Doggedly searching for the crux of the biscuit.
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I don't predict much success with this lawsuit.
Former escort kingpin Arthur "Big Pimpin' Pappy" Vanmoor is known for his litigious nature. In the past decade, he has been a plaintiff or defendant in 29 lawsuits in Broward County alone. He has sued businesses that challenged him, police departments that investigated him, an assistant state attorney who prosecuted him and journalists who reported on him. But his latest suit has stunned even veteran court watchers.
Vanmoor, 46, has filed a federal lawsuit against six former customers of his escort service. He says they broke the law after purchasing time with his escorts, and it was their illegal actions that led to his arrest, incarceration and deportation, as well as the loss of his business. [...] Attempts to reach Vanmoor through his attorneys also were unsuccessful. Sibley said he assumes Vanmoor is still in the Netherlands, where he was deported after serving 18 months in prison for a 2004 racketeering conviction.
Chutzpah, baby. When you're running an escort service, you're known as Big Pimpin' Pappy, and then you sue customers for having sex with your, uh, employees, well, that's just special. Almost as special as his picture. The crux of his argument is that on the credit card slips that his customers signed for $245/hour company, there was a disclaimer: "Cardholder states that this transaction is not for illegal activity." This seems to me about as legally protective as the guys in high school who wouldn't sell you weed before asking, "Are you now or have you ever been a member of any law enforcement agency?" Because, y'know, that will totally work to keep you out of trouble.
I'll probably get sued any day now.
Bush's approval rating: 34%.
Approval on his handling of Iraq: 30%
Approval of anti-terror policies: 44%
Approval of Katrina response: 32%
And the kicker, Cheney's approval rating: 18%.
Well, this sure started off in disturbing fashion.
McKeesport Police say a man walked into the store, located on Fifth Avenue, and asked the clerk to use the microwave oven. After the clerk noticed a strange smell coming from the microwave, she told police she opened the door and discovered human male genitalia wrapped in a paper towel cooking inside. McKeesport police told KDKA the man fled with the severed body part after she made the discovery. She then called the police. According to police, blood was found on the bathroom floor.
But in an update 12 hours later:
Investigators have since learned that it was not a real body part; but instead, it was part of a couple’s alleged plan to pass a drug test. According to McKeesport’s police chief, a man and a woman had inserted urine into a fake penis that the woman was planning to use to pass a drug test. One of them then went into the store and asked the clerk to microwave the object, which they had wrapped in a paper towel, so the urine could reach body temperature. [...] Giant Eagle, the company that owns Get-Go, says the microwave involved in the incident was immediately removed from service and will be discarded.
So, a happy ending, I guess. Sort of. But, um, what about the blood on the bathroom floor?
Sheriff Billy Burt Hopper of Loving County, Texas (population 71) has issued warrants for the arrest of three Libertarians who are alleged to have been planning to take over the county and legalize cannibalism. (via Crooked Timber)
The Hubble Space Telescope just discovered two more moons around Pluto.
Based on their brightness--and assuming that their surfaces are about as reflective as Charon's--the scientists believe the two moons are roughly 38 miles and 29 miles in diameter. Given that they share Pluto's distance from the sun--roughly three billion miles--but are 4,000 times fainter, it is not surprising that the satellites eluded detection until now, the researchers say.
Dubbed S2005 P1 and S2005 P2 while awaiting proper names, the two moons share the same orbital plane as Charon, albeit with much longer orbits. The team thus suspects that they may have formed from the same collision [...] that is theorized to have created the binary Pluto-Charon planetary system. The moons may also be a source for dust that coalesces into rings around Pluto before dispersing. "If Pluto's small moons generate debris rings from impacts on their surfaces, as we predict, it would open up a whole new class of study because it would constitute the first ring system seen around a solid body," notes Bill Merline, team member from the Southwest Research Institute.
On Monday, Cassini will fly by Titan at a distance of about 1100 miles to probe its gravitational field, in hopes of determining whether the moon contains an internal ocean.
The folks operating the Mars rover Spirit are hurrying to gather as much data as possible and maneuver the little guy into optimal position to try to survive another Martian winter and the accompanying decrease in sunlight. It has been checking out a feature known as Home Plate, what might be an old impact crater or volcanic feature and looks like a baseball home plate from orbit and recently sent back this lovely panoramic snapshot of the Barnhill outcropping. Both rovers have travelled over 4 miles each since landing on the Martian surface.
Director JD Ligon's entry at the 2006 Sundance Festival, Ha Ha Ha America.
There’s the tiniest little bit of light sneaking out of there, but it’s just not enough to conclude that anybody’s home. John Hinderaker seems confused that the bombing of a sacred Shiite shrine by those who relish civil war would result in “irrational” blaming of the Americans.
Here’s a hint: The people who blew up the shrine did so in large part because, drumroll, please...
They knew everybody within a thousand miles would blame the Americans! Ta-Daaa! See how this works? It's middlle eastern politics 101. Mob violence, religious passions, and blaming the Americans and Israelis are the primary methods of political discourse. How much you wanna bet we get blamed for the reprisals, too?
Oh. It's just not fair.
Why you can blow up, sabotage, maim or kill just about anything or anybody in Iraq these days and eeeeeveryone just blames the Americans. I wonder who might put that to their advantage? Hmm, how's about...
Everybody!!
Powerseekers there increasingly have everything to gain by demonizing the American presence. You can not ‘win’ given that kind of reality. Invasion worsened the situation in the country, worsened it in the region, and yes, worsened it here in North America. For a long time to come. This unfolding of events disheartens, yes (I suppose we have some common ground there), but surprises nobody but the idiotically myopic.
Great picture raises the question: why is Saturn's moon Telesto so unnaturally smooth?
Company researchers have come up with a way to process a common polymer so that it repels fluid, even drops of honey roll right off. The resulting property is called "superhydrophobicity" -- or extreme repelling of water-based fluids -- beyond even that of a freshly waxed car. While several existing engineered materials behave this way, the GE accomplishment is noteworthy because it was done with an inexpensive plastic, GE's Lexan, that's normally "hydrophilic," meaning water spreads out on contact, not something that's "hydrophobic" to start with, such as Teflon or silicone-based materials. These latter materials are far more expensive compared with Lexan, a ubiquitous thermoplastic used in products ranging from CDs and DVDs to automotive headlamps, food storage containers, and common household appliances.
While GE is not predicting specific applications yet, a few are theoretically possible. A cheap superhydrophobic plastic could be used in food containers from which every last bit of ketchup or syrup would flow right out. It could also allow for a building panel that repels water so efficiently that rain would wash away dirt -- making it essentially self-cleaning. Such a material could be a bonanza for medicine, too. In the field of microfluidics, superhydrophobic materials are needed so that tiny volumes of blood or other body fluids can flow more easily through micrometer-scale channels. Although some superhydrophobic materials are currently available, they're expensive enough to preclude visions of diagnostic gadgets that you could buy in a drugstore. A cheap plastic, though, could make such a disposable diagnostic chip feasible.
You can see video of honey rolling off the material in a perfect bead at the link in this post. Interestingly, the production concept was inspired by looking microscopically at the leaves of the lotus plant, which are naturally superhydrophobic.
Note to the Danish cartoonists: if you're going to mock a revered religious figure, you might as well do it up right.
Ain't nothing good coming of this.
Insurgents dressed as police commandos detonated powerful explosives this morning inside one of Shiite Islam's most sacred shrines, destroying most of the building, located in the volatile town of Samarra, and prompting thousands of Shiites to flood into streets across the country in protest. The golden-domed shrine housed the tombs of two revered leaders of Shiite Islam and symbolized the place where the Imam Mahdi, a mythical, messianic figure, disappeared from this earth. [...] In Baghdad, militiamen loyal to radical cleric Moktada al-Sadr, who is a fervent believer in the prophecy of the Imam Mahdi, drove through the streets of Sadr City with Kalashnikovs, many accusing the Americans of carrying out the attack.
Prepare for it to spiral up from here.
Very little, it turns out. Even those who know the most about it don't really know that much. They can't even make complete sense of why it's slippery. And while that's an interesting enough discussion, I was more captured by how many types of water ice exist.
Besides the everyday ice that you slip on, there are about a dozen other forms, some of which experts suspect exist in the hot interior of Earth or on the surface of Pluto. Scientists expect to discover still more variations in the coming years. [...]
Water — H2O — seems to be a simple molecule: two hydrogen atoms connected to a central oxygen atom in a V-shape. In everyday ice, which scientists call Ice Ih, the water molecules line up in a hexagonal pattern; this is why snowflakes all have six-sided patterns. (The "h" stands for hexagonal. A variation called Ice Ic, found in ice crystals floating high up in the atmosphere, forms cubic crystals.)
The crystal structure of the ice is fairly loose — the reason that Ice Ih is less dense than liquid water — and the bonds that the hydrogen atoms form between water molecules, called hydrogen bonds, are weaker than most atomic bonds. At higher pressures, the usual hexagonal structure breaks down, and the bonds rearrange themselves in more compact, denser crystal structures, neatly labeled with Roman numerals: Ice II, Ice III, Ice IV and so on. Scientists have also discovered several forms of ice in which the water molecules are arranged randomly, as in glass.
At a pressure of about 30,000 pounds per square inch, Ice Ih turns into a different type of crystalline ice, Ice II. Ice II does not occur naturally on Earth. Even at the bottom of the thickest portions of the Antarctic ice cap, the weight of three miles of ice pushes down at only one-quarter of the pressure necessary to make Ice II. But planetary scientists expect that Ice II, and possibly some other variations, like Ice VI, exist inside icier bodies in the outer solar system, like the Jupiter moons Ganymede and Callisto.
With pressure high enough, the temperature need not even be cold for ice to form. [...] The scientists started considering what happens to tectonic plates after they are pushed back down into Earth's interior. At about 100 miles down, the temperature of these descending plates is 300 to 400 degrees — well above the boiling point of water at the surface — but cool compared with that of surrounding rocks. The pressure of 700,000 pounds per square inch at this depth, Dr. Bina and Dr. Navrotsky calculated, could be great enough to transform any water that was there into a solid phase known as Ice VII. No one knows whether ice can be found inside Earth, because no one has yet figured out a way to look 100 miles underground. Just as salt melts ice at the surface, other molecules mixing with the water could impede the freezing that Dr. Bina and Dr. Navrotsky have predicted.
Ice also changes form with dropping temperatures. In hexagonal ice, the usual form, the oxygen atoms are fixed in position, but the hydrogen bonds between water molecules are continually breaking and reattaching, tens of thousands of times a second. At temperatures cold enough — below minus 330 degrees — the hydrogen bonds freeze as well, and normal ice starts changing into Ice XI.
William B. McKinnon, a professor of earth and planetary sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, said that astronomers were probably already looking at Ice XI on the surface of Pluto and on the moons of Neptune and Uranus. But instruments currently are not sensitive enough to distinguish the slight differences among the ices. The most recently discovered form of ice, Ice XII, was found just a decade ago.
They expect there are more to come.
Scientists at Ohio University got quantum dots to talk to each other.
A couple of fascinating articles via Deep-Sea News: one on the dawn of deep ocean mining and another on the secret sex lives of deep sea nomads.
"A family in Hilo, Hawaii, has sued a doctor after the man admitted he implanted a screwdriver into the neck of a patient, instead of titanium rods."
Japan just launched a new space telescope that will use infrared to map galaxies forming at the edge of the universe.
Quebec mom gets in fistfight with a polar bear to save her kids playing hockey.
Bob Jones University kicks Starbucks off campus for being too gay. How so? An Armistead Maupin quote on the side of the cups.
I've never seen card stacking like this before.
No tape, glue, or adhesives of any sort in that picture. Here's a gallery of pictures of some of his other works, including a few in mid-collapse. Impressive. (via AllNightSurfing)
FafBlog! explains the evolving answers to that most frequently asked of questions:
Q. Why are we in Iraq?
A. For freedom! Recent intelligence informs us it is on the march.
Q. Hooray! Where's it marching to?
A. To set up a government of the people, by the people, for the people, and held in check by strict adherence to the laws of Islam.
Q. Huh! Freedom sounds strangely like theocracy.
A. No it doesn't! It is representative godocracy, in which laws are written by the legislative branch, enforced by the executive branch, and interpreted by an all-powerful all-knowing deity which manifests its will through a panel of senior clerics.
Q. Whew! Is democracy on the march?
A. Democracy was on the march. Sadly, freedom and democracy were caught in a blizzard and freedom was forced to eat democracy to survive.
Q. It died as it lived: sautéed in garlic sauce with a side of scalloped potatoes.
A. Democracy is survived by sectarian violence and fanaticism. In lieu of flowers, please send a coherent exit strategy.
More at the link.
Edgar Winter 62-year-old woman gives birth to her 12th baby.
A 62-year-old woman gave birth Friday to a healthy 6-pound, 9-ounce baby boy, becoming one of the oldest women in the world to successfully bear a child. Janise Wulf gave birth to her 12th child. She is also a grandmother of 20 and a great-grandmother of three. [...]
Wulf and her third husband, Scott, 48, named the red-haired boy Adam Charles Wulf. He follows just 3 1/2 years behind his older brother, Ian.
"I hate to raise one alone, without a sibling," said Wulf, who was impregnated both times through in vitro fertilization.
Now, really. What kind of irresponsible doctor provides fertility services to a woman in her condition?
You may not have known this, but what separates gay people from straight people is that gay people are interested in sex. Also, don't let Brad R. anywhere near your cake.
I was driving my eight-year-old to school Friday morning, with Frank Zappa's Apostrophe' in the CD player. When it gets to part of "Stinkfoot" where the dog says, "The crux of the biscuit is the apostrophe," I see the lightbulb go on over his head.
"Is that where the stuff on the top of your website comes from?"
"Yeah, it is."
"God, you're weird."
One of the joys of freakblogging is that, after a while, you no longer have to go looking for stories. They just show up in your inbox.
Squick Factor 11: iWorm!
Doctors at a clinic in Kragujevac, central Serbia, have removed an 11 centimetre-long intestinal worm from a woman's eye socket. According to preliminary results, the worm taken from the 37-year-old patient's eye belongs to the Ascaris family, a common intestinal parasite in pigs that is also found in humans. [...] The parasite had probably travelled through the patient's blood from the digestive tract into the eye socket, doctors at the clinic believe. (h/t: Gaijin Biker)
In America, "eat a bowl of dicks" is an insult. In China, it's the waiter's recommendation.
For beginners, Miss Zhu recommended the hotpot, which offers a sampling of what the restaurant has to offer - six types of penis, and four of testicle, boiled in chicken stock by the waitress, Liu Yunyang, 22. The Russian dog was first. It was julienned, and rather gamey. The ox was, of all six, the most recognisable for what it was, even though it had been diced. In texture seemed identical to gristle. The deer and the Mongolian goat were surprisingly similar: a little stringy, they had the appearance and feel of overcooked squid tentacles. The Xinjiang horse and the donkey, on the other hand, were quite different. Though both came sliced lengthwise, and looked like bacon, the horse was light and fatty, while the donkey had a firm colour and taste. The testicles were slightly crumbly, and tasted better with lashings of the sesame, soy and chilli dips thoughtfully provided. One speciality, Canadian seal penis, costs a hefty £220, and requires ordering in advance. [Bonus: the article has pictures! -'r] (h/t: Matt Harvey)
The expression “I’ll eat my hat” traces back as far as the 19th century, usually credited to Abraham Lincoln in reference to one of his trademark stovepipe hats, which were often made of tenderloin. The popularity of meat hats began to fade in the twentieth century, especially during the depression of the 1930’s. Indeed, few people had the luxury of wearing meat on their heads, needing instead to feed their families with it. Hats of meat remained ostensibly out of favor with Americans during the forties and fifties as well, despite its popularity among certain sects of the well-to-do. (h/t: KJ)
Less threatening than The Matrix, I suppose.
A bright yellow slime mould that can grow to several metres in diameter has been put in charge of a scrabbling, six-legged robot. The Physarum polycephalum slime, which naturally shies away from light, controls the robot's movement so that it too keeps out of light and seeks out dark places in which to hide itself. [...] They grew slime in a six-pointed star shape on top of a circuit and connected it remotely, via a computer, to the hexapod bot. Any light shone on sensors mounted on top of the robot were used to control light shone onto one of the six points of the circuit-mounted mould – each corresponding to a leg of the bot. As the slime tried to get away from the light its movement was sensed by the circuit and used to control one of the robot's six legs. The robot then scrabbled away from bright lights as a mechanical embodiment of the mould. (h/t: cw)
By the way, I've been just terrible about answering email recently because I've been swamped with work and receiving an unholy amount of mail. Despite how it might seem, I still love you all. And to prove it, I give you Dick Cheney playing Folsom County Prison.
Update: Cheney's Got a Gun, via the inimitable BitchPhD.
Via digg, some seriously impressive origami. The animals don't do as much for me, but the human figures include some really amazing stuff.
Fresh off their success at creating retarded mice, scientists have now created schizophrenic mice. The next step is to breed the two strains and see whether the resulting offspring, as expected, will start a cable news network.
How not to respond to sexual harrassment accusations.
State Comptroller William Donald Schaefer reacted angrily Wednesday to questions about whether he may have offended an aide to Gov. Robert Ehrlich at a meeting of the Board of Public Works. After the young woman brought him a beverage at Wednesday morning's meeting at the State House, Schaefer stared intently as she walked back to the governor's office. Then, just as she reached the door, he summoned her back as people waiting to testify before the board watched. When the aide, looking puzzled, returned to the table, Schaefer told her, "Walk again," and watched her as she made the second trip to the exit.
When reporters asked him after the meeting about the incident, he called their interest "dumb." He said "this little girl" ought to be "happy that I observed her going out the door. [...] The one who is offended is me," the Democratic comptroller told reporters. "She's a pretty little girl," he said. "The day I don't look at pretty women is the day I die."
Schaefer is 84 years old, so that day probably isn't that far off. But at a public meeting? Criminy.
Over at Unfogged this morning, I posted on a Slate article about the methodological difficulties of determining average penis size, and if you'd like to see a conversation dive headlong for the gutter, the comments there are just waiting for you. To avoid simply duplicating the post, though, I'd like to focus on a little sidebar to the article.
A recent reanalysis of Alfred Kinsey's data, titled "The Relation Between Sexual Orientation and Penile Size," found that homosexuals had significantly larger penises than nonhomosexuals, no matter how the measurements were done.
Now, wait a minute. Not only do they get bigger equipment, they get carte blanche to feel up Scarlett Johansson in public, too? You think that perhaps God is a big ol' nelly queen, laughing his fabulous ass off? Yeah, me too.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
UPDATE: Robust McManlyPants weighs his massive gay dick in on the matter.
A round up of the best quotes about Cheney's hunting accident.
John Cole: "And the man he shot was not named Scooter Libby, which would have been no surprise."
James Wolcott: "Time to take the shotgun away from grandpa, who's blasted perhaps hundreds of innocent birds into bloody feathers during his life, before he has another senior moment."
Kieran Healy: "In terms of required difficulty and skill, think of what these guys were doing as 'hunting' in the same sense that you might go hunting for a donut on the way to work tomorrow morning.[...]It's astonishing that the VP was able to hit something other than one of the hundreds of tame birds released for his shootin' pleasure."
John Rogers: "Hey, I'm not going to bust Cheney's chops on shooting that guy at all. I know it's an accident. Because the prey Cheney hunts to eat, he strangles to death with his bare hands. Mmmmm, orphan juice."
Dallas Dem: Top 10 Cheney Excuses for Shooting that Guy
Direland: Some serious questions about elements of the story that don't add up.
BitchPhD: "In case you hadn't heard, the Vice President celebrated Darwin's birthday on Sunday by shooting his hunting companion, a 78-year old lawyer. 'Fuck him,' Cheney snarled. 'The dumbass took his eye off me. Survival of the fittest, hombre.' "
I'll probably update this post throughout the day.
There's a series of grinding holes in the creek between the house and the old vineyard. I stopped by today, figuring they'd be well visible - it hasn't rained in almost two weeks and the water is low. The holes are probably a few hundred years old. Not ancient on say, pyramid standards, but an interesting link to the past nonetheless. The Miwok women would grind acorns into flour in them, letting the running water wash away the husks and the tannins. A Miwok coworker of my Uncle once remarked that she remembered her grandmother making acorn bread when she was a young girl.
"Nastiest stuff I ever put my lips on" or some such was the verdict, if I remember correctly.
Bear Creek (neither dog nor body of water are named after each other) runs from below the snow line in the Sierras, but makes it independently all the way to the Sacramento Delta. Headwaters so low means that it runs dry every summer, but by early Spring there are only a handful of spots where you can get across in waders. And if she's really rolling, best just postpone your adventure. Piedmonters: Eno River > Bear Creek > New Hope Creek.
Reason suggests (OK - MY reason, flawless as it is) that this valley, being dry all summer, made it more suitable for transitory use than permanent settlement, people preferring the year-round water security of the Mokelumne valley just over the hills for that. But whether the long dead souls who crushed the same acorns I see moved through here during the wet season because they vacated the valley floodwaters to the west or the Sierra blizzards of the east is unknown to me. But they left their mark, whether they chased the rising or setting sun.
Those folks have a lineage disjointed from mine. Modern latinos would be their distant kin, the vast majority of whom trace their lineage - despite the imaginations of minutemen - to the native peoples of the southwest, not Spain. Californians. Who never saw a grapevine.
You can't throw a rock around here without hitting a vineyard, mostly 'cause you'll run out of rocks before you run out of grapevines. Up in my neck of the woods it's Zin, that most Californian of California varieties. Granted, everything just below us, near Lodi, is irrigated with San Joaquin River water, making the wine taste like, well, San Joaquin River water, (insert basic botany lesson here) but from there to the highest elevation you can grow grapes, in this part of the State, aka Sierra foothills, Zin dominates.
But in the high rent districts over in Sonoma and Napa (insert car parts joke here), as well as up and down the Central Valley where the tonnage is phenomenal, stocking shelves around the world, plenty of other varieties - while maybe not as 'Californian' - dwarf Zin in economic impact. So I have to pause when someone introduces a bill declaring Zinfandel, my lovely Zinfandel, as The State Wine of California:
It's not enough for California to have a state bird (valley quail), tree (redwood), flower (golden poppy), reptile (desert tortoise) and even dance (West Coast swing). What the Golden State really needs is an official wine, says state Sen. Carole Migden, and the only wine that fills the bill is zinfandel. "Zinfandel is the quintessential California wine," the San Francisco Democrat said last week when she introduced legislation that would bestow that status on the wine zippily known as "zin."
Yes, yes, I know...
For more than a century, zinfandel's origins were shrouded in mystery. Unlike every other fine wine grape in California, zin had no known European homeland. Cabernet came from Bordeaux, while chardonnay and pinot noir arrived from Burgundy. "But for all anyone knew, zinfandel came from outer space," wine writer Rod Smith wrote in The Times in 2002.
Outer space. I like that. But California is a big place. California makes a great many wines. Many people, including Froz Gobo, drink these many varieties of wines. Apostropher does, too, if I'm not mistaken. Which I do not think I am. Zinfandel, especially when not made of San Joaquin River water, looms magnificently among these many great wines. But. Uva uvam vivendo varia fit.
California does not need Zinfandel to be it's "official" wine. If for no other reason than that I don't think Zinfandel wishes to be the "official" anything. Taste a bottle and ask it. You will see.
The city of Mississauga in Ontario is holding a contest to design a skyscraper to be built there. The entries are just amazing. Too bad they can only build one.
The finalists.
The runners-up.
The rest of the entries.
(via we make money not art)
The gallery of winners of the 2005 World Press Photo Awards, from the heartbreaking to the headbreaking.
Cross-posted at Unfogged, and I mention that as an unsubtle reminder that half of my already meager blogging is going on over there.
Do you have anything to declare, ma'am?
Haitian Myrlene Severe, 30, a permanent US resident, arrived on Thursday afternoon from Cap Haitien, Haiti, aboard a Lynx International Airlines Flight, said US Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Miami. Customs and Border Protection officials "found a human head with organic matter inside of her checked baggage", ICE Special Agent Erick Hernandez wrote in an affidavit.
Severe told officers "she had obtained the package, which contained the human head, from a male in Haiti for ... use as a part of her Voodoo beliefs. Severe also stated that the purpose of the package was to ward off evil spirits," Hernandez wrote. "It still had teeth, hair and bits of skin and lots of dirt," Gonzalez said.
The charges filed include that Severe smuggled a human head into the US without proper documentation, as well as failure to declare the head and transporting hazardous material in air commerce. She faces a maximum of 15 years in prison if convicted on all charges.
Well, at least she wasn't carrying tweezers.
Squid porn can be strikingly beautiful. Totally work-safe, unless your boss is a squid.
Can't be too many of these places left.
An international team of scientists says it has found a "lost world" in the Indonesian jungle that is home to dozens of new animal and plant species.
"It's as close to the Garden of Eden as you're going to find on Earth," said Bruce Beehler, co-leader of the group. [...]
Mr Beehler said some of the creatures the team came into contact with were remarkably unafraid of humans. Two long-beaked echidnas, primitive egg-laying mammals, even allowed scientists to pick them up and bring them back to their camp to be studied, he added.
No evidence exists that humans have ever been there, and even the local native populations had no knowledge of it. Among the discoveries the team made:
Suitsat isn't dead after all! Just very weak.
Rats smell in stereo.
FafBlog on the Danish cartoons.
Spider vs. snake. Spider wins.
Baby alien in a jar found in a UK attic with US serial number on its foot.
Pretty picture: sun pillar at twilight.
Tom Tomorrow forcefully makes the case.
Cigarette pack graphics through history, with links to a bazillion or so more.
...in a big yellow schoolbus.
Michael Cianci, 38, of Parlin, N.J., named his ride the "Death Cheese Bus" and assigned ranks to his sixth-grade charges, forcing them every day to recite a set of rules posted by his cup-holder, according to the criminal complaint.
Cianci pleaded not guilty to two counts of endangering the welfare of children for allegedly allowing his toughs to push lower-ranking kids around, put them in headlocks and — in at least one instance — slice up a kid's jacket with scissors as punishment for horseplay. The 12-tiered ranking system ran from "Lord (apprentice of the Emperor)" to "Sped," a derogatory term for someone in special-education classes. Other ranks included the Star Wars-themed titles "Darth," "Sith Warrior" and "Jaba."
"As hereby proclaimed by Emperor Mike of the Death Cheese Bus, unit five, sector seven of the gamma system, these laws are laid down upon us to hold order and restore power," the bizarro list of rules stated. "The penalty for breaking this code is banishment. And for a ranking of master or above, the penalty is death or severe beating."
The list specified that the emperor was the supreme leader, accountable to no one, that all lords must obey "Lord Matt," the Darths must obey all lords, and the masters follow the commandments of the Darths. The wacko treatise closed with the ominous proclamation: "Mercy will not be tolerated."
(via kaus)
SuitSat goes silent. NASA suspects the batteries may have gotten too cold.
Holy moly. You have to click the little picture to get the full-body shot, which is flat-out scary.
Over at Corante, Carl Zimmer writes about Ampulex compressa, a parasitic wasp that turns cockroaches into zombie slaves.
She finds a cockroach to make her egg's host, and proceeds to deliver two precise stings. The first she delivers to the roach's mid-section, causing its front legs buckle. The brief paralysis caused by the first sting gives the wasp the luxury of time to deliver a more precise sting to the head.
The wasp slips her stinger through the roach's exoskeleton and directly into its brain. She apparently uses sensors along the sides of the stinger to guide it through the brain, a bit like a surgeon snaking his way to an appendix with a laparoscope. She continues to probe the roach's brain until she reaches one particular spot that appears to control the escape reflex. She injects a second venom that influences these neurons in such a way that the escape reflex disappears.
From the outside, the effect is surreal. The wasp does not paralyze the cockroach. In fact, the roach is able to lift up its front legs again and walk. But now it cannot move of its own accord. The wasp takes hold of one of the roach's antennae and leads it--in the words of Israeli scientists who study Ampulex--like a dog on a leash.
Neurosurgeon wasp then walks the roach back to its burrow, plugs up the entrance, and turns the roach into a living incubator. The roach doesn't die, but enters a state of suspended animation, consuming about 1/3 less oxygen than normal, while the wasp larvae eat it from the inside. Bizarre.
(hat tip: fiend)
Apostropher, 12/24/05: "I'd stipulate that theoretically the victory hands power to the theocrats. We've yet to see whether this election results in the formation of a government and, further, whether that government has any sort of stability. Neither result is guaranteed."
Associated Press, 2/3/06: "Iraqi efforts to form a government are only now beginning in earnest nearly two months after key elections, and the hard bargaining could take weeks - if not months - to produce a new leadership. [...] Major roadblocks stand in the way of a deal for a new government, and thus for any drawdowns - including control of the country's security forces, a definition of terrorism, unfinished business on the new constitution and the deep distrust fanned by tit-for-tat killings."
Here's a brilliant marketing ploy: create an ad so over-the-top insulting to President Bush that your company can be assured even al Jazeera would reject it, then try to buy a slot during the Super Bowl for it. Next step? Talk loudly about "the Super Bowl commercial you're not allowed to see" and watch the hype spread (indeed, they just got me to plug it for free).
Bonus: it's a pretty damn funny ad.
(via John Cole)
Update: I forgot to mention that ABC's letter explaining the rejection of the ad is some funny stuff as well:
"Unless authorized in writing by the Office of the White House Counsel, the use of the name or likeness of the President or Vice President of the United States and their families, as well as the Presidential Seal, is generally not acceptable for advertising purposes." Therefore, the use of the President within this creative is not acceptable.
Also, the following scenes are not acceptable due to their inappropriate nature:
1. The dog squatting to go to the bathroom.
2. The naked man and woman whose genitalia are covered by leaves.
3. The husky elderly man in a thong.
4. The diseased teeth.
5. The hospital gown which reveals a bare bottom.
6. The man getting strangled.
7. The diseased feet.
Update 2: QuietAgent has removed the ad from their website on advice from their legal department, but Gaijin Biker found a copy.
A couple quick links from National Geographic.
First up, in the novel defense department, regal horned lizards repel predators by shooting a stream of blood from an eye socket. Video here.
And following on the main WTF moment from Bush's State of the Union address, here's a year-old article on animal-human chimeras, including pigs with human blood and this more ethically sticky case:
Weissman has already created mice with brains that are about one percent human. Later this year he may conduct another experiment where the mice have 100 percent human brains. This would be done, he said, by injecting human neurons into the brains of embryonic mice. Before being born, the mice would be killed and dissected to see if the architecture of a human brain had formed. If it did, he'd look for traces of human cognitive behavior.
Creepshow. Though perhaps less visibly so than growing a human ear on the back of a hairless mouse. The real aim of Weissman's research is to create models for understanding brain tumors - a project that has my complete support (my father was killed by a brain tumor when he was 40).
Anyhow, I assume Bush mentioned it because Kansas' wingnut Senator Brownback has introduced a bill to make this exact research illegal. PZ Myers explains why that's a very bad idea.
