Snakes on a Plane, the Sequel

If they make a sequel to Snakes on a Plane, they should use only two headed snakes. Photo from article on MSNBC.

Snakes on a Plane

I saw Snakes on a Plane last night (Friday ). Here are my friends who got dressed up as pilots and flight attendants ... with plenty of rubber snakes! This was a pretty gross and funny movie.

Greetings from scenic Xena

OUR SOLAR SYSTEM turns out to be a whole lot messier than we once thought.

For generations, schoolchildren were taught that the sun had precisely nine planets revolving around it. Anyone who could memorize the phrase ``My Very Educated Mother Just Showed Us Nine Planets " could (maybe) remember their names.

But reality is more complex. And this week, a committee of the International Astronomical Union defined ``planet" in a way that would take in three more heavenly bodies. Earthlings, meet Ceres, Charon, and Xena.

According to the panel, a planet is any spherical object that orbits the sun and has a diameter of roughly 250 to 500 miles or larger. If the astronomical union adopts that proposal, it's bound to cause a stir in the general public. Being told that there are 12 planets in the solar system rather than nine is like finding out that your own home has a few more rooms that you'd somehow overlooked. Once you get past the cognitive dissonance, it's interesting to contemplate what you might do with all the extra space. ... in the last several years, astronomers have discovered plenty of new real estate in the outskirts of the solar system.

One such object is Xena, first observed in 2003 and named unofficially for the television character played by Lucy Lawless. (Let's hope that the name sticks.) Under the committee's new definition, it supplants Pluto as the most distant planet in the solar system. - boston

Frozen mice ‘have healthy pups’

Mice kept in the deep freeze for 15 years have fathered healthy offspring, say scientists in Japan and Hawaii. One in five female mice undergoing IVF with sperm extracted from the dead mice had healthy, fertile pups. ... One idea would be to inject frozen mammoth sperm recovered from the ice into the eggs of female elephants. ... They did not use hi-tech cryo-protection techniques, simply storing whole testes or bodies in a freezer. The sperm appeared lifeless when thawed out but researchers were surprised to find that they produced viable offspring. ... Any mammoth recovered from the permafrost would have spent more than 10,000 years in a frozen state.

Great idea! Bring back the dinosaurs too so they escape from their cages and eat lawyers.

Hawaii UFO looked like a wayward missile

HILO, Hawaii, Aug. 17 (UPI) -- No one Thursday was claiming ownership of a tubular flying object that buzzed a Hawaii airport this week and looked a lot like a missile. Officials at the Pohakuloa Training Area told the Honolulu Star-Bulletin that there were no military exercises involving missiles taking place when the object was spotted Tuesday over the Hilo Airport on the Big Island.

Witnesses told the newspaper the silver object was silver and emitted a vapor trail; however it had no apparent fins or markings on it. One man told the newspaper, "The noise was super loud." The object didn't seem to threaten any air traffic around the airport, the report said. Hawaii officials said the FBI and Transportation Security Administration were looking into the matter. - upi

Evangelicals urge museum: hide man’s ancestors

Powerful evangelical churches are pressing Kenya's national museum to sideline its world-famous collection of hominid bones pointing to man's evolution from ape to human. Leaders of the country's six-million-strong Pentecostal congregation want Dr Richard Leakey's ground-breaking finds relegated to a back room instead of being given their usual prime billing.

The collection includes the most complete skeleton yet found of Homo erectus, the 1.7 million-year-old Turkana Boy unearthed by Dr Leakey's team in 1984 at Nariokotome, near Lake Turkana in northern Kenya. The museum also holds bones from several specimens of Australopithecus anamensis, believed to be the first hominid to walk upright, four million years ago. Together the artefacts amount to the clearest record yet discovered of the origins of Homo sapiens.

... "The Christian community here is very uncomfortable that Leakey and his group want their theories presented as fact," said Bishop Bonifes Adoyo, the head of Christ is the Answer Ministries, the largest Pentecostal church in Kenya. "Our doctrine is not that we evolved from apes, and we have grave concerns that the museum wants to enhance the prominence of something presented as fact which is just one theory."

Reality makes many people very uncomfortable. How do millions of fundamentalists explain these fossils? Did the Devil create these bones and hide them in the ground to confuse people about the bible?

Hot Dogs May Cause Genetic Mutations

Ha! I always knew I hated them for a good reason.

Everyone knows hot dogs aren't exactly healthy for you, but in a new study chemists find they may contain DNA-mutating compounds that might boost one's risk for cancer. Scientists note there is an up to 240-fold variation in levels of these chemicals across different brands. ...


Mirvish and his colleagues examined hot dogs because past research had linked them with colon cancer. Hot dogs are preserved with sodium nitrite, which can help form chemicals known as N-nitroso compounds, most of which cause cancer in lab animals.

Extracts from hot dogs bought from the supermarket, when mixed with nitrites, resulted in what appeared to be these DNA-mutating compounds. When added to Salmonella bacteria, hot dog extracts treated with nitrites doubled to quadrupled their normal DNA mutation levels. Triggering DNA mutations in the gut might boost the risk for colon cancer, the researchers explained. "I won't say you shouldn't eat hot dogs," Mirvish said. - yahoo

He's afraid of being sued. I'll say it. YOU SHOULDN'T EAT HOT DOGS. Yetch.

Judge Bars Warrantless Anti-Terrorism Surveillance

A federal judge ordered the U.S. government to stop wiretapping international telephone calls between suspected terrorists and their U.S.-based affiliates without court warrants.

U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor said President George W. Bush exceeded his legal and constitutional authority in ordering the surveillance program that began after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. ... Taylor said the surveillance program violates the U.S. Constitution's guarantee against unreasonable searches as well as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

By failing to seek court permission to conduct the surveillance, Diggs said, Bush violated the Constitution's separation of powers doctrine that provide for the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government to acts as checks on each other.

``It was never the intent of the framers to give the president such unfettered control, particularly where his actions blatantly disregard the parameters clearly enumerated in the Bill of Rights,'' she wrote in the 43-page opinion." - bloom

"The government argued that the program is well within the president's authority, but said proving that would require revealing state secrets."

President Nixon, another republican, was impeached in the Watergate scandal for illegal spying. He tried to hide behind the "national security secrecy" argument when he was actually spying on his political opponents. Nixon asked "the CIA to slow the FBI's investigation ... claiming that national security would be put at risk."

Related: The NSA says it is too secret to be sued. (Also known as "Above the Law".)

My Friend Sarah is a Dog Groomer

I'm not a real dog person but this picture of a Chinese Crested she shared cracked me up. This is obviously a top secret military dog-potato hybrid.

Killer ‘Hybrid Mutant’ creature found dead in Maine

The animal, described as a 40 and 50 pound animal with "a bushy tail, a short snout, short ears and curled fangs hanging over its lips," was apparently hit by a car as it chased a cat across a rural road in Androscoggin County. The creature had been blamed for a series of attacks on dogs and was the subject of local legend. The Sun Journal of Lewiston quoted a Michelle O'Donnell of Turner, Maine, who had recently spotted the animal before it was killed.

"It was evil, evil looking. And it had a horrible stench I will never forget," she told the paper. "We locked eyes for a few seconds and then it took off. I've lived in Maine my whole life and I've never seen anything like it." -monga

Is this an escapee from the secret DNA hybrid experiment mixing wolf with some human DNA? Just look at the eye. Freaky. Check this out: Has there ever been a Humanzee?

MSNBC: Is Bush an “Idiot”?

Interesting quote: "There is no sign of any lack of mental capacity".

UFO Photo from Poland

This UFO photo was taken "at the end of June or beginning of July 1995 by Mrs. Maria Korejwo, a school teacher, in Katy Gorne [near Pustelnik Pinski] in Siedlce district in Mazowieckie wojewodztwo, Poland." Note that this was not a digital picture.

Mrs. Korejwo didn't see the object when the photo was taken. Note that the horizontal lines visible in the photo are clothes lines with colorful clips. Kodak photo laboratory workers concluded that the film was not defective and suggested a possible explanation for the appearance of the acorn shaped object. They stated whatever the object is, the reason the photographer did not see the actual object, was simply because the object was moving too quickly! Further analyses excluded the possibility that the photograph had been altered and stated that it was not a hoax. - ufodigest

Could be a double exposure where the first picture was looking up at a round street light and the next photo was in someone's back yard.

Amazing Skydiving Formation

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Alex Jones’ false-flag terrorism alert mentioned on FOX News

FOX mentioning Alex Jones is very curious, as is the idea that the Neocons may be planning a new attack that they can use to justify invading another country. Aren't we already overextended? Perhaps our "War President" (no relation to Van) is itching to go down in history as having dropped an atomic bomb on someone?

Alligators’ ‘ferocious’ immune system could help people

... In the bayous of Louisiana, researchers have discovered that alligators have a ferocious immune system that can take down a vast range of viruses, bacteria and other infectious microbes, including HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

... As a first step, Merchant and other scientists have begun studying the proteins at the heart of the alligator's powerful immune system. They're short chains of amino acids, called peptides, which attack invading microbes. - more

Despite strong defenses, this same article points out that both gators and humans are suffering from human chemicals. In fact, researchers found a troubling increase in the number of human "malformed penises" and other developmental problems in the last few decades.

Banned in China: The Simpsons

They may have beaten off early battles by hardline Christians and family values campaigners in the US - but it looks like the word-conquering rise of The Simpsons has finally met its match in China.

The little yellow felllers are causing consternation amongst the ruling Communist party who say that the show's dysfunctional characters and capitalist values are having an adverse affect on Chinese children.

State media are said to be planning an outright ban on The Simpsons and any other foreign children's shows - including the loveable Teletubbies - from being screened on TV between the hours of 1700 and 2000 ? effective from September 1. Foreign cartoons are massively popular in China, populated with some 250 million children, and the country's own animation creators have failed to compete. - metro

No one seems very concerned that China is banning Teletubbies. "loveable?" They are downright frightening. I'm against censorship, but China may indeed be helping kids by banning Teletubbies. The Simpsons is another issue. Banning the Simpsons is practically a human rights violation!

Fly Me to the Moon: NASA Borrows Ideas (and Old Parts) from Apollo program

Jim Snoddy and other NASA engineers didn't just go to the drawing board or a warehouse when they needed ideas - and parts - for America's next lunar rocket. They went to space museums.

Facing tight deadlines and uncertain budgets as it works on President Bush's plan to send astronauts back to the moon and on to Mars, NASA is both cannibalizing and analyzing pieces of its glory years, namely the Apollo program that first put humans on the lunar surface in 1969.

Snoddy, a manager at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, has been removing valves and other parts from Apollo exhibits as he oversees construction of the upper-stage engine on the new moon rocket, dubbed Ares 1. Some of the pieces and accompanying documentation are not available anywhere but museums, he said. ... Don Krupp, chief of the vehicle analysis branch at Marshall, said it is unlikely any of the antique parts will actually fly in space; instead, they will be used for research and development. - more

Is Pluto Really A Planet? Scientists to Decide

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) hopes to settle the question of Pluto, which was first spotted in 1930.
Experts are divided over whether Pluto - further away and considerably smaller than the eight other planets in our Solar System - deserves the title.

The stakes were raised when a bigger planet-type body, known as 2003 UB313, was discovered by a US astronomer. Any decision to downgrade Pluto would send shockwaves through the scientific community, instantly outdate textbooks, and change how the basics of the Solar System are taught in schools. - bbc

Mysterious Force Keeps Cars from Starting in one Area

They have car immobilisers in the UK?

It's a mystery that would be well at home in the Twilight Zone or the X-Files ? and it's leaving residents baffled. Motorists leaving their vehicles on a 50-yard stretch of road have returned to find their cars won't start.

Residents of Percy Road, Gosport, say 'unknown forces' are constantly shutting down their car immobilisers and electric starters. But despite putting forward various theories, including new telephone masts, remote broadband installations, and even MoD transmissions, they have been left scratching their heads at what is behind the problem. Wayne Dobson, 38, first discovered the problem when he came home from work, parked up as usual and tried to use his remote immobiliser to lock his V-registered Land Rover Freelander, but got no response.
When he later tried to start the car, he found it was completely dead. However, when he pushed his car a few yards up the road, it started again without complaint. After talking to his neighbours, he discovered they had experienced exactly the same problem. - portsmouth

Walmart Employee: Eagle Eyed Hero, or Paranoid Profiler?

Updates: FBI Cites No Terror Ties in Arrests, FBI: No imminent threat to the Mackinac

Three men are in jail for either plotting to blow up a bridge, or simply for trying to make a buck by reselling cell phones. The "local authorities" were not fooled by logical explanations. They know Arab terrorists when they see them. You can tell by the way they are so... Arab looking.

"An eagle-eyed Wal-Mart clerk in Caro, Michigan may have foiled a dastardly terrorist plot simply by alerting police to a suspicious purchase made by three men of Middle-Eastern descent, the Associated Press reports. Police are holding the men on terror charges because they bought 80 pre-paid cell phones in violation of Wal-Mart policy, which limits to three the number of phones one can buy.

The men said they bought the $20 TracFones with the intention of re-selling them to a merchant in Texas for $38. This makes perfect sense, as the phones are undoubtedly sold at a loss to be recovered through the subsequent sale of air-time credit - hence the purchase limit of three per customer. And removing the packages makes sense if the original purchase price is visible on them, while removing the chargers is a good idea if one wishes to sell them separately. But local authorities weren't fooled: they know that this is exactly the sort of "plausible" cover story that hardened terrorists are trained to concoct." - register

"Louai Abdelhamied Othman of Mesquite, along with his brother, Adham Abdelhamid Othman of Dallas, and their cousin Maruan Awad Muhareb of Mesquite, are charged with collecting or providing materials for terrorist acts and surveillance of a vulnerable target for terrorist purposes. Police found about 1,000 cell phones in the men's minivan. Authorities have not said what they think the men intended to do with the phones, most of which were prepaid TracFones. But the police chief in Caro, Mich., where they were arrested, said cell phones can be used as detonators. Tuscola County Prosecutor Mark Reene told the Saginaw News in Michigan that investigators think the men were targeting the Mackinac Bridge, which connects Michigan's Upper and Lower peninsulas. He declined to say what led investigators to that belief."

The investigators found a picture of the bridge and drew conclusions, it seems.