Archives for June 2011

I know, I know, it’s Monday morning and you’re barely functioning. Depending on how bad the weekend was you might be finally reading your Bible making lots of promises to Yahweh/God/Allah that involve behavior you’ve never, not even once, exhibited. Or maybe your thanking the officer for not tasing you as your lawyer tries to explain to the judge that it was all a harmless prank and, let’s be fair, the two strippers and the pony are going to be just fine and the trampoline could be replaced. On the other hand, maybe you’re like the couple in Florida who decided it would be a GREAT idea to have sex on a 30 foot high dive at a public pool. Attendants were forced to bleach the board before the public could resume its use. Of course you could be like my friend Amy Zanglin who deals with the Post-Party-Trauma Syndrome by donning a bikini and wandering beaches asking complete strangers embarrassingly personal questions.

Yes, there’s video so go ahead and click the link.

Please keep in mind that PPT is a serious disease, you can help by sending large sums of money to info@nudehippo.com. All donations will be used to study the after-effects of partying. This study is ongoing and needs your support.

On the other hand, maybe it’s not you who got out of hand. Maybe, just maybe, the party got a touch goofy without your help. Kierstan Grieshaber (which is German for “I have a greasy Kierstan”) reports on the nice young lady who invited her Facebook friends to her birthday party.

Well, that’s what she wanted to do. Instead she invited Facebook.

Better check your Facebook settings before posting a party invitation online.

A teenage girl in Germany who forgot to mark her birthday invitation as private on Facebook fled her own party when more than 1,500 guests showed up and around 100 police officers, some on horses, were needed to keep the crowd under control.

Eleven people were temporarily detained, one police officer was injured, dozens of girls wearing flip-flops cut their feet on broken glass and firefighters had to extinguish two small fires at the 16th birthday party in Hamburg, police spokesman Mirko Streiber said Sunday.

The birthday girl, identified only as Thessa, went into hiding, Streiber said, but “nonetheless the party was a hit.”

Thessa had initially only wanted to ask some friends over to her home in Hamburg-Bramfeld when she posted her invitation on Facebook, but mistakenly she published it so that everyone on Facebook could see it.

The invitation quickly went viral, and some 15,000 people confirmed online they would come to the party – without even knowing the girl, weekly paper Bild am Sonntag reported.

When Thessa’s parents found out, they made their daughter cancel the party, informed police and hired a private security service to protect their home on Friday night.

Despite public announcements in Hamburg that the party had been canceled, some 1,500 teenagers and young adults showed up on the street in front of Thessa’s home, Streiber told The Associated Press.

“We had cordoned off the house, some 100 police were on the ground, four of them on horses – but that did not keep the kids from celebrating,” Streiber said.

Some revelers held up signs asking “Where is Thessa?” others brought birthday presents and homemade cake, there was lots of alcohol and the crowd chanted again and again, “Thessa, celebrating a birthday is not a crime,” – in obvious relation to the massive police presence, Bild reported.

The police officer was injured when he tried to keep a party reveler from breaking off the Mercedes-Benz logo of his patrol car.

“It was sheer insanity but mostly peaceful,” Streiber summed up the night with a laugh.

As for Thessa – she was nowhere to be seen. Police confirmed she “was not at home that night” and Bild reported that she celebrated quietly with her grandparents at an undisclosed location.

As evidenced by this article, we know that Thessa is going to grow up to be one of those ladies who wears their hair in a tight bun, thinks that beige is a loud color and worries that there aren’t enough rules for her to follow.

We also know that she missed one heck of a party.

Just FYI, Pravda is Russian for “Truth” and Bild is German for “Picture.” None of that is relevant today, I just thought you might like to know.

Anyway, if you’re feeling lonely and need some company, pick up a couple of kegs, post an open invitation on Facebook and try to keep the pony off the trampoline. Also, don’t forget to bring a cell phone camera so you can have a nice memorial video like this.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Thursday morning around 9:10!

Cultures go through stages of rampant xenophobia and isolationism. They fear the new, they fear change and they try to lock themselves within self defined borders. Anything from beyond those borders is considered “bad” and anything from within is considered “all that’s good and holy.” Here, in America, we have seen that scenario play out several times. The most famous isolationist movement happened in the late 1920’s and early 30’s and had Charles Lindbergh as its figurehead. History doesn’t tell us if he ever saw the irony in being the person who helped make trans-Atlantic travel possible while also being the one who wanted us to hide behind an imaginary wall and wish the world away. My guess is that he didn’t. It’s almost impossible for a person who sees things in black and white to enjoy the shades of gray that irony requires. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that there is a similar mentality permeating our great land today. The obvious problem with such a mindset is that it’s not only selfish but ignorant. Selfish because such a mentality always starts with “I,” “me,” and “mine.” Ignorant because it assumes we live in a vacuum. As if our actions here do not affect others and the happenings in lands not ours have no bearing on how we face the day. Lindbergh, and his ilk, allowed the Nazi war machine to grow to unprecedented proportions and nearly take over the world. The only thing that truly stopped it in the end was the ineptness of its leaders. I shudder to think what will happen if similar people gain control in American today.

To be blunt, just because it’s somebody else’s problem doesn’t mean it’s not yours as well.

Long before Jesus walked the earth, the Romans had figured out the basics. Oh, sure, they had onerous taxes and an oppressive military, but underpinning it all was their comprehension that trade between cultures was the best way to hold everything together. And, to that end, they came up with some very clever inventions to make that possible. Even today we are discovering things that Romans took for granted but which changed the face of the world back then. One, and please don’t laugh, was a portable fish tank.

Rossella Lorenzi from Discover News, takes a look at the hows of it all. I’ll tell you the whys once you’re done reading.

The ancient Romans might have traded live fish across the Mediterranean Sea by endowing their ships with an ingenious hydraulic system, a new investigation into a second century A.D. wreck suggests.

Consisting of a pumping system designed to suck the sea water into a fish tank, the apparatus has been reconstructed by a team of Italian researchers who analyzed a unique feature of the wreck: a lead pipe inserted in the hull near the keel.

Recovered in pieces from the Adriatic sea in 1999, the ship was carrying a cargo of processed fish when it sank six miles off the coast of Grado in northeastern Italy.

The small trade vessel, which was 55 feet long and 19 feet wide, was packed with some 600 vases called amphoras.They were filled with sardines, salted mackerel, and garum, a fish sauce much loved by the Romans.

Now the archaeologists suspect that some 200 kilograms (440 pounds) of live fish, placed in a tank on the deck in the aft area, might have also been carried by the ship during its sailing life.

“The apparatus shows how a simple small cargo vessel could have been turned into one able to carry live fish. This potentiality, if confirmed by future studies, shows that trading live fish was actually possible in the Roman world,” Carlo Beltrame, a marine archaeologist at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice in Italy, told Discovery News.

Measuring 51 inches in length and featuring a diameter of at least 2.7 inches, the unique lead pipe was located in a sort of “small bilge-well” and would have been connected to a hand operated piston pump (which had not been found within the wreck).

Ending with a hole right in the hull, the pipe intrigued the researchers.

“No seaman would have drilled a hole in the keel, creating a potential way for water to enter the hull, unless there was a very powerful reason to do so,” Beltrame and colleagues reported in the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology.

According to the researchers, the reason wasn’t the need for removing bilge water from the bottom of the boat through the pipe.

Indeed, bucket chain pumps were able to discharge bilge water from the side in a much safer way, possibly recovering between 110 and 225 liters (30 to 60 gallons) of water per minute.

“It seems unlikely that sailors aboard the small Grado ship abandoned the usual chain-pumping apparatus in favor of the more complex bilge pump,” Beltrame said.

Rather than serving a bilge pump to send water out of the ship, the pipe could have supported a sucking pump to bring water onto the vessel, the researchers argued.

But what could have been the purpose of such an unusual hydraulic system?

According to Beltrame and colleagues, the ship was too small to justify the presence of the pump to wash the decks or extinguish fires (similar piston-driven suction systems were employed on warships such as Horatio Nelson’s HMS Victory).

“Given the ship’s involvement in the fish trade, the most logical hypothesis is that the piston pump worked to supply a fish tank with oxygenated water,” said Beltrame.

The researchers calculated that the small trade vessel could have carried a tank containing around 4 cubic meters (141 cubic feet) of water.

This water mass would have created no problems for stability while housing some 200 kilograms (440 pounds) of live fish, such as sea bass or sea bream.

Connected to the lead pipe, the hand operated piston pump would have easily allowed the necessary exchange of the water mass.

According to the researchers, the water would have needed to be replaced once every half an hour in order to provide a constant oxygen supply.

“With a flow of 252 liters (66 gallons) per minute, the piston pump would have filled the tank in 16 minutes,” Beltrame said.

According to Rita Auriemma, a marine archaeologist at the University of Salento, it is plausible that the hydraulic system in Grado ship served for live fish trade.

“The context in which the ship operated makes this the most logical explanation,” Auriemma told Discovery News.

“The near Istria coast was known for numerous vivaria, large enclosures to breed fish. It is possible that the Grado ship transported live fish from these vivaria to large markets in the high Adriatic,” Auriemma said.

Indeed, it would have taken about 10 hours to cross the nearly 30 miles of sea that divided the Istria vivaria to the river port of Aquileia, one of the richest Roman towns during the imperial period.

“Such a trip could have been sustained by the live fish only through an apparatus of continuous water exchange similar to that of the Grado ship,” Beltrame said.

Besides the obvious fact that people could get exotic, and very fresh, yummies from around the world, there is another fact that needs to be considered. By transporting live fish from point A to point B, the Romans were able to introduce non-native species into waters and change the nature of local ecosystems. Proof that they did it is easy to find. Just look at the many spots in the world that have goldfish, koi and Asiatic carp. All were local to China and northern Japan until the Romans began trading with the east and, eventually, set up a new capital in Constantinople.

Which, technically, made them Constantinoplians and not Romans, but who am I to quibble?

Earlier in this article I mentioned that you didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to see the problems with isolationism. However you do need to be one if you are going to come up with any feasible way to expand humanity beyond the borders of this earthly realm. Fortunately for you, we have one available. Richard Obousy is the co-founder of Project Icarus and it, as the name implies, hopes to fly us close to the stars.

Albeit without the whole flaming to our death ending of the original story.

Before I get to the article I should note that he talks a lot about disruptive technologies. He is not talking about bombs or political unrest. Think of it this way, linear technology would go like this; wheel, unicycle, bicycle, tricycle, qudracycle all the way to motorized vehicles that traverse our roads today. Disruptive technology would be more akin to wheel, car.

As you can see, many of the intermediary steps disappear. I admit my example is very simplistic, but I wanted you to have a grasp of the basics before we continued.

Projections for the first interstellar voyages, based on extrapolations of our current technological state and current investment into space exploration, will almost always place such missions hundreds of years into the future.

To emphasize this point, the Augustine Committee, a review of the United States human space flight program, found that a heavy lift rocket that could return us to the moon — a destination that, in the grand scheme of things, is right on our cosmic front doorstep — would not be available until approximately 2030.

Compound that with the fact that the committee also determined that the lunar lander, necessary for manned landings, would not be ready for many years after. It’s therefore easy to grow skeptical about the prospects for an interstellar mission that could be launched this century.

While this is true, I believe it would be a gross misjudgment to write off an interstellar mission so quickly, since it does not take into account disruptive breakthroughs in both technology and the economy that might drastically accelerate such an aspiration.

Broadly speaking, there are three areas of possible ‘disruption’ that might fast-forward humankind’s first exploration of another star system.

1. Ease of Access to Space

Access to Earth orbit is expensive, and wildly wasteful. A typical space shuttle mission, capable of transferring about 25 tons into orbit costs close to half a billion dollars, requires months of planning and a small army of support staff. Access to space is neither easy, nor routine.

However, the space shuttle paradigm is only one model of space access. For example, the UK company Reaction Engines has been designing and testing elements of the Skylon launch vehicle, which would utilize an air-breathing rocket to access earth orbit with just a single stage engine.

Using the ‘Sabre’ engine, Skylon would require much less propellant than any conventional rocket, and would reduce launch costs by about 23 times, making access to space far cheaper and, possibly, ushering in a new era of exploration as the technology is adopted.

This is just one example of many “disruptive technologies” that would provide us with cheap and easy access to space. Possibly the most exciting examples of ‘easy space access’ is the Space Elevator concept, popularized by Arthur C. Clarke in his novel ‘The Fountains of Paradise.’

The central idea behind a Space Elevator involves lowering a cable — perhaps constructed from asteroid material — from geostationary Earth orbit to the surface of the Earth. The cable would connect with some point on Earth located at the equator, and would allow mass to be transferred to orbit using electricity instead of rocket fuel. Prices for space access would be approximately $100 per pound, or about 100 times cheaper than conventional launch systems.

Skylon, the Space Elevator and other pioneering technologies are receiving serious attention within the space community and any breakthroughs over the coming decades would profoundly change our attitudes toward space exploration.

2. Commercialization of Space

Space exploration is often seen as an expensive adventure, with little return to the economy, or the investor. I would argue that the Apollo program accelerated the development of miniaturization technologies, including the microprocessor — now responsible for multi-billion dollar industries.

However, it’s important for investors to see tangible, rapid and direct returns on their investments. Thus, one critical component to accelerating the construction of an interstellar mission will be the commercialization of space.

John Lewis, in his book “Mining the Sky,” estimates that one of the closest asteroids to the Earth holds a mineral wealth upward of $15 trillion. To put this in perspective, this is about the same as the entire annual GDP of the United States.

When you keep in mind that there are millions of such asteroids within our solar system alone, one can quickly see how space mining could very quickly become a terrific commercial opportunity. Currently, the Return on Investment for any space mining enterprise would be very low (likely not profitable at all) due to launch costs mentioned earlier. However, if the disruptive technologies currently being explored are shown to be realistic, then the commercialization of space could begin in earnest.

Space policy/law currently imposes extremely high tariffs on any materials returned from outer space, and so this law would have to be revisited to really cultivate an entrepreneurial environment to truly capitalize on the abundant resources within our solar system, but this is certainly within our grasp, and is really nothing more than a bureaucratic hurdle.

3. Breakthroughs in Fusion Technology

The real Holy Grail for an interstellar mission will be breakthroughs in our ability to harness thermonuclear energy — namely fusion. Nuclear fusion is what powers all Main Sequence stars in the universe, and efforts to exploit this energy have been ongoing for decades.

Although the challenges are certainly intricate, to say the least, they are not insurmountable. For example, the National Ignition Facility located in Livermore, California, is predicting a major milestone accomplishment of ignition sometime in 2011/2012. While breakthroughs in fusion may appear slow to the public, leaps in our understanding of how to harness this energy are being made daily around the world, and it’s only a matter of time until a working commercial reactor is constructed.

Interestingly, a number of high profile entrepreneurs are investing a lot of money into non-government fusion research programs. For example, Jeff Bezos, Chairman and CEO of Amazon, with a net worth of about $18 billion, has recently invested almost $20 million in a privately held Canadian energy company. It may be that a maverick research organization beats the government behemoths to the finishing line.

Once fusion is better understood, and is being harnessed routinely, it’s a small leap to apply that technology for propulsion purposes. Pound for pound, fusion releases about one million times more energy than conventional chemical rocket fuel, and could conceivably propel a spacecraft to a reasonable fraction of the speed of light, and produce an interstellar rocket that could reach a nearby star on timescales of a human lifetime.

My conclusions are that the ‘safe bet’ for predicting when the first interstellar mission will occur will always lie hundreds of years into the future. But certain pieces to the interstellar puzzle have the potential to fall into place far sooner, and disrupt our current approaches to thinking about this problem.

If we are to take seriously the notion of interstellar travel, and ultimately construct plans to make this happen, then we are forced to push the limits of what is possible under the most optimistic conditions.

Probes that could accomplish this seemingly extraordinary task may be within our grasp, if the appropriate studies are supported today.

The incredible thing, to many, is that all of this can be done without the help of space aliens. Although, if they want to drop by and offer a few helpful pointers, I’m sure they’d be welcomed with open arms. One thing is certain, there is money to be made in space and, because that is so, trade will come sooner rather than later.

Our old pal, Ian O’Neill, wanted to share a video with you that might help you comprehend the joys of space travel. I’ll let him tell you about it.

What do you get when you mix space exploration with an industrial rock band? If you’re thinking a bunch of Klingons trying their hand at slash metal, you’re not the only one. However, if you asked designer/director Chris Abbas a very different blend of space music would result.

Using archival footage from the Cassini Solstice mission, which continues to dazzle us earthlings with incredible imagery from the Saturnian system, and a tune from the band Nine Inch Nails, a rather surprising — and atmospheric — experience awaits.

CASSINI MISSION from Chris Abbas on Vimeo.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Thursday morning around 9:10!

I’ve been so preoccupied with the de-evolutionary process on display in Florida and all the other silliness that’s been happening around this great land of ours, I’ve neglected to take a peek around the world. And, boy oh boy, I have missed some fun stuff. In fact I had to whittle down today’s blog to one country just to keep this from overflowing all over the internet. I mean, seriously, we live on a planet full of whack jobs.

But, as I said, I’m going to focus on one portion of the world. So, let’s get started.

Do you like i-Pads? Always thought it might be fun to own one? Or, if you own one already, do you brag about how much it cost you? Maybe you knew a guy who knew a guy? After all, that’s a traditional Chicago way to make purchases. But, and I feel as though I’m on a sturdy limb here, would you sell a kidney to get one? Peter Foster tells the story of the idiot who didn’t realize that a black market kidney was worth $10,000 and got an i-Pad instead.

The 17-year-old boy, identified only by his surname, “Zheng”, confessed to his mother that he had sold the kidney after spotting an online advertisement offering cash to anyone prepared to become an organ donor.

“I wanted to buy an iPad 2, but I didn’t have the money,” the boy told Shenzhen TV in the southern province of Guangdong, “When I surfed the internet I found an advert posted online by agent saying they were able to pay RMB20,000 to buy a kidney.” After negotiations, the boy travelled north to the city of Chenzhou in Hunan Province where the kidney was removed at a local hospital which discharged him after three days, paying a total of RMB22,000 for the organ.

Trading organs online is a common practice in China, despite repeated attempts by China’s government to stamp out the practice. Last year Japanese television reported that a group of “transplant tourists” had paid £50,000 to receive new kidneys in China.

According to official statistics more than a million people in China need a transplant every year, but fewer than 10,000 receive organs, driving an almost unstoppable black-market organ trade that enriches brokers, doctors and corrupt government officials.

The boy, who has suffered complications following the surgery, returned home but was unable to keep what he had done from his mother.

“When he came back, he had a laptop and a new Apple handset,” his mother, identified as Miss Liu, told the station, showing off the livid red scar where her son’s kidney was removed, “I wanted to know how he had got so much money and he finally confessed that he had sold one of his kidneys.”

The mother took the son back to Chenzhou to report the crime to the police, however, the mobiles of the three agents that Zheng had contacted were all switched off.

The hospital, which admitted contracting out its urology department to a private businessman, denied any knowledge of the surgery.

The case, which caused an online furore, was cited by some as an extreme example of the rampant materialism of modern China.

Thousands of comments were posted on internet discussion groups, with many lamenting the lack of rule of law in China and the “immorality” of the new, ‘capitalist’ China.

“This is a failure of education, the first purpose of which is to ‘propagate morality’,” said one comment on Hong Kong’s Phoenix TV website, “This teenager’s stupid behaviour is a manifestation of his radically materialistic values.” “To sell a kidney in order to buy consumer goods? What vanity!” added another, “It is undeniable that modern Chinese teenagers’ morality is declining. This is something we must all think about.”

Apple products like the iPhone and the iPad are in huge demand in China, and are seen as a badge of wealth and sophistication by young consumers.

Last month scuffles broke out among desperate shoppers outside several Beijing Apple Stores as they queued to buy the newly launched iPad2 and white iPhone4.

Not to belittle the rampant hyperbole on the state sponsored blogs, but it isn’t as though there’s been an outbreak of teenagers selling their kidneys, or any other organs, just to grab the latest Steve Jobs’ toy.

But, see, if this kid truly knew about capitalism he would have sold the kidney for cash and then used the money to buy the toy he wanted and still had more than $9,000 to play with.

Oh well, at least the buyer didn’t eat it.

You see, William Wan reports that one group of Chinese consumers want to eat dogs and another group wants to make them pets. And, now, the two have collided in a scene straight out of Fast and the Furious.

The mutts were destined for the dinner table – all 520 of them crammed onto a truck hurtling down a Beijing highway toward waiting restaurants in northeastern China.

Then fate intervened in the form of a passing driver, an animal lover who spotted the truck and angrily forced it off the road.

From there, things began spiraling out of control. News of the confrontation hit the Chinese blogosphere, sending more than 200 animal activists flocking immediately to the highway. Traffic on the road slowed to a standstill. Dozens of police officers were called in. Animal activists, however, kept arriving with reinforcements, carrying water, dog food, even trained veterinarians for a siege that ended up lasting 15 hours.

Weeks later, those who were there still talk in disbelief at how quickly things escalated. But in many ways, it was a battle that has been brewing for years between the rural and the urbanites, the poor and the rich – between the dog eaters of China and the growing number of dog lovers.

The standoff last month has sparked the widest ranging discussions to date in China over animal rights. Pictures and videos from the incident have spawned endless arguments on e-mail groups and blogs, Web polls and news stories delving into each sides’ points.

And the debate is the latest sign of China’s rapidly changing mores and culture. For centuries, dog meat has been coveted for its fragrant and unique flavor, an especially popular dish in the winter when it is believed to keep you warm. But pet ownership has skyrocketed in recent years as China’s booming economy produced a burgeoning middle class with both money and time for four-legged friends. And with the new pet stores, a once powerless animal rights movement is slowly gaining traction.

Where to put them all?

The highway incident has been its biggest success thus far. The mob of dog lovers finally won the standoff by pooling together more than $17,000 to pay off the truck driver. But their victory was quickly eclipsed when they soon realized they had no idea where to house the hundreds of loud, wild and decidedly not-housebroken canines.

Even after combining forces, the handful of animal rights groups in the region had trouble handling the overflow from the truck. Most of the dogs they unloaded were strays, and many were dehydrated, malnourished or suffering from deadly viruses. Several have died since the rescue. Dozens this week remained under treatment at animal hospitals around Beijing.
“We are a small organization. We haven’t even tried to pay the animal hospital bills yet,” said Wang Qi, 32, who works at the China Small Animal Protection Association. “There was so much enthusiasm when the dogs were first rescued, but our worry is what happens now?”

The trucker has not fared any better in the aftermath.

Reached by phone in his home province of Henan, dog transporter Hao Xiaomao said he lost a small fortune, more than $3,000, after being forced into the deal. Worst of all, because he failed to deliver, no one has been willing to hire him since.

“I still don’t understand what was immoral about my shipment. People also eat cow and sheep. What’s the difference?” he asked. “They were just a group of rich bullies who own pets and have nothing better to do.”

Several others have also raised the specter of class warfare – a common meme in modern China amid the widening gap between rich and poor. In online debates, many have noted the symbolic nature of the confrontation: a working trucker forced off the road by a black Mercedes-Benz, whose owner was on his way to a hotel resort with his girlfriend.

The whole issue comes with historical baggage as well, notes Jiang Jinsong, a philosophy professor at Tsinghua University. “During the Cultural Revolution, having a pet was seen as a capitalist activity. Only the rich and arrogant had dogs and allowed them to bite poor people,” he said. “So there’s this implication that if you treated pets well, you will treat those who are weaker badly.”

At least one netizen has taken this argument to the extreme. Enraged by activists fighting for animals while ignoring the plight of so many rural, impoverished Chinese, a man in Guangzhou posted threats online to kill a dog a day until animal activists donate the money they raised to the poor peasants instead of the dogs.

“I felt I had to do something to represent the grass-roots people,” said Zhu Guangbing, 35, who recently plastered his threat on Twitter-like microblogs in China. “I grew up in a poor village. We raised one dog to watch the door and one to be killed in the Lunar New Year because we were too poor to buy pork. I don’t understand what’s wrong with that.”

Within days, Zhu found his name, cellphone number, office number, even the phone number for his parents posted online.

Insults from the young ones

“My parents got calls condemning them for raising a son like me,” he said, having logged over 200 threats so far. “One elementary school teacher even called me and had her students insult me over the phone one by one.”

But dog activists have defended their fervor as a necessity. China still lacks a single law against cruelty to animals, and by some estimates, as many as 10 million dogs – some vagrant, others stolen pets – are sold for consumption each year and are often kept under horrible conditions.

“People are saying it’s a silly thing protecting animals,” said Wang, the activist. “But it is a question of civilization.

“By teaching people in this country to love little animals, maybe we can help them to love their fellow human beings better.”

Zhu, the netizen who posted the online threat, however, scoffed at that notion. Last week, he was forced to quit his job after his company began receiving threatening calls as well.

“I didn’t even intend to kill dogs. I was just making a point,” he said. “The animal activists claim to have the moral high ground, but look at what they did to me. Can they really say they have love at the front of their heart?”

See, that’s why Chinese animal rights activists should take their cues from their American counterparts. The nice people at PETA just rip off their clothes in umbrage and then go drink champagne while the rest of us go back to our burgers.

In the meantime, if you want to make some good coin, take your chihuahua and i-Pad to Beijing and make sure to only accept cash.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Thursday morning around 9:10!

I got several emails from people wanting me to cover the story about the Kansas City gator. I get why, it’s funny. Even though there are no gators in KC, the cops showed up and shot the holy heck out of one, which turned out to be a lawn ornament. Like I said, it’s funny but what else can I say about it? KC cops are too slow on one kind of draw and too fast on the other? Most of the stories that got printed about this are forced to pad for space by referencing other fake animal stories from around the world. Obviously they get paid by the word. But, so no one will feel cheated and so I can keep this in line with the theme of today’s blog, if you do manage to catch yourself a gator please feel free to try out some of these yummy gator recipes.

In other parts of America we are fighting obesity problems, high blood pressure in children and many other food related health issues. A lot of these stem from the fact that we park our kids in front of an X-Box and keep them indoors. Not because we are anti-exercise but because we are anti-being-a-victim-of-a-drive-by-shooting. Any conversation about children’s health has to include that factor or it will be meaningless in modern society. This is just as true in the meth-lab laden rural areas as it is in the crack addicted urban ones.

But one company is bucking that healthy eating trend and going for an all out push to market sandwiches in a can. And, because they have very clever marketing people, they are calling it the Canwidch.

No, I am not making this up.

The Candwich, which has a shelf life of a year, has just gone on sale in the US and online, selling for £7 for a four-pack or £44 for 24.

Twelve flavours are planned, including US-style peanut butter and grape jelly, BBQ chicken and pepperoni pizza.

The peanut butter version requires diners to spread sachets of the filling on to the bread but the rest have the fillings baked inside, like a pasty.

Creator Mark Kirkland, from Markonefoods, said: ‘My original idea was to stack cookies in a soft drink can to sell in soft drink vending machines.

‘I started looking for a technology for shelf stable sandwiches, which I wanted because it was a healthy and convenient meal.’

The Candwich’s long shelf life is achieved by controlling water, pH and oxygen levels in the packaging.

Yeah, nothing says “heart healthy” like chicken slathered in barbecue sauce and stuck in a Pringles can.

Of course, may people prefer their food more “au natural.” Literally. So, in an effort to placate their needs the Japanese, of course it’s the freaking Japanese, have come up with a fun way to combine cannibalism and fine dining.

What? You never once in your sordid existence thought of mixing those two? Why aren’t you just the silly Hippo?

Japan as a country never stops amazing us. I am sure you have heard of, or seen the “Nyotaimori” (literally means female body plate), where the restaurant serves sushi and sashimi on a naked woman’s body.

If that is not weird enough , Japan has just invented another way of eating, where a “body” is made from food and placed on an operating table, much as though in a hospital.

You can operate anyway and anywhere you want by cutting open the body and eating what you find inside. The body will actually bleed as you cut it and the intestines and organs inside are completely editable. It’s a banquet of Cannibalism.

However, maybe you’re a purist. You don’t want any fake blood and organs, you want your food preppared the way God intended. Or, to be blunt, you thought Sweeney Todd had the right idea. Sophie Borland tells us of the fun loving German Airmen who tried to sell sausages made from human blood.

Two German air force sergeants are facing a court martial after trying to mass produce sausages made with the blood of their comrades.

The two men, who are based at Fürstenfeldbruck, a fighter squadron headquarters, near Munich had already trialed a traditional receipe using their own blood.

But they were caught trying to recruit fellow servicemen and family members to ensure a constant flow of raw materials.

One of the soldiers posted pictures of himself on a popular German website siphoning off their blood and adding it to a recipe for the traditional Blotwurst sausage using onions, bacon, spices and breadcrumbs.

The incident only came to the attention of senior officers after one of their fellow soldiers reported the fact that he had been asked to donate some blood for the scheme.

The man is reported to have said: “I have been asked to give blood for sausage-making and I want to know if this is against regulations.”

The sergeants, aged 25 and 29 and identified only as B and G, were suspended immediately last December, the German defence ministry confirmed yesterday.

The recipe for the sausage, which apparently came from one of their grandmothers, was found in the belongings of one of the men after they were arrested.

It read: “Make sure the blood is fresh and the bacon cubes diced finely with a nice proportion of fat to lean. Do not use too many breadcrumbs but if the blood starts to curdle stir in a teaspoon of wine vinegar.”

Why Grandma, what big fangs you have.

Seriously granny? You were popping leeches on the neighbors so you could spice up your Schnitzel?

Sadly, though, granny’s not the only necrophiliac out there today. In America it used to be a common mobster expression to say “His corpse’s sleeping with the fishes.” In India they flipped that around to read “the fishes are sleeping with the corpses.”

What could possibly go wrong?

People in Tripura, India were shocked to hear the fish they purchased might have spent the night with a human corpse.

Fish traders in Tripura have been storing hilsa, a kind of fish, in the morgue of a local hospital with the help of some of the hospital’s employees.

The fish was stored in cooling boxes together with human corpses. The charge for this service was about $ 0.20 per kilogram per night. That’s pretty cheap compared to private storage charges.

The idea seemed perfect: fish traders could store their fish for no money at all and the corrupt employees made a quick buck with no effort at all.

Unfortunately, for the people involved, the scheme was uncovered by a local reporter who went undercover as a fish trader. The unsuspecting hospital employees showed the reporter how they stored the fish together with corpses in morgue boxes.

The Indian health minister ordered an inquiry and suspended one of the employees.

Only one? That seems awfully kind of him. My guess is that more heads will roll, maybe to serve as fish food, before this all is over.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Thursday morning around 9:10!

The stunning, hometown hotty Erin Heatherton made her way back to Chicago… and we got to chat!  Erin, who hails from Skokie, is a full-fledged supermodel — who’s currently on tour for the Victoria’s Secret Bombshell Summer.  Her stop home is among several other major cities including Miami, Dallas and Toronto, Canada. Fans can get inside access to the tour on Facebook.

Heatherton slid into home, and in true Chicago spirit she threw the first pitch at Wrigley Field on Wednesday, May 25, 2011. You can SEE her throw the first pitch HERE. Also, it’s hard not to “like” Erin– so do it here on facebook :), I did!

I had so much fun at Victoria’s Secret flagship store on Michigan Avenue, where they offered personalized makeup touch-ups, bra and swimsuit fittings. They also had an amazing in-store Customer Event from 3 to 5 p.m., where shoppers were invited to mix and mingle with this hometown beauty — they even got photos with her! Erin showed customers how to be a true bombshell with the Bombshell collection, which offers all the summer essentials.

This bona-fide supermodel not only graces the pages of Victoria’s Secret, but has also been seen on international runways for several TOP designers, and on the cover of magazines! Here she is posing in all her beauty as photographers snap away :).

Make it a Bombshell Summer, and get that bronzed/shimmery glow…. Wondering how to get that supermodel look?? Well, here’s some tips from Victoria’s Secret! Just watch the video below:

We live in an age of many wonders. Sure we don’t have jet packs or mass teleportation or the ability to communicate telepathically, but there are still some very cool things around us. This blog, for example. When I was a little Big Bad the only computers in existence were at NASA and in sci-fi movies. If I wanted to impart my wisdom upon you I would have needed a job at a newspaper or been willing to print my own scandal sheet and sell it on street corners. Now I can wake up, toss a cup of cheap java down my gullet and have at it. Of course just typing it doesn’t guarantee that anyone’s going to read it, but I seem to have gotten lucky in that regard. We now have cars that can run on batteries alone, planes that can fly at 5 times the speed of sound and phones that we can stick in our pockets. Some people stick their phones in other places but this blog is reasonably family oriented so we’ll ignore them. Simply put, there’s some very cool stuff out there that many of us take for granted.

However you know me better than to worry that I would waste your day opining about neat toys. No, if I’m going to write about stuff you don’t know then I’m probably going to write about stuff you really didn’t want to know.

To give you an idea, let’s start by talking about devil worms. Dave Mosher writes that scientists have discovered a new worm that lives miles beneath the surface and, technically, it shouldn’t, and couldn’t, be there.

A “devil worm” has been discovered miles under the Earth—the deepest-living animal ever found, a new study says.

The new nematode species—called Halicephalobus mephisto partly for Mephistopheles, the demon of Faustian legend—suggests there’s a rich new biosphere beneath our feet.

Before the discovery of the newfound worm at depths of 2.2. miles (3.6 kilometers), nematodes were not known to live beyond dozens of feet (tens of meters) deep. Only microbes were known to occupy those depths—organisms that, it turns out, may be the food of the 0.5-millimeter-long worm.

“That sounds small, but to me it’s like finding a whale in Lake Ontario. These creatures are millions of times bigger than the bacteria they feed on,” said study co-author Tullis Onstott, a geomicrobiologist at Princeton University in New Jersey.

Here’s an odd bit of trivia that will keep you awake for months; nematodes are segmented creatures and if one segment dies they simply replace it. So, barring a catastrophe, they can live forever. That means there are immortal worms living miles beneath your feet that are billions of times larger than the food they eat.

Sleep well.

Speaking of sleeping well, it turns out that homeless people are going to have a harder time doing that now since shelters are now charging for them to spend the night. Christina Hoag reports that more and more shelters are now being touted as Homeless Hotels.

Skid Row resident Dadisi Komolafe points indignantly to the sign reading “Union Rescue Mission,” and grumbles that the name no longer fits since the shelter started charging for a nightly stay.

“They should change it to `Union Hotel’,” said the nearly toothless jazz musician, who sleeps on the street. “If you have to pay to stay there, it’s not a mission. A lot of people are getting turned away.”

For decades, four missions have given out “three hots and a cot” for free in downtown Los Angeles’ Skid Row, where 4,000 down-on-their-luck people cram a 50-block area to form the nation’s densest concentration of homeless people. The overflow from the shelters — nearly 1,000 people — spills nightly onto urine-stained sidewalks in a bedlam of tents, cardboard boxes and sleeping bags.

Two months ago, Union Rescue started charging $7 for an overnight stay, and cut its three free meals a day to one.

The move was driven by budget woes caused by the pinch of plummeting funding and soaring demand. But Andy Bales, the mission’s chief executive, said he had been trying to institute fees for several years under a philosophy that homeless people should learn self-sufficiency. Faced with similar crunches, more shelters are taking that view.

“We’ve increased our sustainability, but we really think people are feeling better about themselves if they’re not just taking handouts,” Bales said.

Just FYI, general relief, the stipend that the state pays to homeless people so they can survive, is around $200.00 a month. Even if they gave up eating they couldn’t afford to stay there for a month.

I’m sure this will all work out just fine as more and more homeless people start migrating into nicer neighborhoods so they can feel safer. They may as well if there’s no place for them to sleep anywhere else.

Not all of the stories today are scary or depressing, the next one involves Florida so you know you’re going to laugh. Todd Wright reports on a man who asked his girlfriend to shoot him in the heart to prove his love, so she did.

A South Florida teen’s attempt at a stunt you might see on MTV’s “Jackass” ended with him in a hospital and barely surviving thanks to what doctors call a very unique heart.

Gabriel Mendigutia, 19, dared his girlfriend, Ally Castro, to shoot him in the chest with his pellet rifle at near point blank range, a Miami-Dade Police report read.

Castro allegedly closed her eyes and pulled the trigger and the pellet went directly through Mendigutia’s heart, eventually getting lodged in his back, Mendigutia told the Miami Herald reported.

The stunt gone wrong would have killed most people, doctors at Jackson Memorial Hospital said.

But Mendigutia’s heart is special.

Despite the hole in his heart’s main artery, Mendigutia’s heart was able to pump blood around the bullet wound because of a “very rare” anatomical anomaly, doctors said.

“He is a miracle case because so many things went in his favor,” said Dr. Nicholas Namias, who performed the surgery to save Mendigutia’s life May 23.

Miami-Dade Police have ruled the incident an accidental shooting and Castro isn’t expected to face any charges.

Of course his heart is special. Where else would someone with mutant organs live but in Florida? Hopefully they’ll get married and this will become some sort of annual event to celebrate their undying, literally, love.

Maybe he’s part nematode.

Last, but certainly not least, it’s time to take a look at pole dancing. Ever since 2008, when Mormon moms wanted to add “Pole dancing for Jesus” as an Olympic sport – it’s okay, it’s in Corinthians – pole dancing has been making its way out of seedy night clubs and sweaty back rooms into the mainstream. And now, thanks to David Moye, we know that it’s being done on streets near you.

Yes, even you.

Now that pole dancing has moved out of strip clubs and into gyms, it seems only natural that it would end up in the streets.

That’s what happened recently in Medellin, Colombia, when some of the South American country’s most accomplished dancers took the street to promote the activity by swinging, twirling and climbing up every street sign and scaffold available.

The mass pole dance featured students and instructors based in Medellin. It was designed to promote pole dancing in Colombia as well as Miss Pole Dance Medellin, an event taking place July 2, and “Miss Pole Dance Colombia,” an event taking place July 30.

Organizer Alejandra Santamaria said the street-smart campaign is crucial to getting her fellow Colombians to recognize pole dancing as a great form of fitness.

“We wanted to promote what pole dance can be: a great deal of gymnastics, lots of technique and fun,” she told AOL Weird News. “Pole dance has still lots of space to grow. As of today, it is not even understood. In Latin America, many still think it is related to striptease and they have no clue about the challenge it represents.”

But as difficult as pole dancing can be in a gym or on a stage with a shiny brass pole, the techniques are even more difficult when practiced on wooden stakes or metal street signs, according to Ingrid Tsai, Santamaria’s partner in pole dance promotion.

“The hardest part in urban pole dancing is finding a structure with a good caliber,” Tsai said. “Usually, dancing poles have a diameter of 1.75 to two inches. Apart from the caliber, the material in street structures can make the job harder. Dancing poles are made from stainless steel or brass, which facilitates the friction you need to have between your skin and the surface.”

There you have it ladies, find a good pole with friction and hop on it to have at it.

That sounded dirtier than I intended, but I don’t care.

Here, at the World News Center we’ve had a “dancing pole” in the office since it opened. It’s how our female staff says so svelte. It’s also why the male staff shows up every day even though we haven’t been paid in months.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Thursday morning around 9:10!

Were you ever a kid? I was. I remember being told to use my imagination or it would wither and die. Pencils became rocket ships soaring through the darkling skies to the volleyball satellite where the evil moss people were holding Princess Pouty Lips prisoner and it was up to you, Captain Dirk Studly, to save her. Or, maybe, as a little girl you imagined yourself as a powerful Queen ruling your lands with a firm, but fair, hand and drinking tea with other Queens until you met King Clean-Cut and held hands beneath the oh-so-romantic moon. Oh, c’mon, you were a kid, all of the other stuff Queens and Kings might do wasn’t even on your radar. If you played a sport you’d picture yourself scoring the game winning goal, run, point, etc., and then make that cool cheering sound that only kids can make. In your head it sounded like the accolades of hundreds of thousands of adoring fans. Poets, artists and musicians all retain a semblance of that childlike innocence and it allows them to tap into your core emotions and resonate with your soul.

All of this brings us to the story of Alan Kimble Fahey. Sometime around 1981 he bought some land and began building on it. And building and building and building. What he built was a true Wonderland. Some 70 rooms scattered so widely that it requires a scooter to travel from one end to the other. It has been the focus of music videos, fashion shoots and numerous positive mentions in so many publications that it boggles the mind. So, naturally, the fine morons who run the Los Angeles zoning department want to tear it down.

I guess they need room for a WalMart.

Liz Goodwin has the whole, stupid, story.

Los Angeles county officials are demanding that a creative homeowner tear down a 20,000-square-foot domicile he calls “Phonehenge West”–or face up to seven years in jail.

Former telephone technician Alan Kimble Fahey began building the structure three decades ago in Acton, the Los Angeles Times reports. Fahey, who christened the project “Phonehenge” because it sits atop pilings modified from phone utility poles, says he intends to turn the compound into a museum.

The labyrinthine network of buildings where Fahey, his wife, and teenage son live even includes a 70-foot tower covered in Italian stained-glass windows, and a barn. Fahey uses a “motorized cart” to get between buildings, an earlier report said.

The paper describes the compound as “a hodgepodge of reddish buildings braced with scores of utility poles and steel beams and connected by bridges and ramps.” Inside, the castle is filled with more than 20,000 books, and a yurt–though Fahey and his wife sleep on a single-sized water bed and cook on a tiny stove. Tourists come from all over to gaze at the creation, Fahey says, and Glamour magazine even staged a photo shoot there.

Fahey has attracted popular support for his labor of love. More than 1,000 people have liked a Facebook page called “Save Phonehenge West.” And a national group that opposes “abusive” building codes, F.A.C.E.OFF (Fight Against Code Enforcement Office), is also backing Fahey. The compound has been admiringly featured on home design web sites.

A jury began hearing the county’s case against Fahey last week: He is charged with 14 criminal misdemeanor counts, including unlawful use of land. L.A. County deputy District Attorney David Campbell told the paper that Fahey repeatedly ignored city officials’ warnings that he was violating multiple municipal building safety and fire codes and thinks he is above the law.

“He has set up his own arrogant interpretation of the law,” Campbell told the paper.

Fahey’s lawyer Jerry Lennon says county officials were negligent in enforcing their own rules, leaving his client alone for two decades before deciding to crack down.

“This is an exceptional place,” an L.A.-area advocate for code reform, David Lewis, told the L.A. Times. “Most of the properties that are involved in code enforcement actions are not visually striking. It’s something the public can look at. It’s something special that shouldn’t be demolished.”

Before I continue I must thank my buddy, Bill Ward, a pretty creative guy in his own right, for turning me onto this story yesterday. Second, if you want to check out, or join, Mr. Fahey’s Facebook page, just click here. He has lots of pics and some basics about the construction of the compound.

For example, the main tower was built on telephone poles and those were reinforced with steel I-beams and can withstand 100 mph winds.

See, this is the problem. This isn’t some ghetto construction, nor is it some shoddy track-home project where every house looks the same and is made from cardboard. No, this is a work of art built to the highest quality construction standards you could ever imagine.

And it isn’t like he built it in a vacuum. It’s been there for 3 decades and has garnered the city of Los Angeles a lot of good press which, considering how most press releases emanating from the left coast usually start with the words “Corrupt” or “Police Brutality Alleged ….,” would make you think they’d welcome Mr. Fahey and his family with open arms.

I know it’s asking a lot for a judge to show common sense, but hope springs eternal.

If not, then all creativity will remain the sole purview of young people who are waiting in line to have their souls crushed by the gnashing gears of a subhuman corporate oligarchy.

70 Million by Hold Your Horses ! from L'Ogre on Vimeo.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Thursday morning around 9:10!