Dowbrigade

The Dowbrigade’s local supermarket has been undergoing a major makeover, and it was as if, had we been a pre-super hunter gatherer, the bison herd had suddenly disappeared.

Despite completely reoutfitting and reorganizing the entire store, they managed to stay open 24-7 throughout, doing most of the dangerous, disruptive work late at night. For three months, we couldn’t find anything. It was like a black market, or a sidewalk sale, where the goods one was perusing could suddenly up and move to the next corner at the approach of a flatfoot.

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Now that they’ve finished the work and reinagurated the branch (witnessed by a photo of the store manager and the regional manager posing around a frosted blue cake) things are barely better. Either the new layout is designed to confuse, or the Dowbrigade is getting too old to adjust our grazing patterns. Little things irritate us; the boxes of apple crisp are no longer on top of the apples and the Lactaid is now on a different aisle than the regular milk. How dare they!

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But the worst is the fact that the newly expanded “Nature’s Choice” health food aisle has been relocated directly across from the snack food aisle. As we shamble down the aisle in our polyester Hawaiian shorts, fishnet tank top and fur-lined slippers, it is like we have a tiny angel on one shoulder and that damn little devil on the other.

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“Oh, get the fat-free rice cakes. They make great snacks.”

“Forget that junk! We got candied macadamia nuts over here.”

“Well, if you must have something sweet, why not Granny Ruth’s Organic Granola with Carob?”

“Are you kidding? Grab some Nacho chips and Cheese-like Dip. They’re on sale!”

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Our head rotates back and forth as though we were courtside at Wimbledon. Fearing whiplash, or worse, the dreaded 360 degree Exorcist headspin, we flee the premises. We may have to find another supermarket, where the food doesn’t talk to us.

Frog-deforming infections caused by tiny parasites are increasing because of North American farms’ nutrient-rich watershed, a new study shows.

The excess nitrogen and phosphorus found in farm runoff causes more algae to grow, which increases snail populations that host microscopic parasites called trematodes, said Pieter Johnson, a water scientist at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

Deformed frogs first gained international attention in the mid-1990s, when a group of schoolchildren discovered a pond where more than half of the leopard frogs had missing or extra limbs, Johnson said. Since then, widespread reports of deformed amphibians have led to speculation that the abnormalities were being caused by pesticides, increased ultraviolet radiation or parasitic infection.

Parasite infection is now recognized as a major cause of such deformities, but the environmental factors responsible for increases in parasite abundance have largely remained a mystery.

“What we found is that nitrogen and phosphorus pollution from agriculture, cattle grazing and domestic runoff have the potential to significantly promote parasitic infection and deformities in frogs,” Johnson said.

from LiveScience.com 

This has become a regular point of contention between the Dowbrigade and his main feline spiritual advisor, Chiqui. Rather than walk on our face (always a risky proposition) Chiqui sits calmly and prudently a few inches to one side and gently paws somewhere in the nose-mouth region. What he means is A) fix my breakfast (he manages to survive on a protean diet of Sensitive Systems hi-tech dry food and boiled chicken breast B) scratch me, and C) don’t you have to be somewhere so I can have the bed to myself the rest of the day?

We have become used to this routine,and occasionally are able to perform our duties in a sufficiently somnambulistic manner to return to dreamland for a few precious minutes afterward. However, lately we have noticed a perturbing precision in Chiqui’s wakeup calls which have us wondering about collusion and outside agendas. Turns out Chiqui has been awakening me at precisely sunrise.

For example, today, according to the Boston Globe, the sun rose at precisely 6:21. Sure enough, at Chiqui’s first touch I looked at the clock, and it read 6:21. Yesterday, it was exactly 6:17, and the day before 6:14. Obviously, this is good news going into the Fall, as eventually we will be allowed to sleep past 7. But it is precisely the precision which has us wondering.

Has Chiqui learned to read the clock, and the Globe? Does he have some feline, or human, co-conspirator giving him cues? Does he have an internal clock even more precise than his master’s (we have never owned an alarm clock, and have never missed a plane)?

We are thinking of installing “Kitty Cams” to find out what he really does all day while we are at work…..

WILLS POINT, Tex., Aug. 29 — Most spiders are solitary creatures. So the discovery of a vast web crawling with millions of spiders that is spreading across several acres of a North Texas park is causing a stir among scientists, and park visitors.

Sheets of web have encased several mature oak trees and are thick enough in places to block out the sun along a nature trail at Lake Tawakoni State Park, near this town about 50 miles east of Dallas.

The gossamer strands, slowly overtaking a lakefront peninsula, emit a fetid odor, perhaps from the dead insects entwined in the silk. The web whines with the sound of countless mosquitoes and flies trapped in its folds.

Mr. Dean and several other scientists said they had never seen a web of this size outside of the tropics, where the relatively few species of “social” spiders that build communal webs are most active.

Norman Horner, emeritus professor of biology at Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, Tex., was one of a number of spider experts to whom a Texas Parks and Wildlife Department biologist sent online photos of the web. “It is amazing, absolutely amazing,” said Dr. Horner, who at first thought it an e-mail hoax.

The web may be a combined effort of social cobweb spiders. But their large communal webs generally take years to build, experts say, and this web was formed in just a few months.

from the New York Times

Federal authorities may have to intervene should the webs encircle the nearby North Texas Westmoreland Nuclear Generating Complex…

  It’s back-to-school time so load up with those pencils, notebooks, rulers and, of course, a bullet-deflecting backpack, if you buy the pitch of the security accessory’s Danvers inventors.

  Dads Mike Pelonzi, 43, and Joe Curran, 42, dreamed up the bullet-proof backpack, which also blunts knife attacks, to protect their own children after witnessing the Columbine massacre in 1999.

“It was after seeing what happened in Columbine that we started thinking about this. I’m a parent and so is Joe and we wanted a way of keeping kids safe at school and this is what we came up with,” said Pelonzi, co-owner of MJ Safety Solutions which produces ‘My Child’s Pack’.

The backpacks, which will cost $175, have a super-lightweight bullet-proof plate sewn into the back which weighs no more than a bottle of water. Pelonzi said the material used is a secret.

The plate material meets National Institute of Justice safety standards, said Pelonzi, and during a three-year testing phase, stood up to bullets as well as machete, hatchet and Ka-bar knife attacks.

from the Boston Herald 

According to our yute expert, this is a terrible idea because the only kids who are going to be able to afford and/or need these units are drug dealers and gang members. My expert expects to see kids on corners wearing two – one on the front and one on the back. As he pointed out “It’s still cheaper than full body armor”. We’ll take his word for it…. 

The China Conundrum was inevitable. Importing entire Wal-Marts full of goods from a third world country with as creative and casual an attitude towards standards and regulation as China was wound to have repercussions in a country as litigation-loco as the US. The first thing an American thinks when he stubs his toe is “Who can I sue?”

In fact, many Americans don’t even wait to stub anything, they wake up in the morning thinking “Who can I sue today?”

The fact that the answer to that question, in an increasing number of cases, is “Someone in China” is sure to lead to an increasing demand for American lawyers versed in the procedures of bringing suit in Chinese and international courts, and for English-speaking Chinese lawyers to defend the coming avalanche of suits.

Coincidentally, the Dowbrigade has recently become one of the world’s top experts in teaching legal English to foreign lawyers. Actually, one of the world’s few experts. But, be that as it may, we are evaluating where the best locale for an International Institute of Legal English – Hong Kong or Beijing?

NEW YORK (CNN) — Passengers aboard Spirit Airlines Flight 180 from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to New York’s LaGuardia International Airport had an unexpected travel companion Tuesday: a small monkey.

A passenger who originally departed from Lima, Peru, and connected in Fort Lauderdale had been hiding the small monkey in his ponytail, under his hat, according to Spirit Airlines spokeswoman Alison Russell.

During the flight, the monkey crawled out of its hiding spot, forcing the owner to hold it in his hands, where the unexpected visitor was soon spotted by fellow passengers and crew members, Russell said.

The Port Authority Police Department was contacted by Spirit Airlines, and officials met the owner and the monkey at the gate.

from CNN

What a coincidence – the Dowbrigade’s own personal Curious George is also on his way from Peru to La Guardia with a monkey on his back. Getting out of the country might be a problem; his tourist visa is five years out of date. We are loathe to divulge any more details until the big ape surfaces somewhere in the free world…..

Finally, Ram Bahadur Bomjom, the Buddha Boy, has started preaching. The committee that looks after ‘the modern Buddha’, Namo Buddha Tapoban Committee, assembled a large crowd yesterday in Hallori Jungle in Bara district of southern Nepal that was addressed by a long haired boy clad in a maroon robe. The notice about the first ever preaching by the boy was broadcast in a local FM radio station and the committed also invited people by phone. Around three thousand people gathered to listen to Ram Bahadur Bomjom.

Ram Bahadur Bomjom spoke with several pauses as if he was finding it very difficult to communicate in the language of human being. Just to kill another possible curiosity Ram Bahadur was using Nepali language while preaching via a big mike. He also requested the people not to be skeptical about him and disturb him.

from United We Blog for a Democratic Nepal 

This Buddha Boy is the  real thing.  He once went 5 months without eating while in a deep meditative state.  Unfortunately, his enlightened message to the rest of humanity seems to be “Go away and leave me alone.” No wonder prayers don’t get answered these days.

MANCHESTER, England: Manchester United, by most measures the #1 sports team in the world, has announced the signing of Rhain Davis, a 9-year-old soccer prodigy from Australia (see photo). Rhain was brought to the attention of the world soccer powerhouse by his grandfather, who sent the British team a video of the young star.

As a logical extension of the parallel and intertwined encroachment of gambling into every facet of modern life, the public will be able to buy shares in the future careers of these budding superstars. Welcome to the brave new world of prenatal to postmortem sports betting, a cradle to grave fantasy league reality show. Why be content to bet on tonight’s game, when you can buy actions in some kid who hasn’t even been born yet?

Australia’s new $200m synchrotron in Melbourne could contribute to the fight to save the Tasmanian devil from the outbreak of facial tumour disease currently decimating devil populations, according to Dr Jeff Church from CSIRO Textile and Fibre Technology in Geelong.

Dr Church says he will use the synchrotron to see if the disease causes any biochemical changes in the devils which could be detected in their hair before the disease becomes apparent.

“If we find a consistent change, it could lead to the development of a test which will allow detection of the cancer before the tumours become evident,” he says. “This would make any quarantine strategy easier to establish, as well as much more efficient.”

The idea is based on Australian research showing disease-related changes in the composition of human hair. The suggestion is that similar changes could occur in Tasmanian devils’ hair when the facial tumour disease is triggered. “But, the theory needs to be fully tested,” Dr Church says. “It might work or it might not.”

“If a diagnostic test for the facial tumour disease using the synchrotron does look possible, only having a machine nearby would make it viable. Having to queue-up for time on a synchrotron at least nine hours flying time from Tasmania – more likely further – would make the whole thing very difficult, particularly in terms of biosecurity concerns because we would need to transport biological samples between different countries.”

from a Eureka Alert press release

We figure Australian taxpayers wouldn’t mind schlepping a few of these $200 million babies out to the outback so they can be in place on the frontlines of the war on facial tumors afflicting carnivorous marsupials.

In related news, American scientists have announced plans to retask Fermilabs Tevitron 4-mile particle accelerator in order to investigate the efficacy of using top quarks to treat genital herpes lesions in ferrets.

(Watertown, MA) – Tired of swimming laps with nothing but the sound of water sloshing in your ears, while your land-lubber mates work out to the latest tunes or podcasts? A Watertown company has come up with a solution: an MP3 player and high-response headphones built into a stylish swimming cap.

Tuneslapper Swim Caps feature a 2 GB flash memory mp3 player embedded in flexible, waterproof plastic which is in turn incorporated into an ordinary-looking swimming cap. The manufacturer, AudioAquatics, designed the music system to be inconspicuous, in anticipation of potential objections by pool operators reluctant to allow electrical devices into the pool.

“The Tuneslapper caps are perfectly safe and operate on such low voltages that even if the battery chamber were breached there would be no danger to the user or other swimmers. Nevertheless, once you have the cap in place and turned on, no one will know you are bopping to your favorite beats,” according to Michael Feldman, AudioAquatics product designer and CEO.

The recharegable battery is built of flexible layers of lithium and ionized carbon built into the back of the cap, and recharged through a tiny connector that folds into the cap when not in use.

The headphones themselves are also an innovative flexible design, which cover the ears and offer superior acoustics, even underwater. There is even a small flexible 3-line LCD readout to deliver information on track, playlist, volume, etc.

However, adjusting the cap once in the water can be a problem, as it must be removed from the head in order to see the LCD or reach the controls, not to mention the difficulty of flying under the lifeguard’s sonar while staring at and repeatedly pressing your swimming cap. It is best to load and lock in the locker room, and then let it play throughout your swim.

Whether you fancy a leisurely crawl to Handel’s Water Music, a strong backbeat backstroke to Beastie Boys Intergalactic, a ballatic breaststroke to a Dolly Parton torcher, or a frenetic butterfly to speed thrash standards, the Tuneslapper can provide the soundtrack to those who prefer to get their exercise in the swimming pool.

all rights reserved – investor inquiries welcome

Three weeks just fly by, when one is engaged in engrossing and challenging work in a novel environment. Teaching Torts and Contracts and Remedies in a posh precinct of London so full of museums it seems to serve as a warehouse of Empire has kept your reporter almost too busy to blog.

But it has passed in a flash, and now we are off to Amsterdam for 6 days of R&R before diving back into real life in Watertown. We are already assiduously avoiding desperate emails from flummoxed colleagues and needy children, all asking when we will be back. Too soon, too soon.

Meanwhile, our main worry is the authenticity of the somewhat shady last minute on-line travel agency from whom we obtained our air tickets and hotel reservations. We keep flashing in our mind’s eye to our chagrin on learning that our agency is merely a front for some Mongolian Mafia and our reservations no more than decorative ink on cheap copy paper.

We know not a soul in Holland, not anymore, although a close examination of the Dowbrigade stats reveals a hardcore of readers. Anyone aware of happenings or cyber events next week in Amsterdam, let us know.

The plan, if these reservations are real, is to stay at the Shipshol Airport hotel tonight, and move to the Van Gogh hotel tomorrow, on the Museumplatz, near the Big Three museums; the Van Gogh, the Reichsmuseum (Rembrant, etc.) and the modern art museum. This plaza is near Vondelpark, the biggest botanical refuge in the city, a bit away from the Dam and the major tourist areas. Lovely area, if we remember from our previous visits.

Added interesting note – as we hurry to post this last message before we cut the cord (ubiquitous wifi on Campus here in London) and head off into the adventurous part of the trip, Skynews on the TV is broadcasting live from Heathrow, the airport we are heading for, reporting that 141 flights have been cancelled, hundred yard lines, flooding, etc. Seems the situation is dire.

Although our flight isn’t supposed to leave for 8 hours, maybe we’ll head out as soon as they kick us out of the flat, at 10 am. Smells like news.

We will make an effort to post a few times from Cybercafes in the Low Countries.