Yuck! Live rats a culinary delight after plague in China.

 

Yummy rat!

A few days back I wrote about the estimated 2 billion rats that have been plaguing a rural are of China after flooding of the giant Dongting Lake (includes Reuters video).

The unbelievable scene of rats pilled on top of each other and havoc local farmers had many crops ruined.

Well, now it turns out, in the true spirit of China’s new found capitalism that some people have been cashing in on the misfortune.

Live rats are being captured by locals, and trucked into the counties south, where fresh rat seems to be a culinary delight for thousands of wealthy restaurant goers.

Yes, with the new found wealth of many Chinese, it is customary to eat “exotic things” as a way of showing off your riches. And the consumption of rat is the latest in an extravagant eating trend, which also sees the consumption of other interesting creatures such as snakes and owls.

News Reports:

“Recently there have been a lot of rats … Guangzhou people are rich and like to eat exotic things, so business is very good,” the China News Service quoted a vendor as saying.

Some vendors had asked people from a village in Hunan province, near Dongting Lake, to sell them live rats, the Beijing News said today.

“The buyers offered 6 yuan (9c) for a kilo, but as to where they will sell the rats, they would not say,” the newspaper quoted a local resident as saying, adding that villagers had to catch the rats live.

“If we want to do that, there is no problem. We could catch 150 kilos of rats in one night .. .but we will not do this against our conscience,” the villager was quoted as saying.

Some Guangdong restaurants were promoting “rat banquets”, charging 136 yuan ($20.70) for one kg of rat meat, the newspaper said.

Chinese media reported last week that some internet users from Guangdong had offered rat recipes as a way to deal with the problem.

Scientists have also blamed China’s massive Three Gorges Dam project and climate change for the Hunan rodents’ flight to dry land.

So, just for a laugh I thought I would organise some info on the sorts of nasty things rats are known to carry.

Eat up!

Video: Up and away! Man goes skyward in lawn chair.

 

He’s either crazy or knows how to live life to the fullest.

A 47-year-old man from Oregon, USA, has bravely taken to the skies in his own lawn chair in an act known as Cluster Ballooning- carrying a parachute, snacks and some water as ballast, reports CNN.

Last weekend, Kent Couch settled down in his lawn chair with some snacks — and a parachute. Attached to his lawn chair were 105 large helium balloons.

With instruments to measure his altitude and speed, a global positioning system device in his pocket, and about four plastic bags holding five gallons of water each to act as ballast — he could turn a spigot, release water and rise — Couch headed into the Oregon sky.

Nearly nine hours later, the 47-year-old gas station owner came back to earth in a farmer’s field near Union, short of Idaho but about 193 miles (310 kilometers) from home.

“When you’re a little kid and you’re holding a helium balloon, it has to cross your mind,” Couch told local journalists.

“When you’re laying in the grass on a summer day, and you see the clouds, you wish you could jump on them,” he said. “This is as close as you can come to jumping on them. It’s just like that.”

He took off at 6:06 a.m. Saturday after kissing his wife, Susan, goodbye and petting his Chihuahua, Isabella. As he made about 25 miles an hour, a three-car caravan filled with friends, family and the dog followed him from below.

Couch said he could hear cattle and children and even passed through clouds.

“It was beautiful — beautiful.”

Couch decided to stop when he was down to a gallon of water and just eight pounds of ballast. Concerned about the rugged terrain outside La Grande, including Hells Canyon, he decided it was time to land.

He popped enough balloons to set the craft down, although he suffered rope burns. But after he jumped out, the wind grabbed his chair, with his video recorder, and the remaining balloons and swept them away. He’s hoping to get them back some day.

See more from local TV news KTVZ.COM

Local news story “Balloon Man”.

No laughing matter, humour comprehension decreases with age, study.

 

Here’s a joke for you.

Three guys and a lady were sitting at a bar talking about their professions.

The first guy says ” I’m a Y.U.P.P.I.E, you know… Young, Urban, Professional, Peaceful, Intelligent, Ecologist.”

The second guy says “I’m a D.I.N.K, you know… Double Income, No Kids.”

The third guy says, ” I’m a R.U.B, you know… Rich, Urban, Biker.”

They turn to the woman and ask her, ” What are you? “

She replies: ” I’m a WIFE, you know…
Wash, Iron, Fuck, Etc.”

 Laughter

Didn’t get it? Well, yes it was a little sexist and lame but…

A new study suggests that an individual’s comprehension of humour actual decreases the older you get, well duh’.

msnbc.com has the details.

The research indicates that because older adults may have greater difficulty with cognitive flexibility, abstract reasoning and short-term memory, they also have greater difficulty with tests of humor comprehension.

Researchers at Washington University tested about 40 healthy adults over age 65 and 40 undergraduate students with exercises in which they had to complete jokes and stories. Participants also had to choose the correct punch line for verbal jokes and select the funny ending to series of cartoon panels.

Test showed that the younger adults did 6 percent better on the verbal jokes and 14 percent better on the comic portion than did older participants.

“There are basic cognitive mechanisms to understanding what’s going on in a joke. Older adults, because they may have deficits in some of those cognitive areas, may have a harder time understanding what a joke is about.”

Scientists figure out why we hate/love Barbra Streisand.

 

Love it?

Or

Hate it?

An Australian researcher claims to have discovered why singers like Barbra Streisand and Barry Manilow; make people (like me) feel either angry and irritated, or happy and uplifted, Australian Broadcasting Corp reports.

Dr Emery Schubert says he had a gut instinct aboeut why some people found some songs schmalzy, while others found the tunes uplifting and inspiring.

But he decided to find out for sure by studying people’s reactions to songs.

“We know, psychologically, that one of the things that makes people like music is simply familiarity,” Dr Schubert said.

“So if you know a piece of music well enough you will start to like it.

“You may well attribute it to the features of the music – something about the melody and the harmony and so forth, but we also do note there’s a psychological effect.

“The other issue that [I was] interested in [was] the emotional effect.

“The new research that’s just come out is identifying a new measure, a new feature. Basically it comes down to this – if you can measure the emotion that a piece of music is trying to convey, and if you rate that by the particular listener, you [can] also measure the emotion that the listener is experiencing as a result of listening, and you take the difference of those two you get what’s called the ‘Differential Affect Gap’.

“The bigger that gap is – so, for example, if the piece of music expresses a lot of emotion but you are left unmoved by it, it’s a big Differential Affect Gap.

“What seems to happen is that when that’s big, people don’t like the music as much. When the two measures are connected, if they’re congruent between the expressed emotion and the felt emotion, people tend to like the piece more.”

More muscle = More sex from women, study.

 

When is comes to a woman’s preference for a male partner, most studies have concluded that desirability was influenced by commitment and offcourse earnings potential, but a new study says physical characteristics matter more.

“Women are predisposed to prefer muscularity in men,” said study author David Frederick of UCLA.

The study was published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, and suggests muscles in men are akin to elaborate tail feathers in male peacocks: They attract females looking for a virile mate.

Women were more physically attracted to brawny men, especially for a fling. But when it comes to finding a long-term partner, they tend to pick a regular man over a mate with huge biceps.

“On the one hand, it makes them more sexy to women. On the other hand, it makes women more suspicious about their romantic intentions,” Frederick said.

So, want more one night stands men? Then get into that gym and those protein bars.

Or, if you’re looking for a more long term thing, then the gym can wait, too much muscle and those jealous women might think you’re going to betray them.

Drink Up! Booze doesn’t kill brain cells, says new study.

 

Good news everyone!

Scientists in Australia will present new evidence that shows consumption of alcohol does not kill off brain cells.

For years imbibers have been told a big night on the drink wipes out entire sections of human brain cell function with much the same destructive equivalent as a napalm bombing strike.

According to Queensland Brain Institute director Professor Perry Bartlett, this is not true.

There is no evidence drinking alcohol leads directly to the death of brain cells, he said.

“Some of the best studies, done in Italy, show a bottle of wine a night can reduce the risk of dementia in old age,” Professor Bartlett said.

In moderation, alcohol has positive benefits for blood vessel health and stroke prevention. And, as an added bonus, new brain cells are generated every day of our lives.

Research by Professor Bartlett and his team has found we all have an inbuilt repair kit replenishing the more than 100 billion cells – or neurons – in our brain.

The new evidence will be presented at a conference in the tropical northern Australian resort city of Cairns.

Speakers at the conference will include distinguished scientists from Oxford, Cambridge and Yale.

So everyone, it’s party time! All the more reason to get into onto the piss, as we say in Australia.

Spanish women demand equal rights with Bulls.

 

As you may know, the Spanish town of Pamplona is in the middle of it’s world famous running of the bulls festival— a nine day celebration that honors the city’s patron saint, San Fermín.

A few days before the annual festival started a semi-naked ”running of the nudes” protest took place by PETA, demanding an end to the event. 

And now a group of feminists are demanding, not the end of the bull running events, but a running of the cows to make the festival more gender equal.

The women are demanding that they get thier own version of the festival made world famous by Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises.

A local student web site, www.estudiln.net, is demanding “equality for men and women”, arguing that its only logical that women should have their own bull run, despite the fact that women have been allowed to participate in the death defying race for many years.

 ”Cows, as well as bulls, have four legs and a natural instinct to run,” says their manifesto. “An encierro for cows, would put Pamplona at the vanguard of traditional fiestas with equality for men and women.”

Organizers of the festival, which runs from July 7-14, have not responded to the suggestion.

But, do cows have massive horns on their heads which can be used to spear the flesh of an adrenalin pumped human?

Not that I know of.

But perhaps a running of the cows would result in much less death and injury than a running with the bulls, but less fun offcourse.

Bull Running 2007- Yeeha!

Girlfriend proves revenge is sweeter the second time. Until your thown in jail.

Yowzers!

Now, this story brings a whole new meaning to the term eye for an eye.

A Hong Kong woman who partly blinded her boyfriends’ eye six years ago has been jailed after poking the other eye with a chopstick.

Po Shiu-fong, 58, accused long-time boyfriend Kwok Wai-ming, 49, of having an affair, and a row quickly erupted.

During the heated arugment, Po stabbed a plastic chopstick into Kwok’s left eye, the same eye she wounded just years earlier.

“Po became hysterical when she saw the wound and mopped it with a towel. The pair then went to bed,” reports said.

“The next morning they had another argument in which she grabbed a chopstick and stabbed Kwok’s right eye.”

Two days later, he sought medical treatment and filed a police report against Po, whom he had dated since 1993.

Apparently he didn’t report the attack six years ago, telling the court his silence was “a love sacrifice.”

“If I forgive her, God would not forgive me,” Kwok was reported as saying. “No matter what, nothing could compensate for the loss of my eye.”

Po was jailed for six months.

Video: Hot Dog! Chestnut cracks the big one.

 

As The Crazy News reported last month the dual between Joey Chestnut of the United States and Takeru Kobayashi of Japan was hotting up.

Today the rivalry crescendoed as America celebrated Independence Day with the famous Nathan’s hotdog eating contest in New York.

The American food extraordinaire beat the reigning six time Japanese champion in a thriller, breaking a new record. The nut scoffed down 66 hot dogs in 12 minutes. That’s a rate of one dog every 10.9 seconds.

Kobayashi finished second with an amazing 63 hot dogs consumed, despite the fact that he was suffering from a jaw injury and a pulled wisdom tooth.

 Here’s the exciting video:

You really get the feeling that one day someone is going to die pushing the limits of food scoffing….

Alien mystery deepens, 60 years on.

 

It is 60 years ago this week since the Roswell Army Air Field released a press statment that said it had recovered a crashed “flying disc” from a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico, a statement quickly retracted a few hours after.

With a 60th Anniversary festival planned for the town reliant on the UFO tourist dollar, the mystery, which has inspired movies, TV shows and documentaries has deepened, with witness testimony shining light about what happend at the old air base just south of the site of the first ever atomic bomb test.

A sworn affidavit from the deceased 1947 Roswell Army Air Field public relations officer.

News.com.au reports the story:

Last week came an astonishing new twist to the Roswell mystery.

Lieutenant Walter Haut was the public relations officer at the base in 1947 and was the man who issued the original and subsequent press releases after the crash on the orders of the base commander, Colonel William Blanchard.

Haut died last year but left a sworn affidavit to be opened only after his death.

Last week, the text was released and asserts that the weather balloon claim was a cover story and that the real object had been recovered by the military and stored in a hangar.

He described seeing not just the craft, but alien bodies.

He wasn’t the first Roswell witness to talk about alien bodies.

Local undertaker Glenn Dennis had long claimed that he was contacted by authorities at Roswell shortly after the crash and asked to provide a number of child-sized coffins.

When he arrived at the base, he was apparently told by a nurse (who later disappeared) that a UFO had crashed and that small humanoid extraterrestrials had been recovered.

But Haut is the only one of the original participants to claim to have seen alien bodies.

UFO pieces handed around

Haut’s affidavit talks about a high-level meeting he attended with base commander Col William Blanchard and the Commander of the Eighth Army Air Force, General Roger Ramey.

Haut states that at this meeting, pieces of wreckage were handed around for participants to touch, with nobody able to identify the material.

He says the press release was issued because locals were already aware of the crash site, but in fact there had been a second crash site, where more debris from the craft had fallen.

The plan was that an announcement acknowledging the first site, which had been discovered by a farmer, would divert attention from the second and more important location.

The clean-up operation

Haut also spoke about a clean-up operation, where for months afterwards military personnel scoured both crash sites searching for all remaining pieces of debris, removing them and erasing all signs that anything unusual had occurred.

This ties in with claims made by locals that debris collected as souvenirs was seized by the military.

Haut then tells how Colonel Blanchard took him to “Building 84″ – one of the hangars at Roswell – and showed him the craft itself.

He describes a metallic egg-shaped object around 3.6m-4.5m in length and around 1.8m wide.

He said he saw no windows, wings, tail, landing gear or any other feature.

Haug ’saw the alien bodies’

He saw two bodies on the floor, partially covered by a tarpaulin.

They are described in his statement as about 1.2m tall, with disproportionately large heads.

Towards the end of the affidavit, Haut concludes: “I am convinced that what I personally observed was some kind of craft and its crew from outer space”.

What’s particularly interesting about Walter Haut is that in the many interviews he gave before his death, he played down his role and made no such claims.

Had he been seeking publicity, he would surely have spoken about the craft and the bodies.

Did he fear ridicule, or was the affidavit a sort of deathbed confession from someone who had been part of a cover-up, but who had stayed loyal to the end?

The US government came under huge pressure on Roswell in the ’90s.

In July 1994, in response to an inquiry from the General Accounting Office, the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force published a report, The Roswell Report: Fact Versus Fiction In The New Mexico Desert.

Weather balloon ‘cover story’

The report concluded that the Roswell incident had been attributable to something called Project Mogul, a top secret project using high-altitude balloons to carry sensor equipment into the upper atmosphere, listening forevidence of Soviet nuclear tests.

The statements concerning a crashed weather balloon had been a cover story, they admitted, but not to hide the truth about extraterrestrials.

A second US Air Force report concluded claims bodies were recovered were generated by people having seen crash test dummies that were dropped from the balloons.

Sceptics, of course, will dismiss the testimony left by Haut.

After all, fascinating though it is, it’s just a story. There’s no proof.

But if nothing else, this latest revelation shows that, 60 years on, this mystery endures.

Adulterous sex to bring down Chinese Communist Party?

 

In a hardening of previous policy, the Chinese government are set to crack down on government officials who have been found to have “kept and supported” mistresses, in a move aimed at ‘raising social morals’.

Mistresses and “second wives” are common among government officials and businessmen in China.

Corrupt officials are a major cause of public outrage in China, and the country’s Communist rulers have warned that if graft is not checked it could threaten the party’s grip on power.

Chinese policy makers found it ”necessary to make a clarification and emphasis” on the punishment for officials who supported mistresses.

“The morality of government officials shown in their management or power operation… directly affects the moral level of the whole society.”

“Therefore, officials should set up good examples, and abide by social morality rules.”

Last year, a Chinese vice admiral was jailed for life on embezzlement charges after one of his many mistresses blew the whistle on him when he refused to give in to her demand for money.

Sex in the office, Australia says YES! YES! YES!.

 

A survey on the work habits of Australian adults has found that 1 in 5 people claim to have had a sexual encounter in the office.

A survey by online job search website linkme.com.au said that about 20% of Aussies have not only been getting intimate at the office but also admit to doing ‘it’ during work hours.

The findings hinted at several possible reasons for Aussies getting so up close and personal with work colleagues, which also found that almost one in four Aussies had met their long term partner at work. 

Possible causes of widespread intimacy may stem from people spending more time in the office than ever before, leading to close freindships and socialising.

And colleagues who work in a similar field are likely to share interests and this is an element many people look for in a partner.

The survey found only 13 per cent of Aussies saw romantic relations in the office as unethical and a mere four percent of workers had a no fraternising clause in their contract.

Casual sex Friday?

iLoser. Sloths line up for hyped up Apple phone.

       Sloth of a time.

The Crazy News- Tool of the Week

Some people have all the time in the world.

Regular Homer Simpson, Greg Packer, is claiming his 15 minutes of fame for the second time in New York this week. Or is it the 3rd or 4th or 5th time?

The 43-year-old retired highway maintenance worker (retired? how much do they get paid) started lining up to be the first to purchase the new iPhone from Apple’s flagship store in Manhattan, 101 hours before it goes on sale 6pm Friday US eastern time.

  Apple Man

Packer has since been joined by about more than a dozen other iPhone fans and opportunists, who have also chosen to join in on the sit in, braving the concrete enhanced heat of the other famous Big Apple.

Packer says he is relying on food donations and the bathroom facilities at the Apple Store, which is open 24-hours a day.

 Sitting is fun.

This isn’t the first time our good friend has made headlines waiting for fancy new products to come on sale; he was one of the first to buy a Playstation 3 when that went on sale last November. Indeed, he even has his own wikipedia page, which says he has appeared in mainstrem media more than 100 times, quoted by various media organisations since the mid 1990’s infact.

And according to US TV news host Keith Olberman, this guy is a bit of a pest. The Associated Press even put out a memo to it’s journalists, warning them not to “indulge him”.

The iphone retails between $US499 for a 4GB memory and $US599 for one with 8.

And guess what! Our iPhone friend even has his own wordpress blog!

He’s looking for someone to donate him a comfy chair for all that sitting he’s been doing. It just goes to show, you don’t need to have much talent to be famous in America, just ask Paris Hitlon.

You also have to wonder, could this be a smart marketing stunt from the Jobs’ Apple team? Maybe you should ask..maybe I should ask. Naaa…

Update: Interview with iPhone Greg and fellow lineruperer David.

It’s a circus out there!

Meanwhile, on Friday, just hours before the iPhone went on sale in New York City, a camera crew doing a live interview had a number of those gathered in and near the line taunting and swearing at them. A bloke even tired to grab the reporter’s microphone, before being hammered to the ground by security/teamsters.

 

In the drink. The one about the golfer and the gator.

 

A 50 year old amature golfer had a fun old time when his ball landed in a water hazord.

Bruce Burger was trying to retrieve his ball from a pond on the 6th when an one eyed alligotor came out of the water, grabbing Burgers tasty right arm and pulled him in.

The man used his free arm to beat the reptile in the head and was eventually freed. He was taken to hospital with minor wounds.

 “I saw him reach down to get his ball and he yelled” for help, said Janet Pallo, who was playing the fifth hole and ran over to drive the man to the clubhouse.

The pond at the sixth hole has a “Beware of Alligator” sign.

“Unfortunately, that’s part of Florida,” course general manager Rod Parry said. “There’s wildlife in these ponds.”

Talk about your water hazard.

Video: Interview with Bruce, “I’ll be Okay”.

Does this remind you of a certain one eyed alligator in the film Happy Gilmore?

Pandas for all! China uses it’s native bear like currency.

 

Spanish King Juan with happy communist Chinese poltician.

King Juan Carlos of Spain will be presented with two cute and furry mammals as he departs a visit to Beijing, Chinese authorties said.

A pair of endangered pandas will be given as a gift of mutual freindship to Spains head of state, who is in China to ‘develope a strategic partnership’.

“It will be a lovely present for the Spanish people, and we hope this pair of pandas, as the friendly envoys of the Chinese people, can help promote mutual relations,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told a news conference.

Beijing presented a pair of pandas to the Chinese territory of Hong Kong in 1999 and another pair this year. It has also offered pandas several times to Taiwan, the independently governed island which China considers its own. Taipei has turned down all offers so far.

It is estimated that their is only about 2,000 Giant Pandas left in the world.

If the Chinese keep this up most of those won’t be located in the world’s 4th largest economy.

Marijuana good to eat, says politician.

In a nation renowned for its extremely harsh punishment for drug crimes, Indonesia’s Vice President said it was just fine and dandy for Marijuana to be included in everyday cooking

“It’s alright to use it as a food seasoning,” VP Jusuf Kalla was quoted as saying by the Jakarta Post daily.

 The comments come after two Indonesian agencies recommended the government review policy outlawing marijuana for recreational purposes.

One official even reckons national policy should follow counties like the Netherlands, and legalise modest use of the wacky weed.

   Indo VP High as a kite?

Local Indonesian dishes like mutton and beef curry are said to be laced with marijuana seeds to give them a distinctive local flavour.

Indonesia imposes very harsh penalties including death for drug offences, with 6 Australians, 5 Chinese, a Dutchman and a Frenchman all on death row for recent offences

Give me jail! Women’s undergarment robber demands of Judge.

The Crazy News- Tool of the Week 

A judge in Colorado, USA, granted a defendent his wish to go to jail after he confesed to breaking into womens homes’ and stealing their underwear.

Prosocuters had recommended that 40 year old Steven Quatkemeyer be put under probation, as several misdemeanors and six other felony counts were dropped in exchange for a guilty plea from the thief. But probation was not enough for the drug addict, so he demanded he be put in the big house.

“I apologize to the families affected from the bottom of my heart,” a weeping Quatkemeyer told the court. “After a couple of weeks of incarceration, I realized what I had done was very wrong.”

After pleading with the Judge to be locked away, Quatkemeyer was then given a sentence of 4 years.

Defense attorney Mark Rue said Quatkemeyer felt he needed the treatment programs offered by the state prison system.

Police arrested Quatkemeyer for stealing hundreds of pairs of lingerie and panties after a victim who had been subjected to repeated break-ins installed video surveillance equipment.

Quatkemeyer said a methamphetamine addiction led him to his clandestine life of stealing, then wearing, women’s underwear.

Police found night vision goggles when they arrested him.

Thats right, he could have got off with probation, but instead he insisted he go in the big house. He got himslef 4 long years in the slamma. If this isn’t the definition of tool, I dont know what is. I trust you enjoyed the pictures.

In Worlds fastest ageing nation, even pet dogs get nursing home.

 

Japan is about to have its first aged care facility for mans best friend, the dog.

20 dogs nearing the end of thier lives will be pampered and cared for at a facility set up by Saradi Corporation, cashing in on a demand for dog carers, as many people become too old to care for their own pets.

The facility, located in the resort area of Nasu north of Tokyo, will have a veterinarian on standby 24 hours a day and the dogs will be able to exercise regualarly, eat natural foods and mix with younger dogs to maintain their vitality.

“We see a strong demand for these services, partly because owners are ageing alongside their dogs and also because many women work nowadays, leaving them no time to care for their dogs,” the companies chief executive Nana Uchida says.

Japan is the world’s fastest-ageing nation, with 40 per cent of the population expected to be over 65 in the next 50 years. The average lifespan of Japan’s 13 million dogs has also extended from five years or less in the 1980s, to 15 years or more recently, thanks to improved diet and medical care.

Women dream about sex just as much as men.

 

A new Canadian study on what we dream about when we sleep says that men and women dream about sex on an equal level.

The study was based on interviews with 109 women and 64 men who logged their dreams over a period of two to four weeks. The volunteers racked up some 3500 dreams, with 8 per cent of those being of an erotic nature.

It found that women think about doing it with movie and rock stars and politicians or lovers of past, while men dream about making love to multiple partners in public or unknown settings.

The women who took part in the study were twice as likely to have dream scenarios featuring celebrities such as actors Brad Pitt or George Clooney, or Irish rocker Bono, as their male counterparts.

Men, on the other hand, reported dreams featuring multiple sex partners twice as often as the women.

Men almost never had to put their ego on the line and come on to a woman. In about 90 per cent of the erotic dreams males logged, the women made the first move.

“The men had women coming on to them – at least in their dreams,” said author Antonio Zadra, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Montreal in Canada.

The pattern may reflect a certain amount of wishful thinking given the usual social norms that apply in the dating and courtship world, Professor Zadra said.

And finally, when it came to erotic dreams that dealt with sexual disappointments, the genders had very different tales to tell.

The women recounted scenarios where they were turned off by something that happened or the pace of proceedings. For the men, it was more often a case of their virtual partners refusing to engage in certain activities, or their sexcapade plans falling through for some reason.

“Maybe their demands were unrealistic even for their dream characters,” Prof Zadra said.

All the participants in the study were heterosexuals.

One old whale, 1880’s weapon fragment found in huge mammal caught off Alaska.

 

Fragments of a weapon used by whale hunters off Alaska in the 1800’s has been found lodged in a Bowhead whale, caught by the indigenous Inupiat people recently.

The fragment shows that the whale could be nearly 130 years old, said Craig George, a wildlife biologist with the borough’s Department of Wildlife Management.

“It was probably at least a yearling when it was struck, because the whalemen never took calves”

  

The Beautiful Bowhead whale in icy Alaskan waters.

The fragment of bomb lace was given to scientists by the Inupiat whalers, who are allowed to catch up to 50 of the speices a year in Alaskan waters.  The hunt is managed by the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission. There is a population of around 8,000 Bowheads in Alaskan waters.

The Inupiat have long said that bowhead whales live for the equivalent of two human lifetimes, and the find suggest that knowledge is indeed right.

Commercial whaling is banned worldwide, althought the Japanese would like that to change. Native tribes from Alaska, Greenland and parts of Russia are allowed to hunt whales under a non-commercial agreement.

 In Alaska, meat from hunted whales is distributed to all residents of the hunters’ villages.

Inupiat in Alaska divide up whale meat.

National Geographic video: Bowhead Whales.

Squirrel goes nuts in Germany!

Meanwhile in Germany, three people were injured after an extreamly aggressive squirrel went on a rampage in a town called Passau on the Austrian border to Germany.

The rodent jumped through a living-room window attacking its first victim,a woman who ran into the steet as the crazy squirrel was hanging on by its teeth, she managed to shake the animal off.

The squirrel then bit a builder before fleeing into a nearby garden, where it bit a 72-year-old man who eventually killed it with his crutch.

 The dead squirrel will be tested for rabies.

Japan declares ‘War on Animals’

 

Post World War 2 Japan has had a strict self- defence only policy, but the Land of the Rising Sun is about to declare war on our friends in the animal kingdom

Having debated since March on how to deal with wild animals such as boars, bears and monkeys who attack crops and enter populated areas, a group of Japanese ruling party politicians has agreed to call on the military for help.

   Japanese Macaque monkeys, probably the coolest monkeys in the world, besides us ofcourse.

Under the plan, subject to approval from party executives, local leaders will be able to request help from the country’s Self Defence Forces to build fences and set traps. Some in the party are also calling for troops to use guns.

But the defence ministry is cautious on the use of weapons as Japan’s military activities are strictly curtailed by its pacifist constitution.

Oh deer….

  Hanging out with Japanese deer

Meanwhile, the ruling parties plans’ seem to be falling on deaf ears. Nearly half of Japanese voters want the ruling coalition to lose its upper house majority in July elections, a Kyodo news agency poll showed on Sunday.

The poll of 1,858 voters found 46.9 percent hoped Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Centrist Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its junior coalition partner New Komeito would lose, compared with 43.6 percent who wanted the ruling bloc to maintain its majority.

Shinzo Abe, lucky wild animals can’t vote.

Corrupt police dogs go crazy for human females.

 

In Thailand two ace sniffer dogs who were once street mutts ran riot at an airport and have been fired. The dogs often urinated on peoples luggage and even sexually harassed female passengers.

The devilish pair, Mok and Lai, were pulled off the streets under a program initiated by King Bhumibol Adulyadej to turn strays into police dogs.

The naughty dogs who worked at northern Thailand’s Chiang Rai airport, near the border with Laos and Myanmar,  were guns at sniffing out drugs, however so many passengers complained about their outrageous attitude that authorites had no choice but to have the dogs fired.

“He liked to pee on luggage while searching for drugs inside,” Mok’s former handler, Police Lieutenant Colonel Jakapop Kamhon, said. “He also liked to hold on to women’s legs.”

“Both were just as good as foreign dogs trained for use in drug missions,” he added. “But they were stray dogs, so their manners were worse than those of foreign breeds.”

Apparenlty Mok and Lai now work on a farm, herding chickens and pigs.

Amazing Space Shuttle Atlantis Video.

The U.S. space shuttle Atlantis blasted off on a construction mission to the International Space Station on Friday, ending a three-month grounding to repair the ship’s hail-battered fuel tank.

The launch bolstered NASA’s hopes of finishing work on the slightly more than half-built $100 billion orbital research outpost before the aging shuttles are retired in three years.

Bathed in golden light from the setting sun, Atlantis and its seven-man crew lifted off at 7:38 p.m. EDT (2338 GMT) from a newly refurbished launch pad at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center.

The shuttle is carrying the heaviest payload ever flown to the space station — a 45-foot-(14-metre) long, 35,678-pound (16,183 kg) aluminum structure that will become part of the station’s structural backbone.

It includes a pair of solar wings that will generate additional electricity needed as the station is expanded in the years ahead.