For whatever reason, the house I’m in now has some pretty bad wiring.  It’s a relatively new house — built in the 70’s, perhaps early 80’s — and shouldn’t have the problems it does. 
     Unfortunately, that’s one of the things you’ll always get into when you own a home.  There are quirky things about most every house.  In this one, the fuse box may even be a bit overloaded…

     Last Friday night, I had an overwhelming sense of dread.  I felt like someone close to me was in trouble, and there was nothing I could do.  I was distraught, and I couldn’t shake that feeling.  My car had messed up the night before, and just everything seemed to be going the wrong way.  And what should happen but every time I came into the room and sat down on the bed, the ceiling fan would begin this eerie whining, and shake violently back and forth.
     But it only happened when I came back into the room and sat down on the bed…

     I tested that theory seven or eight times, and finally decided to pull out the voice recorder and leave it running in the otherwise silent room for a few minutes… I mean, a little EVP never hurt anyone, right?

(Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUQNtpGdSAw)

     And so, two things became obvious:

1. Those weren’t ghosts.  They were telephone signals.  There’s obviously a massive amount of Extremely Low Frequency radiation pointed at this upstairs room from “somewhere,” and somehow, it’s bleeding through.  Perhaps it’s the fault of bad grounding in this house’s wiring, or perhaps having a telecommunications transmitter inadvertently pointed directly at this room is the whole problem with the wiring.
2. The ceiling fan was never mounted straight, and it was extremely loose.  I opened and closed the door each time I moved from the bed, walking into the hallway, and just that amount of air pressure was enough to make the ceiling fan go crazy.  A few twists of the screwdriver fixed the problem, however, it’s still off balance… just not so much that the door makes it appear to be a murder weapon from the afterlife.

     This really made me give a lot more thought to the whole EVP phenomenon.

     Sure, you can make recordings in silence, and end up with all sorts of noises.  Ambient and background noises, wind and air pressure changes and other miscellaneous sounds that you wouldn’t normally notice become amplified.  Since the dynamic range of most microphones is significantly wider than that of the human ear, and the fact that the final recording becomes compressed to fit into an audible bandwidth — not to mention the problems of noise from the internal mechanism on tape recorders and sounds created by digital processing on voice recorders — you end up hearing all sorts of noises that can sound rather ghastly.  It’s the perfect illustration of the old saying, “ghost in the machine.”

     You simply have to take a scientific approach to this sort of thing, otherwise, you’ll end up convincing yourself of all sorts of crazy stuff.  As another old saying goes, “Enough research will tend to support your theory.”

     Inspired by movies like Stir of Echoes, Sixth Sense and White Noise, and entertainment television shows like Ghost Hunters, I know too many people who run around recording EVP.  Most of them are convinced that Ghost Hunters is real, as they’re unable to distinguish the difference between science, pseudoscience and entertainment. 
     These types also totally buy into most of the crazy conspiracy theories going around.

     But, like they’d assuredly tell me … I’m just too cynical… *rolls eyes*

     As for that “feeling of dread” I had Friday night (and through the weekend), I was more than right — in fact, I was dead on, right down to times.  As cynical as I might be, there’s still the fact that I perceive things that I shouldn’t be able to.
     You either get used to that or you don’t.

Yah.  I’m back home and totally enjoying the comforts of my OG and my happy little office.  It’s always nice to get to travel far and wide, but even nicer to come home… especially since I had only been married a scant week when I had to leave on that jetplane.  But that’s another story all together ain’t it?

So, OG and I have been known to have some pretty interesting conversations in the last 7 years that we have worked together.  No holds barred.  Really.  We talk about anything and everything.  Which brings me to what we are talking about here.

At lunch, we generally find some kind of magazine full of gossip or short, yet hilarious ditties.  The conversation turned interesting when I found a short article about an ape who doesn’t dig girl apes….  Read this… you’ll love it.

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Sibu the Orangutan has miffed his Dutch keepers by refusing to mate with females and showing sexual interest only in tattooed human blondes.

Apenheul Primate Park hoped Sibu would become its breeding male when he arrived two years ago, but orangutans aren’t his type.

“He chases them, or ignores them, but he doesn’t do what he should do,” said a spokeswoman for the park.

Instead, Sibu fancies his female keepers, especially blondes. That, the spokeswoman said, was common for orangutans but Sibu has a fetish for tattoos, harking back to a heavily tattooed keeper who reared him.

“Orangutans have special interests in special subjects. Sibu happens to like tattoos,” she said.

So, this brought up the question of whether orangutans have a penis bone like most other mammals or if their penis gets hard like a human penis does.  Yah, I know what you must be thinking…  perfectly acceptable, lady-like lunchtime conversation.  So, we finished up our lunch and google’d it, as we google every sick and twisted thing we can think of.  And we found out that an orangutan does, in fact, have a penis bone.

OG has decided that I, being the blonde and tattoo’d chippie that I am, should stay the hell out of Amsterdam.

Just thought I’d share that tid-bit with you kids.  Cheers!

(Article Copyright 2007 Reuters)

A couple of years ago I had a physical and the doctor found that my cholesterol was a bit high (234 I think). So, being the nerd I am, I started reading all I could about this. I read one long article on WebMD and it had an interesting final sentence that said something like “there is no statistical link between high cholesterol and heart attack.” Hmmm.

I got my blood tested again recently and was thinking all would be good. I have been on a low carb diet for months now, lost lots of fat and was thinner and eating much better. Well, my cholesterol was now 269 and all the results were in the “very high” range, except for blood glucose. I have not had any sugar in a long time, so, that should be low. Now the doctor is saying that I may need to get on medication for my cholesterol.

So I did more reading and now I am fairly convinced it is a lot of crap. I read this article which sums up a lot of things. Basically, the cause of heart disease and heart attack and stroke isn’t cholesterol, but stress. The emphasis on cholesterol is perhaps more about selling you a drug you must take every day for the rest of your life.

Study after study shows no link between a low fat diet and lowered risk of heart disease. Study after study shows that lowering cholesterol does not lower the risk of heart disease. But it sells a lot of pills! If cholesterol was bad for you, why does your body make it? New studies are showing serious risks with the extremely low cholestrol levers due to statins. Low cholesterol used to mean under 400.

Stress causes heart disease. That seems simple right? The C Reactive Protien is the better indicator. It also explains the “French Paradox.” This is the fact that although French people eat way more fat and have higher cholesterol, they have a lower incidence of heart disease. The cholesterol obsessed Americans decide this was due to their consumption of red wine. The real truth is that its due to their relaxed lifestyles. Two months of vacation a year. Shorter work weeks. More sick leave and fully insured. Less stress is the answer. The simple and obvious answer.

The other thing that was interesting to discover is that the optimum amount of exercise to strengthen the heart is 8-12 minutes. That’s right 8-12 minutes! Exercising a lot more is stressing your body, which is harmful. But that’s the American way. If 10 minutes is good 3 times a week, 2 hours twice a day is better! Wrong!

I am not going to worry about my high cholesterol. Unfortunately, this myth is so prevalent that my life insurance policy ended up at a much higher rate due to my cholesterol level. I wish I could get a lawyer to sue them over that! Class action!

     The arrival of warmer weather means many things to many different people.  No more snow.  Sunlight.  Trees.  Animals.  Flowers.  The removal of winter garb, in favor of more comfortable clothing, which may or may not reveal an indeterminate amount of flesh.  This is quite notable in the Female variety of our species.

     The fact that the majority of barstools are made of commercial-grade Vinyl can be especially problematic for Females who, due to weather, are beginning to wear shorter skirts.  Their supple skin, when subjected to temparatures above seventy degrees Farenheit and combined with an average body temparature of 98.6 Degrees, may experience a temporary chemical bond with said Vinyl.

     I would ask readers to please be aware of this issue.  Females should especially take note that a slightly longer skirt may decrease the risk of Vinyl-to-epidermal bonds.

     Men should not laugh as bonded barstools fall towards their Female counterparts.  Instead, Men should assist, ever-so-slightly, by putting their feet on the back of said barstools in order to assist the pulling of supple, Female skin from said commercial-grade Vinyl.

     Men should also pay close attention to the problem of vacuum-lock, which may occur between the Female thighs and a standard, commercial-grade barstool.  This problem may present itself with Females who are overly sexually active, or those who have very recently or chronically engaged in sexual intercourse.  These Females should generally be avoided at all costs.
     However, under certain, very specific specific circumstances, this may also be caused by a spontaneous reaction due to a Female’s interest in a chosen Male, although this behavior is considered to be especially rare in establishments which serve alcoholic beverages.

     This has been a Public Service Announcement.

From Fox News:

A 35-year-old Orlando man can thank his 300-pound girth for helping save his life after he jumped off a cruise ship and drifted 20 miles for more than eight hours with a collapsed lung before rescuers found him in the Atlantic Ocean.

Regardless whether I knew my fat would float or not, I would not be jumping off of a perfectly fit rowing boat. That’s just lame. But, Michael Mankamyer did it. More than one witness has come around and said that “he jumped”.

Despite reports that he had “fallen” overboard, theoretically there is no way that could happen. It’s not like he was some tiny little thing that just slipped through the safety rail. No. This is a 300 pound fella.

Now, if you’ve seen the picture of this guy, the story might be explained. He just looks like that kind of goofy, attention-whore who will do anything to be in the class clown and/or the center of attention. You know, the college buddy who always got tanked before midnight and by half past, he was hanging naked from the roof of the frat house.
Jeez, buddy. Couldn’t ya have just talked all of your pals into a bad night of drinking and karaoke?

That’s it. I’ve made a snap decision to stop dieting and to stop going to the gym.
So, if on my honeymoon, I get tanked and take a wrong turn and fall off a big old rowing boat, I’ll be able to float around until they come back to find my fat behind.

He’s just lucky the Pirates weren’t out and about or he would have gotten so dunked for nothing more than being less than genius.

Once in while (wink, wink) I’ll hear, see or read something that just gets my panties all in a wad.

I have several ’sore subjects’, but the one that makes gets my dander up more than anything is the fat people of the world looking for something to blame it on. PLEASE.

As one who has struggled for just shy of one year to lose damn near 70 pounds, I can tell ya this:

• No, fat is not genetic
• No, you don’t have big bones
• No, you can’t lose weight by starving yourself or taking pills.

Fat people are fat because they have not made the decision to motivate and get moving.

There is no miracle pill that you can take to make fat melt. There is no miracle cream that you can rub on your thighs and make them magically disappear into thin air.

Short of surgery, which is an extremely ill idea to begin with, there is only one answer to the timeless question asked of the rolly-polly types: I wonder how I can lose this weight?

Here’s a few pointers (from the master, herself):

1. Step away from the donut. The donut is evil. The donut will find it’s way down your throat and into your guts, where it will then be disbursed and particles of that donut will live in your hips and double chin forever. Other foods that should be in diet hell are: snicker bars, cheesecake, lasagna, loaded potato soup, all mexican food.
2. Taco Bell has always been my weakness. However, one day whilst in a bored situation, I was reading what actually goes into some fast food food. EEEWWWWW.If the fact that most fast food is swimming in grease, lard, oil or someother non-digestable mess isn’t enough to keep you out of the french fries, then go one night around 10 and watch the fry guy at McDonald’s empty that big vat of yack that they fry everything in. MMMMMM, MMMMM, Good, I tell ya. Makes me wanna spew.
3. Starvation. Um, if you don’t give your body something healthy to eat, it’s wired up to know that your dumb ass is trying to starve it. Ask me, what’s my body gonna do if I don’t eat??? Your body is gonna hold on to every single nasty, blobby little molecule of cellulose that it can. You will not lose anything if you starve because your body will be freaking out thinking it’s never going to get to eat again, so it holds onto what it already has. One must eat to lose weight. Funny huh?
4. Get your fat ass on a treadmill!! My fat ass started out doing 15 minutes at 1.5 miles an hour on the treadmill. And amazingly, what those dang nutritionists and exercise therapists have been saying all along was true. YOU GOTTA DO BOTH DIET AND EXERCISE!!!!You can’t sit around and be a slug. Get off your butt and walk around a little amigo. Your body will thank you for it.

So, I guess the bottom line is, you’re only fat if you choose to be fat. I’m a sport, I can admit it, I’m still a little fluffy around certain sections. But I’ve learned that I can’t blame anyone but me for letting me get out of control. I was a scale tipper, and its a battle everyday.

This is why it chaps my ass to hear all this bull-caca about fat being genetic and fat being a disease…

I stand here today, calling BULLshit, DEFCON 5!

     As if Monty didn’t have enough to say about Intelligent Design last year… Check this out… 

     SayUncle Interviews TN State Senator Raymond Finney:

SayUncle: Let’s get the question everyone is wondering out of the way: are you retarded?

Senator Finney: Uh, no.

     Oh yeah, that rules. 

     The “Yeah, God put those [dinosaur] bones there to test our faith,” bit was hilarious.  I can remember hearing that when I was a kid from several people, being that I was such an avid Paleo-archaeologist at the age of six.
     The simple explanation was that there couldn’t have been any dinosaurs, since they weren’t mentioned in the Bible.  Strangely, neither were Planets, Meteors or Giraffes, so they must not exist, either.  *shrug*

     Lately, I’ve taken the attitude that, “I absolutely do not give a damn.”  And I mean it.  It’s been a mind-altering, uplifting, emotionally freeing sort of change.

     One of the greatest gifts has been: laughter.

     Especially when I read crap like this.  Or this.

     Or even this, from New Scientst…

Don’t say cloning, say somatic cell nuclear transfer [SCNT]. That at least is the view of biologists who want the term to be used instead of “therapeutic cloning” to describe the technique that produces cloned embryos from which stem cells can then be isolated.

[...]

Kathy Hudson and her colleagues at the Genetics and Public Policy Center in Washington DC asked more than 2000 Americans whether they approved of deriving stem cells from embryos produced by cloning. For half of the sample they used the term “SCNT” instead of “cloning”, and this raised approval ratings from 29 per cent to 46 per cent, Hudson told a meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics in New Orleans last week.

     Politically correct science?  What’ll they think of next?

     Regardless of what you call it, human cloning is little more than another way to speed up the process of destroying our already shallow gene pool.

The National Institute of Mental Health issued a press release on Monday (Feb 27th) about a study led by Eric Nestler, M.D., of The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. “Sustained hippocampal chromatin regulation in a mouse model of depression and antidepressant action” (Tsankova NM, Berton O, Renthal W, Kumar A, Neve R, Nestler EJ), shows that chronic stress and depression can cause a “molecular scar” in the brains of lab mice.

“The molecular scar induced by chronic stress in the hippocampus, and perhaps elsewhere in the brain, can’t be easily reversed,” said Nestler. “To really cure depression, we probably need to find new treatments that can remove the silencer molecules.”

While not only showing promise for future treatments of depression, it may also give some hints about about genetic predisposition to depression and antisocial behavior.

California geneticists have managed to get working human brain cells in mice.

Geneticist Fred Gage injected embryonic human cells into two-week-old fetal mice as they developed in the womb. When the mice matured, some human stem cells survived and became functional components of the mice’s brains and nervous systems.

The question begs to be asked as to wether these mice now show a propensity to sit on the couch with a remote control and a bag of potato chips.