You May Feel A Little Prick
by T D Wolf on Feb.07, 2012, under Health
Soyulent Rainbow
by T D Wolf on Feb.06, 2012, under Animals, Culture, Food
Hey, is that for real?
That can’t be kosher.
That’s just plain silly.
Singular Focus
by T D Wolf on Feb.06, 2012, under Animals, Food, Health, Nature, Recreation
Discovered in the womb of its mother, an endangered dusky shark, which was caught in the Gulf of California, was a near full term fetus.
The shark had the condition is known as cyclopia, a rare congenital disorder characterised by the failure of the front portion of the brain to properly divide the orbits of the eye into two cavities.
Elephant Story
by T D Wolf on Feb.06, 2012, under Animals, Art, Family, Food, Nature, Pornography, Recreation
A Stillness Within
by T D Wolf on Feb.06, 2012, under Art, Consumer, Crime, Culture, Drugs, Food, Health, History, Recreation, Technology
Leave a Comment :alkindus, boiler, condenser, copper, cucurbit, distiller, flask, still more...La Redoute Redux
by T D Wolf on Feb.06, 2012, under Art, Consumer, Kids, Media, Nature, Recreation
Unless you’re French, you may not be familiar with La Redoute, an online seller of upscale clothes and household goods.
If you were browsing their web site for boys’ t-shirts recently, you might have come across this:
The well-framed photo has the main subjects in the front running through the white sand. You might not even notice the background.
But someone thought there was something inappropriate about the naked bather. La Redoute issued an apology via Twitter.
Loosely translated, it means “We will no longer display penises on our site unnecessarily.”
Imagine what you’d find if you looked more closely at other ads.
Eliminating Animal Testing: Some Important Tips
by T D Wolf on Feb.06, 2012, under Consumer, Drugs, Health, Kids, Nature, Religion, Technology
No matter how much you acknowledge the need for product testing, how could anybody not be moved by the suffering of the test subjects? They lead horrible lives.
In China, bears that are kept to harvest their bile have killed themselves rather than continue to submit to the painful procedure and life in a cramped, isolated cage.
One mother bear killed her cub to spare him from the lifestyle, then continually ran into a wall until she died. Others have starved themselves to death.
But good news is on the horizon, as the Fraunhofer Institute in Stuttgart, Germany has found a substitute for the use of live animals.
You don’t actually need the live baby for testing: Just the foreskin.
So much research material has been lost for so many years!
The Hautfabrik developed at the Fraunhofer Institute in Stuttgart is an affordable and sustainable alternative to animal testing.
The machine is fitted with 500 boards, each with 24 tissue cultures growing on it in little tube formations. In each tube, extremely thin skin samples grow from cells, which robotic hands have painstakingly extracted from foreskins donated to the project. Scientists use enzymes to detach the very top layer of cells from the skin, along with connective tissue and pigment cells.
The foreskin used for the process is only taken from boys up to the age of four. “The older skin is, the worse the cells function,” explained Andreas Traube, an engineer at the institute’s department of production technology and automation.
At the moment only very small skin samples are being created. “It’s logical that we’d want to take the operation to a bigger scale,” said Traube.
If it catches on, maybe we can put an end to the suffering of animals for product testing.
The equipment developed by the Fraunhofer team can extract between three to 10 million cells from a single foreskin. In the incubator these cells then multiply hundreds of times. The whole process can take up to six weeks, but according to Traube, “We can’t use the machine to speed up the process; biology needs time to take its course.”
We wonder if anybody has tried rubbing them gently.
Built to Code, Made in China
by T D Wolf on Feb.06, 2012, under Culture, Miscellaneous, Technology
It’s often best to work out your ideas on paper or computer before you actually implement them.
First you visualize the main object.
Then you add the embellishments. When the underground parking garage is excavated, the dirt can be used for a recreation facility for the kids!
Just add water. You don’t even have to stir.
Now that you’ve established that it works on paper, you can go on to the real thing.
They used lots of pilings.
No time was wasted reinforcing them.
The new building wasn’t exactly like the others.
But there’s a shortage of modern housing.
And these units have a great view of the sky.
Flip the Circus Boy
by T D Wolf on Feb.06, 2012, under Art, Education, Family, Games, Health, History, Kids, Recreation
It’s the best of times, it’s the worst of times. We live in an age of high tech wonder and with all the labor saving devices, improvements in safety practices, and advanced medicine, kids still die unnecessarily.
At one time children were expected to support their families and themselves after they reached a certain age.
Trapped miner prepares to poison child to preserve oxygen
Working conditions were not ideal, and were often dangerous. If a kid couldn’t stand it anymore his options were limited. A hundred years ago, joining the circus was an attractive choice.
You got to travel, work with consummate professionals, learn new skills, and enjoy the company of animals. You didn’t have to go to school, and you could wear tights, a sash, and even a cape if you wanted.
Kids don’t face the same dangers that they used to, but some of them are still looking to escape, and it ends tragically. We wrote about kids dying from the Choking Game, a type of auto-erotic strangulation. More recently, a number of 9-12 year old kids have killed themselves as a reaction to bullying.
Caleb Kors’s death was accidental. The ten year old from Sudden Valley, Washington, was found in his bedroom, entangled in some acrobatic equipment. Caleb was already well known at the weekly farmer’s market in Bellingham, where he regularly performed juggling, magic, and acrobatics.
He was Flip the Circus Boy.
Initial reports indicated he had been practising a trick, although his family noted that he had been scrambling around collecting material for a new costume.
Whatcom County Chief Criminal Deputy Doug Chadwick told the Los Angeles Times, “As far as we know, the young man died in what appears to be an accidental hanging. How he got there, we’re not actually sure. There did not appear to be anything suspicious or nefarious.”
Fellow performers at the Bellingham Circus Guild, where he attended classes and took private lessons, said that he had a natural talent.
His instructor Strangely Timothy Doesburg, who said Kors’ family had asked him to speak on its behalf, told ABC news, “He was a little monkey. He liked to climb and he fell. We don’t know what happened exactly. He was an amazing kid. Incredible. Caleb at 10 could read a person or crowd and see what they needed and take them to a special place.”
According to Mr Doesburg he was making “serious money”, much of which was spent on pizza which he shared with other young performers at the market.
Mr Doesburg added: “He was making more money during those nine months when the market was open than I was. Part of that is because the show was always changing. He was always building the show, finding things that work and getting rid of things that didn’t.”
Caleb Kors, Flip the Circus Boy, leaves behind two brothers and his parents.
Monkey Business
by T D Wolf on Jan.30, 2012, under Animals, Nature
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