The JackB

"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx

Science

Hot Monkey Love- Chimps Put Out for Meat

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My apologies to those readers who are offended by the title of this post, but it is based upon science. The following clip helps to document how relations between chimps are conducted.

Come to think of it, maybe we aren’t all that different from chimps. Quite a few of the boys took their wives out for a steak dinner on Valentine’s day. Maybe we should take notes. 😉

The oldest profession isn’t restricted to humans. A new study found that wild chimpanzees exchange meat for sex.

By stealthily following a group of about 20 adult chimpanzees in Côte d’Ivoire’s Taï National Park, behavioral ecologists Cristina Gomes and Christophe Boesch of Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany carefully noted which male chimpanzees copulated with which females. The researchers found that she-chimps put out more often for males that shared food with them at least once, compared to stingy males who never offered meat.

Apparently, buying dinner is a good way to improve the chances of getting lucky on a date, even if you’re a chimp.

The primates’ food-for-sex barter occurs indirectly, over the course of weeks or months, with males seeming to accrue credit with the ladies by plying them with meat killed on a hunt.

Make Sour Things Sweet

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Kind of interesting.

But after chewing the fruit and rubbing the pulp against the tongue, the berry, known by a promising name — “miracle fruit” or Synsepalum dulcificum — releases a sweetening potency that alters the taste buds.

For about 15 to 30 minutes, everything sour is sweet.

Lemons lose their zing and taste like candy. Oranges become sickeningly sweet. Hot sauce that usually burns the tongue tastes like honey barbecue sauce that scorches as it trickles down the throat.

Through word of mouth, these miracle fruits have inspired “taste tripping” parties, where foodies and curious eaters pay $10 to $35 to try the berries, which are native to West Africa.
About five months ago, a Miami, Florida, hospital began studying whether the fruit’s sweetening effects can restore the appetite of cancer patients whose chemotherapy treatments have left them with dulled taste buds.

“What happens in patients is the food tastes so metallic and bland, it becomes repulsive,” said

Dr. Mike Cusnir, a lead researcher on the project and oncologist at Mount Sinai Medical Center. “Most of the patients undergoing chemotherapy have weight loss. Then they cut further into their diet and then this furthers the weight loss. It causes malnutrition, decreased function of the body and electrolyte imbalance.”

Paralyzed Man Walks Again

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This story was really interesting. I wonder why I haven’t seen more about it.

“He has been confined to a wheelchair for 20 years. Now a paraplegic man is walking again, and his doctors call it a miracle. CBS13 went to Manteca to find out how a spider bite helped get him back on his feet.

“I closed my eyes and then I was spinning like a flying saucer,” explains David Blancarte.
A motorcycle accident almost killed David 21 years ago. At the time he might have wished he was dead.

“I asked my doctor, ‘Sir what happened? I can’t feel my legs’,” said David.

Ever since, David’s been relying on his wheelchair to get around. Then the spider bite. A Brown Recluse sent him to the hospital, then to rehab for eight months.

“I’m here for a spider bite. I didn’t know I would end up walking,” says David.

A nurse noticed David’s leg spasm and ran a test on him.

“When they zapped my legs, I felt the current, I was like ‘whoa’ and I yelled,” he says.

He felt the current and the rush of a renewed sense of hope.

“She says,’your nerves are alive. They’re just asleep’,” explained David.

Five days later David was walking.”

Blue Whales

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I intend to watch the National Geographic special on Blue Whales. I think that they are incredible.

  • Blue whales can grow up to 100 feet (~30 m). Lengthwise that’s the equivalent of two city buses and longer than an NBA basketball court.
  • They can weigh up to 200 tons. That’s about 8 DC-9 aircrafts or 15 school buses.
    In fact, their tongue alone weigh as much as an elephant. About 100 people can fit in a blue whale’s mouth.
  • A blue whale heart is the size of a Mini Cooper and can weigh close to 2,000 pounds (~907 kg). Its heartbeat can be detected from two miles away and a human can easily crawl through its major arteries.
  • Blue whales can produce sounds louder than a jet engine (188 dB vs. jet engine’s 140 dB) and can communicate with other whales up to 1,000 miles away.
  • A single adult eats about 4 tons of krill (tiny shrimplike animals) a day.
  • The spray from a blue whale’s blowhole is almost as tall as a three-story building (30 feet or 9 m).
  • A toddler can fit into its blowhole.

Here is a link to some more incredible facts.

Mammoth Found in Los Angeles

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I thought that this was pretty cool. Think that I might have to take a walk on down to the George C. Page museum. Been a while since I got to see the tar pits.

Now, at least 10,000 years later, visitors in Los Angeles, California, can see the remains of “Zed,” a Columbian mammoth whose nearly intact skeleton is part of what is being described as a key find by archaeologists at Los Angeles’ George C. Page Museum.

Zed was discovered at a construction site in the heart of Los Angeles. An earth mover helping to build an underground parking garage near the L.A. County Museum of Art uncovered the mammoth’s skull, according to project director Christopher Shaw.

“The skull was hit and shaved off … by a scraper,” Shaw told CNN Thursday. “We don’t know just how smashed up it is, but it’s fairly intact because it’s a huge jacket we put it around.”

The mammoth’s fossil was among 16 deposits at the site that archaeologists wrapped, along with the surrounding dirt, in plaster jackets, creating 23 boxes weighing between 5 and 53 tons that were then lifted out intact.

The construction was being monitored by an archaeological consulting firm because the site is so close to the La Brea tar pits — an archeological site that has yielded 100 million bones belonging to 300 species of mammals and birds.

Construction on the parking garage began in 2006, but it took two more years for all the recovered materials to be handed over to researchers at the Page Museum, who began analyzing the various fossils in June, Shaw said.

“It’s very exciting for us because each one of these … could be different ages in the past 10,000 to 45,000 years,” Shaw said.

John Harris, the head curator of the Page Museum, publicly announced the finding of “a whole new treasure trove of fossils” on Wednesday. He described it as “the most important discovery” for the museum “of the last 90 years.”

Shaw said the announcement was made to “create interest” in the museum’s discovery.
Among the most interesting items is likely to be Zed, who is believed to have died in his late 40s. Mammoths are thought to have had an average lifespan of about 60 years.

Not all of Zed’s remains have been cleaned off and analyzed.

“Right now we have opened the plaster jacket of four sections that were excavated, including vertebrae and ribs and pelvis, one tusk and the lower jaw,” Shaw said. “It will take another six to 12 months to open everything.”

Shaw said both of Zed’s tusks were found intact, which is very rare.

“Previously, we’ve found mammoths but the tusk material was very poorly preserved,” Shaw said. “It’s very exciting to us to have these two complete, beautifully preserved tusks.”

Octuplets- An Abdication of Medical & Parental Responsibility

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In concept I am a big believer in giving people freedom to live their lives and do what they are going to do with the caveat that the limits are drawn when their actions hurt others. Nadya Suleman and the doctor who helped her have crossed the line.

They have abdicated moral and parental responsibility with little to no regard for the impact of their actions. Their actions are selfish and misguided and it infuriates me that the public is going to be forced to help support the moronic decisions made by all of the parties here.

The LA Times has a number of articles that document the sad state of affairs of a mother who has 14 children, no source of income and owes $50,000 in student loans. Oh and did I mention that she is already receiving money from food stamps and that three of her children are disabled.

This makes me want to tear my hair out. This article outlines a number of serious issues and her complete lack of touch with reality. I believe in social responsibility. I believe that we have an obligation to try and give people a hand up, not a hand out. But apparently she feels otherwise. We’ll get to that in a moment.

“Even before she gave birth to the octuplets Jan. 26, Suleman was receiving $490 in monthly food stamps, and three of her children were receiving federal supplemental security income because they are disabled.

Let’s review because it really does blow me away. She is an unemployed single mother of six children who is receiving almost $500 a month in food stamps and additional money from the federal government for the disabled children goes t o a doctor and undergoes IVF and then delivers eight more children.

Eight more children. Eight more children who will be in the hospital somewhere between seven to twelve weeks. According to the Times that bill will run on the low end at about $500k and could approach more than $800k, provided that there aren’t any complications.

And that doesn’t take into account the team of more than 46 medical professionals who were assembled for the delivery. But none of this matters to Suleman. She engages in some sort of mental masturbation that allows her to try and say that she is not really receiving any sort of assistance.

“I’m not living off any taxpayer money,” she said. “If I am, if it’s food stamps, it’s a temporary resource. And I was so reluctant. I very much so look forward to the day when I am not getting any kind of help with food stamps, which I believe will end when I graduate in about a year or year and a half.”

Oh ok, you’re going to collect somewhere around nine grand in food stamps, not to mention however much you receive for the disabled children. And during that time what sort of activities will you be engaged in. Are we to believe that you are going to work so that you can support your children and so that you might pay into the system. Doesn’t sound like it.

Some people might say that I am being too harsh, but this was elective. She didn’t have to have more children. She had six and don’t forget that some are disabled. Six healthy children are a lot of work, but when some of them are disabled there is more to be done. And now she has increased the load ten fold.

But we shouldn’t worry because in lollipop land everything works out.

Suleman also bristled at suggestions made by some commentators that she was being irresponsible for having so many children with no income or partner to help raise them.”No. I am not being selfish. . . . If I were just sitting down watching TV and not being as determined as I am to succeed and provide a better future for my children, I believe that would be considered to a certain degree selfish,” she said.

Great. She is determined to succeed and by gum that makes all the difference. I believe in having a “can do” attitude and that it makes a difference, but again there are limits. She doesn’t have the financial resources to take care of these children there are legitimate questions about whether she’ll have the time. Fourteen young children, eight of whom are infants. It is just wrong.

But never fear, she has a website that she is using to ask for donations.

And lest we think that I have forgotten about the doctor and clinic let’s shed some light on these mental midgets.

According to records reviewed by the Times

The Beverly Hills doctor whose fertility treatment led to the birth of Nadya Suleman’s octuplets – and her six previous children – has one of the worst success rates of any fertility clinic in the country, according to federal records reviewed by The Times.

In fact, Suleman’s children represent a sizable portion of the pregnancy rate at his clinic over the last several years

The Times used data from 2006. Out of 61 procedures only five resulted in pregnancies and only two of those resulted in births. So we have a mother whose completely out of touch with reality and a doctor who is seemingly inept with everyone but her.

Even better the good doctor has been involved in a number of lawsuits with past employees.

It is a perfect storm of chaos and we’re the lucky people who get to pick up the pieces. Just peachy.