Monday, 26 October 2009
Customs officials in Norway have arrested a man who they say tried to smuggle 24 reptiles into the country by taping them to his body.
Fourteen royal pythons rolled up in socks were found taped to the man's torso and 10 geckos held in small boxes were taped to his legs.
Officials were alerted to the illegal haul after a tarantula was found in the man's luggage.
The 22-year-old was travelling to Kristiansand on a ferry from Denmark.
"He told us he was crazy about reptiles," the head of the local customs office, Helge Breilid, told AFP news agency on Sunday.
The snakes, which are not endangered, are the smallest of the python family and are not venomous.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8326669.stm
(Submitted by Dave McMann)
Monday, 26 October 2009
Restaurant critic Gill delights in killing a baboon
By Kunal Dutta
Monday, 26 October 2009
His hunting credentials include pheasant-seeking missions to Wiltshire with Jeremy Clarkson, and trigger-happy deliberations with the chef Marco Pierre White moments before they despatched a deer.
But now AA Gill, the outspoken restaurant critic and self-appointed arbiter of British culinary standards, might have just taken a pop too far with a column revelling in the demise of his latest gunshot victim – an entirely inedible African baboon.
Writing in yesterday's Sunday Times Style Magazine, Gill described a trip to Tanzania where, driven by the urge to embody a "recreational primate killer", he shot the ape during a safari.
"I know perfectly well there is absolutely no excuse for this," he said. "Baboon isn't good to eat, unless you're a leopard. The feeble argument for cull and control is much the same as for foxes: a veil of naughty fun."
The comments, which to his critics will smack of Oscar Wilde's famous quotation about fox-hunters ("the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable"), have angered animal welfare charities, which yesterday brandished the act "utterly morally reprehensible".
Douglas Batchelor, chief executive of the League Against Cruel Sports, said: "There is no excuse for taking potshots at such endangered species. The vast majority of people in this country find trophy-shootings of this sort absolutely despicable."
In Gill's column, written as a set-up to preview The Luxe restaurant in London, he described baboons as "no stupider than Piers Morgan".
"They see you, they sod off, in great gambolling gangs, babies riding mums like little jockeys," he wrote. "And they stand around on rocks and bark like Alsatians."
But a spokesman for the International Fund for Animal Welfare said the incident highlighted the growing perception of Africa's baboons as vermin or problem animals. "We are working to shift this perception and are completely opposed to the act of cold killing, which is especially rife among farmers in Africa," he added.
Mr Batchelor went even further, saying: "Baboons might not be in the same league as endangered elephants but that's not the point. Even if the world was overrun with such animals, it is not for a journalist to make the call of culling them.
"Management of animal populations should be left to people with specialist skill and knowledge, and not to restaurants critics with nothing better to do with their time."
Gill has often used hunting as the theme for his columns. In an article last year, he described an incident with Marco Pierre White in which both he and the French chef deliberated about shooting a deer, an act he described as "Ray Mears directed by Quentin Tarantino". "So I kill him and gut him, and sling the cadaver into the back of the Land Rover," Gill wrote.
"But because Marco's going on a bit, I forget to puncture the diaphragm and six pints of gelatinous gore empty into the back. Mr Ishi has to hose it out. He drives me back to London in silence, occasionally muttering: The blood. The blood."
In a column in 2003, Gill wrote: "Somebody asked me what I was going to do in Scotland. Stalking, I said. 'Oh, how exciting. Who?' 'Who? No, I'm shooting.' 'Ooh, with a long lens? I suppose it's Balmoral. You journalists are real scum.' 'No, no, I'm stalking deer and shooting them with bullets. 'Oh God, not Bambi's mother? 'No, no, of course not – Bambi's absentee father.'"
Since the Government criminalised fox-hunting in 2004, hunt groups have reported higher attendances than ever. More than 100,000 people are estimated to have taken part since the ban was implemented.
A spokesman for the RSPCA also condemned Gill's actions but said it could not act against him because the shooting took place beyond its UK jurisdiction .
Gill could not be reached for comment yesterday. But the last word could be left to Clarkson, who once wrote: "Morally reprehensible? Oh yes – but when you're out there on a chilly day with a bellyful of sloe gin and you blow a high bird clean out of the sky with a single shot, it awakens the hunter-gatherer that lurks in all men."
AA Gill: Collected wisdom
"In the range of things you can be good at, being a food or TV critic is not way up there. But it's a talent and I'm quite good at it. Can anyone do it? Is everyone's opinion worth the same? No. My opinion is worth more than other people's."
"[Gordon] Ramsay is a wonderful chef, just a really second-rate human being."
On an overly-attentive waiter in a French restaurant: "I wouldn't have been at all surprised if he'd added that the salt had been shaved from the pudendum of Lot's wife."
"We all know the Welsh are loquacious dissemblers, immoral liars, stunted, bigoted, dark, ugly, pugnacious little trolls."
On the Isle of Man: "The weather's foul, the food's medieval, it's covered in suicidal motorists and folk who believe in fairies."
"I don't like the English. One at a time, I don't mind them. I've loved some of them. It's their collective persona I can't warm to: the lumpen and louty, coarse, unsubtle, beady-eyed, beefy-bummed herd of England."
On TV show Countdown: "A displacement activity for lives circling the plughole."
"The Albanians are short and ferret-faced, with the unisex stumpy, slightly bowed legs of Shetland ponies."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/news/restaurant-critic-gill-delights-in-killing-a-baboon-1809413.html
(Submitted by Ray D.)
Monday, 26 October 2009
His hunting credentials include pheasant-seeking missions to Wiltshire with Jeremy Clarkson, and trigger-happy deliberations with the chef Marco Pierre White moments before they despatched a deer.
But now AA Gill, the outspoken restaurant critic and self-appointed arbiter of British culinary standards, might have just taken a pop too far with a column revelling in the demise of his latest gunshot victim – an entirely inedible African baboon.
Writing in yesterday's Sunday Times Style Magazine, Gill described a trip to Tanzania where, driven by the urge to embody a "recreational primate killer", he shot the ape during a safari.
"I know perfectly well there is absolutely no excuse for this," he said. "Baboon isn't good to eat, unless you're a leopard. The feeble argument for cull and control is much the same as for foxes: a veil of naughty fun."
The comments, which to his critics will smack of Oscar Wilde's famous quotation about fox-hunters ("the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable"), have angered animal welfare charities, which yesterday brandished the act "utterly morally reprehensible".
Douglas Batchelor, chief executive of the League Against Cruel Sports, said: "There is no excuse for taking potshots at such endangered species. The vast majority of people in this country find trophy-shootings of this sort absolutely despicable."
In Gill's column, written as a set-up to preview The Luxe restaurant in London, he described baboons as "no stupider than Piers Morgan".
"They see you, they sod off, in great gambolling gangs, babies riding mums like little jockeys," he wrote. "And they stand around on rocks and bark like Alsatians."
But a spokesman for the International Fund for Animal Welfare said the incident highlighted the growing perception of Africa's baboons as vermin or problem animals. "We are working to shift this perception and are completely opposed to the act of cold killing, which is especially rife among farmers in Africa," he added.
Mr Batchelor went even further, saying: "Baboons might not be in the same league as endangered elephants but that's not the point. Even if the world was overrun with such animals, it is not for a journalist to make the call of culling them.
"Management of animal populations should be left to people with specialist skill and knowledge, and not to restaurants critics with nothing better to do with their time."
Gill has often used hunting as the theme for his columns. In an article last year, he described an incident with Marco Pierre White in which both he and the French chef deliberated about shooting a deer, an act he described as "Ray Mears directed by Quentin Tarantino". "So I kill him and gut him, and sling the cadaver into the back of the Land Rover," Gill wrote.
"But because Marco's going on a bit, I forget to puncture the diaphragm and six pints of gelatinous gore empty into the back. Mr Ishi has to hose it out. He drives me back to London in silence, occasionally muttering: The blood. The blood."
In a column in 2003, Gill wrote: "Somebody asked me what I was going to do in Scotland. Stalking, I said. 'Oh, how exciting. Who?' 'Who? No, I'm shooting.' 'Ooh, with a long lens? I suppose it's Balmoral. You journalists are real scum.' 'No, no, I'm stalking deer and shooting them with bullets. 'Oh God, not Bambi's mother? 'No, no, of course not – Bambi's absentee father.'"
Since the Government criminalised fox-hunting in 2004, hunt groups have reported higher attendances than ever. More than 100,000 people are estimated to have taken part since the ban was implemented.
A spokesman for the RSPCA also condemned Gill's actions but said it could not act against him because the shooting took place beyond its UK jurisdiction .
Gill could not be reached for comment yesterday. But the last word could be left to Clarkson, who once wrote: "Morally reprehensible? Oh yes – but when you're out there on a chilly day with a bellyful of sloe gin and you blow a high bird clean out of the sky with a single shot, it awakens the hunter-gatherer that lurks in all men."
AA Gill: Collected wisdom
"In the range of things you can be good at, being a food or TV critic is not way up there. But it's a talent and I'm quite good at it. Can anyone do it? Is everyone's opinion worth the same? No. My opinion is worth more than other people's."
"[Gordon] Ramsay is a wonderful chef, just a really second-rate human being."
On an overly-attentive waiter in a French restaurant: "I wouldn't have been at all surprised if he'd added that the salt had been shaved from the pudendum of Lot's wife."
"We all know the Welsh are loquacious dissemblers, immoral liars, stunted, bigoted, dark, ugly, pugnacious little trolls."
On the Isle of Man: "The weather's foul, the food's medieval, it's covered in suicidal motorists and folk who believe in fairies."
"I don't like the English. One at a time, I don't mind them. I've loved some of them. It's their collective persona I can't warm to: the lumpen and louty, coarse, unsubtle, beady-eyed, beefy-bummed herd of England."
On TV show Countdown: "A displacement activity for lives circling the plughole."
"The Albanians are short and ferret-faced, with the unisex stumpy, slightly bowed legs of Shetland ponies."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/news/restaurant-critic-gill-delights-in-killing-a-baboon-1809413.html
(Submitted by Ray D.)
Understanding Porphyria: No Vampires Here
Written by NAPSI
Sunday, 25 November 2007
(NAPSI) - Many of the world's myths and legends have some basis in fact, which is why they are perpetuated through the centuries. In one case, the idea of a race of nefarious monsters-specifically, vampires-may actually have sprung from a very real and potentially deadly disease that affects thousands of people worldwide.
Porphyria is not a single disease but a group of at least eight disorders. Symptoms vary, but among them are some that have, in ancient times, given credence to the legend of the vampire. These include excruciating stomach pain, severe headaches, tachycardia (rapid heartbeat), muscle weakness that can take on a state of paralysis from sensitivity to sunlight, and comas that last for days, giving one the appearance of having awakened from the dead.
Genetic Disorder
In reality, porphyria can only be passed genetically through families. It is extremely hard to diagnose and can be painful or even deadly. The root of the disease is in defective enzymes that are involved in the body's manufacturing of heme-a vital substance for all body organs. Heme consists of an iron atom surrounded by a porphyrin molecule and is a part of hemoglobin, which carries oxygen to all parts of the body.
Unfortunately, the legend is bigger than the disease that spawned it; even today, people with porphyria are accused of being vampires. But vampires are only a myth created many centuries ago when medicine couldn't explain the problem.
"It's just absurd to think that drinking blood is a way to revitalize anyone!" says Desiree Lyon Howe, director of the American Porphyria Foundation (APF). "Drinking blood means it goes into the digestive system and merely passes through; it doesn't replace the blood in your body."
Charlotte de ne Guerre, a sufferer of porphyria, recently wrote a novel-inspired by her life story-that will shed light on the subject and dismiss the vampire stigma. In the book, "Grave Disorder," de ne Guerre lays out two tales that are separated by centuries but joined by the one truth.
Spanning The Centuries
The Baroness Elysia von Eschenbach is a young 17th-century noblewoman who doesn't understand the bizarre physical breakdowns that have plagued her. She is betrothed to the arrogant son of a wealthy Frenchwoman who is more interested in Elysia's title and land, but the consequences of having the disease are even more dire. When she absorbs too much sun, drinks wine and eats the wrong foods, she lapses into a near-death coma at her wedding...only to wake up after her abrupt funeral.
The other tale concerns a contemporary American woman, Claire Foster. She knows she's not crazy and that her symptoms are not all in her head, and yet, like many people today, she struggles to understand why she's suffering and is unable to find a doctor who will take her condition seriously, much less accurately diagnose her illness. Both tales are engaging from the onset of the story and build to a climax that will enable the reader to understand the plight of those who suffer with porphyria.
Ms. de ne Guerre spent her professional career as a Certified Quality Engineer for Abbott Laboratories. Even though the orphan drug Panhematin was manufactured by Abbott and coincidentally passed right across her desk, it was several years later that a diagnostician in an emergency room finally gave a name to her condition. She wrote this novel of intrigue not only to delight readers, but to bring understanding of the disease porphyria and help break the stigma that it is thought to be the disease of the vampires.
Understanding The Disease
APF is eager for the understanding as well. There are many people who are afraid to seek treatment because of the stigma, and then, of course, there are many more who are needlessly suffering because the majority of today's doctors are simply unaware of the disease.
Yet people with porphyria can lead very productive lives, such as Lauren Warren, who finished fourth in the Ford Ironman USA Lake Placid Triathlon, thus qualifying her to join athletes around the world in the famous Ironman World Championships. Could a vampire do that? To learn more about the disease and treatments, visit www.porphyriafoundation.com.
http://imperialvalleynews.com/index.php?id=373&option=com_content&task=view
(Submitted by T. Peter Park)
Sunday, 25 November 2007
(NAPSI) - Many of the world's myths and legends have some basis in fact, which is why they are perpetuated through the centuries. In one case, the idea of a race of nefarious monsters-specifically, vampires-may actually have sprung from a very real and potentially deadly disease that affects thousands of people worldwide.
Porphyria is not a single disease but a group of at least eight disorders. Symptoms vary, but among them are some that have, in ancient times, given credence to the legend of the vampire. These include excruciating stomach pain, severe headaches, tachycardia (rapid heartbeat), muscle weakness that can take on a state of paralysis from sensitivity to sunlight, and comas that last for days, giving one the appearance of having awakened from the dead.
Genetic Disorder
In reality, porphyria can only be passed genetically through families. It is extremely hard to diagnose and can be painful or even deadly. The root of the disease is in defective enzymes that are involved in the body's manufacturing of heme-a vital substance for all body organs. Heme consists of an iron atom surrounded by a porphyrin molecule and is a part of hemoglobin, which carries oxygen to all parts of the body.
Unfortunately, the legend is bigger than the disease that spawned it; even today, people with porphyria are accused of being vampires. But vampires are only a myth created many centuries ago when medicine couldn't explain the problem.
"It's just absurd to think that drinking blood is a way to revitalize anyone!" says Desiree Lyon Howe, director of the American Porphyria Foundation (APF). "Drinking blood means it goes into the digestive system and merely passes through; it doesn't replace the blood in your body."
Charlotte de ne Guerre, a sufferer of porphyria, recently wrote a novel-inspired by her life story-that will shed light on the subject and dismiss the vampire stigma. In the book, "Grave Disorder," de ne Guerre lays out two tales that are separated by centuries but joined by the one truth.
Spanning The Centuries
The Baroness Elysia von Eschenbach is a young 17th-century noblewoman who doesn't understand the bizarre physical breakdowns that have plagued her. She is betrothed to the arrogant son of a wealthy Frenchwoman who is more interested in Elysia's title and land, but the consequences of having the disease are even more dire. When she absorbs too much sun, drinks wine and eats the wrong foods, she lapses into a near-death coma at her wedding...only to wake up after her abrupt funeral.
The other tale concerns a contemporary American woman, Claire Foster. She knows she's not crazy and that her symptoms are not all in her head, and yet, like many people today, she struggles to understand why she's suffering and is unable to find a doctor who will take her condition seriously, much less accurately diagnose her illness. Both tales are engaging from the onset of the story and build to a climax that will enable the reader to understand the plight of those who suffer with porphyria.
Ms. de ne Guerre spent her professional career as a Certified Quality Engineer for Abbott Laboratories. Even though the orphan drug Panhematin was manufactured by Abbott and coincidentally passed right across her desk, it was several years later that a diagnostician in an emergency room finally gave a name to her condition. She wrote this novel of intrigue not only to delight readers, but to bring understanding of the disease porphyria and help break the stigma that it is thought to be the disease of the vampires.
Understanding The Disease
APF is eager for the understanding as well. There are many people who are afraid to seek treatment because of the stigma, and then, of course, there are many more who are needlessly suffering because the majority of today's doctors are simply unaware of the disease.
Yet people with porphyria can lead very productive lives, such as Lauren Warren, who finished fourth in the Ford Ironman USA Lake Placid Triathlon, thus qualifying her to join athletes around the world in the famous Ironman World Championships. Could a vampire do that? To learn more about the disease and treatments, visit www.porphyriafoundation.com.
http://imperialvalleynews.com/index.php?id=373&option=com_content&task=view
(Submitted by T. Peter Park)
Flores Hobbits: New analyses show the mini-humans as stranger & more primitive than previously thought
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN staff editor and writer Kate Wong, in "Rethinking the Hobbits of Indonesia," SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, November 2009, pp. 66-73, reports that new analyses show the mini-humans to be even stranger than previously believed, and hint that theories of human evolution need revision.
In 2004, Australian and Indonesian scientists excavating Liang Bua cave in Indonesia's Flores Island found bones of a miniature human species, formally named Homo floresiensis and nicknamed the "hobbit" for J.R.R. Tolkien's fictional creatures, that lived as recently as 17,000 years ago--far more recently than any other pre-sapiens hominids like Homo erectus or Homo neanderthalensis. Scientists initially suggested that Homo floresiensis was a dwarfed descendant of Homo erectus, a human ancestor with body proportions similar to our own and generally considered the first hominids to leave Africa. The "hobbits'" small size compared to H. erectus and modern humans was explained as an adaptation to island conditions.
New investigations, however, show that the "hobbits" were more primitive than researchers had thought--a finding that could could overturn prevailing assumptions about human evolution. The "hobbits" have been found to display features more primitive than those of Homo erectus, suggesting that H. erectus may not have been the first hominid to leave Africa. The Flores "hobbits" could have been a late-surviving relict population of a primitive hominid species that left Africa even before H. erectus. Homo erectus arose about 1,8 million years ago. while H. floresiensis may have appeared either shortly before or shortly after Homo habilis, who emerged about 2 million years ago.
To date, excavators have recovered the remains of about 14 individual "hobbits" from Liang Bua cave on Flores. Some of their features resemble those of apes and of australopithecines like the 3,2 million year old "Lucy." Other traits, however, resemble those of our own genus, Homo. The "hobbit" brain was about the size of a chimpanzee's. However, a virtual reconstruction, generated from CT scans of the interior of the braincase, indicates that despite its small size it had a number of complex, advanced features. Such features may help explain how a creature with a chimp-sized brain was able to make stone tools.
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, November 2009
(Submitted by T. Peter Park)
In 2004, Australian and Indonesian scientists excavating Liang Bua cave in Indonesia's Flores Island found bones of a miniature human species, formally named Homo floresiensis and nicknamed the "hobbit" for J.R.R. Tolkien's fictional creatures, that lived as recently as 17,000 years ago--far more recently than any other pre-sapiens hominids like Homo erectus or Homo neanderthalensis. Scientists initially suggested that Homo floresiensis was a dwarfed descendant of Homo erectus, a human ancestor with body proportions similar to our own and generally considered the first hominids to leave Africa. The "hobbits'" small size compared to H. erectus and modern humans was explained as an adaptation to island conditions.
New investigations, however, show that the "hobbits" were more primitive than researchers had thought--a finding that could could overturn prevailing assumptions about human evolution. The "hobbits" have been found to display features more primitive than those of Homo erectus, suggesting that H. erectus may not have been the first hominid to leave Africa. The Flores "hobbits" could have been a late-surviving relict population of a primitive hominid species that left Africa even before H. erectus. Homo erectus arose about 1,8 million years ago. while H. floresiensis may have appeared either shortly before or shortly after Homo habilis, who emerged about 2 million years ago.
To date, excavators have recovered the remains of about 14 individual "hobbits" from Liang Bua cave on Flores. Some of their features resemble those of apes and of australopithecines like the 3,2 million year old "Lucy." Other traits, however, resemble those of our own genus, Homo. The "hobbit" brain was about the size of a chimpanzee's. However, a virtual reconstruction, generated from CT scans of the interior of the braincase, indicates that despite its small size it had a number of complex, advanced features. Such features may help explain how a creature with a chimp-sized brain was able to make stone tools.
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, November 2009
(Submitted by T. Peter Park)
Sunday, 25 October 2009
Epic humpback whale battle filmed
Friday, 23 October 2009By Matt Walker
Editor, Earth News
It is the greatest animal battle on the planet, and it has finally been caught on camera.
A BBC natural history crew has filmed the "humpback whale heat run", where 15m long, 40 tonne male whales fight it out to mate with even larger females.
During the first complete sequence of this behaviour ever captured, the male humpbacks swim at high speed behind the female, violently jostling for access.
The collisions between the males can be violent enough to kill.
"Even though this is one of the most common of the large whales, very little is known about its actual sexual behaviour," says Life producer Dr Ted Oakes.
"One of the most interesting things is that humpbacks have never been seen to mate."
But what has been filmed is the epic battle between males to get mating access to the female whales.
Up to 40 males swim behind a single female at speeds of up to ten knots, each jostling to obtain a dominant position.
"It's the closest we're ever going to get to dinosaurs fighting. It's the largest battle in the animal kingdom and it feels like something out of Jurassic Park," says Dr Oakes.
Migrate to mate
Most humpback whales spend their summers feeding in polar regions.
During the winter, they migrate thousands of miles to warmer tropical waters.
While there is little food in the tropics, females move there to give birth, as the warmer water helps smaller baby whales better regulate their body temperature.
Males follow the females to the tropics, hoping to find mates.
To film the whales' heat run, the Life team travelled to the southern Pacific waters around the archipelago of the Kingdom of Tonga.
"In order to capture the sequence we had to film from a helicopter, a boat and from underwater," says Dr Oakes.
"Each of those was really difficult, and we had to get them all together. It was a big challenge."
Running the gauntlet
When a female humpback comes into heat, she alerts males by making sounds, such as slapping the water surface. She may also release scent into the water to signal her status.
"The males all gather around the female, she hangs there, and then swims away. That's when it kicks off," says Dr Oakes.
"It is kind of like a gauntlet. She swims away at speed and the males then fight for pole position directly behind her tail."
As they chase the female, the males escalate their conflict.
First they lift their bodies out of the water, slapping the bottom of their huge feeding pouches onto the surface. They also slap their long pectoral fins onto the water.
The males then vocalise loudly and blow bubbles underwater, a threat display among many marine mammals.
Listen to a male humpback whale singing at BBC Wildlife Finder
"When they blow these huge streams of bubbles, in this context it means there's going to be an almighty fight'," says Dr Oakes.
The males then start colliding, hitting one another and even jumping out of the water and onto rivals.
Considering that each male humpback can weigh 40 tonnes, such collisions must hurt, says Dr Oakes.
"It's a violent behaviour. So violent that there are records of males killing one another."
Underwater epic
Cameraman Mr Roger Munns filmed most of the underwater footage of the heat run for the BBC.
Mr Munns had to freedive whilst holding his breath to get shots of the whales swimming past him at speed, as the use of scuba tanks would disturb the humpbacks.
"We had to find the whales when they are on the heat run, which is hard," says Dr Oakes.
"Then we had to position the diving team in front of the charging pack of whales for them to have any chance."
"At one point I think Roger had the female and seven or eight males go past him. He said it was the most incredible experience of his life. Like standing in the middle of a motorway."
The "humpack heat run" is broadcast within the Mammals episode of the BBC series Life at 2100BST on BBC One on Monday 26th October.
See videos at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8318000/8318182.stm
(Submitted by Ted Oakes)
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