quick reads; fun facts & life hacks

Ryan Dunn's Porsche - Scorched Heap of Scrap Metal [PICTURES]

noreply@blogger.com (Quick Reads) — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 00:11:00 +0000

Ryan Dunn's wrecked Porsche 911 GT3 is now sitting in a tow yard ... just a few miles from Monday's fatal crash ... and all that's left is a mangled heap of obliterated car parts.

World's First Dog With All Bionic Legs: Naki'o Can Play Again With 4 Prosthetic Paws (VIDEO)

noreply@blogger.com (Quick Reads) — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 20:34:00 +0000

The Huffington Post
First Posted: 06/22/11 04:29 PM ET Updated: 06/23/11 02:12 PM ET

You might remember Polo, the husky fitted with a prosthetic paw after being hit by a car, or Midnite, the miniature horse who took off running when first fitted with a prosthetic leg, but this red heeler pup takes being a bionic animal to a whole new level.

Naki'o is the world's first dog to be fitted with a complete set of four prosthetic paws, according to incrediblefeatures.com. Naki'o was barely 5 weeks old when he and his brothers and sisters were abandoned by a family fleeing their foreclosed home. Having barely survived the Nebraskan winter, all four of the dog's paws were deformed into rounded stumps after being stuck in an icy puddle.

Incrediblefeatures.com reports that Veterinary technician Christie Tomlinson "organized a fundraiser to pay for Naki’o to have his two back legs fitted with prosthetics."

From the site:

He took to these so enthusiastically, that Orthopets decided to complete the process free of charge. It was the first time they’d fitted an animal with a complete set of new legs.

Now, Naki'o is able to run, jump and play just like other dogs, thanks to the second chance his new set of legs have given him.

WATCH:

Social Security: Did AARP sell out its seniors?

noreply@blogger.com (Quick Reads) — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 20:16:00 +0000

The powerful lobby for senior citizens stuns Democrats by suggesting a willingness to endorse benefits cuts

POSTED ON JUNE 23, 2011, AT 4:07 PM

Best Opinion: Forbes, U.S. News, Firedoglake

AARP went into "full damage-control mode" this week, after news reports said the powerful seniors lobby would be willing to support some cuts to Social Security. While Democratic allies in Congress expressed shock, AARP leaders insisted the group's position hadn't changed, saying they still oppose reducing retirement benefits as part of a deficit reduction bill, but acknowledge the need for long-term adjustments to keep the Social Security trust fund from being drained by 2036, as projected. Is this a sellout, or is AARP merely recognizing the need to fix the system?

AARP's position is just common sense: "AARP deserves tremendous credit for declaring its willingness last week to sit down and work out a Social Security deal," says Howard Gleckman at Forbes. The 70-year-old system, which will only have enough money to provide future retirees with three- quarters of their promised benefits, desperately needs fixing. Republicans want to reform it out of existence, and Democrats resist even minor changes, but everyone will have to compromise to keep this safety net for the elderly intact.
"Commonsense ways to fix Social Security"

The whole kerfuffle is much ado about nothing: "This is not a sea change for AARP," says Meg Handley at U.S. News & World Report. AARP is just repeating the position it has long maintained to "move the ball forward, and that's what we need." People are living longer, so the need for benefits is increasing, but with the baby boomers retiring, there's not enough money coming in. Nobody has a magic solution, but we do "have to sit down and negotiate and figure it out."
"AARP on Social Security: A game-changer for entitlement programs?"

Actually, this really is a sellout: The timing here is critical, says Daniel Marans at Firedoglake. Signaling a "willingness to make a deal now, in the midst of the debt-ceiling negotiations," only makes it more likely that cuts will have to be part of any deficit deal. AARP has demoralized the Left and energized advocates of Social Security reform, which is certain to "open the floodgates to Social Security cuts."
"Why AARP's support for Social Security cuts matters"

Picture: The senior lobby AARP recently said it would support some Social Security cuts.Photo: Facebook/AARPSEE ALL 11 PHOTOS

Source: http://theweek.com/article/index/216627/social-security-did-aarp-sell-out-its-seniors

Man knocks Justin Bieber to ground outside Macy's

noreply@blogger.com (Quick Reads) — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 20:03:00 +0000

Updated at 03:39 PM today

Get the latest from Eyewitness News

By Scott Curkin; Eyewitness News

HERALD SQUARE (WABC) -- Teen pop sensation Justin Bieber was knocked to the ground while greeting fans outside Macy's in Herald Square.

Bieber who was attending an event inside Macy's unveiling his new cologne, decided to go outside of the store to acknowledge the fans that could not come inside to the event.
Witnesses say when Justing Bieber came out the doors an unidentified man jumped a barrier and knocked the teen sensation to the ground.

Bieber was not injured but appeared to be very 'shaken up'.

The man who jumped the barrier was taken away by police.
For more on this breaking story, tune in to Eyewitness News First at 4 p.m.
Hundreds of his devoted fans began lining up as soon as the event was announced on Tuesday.
Earlier in the day Bieber appeared on 'The View'.

Source: http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/local/new_york&id=8208674

Book publishing finally has its 'Radiohead moment' -- with Harry Potter

noreply@blogger.com (Quick Reads) — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 19:26:00 +0000

By Olivia Solon

After a week of heavy speculation, JK Rowling has revealed that she is to self-publish the e-books to her mind-bogglingly successful Harry Potter series through her newly-announced proprietary platform, Pottermore.

While self-publishing in itself is not new -- Stephen King has been distributing self-published chapters since 2000 and others, including Amanda Hocking, J.A. Konrath and more recently John Locke have sold millions of copies through the Kindle store -- Rowling is without a doubt the single most significant author to have turned their back on established publishing houses at a time when the industry is in limbo and the tools are available to create meaningful and innovative digital publications untethered from a small stranglehold of publishers whose businesses are built upon the printed page.

The crucial parallel between Radiohead and Rowling is the fact that they both put their faith in the fans rather than any intermediary. For Radiohead, this meant self-releasing their album In Rainbows after the end of their contract with EMI with an honesty-box pricing strategy. For Rowling it means keeping the e-books DRM-free and trusting her fans not to pirate her works rather than assuming that they will. Rowling is instead opting for a digital watermarking system that links the identify of the purchaser to the copy of the ebook. This doesn't prevent people sharing copies on the web, but does try to ensure that any copies will be traceable to a buyer.

Because the books are said to be "available on any platform", there will need to be some sort of arrangement with the likes of Amazon and iBooks -- whether commercial or logistical -- to ensure that readers can enjoy Potter on their Kindles and iPads.

That aside, it is important to emphasise that just as Radiohead self-released their album, so Rowling is selling the Harry Potterseries of e-books without the need for her publishers Bloomsbury and Scholastic. Radiohead reportedly made more money with its pay-what-you-like model before the album was physically released than it had made in total on the previous album (released through EMI) Hail to the Thief.

Likewise, Rowling stands to make significantly more money by selling her e-books directly than if she sold them through her publisher. Authors generally get anywhere between a few and 10 percent of royalties from printed book sales and anywhere between 20 and 40 percent on e-books. If they self publish through the likes of Amazon, they can get as much as 70 percent of revenues (with the remainder going to the e-book store). Selling direct to fans also means that Rowling will benefit from demographic data and contact details traditionally safeguarded by the publisher or retailer. This information will be invaluable for promoting new projects and for building a mini merchandising empire. Might we even see sales to a "live" Harry Potterexperience?

Like Radiohead, Rowling is not only selling the book without the help of her publisher, she is also initially bypassing the major ecommerce sites at this stage -- exclusively selling the e-books through Pottermore.com -- so she technically stands to make 100 percent of the sales. So far her team have remained tight-lipped about the pricing of the e-books, but have insisted that they will be "competitive". So fingers crossed until they go on sale in October.

By publishing on her own website, Rowling told us at a press conference: "We can guarantee that people everywhere are getting the same experience at the same time. That was extremely appealing to me. I am lucky to have the resources to do it myself and I think this is a fantastic and unique experience that I could afford to take my time over to make this come alive. There was really no way to do it for the fans or me than just do it myself. Not every author could do this, but it's right for Harry Potter. It is so much fun to have direct content with my fans. It was an extension of the existing jkrowling.com."

Interestingly, Rowling is maintaining Scholastic and Bloomsbury as partners, suggesting that she isn't completely abandoning the institutions that built her career. Let's not forget that it's at least partially down to their marketing and distribution prowess that she managed to sell more than 400 million copies of her books as of 2008 -- likely to be significantly more by now.

It is not clear what the continued partnership entails, but what is clear is that Rowling had no obligation to give them anything. She owns the rights to the e-books and has the publishing stature to have easily gone it alone. Of course, it's important to note that the increased interest in the Harry Potterbrand will have a halo effect on sales of the printed books from which her former publishers will benefit. They're likely to piggyback on the hype by releasing special editions of the seven books.

The most exciting thing about the news is that this might be the kick up the arse that the publishing industry needs to stop it from dragging its feet into the digital world (with the exception of academic publishing which has fully embraced it to become an extremely valuable industry).

Publishers need to radically rethink their remuneration structures in order to ensure that their cash cows don't all follow Rowling's suit. To this day, publishing remains a B2B business -- publishers sell to retailers and not readers.

But the rise of consumer empowerment in a digital world means that this will have to change. The web is a powerful disintermediator and has democratised businesses within music, film, gaming and retail, time and time again. There's no reason to think that publishing could be exempt from this rule.

They can also learn from Rowling's understanding that the web is not just a place to replicate the printed page, but allows for a spell-binding level of interactivity which could reinvigorate people's (and especially children's) passion for reading.

Source: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-06/23/pottermore-radiohead-publishing?page=2

DANGER: Don't have sex with a time-travelling sea monkey

noreply@blogger.com (Quick Reads) — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 18:48:00 +0000

By Duncan Geere

Evolutionary ecologists have discovered that having sex with a male sea monkey from the future can be hazardous to a female sea monkey's health.

Nicolas Rode from the Centre for Functional and Evolutionary Ecology took advantage of sea monkeys' ability to weather droughts by remaining in their eggs for years before hatching once the water returns. He gathered eggs from layers of dirt formed in 1985, 1996 and 2007, and then reared them in their lab -- having females mate with males from their own time, as well as from other years.

The conclusion was disturbing. The further away in time the male sea monkey was from, the sooner his female sexual partner died. A male from 22 years away (about 160 generations) cut short the life of his baby-mother on average by 12 percent.

The reason is that male sea monkeys, like the males of many animal species, compete violently over who gets to mate with a particular female. The males evolve all kinds of weaponry to achieve this, from scoops to get rid of sperm from other males to the injection of "anti-aphrodisiacs" to stop the ladies having any desire to mate further.

That's not good news for the females. From an evolutionary perspective, the health of a single female is completely unimportant to a male, so long as they live long enough to birth another generation of offspring. As a result, some of the weaponry developed by the males can be downright toxic.

But the females fight back, evolving antidotes to the males' weaponry, which then force the males to evolve countermeasures, which in turn makes the females evolve more antidotes, culminating in an escalating arms race of sexual conflict, at least in theory.

Unfortunately the data from Rode's experiment wasn't clear-cut enough to determine whether that conflict does indeed escalate indefinitely or whether -- as some evolutionary ecologists suggest -- different sexual weaponry goes in and out of fashion over time, like an evolutionary merry-go-round.

Interestingly, too, is that the time-shifting didn't have any measurable impact on the sea monkeys' overall reproductive success -- the females dying early produced eggs at a faster rate to make up for it.

But either way, be warned: sex with time travellers appears to be far more dangerous than anyone had previously realised.

Story
Written by Duncan Geere
Edited by Nate Lanxon

Photo
Wikimedia Commons / CC-licensed: Hans Hillewaert

Harry Potter adventures will continue ONLINE

noreply@blogger.com (Quick Reads) — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 18:04:00 +0000

By Thair Shaikh, CNN

June 23, 2011 -- Updated 1743 GMT (0143 HKT)

J.K. Rowling unveils Pottermore

London (CNN) -- Harry Potter's final literary chapter may have come to an end, but millions of fans can now continue following the boy wizard's adventures online with the launch Thursday of an interactive e-book series.

The website -- Pottermore.com -- promises storylines that will be brought to life with "sumptuous newly-commissioned illustrations."

An additional 18,000 new words about the novels' characters, places and objects are on the site, with more to come according to JK Rowling, author of the Potter series.

Rowling, who reiterated that she had no intentions of writing another Potter novel, said: "It is the same story with a few crucial additions, the most important one is you. Pottermore will be built in part by you.

"When I finished writing the last Harry book, well I haven't cried that much since my mother died. I never cry over a man, but this was more like an ex-boyfriend."

The seventh and final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, was published in 2007.

Rowling's site will be the exclusive sales channel for the Potter e-books, bypassing traditional e-book stores like Amazon's Kindle store, Barnes and Noble's Nook store and Apple's iBookstore.

British publisher Bloomsbury, which maintains the books' printing rights in the U.K., said it will participate in the sale of e-books from Pottermore and will receive a share of the revenues.

"It was right for me and Harry to go at it ourselves," Rowling said about the deal.

The author also said she was inspired by the hundreds of letters she received every week from fans around the world and wanted to "give something back."

The Potter series has sold over 400 million copies worldwide according to Bloomsbury.

Pottermore, run in partnership with Sony, will also have an online shop where people can purchase the Potter e-books.

The first book to get the online treatment is Harry Potter and the Philosopher's (Sorcerer's) Stone. The storyline of the second book, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, will go live on the site in early 2012.

Pottermore will go live on 31 July, Harry Potter's birthday. Fans can submit their email addresses Thursday and the first million people to complete their registration will gain early entry into the website.

The site will open to all users in October and will initially be available in English, French, Italian, German and Spanish.

The final movie in the franchise, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2," is released in mid-July.

CNN's Per Nyberg contributed to this report.

Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2011/SHOWBIZ/06/23/uk.harry.potter.pottermore/index.html?hpt=hp_c2

New Math in HIV Fight

noreply@blogger.com (Quick Reads) — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 17:45:00 +0000

Statistical Method Evolves From Physics to Wall Street to Battle Against AIDS

By MARK SCHOOFS

Scientists using a powerful mathematical tool previously applied to the stock market have identified an Achilles heel in HIV that could be a prime target for AIDS vaccines or drugs.

The research adds weight to a provocative hypothesis—that an HIV vaccine should avoid a broadside attack and instead home in on a few targets. Indeed, there is a rare group of patients who naturally control HIV without medication, and these "elite controllers" most often assail the virus at precisely this vulnerable area.

Scientists have identified an Achilles' heel in HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, with a powerful mathematical method previously applied to the stock market, and think the spot could be a prime target for vaccines or drugs. Mark Schoofs explains.

"This is a wonderful piece of science, and it helps us understand why the elite controllers keep HIV under control," said Nobel laureate David Baltimore. Bette Korber, an expert on HIV mutation at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, said the study added "an elegant analytical strategy" to HIV vaccine research.

"What would be very cool is if they could apply it to hepatitis C or other viruses that are huge pathogens—Ebola virus, Marburg virus," said Mark Yeager, chair of the physiology department at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. "The hope would be there would be predictive power in this approach." Drs. Baltimore, Korber and Yeager weren't involved in the new research.

One of the most vexing problems in HIV research is the virus's extreme mutability. But the researchers found that there are some HIV sectors, or groups of amino acids, that rarely make multiple mutations. Scientists generally believe that the virus needs to keep such regions intact. Targeting such sectors could trap HIV: If it mutated, it would disrupt its own internal machinery and sputter out. If it didn't mutate, it would lie defenseless against a drug or vaccine attack.

The study was conducted at the Ragon Institute, a joint enterprise of Massachusetts General Hospital, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University. The institute was founded in 2009 to convene diverse groups of scientists to work on HIV/AIDS and other diseases.

Targeting HIV

Read more about the science behind the study

View Interactive

Two of the study's lead authors aren't biologists. Arup Chakraborty is a professor of chemistry and chemical engineering at MIT, though he has worked on immunology, and Vincent Dahirel is an assistant professor of chemistry at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris. They collaborated with Bruce Walker, a longtime HIV researcher who directs the Ragon Institute. Their work was published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

To find the vulnerable sectors in HIV, Drs. Chakraborty and Dahirel reached back to a statistical method called random matrix theory, which has also been used to analyze the behavior of stocks. While stock market sectors are already well defined, the Ragon researchers didn't necessarily know what viral sectors they were looking for. Moreover, they wanted to take a fresh look at the virus.

So they defined the sectors purely mathematically, using random matrix theory to sift through most of HIV's genetic code for correlated mutations, without reference to previously known functions or structures of HIV. The segment that could tolerate the fewest multiple mutations was dubbed sector 3 on an HIV protein known as Gag.

In an interview with WSJ's Mark Schoofs, NIAID director Dr. Anthony Fauci reflects on his thirty years spent fighting AIDS, and how he believes science is at a turning point where it has the potential to dramatically shrink the size of the AIDS epidemic across the globe.

Previous research by Dr. Yeager and others had shown that the capsid, or internal shell, of the virus has a honeycomb structure. Part of sector 3, it turns out, helps form the edges of the honeycomb. If the honeycomb suffered too many mutations, it wouldn't interlock, and the capsid would collapse.

For years, Dr. Walker had studied rare patients, about one in 300, who control HIV without taking drugs. He went back to see what part of the virus these "elite controllers" were attacking with their main immune-system assault. The most common target was sector 3.

Dr. Walker's team found that even immune systems that fail to control HIV often attack sector 3, but they tend to devote only a fraction of their resources against it, while wasting their main assault on parts of the virus that easily mutate to evade the attack. That suggested what the study's authors consider the paper's most important hypothesis: A vaccine shouldn't elicit a scattershot attack, but surgical strikes against sector 3 and similarly low-mutating regions of HIV.

"The hypothesis remains to be tested," said Dan Barouch, a Harvard professor of medicine and a colleague at the Ragon institute. He is planning to do just that, with monkeys. Others, such as Oxford professor Sir Andrew McMichael, are also testing it.

The Ragon team's research focused on one arm of the immune system—the so-called killer T-cells that attack other cells HIV has already infected. Many scientists believe a successful HIV vaccine will also require antibodies that attack a free-floating virus. Dr. Chakraborty is teaming up with Dennis Burton, an HIV antibody expert at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., to apply random matrix theory to central problems in antibody-based vaccines.

Write to Mark Schoofs at mark.schoofs@wsj.com

Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303936704576397491582757396.html

Traumatic brain injuries in the Asterix comics

noreply@blogger.com (Quick Reads) — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 17:22:00 +0000

A team of neurosurgeons has completed an exhaustive study of the causes of traumatic brain injury in the Asterix comics.

Needless to say, it is a work of pure genius.

And if the conclusions at the end of the summary don’t make you beam with delight, you are dead inside.

Traumatic brain injuries in illustrated literature: experience from a series of over 700 head injuries in the Asterix comic books
Acta Neurochir (Wien). 2011 Jun;153(6):1351-5.
Kamp MA, Slotty P, Sarikaya-Seiwert S, Steiger HJ, Hänggi D.
Department for Neurosurgery
Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf
Background: The goal of the present study was to analyze the epidemiology and specific risk factors of traumatic brain injury (TBI) in the Asterix illustrated comic books. Among the illustrated literature, TBI is a predominating injury pattern.
Methods: A retrospective analysis of TBI in all 34 Asterix comic books was performed by examining the initial neurological status and signs of TBI. Clinical data were correlated to information regarding the trauma mechanism, the sociocultural background of victims and offenders, and the circumstances of the traumata, to identify specific risk factors.
Results: Seven hundred and four TBIs were identified. The majority of persons involved were adult and male. The major cause of trauma was assault (98.8%). Traumata were classified to be severe in over 50% (GCS 3-8). Different neurological deficits and signs of basal skull fractures were identified. Although over half of head-injury victims had a severe initial impairment of consciousness, no case of death or permanent neurological deficit was found. The largest group of head-injured characters was constituted by Romans (63.9%), while Gauls caused nearly 90% of the TBIs. A helmet had been worn by 70.5% of victims but had been lost in the vast majority of cases (87.7%). In 83% of cases, TBIs were caused under the influence of a doping agent called “the magic potion”.
Conclusions: Although over half of patients had an initially severe impairment of consciousness after TBI, no permanent deficit could be found. Roman nationality, hypoglossal paresis, lost helmet, and ingestion of the magic potion were significantly correlated with severe initial impairment of consciousness (p ≤ 0.05).

Link to PubMed entry for study (via @velascop).
Link to DOI entry for study.

Source: http://mindhacks.com/2011/06/15/traumatic-brain-injuries-in-the-asterix-comics/

Krokodil: The drug that eats junkies

noreply@blogger.com (Quick Reads) — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 17:01:00 +0000

A home-made heroin substitute is having a horrific effect on thousands of Russia's drug addicts

By Shaun Walker

Wednesday, 22 June 2011

Oleg glances furtively around him and, confident that nobody is watching, slips inside the entrance to a decaying Soviet-era block of flats, where Sasha is waiting for him. Ensconced in the dingy kitchen of one of the apartments, they empty the contents of a blue carrier bag that Oleg has brought with him – painkillers, iodine, lighter fluid, industrial cleaning oil, and an array of vials, syringes, and cooking implements.

Half an hour later, after much boiling, distilling, mixing and shaking, what remains is a caramel-coloured gunge held in the end of a syringe, and the acrid smell of burnt iodine in the air. Sasha fixes a dirty needle to the syringe and looks for a vein in his bruised forearm. After some time, he finds a suitable place, and hands the syringe to Oleg, telling him to inject the fluid. He closes his eyes, and takes the hit.

Russia has more heroin users than any other country in the world – up to two million, according to unofficial estimates. For most, their lot is a life of crime, stints in prison, probable contraction of HIV and hepatitis C, and an early death. As efforts to stem the flow of Afghan heroin into Russia bring some limited success, and the street price of the drug goes up, for those addicts who can't afford their next hit, an even more terrifying spectre has raised its head.

The home-made drug that Oleg and Sasha inject is known as krokodil, or "crocodile". It is desomorphine, a synthetic opiate many times more powerful than heroin that is created from a complex chain of mixing and chemical reactions, which the addicts perform from memory several times a day. While heroin costs from £20 to £60 per dose, desomorphine can be "cooked" from codeine-based headache pills that cost £2 per pack, and other household ingredients available cheaply from the markets.

It is a drug for the poor, and its effects are horrific. It was given its reptilian name because its poisonous ingredients quickly turn the skin scaly. Worse follows. Oleg and Sasha have not been using for long, but Oleg has rotting sores on the back of his neck.

"If you miss the vein, that's an abscess straight away," says Sasha. Essentially, they are injecting poison directly into their flesh. One of their friends, in a neighbouring apartment block, is further down the line.

"She won't go to hospital, she just keeps injecting. Her flesh is falling off and she can hardly move anymore," says Sasha. Photographs of late-stage krokodil addicts are disturbing in the extreme. Flesh goes grey and peels away to leave bones exposed. People literally rot to death.

Russian heroin addicts first discovered how to make krokodil around four years ago, and there has been a steady rise in consumption, with a sudden peak in recent months. "Over the past five years, sales of codeine-based tablets have grown by dozens of times," says Viktor Ivanov, the head of Russia's Drug Control Agency. "It's pretty obvious that it's not because everyone has suddenly developed headaches."

Heroin addiction kills 30,000 people per year in Russia – a third of global deaths from the drug – but now there is the added problem of krokodil. Mr Ivanov recalled a recent visit to a drug-treatment centre in Western Siberia. "They told me that two years ago almost all their drug users used heroin," said the drugs tsar. "Now, more than half of them are on desomorphine."

He estimates that overall, around 5 per cent of Russian drug users are on krokodil and other home-made drugs, which works out at about 100,000 people. It's a huge, hidden epidemic – worse in the really isolated parts of Russia where supplies of heroin are patchy – but palpable even in cities such as Tver.

It has a population of half a million, and is a couple of hours by train from Moscow, en route to St Petersburg. Its city centre, sat on the River Volga, is lined with pretty, Tsarist-era buildings, but the suburbs are miserable. People sit on cracked wooden benches in a weed-infested "park", gulping cans of Jaguar, an alcoholic energy drink. In the background, there are rows of crumbling apartment blocks. The shops and restaurants of Moscow are a world away; for a treat, people take the bus to the McDonald's by the train station.

In the city's main drug treatment centre, Artyom Yegorov talks of the devastation that krokodil is causing. "Desomorphine causes the strongest levels of addiction, and is the hardest to cure," says the young doctor, sitting in a treatment room in the scruffy clinic, below a picture of Hugh Laurie as Dr House.

"With heroin withdrawal, the main symptoms last for five to 10 days. After that there is still a big danger of relapse but the physical pain will be gone. With krokodil, the pain can last up to a month, and it's unbearable. They have to be injected with extremely strong tranquilisers just to keep them from passing out from the pain."

Dr Yegorov says krokodil users are instantly identifiable because of their smell. "It's that smell of iodine that infuses all their clothes," he says. "There's no way to wash it out, all you can do is burn the clothes. Any flat that has been used as a krokodil cooking house is best forgotten about as a place to live. You'll never get that smell out of the flat."

Addicts in Tver say they never have any problems buying the key ingredient for krokodil – codeine pills, which are sold without prescription. "Once I was trying to buy four packs, and the woman told me they could only sell two to any one person," recalls one, with a laugh. "So I bought two packs, then came back five minutes later and bought another two. Other than that, they never refuse to sell it to us, even though they know what we're going to do with it." The solution, to many, is obvious: ban the sale of codeine tablets, or at least make them prescription-only. But despite the authorities being aware of the problem for well over a year, nothing has been done.

President Dmitry Medvedev has called for websites which explain how to make krokodil to be closed down, but he has not ordered the banning of the pills. Last month, a spokesman for the ministry of health said that there were plans to make codeine-based tablets available only on prescription, but that it was impossible to introduce the measure quickly. Opponents claim lobbying by pharmaceutical companies has caused the inaction.

"A year ago we said that we need to introduce prescriptions," says Mr Ivanov. "These tablets don't cost much but the profit margins are high. Some pharmacies make up to 25 per cent of their profits from the sale of these tablets. It's not in the interests of pharmaceutical companies or pharmacies themselves to stop this, so the government needs to use its power to regulate their sale."

In addition to krokodil, there are reports of drug users injecting other artificial mixes, and the latest street drug is tropicamide. Used as eye drops by ophthalmologists to dilate the pupils during eye examinations, Dr Yegorov says patients have no trouble getting hold of capsules of it for about £2 per vial. Injected, the drug has severe psychiatric effects and brings on suicidal feelings.

"Addicts are being sold drugs by normal Russian women working in pharmacies, who know exactly what they'll be used for," said Yevgeny Roizman, an anti-drugs activist who was one of the first to talk publicly about the krokodil issue earlier this year. "Selling them to boys the same age as their own sons. Russians are killing Russians."

Zhenya, quietly spoken and wearing dark glasses, agrees to tell his story while I sit in the back of his car in a lay-by on the outskirts of Tver. He managed to kick the habit, after spending weeks at a detox clinic ,experiencing horrendous withdrawal symptoms that included seizures, a 40-degree temperature and vomiting. He lost 14 teeth after his gums rotted away, and contracted hepatitis C.

But his fate is essentially a miraculous escape – after all, he's still alive. Zhenya is from a small town outside Tver, and was a heroin addict for a decade before he moved onto krokodil a year ago. Of the ten friends he started injecting heroin with a decade ago, seven are dead.

Unlike heroin, where the hit can last for several hours, a krokodil high only lasts between 90 minutes and two hours, says Zhenya. Given that the "cooking" process takes at least half an hour, being a krokodil addict is basically a full-time job.

"I remember one day, we cooked for three days straight," says one of Zhenya's friends. "You don't sleep much when you're on krokodil, as you need to wake up every couple of hours for another hit. At the time we were cooking it at our place, and loads of people came round and pitched in. For three days we just kept on making it. By the end, we all staggered out yellow, exhausted and stinking of iodine."

In Tver, most krokodil users inject the drug only when they run out of money for heroin. As soon as they earn or steal enough, they go back to heroin. In other more isolated regions of Russia, where heroin is more expensive and people are poorer, the problem is worse. People become full-time krokodil addicts, giving them a life expectancy of less than a year.

Zhenya says every single addict he knows in his town has moved from heroin to krokodil, because it's cheaper and easier to get hold of. "You can feel how disgusting it is when you're doing it," he recalls. "You're dreaming of heroin, of something that feels clean and not like poison. But you can't afford it, so you keep doing the krokodil. Until you die."

Some of the names in this story have been changed

Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/krokodil-the-drug-that-eats-junkies-2300787.html

3 Things To Do If There Is No Progress In Your Life

noreply@blogger.com (Quick Reads) — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 16:50:00 +0000

Written by M. A. Tohami
Categories: self improvement

Have you ever noticed the ripple expansion across water when you drop an object into it?

This phenomenon can teach you a great lesson, if you feel that there is no progress in your personal and professional life.

The lesson simply is: the best way to conquer stagnation is to disturb it.

Any tiny action you take will lead to incremental outward changes.

I always advise my life purpose coaching clients that once they find their passion and purpose in life, they should act fast by taking the easiest smallest action possible in the direction of their purpose.

This small action will generate new possibilities and cause a ripple effect that will change the ground and build your momentum.

So, here’re three things you can do now to initiate a ripple effect in your life:

1. Read a new book

Acquiring new information in general broadens your perspective and creates new choices for you. You can stumble upon one idea in a book that gives you an AHA moment, and hence lead to a transformational experience.

2. Connect with new people

Networking is your greatest asset in your passionate living journey. Every new person you know can be pivotal to your success. A new connection can either introduce you to a new idea or to another person that can help you get what you want easier and faster.

3. Travel

Travelling to your favorite or new destinations can help you calm your mind and think clearly about how to move to the next level in your life. The busyness of life can drift you away and gives you no chance to think about what really matters to you. When you take a break and reconsider your choices and possibilities, you will definitely find new ways to accelerate your progress and conquer stagnation.

What else can you do to affect your stagnant situation with a ripple effect?

M. A. Tohami is on a mission to help unfulfilled professionals live with passion.

If you’re interested, visit his blog and get 3 FREE chapters from his book, The Pharaohs’ Code – Amazon’s #1 bestselling motivational book on May 19, 2009

Photo credit: Ginsengsandiego

Source: http://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/3-things-to-do-if-there-is-no-progress-in-your-life/

Ryan Dunn's Wallpaper

noreply@blogger.com (Quick Reads) — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 02:07:00 +0000

Well, the picture was found on wallbase.cc (recommended website)

Seems like many people have been using this picture as wallpaper since his tragic death, enjoy, and don't drink and drive, seriously.

A quick tip to remember

noreply@blogger.com (Quick Reads) — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 09:07:00 +0000

Well well well... It's 4 am in the morning and I cannot sleep. I saw this and thought it might be nice to share.
Some guy said this to a sad guy that was worried because he wanted to do something with his life, instead of being on the pc all day long:

"What do you like? Do you like music? Go to some shows, not
big shows, small ones. Like culture a bit? go to a fuckin' museum, like sports? (not probable), go to some park or something... go outside, watch how life happens, if someone stares at you, reply with a smile... talk to people... just some
ideas, in the small things you will find great sh!ts (in the good
way)."

Simple, yet important.

Kim Crawford Beats Her 5-Year-Old Son to Death for Breaking Their TV

noreply@blogger.com (Quick Reads) — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 00:07:00 +0000

Warning: The following story could make you a fan of forced sterility: 5-year-old Jamar Johnson was playing Wii last week at his family's apartment in the Bronx. Somehow he managed to break the TV, which young boys occasionally do. But his mom didn't chock it up to raising a boy...

Instead, 21-year-old Kim Crawford decided to go apeshit on the little kid. She smacked him in the stomach and back. And we're guessing those weren't love punches.

Over the next five days, Jamar was in brutal pain, vomiting and crying. He'd suffered severe internal injuries. But Crawford refused to take him to a doctor, worried that his bruises would land her ass in jail.

By Friday, his fingers were cold to the touch, so she finally called an ambulance. He would die that evening from an infection from a lacerated pancreas and intestine.

Crawford tried to claim that Jamar had suddenly became ill after falling in the park. But that explanation wasn't consistent with his injuries. She eventually broke down and admitted to hitting the boy, then failing to take him to the doctor to avoid her own arrest.

You won't be surprised that she's been in trouble with the law before. She has a history of arrests for drugs and assault, and the cops have been called to her home 9 times since 2006 over domestic beefs with Jamar's father.

Crawford's now charged with murder and manslaughter.

Source: http://www.truecrimereport.com/2011/06/kim_crawford_beats_her_5-year-.php

Blow Your Mind: Do-It-Yourself Organs

noreply@blogger.com (Quick Reads) — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 23:12:00 +0000

by Robert Lamb | June 21, 2011

I grew up loving haunted houses and mad science laboratories, so I’m not sure I can fully express out INTO the idea of vat-grown organs I really am. It’s pretty much the most mad sciencey thing imaginable, short of actually creating a monster or sewing Ray Milland’s head onto Rosey Grier’s body. And on a realistic note, sure, we’d all like to grow our crops of spare guts to replace our failing organs. But when will it be possible? As Julie and I explore in this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the day is fast approaching.

With the aid of stem cells and organ scaffolding, we’re now able to grow living tissue and organs outside the human body and transplant them into place. Just how does this work? What do an easy-bake oven and an inkjet printer have to do with it? How many teeth can you grow inside a mouse and why would you want to?

All this and more will be explored.

But what’s that? You want to see the video we mention in which a man prints out a human heart? Here ya go:

Source: http://blogs.howstuffworks.com/2011/06/21/blow-your-mind-do-it-yourself-organs/

The Problem with Your Google Search Results (and What You Can Do About It)

noreply@blogger.com (Quick Reads) — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 20:22:00 +0000

Adam Dachis — Eli Pariser, former director of MoveOn.org, noticed that he and his friends ended up with very different search results when searching for the exact same things. Google (and other sites) are filtering out the stuff you might not like, putting you inside an isolated search filter bubble. This is a problem, but one that's easily remedied.

As Pariser explains in the video above, Google uses 57 criteria specific to you to filter your results. They include things like your location, the browser you're using, and the links you click on. Google isn't alone, as Facebook and Yahoo (among others) pay attention to this kind of information as well. If you want unfiltered results, you've got a couple of options.

The Simple Option

The easiest thing you can do is use a search engine that doesn't filter results. One of our favorites is DuckDuckGo. Aside from providing you with the same results as everyone else, it has a bunch of handy shortcuts. If you want to know a little more about DuckDuckGo's commitment to unfiltered search results and learn a little more about the problem as they see it, check out their presentation.

The "I Still Want Google" Option

If you like Google and wanted to continue using it as your search engine, you just need to prevent it from using information about you. Activating private browsing (or "incognito mode" in Chrome) is a start, because it won't save any cookies, but that doesn't solve every problem as Google uses 57 criteria to choose the results it shows you. In addition to disabling cookies you'll need to disguise your browser agent, mask your IP, and a whole bunch more.Downloading and configuring Tor to browse anonymously might be your best bet since it's pretty tough to hide all this information.

All in all, if you're not searching for anything important it shouldn't matter much whether or not your results are filtered, but when you're looking for political opinions or accurate research you might want to use a search engine that isn't trying to show you only what it thinks you want to see.

The Filter Bubble | TED via DuckDuckGo

Source: Lifehacker

Why Red Wine Is So Good For You

noreply@blogger.com (Quick Reads) — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 20:11:00 +0000

Casey Chan — We've all grown up hearing that red wine is sooo good for us. Was it a lie parents told us so they could drink more? Nope, they were right. So what's red wine's little secret?

The answer lies in a polyphenol compound known as resveratrol. Though much more studies need to be done to get all scientists on board, resveratrol contains anti-aging, anti-carcinogenic, anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties. Basically, all the good of red wine is in resveratrol (other than the buzz). And wouldn't you know, red wine is the most important dietary source for that magic polyphenol.

Heather Hausenblas, a researcher in a study about resveratrol, says that:

"We're all looking for an anti-aging cure in a pill, but it doesn't exist. But what does exist shows promise of lessening many of the scourges and infirmities of old age,"

Basically, red wine can't bring you back to your beer chugging youth but it can help you age a little more gracefully. Resveratrol, when tested on animals, prevented "the growth of some cancers in mice, inhibits enzymes that cause inflammation, shrinks tumors and increases blood flow, thus reducing cardiovascular diseases. In many cases, it also extends the life of obese animals." In any case, I think I'm going to test out these health properties myself. [Medical Xpress, Image Credit: Shutterstock/Igor Kilmov]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5814080/why-red-wine-is-so-good-for-us

Why the Best Innovations Are Incremental, Not Monumental

noreply@blogger.com (Quick Reads) — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 18:13:00 +0000

Gabor George Burt is an internationally recognized expert on innovation, creativity and strategy development. His bookSlingshot explores the connection between systematic creativity and smart strategy. Download your free copy of the first chapter at SlingshotLiving.com.

Innovation is a vital ingredient for the sustainability of any organization, especially during these fast-changing times. If you don’t continuously re-imagine what you offer, you are in danger of quickly becoming obsolete. But what sort of innovation should you pursue? Moreover, do you need to invent something completely new in order to innovate, or is there a more practical path?

Many of the most successful innovations were not brought about by outright inventions but rather by reconfiguring existing technologies. They represent a refreshing shortcut for today’s businesses.

As Virginia Postrel once remarked: “The most successful innovations are the ones that we stop noticing almost immediately.” The boldest innovations achieve this integration not by being market driven — fulfilling existing demand — but by being market driving — creating new demand and advancing the way people live.

A Few Examples

The Assembly Line

Let’s look at a few examples, first going back in time a bit. Automobiles were already around well before the Model T was introduced in 1908, but they were widely disliked. It was Ransom E. Olds who first created the assembly line in 1901 but it took the pioneering vision of Henry Ford to create mass appeal by combining the two.

Starbucks

Café culture has thrived in many parts of the world since the 15th century, yet it wasn’t an integral part of modern American society before Starbucks. The company combined a well-established concept (cafés) with an efficient and replicable quick-service platform.

In the process, Starbucks gave coffee consumption a lifestyle-driving quality. Instead of people taking coffee to work, consumers would go do work at their local Starbucks. Again, the innovation of Starbucks was not about some decisive, proprietary invention but about creating broad relevance from existing components.

Twitter

The original inspiration for Twitter came from traditional communication networks for urban transport dispatch systems like those found in taxis and buses. Twitter was built using pre-existing technologies like SMS, email and IM, but combined them in a unique way. The result is a transformative “instant micro-blog” that is changing the way people communicate.

There are already more than 200 million people using Twitter, with 13% of online Americans currently using the social network.

As The New York Times points out: “It has helped transform the way that news is gathered and distributed, reshaped how public figures from celebrities to political leaders communicate, and played a role in popular protests.”

What’s On the Horizon?

Finally, let’s consider a couple of budding innovations that combine existing technologies with market driving possibilities. MyCube is based on meshing the concept of social network sites with the ability to monetize and shield personal content online. Imagine a variation of Facebook in which users have complete privacy and control over their profiles with the option to monetize.

Square is a mobile payment system recently acquired by Visa. It combines handheld devices with credit card readers to allow for mobile transactions. Square’s goal is to facilitate micro-commerce by enabling electronic payment collection for small businesses and service providers that might not be able to accept credit cards.

Such inspiring examples abound. They demonstrate that the innovation shortcut is yours for the taking. Look at the wealth of current technologies as building blocks for your next incremental idea.

Africa's Great Wall of Trees

noreply@blogger.com (Quick Reads) — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 17:17:00 +0000

The Great Wall of China was designed to keep out Mongol hordes, but the Great Green Wall of Africa faces an even more formidable opponent, the Sahara Desert.

The shifting sands of the Sahara creep ever southward into the Sahel, swallowing up what was once farm, forest and field. But African nations are uniting to halt the desert's advance by planting trees in an east to west line starting in Senegal, then passing through Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and ending in Djibouti.

BLOG: Stopping Desertification in Africa With a 'Great Green Wall'

When completed the wall will be more than nine miles wide and 4,750 miles long. The AFP recently ran an article looking at Senegal's contribution to the wall.

Hardy, drought-resistant acacia trees now dig their roots into 330 miles of northern Senegal's Tessekere-Widu rural region. Planting began in 2008.

BLOG: Man-Made Oasis Will Transform the Desert

The Senegalese government is mostly footing the annual $2.1 million bill, and it's going to take more than $200 million to complete just Senegal's portion, Matar Cisse, head of the national Great Green Wall agency, told the AFP. But the country's president seems to admire the project's audacity.

"It is a crazy project, but a touch of madness helps when conceiving something which has never been conceived," Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade said when he launched GGW at a conference of Sahel countries in 2005.

The entire wall will cost billions of dollars. International agencies have pledged more than three billion so far.

Money spent on trees may be an investment in the region's future, considering that a United Nations report warns that two thirds of Africa's farmland may be devoured by the Sahara by 2025.

The Wall is also creating jobs and proverbial money-trees for locals. The area where the Wall is being planted has also sprouted nurseries for the acacia trees. Local women also cultivate their own livelihoods in nearby fruit and vegetable gardens.

BLOG: Ancient Desert Oasis Echoes Eden

The trees have even become something of a tourist attraction. Hundreds of Senegalese students and foreigners visit Tessekere every year to plant trees.

But it's not all blue skies for the green wall. Lamine Gueye, a Senegalese professor, worries that more trees means more shelter for malaria mosquitoes. On the other hand, he notes that the scientists and medical experts flocking to the area provide free medical care to locals.

IMAGE 1: Acacia trees in Moroceli, Honduras (Courtesy: Tim Wall).

IMAGE 2: The Sahara Desert in Senegal (Wikimedia Commons).

IMAGE 3: Acacia tree flowers in Moroceli, Honduras (Courtesy: Tim Wall).

Source: http://news.discovery.com/earth/wall-of-trees-in-africa-110621.html

'Glee' Infographic: The Tangled Web of Flirting, Dating and Love Diamonds

noreply@blogger.com (Quick Reads) — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 17:10:00 +0000

After two seasons of 'Glee' it's hard to keep all the relationships straight.

Finn dated Quinn, but Quinn hooked up with Puck while they were dating, then Finn got with Rachel, then back with Quinn and now he's back with Rachel? See what we mean?

Well, thanks to this handy infographic, all the relationships are mapped out in a very easy to use chart.

From the amount of people Will has dated -- is he really a man slut? -- to the show's many love triangles, they're all here and ready to be digested after the jump. There's even a rare love diamond! You don't see those every day!

Click image to enlarge.

Source: Online Dating University

We will be here – Map of the future

noreply@blogger.com (Quick Reads) — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 16:51:00 +0000

What challenges are we going to face in the next 10 years? And what kind of ideas are going to help us in overcoming them?
Even though predicting the future is not a game, a game is exactly what the Institute for the Future used to answer these dilemmas: 8 October 2008, Jane McGonigal, reasearcher at IFTFlaunched Superstruct (Su` per`struct ‘vt 1.To build over or upon another structure; to erect upon a foundation) , a massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG) that outlined the world of the future, thanks to the ideas and the collaboration of hundreds of users.

After six weeks the game came to its conclusion: Hundreds of ideas, superstructures for our future, guidelines to redefine the world of today and to improve and prepare it for the challenges of the next decade: From big new infrastructure projects to nanotechnology, from overcoming economies of scale to projects of “vertical farming”.

The final report of this first stage of the game was used for the design of our map: The editor in chief of Wired Italia, Riccardo Luna, asked us to visualize the complex net of ideas and assumptions that game’s users produced.

“The goal of the project is to engage a broad public in considering the dilemmas we face in our current, everyday lives and think together about resolutions that go beyond the familiar ways of dealing with problems”
Jane Mc Gonigal, Superstruct game designer

The research for alternative solutions – hence going beyond the more familiar approaches – also requires an alternative visualization.

A map for the future

We began analyzing the keywords provided by IFTF, at the base of which there are 7 key ideas: they are the guiding strategies for the creation of each new “superstructure”, and like satellites they revolve around our future world. They are:

Amplified optimism
Scale extreme
Adaptive emotion
Simulation as game
Evolvability
Collaboration environment
Reverse shortage

Under these, the verbal level, connecting words and concepts that make up the network of superstructures, divided into 5 macrocategories – policy, infrastructure, environment, economy and society- which in turn can operate in three areas:

Networks and individuals
Tools and knowledge
Practices and projects

The map is designed to overlap a semantic level (the network of keywords and groups of ideas) to the allegorical plan of the illustration. Each concept presented in the first level has been reconstructed through an illustration in the second one: the result is a collage drawing influences from the imaginary of the fifties. In this way mapping the future becomes an illustrated game where retro-futuristic imagery references are linked with words and concepts that foresee our future.

From left to right are presented the macro-categories formed by the supersturctures, from the most abstract, like policy and infrastructure, to those which concern more closely in the everyday lives, like economy and society. Amid the environment as a meeting point between abstract and current, with new ideas about global geoengineering and translocalism.

Even for the composition of the collage we want to keep the same sense of reading to level the narration of the world to come: indeed on the left the illustration starts with the abstraction of the map, then move gradually through info-graphics and illustration until reaching collage and photo on the right.

The map, thanks to the layer of allegorical illustrations, not only wants to disseminate the ideas generated during the project ‘Superstruct’ but also provide a starting point, a common imaginary, to start discussion and analysis on the world to come.

In this spirit, the meeting in Rome “A map for the next ten years,” within the cycle of meetingsCapitaleDigitale organized by Wired, founding Rome Europe and Telecom Italy, has fully exploited the possibilities of this tool engaging in an interesting discussion on future developments of technology.

Involved in this project:
Creative Direction, Donato Ricci; Concept development, Gaia Scagnetti; Visualizer, Mario Porpora; Artist, Michele Graffieti; Designer, Luca Masud.

Flickr
High res version ‘We will be here’
High res sketch ‘We will be here’

Source: http://www.densitydesign.org/2009/10/we-will-be-here-map-of-the-future/#more-1346

The Web is taking too long (infographic)

noreply@blogger.com (Quick Reads) — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 16:37:00 +0000

New Relic last week released the results of a study it conducted on 1 billion Web pages across the globe this month--and the data suggest Web page success can come down to a matter of seconds.

Using its new end-user technology, the application performance management company monitored actual page loads on Web sites across a variety of browsers and operating systems, including mobile, for the span of one week.

It takes an average of six seconds for a Web page to fully load, according to the research. That might not seem like a long time to the untrained observer, but CEO Lew Cirne says it's enough time for users to get distracted and move on. "Nielsen data suggests that it takes only one second before a user starts to notice a delay."

Interestingly enough, page load time is most often lost at the browser level, rather than on the network or at the server level. In fact, the study found that pages spent four of the six seconds in the browser, parsing and interpreting HTML, downloading assets and executing JavaScript.

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13846_3-20072653-62/the-web-is-taking-too-long-infographic/#ixzz1PvfjWyak

Credits: http://www.newrelic.com/

Radiohead Debut New Song 'Staircase'

noreply@blogger.com (Quick Reads) — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 16:20:00 +0000

Here's a new track called Staircase, taken from our upcoming 'From The Basement' session.

And no, you're not seeing double. The doppelganger drummers are myself and Clive Deamer. Clive has long been one of my favourite drummers and so I was really excited when he agreed to perform with us. Hope you like what we've all done.

Philip x

Enjoy!

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFTLxkMmY4M&feature=player_embedded#at=15

Margera RIPS Ebert - SHUT UP About Ryan Dunn

noreply@blogger.com (Quick Reads) — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 06:49:00 +0000

Bam Margera is FURIOUS with Roger Ebert -- telling the the movie critic to shut his "fat f*cking mouth" over a tweet Ebert posted earlier today, criticizing Bam's friend and "Jackass" co-star Ryan Dunn for drinking and driving ... just hours after Dunn passed away.

Earlier today, after TMZ posted the story that Dunn was seen drinking at a Philly-area bar before his fatal crash, Ebert posted a tweet that read, "Friends don't let jackasses drink and drive."

After a day of silence, Bam finally went to his Twitter to BLAST Ebert late Monday night ... saying, "I just lost my best friend, I have been crying hysterical for a full day and piece of s**t roger ebert has the gall to put in his 2 cents about a jackass drunk driving and [he is] one, f**k you!"

Bam added, "Millions of people are crying right now, shut your fat f**king mouth!"

source: http://www.tmz.com/2011/06/20/bam-margera-roger-ebert-furious-angry-ryan-dunn-twitter-attack/

Princess of whales: How a naked female scientist tries to tame belugas in the freezing Arctic

noreply@blogger.com (Quick Reads) — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 06:03:00 +0000

Braving sub-zero temperatures, she has thrown caution — and her clothes — to the wind to tame two beluga whales in a unique and controversial experiment.

Natalia Avseenko, 36, was persuaded to strip naked as marine experts believe belugas do not like to be touched by artificial materials such as diving suits.

The skilled Russian diver took the plunge as the water temperature hit minus 1.5 degrees Centigrade.

The beauty of nature: Like a scene from a classic pre-Raphaelite painting, naked Natalia Avseenko swims with beluga whales in the Arctic

Belugas are famed for the way in which their faces are able to convey human-like expressions. Certainly Matrena and Nilma seemed to enjoy frolicking with Natalia.

The taming of the whales happened in the Murmansk Oblast region in the far north-west of Russia at the shore of the White Sea near the Arctic Circle branch of the Utrish Dophinarium.

An area of the sea is enclosed to stop whales and dolphins getting out and instructors tame the mammals before they are transported to dolphinariums around the world — a practice many animal conservationists consider cruel.

Belugas have a small hump on their heads used for echo-location and it was thought that there would be more chance of striking up a rapport with them without clothes as a barrier.

Breathtaking: the scientist uses yoga techniques to hold her breath for up to ten minutes at a time ask she frolics with the whales, Nilma and Matrena

Come on in, the water's lovely: The whales wait for Natalia to take the plunge, but the sub-zero waters are enough to kill most people within five minutes

The average human could die if left in sub-zero temperature sea water for just five minutes.

However, Natalia is a yoga expert and used meditation techniques to hold her breath and stay under water for an incredible ten minutes and 40 seconds.

There are around 100,000 belugas in the wild.

The first to be held in captivity was shown at Barnum's Museum in New York in 1861, and there are belugas in aquariums and sea life parks across Europe, North America and Asia.

Their large range of 'facial expressions' comes from them having a more flexible bone structure than other whales.
Certainly these two had a big smile for the naked Natalia.

Rare space: Natalia's encounters with the whales take place in an area of sea which is enclosed to stop whales and dolphins getting out

Here's looking at you: Belugas have a wider range of 'facial expressions' due to a more flexible bone structure, and it has made them a hit in aquariums around the world

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2004042/Naked-female-scientist-tries-tame-beluga-whales-arctic.html#ixzz1Pt6PPOck