Researchers have discovered that s3x with a partner is much better than m@sturb@tion. What would we do without researchers?

I agree with Ron Bailey’s column on Bush’s health-care proposals, until I get to his proposed solution:

My advice to President Bush on how really to jumpstart consumer-driven health care: mandatory private health insurance. Poor Americans would be offered a voucher with which they would buy private health coverage. Such vouchers could be paid for by abolishing Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Programs….Mandatory private health insurance would avoid the problem of adverse selection, provide insurance for the currently uninsured and make consumer-driven health care work for every American.

While this would be (in theory) a vast improvement over the current employer-driven mess, there’s one problem, which is why I say “in theory”: How is it enforced? What happens to people who don’t do it? With mandatory auto insurance, one in theory revokes the privilege of driving if one doesn’t obey the law, but what’s the equivalent for health insurance?

I suppose the libertarian response is, “their tough luck.” It’s mine, too, but it doesn’t seem very politically correct, or from a policy standpoint, politically palatable.

Apparently our ancestors had more to worry about than bears, snakes and sabre tooths:

…small human ancestors known as hominids had to survive being hunted not only by large predators on the ground but by fearsome raptors that swooped from the sky, said Lee Berger, a senior paleoanthropologist at Johannesburg’s University of the Witwatersrand.

Apparently the Taung Baby was snatched and killed by an eagle.

I hate when that happens.

I already gave my opinion. Now Forbes weighs in.

Robert Bakker says that King Kong wouldn’t be able to get enough to eat.

There are more serious issues than that. Even if he could get enough to eat, for a body with that much mass to move that fast, the heat generated would be much greater than could be radiated out through the skin (mass goes up as the cube of the major dimension, whereas surface area only goes up as the square), particularly through that fur coat, so he’d cook from the inside if he maintained the kind of activity levels presumably depicted. Also, he wouldn’t be able to maintain his own weight on those (relatively) spindly legs, once scaled up to that size–they’d splinter like toothpicks.

No point in seeing the movie, folks–it’s just not realistic…

[Via Mark Whittington]

Robert Bakker says that King Kong wouldn’t be able to get enough to eat.

There are more serious issues than that. Even if he could get enough to eat, for a body with that much mass to move that fast, the heat generated would be much greater than could be radiated out through the skin (mass goes up as the cube of the major dimension, whereas surface area only goes up as the square), particularly through that fur coat, so he’d cook from the inside if he maintained the kind of activity levels presumably depicted. Also, he wouldn’t be able to maintain his own weight on those (relatively) spindly legs, once scaled up to that size–they’d splinter like toothpicks.

No point in seeing the movie, folks–it’s just not realistic…

[Via Mark Whittington]

Robert Bakker says that King Kong wouldn’t be able to get enough to eat.

There are more serious issues than that. Even if he could get enough to eat, for a body with that much mass to move that fast, the heat generated would be much greater than could be radiated out through the skin (mass goes up as the cube of the major dimension, whereas surface area only goes up as the square), particularly through that fur coat, so he’d cook from the inside if he maintained the kind of activity levels presumably depicted. Also, he wouldn’t be able to maintain his own weight on those (relatively) spindly legs, once scaled up to that size–they’d splinter like toothpicks.

No point in seeing the movie, folks–it’s just not realistic…

[Via Mark Whittington]

Makes us stronger, so said Nietzsche. Ancient man may have been forced out of Africa by a prolonged drought.

Anybody know what this thing is? I saw it in the back yard while fertilizing the ixora.

It’s hollow, and those are holes in it, like a whiffle ball. I thought that it was some kind of toy at first.

[Update]

At Michael Mealing’s suggestion in comments, I did a search on “stinkhorn,” and it does indeed resemble this. There wasn’t any noticeable stink to it, though (I got right down on it to smell it). Then again, I don’t have the most sensitive schnoz in the world.

[Another update]

Yes, it does look exactly like a clathrus crispus. It makes geographical sense, too, since the climate on the Virgin Islands is not dissimilar to that of south Florida. And this site says that it’s common in the Caribbean and Florida.

How hard is it to shoot off a lock? A lot harder than it looks in the movies.

[via Geek Press]