Under a Gibbous Moon

No surprisingly, the Recession and it uncertainties have been playing havoc with people’s lives. Now, though, we may have a term to describe it, PTED or Post Traumatic Embitterment Disorder.

I’m a little confused about the embitterment. I guess they needed a different word for stress. Then again, cultural stress does tend to make a person bitter.

So, if you have been feeling traumatized by the current goings on in this country. You’re not alone and soon a commercial will tell you how to deal with your trauma.

Tweet this!

Disgusting but true. Bed bugs have a pheromone that lets males know that they have, uh, “mounted” the wrong gender. Bed bugs, it seems reproduce via traumatic copulation, wherein the male uses his needle like penis to punch a whole into the females chest and then ejaculates into them. Suddenly, Alien seems less creepy.

Researchers were able to block the glad that produced this (why?) and found that males would then mount other males and proceed to stab them to death with there penises.

I can just see the lab now:

“Doctor, when we blocked up those glands, the males started to impale each other with their penises.”

“Hmmm, interesting, let’s run more tests, just to be sure.”

And people get up in arms when they test shampoo on dogs.

Finally, in the comments on the first article, this related comic was linked to. Try to not be drinking anything when you read it.

Tweet this!

This in from  Schneier on Security. Apparently a company called ATSC is selling thousands of bogus divining rod type detectors to the Iraqi government. Despite no working parts or even batteries it well apparently detect just about anything that the operator wishes to find: guns, drugs, explosives or even dead bodies all by changing a piece of plastic coated cardboard on the unit. According to the manufacturer it works thusly:

Ignores All Known Concealment Methods. By programming the detection cards to specifically target a particular substance, (through the proprietary process of electro-static matching of the ionic charge and structure of the substance), the ADE651® will “by-pass” all known attempts to conceal the target substance. It has been shown to penetrate Lead, other metals, concrete, and other matter (including hiding in the body) used in attempts to block the attraction.

No Consumables nor Maintenance Contracts Required. Unlike Trace Detectors that require the supply of sample traps, the ADE651® does not utilize any consumables (exceptions include: cotton-gloves and cleanser) thereby reducing the operational costs of the equipment. The equipment is Operator maintained and requires no ongoing maintenance service contracts. It comes with a hardware three year warranty. Since the equipment is powered electro statically, there are no batteries or conventional power supplies to change or maintain.

At a cost of $16,500 to $60,000 depending on model, snake oil is expensive these day.

Tweet this!

Red 3 making his attack run. CERN; Bird via Foxypar4/Flickr

The Large Hadron Collider, according to an article in Popular Science, has suffered yet a another setback. This time, a piece of bred dropped by a passing bird caused significant overheating within the accelerator.

The upside to this is, that even though the LHC is not fully functional yet, it has already began to make astounding discoveries. Apparently afraid of having their existence discovered, Bird Alliance has sent one of their best flyers to strike a small target with a piece of bread, thereby destroying the menace and returning peace to the skies. Or something like that.

Tweet this!

Coming from the Discovery.com, comes an article detailing 5 scary (but true) space facts. While some of the entries are not particularly scary (space sex was funny with the line “Then you can fasten the whole two-person sex pod to a stable object — like Captain Pike or a Guild Navigator.”) The first entry was definitely high on the creep factor:

Space exploration research has claimed a number of animal lives, and while the idea of sacrificing monkeys and dogs on the altar of science is rather disheartening, the notion that there are dead simian and canine space explorers in orbit RIGHT NOW just adds to the creepiness.

Several early space missions involved re-entry procedures, but not every spacecraft was recovered. This leads many to theorize that perhaps dozens of mummified animals are still making the orbital rounds up there. Think about that the next time you wish upon a star.

Just something to keep in mind when you look up to the skies this Halloween.

Tweet this!