sick squirrels and Ritalin

Endangered red squirrels in the UK may finally be developing immunity to a disease carried by invasive non-native grey squirrels.

Wait, a British species is nearly annihilated because a foreign species came and spread diseases? Oh, the irony.


Increasing numbers of people are using prescription drugs like Ritalin to boost alertness and brain power. A UK bioethics professor says people should be allowed to make their own minds up about using drugs like Ritalin to boost alertness and brain power.

Yes, people should be allowed to make up their own minds, their own deeply drug-addicted minds.

jokes: hybrid stem cells, teasing the space geeks, and dancing dinosaurs

Geologists say they have discovered prehistoric animal tracks so densely packed on a 3/4-acre site that they’re calling it a “dinosaur dance floor.”

And now we know what next summer’s crappy computer-animated Disney film is going to be about.


LONDON – British government overhauled sensitive science laws to allow scientists to use hybrid animal-human embryos. Also under the new laws: in-vitro fertilization clinics will no longer have to consider the need for a child to have a father when deciding whether to offer treatment to lesbian couples.

Yes, it’s good that they’re finally through debating the role of a father in a child’s life, now that they have to start debating the role of a cow.


NASA administrator Michael Griffin said critics in the media and on anonymous Internet blogs can "chip away" at morale by questioning the motives and ethics of engineers designing a next-generation rocket system.

Okay, I’m no rocket scientist, but even I know that telling anonymous internet bloggers that they have destructive power will not make them stop.

British astronauts! and taste buds in your belly

Britain's new science minister has made it clear that he thinks the country ought to have an astronaut to inspire young people to pursue careers in science.

He’s right. Youngsters in the UK and elsewhere should aspire to "orbit it like Beckham”.


A US-based team of scientists studying digestion say that taste receptors in the gut may slow absorption of bad-tasting foods, suggesting that some medication might be absorbed more quickly if it was not so bitter tasting.

So, now we know that the advertisements are in fact wrong: Buckley’s tastes awful, and hence does NOT work.

Lights out, and no corn for you!

TORONTO - Millions of people across Canada and around the globe are expected to turn out their lights Saturday evening to raise awareness about pollution and global warming in an initiative known as Earth Hour.

It will be hard to get by without electricity for an hour, but I intend to tough it out by the warmth of a pile of burning tires.


DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The price of corn could either stabilize or continue to soar depending on how much corn American farmers choose to plant this season.

Yeah, you all laughed when I started hording Doritos, but who’s laughing now?

No one wants to say it, but the next time you go for a corn cob pipe, it might not be there.

Plagues, Canadian Institutions, and fat lazy gorillas

OTTAWA - Industry Minister Jim Prentice says he won't approve the sale of iconic Canadian space technology, the 'Canadarm', to a major American arms-maker unless it has a "net benefit" to Canada.

The financial gain would have to be considerable, he argued, to compensate for the trouble of having to re-write all of the Canadian edition Trivial Pursuit questions that include it in some way, let alone the social studies textbooks.


CHICAGO - In the face of mounting research on wild animals' food needs, today's zoo staffers are trying new feeding tricks to keep their lions and tigers healthy and happy, with fewer sugary snacks.

In a more advanced tactic, zoos in LA are training keepers to ridicule the animals until they develop anorexia.


RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) — Snakes — including one 10-foot anaconda — are increasingly invading the eastern Amazon’s largest city, driven from the rain forest by destruction of their natural habitat, the government’s environmental protection agency said Tuesday.
Government spokespeople downplayed the issue, noting that "It's not an actual plague until there are frogs and/or locusts."

Cocaine, and powerful sex messages

Coca plantations and a cocaine laboratory have been found for the first time in a Brazilian part of the Amazon rainforest, provoking worry that if there was not an immediate crackdown, it might even become a new source of deforestation.

So do your part: make sure your dealer is pushing fair trade, sustainably produced cocaine, or take your business elsewhere.



A University of Calgary scientist will receive more than $1 million over the next seven years in his bid to determine whether chemical messages transmitting sexual attraction can be harnessed to repair brain-cell damage and give back the disabled use of their limbs.

Here’s hoping it can, because otherwise it’s just cruel to get a bunch of people who can’t move, really turned on.

Glowing pigs: TNG

Researchers in Denmark report that the Alcon butterfly has managed to produce larvae with a chemical coating similar to that of the local Myrmica rubra ants, tricking the ants into feeding the young.

But the jig will be up when the ants and butterflies settle it once and for all, on next week’s Maury!


BEIJING - A cloned pig whose genes were altered to make it glow fluorescent green has passed on the trait to its young, a development that could lead to the future breeding of pigs for human transplant organs, a Chinese university reported.

There was no immediate word on when the researchers might start to attempt to breed pigs with useful mutations instead of cool ones.


KANSAS CITY, Mo. - A trail of chicken bones left at a burglary scene more than a year ago has led investigators to a Kansas prison inmate with a long rap sheet and a hefty appetite. Police tracked down the suspect through DNA left on six chicken bones strewn throughout a Gladstone apartment where several firearms were stolen in November 2006.

The chickens have yet to be identified but hopefully, soon, their families can have some measure of peace.


SINGAPORE - Male macaque monkeys pay for sex by grooming females, according to a recent study that suggests the primates may treat sex as a commodity.

So, guys, if you want to get laid, it’s time to learn to do pedicures.