science and anger

german science!

2010-12-06T10:09:00.000-08:00

with their spotless history, what could go wrong?

Scientists Attempt to Crack Secret Code of the Axolotl. The axolotl is one of a kind in nature: It can regenerate severed limbs, organs and even grow back its spinal column after injuries. At a new research center in Hanover, Germany, researchers are trying to unlock the Mexican salamander's secrets -- and whether they can be applied to humans.

These are no ordinary amphibians. Many have had flaps of skin removed or parts of their limbs cut off -- under sedation of course -- by scientists investigating their regenerative capabilities. "Coagulation sets in instantly", says scientist Björn Menger. "You can almost watch the healing process happening." It only takes a few months until the body part has regenerated completely -- "the younger ones are even faster," says molecular biologist Kerstin Reimers-Fadhlaoui.

In September 2010, molecular biologists, surgeons and amphibian experts set up a center for axolotl research in Hanover. Their hope is that they can unlock the healing secrets of the axolotl. They also believe the animal may hold the key to longer life and prolonged youth and health.

"We share a common evolutionary history with amphibians," explains Kerstin Reimers-Fadhlaoui. "Regeneration is in our own fundamental genetic makeup." Perhaps the axolotl will help us to discover how to switch the process on once again.

Reimers-Fadhlaoui and her colleagues have analyzed the transcriptome of the wound-healing cells, focusing on the active genes in the regeneration process. Some of this genetic information contains the building blocks of an enzyme that could be the trigger of cell renewal: amblox. Amblox is thought to support the formation of a transmitter, which causes the cells to change into progenitor cells.

The researcher explains that initial experiments have shown that human cells also respond to these transmitters. A layer of human skin cells programmed with the genetic sequence healed significantly faster after injury that the untreated control cells.

source: http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,732283,00.html

flying fucking snakes!

2010-11-25T16:02:00.000-08:00

DDT motherfucker!

The image of airborne snakes may seem like the stuff of nightmares, but in the jungles of South and Southeast Asia it is reality.

Once thought to be more parachuters than gliders, recent scientific studies have revealed intricate details about how these limbless, tube-shaped creatures turn plummeting into piloting. To prepare for take-off, a flying snake will slither to the end of a branch, and dangle in a J shape. It propels itself from the branch with the lower half of its body, forms quickly into an S, and flattens to about twice its normal width, giving its normally round body a concave C shape, which can trap air. By undulating back and forth, the snake can actually make turns.

There are five recognized species of flying snake, found from western India to the Indonesian archipelago. Knowledge of their behavior in the wild is limited, but they are thought to be highly arboreal, rarely descending from the canopy. The smallest species reach about 2 feet (61 centimeters) in length and the largest grow to 4 feet (1.2 meters).

source: http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/reptiles/flying-snake/

get off my lawn!

2010-11-04T18:36:00.000-07:00

the original polish party animal!

2010-08-24T21:13:00.000-07:00

spuds mackenzie: bred to fight, born to party!

A Polish man living in Germany was unaware he had been shot in the head for five years, because he was drunk when it happened.

Police in the western city of Bochum said doctors found a .22 calibre bullet in the back of his head after the 35-year-old went to have what he thought was a cyst removed.

Presented with the 5.6mm projectile, the man recalled he had received a blow to the head around midnight at a New Year’s party “in 2004 or 2005”, but had forgotten about it because he had been “very drunk”, a police spokesman said.

“He told us he remembered having a sore head, but that he wasn’t really one for going to the doctor,” the spokesman said.

The wound later healed around the bullet and it was not until the man decided to have the lump examined due to recurring pains that the discovery was made.

source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/7962960/Man-unaware-he-had-been-shot-in-head-five-years-ago.html

monkey terror!

2010-07-22T10:53:00.000-07:00

Taliban Training Monkey Terrorists!

(note: pictured above is an ape not a monkey, but it's holding a fucking gun and is righteous so fuck it.)

Monkeys have been trained by the Taliban in Afghanistan to use machine guns and trench mortars against U.S. military forces, reports People's Daily Online.

According to this Chinese media story, monkeys can now operate the Kalashnikov, Bren light machine gun, and have the ability to identify and attack U.S. soldiers based on the appearance of their uniforms.

The report indicates the Taliban was inspired by none other than the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, which it claims used peanuts and bananas to train "monkey soldiers" in Vietnam. This information was, in turn, attributed to a "British media" report from last month.

The story ends by saying, "A senior U.S. military source confirmed the existence of the Taliban monkey soldiers, military experts call armed monkeys 'monkey terrorists.'"

source: http://news.discovery.com/animals/taliban-training-monkey-terrorists.html

old dildo!

2010-07-22T10:32:00.000-07:00

william shatner is a fucking baby faced fist magnet.

Sex toys have come a long way since the Stone Age. Last week, an excavation in Sweden turned up an object that bears the unmistakable look of a penis carved out of antler bone.

"Your mind and my mind wanders away to make this interpretation about what it looks like — for you and me, it signals this erected-penis-like shape," said archaeologist Gšran Gruber of the National Heritage Board in Sweden, who worked on the excavation.

"Without doubt anyone alive at the time of its making would have seen the penile similarities just as easily as we do today," wrote Swedish archaeologist Martin Rundkvist on his blog, Aardvarchaeology.

Ancient phallic objects:
The carved bone was unearthed at a Mesolithic site in Motala, Sweden, that is rich with ancient artifacts from between 4,000 to 6,000 B.C. The area's unique features may have allowed bone artifacts, which usually get destroyed over the millennia, to survive.

source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38343340/ns/technology_and_science-science/

worst. poem. ever!

2010-07-06T19:38:00.000-07:00

while i was trying to find out what kind of scooter Froggy from the Little Rascals was riding when he was killed, i came across the worst poem ever. wtf? im sure this dude is a blast at parties.

Pornography

I like pornography - if it's legal
especially when I can't be with someone
to get me excited sexually.

My wife and I enjoyed the movie
I am Curious Yellow.
We didn't care for Deap Throat.

I don't rent X-rated movies
cause I don't want my name recorded.

A cable channel advertised "Mr. Skin"
It claimed to have nude images
taken from released movies.
I became a member at $4.95 a month.

The next day and thereafter I was bombarded
with dozens of lewd E-mails every day!
The images on Mr Skin were all so dark
I called up and terminated my membership immediately.

For six months I had a daily chore of deleting lewd E-mails.
Then one day I took a peak
and decided to collect some pornographic images.

After a couple hundred I got tired of it
and only went after pictures of pretty faces.

I thought I might use them as models
to make some stylized paintings
but I'm no better at that art than ever.
These still pictures don't interest me any more.
I just want the real thing!
should get rid of them to reclaim the space.

One day someone sent me an E-mail
with family photos in an application
called Picaso

I installed it and it went searching my computer
and came up with an organization of all my images
including those I considered private!

I quickly deleted the shortcut to Picaso
so no one else would see them accidentally!
Some application developers got a lot of nerve.

And Microsoft as well.
Every time I accidentally touch another key
up pops a menu which has nothing to do
with what I'm trying to do!

Or the narrator comes on in that dead voice
reading all the garbage that's on the screen!

When your doing touch typing
all the other functions should be turned off
till you specifically hit a key high up on the keyboard
which turns on these other features!

And the Gateway and HP notebooks
with that pad for moving the cursor
is the worst thing for touch typing.
You are always touching it and
sending the cursor way away from
where you are trying to do your work.

HP will never get my business again.
I bought an Ink Jet 1220 C printer.
They included drivers and a tool kit.
It supported two way commuication with the printer.
Let you see how much ink was left.
When Microsoft Windows XP came out
HP did not updata the drivers
Two way communication no longer works
so you can not see how much ink is left.

The IBM solution for moving the cursor is better but still needs
other keys blocked when your in a typing application!

And when your moving the cursor over text
in a text editor it becomes a very thin vertical line,
almost invisible to see--
Why don't they make it bright red
or an option to make it thicker?

Microsoft is a lousy company!
Too bad the Justice Department didn't split it up
and make the business more competitive!

By Donald Warren, © 2008

handfish!

2010-05-27T21:39:00.000-07:00

Handfishes are anglerfishes in the family Brachionichthyidae, a group comprised of 5 genera and 14 extant species.

They are small (up to 15 cm) bottom-dwelling marine fishes found in coastal waters of southern Australia and Tasmania. Their skin is covered with denticles (tooth-like scales), giving them the name warty anglers. This is the most species-rich of the few marine fish families that are endemic to Australia. Handfish are unusual, slow moving fishes that prefer to 'walk' rather than swim, using their modified pectoral fins to move about on the sea floor. These highly modified fins have the appearance of hands, hence their scientific name, from Latin bracchium meaning "arm" and Greek ichthys meaning "fish".

Only four specimens of the elusive four-inch (ten-centimeter) pink handfish have ever been found, and all of those were collected from areas around the city of Hobart (map), on the Australian island of Tasmania.

Though no one has spotted a living pink handfish since 1999, it's taken till now for scientists to formally identify it as a unique species.

source: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/05/photogalleries/100524-new-species-handfish-walk-science-pictures/#new-handfish-species-pink_20881_600x450.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handfish

periodic table of the empire strikes back!

2010-05-25T21:35:00.000-07:00

not featured: george lucas' frog neck.

the pt of esb:

ps: fuck you george lucas!

source: http://io9.com/5546123/the-periodic-table-of-the-empire-strikes-back

the cylons were created by man...

2010-05-22T08:57:00.000-07:00

they rebelled. they evolved. and they have a plan.

Scientists announced a bold step Thursday in the enduring quest to create artificial life. They've produced a living cell powered by manmade DNA.

Maryland genome-mapping pioneer J. Craig Venter said his team's project paves the way for the ultimate, much harder goal: designing organisms that work differently from the way nature intended for a wide range of uses.

"This is the first self-replicating species we've had on the planet whose parent is a computer," Venter told reporters.

And the report, being published Friday in the journal Science, is triggering excitement in this growing field of synthetic biology.

"It's been a long time coming, and it was worth the wait," said Dr. George Church, a Harvard Medical School genetics professor. "It's a milestone that has potential practical applications."

Scientists for years have moved single genes and even large chunks of DNA from one species to another. At his J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Md., and San Diego, Venter's team aimed to go further. A few years ago, the researchers transplanted an entire natural genome — the genetic code — of one bacterium into another and watched it take over, turning a goat germ into a cattle germ.

Next, the researchers built from scratch another, smaller bacterium's genome, using off-the-shelf laboratory-made DNA fragments.

Friday's report combines those two achievements to test a big question: Could synthetic DNA really take over and drive a living cell? Somehow, it did.

"This is transforming life totally from one species into another by changing the software," said Venter, using a computer analogy to explain the DNA's role.

source: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jUy0CkhjIEOS2ZY_SP3gWg8ELgewD9FQPB980

cop and a half!

2010-04-05T14:51:00.000-07:00

A Thai police force has begun taking a monkey dressed in officer's uniform on patrol each day to help improve relations with Muslim separatists.

(above: i know it's a fucking ape and not a monkey)

The five-year-old pig-tailed macaque was adopted after policemen in Yaha province in southern Thailand found him injured with a broken arm.

The monkey also helps supervise a police checkpoint and his boss says he has made it a much happier place.

Motorists now stop to play with Santisuk, rather than getting angry at the hold-up.

Other forces are now considering introducing monkeys to better their image in the troubled province.

Separatists are blamed for most of the attacks in Thailand's predominantly Muslim deep south.

Buddhists and Muslims associated with the Thai state - such as police, soldiers, government officials and teachers - are often targeted.

source: http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Strange-News/Monkey-Police-Macaque-On-Patrol-With-Thai-Force-To-Help-Improve-Relations-With-Muslim-Separatists/Article/201004115591175?lpos=Strange_News_First_Strange_News__Article_Teaser_Region__0&lid=ARTICLE_15591175_Monkey_Police%3A_Macaque_On_Patrol_With_Thai_Force_To_Help_Improve_Relations_With_Muslim_Separatists

blood diner!

2009-11-14T22:15:00.000-08:00

looks like the work of pathalogical wierdos!

Moscow: Police say body parts sold to kebab stand. Three Russians also suspected of killing man, eating parts themselves.

Russian police have arrested three homeless people suspected of eating a 25-year-old man they had butchered and selling other bits of the corpse to a local kebab house.

Suspicions were raised when dismembered parts of a human body were found near a bus stop in the outskirts of the Russian city of Perm, 720 miles east of Moscow.

Three homeless men with previous criminal records have been arrested on suspicion of setting upon a foe with knives and a hammer before chopping up his corpse to eat, local investigators said in a statement.

"After carrying out the crime, the corpse was divided up: part was eaten and part was also sold to a kiosk selling kebabs and pies," the prosecutor's main investigative unit for the Perm region said.

source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33932286/ns/world_news-europe

venn diagram of the damned!

2009-11-03T15:36:00.001-08:00

veganism of the day!

2009-10-14T13:32:00.000-07:00

'Veggie' spider shuns meat diet. also rides a fixed gear.

It is the first-known predominantly vegetarian spider; all of the other known 40,000 spider species are thought to be mainly carnivorous.

Bagheera kiplingi, which is found in Central America and Mexico, bucks the meat-eating trend by feasting on acacia plants.

Professor Curry said he was extremely surprised when he found out about its unusual behaviour.

He said: "This is the only spider we know that deliberately only goes after plants."

source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8302535.stm

blob!

2009-10-14T13:15:00.000-07:00

Your meteor brought something all right but if it's a germ, it's the biggest son of a bitch you've ever seen!

Giant, Mucus-Like Sea Blobs on the Rise, Pose Danger.

As sea temperatures have risen in recent decades, enormous sheets of a mucus-like material have begun forming more often, oozing into new regions, and lasting longer, a new Mediterranean Sea study says. And the blobs may be more than just unpleasant.

Up to 124 miles (200 kilometers) long, the mucilages appear naturally, usually near Mediterranean coasts in summer. The season's warm weather makes seawater more stable, which facilitates the bonding of the organic matter that makes up the blobs.

Until now, the light-brown "mucus" was seen as mostly a nuisance, clogging fishing nets and covering swimmers with a sticky gel. But the new study found that Mediterranean mucilages harbor bacteria and viruses, including potentially deadly E. coli, Danovaro said.

source: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/10/091008-giant-sea-mucus-blobs.html

snakes!

2009-09-27T10:13:00.000-07:00

A snake with a single clawed foot has been discovered in China.

Dean Qiongxiu, 66, said she discovered the reptile clinging to the wall of her bedroom with its talons in the middle of the night.

"I woke up and heard a strange scratching sound. I turned on the light and saw this monster working its way along the wall using his claw," said Mrs Duan of Suining, southwest China.

Mrs Duan said she was so scared she grabbed a shoe and beat the snake to death before preserving its body in a bottle of alcohol.

The snake – 16 inches long and the thickness of a little finger – is now being studied at the Life Sciences Department at China's West Normal University in Nanchang.

Snake expert Long Shuai said: "It is truly shocking but we won't know the cause until we've conducted an autopsy."

A more common mutation among snakes is the growth of a second head, which occurs in a similar way to the formation of Siamese twins in humans.

Such animals are often caught and preserved as lucky tokens but have very little chance of surviving in the wild anyway, especially as the heads have a tendency to attack each other.

source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/6187320/Snake-with-foot-found-in-China.html

what is best in life?

2009-08-25T18:32:00.000-07:00

to crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women!

here are some people who would not take it anymore, who stood up against the scum, the cunts, the dogs, the filth, the shit. you fuckers, you screwheads!

Brick Wielding Grandpa Attacks Red-light Runners

The daring vigilante act of a retired teacher captured the world’s imagination last month when he smashed the cars of traffic violators with a brick. The three hour spectacle took place in the city of Lanzhou and a total of fourteen cars suffered under the wrath of Yan Zhenping.

Reports claim that the seventy-four year old man armed himself with a brick one night and waited patiently by the pedestrian crossing.

Subsequently, he attacked every car that went through the red lights at that crossing point.

source: http://www.weirdasianews.com/2009/08/21/brick-wielding-grandpa-attacks-redlight-runners/

rolling back violence!

Wal-Mart worker accused of beating boss with bat.

Police in New Haven accused a Wal-Mart worker of beating an assistant manager in a store aisle with an aluminum baseball bat after getting reprimanded for the second time in a few days.

Avery said the worker grabbed the bat off a shelf and hit 29-year-old assistant manager George Freibott nearly a dozen times at about midnight Monday, after Freibott wrote the worker up for poor job performance.

Avery said Freibott suffered a possible broken arm and many bruises.

source: http://www.boston.com/news/odd/articles/2009/08/23/wal_mart_worker_accused_of_beating_boss_with_bat/

Hungry hippopotamus chases man!
This gamekeeper sprints for his life after disturbing a hungry hippo while it was stuffing its face.

He fled as the angry three-ton beast – which can hit speeds of up to 30mph – charged at him, still with a mouthful of grass.

The keeper only managed to escape a nasty end with an impressive 100m dash – in flat work shoes.

The keeper was lucky – hippos have huge teeth and kill more people than any other African animal.

source: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2009/08/23/curb-your-hippo-hungry-hippopotamus-chases-man-115875-21616723/

wolverines!

students would rather be dead than red!

A normal September morning in the small Colorado town of Calumet is unexpectedly interrupted by the surprise appearance of Cuban and Soviet paratroopers in the empty fields behind the local high school. As the paratroopers begin their attack and rounding up the townspeople, a small group of teenagers escapes in a truck, obtains weapons and supplies from a store, and flees to the nearby mountains where they had previously hunted with their fathers. The Arapaho National Forest becomes their base.

Jed and Matt learn that their father, a former military colonel who has given the two boys a lifetime of rigorous military and survival training, has now been captured and is being held in a Soviet concentration camp. Col. Eckart tells the two boys to forget about him, and to "avenge" him. In response, the "Wolverines" mount strikes on invading forces, and persuade others to do the same.

As the result of escalating guerrilla attacks, the Soviet field commanders now view the Wolverines as a serious threat. Initially, the occupiers had tried terror tactics, executing groups of civilians following every Wolverine attack, to intimidate the local population and the Wolverines into halting their attacks. However, this tactic backfires, and civilians lend increasing support to the resistance movement. Following a rise in popular support for the Wolverines, the Soviets decide to stop reprisals against civilians and begin hunting the Wolverines themselves. Spetsnaz commandos are sent into the mountains to eliminate the resistance, but the commandos are ambushed and killed by the Wolverines.

The Wolverines are weakened, however, by the attacks and other events, and their morale erodes as the war of attrition takes its toll on their numbers. Even though the civilians are increasingly resistant to Soviet rule, the occupation forces are pushing the resistance to the breaking point. The remaining Wolverines are ambushed by three Mil Mi-24 helicopter gunships, and Robert and Toni are killed, leaving the group reduced to four: Jed, Matt, Danny, and Erica. The survivors realize that they cannot outlast the Soviets, and if they keep fighting, they will all die. Determined to save at least some of their number, Jed and Matt stage a suicide attack on the Soviet regional headquarters in order to distract the troops while Danny and Erica escape to "Free American" territory. The ploy works: Jed and Matt are killed, but Danny and Erica are free.

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

mongo strikes back!

2009-08-11T11:20:00.000-07:00

fuck you perry farrell.

Man accused of slugging police horse.

A 21-year-old man spent the night in jail after he allegedly punched a Chicago police horse near the Lollapalooza music festival.

The alleged offender, Pablo Fernandez, approached the officer on horseback at about 9 p.m. Sunday, intent on petting the horse, police said.

When the officer ordered Fernandez to move aside, Fernandez reportedly refused and punched the horse, causing the animal to panic and rear back on its back legs in the middle of the crowd present for the three-day music festival, police spokeswoman Gabrielle Lesniak said.

viva pablo!

source: http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2009/08/man-accused-of-slugging-police-horse.html

total disregard for respect!

2009-08-11T08:04:00.000-07:00

Sunseekers run for cover as millions of ladybugs invade seaside resorts.

Ladybirds have mounted their biggest invasion of the British Isles since the long, hot summer of 1976.

Tens of millions of the insects have thrived here on a bumper crop of their favourite food, aphids.

Others flew over from the Continent as supplies there ran out. The red and black swarms are sending families running for cover.

One of the worst affected areas is Norfolk, where one woman in the seaside resort of Cromer found her canary yellow VW Beetle had attracted the bugs - which probably mistook it for a giant flower.

Some holidaymakers fled the area after finding their bright clothing proved irresistible.

Nearby in Bacton-on-Sea, people staying at a caravan park were shutting themselves inside to avoid the ladybirds - though often without success.

'They keep coming in through vents or windows or through doors and people get an influx inside their accommodation,' said Anna Hollis, of Castaways Holiday Park.

An estimated ten million ladybirds also descended on Chard, Somerset, covering every inch of a 20-acre farm

source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1204864/Plague-ladybirds-puts-families-flight-Holidaymakers-overrun-tens-millions-bugs.html

shit that pisses me off when im drunk

2009-07-25T03:08:00.001-07:00

i drank an unholy combination of wine, absinthe, and beer with my buddy sammy. nobody has been attacked by an ape or stabbed in the face lately so im posting the top three things that piss me off when im drunk. dig it!

puff daddy:

horses:

midgets:

x ray spex!

2009-06-25T14:06:00.000-07:00

a testament to human duality: intelligent enough to be able to take a photograph of the interior of a living organism, stupid enough to put a bottle up their own butt.

bottle up the arse.

keys in the face.

eiffel tower in the hand.

knife in the face.

more here: http://nowthatsnifty.blogspot.com/2009/06/x-rays-of-stuck-and-pierced-objects.html

teeth!

2009-06-24T20:43:00.000-07:00

teeth are fucked up and this video makes me want to jump head first into a hammer pit.

be amazed as a tooth is zoomed into to reveal the fucking atomic structure of the bitch!

Zoom into a Tooth
Uploaded by Weird_Weird_Science. - Technology reviews and science news videos.

bonus: skin!

this video will make you wanna swing over the bar like fucking inside out boy.

Zoom into Human Skin
Uploaded by Weird_Weird_Science. - Discover more science and tech videos.

source: http://www.dailymotion.com/related/x4mqrz/video/x4muob_zoom-into-a-tooth_tech?hmz=74616272656c61746564

fucked shit!

2009-06-17T18:56:00.001-07:00

are you going somewhere and want to see something fucked up?
check out http://atlasobscura.com.

atlas obscura is "a compendium of this age's wonders, curiosities, and esoterica. The Atlas Obscura is a collaborative project with the goal of cataloging all of the singular, eccentric, bizarre, fantastical, and strange out-of-the-way places that get left out of traditional travel guidebooks and are ignored by the average tourist. If you're looking for miniature cities, glass flowers, books bound in human skin, gigantic flaming holes in the ground, phallological museums, bone churches, balancing pagodas, or homes built entirely out of paper, the Atlas Obscura is where you'll find them."

A 500 year old scuplture depicts a man eating a sack of babies, and no one is sure why.

bonus: some of the categories are catacombs crypts and cemeteries, ghost towns, crime and punishment, medical museums, memento mori, mummies, and more! shit!

i cut you!

2009-06-17T18:24:00.001-07:00

no one is safe! no more left turns!

Knife-wielding gorilla shocks zoo visitors

Onlookers at the Calgary Zoo were shocked Tuesday when a Western Lowland gorilla picked up a knife and pointed it at a fellow gorilla, then placed it on a chair for the keepers to remove.

He grabbed the knife exactly in the correct position and he smelled it and looked at it," said Calgarian Joe Scheffler, who was at the zoo with his wife, Heike. "A few seconds later, another gorilla came and he was very interested.

"He tried to get the knife, but the gorilla with the knife lifted the knife for his buddy....It seems to me that the gorilla with the knife was a little bit angry, and he lifted his hand with the knife.

"It was just a scene from a crime," added Scheffler, whose wife snapped photos of the morning incident.

Visitors were visibly shaken by the scene, and wondered aloud where the gorilla would get a knife.

Suddenly, as though it sensed danger, Scheffler said the second gorilla stepped away, and the knife-wielding gorilla walked a short distance and placed it on an old chair sitting in the exhibit.

Laurie Herron, manager of communications for the Calgary Zoo, said the knife was accidentally left by one of the gorilla keepers who was cleaning out the exhibit earlier Tuesday morning.

"He dropped it," she explained. "One of the other keepers or a volunteer came and told him that the gorillas had a knife and he was like, 'Oh, crap.'

source: http://www.edmontonjournal.com/Travel/Knife+wielding+gorilla+shocks+visitors/1704496/story.html

viva tom!

2009-06-17T08:06:00.001-07:00

here is a photo of a new species of glass frog (Hyalinobatrachium pellucidum) discovered in ecuador. look at his guts!

playlist:
the flaming stars - ginmill perfume

source: http://www.conservation.org/learn/species/discoveries/where/south_america/Pages/nangaritza.aspx

corpse bride!

2009-06-16T08:31:00.000-07:00

china runs out of brides after throwing all of their women in a river.

Teenage girl dug up to be 'corpse bride'

Five people have been arrested in China for digging up the corpse of a young woman to be a "ghost bride" for a man killed in a car crash.

The suspects included a grieving father who allegedly paid his four accomplices around £2,700 pounds to find a female to be his son's companion in the afterlife.

The men were caught after unearthing the remains of a teenage girl who had poisoned herself after failing her university entrance exams last year, a newspaper in Xianyang in China's Shaanxi province reported.

In rural China, superstitious villagers have for centuries sought out the bodies of recently deceased woman to be ghost brides for young men who die single.

Marriage ceremonies are conducted for the two corpses, and the bride is placed in the same grave as her husband.

Under Chairman Mao's rule, officials made strenuous efforts to stamp out the ghoulish practice but it has since resurfaced in some rural areas.

Last year, a gang in southern China was arrested for strangling young women to sell as ghost brides when the supply of female corpses in their area ran short.

source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/5541242/Teenage-girl-dug-up-to-be-corpse-bride.html

death and fishnets!

2009-06-13T11:46:00.000-07:00

life has two inescapable properties:
1. you are going to die.
2. fishnets is going to eat a burrito today.

if you want to find out what happens to your body after you die go here: http://deathonline.net/
bonus! contains graphic photos and a video of a pig decomposing!

if you want to find out what happens after fishnets eats a burrito, you are a sick motherfucker.

kirk cameron's bad day part 2

2009-06-11T17:10:00.000-07:00

alan thicke wrote the theme song to the facts of life. wtf?

Scientists Create a Form of Pre-Life

A self-assembling molecule synthesized in a laboratory may resemble the earliest form of information-carrying biological material, a transitional stage between lifeless chemicals and the complex genetic architectures of life.

Called tPNA, short for thioester peptide nucleic acids, the molecules spontaneously mimic the shape of DNA and RNA when mixed together. Left on their own, they gather in shape-shifting strands that morph into stable configurations.

The molecules haven’t yet achieved self-replication, the ultimate benchmark of life, but they hint at it. Best of all, their activities require no enzymes — molecules that facilitate chemical reactions, but didn’t yet exist in the primordial world modeled by scientists seeking insight into life’s murky origins.

“There have been many test tube experiments of evolving chemical sequences, but there hasn’t been a system that on its own can form under enzyme-free conditions,” said Reza Ghadiri, a Scripps Research Institute biochemist. “We satisfy some of the requirements of the long-term goal of having a purely chemical system that is capable of undergoing Darwinian evolution.”

“The next phase is to see whether these molecules are capable of self-replication,” said Ghadiri. “That’s another two or three years of work.”

Asked how long it would take before fully synthetic life could be coaxed from an inert chemical mixture, Ghadiri said, “Soon. If not in our lifetime, then the next. In my opinion, it shouldn’t be longer than that.

source: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/06/tpna/

kirk cameron's bad day

2009-06-11T11:45:00.001-07:00

show me that smile!

Scienists find chicken with naturally formed crocodile teeth.

Scientists have discovered that rarest of things: a chicken with teeth – crocodile teeth to be precise.

The team, based at the Universities of Manchester and Wisconsin, have also managed to induce teeth growth in normal chickens – activating genes that have lain dormant for 80 million years.

Professor Mark Ferguson, one of the scientific team at the University of Manchester, says the research – published in Current Biology this week – has major implications in understanding the processes of evolution. It could also have applications in tissue regeneration, including the replacement of lost teeth in humans.

"It was discovered 50 years ago but no one has ever examined its mouth. What we discovered were teeth similar to those of crocodiles – not surprising as birds are the closest living relatives of the reptile."

The discovery led the team to wonder whether healthy chickens might still maintain the genetic pathways to re-grow teeth.

"We found we were able to induce teeth to grow in normal chickens by making changes to the expression of particular molecules," said Professor Ferguson.

"All the pathways to make teeth are preserved which helps us understand how evolutionary changes can be brought about by subtle alterations in developmental biology."

source: http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/hens_teeth_not_so_rare_after_all_10081.html

human v simian reconciliation?

2009-06-06T18:26:00.000-07:00

too many beer bongs on the party porch!

source: http://www.theagitator.com/2009/06/06/saturday-linksopen-thread-13/

when there is no room left in hell!

2009-05-14T09:58:00.000-07:00

Parasitic flies turn fire ants into zombies!

The tool is the tiny phorid fly, native to a region of South America where the fire ants in Texas originated. Researchers have learned that there are as many as 23 phorid species along with pathogens that attack fire ants to keep their population and movements under control.

The flies "dive-bomb" the fire ants and lay eggs. The maggot that hatches inside the ant eats away at the brain, and the ant starts exhibiting what some might say is zombie-like behavior.

"At some point, the ant gets up and starts wandering," said Rob Plowes, a research associate at UT.

he maggot eventually migrates into the ant's head, but Plowes said he "wouldn't use the word 'control' to describe what is happening. There is no brain left in the ant, and the ant just starts wandering aimlessly. This wandering stage goes on for about two weeks."

About a month after the egg is laid, the ant's head falls off and the fly emerges ready to attack any foraging ants away from the mound and lay eggs.

Plowes said fire ants are "very aware" of these tiny flies, and it only takes a few to cause the ants to modify their behavior.

"Just one or two flies can control movement or above-ground activity," Plowes said. "It's kind of like a medieval activity where you're putting a castle under siege."

source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20090512/sc_mcclatchy/3231765?fark

get your ass to mars!

2009-05-09T09:03:00.000-07:00

labor and delivery took two weeks!

A PLUMBER reeled in agony as his stomach ruptured — and the embryonic remains of his TWIN spilled out.

The lumpy mass forced its way out after lying inside Gavin Hyatt’s abdomen since he was born 30 years ago.

GP Dr Joe Santos said: “It was like something from Alien. I didn’t believe Gavin when he said something was coming out of his belly button until I saw him.”

Medics said the growth was a parasitic twin — Gavin’s identical brother who died in the womb early in their mum’s pregnancy.

The 4cm foetus then became embedded in Gavin’s tissue and stayed in his stomach for the next 30 years.

He revealed: “At first I thought I had been stung by something due to the burning pain in my belly button."

“But there was no sign of anything on the skin. Then I felt a large lump just above my navel, which was so painful that I nearly passed out.

“There was a red patch around the area which was hot to the touch. Dr Santos felt it and said it was a hernia.”

But he felt a stabbing pain near his belly button.

Lifting his shirt, he saw that he was bleeding as the lump pushed through his skin.

Dr Santos was shocked at the sight of what came out.

‘I have amputated limbs and done all sorts, but I have never seen anything like this in my life.’

"I have him in a jar at home and I call him little Gav. I haven’t told many people. I feel like a bit of a freak.”

source: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2420523.ece?OTC-RSS&ATTR=News

children of the night!

2009-05-03T20:28:00.000-07:00

shit starts today, check it the fuck out!

Experience Bram Stoker's Dracula in a new way -- in real time. Dracula is an epistolary novel (a novel written as a series of letters or diary entries,) and this blog will publish each diary entry on the day that it was written by the narrator so that the audience may experience the drama as the characters would have.

read it here: http://dracula-feed.blogspot.com/

I brought my pencil!

2009-04-25T10:22:00.000-07:00

Teacher attacked by ungrateful squirrel!

A Michigan teacher guiding students around the University of Michigan campus was attacked by an irate squirrel when she tried to help one of its young.

The teacher spotted the squirrels Thursday as she ushered her students through a campus tour, The Ann Arbor News reported Friday. She noticed the young squirrels were not in their nest and a crow was eyeing one that appeared to have been left behind.

The teacher, whose name was not reported, first tried to shoo the crow away from the squirrels and then to draw the mother's attention to the danger.

The mother squirrel instead turned on the teacher.

Diane Brown, a spokeswoman for the Detroit Public Schools, said the teacher fell while running back to the bus to get away from the angry squirrel. The animal bit her ankle, but the teacher was able to get up and escape.

source: http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2009/04/24/Teacher-attacked-by-ungrateful-squirrel/UPI-41171240616437/

addams groove fail!

2009-04-25T10:06:00.000-07:00

please hammer dont hurt them.

George Fath moved to his mobile home in rural Steuben County two months ago. The previous owners left a lot of trash in the yard, so Fath was cleaning up Thursday afternoon. That's when he found a 22 caliber bullet in the yard. He didn't want his three young boys to get hurt from the bullet, so Fath decided to dispose of it.

"My hammer was outside so I took the bullet and put it on a rock and smacked it with the hammer," Fath said.

Fath wasn't expecting the bullet to fire.

"It went off and went into my belly and knocked me on my butt," Fath said.

"I smacked the bullet and fell down and blood came pouring out," Fath said. "I was hitting it to smash it. I didn't expect it to go bang."

"I wasn't thinking about it. It was the dumbest thing I ever did in my life. I suggest nobody do it," Fath said.

Fath said he'll never hit a bullet with a hammer again.

source: http://www.wane.com/dpp/news/local_wane_steuben_county_man_fires_bullet_with_hammer_200904241621

happy fucking earth day!

2009-04-22T12:02:00.000-07:00

Today is Earth Day, a holiday created to honor the planet and to raise the consciousness of man’s effect on the environment. Philadelphia has a very strong tie to this day. One of its native sons, Ira Einhorn, was a co-founder of the environmentalist jubilee.

But Mr. Einhorn has another line on his resume. In addition to being a environmental guru, he is the Unicorn Killer.

While a student at the University of Pennsylvania, Mr. Einhorn dated a Bryn Mawr College graduate by the name of Holly Maddux. When the affair ended in 1977, Mr. Einhorn went into a jealous rage and murdered her.

He concealed his crime for 18 months by stuffing Ms. Maddux’s body in a trunk that he kept in his apartment. The foul odor of the decomposing corpse coming from Mr. Einhorn’s Powelton Village apartment caused neighbors to complain. In 1979, police found the trunk stored in a closet in Mr. Einhorn’s apartment.

But there is a little mentioned irony about the Einhorn saga.

Ira Einhorn was arrested for murder March 28, 1979, the day the Three Mile Island nuclear plant accident occurred. Ira Einhorn, environmentalist, was charged with murder during the same period as one of the greatest environmental accidents in United States history.

But the real irony is that more people died in the apartment of Ira Einhorn, co-founder of Earth Day than at Three Mile Island. The environmentalist killed more people than the so-called environmental disaster.

source: http://www.thebulletin.us/articles/2009/04/22/top_stories/doc49eebca59bdb3868756314.txt

eye leech!

2009-04-20T18:03:00.000-07:00

A LEECH which had attached itself to an Australian woman's eyeball has been removed by doctors who had to think "outside the box''.

The 66-year-old woman was gardening in the backyard of her suburban Sydney home in March last year, when she accidentally flicked some moist soil and the leech into her left eye.

Her husband then watched in alarm as the leech wriggled its way over her cornea, headed for safety and a feed via the eye's mass of delicate blood vessels.

``It was tucked up underneath her upper eyelid,'' says emergency doctor Toby Fogg who helped to remove the blood-sucking critter.

"Our little fellow started off at about half a centimetre and by the time we removed it it was about 2cm long - it had quite a good lunch.''

"In the several months subsequent we had two more (people) come in with leeches on the eye, just by pure coincidence,'' he says.

source: http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25359996-29277,00.html

knut!

2009-04-13T16:31:00.001-07:00

Zoo keepers saved the life of a German woman who jumped into a polar bear enclosure at Berlin Zoo by pushing away of one of the animals when it attacked her.

The keepers' bravery was praised after they dragged the 32-year-old out of a moat for the animals. They had to shove the animal out of the way after one of four polar bears dived into the water and attacked her, inflicting serious bites to her legs and arms.

Knut, the zoo's baby bear that became an international celebrity in 2007 after it was hand-reared by a keeper, was in the enclosure at the time. Germany went polar bear crazy after the birth of the cute animal.

Police did not say why the woman jumped into the enclosure. She had to climb over a fence, a line of prickly hedges and a wall to get in.

She suffered serious injuries after being bitten on her arms and legs.

"The woman has proved herself to be careless by jumping into the enclosure," a police spokesman said "Logic tells us that polar bears will do this type of thing in this situation."

source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/5142098/Woman-survives-polar-bear-mauling-at-Berlin-Zoo.html

but was it a fixed gear?

2009-04-10T12:19:00.001-07:00

A cyclist was knocked out after being hit by a corpse thrown from a speeding car.

Student Wu Dan, 16, was riding home when the incident happened.

His uncle Yun Tsui said: "A car passed and a package came flying out the door. It had a dead woman inside. My nephew was very upset."

Police believe she was the victim of a car accident and was being dumped by the driver who had hit her in Dongyang, eastern China..

source: http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/2009/04/09/student-hit-by-corpse-thrown-from-speeding-car-86908-21265014/

outbreak!

2009-04-04T09:26:00.000-07:00

Monkeys escape Oregon research center; 4 still at large.

Employees from the Oregon National Primate Research Center were attempting to capture four monkeys that escaped after their cage was cleaned Friday afternoon.

The monkeys (which are Macaques, or snow monkeys) were last seen along the south edge of the university's west campus in Beaverton - an area near a light-rail line, said Jim Newman, an Oregon Health & Science University spokesman. The monkeys are too fast to catch, so caretakers were trying to lure them into cages baited with apples.

Threatened monkeys will bite and their saliva could contain a virus that harms people.

The escape occurred when a caretaker cleaned an outdoor cage that housed nine monkeys. The worker forgot to put the lock back on, and the monkeys figured out how to slide the door open, Newman said. Four monkeys were quickly captured, one was caught in the evening and four remain on the loose.

OHSU did not alert the public until the monkeys ventured near the rail line. A 10-foot chain-link fence, topped with barbed wire, serves as a barrier between the campus and the train.

The primate center affiliated with OHSU has long been criticized by animal-rights groups, who say the research monkeys are mistreated. Newman said OHSU does not believe the employee who forgot to lock the cage is an activist who got a job at the primate center.

Newman said the escapees are breeding monkeys and no tests were being conducted on them.

source: http://www.komonews.com/news/local/42471287.html

honey murder!

2009-04-03T22:01:00.000-07:00

Australian man murdered beekeeper for his honey

An Australian man was convicted Wednesday of murdering a fellow beekeeper so he could steal 40,000 Australian dollars ($27,880) worth of honey and has been sentenced to life in prison.

A jury with the Brisbane Supreme Court took less than a day to convict Donald Robert Alcock, 34, of the 2007 murder of beekeeper Anthony Ross Knight in Woodford, a rural town in Queensland state.

Prosecutors told the court that Alcock was is desperate financial trouble in May 2007 when he entered the 41-year-old Knight's home, shot him in the back while he was sleeping and stole tubs of his honey to sell.

The jury was told that Alcock loaded the largest tubs of honey onto his truck and drove them to a honey distributor but was pinned under a 3,000-pound (1,400 kilogram) tub while unloading the shipment and had to be taken to the hospital.

Knight's decomposing body was found on June 4, 2007.

Alcock _ who pleaded not guilty in court _ confessed to police that he meant to hurt Knight but not kill him, prosecutors said.

"If Tony was home I was going to have to maim him or hurt him bad if I was going to knock off the honey," Alcock said in a video confession recorded by police. "I thought (the bullet) would go straight through him actually."

source: http://www.baynews9.com/content/36/2009/3/25/452484.html

the brain that wouldnt die!

2009-04-03T21:25:00.000-07:00

Scientists have created an "artificial brain" they believe could help them discover a cure for diseases like Alzheimer's.

Researchers at Aston University in Birmingham took cells from a cancerous tumour and "reprogrammed" them to create those identical to the human nervous system.

Michael Coleman, who led the research, funded by the Humane Research Trust, which advocates alternatives to animal testing, said: "What we have developed is effectively an artificial brain capable of processing thought at the most basic level.

It is closer to the human brain than anything else around.

"What we've made is the most basic unit of the human brain. They're processing, they're connecting, they're communicating."

To keep the cells alive, researchers feed them every two days by injecting them with nutrients and minerals.

source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/5050106/Scientists-create-artificial-brain-to-help-fight-Alzheimers.html

time out!

2009-04-03T21:07:00.000-07:00

Scientists have made a breakthrough in understanding how HIV spreads through the human body after filming the process for the first time ever.

Researchers found that the virus is transferred from infected cells to healthy ones in a previously unknown way.

It is hoped that the discovery will help researchers create a vaccine to combat the virus, which has led to the deaths of more than 25 million people.

The study was made possible after experts created a molecular clone of infectious HIV and inserted a protein into its genetic code which glows green when exposed to blue light.

This allowed scientists to see the cells on digital video, and capture the way HIV-infected T-cells interact with uninfected ones.

They noted that when an infected cell came into contact with a healthy one, a bridge was created between them, called a virological synapse.

Researchers were then able to observe the fluorescent green viral particles moving towards the synapse and into the healthy cell.

The US study has broken new ground by revealing that it is the synapse through which the viral proteins are gathered and moved into uninfected cells.

The new video footage indicates that HIV avoids recognition by being directly transferred between cells.

source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/sciencenews/5058131/Scientists-film-HIV-spreading-for-first-time.html

rat king!

2009-03-26T15:33:00.001-07:00

i was attacked by a rat in my garage last night. big ups!

Rat kings are phenomena said to arise when a number of rats become intertwined at their tails, which become stuck together with blood, dirt, ice, or excrement. The animals reputedly grow together while joined at the tails. The numbers of rats that are joined together can vary, but naturally rat kings formed from a larger number of rats are rarer. The phenomenon is particularly associated with Germany, where the majority of instances have been reported.

Specimens of purported rat kings are kept in some museums. The museum Mauritianum in Altenburg (Thuringia) shows the largest well-known mummified "rat king", which was found in 1828 in a miller's fireplace at Buchheim. It consists of 32 rats. Alcohol-preserved rat kings are shown in museums in Hamburg, Hamelin, Göttingen, and Stuttgart. A rat king found in 1930 in New Zealand, displayed in the Otago Museum in Dunedin, was composed of immature Rattus rattus whose tails were entangled by horse hair. Relatively few rat kings have been discovered; depending on the source, the number of reported instances varies between 35 and 50 finds.

Historically, rat kings were seen as an extremely bad omen, particularly associated with plagues. This is a reasonable conclusion if they are formed naturally, since large populations of rats housed in insufficient space generally bring with them disease and pestilence. With an increase in the size of the rat population comes an increase of the chance of outbreak of disease — for example, the Black Death, which is spread by the rats’ fleas.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_king_(folklore)

whoops!

2009-03-25T16:43:00.000-07:00

Dynamite fishermen accidentally kill diver.

The fishermen told police they saw bubbles and movement under the surface and thought it was a large fish.

One of the fishermen tossed dynamite into the water and after it exploded the group jumped into the water but instead of finding a fish, they found the body of the dead diver.

source: http://www.cdnn.info/news/safety/s090324.html

Norman!

2009-03-25T09:26:00.000-07:00

Woman's Mummified Body Found Fused To Bed

Police arrested a Sebastian, Fla., woman after discovering the mummified remains of her 96-year-old mother inside her home.

Code enforcement officers removed eight cats from the home during the weekend and notified police about possible human remains inside.

"There's excessive debris in the residence and it's very difficult to make your way around inside this house," Officer Steve Marcinik said. "While moving around in there, they observed something that was somewhat suspicious and upon that they notified law enforcement."

Neighbors had also been complaining of a foul smell coming from the home.

Michael Pearce said he's complained to the city about feral cats running loose on the property and a foul smell "for at least a decade, if not 12 years" since he has lived there.

Police said Timmie Jordan, 96, had been dead for years. Her mummified body was found in her bed.

Investigators said she still had on her nightgown and her skin had fused to the mattress.

Neighbors said they hadn't seen or heard from Jordan's mother in years.

source: http://www.clickorlando.com/news/19003927/detail.html

Have you ever considered the consequences of failure?

2009-03-24T16:55:00.001-07:00

An Indonesian fisherman has been killed by Komodo dragons after he was attacked while trespassing on a remote island in search of fruit, officials said Tuesday.

Muhamad Anwar, 32, bled to death on his way to hospital after being mauled by the reptiles at Loh Sriaya, in eastern Indonesia's Komodo National Park, the park's general manager Fransiskus Harum told CNN.

"The fisherman was inside the park when he went looking for sugar-apples. The area was forbidden for people to enter as there are a lot of wild dragons," Harum said.

Other fisherman took Anwar to a clinic on nearby Flores Island, east of Bali, but he was declared dead on arrival, he added.

Komodo dragons, the world's heaviest lizards, can grow up to 3 meters (10 feet) in length and have a toxic bite that they use to kill prey such as buffalo, returning to feast when the animal succumbs to the poison.

Despite their ungainly appearance, the carnivorous reptiles can run as fast as a dog in short bursts, jump up on their hind legs, and kill animals with a blow of their powerful tails.

Attacks on humans are rare, but Monday's incident is the latest in a series in which the monster lizards -- which have forked tongues and fearsome claws --have killed or injured people.

Last month a park ranger survived after a Komodo dragon climbed the ladder into his hut and savaged his hand and foot.

source: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/03/24/komodo.dragon/index.html

humans fight back (unsuccessfully)!

2009-03-14T12:17:00.000-07:00

the human v. simian battle escalates!

Malaysian Mistakes Woman For A Monkey, Shoots Her.

Police said a man in Malaysia shot his neighbor as she picked sapodilla fruit in his tree thinking she was a monkey. Police chief in eastern Pahang state Yahaya Othman said the woman was gathering fruit Thursday when her neighbor shot her. Yahaya said the man came home and saw rustling in the tree and fired into it. "Then there was screaming ... and only then did he know it was his neighbor."

He said the woman was hospitalized with a wound to the abdomen but her condition was stable Friday.

source: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/03/13/ap/strange/main4864985.shtml?source=RSS&attr=_4864985

human kebab!

2009-03-14T11:29:00.000-07:00

A six-year-old boy has survived falling off the roof of a house and landing on an upturned metal pole.

Mihir Kumar was celebrating the Holi festival in Ranchi, India, when the accident occured.

He slipped off the roof of his family home and landed on a the five foot-long iron rod that was left standing on a building site.

The pole punched through his rib cage and came out the other side.

His father said Mihir "endured terrible pain".

He was rushed to hospital where he underwent three-hour surgery at the Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences to remove the rod.

He is now recovering in hospital.

source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/4982787/Indian-boy-survives-being-impaled-on-metal-pole.html

pi day!

2009-03-14T08:58:00.001-07:00

happy pi day, nerd.

the revolution has begun...

2009-03-13T16:28:00.000-07:00

A monkey who was forced to climb palm trees by his owner took revenge by killing him with a coconut.

The animal threw the missile from the top of a tree after becoming frustrated with his tiring labour, according to reports.

Leilit Janchoom, 48, had employed the monkey to pick coconuts which he could then sell for around 4p each.

The animal – named Brother Kwan – found the work tedious and strenuous but Mr Janchoom refused to let him rest, dishing out beatings if he refused to climb trees.

It is believed that the monkey eventually snapped, and targeted his owner from a high branch with one of the hard-skinned fruits.

Mr Janchoom, from the province of Nakorn Sri Thammarat in Thailand, died on the spot after being struck by the coconut, according to reports in a local newspaper.

source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/4970905/Monkey-kills-cruel-owner-with-coconut-thrown-from-tree.html

going ape shit!

2009-03-10T18:51:00.000-07:00

Zoo Chimp Planned Weapons Stockpile

A canny chimpanzee who calmly collected a stash of rocks and then hurled them at zoo visitors in fits of rage has confirmed that apes can plan ahead just like humans, a Swedish study said Monday.

Santino the chimpanzee's anti-social behavior stunned both visitors and keepers at the Furuvik Zoo, but fascinated researchers because his behavior was so carefully prepared.

According to a report in the journal Current Biology, the 31-year-old alpha male started building his weapons cache in the morning before the zoo opened, collecting rocks and knocking out disks from concrete boulders inside his enclosure. He waited until around midday before he unleashed a "hailstorm" of rocks against visitors, the study said.

Seemingly at ease with his position as leader of the group, Santino didn't attack the other chimpanzees, Osvath told The Associated Press. The attacks were only directed at humans viewing the apes across the moat surrounding the island compound where they were held.

The fact that the ape stayed calm while preparing his weapons but used them when he was extremely agitated proves that the planning behavior was not based on an immediate emotional drive, Osvath said.

thanks john!
source: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101626066&sc=emaf

vampire!

2009-03-06T16:10:00.000-08:00

A SKELETON exhumed from a grave in Venice is being claimed as the first known example of the "vampires" widely referred to in contemporary documents.

Matteo Borrini of the University of Florence in Italy found the skeleton of a woman with a small brick in her mouth while excavating mass graves of plague victims from the Middle Ages on Lazzaretto Nuovo Island in Venice.

At the time the woman died, many people believed that the plague was spread by "vampires" which, rather than drinking people's blood, spread disease by chewing on their shrouds after dying. Grave-diggers put bricks in the mouths of suspected vampires to stop them doing this, Borrini says.

The belief in vampires probably arose because blood is sometimes expelled from the mouths of the dead, causing the shroud to sink inwards and tear. Borrini, who presented his findings at a meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences in Denver, Colorado, last week, claims this might be the first such vampire to have been forensically examined. The skeleton was removed from a mass grave of victims of the Venetian plague of 1576.

source: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126985.200-vampire-discovered-in-mass-grave.html

03/03/09

2009-03-03T14:08:00.000-08:00

today is square root day. how the fuck do you celebrate that? watch this video instead, it's awesome.

canadian sandwich artist.

2009-02-27T16:50:00.000-08:00

dont kill bears.

big ass fish.

2009-02-27T16:26:00.001-08:00

Fishers and scientists announced this week the catch, and release, of what is likely the world's largest known freshwater giant stingray.

The giant stingray, weighing an estimated 550 to 990 pounds (250 to 450 kilograms) was reeled in on January 28, 2009, as part of a National Geographic expedition in Thailand.

The stingray's body measured 6.6 feet (2 meters) wide by 6.9 feet (2.1) meters long. The tail was missing. If it had been there, the ray's total length would have been between 14.8 and 16.4 feet (4.5 and 5 meters), estimated University of Nevada Biologist Zeb Hogan.

source: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/02/090226-giant-stringray-picture-missions.html

i hate kids too.

2009-02-27T16:11:00.000-08:00

A SWARM of wasps is believed to have attacked 30 schoolchildren in the central Queensland city of Mackay after rocks were thrown at their nest.
It is believed some children in the school group were throwing rocks at a wasps' nest when the swarm of wasps emerged, attacking about 30 children.

They were met there by paramedics, who administered treatment with ice and pain relief.

source: http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,25114933-952,00.html

fuck!

2009-02-12T19:55:00.000-08:00

Deep Sea Frilled Shark

The frilled shark, Chlamydoselachus anguineus, is a prehistoric shark species, the only member of the familyy Chlamydoselachidae in the orderr Hexanchiformes. Superficially, the frilled shark resembles a dark brown or grey eel, but the six gill slits identify it as a shark. The tissue of the gill slits protrudes somewhat, thus inspiring the common name. Its dorsal fin is small, anal fin large, and the caudal fin (tail fin) is highly asymmetric, the dorsal part almost unnoticeable. Its teeth are small, tricuspid, and very sharp.

Loa Loa Worm

It lives in the rainforests of central Africa, and is frequently contracted through fly-bites. Humans are the only known natural incubators for the disease the worm causes, Loiasis, whose symptoms mostly consist of Red Spots, Itching, Soreness, Swelling.

Heteropoda Maxima

It was recently discovered in Laos, and it’s the largest spider in the world. It is a member of the Huntsman Spider family (all of which are frighteningly large,) which are found around the globe – from Japan to Africa, South America to Florida. They’re frequently housed in such exotic places as garages, woodsheds, or firewood piles. When provoked, they will attack. They also travel with incredible speed, and can cling to walls or ceilings just like their smaller counterparts. In Africa, they’re also called Rain Spiders because, when it rains, they seek shelter inside houses and other dwellings.

source, with more: http://community.atom.com/Post/The-Most-Disturbing-Animals-On-Earth-Part-3/03EFBFFFF0182C7B8000800A721B3/

happy 200th birthday charles darwin!

2009-02-12T19:49:00.000-08:00

monkey man!

The Vatican has admitted that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution should not have been dismissed and claimed it is compatible with the Christian view of Creation.

Ahead of a papal-backed conference next month marking the 150th anniversary of Darwin's On the Origin of Species, the Vatican is also set to play down the idea of Intelligent Design, which argues a "higher power" must be responsible for the complexities of life.

The conference at the Pontifical Gregorian University will discuss Intelligent Design to an extent, but only as a "cultural phenomenon" rather than a scientific or theological issue.

Monsignor Ravasi said Darwin's theories had never been formally condemned by the Roman Catholic Church, pointing to comments more than 50 years ago, when Pope Pius XII described evolution as a valid scientific approach to the development of humans.

The Church of England is seeking to bring Darwin back into the fold with a page on its website paying tribute to his "forgotten" work in his local parish, showing science and religion need not be at odds.

source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/4588289/The-Vatican-claims-Darwins-theory-of-evolution-is-compatible-with-Christianity.html

one in a million shot!

2008-12-25T10:00:00.001-08:00

A vicar attended hospital with a potato stuck up his bottom - and claimed it got there after he fell on to the vegetable while naked.

The clergyman, in his 50s, told nurses he had been hanging curtains when he fell backwards on to his kitchen table.

He happened to be nude at the time of the mishap, said the vicar, who insisted he had not been playing a sex game.

The vicar had to undergo a delicate operation to extract the vegetable, one of a range of odd items medics in

Sheffield have had to remove from people's backsides or genitals.

Others include a can of deodorant, a cucumber, a Russian doll – and a carnation.

source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/3330057/Vicar-went-to-hospital-with-potato-stuck-in-bottom.html

monkey attack!

2008-12-18T13:32:00.000-08:00

Three performing monkeys turned on their trainer in China after he beat one of them with a stick.

When one of the monkeys refused to ride on a child's bicycle in a street performance in Sizhou, in eastern China, their owner beat it with a stick.

Although they were tied to the man with ropes attached to their collars, the monkeys appear to have decided to fight back.

The two animals came to the defence of the third monkey, grabbing the stick from the man, pulling on his ear and biting his head.

When he dropped his cane, on monkey snatched it up and began beating the trainer on the head until he broke the stick, witnesses said.

The dazed trainer told his audience: "They were once wild and these performances don't always come naturally to them. They may have built up some feelings of hatred towards me."

source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/3816785/Performing-monkeys-attack-trainer-in-China.html

someone's gonna get their head kicked in

2008-12-18T12:29:00.000-08:00

Colorado Doctor Finds Foot In Newborn's Brain

Dr. Paul Grabb, a pediatric brain surgeon, said he was surprised when he discovered a small foot growing inside the brain of 3-day-old Sam Esquibel.

"The foot literally popped out of the brain," Grabb told TheDenverChannel Wednesday.

When Grabb performed the life-saving surgery at Memorial Hospital for Children in Colorado Springs, he was in for another surprise: he also found what appeared to be parts of an intestine in the folds of the infant's tiny brain, in addition to another developing foot, hand and thigh.

I've never seen anything like it before," Grabb told the Colorado Springs Gazette. "It looked like the breach delivery of a baby coming out of the brain."

source: http://www.thedenverchannel.com/health/18297954/detail.html

monkey pig!

2008-07-25T20:03:00.000-07:00

Villagers were shocked after a monkey-like piglet was born in China.

Curious locals flocked to the home of owner Feng Changlin after news of the piglet spread in Fengzhang village, Xiping township.

"It's hideous. No one will be willing to buy it, and it scares the family to even look at it!" Feng told Oriental Today.

He says the piglet looks just like a monkey, with two thin lips, a small nose and two big eyes. Its rear legs are also much longer than its forelegs, causing it to jump instead of walk.

"But our son likes to play with it, and he stopped us from getting rid of it. He even feeds it milk."

source: http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_2941186.html

dragon slayer!

2008-07-24T21:33:00.000-07:00

In a small, shingled 100-year-old farmhouse near Fowler, Calif., there lives a two-headed bearded dragon lizard.

Zak-n-Wheezie celebrated their first birthday this month, making them possibly the longest-living two-headed bearded dragon lizard on record, and landing owners Barbara and Frank Witte in a "Ripley's Believe it or Not!" cartoon.

When Zak-n-Wheezie were younger, the Wittes laid low to make sure no one searching for an oddity would find their one-in-a-million (actually, statistically speaking, two-in-a-million) pet.

"There were numerous circus-sideshow people looking for me," Barbara Witte says. "But I'm not looking to get them in the sideshow world."

Frank's brother did some research and told the Wittes not to sell Zak-n-Wheezie for anything less than a million dollars — that there were people out there who would pay that much to eat the Wittes' pet.

"There are people who will pay large amounts to eat a two-headed critter. They think it will give them eternal life," says Frank Witte, shaking his head.

The couple say that dragon lizards are cuddly and affectionate and that each has a distinct personality — including the separate heads of Zak-n-Wheezie.

"They are two lizards with one body, not one lizard with two heads," says Frank.

source: http://www.courant.com/features/lifestyle/hc-petsdragon.artjul12,0,1872309.story?page=1

deep discountage!

2008-07-16T10:48:00.001-07:00

Ceri and Rose Williams suffered numbness, head aches and high blood pressure after eating the fruit they purchased in Tesco.

Mr Williams, 52, and his 45-year-old wife had already started munching on the two £1 bags of fruit when they noticed that something was moving inside.

A quick rummage revealed that two spiders, one alive and one dead, had already made a meal out of the Moroccan-grown grapes.

Mr Williams also spotted a cotton wool-like substance - which turned out to be the poisonous arachnid's nest.

Minutes later, Mr and Mrs Williams, who were on holiday in Newquay, Cornwall, fell ill and drove to hospital where doctors told them the fruit they had eaten had been covered in the spider's toxins.

They were monitored closely for several hours and have now made an official complaint to the supermarket in Wadebridge, Cornwall - which has offered to pay them back the £2 cost of the grapes.

Environmental health officers identified the beasts as false widow spiders - Latin name Steatoda nobilis - cousin of the famous Black Widow.

A spokesman for Tesco, said: 'With all the expertise, checks and will in the world it is not always possible to completely legislate for the natural world. It must have been a real scare.'

But Rose added: ''They've offered a £2 refund, which is a bit cheeky considering we were half scared to death.'

source: http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/news/article-1035633/Couple-poisoned-eating-cut-price-supermarket-grapes-tainted-spider-venom.html

slugs!

2008-07-15T13:11:00.001-07:00

A "ghost" slug found in a garden in Cardiff has been declared a new species by specialists at the National Museum of Wales and Cardiff University.

They have given the creature a partially Welsh name, Selenochlamys ysbryda, or ghost (ysbryd) slug.

Unlike most slugs, the ghost slug is carnivorous and kills earthworms at night with powerful, blade-like teeth, sucking them in like spaghetti.

It has no eyes or bodily colouring and lives underground.

source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/south_east/7498195.stm

family circus

2008-07-11T19:25:00.001-07:00

source: http://bostworld.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/backfire.jpg

Hey Whitey, where's your hat?

2008-07-11T19:21:00.000-07:00

A golf club's fairways were turned brown after the groundsman accidentally watered the course with industrial strength weedkiller.

The normally lush fairways have been scorched away after the groundsman sprayed them with a chemical usually used to destroy grass growing through pavements and roads.

A total of 11 holes have been ruined at Haywards Heath Golf Club in West Sussex, and will remain rusty brown for months to come.

Many members, who pay £1,100 a year, fear that prolonged rain could turn them to mud.

source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2285867/Groundsman-destroys-golf-greens-with-weedkiller.html

greatest sport ever!

2008-06-23T14:27:00.000-07:00

Appliance Golf. You know, it’s a lot like regular golf, but players use sledgehammers instead of golf clubs, and they use washers, refrigerators and televisions instead of balls.

The game takes up much less space than normal golf, because of course you’re not going to move an 800-pound refrigerator very far, even with the biggest sledgehammer you can lift.

source: http://blogs.reuters.com/oddly-enough/

science with electrolytes!

2008-06-18T14:19:00.000-07:00

making difficult concepts easier to comprehend by making stuff up.

Evolutionists hold that man arose by the same gradual process as other creatures. This belief follows from the principle that the same laws of nature apply to man as to the rest of the physical world.
The Evolutionist Model demonstrates how an ancestral "ape-man" could have evolved an upright stance and humanlike physiology

Creationists, on the other hand, believe that man was created instantaneously by a cosmic powered super-being from another dimension. This belief is based on ancient, heavily retranslated writings taken from badly decomposed fragments of scroll found in a series of caves in the middle-east. The Creationist Model explains the advent of human intelligence by ascribing it to divine fiat in the creation of the first humans, Adam and Eve. A major weakness is that it fails to account for the origin of Adam and Eve's daughters-in-law.

Pictured, we see how an open-minded approach to these conflicting theories can lead to the resolution of a major problem in each.

find more examples of science made easy here: http://www.besse.at/sms/smsintro.html

big ass beetle wants to get it on!

2008-06-05T12:56:00.000-07:00

A GIANT beetle with an inch-long horn is looking for love after sneaking into Britain - in a shipment of bananas.

The elephant beetle - more at home in the rainforests of Costa Rica - is now fully grown at nearly five inches long.

And time is ticking because elephant beetles - an endangered species - live for just four months.

Zoo staff cannot tell his precise age but believe him to be full grown because he has a 4cm-long horn and weighs 35g.

Linton Zoo director Kim Simmons said: "Billy needs to mate.

"He is showing all the signs and keeps displaying. He bobs up and down on his branch and taps on the ground.

"He has been making the most of his new home and emits tiny mating calls. It's like he's saying 'here I am, come get me'."

But the hunt for a female elephant beetle has so far drawn a blank.

The elephant beetle population has recently been depleted by the destruction of the rainforests, which has reduced their grounds for mating.

source: http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/cn_news_home/DisplayArticle.asp?id=319776

slutty fish!

2008-05-28T18:52:00.000-07:00

Fish fossil is oldest to have 'fun sex'

A prehistoric fish which roamed the seas almost 400 million years ago has been unveiled by scientists as the “oldest mother ever discovered”.

The fossilised placoderm - a now extinct, armoured fish - was discovered in Western Australia complete with a perfectly preserved embryo and umbilical cord.

Dr John Long, Head of Sciences at Museum Victoria, points out the umbilical cord on the fossil

Scientists have hailed the discovery as not only the earliest example of an animal giving birth to live young, but also the oldest evidence of vetebrates having "sex that was fun".

The 10in fossil, dug up at the Gogo rock formation, east of the remote town of Fitzroy Crossing, has been named Materpiscis Attenboroughi - 'Attenborough's mother fish' - after the naturalist Sir David Attenborough.

Thought to be at least 380 million years old, the find pushes back the record for a live birth by 200 million years.

"It dawned on me after studying the specimen that this was the earliest evidence of vertebrates having sex by copulation - not just spawning in water, but sex that was fun."

source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/earth/2008/05/29/eafish129.xml

morrissey impressed!

2008-05-28T18:36:00.000-07:00

Heartbroken man climbs into morgue freezer.

A Taiwan man grieving over the death of his girlfriend climbed inside a morgue freezer to be with her and was only pulled out alive half an hour later, media and an official said on Tuesday.

The 41-year-old man was discovered on Monday when workers detected an unusually high temperature in the freezer and realized the hatch was not securely fastened.

"A morgue manager opened the hatch, saw two people lying inside, felt scared enough to yell out and then even cried," the Liberty Times reported. "She didn't stabilize for a long time."

The man took a drug before entering the freezer to speed what appeared to be suicide attempt, local papers said. They said his girlfriend died on Friday from an overdose of sleeping pills.

The morgue would step up security to ensure that family and others who come by to identify bodies do not stay too long, morgue administrator Chang Lung-ching said.

source: http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSTP34671220080527

seal shags a penguin!

2008-05-02T18:41:00.000-07:00

get it on!!

An Antarctic fur seal has been observed trying to have sex with a king penguin.

The South African-based scientists who witnessed the incident say it is the most unusual case of mammal mating behaviour yet known.

The incident, which lasted for 45 minutes and was caught on camera, is reported in the Journal of Ethology.

Why the seal attempted to have sex with the penguin is unclear. But the scientists who photographed the event speculate that it was the behaviour of a frustrated, sexually inexperienced young male seal.

The penguin flapped its flippers and attempted to stand and escape - but to no avail.

The seal then alternated between resting on the penguin, and thrusting its pelvis, trying to insert itself, unsuccessfully.

After 45 minutes the seal gave up, swam into the water and then completely ignored the bird it had just assaulted, the scientists report.

The penguin did not appear to have been injured by the seal, the scientists report.

source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7379554.stm

attack of the killer beas

2008-04-25T15:16:00.000-07:00

lemmy is god!

A thick swarm of thousands of bees suddenly showed up at a Mexican restaurant in Florida and inexplicably began spiraling in a "tornado pattern," according to Local 6 News.

Diners at Oxie's in DeLand at first thought the huge cloud in the sky had formed Thursday because a rainstorm was coming.

But they soon fled to their cars in fear when they realized the cloud was actually a mass of bees — and the insects seemed to be taunting customers.

source:
http://www.local6.com/news/15982205/detail.html

happy earth day!

2008-04-22T22:43:00.000-07:00

earth day is everyday for loggers.

butter head

2008-04-18T19:06:00.001-07:00

kids these days...

Tyler Hemmert said he and a friend were sitting on a park bench when another boy became angry with them and threw a knife at them.

Tyler said he could still feel the knife. “I could see the handle of the butter knife, sticking out,” he said. “That’s when I freaked out.”

The ambulance took Tyler to the hospital with the knife still in his head.

“They took a CAT scan to make sure it wasn’t in my skull,” he said. “Then they numbed it, and cut it open and ripped the knife out.”

source: http://www.kptv.com/news/15874196/detail.html

i steal your honda

2008-04-15T22:16:00.000-07:00

baby russian mammoth found and unfrozen. requests track pants and a sweater.

Russian scientists say they have obtained the most detailed pictures so far of the insides of a prehistoric animal, with the help of a baby mammoth called Lyuba found immaculately preserved in the Russian Arctic.

"We could see for the first time how internal organs are located inside a mammoth. It is pretty important from a scientific point of view," said Alexei Tikhonov, deputy director of the Russian Academy of Science's Zoological Institute, who has been leading the project.

"Her internal organs were well preserved -- the heart was seen distinctly with all its ventricles and atria, as well as the liver and its veins," Tikhonov told Reuters.

The mammoth species has been extinct since the Ice Age. Tests on Lyuba showed she was fed on milk and was three to four months old when she died 37,000 years ago in what is now the Yamalo-Nenetsk region in Russia's Arctic.

Scientists were excited by the find because, although her shaggy coat was gone, her skin was intact, protecting her internal organs from contamination by modern-day microbes.

source: http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSL0918497020080410

zombie daily

2008-04-15T22:11:00.000-07:00

a new zombie picture everyday. plus, the artist will make personalized zombie portraits.

check it out here: http://www.zombiedaily.com/

black flag hair

2008-04-11T08:45:00.001-07:00

source: http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2008/04/black-flag-hair.html

everybody loves hypnotoad

2008-04-09T16:24:00.000-07:00

National University of Singapore biologist David Bickford, the lead researcher, said in a release that the frog, Barbourula kalimantanensis, has an "amazing ability to breathe entirely through its skin."

The frog receives all necessary oxygen through its skin, the researchers said. Among four-legged creatures, only amphibians are known to breathe without lungs — previously only in two families of salamanders and a species of caecillian, a limbless amphibian.

The researchers hypothesized that the frog may have evolved without lungs, or lost its lungs, in adaptation to the high-oxygen environment of its habitat and the species' preference to sink, rather than float, which would have been hindered by lungs full of oxygen.

Bickford explained that cold water can hold more dissolved oxygen than warm water, meaning that in a fast-flowing river, many molecules of oxygen come into contact with the frog's skin.

source: http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2008/04/07/lungless-frog.html?ref=rss&loomia_si=t0:a3:g4:r5:c0

the international sign of the doughnut.

2008-04-09T16:00:00.000-07:00

A Bosnian man whose home has been hit an incredible five times by meteorites believes he is being targeted by aliens.

He said: "I am obviously being targeted by extraterrestrials. I don't know what I have done to annoy them but there is no other explanation that makes sense. The chance of being hit by a meteorite is so small that getting hit five times has to be deliberate."
The first meteorite fell on his house in November last year and since then a further four have smashed into his home. The strikes always happen when it is raining heavily, never when there are clear skies.

He said: "I did not know what the strange-looking stones were at first but I have since had them all confirmed as meteorites by experts at Belgrade University.

"I am being targeted by aliens. They are playing games with me. I don't know why they are doing this. When it rains I can't sleep for worrying about another strike."

source: http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_2803149.html?menu=

mongo like candy

2008-04-07T14:27:00.001-07:00

Police arrested a Lakeland man early this morning on charges that he punched a police horse in the rear end.

It should be no surprise the incident occurred about 3:15 a.m. in Ybor City.

The Tampa Police Department report said the officer and horse were clearing the street and sidewalks in the 19th Street area of Seventh Avenue.

Carl Coward, 24, of 111 Hodges Road, Lakeland, balled his fist and punched the horse in the right rear hip area, the report states.

Coward was charged with battery of a law enforcement animal and is being held at the Orient Road Jail on $500 bond, jail records show.

The report does not indicate whether the horse suffered any serious injury.

source: http://www2.tbo.com/content/2008/apr/06/man-jailed-after-punching-police-horses-rear-end/?news-breaking

holy cow!

2008-04-04T16:58:00.000-07:00

wal-mart is stoked...

The first hybrid embryos in Europe - a blend of human and cow DNA - have been created by scientists in Newcastle.

The milestone, which is political rather than scientific, will trigger a furore, since the advance comes a month before MPs are to debate the future of such research, which has been condemned by the Catholic Church as "monstrous".

A British Council meeting in Israel was told by Dr Armstrong that the hybrids were created by injecting DNA derived from human embryo cells into eggs taken from cows ovaries which have had DNA responsible for their characteristics removed, so called nuclear DNA, and leaving only cow DNA used to power the cells.

source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/earth/2008/04/01/sciembryo101.xml

shit!

2008-04-04T16:50:00.000-07:00

evolving man pinches a gorilla finger in an oregon cave. modern man celebrates.

A trace of the oldest people to inhabit America has been discovered in a deposit of fossilised excrement.

The fossilised excrement has been dated at 14,300-years-old
An analysis of the dung, deposited more than 14,000 years ago, will change our picture of the first Americans and mean the history books will have to be rewritten.
Now the oldest evidence has come from DNA extracted from dried human excrement recovered from Oregon's Paisley Caves - dating to 14,300 years ago, some 1,200 years before Clovis culture - and the study provides apparent genetic ties to Siberia or Asia, according to an international team of 13 scientists.

According to the standard accepted theory, the Clovis people crossed a land bridge over the Bering Strait from Siberia to Alaska during the period of lowered sea levels during the ice age, then made their way southward through an ice-free corridor east of the Rocky Mountains in present-day western Canada as the glaciers retreated.

The Paisley Caves are located in the Summer Lake basin near Paisley, about 220 miles southeast of Eugene on the eastern side of the Cascade Range. The series of eight caves are westward-facing, on the highest shoreline of Lake Chewaucan, which have stable dry conditions that preserve their contents.

Working in four of the caves, the team retrieved manufactured threads of sinew and plant fibres, hide, basketry, cordage, rope, wooden pegs, animal bones, and two forms of projectile point fragments. They found 14 coprolites that yielded mitochondrial DNA - genetic material passed on maternally - the team reports

source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/earth/2008/04/03/scipoo103.xml

fish!

2008-04-04T16:31:00.000-07:00

A newly discovered pink-and-tan psychedelically striped fish with a flat face, frowning mouth and arm-like fins could be part of a formerly unknown family of vertebrates.

The newly found 4-inch fish lives in Indonesian coral beds, crawling in and out of crevices on its bent pectoral fins.But the fish -- which Pietsch plans to name the Maluku frogfish -- is different from other anglers in remarkable ways. It lacks a lure, has tiny pelvic fins and -- most remarkably -- has a flat face with forward facing eyes. Most fish have eyes on the sides of their head and very few have them located close enough that their range of vision overlaps. These fish could have humanlike binocular vision giving them better depth perception.

source: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/357475_oddfish03.html?noothersources

grow something!

2008-03-18T12:37:00.001-07:00

Genetic signals that block the regrowth of limbs and organs have been found.

With Dr Viravuth Yin and colleagues he studied a common aquarium pet, the zebrafish, which is capable of regenerating its spinal cord, retina, heart and fins in two weeks.

They report in the journal Genes & Development that a reduction in genetic signals based on small scraps of the material RNA - "microRNAs" - is a key step in tissue regeneration.

In humans, microRNAs play important roles in cell growth and death, among other things. There are hundreds of kinds of microRNAs, and scientists are constantly discovering new roles they play.

Dr Poss and many other cell biologists believe that people may have the same tissue regeneration capability as zebrafish, salamanders and newts, but that it is locked away somewhere in our genetic makeup, silenced in the course of evolution. "The key is finding a way to turn on this regenerative ability in humans," Dr Poss says.

source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/earth/2008/03/14/scilimb114.xml

happy pi day!

2008-03-14T14:21:00.000-07:00

today is the day to celebrate the number that both pisses off high school students and laughs at the bible!

two faced baby

2008-03-14T14:13:00.000-07:00

soul eating buffet champion.

The newborn is unlike any other child villagers have seen before — she has two faces.

Since then, people in her rural village have been singing and dancing — offering money and asking for her blessings, IBNLive.com reported.

source (with dream ruining video): http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,337492,00.html

stabbed in the head

2008-03-13T18:41:00.001-07:00

The 10-year-old was stabbed when he tried to protect his father during a row with a male customer in his shop in Kandahar. The boy's father took him to a military base in Kandahar and pleaded with doctors to save him.

Medics there used a portable digital x-ray machine, which produced an image in two minutes, before flying him to Camp Bastion for the operation.

The boy, who has not been named, amazed medics by walking into the field hospital with the knife embedded in his head on July 14 last year. Surgeons of 212 Field Hospital operated before handing over to 208 Field Hospital, who administered the after care.

Major Stephen Gallacher, 49, senior A&E nurse of 208 Field Hospital, said: "It was a horrendous sight. I just didn't think he would survive. But he was soon off the life-support machine and was up and about within days. It was just amazing."

advertisementMaj Gallacher, a father of four from Caernarfon, North Wales, added: "The knife had come in at an angle and gone down behind his eye and had penetrated the front of his brain. To have simply pulled the knife out would have been a disaster."

european (american) alligator

2008-03-13T18:36:00.000-07:00

albino alligator digs thai food, recycling, and mutual funds.

source: http://atcloserangephotography.blogspot.com/2008/03/have-you-ever-seen-white-alligator.html

dont cross the streams!

2008-03-13T18:20:00.000-07:00

Many Shuvs and Zuuls knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of the Slor that day, I can tell you!

A team from University College London finds that when we gaze around in a poorly-lit context, it can fool our brains into seeing things that are not really there.

In the journal PLoS Computational Biology, Prof Li Zhaoping and her colleagues say that the context surrounding what we see is all important - sometimes overriding the evidence gathered by our eyes and even causing us to imagine things.

They were surprised to find that a vague background context has more influence on what we see than one that is bright and well defined, and speculate that this might explain the power of some abstract art and why we can see vivid details in the vague brush strokes of impressionist paintings.

"Everything we see is an hallucination generated by the virtual reality machine inside our head," comments Prof Mike Morgan of The City University, London.

"Normally these hallucinations are vetoed by the information coming through our senses, so we can call perception 'controlled hallucination.'

"But when the input is ambiguous we can see all sorts of things, like the faces de Quincy saw in clouds and carpets. There are hundreds of faces hidden in the textured floors of the platforms at Euston Underground Station, if you look for them."

To reveal the haunting power of context, 18 observers were asked by the UCL team to concentrate on the centre of a black computer screen. Every time a buzzer sounded they pressed one of two buttons to record whether or not they had just seen a small, dim, grey 'target' rectangle in the middle of the screen. It did not appear every time, but when it did appear it was displayed for just 80 milliseconds (80 one thousandths of a second).

"People saw the target much more often if it appeared in the middle of a vertical line of similar looking, grey rectangles, compared to when it appeared in the middle of a pattern of bright, white rectangles. They even registered 'seeing' the target when it wasn't actually there," says Prof Zhaoping.

source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/earth/2008/02/21/scighost121.xml

hey fattie...

2008-02-23T18:26:00.001-08:00

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?

2008-02-22T22:44:00.000-08:00

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!

2008-02-22T22:23:00.000-08:00

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

2008-02-21T15:03:00.000-08:00

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...

2008-02-19T11:38:00.001-08:00

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!

2008-02-18T11:39:00.000-08:00

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

2008-02-14T12:14:00.001-08:00

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

2008-02-14T11:50:00.000-08:00

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