Oddities, curiousities and strangness in history

I've been side swooping my bangs and feeling like a traitor

It sounds like this guy's been getting some serious applicants.



NEW YORK (AP) — A prominent genetics expert from Harvard Medical School says he is not looking for a woman to bear a Neanderthal baby. Not even an adventurous one.

Some press reports in the past few days suggest Harvard's George Church is supporting the idea of creating a Neanderthal and even looking for an "adventurous" woman for the project.

Church says those reports are based on misunderstandings of an interview he gave the German magazine Der Spiegel. Church said the idea gets a brief mention as a theoretical possibility in his recent book.

Scientists have recovered DNA from Neanderthal fossils. Making a Neanderthal baby would start with putting that DNA into human stem cells.

Church says such a process would face ethical questions.


I wonder if Biffo would like the contact info of these ladies?

I think Biffo might be v1.0.

it's like making a mammoth!

here is your throat back thanks 4 the loan

Dont worry Dave, yer balls will be intact, since your doing a good thing for charity,how can we deny you ?!
Neanderthal Mammoth with a mullet...mmm ?

azriel wrote:
Neanderthal Mammoth with a mullet

Brilliant! How could that possibly go wrong?

yeah good for you Dave, its a very nice gesture.

Woodna mine utorl a fyn porshon ov mommoth, und uh skweez un tuckle uftarwoods behun za booshez, wid won eyeoot four prowlin sabertoozs ... Oooh aluk! Zose dees ar loong goon! Goon, eye sez!

I want my car coated with this stuff.

Europe from space

Interesting to see the "islands" between GB and Norway.

blue red and yellow? What happened to white? (Shouldn't Ireland be green?)

I suppose the 'islands' are North Sea oil rigs.

Yup there be money in them there lights Halfy!

But why the red, yellow and blue? I don't remember seeing off white street light colors the few times I've been to Europe.

I suspect the colours have been 'enhanced'- UK looks yellow but our streets lights are more orange than yellow.
I had no idea Ireland had red street lights however, assuming it actually does.

Its also amazing how much of Scotland compared to the surroundng nations is still in the dark- just the central belt and the east coast densly lit really.
That black area is the place most of the folks caught up in the Highland Clearences were from. It never reovered in terms of population.

I'm pretty sure the image has been edited. All the lights are going to blend together into a (more or less) white when photographed from orbit. You can see that in a different picture, here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/27/population.eu

Oh I have no doubt it's been enhanced (I'm a satellite guy, after all) and landsat will definitely give you all the resolution you need.

but you can't enhance unless you have something to enhance. Since yellow is actually an equal mixture of red and green I'm not sure how orange (red with diminishing amounts of green) would turn yellow (enhanced green from the orange mix) without green popping up somewhere else. It's very odd.

Meteorite explodes over Russia, more than 1,000 injured

(Reuters) - A meteorite streaked across the sky and exploded over central Russia on Friday, raining fireballs over a vast area and causing a shock wave that smashed windows, damaged buildings and injured 1,200 people.

People heading to work in Chelyabinsk heard what sounded like an explosion, saw a bright light and then felt the shock wave, according to a Reuters correspondent in the industrial city 1,500 km (950 miles) east of Moscow.

The fireball, travelling at a speed of 30 km (19 miles) per second according to Russian space agency Roscosmos, had blazed across the horizon, leaving a long white trail that could be seen as far as 200 km (125 miles) away.

Car alarms went off, thousands of windows shattered and mobile phone networks were disrupted. The Interior Ministry said the meteorite explosion, a very rare spectacle, also unleashed a sonic boom.

"I was driving to work, it was quite dark, but it suddenly became as bright as if it were day," said Viktor Prokofiev, 36, a resident of Yekaterinburg in the Urals Mountains.

"I felt like I was blinded by headlights."

The meteorite, which weighed about 10 metric tons and may have been made of iron, entered Earth's atmosphere and broke apart 30-50 km (19-31 miles) above ground, according to Russia's Academy of Sciences.

The energy released when it entered the Earth's atmosphere was equivalent to a few kilotonnes, the academy said, the power of a small atomic weapon exploding.

No deaths were reported but the Emergencies Ministry said 20,000 rescue and clean-up workers were sent to the region after President Vladimir Putin told Emergencies Minister Vladimir Puchkov to ease the disruption and help the victims.

The Interior Ministry said about 1,200 people had been injured, at least 200 of them children, and most from shards of glass

Wow, the numbers have climbed.

Imagine if this had happened during the height of the Cold War.

The Soviet military would have assumed naturally that intercontinental ballistic missiles were starting to rain down on them and they'd have been reaching for their red buttons.

That woulda been fun...

http://www.news.com.au/technology/sci-tech/miniature-water-bear-natures-ultimate-survivor-or-alien/story-fn5fsgyc-1226583288014

Looks like it's made of canvas, some golf tees and a couple plastic cups.