Simply Dumb

We wonder, what do children dream of doing when they grow up? Firefighter, astronaut, musician, magician, president. Toilet paper researcher? Maybe not.
But there really is such a thing. And a team of t.p. researchers (yes! there’s more than one!) have created a 3-ply toilet paper. Because 3-ply is better than 2-ply right?
Researchers at George Pacific came up with the idea and it launched as part of their Quilted Northern line of products. The target audience for this ‘innovation’ – women over 45 who view their bathroom as “sanctuary” for their “quality time.” I’m trying not to snort here.
Hey, it’s cool …read more

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The Gila monster. It’s a poisonous lizard. Its venom is nasty, although not usually fatal to humans. Still, you wouldn’t want to get bit by one.
And just like snake venom is used as an antidote to snake bites, Gila monster venom is being used medicinally, too. For controlling a diabetic’s blood sugar.
A few years ago, researchers discovered that a hormone in Gila monster saliva can help diabetics control their blood sugar. It’s on the market as Byetta, but some people call it “lizard spit.” Hmmm, not exactly a winning marketing term, is it?
But it seems to work and some patients …read more

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Well how do you like that. French scientists are using particle accelerators to help authenticate vintage wines. As if the French weren’t big enough wine snobs to begin with. Not to mention that somebody paid for this research.
Don’t get me wrong, I like a good glass of wine now and again. But I am not a sommelier by any stretch. So forgive me if I find this new technique – or even the fact that it’s ‘needed’ – a little odd.
So how do they do it? They test the age of the glass in wine bottles by placing them …read more

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No, seriously. A study by Texas A&M’s Fruit and Vegetable Improvement Center says the famous summer treat contains chemicals that relax blood vessels, similar to the effect the popular drug has.
Dr. Bhimu Patil said watermelon is high in phyto-nutrients, natural compounds that produce beneficial effects in the human body. Citrulline is the chemical that reportedly has the – ahem, special effect. Patil does note that the chemical is not as “organ specific” (his words, not mine) as Viagra. It doesn’t have the laundry list of side effects the drug does either. Thank God. Nobody wants to call the doctor …read more

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Image details: Used Tea Bag served by picapp.com

A Florida man was arrested for violating bond after he failed a drug test. Happens all the time, right? The man claims it was herbal tea that caused him to fail the test.
His mother had served him a Bolivian herbal tea called Mate de Coca. It’s made from the coca plant. Yes, he tested positive for cocaine. But since he’d never been up on drug charges before, the judge released him from jail.
So let’s see, we shouldn’t eat poppy seeds because it will test positive for heroin. And now we shouldn’t drink Mate …read more

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                                                     Remember Pluto, the former ninth planet in the solar system? It got downgraded in 2006 but now there’s a ray of sunshine in its life – and there’s not a lot of sunshine in that area.
Pluto and other objects like it have earned a new designation: plutoids. The International Astronomical Association announced the new description Wednesday. Plutoids are celestial bodies in orbit around the sun farther away than Neptune. But that’s not all. They must have a near-spherical shape and no other smaller objects swept up in their orbits.
Right now the only two plutoids are Pluto and Eris but …read more

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A search-and-rescue dog got a second chance after being diagnosed with a complete electrical heart blockage. Surgeons at the University of Missouri installed a pacemaker in a 5-year-old chocolate lab’s heart.
The dog, named Molly, helps search-and-rescue find murder victims and survivors of natural disasers. Her owners, Allen and Alicia Brown received multiple offers of help after the Joplin Globe reported on the dog’s heart problems.
Medtronic Inc., a medical technology company, donated the pacemaker, while a Kansas man offered to pay up to $2,000 towards the surgery.
Molly, normally energetic, became lethargic and out of breath last month, according to the AP. …read more

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Staff at the world-renowned Smithsonian Institute Museum of Natural History are red-faced after a 5th grader on a family trip pointed out a mistake that’s been there for nearly 30 years.
Kenton Stufflebeam, an 11-year-old from Michigan, noticed a bold notation in the museum’s Tower of Time display that mistakenly identified the Precambrian as an era. The Precambrian is a dimensionless unit of time encompassing all the time between the beginning of Earth and the beginning of the Cambrian period of geologic time.
Yeah, I so knew all that info before I Googled. Young Stufflebeam told the Kalamazoo Gazette his teacher almost …read more

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Scientists at an aquarium in the UK have made an odd discovery.  One of their recently acquired octopuses is missing two of its eight legs.
Dubbed Henry the Hexapus, it seems that this guy suffers from a birth defect where two of the sets of legs failed to separate during gestation. 
This brings a whole new meaning to the term webbed feet…
Check out the story here at CNN.
Technorati Tags: dumb news,octapus,hexapus

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Do you like running out in fresh snowfall and catching snowflakes on your tongue.  Maybe you shouldn’t.  Our friends over at MWDaily have the story:
According to a new study published in Science magazine, up to 85% of snowflake nuclei are bacteria.  The most common bacteria found was Pseudomonas syringae, which can cause disease in several types of plants including tomatoes and beans.
Gross stuff, eh?
source
Technorati Tags: snowflakes,bacteria

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