A very good adaptation of a story I didn't think could be made out of meat.

Now I hope someone will adapt "Bears Discover Fire".

Pier 39's famous sea lions have mysteriously disappeared.  They mysteriously appeared right after San Francisco's Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989 and stayed.  Could they be sensing another earthquake?

Scientists have thought that sea urchins are blind because they apparently don't have eyes, but now marine biologists at Duke University have found that sea urchins ARE eyes.

Genetic analysis shows that urchins' bodies contain light sensitive molecules, so the biologists speculated that their spines might be light sensitive and act like cells of a compound full-body eye.  They put black disks of various sizes on the wall of a tank containing purple sea urchins, and when the disk was over 3.5 inches, the urchins showed a fight-or-flight reaction, with two-thirds "running" toward the disk, and the rest apparently fleeing it.

The researchers think that the more spines an urchin has, the sharper its vision is.  The experiment also indicates that urchins may have compound brains as well.  They don't have one organ that can be called a brain, but they do have a nervous system spread evenly through their bodies.  The coordination of visual input from their spines into images, and acting upon them,  suggests some processing is going on.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20091228/sc_livescience/bodyofseaurchinisonebigeye

Notice the character changes toward the end.

Stolen from freakylynx .

( Contains language... )

My ingredients:



I think the recipe came from an old Parade newspaper insert.  It's for two people, but the smallest package of hamburger I could find was a pound, so I doubled it and divided it into four loaves for tonight the next three nights.  It turned out very good, allowing for my substitutions.  [My comments in brackets.]

Old-Fashioned Meatloaf For Two

This tiny meatloaf should not be overbaked!  Once removed from the oven, it will keep cooking for a few minutes.  The chili sauce is the American kind, not the Asian.  [I think the Asian kind would make it better.]

1.  Preheat the oven to 350° F.  Place the chuck, onion, parsley, 2 tablespoons of the chili sauce, the Worcestershire, salt and pepper in a bowl.  Toss together lightly.
2.  Form the meat into a 5-inch by 3-inch oval loaf in a small baking pan.  Spread the remaining tablespoon of chili sauce all over the surface of the meatloaf.  Bake for 30 minutes, or until cooked through.  Do not overbake.

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Researchers at Boston University, Harvard, and other contributing colleges have developed a "Neuralynx System" that translates neural activity into phonemes.  About five years ago, they implanted three electrodes into a 21-year-old patient who is almost totally paralyzed, except for his eyes, and over three years his brain grew neural connections with them, creating a brain-computer interface.  Over the past two years, they've had him trying to say vowels, and have been training the interface to match the neural activity of the intended vowel attempt with the actual vowel in computer memory, with the current reaction time being about 50 milliseconds.  Once the vowels are mastered, they will move onto consonents, and then putting them together into words.

http://www.physorg.com/news180620740.html

Sinornithosaurus, a feathered four-winged avian dinosaur discovered in China ten years ago, has been determined to have venomous fangs, making them much like feathered snakes.  Recently discovered fossils show grooved back fangs that would have injected venom into prey to paralyze it, along with forward teeth that it used to strip feathers from its prey.  A University of Kansas researcher who helped find it said the teeth make it look a lot like a sabertoothed bird.

Chicago Tribune story.
Guardian UK story.

In a debate on a vote for health care reform, Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma said the American people should pray for something to happen to keep Democrats from voting.  That led to a debate about what Coburn meant, with some interpreting his remarks as wishing harm on Democrats, 92-year-old Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia in particular, that God should favor the Republicans over Democrats, etc.  One defender said that maybe Coburn just wanted a blizzard to keep voting Democrats away, as if that were okay.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/ynews_ts1039

Local DC TV stations spun this incident wildly. One said several police showed up at once and drew their guns on the snowballers. Another claimed anti-war anarchists had crashed the party and attracted police. CNN and Reason.tv showed that it was really one plainclothes cop who got mad his car got hit by a snowball, unholstered his gun, and threatened to arrest people.

Despite reviews to the contrary, this movie is not a "Ferngully" rehash or a Afghanistan/Vietnam allegory.  It is a soldiers and Indians movie, however, and could have been set in the American west with a little tweaking, but fortunately James Cameron set it on an alien planet instead.  The movie isn't just about the story; it's a showcase for the cinema technology he developed and the world he crafted.  It's science fiction as it's meant to be, the proposal of a scientific premise and how it affects the people living with it.  In this case, the premise is the interactivity of all the life on the planet Pandora, how a few scientists come to understand it, and how the people who want to exploit the planet refuse to understand it.  Without the science fiction basis and spectacular effects, it could have been a story about a soldier being sent to infiltrate an Indian tribe so that they could be evicted and their land taken, and turning to defend them instead.  That's not a bad story, though, and it would have made a good Western, but Cameron integrated the SF and effects to make it at least three dimensions better. 

This video from Uruguay was made by Fede Alvarez for only $300, and has gotten him millions of dollars in movie studio offers.  Check out the music video by Snake as well.

Yahoo! Buzz story.

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/12/07/mobius-bagel-interlo.html

Stolen from lnhammer .