While researchers have long shown that tall people earn more than their shorter counterparts, it's not only social discrimination that accounts for this inequality -- tall people are just smarter than their height-challenged peers, a new study finds. - yahoo
Yes, don't tell anyone, but we tall people have been having secret group meetings for years. We communicate with secret smart people symbols, metaphors. We have plans.
"Israel dropped cluster bombs -- anti-personnel weapons that spray bomblets over a wide area- on at least 170 villages in their 34-day offensive, according to Tekimiti Gilbert, operations chief of the UN Mine Action Coordination Centre in Lebanon. The UN group is attempting to map the 285 unexploded cluster bomb sites that have so far been identified in southern Lebanon, said Dalya Farran, a spokesperson for the group." - ctv
...State Department official Gonzalo Gallegos said the investigation began after human rights groups complained that cluster weapons had been found across Lebanon and were responsible for many civilian deaths. ... In 1978, 1979 and 1981, the State Department notified Congress that Israel ``may have violated'' U.S.-Israeli agreements by using U.S. weapons for purposes other than defense, according to the Congressional Research Service.But the probes did not result in any penalties against Israel.
In 1982, the Reagan administration suspended sales of cluster bombs to Israel for six years after a congressional investigation found that Israel had violated agreements on their use during its invasion of Lebanon.
During President Bush's first term, the State Department investigated whether Israel misused U.S.-made Apache helicopters in its assassinations of Palestinian leaders. State Department officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose internal debates, said lower-level officials had determined that Israel had violated its agreements with the United States, but, the officials said, the finding was quashed at a more senior level. - mercurynews
"Each M-26 rocket disperses 644 M-77 "bomblets" over an area roughly 350 feet by 650 feet. Each individual M-77 -- essentially a small grenade -- is stabilized by a ribbon." - stratf
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A few years back we executed a mission that involved repeating time. Ever since then I've wanted to try something that stopped or slowed down time. How would people react if they found themselves surrounded by people moving forward at a different rate or time (or not moving at all)? ... On a Saturday afternoon, around 225 people showed up at the meeting point in Madison Square Park, a short walk from the Home Depot.... Amazingly, about thirty seconds before the freezing in place began, the Home Depot PA system started playing Jewel's 2001 hit, "Standing Still." Really. Several agents came up to me after the mission asking how I had gotten that song to play. I wish we were clever enough to sneak into the Home Depot back rooms and insert a CD into their stereo, but it was honestly just a freaky coincidence.
I was on TV locally in 2003 as the first Sacramento Area Flash Mob coordinator. I got a bunch of people to wear tinfoil hats and walk from the Crest Theatre to the Park where some music was playing. Great random strangeness.
Health officials have issued another warning about lung infections from raw or undercooked freshwater crabs after diners at two more Orange County restaurants succumbed to parasites.
Orange County health officials said four people have now been sickened after eating imported Sawagani crabs. No infections have been reported outside the county. The tiny Japanese river crabs can carry a parasite that migrates from the intestines to the lungs, causing lung fluke infection.
Symptoms include coughing, diarrhea and breathing difficulties. The owner of the sushi restaurants where the crabs were served said they're usually deep-fried in tempura batter. But he said some were eaten live by diners who started a "Fear Factor" style tradition in which they reach into the sushi bar and devour live seafood as friends cheer them on.
I'd say this is Karma. We should have by now evolved past eating other animals while they are still alive. As a result, the parasites eat the humans alive who eat the crabs alive. Karma.
August 25, 2006 (GENESEO, Ill.) - When farmer Jim Stahl approached the Henry County Sheriff's Department to report mysterious damage to his soybeans, officers decided to have a little fun. The department issued a news release describing the strange crop circles. The release then says, in part, "So, if anyone happens to see a U-F-O or any other suspicious vehicle with soybeans attached, please call the sheriff's office." But for some researchers, the crop circles in Stahl's beans are no laughing matter. BLT Research, a nonprofit group based in Massachusetts, sent a member out to gather samples from his field. BLT has been investigating crop circles for 15 years. President Nancy Talbott says the group believes low-energy plasma from outer space causes the crop formations.
Philips 3D displays using WOWvx technology takes the immersive experience one step further, delivering stunning out-of-screen 3D effects without the need for special glasses or filters.
?Philips 3D displays based on Philips WOWvx technology is just the latest in a series of innovations,? said Jos Swillens, CEO of Philips 3D Solutions. ?3D-TV is the next frontier for those in the professional display market seeking differentiation to gain a competitive edge, and for consumers seeking the next level in the immersive entertainment experience. Our 3D displays meet that demand for innovation and performance. Best of all, we have accomplished this without the need for special headgear, and with the ability for multiple people to enjoy the same 3D experience at the same time. SID attendees will enjoy a demo of this innovative 3D experience using a selection of animation, gaming, and stereoscopic video content.? - philips
Aztecs, evidence shows that the Aztecs held a group of prisoners and ate them, a few per day, over the course of six months."On hearing of the massacre, Cortes renamed [Zultepec as] the town Tecuaque -- meaning "where people were eaten" in the indigenous Nahuatl language -- and sent an army to wipe out its people. " - yahoo
[36 year old] Sanju Bhagat's stomach was once so swollen he looked nine months pregnant and could barely breathe. ...
Living in the city of Nagpur, India, Bhagat said he'd felt self-conscious his whole life about his big belly. But one night in June 1999, his problem erupted into something much larger than cosmetic worry.
An ambulance rushed the 36-year-old farmer to the hospital. Doctors thought he might have a giant tumor, so they decided to operate and remove the source of the bulge in his belly.
... One doctor recalled that day in the operating room. "He just put his hand inside and he said there are a lot of bones inside," she said. "First, one limb came out, then another limb came out. Then some part of genitalia, then some part of hair, some limbs, jaws, limbs, hair." Inside Bhagat's stomach was a strange, half-formed creature that had feet and hands that were very developed. Its fingernails were quite long.
"We were horrified. We were confused and amazed," Mehta said.
A Mutated Body Within a Body
At first glance, it may look as if Bhagat had given birth. Actually, Mehta had removed the mutated body of Bhagat's twin brother from his stomach. Bhagat, they discovered, had one of the world's most bizarre medical conditions ? fetus in fetu. It is an extremely rare abnormality that occurs when a fetus gets trapped inside its twin. The trapped fetus can survive as a parasite even past birth by forming an umbilical cordlike structure that leaches its twin's blood supply until it grows so large that it starts to harm the host, at which point doctors usually intervene.
According to Mehta, there are fewer than 90 cases of fetus in fetu recorded in medical literature. - abcnews
A man from Bloemfontein survived a 1?000m fall by landing in a ploughed field after his parachute failed to open properly while he was executing his first jump. Shocked family and friends stood watching at Tempe airport in Bloemfontein as Benno Jacobs, 35, struggled to disentangle the ropes of his parachute while hurtling through the air at a dizzying speed. "As it was my first jump, I thought it was only a bad jump, and not a fall," said the father of two. Jacobs didn't even break a bone or tear a ligament. He suffered a few bruises, a bruised lung, a swollen lip and an aching body. - news24
"MADONNA and her husband Guy Ritchie have been lobbying the government and nuclear industry over a scheme to clean up radioactive waste with a supposedly magic Kabbalah fluid.
The couple, both followers of the Jewish spiritual movement, approached Downing Street, Whitehall and British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) promoting a ?mystical? liquid tested in a Ukrainian lake.
The response?
?It was like a crank call . . . the scientific mechanisms and principles were just bollocks, basically,? one official said.
Which other country in the world would provide an official response which was so concise, accurate and to the point?" - worstall
US astronomers say they have found the first direct evidence for the mysterious stuff called dark matter.Dark matter - which does not emit or reflect enough light to be "seen" - is thought to make up 25% of the Universe. By contrast, the ordinary matter we can see is believed to make up no more than about 5% of our Universe. ...
WHAT THE UNIVERSE IS MADE OF
What the researchers have done is, in effect, to identify the gravitational "signature" of dark matter. This signature was created by dark matter and ordinary matter being wrenched apart by the immense collision of two large galaxy clusters.
Study leader Doug Clowe, from the University of Arizona, said: "This provides the first direct proof that dark matter must exist and that it must make up the majority of the matter in the Universe."? - bbc
"Calls streamed in to local police stations during the night after an unidentifiedflying object darted over the night skies in northern Norway. A top astronomer, though, thinks it was another meteorite. ... "It was colored white, green and gold, and lights seemed to blow off it like it was a sparkler," said one observer, Andre Gr?nmo. "It looked like it was a comet, and it was around four- to five times larger than a plane, and it flew much faster."
Slettli said others described a "green, lighted ball with a tail" that flew low. He said neither the Defense Department's radar station or its rocket facility at And?ya, nor the tower at Evenes airport, which serves Harstad and Narvik, had picked up the object." - aftenposten
Trixie Says: August 18th, 2006 at 10:59 am So, I?ve got a scientific question that I?m hoping you can answer?.are human pheromones real? If so, what distance are they able to travel?
Good question. Well, one article I found (NEWSCIENTIST, June 2003) says human pheromone sensing ability ended due to a genetic mutation. This happened about 23 million years ago. So, one group says we haven't been able to pick up on pheromones for millions of years... Then again, this article (NATURE, 1998) says they have proof of human pheromones. The meeting highlights from the Women's Sexual Health Annual Meeting held March 2006 says yes, there are human pheromones:
"Dennerstein and colleagues[14] (1994) had demonstrated that heightened sexual desire precedes ovulation by 6 days. McClintock and colleagues have also demonstrated that heightened sexual desire precedes ovulation by 6 days.[15] McClintock and colleagues then showed that after 2 cycles of exposure to pads from breastfeeding women, there was a 22% increase in reported sexual desire and an equally large increase in reported sexual fantasies. ...
These compounds, such as androstadienone, are found in commercially marketed pheromones. In the experiment described, this compound prevented women arriving for laboratory testing from becoming irritable and from experiencing a drop in positive mood.[16] It also increased sympathetic tone and cortisol. Notably, however, the compound only had these effects when the women were tested by a man, and not by another woman. The women responded emotionally and physiologically to the man, and the androstadienone modulated their responses. They did not respond to the women, and in this social situation, the androstadienone had no effect..."
So yes, anderostadinone is a real human pheromone as far as I can tell. Read this study for some interesting details. The distance it works would be the distance any smells can travel. Depends on the wind, etc.
What does "works" mean? Will bottled pheromones help your sex life? This pheromone seems to make make women feel more comfortable and happy, but we haven't found anything yet that makes women "go wild" with lust. Looking at hormones, Androgen in women increases sexual motivation but "not on sexual activity per se." Trazodone (Desyrel) seems to increase female sex drive and sometimes produces spontaneous orgasm, but there are some dangerous heart effects. One study from 2004 was titled, "Spontaneous orgasm started with venlafaxine and continued with citalopram." Citalopram may have caused one woman to die.
I'd stay away from all of this artificial junk... but for $89.95/bottle, I'll sell my 100% natural manly armpit pheromones. ;-)
Tooth decay affects about 5 billion people worldwide. ... A chewing gum containing good bacteria that can destroy the bad bacteria that cause tooth decay could be in the shops soon. The gum is one of several products being developed by German chemical company BASF using the bacteria Lactobacillus, which is normally found in live yoghurt.BASF discovered a new strain of lactobacillus called L anti-caries, which binds to Strepptococcus mutans (S
Mutans), the bacteria responsible for tooth decay.
S Mutans sticks to the surface of teeth, where it produces an aggressive acid that breaks down the enamel. The friendly bugs in the gum will make the S Mutans clump together, preventing them from becoming attached to the tooth surface. Tests reveal that the? gum can reduce bacteria in the mouth fifty times.
The company is also going to release a new line of toothpastes and mouthwashes using L anti-caries.
Other potential uses of Lactobacillus include the prevention of body odour. BASF are looking into producing a deodorant based on L aladoris, which can inhibit odour-producing bacteria in the armpit. Similarly, tests have shown another strain, L ala-odoris can reduce odour formation in feet. - mum
"Vaccines have been prepared from purified antigens of mutans streptococci. These vaccines confer protection in non-human primates, but have yet to be tested in a human clinical trial." -Caries Res. 1993;27 Suppl 1:72-6.
A man who claims to have developed a free energy technology which could power everything from mobile phones to cars has received more than 400 applications from scientists to test it.Sean McCarthy says that no one was more sceptical than he when Steorn, his small hi-tech firm in Dublin, hit upon a way of generating clean, free and constant energy from the interaction of magnetic fields. 'It wasn't so much a Eureka moment as a get-back-in-there-and-check-your-instruments moment, although in far more colourful language,' said McCarthy. But when he attempted to share his findings, he says, scientists either put the phone down on him or refused to endorse him publicly in case they damaged their academic reputations. So last week he took out a full-page advert in the Economist magazine, challenging the scientific community to examine his technology.
McCarthy claims it provides five times the amount of energy a mobile phone battery generates for the same size, and does not have to be recharged.Within 36 hours of his advert appearing he had been contacted by 420 scientists in Europe, America and Australia, and a further 4,606 people had registered to receive the results. - observer
"What we have developed is a way to construct magnetic fields so that when you travel round the magnetic fields, starting and stopping at the same position, you have gained energy," he told Ireland's RTE radio. "The energy isn't being converted from any other source such as the energy within the magnet. It's literally created. Once the technology operates, it provides a constant stream of clean energy." - playfuls
"When asked if he or his company has been impacted by the threat or fear of possible suppression of the technology, as has allegedly been the case in many other similar revolutionary energy technology situations, McCarthy responded: "Not in the slightest." "We don't live in the conspiracy-theory world." He said his company has worked extensively as a vendor for law enforcement, and has confronted some "pretty scary people," and has good security in place. "Furthermore, it's not a person, but a company that has produced this technology." - pesn
Published on Saturday, July 3, 2004 by the Los Angeles Times Army Stage-Managed Fall of Hussein Statue
"... The Army's internal study of the war in Iraq criticizes some efforts by its own psychological operations units, but one spur-of-the-moment effort last year produced the most memorable image of the invasion.
As the Iraqi regime was collapsing on April 9, 2003, Marines converged on Firdos Square in central Baghdad, site of an enormous statue of Saddam Hussein. It was a Marine colonel ? not joyous Iraqi civilians, as was widely assumed from the TV images ? who decided to topple the statue, the Army report said. And it was a quick-thinking Army psychological operations team that made it appear to be a spontaneous Iraqi undertaking. After the colonel ? who was not named in the report ? selected the statue as a "target of opportunity," the psychological team used loudspeakers to encourage Iraqi civilians to assist, according to an account by a unit member."
... Ultimately, a Marine recovery vehicle toppled the statue with a chain, but the effort appeared to be Iraqi-inspired because the psychological team had managed to pack the vehicle with cheering Iraqi children.
Perhaps. One possibility is that fear based propaganda is being used to get us to pay for endless war. Although distateful, I understand the need for some of this type of thing in the big picture to protect our interests. I think it explains some UFO mysteries, in fact." In fact, your chance of being killed by a falling vending machine, (yes, a vending machine) is more than double that of being killed by a terrorist!" - ws
