the city's university, has already coaxed male bone marrow cells to develop into primitive sperm cells, and has repeated the feat with female embryonic stem cells.

He plans to apply for permission to turn the bone marrow cells of a woman into sperm.

This work raises the possibility of lesbian couples having children: sperm created from the bone marrow of one woman could be used to fertilise an egg from her partner.

full story and source here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/earth/2008/02/12/scisperm112.xml

geep!

The animal is a crossbreed of two entirely different species, a goat and a sheep. Inevitably, it has been dubbed a geep.
Now 18 months old and thriving, the geep was produced by the latest tricks of embryo manipulation. Scientists at the Institute of Animal Physiology in Cambridge, England, mingled new embryos from both sheep and goats when each consisted of no more than four to eight cells. Ultimately, these were placed in the wombs of surrogate sheep or goat mothers and allowed to grow to term. Such hybrids are called chimeras (after the mythic monster with a lion's head, goat's body and serpent's tail).
Because each embryo came originally from the fertilized eggs of both a goat and a sheep, the animals had four parents.

source: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,921546,00.html

Vespa mandarinia

giant asian hornet.




The venom contains at least eight distinct chemicals, some of which damage tissue, some of which cause pain, and at least one which has an odor that attracts more hornets to the victim.
The venom contains 5% acetylcholine, a greater concentration than is present in bee or other wasp venoms. Acetylcholine stimulates the pain nerve fibres, intensifying the pain of the sting.
Vespa mandarinia uses its large crushing mandibles, rather than its sting, to kill prey.
The venom of the Asian giant hornet is more toxic than that of most other bees or wasps, giving this species one of the greatest lethal capacities per colony.
The enzyme in the venom is so strong that it can dissolve human tissue.
Like all hornets, V. mandarinia has a barbless stinger, allowing it to sting repeatedly.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_hornet

giant isopods

Maturing to a length between 19 and 37 cm (7.5 to 14.5 in), and maximally reaching a weight of approximately 1.7 kg (3 lb) in B. giganteus, giant isopods are a good example of deep-sea gigantism (cf. giant squid); most other isopods range in size from 1–5 cm.

Although generalist scavengers, these isopods are mostly carnivorous and feed on dead whales, fish, and squid; they may also be active predators of slow-moving prey such as sea cucumbers, sponges, radiolarians, nematodes and other zoobenthos, and perhaps even live fish.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_isopod

piglet squid!


duo, the two nosed staffordshire terrier!

old lady loses knife fight!

lives to hate cutlery.