Random News Stories

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

This reminds me, flouride in our drinking water??  OK, I know, but flouride in baby water from Wal-Mart???  By the time they have teeth, aren't they ready for tap water??? 

Ingested fluoride actually has its greatest effect while teeth are developing, before they emerge, which is why kids are given it in grade school before they lose their baby teeth.

I ate fluoride tablets while I was pregnant and breastfeeding with my youngest, and she has amazing teeth. OTOH she is developmentally extremely odd and seems to have OCD far more severely than I do. Coincidence? Almost certainly.

[Cain]

I had flouride as a kid, and my dentist has basically declared my teeth indestructible.

[LMNO]

[Roo]

I used to live out in the middle of nowhere, where we had well water, and therefore no flouride in the drinking water...so we had these little flouride pills instead...which tasted like candy, and came in pretty colors. I liked eating all the pink ones, and then all the orange ones and so on (like mini M&Ms).

[Diseris]

A little hope for everyone:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/29/science/29collider.html?em&ex=1207022400&en=fc4bb1d73347fe4e&ei=5087%0A

But William Unruh, of the University of British Columbia, whose paper exploring the limits of Dr. Hawking's radiation process was referenced on Mr. Wagner's Web site, said they had missed his point. "Maybe physics really is so weird as to not have black holes evaporate," he said. "But it would really, really have to be weird."

and even

Dr. Arkani-Hamed said concerning worries about the death of the Earth or universe, "Neither has any merit." He pointed out that because of the dice-throwing nature of quantum physics, there was some probability of almost anything happening. There is some minuscule probability, he said, "the Large Hadron Collider might make dragons that might eat us up."

To bad Gygax isn't going to be around to see that...

[AFK]

More fallout from the Housing meltdown:



As families go through foreclosure on their homes, they are forced to give up their family pets.  The shelter in the story estimates 15% of the animals surrendered to them are a result of foreclosures. 

[Iason Ouabache]

"People searching the Internet for information about suicide methods are more likely to find sites encouraging suicide than those offering help or support, according to a study released Friday."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080411/lf_afp/healthinternetsuicide_080411164139

[Thurnez Isa]

Fed up with politics, man eats vote

NAPLES (Reuters) - Ballot stuffing took on a new meaning in Italy's parliamentary election on Sunday when a man ate his ballot paper in protest at the country's politicians.

Police in Naples said they had charged the 41-year-old businessman with destroying election materials. He said all Italian politicians and politics "are crap" and that he was protesting "against the system."

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/reuters/080414/odds/odd_election_odd_dc

[Jenne]

  Go random Italian dude.

[AFK]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24292481/

Mick Jones (ex-Clash for you young-uns) is writing a song inspired by the "Don't Tase Me Bro" incident. 

[Triple Zero]

Security is No Match for Chocolate and Good Looking Women

A survey out today by the organizers of the tech-security conference Infosecurity Europe found that 21% of 576 London office workers stopped on the street were willing to share their computer passwords with a good looking woman holding a clipboard. People were offered a chocolate bar in exchange for the information. More than half of the people surveyed said they used the same password for everything.

http://blogs.wsj.com/biztech/2008/04/16/security-is-no-match-for-chocolate-and-good-looking-women/?mod=WSJBlog

[AFK]

Girl's twin is found inside her stomach

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24645826/

ATHENS, Greece - A 9-year-old girl who went to hospital in central Greece suffering from stomach pains was found to be carrying her embryonic twin, doctors said Thursday.

Doctors at Larissa General Hospital examined the girl and surgically removed a growth they later discovered was an embryo about six centimeters (more than two inches) long.

"They could see on the right side that her belly was swollen, but they couldn't suspect that this tumor would hide an embryo," hospital director Iakovos Brouskelis said.

The girl has made a full recovery, he said.

Andreas Markou, head of the hospital's pediatric department, said the embryo was a formed fetus with a head, hair and eyes, but no brain or umbilical cord.

Markou said cases where one of a set of twins absorbs the other in the womb occurs in one of 500,000 live births.

The girl's family did not want to be identified, hospital officials said.

[Cain]

Yeah, I've heard of that before.  Pretty sucky, really.

[hooplala]

Parasitic twin phenomena, no?

[AFK]

That's gotta creep the fuck out of that poor girl.  I mean what kind of mental therapy is she going to need to get her head around that.