Guess what? Mind. Blown.

Humanity may, just may not be the center of the universe. Hate to break the news to anyone still living in pre-Renaissance feudal Europe.

I wish I could embed this fantastic Flash piece  Portugese site, HTwins.net. Therein you get the true scale of the Universe, and all life, features and matter (hypothetical or otherwise), from the impossibly micro (Quantum foam), to the boundaries of this plane of existence (930 million light years across).

Please, go now. You won't be disappointed, although you might be humbled...rightly so.

The universe is so vast in scope that our frail simian brains cannot even fathom it without caving in ourselves.

No petty description of hell or heaven or eternal delights or silly superstition puts humanity more in its place than pondering the imponderable that is our universe...and possibly our multiverse.

H/T Felice Fawn

Voynich Manuscript has a Birthday...

and, it's about a full century old than anyone thought.

Kegger?

Let me back up for a second. Life is full of conspiratorial nutjobs chasing grumkins and snarks in the shadows, and looking for hidden wisdom and "ancient astronomers"; healing crystals and magic pyramids, where frankly no evidence exists to support these wild claims (like, for instance, unschooling). 

But, occasionally, nature or accidents of history churn out something so freaky, so bizarre and mysterious that it begs to be explored.

Such is the case of the Voynich Manuscript. 

What is the Manuscript? Good question, no one really knows. And the reason that no one knows is because it describes plants and animals that do not exist, in strange milieus unknown in 15th Century Europe. And, worst of all, is a a language that we cannot read, cannot decipher, yet is incredibly consistent throughout. And, it's illuminated and illustrated.

 Looks like Friday at my house...

Let the good ole' Wiki explain the linguistic style of this one:

The text consists of over 170,000 discrete glyphs, usually separated from each other by narrow gaps. Most of the glyphs are written with one or two simple pen strokes. While there is some dispute as to whether certain glyphs are distinct or not, an alphabet with 20–30 glyphs would account for virtually all of the text; the exceptions are a few dozen rarer characters that occur only once or twice each.
Wider gaps divide the text into about 35,000 "words" of varying length.

These seem to follow phonological or orthographic laws of some sort e.g. certain characters must appear in each word (like English vowels), some characters never follow others, some may be doubled or tripled but others may not, etc.

And, the subject matter:

The illustrations of the manuscript shed little light on the precise nature of its text but imply that the book consists of six "sections", with different styles and subject matter. Except for the last section, which contains only text, almost every page contains at least one illustration. Following are the sections and their conventional names:

Herbal 

Each page displays one plant (sometimes two) and a few paragraphs of text—a format typical of European herbals of the time. Some parts of these drawings are larger and cleaner copies of sketches seen in the "pharmaceutical" section (below). None of the plants depicted are unambiguously identifiable.

Astronomical 

Contains circular diagrams, some of them with suns, moons, and stars, suggestive of astronomy or astrology. One series of 12 diagrams depicts conventional symbols for the zodiacal constellations (two fish for Pisces, a bull for Taurus, a hunter with crossbow for Sagittarius, etc.). Each of these has 30 women figures arranged in two or more concentric bands. Most of the females are at least partly naked, and each holds what appears to be a labeled star or is shown with the star attached by what could be a tether or cord of some kind to either arm. The last two pages of this section (Aquarius and Capricornus, roughly January and February) were lost, while Aries and Taurus are split into four paired diagrams with 15 women and 15 stars each. Some of these diagrams are on fold-out pages.

Biological 

A dense continuous text interspersed with figures, mostly showing small naked women bathing in pools or tubs connected by an elaborate network of pipes, some of them clearly shaped like body organs. Some of the women wear crowns.

Cosmological 

More circular diagrams, but of an obscure nature. This section also has foldouts; one of them spans six pages and contains a map or diagram, with nine "islands" connected by "causeways", castles, and what may be a volcano.

Pharmaceutical 

Many labeled drawings of isolated plant parts (roots, leaves, etc.); objects resembling apothecary jars drawn along the margins; and a few text paragraphs. 

Recipes 

Many short paragraphs, each marked with a flower- or star-like "bullet".

 Pharmacopiea? Madman's rantings? Who knows....

So, know one knows who wrote this tome, what language it's in, why there are plants from the New World in a 15th Century manuscript, much less how cellular anatomy came into play.

But, at least now, thanks to Carbon 14-Isotope dating, we do, in fact, know when it was written: drumroll please....

According to Physorg

University of Arizona researchers have cracked one of the puzzles surrounding what has been called "the world's most mysterious manuscript" – the Voynich manuscript, a book filled with drawings and writings nobody has been able to make sense of to this day.

Using radiocarbon dating, a team led by Greg Hodgins in the UA's department of physics has found the manuscript's parchment pages date back to the early 15th century, making the book a century older than scholars had previously thought.  (specifically 1404-1438).

Again, we have no idea what its purpose was, but as one of the Ariz. U profs conjectures, and I think it's just as likely as any other reason:

"The text shows strange characteristics like repetitive word use or the exchange of one letter in a sequence," he says. "Oddities like that make it really hard to understand the meaning."

"There are types of ciphers that embed meaning within gibberish. So it is possible that most of it does mean nothing. There is an old cipher method where you have a sheet of paper with strategically placed holes in it. And when those holes are laid on top of the writing, you read the letters in those holes."

"Who knows what's being written about in this manuscript, but it appears to be dealing with a range of topics that might relate to alchemy. Secrecy is sometimes associated with alchemy, and so it would be consistent with that tradition if the knowledge contained in the book was encoded. What we have are the drawings.

Just look at those drawings: Are they botanical? Are they marine organisms? Are they astrological? Nobody knows."

 I'm sticking with alchemy...

Anyway, just an awesome little piece of news about one of the most awesome, mysterious objects on the planet today.

-d.s.

Your Country is Fucked: America. All of it.

Just a tease; just a tease. This not truly a "Your Country is Fucked", not really, in the sense that it includes painstaking, meticulous research.

Rather it's just a quick hitter to show each and every one of you, from no matter whence you hail, that not only is our entire country fucked, but the constituent parts thereof --even if taken in individual portions-- still represent their own unique font of suck, with varying degrees of fucked.

Awesome, I was born in the State with the Lowest teaching salaries, but was raised largely in the States with Highest deaths by motorcycle, Highest incidents of Stroke, and Highest HIV/AIDS rate. I was educated in Stroke-land, and the Most Corrupt, and Rape-iest States.

Professionally, I have worked in Strokes-ville, Most Sickly, Most Obese, and Rape-iest States. Also representing are Highest incidences of women-beating and the Oldest states.

I am presently employed, and loving, the State with the Highest Cost of Living.

(play along, it's fun).

-d.s.

Pants-wetting doesn't even begin to describe this...

Ever wondered what it would be like to service antennae towers that are 800-900 or more feet above the ground? Acrophobic? Wonder what it would be like to look down on the unforgiving earth 1000 short feet removed from you and a misstep?

Wonder no more.

Tip 'o the Black-Felt Windsor to Leanne Rose a/k/a the hottest Canadian I know.

-d.s.

Kind of a big deal, really: Captured Anti-Matter

Large Hadron Collider: Not just for destroying the Earth anymore!

Really, this is  a very big deal, and exceptionally cool. Seems scientists at Lucerne have pulled off the impossible feat of isolating, and then containing anti-matter. Anti-matter is destroyed when it comes into contact with regular ole' universe matter. That they were able to isolate it, and then contain it for a a period of time is remarkable. 

One of the holy grails of particle physics, in fact.

Per the BBC:

Researchers at Cern, home of the Large Hadron Collider, have held 38 antihydrogen atoms in place, each for a fraction of a second.

Antihydrogen has been produced before but it was instantly destroyed when it encountered normal matter.

The team, reporting in Nature, says the ability to study such antimatter atoms will allow previously impossible tests of fundamental tenets of physics.

The current "standard model" of physics holds that each particle - protons, electrons, neutrons and a zoo of more exotic particles - has its mirror image antiparticle.

The antiparticle of the electron, for example, is the positron, and is used in an imaging technique of growing popularity known as positron emission tomography.

However, one of the great mysteries in physics is why our world is made up overwhelmingly of matter, rather than antimatter; the laws of physics make no distinction between the two and equal amounts should have been created at the Universe's birth.

This still doesn't mean that I trust the LHC, or that it won't devour our world like Galactus; nevertheless, this alone would be a pay-off for the long-delayed, over-budgeted, controversial particle collider.

Yea, science!

  Ignore this guy. Really, he's just here for the refreshments.

-d.s.

Why cavemen were tougher than you or I...

 Ancient ancestor, looking for a date...

Obviously, our hominid ancestors were much, much tougher than you or I. But, how much tougher? Well, besides being hunted by sabre-toothed cats, hunting mammoths and surviving ice ages, what they ate was, by and large, the diet of supreme badasses.

In a recent story by Nat. Geo, a group of archeologists stumbled across a nearly 2 million year-old kitchen. In this preparation area the scientists discovered, among other things, that the diet of our ancestors included...holy shit, CROCODILES!

The work is based on bones and artifacts from a prehistoric “kitchen” that make up the earliest evidence that humans ate aquatic animals.

Stone tools and the butchered bones of turtles, crocodiles, and fish were found at the 1.95-million-year-old site in northern Kenya. No human bones were found, but the combination of remains suggests early humans used the site specifically to prepare meals.

The next time you grumble about skinning or de-boning a chicken, think about the implications of hunting, catching, killing, then cleaning a fucking crocodile...with rocks.

Scaly, toothsome reptiles...not just for nightmares anymore.

.

 

For the tens of people who think homosexuality is a "choice"

I defy you to watch the Ten Minute Tranny's "Little Mermaid" revue and get back to me if you think these men are trying to defy god's will, rebelling against society or in any way being other than who they were and how they were born.

Thanks 

-Rational society

.

Sin is good for you...

These fraulein could have told you that...

BTW: While Der Schatten approves of both breasts and German beers, Spaten is just nasty...Of course, I've never had it in Germany, where I imagine it is significantly better than the piss we get in the States.

For those worried about their mental health and capacity through our lives and into the sunset years, there is especially good news: Alzheimer's can probably be staved off with the help of some items at your local Kroger's. It is doubly good news if you look at a recent Spanish study into the cognitive effects of alcoho:

"Our results suggest a protective effect of alcohol consumption, mostly in non-smokers, and the need to consider interactions between tobacco and alcohol consumption, as well as interactions with gender, when assessing the effects of smoking and/or drinking on the risk of Alzheimer's disease," the study's lead author, Ana M. Garcia, from the University of Valencia's department of preventive medicine and public health, said in a news release.

 Sod off, I'm protectin' me gob...

There is, however, a downside to this research. It seems that the protective powers are especially pronounced among non-smokers. This seems to be completely at odds with a bevy of reports indicating that nicotine benefits Alzheimer's patients, delays onset of the disease, and may actually provide protection against the dementia. So, while beer helps and a smoke helps, a beer and a smoke doesn't help...

Which is a pity really, since a smoke buddies up with a pint as natural as potatoes form a symbiosis with steak. But, like most things in life, it seems you're going to have to forgo one or the other.

Pictured: Not protecting oneself from Alzheimer's, but, greatly enhancing the chances of getting laid...Your call.

.

When Physicists Masturbate

Gangsta' for Gravity, yo

Sir Isaac Newton, the apocryphal tale of an apple hitting his head, the First Law, Newtonian theories of Gravity, yada yada yada. While these are facts foisted on most of us at an early age, to physicists, these are superhot life-altering words. So much so, that freakin' rocket scientists at the UK's Royal Society have now planned what is, beyond all doubt, the nerdiest shit you will ever read:

From the UK Telegraph :

[A] section of wood, from the original tree from which the apple fell that inspired Newton’s theory of gravity, is normally held in the Royal Society’s archives.

The tree sample will be accompanied on its trip into space by an image of Sir Isaac, also donated by the Royal Society.

"We’re delighted to take this piece of Sir Isaac Newton’s apple tree to orbit. While it’s up there, it will be experiencing no gravity, so if it had an apple on it, the apple wouldn’t fall...I’m pretty sure that Sir Isaac would have loved to see this, assuming he wasn’t spacesick, as it would have proved his first law of motion to be correct. 

You read that correctly: The Royal Society is taking a piece of bark from Newton's apple tree and are going to shoot it up into space as an homage to Newton's First Law. I want to say that this is cool, etc, but, in reality, this is intellectual masturbation at its finest.  

I am pleased now to show you proof:

Look closely at his screen...are those boobies?

Wait for it...

Nooooooo!!!!!!

.

As if a heart attack weren't merely bad enough...

I

 I wish I were talking about the "nurses" at the Heart Attack Grill...

In what could be this year's least stunning bit of scientific research, clinicians in Germany have found a link between corornary heart disease/heart attacks/strokes and impotence....

The University of Saarland report, published in the journal Circulation, suggests men with impotence should be checked for cardiovascular disease.
Some experts want doctors to ask about impotence in over-40s health checks.
Impotence is linked to inadequate blood flow in the penile arteries.
These are much smaller than coronary arteries.
So for some men, a persistent failure to get an erection might be an early sign that his arteries are narrowing.

 What do you mean, I can't get it up?

This really shouldn't surprise any...whatsover. The male penis is a feat of hydraulic engineering that requires adequate blood flow. No blood flow, no happy time. So, I guess we now get to amend the  heart attack symptoms and signs:

• Tingling/Pain in the left side of the body
• Left side facial pain
• Crushing/tightness in the center of the chest
• Fleshing/sweating...

A

and this...

. 

Women are drugs...

 Scarlett Johansson = crack, according to science.

Chalk this up in the "no shit" department, but men's brains react the exact same to a buxom, hourglass figure as they do to drugs and alcohol. The money shot comes in the LiveScience article here:

"Hugh Hefner could have told us that by showing us how many zeroes are in his bank account," said researcher Steven Platek, an evolutionary cognitive neuroscientist at Georgia Gwinnett College in Lawrenceville, Georgia. "But there's more to it than buying Playboy, Maxim, or FHM."
For instance, "these findings could help further our understanding pornography addiction and related disorders, such as erectile dysfunction in the absence of pornography," he explained. "These findings could also lend to the scientific inquiry about sexual infidelity."

Scarlett again...It's okay. Science tells me that this addictive behavior is normal...

 

It's not just men that check out the hourglass figure either. According to the principal researchers, women do it as well, but for something insidious called "mate-guarding".

"It turns out women find similar optimally attractive female bodies as attention-grabbing, albeit for different reasons," Platek said. "Women size up other women in an effort to determine their own relative attractiveness and to maintain mate guarding — or, in other words, keep their mate away from optimally designed females."

Y

You think "Dear God, what a great body".

Your wife thinks, "Stay the fuck away, bitch".

The researchers conclude with some thoughts for future research...including, my favorite: What effect does viewing optimally curvy women have on other women's brains. I'm not an expert, but I can conclude that the result is simple....

Science is hot...

.

South Dakota: The land that science forsook

I've dumped on Missouri many, many times as my second-least favorite state in the union. Number 1, is and shall remain, the State of South Dakota. This god-forsaken banana republic is run by a cadre of ill-educated, xenophobic, racist, theocratic boobs.

 

The only good thing to come out of this shithole were the tribes who slaughtered Custer's illegitimate band of terrorists.

This most recent bill, in essence denying climatic change, is but one illustration of the typical South Dakotan mindset:

  WHEREAS, carbon dioxide is not a pollutant but rather a highly beneficial ingredient for all plant life on earth. Many scientists refer to carbon dioxide as "the gas of life"; and... 
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, by the House of Representatives of the Eighty-fifth Legislature of the State of South Dakota, the Senate concurring therein, that the South Dakota Legislature urges that instruction in the public schools relating to global warming include the following:

            (1)    That global warming is a scientific theory rather than a proven fact;

            (2)    That there are a variety of climatological, meteorological, astrological, thermological, cosmological, and ecological dynamics that can effect world weather phenomena and that the significance and interrelativity of these factors is largely speculative; and

            (3)    That the debate on global warming has subsumed political and philosophical viewpoints which have complicated and prejudiced the scientific investigation of global warming phenomena; and

    BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the Legislature urges that all instruction on the theory of global warming be appropriate to the age and academic development of the student and to the prevailing classroom circumstances.

That's a great piece of writing: Cosmology and Astrology influence climate? This is one of the least intelligent, shoddily written, pieces of shit to come out of a state besotted by Fox News mentality and reasoning. That's a great fucking job there, guys. But, I applaud it, and think it needs to go further. I propose that we start teaching the following as well...

Phrenology

I do believe there is something to this whole "criminals have sloping brows" theory....

Birth Order Theory

 

Those damned middle kids are always so ambitious...

Alchemy

  
 

As a "science" it's definitely been around longer than climatology. Now, where's my phlogiston?

Divination

  

 C'mon, if we're willing to concede that astrological factors are important in climate research, then the Tarot Deck is a valid instrument for those purposes.

Eugenics...\really, what could go wrong?

  Besides that...

I have no idea what the hell is wrong with that state, those people and that entire vacuum of intellect, but -even from Omaha- I think they are way the hell too close to me, and I can't wait to escape all of these imbecilic, shitty, landlocked states and the people that populate them.

.

Pedobear/John Edwards can get behind this...

According to a French researcher (e.g., libertine), marriages flourish when the wife is at least 5 years younger than the husband.*

That's pretty hot...so, tell me, are you marriageable?

I can honestly say that my first marriage did not work out that way, although, according to the researchers, it was destined to succeed: The wife was 27% smarter than me, and I was 5 years older. Of course, the esteemed scientist did not count on knocking up a man-hating lesbian who loathed men with the wrath of a thousand suns, nor did they count on the person (of alleged 20% greater raw intelligence), being married to someone who was -objectively- a friggin' genius. So, there are a few confounds....

Nor, apparently, did they account for my "it's all pink" Blitzkrieg strategy....

All that said, I wonder what the same researcher would think of the research demonstrating the wonders of an occasional extra-marital romp in the sack? The "money shot", as it were, is this line:

“young women in love” must “understand that mono-gamy sometimes conspires against a lasting relationship”...“Men dream of sex,” she says, but are able to separate sex from love more easily than women. “Some men,” she goes on, “can spend the afternoon in a hotel with their mistress and come home to dinner with the family without any feelings of guilt.” According to Vaillant, obsessive fidelity is as much of a plague in a marriage as serial infidelity

A-Freakin'-Men.

.

 

You know you want to talk about porn...

 

Yaaaaarrrrrrr

You like sex. I like sex. We all like sex. What we really need is some meaningful research on the matter. 

My little brother is working in his MA/PHD research and REALLY needs some anonymous folks to answer innocuous questions about online porn.

Help him out here: takes about 5-7 minutes. Password is "Che".

. 

How can you NOT love America?

Seriously. There is a reason we lag behind damned near every other industrialized nation in science education. When local schools are ran by local boobs with some weird theological axe to grind, and the average kid is more concerned with Halo or Modern Warfare than achievement, this is the kind of shit you get....

 

Once again; I love America...

 via Y!AnswerFail.com  

. 

Monday has very little of a certain commodity

Joe Jackson's "Time" as covered by Anthrax....Amazing how such an arbitrary concept such as time, nothing more than the expression of quantum processes, can completely dominate our lives.

Lyrics go now:

Wake up,
got another day to get.
Through now,
got another man to see.
Gotta call him on the telephone, way-o.
Gotta find a piece of paper.
Sit down, got another letter to write.
Think hard,
gotta get a letter just right.
Little ringing on the telephone, wo no.
Gotta write another letter.

No such thing as tomorrow.
All we want...
(two three go!)
Got the time tick, tick, tickin' in my head.
Time!
Got the time tick, tick, tickin' in my head.
Time!
Got the time tick, tick, tickin' in my head.
Time
Ticking in my head
Ticking in my head
Ticking in my head

If I tell you what i'm doing today,
will you shutup and get out of my way?
Someone asked me what the time is,
I don't know.
Only know I gotta go now.
No time,
tryin' to get a watch repaired.
No time, never got a thing to wear.
Little ringing on the telephone, wo no.
Hear a ringing in my head now

No such thing as tomorrow.
All we want...
(two three go!)
Got the time tick, tick, tickin' in my head.
Time!
Got the time tick, tick, tickin' in my head.
Time!
Got the time tick tick ticking in my head
Ticking in my head
Ticking in my head
Ticking in my head

No such thing as tomorrow.
All we want...
(two three go!)
Got the time tick, tick, tickin' in my head.
Time!
Got the time tick, tick, tickin' in my head.
Time!
Got the time tick, tick, tickin' in my head.
Time!
Ticking in my head
Time
Got the time tick, tick, tickin' in my head.
Time!
Got the time tick, tick, tickin' in my head.
Time!
Got the time tick, tick, tickin' in my head.
Time!
Ticking in my head
Ticking in my head
   Ticking in my head!   

.

 

Well, that certainly explains a lot...

 

Probably not bi-polar, just fucking nuts....

Some interesting research has come down the pipe regarding bi-polar and high-acheivement. According to a study by King's College psychologists found that there appears to be two sorts of bi-polar, and over-achievers and the very bright are far more likely to suffer from the disorder than do those in the median of intellect and/or achievement levels:

The findings of a link between the disorder and academic and intellectual performance may explain the association between genius and mania that has long been thought to exist. People with bipolar disorder who are in a manic phase can have exaggerated emotional responses and can be witty, inventive and have high cognitive capabilities. They are also capable of sustained concentration and have high stamina, and so can achieve much more than people without the disorder. 

 

Probably bi-polar AND fucking nuts...

How this study played out, according to the researchers is that

The national cohort study was carried out by scientists from King’s College London's Institute of Psychiatry and the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. The team, led by King’s College senior lecturer in psychiatric epidemiology, Dr James MacCabe, studied the final exam results of all 15-16-year-old pupils attending High Schools in Sweden from 1988 to 1997, and compared them to hospital records of bipolar disorder admissions of patients between the ages of 17 and 31.
They found those with A-grade results were almost four times more likely to be admitted for the condition than average students, even after the findings were controlled for income and education level of the parents. The link was stronger in males than females.

 

 BUT. IT FEELS SO FUCKING GOOOOOOOOD!!!!!

Having had a few instances of --ahem-- increased productivity, Newton's ole' first law does come back to bite you in the ass: Like great cocaine, mind-blowing orgasms, winning the lottery, whatever...the piper always comes around for his pay...Always.

During their elation (manic) periods they may have insomnia, restlessness, racing thoughts, and may have an over-inflated self-esteem. In the depressed stages they may be suicidal. Around 1% of the population suffers from bipolar disorder.

 

Kill me now, fuckers. Do it! Do it!

So, all in all, probably better off to be in the 99% that doesn't suffer from the intense highs and gravity-defying depths...Then again, not as though it can be helped. Besides, psychotic people certainly make the world more interesting, wouldn't you agree?

. 

Amen. Food Allergies.

 

I have an allergy to smart-asses

One thing that perplexes me, and is something I ruminate frequently upon is the new scourge of alleged food allergies. I am not talking about fatal reactions to peanuts, but all of these folks claiming weird allergies to everything from sorghum and eggs and dairy to wheat and barley. 

I grew up in no less than 13 school districts, with no less than 15,000 children encountered. Want to know how many kids died from the school lunches, which were heavily laden with soy, nuts, whey, wheat, and the like.

Abso-fucking-lutely zero. 

They did, however, turn into armies of the diminutive undead.

 

Yet, you can barely turn your head these days without someone claiming some fantastical new allergy. If the incidence of these food allergies were so great, then humanity would have fuck-all never gotten off the ground. If all of the available grains were sickening 1/7th of the population; if easy protein like legumes and eggs were death-nuggets, then how the fuck are we still around. Why are there no cautionary tales in historical literature that read "thou shalt not eat a fucking omelette?" 

Simple. It's Bullshit. That's why. 

 

 Sniff. Sniff. I smell bullshit.

The Times of London has a fabulous editorial on the 400% increase of people claiming to have newer, more exotic food allergies. The entire thing is worth your read, however, enjoy some excerpts:

The nation is in the grip of an epidemic, but one very different from those usually written about, such as obesity, diabetes and binge-drinking. What makes this epidemic unusual is that it is not an illness or condition in itself, but the false belief that something is wrong with you. This mass delusion affects millions of people in this country, and it’s getting worse. It’s food intolerance. One in five Britons now claims to have a food allergy or intolerance, with most stating wheat as the problem. That is an increase of 400 per cent in the past 20 years. 

Now research conducted by Portsmouth University has shown that of those people claiming to have an allergy or intolerance, only 2 per cent actually did. 

The realisation that most people aren’t that special can be avoided by adopting a quasi-medical condition that sets one apart. It demands attention and consideration. It forces other people to think about them and make special arrangements for them. Only last week, a friend with recently self-diagnosed lactose intolerance came round for a cup of tea. “Do you have any soya milk?” she asked as the kettle boiled. I confessed I hadn’t and felt awful. It was then that I realised she was on her third chocolate biscuit. “Oh, milk’s OK in chocolate biscuits,” she said hastily. How convenient, I thought. 

Pretty sobering, but not entirely unexpected. Think about it 2% of the population are earnest, sincere and have legitimate concerns and/or medical condiction. The other 98% are self-important, self-obsessed, "look at me", lying pricks. So, quit being an asshat, and enjoy your omelette and dry wheat toast.

STFU and eat your lunch Billy.  You're not special.

.

Sad day for human knowledge...

 

The Andaman and Nicobar Island chain, nestled in the Bengali Bay, are the site of some of the oldest, continuous human habitation. There are less than 250 Native Andamaran tribesmen left today.

Via several sources, but notably A Blog About History, comes some sad news. Boa, the last known native speaker of the Bo or Aka-Bo Language, has passed away. The loss of any indigenous langauge, plant, people, animal is always a bad thing, but this one was particular devastating, as this language was sort of a linguistic missing link; spoken for nearly 70,000 years. 

Globalization's unforeseen effects: Losing our cultural patrimony throughout the world.

Sadly, the situation across the globe is not just like losing the dodo or the carrier pigeon or the panda; according to UNESCO there are literally 6000 indigenous languages that are on the verge of being extinct. Every time we lose one of those, we lose not only a link to our past, but another piece of the puzzle in reconstructing our habitation and migration on this lonely planet.

To hear the haunting, lilting melody that was the now extinct Aka-Bo language, check out the BBC's article on this story.

.

 

Cats cannot be trusted...

 

 Meow Mix = human souls.

The headline in the Telegraph (UK) makes it sound like this cat has the amazing predictive ability to know when nursing home patients will die. (Cat predicts 50 deaths in RI nursing home).  According to the article,

The tortoiseshell and white cat spends its days pacing from room to room, rarely spending any time with patients except those with just hours to live.
If kept outside the room of a dying patient, Oscar will scratch on the door trying to get in.
When nurses once placed the cat on the bed of a patient they thought close to death, Oscar "charged out" and went to sit beside someone in another room. The cat's judgement was better than that of the nurses: the second patient died that evening, while the first lived for two more days.

Holy shit, did you read that? This cat will scratch and claw its way to get to a "dying" patient; and has done so 50 times. Then, the person mysteriously, suddenly or imminently (and without fail) shuffles off this mortal coil. You know who else sits outside, and stalks your door, never going away until you've rattled out your last breath?

Yep. Him.

 

In any event, its pretty damned uncanny, creepy even. According to the story, this kitty was first documented back in a 2007 New England Journal of Medicine article, when it had merely "predicted" 25 deaths. The doctors think that this is some sort of awesome power; that the felonious felines smell ketones from dying cells, especially from the cancer patients. But, I think Occam's Razor has eluded the fine physicians at the elderly home. What's more likely, a cat that sniffs out the dying, or -as the old folk myth correctly predicted- a cat that kills by stealing your breath?

And, that is very clearly what we are dealing with: 15 pounds of tortoise-shelled, Ted Bundy; Ed Gein with a purr.

Not just a hissing, spitting, nuisance and allergy trigger; a likely murderer.

 .