U.K. Warned `Kick-Boxing' Shrimp Found at Coast, Telegraph Says
2004-05-12 01:55 (New York)
By Chris Peterson
May 12 (Bloomberg) -- U.K. officials warned bathers to take care after a rare species of shrimp able to deliver a punch at the speed of a small-caliber bullet was found off the south coast, the Daily Telegraph said, citing marine wildlife experts.
The three-inch long mantis shrimp, known as the ``kick-boxing'' shrimp, can lash out with one of its limbs and shatter the shell of a crab as well as give a painful lesson to anyone who tries to pick it up, the newspaper said.
Two were caught in a fishing net off the south English resort of Weymouth and marine biologists say there may be a colony there; the bright orange creature is typically found in the Mediterranean Sea or tropical areas around the Equator, the newspaper said.
``It has the swiftest, and perhaps the most brutal, strike of any predator,'' biologist Sheila Patek of the University of California told the Telegraph.
Today I just learned about Xylem, the tissue type in plants that create a pathway for water. Aside from being totally beautiful, the Xylem are neat because their function is in being dead. They grow to be the right size and get to the right place, then die and hollow out so that water can pass through them. So that "maturity" for this tissue is actually death. Which is interesting, that something organic could serve it's purpose in life only when dead.
i woke up this morning and heard this on the news: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/19/international/middleeast/19CND-ISRA.html
i got into school and saw this on my homepage:
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20040519/D82LPPNO0.html
i went through my emails and read this EXTREMELY important article:
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0420/perlstein.php
for some godforsaken reason i did a google search and came up with this:
http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/iraqis_tortured/
i don't know what to do anymore. i can't do my work. it just feels wrong.
my father suggested it would be more constructive to go down to florida or something and register people to vote rather than the RNC and fuck shit up. but i'm so angry. i feel like we owe it to the world. in montreal some guy had a shirt with an american flag that said, "a nation of sheep, lead by wolves." voting is so minimal. it's so useless and litterally the least anybody can do. part of me is insluted by the idea of working my ass off to register people to vote in a country that very well might opt to keep this murderous administration in power. how could i knock on a door and remain rational when this shit is going on and people might actually like it? you know last week the single most searched for thing on the internet was the video of that american getting his head chopped off. that's what people want to see. we're a nation of sick people. distracted and entertained. we prefer some one smiling and giving the thumbs up while simultaniously doing his best to destroy all non-corporate or religious aspects of government and bring about the rapture. people want positivity regardless of reality. even kerry can't decide if he's going to speak straight up or try to put a positive spin on everything. and this is how most people will vote, who is the nicest guy, who would i have over for dinner..and these people bitching about kerry, like it matters who kerry is! why even spend the energy to think about it? talk him up! send him your money and get his ass in office! canadians too, you think this isn't your problem? this is the ENTIRE world's problem at this point. wearing a t-shit, marching around in a circle, and feeling good about yourself does not cut it anymore. honestly, i don't think the RNC is that important. it's just a place to express some pent up shit. but i just don't know what else to do.
seriously, i feel hopeless and desperate. please send me an email to make me feel better. even if it's just to tel me you feel like this too and want to do soemthing.
I just realized that I do not live life in the fast lane. I live life in the lane that does not check for oncoming traffic when merging into the fast lane.
Subject of famous Joan/John case commits suicide.
I just got to Montréal and yes, I am spending my first night staring at a computer. It’s raining ok? Plus I have work to procrastinate from...
Anyways, I am writing for a reason. I haven't really been keeping up with the news outside of having Drudge Report as my homepage. But of course I cannot escape the images of Iraqi prisoners. At first they did not shock me in the slightest. I was hardly surprised. This is war. The very idea that they could train people to kill within certain boundaries and then expect them to act like civilized humans outside of those boundaries is laughable. Far more heinous things are happening to people in Iraq than being stripped and photographed (gunned down while wounded comes to mind). Regardless, all of it, it’s war and it's what we tried to prevent and now that it’s here we should not pretend we didn’t know what it entailed. Maybe Dubya had no idea what it entailed.
It has only really been today though, that the true weight of the world has fallen up my mind as the international opinions of the US and us within it became apparent. All day the images have been thrust in my face and a real shame has descended with them.
I got in a cab from the air port to go to the hostel and started a conversation with the Lebanese driver. We talked of riding bikes (he had just learned) and visiting forests (he had never been and would only go with someone who was a "professional". He told me about thousand year old cedars in Lebanon and how they put them on their flag. He asked me where I was coming from and of course I said Victoria. I started telling stories about New York and he said, "you’re not American are you?" I’ve never in my life done this before but I completely lied and said no fucking way. At this point, I am just embarrassed. I can’t believe us. Not just the administration, but you and me. Going on about our lives while this stuff goes on. We don’t have the right. It’s inappropriate.
Normally I totally represent those of us lefties from the States and feel that it is very important that people from other countries know there are people on the inside fighting the fight. But today I completely understood his hate. I felt it too.
In Victoria, people in general can be quite ignorant. I loath their opinions of Americans. They have no idea. I welcome, solicit, and engage in intelligent critique of American culture but it’s a form of social climbing to bitch about us in Victoria. So I could dismiss it. But now that I’m here, I see it’s everywhere. I almost got kicked out of my hostel because I wasn’t a Canadian citizen. Again, I had told them I was "coming" from Victoria and apparently they had meant to ask my nationality. I had to prove to them I was studying here and working for the greater good of Canadians. I went to my room and had a nice chat with a Scottish woman till I said I was American and she promptly left the room. I went to the common room and a bunch of Europeans were sitting around talking about how they would not visit the States right now.
So I guess my point is that we’re hated. Not just Bush, but us. And I can’t dismiss it all the way anymore. I’m not a turn coat. I still think we/I should reprazent our people. And I will, it was just that once. But I genuinely feel ashamed about being an American today. And fucking hell it makes me angry.
So the next obvious point is that the onus is now on us. We cannot allow this administration to continue. It is our responsibility as citizens to stop it. It was our lazy asses who let democracy slide by the wayside and a bunch of crazies come to power. It’s us reaping the benefits of the economic system built on slavery and occupation. It is our responsibility. I know I sound like a Weatherman and I hope you know I’m not. But we cannot rely on the rest of the world anymore.
Personally, I am going to be at the Republican National Convention and I am going to shut it down. I am going to take it very seriously. I think we need to show the world that Americans are not all ignorant and complacent. I hope you’ll come with me and I hope you can think of better things to do in the mean time. Any ideas let me know.
This is a webpage dedicated to the exploration of the effects of oxyticin, the love hormine. It is truely fasinating. Enjoy.
This article is about testosteron effects in those in love. It is fascinating in light of other hormonal articles I've spammed in the recent past.
This is a really interesting statement by Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan and is an obvious reason behind the US economic expansion.
The following is a press release for the latest stunt pulled off by the fabulous Yes Men! I *highly* recommend following the link at the bottom and reading the page it goes to, as it describes who the Heritage Foundation is in greater detail and I really believe that this is the goal and vision of this administration: to shut down the state, just not in the nice happy anarchist way, more in the evil corporate empire way:
May 5, 2004
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
PROTESTERS AMBUSH CONSERVATIVE THINK TANK
Speaker applauded for lambasting Bush
At the Heritage Foundation's annual Resource Bank meeting in Chicago last
Friday, protesters masquerading as a right-wing think tank took the stage
and announced that in light of Bush's shortcomings, they were nominating
former Reagan Attorney-General Ed Meese for president.
The audience applauded for nearly ten seconds. Meese, eating at a table
just feet away from the podium where Andy Bichlbaum of The Yes Men made
the announcement, grimaced and shook his head in surprise.
Heritage is the most influential think tank in Washington, spending over
$25 million annually to influence policy. Just as the wildest anarchists
aim to "smash the state," Heritage hopes that "the liberal welfare state
can be brought to collapse," in the words of its current president.
The Yes Men registered for the Heritage event as "The Society for
Socioeconomic Stability" and spent two days mingling among the 650
participants before approaching the microphone during a lull in the
closing luncheon.
Echoing sentiments expressed by others throughout the event, Bichlbaum
condemned Bush as an inadequate free-markets candidate. But while others
had condemned Bush's "No Child Left Behind" program as "socialistic,"
Bichlbaum focussed on the administration's war in Iraq, calling it "crony
corporate welfare" and "market distortion on a fairly gigantic scale."
"The Iraq war was history's biggest illegal trade subsidy," said Yes Man
Mike Bonanno, who was also in attendance. "One thing we'll be trying to
do in the months ahead is lodge an official complaint about this with the
WTO in Geneva."
"In a free market, companies like Halliburton and Exxon should be funding
their own market expansion projects instead of depending on the Federal
government for it," said Louise Smith, another Yes Man attendee.
Please see http://www.theyesmen.org/hijinks/bush/heritage.shtml
forpictures and video.
sexual desire now available in patch form.
(well in two years if P&G have anything ot say about it)
such wonderful animals, ravaged by war. Full article below:
May 3, 2004
KINSHASA JOURNAL
The Gentlest of Beasts, Making Love, Ravaged by War
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
INSHASA, Congo - Upstream from this dog-eat-dog capital, where the Congo River spills its tendrils into the belly of the equatorial rain forest, lies the jungle home of one of mankind's closest cousins and one of the most endangered primates on earth: the bonobo.
Genetically, humans and bonobos, a species of chimpanzee, are more than 98 percent similar. Socially, it is another matter. Matriarchal as a rule, bonobos eschew conflict. They do not fight over territory. They do not kill. Any small friction they resolve through sexual contact: a playful rub, oral sex, full intercourse.
Peace-loving they may be, but during Congo's latest war, the bonobos' jungle habitat fell smack on the front line between fighting factions.
Fishing and farming all but ground to a halt during the war, which officially ended last year. Civilians and soldiers alike turned to the forest to fill their bellies.
More and more, the bonobos turned up as supper. Their smoked remains showed up at riverine markets. Babies were orphaned, which is to say they were more or less destined to die: the bonobo infant, accustomed to staying on its mother's back for the first several years of life, has great trouble making it on its own.
So it was that the bonobo orphans of the central African rain forest found themselves hurtling hundreds of miles down the Congo River to this gritty metropolis and into the arms of a redheaded Frenchwoman called Claudine André.
Ms. André recalls it as love at first sight. More than 10 years ago, after a famous, ruinous pillage of Kinshasa, Ms. André, then a businesswoman, went to the ravaged city zoo and chanced upon a bereft infant bonobo. He looked as though he wanted to die, she recalled. She named him Mikano, took him home and became, in her words, his surrogate mother.
When the war came, more orphans trickled in. She kept them on the grounds of an elite American school. Then, last year, when peace came, she opened Lola Ya Bonobo, a sanctuary for orphaned bonobos on a 75-acre patch of green on the fringes of the capital.
Infants are paired up with surrogate mothers. There is an endless supply of bananas and sugar cane (bonobos have an incurable sweet tooth). An electric fence encircles the park, so as to keep the apes from scampering out of the woods and into Kinshasa's traffic. The park is open to visitors.
On a Sunday afternoon not long ago, the park's 31 young charges did what young bonobos do: chewed on blades of grass, swung from palm fronds, kissed, frolicked and fondled.
"It's the hippies of the forest," Ms. André said, taking their wrinkled hairy hands in hers. "When they feel anxious, when they are afraid, they have sex. And they calm down."
As if on cue, a big bonobo mounted a small bonobo. They rolled around on the grass, rubbed against each other and went on their merry ways.
Bonobos are not proprietary about mates, and sex is not always about procreation. Homosexuality is au courant, and sexual play begins when they are barely a year old, though intercourse must wait until they are teenagers. Much to Ms. André's delight, a teenage orphan, a male, arrived recently. Hopefully, she said, mating will soon begin.
"It's really make love, not war," Ms. André said of the bonobo way of life. "It was so sad to see such a pacific animal so destroyed by war."
The plight of the bonobos, a species found only in Congo, is a window into the repercussions of war on the ecology of the Congo River Basin, one of the most diverse ecosystems in the world and home to more than 400 species of mammals. Mining, logging and a sustained trade in bush meat have all put the squeeze on their habitats.
War having made vast swaths of the country inaccessible to researchers, it is impossible to know precisely how these creatures have fared. Certain habitats may have been left untouched, others devoured.
In the Virunga Highlands near the border of Uganda and Rwanda, the mountain gorilla population has grown, according to a census by the Wildlife Conservation Society. By contrast, in the Kahuzi-Biega National Park, the eastern lowland gorilla's population has fallen by 70 percent to fewer than 5,000, according to Conservation International. The elephants in the same park may well have vanished.
As for the bonobo population, scientists have no reliable numbers but fear the species may be nearing extinction. Late last year, the United Nations Environment Program reported that the bonobo, along with the gorilla, chimpanzee and orangutan, could disappear in 50 years.
Peace is likely to present a new challenge to forest dwellers: Congo's rain forests have once again opened up to logging companies, and today the first batches of timber can be seen floating downriver from Équateur Province to the port here in Kinshasa. With blessings from the World Bank, 150 million acres of rain forest could be opened up for logging.
As the World Bank sees it, timber concessions could pour hundreds of millions of dollars into government coffers. Environmentalists fear that the logging could also endanger the habitat of the Pygmy people, who have eked out a living in the forest for centuries. The bonobos are sometimes called Pygmy chimpanzees, because Pygmies too are averse to conflict; they too prefer to hunt and forage in the forest rather than fight one another for territory. United Nations investigators suspect that some of them had been eaten during the war too.
Secret Service Investigates Teen's Art Project Depicting Bush As Devil
if you want to download it, you'll have to go here right-click or whatever click, you may just want to go here in the first place.
Molecular basis for Mozart effect revealed!
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0418/taormino.php
(lookout for the appropriate banner ads)
The Center for American Progress today launched a comprehensive Claims vs. Facts database.
The database documents statements from conservatives like President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Members of Congress and Fox News personalities, and compares those statements to the facts. Each fact is sourced, and in many cases includes a web link directly to that source.
More Treasury Department agents are tracking Castro than Bin Ladden:
http://truthout.org/docs_04/050104F.shtml
An interesting look at the corporate angle of activism.
So, I had yet another lavalife date last night. This guy seemed bland but OK, cute, smart, blablabla. I dressed up all typical girl pretty. I’m wore a shirt that was not really low cut, but the top buttons were unbuttoned. (I know that seems like info you didn’t need but keep it in mind). So anyways we meet at this restaurant for dessert in the evening and I suggest we sit outside. We walk outside and, I am not sure, but I think I feel a moth fly down my shirt. We sit down at a table. It’s all very formal and professional. I am not really listening to anything the guy is saying because I am trying to figure out if there is a moth in my shirt. It is far too early in the date to run to the washroom and once in a while I definitely feel a fluttering. The conversation is bland and I begin weighing casually scratching my chest and smashing the moth. But I sort of felt bad for the moth and it was not possible to process moral calculations and small talk at the same time.
Suddenly the conversation turns political and he tells me about how the concept of “precedence” in law is really on of the basic flaws of the American legal system. I actually watched him morph from a typical bland guy into a really cute smart guy. It is at this same moment that I realize that there is a chance that the moth could actually fly out from my chest and this would be completely unacceptable. I would not date someone from whom moths few out, I could not expect that he would either. But of course the whole situation is really funny and the moth is tickling me and I start snickering at the most inappropriate moments.
At one point he asks me why I am on a date with him and not any of the other desperate people on lavalife and I just lose it. The moth decides to freak out and I almost fell off my chair laughing. I can’t imagine what he was thinking but of course I had to say, “Listen, Mike, I have to tell you something… There’s a moth in my shirt.” He stares blankly at me and I start laughing even more. I pull down my shirt and the moth is perched perfectly on my right breast and it flies away towards the light. I’m in hysterics of course and he’s saying something about “If you’re not embarrassed, I’m not embarrassed for you.” In the end, it was a nice professional date, more like a job interview than anything. But he was interesting and I think we’ll hang out again. Alas, the only one who got any action was of course the moth.