Million-dollar whale vomit!

A STINKING, solidified lump of gunk from the gut of a sperm whale could make an Australian family up to $1 million richer.

The 14.75kg block of rare whale excreta, expelled orally, was found by the family on a beach near Streaky Bay on South Australia's west coast.

They were baffled by the substance before inquiries revealed it to be ambergris - a wax-like substance originating from the intestine of a sperm whale, and greatly prized for its use in perfume.

...

[A man advising the family] said the finding was rare. "When the whale throws this out, it's discarded material that it can't digest and includes all sorts of things like hundreds of squid beaks and goodness knows what," he said. "The substance is actually lighter than water and so it floats around the ocean.

"If you were to pick it up immediately after the whale discarded it, you would immediately put it back because it is so foul.

"However, over a period of floating around the ocean for 10 years, the sun and the salt water cleanses this amazing stuff. After 10 years, it's considered clean and all you are getting then is the wonderful musty, very sweet perfume which I have got to say is ultra-smooth.

"You can trace it back to 1000 BC. The Egyptians used it, the Chinese did - they not only used it as perfumes but they used to eat it and they used to give it as gifts. It was literally worth more than gold."

Million. Dollar. Whale vomit.

Thanks to S J, again.

Posted by: Ace at 06:35 AM | Comments (12)
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What. Ever.

Has ever a little indie film faced a greater hurdle? Imagine this sales pitch: Babe, it's a movie about global warming. Starring Al Gore. Doing a slide show.

With charts.

About "soil evaporation."

Improbable? Perhaps. So it's all the more amazing that "An Inconvenient Truth" had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on Tuesday night before an enthusiastic audience that gave the former vice president and his movie a big standing O.

Ohhhh, yeah. As someone who's been to Sundance, I can attest that is even "more amazing" that an Al Gore slideshow about environmentalism managed "a big standing O" at the festival. It's all hardcore righties out there, man. How Gore managed to persuade them, I'll never figure.

Among the film's lessons: Earth's glaciers are melting, the polar bears are screwed, each year sets new heat records. Al Gore sometimes flies coach. He also schleps his own bags.

The morning after his debut as leading man, Gore pronounces this whole Sundance thing "a most excellent time." He is wearing earth tones again. He seems jolly.

Well, he looks "jolly," too.

He brought Tipper and the kids. He is attending parties and posing for pictures with his fans and enjoying macaroni and cheese....

Al? Seriously? Carbs are the enemy.

Thanks to S J.

What a depressing day for news this is shaping up to be.

Posted by: Ace at 06:27 AM | Comments (23)
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What a shock.

Some reactions at Instapundit.

From Captain's Quarters:

Hamas claimed it had won at least 70 seats in the 132-member parliament, while EU election observer Richard Howitt told the BBC he had been informed that Hamas could have won up to 80 seats. ...

Another Hamas official, Mushir al-Masri, warned that Hamas would not hold peace talks with Israel. "Negotiations with Israel is not on our agenda," he said. "Recognising Israel is not on the agenda either now."

He says the Palestinians have chosen war, and should be so judged. I agree.

The infantilization of the Palestinians, by which they are immunized by the world for the vicious, murderous decisions they as a people make, has got to end. This is a depressing moment, but a clarifying one. Let no one say again that the Palestinians "want peace" and would choose it if only they could get past their extremist and corrupt leadership. They chose war -- as they have been choosing war for 30 years.

It's time they were finally exposed to the consequences of their decisions.

Palestine

State-sponsored terrorism is for pussies. How about a terrorist-sponsored state?

Posted by: Ace at 06:21 AM | Comments (84)
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I wish I knew how to quit Iceman.

Thanks to yls.

Posted by: Ace at 06:02 AM | Comments (5)
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France Battles a Problem That Grows and Grows: Fat

It really seems that the more Froggy hates us, the more they really love us!
They hate our movies but always go to see them.
They hate our music but have to pass laws mandating that a minimum number of local songs get played on the radio.
And no matter how many McDonalds they destroy, the more they eat there!

McDonald's is more profitable in France than anywhere else in Europe. Sales have increased 42 percent over the past five years. Some 1.2 million French, or 2 percent of the population, eat there every day.

Posted by: Tanker at 03:04 PM | Comments (20)
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The ones with the curly-toed shoes.

VILLAGERS who protested that a new housing estate would “harm the fairies” living in their midst have forced a property company to scrap its building plans and start again.

Marcus Salter, head of Genesis Properties, estimates that the small colony of fairies believed to live beneath a rock in St Fillans, Perthshire, has cost him £15,000. His first notice of the residential sensibilities of the netherworld came as his diggers moved on to a site on the outskirts of the village, which crowns the easterly shore of Loch Earn.

He said: “A neighbour came over shouting, ‘Don’t move that rock. You’ll kill the fairies’.” The rock protruded from the centre of a gently shelving field, edged by the steep slopes of Dundurn mountain, where in the sixth century the Celtic missionary St Fillan set up camp and attempted to convert the Picts from the pagan darkness of superstition.

“Then we got a series of phone calls, saying we were disturbing the fairies. I thought they were joking. It didn’t go down very well,” Mr Salter said.

...

“There are a lot of superstitions going about up here and people do believe that things like standing stones and large rocks should never be moved,” she said.

Ever notice environmentalists only care about the "cute" species, like seals, dolphins, and fairies? No one ever says a word about the endangered neo-otyugh or the threatened habitat of the displacer beast.

Thanks to Ron.

Posted by: Ace at 03:03 PM | Comments (62)
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Joel Stein, trutheller, dipshit, has started a mass of confessions:

Liberals shouldn't pretend to be in favour of the military (as a concept most liberals are instinctively against it) when we aren't. The military are "special cirucmstances [sic]"--men who must do a dirty job when all other opportunities and options are exhausted. They aren't men to be lionised and put on a pedestal--they're like toilet cleaners: it's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it.

Really, it's nice to finally be dispensing with the dishonesty.

Posted by: Ace at 02:56 PM | Comments (20)
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He claims that the various anomalies thought caused by "dark matter" are explainable by an adjustment to the formulas describing the effects of gravity:

A modified theory of gravity that incorporates quantum effects can explain a trio of puzzling astronomical observations – including the wayward motion of the Pioneer spacecraft in our solar system, new studies claim.

The work appears to rule out the need to invoke dark matter or another alternative gravity theory called MOND (Modified Newtonian Dynamics). But other experts caution it has yet to pass the most crucial test – how to account for the afterglow of the big bang.

Astronomers realised in the 1970s that the gravity of visible matter alone was not enough to prevent the fast-moving stars and gas in spiral galaxies from flying out into space. They attributed the extra pull to a mysterious substance called dark matter, which is now thought to outweigh normal matter in the universe by 6 to 1.

But researchers still do not know what dark matter actually is, and some have come up with new theories of gravity to explain the galaxy observations. MOND, for example, holds that there are two forms of gravity.

Above a certain acceleration, called a0, objects move according to the conventional form of gravity, whose effects weaken as two bodies move further apart in proportion to the square of distance. But below a0, objects are controlled by another type of gravity that fades more slowly, decreasing linearly with distance.

But critics point out that MOND cannot explain the observed masses of clusters of galaxies without invoking dark matter, in the form of almost massless, known particles called neutrinos.

Okay, got that? Well there's another non-dark-matter theory, too.

Now, Joel Brownstein and John Moffat, researchers at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics and the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, say another modified gravity theory can account for both galaxies and galaxy clusters.

The theory, called scalar-tensor-vector gravity (STVG), adds quantum effects to Einstein's theory of general relativity. As in other branches of physics, the theory says that quantum fluctuations can affect the force felt between interacting objects.

In this case, a hypothetical particle called a graviton – which mediates gravity – appears in large numbers out of the vacuum of space in regions crowded with massive objects such as stars. "It's as if gravity is stronger" near the centres of galaxies, Brownstein told New Scientist. "Then, at a certain distance, the stars become sparse, and the gravitons don't contribute that much." So at larger distances, gravity returns to the behaviour described by Newton.

Okay, physics geeks: In Ringworld, Larry Niven postulated that the maximum allowable speed (usually the same as the speed of light) was not constant, but was low when near a "singularity" (a massive body like a star) and very high when away from such a mass. Thus permitting FTL travel when you were far away from a star.

Which I always thought was silly.

Does this second theory have anything to do with that?

Posted by: Ace at 02:53 PM | Comments (54)
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Really? Sex calms people down? Who knew?

Researchers say sexual intercourse can help
calm the nerves in stressful situations.

That's ABCNews' picture, by the way, just in case you weren't sure what sex might look like. I'm not even sure that is what sex looks like, actually. It's more like what a diamond advertisement looks like. I think they cropped the tagline, "Give her the karat and the stick."

Helpful caption, too.

Forget pretending you are talking to one person or concentrating on a single point in the audience - having sex is good way to calm nerves before giving a speech or presentation.

But Stuart Brody, a psychologist at the University of Paisley in Scotland says it has to be full sexual intercourse to get the best results.

He studied nearly 50 men and women who recorded their sexual activities for two weeks and analysed its impact on their blood pressure levels when under acute stress, such as when giving a speech.

He discovered the volunteers who had sexual intercourse were the least stressed and had blood pressure levels that returned to normal more quickly than people who engaged in other types of sex.

Other types of sex?

...

He believes the release of the so-called "pair bonding" hormone oxytocin might explain the calming effect.

His alternate theory is that getting bent "just kind of takes the edge off." But he'll need more money to confirm that.

In related news, Karol says "Forget it."

From your source for Iranian nuke news & semi-pornographic "studies."

Posted by: Ace at 02:40 PM | Comments (17)
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Does anyone think that Michael Jackson spending so much time in a country with draconian penalties for sex-related offenses is a good idea?

Pop star Michael Jackson was spotted shopping in a Bahrain mall on Wednesday, hiding his face behind a veil and donning a black robe traditionally worn by women in the Gulf.

He was with three children, apparently his own, who also had their faces covered by dark scarves. An unidentified woman accompanied them.

I have developed a theory about Michael Jackson. Here is my Michael Jackson Theory: He's a friggin' weirdo, man.

Seriously? He's crazy. He's not even Howard Hughes eccentric-fun-crazy. He's appointment-with-a-length-of-rope-and-a-roof-beam crazy.

Nah. Pills. Of course. Women commit suicide by pills. That's how Liz Taylor would do it. All classy-like.

Thanks to SJ.

Posted by: Ace at 02:34 PM | Comments (14)
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