January 11, 2001
WILY SLIME
Scientists at the Bio-Mimetic Control Research Centre
in Nagoya, Japan, have discovered that a slime mould can negotiate
a path through a maze in order to find the shortest route to its
meal. The single-celled organism Physarum polycephalum was able to
ooze itself between two meals and take short cuts to find food.
"This remarkable process of cellular computation implies that
cellular materials can show a primitive intelligence," commented
Toshiyuki Makagaki. What he meant to say was, "Woah, fungus can
think! I'm trippin' out!" (Nature)
WAY TO UPSELL!
Akira Ishiguro, a shopowner in Yokohama, Japan, was
so fed up with customers who tried on his clothes with no intention
of buying anything, he put up a sign reading "Entry strictly
prohibited to shoplifters, browsers, and teasers." After most
shoppers ignored the warning, he lost his temper one day, and
forced a 26-year-old woman to get down on her knees and apologize
for trying on a coat. "Didn't you see the sign outside? Do you take
me for a fool?" he screamed, then forced her to give him $27 as a
down payment for the coat. (Asahi Shimbun News)
SADLY, BUSINESS IS BRISK IN THE LIVE HUMAN ORGAN TRADE
An article
by Leonardo Calcagno in uPhoria magazine paints a disturbing
picture of the black market trade in live human organs around the
world. According to the unnamed donor bank employee interviewed in
this article, the human body is worth about $35,000, and the
skeleton can be sold for $200 a gram. Corporations such as
Osteotech and Cryolife Inc. contribute to a multi-billion dollar
industry by, for example, buying hearts from India for $150 and
selling them for $5000. The most horrifying news is that healthy
children who are brought to doctors in "third world" countries are
often unnecessarily operated on so that the doctor can sell their
organs or eyes (a pair of human corneas sell for US$3000) to these
corporations.
POLLY WANTS A 1-900 NUMBER
Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, author of Dogs
That Know When their Owners Are Coming Home - And Other Unexplained
Powers of Animals, is currently studying a psychic parrot in New
York named N'Kisi. According to Sheldrake, N'Kisi's owner, Aimee
Morgana, can sit in one room looking at images, and the parrot can
name them using words from its 555-word vocabulary. Apparently, the
parrot correctly named the images 32 out of 70 times. "You'd only
expect 5.2 hits like this to occur by chance," said Sheldrake,
"this is staggering." He has also studied psychic cats, chickens
and ferrets, and has videotaped over 100 experiments with an
especially psychic dog named Jaytee. (USA Today)
MORE STRANGE ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR
Authorities in India are baffled by
the behaviour of a wild elephant who has bathed and stood guard
over the corpse of a man it trampled to death over two weeks ago.
Villagers are demanding that forest rangers "rescue the corpse" so
that it can be given a proper cremation, but the elephant is
refusing to give up the body. "We think the elephant might be
feeling some remorse for having killed the villager," speculated
one ranger. (AFP)
SUCCESSFUL TOXIN FARMING
A study carried out by Dr. Michael Easton
of the David Suzuki Foundation has revealed that farmed salmon can
contain up to ten times the amount of pesticides and chemicals that
is usually found in wild salmon. Researchers believe that the food
pellets fed to farmed salmon contain more concentrated doses of
toxins than would be found in the salmons' natural diet. Toxins
discovered in farmed fish include PCBs, which can attack the
nervous system and suppress the body's immune system. (BBC)
SURVEY SAYS!
According to surveys compiled by The Oregonian, 21 per
cent of Americans report being "regularly bored out of my mind"; 8
per cent of Americans would let a reality-based TV show film them
having sex; 19 per cent of men wouldn't mind being stupid if they
had a perfect body; and, according to the Weekly World News, 33 per
cent of prayers are "intercepted or jammed" by Satan.
HOW ROMANTIC
A 41-year-old woman in Germany, on trial for
shoplifting, told the judge that she was doing it for the sexual
kick. "I have an orgasm whenever a department store detective
discovers me stealing and grabs my shoulder from behind," she said.
(AP)
RHINO BODYGUARDS
An international team of conservationists has
drawn up a plan to give each of the last 15 Western black
rhinoceros' in Cameroon its own armed guard, in order to guarantee
them 24-hour protection from poachers until the rhino population
begins to recover. (Environment News Service)
www.i'mdeadnow.com
A Swedish funeral parlour is planning on
offering online funerals as soon as the transmission of video over
the internet is up to an acceptable standard. "It's a fine way for
a person who cannot personally attend to show his respect," said
manager Ib Ahlen. (Reuters)
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Copyright 2000 by Andreas Ohrt
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Email:aohrt@hotmail.com
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