Earth's atmosphere is leaking into space.

Great, as if we didn't have enough to worry about... From Universe Today:

Oxygen is constantly leaking out of Earth's atmosphere and into space. Measurements taken by satellites during the 1980s and 1990s showed the escaping ions were traveling faster the higher they were observed. This implied that some sort of acceleration mechanism was involved. Now, new work on data collected by a group of formation-flying satellites called Cluster shows that Earth’s own magnetic field is accelerating the oxygen away. But don't worry, compared to the Earth’s stock of the life-supporting gas, the amount escaping is negligible. However, in the far future when the Sun begins to heat up in old age, the balance might change and the oxygen escape may become significant.

Kathie Lee Gifford mocks Asians on TV.

Kathie Lee Gifford, not the brightest bulb in the.. umm.. bulb store, puts on a "Chinese" accent and slits her eyes to tell some stupid story. Here is the Asian American Journalists Association's letter to NBC News:

It's difficult to believe in this day and age, and immediately following an Olympics hosted by China, that "Today" host Kathie Lee Gifford chose to relate on national television an "amusing" anecdote about Al Roker sending birthday greetings to her in a mock "Chinese" accent.

If that weren't bad enough, Gifford decided to spice up her performance by squinting her eyes into slits. Gifford's performance had all the wit and subtlety of a schoolyard taunt. All that were missing were the buck teeth and Coke-bottle glasses.

I suppose she could defend herself by pointing out her name IS Lee....

Iran: Attack on us will cause World War III.

Doubtful. It's a Coozer Prophesy that the next world war will be between the world and Canada, and it'll be over clean water and/or Moose Munch.

Should Israel or the United States attack Iran, it would be the start of another World War, Iranian Deputy chief of staff General Masoud Jazayeri warned on Saturday.

"Any aggression against Iran will start a world war," the Iranian state news agency IRNA quoted the top Iranian official as saying. "The unrestrained greed of the US leadership and global Zionism... is leading the world to the edge of a precipice."

"It is evident that if such a challenge occurs, the fake and artificial regimes will be eliminated before anything," he said.

The news agency also quoted Jordan's King Abdullah II as saying that if an attack was launched against Iran, it would fail to achieve its objectives.

Rest of the article here.

Tecmo Bowl players to have spiky hair, giant swords.

Square Enix has offered a "friendly" takeover of Tecmo. How can a hostile takeover be friendly? You'll find out when you've summoned a Level 40 Bahamut.

25% of gas stations in NY overcharge.

From the Consumerist:

New York's Attorney General, Andrew Cuomo, is warning consumers after an undercover investigation found that 25% of gas stations are engaging in "deceptive practices, including wrongfully surcharging credit card customers." The AG says that under New York state law, retailers are not allowed to impose surcharges for using a credit card.

The AG also said that the stations were engaging in false advertising by only listing the lower cash prices on signs, leading to nasty surprises for consumers once they parked at the pump.

Candy Addict continues its noble experiment.

Once again, Candy Addict smothers household items in chocolate to discover new epically chocolicious combinations. This time, they raise the bar (and bile) with sundried tomatoes and roasted garlic. The results may shock you.

Special 200th Post Extravaganza!!

200 posts in under a month. I think I've hit a new record for boredom and spare time.

So what do you think about this place and these posts? Your kind of thing? Do you dig the political stuff, the offbeat news, the science-y things? The close watch on our future zombie masters? The scrumptious recipes I was gonna post but never did? Talk to me, O silent Coozer-Philes!!

Nun beauty pageant canceled.

I think what I love most about this story is that the priest wanted to hold the contest on his blog.

An Italian priest who planned to hold the world's first beauty contest for nuns has decided to cancel the pageant after complaints.

Antonio Rungi wanted to host the called Miss Sister Italy contest to end the stereotype of nuns being old and dour, reports the BBC.

He wanted to hold the contest online on his internet blog but changed his mind after the local religious authorities expressed their displeasure.

Slimelight to reopen?

Oh, good lord. According the Village Voice's blog, the church-turned-dance club/pharmaceutical factory may reopen. I have mixed (and fuzzy) memories of the Limelight from the early 90s. The good: Seeing some cool shows there, like Mr. Bungle and one particularly memorable hardcore show. The bad: Being asked at the door if I had drugs. And when saying no, being pressured into buying some from said doorman.

Brain chemical linked to strong appetities, obesity.

Good news for always-hungry people like me. (I drown my tummy pangs with coffee and booze.) From the NIH:

A brain chemical that plays a role in long term memory also appears to be involved in regulating how much people eat and their likelihood of becoming obese, according to a National Institutes of Health study of a rare genetic condition.

Brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) is, as its name implies, produced in the brain. Studies of laboratory animals have suggested it also helps control appetite and weight. The NIH study, appearing in the August 28 New England Journal of Medicine, provides the first strong evidence that BDNF is important for body weight in human beings as well.

Least surprising celebrity news.

David Duchovny can't keep his little grey alien in his pants.

I dunno, I always got that vibe off him. That's what makes him awesome.

Rat meat in demand.

Poor mousies...

The price of rat meat has quadrupled in Cambodia this year as inflation has put other meat beyond the reach of poor people, officials said on Wednesday.

With consumer price inflation at 37 percent according to the latest central bank estimate, demand has pushed a kilogram of rat meat up to around 5,000 riel ($1.28) from 1,200 riel last year.

Spicy field rat dishes with garlic thrown in have become particularly popular at a time when beef costs 20,000 riel a kg.

Cocaine and Ecstasy deaths in UK up 1,200% thanks to Amy Winehouse.

Amy Winehouse's #1 hit was probably a speedball injection. But she can also be proud of creating a country-wide drug epidemic.

Halliburton sued for human trafficking.

Is there anything these dicks won't do for money? From Raw Story:

Thirteen Nepali men were recruited and held against their will for thirteen months in a human trafficking scheme engineered and perpetrated by Halliburton and its Jordanian contractor, according to a lawsuit filed yesterday in California federal court.

The Nepali men, each between the ages of 18 and 27, were allegedly hired as kitchen staff by the then-Halliburton subsidiary KBR and its Jordanian subcontractor, Daoud & Partners. Once they arrived in Jordan, however, their passports were seized and they were dispatched to Iraq.

"Tragically, as the men were being transported to Iraq, a car containing twelve of the men was stopped by members of the Ansar al-Sunna Army, an insurgent group," the Washington lawfirm Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld & Toll writes. "The 12 men in the car were taken hostage and executed by the insurgents. The executions were filmed and posted on the Internet. The Inspector General for the United States Department of Defense investigated and confirmed the facts related to the fate of the 12 men, which led to increased enforcement of anti-trafficking measures by the United States."

Only one man survived. After he was released by Iraqi rebels, he said he was assigned to work as a loader/unloader in a US military warehouse facility supervised by KBR. He asserts that he was held for 15 months against his well, before the firm finally allowed him to return home to Nepal.

Scientists: Our eyes evolved for X-Ray vision!

My 12-year-old dreams have finally become true! Now if only there were a girls' locker room here...

The advantage of using two eyes to see the world around us has long been associated solely with our capacity to see in 3-D. Now, a new study from a scientist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has uncovered a truly eye-opening advantage to binocular vision: our ability to see through things.

[...] Demonstrating our X-ray ability is fairly simple: hold a pen vertically and look at something far beyond it. If you first close one eye, and then the other, you'll see that in each case the pen blocks your view. If you open both eyes, however, you can see through the pen to the world behind it.

To demonstrate how our eyes allow us to see through clutter, hold up all of your fingers in random directions, and note how much of the world you can see beyond them when only one eye is open compared to both. You miss out on a lot with only one eye open, but can see nearly everything behind the clutter with both.

Read the article - there's interesting stuff in there about how eyes evolved for different animals and why. Kinda cool.

Pete Wentz on politics.

CNN threw some softballs at Pete Wentz, whose craptastic emo band played Rock the Vote. I found this part nauseating on multiple levels:

CNN.com: So what do the Democrats need to do to win the White House, do you think?

Wentz: I actually learned this from the person I got tennis lessons from that Democrats or the Republicans need not only to win the White House but you need to maintain the majority in the government in general in order to get things moving.

Just... wow.

Bloomberg announces park is safe while junkies shoot up nearby.

Whoops. From The Post:

Just several hundred feet from where Mayor Bloomberg was proclaiming that the renovated High Bridge Park in Washington Heights is now safe, a parks advocate yesterday said he stumbled upon two drug addicts shooting up.

"I told them, 'I'm just walking by, I'm not the cops,' " recalled Geoffrey Croft, adding that he had the encounter in a wooded area while taking a shortcut to the mayor's press conference nearby.

Old woman misunderstands instructions at airport, goes down baggage chute.

From Breitbart:

An elderly woman misunderstood instructions while checking in at Sweden's main airport and was whisked down a baggage shoot after she placed herself instead of her luggage on the belt, media reported Wednesday.

The 78-year-old woman, who was not named, was preparing to fly from Stockholm's Arlanda airport to Germany on Tuesday when she lay down on an unmanned baggage belt in the belief she was following check-in instructions, the Upsala Nya Tidning local daily reported on its website.

Dumbass.

Zoo student intern opens giant python cage, gets swallowed head-first.

Stupid intern. From The Independent:

A three-metre (10ft) python has killed a student zookeeper who let the snake out of its enclosure in Venezuela while working a night shift at the zoo.

Horrified colleagues at the Caracas zoo had to beat the snake to make it release the body of Erick Arrieta, whose head it was swallowing, local media reported.

Marks on the biology student's wrist suggested the snake had bitten him before crushing him to death.

The intern, 29, had been supervising the section alone when he broke zoo rules by opening the snake's cage, according to press reports.

Cats in China grow angel wings.

If this story is real, the weird thing is that the cats weren't born with these wings as an odd genetic defect, but grew them suddenly as a result of their environment, which seems strange and unlikely.

In any case, very cute but also pretty weird.