According to the BBC News, “The world’s first film shot entirely by chimpanzees is to be broadcast by the BBC as part of a natural history documentary. The apes created the movie using a specially designed chimp-proof camera given to them by primatologists.”

This is good news, as the demise of television has progressed to the point of idiocy.

The irony – monkeys in blue jeans watching the Chimp Network.

posted by Mudd

As reported by NPR – “How bad is all that salt in the food you eat? Let’s put it this way, if everyone in the country ate just a half-teaspoon less salt each day, it would save the lives of between 44,000 and 92,000 people a year.”

Or so says the New England Journal of Medicine.

Half a teaspoon a day less salt? How much of the white stuff are we eating? The “average American gets about 10.4 grams of salt a day; women consume about 7.3 grams a day.”

U R what U eat.

posted by mudd

Interesting book review in the New York Times re: Rewilding the World, Dispatches From the Conservation Revolution, by Caroline Fraser.

An idea developed by Dave Foreman, Michael Soulé, Reed Noss, and others, “rewilding” is all about “the restoration of animal habitats and the importance of migration corridors.” And that includes some fun critters that roam the wild: large carnivores.

Any tome postulating the rewilding of America’s shattered landscape is worth the look. But it still comes back to the bottom line, rewild or not – too many hungry members of Homo erectus asphaltus crashes ecosystem viability.

Corridors and critters are a lofty goal. But until we deal with our impacts to carrying capacity, it’s all academic.

Want a bail-out package that works? Free condoms!

posted y Mudd

In the “ain’t that weird department,” we have news that “International hotel chain Holiday Inn is offering a trial human bed-warming service at three hotels in Britain this month. If requested, a willing staff-member at two of the chain’s London hotels and one in the northern English city of Manchester will dress in an all-in-one fleece sleeper suit before slipping between the sheets.” [MSNBC]

Human bed warmer?

This raises certain possibilities.

posted by Mudd

As reported by the Environmental News Network – “A study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) shows that Springtime ozone levels above western North America are rising, primarily due to air flowing eastward from the Pacific Ocean, a trend that is most significant when the air originates in Asia.”

Looks like “made in China” is taking on a whole new meaning.

posted by Mudd

As reported in the New York Times – “As awareness of environmental concerns has grown, therapists say they are seeing a rise in bickering between couples and family members over the extent to which they should change their lives to save the planet.”

E-gad: The Green Meanies! First it was a fight against developers and other assorted scalawags; now the Greens are fighting amongst themselves.

As one erudite “therapist” puts it -“One still wants to live the American dream with all that means, and the other wants to give up on big materialistic consumption,” Dr. Brulle said. “Those may not be compatible.”

What? The American Dream is about “big materialistic consumption”?

This is rich. There’s gotta be some way to turn this shindig into a money making, reality TV show.

Calling Follywood!

posted by Mudd

You have to love this headline from the TimesOnline: World misled over Himalayan glacier meltdown.

Oops. Another slice of globaloney?

“Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was the world’s glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035.”

It’s now come to light that “the claim was ‘speculation’ and was not supported by any formal research. If confirmed it would be one of the most serious failures yet seen in climate research.”

Stay tuned; the climate debates are getting interesting.

posted by Mudd

As reported in the New York Times, “The era of the mobile gadget is making mobility that much more perilous, particularly on crowded streets and in downtown areas where multiple multitaskers veer and swerve and walk to the beat of their own devices.”

Oh, ain’t it awful, especially since “…. more than 1,000 pedestrians visited emergency rooms in 2008 because they got distracted and tripped, fell or ran into something while using a cellphone to talk or text.”

We’re talking about allegedly intelligent people walking into storefront windows while engaged in sidewalk cell phone gab. Gum-flapping is taking on a whole new meaning.

And it makes Homo erectus asphaltus look even dumber than previously suspected.

And now for the free advice – “shut up and walk.”

posted by Mudd

And now for a refreshing look at the problems associated with crowd sourcing. And this time through the lens of a seriously bad-ass cyber-freak: Jaron Lanier. Coming to us via the New York Times, Monsieur Lanier suggests that the “wisdom of the crowd” isn’t always as wise as it might appear. In fact, crowd sourcing can be little more than a bad mash-up of lame ideas. Where’s the beef?

You have to admire a Cyber Guru willing to state the obvious – “pop culture has entered into a nostalgic malaise.” Jimmy Carter would be proud. How about this for a fun idea: “…the new collectivist ethos — embodied by everything from Wikipedia to ‘American Idol’ to Google searches — diminishes the importance and uniqueness of the individual voice, and that the ‘hive mind’ can easily lead to mob rule.” Ahoy!

Lanier has a new book out – You Are Not a Gadget.

I’m off to the local bookstore before some gadget nerds pull off a mash-up of Lanier’s tome on YouBoob.

posted by Mudd

There seems to be no end to Homo erectus asphaltus’ anthropocentric bias. Even the New York Times’ erudite writers are not immune to this rampant side-step in our strange evolutionary path. Take this fun pronouncement in an article entitled: “Deciphering the Chatter of Monkeys and Chimps” —

“…. monkeys have been around for 30 million years without saying a single sentence. Chimps, too, have nothing resembling language, though they shared a common ancestor with humans just five million years ago. What is it that has kept all other primates locked in the prison of their own thoughts?”

Locked in a prison of their own thoughts? How quaint. At least the writer acknowledges that monkeys think, a quantum leap in some circles. But only the hubris of our species’ Shakespearean world view is seriously stuck on whether monkeys are on the short end of the language stick. How about dolphins, whales, and mockingbirds? Or oak trees? Or Jimi Hendrix, for that matter?

As one White Lab Coat guy (the mysterious Dr. Zuberbühler) says. “There is nothing to talk about for a chimp because he has no interest in talking about it.”

To which the rest of Creation replies – “Horseshit, Herr Dr. Zuberbühler!” Of course, that translates into many dialects, depending on whether you’re into brachiation or not.

How tedious. I’m going outside to talk to my dog.

posted by Mudd