Have you dudes heard of Conservapedia? You think I jest?

Their tagline is “The Trustworthy Encyclopedia.” Obviously. I mean check out some of th featured sources on the homepage:

“There is no scientific consensus that AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming) is significant”
“Understanding Intelligent Design”
“Planned Parenthood Website Promotes Porn to Teens”
“National Education Association Pushes Homosexuality in School Booklet”
“Guns Save Lives”

If that isn’t trustworthy news, I don’t know what is. I mean the liberals obviously have a gruesome hold of Wikipedia, the Encyclopedia Brittanica, The Oxford English Dictionary etc. We decent people have to have some where to find decent information. Cause there ain’t no true, just Red and Blue.

(I actually found this site by way of looking for some vaccine-autism stuff wherein I came across this line on their vaccine page: “A concept in vaccine planning is “herd immunity,” whereby humans are equated with chattel.” I could spend all day on this site. But then I might have to kill myself. Or move to Sweden.)

There was an earthquake in England today, measuring 5.2 on the Richter Scale. Small fry compared to most places in the world, but apparently a big deal on this green and pleasant isle. It was the biggest quake in 25 years, it did a bit of damage, knocking down the odd chimney pot and putting someone in hospital with a broken pelvis, but I confess I just don’t get what all the fuss is about. It topped the BBC News Online page all day, even it was all over, and it pushed an insignificant little story about protesters scaling the Houses of Parliament into a distant second place. There were randoms sitting on the roof of the actual building and the news was all obessed with a bit of a wobble in Market Rasen.

And no, I’m just just being bitter because I slept right through it and I’ve always wanted to experience an earthquake. Oh no. No way.

(PHOTO: MYLES)

There’s a fantastic online experiment going on now that seeks to create music from the first 10,000 numbers of pi. But it’s interactive. Which means that the first note you pick will be played when the number 1 crops up, the second note you pick will be 2, and so on.

My choice of notes wound up dark and minor enough that the result sounded like a less professional riff of the soundtrack to “There Will Be Blood“‘s blood-pressure raising march of minor notes and strings. It’s a bit rushed (after all there are 10K notes to run through) but the fun part is that you can vary and repeat it as much as possible. I’m now going back to come up with some nice pretty high notes to play pi: I’m thinking triangles, and song birds, and the noise of sunshine instead of dark and roily mining story in California. 

Sometimes the news makes me so angry I can’t see straight. Apparently, the US Supreme Court is ‘inclined’ to let Exxon Mobil off the hook for some of the $2.5bn damages they were ordered to pay after the catastrophic Valdez disaster 19 years ago in Alaska. I was only 9 at the time, when the ship ran aground on the Bligh Reef in the Prince William Sound, and to be honest I’d forgotten how hideous it was. Just looking at the pictures of the tiny rusty red boat in the blue Alaskan waters, surrounded by a thick gloopy slick of black gunge makes me so terribly terribly sad.

I wanted to write something scientific and witty comparing punitive damages to the damage that was done to the 500,000 sea birds, the billions of fish, the hundreds of seals, the 5000 sea ottters, the 22 killer whales, and the 250 bald eagles when 10.8 million barrels of crude oil were released into the sea, but I can’t.

The damages have been cut twice already in the past two decades, and now they might be cut again. The accident happened because of human error, the captain of the ship was drunk, and Exxon claim that the accidental nature of what happened and the fact that the area is now recovering mean that they shouldn’t be made to pay any more. BUT. They knew the captain was an alcoholic and still left him in charge. And that $2.5bn represents THREE WEEKS worth of Exxon’s profits. And they should pay it. And they should keep paying it until all the birds and seas are clean and all the damage is undone. Which is never.

We humans shouldn’t be allowed to play with things that we can’t control.

Rant over.

More info here from NOAA if you’re curious.

I will buy this beautiful original John James Audubon pelican from his Birds of America 1927 book. For $96,000. Of course if inflation continues in the way it’s going now, that will be $9.6 million by the time I can afford it. 

Sooooo you know the milky way galaxy? The one in which we reside not the chocolate bar.

Well a bunch of Australian astronomers at the University of Sydney showed a slew of astronomers up when they proved, after only a couple hours of internet-based research, that our home galaxy is a is 12,000 light years thick, not the 6,000 light years thick it was previously believed to be (the width of our disc shaped galaxy remains constant, however, at 100,000 light years across).

Here’s the hilarious quote from team leader Astrophysicist Professor Bryan Gaensler from the University of Sydney news page:

“Some colleagues have come up to me and have said ‘That wrecks everything!’” says Professor Gaensler. “And others have said ‘Ah! Now everything fits together!’”

We here at the circus are big fans of parasites. Really really big fans. I mean I have been considering infecting myself with a tapeworm for years - lose weight and fight allergies! But in case that’s a little too extreme for you, why not just buy this delicious gummy tapeworm. It might not help with the belly or the sneezing, but it will surely taste better. Not to mention it will also breakdown and actually exit your body after consumption. (Thanks Debby). 

(PHOTO: DANONE’S ITALIAN AD CAMPAIGN)...THIS YOGURT WON’T JUST CURE YOUR IRRITABLE BOWEL, IT WILL ALSO GIVE YOU PERFECT, PERT BREASTS!

So you know how like a couple weeks ago I was all ”these probiotics yogurts are such a marketing crock of shit and we should all just buy the normal stuff?” Well. Erm. So the Danone Activia was on sale at my grocery store (still more than the normal price of my regular stuff), so I thought, “what the hey, it’s only 50 cents and you like trying new things.”

So I bought it. A 650 ml container of vanilla for $3.99.

The second ingredient is CREAM, people. Cream.

Let’s just say that I have more than adequately inoculated myself with Bifidobacterium lactis. Maybe I should test its powers by eating a giant bag of Doritos for dinner and seeing if I feel sick?

Yes, yes, I know that National Chocolate-Covered Raisin Day is not for a whole month (March 24th, if you were wondering), but I’d like to take a moment and appreciate this most delicious of foods. This may or may not be a thinly veiled attempt to justify the approximate 600 grams of raisins I have eaten in the past two days (that’s about 1800 calories btw; Costco is an evil place). Anyways.

Raisin and people go waaaaay back. To at least 1490 BC (and probably before then, because let’s be honest, wherever there is raisin, there is grape. And then there is wine and we’ve been winos for centuries). According to the funny propagandists raisin site above, you could trade two jars of raisins for a slave in ancient Rome. Also, they were handily portable warrior food.

Raisins are among the top nutritional sources of the trace element Boron.  Yes, Boron. You need it for bone health (especially post-menopausal women), turning vitamin D and estrogen into their active forms and other yummy things. 

Of course they have lots and lots of delicious, dark n’ purply antioxidants (though not as much as fresh grapes), handy for their cancer-fighting properties. Indeed, researchers at Tufts University ranked raisins and prunes as the #1 cancer-fighting fruits.

Oleanolic acid (also an antioxidant) in raisins actually kills bacteria in the mouth, protecting gums and preventing cavities - this despite raisin’s usual spot on the “bad for teeth” list of snack foods. Oleanolic acid has other health benefits too, including liver protection. Who knew?

Raisins are really high in iron. Let’s just say that my 600 grams of raisins gave me 90% of my daily iron intake (raisins have 1.88 mg of iron per 100 grams - beef has between 2 - 4 mg/100grams. Impressive, non?)

(THIS IS ME AND BOAZY, THE KING OF KATS, SNOOZING AT MY COUSIN’S IN NYC A COUPLE YEARS AGO)
So recently I’ve started dividing my friends into nappers and non nappers. I find that the non nappers are quite unsympathetic to the nappers and write them off as lay abouts. But! Wait!! They serve a function. Other than snoozing through the doldrums of the day. They work to solidify long term memory. How cool is that??

This is very welcome news because lately I’ve taken to cat napping one of our office cats and taking a cat nap with her on the love seat in the conference room. Her purring is better than a low rpm car engine at sending me to dreamland. And, now that the researchers from University of Haifa’s Center for Brain and Behavior Research in Israel mention it, it really might quicken the “storage of long-term memory.” Mind you, in their experiments they found this was only true of 90 minute naps. And well, I rarely conk out for that long. But maybe I should. For the betterment of the speed at which I consolidate my long-term memory.

Yeah, that’s totally what I’m going to start calling it. Practice it with me fellow nappers: “Pshaw. I’m not NAPPING! Jeee-ez. I’m consolidating my long term memory. Like, duh!”