Wired for Strange

The world's first caffeinated bakery

2010-09-25T15:57:00.000-07:00

Ames, Ia. - In a 400-square-foot storefront across the street from Iowa State University, a peppy woman cooks up a batch of Iowa's newest alternative energy.

Allison Nelson pulls a sheet of brownies from the oven, lets it cool, then slices the sheet into 4-inch-long treats. Baked inside each is the magic ingredient of Nelson's business, a fledgling bakery called A Snack in the Face: 200 milligrams of pharmaceutical-grade caffeine.

"Iowa's the capital of alternative energies: wind, ethanol, biodiesel," Nelson said.

And now this - the tastiest alternative energy yet, and another step in the modern world becoming the most caffeinated society known to man.

The nation's first caffeine bakery, now a year old, plans to expand to a larger manufacturing facility and supply convenience stores in Iowa and nationwide. The tiny Lincoln Way shop garners surprised looks from many who walk past. Some seem scared. But for most who pop in, it's like a revelation. Their faces light up at a delectable brownie with an energy burst.

But perhaps Nelson's caffeinated brownies, cookies, truffles and more shouldn't be surprising, just another cultural touchstone for our work-harder, produce-more, sleep-less society. Since Red Bull first came to America in 1997, energy drinks have proliferated. Convenience stores have entire sections dedicated to hundreds of energy drinks. Tiny energy shots have gained prominent spots on store counters. Cyberspace hawks caffeinated knickknacks: soap (Shower Shock), lip balm (Spazz Stick), beef jerky (Perky Jerky) - even Stay Puft Caffeinated Gourmet Marshmallows.

It's as if an American subculture, defined by extreme-sports fanatics on one end and computer geeks on the other, has developed around the omnipresent drug.

"Caffeine is much more available and in much more things than at any time in human history," said Catherine Tucker, an associate professor of anthropology at Indiana University and author of an upcoming book, "Coffee Culture." "But a bakery, that's fascinating. It's the next step - as if you can't get enough caffeine in cola, coffee, tea and chocolate."

While caffeinated brownies might be a uniquely 21st-century phenomenon, the human desire for a pick-me-up might be as old as humanity. Evidence of tea consumption goes back millenia. The history of coffee is a bit murkier.

According to Bennett Alan Weinberg, who with Bonnie K. Bealer co-authored "The World of Caffeine: The Science and Culture of the World's Most Popular Drug," historians believe natives of Africa harvested coffee beans thousands of years ago, crushed them and mixed them with food during long hunting trips.

But the first evidence of coffee consumption in the western world, Weinberg said, comes from 16th-century mystics in Yemen, who used coffee to fuel whirling dervish dances. Europe first saw coffee in the intellectual gatherings of the Royal Society in England, Weinberg said, served by a pharmacist to stimulate the leading scientific minds. Soon, coffee and tea spread through the Western world.

It's no coincidence, he said, that the Industrial Revolution came at the same time, and that caffeine use has again spiked in the Internet age. Coffee is now the second-most valuable traded commodity in the world, next to oil.

"As we enter the information age, with the need to stimulate intellects, the need to think sharply and more quickly and be more accurate, these are the things that caffeine ratchets up," Weinberg said.

Kathryn Lollar, an Iowa native who lives near Chicago, has talked up A Snack in the Face on her blog after she had Nelson ship goodies to her.

Earlier generations "got up in the morning and started farming, were busy all day and didn't have time to think about how tired they were," Lollar said. "Now we get up, go and sit in an office all day, not doing anything physical. ...

"We're meant to do stuff, but we don't anymore," she continued. "Everything's done for us. It's just like this never-ending cycle. We need something to wake us up, then we can't sleep."

For some experts, that's a deep concern.

Caffeine use among youth worries Ruth Litchfield, an Iowa State University associate professor of food science and nutrition. Researchers have found caffeine to have health benefits, she said - lowering the risk of Parkinson's, protecting brain cells, decreasing the risk of gallstones in women - but research also shows caffeine affects women's fertility and disrupts sleep patterns. Litchfield is most worried about high-calorie, high-caffeine beverages hurting children's health.

"We are creating a generation that is highly addicted to stimulants," Litchfield said.

At A Snack in the Face, a chocolate melter sits next to a bowl of a mound of white, powdery caffeine. The powder tastes awful: grainy, with a potent bitterness that lingers.

The idea came a few years ago. Neither Nelson nor her husband likes coffee, but both love caffeine. Wes Nelson's first idea was to mix caffeine powder with water. He brought samples to his colleagues at an Ames engineering firm. A problem: Powdered caffeine is not water-soluble. His colleagues hated it.

Another problem: The taste. Plants developed caffeine in their leaves to repel pests. Nicknames for coffee include "battery acid" and "varnish remover." In powdered form, caffeine tastes like crushed aspirin. That's why caffeine is so often masked in beverages with sugar and flavoring agents.

The next idea made more sense. Allison Nelson grew up around her mother's catering business. She learned to cook and bake at age 13. For years, she's operated a side business baking creative specialty cakes.

How much caffeine could they jam into a brownie and still have it taste good? Their first brownies had 400 milligrams of caffeine, about the same as a large cup of Starbucks brewed coffee. The brownies tasted good. But caffeine in solid form digests slowly. The energy burst creeps up on you.

"I'm lying there, staring at the ceiling at 2 a.m. and saying, 'I think that's too much,' " Wes said.

They settled on 200 milligrams per brownie, their highest-potency item. They hope to get in campus convenience stores this month, and then move into local convenience store chains soon. Each batch of the brownies has two cups of butter, four cups of sugar and eight eggs, plenty of flavor to mask the bitterness.

"It's exactly what grandma used to bake - no high-fructose corn syrup, no partially hydrogenated soybean oil," Allison Nelson said. "We're not wrapping up caffeine in a health bar here. We're wrapping it up in a home-baked treat. Isn't it about time you have caffeine and it tastes good?"

As Nelson spoke, a woman walked in. The university research scientist was out for a lunchtime stroll and was intrigued.

"So it's for students to stay awake?" asked Marcia Macedo with a quizzical look.

And like any good dealer, Wes Nelson offered her a free chocolate-covered brownie bite for the first taste. The woman paused, appearing scared, and said she would return after lunch.

Bad ways to die

2010-09-19T11:15:00.000-07:00

A 59-year-old chef died after a 50cm Asian swamp eel was put up his bottom. Doctors in Sichuan, China, found the marine creature in the man’s rectum after his death. It had allegedly been inserted after the man passed out drunk, by “pals” playing a prank. Doctors said the eel had devoured his bowels. Sun, 30 April 2010.

Cindy Corton, 35, of Sleaford, Lincolnshire, had a 15cm long toilet brush handle embedded in her buttock after a drunken fall in a friend’s bathroom in 2005. She went to hospital but was sent home with painkillers despite showing medics the wound in her bottom. Four days later, she was in such pain that she went for X-rays, but nothing was found. She suffered two years of constant pain before she was able to convince doctors that the thin serrated plastic handle was stuck in her arse cheek. By then it had become much more dangerous because it was embedded in her pelvis. After two unsuccessful operations in 2007, Mrs Curton agreed to undergo further surgery in June 2009, but died from massive blood loss. Her husband is suing United Lincolnshire Hospi-tals Trust. Sun online, 18 May 2010.

Gardener Sean Sok was eaten alive by a five-legged pig after he tried to chase it off his vegetable patch in Cambodia. News of the World, 25 April 2010.

A woman was killed by wolves in the United States – the first such fatality for 50 years. Candice Berner, 32, was attacked while out jogging near the village of Chignik Lake in Alaska. Snowmobilers found the teacher’s body in a pool of blood and tracks from four wolves in the snow. “The damage to the throat was severe,” said a state trooper. “Wolves, just like big cats, usually attack the windpipe area and try and control the victim that way.” Attacks by wild wolves are extremely rare, with the majority occurring in Russia and Canada. The last recorded fatal wolf attack in North America occurred in 2005 in Saskatchewan. D.Telegraph, 13 Mar; Sunday Times, 14 Mar 2010.

A poacher setting illegal snares in South Africa’s vast Kruger National Park was chased off by hippos, and then eaten by lions. Rangers alerted by two other men who fled found part of a skull and ripped clothing two days later. “It appears the dead man was charged and injured by hippos,” said an official. “It’s impossible to say whether he was alive or dead by the time the lions got to him.” D.Mirror, 25 Mar 2010.

A newly-wed groom was accidentally shot dead by his uncle as he fired his gun in the air to celebrate the marriage. Pankaj Kishore Karotia, 21, was just about to claim his bride and take her from a wedding recept-ion to her family home when his uncle drew his licensed handgun to fire a final shot. As he was loading it, it fired accidentally and hit his nephew in the head. His bride was waiting for him in the car as he died. The uncle was arrested for culpable homicide. D.Telegraph online, 19 Feb 2010.

Richard Butler wanted his girlfriend to think they were just taking a scenic hike in the North Carolina mountains, but he had a secret plan. When they got to the top, he was going to pull out a ring and propose to her. As they reached the summit of Max Patch Bald, near Asheville, on 4 June, lightning struck three times. The third bolt hit the 30-year-old and his girlfriend, Bethany Lott, 25, killing her and giving him third-degree burns. “I was spun 180 degrees and thrown several feet back,” said Mr Butler, from Knoxville, Tennessee. “My legs turned to Jello, my shoes were smoking and the bottom of my feet felt like they were on fire.” Ms Lott’s last words, about 30 seconds before she died, were: “Look at how beautiful it is.” [AP] 9 June 2010.

Guy Survives on 50cents a day!

2010-08-17T03:21:00.000-07:00

You guys gotta check it out! Great stuff

http://www.dalepower.net/articles/econeating/articles_EconEating_12.html

Giant spiders invade Australian Outback town

2009-05-11T16:28:00.000-07:00

Australia is known around the world for its large and deadly creepy crawlies, but even locals have been shocked by the size of the giant venomous spiders that have invaded an Outback town in Queensland.
Scores of eastern tarantulas, which are known as “bird-eating spiders” and can grow larger than the palm of a man’s hand, have begun crawling out from gardens and venturing into public spaces in Bowen, a coastal town about 700 miles northwest of Brisbane.
Earlier this week locals spotted an Australian tarantula wandering towards a public garden in the centre of town where people often sit for lunch. They called in a pest controller, but not before using a can of insect spray to paralyse the spider.
Audy Geiszler, who runs Amalgamated Pest Control in Bowen, said that the spider was a large male with powerful long fangs and was so big that when he placed it – dead – in the palm of his hand its legs hung over his fingers.
Mr Geiszler said that he had been inundated with calls from worried locals reporting sightings of the giant tarantulas, which have been pushed out of their natural habitat over the past month by heavy, unseasonal rain.
"There have been a number of reports. It's not plague proportions but a number have been spotted around the district,” Mr Geiszler told The Times today shortly after receiving a call from a resident who had spotted another spider on the outskirts of town.
While not deadly like other Australian spiders, the eastern tarantulas are venomous and can grow up to 6cm (2.4in) long with a leg span of 16cm (6.3in). Despite their common name, they do not eat birds, but can kill a dog with one bite, and make a human very sick.
They are also known as whistling or barking spiders for the hissing noise they emit when they are disturbed or aggravated at close range.
Mr Geiszler said that they were common in the east of Australia, but usually kept out of the way and lived under mulch and logs and in natural rocky outcrops.
“I’ve warned folks around here to make sure they wear shoes and gloves when they are gardening at the moment as it can be a very nasty bite,” he said.
Asked what he would do with the giant spider he caught this week, Mr Geiszler said: “I think I’m going to mount this one in acrylic to show people how big it is. It’ll make a great paperweight.”

Strange news over the years

2008-12-21T10:49:00.000-08:00

1. Police in Wichita, Kansas, arrested a 22-year-old man at an airport hotel after he tried to pass two (counterfeit) $16 bills.

2. A man in Johannesberg, South Africa, shot his 49-year-old friend in the face, seriously wounding him, while the two practiced shooting beer cans off each other's head.

3. A company trying to continue its five-year perfect safety record showed its workers a film aimed at encouraging the use of safety goggles on the job. According to Industrial Machinery News, the film's depiction of gory industrial accidents was so graphic that twenty-five workers suffered minor injuries in their rush to leave the screening room. Thirteen others fainted, and one man required seven stitches after he cut his head falling off a chair while watching the film.

4. The Chico, California, City Council enacted a ban on nuclear weapons, setting a $500 fine for anyone detonating one within city limits.

5. A bus carrying five passengers was hit by a car in St. Louis, but by the time police arrived on the scene, fourteen pedestrians had boarded the bus and had begun to complain of whiplash injuries and back pain.

6. Swedish business consultant Ulf af Trolle labored 13 years on a book about Swedish economic solutions. He took the 250-page manuscript to be copied, only to have it reduced to 50,000 strips of paper in seconds when a worker confused the copier with the shredder.

7. A convict broke out of jail in Washington D.C., then a few days later accompanied his girlfriend to her trial for robbery. At lunch, he went out for a sandwich. She needed to see him, and thus had him paged. Police officers recognized his name and arrested him as he returned to the courthouse in a car he had stolen over the lunch hour.

8. Police in Radnor, Pennsylvania, interrogated a suspect by placing a metal colander on his head and connecting it with wires to a photocopy machine. The message "He's lying" was placed in the copier, and police pressed the copy button each time they thought the suspect wasn't telling the truth. Believing the "lie detector" was working, the suspect confessed.

9. When two service station attendants in Ionia, Michigan, refused to hand over the cash to an intoxicated robber, the man threatened to call the police. They still refused, so the robber called the police and was arrested.

10. A Los Angeles man who later said he was "tired of walking," stole a steamroller and led police on a 5 mph chase until an officer stepped aboard and brought the vehicle to a stop.

11. A fierce gust of wind blew 45-year-old Vittorio Luise's car into a river near Naples, Italy, in 1983. He managed to break a window, climb out and swim to shore -- where a tree blew over and killed him.

12. Mike Stewart, 31, of Dallas was filming a movie in 1983 on the dangers of low-level bridges when the truck he was standing on passed under a low-level bridge -- killing him.

13. Walter Hallas, a 26-year-old store clerk in Leeds, England, was so afraid of dentists that in 1979 he asked a fellow worker to try to cure his toothache by punching him in the jaw. The punch caused Hallas to fall down, hitting his head, and he died of a fractured skull.

14. Two West German motorists had an all-too-literal head-on collision in heavy fog near the small town of Guetersloh. Each was guiding his car at a snail's pace near the center of the road. At the moment of impact their heads were both out of the windows when they smacked together. Both men were hospitalized with severe head injuries. Their cars weren't scratched.

15. George Schwartz, owner of a factory in Providence, R.I., narrowly escaped death when a 1983 blast flattened his factory except for one wall. After treatment for minor injuries, he returned to the scene to search for files. The remaining wall then collapsed on him, killing him.

16. Depressed since he could not find a job, 42-year-old Romolo Ribolla, in 1981, sat in his kitchen near Pisa, Italy, with a gun in his hand threatening to kill himself. His wife pleaded for him not to do it, and after about an hour he burst into tears and threw the gun to the floor. It went off and killed his wife.

17. In 1983, a Mrs. Carson of Lake Kushaqua, N.Y., was laid out in her coffin, presumed dead of heart disease. As mourners watched, she suddenly sat up. Her daughter dropped dead of fright.

18. A man hit by a car in New York in 1977 got up uninjured, but laid back down in front of the car when a bystander told him to pretend he was hurt so he could collect insurance money. The car rolled forward and crushed him to death.

19. Surprised while burgling a house in Antwerp, Belgium, a thief fled out the back door, clambered over a nine-foot wall, dropped down and found himself in the city prison.

20. In 1976 a twenty-two-year-old Irishman, Bob Finnegan, was crossing the busy Falls Road in Belfast, when he was struck by a taxi and flung over its roof. The taxi drove away and, as Finnegan lay stunned in the road, another car ran into him, rolling him into the gutter. It too drove on. As a knot of gawkers gathered to examine the magnetic Irishman, a delivery van plowed through the crowd, leaving in its wake three injured bystanders and an even more battered Bob Finnegan. When a fourth vehicle came along, the crowd wisely scattered and only one person was hit, Bob Finnegan. In the space of two minutes Finnegan suffered a fractured skull, broken pelvis, broken leg, and other assorted injuries. Hospital officials said he would recover.

21. While motorcycling through the Hungarian countryside, Cristo Falatti came up to a railway line just as the crossing gates were coming down. While he sat idling, he was joined by a farmer with a goat, which the farmer tethered to the crossing gate. A few moments later a horse and cart drew up behind Falatti, followed in short order by a man in a sports car. When the train roared through the crossing, the horse startled and bit Falatti on the arm. Not a man to be trifled with, Falatti responded by punching the horse in the head. In consequence the horse's owner jumped down from his cart and began scuffling with the motorcyclist. The horse, which was not up to this sort of excitement, backed away briskly, smashing the cart into the sports car. At this, the sports car driver leaped out of his car and joined the fray. The farmer came forward to try to pacify the three flailing men. As he did so, the crossing gates rose and his goat was strangled. At last report, the insurance companies were still trying to sort out the claims.

22. In a classic case of one thing leading to another, seven men aged eighteen to twenty-nine received jail sentences of three to four years in Kingston-on-Thames, England, in 1979 after a fight that started when one of the men threw a french fry at another while they stood waiting for a train.

23. Hitting on the novel idea that he could end his wife's incessant nagging by giving her a good scare, Hungarian Jake Fen built an elaborate harness to make it look as if he had hanged himself. When his wife came home and saw him she fainted. Hearing a disturbance a neighbor came over and, finding what she thought were two corpses, seized the opportunity to loot the place. As she was leaving the room, her arms laden, the outraged and suspended Mr. Fen kicked her stoutly in the backside. This so surprised the lady that she dropped dead of a heart attack. Happily, Mr. Fen was acquitted of manslaughter and he and his wife were reconciled.

24. An unidentified English woman, according to the London Sunday Express was climbing into the bathtub one afternoon when she remembered she had left some muffins in the oven. Naked, she dashed downstairs and was removing the muffins when she heard a noise at the door. Thinking it was the baker, and knowing he would come in and leave a loaf of bread on the kitchen table if she didn't answer his knock, the woman darted into the broom cupboard. A few moments later she heard the back door open and, to her eternal mortification, the sound of footsteps coming toward the cupboard. It was the man from the gas company, coming to read the meter. "Oh," stammered the woman, "I was expecting the baker." The gas man blinked, excused himself and departed.

Sapporo's Space Beer

2008-12-03T03:52:00.000-08:00

TOKYO - Space beer, the result of a five-month mission to boldly grow, where almost no one has grown barley before, has landed in Japan.
The beverage, brewed from barley cultivated in the International Space Station in 2006, has splashed down courtesy of the Russian Academy of Science, a Japanese university and beer giant Sapporo.
But the 100 liters of the 5.5 percent alcoholic brew are not for sale, although tastings are being offered to some earthlings as Sapporo tries to push its brand into a new orbit.
"There's really no beer like it because it uses 100 percent barley. Our top seller is the Black Label brand, using additional ingredients such as rice. This one doesn't, and is really a special beer," Junichi Ichikawa, managing directory for strategy at Sapporo breweries, told a news conference on Tuesday.
Cosmonaut Boris Morukov, who spent 11 days in space himself, says barley joins wheat, lettuce and peas as space station produce, noting potatoes may take root in future studies, although not to make an equally famous Russian beverage.
"I think we would try to grow potatoes as food, not for vodka production," Morukov said.
Beer sales have been falling in Japan and has generally been off space menus because of its alcohol and gas content.
With explorers now eyeing longer trips to Mars, that menu may change, with Japan's Okayama University Professor Manabu Sugimoto advising astronauts not to rule out space rice wine in future.

Man says God ordered him to ram vehicle at 100 mph

2008-12-02T18:17:00.000-08:00

SAN ANTONIO — A man who rammed his truck into a woman's vehicle on a highway early Friday told authorities he crashed into her while going more than 100 mph because God told him "she needed to be taken off the road."
The truck rear-ended the car on U.S. Highway 281, both vehicles spun across a median then came to a stop along a barrier in the opposite lanes. Both drivers suffered only minor injuries.
"He just said God said she wasn't driving right, and she needed to be taken off the road," Bexar County Sheriff's Office spokesman Kyle Coleman said in the online edition of the San Antonio Express-News. "God must have been with them, 'cause any other time, the severity of this crash, it would have been a fatal."
The pickup driver did not tell police how the woman was driving. Police could not find alcohol or drugs in either driver.
A psychiatric evaluation has been ordered for a man.

Tomato plants mistaken for cannabis

2008-11-30T03:30:00.000-08:00

Police raided a 79-year-old widow's cottage - after mistaking her tomato plants for a cannabis factory.
The officers burst in to Lulu Matheson's home in the Scottish Highlands with sniffer dogs and took samples of the plants for analysis, reports the Daily Mail.
Lulu Matheson, of Shieldaig, said: "I got a terrible fright and I couldn't understand what they were doing here because I knew we had nothing more than tomatoes in the window. I don't know what the neighbours must be thinking."
Her 47-year-old son Gus, a former driver, was looking out of the window when he saw police cars stop outside.
He said: "I wondered what on earth was going on. I opened the door and they more or less barged past, saying that I was growing cannabis on the windowsills.
"I started laughing because I knew they were tomato plants but it wasn't so funny when they frisked me and then started tearing the house apart."
Mr Matheson is now making a formal complaint to Northern Constabulary.
A police spokesman said: "We can confirm that, acting on information, we attended at an address in the Shieldaig area. No drugs were found as a result of the search."

Turkey's Stonehenge

2008-11-17T16:57:00.000-08:00

Six miles from Urfa, an ancient city in southeastern Turkey, Klaus Schmidt has made one of the most startling archaeological discoveries of our time: massive carved stones about 11,000 years old, crafted and arranged by prehistoric people who had not yet developed metal tools or even pottery. The megaliths predate Stonehenge by some 6,000 years. The place is called Gobekli Tepe, and Schmidt, a German archaeologist who has been working here more than a decade, is convinced it's the site of the world's oldest temple.
"Guten Morgen," he says at 5:20 a.m. when his van picks me up at my hotel in Urfa. Thirty minutes later, the van reaches the foot of a grassy hill and parks next to strands of barbed wire. We follow a knot of workmen up the hill to rectangular pits shaded by a corrugated steel roof—the main excavation site. In the pits, standing stones, or pillars, are arranged in circles. Beyond, on the hillside, are four other rings of partially excavated pillars. Each ring has a roughly similar layout: in the center are two large stone T-shaped pillars encircled by slightly smaller stones facing inward. The tallest pillars tower 16 feet and, Schmidt says, weigh between seven and ten tons. As we walk among them, I see that some are blank, while others are elaborately carved: foxes, lions, scorpions and vultures abound, twisting and crawling on the pillars' broad sides.
Schmidt points to the great stone rings, one of them 65 feet across. "This is the first human-built holy place," he says.
From this perch 1,000 feet above the valley, we can see to the horizon in nearly every direction. Schmidt, 53, asks me to imagine what the landscape would have looked like 11,000 years ago, before centuries of intensive farming and settlement turned it into the nearly featureless brown expanse it is today.
Prehistoric people would have gazed upon herds of gazelle and other wild animals; gently flowing rivers, which attracted migrating geese and ducks; fruit and nut trees; and rippling fields of wild barley and wild wheat varieties such as emmer and einkorn. "This area was like a paradise," says Schmidt, a member of the German Archaeological Institute. Indeed, Gobekli Tepe sits at the northern edge of the Fertile Crescent—an arc of mild climate and arable land from the Persian Gulf to present-day Lebanon, Israel, Jordan and Egypt—and would have attracted hunter-gatherers from Africa and the Levant. And partly because Schmidt has found no evidence that people permanently resided on the summit of Gobekli Tepe itself, he believes this was a place of worship on an unprecedented scale—humanity's first "cathedral on a hill."
With the sun higher in the sky, Schmidt ties a white scarf around his balding head, turban-style, and deftly picks his way down the hill among the relics. In rapid-fire German he explains that he has mapped the entire summit using ground-penetrating radar and geomagnetic surveys, charting where at least 16 other megalith rings remain buried across 22 acres. The one-acre excavation covers less than 5 percent of the site. He says archaeologists could dig here for another 50 years and barely scratch the surface.

Gobekli Tepe was first examined—and dismissed—by University of Chicago and Istanbul University anthropologists in the 1960s. As part of a sweeping survey of the region, they visited the hill, saw some broken slabs of limestone and assumed the mound was nothing more than an abandoned medieval cemetery. In 1994, Schmidt was working on his own survey of prehistoric sites in the region. After reading a brief mention of the stone-littered hilltop in the University of Chicago researchers' report, he decided to go there himself. From the moment he first saw it, he knew the place was extraordinary.
Unlike the stark plateaus nearby, Gobekli Tepe (the name means "belly hill" in Turkish) has a gently rounded top that rises 50 feet above the surrounding landscape. To Schmidt's eye, the shape stood out. "Only man could have created something like this," he says. "It was clear right away this was a gigantic Stone Age site." The broken pieces of limestone that earlier surveyors had mistaken for gravestones suddenly took on a different meaning.
Schmidt returned a year later with five colleagues and they uncovered the first megaliths, a few buried so close to the surface they were scarred by plows. As the archaeologists dug deeper, they unearthed pillars arranged in circles. Schmidt's team, however, found none of the telltale signs of a settlement: no cooking hearths, houses or trash pits, and none of the clay fertility figurines that litter nearby sites of about the same age. The archaeologists did find evidence of tool use, including stone hammers and blades. And because those artifacts closely resemble others from nearby sites previously carbon-dated to about 9000 B.C., Schmidt and co-workers estimate that Gobekli Tepe's stone structures are the same age. Limited carbon dating undertaken by Schmidt at the site confirms this assessment.
The way Schmidt sees it, Gobekli Tepe's sloping, rocky ground is a stonecutter's dream. Even without metal chisels or hammers, prehistoric masons wielding flint tools could have chipped away at softer limestone outcrops, shaping them into pillars on the spot before carrying them a few hundred yards to the summit and lifting them upright. Then, Schmidt says, once the stone rings were finished, the ancient builders covered them over with dirt. Eventually, they placed another ring nearby or on top of the old one. Over centuries, these layers created the hilltop.
Today, Schmidt oversees a team of more than a dozen German archaeologists, 50 local laborers and a steady stream of enthusiastic students. He typically excavates at the site for two months in the spring and two in the fall. (Summer temperatures reach 115 degrees, too hot to dig; in the winter the area is deluged by rain.) In 1995, he bought a traditional Ottoman house with a courtyard in Urfa, a city of nearly a half-million people, to use as a base of operations.
On the day I visit, a bespectacled Belgian man sits at one end of a long table in front of a pile of bones. Joris Peters, an archaeozoologist from the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, specializes in the analysis of animal remains. Since 1998, he has examined more than 100,000 bone fragments from Gobekli Tepe. Peters has often found cut marks and splintered edges on them—signs that the animals from which they came were butchered and cooked. The bones, stored in dozens of plastic crates stacked in a storeroom at the house, are the best clue to how people who created Gobekli Tepe lived. Peters has identified tens of thousands of gazelle bones, which make up more than 60 percent of the total, plus those of other wild game such as boar, sheep and red deer. He's also found bones of a dozen different bird species, including vultures, cranes, ducks and geese. "The first year, we went through 15,000 pieces of animal bone, all of them wild. It was pretty clear we were dealing with a hunter-gatherer site," Peters says. "It's been the same every year since." The abundant remnants of wild game indicate that the people who lived here had not yet domesticated animals or farmed.
But, Peters and Schmidt say, Gobekli Tepe's builders were on the verge of a major change in how they lived, thanks to an environment that held the raw materials for farming. "They had wild sheep, wild grains that could be domesticated—and the people with the potential to do it," Schmidt says. In fact, research at other sites in the region has shown that within 1,000 years of Gobekli Tepe's construction, settlers had corralled sheep, cattle and pigs. And, at a prehistoric village just 20 miles away, geneticists found evidence of the world's oldest domesticated strains of wheat; radiocarbon dating indicates agriculture developed there around 10,500 years ago, or just five centuries after Gobekli Tepe's construction.
To Schmidt and others, these new findings suggest a novel theory of civilization. Scholars have long believed that only after people learned to farm and live in settled communities did they have the time, organization and resources to construct temples and support complicated social structures. But Schmidt argues it was the other way around: the extensive, coordinated effort to build the monoliths literally laid the groundwork for the development of complex societies.
The immensity of the undertaking at Gobekli Tepe reinforces that view. Schmidt says the monuments could not have been built by ragged bands of hunter-gatherers. To carve, erect and bury rings of seven-ton stone pillars would have required hundreds of workers, all needing to be fed and housed. Hence the eventual emergence of settled communities in the area around 10,000 years ago. "This shows sociocultural changes come first, agriculture comes later," says Stanford University archaeologist Ian Hodder, who excavated Catalhoyuk, a prehistoric settlement 300 miles from Gobekli Tepe. "You can make a good case this area is the real origin of complex Neolithic societies."
What was so important to these early people that they gathered to build (and bury) the stone rings? The gulf that separates us from Gobekli Tepe's builders is almost unimaginable. Indeed, though I stood among the looming megaliths eager to take in their meaning, they didn't speak to me. They were utterly foreign, placed there by people who saw the world in a way I will never comprehend. There are no sources to explain what the symbols might mean. Schmidt agrees. "We're 6,000 years before the invention of writing here," he says.
"There's more time between Gobekli Tepe and the Sumerian clay tablets [etched in 3300 B.C.] than from Sumer to today," says Gary Rollefson, an archaeologist at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, who is familiar with Schmidt's work. "Trying to pick out symbolism from prehistoric context is an exercise in futility."
Still, archaeologists have their theories—evidence, perhaps, of the irresistible human urge to explain the unexplainable. The surprising lack of evidence that people lived right there, researchers say, argues against its use as a settlement or even a place where, for instance, clan leaders gathered. Hodder is fascinated that Gobekli Tepe's pillar carvings are dominated not by edible prey like deer and cattle but by menacing creatures such as lions, spiders, snakes and scorpions. "It's a scary, fantastic world of nasty-looking beasts," he muses. While later cultures were more concerned with farming and fertility, he suggests, perhaps these hunters were trying to master their fears by building this complex, which is a good distance from where they lived.
Danielle Stordeur, an archaeologist at the National Center for Scientific Research in France, emphasizes the significance of the vulture carvings. Some cultures have long believed the high-flying carrion birds transported the flesh of the dead up to the heavens. Stordeur has found similar symbols at sites from the same era as Gobekli Tepe just 50 miles away in Syria. "You can really see it's the same culture," she says. "All the most important symbols are the same."
For his part, Schmidt is certain the secret is right beneath his feet. Over the years, his team has found fragments of human bone in the layers of dirt that filled the complex. Deep test pits have shown that the floors of the rings are made of hardened limestone. Schmidt is betting that beneath the floors he'll find the structures' true purpose: a final resting place for a society of hunters.
Perhaps, Schmidt says, the site was a burial ground or the center of a death cult, the dead laid out on the hillside among the stylized gods and spirits of the afterlife. If so, Gobekli Tepe's location was no accident. "From here the dead are looking out at the ideal view," Schmidt says as the sun casts long shadows over the half-buried pillars. "They're looking out over a hunter's dream."

Original article from the Smithsonian Magazine.

Tattooed pigs banned from exhibition

2008-11-06T18:41:00.000-08:00

Pigs tattooed with Louis Vuitton designer logos have been banned from an art exhibition.

The pigs with the trademark LV symbol and other designs were to form part of an exhibition at the Shanghai Contemporary Art Fair.
Wim Delvoye, a 43-year-old Belgian conceptual artist, created the exhibit, called Art Farm, reports the Daily Telegraph.
Mr Delvoye had tattooed the designs on the animals when they were piglets and tracked the "canvases" as they grew.
However, gallery owners felt they were in poor taste after complaints.
Mr Delvoye said collectors came from Europe to see his eight pigs at the show in Shanghai, China. They had already been displayed at a Beijing art show.
Mr Delvoye bred his pigs on a farm outside Beijing, letting his tattoos grow with the animals.
He says his pigs were treated humanely and given sedatives before being tattooed. Collectors can buy them live or purchase their tattooed skins when they die of old age.
Mr Delvoye recently sold a tattoo of the on the back of a Swiss man which depicts the Virgin Mary with a lifeless skull for a record of around £120,000. Under their agreement, when the man dies the purchaser will be able to keep the tattoed skin.
The main difference between working on pigs and people was that "the pigs never had an opinion", according to Mr Delvoye.

Amazing Art

2008-11-04T14:40:00.000-08:00

Albanian artist Saimir Strati, creates a very unusual kind of art using only a hammer and nails.
With this he creates awe inspiring art. Here are a few pictures of the artist at work on a portrait of Leonardo Da Vinci.

Road kill inside Chinese restaurant

2008-10-28T12:37:00.000-07:00

HAMBURG, N.Y. (WIVB) - Is road kill on the menu at a popular Hamburg, NY restaurant? A disturbing discovery at the China King Restaurant has forced health officials to lock the doors.
Lisa Williams was going to eat in the restaurant when she got some upsetting news. "Were you coming to eat here?" "Yeah, we were coming to eat." "Did you hear what happened?" "No." "Health inspectors closed it down because there was road kill out here, a deer." "Oh no."
People who came to China King for their Friday dinner found it hard to believe. A dead deer had been butchered inside the kitchen in the restaurant they've been coming to for years.
Patron, Sue Bender said, "Our daughter just called us because she knows this is our take out Chinese, and told us, you're not going to believe what was just on Channel Four."
A witness tells us he saw an Asian man dragging the deer inside.
"I watched him drag it across the parking lot and he dragged it through the front door of the China King Restaurant. I said this is just not right, so I called Hamburg Police and reported it. Sure enough by the time they got there, they said that he had the deer almost all butchered inside the restaurant."
Another patron wonders, "How stupid could that man be? To let that go on."
Erie County Health Commissioner, Dr Anthony Billitier said, "I don't know what the intention was with the deer, but they can't do that in the restaurant even if they were going to use it for private consumption. It's not consistent with the sanitary code.
Its a story that's closed down the restaurant and caused patron to loose their appetite
Lisa Williams said, "That's disgusting, I'll never eat Chinese again. I'm sorry for all these people out there. That's gross."
When asked if Sue Bender will come here again? She replied, "never...never."
The Health Commissioner tells News4 a hearing with the owner is scheduled for next week.
Story by Tricia Cruz, WIVB

Strange Money Alternatives.

2008-10-27T18:04:00.000-07:00

With the current state of affairs worldwide the value of your currency is fast dropping, you have considerably less buying power.
It seems some people have started using alternatives to cash, while their situations might have forced them to adapt to alternatives, it works well for them and might even give us ideas to implement as things progress.

Cocaine
In a place called Guerima in Colombia, in an effort to try and curb its drug trade, the government has deployed the army to remote areas to block access to places where cocaine is grown and processed i.e. Guerima.
So now, with no one to sell their 'cash crop' to they have a stockpile of cocaine and no money, so they have decided to simply replace cash with cocaine. The inhabitants use it to conduct transactions amongst themselves.
'One gram enough to buy a soft drink'
BBC article

Urine
This strange alternative to money is used in the prison system; they have been known to use cigarettes, sardine cans and now urine. This has become a precious commodity because drug screening has become much more prominent in penitentiaries. Clean samples are traded and they are usually kept in a condom and warmed to body temperature by rectal insertion.

Bottle Caps
In the African republic of Cameroon bottle caps are used as a form of currency, but it isn’t as backward as you think, as with local breweries and soft drink companies, in Cameroon they print prizes below the bottle caps (Cameroon local beer company). Unlike companies here, in Cameroon almost every other bottle cap has a prize, the cheapest prize being a free beer.
Locals have started paying for things like taxi fares, bribes even everyday items with bottle caps.

Hair growing rock in Beijing

2008-10-20T15:51:00.000-07:00

CHINA—On March 16, 2007, an unusual rock went on display in Beijing. This rock has "hair," almost identical to human hair, growing out of its "head."
The rock is iron gray in color, naturally smooth and rounded, and is similar to a cobblestone. There is also a very thin layer of scalp tissue connecting the "hair" to the rock. The hair is grey in color and similar to the color of the rock itself. The hair grows quite naturally from the top with the longest strands being about 15 centimeters (6 inches) long. The hair is slightly coarser than human hair.
The rock was found on a beach, and according to Fashion Rock Café's executive Miss Yong, this kind of rock is named a "hair-growing rock". As long as conditions are right, the hair on this rare rock will continue to grow. Only two other hair-growing rocks have been reported in the world; and both are in a Taiwan Museum.
This "hair-growing rock" is in a glass display case at the Fashion Rock Café, located in the Digital Building in Beijing's Zhongguan Village. The rock measures approximately 30 centimeters (11.8 inches) long, 20 centimeters (7.8 inches) wide, and about 15 centimeters (6 inches) high.
The value of the rock is estimated to be around 10 million Yuan (approximately USD 1.3 million).

Strange themed restaurant

2008-10-19T05:30:00.001-07:00

A Taipei restaurant-bar is letting visitors order "medicine" from a menu and dripping it into their glasses from a transparent ceiling-suspended vat, becoming the latest oddball themed restaurant in Taiwan's capital.
As many as 10 visitors can sit around each bed at the D.S. Music Restaurant, a hospital-themed eatery, and watch showgirls dance on weekend nights or chat up "nurses" whose rabbit-ears complement their starched white uniforms.
The 130-seat restaurant, which features crutches hung from the walls and a wheelchair parked in the lobby, is the only one with a hospital theme in Taiwan.
Other touches include a sign marked "emergency room" leading to the toilets.
"Food is hard to compete on with other restaurants, so the part we emphasize is service," says assistant manager Ou Chia-hao, brother of the 29-year-old owner. "In Taipei, pressure on people is high, and they want a place near home where they can feel relaxed."
Ou's brother opened D.S. last year with T$5 million ($150,760) to express his enthusiasm for the care he got at a hospital when he was treated for a liver disorder.
Two more D.S. branches are in the works, with plans to open by the end of next year, Ou said.
The spot is the latest in a string of strange-themed eateries in Taipei, as local entrepreneurs cater to people with a taste for the quirky and offbeat.
The Jail puts some of its restaurant tables behind bars, while another serves full-course meals in toilet bowls.
Years ago, a Taipei bistro tried a Holocaust theme, but eventually removed items and photos reminiscent of Nazi Germany brutality under pressure from Jewish groups.

Lickable Magazine Ads

2008-10-18T16:51:00.001-07:00

Madison Avenue thinks a tasty approach will give new life to Welch's grape juice. Welch's is taking out full-page print ads in People magazine this month that give readers a chance to sample its grape juice by licking the ad. The front of the advertisement shows a huge bottle of the juice, while the back has a strip that peels up and off, with text that reads: "For a TASTY fact, remove & LICK."

Marketers are excited about the prospects for lickable ads, but also have to deal with the "ick" factor. Since magazines are often passed from reader to reader (think doctors' offices) there is a good chance that saliva could be left on the ad. Readers are supposed to peel off the entire sticker on the Welch's ad before licking, says First Flavor, the company that developed the technology used in the ad. If someone doesn't rip off the whole sticker, First Flavor says, the flap can't reseal, giving people an easy way to know whether the ad has already been licked.

While scent technology -- such as scratch-and-sniff ads or fragrant ink -- is commonplace in magazines, lickable ads are still in the experimental stages. CBS was one of the first companies to offer them in a marketing campaign. The network's flavor strips, which ran in copies of Rolling Stone magazine in New York and Los Angeles last fall, gave readers a taste of lime-flavored mojitos. The ad, the brainchild of Interpublic Group's Initiative, promoted the fictional rum brand that is central to the plot of the CBS series "Cane," which stars Jimmy Smits as the head of a family that owns a Florida rum business.

"We struggled with the concept," says Greg Castronuovo, senior vice president and group account director at Initiative, the media-buying firm that worked on CBS's mojito ad. "There is a lot of pass-along in magazines -- I had a little bit of aversion to it; it's a little unsanitary, perhaps."

First Flavor, the small, privately held company in Bala Cynwyd, Pa., that worked with Welch's, also did in-store marketing patches for a new flavor, dubbed Brilliant Sparkle, of Church & Dwight's Arm & Hammer Advance White toothpaste. First Flavor has been experimenting with how far it can push its technology, and has created test ads that taste like everything from cheese pizza to soy milk and children's cold medicines.

In some lickable ads, including the Welch's ad, some of the essence of the actual product is added to the strip, while in others, the strip is made up of unrelated flavors, both natural and artificial. Creating savory flavors such as pepperoni pizza is particularly tricky. "It's difficult for the consumer to get the feeling that they are tasting the product," says Jay B. Minkoff, chief executive of First Flavor.

Welch's says it suspects some folks will pass on the free taste test. "A lot of people won't lick a magazine no matter how good it tastes," says Chris Heye, Welch's marketing chief.

The company, which is owned by a cooperative of grape growers, says it went to great lengths to make sure the ad tasted good and that the ingredients used in the lickable strip met safety guidelines laid out by the Food and Drug Administration. It says it spent weeks conducting consumer taste tests and enlisted more than 50 company employees to try the lickable ad. The ad was created by WPP Group's JWT.

Print ads present a unique challenge for marketers because they don't typically have "sound or motion," the two things that tend to make ads stand out, says Paul Caine, president of Time Inc.'s Entertainment Group, which includes People magazine. Adding taste is one way to create a new way to grab reader attention, he says. People has experimented with adding sound chips to some print ads.

Welch's says the ad costs a couple hundred thousand dollars more to create than a normal national print ad because it had to pay to make the sticker plus an additional fee to People for the added production costs. The ad will appear in the Feb. 18 issue of the magazine, which has a circulation of about 3.6 million.

Getting people to use multiple senses to process ads is a good way to build a stronger connection with consumers, ad experts say. "It's hard to forget whose brand you are licking," says Lisa Haverty, a cognitive scientist who works in the marketing field.

Assuming, of course, that the consumers like what they taste. "If the taste is unpleasant or not good, the ad could flop worse than a regular ad," adds Ms. Haverty.

Suzanne Vranica, The Wall Street Journal. February 13, 2008
Copyright © 2008 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.. All rights reserved

Myostatin Monsters

2008-10-15T16:39:00.000-07:00

Myostatin is a growth factor that limits muscle tissue growth, i.e. higher concentrations of myostatin in the body may cause the individual to have less developed muscles.

The mutation exists where the body does not produce enough or any myostatin.

This mutation can be found in Whippet dogs and a breed of cattle know as belgium blues, but that rare genetic defect does not occur only in the whippet breed. In fact, it can and has occurred in other animals, even in humans themselves!

This could be a body builder's dream!

Here are some pictures of a whippet with the defect and beligian blue cattle.

Research into myostatin and the myostatin gene may lead to therapies for muscular dystrophy. The idea is to introduce substances that block myostatin. In 2002, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania showed that monoclonal antibody specific to myostatin improves the condition of mice with muscular dystrophy, presumably by blocking myostatin's action.

Bad plumbing turns water into wine

2008-10-08T04:39:00.000-07:00

Residents of an Italian town thought it was a miracle when white wine began flowing through their household taps.
But it turned out to be a bad plumbing as the wine was supposed to flow from the fountain in Marino, south of Rome, reports the Daily Mail.
Every year, the small town celebrates its festival by having sparkling white wine flow instead of water from the public fountain in the town square.
But this week the pipes from the local vineyard which supply the marble fountain during the event were hooked up instead to the domestic water supply.
When mayor Adriano Palozzi, the parish priest and locals gathered round the fountain, with glasses at the ready for a drop of crisp dry white, they were left disappointed as the everyday water poured out.
But minutes later came the shout of 'Miracolo' from a house overlooking the square. The householder rushed out onto her balcony to reveal that wine was flowing from her kitchen tap.
One local, named Anna, said: "I was in the kitchen ready to do the housework and filled up a bucket of water to mop the floor. But I noticed the smell - and realised it was white wine.
"I called my neighbours and they turned on their taps to find they had the wine too. The word quickly spread and everyone filled up bottles and plastic containers with the wine. Everyone thought it was a miracle."
Mayor Palozzi said: "It was a surprise and completely unexpected - workmen are fixing the problem which obviously came about through a technical error.
"Many houses have been affected. People were calling it a miracle, but it wasn't, it was a mistake. I don't think it dampened the enthusiasm of people at the festival though, and everyone still had a good time."

Man Murders his Lawn Mower

2008-10-07T12:48:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, anger makes you do strange things. A 56-year-old Milwaukee man is accused of shooting his lawn mower to death because it wouldn’t start for him.
Keith Walendowski was charged with felony possession of a short-barreled shotgun or rifle and misdemeanor disorderly conduct while armed. According to the criminal complaint, Walendowski said he was angry because his Lawn Boy wouldn’t start Wednesday morning. He was quoted as telling police: “I can do that, it’s my lawn mower and my yard so I can shoot it if I want.”
A lady who lives at Walendowski’s house reported the incident. She says he was quite intoxicated. Walendowski could face up to an $11,000 fine and six years and three months in prison if convicted. The funny thing is that when police showed up they checked the gas tank of the mower and it was empty, so he didn’t have to kill it, just fill it

Goat Contraceptive In Kenya

2008-10-06T15:23:00.000-07:00

Maasai herdsmen in Kenya have turned to an age-old contraceptive device, the "olor", to protect their precious goat herds from an ongoing drought.
The olor is made from cowhide or a square piece of plastic, and is tied around the belly of the male goat.
It prevents the bucks from mating with the female goats.
The herdsmen are using the device to limit the goat population and ensure there are not too many animals grazing on sparse vegetation.
"We don't want them to breed in this drought," says Mr Ole Ngoshoi Kipameto, a goat owner in Kajiado district.
"We tie this hide under the belly of the buck for three months. After that we remove it and then they can breed by November when the short rains come," Mr Kipameto says.

The rectangular piece of cowhide is passed over the buck's head and front legs and secured under the belly in front of the hind legs with a rope or elastic strap.
"It looks like an apron," Mr Kipameto says.
Peter Ndirangu, the area livestock officer, says the olor is very effective.
"In the modern method, we advocate keeping the bucks separate from the breeding goats. But that is an added cost as you require two herdsmen - one for the bucks and one for the goats," he says.
"This [device] will play the part of a herdsman."
He says the device is very useful in keeping the herd numbers down and controlling when the goats give birth.
"If they give birth during harsh conditions like now, the mothers - the does - are going to be very weak, they're not going to feed their young ones properly," he says.
The device helps the herdsmen to restrict kidding to the period during and after the rains.
If the rains fall in October and November, the dry landscape will turn green again and the herdsmen will be able to settle with their livestock.
Until then, the herdsmen will have to employ the olor to protect their livestock and livelihood safe.
Those who do not use it could face a hefty fine if their bucks are found guilty of impregnating another herder's doe.

Resturant has fish in urinal

2008-10-03T14:56:00.000-07:00

A Chinese restaurant has been criticised - for keeping ornamental fish in a urinal.

The restaurant in Changchun city has around 20 fancy carp in the four-metre long trough in the gents' bathroom.
The Eastern Asian Economic and Trade Daily says experts have condemned the move as harmful to the fish and "disrespectful to China's fish culture".
A spokesman for the restaurant insisted the urinal contained a mixture of urine and water which was not harmful to the fish.
"The water is running, and each day we change the water at least twice and add oxygen into the water. It's not much different to a fish tank," he said.
The owner added that the fish were intended as an attraction for diners and were not used in dishes.
Guests seemed surprised to find fish swimming in the trough which has sign saying "Please urinate here" above it.
"If they didn't have the sign here I would have thought it was a new fish tank," said one diner, Mr Wang.
"It's really interesting," added another, Mr Sun, who said he was planning to use the bathroom again, just to repeat the experience.

Couple born to be together

2008-09-30T03:16:00.000-07:00

A couple are tying the knot this weekend - 22 years after they were born next to each other in the same hospital ward.
Kelly Robinson and Dale Wilson were born just three days apart at Northampton General Hospital, with their mothers recovering in adjacent beds.
They lived separate lives until they were introduced by a mutual friend in 2006 - exactly 20 years and one day since they first 'met', reports the Daily Telegraph.
But the pair only realised their connection when their mums got together and started talking about their births.
Miss Robinson, a team manager at Barclaycard from West Hunsbury, Northamptonshire, said: "I think it is destiny.
"Everything fell into place when we got together. It felt like we'd known each other for ever.
"It's so strange how we've met again and fallen in love. I can't imagine it happening to anyone else. I feel so lucky I've found Dale."
The couple were re-introduced by Emma Smith - who went to the University of Northampton with Miss Robinson and is a childhood friend of Mr Wilson's.
Miss Robinson said there was an instant attraction between them, so - after a whirlwind five-month romance - the pair decided to get hitched.
The wedding will take place at St John the Baptist Church in Kingsthorpe, Northamptonshire, on 9 August - followed by a honeymoon in Cyprus.

102 year old gran on Facebook

2008-09-25T04:26:00.000-07:00

A British great granny has become the oldest person on Facebook.
102-year-old Ivy Bean decided it was time to get herself some online action when she heard about the site through staff at the care home where she lives.
Her carers helped Ivy set-up a profile and the former mill worker, from West Yorkshire, now uses it to keep in touch with friends and family.
Ivy told the Sun: "I heard about Facebook and wanted to know what it was about. I love being online and it beats writing with a pen."
"More and more people are on Facebook now. But at 102 I have a lot to put on about myself," she said.
"I've only got nine friends on the net at the moment but I'm hoping for lots more. I'm going to put some of my photos on my page."
Ivy lives at Hillside Manor in Bradford. Boss Pat Wright said: "Ivy loves going on Facebook. We're trying to keep all our residents independent by letting them use the computer."
The great gran also plans to try out a Nintendo Wii.

Here are some links on facebook where you can find Ivy and some groups

Ivy Bean fan Page

Oldest Person on facebook

Ivy Bean appreciation group

Huge diamond found - a record breaker !

2008-09-24T07:12:00.000-07:00

A diamond unearthed in the southern African nation of Lesotho could yield one of the largest and highest quality round polished diamonds, according to a statement Monday from company that found it.

Experts in Antwerp, Belgium who analyzed the 478-carat stone determined it to be of the highest color grading available for a white diamond, said a statement from Gem Diamonds Ltd., the company that found the stone.
“What makes it more remarkable is the color and quality of this stone,” said diamond consultant Neil Buxton.
“It’s a D color, which is the highest possible graded color you can get, and we believe there is a chance - a very good chance - of getting a 100-carat plus” round stone with the highest color and clarity rankings.
The company said such a stone would “to the best of our knowledge” be “the first one in history.” The diamond, which was found in September, ranks as the 20th largest rough diamond ever found, but is not the biggest ever taken from the Letseng Mine, which is co-owned by Gem Diamonds Ltd. and the Kingdom of Lesotho, a country of 2.1 million that is surrounded by South Africa.
Two bigger stones - 603 and 493 carats - were found in the mine in 2006 and 2007, respectively, the company said. A 601-carat diamond was mined there in 1960, it said.

Mr Methane to blow away audiences

2008-09-22T13:29:00.000-07:00

The world's only full-time performing flatulist is promising to "blow away audiences" at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Mr Methane, alias former train driver Paul Oldfield, will reveal his unique skills in a show called An Audience With Mr Methane.
In it, he tells broadcaster Martin Kelner how his 'talent' came to light when he accompanied his sister in yoga practice.
He discovered - to his surprise and delight - that he was able to take in air through the rear, retain it, and then expel it as and when he chose.
At first, it was nothing more than a party trick to entertain fellow railwaymen, but eventually Mr Methane found that by careful control, he could pick out a simple tune.
He gradually expanded his repertoire, which now ranges from Strauss's Blue Danube waltz through to Kylie Minogue's I Should Be So Lucky.
Using audio visual aids, Kelner will tell the Methane story, and may join him on a moving rendition of Da Doo Ron Ron, "performed fore and aft".
Mr Methane will tell how he conquered the Howard Stern show in America, did sell-out tours in Australia, and became a star on Japanese TV.
"He wanted to call it Working My Passage but I persuaded him not to," reveals Kelner.

Swiss restaurant to serve meals cooked with human breast milk

2008-09-18T14:37:00.000-07:00

A Swiss gastronomist has stirred a controversy in the tranquil Alpine republic after announcing that he will serve meals cooked with human breast milk.

The owner of the Storchen restaurant in the exclusive Winterthur resort will improve his menu with local specialities such as meat stew and various soups and sauces containing at least 75 per cent of mother's milk.
"We have all been raised on it. Why should we not include it into our diet?" Hans Locher, who has become Switzerland most controversial restaurant owner, said.
Mr Locher attracted the attention of the leading media of the German-speaking world this week after he posted ads looking for women donors, who will receive just over three pounds for 14 ounces of their milk.
He said: "I first experimented with breast milk when my daughter was born.
"One can cook really delicious things with it. However, it always needs to be mixed with a bit of whipped cream, in order to keep the consistency."
The food control authority in Switzerland was initially confused by the apparent loophole in local legislation regulating the use of human milk and it was not clear whether Mr Locher could actually be banned from serving his specialities.
"Humans as producers of milk are simply not envisaged in the legislation.
"They are not on the list of approved species such as cows and sheep, but they are also not on the list of the banned species such as apes and primates," Rolf Etter of the Zurich food control laboratory said.

All Water Is Not Created Equally

2008-08-31T10:33:00.000-07:00

Water is water right? Whether you get it from a faucet or a garden hose, or grab one from the cooler at the convenience store, it's just water and all water is just that, right? Not true at all. All water is not created equally. I hope that after reading this article you will have a better understanding about the differences that exist in this refreshment that nature has kindly provided for us since the beginning of time.Of course, way-way back when, the water provided by nature was in its purest form. It was free from the pollutants of today, caused by a number of factors in the air and soil, and which then makes its way into oceans, rivers, lakes and streams.In many communities it isn't really advisable to drink water straight from the tap, because tiny microbial organisms can find their way into the water that comes out of our faucets. These microbial teeny-weenies don't usually cause people with healthy immune systems any problems. But those with immune systems weakened by chronic disease, poor nutrition, lack of adequate exercise, and other ailments, could become sick from drinking unfiltered water. Children can also become sick through drinking unfiltered water because a child's immune system isn't fully developed yet and may not be strong enough to combat these microbial organisms.To prevent these micro organisms from making their way into your cup of water install a filter on your faucet to trap and kill them. You can find filters for the faucets in your home at your local hardware, home and chain stores. The internet offers a wealth of selections in filters for the faucets in your home and good deals on pricing, and reasonable shipping costs aren't hard to find either! How about bottled water? Here too, not all water is the same. Next time you're grocery shopping, check out the beverage aisles, they are jam packed with enough choices to make a person dizzy! Plain, distilled, from spring-fed waters, with flavoring (made either with pure sugar or sugar substitutes) added to them, or loaded with electrolytes, minerals and now even with appetite suppressants and energy boosters!Don't be fooled by the clever packaging used by manufacturers to encourage consumer purchasing. Just as you are carefully reading food labels to ensure you're making the healthiest food choices, the same applies when buying bottled water and bottled water combined with other ingredients. Bottled water that is advertised as: made from fresh, spring-fed waters may not be as accurate as their packaging suggests at first glance. Check the label and look for the % of spring-fed water the product actually contains. Some brands that look as if they came straight out of the purest of waters, only contain a small amount of this so-called pure water (beavers and other animals do the doo in these waters) and the remaining water content is most likely no different than the tap water from home.Stay away from flavored water made with high-fructose corn syrup. Sure, it makes the water taste really good; high-fructose corn syrup is just a fancy name for sugar, but it also adds needless calories and absolutely no nutritional value to your water. So is it really worth it when the purpose of drinking more water per day, is for the betterment of our health? Remember- not all water is created equal. For good health, consider installing filters on the faucets in your home to keep the microbial organisms that can make you sick out of your drinking water. Be diligent in reading the labels on the various types of bottled water so you know exactly what you're drinking.

How to Get Prescription Drugs out of Your Tap Water

2008-08-31T10:32:00.000-07:00

One of the consequences of being "one nation under drugs" is being exposed to toxic, prescription drug metabolites via your tap water! Fortunately, with the right water filter, you can avoid it.Drug giant Merck recently warned that "There’s no doubt about it, pharmaceuticals are being detected in the environment and there is genuine concern that these compounds, in the small concentrations that they’re at, could be causing impacts to human health and aquatic organisms." To wit, officials in Philadelphia identified 56 pharmaceuticals or by-products in tap water. Such medications included pain meds, cholesterol lowering drugs, birth control pills, antidepressants and blood pressure meds! None of which belong in little Johnny’s "sippy cup."Don’t expect your city to be any different. The federal government doesn’t require any testing or safety limits for drugs in tap water. Protect yourself with the right water filter!The market is flooded with various types of water filters - microfiltration, ultrafiltration, nanofiltration, reverse osmosis, electrodialysis reversal, membrane bioreactors, and combinations of membranes in series. At the conference on Wastewater Reclamation and Reuse for Sustainability it was shown that reverse osmosis filters were the most effective at removing all pollutants, including pharmaceuticals. Looking for the most user friendly and economic filter, I found the RioFlow Complete 5-Stage Reverse Osmosis System. For about $180, you can rest assured that your water is free and clear of "other people’s drugs.

Mesothelioma Dedication Page

2008-01-20T07:03:00.000-08:00

Mesothelioma
Mesothelioma is a form of cancer that is almost always caused by previous exposure to asbestos. In this disease, malignant cells develop in the mesothelium, a protective lining that covers most of the body's internal organs. Its most common site is the pleura (outer lining of the lungs and chest cavity), but it may also occur in the peritoneum (the lining of the abdominal cavity) or the pericardium (a sac that surrounds the heart).
Most people who develop mesothelioma have worked on jobs where they inhaled asbestos particles, or have been exposed to asbestos dust and fibre in other ways, such as by washing the clothes of a family member who worked with asbestos, or by home renovation using asbestos cement products. Unlike lung cancer, there is no association between mesothelioma and smoking

Signs and symptoms
Symptoms of mesothelioma may not appear until 20 to 50 years after exposure to asbestos. Shortness of breath, cough, and pain in the chest due to an accumulation of fluid in the pleural space are often symptoms of pleural mesothelioma.
Symptoms of peritoneal mesothelioma include weight loss and cachexia, abdominal swelling and pain due to ascites (a buildup of fluid in the abdominal cavity). Other symptoms of peritoneal mesothelioma may include bowel obstruction, blood clotting abnormalities, anemia, and fever. If the cancer has spread beyond the mesothelium to other parts of the body, symptoms may include pain, trouble swallowing, or swelling of the neck or face.
These symptoms may be caused by mesothelioma or by other, less serious conditions.
Mesothelioma that affects the pleura can cause these signs and symptoms:
1. chest wall pain
2. pleural effusion, or fluid surrounding the lung
3. shortness of breath
4. fatigue or anemia
5. wheezing, hoarseness, or cough
6. blood in the sputum (fluid) coughed up

In severe cases, the person may have many tumor masses. The individual may develop a pneumothorax, or collapse of the lung. The disease may metastasize, or spread, to other parts of the body.
Tumors that affect the abdominal cavity often do not cause symptoms until they are at a late stage. Symptoms include:

1. abdominal pain
2. ascites, or an abnormal buildup of fluid in the abdomen
3. a mass in the abdomen
4. problems with bowel function
5. weight loss

In severe cases of the disease, the following signs and symptoms may be present:
blood clots in the veins, which may cause thrombophlebitis
disseminated intravascular coagulation, a disorder causing severe bleeding in many body organs jaundice, or yellowing of the eyes and skin low blood sugar level, pleural effusion, pulmonary emboli, or blood clots in the arteries of the lungs, severe ascites.
A mesothelioma does not usually spread to the bone, brain, or adrenal glands. Pleural tumors are usually found only on one side of the lungs.
Diagnosis
Diagnosing mesothelioma is often difficult, because the symptoms are similar to those of a number of other conditions. Diagnosis begins with a review of the patient's medical history. A history of exposure to asbestos may increase clinical suspicion for mesothelioma. A physical examination is performed, followed by chest X-ray and often lung function tests. The X-ray may reveal pleural thickening commonly seen after asbestos exposure and increases suspicion of mesothelioma. A CT (or CAT) scan or an MRI is usually performed. If a large amount of fluid is present, abnormal cells may be detected by cytology if this fluid is aspirated with a syringe. For pleural fluid this is done by a pleural tap or chest drain, in ascites with a paracentesis or ascitic drain and in a pericardial effusion with pericardiocentesis. While absence of malignant cells on cytology does not completely exclude mesothelioma, it makes it much more unlikely, especially if an alternative diagnosis can be made (e.g. tuberculosis, heart failure).
Screening
There is no universally agreed protocol for screening people who have been exposed to asbestos. However some research indicates that the serum osteopontin level might be useful in screening asbestos-exposed people for mesothelioma. The level of soluble mesothelin-related protein is elevated in the serum of about 75% of patients at diagnosis and it has been suggested that it may be useful for screening.
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Risk factors
Working with asbestos is the major risk factor for mesothelioma. A history of asbestos exposure exists in almost all cases. However, mesothelioma has been reported in some individuals without any known exposure to asbestos. In rare cases, mesothelioma has also been associated with irradiation, intrapleural thorium dioxide (Thorotrast), and inhalation of other fibrous silicates, such as erionite.
Asbestos is the name of a group of minerals that occur naturally as masses of strong, flexible fibers that can be separated into thin threads and woven. Asbestos has been widely used in many industrial products, including cement, brake linings, roof shingles, flooring products, textiles, and insulation. If tiny asbestos particles float in the air, especially during the manufacturing process, they may be inhaled or swallowed, and can cause serious health problems. In addition to mesothelioma, exposure to asbestos increases the risk of lung cancer, asbestosis (a noncancerous, chronic lung ailment), and other cancers, such as those of the larynx and kidney.
The combination of smoking and asbestos exposure significantly increases a person's risk of developing cancer of the airways (lung cancer, bronchial carcinoma). The Kent brand of cigarettes used asbestos in its filters for the first few years of production in the 1950s and some cases of mesothelioma have resulted. Smoking modern cigarettes does not appear to increase the risk of mesothelioma.
Some studies suggest that simian virus 40 (SV40) may act as a cofactor in the development of mesothelioma.

Treatment
Treatment of MM using conventional therapies has not proved successful and patients have a median survival time of 6 - 12 months after presentation. The clinical behaviour of the malignancy is affected by several factors including the continuous mesothelial surface of the pleural cavity which favours local metastasis via exfoliated cells, invasion to underlying tissue and other organs within the pleural cavity, and the extremely long latency period between asbestos exposure and development of the disease.
Surgery
Surgery, either by itself or used in combination with pre- and post-operative adjuvant therapies has proved disappointing. A pleurectomy/decortication is the most common surgery, in which the lining of the chest is removed. Less common is an extrapleural pneumonectomy (EPP), in which the lung, lining of the inside of the chest, the hemi-diaphragm and the pericardium are removed. It is not possible to remove the entire mesothelium without killing the patient.

Radiation Oncology/Lung/Mesothelioma
For patients with localized disease, and who can tolerate a radical surgery, radiation is often given post-operatively as a consolidative treatment. The entire hemi-thorax is treated with radiation therapy, often given simultaneously with chemotherapy. This approach of using surgery followed by radiation with chemotherapy has been pioneered by the thoracic oncology team at Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston. Delivering radiation and chemotherapy after a radical surgery has led to extended life expectancy in selected patient populations with some patients surviving more than 5 years. As part of a curative approach to mesothelioma, radiotherapy is also commonly applied to the sites of chest drain insertion, in order to prevent growth of the tumor along the track in the chest wall.
Although mesothelioma is generally resistant to curative treatment with radiotherapy alone, palliative treatment regimens are sometimes used to relieve symptoms arising from tumor growth, such as obstruction of a major blood vessel. Radiation therapy when given alone with curative intent has never been shown to improve survival from mesothelioma. The necessary radiation dose to treat mesothelioma that has not been surgically removed would be very toxic.
Chemotherapy
In February 2004, the United States Food and Drug Administration approved pemetrexed (brand name Alimta) for treatment of malignant pleural mesothelioma. Pemetrexed is given in combination with cisplatin. Folic acid is also used to reduce the side-effects of pemetrexed.
Immunotherapy
Treatment regimens involving immunotherapy have yielded variable results. For example, intrapleural inoculation of Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) in an attempt to boost the immune response, was found to be of no benefit to the patient (while it may benefit patients with bladder cancer). Mesothelioma cells proved susceptible to in vitro lysis by LAK cells following activation by interleukin-2 (IL-2), but patients undergoing this particular therapy experienced major side effects. Indeed, this trial was suspended in view of the unacceptably high levels of IL-2 toxicity and the severity of side effects such as fever and cachexia. Nonetheless, other trials involving interferon alpha have proved more encouraging with 20% of patients experiencing a greater than 50% reduction in tumor mass combined with minimal side effects.
Heated Intraoperative Intraperitoneal Chemotherapy
A procedure known as heated intraoperative intraperitoneal chemotherapy was developed by Paul Sugarbaker at the Washington Cancer Institute. The surgeon removes as much of the tumor as possible followed by the direct administration of a chemotherapy agent, heated to between 40 and 48°C, in the abdomen. The fluid is perfused for 60 to 120 minutes and then drained.
This technique permits the administration of high concentrations of selected drugs into the abdominal and pelvic surfaces. Heating the chemotherapy treatment increases the penetration of the drugs into tissues. Also, heating itself damages the malignant cells more than the normal cells.
Prevention & Expectations
What can be done to prevent the disease? Since the 1970s, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration have regulated the asbestos industry in the U.S. In the past, asbestos was used as a fire retardant and an insulator. Other products are now used in its place. The controversy involving exposure to different forms of asbestos continues.
There are two major types of asbestos: chrysotile and amphibole. It is thought that exposure to the amphibole form is more likely to cause mesothelioma. However, chrysotile has been used more frequently, hence many mesotheliomas are caused by chrysotile.
Removal is taking place in schools and other public buildings throughout the U.S. The hope is that these measures will greatly reduce the occurrence of this cancer.
What are the long-term effects of the disease? A mesothelioma is a highly aggressive tumor that is generally deadly. Current treatment of malignant mesothelioma is designed to make the person with cancer comfortable. Although long-term survival cannot usually be expected, the case of famed paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould is a noted exception.
What are the risks to others? Mesothelioma is not contagious and cannot be passed from one person to another. The exposure to the asbestos that caused the cancer occurred many years to several decades before the disease appeared. People who live with asbestos workers have a higher risk of getting this cancer.
What happens once treatment is over? Although mesothelioma is very unpleasant it's still important for person after treatment is over to keep up all follow-up appointments and that's vital because further testing is always needed to check whether cancer is coming back or to examine possible side effects that could be rather unpleasant and what's even worse permanent.
Notable people that died from mesothelioma
Mesothelioma, though rare, has had a number of notable patients. Australian anti-racism activist Bob Bellear died in 2005. British science fiction writer Michael G. Coney, responsible for nearly 100 works also died in 2005. American film and television actor Paul Gleason, perhaps best known for his portrayal of Principal Richard Vernon in the 1985 film The Breakfast Club, died in 2006. Mickie Most, an English record producer, died of mesothelioma in 2003. Paul Rudolph, an American architect known for his cubist building designs, died in 1997.
Bernie Banton was an Australian workers' rights activist, who fought a long battle for compensation from James Hardie after he contracted mesothelioma after working for that company. He claimed James Hardie knew of the dangers of asbestos before he began work with the substance making insulation for power stations. Mesothelioma eventually took his life along with his brothers and hundreds of James Hardie workers. James Hardie made an undisclosed settlement with Mr Banton only when his mesothelioma had reached its final stages and he was expected to have no more than 48hrs to live. Australian Prime Minister-elect Kevin Rudd mentioned Mr Banton's extended struggle in his acceptance speech after winning the 2007 Australian Federal Election.
Steve McQueen was diagnosed with peritoneal mesothelioma on December 22, 1979. He was not offered surgery or chemotherapy because doctors felt the cancer was too advanced. McQueen sought alternative treatments from clinics in Mexico. He died of a heart attack on November 7, 1980, in Juárez, Mexico, following cancer surgery. He may have been exposed to asbestos while serving with the US Marines as a young adult—asbestos was then commonly used to insulate ships' piping—or because of its use as an insulating material in car racing suits. (It is also reported that he worked in a shipyard during World War II, where he might have been exposed to asbestos.[citation needed]
United States Congressman Bruce Vento died of mesothelioma in 2000. The Bruce Vento Hopebuilder is awarded yearly by his wife at the MARF Symposium to persons or organizations who have done the most to support mesothelioma research and advocacy.
After a long period of untreated illness and pain, rock and roll musician and songwriter Warren Zevon was diagnosed with inoperable mesothelioma in the fall of 2002. Refusing treatments he believed might incapacitate him, Zevon focused his energies on recording his final album The Wind including the song "Keep Me in Your Heart," which speaks of his failing breath. Zevon died at his home in Los Angeles, California, on September 7, 2003.
Christie Hennessy, the influential Irish singer-songwriter, died of mesothelioma in 2007, and had stridently refused to accept the prognosis in the weeks before his death. His mesothelioma has been attributed to his younger years spent working on building sites in London.
Bob Miner, one of the founders of Software Development Labs, the forerunner of Oracle Corporation died of mesothelioma in 1994.
Notable people that have lived for some time with mesothelioma
Although life expectancy with this disease is typically limited, there are notable survivors. In July 1982, Stephen Jay Gould was diagnosed with peritoneal mesothelioma. After his diagnosis, Gould wrote the "The Median Isn't the Message" for Discover magazine, in which he argued that statistics such as median survival are just useful abstractions, not destiny. Gould lived for another twenty years eventually succumbing to metastatic adenocarcinoma of the lung, not mesothelioma.
Author Paul Kraus was diagnosed with mesothelioma in June 1997 following an umbilical hernia operation. His prognosis was "a few months." He continues to survive using a variety of integrative and complimentary modalities and has written a book about his experience.
Legal issues
The first lawsuits against asbestos manufacturers were in 1929. Since then, many lawsuits have been filed against asbestos manufacturers and employers, for neglecting to implement safety measures after the links between asbestos, asbestosis, and mesothelioma became known (some reports seem to place this as early as 1898). The liability resulting from the sheer number of lawsuits and people affected has reached billions of dollars. The amounts and method of allocating compensation have been the source of many court cases, and government attempts at resolution of existing and future cases.
History
The first lawsuit against asbestos manufacturers was brought in 1929. The parties settled that lawsuit, and as part of the agreement, the attorneys agreed not to pursue further cases. It was not until 1960 that an article published by Wagner et al first officially established mesothelioma as a disease arising from exposure to crocidolite asbestos. The article referred to over 30 case studies of people who had suffered from mesothelioma in South Africa. Some exposures were transient and some were mine workers. In 1962 McNulty reported the first diagnosed case of malignant mesothelioma in an Australian asbestos worker. The worker had worked in the mill at the asbestos mine in Wittenoom from 1948 to 1950.
In the town of Wittenoom, asbestos-containing mine waste was used to cover schoolyards and playgrounds. In 1965 an article in the British Journal of Industrial Medicine established that people who lived in the neighbourhoods of asbestos factories and mines, but did not work in them, had contracted mesothelioma.
Despite proof that the dust associated with asbestos mining and milling causes asbestos related disease, mining began at Wittenoom in 1943 and continued until 1966. In 1974 the first public warnings of the dangers of blue asbestos were published in a cover story called "Is this Killer in Your Home?" in Australia's Bulletin magazine. In 1978 the Western Australian Government decided to phase out the town of Wittenoom, following the publication of a Health Dept. booklet, "The Health Hazard at Wittenoom", containing the results of air sampling and an appraisal of worldwide medical information.
By 1979 the first writs for negligence related to Wittenoom were issued against CSR and its subsidiary ABA, and the Asbestos Diseases Society was formed to represent the Wittenoom victims.