OT- Things you may or may not need to know

I'm Ducking this Baty Conversation.

Wasen't that one of Proxmyre's (sp?) complaints ? ...lew...

On Fri, 30 Apr 2004 20:03:40 GMT, Lewis Hartswick brought forth from the murky depths:

I don't think he knew about that one, but he did object strenuously to the study of the mating habits of the male tsetse fly which lasted decades. (No, silly, the _research_ lasted that long. Tsetse flies are similar to us: We don't go in for long foreplay.)

I think Proxmire was right, too. A Google search just netted 11,000 hits on tse tse fly research. It's STILL going on!

----- = The wealth of reality, cannot be seen from your locality. =

Well pretty sure not a faulty echo as every time it happens you can hear the echo ripple through the stands . I also suspect few people would claim any bat that makes its way to the ump can possibly be considered faulty . So that seems to narrow it down to the Duck . Ken Cutt

There's a good reason for studying them. They are very short lived so many generations can be studied in a comparatively short time. This is important in the field of genetics.

Ted

That asshole proxmire also delivered one of his fleece awards to a research group that was studying the mating of snails.

"Duh, what do you need to know about that for" to paraphrase.

Turns out that snails vector shistosomaisis which is a disease that causes widespread blindness in third world countries. He was just too dumb to realize that just because something had 'sex' in the title, that it might not be serious science about a real problem. Of course their grant was revoked because of the publicity.

Boy am I glad he's dead.

Jim

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On Sat, 01 May 2004 17:28:13 GMT, Ted Edwards brought forth from the murky depths:

Bbbbut, 11,000 x maybe 5 on each team x 130+ _YEARS_??? (The Brits were doing this waaaaaay back.)

----- = The wealth of reality, cannot be seen from your locality. =

Oh! Yee of little strength!

Harold

Don't hold back, Jim. Tell us how you feel about him. :-)

Harold

Skipping school, I decide to respond to what Gunner fosted Mon, 26 Apr 2004 04:15:20 GMT in rec.crafts.metalworking , viz:

Watching "Mythbusters" and they did the test. Thirty days, a number of tooth brushes about the bathroom ... all of them tested positive for the little fecalcolioform bacteria. Including the control toothbrushes which had been in a container. OTOH, the microbiologist they had do the cultures said "they're all contaminated, but in very low levels and 'so what?'"

In my humble and totally speculative blathering, I wonder if some of the 'allergies' and the like might not be the result of sterile environments, and the immune systems, like cops, get bored and start looking for something to do.

Read an article in Discover, or maybe SciAm, about this very topic. It's believed that lack of exposure to various bugs seems to impact development of the immune system.

As someone's SIG line from here says, 'that which does not kill us, makes us stronger'

Jon

living with animals- livestock or pets- at an early age has a significant and positive (um... inverse...) correlation with allergies lifelong.

a bit of folk wisdom: if you are having allergies to pollen, eat honey made by bees in the neighborhood of the offending plants.