The Invasion Of The Giant Killer Pythons


Image from the excellent KingSnake.com site.

The swamps of the Everglades, in south Florida, have been invaded by giant killer pythons. They grow up to six metres in length, can weigh as much as 100kg and can live for two decades. The Burmese pythons are believed to have come to the Everglades thanks to idiotic pet owners who dumped the snakes when, presumably, they grew too big for the largest of fish tanks, or homes.

It's being called an ecological disaster. We call it a horror movie come to life :

The pythons have established breeding pairs in the swamps and are racing to the top of the food chain, even ousting alligators that were the Everglades' top predator. Two years ago a photographer snapped a picture that appeared to show a python so big it had eaten an alligator whole.

'It is a very serious issue, especially as we have found breeding pairs and clutches of eggs. That means they have adapted to living here and they are having a big impact,' said Linda Friar, an official at Everglades National Park. The snakes are a serious threat to indigenous wildlife due to their big appetites. The stomach contents of every python caught by rangers usually reveals a feast of rare birds and small mammals. Sometimes it also shows that the snakes have been snacking on household pets.

The park has embarked on a major effort to curb the snakes' numbers, but total eradication would be difficult. 'We think we can slow down their rate of increase,' said Friar. At the moment there are an estimated 350 pythons in the park, but many more in the swamps outside. Rangers estimate that, for every python they spot, 10 lie hidden in the marshes.

Park rangers, in their efforts to catch the elusive snakes, have a specially trained sniffer dog - nicknamed 'Python Pete'. They have also used so-called 'Judas animals' by tagging female pythons with electronic signalling devices. The females then lead rangers to populations of male pythons, which the rangers can kill.

But, according to this story, the giant pythons are not the biggest threat to the rich ecological balance of the Everglades :

...plants from suburban gardens are busy supplanting native species. An estimated two million acres of the swamp are now covered by invading plants.

'They don't create quite the same headlines as pythons, but plants are the invaders who actually make up the biggest threat,' said Friar.

This infamous photograph reportedly shows what happens when a four metre long Burmese python tried to eat an alligator, whole. The tail of the alligator can be seen jutting out from a huge tear in the python's mid-body :





Darryl Mason is the author of the free, online novel ED Day : Dead Sydney. You can read it here

Cat Knows When Old People Are Going To Die, And Pays A Visit



Oscar the cat seems to know when elderly people in a nursing home are just a few hours away from death. He curls up beside them, and on more than 25 occasions, the person he visits has died.

So is Oscar a kind of Grim Reaper?

Not necessarily. A story published in the New England Journal of Medicine suggests Oscar may be able to smell chemical changes eminating from the flesh of the elderly when their bodies are preparing for death. Why Oscar chooses to sit beside them, or on their laps during their final moments, may be nothing more than his desire to be with them, and perhaps comfort them, as their lives end.

Staff at the nursing home are now so confident of Oscar's 'choice' that they call in the relatives of the person Oscar sits beside so they have a final chance to say goodbye.

A friend who e-mailed me a link to this story is a maybe-yes believer in reincarnation. His theory? The cat was a priest in a former life. Interesting.

Nevertheless, this is an absolutely remarkable story :

"He doesn't make too many mistakes. He seems to understand when patients are about to die," said Dr. David Dosa in an interview.

"Many family members take some solace from it. They appreciate the companionship that the cat provides for their dying loved one," said Dosa, a geriatrician and assistant professor of medicine at Brown University.

The 2-year-old feline was adopted as a kitten and grew up in a third-floor dementia unit at the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. The facility treats people with Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease and other illnesses.

After about six months, the staff noticed Oscar would make his own rounds, just like the doctors and nurses. He'd sniff and observe patients, then sit beside people who would wind up dying in a few hours.

Dosa said Oscar seems to take his work seriously and is generally aloof. "This is not a cat that's friendly to people," he said.

Oscar is better at predicting death than the people who work there, said Dr. Joan Teno of Brown University, who treats patients at the nursing home and is an expert on care for the terminally ill

Doctors say most of the people who get a visit from the sweet-faced, gray-and-white cat are so ill they probably don't know he's there, so patients aren't aware he's a harbinger of death. Most families are grateful for the advanced warning, although one wanted Oscar out of the room while a family member died. When Oscar is put outside, he paces and meows his displeasure.

Nursing home staffers aren't concerned with explaining Oscar, so long as he gives families a better chance at saying goodbye to the dying.

Oscar recently received a wall plaque publicly commending his "compassionate hospice care."

We sense a tear-jerking, heart-breaking Disney movie in the offing.

A story here from CNN claiming that domestic cats, like Oscar, are descendants of a Middle Eastern wild cat :

By studying the mitochondrial DNA of 979 domestic and wild cats from Europe, Asia and Africa the researchers concluded that the origins of the species -- what O'Brien calls a feline Adam and Eve -- developed between 130,000 and 160,000 years ago. Mitochondrial DNA is passed down from mother to child.

Domestication of cats began as long as 10,000 to 12,000 years ago, O'Brien said, as the earliest farmers domesticated grains and cereal. As that occurred, local wild cats adapted to hunting rodents in the grain and developed a relationship with humans.

The earliest archaeological evidence of cats and humans in association dates to 9,500 years ago in Cyprus.

Of course, this theory claims that humans domesticated cats.

Many long-time cat owners would probably tell you, with not too much displeasure, that it was probably the cat that domesticated us. You never really own a cat, it just stays with you for as long as it wants to.

Triple Cone With Chunky Bacon, Ox Tongue And Carrot Ice-Cream, Please


Personally, I'd find it hard to go past the Raw Horseflesh ice cream...


Who Sucks has a mind-boggling, stomach-churning collection of the 101 Most Frightening Ice Cream Flavours From Around The World, with pics of the ice-cream tubs to prove they're real.

I won't spoil all the fun, and shock, of actually going through the whole list, and imagining what some of them must taste like if you could keep them down long enough, but here's a handful of flavours that just thinking about tasting made my bile consider a quick exit :

Octopus

Fried Eggplant

Wasabi

Eel

Chicken Wing

Oyster

Lettuce And Potato

Pit Viper

Indian Curry

Squid Gut

Spaghetti Bolognaise

Fried Pork Rind

Tuna and Seaweed

And finally, oh my god...

Stilton ice cream

Okay, I've been a bit harsh. Obviously these ice cream flavours must taste good, otherwise Japanese stores wouldn't sell them. Right?

Apparently Venezuela is legendary in ice-cream afficianado circles for the range of exotic flavours found at this store. It's featured in the Guiness Book Of World Records for having the most flavours - more than 700. Fried onion flavour is very popular.

Not just squid, but squid gut ice cream. Okay, that's done it.

Spiders Save Woman From Fire

She hates spiders. But she has vowed never to kill one again. Why? Because she know believes spiders saved her from burning to death when the attic of her home caught fire :

Danielle Vigue, 18, says she awoke early Tuesday to find spiders in her room, and started killing them. When more showed up, she says she wentacross the hall and got into bed with her 15-year-old sister, Lauren.

"At first there were five, they were all around the light fixture," Danielle Vigue told The Saginaw News. "I hate spiders, they freak me out."

A fire, the newspaper said, apparently was smoldering in the attic of the home about 90 miles northwest of Detroit.

A few hours later, Vigue's 48-year-old mother, Debra, and 8-year-old sister, Shelby, smelled smoke, and flames greeted the family when they opened the door to the room Danielle Vigue had earlier left.

"I will never kill another spider again," she told WNEM-TV in Saginaw.

Sky "Filled With Angels"



From Local 6 :

A couple from South Carolina vacationing in Florida said family photos of the sky show angels in the clouds.

Rev. Glenn Fulton and his wife Linda were celebrating their 15th wedding anniversary in Amelia Island, Fla. during the Fourth of July weekend when they went for a walk to pray.

As the couple asked God for guidance, they said they snapped some photographs of the sunrise.

When the Fulton's left the beach, they noticed the images."While we were in the elevator, I began to look at my pictures, and I told my wife, I said, 'Look at these pictures and tell me what you see,'" Glenn Fulton said. "She said, 'Oh my God, I see a face."

The Fulton's said angels are everywhere in the photo, just like God's grace.

"They are proof God exists," Fulton said.

Or proof of the reverand's very vivid imagination.

Mmm. Can see a face in those clouds, sort of, maybe a few wings, but you're more likely to find yourself looking at a duckie, a doggie and horsie, than a pack of angels.

Goal!



Whaddayamean you didn't know chickens enjoyed a good game of football?

One of the many excellent images from another 'Animals Having Fun' photo collection over at Dark Roasted Blend.

The Lion-Eating Apes Of The Congo

Apes that can catch fish, kill lions and like to howl at the moon are, apparently, part of local legend in the Congolese jungle. Local hunters have spoken of "massive creatures" that sound like a hybrid of a gorilla and a chimpanzee.

Surely such stories can't be real, can they? Monster apes that kill lions? Come on.

The civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo has meant that western scientists have been unable to investigate the legendary apes for decades. They are said to live deep within impenetrable forests, and to even reach the outskirts of these forests, scientists would have to get through the patrols of local rebels.

But recently, scientists have reached the inner sanctums of the monster ape forest, and they found some parts of the legend to be merely that : legend.

But only the stories of the monster apes being some sort chimp/ape hybrid and enjoying a good howl at the moon, Remarkably, scientists now claim that these larger-than-normal apes actually do eat big cats :

The most detailed and recent data comes from Cleve Hicks, at the University of Amsterdam, who has spent 18 months in the field watching the Bili apes - named after a local town - since 2004. His team's most striking find came after one of his trackers heard chimps calling for several days from the same spot.

When he investigated he came across a chimp feasting on the carcass of a leopard. Mr Hicks cannot be sure the animal was killed by the chimp, but the find lends credence to the apes' lion-eating reputation.

"What we have found is this completely new chimpanzee culture," said Mr Hicks. Previously, researchers had only managed to snatch glimpses of the animals or take photos of them using camera traps. But Mr Hicks used local knowledge to get closer to them and photograph them.

"We were told of this sort of fabled land out west by one of our trackers who goes out there to fish," said Mr Hicks whose project is supported by the Wasmoeth Wildlife Foundation. "I call it the magic forest. It is a very special place."

Mr Hicks reports that he found a unique chimp culture. For example, unlike their cousins in other parts of Africa the chimps regularly bed down for the night in nests on the ground. Around a fifth of the nests he found were there rather than in the trees.

"How can they get away with sleeping on the ground when there are lions, leopards, golden cats around as well as other dangerous animals like elephants and buffalo?" said Mr Hicks.

Mr Hicks said the animals also have what he calls a "smashing culture" - a blunt but effective way of solving problems. He has found hundreds of snails and hard-shelled fruits smashed for food, seen chimps carrying termite mounds to rocks to break them open and also found a turtle that was almost certainly smashed apart by chimps.

Like chimp populations in other parts of Africa, the Bili chimps use sticks to fish for ants, but here the tools are up to 2.5 metres long.

The most exciting thing about this population of chimps though is that it is much bigger than anyone realised and may be one of the largest remaining continuous populations of the species left in Africa. Mr Hicks and his colleague Jeroen Swinkels surveyed an area of 7,000 square kilometres and found chimps everywhere. Their unique culture was uniform throughout.

It's A Baby....Mammoth



More than 40,000 years ago, the baby mammoth above roamed what is now Russia's Arctic Yamalo-Nenetsk region. The baby mammoth, found frozen in the ice, is believed to be a female, about six months, and is the most perfect specimen yet found of the long extinct beasts. Numerous varieties of mammoth roamed the world through the last Ice Age - up to 1.8 million years ago. They are believed to have become extinct more than 11,000 years ago.

From National Geographic :

At 110 pounds (50 kilograms) and 51 inches long (130 centimeters long), the baby is the size of a large dog, Reuters reported.

Scientists are banking on the female—named "Lyuba" after the Russian hunter's wife—to reveal some of the genetic secrets of the prehistoric giants.

That's because Lyuda's excellent state—intact except for her shaggy locks—makes her a veritable treasure trove for research.

Emerging DNA technologies have already allowed some scientists to consider resurrecting the mammoth.

More on the history of the mammoth :

Mammoths first appeared in Africa about four million years ago, then migrated north and dispersed widely across Europe and Asia.

At first a fairly generalized elephant species, mammoths evolved into several specialized species adapted to their environments. The hardy woolly mammoths, for instance, thrived in the cold of Ice Age Siberia.

In carvings and cave paintings, Ice Age humans immortalized the giant beasts, which stood about 11 feet (3.4 meters) tall at the shoulder and weighed about seven tons.

Japanese Businessmen Want To Resurrect Mammoths For A Theme Park

Monster Loose In The Amazon? Yeah, Right

Oh, But...Wait

If you're a tribe of prehistoric history and you don't have a regional monster of myth and of recent sightings fame, well, you're nobody.

The remaining tribes of the Amazon rainforest have some incredible, and heartbreaking, stories to tell of their fight to survive the encroachment of 'civilisation', the struggle to keep their traditional ways and beliefs, the effectiveness of thousands of years old traditional herbal and plant medicines, and the fading knowledge of their ancient ancestors that have helped to keep them alive, and in some cases thriving, for tens of thousands of years.

Yeah, whatever.

Just tell us about your monster :

Perhaps it is nothing more than a legend, as skeptics say. Or maybe it is real, as those who claim to have seen it avow. But the mere mention of the mapinguary, the giant slothlike monster of the Amazon, is enough to send shivers down the spines of almost all who dwell in the world’s largest rain forest.

The folklore here is full of tales of encounters with the creature, and nearly every Indian tribe in the Amazon, including those that have had no contact with one another, have a word for the mapinguary (pronounced ma-ping-wahr-EE). The name is usually translated as “the roaring animal” or “the fetid beast.”

So widespread and so consistent are such accounts that in recent years a few scientists have organized expeditions to try to find the creature. They have not succeeded, but at least one says he can explain the beast and its origins.

“It is quite clear to me that the legend of the mapinguary is based on human contact with the last of the ground sloths,” thousands of years ago, said David Oren, a former director of research at the Goeldi Institute in Belém, at the mouth of the Amazon River. “We know that extinct species can survive as legends for hundreds of years. But whether such an animal still exists or not is another question, one we can’t answer yet.”

Dr. Oren said he had talked to “a couple of hundred people” who had said they had seen the mapinguary in the most remote parts of the Amazon and a handful who had said they had had direct contact.

In some areas, the creature is said to have two eyes, while in other accounts it has only one, like the Cyclops of Greek mythology. Some tell of a gaping, stinking mouth in the monster’s belly through which it consumes humans unfortunate enough to cross its path.

But all accounts agree that the creature is tall, seven feet or more when it stands on two legs, that it emits a strong, extremely disagreeable odor, and that it has thick, matted fur, which covers a carapace that makes it all but impervious to bullets and arrows.

“The only way you can kill a mapinguary is by shooting at its head,” said Domingos Parintintin, a tribal leader in Amazonas State. “But that is hard to do because it has the power to make you dizzy and turn day into night. So the best thing to do if you see one is climb a tree and hide.”

Though the descriptions of the mapinguary may resemble the sasquatch of North America or the yeti of Himalayan lore, the comparisons stop there. Unlike its counterparts in the Northern Hemisphere, the creature is said not to flee human contact, but to aggressively hunt down the hunter, turning the tables on those who do not respect the jungle’s unwritten rules and limits.

One scientific theory holds that what the tribes are describing are actually ancient encounters with a Giant Sloth, not uncommon to the region, but believed to have died out thousands of years ago. Apparently a Giant Sloth could grow as big as an elephant.

Then again, it's still one huge jungle, and there are plenty of regions still unexplored, or even charted, by man.

42 : Douglas Adams Was Right

There's a bit of stretching going on in the following story to make it fit into the idea that author Douglas Adams was right when he said the answer To Life, The Universe And Everything was '42', but it's a nice and confusing attempt :

After pondering the weighty question of the mass of the Milky Way galaxy, astronomers have come up with an answer: 42.

That is, our galaxy weighs three times 10 to the power of 42kg - a number written as 3 followed by 42 zeroes, which has echoes of author Douglas Adams's fictional answer to the question of life, the universe and everything in his series Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

It seems esoteric but knowing the weight of the galaxy - the amount of matter it contains - is key to solving important astronomical problems.

Of particular interest to astrophysicist Ken Freeman is the nature of so-called dark matter.

Unlike the "ordinary matter" of stars and planets, scientists have only hunches about the nature of the invisible material that, along with "dark energy", they estimate makes up 96 per cent of the universe.

While it's possible to estimate the mass of the entire universe, accurately measuring galaxies, particularly distant ones, is another matter.

It's all well and good to know how much our galaxy weighs, but it doesn't answer the real question of Life, The Universe and Everything, which was : What is the question?

The World's Most Expensive Toilet - $19 Million

Did someone forget to put enough toilets in the International Space Station? Sure sounds like it. NASA is now going to spend some $19 million buying a space toilet from the Russians :

The new toilet will go on the International Space Station, which currently has a crew of three, and only one toilet. The crew will expand to six members in 2009, and space bosses don't want astronauts lining up when they have to go.

The new toilet will be similar to the existing toilet (also Russian-built), which has been in orbit since late 2000, 1.6 billion kilometres ago, and is still flushing.

Actually, space toilets don't really flush, because that would waste water. They use vacuum instead.

Since supplies are difficult and expensive to deliver, the space station (like the Russian Mir station before it) has to get along with very little fresh water. It is in such short supply that astronauts use no-rinse shampoo and edible toothpaste so they don't have to rinse and spit.

Every few months, a supply ship brings about 450 litres of fresh water. But that's not enough to supply a crew of three.

Instead, the toilet pumps urine to a U.S.-made filtering system. Water molecules are very small, and the filters can remove anything made of bigger molecules -- in particular, the organic waste in urine.

For $19 million, NASA also gets a "privacy enclosure" around the toilet. And like all space toilets, it will have foot straps to keep the user steady.

Yeah, that is one activity in space where you don't want to start floating away.

No rinse shampoo? Why hasn't that, like Velcro, made its way into terra shops?

'Dragon' Bone Soup

We called them dinosaurs. Rural Chinese called them 'dragons'. Interesting story here claiming that in central China, villagers have been unearthing of dinosaurs bones, for two decades, and either boiling them up in soups, or grinding the bones into a fine powder for use in their traditional medicines. They apparently believed the bones of 'dragons' had special healing powers :

Until last year, the fossils were being sold in Henan province as "dragon bones" at about 4 yuan (50 cents) per kilogram (2.2 pounds), scientist Dong Zhiming told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Dong, a professor with the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said when the villagers found out the bones were from dinosaurs they donated 200 kilograms (440 pounds) to him and his colleagues for research.

"They had believed that the 'dragon bones' were from the dragons flying in the sky," he said.

The calcium-rich bones were sometimes boiled with other ingredients and fed to children as a treatment for dizziness and leg cramps. Other times they were ground up and made into a paste that was applied directly to fractures and other injuries, he said.

Man Bites Dog, To Death

The puppy was in the process of being mauled to death by a fierce dog. The Chinese man loved that puppy. So he did what any normal person would do. He mauled the attacking dog to death :

Awakened by the puppy's yelps, a villager named Geng first tried to chase the dog away by hurling watermelons at it, a local newspaper reported today.

The farmer then threw himself on the dog, clamping his teeth around its neck and eventually killing it.

“The two were rolling around on the ground and fighting for nearly 10 minutes,” the Yanzhao Cosmopolitan News in the northern province of Hebei said.

The puppy lived through the ordeal. As did Geng, with some deep wounds on his arms.

How To Fight Global Warming?

Chemtrails

So chemtrails, those big white fluffy lines left by aircraft across clear blue skies that slowly spread and form clouds, are just wacko-paranoid-loopy-nutso conspiracy theory delusions, right?

Well, maybe. But not for long.

Soon, at least in the United States, chemtrails are likely to be used to create clouds and chemical barriers to reflect back sunlight, supposedly to dampen the effects of global warming.

A fairly comprehensive and (occasionally) balanced report from a Californian NBC news channel in the US prepares the masses for their perpetually cloudy-sky new reality :





If Chemtrails Are BS, Why Are They Mentioned, Along With 'GeoEngineering' In American School Textbooks?

Does The Existence Of Chemtrails Prove That Global Warming Is A Galactic Phenomena?

The Weather Modification Act Of 2005 And The 'Struck Out' Version

Presenting The 'Zorse'



It's a mutant, but it's beautiful.

This is what you get when a horse and zebra successfully mate :

It looks as if someone tried to give a zebra a respray. . . then ran out of white paint halfway through the job.

But in reality there is no artificial colouring on display here. This amazing but natural coat belongs to Eclyse the zorse.

Her father is a zebra, while her mother is a horse. And she's walking proof of how a child inherits genes from both parents.

For while most zebra-horse crossbreeds sport stripes across their entire body, Eclyse only has two such patches, on its face and rear.

The one-year-old zorse was the accidental product of a holiday romance when her mother, Eclipse, was taken from her German safari park home to a ranch in Italy for a brief spell.

Horses and zebras are often crossbred in Africa and are used as trekking animals on Mount Kenya.

The One Million Year Old Human Tooth

So how long exactly how we humans been roaming around this planet? When I was in high school, some 20 years ago, we were told it was a hundred, maybe, two hundred thousand years tops.

With the discovery of a "human tooth" in Spain, we're now up to 1.2 million years.

What happened to the 'Out Of Africa' theory, that says humans spread out from Africa 50,000 to 70,000 years ago?

According to this story, and the discovery of a tooth, humans were in Spain a million years ago :

Jose Maria Bermudez de Castro, co-director of research at the Atapuerca site said the molar, discovered on Wednesday in the Atapuerca Sierra in the northern province of Burgos, could be as much as 1.2 million years old.

"The tooth represents the oldest human fossil remain of western Europe. Now we finally have the anatomical evidence of the hominids that fabricated tools more than one million years ago," the Atapuerca Foundation said in a statement.

"Since it is an isolated fossil remain, it is not possible at this point to confirm which Homo species this tooth belongs to," the foundation added, but said first analyses "allow us to suppose it is an ancestor of Homo antecessor (pioneer)."

In 1994 at the nearby Gran Dolina site several Homo antecessor fossils were uncovered, suggesting human occupation of Europe around 800,000 years ago, whereas scientists had previously believed the continent had only been inhabited for around half a million years.

The Sierra Atapuerca contains several caves such as the Gran Dolina site, where fossils and stone tools of Europe's earliest known hominids have been found.

Maybe it's just easier to go with the 'Intelligent Design' and 'Creationist' theories : God created man and dinosaurs at the the same time, about 8000 years ago. That's it. No debate.

Nobody Can Explain The Mystery Of The Night-Shining Clouds



They street term is "night-shining" clouds. And it's far more poetic than the scientific term, "noctilucent", for one of the world's greatest, and most beautiful mysteries.

So far, there is no peer-reviewed, or even unanimous, explanation for why high-floating clouds are glowing spectacularly at night, usually coming from out of the Arctic.

There's a few theories - volcanic ash, ice crystals sandwiched between layers of atmosphere, space dust.

But when in doubt of an explanation that makes sense, you can always try this one : climate change.

From Live Science :

The clouds are on the move, brightening and creeping out of polar regions, and researchers don't know why.

"It is clear that these clouds are changing, a sign that a part of our atmosphere is changing and we do not understand how, why or what it means," said atmospheric scientists James Russell III of Hampton University in Hampton, Virginia.

"These observations suggest a connection with global change in the lower atmosphere and could represent an early warning that our Earth environment is being changed."

The clouds form 50 miles above the Earth’s surface, in an upper layer of the atmosphere called the mesosphere. The puffs of water vapor and crystals appear during summer months above the Northern Hemisphere's pole as well the Southern Hemisphere’s pole in summer.

The mysterious clouds aren't new. They were first recorded back in 1885, but weirdly, they are now on the move, spreading further across the planet, through the upper atmosphere, as the decades pass.

Night-shining clouds were observed, and photographed, from the International Space Station back in 2003. Astronauts described them vividly, as visions of immense beauty :

They hover on the edge of space. Thin, wispy clouds, glowing electric blue.

Some scientists think they're seeded by space dust. Others suspect they're a telltale sign of global warming.

A century ago the clouds were confined to latitudes above 50 degrees; you had to go to places like Scandinavia, Russia and Britain to see them. In recent years they have been sighted as far south as Utah and Colorado.

A view of the night-shining clouds from the International Space Station, back in 2003

Even Man-Beasts Have A Right To Life

Will The Catholic Church Allow A PigMan To Become Pope?

Just because you managed to combine animal and human embryos in your laboratory, late at night, in a castle, with lightning flashing outside, and a hunchbacked ogre providing assistance, doesn't mean you have the right to kill your own mutant creation.

Or so says the Roman Catholic Church.

Bizarrely, some bishops believe that human-animal hybrids, or man-beasts as we like to call them, not only deserve the right to life, they should be allowed the option to be born as human babies are born and raised like normal children.

Haven't these clowns seen The Island Of Dr Moreau? You can't trust a man-beast, particularly not when the animal instincts override the human :

Human-animal hybrid embryos conceived in the laboratory - so-called “chimeras” - should be regarded as human and their mothers should be allowed to give birth to them, the Roman Catholic Church said yesterday.

Under draft Government legislation to be debated by Parliament later this year, scientists will be given permission for the first time to create such embryos for research as long as they destroy them within two weeks.

But the Catholic bishops of England and Wales, in a submission to the Parliamentary joint committee scrutinising the draft legislation, said that the genetic mothers of “chimeras” should be able to raise them as their own children if they wished.

The bishops said that they did not see why these “interspecies” embryos should be treated any differently than others.

The bishops, who believe that life begins at conception, said that they opposed the creation of any embryo solely for research, but they were also anxious to limit the destruction of such life once it had been brought into existence.

In their submission to the committee, they said: “At the very least, embryos with a preponderance of human genes should be assumed to be embryonic human beings, and should be treated accordingly.

“In particular, it should not be a crime to transfer them, or other human embryos, to the body of the woman providing the ovum, in cases where a human ovum has been used to create them.

“Such a woman is the genetic mother, or partial mother, of the embryo; should she have a change of heart and wish to carry her child to term, she should not be prevented from doing so.”

Religious doctrines dating back hundreds, and thousands of years, are going to look increasingly absurd in the coming decades, as new strands of human evolution are created and guided by scientists and researchers.

Chimpanzees share almost the exact amount of genetic material as humans do, and some would argue that chimpanzees show more empathy, humanity and respect than that possessed by many drunken thugs in the high street on a Saturday night.

So does the Catholic Church support the right to life for our closest living mammalian relatives?

And will the Catholic Church stand by its widely-scoped 'right to life' for man-beasts in the decades to come and one day allow a PigMan, or FlounderMan, to become Pope?

Headache Mystery Solved Once Bullet Was Removed From Skull

A man in Florida woke up with a terrible headache. It was so bad he thought he was having an anuerysm. Drive me to the hospital, he told his wife, the pain is killing me.

When doctors took a look at the man's head, were stunned at what they found :

"The nurse looked at him and said, 'It appears that you've been shot,'" the Fort Pierce Tribune quoted St. Lucie County Sheriff Ken Mascara as saying. "And he said, 'No way.'"

The wife, April Moylan, fled the emergency room when the bullet was discovered but later told deputies she had accidentally shot her husband as he slept early on Tuesday. She was jailed on a weapons violation charge while deputies pursued additional charges.

The man survived.

All Hail The Guinea Pig


Ready for the barbecue...

Yeah, it's a rodent. But it's a tasty rodent.

Peru loves guinea pigs so much, Peruvians are now holding an annual celebration in honour of the little 'cuy'. The festival is into its second year, and brass bands took to the streets of the highland town of Churin, last Sunday, to celebrate the furry little meat ball.

But yeah, behind all the, ahhh, pagentry, this is a food festival. And the figure of celebration also happens to be the main course.

From Associated Press :

"Zero cholesterol! Protein for anemia!" Teresa Figeroa shouted from under her woven, flower-lined hat.

For 20 soles ($7), she sold plates of guinea pig fried, grilled, baked - even cuy au vin - with generous helpings of Andean potatoes and large Peruvian corn called choclo.

Foreigners may cringe at seeing the critters served for lunch, looking much like they did in life, face down on a bed of greens. But people came from across Peru to savor the meat and to compete in a cuy cookoff.

There was also a competition for the biggest guinea pig; the winner weighed in at almost 8 pounds of flesh, fat and fur.

That's one big rodent.

Barbecued guinea pig is very good with chili peppers. Apparently.

It's not the cooking of a cute little guinea pig, or the eating of its meat, that makes me shudder. It's the crunching of all those little bones. Brrr...


Optimistic : When Peruvians Tried To Market Guinea Pigs To The American Food Market

It's Not All About The Guinea Pig, Peru Is A Land Of Culinary Riches

An Excellent Selection Of Peruvian Recipes - Cuy Free

Fugly



Officially, this is 'The World's Ugliest Dog' :

Elwood, a 2-year-old Chinese Crested and Chihuahua mix, was crowned the world's ugliest dog Friday, a distinction that delighted the New Jersey mutt's owners.

Elwood, dark colored and hairless _ save for a mohawk-like puff of white fur on his head _ is often referred to as "Yoda," or "ET," for his resemblance to those famous science fiction characters.

"I think he's the cutest thing that ever lived," said Elwood's owner, Karen Quigley, a resident of Sewell, New Jersey.

World's Ugliest Dog competitions are sure to boom, considering the amount of international publicity and news time that creature captured in the past week.

There's money in it, too :

Beyond the regal title of ugliest dog, Elwood also earned a $1,000 reward for his owner.

Elwood was rescued from a dog shelter. Not suprisingly, the original owner, who sells 'interesting' cross breeds, thought the best was so hideous he wanted it put down.

Let's hope Elwood doesn't start breeding himself.

In the 150 years that people have been traveling the planet, with a camera in tow, there have been millions of strange, unusual and dramatic travel photos taken.

But is the above image the greatest travel photo of all time?

It's got to be in the top ten, minimum.

Even After Being Stabbed Twice, He Couldn't Stop Masturbating

If this story didn't involve the presence of children, it would be funny. But it does, so it's not.

It is, however, provide yet another example of how amphetamines can lead the user to episodes of compulsive masturbation. Even after being warned to stop, and then being stabbed twice, the masturbation marathon continued. Bizarre and disturbing :

Defence lawyers for Kylie Louise Wilson, 28, said the mother of two "lost it" when her friend of six years, Daniel Peter Blair, went on a masturbation marathon on April 6 last year.

Brisbane's District Court this morning heard Mr Blair had showed up at Wilson's unit at Birkdale unit, in Redland Shire, where he took amphetamines before having a shower.

Whilst in the bathroom, Mr Blair, 32, began pleasuring himself, before moving to Wilson's bedroom, where he rolled around naked on her bed and continued his lewd conduct.

He returned to the bathroom for more and was busted by Wilson, who was attempting to bath her three-and-a-half year-old daughter.

The court heard Mr Blair refused her repeated requests to stop, prompting her to fetch a knife from the kitchen which she used to stab him twice in the left shoulder.

Crown prosecutors said Mr Blair paused only to put on his shorts and flee outside to wait for police to arrive, but was again overcome by the urge.

"Despite his injury, it seems (Mr Blair) continued to masturbate while in the garage," the prosecutor said.

Ms Wilson was sentenced to nine months jail, but was immediately released on patrol.

No word on whether or not Mr Blair has sought help for his twin addictions : amphetamines and wanking.

Species Deceases - Tens Of Millions Of Birds In America Disappear Without A Trace


The passenger pigeon, from 5 billion to none in 200 years

This report from the New York Times discusses the massive decline in bird numbers across the past few decades. Tens of millions of birds have just disappeared :

Last week, the Audubon Society released a new report describing the sharp and startling population decline of some of the most familiar and common birds in America: several kinds of sparrows, the Northern bobwhite, the Eastern meadowlark, the common grackle and the common tern. The average decline of the 20 species in the Audubon Society’s report is 68 percent.

Forty years ago, there were an estimated 31 million bobwhites. Now there are 5.5 million. Compared to the hundred-some condors presently in the wild, 5.5 million bobwhites sounds like a lot of birds. But what matters is the 25.5 million missing and the troubles that brought them down — and are all too likely to bring down the rest of them, too. So this is not extinction, but it is how things look before extinction happens.

The word “extinct” somehow brings to mind the birds that seem like special cases to us, the dodo or the great auk or the passenger pigeon. Most people would never have had a chance to see dodos and great auks on their remote islands before they were decimated in the 17th and 19th centuries. What is hard to remember about passenger pigeons isn’t merely their once enormous numbers. It’s the enormous numbers of humans to whom their comings and goings were a common sight and who supposed, erroneously, that such unending clouds of birds were indestructible. We recognize the extraordinary distinctness of the passenger pigeon now because we know its fate, killed off largely by humans. But we have moralized it thoroughly without ever really taking it to heart.

The question is whether we will see the distinctness of the field sparrow — its number is down from 18 million 40 years ago to 5.8 million — only when the last pair is being kept alive in a zoo somewhere. We love to finally care when the death watch is on. It makes us feel so very human.

Why are so many bird species racing towards extinction?

Agriculture has intensified. So has development. Open space has been sharply reduced. We have simply pursued our livelihoods. We knew it was inimical to wolves and mountain lions. But we somehow trusted that all the innocent little birds were here to stay. What they actually need to survive, it turns out, is a landscape that is less intensely human.

In our everyday economic behavior, we seem determined to discover whether we can live alone on earth. E.O. Wilson has argued eloquently and persuasively that we cannot, that who we are depends as much on the richness and diversity of the biological life around us as it does on any inherent quality in our genes. Environmentalists of every stripe argue that we must somehow begin to correlate our economic behavior — by which I mean every aspect of it: production, consumption, habitation — with the welfare of other species.

This is the premise of sustainability. But the very foundation of our economic interests is self-interest, and in the survival of other species we see way too little self to care.

The story of the decimation and extinction of the American passenger pigeon is a shocking story, probably even more so today. From an estimated population of more than 5 billion before Europeans arrived in North America, to none in less than 200 years :

They lived in enormous flocks, and during migration, one could see flocks of them a mile (1.6 km) wide and 300 miles (500 km) long, taking several days to pass and probably containing two billion birds.

Giant Human Skeletons?

The impressive photographs below were forwarded to me, from a reader, via e-mail.

Of course, they are photoshopped hoaxes. But they are extremely impressive hoax photos.

If you know the source of these pics, or the stories that go along with them, drop a line in the comments. I've found nothing of value online about these images, so far.

Stone Age Mickey



An American named Walt Disney didn't invent the iconic big-eared, huge smile face known as Mickey Mouse. It was a French artist, who lived more than 1000 years ago.

Well, Walt Disney did come up with the original design of Mickey Mouse. The brooch shown above was unearthed decades after Mickey appeared on cinema, and TV, screens.

It's a remarkable coincidence, however.

From the Discovery Channel :

One thousand years before the cartoon character Mickey Mouse was even a glint in Walt Disney's eye, a French artist created a bronze brooch that looks remarkably like the famous rodent, according to archaeologists at Sweden's Lund Historical Museum, which houses the recent find.

The object, dated to 900 A..D., was excavated at a site called Uppåkra in southern Sweden.

Although made of bronze, the brooch ornament likely adorned the clothing of an Iron Age woman.

The bronze brooch may remind modern viewers of Mickey Mouse, but archaeologist Jerry Rosengren from Lund University told Discovery News that it actually represents a lion.

"Look, It's The Face Of God! Can't You See It?"

Ahhh...No, Not Really


Don't stare too hard for too long, you can only see this 'Face Of God' through a camera


See it now? No? Me neither...


The pastor can see it, so can members of his Memphis congregation. It's the face of God, staring back down at them from the ceiling of their church.

Or it's just the way the lights happen to spill across the ceiling that makes it look like a face. If there's even the image of a face to see :

Pastor Reginald Lowery of Miracle Crusade Bible Church Holiness said it all started one Friday night at his church, located near 6th and Looney.

"I was preaching on 'God Knows Where We Are,' and all of a sudden a big bang hit the church," he said.

With that, Lowery said, alarms all over the neighborhood started going off, including those at the church. Then, according to the pastor, something else happened.

"The lights on the inside went to solid gold," he said.

It was then that Lowery's daughter first saw it: The face of God on the church's ceiling. But, there was a catch...it can't be seen with the naked eye.

"She took her camera and took a picture," Lowery said. "That's when the image came through."

Public Donates Thousands To Fund Backward-In-Time Experiments

NASA didn't want to know, neither did a special research unit of the Pentagon, but the members of the public want to find out whether or not an American physicist can actually prove that travelling back in time is a reality. And they put their money behind their curiosity, funding the radical research project with more than $35,000 in donations.

A rocket scientist has kicked in money, so has a chemist, an artist, a computer programmer and a Las Vegas music mogul.

Albert Einstein said it was impossible to travel backwards or forwards in time, but he would have stuck to that belief, wouldn't he? For even a particle to make such a journey would have gone against the rules of his greatest claim to fame : the theory of relativity.

But to prove that it is possible to go backwards in time doesn't necessarily mean that Einstein was wrong.

A University of Washington scientist believes it might just be possible for "light particles to act in reverse time". It's not a completely radical idea, quantum physics, and scientific observations, have already shown it is possible.

From the Seattle Post Intelligencer :

Cramer, a physicist, for decades has been interested in resolving a fundamental paradox of quantum mechanics, the theory that accounts for the behavior of matter and energy at subatomic levels. It's called the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox.

It was set up by Albert Einstein (and two other guys named Rosen and Podolsky) in the 1930s to try to prove the absurdity of quantum theory. Einstein didn't like quantum theory, especially one aspect of it he ridiculed as "spooky action at a distance" because it seemed to require subatomic particles interacting faster than the speed of light.

However, experimental evidence has continued to pile up demonstrating the spooky action. Two subatomic particles split from a single particle do somehow instantaneously communicate no matter how far apart they get in space and time. The phenomenon is described as "entanglement" and "non-local communication."

For example, one high-energy photon split by a prism into two lower-energy photons could travel into space and separate by many light years. If one of the photons is somehow forced up, the other photon -- even if impossibly distant -- will instantly tilt down to compensate and balance out both trajectories.

As the evidence for this has accumulated, several fairly contorted and unsatisfying efforts have been aimed at solving the puzzle. Cramer has proposed an explanation that doesn't violate the speed of light but does kind of mess with the traditional concept of time.

"It could involve signaling, or communication, in reverse time," he said.

He has proposed a relatively simple bench-top experiment using lasers, prisms, splitters, fiber-optic cables and other gizmos to first see if he can detect "non-local" signaling between entangled photons. He hopes to get it going in July. If this succeeds, he hopes to get support from "traditional funding sources" to really scale up and test for photons communicating in reverse time.

"I'm not crazy," he confirmed. "I don't know if this experiment will work, but I can't see why it won't. People are skeptical about this, but I think we can learn something, even if it fails."

Cramer said it's possible that the primary goal of his experiment could fail and yet still produce something of value. Some new subtlety about the nature of entanglement could be revealed, he said, even if the photons don't engage in measurable non-local communication. The "disentanglement" itself, he said, could be quite revealing.

And You Thought Your Neighbourhood Was Crowded...



Photographer Michael Wolf has a collection of mind-boggling images of incredibly overcrowded apartment blocks and apartment tower complexes in Hong Kong.

Go Here To View More Of Wolf's Photograph From Hong Kong

(tip 'o the hat to Dark Roasted Blend)

Behold The Dubai 'Lighthouse'

Green Tower To Chew Less Power



There has been an exciting, inspiring explosion of creativity in 'green' architecture in the past few years. But this 'Lighthouse' tower planned for Dubai is easily the most extraordinary design we've come across, so far.

The top third of the building is filled with huge wind turbines.

Here's some detail on 'The Lighthouse' from the developers :

...the 400-metre luxury office tower aspires to be a low carbon commercial building which aims to reduce its total energy consumption by up to 65% and water consumption by up to 40%. This will be achieved through the use of passive solar architecture, many low energy, low water engineering solutions, recovery strategies for both energy and water and building integrated renewables – including large scale wind turbines and photovoltaics.

During the development of the design Atkins will map and manage the embodied energy content of the building and select materials from sustainable sources, so that impact on global resources is controlled. Already this is leading designers to consider a steel frame solution for this structure.

According to a report on TreeHugger, the three 225 kilowatt wind turbines will be each be a whopping 29 metres in diameter, and some 4000 photovoltaic panels will soak up the sun's energy to help keep the whole building running.

Weirdest Weapon Used In A Robbery This Week?

Snout Of Swordfish

During a 'home invasion' in Queensland last night, a man was attacked with the snout of a swordfish. Long, hard and covered with serrated teeth-like pieces of cartilage, the two robbers used it to cut the man's arms, hands and back, as he presumably tried to fight them off.

Police are investigating and no doubt shaking their heads in disbelief at this bizarre weapon of choice.

The Great American Bee Die Off

Mystery Surrounds Reasons Why Bees Are Dying In 35 American States

It's one of America's greatest modern mysteries - why are millions of honeybees dying off? Why are millions more leaving their hives never to return? Are chemicals somehow responsible? Is it radiation from cell phone towers? A genetic virus yet undetermined?

Nobody seems to have a firm answer, but the great bee die-off is threatening the future of America's food supply, in the midst of some of the worst drought conditions to hit the American mid-west, and its 'food belt' since the Dust Bowl years of the Great Depression.

From the Los Angeles Times :

The dead bees under Dennis vanEngelsdorp's microscope were like none he had ever seen.

He had expected to see mites or amoebas, perennial pests of bees. Instead, he found internal organs swollen with debris and strangely blackened. The bees' intestinal tracts were scarred, and their rectums were abnormally full of what appeared to be partly digested pollen. Dark marks on the sting glands were telltale signs of infection.

"The more you looked, the more you found," said VanEngelsdorp, the acting apiarist for the state of Pennsylvania. "Each thing was a surprise."

VanEngelsdorp's examination of the bees in November was one of the first scientific glimpses of a mysterious honeybee die-off that has launched an intense search for a cure.

The puzzling phenomenon, known as Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD, has been reported in 35 states, five Canadian provinces and several European countries. The die-off has cost U.S. beekeepers about $150 million in losses and an uncertain amount for farmers scrambling to find bees to pollinate their crops.

Scientists have scoured the country, finding eerily abandoned hives in which the bees seem to have simply left their honey and broods of baby bees.

"We've never experienced bees going off and leaving brood behind," said Pennsylvania-based beekeeper Dave Hackenberg. "It was like a mother going off and leaving her kids."

Researchers have picked through the abandoned hives, dissected thousands of bees, and tested for viruses, bacteria, pesticides and mites.

So far, they are stumped.

According to the Apiary Inspectors of America, 24% of 384 beekeeping operations across the country lost more than 50% of their colonies from September to March. Some have lost 90%.

...honeybees, scientifically known as Apis mellifera, are required to pollinate a third of the nation's food crops, including almonds, cherries, blueberries, pears, strawberries and pumpkins.

Pentagon Spent Millions Trying To Develop 'Gay Bomb' That Would Induce Homosexuality In Enemy Fighters

Stories surfaced on so-called 'conspiracy' websites in the late 1990s stating that the Pentagon was actively looking into the use of a hormonal chemical weapon that could turn an angry enemy into a virtually paralysed, submissive, and highly distracted non-threat.

The bizarre claims, back then, storied that the Pentagon was actively pursuing a stream of genuinely weird and highly unlikely ideas as they sought to expand the development of supposedly non-lethal weapons.

Back then, the 'gay bomb' idea was totally dismissed by the Pentagon and the mainstream media as an absurdity, and little more than a fantasy.

But it was, in fact, true. The Pentagon had spent millions in funding the development of such a weapon :

A Berkeley watchdog organization that tracks military spending said it uncovered a strange U.S. military proposal to create a hormone bomb that could purportedly turn enemy soldiers into homosexuals and make them more interested in sex than fighting.

Pentagon officials on Friday confirmed to CBS 5 that military leaders had considered, and then subsequently rejected, building the so-called "Gay Bomb."

Edward Hammond, of Berkeley's Sunshine Project, had used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain a copy of the proposal from the Air Force's Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio.

As part of a military effort to develop non-lethal weapons, the proposal suggested, "One distasteful but completely non-lethal example would be strong aphrodisiacs, especially if the chemical also caused homosexual behavior."

The documents show the Air Force lab asked for $7.5 million to develop such a chemical weapon.

"The Ohio Air Force lab proposed that a bomb be developed that contained a chemical that would cause enemy soldiers to become gay, and to have their units break down because all their soldiers became irresistibly attractive to one another," Hammond said after reviewing the documents.

"The notion was that a chemical that would probably be pleasant in the human body in low quantities could be identified, and by virtue of either breathing or having their skin exposed to this chemical, the notion was that soldiers would become gay," explained Hammond.

The Pentagon told CBS 5 that the proposal was made by the Air Force in 1994.

During the South African Truth And Reconciliation hearings in the late 1990s, it emerged that 'backyard chemists' from America and the United Kingdom had been recruited by South African apartheid-era regime to help develop drugs that could be sprayed on, or distributed through, rioting crowds to calm them down, make them submissive, or more inclined to turn to love instead of war.

Powerful strains of cannabis and Ecstasy were developed and apparently tested on unknowing people in poor townships.

The Pentagon revelations prove that developing drugs to alter the behaviour of presumed or known enemies as part of non-lethal weapons development is neither a 'conspiracy theory' or all that far-fetched.

Such programs have existed since the 1980s, if not earlier.

Drug Sniffing Dogs Fired For "Sexual Harassment"

For Customs agencies around the world, a good drug dog is hard to find. Which is why some dogs with less than savoury personal habits are usually allowed to keep on working, as long as they keep finding the drugs.

But there are some lines that even hard working drug dogs cannot cross.

Mok and Lai, two "streets mutts" in Thailand who became "ace sniffer dogs" have been "fired" for sexually harassing female passengers and urinating on travellers' bags.

From Reuters :

Mok and Lai had been plucked from obscurity under a program initiated by King Bhumibol Adulyadej to turn strays into police dogs, the Bangkok Post said on Sunday.

Although they won plaudits from police for their work in sniffing out drugs at northern Thailand's Chiang Rai airport, near the border with Laos and Myanmar, so many passengers complained about their behavior they had to be fired.

"He liked to pee on luggage while searching for drugs inside," Mok's former handler, Police Lieutenant Colonel Jakapop Kamhon, said. "He also liked to hold on to women's legs."

"...they were stray dogs, so their manners were worse than those of foreign breeds."

The animals weren't put down, or returned to the streets. They are apparently working on a farm, herding sheep. And presumably still trying to hump legs and piss on whatever they please.

Elephant Beats Zookeeper When Its Meals Are Served Late

Suzi The Elephant Also Doubles As Harmonica Player, Children's Ride And Saluter Of Visitors

Imagine trying to get away with this sort of behaviour in your favourite restaurant?

The only elephant in a Pakistani zoo knows when its meals are being served late, and it knows how to deal with such insubordination.

'Suzi' the elephant seizes a cane in its trunk and beats the zookeeper with it, no doubt providing much enjoyment for the crowds that gather to watch this apparently regular ritual in Lahore.

If you think that's cute, the zoo is looking for donors to sponsor the elephant's meals, as they are running out of money and can't afford to keep the aggrophant for much longer :

The zoo was hoping philanthropists and schools would "adopt" Suzi and pay for its food, the paper said today.

"We don't have enough funds to feed Suzi and its expenses are more than our budget," said zoo director Yousuf Pal.

Actually, on further research, forget the donations. It appears the zoo has a few problems with its rare animals dying from curable diseases, the most recent victim a chimpanzee, and gets 'Suzi' to regularly beg for money from crowds, which she collects in her trunk :

“This is a negative trend which is totally against zoo ethics,” sources said. They said that the 20-year-old Suzi was living alone, which was rather sad because elephants normally live in groups. There should be more elephants at the Lahore Zoo, they said.

Perhaps money should be raised to rescue poor old, lonely Suzi from the zoo before the 'beat the zookeeper' donations start pouring in.

This 'Elephant Beats Zookeeper' story, which will be the top of the 'most read' stories on internet news sites around the world today, hides a few important facts about Suzi. She is likely to be beating the zookeeper not only because her meals are late, but because those meals are becoming more infrequent as the zoo doesn't have the money to feed her any longer.

More research reveals that the zoo also uses Suzi as an amusement ride for kids.

And she also has to play the harmonica for the amusement of the crowds. How many gigs does this poor old elephant have?

And more still. People visiting the zoo are also charged money to get a 'salute' from Suzi.

Seems Suzi might be beating her zookeeper for a few other reasons than just the late meal service.

British Family Forced To Flee Home Because Of Their Hair Colour

Perhaps this story will be exposed as something close to a hoax, or an exaggeration, but then again, life for anyone deemed "weird" or "different" on some of the more impoverished council housing estates in England can be a nightmare.

And Brits generally seem to enjoy mocking those with red hair, or for being "ginger", as the slang goes.

In the rapidly police state-like land that is England, will being a "gingerist" soon become punishable prejudice? Or hate crime?

From the Daily Mail :

A family are being forced out of their home by a gang of thugs because of their red hair.

Kevin and Barbara Chapman say they and their four young children have already moved twice to avoid the taunts but at each address have been subjected to attacks.

Their windows have been smashed, the walls daubed with graffiti and their children physically assaulted in the street by other youths.

In the latest incident the family returned to their third home in Newcastle upon Tyne to find the words "ginger is gay" painted on the outside of the property.

Even as the family, all of whom have red hair, discussed a move with social workers, their windows were smashed.

The Chapmans, who have a ten-year-old daughter Ryelle, and sons Daniel, ten, and Jordon, 13, first moved from Walker to Newbiggin Hall to escape the prejudice.

They were forced to move again a year ago to Kenton Bar. Within weeks they were once again subjected to abuse.

"There seem to be around ten or 12 families who have relations in the different areas we have been," said Mr Chapman. "Word seems to get around and it starts again."

Mrs Chapman, 44, said: "Wherever they go they get called "ginger nut, ginger bastard, ginger c***", it's disgusting."

Another 'Salt Man' Discovered In Iran



Salt, like honey, can be a remarkable preservative, keeping hair, flesh and bones in something close to a pristine state for thousands of years. 'Pristine', at least, compared to the rapid decomposition of corpses left exposed to air and bacteria.

From Press TV :

The sixth Iranian salt man was discovered in a salt mine in the central province of Zanjan, where five other similar discoveries was made.

It was discovered around the area of a mine where the second salt mummy belonging to the Achaemenid and Parthian dynastic eras was discovered.

Chehr-Abad is a historical salt mine of Zanjan where other salt men dating back to the Sassanid era (224 - 651 AD) were previously found.

Items found with the previous skeletons, which include leather shoes, a leather bag, a terra cotta lamp and two cow horns, which have probably been used for the transportation of oil, are mostly intact.

Journey To Find The People Who Live At The Earth's Core...Or Something

There's a hole in the Arctic that leads right down to the centre of Earth. Maybe. And far below the Earth's crust are huge caverns and thousands of miles of tunnels. Perhaps. And living in that all that space is a race of long lost human-like creatures, who've adjusted well to their new home far below the surface world and they've built a new society for themselves. What?

Yes, or so claims a US scientist. Well, he doesn't claim it all to be true. He just thinks it might be. But regardless of the absurdity of his claims, he's going to mount an expedition to the Arctic to find the cave that will lead to the tunnels that will lead to the caverns that will bring him to the underworld civilisation. He's calling the trip "the greatest geological expedition in history."

Naturally the American scientist is also selling tickets for his great expedition :

This time next year, Kentucky based physicist and futurist Brooks Agnew hopes to board the commercially owned Russian icebreaker Yamal in the port of Murmansk, and to sail into the polar sea just beyond Canada's Arctic islands.

"Everest has been climbed a hundred times," Mr. Agnew says. "The Titanic has been scanned from stem to stern. [But] this is the first and only expedition to the North Pole opening ever attempted."

Mr. Agnew is the latest in a long line of people to peddle the nutty, yet persistent, theory that humans live on the surface of a hollow planet, in which two undiscovered openings, near the North and South poles, connect the outer Earth with an interior realm.

In the 17th century, English astronomer and mathematician Sir Edmond Halley, who calculated the orbit of Halley's Comet, advanced hollow-Earth theories, as did German scientist Athanasius Kircher.

While he insists the journey has a genuine scientific purpose, Mr. Agnew also says the expedition will include several experts in meditation, mythology and UFOs, as well as a team of documentary filmmakers.

Randy Freeman, a Yellowknife writer commenting in the current issue of Up Here magazine, warns that "besides heaps of throwaway cash, prospective cruisers should bring along enough gullibility to swallow an outlandish theory that, despite centuries of scorn, refuses to die."

But Mr. Agnew is unfazed by such criticism, promising a grand polar adventure, no matter what the outcome.

If the polar opening isn't there, the voyage "will still make an outstanding documentary," he promises.

"But if we do find something, this will be the greatest geological discovery in the history of the world."

Is it a proper scientific trip and investigation? Well, not really. He's setting out find something that he knows very likely does not even exist : the cave that acts as the 'portal' to the underworld.

He's just going to drag a bunch of people into the middle of nowhere, meditate, and roll cameras.

Will it be profitable?

Oh yes. Mr Agnew is charging $20,000 for anyone who wants to join him on his journey of discovery to find just a cave, if he's lucky.