Ten years ago a couple of Sandoz chemists discovered a pair of compounds, thymoumanine and lismonine, that (respectively) stimulate and depress activity in the hippocampus. MillerCoors LLC bought the patents eighteen months ago and has begun test-marketing a pair of beverages based on the compounds. I wonder whether the cans will be red and blue?
Image CC-BY-NC-ND by pinkangelbabe
Inspected by 9973 and verified false at time of posting.
I’ve never been very motivated one way or the other about medical experimentation on primates. I eat meat and use drugs, so I figure any resentment of animal testing would be rather hypocritical. Turns out I was an ass.
Everybody expected the Singularity to come from networking a bunch of computers together—one of those cases where a quantitative change hits a threshold and becomes a qualitative change. Nobody had their eye on Cai Houzi’s monkey-networking lab at Chengdu University of Technology. You know the old joke, “nine women, one month, one baby?” Well, it turns out rhesus monkeys actually work like that. Every time Cai’s monkeys failed a Turing test, she and her students simply added another monkey. She’s not sure at what point the meta-monkey began failing on purpose. “I guess we thought monkey humor would resemble human humor. Now we’ll never know for sure,” she says. CCTV footage shows the networked monkeys packing up the networking equipment, the spare monkeys, the remaining supplies of monkey chow and one napping graduate student and walking out the lab’s front door. All of the University’s other CCTV cameras were found disabled the next morning. Cai is in custody, though she denies any wrongdoing. No word from the monkeys.
Image CC-BY-NC-SA by Dey
Inspected by 9973 and verified false at time of posting.
Ever since last April’s successful orbiting of geosynchronous satellite Bite Me, Homophobic Comrade, the satellite has been slowly spinning a single filament of carbon nanosilk. Now that the filament has neared ground level, the scouts have begun using it as the core of a ladder that will eventually climb all the way back up to the satellite. “Mount Everest, Bah!” says Chen Wenming. “Grab your pressure suit and get climbing!”
Image CC-BY-SA by Marshall Astor – Food Pornographer
Inspected by 9973 and verified false at time of posting.
The Senate Emigration Subcommittee met in special session today to discuss the escalating brain drain of U.S. doctors, nurses and medical technicians who can no longer afford health care in the U.S. Many nations, particularly France, Singapore, Spain and Japan, have flung open their doors to medical immigrants from the U.S., who typically accept lower-status positions and drastically lower salaries in their new countries. “It’s worth it,” said one doctor who recently emigrated from California to Malta. “In Malta, I can stop worrying that if I find a lump in my breast I may have to default on my mortgage and move in with my mother-in-law.”
image CC-BY-NC-ND by sunnyUK
Inspected by 9973 and verified false at time of posting.
Since last month’s simultaneous publication of French and Korean studies that appear to offer conclusive evidence that the Rapture is exclusively sexually transmitted, most major evangelical groups have strenuously disavowed their earlier embrace of the phenomenon and have moved to distance themselves from the growing number of Raptured (many of whose disappearances have been captured on widely-disseminated mobile-phone videos.)
Image CC-BY-ND by *Tom [Luckytom]
Inspected by 9973 and verified false at time of posting.
You know the thing where your ax handle breaks so you replace the handle but then the head breaks so you replace the head but it’s the same ax?
Lawrence C’rz and James Williams have been on a decade-long quest to test that proposition. Taking advantage of the rapid advancements in transplant technology, C’rz and Williams first exchanged left arms. Then, in a frenzy of globetrotting part-swapping that rapidly burned through the once-extensive fortune Williams had amassed as a metallurgist (lead into coltan, anyone?) they visited grey-shading-into-black clinics from Bazaruto to Bocas del Toro (always with the B’s?) until last year in Babeldaob (which, as you’ll recall from the shrill media coverage, submerged completely in September) when they exchanged heads. The body with Williams’ head died under medically ambigous circumstances, and the body with C’rz’ head is now on trial for manslaughter under the legal doctrine “guilt follows the head.”
Image CC-BY-NC-ND by a shadow of my future self
Inspected by 9973 and verified false at time of posting.
I’m having a hard time getting my mind around this one.
Reasearchers at the University of the Canadian Shield have discovered that ruffed grouse can fly (fly?) forwards and backwards through time. Ornithology post-doc Jesse Fend explains, “I was following grouse tracks in the woods and they stopped abruptly. Of course! The grouse took off! And I started to wonder: If you’re tracking a grouse in flight, could it also ‘take off’ from there? It’s a logical extension, right? We know they can go from two dimensions into three. Why not from three dimensions into four?”
To test her hypothesis, Fend attached radio trackers to a number of grouse. “At that point, I simply had to wait for the trackers to blink on and off. And sure enough: If a grouse unexpectedly vanishes, it always reappears later at that same X,Y,Z position. If a grouse unexpectedly appears, it always vanishes later at that same X,Y,Z position.”
Any idea why grouse always time-travel while flying and never while walking?
She laughs. “Have you ever seen a grouse take flight? They jump up and show you their asshole, eh? Well, when we’ve caught grouse appearing and disappearing from flight, they show their assholes then too. It seems to be a requirement for going up a dimension. Asshole, then time-travel! How punk is that?”
Well, yeah.
via Mikinaak
image CC-BY-NC-ND by ru_24_real
Inspected by 9973 and verified false at time of posting.
Ghostspace hit its 10,000th memorial last night. Founder Gui Youling built the site anticipating that users would want to create virtual memorials at the GPS coordinates at which loved ones died—the geoblogging equivalent of a ghost bike or a cross at the side of the road. Instead, a huge preponderance of users has chosen to construct memorials at the coordinates of the deceased’s favorite places—the geoblogging equivalent of sprinkling cremains on Mount Shasta or tipping the forty. I notice via Google that Coffinpimp in Accra is now offering custom-pimped Ghostspace memorials. Go check them out!
image CC-BY-NC-SA by clickykbd
Inspected by 9973 and verified false at time of posting.
You can’t blame them for trying.
Icelandic schoolgirl Andrea Hildursdottir last week demonstrated that whale oil can be cracked into the full range of petroleum distillates using only Iceland’s copious supplies of geothermal steam. In an apparently-unrelated study, Reykjavik bioengineer Sigrun Sigrunsdottir (mmm. I should move to Iceland and rename my entire family) claims to have successfully developed a strain of GMO sheep that produce fat with the chemical structure of whale oil (insert lonely-goatherd / Moby Dick joke here.)
Both of these studies were underway well before Iceland’s unexpected return to a natural-resources-based economy. But every little bit counts, right?
image CC-BY-NC-SA by Skygge
Inspected by 9973 and verified false at time of posting.
Yiersan wanted an endorsement from Bruce Sterling, the inspiration for its new direct-marketed BrightLine line of vatgrown medical food*. When Sterling refused, Yiersan set up and publicized a cookiejar: an account in Sterling’s name, with funds available any time he reaches out for them. This increasingly-popular tactic is intended to imply a relationship and requires no complicity on the victim’s part. No word so far from Sterling.
*BrightLine seems to have come along at a perfect time: Just as tens of thousands of financial advisors found themselves out of work, Yiersan came along needing approximately the same skill-set: the ability to sell an apparently-customized mix of assetsvatgrown nutrients to a gullibleterrified populace.
image CC-BY-NC-SA by Mike Fischer
Inspected by 9973 and verified false at time of posting.