Tuesday, August 05, 2008 . 8/05/2008
I haven't posted anything in ages, goddamn. For anyone who bothers to read this and/or thinks that I'm amazing and was worrying about me, let me explain why.I (or rather my dad, since I don't know how) had to reformat my computer since it was messed up and would restart every hour or so (more on this in a bit). He reinstalled Windows XP because 2000 is crap and once he did, I reinstalled Firefox and all my games etc, including Oblivion which would always crash. So I downloaded all the mods I used to use and more, which took forever... and then BAM, my hard drive pooped out. Cue ANOTHER reformat and painstakingly getting all these mods for Oblivion again. Good news is that my new hard drive is obviously much, much better, and now I have a new graphics card too. Doing some reading made me realize that the computer restarting constantly meant that my old hard drive was dying and wasn't getting enough power.
So anyway, I've been playing Oblivion quite a bit since now it runs much better than it ever did, and with high settings to boot. And to avoid looking like a shut-in, I'm going to mention that I'm going to be getting a job at the hospital my parents work at soon, perhaps next week. Data collecting at first probably, but she also suggested I could draw blood which would pay about $12 an hour which isn't bad, and I'd only have to work about four days a week. One problem, though. I have blood phobia. BUT being around blood a little every day before I were to get this job could help, and my mom reassured me that almost everyone faints at first. I know that therapists even take the "face your fears" approach so maybe drawing blood will help me conquer blood phobia once and for all.
AND NOW BACK TO YOUR SCHEDULED PROGRAMMING - animal rights activists. They're at it again:
Santa Cruz police labeled the incidents "acts of domestic terrorism."
In the off-campus incident, a well-known molecular biologist and his family, including two small children, were forced to escape a smoke-filled house using a second-story ladder after a firebomb was intentionally set off, police said. One family member sustained injuries requiring brief hospitalization, and police are calling the firebombing, which occurred shortly before 6 a.m., a case of attempted homicide.
About the same time, a car belonging to a researcher parked at a home on campus also was firebombed, destroying the vehicle.
The violence occurred four days after a customer at Caffe Pergolesi, a downtown Santa Cruz coffeehouse, found fliers listing the names, home addresses, home phone numbers and photos of 13 UC-Santa Cruz science researchers and professors. Police believe unidentified animal rights activists created the fliers, which were made to appear as "wanted posters." They warned: "Animal abusers everywhere beware; we know where you live; we know where you work; we will never back down until you end your abuse." City and UC-Santa Cruz police contacted most of the people on the list to warn them.
Read on
Horrible. What these so-called animal rights activists fail to realize is that without animal testing, they most likely wouldn't even be alive. We wouldn't have modern medicine, sunscreen, penicillin, or any of the things we tend to take for granted. Further, researchers must take as much care of these animals as they can.
I can't find the words to say much else as this is all just too insane.
Oh yeah and I just remembered something that has absolutely nothing to do with the above (unless you count vegetarian PETA terrorists) - on Saturday while I was getting my hair done, the hairdresser and her client next to me were talking about how amazing fried chicken tasted and how regular chicken was flavorless. The fuck? I felt like asking "Ever try grilling it? Smoking it? Maybe even, oh I don't know... SEASONING it?" And fried chicken is gross. Get better taste buds, fatass.
Labels: News, Personal, Stupid
1 Comments - Post/view commentsWednesday, July 02, 2008 . 7/02/2008
As some of you might already know, LiveScience isn't always that great (the Science Channel website is much better). But never have I seen an article on it that didn't have anything to do with science whatsoever:Giraffe Helps Camels, Zebras Escape from Circus
Police spokesman Arnout Aben says the animals wandered in a group through a nearby neighborhood for several hours after their 5:30 a.m. breakout.
The animals were back at the circus later Monday after being rounded up by police and circus workers with the assistance of dogs. Aben says neighbors fed some of the animals — which he said was a bad idea — but they were tame and nobody was hurt.
Says Aben: "You have to imagine somebody rubbing his eyes first thing in the morning and saying, 'Am I seeing things or is that 15 camels walking past?'"
Oookay. It may be under "Strange News" but I was under the impression that it was called LiveScience for a reason.
Oh, and was anyone else hoping that the animals would be placed in zoos after escaping instead of being caught again and being dragged back into the circus? I'm not an animal rights guru by any means, nor do I endorse it (I prefer animal welfare), but circuses are pretty nasty places for any animal (humans included). 0 Comments - Post/view comments
Sunday, June 29, 2008 . 6/29/2008
Unlike intelligent design/creationism, science actually progresses:Bird Family Tree Gets Re-Write
"With this study, we learned two major things," said Sushma Reddy, lead author and a fellow at The Field Museum in Chicago, Ill.
"First, appearances can be deceiving. Birds that look or act similar are not necessarily related. Second, much of bird classification and conventional wisdom on the evolutionary relationships of birds is wrong."
The results of the largest ever study of bird genetics are so widespread that the names of dozens of birds will now have to be changed, says the study to be published in Science magazine.
The Early Bird Assembling the Tree-of-Life Research Project has been researching the evolution of all major living groups of birds and has already examined 32 kilobases of DNA data in 19 places of some 169 bird species.
A kilobase in molecular biology is a unit of length for DNA fragments representing 1,000 base pairs of DNA.
Among new discoveries the team found that birds repeatedly adapted to new environments. For example, flamingos and grebes did not evolve from other water birds, while birds that now live on land such as cuckoos did not evolve from other land birds.
Other findings were that, contrary to current thought, daytime hummingbirds evolved from nocturnal nightjars, falcons are not related to hawks and eagles and fast flying ocean birds are not related to pelicans and other water birds.
"We now have a robust evolutionary tree from which to study the evolution of birds and all their interesting features that have fascinated so many scientists and amateurs for centuries," Reddy said.
"Birds exhibit substantial diversity, and using this 'family tree' we can begin to understand how this diversity originated as well as how different bird groups are interrelated."
Pretty cool, huh? 0 Comments - Post/view comments
Wednesday, June 25, 2008 . 6/25/2008
This is just fucking sick.Leonard Yankton, 32, called police and told them the dog had tried to attack him, so he used the machete to fight back.
"It appeared Leonard Yankton tried to chop the dog's head off," said Lincoln Officer Katie Flood.
The pit bull was taken to an animal clinic, where it died. Yankton was arrested and charged with felony animal abuse.
"Apparently, where the injuries were on the dog, it could not have been in attack mode. It appeared the dog had been laying down," Flood said.
What kind of a fucked up piece of shit does this? Who in their right mind could ever willingly kill an innocent animal with no guilt? People are fucked up, and quite frankly, I don't think five years in jail is nearly enough. If this idiot killed a dog, who's to say he'd stop there?
Labels: News
0 Comments - Post/view commentsMonday, June 23, 2008 . 6/23/2008
SANTA MONICA, Calif. - Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television. Some People Are Stupid. Stuff. People I Can Do Without.
George Carlin, who died of heart failure Sunday at 71, leaves behind not only a series of memorable routines, but a legal legacy: His most celebrated monologue, a frantic, informed riff on those infamous seven words, led to a Supreme Court decision on broadcasting offensive language.
The counterculture hero’s jokes also targeted things such as misplaced shame, religious hypocrisy and linguistic quirks — why, he asked, do we drive on a parkway and park on a driveway?
Carlin, who had a history of heart trouble, went into St. John’s Health Center in Santa Monica on Sunday afternoon complaining of chest pain and died later that evening, said his publicist, Jeff Abraham. He had performed as recently as last weekend at the Orleans Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas.
“He was a genius and I will miss him dearly,” Jack Burns, who was the other half of a comedy duo with Carlin in the early 1960s, told The Associated Press.
The actor Ben Stiller called Carlin “a hugely influential force in stand-up comedy. He had an amazing mind, and his humor was brave, and always challenging us to look at ourselves and question our belief systems, while being incredibly entertaining. He was one of the greats.”
Carlin constantly breached the accepted boundaries of comedy and language, particularly with his routine on the “Seven Words” — all of which are taboo on broadcast TV to this day.
When he uttered all seven at a show in Milwaukee in 1972, he was arrested on charges of disturbing the peace, freed on $150 bail and exonerated when a Wisconsin judge dismissed the case, saying it was indecent but citing free speech and the lack of any disturbance.
When the words were later played on a New York radio station, they resulted in a 1978 Supreme Court ruling upholding the government’s authority to sanction stations for broadcasting offensive language during hours when children might be listening.
“So my name is a footnote in American legal history, which I’m perversely kind of proud of,” he told The Associated Press earlier this year.
Labels: News
0 Comments - Post/view commentsSaturday, June 07, 2008 . 6/07/2008
I can't fucking believe this.A bill has been introduced to the University of Michigan to teach creationism.
From BadAstronomy.com:
They can flush that reputation away if State Rep. Moolenaar and Senator Hardiman get their way; they have introduced a bill into the state legislation to allow the teaching of creationism.
Oh, they won’t phrase it that way, of course. They’ll talk about "academic freedom", and "controversial scientific subjects", but what they really mean is that they want to teach fundamentalist religion in school. It’s that simple.
And guess what political party these guys call home? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller*?
Yeah, they’re Republicans.
Remember when that party was all for defending the Constitution, and not for undermining the First Amendment? Incredible.
We might as well just teach witchcraft alongside medicine for all creationism has to offer. So please do as this guy says:
Wednesday, May 28, 2008 . 5/28/2008
With a name like T. rex, you'd expect to be safe from even the fiercest paleo-bullies. Turns out, ancient, flying reptiles could have snacked on Tyrannosaurus Rex babies and other landlubbing runts of the dinosaur world.
A new study reveals a group of flying reptiles that lived during the Age of Dinosaurs some 230 million to 65 million years ago did not catch prey in flight, but rather stalked them on land.
Until now, paleontologists pictured the so-called "winged lizards" or pterosaurs as skim-feeders. In this vision, the creatures would have flown over lakes and oceans grabbing fish from the water's surface, much as gulls do today.
The new findings, detailed this week online in the journal PLoS ONE, don't ground the animals totally.
"In our hypothesis, flight is primarily a locomotive method," said co-researcher Mark Witton of the University of Portsmouth in England. "They're just using it to get from point A to point B. We think the majority of their lives, when they're feeding and reproducing, that's all being done on the ground rather than in the air."
To uncover these feeding habits, Witton and Portsmouth colleague Darren Naish analyzed fossils of a group of toothless pterosaurs called azhdarchids, which are much larger on average than other pterosaurs. For example, one of the largest azhdarchids, Quetzalcoatlus, weighed about 550 pounds (250 kilograms) with a wingspan of more than 30 feet (10 meters) and a height comparable to a giraffe.
Witton and Naish learned that more than 50 percent of the azhdarchid fossils had been found inland. Other skeletal features, including long hind limbs and a stiff neck, also didn't fit with a mud-prober or skim-feeder.
"All the details of their anatomy, and the environment their fossils are found in, show that they made their living by walking around, reaching down to grab and pick up animals and other prey," Naish said.
A skim-feeder, such as a gull, trawls its lower jaw through the water, eventually smacking into a fish or shrimp and pulling it from the water. "Regardless of what they hit, the impact force drives the head and neck underneath the body and into the water, thus requiring a hugely flexible neck," Witton said.
This is the case with gulls and pelicans (which are considered plunge divers), but azhdarchid's neck, despite potentially reaching nearly 10 feet (3 meters) in length, was super stiff. "Whatever these animals were doing, it had to involve minimal neck action," Witton said.
Their tiny feet also ruled out wading in the water or probing the soft mud for food. "Some of these animals are absolutely enormous," Witton told LiveScience. "If you go wading out into this soft mud, and you weigh a quarter of a ton, and you've got these dinky little feet, you're going to just sink in."
The reptile's head also was pretty lengthy, up to 10 feet (3 meters). So Witton said an azhdarchid would only have to dip its head part way to the ground, enough for the tip of its jaws to touch down, to hunt and feed on terrestrial prey. Back before they went extinct 65 million years ago during the event that also killed off non-avian dinosaurs, these pterosaurs could lunch on animals ranging from small bird-like Velicoraptors to T. rex babies to amphibians. [Source:LiveScience]
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Tuesday, May 13, 2008 . 5/13/2008
Einstein letter calls Bible ‘pretty childish’
A letter being auctioned in London this week adds more fuel to the long-simmering debate about the Nobel Prize-winning physicist's religious views. In the note, written the year before his death, Einstein dismissed the idea of God as the product of human weakness and the Bible as "pretty childish."
The letter, handwritten in German, is being sold by Bloomsbury Auctions on Thursday and is expected to fetch between $12,000 and $16,000.
Einstein, who helped unravel the mysteries of the universe with his theory of relativity, expressed complex and arguably contradictory views on faith, perceiving a universe suffused with spirituality while rejecting organized religion.
The letter up for sale, written to philosopher Eric Gutkind in January 1954, suggests his views on religion did not mellow with age.
In it, Einstein said that "the word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish."
"For me," he added, "the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions."
Addressing the idea that the Jews are God's chosen people, Einstein wrote that "the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them."
Bloomsbury spokesman Richard Caton said the auction house was "100 percent certain" of the letter's authenticity. It is being offered at auction for the first time, by a private vendor.
Quirky beliefs
John Brooke, emeritus professor of science and religion at Oxford University, said the letter lends weight to the notion that "Einstein was not a conventional theist" — although he was not an atheist, either.
"Like many great scientists of the past, he is rather quirky about religion, and not always consistent from one period to another," Brooke said.
Born to a Jewish family in Germany in 1879, Einstein said he went through a devout phase as a child before beginning to question conventional religion at the age of 12.
In later life, he expressed a sense of wonder at the universe and its mysteries — what he called a "cosmic religious feeling" — and famously said: "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."
[Source: MSNBC]
Whether the letter is authentic or not remains to be seen I suppose, but if it's real, then awesome. 2 Comments - Post/view comments
Thursday, April 10, 2008 . 4/10/2008
Earth's first animal was the ocean-drifting comb jelly, not the simple sponge, according to a new find that has shocked scientists who didn't imagine the earliest critter could be so complex.
The mystery of the first animal denizen of the planet can only be inferred from fossils and by studying related animals today. To get to the bottom of that, scientists analyzed massive volumes of genetic data to define the earliest splits at the base of the animal tree of life.
The tree of life is a hierarchy of evolutionary relationships among species that shows which groups split off on their own evolutionary path first.
The new study surprisingly found that the comb jelly was the first animal to diverge from the base of the tree, not the less complex sponge, which had previously been given the honor.
"This was a complete shocker," said study team member Casey Dunn of Brown University in Rhode Island. "So shocking that we initially thought something had gone very wrong."
Dunn's team checked and re-checked their results and came up with the same result every time: the comb jelly came first. The results are detailed in the April 10 issue of the journal Nature, a journal that, like most respected journals, requires other scientists review a paper prior to publication.
Unlike sponges, comb jellies have connective tissues and a nervous system, and so are more complex. Though squishy and tentacled, they are not, however, true jellyfish as they lack the classic bell-shaped body and characteristic stinging cells.
The finding was unexpected because evolutionary biologists had thought that less complex animals split off and evolved separately first. Dunn says that two evolutionary scenarios can explain why the comb jellies would actually have been first among animals. The first is that the comb jelly evolved its complexity independent of other animals after branching off to forge its own path.
The second is that the sponge evolved its simpler form from the more complex form. This second possibility underscores the fact that "evolution is not necessarily just a march towards increased complexity," Dunn said.
Though scientists can say which animal branched off first, they can't date precisely when this early comb jelly diverged away. "Unfortunately, we don't have fossils of the oldest comb jelly," Dunn said. "Therefore, there is no way to date the earliest jelly and determine when it diverged."
Though comb jellies are a common creature in the seas today, these modern specimens likely look very different from their early ancestors.
Dunn and his team hope that their approach will fill other gaps in the tree of life, including where the branches of many of today's species belong.
Other researchers involved in the study, funded by the National Science Foundation: Gonzalo Giribet of Harvard University, Mark Martindale of the University of Hawaii and Ward Wheeler of the American Museum of Natural History.
[Source: LiveScience]
Aaaaannd cue the dumbass creationists getting all over this. 0 Comments - Post/view comments
Monday, March 17, 2008 . 3/17/2008
I don't know about you, but I find it rather annoying that there are people out there who have the nerve to take advantage of the gullible. I also find it annoying that there even are gullible people out there. Most people have probably heard this already but the makers of Airborne are offering refunds to people who bought (into) it:Concocted by second-grade teacher Victoria Knight McDowell and her screenwriter husband Thomas Rider McDowell, Airborne promised to “boost your immune system to help your body combat germs” and instructed users to “take it at the first sign of a cold symptom or before entering crowded, potentially germ-infested environments.” The company’s folksy “created by a school teacher!” slogan and insistence that the product be stocked with real cold, cough, and flu medicines instead of with dietary supplements, helped turn the company into an overnight success, as did an appearance by Victoria Knight McDowell on the Oprah Winfrey Show.
But in February 2006, ABC News revealed on Good Morning America that Airborne’s much-touted lone clinical trial was actually conducted without any doctors or scientists, just a “two-man operation started up just to do the Airborne study.” Soon after the plaintiff notified Airborne of his intent to file suit in March 2006, the company stopped mentioning the study and began toning down the overt cold-curing claims in favor of vague “immunity boosting” language. Next, in 2007, the Federal Trade Commission and a group of state attorneys general began investigating the various “cold busting” claims that Airborne has made since its launch in 1999. Those investigations are continuing.
Airborne’s basic formula contains Vitamins A, C, and E, as well as other nutrients common in multivitamins; the amino acids glutamine and lysine, and an “herbal extract proprietary blend.” CSPI cautions that Airborne may provide too much vitamin A, since just two pills provide 10,000 IU—the maximum safe level for a day—and the package directs customers to take three per day. In addition to several flavors of the original formula, other Airborne products include “Power Pixies,” an artificially sweetened powder version for children; Airborne Seasonal, which is described as a “non-drowsy formula containing a nutritional blend which promotes normal histamine levels”; Airborne On-the-Go; and Airborne Nighttime.
“There’s no credible evidence that what’s in Airborne can prevent colds or protect you from a germy environment,” said CSPI senior nutritionist David Schardt, who reviewed Airborne’s claims. “Airborne is basically an overpriced, run-of-the-mill vitamin pill that’s been cleverly, but deceptively, marketed.”
Read on...
Now, I guess I could understand if someone bought into Airborne's claims simply because there is so much pseudoscience/quackery out there that it can be hard to tell what's real and what isn't, and not everyone is interested in science or knows about the placebo effect. But when there is evidence that it doesn't actually work, as well as an explanation as to why, and you STILL think it does.. well then there is no hope for you. From LiveScience:
Last week the makers of Airborne, an herbal supplement once claimed to help prevent and cure the common cold, agreed to pay over $23 million to settle a false advertising class action lawsuit.
Despite a lack of scientific evidence that the remedy worked as initially advertised, many of Airborne’s defenders believe that the supplement is effective, and that people wouldn't use the product if it didn't work. There was a similar reaction earlier in the winter when the efficacy of children's cough medicines was questioned.
The idea that people wouldn't continue to do things if they didn't work is very common, and on a superficial level it makes some sense. It's also absolutely false.
People do things all the time that don't work—and they do them again and again. The problem is that it's often not clear whether something "works" or not, especially when it comes to health issues. A body is not like a car, for example. A car either works or does not work, and the remedies taken to fix a problem either work or do not work. This is pretty clear-cut.
Personal experience
Medical issues are far more ambiguous and subjective. We know, for example, that the placebo effect can reduce the pain that a person feels even though they were not actually given a painkiller. Let's look a little more closely at the testimonials for Airborne, as posted by users for an ABCNews.com story:
One wrote, "I used it and works for me. I used to suffer from colds, but for some reason taking Airborne has reduced the frequency significantly." Another, reflecting a touch of conspiracy theory, wrote "Airborne has always worked for me and my family. It may not be FDA approved, but it still works. Someone is afraid that it really works and got scared that it just might be a good thing."
How do the Airborne users know that the product worked? Because they didn't get a cold? Maybe, but not everyone catches a cold when they expect to, even when others around them are sick. We (and they) don't know how many colds—if any—the person would have gotten if they had not taken the herbal remedy. If they used Airborne and didn't get a cold, they will likely assume the supplement prevented it. On the other hand, if they used the remedy and did catch a cold, they may still believe that the medicine worked, assuming that the pills probably prevented two or three other colds! As decades of research on placebos shows, whether the preventive measures actually work or not has little to do with whether people believe they do.
Danger of false cures
While colds are miserable but pretty minor, a mistaken belief in the efficacy of medical treatments has killed many people.
People used to believe that disease was caused by an imbalance of fluids in the body called humors. There were four humors: yellow bile, black bile, phlegm, and blood. Working under this premise, physicians treated patients by trying to restore balance among the humors. Bloodletting was a common treatment (veins would be opened with knives and leeches applied to sick patients), along with the use of laxatives and purgatives. A minority of patients (those who didn't die from severe blood loss or infection) recovered and thanked the doctors for their effective treatment.
Airborne's CEO, Elise Donahue, claimed that "Airborne ... helps your body build a healthy immune system. When you have a healthy immune system, then it allows your body, on its own, to fight off germs."
It is certainly true that having a strong immune system helps fight off disease. But there are many ways to boost your immune system, and most are cheap or free. Getting enough exercise and sleep are two ways, and (unlike Airborne's pills) they are proven and don't cost a dime.
Speaking of multi-vitamin pills and supplements, it also kind of annoys me to see people who say, "Oh, I almost forgot to take my multi-vitamin!" We're talking about fit, healthy individuals here, people who eat three times a day. Multi-vitamins are meant either for children, people with vitamin deficiencies, the really ill and/or disabled, and old people. They are for people who can't take care of themselves properly. I am willing to bet that most people who take multi-vitamins get more than enough vitamins from the food they eat. And yeah, there is such a thing as taking too much of a vitamin. All in all, you're supposed to consult a doctor (not a quack, i.e a "naturopath") to determine whether or not you even need to take a supplement. More info can be found here. 1 Comments - Post/view comments
Saturday, March 08, 2008 . 3/08/2008
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Pets Pampered with People Products
Dozens of companies — from Harley-Davidson and Jeep to Omaha Steaks and Newman’s Own Organics — now produce pet clothes, toys and treats.
A slowing economy isn’t even worrying companies about jumping into the sector.
“I really have no concerns at all at this point,” says Steven Shweky, president of New York City-based Pet Head, a dog grooming line by Bed Head. “I think [owners] will spend on their pets before they’ll spend on themselves.”
Pets these days are also treated to music therapy and stem cell therapy. Their owners increasingly use pet funeral homes at that special time.
Recent figures released by American Pet Products Manufacturers Association (APPMA,) a trade group based in Greenwich, Conn., shows spending on pets topped $41 billion in 2007 — that’s more than what consumers pay annually to satisfy their sweet tooth for candy.
With pet obsession at an all-time high, the APPMA is forecasting 5.5 percent growth this year.
Paul Mitchell goes to the dogs
Pet Head’s recent launch of more than 300 products includes apparel and accessories as well as shampoos, crème rinses and sprays.
Products are sold in beauty salons nationwide — a sales strategy also used by John Paul Pet, popular grooming supplies created by John Paul DeJoria, co-founder of Paul Mitchell hair care products.
“There’s one dog for every two people in America so your chances of hitting a pet owner [at a beauty salon] are pretty good,” explained Pet Head’s Shweky.
Grooming supplies use similar packaging to Bed Head with bright, bold colors and quirky names. There’s Fears for Tears (tearless shampoo), Dirty Talk (deodorizing shampoo) and Furball, a detangling spray.
Doggie shampoos share the same fragrance as the human cleansers, and are free of chemical additives such as parabens, petroleum derivatives and propylene glycol.
“We’ve really raised the bar in the pet business to mimic what’s going on in the human side, “said Shweky.
Better bowls
Another company eyeing the pet industry as an additional source of revenue is Dexas International, a housewares manufacturer in Coppell, Texas.
The 40-year-old company recently introduced Popware for Pets, a line of collapsible rubber bowls for home or travel.
“This was a natural cross-over,” said John Hollingsworth who developed the company’s space saving pet products. Dexas has long manufactured collapsible measuring cups, colanders and funnels.
The Popware for Pets line includes turquoise and pink bowls that fit into a chocolate brown stand — a color scheme that’s hot in both the housewares and pet industries, he said. When not in use, the dishwasher safe unit flattens to 1.5 inches.
For pups on the go, the company’s lightweight travel bowl easily clips to a collar or leash. It holds two cups of water and collapses to a slender quarter of an inch.
Soft or firm?
Serta mattress is banking on brand image to sell dog beds, which were introduced for the first time last month at a pet industry trade show. The recycled polyester filled beds, made in the United States, feature removable covers for easy washing.
“The consumer has confidence in Serta for their own sleep,” said Randy Spence, president of nVision Marketing in North Carolina, which heads production and sales of the dog beds. “And they certainly want that for their animals as well.”
Work is already under way to add to the line by incorporating features normally found in specialty mattresses, such as memory foam and orthopedic support.
Those human-grade dog beds will hit store shelves later this year, he said, with a price tag of around $200.
[Source: LiveScience]
This is so fucking stupid. What's the world coming to when people care more about treating their pets like humans than actually caring about other humans? You know, like those homeless ones? Dogs don't need clothes on their backs; that is what fur is for. They don't need mattresses. PEOPLE DO. This also brings to mind all of those fatasses that eat enough food to feed Africa. 0 Comments - Post/view comments
Thursday, February 21, 2008 . 2/21/2008
Tehran, 19 Feb.(AKI) - A 70-year-old man has been sentenced by an Iranian judge to four months in jail and 30 lashes for going out on the street with his dog.
The incident took place in Shahr Rey, a suburb of Tehran when the owner of the dog was caught by a police who quickly handcuffed the man. He was later charged by an Islamic judge for "disturbing the public order".
The sentence, seems to want to panic the owners of dogs that despite repeated warnings by the police, continue to defy the authorities by taking their dogs outside their homes.
President Ahmadinejad recently provoked debate in Iran about dog ownership when he took possession of four guard dogs, bought in Germany at a cost of 110,000 euros each.
The dogs are at the centre of a theological controversy because Islam considers dogs to be impure.
For this reason, the government has banned owners of domestic animals from taking them on the streets of the city, and owners risk fines or the 'detention' of their animals in a pound.
"The purchase of these dogs was authorized by a fatwa issued by several ayatollahs who approved the use of these animals if the only goal was to guarantee personal security and not infringe on any religious rule," said Iran's semi-official news agency Fars.
[Source]
Okay, what the hell? I mean honestly. Even assuming that their god was real, it still doesn't make any sense. Why would he create dogs in the first place if they're unclean? But more importantly, when will countries like Iran ever come into the 21st century?
Labels: News, Pets, Religion, Stupid
0 Comments - Post/view commentsWednesday, February 20, 2008 . 2/20/2008
A total eclipse of the moon tonight is expected to delight skywatchers across the United States and much of the world.
It will be the last total lunar eclipse until 2010.
The easy-to-watch event will play out in several stages as Earth's shadow blocks sunlight from shining on the moon. Weather permitting, the eclipse will be visible from all locations in the United States, according to NASA. Along the Oregon and northern California coasts, the moon will rise during the early stages of the eclipse, however.
When to watch
Eclipses occur only at full moon when the sun, Earth and moon are in a perfect line. Because the moon's orbit around Earth is not perfectly aligned with the plane of Earth's orbit around the sun, eclipses do not occur at every full moon.
The moon will enter Earth's umbral shadow (the full shadow) at 8:43 p.m. ET (that's 7:43 p.m. Central, 6:43 p.m. Mountain and 5:43 p.m. Pacific) on Wednesday, Feb. 20. It will appear as though an ever-larger bite is being taken out of the moon.
Some 78 minutes later, the moon will slip into full eclipse. About 51 minutes later, a bright scallop will appear as the moon starts emerging. It will be completely out of the umbral shadow at 9:09 p.m. Pacific time, which is 12:09 a.m. ET on Thursday morning.
For Europe and Africa, the eclipse is a predawn Thursday event, with the moon starting entry to the umbral shadow at 1:43 Greenwich (or Universal) Time.
What you'll see
Look for the moon to possibly turn red during the total portion of the eclipse. "The exact color that the moon appears depends on the amount of dust and clouds in the atmosphere," according to a NASA statement. "If there are extra particles in the atmosphere, from say a recent volcanic eruption, the moon will appear a darker shade of red."
The redness occurs because while the moon is in total shadow, some light from the sun passes through Earth's atmosphere and is bent toward the moon. The effect is to cast all the planet's sunrises and sunsets on the moon.
Christopher Columbus famously used a blood-red eclipse in 1504 to frighten natives on Jamaica into feeding his crew.
The planet Saturn and the bright star Regulus will form a broad triangle with the moon's ruddy disk, according to Joe Rao, SPACE.com's Skywatching Columnist.
You don't need any special equipment to watch a lunar eclipse. Comfortable chairs and warm clothing are good ideas. A telescope will bring out interesting details of the lunar surface, and even a small telescope will reveal Saturn's stunning rings.
[Source: LiveScience]
Here's to hoping the sky will be clear tonight!
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I just got the book The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan. I've only read a few pages so far since I read better at night when everything's quiet, but I can already tell that I'm going to enjoy it a lot. What's sad is that I've noticed it was published in 1996 - the year Sagan died. I often find myself wishing that he could somehow come back to life, because truly, from what I've read he seems to have been a great person. I guess I'm kind of greatful that I was only six when he passed away.. but now I'll have to deal with hearing in the news when the time comes for other great minds such as Richard Dawkins. That's one of the reasons I'd like to go to Oxford - so I could get a chance to meet him [Dawkins]. Of course that'll make it ten times harder for me when he dies, but I'll be kicking myself in the foot for not taking a chance to go to, or at least visit that college.
One of the reviews for Demon Haunted World says that Sagan was very gentle when it came to religion, and that's how I want to be. As I've said in a previous post, it does next to nothing to be intolerant and rude, although for some people that's the only way to get through to them.
Also, looking back at old posts in this blog and at all the books I had on ghosts and astrology, I think it's amazing I managed to come through and be skeptical of everything. It's like a visual time-line of my journey to "enlightenment", I guess you could say. 2 Comments - Post/view comments
Tuesday, February 19, 2008 . 2/19/2008
I don't usually report personal stuff about me but.. this is pretty big. I have this sort of "second ankle" on both my feet, like a bony bump just below my ankles. When I went to get a physical the nurse said it could be an enlargement of a bone there but she didn't know for sure. So since my parents work at a hospital I'm going to be going with them to work next Tuesday to get it checked out, and if possible I'd like to have them removed. The thought of surgery though is scary.. I'd have to use crutches or be in a wheelchair and be crippled for a couple weeks or months or something.Yeah I'm a freak.
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With an armored head and a mammoth 16-inch body, it wasn't quite the frog prince. Scientists have discovered the remains of what might have been the largest and fattest frog ever to have lived on Earth.
A team of researchers unearthed the fossilized frog in Madagascar. Dating from about 65 million to 70 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period, the frog is 3.5 inches longer than the largest living frog, the goliath frog of West Africa.
The scientists named the creature Beelzebufo ampinga, or "devil frog," because its incredible size, frightening appearance and predatory nature made them call it "the frog from hell," said Stony Brook University paleontologist David Krause, who led the team that discovered it.
Fierce predators
"They are just these big round blobs, basically all mouth and stomach," Krause told LiveScience. "They were sit-and-wait, ambush predators."
They didn't have very long legs, so they probably didn't hop around much. It was more likely they would let prey come to them. The scientists think they feasted on smaller frogs, lizards and mice.
"When you consider its size, I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility that it could have consumed some hatchling dinosaurs," Krause said. The largest living frog on Madagascar today, at just over 4 inches long, "would have been a nice hors d'oeuvre for Beelzebufo."
The discovery will be reported on-line this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Read more..
I love biology. From the giant crocodiles of the past to Tiktaalik, it never fails to be interesting to me.
Labels: Biology, Evolution, News, Personal
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when will this world wake up and stop believing bold faced lies that come out of a scientists butt who thinks they know everything? if you want to know what killed the dinosaurs, do your research from the only source that matters: the bible.
yea ok, i know that struck a bad chord with many of you out there and probably made quite a number of you expell a mocking scoff, but how many lies does the "scientific community" need to spew out before you start realizing they're just making this baloney up?
Giant birds didn't kill the dinosaurs, the great flood back in noah's time did. after the flood happened, the o2 content in the air was drastically reduced from all of the moisture that was removed from the atmosphere. as a result of that event, the breathing airways in the dinosaurs nasal cavity, trachea, and lungs were too thin to suck in that low amount of oxygen (as would be the case if a human today went from sea level up to 30,000 feet and was suddenly expected to be able to breathe easily), and therefore, they all suffocated shorly after.
i look forward to the day when science is based on the facts and scientific PROOF rather than hocus pocus wizardry that conjures up giant dodo birds that eat dinosaurs.
one more note, if you're at all scientifically inclined, watch the movie Expelled. that is all.
You're speechless after reading that, aren't you? Well, so am I. Almost.
No where in the bible does it mention dinosaurs being killed during this non-existent flood (who's making up shit now?). No where in that article did I see anything about those giant reptiles killing off all the dinosaurs. And where did he get the idea that scientists made this creature up? Even further, what the bloody hell is a creationist doing on a website like LiveScience, a place including, oh I dunno, evidence and reality?
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go decide whether I want to laugh or cry.