On News

News Followups

It turns out there are some followup stories based on previously covered news! That’s always something awesome, right? It’s great when the news gives us the whole story.

Odd News Roundup

Kitsu’s back again, rounding up even more news! Today’s three stories have a decidedly odd theme: Being straight up weird.

  • Real ‘Love Potion’ Identified – JAN 22, 2013 07:00 PM ET // BY JENNIFER VIEGAS
    People are attracted to scents that amp-up the natural scent of a person. Seriously. They did a whole study that revolved around armpit sniffing and careful scent selection.
  • Surrogate Mother Wanted for Neanderthal Baby – JAN 22, 2013 12:22 PM ET // BY LIVESCIENCE
    That’s right. A science staff is seeking an “extremely adventurous female human” to serve as a surrogate for a baby neanderthal scientists wish to clone using stem cells. The scientist, Church, seems to think that the expanded potential gene pool cloned neanderthals offer has some sort of a value to human existence.
  • Shetland Ponies In Cardigans. You’re Welcome. – The Huffington Post UK 22/01/2013 16:44 GMT
    Scotland is launching their “Year of National Scotland” with photos of shetland ponies (a scottish breed) in cardigans. Honestly. You can’t make this shit up.

Shetland Ponies in Sweaters

Critter News Roundup Vol.1

Another of Kitsu’s News Roundups! Mainly because Kitsu finds these fun, and she’s got 3 stories about critters waiting to be talked about right now!

  • Stray Dogs Offered as Pedestrian Role Models – JAN 23, 2013 09:00 AM ET // BY AFP
    In Romanian cities more than 1,200 people where injured in 2012 because of “pedestrian lack of discipline”. Police officials are now using the example of stray dogs, who protect themselves by using “zebra crossings” (crosswalks) to traverse streets.
  • Why Wolves Are Forever Wild and Dogs Can Be Tamed – JAN 22, 2013 08:04 PM ET // BY JENNIFER VIEGAS
    Evolutionary biologist Kathryn Lord of the University of Massachusetts has led research that suggests the key to the difference between dogs and wolves where the relationship to people is concerned is rooted in the way puppies of the two species develop.
  • Seeking Wilderness Paths For 5,000-Mile Walk – JAN 23, 2013 09:30 AM ET // BY BECKY OSKIN, OURAMAZINGPLANET CONTRIBUTOR
    Conservationist John Davis has already completed 7,600 miles of his trek demonstrating the need for wildlife corridors. He is currently launching on a 5,000 mile leg from Mexico to Canada. Best of luck, Mr Davis! Critters need roads, too!

News Dump Vol.1

I’m not going to actually talk about these articles, just provide a few links in an effort to get excess older items out of my RSS Newsfeed Stars.

Outrageous Hoaxes

I decided that Benjamin Radford‘s Discovery News article “The 5 Most Outrageous Hoaxes” deserved some commentary by me.

  1. Flight of the Balloon Boy: This is one of those things that makes me wonder why the cops have to investigate everything that comes there way. It’s a silly world in which people are so driven to be on reality TV that they’ll lie like that. All you have to do to get on reality TV is curse a lot and be bizarre. Then you’re good to go.
  2. Protocols of the Elders of Zion: It’s amazing how pervasive forged books and documents can be. It’s also stunning how much work people are willing to do to attack religions that they wish to defame. and how people can look straight into the face of facts and still deny them. I want badly to believe in many things, but when the facts decide it’s impossible, I let it go.
  3. Tawana Brawley Attack: This is why people don’t get taken seriously when true horrible incidents happen. This hurt not just everyone involved directly, but also hurt those whose cases didn’t get the attention deserved because investigators were tied up in lies.
  4. Innocence of Muslims: Why is it that people don’t understand that with free speech comes responsibility to exercise that speech in a way that doesn’t cause riots? People died not for this speech, but because of it. And even worse, no one knows for sure if the film even exists! and the actors who were involved had the inflammatory speech dubbed over the actual words they used. This is hate of the highest order.
  5. Satanic Panic: This one is out and out amazing. I’ve even suffered at the hands of this one, because most of the anti-Dungeons-and-Dragons stuff stems directly from the Satanic Panic! This is another case of people not checking facts and assuming that any book that’s put on the non-fiction shelves must be completely true. Factchecks, people. Factchecks!

Bright Light at the end of the Tunnel?

Right now, news headlines concerning horses are rarely positive. They’re things like “Charges Filed in Pa. Morgan Horse Neglect Case” and “South Dakota Authorities Seize Horse Herd” (both are actual news stories from the Horse that came down yesterday morning).

Between the tight financial times, human stupidity, and the continuing insistence that “if you breed it, it will sell. Even if it’s so fugly it shouldn’t have been conceived in the first place” is dangerous.

Hidden amoungst the depressing headlines in my inbox was “Responsible Horse Breeders Council Formed“. I’m not sure if this is a bright light shining in the dark, or a misnamed organization without the power to affect change… But I like to hope.

News Roundup Vol.2

  • Girl Who Doesn’t Grow Baffles Doctors – 16 January 2013 by Marc Lallanilla
    Brooke’s condition dosen’t have a name. She’s only 16 pounds. And her physicality isn’t the only thing failing to grow, as she’s mentally equivalent to a toddler despite being 20 years old.
  • Cats Take on Owners’ Habits (Good and Bad) – 16 January 2013 by Jennifer Viegas
    It’s nice to know that dogs aren’t the only ones who bear some similarities to their people. It also changes much of what was understood by biology about feline behavior.
  • Cornell Creates Massive Animal Sound Site – 16 January 2013 by Jennifer Viegas
    Cornell is launching a website with nearly 150,000 augio recordings of 9,000 species that go back to the year 1929. Check it out at www.MacaulayLibrary.org

Science News

I figure I’ve fallen away from actually writing in this blog, but I’m going to get back into it. Specifically, I’m going to talk today about a few articles that came to me through discovery news yesterday.

  • New Device to Clear Land Mines: A scientist, Massoud Hassani, invented a 50$ solar & wind powered device that can trigger land mines without human specialists. Very cool, and very needed device. [SOURCE]
  • Biodiversity Lack Fingered in Increased Allergies: This year has been bonkers for allergies, and studies are suggesting that the lack of biodiversity near human habitation is actually increasing people’s sensitivity to allergens. [SOURCE]
  • Camera “Traps” Cross River Gorilla: The Cross River Gorilla is the rarest subspecies. With only 250 known individuals in the wild, this species is rarely observed or studied, so the video captured by a camera trap is priceless to researchers. [SOURCE]

NEWS: Hybrid Shark

Given that I’m all out of D&D stuff to write about until we game again next week (silly DM and his silly need for a break) I’ve scoured recent news articles that I care about. What I ended up finding was an article from Discovery News on 3 January 2012 by Amy Coopes.

Shark Hybrids have never been observed in the wild (and as most shark species don’t reproduce well in captivity even now, during the hybridization craze of the 50’s they were not victimized like Lions, Tigers, Jaguars and a pile of other species). Until now. A wild-bred example was discovered by Jess Morgan, who declared it to be “evolution in action”.

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