New stuff, different day...

And you thought White Castles couldn't affect you that much….
And green pigs might fly...
Thu Jan 12, 9:38 AM ET
TAIPEI (AFP) - Scientists in Taiwan have successfully bred three pigs which glow fluorescent green in the dark, marking a potential breakthrough for stem cell research.

The team from Taiwan, where the world's first genetically engineered fluorescent fish were created in 2003, injected a protein extracted from jelly fish into the nucleus of cells in a pig embryo to breed three male transgenic pigs, said Professor Wu Shinn-Chih, of National Taiwan University's Institute and Department of Animal Science and Technology.

It was hoped that the pigs would eventually enable reserachers to trace the development of tissues when stem cells are used to repair damaged organs, Wu said.

"Yes, this is really important. It should be helpful in the acceleration of clinical research of human stem cells as it is generally believed that physically pigs are among the animals which are most similar to human beings," he told AFP.

"I'm not sure if there are fluorescent green pigs elsewhere in the world, but so far, in the photos available in the field, I have never seen such pigs, whose whole bodies can glow green in the dark," Wu said.

"I was shocked when I saw the animals (glowing) the first time."
Wu dismissed concerns that the technology could endanger the ecosystem.
"There is no need to worry about that because, unlike fish, the confined green pigs have no way to crossbreed with wild species and produce 'Frankenpigs'," he said.

Conservationist groups warned of potential serious consequences to the eco-system after Taiwan's Taikong Corp in 2003 became the world's first company to sell transgenic fluorescent fish, which was listed as one of the "coolest inventions" that year by Time magazine.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yes, but they cant remove the glow…
New Invention Removes Odor From Hog Manure
Mon Jan 16, 10:27 PM ET
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP)- A man has received a $500,000 federal grant to mass produce his invention, a machine that removes the odor from hog manure.

The Tempest dryer, developed by Loran Balvanz, is designed to help solve water pollution, odor and noxious gas problems in the hog industry.

Balvanz said that because his invention separates water from the solids in manure, it can solve air and water quality problems.

The Tempest removes water from manure by spinning it at a high speed. The water is vented through the top of the dryer and vaporizes in the outside air.

The process reduces the volume and weight of the manure making for easy collection of the remaining solids.
The machine was developed for Balvanz's Global Resource Recovery Organization Inc., a company he founded in 1999.
Company president Bill Flowers said a farmer using the dryer each day could retain about 75 percent of the nutrients from hog manure. Since water is eliminated, farmers will no longer need long-term storage for liquid manure, Flowers said.

The smaller quantity of solids left over after the Tempest does its job can be stored on the farm and applied to fields as fertilizer when needed, he said.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lets just hope this doesn't happen at the sex change clinic…
Two patients in surgical slip-up
Mon Jan 16, 9:55 AM ET
SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean doctors mistakenly removed part of the stomach of a patient due to have thyroid surgery, while removing the thyroid gland of another scheduled for stomach surgery, a hospital official said Monday.

The surgical mix-up took place at Konyang University Hospital in the city of Taejon, about 150 km (95 miles) south of Seoul and involved two women in their sixties who were both in for surgery the same day, hospital spokesman Kim Man-sik said.

Medical staff found out about the mix-up, which took place on December 29, only after they were filing paperwork on the two women, he said.

Doctors later performed the correct surgical procedures on both women and re-attached the part of the stomach they had removed from the patient with the thyroid problem, Kim said.

Both were recovering from their operations, he said.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sober…crazy, perhaps, but definitely sober…He probably wanted to avoid the Sanity Check point up the road…or, maybe he didn’t want to go through the check for DWI in that area, which is whipping out your sword and throwing yourself on it (real drunks would miss, you see…)

Sober driver flees police drink check, crashes
Fri Jan 13, 9:20 AM ET
TOKYO (Reuters) - A Japanese driver, afraid of having to take a breath-test, fled a police drink-driving checkpoint even though he was well under the legal alcohol limit, but ended up crashing his car.

The 44-year-old man drove through the checkpoint on a road in the western Japanese city of Ikeda late Wednesday. Pursuing police officers found the car about half a mile away, upside down in a dry riverbed below the road.

The driver, who suffered light injuries to his legs, was sitting beside the vehicle.
"I'd been drinking, so I fled," the Mainichi newspaper quoted the man as telling police.
A spokesman for the Osaka prefectural police said the man was not in breach of drunk-driving laws and they were treating the case as a simple traffic accident.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
BUFFY FOR LT. GOVERNOR OF MINNESOTA, eh?  This only goes to prove the long standing thoughts of many Iowans and Wisconsins that, yep, Minnesota DOES suck...

Vampire seeks governor's job
Fri Jan 13, 9:16 AM ET
MINNEAPOLIS (Reuters) - Minnesota voters, who eight years ago elected a former professional wrestler as their governor, may find a self-proclaimed vampire on the ballot for the office this year.

"Politics is a cut-throat business," said Jonathan "The Impaler" Sharkey, who said he plans to announce his bid for governor Friday on the ticket of the Vampyres, Witches and Pagans Party.

Like Jesse "The Body" Ventura, who was elected governor as an independent in 1998, the 41-year-old Sharkey once was a wrestler, although he spent his time "The Unholiest of Kings: Tarantula" on obscure professional circuits.

"I'm a Satanist who doesn't hate Jesus," Sharkey told Reuters. "I just hate God the Father."
However, he claims to respect all religions and if elected, will post "everything from the Ten Commandments to the Wicca Reed" in government buildings.

Sharkey also pledged to execute convicted murders and child molesters personally by impaling them on a wooden pole outside the state capitol.

Sharkey told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that he's a vampire "just like you see in the movies and TV."
"I sink my fangs into the neck of my donor ... and drink their blood," he said, adding that his donor is his wife, Julie.

The field for the governor's race in Minnesota is far from complete. Republican incumbent Tim Pawlenty is widely expected to seek another term in November and his Democratic opponent has not been determined.

Sharkey said he planned to announce his candidacy Friday -- the 13th -- because that was "my lucky number."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ladies, take note…hey what happens if you watch "those kind of movies" on the TV in the bedroom????  Hey, they're documentaries - have you ever seen someone do something like that comfortably with their end up in that kind of position???

TV in the bedroom halves your sex life - study
Mon Jan 16, 12:53 PM ET
ROME (Reuters) - Thinking of buying a TV for the bedroom? Think again -- it could ruin your sex life.
A study by an Italian sexologist has found that couples who have a TV set in their bedroom have sex half as often as those who don't.

"If there's no television in the bedroom, the frequency (of sexual intercourse) doubles," said Serenella Salomoni whose team of psychologists questioned 523 Italian couples to see what effect television had on their sex lives.

On average, Italians who live without TV in the bedroom have sex twice a week, or eight times a month. This drops to an average of four times a month for those with a TV, the study found.

For the over-50s the effect is even more marked, with the average of seven couplings a month falling to just 1.5 times.
The study found certain programmes are far more likely to impede passion than others. Violent films will put a stop to sexual relations for half of all couples, while reality shows stem passion for a third of couples.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is like calling the wrong number…hello?  Hello, I'd like to speak with Joey….ok, you can, but Joey is a year and a half old….I'll hold…<with apologies to Steven Wright..>  I get cranky too if I don’t get my sleepy time...

Two-Year-Old Called for Jury Duty
Mon Jan 16, 10:29 PM ET
NEW BEDFORD, Mass. (AP) - Kaylee Reynolds had a problem when she recently received a summons to serve on a jury. She wasn't old enough to read it.

The 2-year-old has quite a few years to go before she reaches the minimum age of 18 to serve on a state jury. Lucky for Kaylee, Massachusetts Jury Commissioner Patricia Reynolds seemed willing to let it slide for a while.

"We'll give her a 16-year grace period," Wood told The Standard-Times of New Bedford.
Wood guessed the mix-up could be traced to a local census form. If the form has a blank or mistaken birth date, July 4, 1776 is filled in.

"With that date we'll know it is wrong," Wood said.
Besides her questionable understanding of the concepts of guilt or innocence, there are other reasons why it's best to wait for Kaylee to serve. Her mother, Patricia, says Kaylee gets really cranky if she doesn't get her noontime nap.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The bring out your dead sequence from Monty Python and the Holy Grail…
Scene - middle ages, village street, bustle, MORTICIAN w/two other men pushing giant wheelbarrow like cart full of dead bodies (this is the middle ages, plagues and such you know) ringing small gong/cymble type device in one hand and calling out with the other…

MORTICIAN <Eric Idle>: Bring out your dead!
Bring out your dead!
[clang] Bring out your dead!
[clang] Bring out your dead!
[clang] Bring out your dead!
[clang] Bring out your dead!
CUSTOMER [<John Cleese> appears w/an old gent over his left shoulder]: Here's one
MORTICIAN: Ninepence. [CUSTOMER hands MORTICIAN nine pence]
DEAD PERSON <some old guy, pleading>: I'm not dead!
MORTICIAN: What?
CUSTOMER: Nothing -- here's your nine pence.
DEAD PERSON <pleading>: I'm not dead!
MORTICIAN: Here -- he says he's not dead!
CUSTOMER: Yes, he is.
DEAD PERSON{to MORTICIAN}: I'm not!
MORTICIAN: He isn't.
CUSTOMER: Well, he will be soon, he's very ill.
DEAD PERSON: I'm getting better!
CUSTOMER [to old guy]: No, you're not -- you'll be stone dead in a moment.
MORTICIAN: Oh, I can't take him like that -- it's against regulations.
DEAD PERSON: I don't want to go on the cart!
CUSTOMER [to old guy]: Oh, don't be such a baby.
MORTICIAN: I can't take him...
DEAD PERSON: I feel fine!
CUSTOMER [to MORTICIAN, pleading]: Oh, do us a favor...
MORTICIAN: I can't.
CUSTOMER: Well, can you hang around a couple of minutes? He won't be long.
MORTICIAN: Naaah, I got to go on to the Robinson's -- they've lost nine today.
CUSTOMER: Well, when is your next round?
MORTICIAN: Thursday.
DEAD PERSON [to no one in particular]: I think I'll go for a walk.
CUSTOMER: [looks the old guy/dead person over his shoulder direct in the eye] You're not fooling anyone y'know. [looks back at MORTICIAN] Look, isn't there something you can do?
DEAD PERSON: I feel happy... I feel happy.
[MORTICIAN whops the old guy/dead person in the back of the head with a large club, killing him...]
CUSTOMER: Ah, thanks very much. [throws the old man/dead person on the cart with several other dead bodies on it]
MORTICIAN: Not at all. See you on Thursday.
CUSTOMER: Right.
Beings that he was in Bhopal, maybe he should have already been dead when Union Carbide tried to blow the place up back in the 80s (a battery plant they had there blew up, leveling a good percentage of the city and killing thousands of people (if memory serves me close to 100,000, but don’t quote me.))  That's why Ralston Purina got to buy Everready Batteries/Energizer - Union Carbide couldn’t handle the liability lawsuits from that and another plant explosion in the Appliacians somewhere (West Virginia comes to mind) earlier in the 70s, as well as being one of the contractors who made Agent Orange (if I remember) w/Dow Chemical, and they sold to RalCorp in the late 80's to make money to settle these suits - they moved their HQ to StL, and the rest is history!!!

BHOPAL, India (AP) - Is Raju Raghuvanshi alive or dead? Ask Raghuvanshi, he'll tell you he is alive. But ask his friends and family, and they'll tell you the man you just spoke with is a ghost sent to haunt them.

Believed by his friends and family to have died in prison, Raghuvanshi returned home earlier this month from his short jail stint to shouts of "Help! Ghost!" and the sounds of neighbors locking their doors in his home village of Katra.

"My family thinks I am dead," he said in a phone interview Monday. "They will not permit me to enter my home because they think I am a ghost."

Ostracized by the people of Katra, about 280 miles from Bhopal, he's now living in a nearby village and struggling to prove he's alive.

The best proof he had — that his feet were still properly attached, not turned backward as ghosts' feet are thought to be — was dismissed by villagers.

He said his brothers even "argued that they had completed all religious death ceremonies" and he should not have come back to haunt them.

Rural India remains deeply traditional and many in Katra share the traditional Hindu belief that they will be haunted by a ghost if ceremonies are not performed to ensure the soul of the deceased makes a peaceful transition into its next life.

Rumors over Raghuvanshi's death began when he was sent to prison in October for a minor tax infraction.
He fell ill there and was transferred to a prison hospital in another district, from where word spread that he had died and that his body had been cremated because no one had retrieved it.

After being turned away by his neighbors after his release, Raghuvanshi finally went to the police, who are trying to help convince the people of Katra that he is alive, said the area's police superintendent, N.V. Vaigankar.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This one wasn't pinin for the fjords….<all these Monty Python references, I mean really!>
Pet Parrot Bites Alleged Burglar
Mon Jan 16, 6:08 PM ET
Information from: The Patriot-News, http://www.pennlive.com/patriotnews
WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. (AP) - Polly want a burglar? A pet parrot attacked a man who broke into its owner's apartment, and the bite and blood marks helped police identify a suspect.

The blue and gold macaw hybrid named Sunshine attacked Michael L. Deeter, 44, after he broke into the apartment, police said. Sunshine had blood on its beak and Deeter had marks on his hand consistent with those made by a parrot.

Deeter told police the bird bit him very hard after he entered James Erb's apartment and he still had the marks to prove it when he was arrested, authorities said. He allegedly got away with about $100 and a camcorder.

The crime-fighting bird also helped pinpoint the time of the break-in at 3 p.m. Saturday, when a neighbor heard it making a commotion.

Deeter became a suspect when police learned he had called Erb around 1 p.m. Saturday and learned he would be leaving for work. He confessed to breaking the glass in the door to get into the apartment, but said he was too drunk to remember anything else but his encounter with the bird, police said.

Deeter was arraigned on charges of burglary, criminal trespass, theft and criminal mischief and taken to the county jail in lieu of $25,000 bail.

As for the bird, Sunshine did not come away unscathed — all but one of its large tail feathers had been pulled out.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
More birds with vicious beaks news…
Woman With Owl Collection Sets Record
Mon Jan 16, 5:17 PM ET
Information from: Sun-Journal, http://www.sunjournal.com
LEEDS, Maine (AP) - With more than 18,000 collectible owl memorabilia, Pam Barker half-kiddingly thought she might have a world's record. The Guinness Book of World Records has now certified that she was right.

Barker, 47, sent her count, a video and photographs to Guinness last spring. A couple of weeks ago, she got a certificate verifying her claim.

Barker came into the collection after a friend noticed an ad two years ago in the Uncle Henry's Swap It or Sell It Guide.

Under collectibles, the ad offered 14,000 owl items for sale. Barker and her friend thought the ad contained a typo and must have meant 1,400.

But when they went to a home in Wilton they found room after room filled with ceramic, macrame and plush owls, owls on beer steins and on towels, owl necklaces, owl statues, owl wind chimes, owl greeting cards. Even a blue toilet seat with a green owl painted under the lid.

The collection — all 18,055 items — had been owned by Dianne Turner, a collector who had recently died. A family friend was cleaning out the house and put the owls up for sale for $7,000. Barker offered about half.

"I did it as an investment, then out of curiosity," Barker said.
It took four people 13 days to pack them all up, and it took Barker months to unpack and clean them. She borrowed extra shelves at her husband's store, North Leeds Building Supply, to showcase her favorite colored-glass owls and bought display cases so she'd have somewhere to put the owl banks.

"It's been fun. Like a mid-life madness," Barker said.
On the Internet, Barker found someone who claimed to have the world's largest collection of owl items, with 8,000. So Barker applied with Guinness and got her collection certified as the world's largest.

Although Barker didn't know Turner, she's put the world record in Turner's name.
"Her husband gave her three owls after they got married," Barker said. "That started it all."
Barker is now selling off the collection, and has priced everything in the store. She'll sell it piece-by-piece if she has to, although she'd like to find a home for the entire collection.

"My husband would like his store back," she said.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I HATE people like this….and I'm not a hater...
Man Solves Rubik's Cube in 11.13 Seconds
Sun Jan 15, 5:25 PM ET
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - A 20-year-old California Institute of Technology student set a new world's record Saturday for solving the popular Rubik's Cube puzzle, turning the tiled brain-twister from scrambled to solved in 11.13 seconds.

Leyan Lo is part of Caltech's Rubik's Cube Club, a brainy clutch of students that hosted the competition at the Exploratorium museum in San Francisco. Lo's record-setting time came early in the day, among his first five tries in the preliminary rounds.

The record-setting solve caught competitors and Lo himself by surprise.
"It's kind of scary now that I set it, because I have two more (attempts) to go," Lo said humbly afterward. His time of 11.13 seconds broke the previous record of 11.75 seconds, set by Frenchman Jean Pons at the Dutch Open competition last year.

Still, the world record alone wouldn't gain Lo the overall champion's title at the event, which is determined by averaging three of five solution times in the final round. For that title, Lo went up against the teenager widely considered the fastest Rubik's Cube solver on the planet — Shotaro "Macky" Makisumi, a 15-year-old high school sophomore from Pasadena.

Makisumi prevailed, clocking in with an average time of 14.91 seconds in the final round to take first place.
Besides blindingly fast fingers and a head for memorizing algorithms used by most top competitors to solve the cube, what is Makisumi's secret?

"I don't know. Faster first two layers," he surmised, referring to solving the first two layers of the cube's colored tiles before moving on to the last. For his victory, Makisumi won a Rubik's Snake puzzle, one of several variations on the basic cube model which has sold more than 100 million worldwide, according to the manufacturer.

Contestants brought their own cubes to the competition, and a computer program was used to scramble the cubes in the same fashion for each round to give the contestants equal footing.

One of the crowd favorites was Casey Pernsteiner, 14, who traveled to the event from her hometown of Gonzales, Texas, with her mother. Pernsteiner logged a 21.59 second average in the preliminary round to move on to the finals.

The crowd erupted with applause as she threw the cube down time after time, slapping an electronic timing mat and consistently clocking times well under 30 seconds.

"My previous best time in competition was 25 (seconds) and I beat that, like, all ten solves, so I was really happy with that," Pernsteiner said. She finished among the top 16 finalists.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Its in Canada, but not here???  Think of the ratings boosts if we had this in America!!!  They would get nicknames…Brian "Boo-tay" Williams….George "you think my name is long" Stephanopolous…Anna Nicole Smith could finally get a job…only problem would be what you do with "breaking news"…

Naked News breaking in Japan market
By Julian Ryall
Wed Jan 11, 9:52 AM ET
TOKYO (Hollywood Reporter) - Naked News, which features anchors and reporters who disrobe during newscasts, launched its risque take on current affairs in Japan Tuesday.

Beneath a banner proclaiming Naked News as "The program with nothing to hide," Sunrise Corp. CEO Takuya Uchikawa described the service as "a unique concept for the Japanese market."

Sunrise, which specializes in sales of goods and services via the Internet, and Naked News owner eGalaxy Multimedia have set a target of 10,000 mobile subscribers in the first year.

"We would not have dared to come to Japan unless we were convinced that there was a definite market, and we now see there is a massive market here, we have a partner that understands that market and the technological skills to provide an enjoyable product," eGalaxy Multimedia Inc. CEO David Warga said.

Since making its debut in Canada in 1999, Naked News has become available via the Internet, television and mobile phones in North America, Australia and Europe.

"We believe there is a huge untapped market for the right kind of information if it was properly packaged," Warga said. "So we created a news-entertainment program in which women, and later men, informed while removing their clothing."

The service initially will be news that is provided for Naked News' existing markets but with Japanese subtitles. The plan is eventually to produce content in Japan that will appeal to a larger percentage of the population.

Another area being tested concerns the degree of nudity of the presenters. Initially, newscasters will strip to their underwear, but Uchikawa indicated that he hopes to be able to see how far Japanese obscenity broadcasting laws can be bent before they are broken.

Canadian-born presenter Lily Kwan has been peeling off her work clothes for five years and described the experience as "liberating."

"I love being able to go out onto the streets and take my clothes off," she said. "While we have been in Tokyo, people have been very surprised to see us with no tops on, but they're very happy and interested in talking to us."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And finally, for the only reason to just creep you completely out….
Spider nests in Swedish woman's ear for 27 days
Wed Jan 11, 7:27 AM ET
STOCKHOLM (AFP) - A spider that nested in the ear of a Swedish woman was discovered and removed alive after 27 days.
The black spider, "the size of a thumbnail", crept into the woman's ear while she was sleeping and went undiscovered for almost a month, Swedish tabloid Expressen reported Wednesday.

The woman, whose name was not disclosed, told the paper that she at first experienced "a slight loss of hearing" and assumed that she had a build-up of wax.

But when she heard "a scratching sound" in her ear she decided to go to the pharmacy to buy a cleanser to wash out her ear cavity.

When she did so, the spider was flushed out alive and crawled away.
The woman recalled having seen a spider on her bed in November, 27 days earlier.