Bib FName LName City State Country Age Sex ChipTime ClockTime
3914 Rachel Paiste Boston MA 24 F 2:04:04 2:14:43
Overall SexPl DivPl AgeGrade Pace Ttlrace Ttldiv Ttlsex 5K 6Mi 10Mi
5753 2263 480 53.1% 9:28 21398 1978 13477 27:33 53:42 1:32:50
see more crazy cat pics
see more crazy cat pics
honestly, truly, really…
the creepiest playgrounds ever.
EVER!
Anyone Seen My $4.2 Billion?
Even if you know nothing about the music industry, you probably know this: People don’t buy albums anymore. Everyone is aware of this, mostly because this phenomenon is reported on constantly. The soundtrack to High School Musical was considered a commercial success by selling 2.9 million units in all of 2007; seven years before, Britney Spears was able to sell 1.3 million copies of Oops! . . . I Did It Again in a single week. That disparity should be shocking, but it isn’t — by now, anyone who (even casually) follows the music industry is inundated with similarly grim statistics all the time. Interestingly, these stories tend to make music fans happy. People hate corporate record labels and love reading about how the industry is failing. As such, the media coverage of plummeting music sales almost always focuses on how labels are losing money. But this coverage usually ignores an economic element that is less tangible but more interesting: What is happening to all the money not being spent on music?
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has just offered a $1 million prize to anyone who develops a commercially viable “in vitro chicken-meat product.” The catch is that the product can’t contain or entail the use of “animal-derived products, except for starter cells obtained in the initial development stages.”
The idea is simple: Instead of growing a chicken embryo into a bird and cutting meat from it, you skip the bird part and grow the meat directly from the embryo.
If you don’t believe this can be done, read up on the blood vessels, livers, bladders, and hearts we’ve already grown in labs. Check out this month’s International In Vitro Meat Symposium. Scan the latest updates on “cultured meat” R&D.
If this idea repels you as a carnivore, imagine how it feels to a vegetarian. PETA co-founder Ingrid Newkirk tells the New York Times that the prize offer caused “a near civil war in our office” and that “we will have members leave us over this.” Newkirk observes, “In any social cause community, there are people who strive for purity.”
She’s right.
That force is now shaking up PETA and will soon confront the rest of us. Reality is changing. Eating meat and eating animals used to be the same thing. Now they’re coming apart. Should we promote lab-grown meat so people can eat flesh without eating animals? Or is PETA’s promotion of meat the final surrender to a mentality of predation?
Purists see it as a moral surrender. “It’s our job to introduce the philosophy and hammer it home that animals are not ours to eat,” a dissident PETA official tells the Times. Purists also point out that carnivores suffer more obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and other diseases. Getting your meat from stem cells might not change that.
Pragmatists point to all the issues lab meat would resolve. No more cages. No more body-inflating drugs. No more slaughter. Less environmental harm. “We don’t mind taking uncomfortable positions if it means that fewer animals suffer,” Newkirk concludes.
What’s the Army policy on fat people? They’re not particularly welcome. The Army’s basic recruitment standard is linked to a candidate’s body-fat percentage, measured by an equation involving height and the circumferences of the abdomen, neck, and—for women—hips. If they’re 27 years old or younger, men must have a body-fat percentage below 26 percent, while women must be below 32 percent.
Typically, however, recruits are first judged against a BMI table. The upper limits on the Army’s weight table are slightly more lenient than the definition of “overweight” provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: For example, a 21-year-old male recruit who is 5 foot 10 and weighs 190 pounds would be a bit overweight under CDC guidelines but not above the Army’s weight maximum. (You can also be too skinny to be recruited—the minimum body-mass index (PDF) is 19.) If candidates pass muster according to the table, they don’t need to go through a body-fat measurement.
Because of increasing obesity rates in the United States, the Army’s standards now disqualify a large percentage of the population. A study conducted by Army researchers found that 27.1 percent of the 18-year-olds who applied to join the military in 2006 were overweight—up from 22.8 percent in 1993. Weight is by far the most common medical reason why potential recruits are rejected from serving. And while prospective enlistees can try to make weight before their official screening—often with the support of eager recruiters—the pool of eligible young adults remains smaller than the Army would like.
As a result, the Army has tried to find ways to admit recruits who fall outside the typical boundaries but are still likely to succeed in the service. In particular, the Assessment of Recruit Motivation and Strength—known as ARMS—has become a source of automatic waivers for recruits with a body-fat percentage up to 30 percent for men and 36 percent for women. The ARMS process requires participants to complete a five-minute modified “Harvard step” test—which involves stepping onto a low platform 120 times per minute. After that, applicants must do a certain number of pushups in one minute—at least 15 for men and four for women. Applicants who qualify through the ARMS test get a free pass on being overweight, but they do have to get themselves in shape within a year of entering active duty. Early research suggests that recruits who get ARMS waivers have attrition rates similar to enlistees who enter the Army without a waiver.
Once a recruit makes weight, he’s expected to stay slim. At a minimum, Army personnel are required to take a physical-fitness test every six months, which includes a weight screening. If a soldier is above the maximum body-fat percentage (PDF) for his age, he must take part in a “weight control” program that includes a workout regimen and nutritional counseling. While under an “overweight flag,” soldiers can’t attend a professional military school, be promoted, or even re-enlist.
And yes, you can eat yourself out of the Army: If you don’t eventually make satisfactory progress after being placed in the weight-control program, a commander can initiate “separation proceedings” leading to an eventual discharge.
Above the Clouds
Credit & Copyright: Serge Brunier (TWAN)
Explanation: From the windswept peak of Mauna Kea, on the Big Island of Hawaii, your view of the world at night could look like this. At an altitude of about 13,500 feet, the mountain top is silhouetted in the stunning skyscape recorded near dusk in early December of 2005. The volcanic peak rises just above a sea of storm clouds illuminated by a bright Moon. Planet Venus is setting near the Moon as the brilliant evening star. The scene also includes the faint, milky band of our own galaxy’s disk of stars and cosmic dust clouds stretching from the horizon into the sky along the right edge of the frame.
We’ve all goofed up and flubbed up things we’ve previously done time and again.
It turns out the root of these brain farts may be a special kind of abnormal brain activity that begins up to 30 seconds before a mistake even happens.
When people blunder after performing the same task over and over, scientists had suspected that such lapses were due to momentary hiccups in concentration. Still, little was known about what the brain was actually doing before such errors.
To investigate further, the brains of volunteers were scanned as they performed a monotonous task — repetitively pushing buttons that matched images flashed at them.
Unexpectedly, before volunteers made errors, their brains started displaying abnormal behavior … up to a half-minute beforehand.
“We thought initially that it would be quite remarkable if we were to find abnormal activity six or so seconds ahead,” said researcher Tom Eichele, a neuroscientist at the University of Bergen in Norway. “That the entire process spans across a much longer timescale was quite astonishing and spooked us, such that we checked this finding over and over again.”
“We did not find much evidence that the brain is just getting tired. However, I don’t think that we understand it well enough to bet all our money yet,” Eichele said.
If portable devices could detect this abnormal brain activity before an accident happened, they could save lives — say, by sounding an alert before a slip is made while driving a car or operating a piece of machinery in a factory.
However, if such abnormal brain activity can get detected simply using electrodes on the scalp, then brain-scanning caps under development for video games and other applications might work, Eichele said. “It, at least, does not seem technically impossible,” he told LiveScience.
It’s from the Sun (brit), so who knows how true it is… but I really, REALLY hope this is a non-truth.
A SERIES of sickening videos have been posted on the internet showing a man who claims to have deliberately “infected” thousands of women with AIDS.
Calling himself ‘Trashman’ and speaking with an American accent, the masked man says he has infected between 1200 and 1500 unknowing victims with the devastating disease.
He can be seen reading the names and ages of some of the women he claims to have had unprotected sex with in the video clips on website YouTube.
The videos - one of which has been viewed 195,000 times - also feature a web address to a “gangsta” portal filled with pornography and where Trashman has a profile.
In the first video Trashman is filmed reading from a list of women he claims to have infected.
He gloats: “Today I’m doing a show about something that’s more important than killing rappers.
“This here (piece of paper) that I hold in my hand is a list of women who I actually infected with AIDS on purpose.
“So if I call your name and if you just happen to be on my ‘I got the AIDS from that n***er’ list’, then God bless you.”
He then goes on to name several women and their ages.
President of People Living with HIV/AIDS, Brett Hayhoe, said the man “does seem genuine” in the video clips.
He blasted: “It’s extremely disturbing (and) the guy needs psychiatric help.”
AIDS can only be contracted once a person has been infected with HIV, but Mr Hayhoe said the man may have lumped the two together.
Mr Hayhoe said if Trashman was telling the truth, it would be “absolutely devastating” for anyone who has had sex with him.