The Coozer Files

Coozer-Files: RIP.

2011-10-17T10:06:00.002-04:00

Hi guys,

As you can tell, I've been updating less and less. Truthfully, I'm just very lazy. You guys deserve better.

Thank you for reading this over the years. It's been fun!!

Best,
Adam

Hamburglar steals raw meat, eats it in store.

2011-09-16T13:27:00.002-04:00

That's disgusting - Wal-Mart sells raw meat?? From the Food Section:

According to the Cumberlink Sentinel, a Carlisle, Pennsylvania man faces felony charges after police said he was seen eating raw meat from off the shelf of a Walmart store.

Police say that the man, Scott T. Shover, 53, opened packages of raw ground beef and raw stew beef in the store, ate some of it, placed the opened packages back on the shelf, and then walked out of the store without paying for any of the meat. "Shover was arrested at Taser point without any further issues," according to police.

Shover's record showed that he had four previous retail theft convictions.

Escaped pet birds are teaching wild birds English.

2011-09-16T13:26:00.000-04:00

From TreeHugger (Thanks Jen!):

Across parts of Australia, reports have been pouring in of strange voices chattering high in the treetops -- mysterious, non-sensical conversations in English. But while this phenomenon is certainly quite odd, its explanation isn't paranormal. It turns out that escaped pet birds, namely parrots and cockatoos, have begun teaching their wild bird counterparts a bit of the language they picked up from their time in captivity -- and, according to witnesses, that includes more than a few expletives.

Jaynia Sladek, an ornithologist from the Australian Museum, says that some birds are just natural mimickers, able to acquire new sounds based on things they hear around them. For birds kept as pets, these sounds tend to mirror human language -- but that influence doesn't cease even after said birds escape or are released back into the wild.

Once back in their natural environments, these chatty ex-pets eventually join with wild birds who, in turn, start picking up the new words and sounds. The remnants of that language also eventually gets passed along to the escaped birds' offspring, much like it does for humans.

"There's no reason why, if one comes into the flock with words, [then] another member of the flock wouldn't pick it up as well," Sladek said in an interview with Australian Geographic.

According to the report, 'Hello cockie' is one of the most commonly heard phrases feral birds are teaching in the wild, along with a host of expletives -- perhaps the last words those escapees heard after their frantic owners realized they were making a break for freedom.

Anti-gay lawmaker, 64, caught in hotel with 18-year-old boy.

2011-08-24T20:09:00.003-04:00

Another case of a pathetic, closeted old man in a position of power who, out of self-hatred, makes things difficult for all other well-adjusted adults. From Daily Mail:

A married lawmaker, pressured to resign after he was reportedly caught 'arranging' a gay sex tryst via Craigslist, has admitted paying a male teen.

However, Indiana state Rep Phillip Hinkle claims he is not gay and can’t explain why he set up the meeting.

The Indianapolis Star reported two weeks ago that Kameryn Gibson, 18, posted the ad for a ‘sugga daddy’ and got a response from Hinkle, 64.

Mr Gibson claimed Mr Hinkle offered him $140 for 'for a really good time.'

The paper published emails between Hinkle, 64, and Gibson, 18, as they set up a meeting at a downtown Indianapolis hotel.

One of them said: 'Cannot be a long time sugar daddy, but can for tonight. Would you be interested in keeping me company for a while tonight?'

The email offered 'to make it worth [your] while' in cash, and offers a personal description: ‘I am an in shape married professional, 5'8", fit 170 lbs, and love getting and staying naked.'

On Tuesday, Hinkle admitted meeting Gibson and giving him $80 for his time, but denied a sex act or any other wrongdoing took place.

The Republican said: 'I went to the edge, but I didn't fall over the edge.'

Mr Gibson claimed he changed his mind about sex when he found out Hinkle was a state rep, but Hinkle wouldn't let him leave the hotel room.

When Gibson called his sister for help, he said she threatened to call the cops and the media, and Mr Hinkle offered to 'give you whatever.'

After hanging up, Mr Gibson alleges that Mr Hinkle grabbed his buttocks, dropped the towel he was wearing and sat naked on the bed.

When Megan arrived later, they said Mr Hinkle gave them his BlackBerry, iPad and $100 cash to keep them quiet.

The siblings also claimed Mr Hinkle's wife also offered them money when she called the BlackBerry.

Megan Gibson told the Star: 'I was like, "Your husband is gay," and then she was like, "You have the wrong person."'

When Gibson began reading the emails and the address they were sent from, she said Barbara Hinkle told them not to call the police and later offered them $10,000 not to tell anyone.

In Mr Hinkle's version of the events, he claims he was the one victimized by the hotel encounter.

He says he came out of the bathroom at one point to find his money clip, business card holder, his BlackBerry, his iPad and Gibson - gone.

He also denied his wife spoke to Kameryn or Megan Gibson.

Mr Hinkle told the paper: 'Anybody who knows my wife knows she would not pay $10 to keep a mistake I made quiet, let alone $10,000.'

The Gibsons said they contacted The Star because she thought Hinkle's actions were 'creepy,' especially for a lawmaker.

The lawmaker said he is now working with his attorney to find hotel security tapes that back up his claim that he never met Megan Gibson.

Mr Hinkle, a strong opponent of gay marriage, denied he has homosexual tendencies.

He told the Star: 'I say that emphatically. I'm not gay.'

The news comes as pressure mounts from the Indiana Statehouse for Mr Hinkle to step down from the post he has held since 2000.

House Speaker Brian Bosma said he met with the embattled rep last week, and told him he should focus on his personal life in the 2012 session.

Mr Bosma, a fellow Republican, called the alleged scandal 'a detriment to the continuing work of the legislature.'

But Hinkle won't budge, telling the Star: 'Those people didn't elect me. The constituents did.'

Mr Hinkle, who boasts that he co-sponsored the creation of 'In God we trust' license plates in Indiana, has voted in favor of a gay marriage ban.

Indiana Gov Mitch Daniels called the situation a 'tragedy.'

Japan trying to WEAKEN their currency.

2011-08-24T19:47:00.001-04:00

Leave it to Japan to humbly weaken their economy. From NY Times:

TOKYO — Japan took steps on Wednesday to help its economy ride out a surge in the yen, which has battered the country’s export-led economy.

The government announced a $100 billion loan fund to spur Japanese spending on corporate acquisitions and resources overseas, according to a statement released by the Finance Ministry. The ministry also said it would step up monitoring of currency markets by asking financial institutions to report on positions held by their currency dealers.
“Taking into account that there is a lopsided rise in the yen, I felt that swift measures were needed,” Yoshihiko Noda, the finance minister, told reporters.
But the action had little immediate effect on the yen and could underscore just how difficult it might be for the government to sway the huge foreign exchange market. A strong yen hurts Japanese exporters because it makes their goods less competitive and erodes the value of their overseas earnings when repatriated into yen.
Under the loan program, the government will send foreign currency reserves to the Japan Bank for International Cooperation, which will then make loans to commercial banks so they can help companies with overseas investments. By spending yen for dollars and other currencies, the ministry hopes that the currency will weaken somewhat.
The yen was little changed, with the dollar trading at 76.96 yen late in New York, up slightly from 76.64.
The second part of the government’s action is an effort to curtail speculation that officials think might be contributing to moves in the yen. Mr. Noda has indicated recently that the government will act against speculators seeking short-term profits.
The Bank of Japan issued a statement in support of the measures.
“The Bank of Japan will continue to carefully monitor the effects of developments in the foreign exchange market on the future course of economic activity and prices,” it said.
The government’s announcement came hours after Moody’s Investors Service, the credit ratings agency, lowered Japan’s credit rating, warning that frequent changes in administration, weak prospects for economic growth and its recent natural and nuclear disasters have made it difficult for the government to pare down its huge debt.
Moody’s lowered Japan’s grade by one step to Aa3, the fourth-highest rating, the company said in a statement.
The downgrade brings Moody’s rating for Japan in line with that of Standard & Poor’s, which lowered the country’s grade by one notch to AA– in January, the fourth-highest on its scale. Moody’s had put Japan on review for a downgrade in May.

Coozer-Bits.

2011-08-22T13:50:00.005-04:00

Creepy: New spider arrival quickly spreading.

Awesome: Lottery wins come easy if you can spot the loopholes.

D'oh: Three self-delusions that influence your decisions and productivity.

Yipes: Kate Winslet escapes fire at Richard Branson's luxury island retreat.

ZombieWatch: Cat urine turns rats into zombie prey.

Ridley Scott to direct new Blade Runner.

2011-08-22T13:11:00.003-04:00

Well, at least it's not a remake, or in this case, replicant. From Raw Story:

Nearly 30 years after making the sci-fi cult classic "Blade Runner," British director Ridley Scott has agreed to direct a new installment, the producers have said.

The new "Blade Runner," produced by Alcon Entertainment, will not be a remake but rather a follow-up or a prequel to the original. Scott has yet to decide between the two options, the company said in a statement.

"It would be a gross understatement to say that we are elated Ridley Scott will shepherd this iconic story into a new, exciting direction," said producers Andrew Kosove and Broderick Johnson.

"We are huge fans of Ridley's and of the original 'Blade Runner'." This is once in a lifetime project for us," they added.

No casting decisions have been made as of yet, and no release date has been fixed.

Sorry!!

2011-08-22T10:03:00.003-04:00

I'm really sorry I haven't been updating lately. It's been a busy summer. I should have some updates this week. To regain your love, below is a picture of Fudgie the Whale.

Leave a comment so I know there are people still reading this!

Mexico accidentally invades US.

2011-07-28T09:30:00.001-04:00

Good thing George W. Bush still isn't in office. Otherwise, in retaliation, he would've declared war on Morocco. From Huffington Post:

AUSTIN, Texas - U.S. Customs and Border Protection inspectors returned 33 Mexican soldiers on Tuesday who inadvertently crossed over the Rio Grande river into Texas, authorities said.

The soldiers, packed into four Humvees, crossed over the Donna-Rio Bravo International Bridge into south Texas at around 2 p.m., said Felix Garza, a spokesman for CBP in Pharr, Texas.

"They crossed the boundary line on the bridge. Once they did that they were forced to continue traveling to our primary inspection area," Garza told Reuters.

"They were processed according to protocols, and they were released and returned to Mexico without incident or charges," he added, declining to say whether the troops were armed.

In a statement late Tuesday, the Mexican military said the troops "unintentionally" crossed over the bridge while they were carrying out reconnaissance on the border.

After clarifying the error with U.S. authorities, they returned to Mexico and continued their "routine activities," it said.

Man tries to hijack NYC subway train.

2011-07-26T15:22:00.002-04:00

Where's Walter Matthau when you need him? Item!

A man wielding a screwdriver and screaming someone wanted to kill him tried to hijack a subway train by forcing his way into a motorman's cab, cops, a witness and the motorman said Monday.

The terrifying 10-minute ordeal on a crowded northbound No. 5 train happened Friday and prompted panicked passengers to rush to the conductor's defense.

"I had some passengers helping me, so thank God for them," said motorman Darryl George, 36. "There are still good people in New York City."

Suspect Richard Arrocho, 42, is accused of entering George's front-car cab by climbing through its open side window from a wall alongside the tracks near the 149th St. station in the Bronx.

"I had opened my window to see what the situation was," George said. "He said someone with a gun was trying to kill him."

As George turned his back to radio a supervisor, Arrocho clambered inside.

"I was shocked," George said. "I couldn't believe it - he was inside my cab.

"He said, 'Move the train or I'm going to f-----g kill you,'" George added. "He wouldn't let me open the door. He pulled a screwdriver and tried to stab me.
"I started to move the train slowly," George added. "He pulled my hand off and pushed the control to make the train go faster. I told him, 'If we keep moving at this speed, we're going to hit something.' It didn't make any difference to him. "

"It was crazy," said witness Ronald Baker, 60, of the Bronx, who shot dramatic video of the 3:40 p.m. incident. "People were screaming, passengers were pounding on the [motorman's] door, trying to get the guy to put down his screwdriver."

Baker's video shows George wrestling with Arrocho and briefly getting the suspect in a headlock as the train rumbled down the tracks. The train stopped once it reached the Jackson Ave. station. George managed to open the door and run out, leaving Arrocho in the cab alone.

The video shows two passengers initially helping George try to keep the suspect locked in the cab. Apparently believing he might commandeer the controls, George and a passenger pushed open the door and attempted to get Arrocho to calm down.

"Someone's trying to kill me!" Arrocho yelled.

Court records show Arrocho claimed someone was trying to kill him in retaliation for a previous robbery. When cops arrived at the Jackson Ave. station, Arrocho surrendered without incident.

"He may have seen 'Taking of Pelham 123' one too many times," said a law enforcement source, referring to the 2009 remake staring John Travolta as the hijacker of a No. 6 train in the Bronx.

The source said Arrocho has a history of mental illness and spent time in a psych ward. He was charged with felony attempted assault, menacing, harassment and criminal possession of a weapon - a pointy Phillips-head screwdriver. He was being held on $2,500 bail.

He has been arrested at least 40 times since 1985 on charges ranging from robbery to petty larceny, records show.

"I could have lost my life over this," George said. "You don't expect something like this to happen when you go to work."

Top 10 craziest state legislatures.

2011-07-26T15:08:00.002-04:00

Eye-popping article from AlterNet. Some highlights:

10. Michigan: Passed a martial law bill that would end democracy during tough financial times.

8. Ohio: Ohio Republicans had a fetus testify on the floor of the legislature.

7. Montana: Made sure homosexuality is still a crime.

And lots more.

ZombieWatch: Man wakes up in morgue after being mistaken for dead.

2011-07-26T14:18:00.002-04:00

From NY Daily News:

An unconscious South African man, presumed dead by relatives, had a rude awakening Sunday when he came to his senses in a morgue, officials said.

His cries for help terrified employees at the mortuary in the Eastern Cape province of Libode.

"Two workers heard screaming from the refrigerators," Sizwe Kupelo, a spokesperson for the Eastern Cape Health Department, told ABC News. "They thought it was a ghost and they ran for their lives."

The man, who did not want his name released but is described as a grandfather in his 60s, had apparently suffered an asthma attack and fell unconscious.

"The family called a private undertaker who took what they thought was a dead body to the morgue," Kupelo said, according to South Africa's News24.

Relatives did not call paramedics, but instead phoned the mortuary, assuming he was dead. The morgue's owner told The Associated Press that the worker who picked up the supposedly dead man "examined the body, checked his pulse, looked for a heartbeat, but there was nothing."

Ayanda Maqolo was there when the elderly man woke up and started screaming after having been in the refrigerator with other corpses for at least 21 hours.

"He asked, 'How did I get here?'" the owner recalled the man saying. The owner added that the chilling experience even gave him "nightmares."

"I couldn't sleep last night," he told AP. "But today I'm much better."

Jesus saves (by shopping at Wal-Mart).

2011-07-21T12:52:00.002-04:00

From the NY Daily News:

A South Carolina couple claims to possess one heckuva of a saintly sales slip--a Wal-Mart check-out receipt with the face of Christ on it.

Gentry Lee Sutherland and Jacob Simmons got the blessed bill of sale upon paying for the development of 11 photos June 12 at a Wal-Mart store in Travelers Rest, S.C.

"People are going to believe what they want to believe," said Sutherland.

"There's tons of people who will say, 'Oh, we're in the Bible Belt,' but here's my question to the doubters, who else has the power to put their face on a check-out receipt but Jesus?"

It wasn't until three days after they paid for the photos that Sutherland and Simmons divined the two eyes and bushy beard and hair that is now so evident when they look at the receipt.

Marauding gangs of monkeys invade Rio.

2011-07-21T12:43:00.001-04:00

From Treehugger:

In Rio de Janeiro, bold bands of marauding monkeys are turning to a life of looting and mischief. By the dozens, young capuchin monkeys have been descending the nearby hills to sneak into homes and steal fruit and other food from unsuspecting residents -- wreaking havoc in the process. "They come in, make a mess, break and throw everything onto the floor," says one distraught resident of Rio's primate-sacked South Zone. But local experts say that kind-hearted humans may be to blame for unleashing this proverbial barrel of monkeys.

Sure, in still-photos and wildlife documentaries, capachin monkey are undeniably adorable and seem rather harmless,but the recent slew of break-ins and thefts have familiarized locals with their more cunning qualities. In fact, an investigation from Jornal Floripa recorded some surprisingly well-orchestrated incidents of looting. By mimicking a birdcall, one monkey alerts countless others hidden that the latest home invasion will soon be underway.

ZombieWatch: New virus jumps from monkey to lab worker.

2011-07-15T13:26:00.002-04:00

From Science:

It started with a single monkey coming down with pneumonia at the California National Primate Research Center in Davis. Within weeks, 19 monkeys were dead and three humans were sick. Now, a new report confirms that the Davis outbreak was the first known case of an adenovirus jumping from monkeys to humans. The upside: the virus may one day be harnessed as a tool for gene therapy.

Adenoviruses are relatively large DNA viruses—as opposed to many other viruses that replicate using RNA—that commonly cause colds and respiratory infections in humans. They're also responsible for a variety of illnesses in cattle, dogs, horses, pigs, and other animals, but scientists thought the viruses and their ailments couldn't jump between species.

Then, on 14 May 2009, a healthy adult male titi monkey—a small, reddish-brown species that calls much of South America home—came down with a cough at the Davis primate center and soon became lethargic and wouldn't eat. Staff members gave the animal intravenous fluids and antibiotics, but its condition worsened, and after 5 days staff members euthanized him. Four weeks later, another titi monkey came down with the same symptoms. Then another. And another. Within 2 months, 23 of the 65-strong population had become sick, and 19 eventually died. A team led by infectious diseases researcher Charles Chiu of the University of California, San Francisco, analyzed lung tissue samples from the dead monkeys and identified a never-before-seen adenovirus, which they named titi monkey adenovirus (TMAdV).

But where did the virus come from? It's unlikely it originated in the titi monkeys themselves, Chiu says: "Hosts that are that susceptible to a disease are not likely to be its originators." So the researchers asked whether any lab workers had been sick during that period. One person, who had had close daily contact with the monkeys, reported coming down with a fever, chills, a headache, a dry cough, and a burning sensation in her lungs—hallmarks of the kinds of respiratory infection commonly caused by adenoviruses. Two of her family members reported similar, though less severe, symptoms in subsequent weeks.

Neither the lab worker nor her family members sought medical attention, and all recovered within 4 weeks, after which it was too late for researchers to swab for traces of the adenoviruses directly. Instead, they examined the patients' blood for antibodies and compared them with those found in the infected monkeys. The lab worker and one of her family members showed a match, suggesting that the monkeys gave the virus to the lab worker or vice versa. But when the team tested a representative set of 81 blood samples from donors in the western United States, none had antibodies. That suggests humans weren't the source of the outbreak either.

Charity offers baby as raffle prize.

2011-07-07T14:12:00.001-04:00

This is bizarre. How is this legal? From Washington Post:

Games of chance give lucky people the opportunity to win almost anything, from a goldfish at a carnival to millions of dollars. Now a charity in Britain is giving one couple the chance to have a baby.

To Hatch, a charity that offers fertility treatment advice, will sell £20 raffle tickets to couples who want a chance to win £25,000 worth of in vitro fertilization treatments. This controversial lottery, set to launch July 30, has been received with some criticism.

Anyone can enter to the contest and can give the prize to someone else if they win, according to the Telegraph.. If IVF treatments fails, then the charity will offer a surrogate, donor eggs or surgery.

To Hatch founder Camille Strachan said the lottery comes at a time when the National Health Service, Britain’s publicly funded health care system, has undergone budget cuts: “We hope the To Hatch Lottery can ease the burden on the NHS and reduce the stress slightly on some of those who are struggling.”

Josephine Quintavalle, director of the Comment on Reproductive Ethics, told the Telegraph the lottery “demeans the whole nature of human reproduction.” She also questioned the legality of the practice to Sky News.

“This latest initiative, turning the process of reproduction into a buy-your-ticket lottery, is absolutely unacceptable and quite possibly breaks European Law on the commercialization of human tissue,” she said. “It is in this area where an immediate investigation should be demanded. It is surely not legal to pay £20 to have access to another woman’s womb?”

The charity’s Web site was down Wednesday shortly after the announcement went viral. A message on the site read, “To Hatch is currently offline for site-wide maintenance, it will be up and running shortly.” It was later changed to, “Due to overwhelming demand the To Hatch website is currently offline for site-wide maintenance. It will be back up and running as soon as possible.”

U.S. to send condolences after military suicides.

2011-07-07T14:10:00.002-04:00

Amazing to think that people were against this because they thought it would encourage suicide! From NY Times:

Breaking with longstanding concerns that officially memorializing military suicides might encourage them, President Obama announced on Wednesday that he would begin sending letters of condolence to the families of troops who kill themselves in combat zones.

“This decision was made after a difficult and exhaustive review of the former policy, and I did not make it lightly,” the president said in a statement. “This issue is emotional, painful and complicated, but these Americans served our nation bravely. They didn’t die because they were weak.”

As the number of military suicides has surged since 2001, the issue of presidential letters — which are sent to the families of every service member killed in action — has become a source of great dismay among families of suicides. Some organized letter-writing campaigns and prodded members of Congress to introduce legislation to overturn the policy, which has existed for several administrations.

In 2009, the Obama administration demurred, citing widespread concerns among veterans groups and senior military officers that such letters might be construed as sanctioning suicide. But on Wednesday, citing an 18-month review of the policy, Mr. Obama said he had concluded that by recognizing certain suicides, he might destigmatize the problem of mental illness within the military and thereby encourage service members to seek counseling.

“The fact that they didn’t get the help they needed must change,” the president’s statement said. “Our men and women in uniform have borne the incredible burden of our wars, and we need to do everything in our power to honor their service, and to help them stay strong for themselves, for their families and for our nation.”

The new policy, which was first reported by CBS News, will apply only to troops who commit suicide in officially designated combat zones, mainly Afghanistan and Iraq. The letters will differ from those sent to troops killed in combat, though the White House declined to say precisely how.

In recent years, the military suicide rate has been above the rate for the general population, a reflection, experts say, of the stress of rapid-tempo combat operations and multiple deployments. But a majority of those suicides, 295 last year among active-duty personnel, have been committed outside combat zones, mostly in the United States.

Woman dies at her own funeral.

2011-06-24T15:23:00.000-04:00

From Daily Mail:

A woman died from a heart attack caused by shock after waking up to discover she had been declared dead - and was being prepared for burial.

As mourning relatives filed past her open coffin the supposedly dead woman suddenly woke up and started screaming as she realised where she was.

Fagilyu Mukhametzyanov, 49, had been wrongly declared deceased by doctors but died for real after hearing mourners saying prayers for her soul to be taken up to heaven in Kazan, Russia.

Deep history of coconuts decoded.

2011-06-24T15:03:00.003-04:00

"Are you suggesting coconuts migrate?" From WUSTL:

The coconut (the fruit of the palm Cocos nucifera) is the Swiss Army knife of the plant kingdom; in one neat package it provides a high-calorie food, potable water, fiber that can be spun into rope, and a hard shell that can be turned into charcoal. What’s more, until it is needed for some other purpose it serves as a handy flotation device.

No wonder people from ancient Austronesians to Captain Bligh pitched a few coconuts aboard before setting sail. (The mutiny of the Bounty is supposed to have been triggered by Bligh’s harsh punishment of the theft of coconuts from the ship’s store.)

So extensively is the history of the coconut interwoven with the history of people traveling that Kenneth Olsen, a plant evolutionary biologist, didn’t expect to find much geographical structure to coconut genetics when he and his colleagues set out to examine the DNA of more than 1300 coconuts from all over the world.

“I thought it would be mostly a mish-mash,” he says, thoroughly homogenized by humans schlepping coconuts with them on their travels.

He was in for a surprise. It turned out that there are two clearly differentiated populations of coconuts, a finding that strongly suggests the coconut was brought under cultivation in two separate locations, one in the Pacific basin and the other in the Indian Ocean basin. What’s more, coconut genetics also preserve a record of prehistoric trade routes and of the colonization of the Americas.

The discoveries of the team, which included Bee Gunn, now of the Australian National University in Australia, and Luc Baudouin of the Centre International de Recherches en Agronomie pour le Développement (CIRAD) in Montpellier, France, as well as Olsen, associate professor of biology at Washington University in St. Louis, are described in the June 23 online issue of the journal PLoS One.

Blogger jailed 30 days for saying beef noodles were too salty.

2011-06-24T14:45:00.003-04:00

What's even more crazy is that she was right about the cockroaches. From Daily Mail:

A scathing review led to a Taiwanese blogger being sent to prison and ordered to pay compensation to the restaurant she criticised.

The Taichung branch of Taiwan High Court on Tuesday sentenced the blogger, surnamed Liu, to 30 days in detention and two years of probation and handover NT$200,000 for her harsh review of the 'salty beef noodles'.

The blogger writes about a variety of topics, giving her opinion on food, health and interior design, and has received more than 60,000 hits on her website.

After visiting a Taichung beef noodle restaurant in July 2008, where she had dried noodles and side dishes, Liu wrote that the restaurant served food that was too salty, the place was unsanitary because there were cockroaches and that the owner was a 'bully' because he let customers park their cars haphazardly, leading to traffic jams, according to the Taipei Times.

The restaurant’s owner, surnamed Yang, learned about Liu’s blog post from a regular customer, and filed charges against her, accusing her of defamation.

The Taichung District Court ruled that Liu’s criticism of the restaurant exceeded reasonable bounds and sentenced her to 30 days in detention, a ruling that Liu appealed.

The High Court found that Liu’s criticism about cockroaches in the restaurant to be a narration of facts, not intentional slander, the news website reported.

However, the judge also ruled that Liu should not have criticized all the restaurant’s food as too salty because she only had one dish on her single visit.

Health officials who inspected the restaurant did not find conditions to be as unsanitary as Liu had described, so the High Court also ruled that Liu must pay NT$200,000 to the owner for revenues lost as a result of her blog post.

Liu has apologized to the restaurant for the incident.

Yang said he filed the charges because Liu’s negative comments about his restaurant led to many customers calling him to ask if her review was true.

He said he hoped the case would teach her a lesson.

Huang Cheng-lee, a lawyer in Taichung, said that bloggers who post food reviews should remember to be truthful in their commentary and supplement their comments with photographs to protect themselves.

He also said bloggers should be objective and fair in their writing.

Connecticut citizens use fountain as toilet.

2011-06-09T14:59:00.001-04:00

From Yahoo! News:

NEW LONDON, Conn. – Officials in New London, Conn., turned off the water at the city's new waterfront fountain over the weekend, because people have been using it as a toilet.

The fountain was activated last month and features a sculpture of a whale's tail with water spilling over it, which visitors are encouraged to run through.

City Councilor Michael Buscetto III tells The Day of New London that since the fountain opened, police have responded to calls of people urinating, defecating and showering in the fountain water. He said some people who have cut themselves have also used the fountain to rinse off blood.

City Manager Denise Rose says police are developing a plan to better keep an eye on the area.

Flying bear kills two Canadians in freak accident.

2011-06-09T14:50:00.001-04:00

From Yahoo! News:

OTTAWA (Reuters) – Two Canadians died instantly in a freak accident when a car hit a 440-pound (200-kg) black bear and sent the animal flying straight through the windshield of an oncoming vehicle, local media said Wednesday.

The bear's body hit the 25-year-old driver and a 40-year-old man sitting behind her and then shot out of the back window. The bear also died.

The accident happened Monday night in a rural area about 25 miles north of the federal capital Ottawa.

"We don't see (this) often, even if we live in the country. Lots of deer, but collisions with a bear and two people died? That's really rare," local police spokesman Martin Fournel told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.

Collisions between vehicles and animals are common in Canada, which has a healthy population of large wild animals such as moose and deer.

Coozer-Bits.

2011-06-09T14:08:00.003-04:00

Yipes: Jellyfish invade FL beach, sting 1600 people!

WTF: 12 arrested for feeding the homeless in Orlando.

Lame: Woman-hating Santorum says abortion exception to protect mother's health is "phony."

PSA: Citibank confirms hacking attack.

Science: Periodic table adds two new superheavy elements.

Russian man buries himself for luck, dies.

2011-06-02T13:31:00.000-04:00

From NY Daily News:

A superstitious Russian man died after burying himself alive in the hopes it would bring him "good luck."

The 35-year-old computer programmer told friends that spending a night underground would bring him good fortune for the rest of his life.

"According to his friend, the man wanted to test his endurance and insistently asked his friend to help him spend the night buried," police official Alexei Lubinsky told the BBC.

The victim dug a hole in his garden in the eastern city of Blagoveshchensk and created an improvised coffin with pipes for air.

With a cell phone and a bottle of water in hand, he hopped in and had his friend cover the coffin with about eight inches of dirt.

Heavy rain fell overnight and when the friend returned the next morning, his pal was dead.

Police suspect the rain somehow blocked the air supply.

A similarly bizarre fate met a another man in Russia last summer after pals buried him. They found him dead an hour-and-a-half later, crushed by the weight of the dirt.

Bees swarm in Little Italy.

2011-06-01T13:54:00.002-04:00

This has the whole city a-buzz! From NY Post:

It was the biggest sting operation in Little Italy since the Gambinos were driven off.

Crowds of people stopped to gape at a bizarre bee swarm (left) yesterday at a mailbox on the corner of Mulberry and Grand streets, snapping cellphone pictures and calling friends to marvel at the little bit of country in the midst of the big city.

Andrew Cote, president of New York City Beekeepers, said there was nothing to worry about, as the buzzers are as sweet as honey when they travel in packs.

"Bees are most docile when they swarm," he said.

"They have no hive to protect, and they pose absolutely no threat."

A beekeeper from his group helped the NYPD move the bugs to a safe location, he said.

"People keep bees in New York City, and it's not unusual for them to swarm," Cote said.

"It happens many times. I just picked up a swarm in The Bronx."

But another beekeeper, Chet Crowl, said it's lucky the insects were quickly moved, because "the longer they stay, the more aggressive they get."

Last year, the New York City Board of Health lifted a ban on beekeeping.

Man attacks girlfriend's car with forklift, lifting it with her inside.

2011-05-31T16:37:00.000-04:00

From NY Daily News:

A Massachusetts man used a forklift to attack his girlfriend's car, hoisting the vehicle off the ground with the woman inside, cops said.

Then the angry boyfriend slammed the car down on the street several feet away.

Brian Hurley, 41, of Springfield, Mass., began fighting with his girlfriend over money as she dropped him off at work at New England Warehousing Inc. on Saturday morning, police said.

The victim, who was not identified, told cops that Hurley slapped her and then hopped out of her car and began kicking it, causing several dents.

The enraged beau then jumped into the cab of a nearby forklift, steered the forks underneath her car and lifted it into the air.

Hurley split before police arrived, but was later busted when cops found him banging on the door of his home, Springfield's WWLP television reported.

He was charged with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, assault and battery, and damaging a car.

The woman wasn't seriously injured.

Amazon rainforest activist shot dead.

2011-05-31T10:58:00.002-04:00

Meant to post this last week. How awful. From the Guardian:

Six months after predicting his own murder, a leading rainforest defender has reportedly been gunned down in the Brazilian Amazon. José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva and his wife, Maria do Espírito Santo, are said to have been killed in an ambush near their home in Nova Ipixuna, in Pará state, about 37 miles from Marabá.

According to a local newspaper, Diário do Pará, the couple had not had police protection despite getting frequent death threats because of their battle against illegal loggers and ranchers.

On Tuesday there were conflicting reports from about whether the killing happened on Monday night or Tuesday morning. A police spokesperson said there were reports of a "double homicide" at the settlement called Maçaranduba 2.

In a speech at a TEDx event in Manaus, in November, Da Silva spoke of his fears that loggers would try to silence him. "I could be here today talking to you and in one month you will get the news that I disappeared. I will protect the forest at all costs. That is why I could get a bullet in my head at any moment … because I denounce the loggers and charcoal producers, and that is why they think I cannot exist. [People] ask me, 'are you afraid?' Yes, I'm a human being, of course I am afraid. But my fear does not silence me. As long as I have the strength to walk I will denounce all of those who damage the forest."

Roberto Smeraldi, founder and director of the environmental group Amigos da Terra, who worked with Da Silva in the Amazon, said he had been in a meeting with Brazil's president, Dilma Rousseff, discussing changes to the forest code when the news broke of Da Silva being killed. "He was convinced he would be killed one day," Smeraldi said. He added that Da Silva had been "very active" in the fight against illegal forest burning and logging. According to Brazilian media reports, Rousseff has asked her chief of staff, Gilberto Carvalho, to offer support to the murder investigation.

"We now have another Chico Mendes," said Felipe Milanez, an environmental journalist from São Paulo, referring to the Amazonian rubber-tapper who became an environmental martyr after his murder in 1988. Milanez said that in a recent phone conversation with Da Silva's wife she had suggested the situation was "getting very ugly". Milanez added: "He knew the threats were very real. He was scared."

A 2008 report compiled by Brazilian human rights groups listed Da Silva as one of dozens of Amazon human rights and environmental activists "considered at risk" of assassination.

Study: Bad boys really do bamboozle women.

2011-05-25T10:39:00.001-04:00

From the Toronto Star:

Hey guys, if you’re on the prowl, you can drop the nice guy act.

By a wide margin, women really do find bad boys more attractive than their kind and happy counterparts, a new University of British Columbia study says.

“That’s very much what we found,” says UBC psychologist Jessica Tracy, the lead study author.

The study, which involved about 1,000 people split evenly between men and women, had subjects view pictures of opposite sex individuals displaying expressions of pride, shame, happiness or a neutral demeanour.

The participants were then asked to rate their attractiveness on a scale of one to nine.

For women, Tracy says, a proud physical expression made males most alluring. But close behind, those men who had sagging shouldered shame written large on their faces were given surprisingly high attractiveness ratings.

“What we didn’t expect was that women would find happy men really, really unattractive,” says Tracy. “And that’s exactly what we found. It was the least attractive thing men could show.”

The study was released Tuesday by the American Psychological Association journal Emotion.

While a proud man’s attractiveness to women may be easily explained on an evolutionary level, the allure of the bad boy is more elusive, says Tracy, who specializes in physical expressions of emotion.

“Pride conveys high status, strength, power (and) these are all pretty good things to have in a mate,” she says.

Bad boys, depicted in the photo arrays with “brooding” expressions, may well elicit a desire in women to both forgive the guy and to fix him up, Tracy says.

Girl Scout cookies kill orangutans.

2011-05-25T09:26:00.001-04:00

From the Wall Street Journal:

To earn their Girl Scout Bronze Award four years ago, Rhiannon Tomtishen and Madison Vorva set out to study orangutans.

Instead, they wound up investigating Thin Mints, Trefoils and Samoas.

What they uncovered soured them on the sweets and has put the Michigan teens at odds with Girl Scouts of the USA. Now they're on a march to change the recipe for Girl Scout cookies.

Their target: palm oil, which can come from places the primates live.

The girls, who have been scouts since they were five, have rallied troops across the country. Scouts sold 198 million boxes of cookies last year, but now some say they're done. Scouts and leaders have criticized their nonprofit organization on Facebook and Twitter.

"My troop is up in arms," says Nicole Bell, a Lansing, Kan., leader and former scout. "They do not want to sell cookies next year."

The Girl Scouts organization says its bakers have told them there isn't a good alternative to palm oil that would ensure the same taste, texture and shelf life. "Girls sell cookies from Texas to Hawaii and those cookies have to be sturdy," says Amanda Hamaker, product sales manager for Girl Scouts of the USA.

[...] Hoping to help orangutans, the Michigan teens want the Scouts to either remove palm oil entirely from cookies, or use sustainably grown palm oil.

CDC releases zombie apocalypse guidelines.

2011-05-20T09:11:00.001-04:00

From the Daily Mail:

The next time a decaying corpse approaches you in the street, you'll know what to do.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has posted guidance telling people what to do in a ‘zombie apocalypse’ - and they don’t advise shooting the walking dead.

A light-hearted blog post by the organisation said U.S. citizens should prepare an emergency kit and then look for a zombie-free refugee camp.

But the Zombie Apocalypse campaign has a serious side as it intends to familiarise Americans with disaster preparedness techniques for the hurricane season.

‘There are all kinds of emergencies out there that we can prepare for,’ wrote infectious disease specialist Dr Ali Khan. ‘Take a zombie apocalypse for example.

‘You may laugh now, but when it happens you'll be happy you read this, and hey, maybe you'll even learn a thing or two about how to prepare for a real emergency.’

The blog post drove so much traffic that it crashed the website on Thursday, and it came just days before an evangelist’s prediction of the May 21 ‘Judgment Day’.

‘If you prepare for the zombie apocalypse, you'll be prepared for all hazards,’ a CDC spokesman said.

The CDC said disaster preparedness involves putting together an emergency kit, coming up with an emergency plan and having two meet-up spots.

It recommends an emergency kit should include water, food, medication, battery-powered radio, a utility knife and vital documents.

Rigorous study confirms video game playing increases food intake.

2011-05-17T15:44:00.002-04:00

I blame Pac-Man. From EurekAlert:

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that almost 18% of US teens are obese. Although most experts agree that our growing obesity "epidemic" is driven by both inadequate physical activity and excessive caloric intake, implementing solutions is extraordinarily difficult. One area that has caught the attention of health researchers is the observation that trends in video game playing parallel obesity rates on a population basis. Furthermore, several studies have documented a positive association between how much time a child plays video games and his or her chance of being obese. However, correlation does not necessarily imply causality, and controlled intervention studies are required to test whether playing video games causes children to increase their food intake and/or decrease their energy expenditure. In the first such study of this kind, Canadian and Danish researchers tested their hypothesis that video game playing is accompanied by increased spontaneous food intake.

"This study is an especially important piece of the scientific puzzle in this arena because it went beyond simply simultaneously documenting the relationship between video game playing and food intake in kids," said Shelley McGuire, PhD, American Society for Nutrition spokesperson. "Instead, it actually studied the same group of children during two separate, experimentally-administered periods of rest and video-game play, and then used gold-standard methods to measure important outcomes such as food intake, energy expenditure, and feelings of hunger and appetite. Consequently, the results can be used with a high degree of confidence to suggest that playing virtual soccer can affect food intake. Very interesting! Given our current obesity "crisis" in kids, I will be curious to follow the results of follow-up studies. For instance, do violent games or educational games have the same effect as sports-related games?"

Amtrak passenger kicked off train for talking too loudly.

2011-05-17T15:41:00.002-04:00

Finally, Amtrak does something right. From HuffPo:

An Amtrak train made an unexpected stop Sunday, as a woman was escorted off for speaking loudly on her cell phone.

Lakeysha Beard, 39, was charged with disorderly conduct after she wouldn't stop talking on the 16-hour trip from Oakland, California, to Salem, Oregon. The train was stopped short of its destination.

Train operators called police due to passenger complaints, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. Beard's car was designated a "quiet car."

Beard told Portland's KATU News that she felt "disrespected" by the incident.

Watermelons explode like land mines in China.

2011-05-17T15:28:00.001-04:00

From the Daily News (also submitted by Jen C):

Chinese farmers discovered how science can go bad after fields of watermelons exploded like "land mines" after being over-pumped with growth chemicals.

The chilling chemistry calamity struck after a group of 20 farmers in Jiangsu Province used a growth accelerator for the first time during a period of heavy rains.

That caused hundreds of groaning melons to pop like balloons, state broadcaster CCTV reported.

"On May 7, I came out and counted 80 but by the afternoon it was 100," said farmer Liu Mingsuo. "Two days later I didn't bother to count anymore."

The chemical involved is legal and is often used in the U.S. with kiwis and grapes, but underscores China's recent troubles with the unregulated use of chemicals in the nation's food supply.

Car commits suicide at auto show.

2011-05-09T10:40:00.002-04:00

From CBS Local:

BABYLON, N.Y. — Police were investigating how a car accelerated across a parking lot and into the water near a Long Island boat basin.

State park police said the driver was able to swim to safety.

Police said the car hit several motorcycles and a parked car but no one was injured.

Witnesses told Newsday that the driver was standing talking with dozens of people at the Captree State Park auto show when the car started to run away from him. The driver managed to jump inside the car when it took off again.

Witness John Rodriguez said the car went airborne about 7 to 8 feet and then hit the water.

The driver was only identified as a 30-year-old man from West Islip. He was taken to a hospital for undisclosed injuries.

Fungus turns ants into zombies at high noon.

2011-05-09T10:32:00.002-04:00

I've been following the zombie ant story for awhile, and these new details are even weirder than usual. From Penn State Live:

New research has revealed how infection by a parasitic fungus dramatically changes the behavior of tropical of carpenter ants (species Camponotus leonardi), causing them to become zombie-like and to die at a spot that has optimal reproduction conditions for the fungus. The multinational research team studied ants living high up in the rainforest canopy in Thailand. A paper describing the research was published in the BioMed Central open-access journal BMC Ecology on May 9.

"The behavior of these infected zombie ants essentially causes their bodies to become an extension of the fungus's own phenotype, as non-infected ants never behave in this way," said David P. Hughes, the first author of the research paper and an assistant professor of entomology and biology at Penn State.

Using transmission-electron and light microscopes, the researchers were able to look inside the ant in order to determine the effect of the fungus on the ant. They found that the growing fungus fills the ant's body and head, causing muscles to atrophy and forcing muscle fibres to spread apart. The fungus also affects the ant's central nervous system. The scientists observed that, while normal worker ants rarely left the trail, zombie ants walked in a random manner, unable to find their way home. The ants also suffered convulsions, which caused them to fall to the ground. Once on the ground, the ants were unable to find their way back to the canopy and remained at the lower, leafy understory area which, at about 9 or 10 inches (25 cm) above the soil, was cooler and moister than the canopy, provided ideal conditions for the fungus to thrive.

The scientists found that at solar noon, when the Sun is at its strongest, the fungus synchronised ant behavior, forcing infected ants to bite the main vein on the underside of a leaf. The multiplying fungal cells in the ant's head cause fibres within the muscles that open and close the ant's mandibles to become detached, causing "lock jaw," which makes an infected ant unable to release the leaf, even after death. A few days later, the fungus grows through the ant's head a fruiting body, a stroma, which releases spores to be picked up by another wandering ant.

Even the Dalai Lama agrees with bin Laden assassination.

2011-05-04T10:42:00.001-04:00

From the LA Times:

As the leader of Tibetan Buddhism, the 14th Dalai Lama says he practices compassion to such an extent that he tries to avoid swatting mosquitoes "when my mood is good and there is no danger of malaria," sometimes watching with interest as they swell with his blood.

Yet, in an appearance Tuesday at USC, he appeared to suggest that the United States was justified in killing Osama bin Laden.

As a human being, Bin Laden may have deserved compassion and even forgiveness, the Dalai Lama said in answer to a question about the assassination of the Al Qaeda leader. But, he said, "Forgiveness doesn't mean forget what happened. … If something is serious and it is necessary to take counter-measures, you have to take counter-measures."

Treasure trove of data seized from bin Laden's mansion.

2011-05-04T09:53:00.002-04:00

From Irish Times:

US INTELLIGENCE officers have discovered unpublished statements from Osama bin Laden amid “a treasure trove” of computer hard drives, CDs, DVDs and papers seized from his safe house in Pakistan, an American government official claimed yesterday.

They believe they may also have found communications between al-Qaeda lieutenants and bin Laden which could reveal information about potential targets, strategic guidance of the terror network, and the whereabouts of its leadership and operatives.

US Navy Seals who raided the Abbottabad compound on Sunday and shot bin Laden and two others dead took away a range of “removable media” such as computer disks. The US government believes some of the hardware could have been used to get messages to and from bin Laden in the absence of an internet or phone link to the hideaway, a two-hour drive from Islamabad, the official said.

White House counter-terrorism chief John Brennan, in a briefing yesterday, said: “What we’re most interested in is seeing if we can get any insight into any terrorist plot that might be under way so that we can take the measures to stop any type of attack planning. Secondly, we’re trying to look and see whether or not there are leads to other individuals within the organisation, or insights into their capabilities.”

An urgent priority will be to find any evidence of attacks which bin Laden might have ordered in the event of his death, according to British sources familiar with the find. “The data could also help to clarify just how candid the Pakistanis have been about the knowledge of his movements,” a UK source said.

Another central question which the cache may help answer is the whereabouts of Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s deputy leader, and the extent to which bin Laden continued to communicate with the outside world on both strategy and operations.

The US official familiar with the intelligence operation stressed the process of analysing documents was at an early stage, and would not say yet whether the bin Laden statements found were written or recorded on audio or video, or how recent they were – except to say they had not been seen before.

Video taken after the raid inside the house appeared to show broken computers in one room which had been stripped of hard drives. The discovery of the cache is being treated as a coup in intelligence circles, which could prove to be a vital reference document on al-Qaeda for years to come.

It is understood British computer forensics experts are on standby to help sift through what one US official described to the US Politico.com news website as “the motherlode of intelligence”.

Pakistan blames rest of the world for their incompetence.

2011-05-04T09:46:00.002-04:00

Let's hope Pakistan only harbored terrorists and didn't supply them with nuclear materials. Item.

Pakistan's prime minister says spy agencies worldwide share the blame for his country's failure to capture Osama Bin Laden, who was killed by US forces.

"We have intelligence failure of the rest of the world including the United States," PM Yousuf Raza Gilani said.

Pakistan has been criticised for not locating Bin Laden, who was living near the country's main military academy.

The CIA head has said the US did not tell Islamabad of the raid in advance, for fear it would be jeopardised.

[...] Speaking to reporters during a visit to Paris on Wednesday, Mr Gilani said: "There is intelligence failure of the whole world, not Pakistan alone."

He added that Pakistan needed "the support of the entire world" to combat militants.

"We are fighting and paying a heavy price," he said, adding that his government was "fighting not only for Pakistan but for the peace, prosperity and progress of the whole world".

Earlier his foreign minister questioned the suggestion by CIA Director Leon Panetta that Pakistan could not be trusted with details of the operation.

Pakistani Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir told the BBC that this view was "disquieting" and his country had a "pivotal role" in tackling terrorism.

He said the compound in Abbottabad where Bin Laden was shot dead had been identified as suspicious some time ago by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

But it took the greater resources of the CIA to determine that it was the al-Qaeda leader's hiding place.

[...] The BBC's Aleem Maqbool in Abbottabad says that if Bin Laden had been there for as long as five years, it raises questions about the Pakistani authorities.

Either they were incredibly incompetent or were harbouring the al-Qaeda leader, our correspondent says.

North Korean political concentration camps growing.

2011-05-04T09:43:00.001-04:00

From BBC News:

A rights group has published satellite images of what it says are North Korea's political prison camps, saying they appear to be growing in size.

In a linked report, Amnesty International also provides new witness testimony to shed light on the conditions in the camps.

The document details accounts of torture, starvation and mass executions of political inmates.

Amnesty has urged the secretive state to immediately close all the camps.

It also calls on Pyongyang to publicly admit the existence of the camps.

The North Korean government - which has denied the existence of mass political prison camps - has not publicly commented on the report's findings.

The new images show four of the six camps occupying huge areas of land in vast wilderness sites in the provinces of South Pyongan, South Hamkyung and North Hamkyung, Amnesty says.

A comparison of the latest pictures with satellite imagery from 2001 indicates "a significant increase in the scale of the camps", it adds.

"These are places out of sight of the rest of the world, where almost the entire range of human rights protections that international law has tried to set up for the last 60 years are ignored," said Sam Zarifi, Amnesty's Asia Pacific director.

"As North Korea seems to be moving towards a new leader in Kim Jong-un and a period of political instability, the big worry is that the prison camps appear to be growing in size."

Amnesty says its report is also based on testimony from 15 former inmates and prison guards and a number of other people.

The former prisoners at one camp at Yodok said they were forced to work in conditions approaching slavery and were frequently subjected to torture and inhumane treatment.

Kim, a former prisoner in Kwanliso 15 at Yodok, says: "Everyone in Kwanliso witnessed executions. All those who tried to escape were caught. They were interrogated for two to three months and then executed."

Amnesty also says it has been told of several accounts of people in the camps eating rats or picking corn kernels out of animal waste purely to survive amid severe food shortages.

Monsanto's Roundup herbicide may be dangerous to plants, animals, and humans.

2011-05-04T09:26:00.002-04:00

From Alternet:

Dr. Don Huber did not seek fame when he quietly penned a confidential letter to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack in January of this year, warning Vilsack of preliminary evidence of a microscopic organism that appears in high concentrations in genetically modified Roundup Ready corn and soybeans and "appears to significantly impact the health of plants, animals and probably human beings." Huber, a retired Purdue University professor of plant pathology and U.S. Army colonel, requested the USDA's help in researching the matter and suggested Vilsack wait until the research was concluded before deregulating Roundup Ready alfalfa. But about a month after it was sent, the letter was leaked, soon becoming an internet phenomenon.

Huber was unavailable to respond to media inquiries in the weeks following the leak, and thus unable to defend himself when several colleagues from Purdue publicly claiming to refute his accusations about Monsanto's widely used herbicide Roundup (glyphosate) and Roundup Ready crops. When his letter was finally acknowledged by the mainstream media, it was with titles like "Scientists Question Claims in Biotech Letter," noting that the letter's popularity on the internet "has raised concern among scientists that the public will believe his unsupported claim is true."

Now, Huber has finally spoken out, both in a second letter, sent to "a wide number of individuals worldwide" to explain and back up his claims from his first letter, and in interviews. While his first letter described research that was not yet complete or published, his second letter cited much more evidence about glyphosate and genetically engineered crops based on studies that have already been published in peer-reviewed journals.

The basis of both letters and much of the research is the herbicide glyphosate. First commercialized in 1974, glyphosate is the most widely used herbicide in the world and has been for some time. Glyphosate has long been considered a relatively benign product, because it was thought to break down quickly in the environment and harm little other than the weeds it was supposed to kill.

According to the National Pesticide Information Center, glyphosate prevents plants from making a certain enzyme. Without the enzyme, they are unable to make three essential amino acids, and thus, unable to survive. Once applied, glyphosate either binds to soil particles (and is thus immobilized so it can no longer harm plants) or microorganisms break it down into ammonium and carbon dioxide. Very little glyphosate runs off into waterways. For these reasons, glyphosate has been thought of as more or less harmless: you spray the weeds, they die, the glyphosate goes away, and nothing else in the environment is harmed.

But Huber says this is not true. First of all, he points out, evidence began to emerge in the 1980s that "what glyphosate does is, essentially, give a plant AIDS." Just like AIDS, which cripples a human's immune system, glyphosate makes plants unable to mount a defense against pathogens in the soil. Without its defense mechanisms functioning, the plants succumb to pathogens in the soil and die. Furthermore, glyphosate has an impact on microorganisms in the soil, helping some and hurting others. This is potentially problematic for farmers, as the last thing one would want is a buildup of pathogens in the soil where they grow crops.

Coozer-Bits.

2011-04-29T20:28:00.002-04:00

Eats: Unexpected fungus decimates Australia's pistachio crop.

Karaoke Kills: Karaoke killer gets 54 years to life.

Karaoke Kills: Neighborhood pulls together to reject restaurant's request for karaoke license.

Awesome: Scott Pilgrim finally comes to Japan.

Supreme Court rules to let corporations bar class action suits.

2011-04-29T19:24:00.001-04:00

From Huffington Post:

On Wednesday the U.S. Supreme Court sided with AT&T in AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion -- a decision with devastating consequences for consumer protection and civil rights. In essence, AT&T asked the court to allow it to use the fine print of contracts to eliminate class actions, a practice that flouts the laws of 20 states. In a 5-4 decision, the court granted AT&T's request.

The case's potential impact is breathtaking. Corporations can now prevent consumers and small business owners from exercising what is often their only real option for challenging companies that defraud them by millions or even billions of dollars: banding together to file class action lawsuits. The case could be equally devastating to millions of non-union employees, who need class actions to challenge systemic discrimination by their employers. The Supreme Court has given major corporations the green light to engage in nearly limitless wrongdoing against others, so long as they do it in relatively small dollar amounts, which ensures that no one can afford to challenge the misconduct without a class action.

A sudden demise of class actions will shock the markets and the legal system. It will dramatically increase the market power of major corporations over ordinary Americans and small business owners, who are already outmatched. Innumerable laws that protect the public will become irrelevant because few people can enforce them.

Yet for all these far-reaching implications, AT&T's achievement is remarkably ordinary. The company has secured a state of lawlessness similar to the one that allowed banks to foreclose on millions of homeowners without showing evidence that they had the right to do so. It has achieved a deregulatory regime similar to those that tanked the economy and destroyed millions of jobs, devastated the Gulf of Mexico with oil, allow thousands of preventable workplace deaths every year and threaten untold upheaval through climate change. Like the big banks, the oil and coal companies and the mine operators, AT&T simply wants to write its own rules. It's doing just that, through a practice that has become so ordinary we hardly notice the absurdity and injustice anymore: writing one-sided contracts and imposing them on others.

Why corporations are permitted to do anything important through standard-form contracts is somewhat of a mystery. Companies hire armies of lawyers to draft and redraft these contracts, claiming every new advantage they can wring out of legal developments. They secure "consent" by holding our credit cards or cell phones for ransom, saying we must submit to the new terms or immediately stop using them. Some companies even do this with people's jobs, telling employees they must sign new contracts or be fired (never mind that contract law is supposed to be based on mutual consent).

The average American is deluged with hundreds of thousands of fine-print words each year that no one reads and no one understands -- but that everyone is bound by. Avoiding these contracts is impossible unless one eschews most consumer products and services. Courts uphold adhesion contracts with a breeziness that is astonishing, especially since judges themselves don't read the fine print (John Roberts, chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, has said he doesn't read it). The effect is nothing short of privatization of the law, with major corporations writing the rules and imposing them on the rest of us.

If recent crises have taught us anything, it's that disaster follows quickly when companies have too little oversight. AT&T is pushing the outer limits of deregulation, seeking a world in which companies can use one-sided contracts to grant themselves immunity from accountability for a vast range of wrongdoing. Concepcion represents a giant leap toward a dystopian legal system that the Supreme Court should have rejected out of hand -- lawlessness for major corporations and corporate-made law for the rest of us.

But the Court rubber-stamped AT&T's scheme, so we need the Congress and administrative agencies to protect us. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act gives the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) the authority to eliminate abuses like AT&T's within their jurisdictions. The CFPB and SEC should get to work quickly. To solve the problem in every industry, not just financial services, Congress should pass the Arbitration Fairness Act, which Sens. Al Franken (D-Minn.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) plan to introduce next week.

Millions in malaria drugs stolen.

2011-04-27T12:00:00.000-04:00

From the Seattle Times:

A global health fund believes millions of dollars worth of its donated malaria drugs have been stolen in recent years, vastly exceeding the levels of theft previously suspected, according to confidential documents obtained by The Associated Press.

The internal investigation by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria comes two months into a new anti-corruption program that the fund launched after an AP report detailing fraud in their grants attracted intense scrutiny from donors.

In internal documents detailing drug thefts, officials identified 13 countries, mostly in Africa, where millions of dollars worth of malaria drugs have gone missing. According to the reports, drug theft in which donated drugs are sold on the black market "appears to be on the rise and (is) becoming increasingly sophisticated."

The reports were provided to the AP by an official with a different health organization, who did so on condition of anonymity because he was granted confidential access to the documents by a Global Fund staffer.

Global Fund spokesman Jon Liden confirmed the fund suspects $2.5 million worth of malaria drugs were stolen from Togo, Tanzania, Sierra Leone, Swaziland and Cambodia, dating mainly from 2009 to 2011, but with some cases going further back. He said investigations are under way to determine how much more was stolen elsewhere.

"We take this very seriously and we will do what it takes to protect our investment," he said.

An AP report in January exposed high rates of misappropriated money in some Global Fund grants and bruised the reputation of the multibillion-dollar fund, backed by big names including Bono and Bill Gates and hailed as an alternative to the bureaucracy of the United Nations.

But the fact that these revelations have come to light at all may be due to stricter self-policing and greater transparency at the Global Fund, compared with other aid organizations.

Update on the global catastrophic amphibian decline.

2011-04-27T10:58:00.001-04:00

From Science Daily:

Amphibian declines around the world have forced many species to the brink of extinction, are much more complex than realized and have multiple causes that are still not fully understood, researchers conclude in a new report.

The search for a single causative factor is often missing the larger picture, they said, and approaches to address the crisis may fail if they don't consider the totality of causes -- or could even make things worse.

No one issue can explain all of the population declines that are occurring at an unprecedented rate, and much faster in amphibians than most other animals, the scientists conclude in a study just published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

The amphibian declines are linked to natural forces such as competition, predation, reproduction and disease, as well as human-induced stresses such as habitat destruction, environmental contamination, invasive species and climate change, researchers said.

"An enormous rate of change has occurred in the last 100 years, and amphibians are not evolving fast enough to keep up with it," said Andrew Blaustein, a professor of zoology at Oregon State University and an international leader in the study of amphibian declines.

"We're now realizing that it's not just one thing, it's a whole range of things," Blaustein said.

"With a permeable skin and exposure to both aquatic and terrestrial problems, amphibians face a double whammy," he said. "Because of this, mammals, fish and birds have not experienced population impacts as severely as amphibians -- at least, not yet."

The totality of these changes leads these researchers to believe that Earth is now in a major extinction episode similar to five other mass extinction events in the planet's history. And amphibians are leading the field -- one estimate indicates they are disappearing at more than 200 times that of the average extinction rate.

Efforts to understand these events, especially in the study of amphibians, have often focused on one cause or another, such as fungal diseases, invasive species, an increase in ultraviolet radiation due to ozone depletion, pollution, global warming, and others. All of these and more play a role in the amphibian declines, but the scope of the crisis can only be understood from the perspective of many causes, often overlapping. And efforts that address only one cause risk failure or even compounding the problems, the researchers said.

"Given that many stressors are acting simultaneously on amphibians, we suggest that single-factor explanations for amphibian population declines are likely the exception rather than the rule," the researchers wrote in their report. "Studies focused on single causes may miss complex interrelationships involving multiple factors and indirect effects."

King crabs invade Antarctica.

2011-04-27T10:01:00.002-04:00

From Science Daily:

It's like a scene out of a sci-fi movie -- thousands, possibly millions, of king crabs are marching through icy, deep-sea waters and up the Antarctic slope.

"They are coming from the deep, somewhere between 6,000 to 9,000 feet down," said James McClintock, Ph.D., University of Alabama at Birmingham Endowed Professor of Polar and Marine Biology.

Shell-crushing crabs haven't been in Antarctica, Earth's southernmost continent, for hundreds or thousands, if not millions, of years, McClintock said. "They have trouble regulating magnesium ions in their body fluids and get kind of drunk at low temperatures."

But something has changed, and these crustaceans are poised to move by the droves up the slope and onto the shelf that surrounds Antarctica. McClintock and other marine researchers interested in the continent are sounding alarms because the vulnerable ecosystem could be wiped out, he said.

Antarctic clams, snails and brittle stars, because of adaptation to their environment, have soft shells and have never had to fight shell-crushing predators. "You can take an Antarctic clam and crush it with your hands," McClintock said. They could be the main prey for these crabs, he said.

Loss of unique mollusks could jeopardize organisms with disease-fighting compounds, McClintock said. Sea squirts, for example, produce an agent that fights skin cancer. If the crabs eat them, it could bring McClintock's research with that organism to a halt.

McClintock's chemical ecology program has published more than 100 papers on species researchers have discovered, including the compound that combats skin cancer and one to treat flu, that are being explored by drug companies.

"I am very concerned that species could disappear, and we could lose a cure to a disease," he said.

Playstation hacked: 77 million users' personal and credit card info in jeopardy.

2011-04-27T09:37:00.003-04:00

Grand Theft Identity. From Daily Mail:

The credit card details of 77million PlayStation users could have been stolen during one of the largest Internet thefts in history, Sony admitted today.

The Japanese firm suffered a massive breach in its online video game network last week that allowed the names and addresses of the users to be stolen in a hacking attack that could cost the company billions.

Access to the PlayStation network was suspended last Wednesday, but the company only revealed the true extent of the data breach today.

A post on a Sony blog said hackers obtained user names, passwords, logins, security questions and, potentially, credit card numbers.

The online network that allows PlayStation owners to play video games against one another was shut immediately after the hacking was discovered on April 19.

A spokesman said it took 'several days of forensic investigation' after learning of the breach before the company knew consumers' data had been compromised.

Sony announced the details of the breach hours after the glitzy launch of a new tablet PC yesterday - and users reacted furiously after Sony made its hacking announcement in a low-key manner on a company blog.

One said: 'If you have compromised my credit information, you will never receive it again. The fact that you've waited this long to divulge this information to your customers is deplorable. Shame on you.'

Pittsburgh is having a ninja problem.

2011-04-27T09:33:00.001-04:00

From Gawker:

The greater Pittsburgh area has been contending with a very annoying ninja infestation lately. If you've ever had a ninja problem yourself, you know that they're really hard to get rid of, and if you see one, you can be sure there's hundreds more where he came from.

The most recent outbreak occurred when a sword-wielding ninja was spotted breaking into eleven cars by a man named Santino Guzzo. When Guzzo confronted him, the ninja "tried to stab him." Guzzo was packing heat, however, and drew his gun. That sent the ninja running off into the cover of darkness, yet he still somehow managed to "break the rear window of Guzzo's car as he ran off."

[...] Less than two weeks prior, Ross Hurst, a resident of Scottdale (less than hour south of Pittsburgh), had left his four-year-old son sleeping alone at home — when police picked him up at 1:30 am allegedly "pretending to be a ninja."

Scientists teach computers to feel regret to improve performance.

2011-04-19T16:37:00.001-04:00

Great, let's teach robots to feel shame and self-loathing. What could go wrong? Item.

Engineers are teaching computers how to feel ‘regret’ so they will operate much faster and predict events before they happen.

Researchers are developing programmes which will ask computers to try and do something only for them to be deliberately thwarted.

By understanding the difference between the desired outcome and the reality, the machines will learn a sense of ‘regret’ and how to minimise it.

Computers which experience this will be less likely to make the same mistake in the future and will run more efficiently.

It could also teach them to predict the future - by considering all possible outcomes, they work out which is the most likely to succeed before they even start.

The researchers behind the project admit that it is not quite on a par with artificial intelligence depicted in science-fiction films.

Instead, they say that it is a first step on the way to creating computers which could one day have human emotions.

Humpback whales spread songs outward like pop tunes.

2011-04-14T12:26:00.001-04:00

So cool! From EurekAlert:

Humpback whales have their own version of the hit single, according to a study reported online on April 14th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication. At any given time within a population, male humpbacks all sing the same mating tune. But the pattern of the song changes over time, with the new and apparently catchy versions of the song spreading repeatedly across the ocean, almost always traveling from west to east.

"Our findings reveal cultural change on a vast scale," said Ellen Garland, a graduate student at The University of Queensland. Multiple songs moved like "cultural ripples from one population to another, causing all males to change their song to a new version." This is the first time that such broad-scale and population-wide cultural exchange has been documented in any species other than humans, she added.

Researchers from The University of Queensland in collaboration with members of the South Pacific Whale Research Consortium made the discovery by searching for patterns in whale songs recorded from six neighboring populations in the Pacific Ocean over a decade. This revealed a striking pattern of cultural transmission as whale songs spread from Australia to French Polynesia over the course of about two years.

"The songs started in the population that migrates along the eastern coast of Australia and then moved—just the songs, and probably not the whales—all the way to French Polynesia in the east," Garland said. "Songs were first learnt from males in the west and then subsequently learned in a stepwise fashion repeatedly across the vast region."

In fact, only one song ever moved to the west over the period of the study. Garland explained that the almost exclusive movement of songs to the east may be due to population size differences, because the population on the east coast of Australia is very large compared to all others in the area. The researchers suspect that either a small number of males move to other populations, taking their songs with them, or whales in nearby populations hear the new songs while they swim together on migration.

Most of the time, songs contain some material from the previous year blended with something new. "It would be like splicing an old Beatles song with U2," Garland said. "Occasionally they completely throw the current song out the window and start singing a brand new song."

Once a new song emerges, all the males seem to rapidly change their tune. Those songs generally rise to the "top of the chart" in the course of one breeding season and typically take over by the end of it.

Garland said it is not yet known why the humpbacks' songs spread in this way. In fact, why whales sing in the first place isn't fully known. Song is likely a mating display, but it is unclear whether the main effect is to attract females or to repel rival males.

Still, Garland suspects that the whales may want to stand out like a new pop song. "We think this male quest for song novelty is in the hope of being that little bit different and perhaps more attractive to the opposite sex," she said. "This is then countered by the urge to sing the same tune, by the need to conform."

Cuba faces worst drought in 50 years.

2011-04-14T11:19:00.000-04:00

From BBC:

Cuba is facing its worst drought in half a century, with tens of thousands of families almost entirely reliant on water trucks for essential supplies.

The drought started two years ago, and reservoirs are now down to a fifth of their normal levels.

The government is providing road deliveries of water to more than 100,000 people in the worst affected areas of the capital, Havana.

The situation in Havana is compounded by a pipe network in poor condition.

The state-run newspaper Granma says up to 70% of water pipes supplying the capital are leaking and in urgent need of repair, the BBC's Michael Voss in Havana says.

Residents are having to use buckets and bottles to fill up with water from the road deliveries.

"It's completely out of control," one resident, Ana Gomez, said. "Just imagine that you can't wash when you want to, you have to wash when you are able to."

Another, Enrique Olivera Gonzalez, said: "As there is no water, you can't wash your clothes, cook, or clean your house."

Cubans are hoping the rainy season in May and June will bring some respite.

But even a normal rainfall will not be enough to fill up the reservoirs, our correspondent says.

Coozer-Bits.

2011-04-14T10:18:00.004-04:00

Media: How the advertising boycott helped push Glenn Beck off the air.

Duh: Civic group finds the LIRR is the least efficient commuter railroad in the nation.

Health: India emerges as world's leading vaccine producer.

Duh: US Senate probe finds Goldman Sachs knowingly misled and fleeced their investors.

Booze: Cheap wine as good as expensive wine in blind taste tests.

How the wild hamster was tamed.

2011-04-11T17:46:00.002-04:00

From NPR:

In the spring of 1930, a biologist named Israel Aharoni ventured into Syria on a mission. He was searching for a rare golden mammal.

Its name in Arabic translates roughly as "Mr. Saddlebags." Thanks to Aharoni, the little rodent with the big cheeks can now be found in many grade-school classrooms, running on a little wheel in a little cage.

That's right. Aharoni's big find was the hamster.

Of course, Aharoni didn't set out looking for a schoolchild's pet, biologist Rob Dunn tells NPR's Linda Wertheimer. Dunn, an assistant professor at North Carolina State University, wrote about the hamster's discovery in a recent article on Smithsonian.com.

One of Aharoni's colleagues, Saul Adler, thought the animal might be similar enough to humans to use for medical research. "Aharoni saw this as a chance to both to discover this organism in the wild and to bring them back to Adler so he could make major discoveries about humans," Dunn says.

Following tips from local farmers, Aharoni tracked down a litter of 11 hamsters in a Syrian wheat field. He put the little family in a box, and trouble started immediately when mama hamster ate one of her babies.

More troubles followed in the lab. There was more hamster cannibalism, and five others escaped from their cage — never to be found. Finally, two of the remaining three hamsters started to breed, an event hailed as a miracle by their frustrated caretakers.

Those Adam-and-Eve hamsters produced 150 offspring, Dunn says, and they started to travel abroad, sent between labs or via the occasional coat pocket. Today, the hamsters you see in pet stores are most likely descendants of Aharoni's litter.

Fertilizers causing huge destruction to Europe's environment and economy.

2011-04-11T17:43:00.001-04:00

Jeez. Item.

A major new study has found that nitrogen pollution is costing each person in Europe around £130 - £650 (€150 – €740) a year. The first European Nitrogen Assessment (ENA) is launched at a conference today (11 April) in Edinburgh, Scotland. The 4 minute long official launch video can be watched on Youtube.

The study, carried out by 200 experts from 21 countries and 89 organizations, estimates that the annual cost of damage caused by nitrogen across Europe is £60 - £280 billion (€70 - €320 billion), more than double the extra income gained from using nitrogen fertilizers in European agriculture.

Professor Bob Watson, Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), welcomed the report. He said, "The assessment emphasizes how nitrogen links the different environmental issues that we have come to know so well: climate, biodiversity, air, water, and soil pollution. It develops the vision for a more holistic approach, which is vital if we are to make progress in tackling these issues."

The ENA (available to download here) is the first time that the multiple threats of nitrogen pollution, including contributions to climate change and biodiversity loss, have been valued in economic terms at a continental scale. As well as identifying key threats the assessment also identifies the geographical areas at greatest risk of damage by nitrogen pollution. The report provides EU policymakers with a comprehensive scientific assessment on the consequences of failing to address the problem of nitrogen pollution – and outlines key actions that can be taken to reduce the problem to protect environmental and public health.

The assessment deals with ‘reactive nitrogen’ which includes ammonia, nitrous oxide (laughing gas), nitrogen oxides (NOx) which form acid rain and smog, and nitrates, as distinct from the ‘inert nitrogen’ which makes up 78% of the atmosphere.

Key messages from the assessment include:

At least ten million people in Europe are potentially exposed to drinking water with nitrate concentrations above recommended levels.
Nitrates cause toxic algal blooms and dead zones in the sea, especially in the North, Adriatic and Baltic seas and along the coast of Brittany.
Nitrogen-based air pollution from agriculture, industry and traffic in urban areas contributes to particulate matter air pollution, which is reducing life expectancy by several months across much of central Europe.
In the forests atmospheric nitrogen deposition has caused at least 10% loss of plant diversity over two-thirds of Europe.

The lead editor of the ENA, Dr Mark Sutton from the UK’s Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, said, “Nearly half the world’s population depends on synthetic, nitrogen-based fertilizer for food but measures are needed to reduce the impacts of nitrogen pollution. Solutions include more efficient use of fertilizers and manures, and people choosing to eat less meat. We have the know-how to reduce nitrogen pollution, but what we need now is to apply these solutions throughout Europe in an integrated way.”

Squids experience massive acoustic trauma from ocean noise pollution.

2011-04-11T17:42:00.002-04:00

Sad. From EurekAlert:

Noise pollution in the oceans has been shown to cause physical and behavioral changes in marine life, especially in dolphins and whales, which rely on sound for daily activities. However, low frequency sound produced by large scale, offshore activities is also suspected to have the capacity to cause harm to other marine life as well. Giant squid, for example, were found along the shores of Asturias, Spain in 2001 and 2003 following the use of airguns by offshore vessels and examinations eliminated all known causes of lesions in these species, suggesting that the squid deaths could be related to excessive sound exposure.

Michel André, Technical University of Catalonia in Barcelona, and colleagues examined the effects of low frequency sound exposure—similar to what the giant squid would have experienced in Asturias—in four cephalopod species. As reported in an article published in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment (e-View), a journal of the Ecological Society of America, all of the exposed squid, octopus and cuttlefish exhibited massive acoustic trauma in the form of severe lesions in their auditory structures.

The researchers exposed 87 individual cephalopods—specifically, Loligo vulgaris, Sepia officinalis, Octopus vulgaris and Illex coindeti—to short sweeps of relatively low intensity, low frequency sound between 50 and 400 Hertz (Hz) and examined their statocysts. Statocysts are fluid-filled, balloon-like structures that help these invertebrates maintain balance and position—similar to the vestibular system of mammals. The scientists' results confirmed that statocysts indeed play a role in perceiving low frequency sound in cephalopods.

André and colleagues also found that, immediately following exposure to low frequency sound, the cephalopods showed hair cell damage within the statocysts. Over time, nerve fibers became swollen and, eventually, large holes appeared—these lesions became gradually more pronounced in individuals that were examined several hours after exposure. In other words, damage to the cephalopods' auditory systems emerged immediately following exposure to short, low intensity sweeps of low frequency sound. All of the individuals exposed to the sound showed evidence of acoustic trauma, compared with unexposed individuals that did not show any damage.

"If the relatively low intensity, short exposure used in our study can cause such severe acoustic trauma, then the impact of continuous, high intensity noise pollution in the oceans could be considerable," said André. "For example, we can predict that, since the statocyst is responsible for balance and spatial orientation, noise-induced damage to this structure would likely affect the cephalopod's ability to hunt, evade predators and even reproduce; in other words, this would not be compatible with life."

The effect of noise pollution on marine life varies according to the proximity of the animal to the activity and the intensity and frequency of the sound. However, with the increase in offshore drilling, cargo ship transportation, excavation and other large-scale, offshore activities, it is becoming more likely that these activities will overlap with migratory routes and areas frequented by marine life.

"We know that noise pollution in the oceans has a significant impact on dolphins and whales because of the vital use of acoustic information of these species," said André, "but this is the first study indicating a severe impact on invertebrates, an extended group of marine species that are not known to rely on sound for living. It left us with several questions: Is noise pollution capable of impacting the entire web of ocean life? What other effects is noise having on marine life, beyond damage to auditory reception systems? And just how widespread and invasive is sound pollution in the marine environment?"

Absolutely nothing interesting happened on this day in history.

2011-04-11T15:01:00.001-04:00

From NPR, who know a little something about boringness.

Coming into work this morning we heard Morning Edition's Renee Montagne say that April 11, 1954, according to a British computer scientist, was "the most uneventful day of the 20th century" because nothing much happened on that date.

That sounded familiar. And, sure enough, we blogged about that very claim last November, when All Things Considered talked about it.

Which makes us wonder:

Has all this talk about what didn't happen 57 years ago today made that day any more interesting? While we can't go back in time to change things (or can we, sci-fi fans?), is saying something isn't interesting making it interesting?

We e-mailed William Tunstall-Pedoe, the man behind the notion that April 11, 1954, was so dull. Here's how he responded to our musings:

— "(a) Yes, the attention paid to the day has certainly now made it far more interesting that many other days.

— "However, (b) our original conclusion based on the lack of things that actually happened that day still stands. It is the exceptional boringness that makes it interesting."

Pistachios deliver weight management support, other health benefits.

2011-04-11T14:01:00.001-04:00

From EurekAlert:

Washington, D.C., April 11, 2011 – In a first-of-its-kind study with nuts, randomized controlled-feeding research conducted by the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) found that fat in pistachios may not be completely absorbed by the body. The findings indicate that pistachios may actually contain fewer calories per serving than originally thought – further validating pistachios as one of the lowest calorie nuts with 160 calories per 30 gram serving (approximately 1 ounce). The study was presented today at the Experimental Biology conference in Washington, D.C.

The research measured the energy value of pistachios by feeding 16 healthy adults the nuts as part of a controlled diet and calculating the energy value from differences in energy excretion during the dietary treatment timeframe. The resulting energy value of one 30 gram serving of pistachios was 5.9 percent less than previous calculations.

"Existing scientific research indicates that fat from nuts is poorly absorbed through the gastrointestinal tract," said lead ARS researcher David J. Baer, Ph.D., Supervisory Research Physiologist with the Beltsville Human Nutrition Research Center. "This study confirms that the fat from pistachio nuts, specifically, is not completely digested or absorbed, resulting in a lower energy value."

Additional data from this study presented at Experimental Biology reinforced the heart-health benefits of pistachios. The ARS researchers found that when healthy individuals included 1.5 and 3 ounces of pistachios into their typical American diet, cardio-supportive results were shown.

The new data demonstrating the potential calorie savings of pistachios builds on previous research showing that pistachios are a weight-wise snack. According to researchers at the University of California – Los Angeles, choosing to snack on pistachios rather than pretzels not only supports body mass index (BMI) goals, but can support heart health, too.

In a 12-week randomized study, 52 overweight and obese subjects were placed on a 500-calorie deficit diet and assigned to either a pistachio snack (about 75 pistachios providing 240 calories) or a pretzel snack group (two-ounces of pretzels providing 220 calories). The results showed that the pistachio group had better success with supporting their BMI goals compared to the pretzel group, showing pistachios can be included in a healthy diet, even for those managing their weight.

Additionally, pistachios – also known as the "Skinny Nut" – are shown to be a "mindful snack" in terms of taking longer to eat and requiring the snacker to slow down and be more conscious of what has been consumed. According to behavioral eating expert, James Painter, Ph.D., R.D., Chair of the School of Family and Consumer Sciences at Eastern Illinois University, "Our research shows in-shell snackers eat 41-percent fewer calories than those who snack on shelled nuts. We also found that in-shell pistachios offer a visual cue to help reduce intake. When leftover shells are cleared immediately, snackers eat up to 22 percent more compared to leaving left over shells as a reminder of consumption. "

Pistachios are also a good source of fiber and protein. Providing about 49 kernels per 30 grams (approximately 1 ounce) serving, pistachios offer the most nuts per serving when compared to other popular snack nuts – comparatively, almonds have 23 in a serving, walnuts 14 halves and cashews, 18.

Chiquita banana company sued for murdering over 4,000 Colombians.

2011-04-11T13:30:00.001-04:00

Sent in by JenK. Item. And more info here.

Despite some efforts by Chiquita to clean up its act in recent years, its long history of human rights abuses is coming back to haunt the company. Chiquita is being sued by the families of more than 4,000 Colombians murdered by illegal armed groups funded by Chiquita.

More than 100 lawyers have filed the suits for different groups of victims, but are all working together, according to Colombia Reports, to make one giant case against the company.

The Irish Times writes, "The civil cases follow Chiquita's admission in 2007 that it paid $1.7 million (€1.2 million) to the AUC between 1997 and 2004 and acknowledged previous payments to other groups."

That admission was preceded by a secret Justice Department investigation, at which time Chiquita was represented by Eric Holder—yes, the current Attorney General. Chiquita was fined $25 million.

Lamest bank robbery attempt ever?

2011-04-11T13:02:00.000-04:00

From NY Post:

Who planned this bank heist? Woody Allen?

Like a scene from Allen's classic film "Take the Money and Run," a nebbishy knucklehead in a black yarmulke allegedly tried to rob a Bank of America in Queens only to give up after the teller refused to comply with his demand note.

"OK, I will go to Citibank . . . I will rob them instead!" Harold Luken, 45, allegedly declared in the Forest Hills branch shortly before being grabbed by cops, police sources said.

The shtick-up began at about 1:50 p.m. Thursday when Luken walked into the bank at 107-26 71st Ave., carrying an acoustic guitar. He apparently didn't want to cause too much of a fuss.

"I am gonna rob the bank," he allegedly yelled. "I have a gun, but I'm gonna wait on line."

True to his word, Luken patiently waited for his turn at the teller window. Once there, he allegedly said, "I'm gonna rob the bank."

He added, "First, I'm gonna pass you a note . . .", police sources said.

The note didn't read, "I have a gub," as in the famous robbery scene from the Allen flick, but it had just as little impact.

When teller Sean Knudsen balked at giving him money, Luken asked for the balance in his own account, police sources said.

Knudsen didn't even give him that.

Luken slunk out of the bank, only to be arrested by 112th Precinct cops.

NIH science projects in jeopardy from government shutdown.

2011-04-06T18:07:00.003-04:00

From ScienceMag:

With a possible government shutdown only a few days away, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) appears to be ready to send in a skeleton staff to care for patients and maintain animals and experiments at the agency's Bethesda, Maryland, campus. But accompanying the plans is a strange sense of secrecy.

As lawmakers and the Obama Administration continue to clash over the depth of budget cuts, leaders are now acknowledging that the federal government could shut down Monday barring another stopgap measure to fund government operations for a fiscal year that began last October. University-based scientists may not notice at first, as temporarily closing the offices that distribute most of NIH's $31 billion budget to outside investigators won't immediately affect these extramural grants. But about 10% of the agency's budget goes to its intramural program, which has over 1000 principal investigators (PIs), 4000 postdocs, hundreds of labs, animal facilities, and many clinical studies. Much of this can't just shut down and be left unattended.

NIH Deputy Director for Intramural Research Michael Gottesman e-mailed ScienceInsider yesterday that each of NIH's 27 institutes and centers is identifying people who would be "excepted" from the shutdown. That includes clinical staff; fire, security, and animal care personnel; and a few employees "who are protecting research investments."

But the details are sketchy. Any public discussion of the contingency plans is forbidden "for political reasons," says one high-level official, explaining that the government can't look like it's preparing for a shutdown. Even internal e-mails are now verboten, this source said; instead, planning has been done the old-fashioned way, by word of mouth.

That said, "there seems to be a coherent plan," a lab chief said. A few months ago, PIs submitted lists of essential personnel, including most physicians, animal caretakers, and others who will maintain experiments or cell lines that can't be shut down. The numbers ScienceInsider heard ranged from 50% of a group that does nonprimate work and clinical trials to just 10% of one institute's entire intramural program. But there's no word whether those lists have been approved.

The uncertainty is stressful, says one PI, who was allowed to designate only himself and one other lab member to maintain lab animals and cell cultures for a pause of indefinite length. "A great deal of treasure will be lost if this shutdown happens" because experiments may be damaged, he predicted.

Although government shutdowns are not uncommon, most recently in late 1995 and early 1996, the culture seems different this time around. While in the past many people, especially postdocs, came into work and were eventually paid, this time, "the impression I have is that you will have to show you're on some list" to enter a building, one lab chief said. Another investigator was told there will be fines for violators. This time, NIH staff members aren't even supposed to log into e-mail from home, a source said.

Man arrested after trying to sell U.S. spy drone on eBay.

2011-04-02T16:20:00.002-04:00

This is really shocking. People still use eBay?? Item.

It is said you can buy and sell anything on eBay.

But for one Philippine national who sold and mailed a U.S. military drone to undercover agents, the postage and packing could cost him up to 20 years in jail.

Henson Chua, 47, was caught by an undercover Homeland Security agent as he tried to sell the four lb 'Raven' for $13,000. He is now charged with violating the Arms Export Control Act and smuggling and faces up to 20 years in jail if convicted.

It is not known how Chua acquired the hand-launched plane, but according to official documents he allegedly bought it from the Philippine government.

The Raven is equipped with three cameras that U.S. troops use for battlefield surveillance and can be taken apart by troops and then reassembled for use.
According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, agents with the Homeland Security Department found out last May that Chua was offering a Raven for sale on eBay for $13,000.

The listing had nine pictures of the plane that clearly showed an ID tag and bar code proving its authenticity.

Homeland Security agents then began to talk to Chua, who had been living in the U.S. since April 2010 on a non immigrant visa.

Agents then called Chua on May 17, where he allegedly claimed to have bought the Raven from the Philippine government, who sold it as abandoned property.

U.S. agents then allegedly warned Chua that exporting the plane out of the country was illegal.

But in an email exchange, Chua then told them: 'Now, as far as the US permits. yes you're right that could be a bit of a problem for me if this isn't done right.'

'It's tricky because you have to be a registered broker with the state department in order to transfer US military items.(The Raven and its parts are definitely military items.) Otherwise, you're breaking US law.

'I'm not really registered, so I hope that is not a problem for you :)'.

Dying bats will cost U.S. economy up to $50 billion.

2011-04-01T21:58:00.001-04:00

From ScienceDaily:

Bats in North America are under a two-pronged attack but they are not the only victim -- so is the U.S. economy. Gary McCracken, head of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, analyzed the economic impact of the loss of bats in North America in agriculture and found it to be in the $3.7 to $53 billion a year range.

McCracken's findings are published in the April edition of Science. McCracken conducted his study with Justin Boyles of the University of Pretoria in South Africa, Paul Cryan of the U.S. Geological Survey and Thomas Kunz of Boston University.

Since 2006, more than a million bats have died due to a fungal disease called White-Nose Syndrome (WNS). At the same time, several migratory tree-dwelling species are being killed in unprecedented numbers by wind turbines. This hurts the economy because bats' diet of pest insects reduces the damage the insects cause to crops and decreases the need for pesticides.

In fact, the researchers estimate the value of bats to the agricultural industry is roughly $22.9 billion a year, with the extremes ranging as low as $3.7 and $53 billion a year.

"These estimates include the reduced costs of pesticide applications that are not needed to suppress the insects consumed by bats. However, they do not include the downstream impacts of pesticides on humans, domestic and wild animals and our environment," said McCracken. "Without bats, crop yields are affected. Pesticide applications go up. Even if our estimates were quartered, they clearly show how bats have enormous potential to influence the economics of agriculture and forestry."

According to the researchers, a single colony of 150 big brown bats in Indiana eat nearly 1.3 million insects a year -- insects that could potentially be damaging to crops.

WNS infects the skin of bats while they hibernate. Some species such as the little brown bat are likely to go extinct in parts of North America. The disease has quickly spread from Canada to Tennessee, Missouri and Oklahoma and actions to slow or stop it have proven unsuccessful.

It is unknown how many bats have died due to wind turbines, but the scientists estimate by 2020, wind turbines will have killed 33,000 to 111,000 annually in the Mid-Atlantic Highlands alone. Why migratory tree-dwelling species are drawn to the turbines remains a mystery.

Coozer-Bits.

2011-03-31T16:43:00.005-04:00

Politics: The 8 worst governors in America.

Aww: Missing deadly cobra found alive in Bronx Zoo.

Dick: GoDaddy CEO posts video of him shooting an elephant.

Yipes: Rabid skunks descend on Arkansas.

Sorry I haven't been posting much lately - busy busy busy. Will start posting more frequently very soon!

Survey shows women hate their Facebook friends.

2011-03-31T08:44:00.001-04:00

I'm pretty sure men feel the same way... From Mashable:

When it comes to Facebook, we have friends, and we have “friends.” A recent survey found that for many women on Facebook, their true feelings about many of their Facebook friends might be less than friendly.

Daily deals site Eversave talked to 400 women about their Facebook relationships. The company originally conducted the survey as market research on the social network’s influence on the daily deals ecosystem, but Eversave was surprised to uncover the love/hate relationship between women and their online friends.

For example, the majority of female respondents said they had at least one friend who was a “drama queen” on Facebook. A majority also said they had at least one obnoxiously “proud mother” as a Facebook friend.

Most women — 83% of respondents in this survey — are annoyed at one time or another by the posts from their Facebook connections. For these respondents, the most off-putting post was some kind of whine; a full 63% said complaining from Facebook friends was their number one pet peeve, with political chatter and bragging coming in a distant second and third.

Stink bug epidemic spreads across U.S.

2011-03-31T08:42:00.001-04:00

From Daily Mail:

Few of us ever come to terms with the idea of bed bugs infesting their house and home.

But now a new threat is on the rise that is arguably worse - stink bugs.

Sightings of the brown marmorated stink bug have been reported in 33 states so far this year, a rise of eight since fall alone.

The pest appears to be spreading from its traditional home in the mid-Atlantic coast throughout America, experts said.

The only areas to escape the epidemic are the Rockies and the Plains but everywhere else homeowners have found thousands of the dime-sized creatures infesting their homes in beds and in sofas.

Stink bugs are named after the smell they emit whenever they are squashed or crushed.

Like bed bugs they do not transmit disease and are not poisonous.

They do however bite you, eat your plants and vegetables and emit an appalling stench when they are squeezed that resembles decaying garbage.

They are also almost impossible to get rid of and have wings which means they fly off when you try to catch them.

Celebrity chef turns down wish from dying child.

2011-03-29T10:32:00.002-04:00

Update: She has been shamed by the interweb into granting the wish. Item!

From the Nonprofit Quarterly:

To her cooking show fans, she's known as the Barefoot Contessa. But her treatment of a six-year-old boy from Portland, Ore., suffering from leukemia, can only be characterized as flat-footed.

Enzo Pareda, who says he watches Ina Garten's cooking shows in his hospital bed with his mother, had asked the Make-A-Wish Foundation to set up a meeting for the two of them. According to the MailOnline.com, which is feasting on this story, Garten turned down Pareda's request twice. The first time she said no to Pareda, who has been suffering from Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia for three years, because of a conflict with a book tour. The second time she begged off saying she was too busy.

Pareda's mother has been chronicling her son's failed attempts to meet the Garten on a blog, Angels for Enzo. After the second time Garten spurned the request to meet, Pareda's mother wrote: ''I felt terrible for him, he has been unwavering in his desire to meet her for 3 years and despite many attempts to get him to pick a 2nd wish or change his mind he would not." When hearing the news a second time, Pareda asked his mother, “Why doesn’t she want to meet me?"

The Make-A-Wish Foundation acknowledges that sometimes "planning for wishes doesn't turn out as originally envisioned, despite people’s best intentions and efforts throughout the wish-granting process." A spokesman for Garten says the chef does her best to help with as many groups as she can, but can't say yes to all them. Pareda isn't giving up, though. He told his mother: “I still want her as my 1st wish, even if she doesn’t want me."

If you paid taxes in 2010, you paid more than GE.

2011-03-25T18:39:00.003-04:00

This NY Times article was pointed out by Coozer-Phile Steve. As he puts it:

"In 2010, I paid more in taxes than GE! In fact, anyone who paid anything in taxes last year--even one dollar--paid more than GE (which earned $5.1 BILLION in profits in the United States). They actually received a tax BENEFIT of $3.1 BILLION.

"So, right now our country is slashing all services--federal, state, and local--because we don't have enough revenue--but we're letting giant corporations get away without paying anything? And we're giving them tax breaks?!

"I should have been born rich and connected. We're all royally screwed."

More here.

General Electric, the nation’s largest corporation, had a very good year in 2010.

The company reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States.

Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.

That may be hard to fathom for the millions of American business owners and households now preparing their own returns, but low taxes are nothing new for G.E. The company has been cutting the percentage of its American profits paid to the Internal Revenue Service for years, resulting in a far lower rate than at most multinational companies.

Its extraordinary success is based on an aggressive strategy that mixes fierce lobbying for tax breaks and innovative accounting that enables it to concentrate its profits offshore. G.E.’s giant tax department, led by a bow-tied former Treasury official named John Samuels, is often referred to as the world’s best tax law firm. Indeed, the company’s slogan “Imagination at Work” fits this department well. The team includes former officials not just from the Treasury, but also from the I.R.S. and virtually all the tax-writing committees in Congress.

While General Electric is one of the most skilled at reducing its tax burden, many other companies have become better at this as well. Although the top corporate tax rate in the United States is 35 percent, one of the highest in the world, companies have been increasingly using a maze of shelters, tax credits and subsidies to pay far less.

In a regulatory filing just a week before the Japanese disaster put a spotlight on the company’s nuclear reactor business, G.E. reported that its tax burden was 7.4 percent of its American profits, about a third of the average reported by other American multinationals. Even those figures are overstated, because they include taxes that will be paid only if the company brings its overseas profits back to the United States. With those profits still offshore, G.E. is effectively getting money back.

Such strategies, as well as changes in tax laws that encouraged some businesses and professionals to file as individuals, have pushed down the corporate share of the nation’s tax receipts — from 30 percent of all federal revenue in the mid-1950s to 6.6 percent in 2009.

Knut the polar bear may be stuffed.

2011-03-24T13:39:00.000-04:00

From Time:

Even in death, the world's most famous polar bear can't escape the spotlight.

On March 23, it emerged that the deceased polar bear may be stuffed and put on display in Berlin's Natural History Museum. “It is true that our taxidermists are working on his corpse and have removed his fur,” Gesine Steiner, a spokeswoman for the museum, told Bloomberg. “We haven't yet made a decision on whether we will stuff him and exhibit him. We have to talk to the zoo. We do of course have lots of stuffed zoo animals on show here.”

Four-year old Knut—who shot to fame after his mother rejected him and his human keepers decided to rear him themselves—passed away in his enclosure at the Berlin Zoo on March 19. Three vets began examining the 661-pound animal on March 22, and a taxidermist observed the procedure to ensure that Knut's fur remained in tact.

Plans to stuff the bear have left several of his fans in dismay. “To stuff Knut is to abuse the feelings of millions of Knut fans all over the world,” one fan, Horst Krause, wrote in the zoo's online condolence book. “Knut deserves a worthy burial.”

NY Times.com paywall coming soon.

2011-03-17T13:08:00.002-04:00

Blah.

The New York Times announced "digital subscriptions" on Thursday, revealing the long-awaited details of its paywall plan. Starting March 28, non-subscribers will be able to read only 20 online articles for free each month.

Home delivery subscribers can continue to access online and app content for free. Non-subscribers can choose from three packages: $15 per month for Web access and smartphone content; $20 for Web plus access to the Times iPad app; and $35 for Web, tablet and smartphone access.

There's still some room for free, though: Readers who reach online Times articles through links from search engines, blogs and social media will be able to access those individual articles, even if they have reached the 20-article monthly limit.

But for some search engines, users will have a daily limit of free links. The New York Times' press release on its plan did not specify which search engines will be affected, but a Times article on the plan said there will be a five-link limit through Google (GOOG, Fortune 500).

The homepage at NYTimes.com and all section fronts will remain free to browse at all times. The "Top News" section will remain free on the Times' smartphone and tablet applications.

Coozer-Bits.

2011-03-17T10:54:00.005-04:00

WTF: Nazi books suddenly huge in Britain.

Booze: 14 surprising facts about beer.

Lame: GOP-run House votes to terminate Neighborhood Stabilization Program.

Media: Fox News' union-busting crusade.

McDonald's partners with WWF on sustainability plan.

2011-03-17T10:43:00.004-04:00

A step in the right direction. From Fast Company:

Most people who buy a Big Mac aren't concerned about where it came from--or whether the accompanying fries are made using sustainable palm oil. But apparently, McDonald's cares. The company recently announced its Sustainable Land Management Commitment, a pledge to work with suppliers that ensure agricultural raw materials and packaging come from sustainable sources. First up: beef, poultry, coffee, palm oil, and packaging.

McDonald's started looking at its supply chain impact in 2009. As part of a partnership with the World Wildlife Fund, the fast food chain invited in the nonprofit for an unfettered look at what McDonald's buys, how much it purchases, and who it buys from. The WWF performed a detailed analysis, and came up with the five categories listed above as a starting point. "This year is mostly about goals and targets," says Bob Langert, VP of Corporate Responsibility at McDonald's.

The top priority for McDonald's is cleaning up the beef supply chain. "Beef has its fair share of impacts on the world, and we have a role to play to reduce its impact. We have done a carbon footprint analysis, and beef rises to the top as the number one priority," says Langert. In concrete terms, that means keeping track of and reducing CO2 emissions from farms, as well as developing a program to trace and certify sustainable beef in the Amazon to make sure that no beef from deforested areas is used.

McDonald's next priority is the poultry supply chain, and more specifically, the impact of poultry feed on rainforest destruction. " The impacts of how animal feed like soya is grown and raised is almost equal to the impact of the animal itself," explains Langert. McDonald's has already committed to a moratorium on soya purchased from deforested areas in the Amazon. The company is still trying to figure out next steps.

Most of McDonald's goals are still being formulated--the most comprehensive goal this far is for palm oil (the company plans to use only certified sustainable palm oil by 2015). And foodies hoping for the chain to start using only local, grass-fed organic beef should look elsewhere. But whenever a gigantic corporation like McDonald's shifts its food policies in the right direction, attention must be paid.

US alarmed at Japan's nuclear crisis response.

2011-03-17T10:24:00.003-04:00

I feel terrible for Japan, but their attempt to contain this crisis seems even less competent than BP during the oil spill. Helicopters with buckets of water? Item.

U.S. officials are alarmed at how the Japanese are handling the escalating nuclear reactor crisis and fear that if they do not get control of the plants within the next 24 to 48 hours they could have a situation that will be "deadly for decades."

"It would be hard to describe how alarming this is right now," one U.S. official told ABC News.

President Obama has been briefed by nuclear experts.

The Japanese have evacuated most of the reactor personnel from the Fukushima nuclear complex and are rotating teams of 50 workers through the facility in an attempt to cool it down.

"We are all-out urging the Japanese to get more people back in there to do emergency operation there, that the next 24 to 48 hours are critical," the official said. "Urgent efforts are needed on the part of the Japanese to restore emergency operations to cool" down the reactors' rods before they trigger a meltdown.

"They need to stop pulling out people—and step up with getting them back in the reactor to cool it. There is a recognition this is a suicide mission," the official said.

The official said the United States is in very deep consultations with Japanese about the way forward and that the only thing that has been favorable is the wind pattern that is blowing the contaminated material out to sea instead south towards Tokyo and other populated areas, but that can't be counted upon.

The U.S. official says experts believe there is a rupture in two, maybe three of the six reactors at the Fukushima power plant, but as worrisome is the fact that spent fuel rods are now exposed to the air, which means that substances like cesium, which have a long half-life, could become airborne.

"That could be deadly for decades," the official said.

There is a growing concern around the world that a nuclear catastrophic disaster is in the works.

"There is talk of an apocalypse and I think the word is particularly well chosen," European Union's energy commissioner Günther Oettinger said today, according to various reports. "Practically everything is out of control. I cannot exclude the worst in the hours and days to come."

Grisly voodoo masks found in Steinway mansion.

2011-03-08T15:32:00.001-05:00

This sounds like a good beginning to Ghostbusters III. From NY Post:

Auctioneers clearing out the historic Steinway Mansion have made a grisly discovery -- a voodoo doll and voodoo masks hidden in the fabled Astoria landmark.

Experts made the chilling find in the Queens mansion, which was home to the Steinway piano family until the 1920s, as they cleared the attic following the death of its last owner, Michael Halberian, who lived there for 82 years and died in December.

Halberian's children brought in auctioneer Michael Capo to sell the mansion's contents, including items left behind by the Steinway family. He told us, "It is eerie. We were clearing out the far reaches of the attic when we came across what looks like a late-19th-century wooden box or trunk.

"We broke the lock and inside we found five voodoo masks and a doll surrounded by rusty nails in a little coffin. I don't know if the masks are made out of wax, pigskin or even real skin. This thing has some energy, and I am not sure that it's good energy.

"Everyone went silent. We are professionals, but nobody wants to go near this thing. It is scary. Clearly, somebody used this in some sort of ceremony, because there's a mirror inside the lid so the image could be reflected to others in the room.

"The Halberians do not think one of their relatives would have owned this. I think it had been there since the late 19th century. It was hidden away in an area where the owner wouldn't necessarily go, so perhaps a member of the domestic staff kept it there."

The 27-room palace, packed with such objects as telescopes, barometers and old maps, was built by Benjamin T. Pike Jr. in 1858. In the early 1870s, Pike's widow sold it to the Steinway family, which had begun moving its piano-making facilities to Astoria from Manhattan. Tailor Jack Halberian bought the mansion at auction in the 1920s after the Steinways moved out. It's now up for sale for $2.5 million.

Capo will auction off the first lot on March 26 but adds, "I don't know if we are going to sell the voodoo masks yet. I think we'll hold on to [them] and get some research done. There's a dark story here."

Effective population of Siberian tiger down to 14.

2011-03-07T11:52:00.002-05:00

From AOL HuffPo:

The effective population of the Amur tiger, also known as the Siberian tiger, is down to just 14 animals, scientists report in the journal Mammalian Biology.

There are about 500 Amur tigers currently surviving in the wild, but the effective population accounts for genetic diversity. BBC reports that the tiger has a very low diversity, which means that any disease or rare genetic disorders will probably be passed on to the next generation. A more diverse genetic population would increase the tiger's chance of survival -- it would be able to "cancel out" diseases and disorders with healthy genes.

The Amur tiger is the largest cat in the world. It once lived across China, Korea, and Russia, until the early 20th Century, when human settlements, habitat loss, and poaching drove the cats to near extinction. By the 1940's, less than 30 individual tigers survived in the wild -- this has now led to a "genetic bottleneck," destroying the Amur tiger gene pool. The results of this are seen today in the tiger's lack of genetic diversity.

Not just Amur tigers are at risk of extinction. The World Wildlife Fund reports that climate change may be shrinking tigers' habitat by 96%. Bengal tigers are shrinking in size due to stress over environmental changes. The WWF goes so far as to state that if no action is taken, tigers may become extinct in the next 12 years.

This past November, a summit was held focused on saving tigers from extinction. The summit's biggest news? It was probably that Leonardo DiCaprio survived a plane accident and still managed to attend. But also at the summit, countries agreed to double the tiger population by 2022 and crack down on poaching and illegal trade of tiger parts. It is an uphill battle, but one worth fighting.

Zombie ants controlled by fungus.

2011-03-04T14:47:00.002-05:00

Anyone else horrified by the last paragraph? Yeah, let's find zombie fungus and bring it back to civilization to study. What could go wrong? From National Geographic:

A stalk of the newfound fungus species Ophiocordyceps camponoti-balzani, grows out of a "zombie" ant's head in a Brazilian rain forest.

Originally thought to be a single species, called Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, the fungus is actually four distinct species—all of which can "mind control" ants—scientists announced Wednesday.

The fungus species can infect an ant, take over its brain, and then kill the insect once it moves to a location ideal for the fungi to grow and spread their spores.

All four known fungi species live in Brazil's Atlantic rain forest, which is rapidly changing due to climate change and deforestation, said study leader David Hughes, an entomologist at Penn State University.

Hughes and colleagues made the discovery after noticing a wide diversity of fungal growths emerging from ant victims, according to the March 2 study in the journal PLoS ONE.

"It is tempting to speculate that each species of fungus has its own ant species that it is best adapted to attack," Hughes said.

"This potentially means thousands of zombie fungi in tropical forests across the globe await discovery," he said. "We need to ramp up sampling—especially given the perilous state of the environment."

Welcome Back, Kotter cast to reunite for award.

2011-03-04T11:14:00.001-05:00

What about Juan Epstein?? From CNN:

It'll be a high-school reunion of sorts when John Travolta reunites with the cast of the '70s sitcom "Welcome Back, Kotter" at the 2011 TV Land Awards.

The classic series, which ran from 1975-1979, starred Gabe Kaplan as Mr. Kotter, an inner city high school teacher whose students include the underachieving misfits the Sweathogs.

Travolta, who played ladies' man Vinnie Barbarino, uttering classic lines like, "Up your nose with a rubber hose," is set to accept TV Land's 35th Anniversary Award alongside fellow Sweathogs Ron Palillo ("Arnold Horshack") and Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs ("Freddie 'Boom Boom' Washington"). Marcia Strassman, who played Mr. Kotter's wife Julie, will also join the guys.

It is not yet known whether Kaplan will attend the ceremony, to air April 17, but more cast members are expected to be announced in the coming weeks.

6th mass extinction is happening now.

2011-03-03T09:37:00.002-05:00

From Discover:

It’s no secret that an alarming number of species around the world, especially vertebrates, are in trouble. But is the notion that the Earth is on the brink of a sixth major extinction event—the first since the dinosaur die-off—true, or alarmist? In Nature this week, a team of scientists sought to answer the question directly by counting as many species (and extinctions) as they could in the fossil record and the recent historical record. The result is gloomy news: There’s still a chance to avert much of the crisis, but if nothing changes, such a mass extinction event really could happen in the span of just a few centuries.

Mass extinctions include events in which 75 percent of the species on Earth disappear within a geologically short time period, usually on the order of a few hundred thousand to a couple million years. It’s happened only five times before in the past 540 million years of multicellular life on Earth. (The last great extinction occurred 65 million years ago, when the dinosaurs were wiped out.) At current rates of extinction, the study found, Earth will enter its sixth mass extinction within the next 300 to 2,000 years. [MSNBC]

That range of time the researchers give is so large because of the great diversity of life—it makes it hard to track exactly how many species are disappearing, and how quickly. (Indeed, DISCOVER has covered how biologists are discovering many new species these days just as those species face extinction). So Anthony Barnosky and his team made conservative estimates based on the available evidence. For instance, they pegged the rate of mammal extinction at 80 species out of a total of 5,000-plus in the last five centuries. That may not sound like much, but when you consider the speed at which things typically happen on a geologic scale, it is a faster rate of species loss than the previous five mass extinctions saw, scientists believe.

The picture gets even grimmer when all mammals currently endangered or threatened are added to the count. If those all disappear within a century, then by 334 years from now, 75% of all mammal species will be gone, says Barnosky. “Look outside of your window. Imagine taking away three-quarters of the living things you see and ask yourself if you want to live in that world.”

Tractor beam is possible with lasers.

2011-03-03T09:29:00.002-05:00

Wake me up when we have holodecks. From BBC:

A laser can act as a "tractor beam", drawing small objects back toward the laser's source, scientists have said.

It is known that light can provide a "push", for example in solar sails that propel spacecraft on a "wind of light".

Now, in a paper on the Arxiv server, researchers from Hong Kong and China have calculated the conditions required to create a laser-based "pull".

Rather than a science fiction-style weapon, however, the approach would only work over small distances.

The effect is different from that employed in "optical tweezers" approaches, in which tiny objects can be trapped in the focus of a laser beam and moved around; this new force, the authors propose, would be one continuous pull toward the source.

And it relies on directly impinging on an object, making it distinct from an approach demonstrated in 2010 by Australian researchers whose trapping worked by heating air around a trapped particle.

The trick is not to use a standard laser beam, but rather one known as a Bessel beam, that has a precise pattern of peaks and troughs in its intensity.

Seen straight-on, a Bessel beam would look like the ripples surrounding a pebble dropped in a pond.

If such a Bessel beam were to encounter an object not head-on but at a glancing angle, the backward force can be stimulated.

As the atoms or molecules of the target absorb and re-radiate the incoming light, the fraction re-radiated forward along the beam direction can interfere and give the object a "push" back toward the source.

Last US World War I vet dies.

2011-02-28T11:05:00.001-05:00

From CNN:

Frank Buckles, the last U.S. World War I veteran, has died, a spokesman for his family said Sunday. He was 110.

Buckles "died peacefully in his home of natural causes" early Sunday morning, the family said in a statement sent to CNN late Sunday by spokesman David DeJonge.

Buckles marked his 110th birthday on February 1, but his family had earlier told CNN he had slowed considerably since last fall, according his daughter Susannah Buckles Flanagan, who lives at the family home near Charles Town, West Virginia.

Buckles, who served as a U.S. Army ambulance driver in Europe during what became known as the "Great War," rose to the rank of corporal before the war ended. He came to prominence in recent years, in part because of the work of DeJonge, a Michigan portrait photographer who had undertaken a project to document the last surviving veterans of that war.

As the years continued, all but Buckles had passed away, leaving him the "last man standing" among U.S. troops who were called "The Doughboys."

DeJonge found himself the spokesman and advocate for Buckles in his mission to see to it that his comrades were honored with a monument on the National Mall, alongside memorials for veterans of World War II and the conflicts in Korea and Vietnam.

Buckles made history when he was asked to testify in Congress on the matter before a House committee on December 3, 2009.

"I have to," he told CNN when he came to Washington, as part of what he considered his responsibility to honor the memory of fellow-veterans.

Buckles, after World War I ended, took up a career as a ship's officer on merchant vessels. He was captured by the Japanese in the Philippines during World War II and held prisoner of war for more than three years before he was freed by U.S. troops.

Never saying much about his POW experience, Buckles instead wanted attention drawn to the plight of the D.C. War Memorial. During a visit to the run-down, neglected site a few years ago, he went past the nearby World War II memorial without stopping, even as younger veterans stopped and saluted the old soldier in his wheelchair as he went by.

Former president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving arrested... for drunk driving.

2011-02-25T17:02:00.001-05:00

From Daily Mail:

A former president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving has been arrested for driving while nearly three times over the alcohol limit.

Debra Oberlin, from Gainesville, Florida, was spotted driving erratically, swerving and crossing lanes just after 1 in the morning, police said.

When an officer pulled her over she allegedly smelled of alcohol and had watery, bloodshot and dilated eyes.

The 48-year-old estate agent had difficulty on a field sobriety test - including walking in a straight line and standing on one leg - and registered a .234 and .239 on breath alcohol tests. Florida's legal limit for driving is .08

Oberlin told MailOnline that her mother's death at Christmas had affected her badly and that the drink-drive episode was a one-off.

She had been out to watch a friend play at an acoustic night and was giving somebody a lift home because she thought they were the one over the limit.

'I didn't want them to drive,' she said. 'I didn't know I was intoxicated. I hadn't eaten all day. I thought I was overtired and I was hungry.

'I screwed up. I'm really sorry.

'I'm not this terrible, hypocritical person. I'm a hard-working person who has gone through the biggest personal loss in my life.

'The physical stress, hunger and tiredness meant the alcohol affected me more than it normally would.'

Oberlin, who has two grown-up children, was the president of the local chapter of MADD for three years in the 1990s.

Voodoo sex romp sets Brooklyn apartment on fire.

2011-02-25T16:13:00.002-05:00

From NY Daily News:

A couple engaged in a voodoo sex romp in Brooklyn set off the weekend blaze that killed a woman and left dozens homeless, sources said.

A woman paid $300 to a voodoo priest on the fourth floor of the apartment building on E. 29th St. She wanted him to perform a mystical ceremony that would bring her luck, the sources said.

The voodoo priest placed candles on the floor around the bed on Saturday. He lit the candles then the couple began having sex. Candles were accidentally knocked over, igniting bed sheets and their recently discarded clothes.

Instead of calling 911, the man conducting the ceremony tried to put out the fire using water from the bathroom sink, the FDNY said in a statement.

Someone else in the apartment opened a window and a door leading to the building's hallway, creating wind gusts that "shot the flames back inside, creating a blowtorch effect," fire officials said.

Flames tore through the fourth, fifth and sixth floors, causing one of the floors to collapse. A resident on the top floor, Mary Feagin, a 64-year-old retired teacher, died in the blaze.

Twenty firefighters and 11 residents were injured and 47 families were left homeless.

Without referring to the sex, Fire Commission Salvatore Cassano lamented the series of errors that lead to the fire.

"Time and time again we respond to tragedies that could have been so easily prevented," he said. "This fire had so many of those elements - candles left on the floor near combustible material, one of the occupants trying to douse the flames before calling 911 and an open door, which allowed fire to spread into the hallway."

No one has been charged.

"Hopefully others will learn from this tragedy," Cassano said.

Costco makes big move toward sustainable seafood.

2011-02-25T15:51:00.001-05:00

Great news and a rare case of a huge corporation acting responsibly. From Alternet:

[...] Greenpeace just announced that Costco has a new policy for sustainabe seafood that affects a "vast majority of the chain's seafood inventory and means the retailer will discontinue sales of twelve kinds of fish associated with severe environmental concerns, including shark, orange roughy, Chilean sea bass, and Atlantic halibut." And they "also pledged to pursue aquaculture certification standards that support best practices, as farmed salmon and farmed shrimp are two of its largest volume items."

Because of Costco's huge size, this is a really big win for our fisheries and ocean health. The company is still far from perfect, but this latest step in the right direction should be applauded. One thing to keep an eye on is that they will sell some questionable species if they are certified by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), which is the most recogonized name in the sustainable seafood biz, but not without its flaws, either.

"We recognize that Costco is moving in the right direction," said Trenor. "That said, Greenpeace shares the concerns some scientists and environmental groups have voiced about the MSC and its standards. Hopefully a progressive company like Costco will use its significant purchasing power to push the MSC to continue to improve and become the gold standard that we all hope it will be."

Vatican: Priests have been raping nuns to avoid AIDS from prostitutes.

2011-02-25T15:29:00.002-05:00

From the Independent (via Coozer-Phile Duff):

The Catholic Church in Rome made the extraordinary admission yesterday that it is aware priests from at least 23 countries have been sexually abusing nuns.

Most of the abuse has occurred in Africa, where priests vowed to celibacy, who previously sought out prostitutes, have preyed on nuns to avoid contracting the Aids virus.

Confidential Vatican reports obtained by the National Catholic Reporter, a weekly magazine in the US, have revealed that members of the Catholic clergy have been exploiting their financial and spiritual authority to gain sexual favours from nuns, particularly those from the Third World who are more likely to be culturally conditioned to be subservient to men.

The reports, some of which are recent and some of which have been in circulation for at least seven years, said that such priests had demanded sex in exchange for favours, such as certification to work in a given diocese.

In extreme instances, the priests had made nuns pregnant and then encouraged them to have abortions.

The US article was based on five documents, which senior women from religious orders and priests have presented to the Vatican over the past decade. They describe a particularly bad situation in Africa. In a continent devastated by Aids, nuns, along with early adolescent girls, are perceived by some as safe sexual targets. The reports said that the church authorities had done little to tackle the problem.

The Vatican reports cited countless cases of nuns forced to have sex with priests. Some were obliged to take the pill, others became pregnant and were encouraged to have abortions. In one case in which an African sister was forced to have an abortion, she died during the operation and her aggressor led the funeral mass. Another case involved 29 sisters from the same congregation who all became pregnant to priests in the diocese.

The reports said that the cultures in some African countries made it almost impossible for a young woman to disobey an older man, especially one seen as spiritually superior. There were cases of novices who applied to their local priest or bishop for certificates of good Catholic practice that were required for them to pursue their vocation. In return they were made to have sex. Some incidents of sexual abuse allegedly took place almost within the Vatican walls.

Certain unscrupulous clerics took advantage of young nuns who were having trouble finding accommodation, writing their essays and funding their theological studies.

Forced to acknowledge the problem, the Vatican has tried to play down its gravity. In a statement issued yesterday the Pope's official spokesman, Joaquin Navarro Valls, said: "The problem is known and involves a restricted geographical area. Certain negative situations must not overshadow the often heroic faith of the overwhelming majority of religious, nuns and priests".

Cats adore women, form same bonds as human babies.

2011-02-25T10:26:00.002-05:00

From Discovery:

The bond between cats and their owners turns out to be far more intense than imagined, especially for cat aficionado women and their affection reciprocating felines, suggests a new study.

Cats attach to humans, and particularly women, as social partners, and it's not just for the sake of obtaining food, according to the new research, which has been accepted for publication in the journal Behavioural Processes.

The study is the first to show in detail that the dynamics underlying cat-human relationships are nearly identical to human-only bonds, with cats sometimes even becoming a furry "child" in nurturing homes.

"Food is often used as a token of affection, and the ways that cats and humans relate to food are similar in nature to the interactions seen between the human caregiver and the pre-verbal infant," co-author Jon Day, a Waltham Centre for Pet Nutrition researcher, told Discovery News. "Both cat and human infant are, at least in part, in control of when and what they are fed!"

For the study, led by Kurt Kotrschal of the Konrad Lorenz Research Station and the University of Vienna, the researchers videotaped and later analyzed interactions between 41 cats and their owners over lengthy four-part periods. Each and every behavior of both the cat and owner was noted. Owner and cat personalities were also assessed in a separate test. For the cat assessment, the authors placed a stuffed owl toy with large glass eyes on a floor so the feline would encounter it by surprise.

The researchers determined that cats and their owners strongly influenced each other, such that they were each often controlling the other's behaviors. Extroverted women with young, active cats enjoyed the greatest synchronicity, with cats in these relationships only having to use subtle cues, such as a single upright tail move, to signal desire for friendly contact.

While cats have plenty of male admirers, and vice versa, this study and others reveal that women tend to interact with their cats -- be they male or female felines -- more than men do.

"In response, the cats approach female owners more frequently, and initiate contact more frequently (such as jumping on laps) than they do with male owners," co-author Manuela Wedl of the University of Vienna told Discovery News, adding that "female owners have more intense relationships with their cats than do male owners."

Cats also seem to remember kindness and return the favors later. If owners comply with their feline's wishes to interact, then the cat will often comply with the owner's wishes at other times. The cat may also "have an edge in this negotiation," since owners are usually already motivated to establish social contact.

Although there are isolated instances of non-human animals, such as gorillas, bonding with other species, it seems to be mostly unique for humans to engage in social relationships with other animals. In this case with cats, it's for very good reason. Cats could very well be man's -- and woman's -- best friend.

"A relationship between a cat and a human can involve mutual attraction, personality compatibility, ease of interaction, play, affection and social support," co-author Dorothy Gracey of the University of Vienna explained. "A human and a cat can mutually develop complex ritualized interactions that show substantial mutual understanding of each other's inclinations and preferences."

Dennis Turner, a University of Zurich-Irchel animal behaviorist, told Discovery News the he's "very impressed with this study on human-cat interactions, in that it has taken our earlier findings a step higher, using more modern analytical techniques to get at the interplay between cat and human personalities."

Turner, who is also senior editor of The Domestic Cat: The Biology of Its Behaviour (Cambridge University Press), added that he and his colleagues "now have a new dimension to help us understand how these relationships function."

Polysics releasing new album!!

2011-02-23T14:27:00.002-05:00

From their newsletter. HURRAY!

Hi there!! TOISU!!!!
Here is the Polysics 15th mailing magazine.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
///SHOW ON USTREAM///

We have good news for overseas Polysics fans.
The Polysics one-man show at Shibuya-AX in Japan on 4th March
will broadcast on Ustream.
This show has meanings of 14th anniversary, pre-show for new
album will release on 9th March, and summarization of new Polysics
which has started as 3 piece band.
The show will be fan.
MUST WATCH IT OR DIE!!!

POLYSICS　one-man show
2011.3.4 (FRI) start 19:00
URL http://k.d.combzmail.jp/t/4ya7/a0u5tpu08ig7lr8tti

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
///RELEASE////

Polysics new album “Oh! No! It’s Heavy Polysick!!!” will be
released on 9th March.
This album is the first full album by new Polysics.
Songs is totally original and unique, at the same time, sound is
more dynamic and aggressive.
It will be addictive what the title says.
You must be Heavy Polysick once you listen to this album!!!

[Release info.]
『Oh! No! It’s Heavy Polysick!!!』
2011/03/09(Wed) release
KSCL 1458
Price：\3,059

Firefly fans step up campaign.

2011-02-23T14:25:00.002-05:00

Yes, please, make this happen! From CNN:

True Browncoats, like the fictional freedom fighters they named themselves after, don't give up easily.

Those diehard fans of "Firefly," the 2002 cult TV hit, have a history of turning to the internet to buck improbable odds in defense of their favorite show.

Now, they're at it again.

Just days after an apparently offhand comment from Nathan Fillion, who played Capt. Malcolm Reynolds on the short-lived Fox series, the Web has once again lit up with efforts to revive the sci-fi franchise.

Last week, Fillion, who now stars in ABC's "Castle," told Entertainment Weekly he'd love to play Mal again. Then, he ratcheted things up a notch.

"If I got $300 million from the California Lottery, the first thing I would do is buy the rights to "Firefly," make it on my own, and distribute it on the internet," Fillion told EW, a CNN.com partner.

Then, some possibly surprising online reactions started rolling in.

The next day, former "Firefly" writer Jose Molina wrote on Twitter: "For what it's worth, I've told him I'd drop what I was doing and follow."

Then, Jane Espenson, who wrote an episode, chimed in: "I'm there, if needed," she tweeted.

Jewel Staite, who played ace mechanic Kaylee on the show, had a simple answer when a Twitter follower asked if she'd be on board: "Is the Pope Catholic?"

That was more than enough for fans (whose "Browncoat" nickname, by the way, comes from the Western-style dusters worn by Fillion and others on the show).

A website, "Help Nathan Buy Firefly," popped up, under the title "Let's get the Captain his money."

The goal? To set up a means of collecting pledges that would turn into donations if a revived "Firefly" looks like it could become a reality.

The pledge system hadn't been officially created as of Tuesday, but fans were already writing in the site's comment section that they're willing to pony up.

In five days, the site's Facebook group had picked up more than 33,000 members -- about 10,000 of them in the past 24 hours.

The two creators of the site are remaining publicly anonymous for now. In an email to CNN (which came from an address linked to the site and was mentioned on the group's Facebook page), they said they work in the nonprofit field but "have no credentials to speak of" in the TV/film industry or "Firefly" community.

They acknowledged that the odds that Fillion was serious about buying the show's rights are "pretty low," but hope the community's willingness to support some sort of revamped "Firefly" will encourage creator Joss Whedon or someone else with the proper clout to make a move.

"Joss paid out of pocket to make [Web series] 'Dr. Horrible,' and it's not only paid him back, it's paid the folks involved," they said in the email. "We'd like to see him be willing to let fans become his pocket and revisit ['Firefly']."

They say they "won't take a penny" from anyone until someone like Whedon or Fillion gets involved in an effort to revive the show and would look to set up a not-for-profit foundation or something of the sort if that happens.

Other devotees of the cult favorite say they're not surprised by the quick Web action.

"I couldn't believe it when I first read the story," said Brian Harvard, co-creator of the 25,000-member-strong "Bring Back Firefly" Facebook page. "Then, all of a sudden, everyone's posting these links to the 'Help Nathan Buy Firefly' page and I said, 'We've got to help get the word out about this.' "

Even before "Firefly" was officially sacked in 2002, fans had taken to the Web to try to save it. Using the online tools of the early 2000s -- message boards, fan sites, chat rooms and LiveJournal blogs -- they organized. Call it an early example of crowd-sourcing.

They collected money for an ad in Variety, organized a postcard-writing campaign to Universal Pictures and, when the DVD box set was released, raised $14,000 to put copies on 250 Navy ships for the crews to watch.

The fan base's self-styled guerrilla marketing is widely considered to have helped Whedon get funding for 2005's "Serenity," a feature film that draws together some of the loose ends from the series.

"On the internet, that was one of the first times you've seen such a drive to bring something back," Harvard said. "Now, with the advent of Facebook? My goodness -- that's probably the most useful tool, next to the internet itself, to really bring some fire under this movement."

Harvard acknowledges that Fillion's comment sounds like an off-the-cuff quip. (And 20th Century Fox, which owns the rights to "Firefly," hasn't expressed any desire to sell them.)

But he says that doesn't mean nothing will come out of the internet reaction to it.

"Even if this project goes nowhere, at least it's something to show the powers-that-be that there's a product there that could be making them some money," he said.

Another lawmaker caught sending pic... this one dressed as a tiger.

2011-02-22T16:05:00.004-05:00

This is just bizarre. We need to vote these lunatics out of office. Item.

Grinning broadly in his tiger costume, this was the picture a Senator sent to a female member of his staff at 1am in the morning.

David Wu has admitted he is on medication for mental health problems, but is refusing to resign.

He is receiving counselling after the pressures of his job and looking after his family became too much for him.

The Democrat Senator for Oregon confirmed on ABC's Good Morning America that his staff had tried to stage an ‘intervention’ and force him to have psychiatric treatment when his erratic behaviour caused them deep concerns.

But despite lingering concerns over his mental health, he claimed he can ‘emphatically do the job’.

The admission from Wu begins to explain a catalogue of strange incidents which have sparked a whispering campaign that he is unfit for office.

At least six of his team of 20 have quit - including his chief of staff, communications director and treasurer - meaning he has had to take the unusual step of managing his own campaign finances.

Local newspapers have reported that staff confronted him about his drinking and harassment, but that he was not interested in listening to their advice.

They claimed Wu, whose marriage broke up in 2009, displayed a violent temper -- and became unpredictable.

Wu told ABC: ‘This was a very difficult time in my life. I’ve had a couple of pretty stressful years raising my children basically on my own.

‘Last October was not a good month. I did some things I sincerely regret and as a result I saw fit to get professional help.

‘I’m in a good place now, I’m taking care of my two children, I’m taking care of my 88-year-old mother, I’m taking care of myself and very importantly I’m taking care of the people of Oregon.’

Wu added that he did not seek help in October because he was unable to take the time off, although he later changed his mind.

The picture of him in a Tiger costume was sent to a female member of staff at 1.03am on October 30th from his personal Congressional email account.

He had both hands - paws - held up to either side of his face and was grinning broadly.

In an attempt to make it look like it was from one of his daughters, he wrote: ‘You're the best, but my Dad made me say that, even though you threatened to shut down his campaign.’

An email half an hour later with the subject ‘wasted’, supposedly from his son, read: ‘My Dad said you said he was wasted Wednesday night after just three sips of wine.

‘It's just that he hasn't had a drink since July 1. Cut him some slack, man. What he does when he's wasted is send emails, not harass people he works with.

'He works SO hard for you . . . Cut the dude some slack, man. Just kidding.’

Wu told the ABC show that he deeply regretted sending the emails.

He said: ‘I think a take-home lesson from this is that while they were very unprofessional you shouldn’t ever send photos of yourself in a Halloween costume.

‘It isn’t professional even when you’re joshing around with your kids a couple of nights before Halloween.

‘I did send those photographs, it was unprofessional, it was inappropriate,’ he said.

Wu added that being his own treasurer would be a ‘temporary situation’ - such an arrangement is frowned upon in the interests of financial proprietary.

‘I emphatically can do that job, I am doing that job,’ he said.

'It was a very tough time, I’ve got myself into a good place...and I’m taking care of myself and my constituents.’

Pizza saves woman's life.

2011-02-22T11:40:00.002-05:00

From the Toronto Star:

MEMPHIS, TENN.—Authorities say a pizza delivery driver who was concerned about a regular customer may have saved the elderly woman’s life.

Domino’s delivery driver Susan Guy told WMC-TV that Jean Wilson has ordered pizza every day for the past three years.

On Monday, Guy said her boss told her Wilson hadn’t called in three days. Guy insisted on going to check on the woman. When no one came to the door, Guy asked a neighbour whether he’d seen Wilson and then called police.

Police broke the door down and found Wilson on the floor. She’d fallen Saturday and couldn’t get to a phone to call for help.

Investigators said it’s possible her pizza-heavy diet may have saved her life.

Late Monday evening, Wilson was listed in non-critical condition at a hospital.

Coozer-Bits.

2011-02-22T11:27:00.006-05:00

Awesome: Step-by-step guide on making your own human skull goblet!

Robot Uprising Watch: Brain-machine interfaces to learn about users.

Tech: Scientists create car that can be driven by THOUGHT.

Religion: 36 killed in stampede at holy festival.

Sad: Aspiring NYC artist dies homeless, frozen to death.

Yipes: Stranded motorist struck and killed by own car.

20% of US's dams in danger of collapsing.

2011-02-22T09:41:00.000-05:00

From Daily Mail:

The U.S. could be set for a catastrophic flood in the near future after 4,400 of the country's dams were declared susceptible to failure.

Nearly 20 per cent of the nation’s 85,000 dams could give way and need to be repaired, according to the Association of State Dam Safety Officials.

However, with costs of repairs running into billions of dollar, a fix is unlikely any time soon considering the current economic climate.

One of the communities most at risk are the 4,000 residents who live downstream of the Lake Isabella Dam, which is built on an active fault line that has the potential to cause a devastating earthquake which would crumble the earthern water barrier.

Engineers who built the 57-year-old dam have said that the structure is also in danger of eroding internally.

If the dam were to break, Lake Isabella would probably be carried away and billions of gallons of water would rush down the Kern River Canyon onto the town of Bakersfield, home to 340,000 people.

The potential disaster would rival the Great Flood of 1889 in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, which killed over 2,000 people and caused million of dollars' worth of damage.

Plankton key to origin of Earth's atmosphere.

2011-02-22T09:27:00.001-05:00

From EurekAlert:

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Researchers studying the origin of Earth's first breathable atmosphere have zeroed in on the major role played by some very unassuming creatures: plankton.

In a paper to appear in the online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Ohio State University researcher Matthew Saltzman and his colleagues show how plankton provided a critical link between the atmosphere and chemical isotopes stored in rocks 500 million years ago.

This work builds on the team's earlier discovery that upheavals in the earth's crust initiated a kind of reverse-greenhouse effect 500 million years ago that cooled the world's oceans, spawned giant plankton blooms, and sent a burst of oxygen into the atmosphere.

The new study has revealed details as to how oxygen came to vanish from Earth's ancient atmosphere during the Cambrian Period, only to return at higher levels than ever before.

It also hints at how, after mass extinctions, the returning oxygen allowed enormous amounts of new life to flourish.

Saltzman and his team were able to quantify how much oxygen was released into the atmosphere at the time, and directly link the amount of sulfur in the ancient oceans with atmospheric oxygen and carbon dioxide.

The result is a clearer picture of life on Earth in a time of extreme turmoil.

"We know that oxygen levels in the ocean dropped dramatically [a condition called anoxia] during the Cambrian, and that coincides with the time of a global extinction," said Saltzman, associate professor of earth sciences at Ohio State.

Climate change affecting food safety.

2011-02-21T20:16:00.002-05:00

From Michigan State University:

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Climate change is already having an effect on the safety of the world’s food supplies and unless action is taken it’s only going to get worse, a Michigan State University professor told a symposium at this year’s meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Ewen Todd, an MSU professor of advertising, public relations and retailing, organized a session titled “How Climate Change Affects the Safety of the World’s Food Supply” at which several nationally known experts warned that food safety is already an issue and will worsen unless climate change is confronted.

“Accelerating climate change is inevitable with implications for animal products and crops,” said Todd, who also is an AAAS Fellow. “At this point, the effects of climate change on food safety are poorly understood.”

However, Todd said there are already a number of examples of climate change taking its toll on the world’s food supply. One is Vibrio, a pathogen typically found in warm ocean water which is now becoming more common in the north as water temperatures rise.

“It’s been moving further up the coast these past few years,” he said. “There was an outbreak of it near Alaska in 2005 when water temperature reached 15 degrees Celsius.”

Todd also said that extreme weather – droughts and heavy rains – is having an impact on the world’s food supply. In some areas crops are being wiped out, resulting in higher prices and other issues.

Peaceful Japan trying to create a secret spy agency.

2011-02-21T19:56:00.003-05:00

This is adorable. From Japan Times:

SYDNEY (Kyodo) Japan has established a secret foreign intelligence unit for the first time since the war to spy on China and North Korea and gather information to prevent a terrorist attack, according to an Australian report Monday citing a classified U.S. cable obtained by WikiLeaks.

The Sydney Morning Herald and other Fairfax newspapers said the cable provided exclusively to them shows a spy unit has been created under the Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office and modeled on such Western intelligence services as the CIA and the British Secret Intelligence Service known as MI6.

According to the report, a discussion in October 2008 between the former head of the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Research and Intelligence, Randall Fort, and Director Hideshi Mitani of Japan's agency revealed a shift in Japanese attitudes for the first time since World War II and signaled that a having a "human intelligence collection capability" was a priority.

A secret cable to Washington by the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo indicates the decision was made by the then Liberal Democratic Party government led by Yasuo Fukuda until September 2008 and upheld by his successor, Taro Aso, whose party was defeated in the August 2009 election that brought the Democratic Party of Japan to power after decades of LDP rule.

"The decision has been made to go very slowly with this process as the Japanese realize that they lack knowledge, experience, and assets/officers. A training process for new personnel will be started soon," the embassy told Washington in the leaked cable.

The cable also revealed Japan's lack of information on North Korea, with Mitani frankly admitting to his U.S. counterpart that Japan's best insights into Kim Jong Il were through his former sushi chef, Kenji Fujimoto, who had published a memoir.

Animal rights group shuts down Japan's whaling season.

2011-02-18T10:13:00.003-05:00

It's great to see good news. From CNN:

Japan has canceled the rest of its winter whaling season, with a top official reasoning that environmentalists' obstructive efforts made it dangerous for whalers to stay on the high seas.

Japanese Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Michihiko Kano told reporters Friday that the country's government halted whaling because of actions taken by the animal rights group, Sea Shepherd. He stressed that Japan did not want to do so, but felt its hand was forced.

"From the viewpoint of our crew's safety, we have decided to cut short the research whaling at this time, against our will," he said.

The decision marks the first time Japan has canceled its whale hunt in the waters of the Antarctic since it started the practice in 1987. In 2005, Sea Shepherd began its bitter battle with Japanese whalers, monitoring them and occasionally getting into altercations. What Japan calls its winter whaling season typically extends into mid-March.

On Thursday, Hiroshi Kawamura, a government official in charge of research whaling, said Japan had decided to a temporary halt while it determined its next step -- one that it later ended up taking .

Japan has left its fleet of four whaling vessels in the Antarctic, as it decides what to do about the winter hunt, according to the ministry.

Capt. Paul Watson, who is helming a Sea Shepherd vessel called the Steve Erwin off the coast of Antarctica, said early Friday that at least some of those whalers were still in the Antarctic region.

"If it's true, this is great news," said Watson, who heads Sea Shepherd's operations in the Antarctic. "But we'll keep tailing them until they leave these international waters."

Watson said he and his colleagues have gained momentum and numbers steadily in recent years, while Japanese whalers have become less of a force -- especially economically. He suggested that his group was able to "bankrupt" the fleet so that it wasn't economically feasible to keep going..

He said it was wrong for the Japanese minister to label him and others as dangerous, adding that no one has ever been hurt in their efforts.

"We're getting more support every year, so it's working out that we're wearing them down," Watson said. "We've found a way where, once we're on them, they can't kill whales."

"We're very stubborn and very persistent. We've clearly frustrated them," he added.

Japan annually hunts whales, despite a worldwide moratorium on whaling, under the auspices it is conducting scientific research. The moratorium allows the culling of whales for purposes of scientific research.

Critics call Japan's hunt a cover for commercial whaling, since the whale meat ends up in supermarkets and restaurants. Animal rights groups, from Greenpeace to Sea Shepherd, and the governments of Australia and New Zealand, have publicly condemned Japan's hunts.

"I hope this is the end of whale hunting by Japan," said Watson. "But if they return next year, we'll be here."

Woman sues Century 21 for 80 cents.

2011-02-17T13:33:00.003-05:00

From the NY Daily News:

A coupon-clipping New Jersey mom insists Century 21 short-changed her and is suing the famed department store to recoup a grand total of...80 cents.

That's right, 80 cents.

Tova Gerson claims in court papers that she used a $5 coupon when she bought more than $100 worth of stuff last month at the chain's Paramus, N.J., store.

When she returned one item a week later, Gerson claims she got back $17.17 instead of the $17.97 she had been expecting because the coupon had been pro-rated over all the goods she purchased.

So she hired a New York lawyer and tried to up the ante by filing a class action lawsuit on Feb. 10 for damages.

Gerson has "been injured as a result of defendant's fraudulent conduct," the lawsuit states.

Reached at her suburban home in Bergenfield, N.J., Gerson refused to answer any questions about the case.

"It's not a good time," she said, accompanied by a pair of kids. "I'm a mom. It's not a good time."

Told there was going to be an article about the suit, Gerson said, "I'd really rather you didn't."

Gerson's lawyer, Harry Katz in Fresh Meadows, Queens, did not return repeated calls to his office.

There was also no comment from Century 21's legal team.

Katz and Gerson, who records suggest are related, teamed up before to launch a similar lawsuit in December 2008 against the Modell's sporting goods chain.

In that case, Gerson bought more than $100 worth of gear using a $25 coupon and complained "the consumer lost the full benefit" of the coupon if they returned "some or all items."

It was not immediately clear what happened to that suit - or whether Gerson was getting any other disgruntled consumers to go after Modell's.

In the Century 21 case, Gerson claims she bought $108.16 from the store on Jan. 10.

Included in the court papers are a copy of a receipt for purchases of tights, leggings, "faux suede" moccasins and other items. It says Gerson paid cash and got the $5 off.

On Jan. 19, Gerson returned a pink, two-piece, infant girl's outfit citing "incorrect size," according a copy of another receipt.

"By pro-rating the $5.00, the plaintiff lost the amount of $0.80 she would have been entitled to as part of a coupon she used," the lawsuit states.

South Dakota may legalize the murder of abortion doctors.

2011-02-15T16:04:00.002-05:00

This is horrifying. These legislators are lunatics. From Alternet, submitted by Coozer-Phile Duff:

We knew the abortion debate was moving to scary extremes, but WHAT? New legislation in South Dakota is being introduced that would make killing abortion doctors a 'justifiable homicide.' Legal. Murder. It's too shocking to comprehend. Mother Jones:

A law under consideration in South Dakota would expand the definition of "justifiable homicide" to include killings that are intended to prevent harm to a fetus—a move that could make it legal to kill doctors who perform abortions. The Republican-backed legislation, House Bill 1171, has passed out of committee on a nine-to-three party-line vote, and is expected to face a floor vote in the state's GOP-dominated House of Representatives soon.

The bill, sponsored by state Rep. Phil Jensen, a committed foe of abortion rights, alters the state's legal definition of justifiable homicide by adding language stating that a homicide is permissible if committed by a person "while resisting an attempt to harm" that person's unborn child or the unborn child of that person's spouse, partner, parent, or child. If the bill passes, it could in theory allow a woman's father, mother, son, daughter, or husband to kill anyone who tried to provide that woman an abortion—even if she wanted one.

Originally the bill was meant to clarify language in the state's justifiable homicide laws, but the anti-choicers immediately latched on with the abortion amendment after testimony in support made by representatives of the Family Heritage Alliance, Concerned Women for America, the South Dakota branch of Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum, and a political action committee called Family Matters in South Dakota.

Sara Rosenbaum, a law professor at George Washington University, told Mother Jones, "It takes my breath away. Constitutionally, a state cannot make it a crime to perform a constitutionally lawful act."

Drug trafficking submarine found in Colombia.

2011-02-15T12:39:00.000-05:00

From CNN:

The Colombian military has seized a 100-foot-long submarine capable of transporting eight tons of cocaine from Colombia to Mexico, news reports say.

The vessel was found in a jungle area in Timbiqui in southwestern Colombia on Sunday, according to a report from RTT News.

Colombian navy officials said the homemade sub had two diesel engines and sophisticated navigational equipment that would enable it to travel to Mexico while remaining up to 30 feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean.

The vessel was set up for a crew of four but was unoccupied when found, RTT reported. Officials estimated it would have cost $2 million to build.

The submarine is just the latest example of crafts smugglers have made to try to get their illicit cargo past law enforcement.

US veterans sue Pentagon for ignoring rape victims.

2011-02-15T12:35:00.004-05:00

It is shameful, if not downright evil, that our army and government turn a blind eye to this. From Daily Mail:

Fourteen U.S. veterans who say they were raped and abused by their comrades today accused the Pentagon of ignoring their claims.

More than a dozen female and two male current or former service members will launch a legal action today, claiming that servicemen get away with rape and other sexual abuse.

One woman claimed that two male colleagues raped her in Iraq and videotaped the attack, circulating it around the base.

She was bruised from her shoulders to her elbows from being held down but charges were not filed as the commander said she 'did not struggle enough or act like a rape victim'.

Victims have also claimed that they are often ordered to serve alongside those they say attacked them.

So incensed are some of the victims about the way complaints were handled that several women have waived their anonymity to speak out.

In a federal class-action lawsuit to be filed today, they want an objective third party to handle such complaints because individual commanders have too much say in how allegations are handled.

The alleged attackers in the lawsuit include an Army criminal investigator and an Army National Guard commander. The abuse alleged ranges from obscene verbal abuse to gang rape.

It also specifically names Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and his predecessor Donald Rumsfeld who they say both failed to take aggressive measures to protect women.

In 2009, there were 3,200 sexual assaults reported in the military with fewer than a quarter of those prosecuted, many for lesser charges.

In fact statistics show it is more likely for a woman to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire.

Panayiota Bertzikis, who is a plaintiff in the lawsuit and claims she was raped in 2006, said: 'The problem of rape in the military is not only service members getting raped, but it's the entire way that the military as a whole is dealing with it.

'From survivors having to be involuntarily discharged from service, the constant verbal abuse, once a survivor does come forward your entire unit is known to turn their back on you. The entire culture needs to be changed.'

After 20 years of legal battles, Chevron fined $8 billion for Amazon pollution.

2011-02-15T12:32:00.002-05:00

From Treehugger (thanks Jen):

It's been a long battle: people of the Ecuadorean Amazon against Chevron, which is accused of dumping more than 18 billion gallons of toxic waste sludge into the Amazon, leaving people sick with cancer and suffering miscarriages and birth defects. But the BBC reports that, after a lawsuit lasting nearly 20 years, a court in Ecuador has fined Chevron $8 billion for the pollution.

Technically, Texaco did the dumping—into unlined pits and rivers between 1972 and 1992, destroying large areas of rainforest—but the company merged with Chevron in 2001 and has never taken responsibility for the mess or its cleanup.

Chevron has called the ruling a "product of fraud" and plans to appeal—but one lawyer for the plaintiff also said he might consider an appeal, because the damages award is too small.

Considering the company tripled its profit in the second quarter of last year to $5.4 billion, it's not crazy to think people in Ecuador would be entitled to at least $8 billion for 20 years' worth of ongoing and irreparable health problems and damage to delicate ecosystems.

Cairo's cats forgotten as its humans rebel.

2011-02-14T12:56:00.003-05:00

From Time:

Trying to reach Cairo's Tahrir Square through clouds of tear gas and volleys of rubber bullets, Egyptian TV anchor Mona Khalil was forced by the tumult into a side street. There, she remembers, "I saw cats running, running, running, and trying to get into houses or staircases or buildings and some of them were really gasping." Two kittens had found shelter under a car. She managed to take them inside a building, away from the toxic fumes. Others were not so lucky. "Going back later I found two cats that were lying on their sides, dead," she adds. For Khalil, 43, who is also one of the leaders of Egypt's fledgling animal rights movement, the event had particular resonance. It was, she said, "the first slap in the face that, oh my God, those streets are filled with cats and dogs."

While the world has focused on the many troubles faced by humans during the 18-day uprising, the four-legged residents of Cairo have been left to fend for themselves. Many Egyptians, expats, and tourists have been forced by authorities to flee the country without their pets; zoos and pet shops were also abandoned. The chaos of the uprising put a tremendous strain on the nation's largest animal rights organization, the Egyptian Society for Mercy to Animals (ESMA), of which Khalil serves as treasurer. "It's very common to see stray cats and dogs on the street, but not for us to see [abandoned] Persians and Siamese," she says.

[...] So much of what Westerners know about Egypt is animal related, from riding camels around the Pyramids to studying about the worship of cats in Pharaonic times. The recent political turmoil has revealed many deep-rooted, previously overlooked problems in that country, the plight of their animals not the least among them. "A couple of people have asked me why they should care about animals all the way in Egypt," says Cooper. "My response has been to say that animals aren't citizens of countries. They're citizens of our hearts, and our hearts have no borders."

ESMA's web site can be found here.

Woman, 55, beats back tiger with soup ladle, saves husband.

2011-02-14T10:06:00.002-05:00

From BBC:

A man has been rescued from a near-fatal attack by a tiger in northern Malaysia by his wife.

She entered the fray wielding a wooden soup ladle at the tiger - which fled.

Tambun Gediu, now badly lacerated and recovering in hospital, had tried hitting the tiger away in vain and says his wife saved his life.

Wildlife rangers plan to track the tiger and send it further into dense, unpopulated jungle in the the northern state of Perak.

"I was trailing a squirrel and crouched to shoot it with my blowpipe when I saw the tiger.

"That's when I realised that I was being trailed," Mr Gediu said after surgery.

The tiger pounced not far from the Gediu home in a jungle settlement of the Jahai tribe.

Mr Gediu had tried climbing a tree to escape the animal, but was dragged down by the tiger.

His wife, 55-year old Han Besau, rushed out of the kitchen on hearing his screams and used the kitchen implement to good effect.

"I was terrified and I used all my strength to punch the animal in the face, but it would not budge," the New Straits Times newspaper quoted him as saying.

"I had to wrestle with it to keep its jaws away from me, and it would have clawed me to death if my wife had not arrived."

It was the first time anyone in the village had been attacked by a tiger.