Weirdness and beyond

The weird things we've found to eat.  Can you imagine how hungry we had to be to figure out how to eat them?

Wells Fargo.. foreclosing people one client at a time.

Hobby Lobby... going after birth control.  The definition of rape culture.

Anybody have an invention they'd like to have produced?

Women in the gaming industry.

Should we worry if the engineered bacteria making jet fuel (which is fantastic) escapes into the wild?

Ten cooking tips for the kitchen.

Maybe there's a Super Earth out there too?

And speaking of weird things... a spider as big as your face.  That's one more country I'm not visiting....

From belly buttons to Jesus.

I never thought I'd be able to write that sentence....

The science of belly button bacteria.

Beijing rejects North’s envoy request

BEIJING - Pyongyang has allegedly asked Beijing to send them an envoy in order to improve their soured relations, but Beijing turned it down, seen as a warning regarding the regime’s recent warmongering rhetoric.

Because small government means being able to insert it into your private parts.  Republican Attorney General: Oral And Anal Sex Should Be ‘Crimes Against Nature’ In Virginia

Remembering Roger Ebert.

Reaping What You Sow: Are White Supremacists Preparing to Fight a new Civil War?

The Very Smell of Olive Oil is Good for You

Demotivational cat

Breakthrough in hydrogen fuel production could revolutionize alternative energy market

Gulf Of Mexico Dolphin Deaths Point To Continued Effects Of BP Oil Spill, Group Alleges

How much does going solar actually cost you and how long does it take to pay for itself.

Tennessee GOP’s Plan To Shove Jesus Down Our Throat Goes Hilariously Wrong

From bones to security

The church decorated with bones.

Global warming is making plants grow around the northern latitudes.

Surviving Mengele.

Bee venom is good for something... destroying HIV cells.

A woman speaks out about how men should be taught not to rape... and gets truly ugly threats about rape.

Unknown microbes found in Antarctic ice lake.  Isn't this how the horror story begins?

The frightening buildup of hate groups in reaction to a black president and the gun control movement. (pdf)

Getting rich off of schoolchildren.

Policy Basics: Top Ten Facts about Social Security

Sterilizers to skeletons to burglary...

Ionized Plasmas as Cheap Sterilizers for Developing World
University of California, Berkeley, scientists have shown that ionized plasmas like those in neon lights and plasma TVs not only can sterilize water, but make it antimicrobial -- able to kill bacteria -- for as long as a week after treatment.

Interesting discussion about burglary and fortifying one's house against it.

Skeleton of ancient human relative may yield skin.

Death with dignity.

For those gamers who have run out of ideas for names:

Blog sprinkles

A reminder why the Gulf of Mexico will not be the same for decades and decades. And BP's happy story about oil eating bacteria? Gulf bacteria digests gas, not oil.

Monkeyfister notes that a Florida man's blood was tested and was off the charts with the chemicals that BP uses: Florida man gets tested: Six of nine VOCs in blood — Hexane “off the charts”

The tree of crazy and why we need a chainsaw.

Californians better watch who's doing what to our water supply.

And speaking of water.... it can be turned into a blade and defuse bombs!

A watery blade is saving the lives of American soldiers in Afghanistan. Known as the Stingray, the device uses conventional military explosives to craft a blade of water sharp enough to slice through a metal bomb and scramble its innards.

Developed by the Sandia National Laboratories, thousands of units of this technology have already been shipped to Afghanistan to help diffuse the improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, that are so deadly to U.S. soldiers.

High fructose corn syrup producers want to change its name but not its potency.... basically hiding the ingredient in the product. Be careful what you eat.

The Art of Drew Struzan

Digby quoting Michael O'Hare about those super rich whining about the ending of the Bush tax cuts:

"A truly amazing pasticcio of mendacity, ignorance, and small-minded cupidity"

Why riding a motorcycle can be effing dangerous.

The glory of an egret in flight.

Phila of Bouphonia is back with another Friday Hope blog!

What the overuse and misuse of antibiotics

Has led us to:

New drug-resistant superbugs found in 3 states

The U.S. cases occurred this year in people from California, Massachusetts and Illinois, said Brandi Limbago, a lab chief at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Three types of bacteria were involved, and three different mechanisms let the gene become part of them.

[snip]

She did not know how the three patients were treated, but all survived.
Doctors have tried treating some of these cases with combinations of antibiotics, hoping that will be more effective than individual ones are. Some have resorted to using polymyxins — antibiotics used in the 1950s and '60s that were unpopular because they can harm the kidneys.

The two Canadian cases were treated with a combination of antibiotics, said Dr. Johann Pitout of the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada. One case was in Alberta, the other in British Columbia.

Both patients had medical emergencies while traveling in India. They developed urinary infections that were discovered to have the resistance gene once they returned home to Canada, Pitout said.

The CDC advises any hospitals that find such cases to put the patient in medical isolation, check the patient's close contacts for possible infection, and look for more infections in the hospital.

Any case "should raise an alarm," Limbago said.

What's wrong with these stories?

Seattle bank teller chases robber, loses job

US Marshals seize sanitizer for bacteria problems

Obviously what will win the 'war on terror' is bigger bombs.... which is what we've said ever since we dropped the A bomb on Hiroshima:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon is seeking to speed deployment of an ultra-large "bunker-buster" bomb on the most advanced U.S. bomber as soon as July 2010, the Air Force said on Sunday, amid concerns over perceived nuclear threats from North Korea and Iran.

The non-nuclear, 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrator, or MOP, which is still being tested, is designed to destroy deeply buried bunkers beyond the reach of existing bombs.

If Congress agrees to shift enough funds to the program, Northrop Grumman Corp's radar-evading B-2 bomber "would be capable of carrying the bomb by July 2010," said Andy Bourland, an Air Force spokesman.

Crazy Landlord Fights Heat Wave With Air Conditioning Ban

An Oregon landlord refuses to let his tenants install air conditioners because he thinks they "look tacky." Tenants of the Arbor Creek complex in Aloha who choose to sacrifice aesthetics for comfort have ten days to correct their mistake before facing eviction. One tenant's kid already landed in the hospital thanks to heat stroke.

China wants perfect astronauts:

Would-be astronauts competing for China's next space programme must comply with 100 rules - excluding those with bad breath or a runny nose.

The list, intended to recruit "super human beings", also prohibits those with body odours, tooth cavities or scars which may "burst open" in space.

Dammit! Americans have ruined the British class system by making people not buy fish forks!!

Cute: Why one should not draw faces in public.

I guess the question should be: Are people actually still evolving? Or are we now going backwards, sinking into primordial stupidity?

Don't answer that!

Now we can blame the Chinese

For starting life in their lakes?

Conventional wisdom has it that the first animals evolved in the ocean.

Now researchers studying ancient rock samples in South China have found that the first animal fossils are preserved in ancient lake deposits, not in marine sediments as commonly assumed.

These new findings not only raise questions as to where the earliest animals were living, but what factors drove animals to evolve in the first place.

For some 3 billion years, single-celled life forms such as bacteria dominated the planet. Then, roughly 600 million years ago, the first multi-cellular animals appeared on the scene, diversifying rapidly.

The oldest known animal fossils in the world are preserved in South China's Doushantuo Formation. These fossil beds have no adult specimens - instead, many of the fossils appear to be microscopic embryos.

"Our first unusual finding in this region was the abundance of a clay mineral called smectite," said researcher Tom Bristow, now at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "In rocks of this age, smectite is normally transformed into other types of clay. The smectite in these South China rocks, however, underwent no such transformation and have a special chemistry that, for the smectite to form, requires specific conditions in the water - conditions commonly found in salty, alkaline lakes."

The researchers collected hundreds of rock samples from several locations in South China. All their analyses suggest these rocks were not marine sediments.

I have a new hero

Evolutionary biologist Richard Lenski of Michigan State University.

Who knows how to smack down creationists.

Amen.

Nothing to worry about?

Ah, yeah... right... Kinda like the scientist guy in the movie Jurassic Park:

Dr. Ian Malcolm: Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.

So don't tell us there's nothing to worry about with this:

An 8-million-year-old bacterium that was extracted from the oldest known ice on Earth is now growing in a laboratory, claim researchers.

If confirmed, this means ancient bacteria and viruses will come back to life as ice melts due to global warming. This is nothing to worry about, say experts, because the process has been going on for billions of years and the bugs are unlikely to cause human disease.

You notice the word 'unlikely'?

Don't say I didn't warn you first!