(And thanks to WP’s scheduler, I’m not even going to be home when it posts.)
From my friend Gerard, 50 things that we know now that we didn’t know last year. Some excerpts, with snark, of course:
2. The part of the brain that regulates reasoning, impulse control and judgment is still under construction during puberty and doesn’t shift into autopilot until about age 25.
Yeah, kinda knew that about guys, but damn, us too? Say it isn’t so!
21. Two previously unknown forms of ice – dubbed by researchers as ice XIII and XIV – were discovered frozen at temperatures of around minus 160 degrees Celsius, or minus 256 Fahrenheit.
So we have gone beyond Ice-9, and Kurt Vonnegut will find it even more difficult to sleep at night.
32. Just 30 minutes of continuous kissing can diminish the body’s allergic reaction to pollen, relaxing the body and reducing production of histamine, a chemical cell given out in response to allergens.
Don’t you like the way they say, “Just 30 minutes”? I think, all in all, I’d rather have take an allergy pill once a day.
34. Scientists have discovered the fastest bite in the world, one so explosive it can be used to send the Latin American trap-jaw ant that performs it flying through the air to escape predators.
So this is even a better toy for Gracie than a clicker beetle? Too bad they don’t live in the U.S.
37. Marine biologists discovered a new species of shark that walks along the ocean floor on its fins.
Yeah, and in a few years, sucker’s going to figure out how to walk on land. Then where will we be? Who knew that SNL was prophetic?
39. The common pigeon can memorize 1,200 pictures.
Which, eerily, makes it smarter than the common Internet troll. On the other hand, it’s still a rat with wings.
And on that note, a happy New Year to all of my readers.
Not a rat with wings, Meryl, a reptile with feathers and wings. No teeth you see. Now a bat on the other hand is closer, except for the incisors.
P. J. O’Rourke once referred to a particularly nasty looking bat he encountered in the Brazilian rainforest as looking like a colonel in the rat air force.
Happy New Year.
Bats and rats are VERY close to primates. Flying dinosaurs, even when they coo, are not so good for you.
CATS however will control all of them !!!
A happy, healthy, and prosperous new year to every one of us.
Ha! My mother used to scare me when I was little by telling me the land-shark was at the door. That was the first thing I thought of when I read the news about the shark walking on fins.
But will 30 minutes of continuous kissing eliminate my cat allergies?
BTW, the article doesn’t say whether the test subjects were kissing humans.
chsw
Huh. I don’t think any of my feline friends would let me kiss them for a half-hour, even if I could last that long without my respiratory system seizing up. Skritch, perhaps. But not kiss.