I may not be autistic, but I think a few colleagues would like to get a hold of this little gadget when I’m at work… it will tell you if you’re being boring or irritating. God knows I seldom realise it until much later!
After such a serious post, some brevity is in order.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, Spider-cat:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rA97bT8WMSs]
Venezuelan president and 21st century socialist Hugo Chavez apparently wants to launch his own range of PCs, which he would then distribute to his citizens.
Nothing has been finalised, although Venezuela has apparently been in touch with firms in Asia about the scheme.
Well, this is a man who wanted to seize golf courses in order to build homes for the poor…
Ladies and gentlemen, you can’t make this stuff up. From the Associated Press:
A man clad only in underwear and a T-shirt wrestled a wild leopard to the floor and pinned it for 20 minutes after the cat leapt through a window of his home and hopped into bed with his sleeping family.
“This kind of thing doesn’t happen every day,” said 49-year-old Arthur Du Mosch, a nature guide. “I don’t know why I did it. I wasn’t thinking, I just acted.”
Raviv Shapira, who heads the southern district of the Israel Nature and Parks Protection Authoritym said a half-dozen leopards have been spotted recently near Du Mosch’s small community of Kibbutz Sde Boker in the Negev desert in southern Israel, although they rarely threaten humans.
Shapira said it was probably food that lured the big cat. Leopards living near humans are usually too old to hunt in the wild and resort to chasing down domestic dogs and cats for food, he added.
Du Mosch’s pet cat was in the bed with him at the time, along with his young daughter who had been frightened by a mosquito in her own room.
Shapira said the leopard was very weak when park rangers arrived at Du Mosch’s home after the surprise late-night visit. He said nature officials would likely release it back into the wild.
Du Mosch said he probably would not have been able to control the big cat were it in better health. As a nature guide, he said, he was familiar with animals and did his best to hold down the leopard without harming it. He said he took it all in stride, “but the kids were excited.”
A while back I posted on the glory that is coffee, and how it can cut the risk of diabetes. But wait, there’s more!
Canadian researchers now say it can reduce the risk of gout. Now, gout may sound like an old-fashioned kind of ailment, but this article points out it affects about six million people in the US. What made me laugh is that for years people at risk of developing the painful joint condition — which is caused by uric build-up in the blood — were told to avoid coffee!
The study team found drinking four or five cups a day can cut the risk by 40%, while drinking up to six cups can make it 50-60%. Decaf seems to work just as well, while tea does feck all.
Unfortunately, study author Dr Hyon Choi says the drink isn’t a treatment, but adds there’s no need to cut down if you have the condition already.
From Reuters:
Dolphins living off the coast of Wales whistle, bark and groan in a different dialect from dolphins off the western coast of Ireland, scientists have discovered.
Different physical environments might have contributed to the mammals developing distinctive sets of vocalizations or “dialects,” said Simon Berrow from the Shannon Dolphin and Wildlife Foundation.
Berrow supervised a master’s thesis by student Ronan Hickey at University of Wales, Bangor, who analyzed 1,882 whistles from the dolphins in the Shannon estuary and bottlenose dolphins in Cardigan Bay in Wales. The study found 32 different sound categories, of which eight were only produced by the Shannon animals.
“The idea that the sounds are different is not a bad notion — you’d expect the information had to be different given the diversity of the areas where they reside,” Berrow told Reuters, adding he would use the data to create a dictionary of sounds and pursue the research further, should time and money allow.
There are times when I just sigh. As much as I love nature and animals of all persuasions — and God knows I hope we can maintain our climate so as to save as many from extinction as possible — there are times when I can’t help but wonder if our scientific focus is fecked beyond belief. Now, I will confess I’m fascinated by this little story, as it’s quirky and unusual. But was it worth the time and money? Could our scientific expertise be used toward better ends? Or am I ignoring the simple joy of research for research’s sake?