-
Ephemera.
- Living with a female mouse can extend the reproductive life of a male mouse by as much as 20 percent, according to a study conducted by Ralph Brinster and a team of other researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine.
- For the first time, scientists have successfully teleported information between two separate atoms in ( Read more... )
- Living with a female mouse can extend the reproductive life of a male mouse by as much as 20 percent, according to a study conducted by Ralph Brinster and a team of other researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine.
-
Ephemera.
- In a bizarre ritual, two minor girls, both seven, from the remote Pallipudupet village in Tamil Nadu's Villupuram district were married off to frogs last Friday night. The ceremony, an annual feature during the Pongal (harvest) festival, is conducted "to prevent the outbreak of mysterious diseases in the village". The terrified frogs were thrown ( Read more... )
-
Sins of the Times
- The buraku - ethnically indistinguishable from other Japanese - are descendants of Japanese who, according to Buddhist beliefs, performed tasks considered unclean. Slaughterers, undertakers, executioners and town guards, they were called eta, which means defiled mass, or hinin, nonhuman. Despite decades of government-sponsored affirmative action ( Read more... )
-
Ephemera.
- Plumes of methane have been found seasonally emanating from the surface of Mars, providing new targets for extraterrestrial life hunters. Because methane is decomposed by sunlight, some chemical process must be renewing the supply, and the most likely candidate is organic metabolism, perhaps by bacteria similar to those which thrive near geothermal ( Read more... )
-
Ephemera.
- Some of you may have heard that Larry Flynt has been asking for a bailout for the porn industry. Although I'm pretty sure that Flynt's request is at least partially tongue in cheek, there is some precedent for Federal involvement in the sex industry. As part of a New Deal attempt to legislate economic recovery, the National Recovery Administration ( Read more... )
-
(Untitled)
I had just finished reading in BoingBoing that there have been no fatal jetliner crashes on United States soil since American Flight 587 lost a tailfin over Jamaica Bay in November 2001, when a co-worker alerted me to the breaking news that US Airways Flight 1549, headed out of LaGuardia airport for Charlotte, North Carolina, has crashed into the ( Read more... ) -
More miscellany.
- Based on satellite observations, the University of Illinois' Arctic Climate Research Center reports that the amount of sea ice on the planet is the highest in 29 years, when satellite record-keeping began. Polar ice sheet coverage remains substantially below historic levels.
- The four-eyed spookfish is discovered to be the first vertebrate ever ( Read more... )
- Based on satellite observations, the University of Illinois' Arctic Climate Research Center reports that the amount of sea ice on the planet is the highest in 29 years, when satellite record-keeping began. Polar ice sheet coverage remains substantially below historic levels.
