Turquoise Bicycle Shoe Fins

Provenge, which must be prepared specifically for each patient (as it is a wholly different approach that recruits the patients’ own immune system cells to treat cancer), has been shown to increase the age of prostate cancer victims by 4.1 months.  (In the trial were men with late-stage prostate cancer — which had spread to other organs — who no longer received any benefit from other therapies.)  The price tag for a course of Provenge is a staggering US$93,000, to be paid by US taxpayers (by law, Medicare doesn’t take into account a drug’s cost when considering whether or not to provide it).  Analysts expect Provenge to rake in sales of US$1 billion by 2012.  In harsh economic times, should men be told, “If you don’t have the $93,000 or don’t want to spend it, then you must die a little sooner”?  (This is a decision that most non-Medicare patients have to make.)  The FDA study shows people living 25 rather than 21 months.  Is that a good buy?  Most people would rather leave $93,000 to their families than pay it just to live in agony another 4 months.  To really prioritise life-enhancing dollars, giving everyone access to aerobics classes and a dietitian would cost much less and could help more people live longer.  But there was such a big outcry over the FDA’s 2-year delay in okaying the medicine that two prostate cancer specialists who recommended against approval had to attend a conference with bodyguards.

Of the 34 generic cancer drugs on the market, 14 are in short supply.  The underlying reason?  Cancer patients don’t buy chemotherapy drugs from local pharmacies the way they buy asthma inhalers or insulin.  No, their oncologist buys the drug, administers it, then bills Medicare and insurance companies for costs.  Drug companies had been charging inflated, essentially made-up “average wholesale prices.”  The Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003 put an end to this arrangement, requiring Medicare to pay physicians who prescribed the drugs based on its actual average selling price + 6% for handling.  Indirectly, because of time needed for drug companies to compile actual sales data and the government to revise averages, the act restricted increases to no more than 6% every 6 months.  But the act had an unintended consequence.  In the first 2-3 years after a cancer drug goes generic, its price can drop as much as 90% when manufacturers compete for market share.  But if a shortage later develops, the drug’s price should be able to increase again to attract more manufacturers.  Because the 2003 act effectively limits drug price increases, it prevents this.  The low profit margins mean that manufacturers face a hard choice: lose money producing a lifesaving drug or switch limited production capacity to a more lucrative drug.  A more radical approach would be to take Medicare out of the generic cancer drug business entirely.  Once a drug becomes generic, Medicare should stop paying, and it should be covered by a private pharmacy plan.  That way, prices can better reflect the market, and market incentives can work to prevent shortages.

Far left progressives constantly bash Obama for not closing GITMO, but a closer look at the facts reveals that their blame has been misplaced.  On 22 January 2009 as one of his first official acts in office, Barack Obama signed an executive order to close GITMO within one year.  He said, “This is me following through on not just a commitment I made during the campaign, but I think an understanding that dates back to our founding fathers, that we are willing to observe core standards of conduct, not just when it’s easy, but also when it’s hard.”  But Obama was denied needed funding to close GITMO and relocate detainees.  Only 6 Democrats stood with him on closing GITMO (Durbin, Harkin, Reed, Levin, Leahy, Whitehouse).  The rest voted with the Republicans.  Fast forward to December 2009, Obama signed a presidential memo ordering Attorney General Holder and Defense Secretary Gates to acquire the state prison in Thompson, Illinois as a GITMO replacement.  Six months later, the Democratically controlled House Armed Services Committee votes unanimously to prohibit opening any GITMO replacement facility in the US, and his dream of closing GITMO was dead.

Has an incumbent US president ever lost the nomination to run for a second term?  Four incumbent presidents have been denied a nomination to run by their own party.  Franklin Pierce, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson (sort of), and Chester A Arthur; but only Pierce had actually been elected president.  The rest were vice presidents who who ascended to the presidency after assassinations or deaths in office.  Pierce was the 14th President and served from 1853-1857.  John Fremont defeated Pierce in his bid for renomination, making Pierce the only elected President (rather than a Vice President who succeeded to the position) to not gain his party’s nomination for a second term.  But Lyndon Johnson may have come close.  In 1968, he ran for a second full term, but dropped out of the race after he only narrowly won the New Hampshire primary against Eugene McCarthy.  This was considered a sign of major weakness for an incumbent president.  After Robert Kennedy joined the race, it became clear to Johnson that he wouldn’t win the nomination, so on 31 March 1968, he announced he wouldn’t run for another term.

What’s wrong with Texas?  (Having been born there, as were both my parents and two of my children, I feel I have a right to ask.)  With 50th = lowest and 1st = highest, Texas ranked 49th in tax revenue raised, 45th in public health, 47th in mental health, 49th in police protection, 50th in government administration, and 46th in environmental protection.  If you’re a libertarian, perhaps you see that as a net good.  Fine.  However, they are 46th in percentage of the population graduated from high school and 47th in Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) scores.  Okay, they do have a relatively high proportion of immigrants, many illegal, which would have an impact.  But consider this: they rank 1st in percentage of the population without health insurance, 1st in percentage of homes refinanced as subprime-mortgages, 1st in toxic emissions from manufacturers, clean water permit violations and hazardous waste and spills.  They’re 2nd in teenage birth rate, adults incarcerated, and firearm deaths.  They’re 1st in executions, number of registered machine guns, and alcohol-related traffic fatalities.  Over 12,000 Texas bridges are classified as structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.  Five of the 15 cities deemed to be the “Fattest Cities in America” are in Texas, with Houston ranked number one.  [Now, I am a Kiwi.]

An array of get-tough policies in US schools in the past 20 years has brought many students into contact with police and courts — a trend some call the criminalisation of student discipline.  Now, these practices are under scrutiny.  Federal officials want to limit punishments that push students from classroom to courtroom; many state and local leaders agree.  In Texas, harsh discipline has police issuing Class C misdemeanor citations for offensive language, class disruption and schoolyard fights.  Thousands of students land in court, with fines of up to $500.  Students with outstanding tickets can be arrested after age 17.  60% of Texas students are suspended or expelled at least once from 7th grade on.  After the first time, students are nearly 3 times more likely to be involved again compared to students with no disciplinary referrals.  US Education Secretary Arne Duncan said, “The first response to student misbehaviour can’t be to pick up the phone and call 911.”  Research shows students who’ve been arrested or who have appeared in court are more likely to drop out of school.  Dropouts in turn are more likely to be incarcerated or unemployed.  A 10-year-old 4th grader appeared in court for a tussle on the school bus and was ordered to do 8 hours of community service and take classes in anger management at a cost of $370.  His mother said, “I’m a single parent.  $400?  I have two other boys.”  A middle school student in Austin was ticketed for class disruption after she sprayed herself with perfume when classmates said she smelled.  Tickets have been issued to students as young as 5.  How much this matters on college applications depends on the offense, the student’s overall record, and his or her explanation.

It all began in the 1950s at the Wellington Zoo, where a local resident, the rather domineering Mrs Cosgrove, was bitten by a Sumatran rat monkey.  A rat monkey bite can be poisonous and Mrs Cosgrove quickly became a ravenous zombie.  It got very much worse when her sleazy brother Les tried to interfere.  Luckily, her nerdish son Lionel was determined to make sure no one found out and, almost unbelievably, most of the mayhem stayed safely hidden behind Mrs Cosgrove’s lace curtains.  This piece of local history is all recounted in Peter Jackson’s very bloody Braindead. If zombie-comedy-splatter films are your thing, then this is definitely one for you.  The photograph is from the Evening Post, February 1992, a few months before the premiere.  It shows Jackson with a model very like the Wellington suburb of Newtown, used in the opening credits of the film.  (That is definitely the intersection of Constable and Riddiford Streets, but Newtown never had any 4-story buildings.)  In the accompanying article. Jackson relates how the model was made for only $3,000 with the help of film students.  The rest, as they say, is history.

Sweden has no inheritance tax.  None whatsoever: it also doesn’t have a national minimum wage or wealth tax.  It follows the classical liberal, or if you prefer, standard economics of taxation.  Taxes on corporate and capital incomes are lower than those on labour income.  It is consumption taxes which carry the heavy load of funding the welfare state, not taxes on income, companies or capital.  The Swedish national income tax rates are 20 and 25%.  These are, you will note, markedly lower than US rates.  But the bigger tax on incomes is imposed by the municipalities in Sweden.  These local taxes are high: 25-35% of income.  This is, as you will note, entirely the opposite of the US system.  US taxes are low at the local level, usually just property taxes and perhaps local sales tax.  Taxes are higher at the State level but rarely above 6 or 7% of income and perhaps the same again in sales tax.  The big tax gatherer is the Federal Government.  Yes, it’s absolutely true that Sweden has both high taxes and a large welfare state: it also works very well.  The reason?  Underneath the high tax and large welfare state, it’s an economically free (even classically liberal) economy.  Further, Sweden’s taxing and spending is local — meaning it’s done more efficiently and with the consent of the local populace.

All he needs is love.  And someone to keep an eye on his glasses.  After thieves twice swiped the round-rimmed spectacles from Havana’s John Lennon statue 8 years ago, 4 retirees have rotated 12-hour, round-the-clock shifts to ensure they don’t go missing again.  “You have to be here every day because the day you aren’t, there the glasses go,” said watchman Juan Gonzalez, an 89-year-old retired filing clerk who smokes up to 7 cigars a day guarding the bronze statue from a nearby bench.  In fact, the “guards” are so worried about another theft that they hold onto the glasses in shirt pockets or rags, restoring them to Lennon’s face only when tourists want to take pictures.  Lennon’s likeness sits cross-legged in a small park bearing his name, a place casually known as Rockers Park because amateur musicians and Beatles fans gathered there in the days when the group was banned.  The Imagine lyric, “You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one,” is engraved in Spanish at Lennon’s feet.  Cuba inaugurated the statue 8 December 2000, to mark the 20th anniversary of Lennon’s slaying.  Fidel Castro once labelled the Beatles subversive and symbols of selfish consumerism.  But he made a surprise appearance at the unveiling and lamented never meeting him.  [Yes, but is this enough to keep him from appearing on a future Powershop poster?]

The United States claims to be a shining beacon of democracy to the world.  But democracy is about responsiveness of political leaders to an engaged and informed electorate, which holds that leadership class accountable for mistakes and misdeeds.  How to explain Americans’ acquiescence in the face of political leaders who repeatedly lead her into illegal, geopolitically disastrous and economically devastating wars of choice?  The dynamics of US public opinion have changed dramatically since the 1960s, when popular opposition to the Vietnam War coalesced into a political and cultural movement that nearly toppled the government and led to sweeping social reforms.  Numerous explanations have been offered for the vanishing of American protesters.  Foremost: Fewer people know someone who’s been killed.  The death rate for US troops fell from 58,000 in Vietnam to a total of 6,000 for Iraq and Afghanistan.  Second: During the ’60s and early ’70s conservatives unmoved by the human toll in Vietnam were appalled by the cost to taxpayers.  Aware of this concern, President George W Bush kept the lion’s share of spending on wars against Afghanistan and Iraq “off the books” — funding the “war on terror” from supplemental and emergency appropriations.  Third: The Obama administration argued that it did not need congressional approval for war against Libya because US forces were not substantially at risk in a campaign fought from the air and with drones.  War is only war, it seems, when Americans die.  When only Libyans die, it is something else that as yet apparently has no name.  When they attack, it’s war.  When we attack, it’s not.  Fourth: 40 years ago, media consumers saw thousands of images of dead and dying combatants, both American and Vietnamese, most supplied by war photographers embedded with US troops.  Today’s “embeds” submit their work to military censors for approval and transmission.  One reporter returned from the 1991 Gulf War to find none of his photos had been sent to his employer.  Finally: Another marked departure from Vietnam: then, the Department of Defense tried to count the number of military and civilian dead on both sides of the conflict.  Now, the US claims to no longer track civilians killed in Afghanistan and Iraq.  American citizens are morally responsible for the wars and the war crimes committed in their name.  The sad truth is, however, that they don’t know what’s going on — and they don’t appear determined to find out.  [Powershop puts people who abuse power on posters?  I wonder how long their list is.]

Did they create evidence where there was none?  “It’s likely that the many witnesses who observed the dead from the helicopter crash have been warned to keep quiet.  However, a news organisation, should one be so inclined, could certainly interview Bashir and the 200 others who saw the dead bodies.  A good reporter, perhaps accompanied by trained psychologists, would be able to tell if people were lying out of fear and encourage some to speak anonymously.  I am confident that no news organisation believes that it could confront such an important US national myth in this way.  The killing of bin Laden satisfies the emotional need for revenge and justice.  In the least, a news organisation that challenged the government’s story would be cut off from all government sources and be denounced by politicians and a large percentage of the US population as an anti-American terrorist-serving organisation.  OBL’s death will remain one of those many “truths” that rest on nothing but the government’s word.” — Paul Craig Roberts, Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury under Reagan and Associate Editor and columnist with the Wall Street Journal, staff associate of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, staff associate of the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, and Chief Economist, Republican Staff, House Budget Committee.  I caught a lot of flack for posting my doubts about the official version of the bin Laden raid (whether those doubts are justified or not matters not at all to some).  I’ll say no more here, but if you’re interested, go read the article.

Emmanuel Goldstein is a character in George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.  He is the number one enemy of the people according to Big Brother and the Party, who heads a mysterious and possibly fictitious anti-party organisation called The Brotherhood.  Despite being a key part of the story, he’s only actually seen and heard on telescreen, and may in fact be nothing more than a useful propaganda fabrication of the Ministry of Truth.  However, Goldstein’s persona as an enemy of the State serves to distract, unite and focus the anger of the people of Oceania.  Ostensibly, Goldstein serves an important role as both a convenient scapegoat for the totalitarian regime in 1984, and justifying reason for more military buildup, surveillance and elimination of civil liberties.  Goldstein is always the subject of the “Two Minutes Hate,” a daily, 2-minute period beginning at 11:00am at which a purported image of Goldstein is shown on the telescreen (a one-channel tv with built-in surveillance devices that can’t be turned off).  The reader may surmise that a political opposition to Big Brother — namely, Goldstein — was psychologically necessary in order to provide an internal enemy posing a threat to the rule of the Party; the constantly reiterated ritual of the Two Minutes Hate help ensure that popular support for and devotion towards Big Brother is continuous.  It is never revealed whether Goldstein really exists.

Judaism is a religion robustly grounded in this world (as against the otherworldly concerns of Christianity).  One: Jews are called to work on tikkun loam — “repair of the world” — and to stop worrying about the afterlife (if there even is one).  Two: Jews live on beyond death in the memory of their deeds.  And Three: They live on in their descendants — DNA, after all, goes on forever.  This is why the loss of children, or the inability to have them because of infertility, is feared.  This belief is dramatically illustrated by the institution of so-called Levirate marriage (as legislated in Deuteronomy 25:5): If a man dies childless, his brother is commanded to produce offspring with the widow, so “that his [the dead man’s] name may not be blotted out of Israel.”  A son born out of this brotherly duty will carry the name of the dead man, who then is presumed to live on.  Peter Schweitzer, a rabbi from the City Congregation for Humanistic Judaism in New York, says: “Most people I know believe that this is the only life we’ll ever know.”  No reason to question this.  [Even I believe it.]  However, if there is really nothing beyond death, let’s face this unpleasant reality and cultivate the virtue of stoic resignation and not indulge in the illusionary comforts of posthumous fame, great-grandchildren and an eternal DNA.  The belief that we live on in the memory of others and in the genes of our descendants is illusionary indeed.  Years after my death when somebody reads a book I wrote, this doesn’t restore me to life.  I’m not my great-grandchild.  I’m not my DNA.  But I can be glad I had the chance to live for a little while.

"If a candidate for president says he believes space aliens dwell among us, would you still vote for him?  One of 3 Americans believe we’ve had Visitors and, hey, who knows?  But I’d certainly want to ask a few questions: Where does he get his information?  Does he talk to aliens?  Do they have an economic plan?  Yet when it comes to religious beliefs of would-be presidents, we’re a little squeamish about probing aggressively.  Michele Bachmann was asked during the Iowa GOP debate what she meant when she said the Bible obliged her to 'be submissive’ to her husband.  There was an audible wave of boos — for the question, not the answer.  There’s a sense that what goes on between a candidate and his or her God is sensitive, even privileged (except when useful for mobilising the religious base and prying open their wallets).  An unusually large number of this year’s Republican candidates, including putative front-runners, belong to churches that Many Americans find mysterious or suspect.  Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman are Mormons, a faith many conservative Christians label cult.  Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann are both affiliated with evangelical Christianity; Rick Santorum is of the conservative wing of Catholicism.  Every faith has its baggage — beliefs that seem bizarre to outsiders.  But does a candidate place fealty to the Bible, the Book of Mormon (text, not Broadway musical) or some other authority higher than the Constitution and laws of this country?  It matters if a president respects serious science and verifiable history — in short, belongs to what a previous official scornfully called 'the reality-based community.’" — Bill Keller, The New York Times

The hygiene hypothesis suggests that our bodies are ecosystems that have been damaged by a rapid reduction, in genetic terms, in the number and variety of microorganisms that populate our bodies.  It proposes that our immune system, having evolved in circumstances where such exposure to benign, and not so benign, infectious organisms was constant and continuous throughout life, depends on such exposure to develop properly.  The enormous changes in the numbers and variety of microorganisms we are exposed to during our lifetimes has been caused by the widespread adoption of modern hygienic practices, like sterile drinking water, refrigeration of food, antibiotics, vaccines, modern housing, clothing and so on, in the developed world.  That alteration of our “personal ecosystems” has been so rapid in genetic terms that our immune systems have not had time to adapt.  The consequence is the rise of autoimmune diseases and immunological disorders.  This neatly explains why autoimmunity and immunological disorders are far, far more common in the developed world than in the undeveloped.  It also suggests that perhaps we might treat immunological disorders by restoring our personal ecosystems.  Probiotics and promotion of eating fermented foods like live yoghurt are an example of this.  Recent research into the function of the appendix suggests that it exists to regulate our intestinal flora and fauna.  If we even have an organ devoted to managing intestinal microorganisms, perhaps we shouldn’t be so cavalier in wiping them out with antibiotics on a regular basis?

Bacteria are ubiquitous in every habitat on earth, growing in soil, acidic hot springs, radioactive waste, water, and deep in the earth’s crust, as well as in organic matter and the live bodies of plants and animals.  There are typically 40 million bacterial cells in a gram of soil and a million bacterial cells in a millilitre of fresh water; in all, there are approximately 5 nonillion (5×10 ³⁰ ) bacteria on Earth, forming a biomass exceeding that of all plants and animals.  Bacteria are vital in recycling nutrients, with many steps in nutrient cycles depending on these organisms, such as the fixation of nitrogen from the atmosphere and putrefaction.  However, most bacteria have not been characterised, and only about half of the phyla of bacteria have species that can be grown in the laboratory.  There are approximately 10 times as many bacterial cells in the human flora as there are human cells in the body, with large numbers of bacteria on the skin and as gut flora.  The vast majority of the bacteria in the body are rendered harmless by the protective effects of the immune system, and a few are quite beneficial.  [And, apparently, pretty.]

Only about 2% of the human genome carries the code for making enzymes and other proteins, the cogs and scaffolding of the machinery that a cancer cell turns to its own devices.  These days “junk” DNA is referred to more respectfully as “noncoding” DNA, and researchers are finding clues that “pseudogenes” lurking within this dark region may play a role in cancer.  “We’ve been obsessively focusing attention on 2% of the genome,” said Dr Pier Paolo Pandolfi, professor of medicine and pathology at Harvard Medical School.  He describes a new “biological dimension” in which signals coming from both regions of the genome participate in the delicate balance between normal cellular behaviour and malignancy.  Cancer researchers are also awakening to the fact that some 90% of the protein-encoding cells in our body are microbes.  We evolved with them in a symbiotic relationship, which raises the question of just who is occupying whom.  “We are massively outnumbered,” says Jeremy Nicholson, head of the department of surgery and cancer at Imperial College London.  Altogether, he says, 99% of the functional genes in the body are microbial.  Genes in this microbiome exchange messages with genes inside human cells and may be involved with cancers of the colon, stomach, esophagus and other organs.  These shifts in perspective, occurring throughout cellular biology, can seem as dizzying as what happened in cosmology with the discovery that dark matter and dark energy make up most of the universe: background suddenly becomes foreground and issues once thought settled go back up in the air.

“Cancer is comparable to a bacterial level of complexity, but still autonomous, that is, it doesn’t depend on other cells for survival; it doesn’t follow orders like other cells in the body, and it can grow where, when and how it likes,” says Berkeley molecular biologist Peter Duesberg.  “That’s what species are all about.”  This novel view of cancer, documented in the journal Cell Cycle, could yield new insights into the growth and metastasis of cancer, and perhaps new approaches to therapy.  Duesberg’s arguments derive from his controversial proposal that the reigning theory of cancer — that tumours begin when a handful of mutated genes send a cell into uncontrolled growth — is wrong.  He argues, instead, that carcinogenesis is initiated by a disruption of the chromosomes, which leads to duplicates, deletions, breaks and other chromosomal damage that alter the balance of tens of thousands of genes.  The result is a cell with totally new traits — that is, a new phenotype.

Blue-footed boobies are strong fliers.  They feed many miles offshore, preying on fish which they catch with spectacular plunge dives.  They hit the water around 60 miles (97 kilometres) per hour and can go to depths of 82 feet (25 metres) below the water’s surface.  Boobies have forward-pointing, stereoscopic vision which allows them to accurately pinpoint their prey.  But their eyes give them a comical appearance — in fact, the word booby comes from the Spanish word “bobo” meaning clown or stupid.  In trying to attract a female, the booby male flaunts his blue feet and dances.  The female joins in the two-step, which consists of dramatic foot raising and sky pointing with their beaks.  A few presents of stones or twigs are offered in the ceremony.  Their feet range from a pale turquoise to a deep aquamarine.  Males and younger birds have lighter feet than females do.  Boobies are monogamous, although they do have the potential to be bigamous.  (The males of the species have been known to throw up their head and whistle at passing flying females.)  Usually 2-3 eggs are laid, and 1-2 chicks are hatched.  The incubation period is 41–45 days.  They nest on bare black lava in a small dip in the ground.  The female turn to face the sun throughout the day so the nest is surrounded by excretion.  Blue-footed boobies are distributed along the continental coasts of the eastern Pacific Ocean, from California to the Galápagos Islands.

A head transplant is a surgical operation involving the grafting of one organism’s head onto the body of another.  It should not be confused with the hypothetical surgical operation, the brain transplant.  Head transplantation inevitably involves decapitating the patient.  Although it has been successfully performed using dogs, monkeys and rats, no human is known to have undergone the procedure.  It may be useful for people who would rather be quadriplegic than dead.  For more than a decade Chet Fleming has been on a quest for knowledge about discorporation, the technical name for keeping a severed head alive.  Thus, he went into patent law, specialising in biotechnology.  He studied biochemistry and medical technology, then applied for and was granted patent #4,666,425 from the US Patent Office, entitled, “Device for Perfusing an Animal Head”.  This gives him the right to stop or slow down discorporation research in America unless researchers agree to follow certain safeguards.  His goal is to force ethical discussion prior to such technology actually being successful.  Most research was done in the 1960s (with a fair degree of success achieved — 29 days alive).  Fleming’s book If We Can Keep a Severed Head Alive: Discorporation and U.S. Patent 4,666,425 discusses what life would be like as a severed head and how society might be affected by its widespread practice.  Fleming wants researchers to consider what their work will do to society before they do it in secret and then announce it.  [Good luck with that since it has the possibility of making many people fortunes.]  From an Amazon review by Gilbert in France: “I admit, I had quite a bit of trouble keeping my brother’s head alive, but my dog was pretty simple!  I would suggest starting with something easy and working up to maybe a homeless person before you make a big goof like I did with my brother.”  From T.bailey: “During the past 4 years, one group created headless mice; the other, headless tadpoles.  Why?  Take the mouse-frog technology, apply it to humans, combine it with cloning, and you become a god: a single cell taken from, say, your finger, can produce a headless replica of yourself, a twin, arguably lifeless, that becomes your personal, precisely tissue-matched organ farm.  Clone a headless double of yourself 18-20 years before you die and on your death bed, transplant your old head to the new cloned body.  Immortality!”  [But people don’t want to still look old and grey with patched and discoloured teeth.  Grow clones brainless, not headless.]

Are your hermit crabs looking for new homes?  Artist/designer Robert DuGrenier creates exquisite hand-blown glass shells for hermit crabs in his Vermont, USA workshop.  (But teach your pet the rules for crabs who live in glass houses…)

This is what can happen when you start feeding wildlife!

Limax maximus (“great slug”), also called great grey or leopard slug, as an adult measures 10-20 centimetres (4-8 inches) in length.  It responds to classical conditioning and also can detect deficiencies in its diet and seeks to rectify them.  This species is not gregarious.  It frequents gardens, damp and shady hedgerows, and woods, hiding during the day beneath stones, under fallen trees, or other obscure and damp places.  It does, however, exhibit a decided preference for the vicinity of human habitations and readily takes up its abode in damp cellars or outbuildings.  Limax maximus is a detrivore, eating dead plants and fungi, and also a carnivore for it hunts down other slugs with its top speed of 6 inches per minute.  Its lifespan is about 3 years.  It has a very unusual and distinctive mating method, where the pair of slugs use a thick thread of mucous to hang suspended in the air from a tree branch or other structure.  The hermaphrodite slugs court, usually for hours, by circling and licking each other.  After this, they climb a tree or other high area and then, entwined together, lower themselves on a thick string of mucus, extend their white translucent penises, entwine these organs, and exchange sperm.  Both participants will later lay hundreds of eggs.  The penis of this species is curled like a corkscrew and often becomes entangled in their mate’s genitalia in the process of exchanging sperm.  When all else fails, apophallation (when one or both of the slugs chews off the other’s penis) allows the slugs to separate themselves.  Afterward, a slug is still able to participate in mating, but only using the female parts of its reproductive system.

We have what you’re missing.  Apparently this was by commissioned by the Humane Society of Puerto Rico.  Click on the photo for a variant.  Very well done.

Detroit’s Green Gym is the nation’s first workout facility created specifically for homeless men, women and children.  In addition to standard fitness equipment such as two weight machines, boxing bags, and a treadmill, 10 Green Revolution Technology™ enabled stationary bikes will generate electricity.  Over one year of 4 daily classes, a full class of 10 at the Green Gym can generate enough power to light 36 homes for a month, or 3 homes for a year.  [So, 40 hours of cycling per week — a full-time job for one — can generate electricity for 3 homes?  Of course, if you subtract the cost of the food required to power the legs that push the pedals, that reduces the “profit” a bit, doesn’t it?]  The Green Gym will be staffed by volunteers and open 6 days a week, closed on Sundays [even sweating hamsters need rest].

If you aren’t (yet) homeless, there’s still something you can exercise — your finger!  Twirl a special cellphone battery around 130 times to charge it in an emergency — good for 2 minutes of talk time or 25 minutes of standby.  Or, you could spin the whole phone.  A majority of Americans are overweight and need to exercise.  If all gyms and all cellphone batteries were converted to use human power to generate useful energy, then voila! — two problems on the way to being solved.  Gifts in the future?  No problem — just hike to the gym and power up an electric bill credit for your friends or relatives.  (Actually, ideas like these may seem brilliant, but are generally impractical in real life.)

At age 61, identical twins Jeanne (left) and Susan no longer look exactly alike.  Susan smoked for many years and is an admitted sun worshipper, habits Jeanne does not share.  Taking birth control pills can make women look younger, while taking antidepressants, drinking alcohol, smoking, being divorced and having heightened sun exposure all have the opposite effect.  There’s good news for middle-aged women carrying a few extra pounds: additional weight fills in and softens wrinkles, making heavier women look younger.  For women under 40, however, being overweight has the opposite effect, obscuring youthful features like a smooth jawline and causing facial skin to sag.

If you’re lucky enough to own a 1920s Martin guitar, you’ll know that it’s likely made, in part, of Brazilian rosewood.  Cross an international border with an instrument made of that now-restricted wood, and you’d better have correct and complete documentation proving the age of the instrument.  Otherwise, you could lose it to a zealous customs agent — not to mention face fines and prosecution.  John Thomas, a law professor at Quinnipiac University and a blues and ragtime guitarist, says “there’s a lot of anxiety, and it’s well justified.”  Once upon a time, he’d have taken one of his vintage guitars on his travels.  Now, “I don’t go out of the country with a wooden guitar.”  The tangled intersection of international laws is enforced through a thicket of paperwork.  Recent revisions to 1900’s Lacey Act require anyone crossing the US border declare every bit of flora or fauna being brought into the country.  One is under “strict liability” to fill out the paperwork without mistakes.  It’s not enough to know that the body of your old guitar is made of spruce and maple: What’s the bridge made of?  If it’s ebony, do you have the paperwork to show when and where that wood was harvested and when and where it was made into a bridge?  Is the nut holding the strings at the guitar’s headstock bone or could it be ivory?  “Even if you have no knowledge — despite Herculean efforts to obtain it — that some piece of your guitar, no matter how small, was obtained illegally, you lose your guitar forever,” Professor Thomas has written.  “Oh, and you’ll be fined $250 for that false (or missing) information.”

This folding mat is a clever idea.  Unfortunately, none of the photos show it folded for stowing — I suspect it doesn’t make a nice compact cuboid with a handle.  I wish it did, because I can think of two uses for it.  In the image on the right, if the tops of the two sides were folded toward each other to make the whole thing triangular and one edge had a bit of flap with velcro to seal the top, then it would make a dandy sleeping compartment for a homeless person — water resistent, out of the wind, and you could put your stuff in the middle where it would be hard to steal without waking the sleeper.  The other use would be in airports, to take a secure private nap in an out-of-the-way place against a wall with your stuff safe in the inside beside you.  Ideally, someone in the airport would rent these things by the hour and the airport would provide an alcove for would-be nappers.  That way, you wouldn’t have to abandon it there or else have it be your carry-on.

If you write a scene in which characters sing “Happy Birthday,” prepare to write a cheque.  Warner Music Group, who acquired the copyright in 1988, collects upward of $2 million a year from film and TV fees off the song.  It is almost certainly no longer under copyright due to a lack of evidence about who wrote the words, defective copyright notice, and a failure to file a proper renewal application.  But the insurance necessary on film financing often requires that litigation be avoided by paying all permissions fees.  And even without that barrier, it’s simply cheaper to pay the bill than it is to fight Warner.  [Isn’t this the way the mob works — making you pay for protection?  Is this even legal?]

Words that don’t exist in the English language:

1. L’esprit d’escalier (French) — The feeling you get after leaving a conversation, when you think of all the things you should have said.  Translated it means “the spirit of the staircase.”
2. Meraki (Greek) — Doing something with soul, creativity, or love.
3. Forelsket (Norwegian) — The euphoria you experience when you are first falling in love.
4. Pena ajena (Mexican Spanish) — The embarrassment you feel watching someone else’s humiliation.

I’m not completely sure I understand this.  Who is supposed to be speaking?  Is that a telephone pole?  It may LIKE being a telephone pole.  If the paper is supposed to be telling a tree that it misses being “one of them”, then the comment written at the bottom makes no sense.  The title of the photo is “Snappy Comeback”.  (Addressed to whom?)

Things that are difficult to say when you’re drunk:

• Cinnamon.  Indubitably.  Innovative.  Preliminary.  Proliferation.

• British Constitution.  Loquacious.  Transubstantiation.  Passive-Aggressive Disorder.  Specificity.

• Thanks, but I don’t want to have sex.
• Nope, no more alcohol for me.
• Sorry, but you’re not really my type.
• Good evening Officer.  Isn’t it lovely out tonight?
• Oh, I just couldn’t.  No one wants to hear me sing.
• You’re right.  I can’t jump over that table.