Yummy Wakame

Kenya: 84-year-old schoolboy (photo) faces expulsion for being “too disruptive”.

Parents say that Mr. Maruge - who was top of his class last year - has become a teacher’s pet and have questioned his grades.

“If I am expelled I will surely die,” said Mr Maruge who is planning to sue the British Government for alleged abuse during the 1950s Mau Mau rebellion.

I love sleep. Its utterly delicious to totally let go and completely relax for a couple of hours… and then the dreams come.

You may take it for granted, but this man hasn’t been able to sleep for 20 years!

Thai elephants toilet trained
“Some seven elephants at the privately run camp beside Chiang Mai Zoo are being trained to sit like a human on the giant white toilets, which can be flushed by pulling on a rope with a gentle tug of the trunk.”

Cute pic!

This is why my friend Kat is a double hard woman plus she has real fangs! … man what a cool story!

While men mope in bed with the sniffles feeling all sorry for themselves, women get on with it. There’s no time considering your typical woman is bred to raise 2 kids (+ 1 husband), climb the corporate ladder 6 days a week 7 - 7, use lunch to pick up the kids, pretty much do all the housework and somehow still manage to not to look like weathered-out old bag lady at the end of the day.

Not that I condone going into zombie mode and joining the giant killing machine that is the armed forces, compared to women, men just aren’t cut out to be soldiers. They’re just too soft and whiney. I’d choose a woman for the job any day. Got flu, a bit of radiation poisoning, broken neck? No problem. Women also wouldn’t go around raping women and killing children for kicks either. Physical strengh? A high-protein diet with weights and endurance training are enough prep. And don’t forget women’s intuition - invaluable in crisis mode for making quick and crucial decisions. Men aren’t bad, but women rock!

Tsunami folklore ’saved islanders’
BBC NEWS: “Traditional knowledge handed down from generation to generation helped to save ancient tribes on India’s Andaman and Nicobar Islands from the worst of the tsunami.

The aboriginal tribes - some of the oldest and most isolated in the world - have oral traditions apparently developed from previous earthquakes that may have allowed them to escape to higher ground before the massive tsunami struck the island chain off Indonesia.

The Onge tribe, for example, have lived on Little Andaman for between 30,000 and 50,000 years and, though they are on the verge of extinction, almost all of the 100 or so people left seem to have survived the 26 December quake and the devastating waves which followed. Their folklore talks of “huge shaking of ground followed by high wall of water”. When the earthquakes struck, the Onges moved to higher ground deep inside their forest and escaped the fury of the waves that entered the settlements.”

Another aboriginal people - the Jarawa on South and Middle Andaman - also fled to higher ground before the waves.”

Boy cuttlefish ‘dress as girls’
Diminutive Giant Australian Cuttlefish males have taken to pretending to be female to elbow out larger love rivals.

“We found that female mimickers could successfully deceive the consort male and that they were able to position themselves near the female in 30 out of 62 attempts.”
~ Dr Roger Hanlon

Man constructs 18-foot-tall mecha (pic)
It will shoot nine-inch nails from the shoulders and 20-foot flames from forearms!

“The red backlit eyes of his 18-foot hydraulic mecha - please don’t call it a robot - will glow, but they’re just for show. Five cameras will be the real eyes, allowing the operator riding inside the steel contraption to see via a laptop computer and flatscreen monitor rigged inside.”

Stopping light gives atoms a memory
“The ability to stop light using shock-waves in gas could write information onto atoms at specific locations, aiding quantum computing.

In recent years, innovative quantum tricks have slowed down light, even stopping it altogether. Now by switching the light source off at the right time it might be possible to use “slow light” as a new way to store information for use in quantum communications and computing.”

Tricked human eggs divide without sperm
The new technique could supply embryonic stem cells for research while avoiding ethical issues as embryos are not required

NewScientist: Even cheap love tokens can buy sex
“When male flies gave their prospective partners a useless cotton bauble rather than a juicy meal, they still improved their mating chances

It is an age-old story in the animal kingdom: males give gifts to females to seduce them. But why do some individuals hand over valuable presents while others get away with common tat? For instance, males of some fly species either present females with hard-won edible insects, or inedible seeds or twigs. Some even do both.”
Read the article…

What a delicious find -
The Streeb-Greebling Diaries

Adventures in Robots, Artificial Intelligence, Ethology, Neuroscience, cheese sandwiches, books, Psychology, programming, computer science, robotics, animatronics, puppetry, cybernetics, artificial life, Philosophy, consciousness, singularity, transhumanism, Electronics, submersibles and avionics.

Wow! Everything I need to keep perfectly entertained all in one blog. And to think I stumbled upon this in the comments popup.

Bob is a computer programmer who authors programs to control various industrial machines. For fun he made these cute little robots - Rodney and Flint the monkey.

Related to my earlier post - the Edge 2005 Annual Question, Bob’s article “I believe” is a fascinating read.

It may help to eat a cheese sandwich while reading to increase your mental RAM.

This blog should be filled with your comments and opinions! Where have you been?

Einstein@Home
Catch a Wave From Space

Search the galaxy for pulsars. This fun and educational screen saver enables you to contribute to gravitational wave research and help physicists analyze real gravity wave data from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO).

Sign up to be notified when Einstein@Home is ready to go live!

Via interactions.org - Particle Physics News & Resources

Top Ten Mormon Urban Legends

Autotrophs: new kind of humans appears who neither drink nor eat

“People all around the world were storming supermarkets and grocery stores on Christmas and New Year’s Eve. There was a small group of people, though, who did not even think about eating anything for Christmas. In fact, they do not think about food at all. Such people call themselves autothrophs - they do not eat at all. The term designates an organism that makes its own food. Autotrophs can go on hunger strikes for years and even decades.”

“[Russian philosopher] Vernadsky was certain that man is an energetic creature that can nourish himself from the energy of space. Some people can prove it today that it is possible to live a normal life without physical food.”

“Doctors say that autotrophs make a fundamentally new type of self-sufficient human beings. It is not ruled out that they will replace us at a new evolution stage. Modern science has already confirmed the ability of a human being to maintain itself. Dietitians were recently saying that the B12 vitamin was naturally contained only in animal foods. Vegans, therefore, were supposed to die, since they could not receive the vitamin. However, doctors found out that the concentration of the B12 vitamin was fine with vegans. The situation became clear, when scientists discovered the synthesis process in the intestines. It became known that human beings could live on their own microflora. Medics have already discovered that the human intestines produce microorganisms that can synthesize amino acids.”

Vampire on the loose in Birmingham
Stories about a man who stalks the streets, sinking his teeth into passers-by, began to emerge from the Ward End area of the city last month.

Guardian Unlimited: According to the rumours, he bit a man walking along the street, then pounced on neighbours who came to his aid. One woman is said to have had a “chunk” bitten out of her hand. Local media have since been inundated with calls from people in the city’s Saltley, Small Heath and Alum Rock areas, who have heard of attacks and of people being bitten after answering their front doors.

“I heard the story in the barber’s the other day,” said Father Anthony Rohan of the Holy Family Catholic church in Small Heath. “They asked me if I believed in vampires and I said no. Then the lollipop lady mentioned it to me as well. I’m not worried, though. I’ve got a lot of crucifixes in the house.”

For sufferers of severe migranes, there is a possible new cure…

Migraine linked to heart defect
A new study, the first trial of its kind, is looking into the possible link between migraines and a hole in the heart. If successful, it could be the most significant development in treatment for over a decade.

One in four people have a valve-like hole, which can be closed using straight-forward keyhole surgery, but it is twice as common among a type of migraine sufferer. The theory is that closing this hole will ensure blood going through the heart is always filtered through the lungs on the way to the brain - thus removing chemicals that are thought to play a role in causing migraine. The operation takes less than an hour and is carried out under light general anaesthetic.

Researchers are now looking for volunteers who suffer migraines with aura - one of the most severe types of the condition. People who experience severe migraine are invited to participate in a study. More information is available from Migraine Action Association, call 0870 050 5898 or MIST. There is with with no obligation to sign up to the study.

blinkx TV allows you to search the main news sites for video and audio clips.

Unlike other search providers, blinkx TV not only lets you search using standard keyword and Boolean queries but you can also use conceptual search.

A9.com is a powerful search engine, using web search and image search results enhanced by Google, Search Inside the Book results from Amazon.com, reference results from GuruNet, movies results from IMDb, and more…

www.ninjaburger.com
You WILL experience the Ninja Burger difference!

Virtually the World is the world’s largest directory of Virtual Tours containing more than 14,000 Virtual Tours across over 110 cities and countries.

Pack your bags, fasten your seatbelts and prepare yourself for take-off on a virtual ‘Round the World’ trip. Using the unrivalled viewing experience of iPIX imaging our web-site will guide you through the streets, sites and highlights of the world’s most exciting cities.”

2 cool cams…

Earth View - choose a satellite and pick your spot

Africam - various cams… the world’s first virtual game reserve

The geek hierarchy, and frequently paraphrased questions.
(Courtesy Brunching Shuttlecocks)

How to design a radio without buttons

“The mouseradio is a fully functioning radio without buttons. The idea was to use the mouse navigation and to implement it in a radio.

(see the video)

via just for the record…

M-Net for South Africans abroad
www.mnetondemand.com

Oh I love love LOVE Shutterbug!!! Such dazzling colours and moody shots. Tracey has such a fantastic eye for photography.