bluemana
Dutch TV-Show Hosts Appear to Dine on Each Other’s Flesh
Alyssa Newcomb reports on ABC News:
Two Dutch television-show hosts said they had their flesh cooked by a top chef and then dined on each other before a studio audience.
“Nothing is really that special when you’re talking about the taste of the meat,” host Dennis Storm told ABCNews.com. “But it is weird to look into the eyes of a friend when you are chewing on his belly.”
Part of Storm’s left butt cheek was carved out by a surgeon, while his co-host, Valerio Zeno, opted to have a piece of his abdomen removed, they say.
“We went to the butcher, the surgeon and the studio, then we looked at each other and just ate it,” Storm said. “The special thing is, it was his flesh, of course.”
With $666,000 in Federal Research Money, Scientists Determined Prayer Could Not Heal AIDS
Trine Tsouderos reports in the Chicago Tribune:
Thanks to a $374,000 taxpayer-funded grant, we now know that inhaling lemon and lavender scents doesn’t do a lot for our ability to heal a wound. With $666,000 in federal research money, scientists examined whether distant prayer could heal AIDS. It could not.
The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine also helped pay scientists to study whether squirting brewed coffee into someone’s intestines can help treat pancreatic cancer (a $406,000 grant) and whether massage makes people with advanced cancer feel better ($1.25 million). The coffee enemas did not help. The massage did.
NCCAM also has invested in studies of various forms of energy healing, including one based on the ideas of a self-described “healer, clairvoyant and medicine woman” who says her children inspired her to learn to read auras. The cost for that was $104,000.
Norway’s Low-Carb, High-Fat Diet Fad Has Caused a Butter Shortage
Nick Carbone writes in TIME:
Denmark is trying to wean its people off butter by imposing a hefty “fat tax,” but their neighbors across the Skagerrak in Norway can’t get enough of the golden goodness. A diet fad in the Scandinavian country has depleted the nation’s supply of butter. While we’d use the term “diet” lightly, the newest craze is a low-carb, high-fat feeding frenzy that has put a strain on Norway’s butter supply.
“Sales all of a sudden just soared,” Lars Galtung, head of communications at TINE, the country’s biggest farmer-owned cooperative, told Reuters. “Twenty percent in October then thirty percent in November.” The fat fad coupled with a summer that saw a major reduction in milk production spells empty supermarket dairy fridges. This year’s wet summer ruined animal feed, reducing cows’ outputs to 25 million liters less than last year. As a result, this year’s hot Christmas item isn’t the…
Is Fire Protection a Right or a Privilege?
You might have heard about this Tennessee couple lost their home as firefighters watched. John McQuaid asks in Forbes:
As tax revenues have fallen over the past three years of recession, and austerity became the default policy of local governments, the public sector has been steadily hemorrhaging employees and cutting back on services. This is kind of a shadow recession, its effects lagging behind the first and putting a drag on the recovery. Most of us get by on a patchwork of public and private services, with overlapping responsibilities: the fire department (paid for with tax revenues, usually) will put out the fire, while most homeowners have insurance to pay for the damages. These days, both the public and private ends of this arrangement are fraying badly, and gaps are opening up. As the story notes, this is the second time firefighters in South Fulton have let a house burn because the owner…
Giant Godzilla-Shaped Christmas Tree in Shopping Mall
John Farrier writes on Neatorama:
Allegedly, this is a picture of a Godzilla-shaped Christmas tree that appeared in the Aqua City Odaiba shopping mall.
Within minutes, it destroyed the mall.
So, in retrospect, it was a really bad idea …
Dead People Power: UK Crematorium to Sell Power for National Grid
Jasper Copping reports in the Telegraph:
Durham Crematorium wants to install turbines in two of its burners, which would use the heat generated during the cremation process to provide the same amount of electricity as would power 1,500 televisions.
A third burner is to be used to provide heating for the site’s chapel and its offices. The scheme would be the first of its kind in the UK but industry experts say that it could be followed by other similar projects.
Many crematoria are currently replacing their furnaces, to meet government targets on preventing mercury emissions from escaping into the atmosphere. Up to 16 per cent of all mercury emitted in the UK comes from crematoria because of fillings in teeth. Left unchecked, that figure is predicted to rise to 25 per cent by 2020.
The Beginning of the American Fall
By Stephanie McMillian via Cartoon Movement:
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Male Spiders Pay For Sex
Via PhysOrg:
Male nursery web spiders (Pisaura mirabilis) prepare silk-wrapped gifts to give to potential mates. Most gifts contain insects, but some gifts are inedible plant seeds or empty exoskeletons left after the prey has already been eaten (presumably by the male himself!).
Males will also ‘play dead’ if a female moves away and then attempt to re-establish mating. New research published in BioMed Central’s open access journal BMC Evolutionary Biology examines the reproductive success of deceitful males and shows that females are not impressed by worthless gifts.
Male spiders were provided with either a potential gift of a fly, or a worthless item, such as a cotton wool ball, a dry flower head, a prey leftover (previously eaten housefly), or no gift at all. All the gifts were approximately the same size, so the females would not be able to tell what the gift was without unwrapping it. Males that offered any gift…
Every Crazy CIA Plot (You Are Aware of) Originated With One Man: Sidney Gottlieb
Very interesting article from Esther Inglis-Arkell on io9.com:
There are stories that have come to light, over the years, that make the Central Intelligence Agency look like a collection of Looney Tunes shorts. The violence, the slapstick, and the over-the-top ridiculousness of the experiments that have been conducted over the years boggle the mind. They came from the (slightly-boggled) mind of one man: Sidney Gottlieb.
Sidney Gottlieb proved to the world that there are few things more dangerous than a chemist with a metaphysical streak — especially if he collects a few thwarted ambitions. Born in 1918, he was deemed physically unfit for duty in the Second World War. Instead of going to war, he went to the University of Wisconsin, and graduated with a degree in chemistry. His degree didn’t help him into the army, but it did interest the CIA.
The Central Intelligence Agency, barreling into the Cold War, was trying…
7 Billion People and Counting: Concerns From Around the World
Great roundup of opinion found in the Detroit Free Press:
What’s the biggest issue facing humanity as the global population reaches seven billion?
Montreal’s Le Devoir newspaper asked for an answer from correspondents around the world. Here are the replies, including a link to that from the Free Press. Note the recurring theme of fresh water, not a problem here in the Great Lakes region, but a critical issue for millions of people in many regions.
Happy Jesus Ween: Canada Pastor Invents ‘Christian Alternative’ to Halloween
Tamara Gignac reports in the Calgary Herald
Tiny ghosts and goblins hoping for sugary snacks may find something odd in their loot bags this Halloween: a bible.
A Calgary pastor is promoting Jesus Ween, a faith-based alternative to the traditional holiday fare of candy and spooky garb.
Instead of chocolate bars and gummy bears, he’s asking people to shun demonic costumes and instead dole out pocket-sized bibles or other “Christian gifts.”
The idea has caught on in communities across North America, according to Jesus Ween creator Paul Ade. He’s hoping it will bring a new perspective to an otherwise pagan festival, he said.
“I do not associate myself with ghosts, demons, Satan and witches. These are things I want to get rid of,” he said.
“If it’s OK for a child to know about demons, it should also be OK for a child to know about Jesus.”
Are Whales Slaves?
PETA is asking … Hamilton Nolan reports on Gawker:
PETA has filed a lawsuit charging SeaWorld with violating the 13th Amendment by enslaving killer whales. This could be interesting.
The scorn heaped upon this lawsuit in the court of public opinion will be roughly equal to the scorn once heaped upon the ideas of abolition and female suffrage. Somebody please have Jay Leno read some Peter Singer before he starts to discuss this news.
And Now For Something Completely Different …
This is the latest political ad for the leading Republican candidate (according to polls) for the presidency of the United States of America:
FBI Crime Maps Now ‘Pinpoint’ Average Muslims
Spencer Ackerman reports on WIRED’s Danger Room:
It started out as a crimefighting tool. But over the years, an FBI effort known as “geo-mapping” evolved into something more expansive — a method to track Muslim communities, without any suspicion of a crime being committed.
Last month, Danger Room revealed that the FBI was training its agents that religious Muslims tended to be “violent” and that Islamic charity is merely a “funding mechanism for combat.” In response, both the FBI and the Justice Department promised full reviews of their training materials. But the geo-mapping effort indicates that the FBI may have more than just a training problem: The suspicion of ordinary Muslims promoted in those lectures may be spilling over into its counterterrorism tactics.
Last week, the American Civil Liberties Union acquired some of the FBI geo-maps (.pdf), like the one pictured after the jump, through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. Although many of the…
