and now the news

A huge beached whale has been dumped outside the Japanese embassy in Berlin. Greenpeace activists hauled the fin whale to Berlin from the Baltic coast after finding it beached on a sandbank. The dead whale measured 56ft long and weighed 20 tonnes.

A seven-tonne whale has made its way up the Thames to central London.

London Aquarium Curator Paul Hale told the BBC: "Getting that to do anything it doesn't want to do is going to be extremely difficult."

Korean Supreme Court Upholds Obscene Yogurt Conviction:

The models, caked in wheat flour, used spray devices to squirt each other with yogurt, which washed off the flour to expose their bodies. The court said the performance "was obscene as the event's main purpose was commercial and it went beyond the point necessary to promote the product."

Are brain parasites altering the personalities of three billion people?
ome scientists believe that Toxoplasma changes the personality of its human hosts, bringing different shifts to men and women. [...] Those infected, he found, show a small, but statistically significant, tendency to be more self-reproaching and insecure. Paradoxically, infected women, on average, tend to be more outgoing and warmhearted than controls, while infected men tend to be more jealous and suspicious.

Update: Cecil weighs in!

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21 Responses:

  1. jkow says:

    I regret I didn't go see it, they took it away after a day already :( I mean.. in two nights we'll have about -25°C, i assume that would conserve a whale pretty good ;)

  2. phreddiva says:

    Well, why aren't they getting GREENPEACE to move the whale?

    Those two should talk.

  3. violentbloom says:

    Lyme disease also causes neurological problems and personality changes.

    People with late-stage Lyme disease may develop a neurologic disorder characterized by personality changes and problems with thinking or memory that persist in spite of antibiotic treatment. This syndrome has been called persistent Lyme disease, or PLD.[...] Children with PLD have difficulty getting along with classmates in school as well as making academic progress, and are at increased risk of developing long-term psychiatric disturbances.

    no really the bugs are eating my brain. :(

    • I love the story about the guy who got a railroad spike or something through his frontal lobe in the late 1800s, but recovered to full health. Except his morals were completely destroyed. He went from being completely upstanding to having every vice in the book.

  4. beerfrick says:

    KAAAAAAAANG!!!

  5. glocka says:

    Just the opposite - they did not reach the point necessary to promote the product: my consumption of yougurt did not increase after the promotional event.

    • strspn says:

      Well, my personal demand for yogurt has also remained constant.

      However, there is no question that I now must have my own yogurt-spraying vaporizer. Those Asians and their high technology have clearly eclipsed the West.

  6. zzedar says:

    And the yogurt was in a town that sounds very much like "Is a dong." Beautiful.

  7. jkow says:

    guess they didn't get that whale to do what it didn't want to do.. dead now.

  8. xah_lee says:

    what is the origin of the concept of obscenity in the context of anthropology?

  9. irma_vep says:

    Dam ! Now I know why I am being so self-reproaching and insecure.

  10. The Thames whale died. While they tried to rescue it. There was national mourning.