Monday - March 26, 2007

Wooly Bully

I don’t see what the big deal is about this “sheeple”. Heck, the Arabs have been making half-man, half-sheep critters for thousands of years - and they didn’t need any scientists or artificial insemination methods to do it. Nope, all the ragheads need is a dark night in a convenient field, away from prying eyes and in just a few months they have a “sheeple”. No one knows what they call the half-man, half-goat critters they create. Leave your suggestions in the comments ...

Scientists Create A Sheep That’s 15% Human
(DAILY MAIL-UK) - March 26, 2007

Scientists have created the world’s first human-sheep chimera - which has the body of a sheep and half-human organs. The sheep have 15 per cent human cells and 85 per cent animal cells - and their evolution brings the prospect of animal organs being transplanted into humans one step closer.

Professor Esmail Zanjani, of the University of Nevada, has spent seven years and £5million perfecting the technique, which involves injecting adult human cells into a sheep’s foetus.

He has already created a sheep liver which has a large proportion of human cells and eventually hopes to precisely match a sheep to a transplant patient, using their own stem cells to create their own flock of sheep.

The process would involve extracting stem cells from the donor’s bone marrow and injecting them into the peritoneum of a sheep’s foetus. When the lamb is born, two months later, it would have a liver, heart, lungs and brain that are partly human and available for transplant.

“We would take a couple of ounces of bone marrow cells from the patient,’ said Prof Zanjani, whose work is highlighted in a Channel 4 programme tomorrow.

“We would isolate the stem cells from them, inject them into the peritoneum of these animals and then these cells would get distributed throughout the metabolic system into the circulatory system of all the organs in the body. The two ounces of stem cell or bone marrow cell we get would provide enough stem cells to do about ten foetuses. So you don’t just have one organ for transplant purposes, you have many available in case the first one fails.”

Scientists at King’s College, London, and the North East Stem Cell Institute in Newcastle have now applied to the HFEA, the Government’s fertility watchdog, for permission to start work on the chimeras.

But the development is likely to revive criticisms about scientists playing God, with the possibility of silent viruses, which are harmless in animals, being introduced into the human race.

- More ...

Posted by The Skipper     on 03/26/2007 at 11:55 AM   
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   Wednesday - March 21, 2007

No Way

I’m not agoraphobic at all. In fact, I love being on high places. But there is no way on God’s Green Earth™ that I would get up on this thing.

First steps on skywalk over Grand Canyon
Indian leaders and former astronauts stepped gingerly beyond the Grand Canyon’s rim Tuesday, staring through the glass floor and into the 4,000-foot chasm below during the opening ceremony for a new observation deck.

A few members of the Hualapai Indian Tribe, which allowed the Grand Canyon Skywalk to be built, hopped up and down on the horseshoe-shaped structure. At its edge—70 feet beyond the rim—the group peeked over the glass wall.

The tribe will include access to the deck in a variety of tour packages ranging from $49.95 to $199.00. They’ll allow up to 120 people at a time to look down to the canyon floor more than 4,000 feet below, a vantage point more than twice as high as the world’s tallest buildings.

No. Freaking. Way.

Posted by Drew458     on 03/21/2007 at 02:59 PM   
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   Friday - March 16, 2007

Fighting Fire with Fire

From Misha, we get the newest in fighting gear available to our troops.

Introducing the RPC - Rocket Propelled Chainsaw.

Click the link to see it in action.

Posted by Drew458     on 03/16/2007 at 08:22 AM   
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   Wednesday - February 28, 2007

It’s Not About Ewe

It’s “Hump Day” and we’re halfway to the weekend, gang. Time to ease up and coast into the finish line. What better way than a humorous editorial from Tom Purcell? Tom is the only man I know who can take a story about gay sheep and turn it into a statement about our “voyeur nation”. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, mind you. I’ll let him explain ...

_{Mike Lane - Cagle Cartoons}

A Wild and Woolly Affair
-- By Tom Purcell

Boy, are we a country with too much free time on our hands. Or should I say, what do a retired tennis pro, PETA, two research scientists and a herd of gay sheep have to do with each other? Plenty, according to the Toronto Star.

The paper reports that two researchers—Charles Roselli of Oregon Health and Science University and Fred Stormshak of Oregon State University—have been studying why eight percent of rams prefer to court other rams rather than ewes (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

The study had been proceeding quietly until fate intervened. You see, two university football players (you’re getting ahead of me here) were pulled over for speeding. They’d been drinking. They had, in the bed of their truck, something they’d swiped from the research center—a gay ram.

Once a story like that hit the wires, containing it was impossible. Pretty soon, people were asking questions about the research. Then animal-rights activists, gay-rights advocates and left-leaning bloggers raised a great hue and cry ("ewe" and cry?)

Former tennis star Martina Navratilova kicked off the frenzy. She wrote a letter to both universities demanding they pull the study’s funding. She said the research was “homophobic and cruel.” She said the money would be better spent promoting acceptance of all sexual preferences.

PETA had urged her to write the letter. PETA urged 14,000 other people to voice their complaints, too, and some of them protested and called the researchers Nazis. PETA said that encouraging one ram to mount another was—I’m not exaggerating here—tantamount to rape.

By this point, bizarre conspiracy theories were in full throttle. Some theorists said the researchers were really interested in breeding homosexuality out of humans (ewe-genics?). One credible newspaper, The Sunday Times of London, began printing such untruths (boy, was the wool pulled over its eyes) and later had to retract them.

The researchers finally cried foul. They said the purpose of their study was simply to determine which rams are likeliest to breed—useful knowledge to ranchers.

They said they weren’t trying to discourage homosexual behavior, anyway. They were simply trying to understand such behavior in rams. And if they were to find a biological cause, they argued, wouldn’t that promote compassion and acceptance for all beings that prefer the same sex?

Some of the attackers backed off—not because the researchers were convincing, but because it’s hard not to sympathize with two fellows whose career choice involves walking around with a clipboard and encouraging male sheep to get amorous with each other.

In any event, this incident is at once a sign of America’s greatness and, perhaps, a premonition that we may not be great for much longer.

Evil dictators are stifling freedom and torturing millions. Ethnic hatred and genocide are killing millions. Pestilence and disease are killing millions more. But we’re more attuned to things that don’t matter, such as “American Idol.”

And we’re at war. Western civilization is in a battle of wills with fanatics who hope to restore 6th-century values. They intend to get their hands on some frighteningly powerful bombs to make us bend to that will. Yet we worry more about Anna Nicole Smith.

And gay rams.

We have so much wealth and affluence, you see, we can fund university research studies of every kind. We can also fund touchy advocacy groups that use their means to cloud and confuse and obscure whatever is unpleasant to them.

America, to borrow from James Thurber, “has become consumed largely about small matters and ‘smally’ about great affairs.” We’re losing our ability to discern between what is and isn’t really important. That doesn’t bode well for a democracy.

Oh, well, at least the gay sheep story brought some needed levity. The Australians came up with the best headline:

“He’s Just Not That Into Ewe.”

---

_{Tom Purcell is a humor columnist nationally syndicated exclusively by Cagle Cartoons. For comments to Tom, please email him at Purcell@caglecartoons.com.}

Posted by The Skipper     on 02/28/2007 at 05:55 AM   
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   Sunday - February 18, 2007

I Told You So …

All along President Bush has repeatedly said that he opposes embryonic stem cell research because (a) there is no proven benefit being demonstrated to this point, and (2) there is too much room for unethical harvesting of human eggs for research. Meanwhile, adult stem cells are providing cures in several areas. Embryonic stem cells have so far proven to be good for not much more than creating cancer.

Now, welcome to the President’s worst fears: women being encouraged to become nurseries for scientists to harvest crops of human eggs to be used in embryonic stem cell research. This is the slippery slope the President was afraid of and sure enough, he was right - again. Not that that will matter to the research scientists out there who are dreaming of all the grant money they can grab if they just continue to pressure governments to free up public funding for their bullshit research.

The sad part is that there are many poor women who will look at this as an opportunity to make a few bucks to get by in exchange for a tiny body part - even though the procedure to “harvest” eggs is extremely dangerous. You can’t say we didn’t tell you so. The greed of research scientists trumps womens’ health once again. I wonder how women will react to being forced by financial hardship into a life of being nothing more than a cash crop.

Women Will Be Paid To Donate Eggs For Science
_{(GUARDIAN-UK) - Sunday February 18, 2007}

Women will be paid to donate their eggs for scientific research in a landmark decision that will prompt a fierce backlash from leading figures in the medical world.

The Human Fertility and Embryology Authority (HFEA), the government regulator of this highly sensitive area, is expected to approve the policy when it meets on Wednesday. At present, clinics are not allowed to accept eggs donated for scientific research unless they are a byproduct of either IVF treatment or sterilisation. Campaigners for change say that this has led to a chronic shortage of eggs for scientific use.

The HFEA’s influential Ethics and Law Committee has already privately recommended the controversial switch, and the authority is expected to follow this recommendation. The committee based its opinion on a 64-page report, seen by The Observer, summarising the arguments. ‘The potential scientific gains outweigh the objections,’ said one source closely involved in the decision.

The authority will argue that allowing women to donate eggs more generally for scientific use may help stem cell researchers to find cures for heart problems, infertility, diabetes, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

Women who go through the medical procedure to harvest the eggs from their ovaries, which doctors describe as ‘invasive’ and possibly dangerous, will be paid £250 plus travel expenses, the existing maximum compensation for any egg or sperm donor. Anyone agreeing to donate will have to show that they are acting for altruistic reasons, for example because they have a close relative suffering with one of the conditions scientists are trying to develop new treatments for with the aid of human eggs.

But scientists from the University of Padua in Italy have warned that women who donate their eggs for research could be at risk from life-threatening side effects induced by the powerful drugs administered to them. The drugs help to increase the number of eggs produced and were found by the scientists to cause paralysis and could lead to limb amputation and even death.

There were also warnings last night that poor women could be tempted or coerced into taking part for the money. ‘The HFEA could be unwittingly opening the door to barter or sale of eggs, including women in Britain as well as abroad, even though it is saying that women doing this would do so for purely altruistic reasons,’ said Donna Dickenson, emeritus professor of medical ethics and humanities at the University of London and one of Britain’s leading experts on the issue.

‘The sum of £250 would still be enough of an inducement for women from eastern Europe, for example, to come to Britain to sell their eggs. That’s clearly turning eggs into an object of trade and that’s disturbing. Once the principle of egg donation for research is established, it will become harder to prohibit paid egg donation.’

Some leading scientists have welcomed the HFEA’s expected decision. Professor Peter Braude, head of the department of women’s health at King’s College London, said the medical dangers involved in the process of collecting the eggs should not deter women from offering to help medical science make potentially significant breakthroughs. There is a low but well-recognised risk of developing ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, which can occur during the extraction of eggs and can damage a woman’s fertility and even cause death.

‘Women are intelligent enough to make decisions for themselves about whether they want to donate eggs for research,’ said Braude. ‘Why should they be prevented from doing this? They shouldn’t be, as long as they are told about the risks. Women have been donating eggs for more than 20 years, usually those undergoing sterilisation, so the principle isn’t new. This is different because it’s volunteering.’

- More ...

Posted by The Skipper     on 02/18/2007 at 11:59 AM   
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   Tuesday - February 13, 2007

OH MY!

That’s it, End of story. The battle to keep scientists from conducting freaky experiments with stem cells is over. They have won the war with this latest announcement. All they have left to do in order to seal the deal is show how stem cells can be used for penis enhancement.

Stem-cell enhanced boobies could be real trouble though. Does anyone else here remember that old Woody Allen move “Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex But Were Afraid To Ask”? If you do, do you remember the first part where the mad scientist (played brilliantly by John Carradine) was performing a mutant breast-enhancement technique on his female lab assistant and the enhancer machine went wild and the breasts swelled up to the size of two Volkswagons and they ripped themselves off her body, escaped from the lab and went on a monster rampage through the countryside, killing people by squashing them to death until finally captured by Woody Allen with the aid of .... never mind, you’ll just have to go rent the DVD.

Stem Cells Used To Boost Breasts
_{(BBC) - Monday, 12 February 2007, 17:35 GMT}

Scientists in Japan claim to be able to increase the size of a woman’s breasts using fat and stem cells. The technique uses fat from the stomach or thigh which is then enriched with stem cells before being injected.

It is hoped the method could prove a more natural-looking alternative to artificial implants filled with salt water or silicone. But plastic surgeons working in Britain have greeted news of the technique with “extreme caution.”

Kotaro Yoshimura, a surgeon at the Tokyo University medical school, said more than 40 patients had been treated. Mr Yoshimura said he believed the stem cell and fat combination, which can increase a woman’s cupsize by two sizes, was a success.

“There have been no serious complications,” he said. During the operation, surgeons suck fat cells from the stomach or thigh, and this “slurry” is enriched so that there are higher numbers than usual of stem cells.

These are “master” cells which are capable of making new fat cells. When the enriched stem cell mixture is combined with normal fat tissue, it can then be injected into the breast area. The treatment aims to offer a softer more natural look than traditional silicone implants.

Mr Yoshimura said the he believed combining stem cells with fat gave an improved result. He said breast enlargement using fat and stem cells did not create a lumpy effect. Lots of small particles were added rather than “one big lump”.

Cellport Clinic Yokohama in Japan are currently the only ones to provide the treatment. The clinic website claims: “The enhanced breasts are soft and natural, so they are the patient’s “real” breasts.” Consultant Norman Waterhouse said he had concerns about such a procedure.

He said: “It would be incorrect to suggest that a breast implant equivalent could grow from stem cells alone, and fat transfer, which is not a new procedure, can still lead to complications and give a lumpy effect.”

“This appears to be a rather optimistic view of what is yet a theoretical approach.” Consultant Rajiv Grover added: “We greet this news with extreme caution.” However, Adam Searle, past president of British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons said the development should not be dismissed.

“There is exciting potential but no reality in practical terms at the moment. “The stem cell ‘soup’ is too non-specific to really focus on what you want.”

Posted by The Skipper     on 02/13/2007 at 09:20 AM   
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   Thursday - January 25, 2007

Through The Looking Glass

Posted by The Skipper     on 01/25/2007 at 03:44 PM   
Filed Under: • Art-Photography • Science-Technology •  
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   Tuesday - January 16, 2007

It’s So Easy, Even A Blogger Can Do It

I wonder if they had car insurance? Or if they had cars. If not, were their carts insured according to state law? Finally, has GEICO really been around that long? This will give me much to ponder today. One thing I don’t need to ponder is how there might have been interbeeding between homo sapiens sapiens and homo sapiens neanderthalis. Of course there was. It’s a well-known fact that human males will screw anything even remotely resembling a female. As for Neanderthals disappearing - that’s easy. They had to hide the evidence of their naughty flings. See! It all makes sense. Now ... about that homeowners insurance - I have this little gecko I want you to meet ....

Skull Shows Possible Human/Neanderthal Breeding
_{WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Mon Jan 15, 2007 8:14pm ET138}

A 40,000-year-old skull found in a Romanian cave shows traits of both modern humans and Neanderthals and might prove the two interbred, researchers reported on Monday.

If the findings are confirmed, the skull would represent the oldest modern human remains yet found in Europe.

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, will add to the debate over whether modern Homo sapiens simply killed off their Neanderthal cousins, or had some intimate interactions with them first.

DNA samples taken from Neanderthal bones suggest there was no mixing, or at least that any Neanderthal genetic contribution did not make it to the modern DNA pool.

But Erik Trinkaus of Washington University in St. Louis has in the past found bones that he believes show both modern human and Neanderthal traits, and now he and colleagues have found a skull.

The skull, probably that of a teenager, has been dated to 40,000 years ago and shows many modern traits. But it also is a little flatter than most modern Homo sapiens, and exceptionally large upper molars more associated with Neanderthals.

“Such differences raise important questions about the evolutionary history of modern humans,” said Joao Zilhao of the University of Bristol in Britain, who worked on the study.

It could be “evolutionary reversal” he said—humans changing back into archaic forms. “They could also reflect admixture with Neanderthal populations as modern humans spread through western Eurasia,” Zilhao said in a statement.

“This mixture would have resulted in both archaic traits retained from the Neanderthals and unique combinations of traits resulting from the blending of previously divergent gene pools.”

Modern humans are believed to have spread into Europe around 45,000 to 50,000 years ago, and had completely replaced the older Neanderthals by 30,000 years ago.

But that means at least 10,000 years of living side by side, and artifacts attributed to the more modern humans have been found at Neanderthal sites.

Posted by The Skipper     on 01/16/2007 at 03:24 AM   
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   Saturday - December 23, 2006

You Can Run - But You Can’t Hide

Two things struck me about this new “instant death” missile: (1) In it’s final test flight, it hit 7,000 mph (Mach 10) and (2) It only has a range of 600 miles (or so they say). Now, with speeds like that you could conceivably hit a target anywhere on Earth in an hour or less - if you could get enough fuel in it. My guess, based on what I saw of the model specs, is that they could expand the length by about two extra feet (making it 14 feet in length) and you’d have the range to have Osama Bin Laden taken out in less than less than an hour, no matter where you fired it from. Five minutes or less if you fired it from Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.

Quick response? More like instant death. The enemy wouldn’t know what hit them - especially if you loaded this missile up with a nuclear warhead. Now we’re talking real projection of power. No mess, no fuss. Push a button, go get coffee and come back in time to watch the fireworks via satellite. Yep, this ought to scare the bejeezus out of any aggressor. All we’d need then is a leader with the balls to use it. Can we resurrect Teddy Roosevelt now? I think we finally have his “big stick”. Mheh-heh ...

With an angled nose, flaps in the middle and an inlet on the underbelly, the device looks like a cross between a spaceship and a futuristic cruise missile. It’s designed to go nearly seven times faster than a Tomahawk — a flight from the Arabian Sea to eastern Afghanistan would take 20 minutes — and destroy targets with its own kinetic energy. Test flights are scheduled for 2008.

The pressure, drag and high temperatures associated with hypersonic speeds (typically, greater than Mach 5, or 3600 mph) used to be considered too extreme for an aircraft to handle in a controlled way. Only ballistic missiles and spacecraft burning rocket fuel, shooting into space and roaring back to Earth, could go that fast.

What the X-51 does is to turn some of the most brutal effects of hypersonic flight to its advantage. Take shock waves, for example. Bursting through the air at a hypersonic rate produces a train of waves, one after the other, which can drag down an aircraft. But the X-51 is a “wave rider,” with a sharp nose shaped to make the waves break at precisely the right angle. All of the pressure is directed beneath the missile, lifting it up. The shock waves also compress the air to help fuel the X-51’s combustion process.

The craft is the same size and shape as a Joint Air-to- Surface Standoff Missile, so it can be attached to a B-52 or fighter jet. It runs on standard JP-7 jet fuel, not on rocket fuel, so it fits in neatly with the military’s existing logistical chain. The X-51 is made from a fairly standard nickel alloy, not from exotic materials. And the advanced engine technology is very real. In 2004, NASA broke speed records while testing its X-43A, a precursor to the X-51 (see “Breakthrough Awards 2005,” Nov. 2005). In a final test flight, the 12-ft.-long aircraft hit 7000 mph — nearly Mach 10. In other words, the X-51 is not just some lab experiment; it’s being designed from the start to deploy. “I’ve got tremendous confidence in it working,” the Air Force’s Mark J. Lewis says.

That doesn’t mean the X-51 will be in competition with a conventional Trident. It will have a range of only 600 nautical miles. And it first needs to be lifted into the air by a plane, then accelerated by a rocket-fueled booster before its hypersonic engine kicks in. But if the 2008 test flight is a success, the X-51 will be the first weapon other than a ballistic missile to fly at hypersonic speeds.

-- Popular Science

Posted by The Skipper     on 12/23/2006 at 03:23 AM   
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   Friday - December 01, 2006

I Spy

Quick, examine the picture below. Have you ever seen this screen? You probably haven’t but your boss or network administrator probably has - or they’ve seen screens similar to this. This is a screenshot from a program called eBlaster from SpectorSoft.

What is it? It is spying software that is used to keep track of what employees are doing with their computers while they’re at work. Up until now, companies have been installing tools like this to spy on you at the office. They have been doing it voluntarily to ”keep track of how our employees use our network bandwidth and our computer equipment”, as they tell it. If you think your company isn’t spying on you, you have to be incredibly stupid ... and will probably be out of work soon.

Now this spying is no longer voluntary. The Department Of Justice and the Supreme Court have decided that your employer must be able to produce records of e-mails and internet chat sessions ... or else they’re in deep legal trouble. Privacy? You never had any at work. Now the law says you can never have any privacy at work.

Does this make you happy? It bothers me greatly because I may need to have a private e-mail conversation with a family member in an emergency or I may need to check my bank balance. I don’t want that information available for viewing by the geeks in network administration.

I am always careful what I say in e-mails from the office and I never use chat sessions from work. That’s because I work in the IT departments and I see the recording going on as well as the backups of all server files that are saved until eternity. So do yourself a favor. Keep your freakin’ e-mail mouth shut. You never know where those words will turn up again ...

Companies Must Store Employee Emails
_{(ABC NEWS) - Dec. 01, 2006}

U.S. companies will need to know more about where they store e-mails, instant messages and other electronic documents generated by their employees in the event they are sued, thanks to changes in federal rules that took effect Friday, legal experts say.

The changes, approved by the Supreme Court’s administrative arm in April after a five-year review, require companies and other parties involved in federal litigation to produce “electronically stored information” as part of discovery, the process by which both sides share evidence before a trial.

Federal and state courts have increasingly been requiring the production of such evidence in individual cases. The new rules clarify that the data will be required in federal cases.

Under the new rules, an information technology employee who routinely copies over a backup computer tape could be committing “virtual shredding” once a lawsuit has been filed, said Alvin F. Lindsay, a partner at Hogan & Hartson LLP and expert on technology and litigation.

Companies still could routinely purge their archives if the data aren’t relevant to cases companies have pending or expect to face, though specific sectors such as financial services remain governed by other data-retention rules.

The new rules make it more important for companies to know what electronic information they have and where, especially because of a provision that requires lawyers to provide information much earlier than before on where their clients’ data are stored and how accessible they are.

Large companies are likely to face higher costs from organizing their data in order to meet those deadlines, said James Wright, director of electronic discovery at Halliburton Co. Besides e-mail, he said, companies also will need to know about things more difficult to track, like digital photos of work sites on employee cell phones and information on removable memory cards.

There are hundreds of “e-discovery vendors” and these businesses raked in approximately $1.6 billion in 2006, Wright said. That figure could double in 2007, he added.

Lawyers will have to spend time reviewing electronic documents before turning them over, Lindsay said. Although electronic searches can help narrow the amount of data, some high-paid lawyers will still have to sift through casual e-mails about subjects like “office birthday parties in the pantry” to find the relevant information, he added.

But Martha Dawson, a partner at the Seattle-based law firm of Preston Gates & Ellis LLP who specializes in electronic discovery, said companies will not have to alter how they retain their electronic documents. Rather, she said, they will have to do an “inventory of their IT system” in order to know better where the documents are.

The new rules also provide better guidance on how electronic evidence is to be handled in federal litigation, including guidelines on how companies can seek exemptions from providing data that isn’t “reasonably accessible,” she said. This could actually reduce the burden of electronic discovery, she said.

Posted by The Skipper     on 12/01/2006 at 01:58 PM   
Filed Under: • Homeland-Security • Judges-Courts-Lawyers • Science-Technology •  
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   Thursday - November 30, 2006

Yakkity-Yak

Men: Just shut up and git ‘er done.

Women: We really need to discuss the implications and repercussions of the actions we intend to take but first let’s talk about those new shoes that Jill is wearing and whether they will go with the purse Lorie bought yesterday ... and while we’re at it, we need to take time to go through all the steps involved in maintaining a relationship with our partners.

Men: Say what?

Women: You aren’t listening, are you? I’m trying to communicate our needs and you can’t take a few minutes to hear us out and validate our concerns in this matter and what did you mean when you said my new dress didn’t “quite” make me look fat?

Men: Never mind. (mixes stiff drink and hunkers down for the verbal storm that is coming)

_{Steve Kelley - The New Orleans Times-Picayune}

Women Talk More Than Men: Like Heroin Addiction, But Louder
_{(REGISTER - UK) - Tuesday 28th November 2006 10:02 GMT}

A “self-proclaimed feminist” psychiatrist has finally thrown in the towel and admitted her fellow females do indeed talk more than men, The Daily Mirror reports. Dr Luan Brizendine of the University of California, who’s published her shock findings in The Female Brain, says the average woman works her way through 20,000 words per day, compared with just 7,000 for the average bloke.

She says “women devote more brain cells to talking than men”, and cites fundamental differences between male and female brains as the cause.

Brizendine - whose findings are based on her own clinical work and the findings of more than 1,000 studies - reluctantly admitted: “I know it is not politically correct to say this but I’ve been torn for years between my politics and what science is telling us. I believe women actually perceive the world differently from men.

“Girls arrive already wired as girls, and boys arrive already wired as boys. Their brains are different by the time they’re born, and their brains are what drive their impulses, values, and their very reality.”

Indeed, Brizendine says said differences “can be traced back to the womb, where the sex hormone testosterone moulds the developing male brain”. Specifically, “the areas responsible for communication, emotion and memory are all pared back the unborn baby boy”. Accordingly, males “chat less than their female counterparts and struggle to express their emotions to the same extent” - which is hardly news to long-suffering females.

Brizendine elaborated: “Women have an eight-lane superhighway for processing emotion, while men have a small country road.” And when they’re not cruising their eight-lane superhighway of emotion, women are getting a quick fix of verbals because “the simple act of talking triggers a flood of brain chemicals which give women a rush similar to that felt by heroin addicts when they get a high”.

Men, on the other hand, beat women hands-down in one area: contemplating rumpy-pumpy. Brizendine noted “that while a man will think about sex every 52 seconds, the subject tends to cross women’s minds just once a day”. To put that in perspective, “men have an international airport for dealing with thoughts about sex, where women have an airfield nearby that lands small and private planes”, as the good doctor put it.

Some scientists reckon, however, that Brizendine’s conclusions have driven her down a promising-looking dual carriageway only to end at a collapsed bridge of scientific proof. Oxford University linguistics professor Deborah Cameron insisted “the amount we talk is influenced by who we are with and what we are doing”. She concluded: “If you aggregate a large number of studies you will find there is little difference between the amount men and women talk.”

Posted by The Skipper     on 11/30/2006 at 12:35 PM   
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   Sunday - November 19, 2006

The Great Flood?

May 10, 2807 BC - Noah and his sons finally had all the animals aboard and Noah knew that the bright light in the Southern sky was the hand of God about to descend on the idol worshipers and sinful people of Earth. All he could do was wait and pray the ship held together. Suddenly, the ground shook beneath the huge ship and it rocked on the beams propping it up as if the planet was wrenching in agony at some mysterious intrusion.

Gradually, over the course of the next few hours, the trembling slowed down with occasional tremors moving the giant ship around more and more. Slowly the sky began to darken as day turned into night. The animals stirred restlessly and outside large crowds of those God intended to destroy gathered and began pounding on the sides of the ship.

Then the rains came and lightning flashed across the sky in mighty rumbling sheets of righteous energy from the hand of God. Noah and his family huddled together and prayed while from the South a huge wall of water several hundred feet high approached at blinding speed, washing all before it. The cleansing had begun ....

At the southern end of Madagascar lie four enormous wedge-shaped sediment deposits, called chevrons, that are composed of material from the ocean floor. Each covers twice the area of Manhattan with sediment as deep as the Chrysler Building is high.

On close inspection, the chevron deposits contain deep ocean microfossils that are fused with a medley of metals typically formed by cosmic impacts. And all of them point in the same direction — toward the middle of the Indian Ocean where a newly discovered crater, 18 miles in diameter, lies 12,500 feet below the surface.

The explanation is obvious to some scientists. A large asteroid or comet, the kind that could kill a quarter of the world’s population, smashed into the Indian Ocean 4,800 years ago, producing a tsunami at least 600 feet high, about 13 times as big as the one that inundated Indonesia nearly two years ago. The wave carried the huge deposits of sediment to land.

-- “Ancient Crash, Epic Wave” (NY TIMES)

This asteroid landed in the seabed (30.87 S / 61.36 E - See Map Below) and sent a 600-900 foot high wall of water - a megatsunami - around the Indian Ocean, impacting land as far away as Australia, and crashing onto the coast of Africa, up the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, and quite possibly into the Mediterranean Sea as well.

This asteroidal impact would have sent a huge surge of water into the mouth of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, flooding the ancient land of Sumeria, the source of the Biblical flood legend. Indeed, Sir Leonard Wooley, the archaeologist who discovered the city of Ur, found 30 feet of flood-deposited sand that separated the most ancient levels of the city from newer habitation levels on top of the flood debris.

Abbott’s findings of deep-sea meteor/asteroid strike craters (which she has developed the technology to discover) indicates that large-scale cosmic strikes hit the earth much more frequently than scientists have previously postulated - perhaps every 1 to 3 thousand years, instead of every hundred thousand or so.

Large asteroid strikes also produce weather alterations, and many more global phenomena. Interestingly, the period 2800BC is when the first dynasty of Egypt started.

-- “Origin Of The Flood Legends” (HISTORY CHANNEL)

Posted by The Skipper     on 11/19/2006 at 03:19 PM   
Filed Under: • Climate-Weather • Science-Technology •  
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   Monday - October 30, 2006

Stem Cell Confusion

You folks who don’t live in Missouri may not be having this problem that we have right now. There is just a week until the election and our Political Poobahs want us to vote on a measure. They want a simple “YES” or “NO”. Well, here’s the problem ... they want a simple answer from us to a question that defies all logic and also bends the English language seven ways from Sunday.

There is no way in hell a human being actually wrote Amendment Two: Stem Cell Initiative. Not a sane one anyway. From the looks of it, this Amendment was farmed out to Rain Man and his fellow inmates. I’m afraid I’m going to have to vote NO just because I’m an ornery cuss and I hate it when people try to confuse me with word games. I also hate it when movie stars like Michael J. Fox come in from out of town and interrupt the World Series to stick their nose into a local matter.

The full text of the “Amendment From Hell” is below the “CONTINUE READING” link. Click at your own risk. Here is a translation of a few key sentences ....

* ensure Missouri patients have access to any therapies and cures, and allow Missouri researchers to conduct any research, permitted under federal law;

Amendment 2 doesn’t set any “limitations” on stem-cell research that aren’t already in federal law. All U.S. citizens—including Missourians—have the same access to medical breakthroughs. And there’s no law holding back Missouri scientists from conducting research that federal law allows.

* ban human cloning or attempted cloning;

Amendment 2’s fine-print says that cloning humans for research isn’t really “cloning”. The only cloning Amendment 2 actually bans is the kind (which nobody is trying), that would result in a fully-grown human baby.

* require expert medical and public oversight and annual reports on the nature and purpose of stem cell research;

According to the full text of Amendment 2, this “oversight” would consist of human-clone researchers policing themselves.

* impose criminal and civil penalties for any violations;

How many states actually write civil and criminal penalties into the state constitution? This is unprecedented.

* prohibit state or local governments from preventing or discouraging lawful stem cell research, therapies and cures.

Since the “lawful stem cell research” described in Amendment 2 requires human cloning, this means your tax dollars will be used to fund this research. And no state, county, or local government will have the power to say no.

Posted by The Skipper     on 10/30/2006 at 02:00 AM   
Filed Under: • Politics • Science-Technology •  
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   Tuesday - October 24, 2006

Fried Sperm

Guys ... we’re in deep kimchee now. Unless we think fast. Let me see. We may can use this to our advantage. I can hear it now. You’re on a hot date and she refuses to give it up ‘cause you forgot your rubber. You say, “But honey, I was on the cell phone most of the day. My sperm are fried. There’s no way you can get pregnant.”

You never know. It just might work .... 

Men Who Use Mobile Phones Face Increased Risk Of Infertility
_{(DAILY MAIL) - 21:01pm on 23rd October 2006}

Men who use mobile phones could be risking their fertility, warn researchers. A new study shows a worrying link between poor sperm and the number of hours a day that a man uses his mobile phone.

Those who made calls on a mobile phone for more than four hours a day had the worst sperm counts and the poorest quality sperm, according to results released yest at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine annual meeting in New Orleans. Doctors believe the damage could be caused by the electromagnetic radiation emitted by handsets or the heat they generate.

The findings suggest millions of men may encounter difficulties in fathering a child due to the widespread use of mobile phones and offers another possible explanation for plummeting fertility levels among British males.

Sperm counts among British men have fallen by 29 per cent over the past decade, a drop which has also been blamed on increasing obesity, smoking, stress, pollution and ‘gender-bending’ chemicals which disrupt the hormone system.

The latest study backs up previous research which indicated a link between mobile phone use and sperm quality, but it is the biggest and best designed to date. US researchers in Cleveland and New Orleans, and doctors in Mumbai, India, looked at more than 360 men undergoing checks at a fertility clinic who were classified into three groups according to their sperm count.

Men who used a mobile for more than four hours a day had a 25 per cent lower sperm count than men who never used a mobile. The men with highest usage also had greater problems with sperm quality, with the swimming ability of sperm - a crucial factor in conception - down by a third. They had a 50 per cent drop in the number of properly formed sperm, with just one-fifth looking normal under a microscope.

- More ...

Posted by The Skipper     on 10/24/2006 at 09:19 AM   
Filed Under: • Medical • Science-Technology •  
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