How Earth Will Look If Humans Are Eliminated

Life on our planet would be incredibly different if humans were to suddenly be wiped out. According to a new video, within a few hours most of the lights would turn off and within months, nuclear disasters would happen around the world.

[From article]
If doomsday struck, and humans were wiped off the face of the Earth, what would happen to our planet?
According to a recent video, it won't take long for Earth to 'reset' itself - but the process would be terrifying.
Within a few hours most of the lights would turn off and within months, nuclear disasters would strike across the planet.
After thousands of years the only evidence of our existence would be in the form of stone structures like the Great Wall of China or Mount Rushmore.
'The reason is irrelevant, just imagine the results,' the narrator of the video, from viral YouTube channel '#Mind Warehouse', says.
The video was put together using footage created by National Geographic.
The video animations came from Life After People, a television series on which scientists, structural engineers, and other experts speculate about what might become of Earth should humanity instantly disappear.
A few hours after humans disappear, most of the lights around the world will shut off because most of the power stations will not be able to run.
Fossil fuels power plants would run out of fuel and solar panels would eventually get covered in dust.
The only power plants still running would be hydroelectric stations.
'On the west of the United States, the generators of Hoover Dam are activated by the water flow from Lake Meade,' the narrator says. 'Thus, it can be left unattended for several months, or even years.'
Two or three days later, most underground train systems would flood because the pumps keeping water out would stop working.
After ten days pets and farm animals - including billions of chickens and millions of cows - would die of starvation, while packs of big dogs would form to hunt down other animals.
A month later, the cooling water in nuclear power stations would have evaporated. This would lead to a series of disasters across the world, stronger than Fukushima and Chernobyl.
'But overall the planet would recover from the radioactive contamination rather fast and easily,' the video says.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3621492/What-happen-Earth-humans-disappeared-Watch-terrifying-sequence-doomsday-events-unfold.html

What would happen to Earth if humans disappeared? Video shows how the terrifying sequence of doomsday events would unfold
A few hours after our disappearance, lights around the world will shut off
Two or three days later, most underground train systems would flood
A month later, cooling water in nuclear power stations would evaporate
Only evidence of our existence will be the things we’ve made with stone like the pyramids in Egypt, the Great Wall of China and Mount Rushmore
By ABIGAIL BEALL FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 05:45 EST, 2 June 2016 | UPDATED: 13:28 EST, 2 June 2016

Published on May 24, 2016
Today we are presenting you a video on an unusual topic. Imagine that all people suddenly disappeared from the planet.
The reason is irrelevant, just imagine the result. Now we are going to tell what is going to happen after we are gone.

https://youtu.be/Wy7Q6wazD_E

Technology's Unintended Consequences

[From book review]

Philosophers from the ancient Greeks onward have worried that technological innovation would suborn the pursuit of truth and wisdom through ease, superficiality, and distraction. In Plato’s Phaedrus, no less a figure than Socrates lamented the invention of writing for its deleterious effects on memory, argument, and knowledge. Socrates imagined the Thamus, king of the Egyptian gods, chastising Teuth, inventor of the alphabet: This discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learner’s souls, because they will not use their memories … [Y]ou give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality. Late in the 18th century, Immanuel Kant identified excessive distraction as the enemy of an Enlightened mind. 

[. . .] 

Crawford’s greatest service is to spur our thought, to enjoin his readers to pay attention to the struggle of paying attention. 

[. . .] 

Attention, this is to say, isn’t ours to direct freely. It is, in his words, erotic; it pulls us out of our heads into the world around us. Giving in to attention’s pull can be an exhilarating experience. 

[. . .]

Thinking about the cook’s feeling of success after a difficult service or the racer’s excitement at entering “the zone” during a race gives credence to Crawford’s description of attention’s erotic quality. It’s also important to remember, he urges, that this erotic quality is born out of constraint. 

[. . .] 

analyzes video gambling as sites of the thanatotic self-negation created by a world devoid of true agency. 

[. . .] 

Take, for instance, Crawford’s analysis of video slots and virtual poker. He argues that gambling’s malevolence lies not in the misplaced hope for the once-in-a-lifetime jackpot it inspires, but in the illusory sensation of skillful development each wager fosters. Playing a machine that comes closer and closer to a winning combination with each pull, the gambler feels that he’s gaining the upper hand on the one-armed bandit. But the odds are rigged in more ways than one: the exercise of the will is, at best, a “pseudo-action;” a simulation of autonomy, experience, and mastery in a carefully managed environment. Gambling alternately fosters and frustrates autonomous agency, sending the modern ego into fits of directionless anger and self-loathing that spiral into destruction. It is the antithesis of real skill and the gambler is the inverted craftsman: endlessly feeds quarter after quarter into the slot, he is searching for some dark nirvana, for the total sublimation of the active, thinking self in the emptiness of automatic routines. 

[. . .] 

When it comes to justifying its existence, Crawford rightly argues, the gambling industry has no problem turning to the very same discourse of individualism that its operations so clearly unmask as hollow. Such arguments bear some resemblance to the Western-Marxist tradition of critical theory. Theodor Adorno saw fascism reflected in slippers and capitalism embodied in automatic doors; Crawford sees liberal individualism instantiated in slot machines. Both unite cultural and philosophical critique in analyses of the strange collusion between industry and entertainment in the creation of a fragile modern subjectivity. 

[. . .]

Crawford would have done well to direct his efforts to the real confrontations that bear directly on his anthropology of attention and theory of tradition. Consider, for instance, the varied arguments for a physically embedded, socially embodied human condition put forward by, inter alia, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Michael Polanyi, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Charles Taylor, and, perhaps most radically, Derek Parfit. These philosophers deserve more than the cursory treatment they receive or total neglect they suffer in The World Beyond Your Head. Crawford, it seems, subscribes to a narrowly circumscribed philosophical canon. Certainly the most striking omission from this canon is Martin Heidegger. Crawford’s belief that we encounter our world as laden with pre-given meanings and significances, his claim that we act in the world through the pragmatic use of skill in the pursuit of projects, and, above all, his argument that true individuality consists in both the rejection of the dominant opinion of an anonymous public and the authentic embrace of tradition — in short, the entire scope of the book’s argument — relies heavily on the recondite philosophical anthropology the young Heidegger developed in Being and Time. Moreover, Crawford’s dim evaluation of the dominant philosophy of the subject — as a sovereign self at once isolated from the world yet imperiously demanding authority over it —resonates deeply with the later Heidegger’s trenchant critique of Western metaphysical thought and its concomitant humanistic worldview. Modern technology, Heidegger argued, encapsulated this view of man as an all-powerful subjectum, a tyrant who orders, manipulates, and controls the things of the world. Heidegger urged a clearer thinking that would abandon this position in favor of a humble view of man — of human being — as subordinate to the larger sway of Being. 

https://lareviewofbooks.org/review/are-you-out-of-your-mind

Are You Out of Your Mind?
By Charles Clavey

October 5, 2015

Film Review, Ex-Machina. Will Humans Survive AI?

[From article
Ex Machina, released in 2015 and now available on DVD and BluRay, may be the best movie about artificial intelligence to come along in years. It gives an outstanding portrayal of a possible A.I. revolution in all of its ethical and philosophical dimensions, not to mention what it might actually look like. What I found to be one of the many excellent themes to the movie is how it examines that question as to what is real and what is not with the emerging A.I. technologies.
It shows how the line between the two are becoming blurred and what will happen once that line is destroyed forever. The movie displays in another underlying narrative the role humans are playing in their possible slow-motion suicide by playing God with technology through the advancing sophistication of artificial intelligence.
[. . .]
Nathan feels he needs a third-party to interact with Ava in order to determine if she meets the criteria for being true artificial intelligence by using the Turing Test (named after the father of the modern computer, Alan Turing), in which “inputs from machines and other humans and then having the human try to determine which inputs are coming from a machine and which are coming from a human.”
[. . .]
It points to the underlying theme about the real danger artificial intelligence poses that plays itself out in the movie. In our world of evolving technical “progress,” science is moving to a new form of potential self-destruction after having already created atomic and nuclear weapons.
[. . .]
It is the Hegelian dialectic that’s replaced Christian eschatology, that is, the misplaced idea that man can manipulate the material world in order to make it a better and more perfect one (the yearning for a utopian heaven on earth) rather than living an ethical life in a broken temporal world for salvation in a perfect eternal afterlife. And all of the real and lethal dangers that come with the hubris of ‘man playing God, especially when moral considerations are left out of the equation.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/03/emex_machinaem__a_review.html

March 21, 2016
Ex Machina -- A Review
By Tim Jones

Lowered Standards For Respecting Human Life Pervasive

[From article]
nearly 56 million children had been the victims of legal abortions in the United States since 1973.
[. . .]
the heartless disregard for life in the United States and the world in general is no different than the gradual and unchallenged steps the Nazis took in the 1930’s that culminated in the atrocities they committed in the 1940’s. That they too justified their actions by claiming the human beings they were either exterminating or using for experiments were in fact not human.
[. . .]
the heartless disregard for life in the United States and the world in general is no different than the gradual and unchallenged steps the Nazis took in the 1930’s that culminated in the atrocities they committed in the 1940’s. That they too justified their actions by claiming the human beings they were either exterminating or using for experiments were in fact not human.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/08/a_message_to_the_supporters_of_planned_parenthood.html

August 3, 2015
A Message to the Supporters of Planned Parenthood
By Steve McCann

Chinese Factory Employs 90 Percent Robots Increases Efficiency

[From article]
In Dongguan City, located in the central Guangdong province of China, a technology company has set up a factory run almost exclusively by robots, and the results are fascinating.
The Changying Precision Technology Company factory in Dongguan has automated production lines that use robotic arms to produce parts for cell phones. The factory also has automated machining equipment, autonomous transport trucks, and other automated equipment in the warehouse.
There are still people working at the factory, though. Three workers check and monitor each production line and there are other employees who monitor a computer control system. Previously, there were 650 employees at the factory. With the new robots, there's now only 60. Luo Weiqiang, general manager of the company, told the People's Daily that the number of employees could drop to 20 in the future.



The robots have produced almost three times as many pieces as were produced before. According to the People's Daily, production per person has increased from 8,000 pieces to 21,000 pieces. That's a 162.5% increase.
The increased production rate hasn't come at the cost of quality either. In fact, quality has improved. Before the robots, the product defect rate was 25%, now it is below 5%.



http://www.techrepublic.com/article/chinese-factory-replaces-90-of-humans-with-robots-production-soars/

Chinese factory replaces 90% of humans with robots, production soars
Changying Precision Technology Company in Dongguan city has set up an unmanned factory run almost entirely by robots. The factory has since seen fewer defects and a higher rate of production.
By Conner Forrest

July 30, 2015, 11:30 AM PST

Scientists Warn of Potential Extinction Of Humans

[From article]
The planet is entering a new period of extinction with top scientists warning that species all over the world are “essentially the walking dead” – including our own.
The report, authored by scientists at Stanford, Princeton and Berkeley universities, found that vertebrates were vanishing at a rate 114 times faster than normal.
In the damning report, published in the Science Advances journal, researchers note that the last similar event was 65 million years ago, when dinosaurs disappeared, most probably as a result of an asteroid.
[. . .]



The research examined historic rates of extinction for vertebrates, finding that since 1900 more than 400 vertebrates have disappeared – an extinction rate 100 times higher than in other – non-extinction – periods.
"There are examples of species all over the world that are essentially the walking dead,” said Stanford University professor Paul Ehrlich.
He added: "We are sawing off the limb that we are sitting on."
The research, which cites climate change, pollution and deforestation as causes for the rapid change, notes that a knock-on effect of the loss of entire ecosystems could be dire.

[. . .]

The report, which builds on findings published by Duke University last year, does note that averting this loss is “still possible through intensified conservation effects,” but that “window of opportunity is rapid closing.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/earth-is-entering-sixth-extinction-phase-with-many-species--including-our-own--labelled-the-walking-dead-10333608.html

Earth enters sixth extinction phase with many species – including our own – labelled 'the walking dead'
ROSE TROUP BUCHANAN
Saturday 20 June 2015

How Long Before Man Is Obsolete?

[From article]
First, history is repeating itself. Robots are causing a new Industrial Revolution. Similar to what happened to farming, 70 percent (or more) of current jobs will be replaced by machines. Replacement by robots in most jobs is just a matter of time. As Kevin Kelly said:
This upheaval is being led by a second wave of automation, one that is centered on artificial cognition, cheap sensors, machine learning, and distributed smarts. This deep automation will touch all jobs, from manual labor to knowledge work.
[. . .]



"... robots will continue their migration into white-collar work." All jobs dealing with paperwork will be done by robots. "It doesn't matter if you are a doctor, lawyer, architect, reporter, or even programmer: The robot takeover will be epic."
[. . .]
When the robot revolution finally starts to happen, it's going to happen fast, and it's going to turn our world upside down.
Second, liberals blame labor-saving technology for unemployment and economic slowdown.
[. . .]



Obama blamed progress, in the form of robots, for the failure of his dreadful economic policies. And liberals are blaming robots for job losses and wealth inequality.
[. . .]
The liberal solution is to halt, or at least slow, progress. And they call themselves "Progressives!"
Sir Winston Churchill said, "Those that fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it." Okay, politicians of every stripe, technological advances changed America and the world 200 years ago. And it's happening today. So learn from the Industrial Revolution.
[Santayana wrote (in The Life of Reason, 1905) : “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

https://www.nationalchurchillmuseum.org/blog/churchill-quote-history/




no citation for Churchill]
[. . .]



Society must also learn from history. It's a "sink or swim" world. Swimmers will embrace robots and new technology, sinkers won't. With even high-skill "knowledge workers" being replaced by robots, what jobs will be left? Justin Reich of Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society said, "I'm not sure that jobs will disappear altogether, but the jobs that are left will be lower paying and less secure than those that exist now."
To address that issue, Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher Andrew McAfee says that "the education system has to change to prepare young people for a world in which most of today's jobs are automated." But a new education system alone can't prepare society for what's coming. Individuals themselves must take advantage of the enhancements. Most won't, today's history tells us, if wealth is redistributed to them. Why work if they don't have to?



Liberals are already lining up to redistribute wealth. Liberals say that by embracing robots, the already rich entrepreneurs and top level management will get richer while the middle class and poor will be left behind. They advocate policies that have swimmers "pay their fare share." They are, in liberals' view, "society's lottery winners."
Socialism (or wealth redistribution, or whatever else liberals come up with) was not, is not, and never will be the answer. As Margaret Thatcher said, "The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money." So if politicians continue to pursue socialism by enabling the sinkers, the money is going to run out.
[. . .]



Another Industrial Revolution is coming (it may already be here!). History tells y'all what is going to happen. And experts tell y'all what to specifically expect. So the ultimate question is, "Will politicians (and society) learn from history?"

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/06/the_next_phase_of_the_industrial_revolution.html

June 10, 2015
The Next Phase of the Industrial Revolution
By Warren Beatty

Dogs Expert At Detecting Cancer in Humans

[From article]

The Italian study backs up tests carried out by the charity Medical Detection Dogs, which is based in Buckinghamshire.
Its co-founder Dr Claire Guest said its own research had found a 93% reliability rate when detecting bladder and prostate cancer, describing the new findings as "spectacular".
The latest research, by the Department of Urology at the Humanitas Clinical and Research Centre in Milan, involved two German shepherds sniffing the urine of 900 men - 360 with prostate cancer and 540 without.
Scientists found that dog one got it right in 98.7% of cases, while for dog two this was 97.6%.
They said the dogs are able to detect prostate cancer specific volatile organic compounds in the urine but said an important question remains of how a dog would find it in daily practice.
Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men in the UK, with more than 40,000 new cases diagnosed every year.
Dr Guest said: "These results are spectacular. They offer us further proof that dogs have the ability to detect human cancer.
"It is particularly exciting that we have such a high success rate in the detection of prostate cancer, for which the existing tests are woefully inadequate."

http://guernseypress.com/news/uk-news/2015/04/10/dog-cancer-detection-98-reliable/

PUBLISHED: April 11, 2015 12:32 am
Dog cancer detection '98% reliable'
Dogs have been found to have 98% reliability rate in sniffing out prostate cancer in men, according to newly-published research.

* * *

[From article]
'Over the years, millions of pounds of NHS funding has been poured into the traditional test methods, and yet there has been little improvement in their reliability,' Dr Guest added.
'This has caused a huge waste of resources, not to mention the distress to the impacted individuals.
'Moreover, the detection dogs provide alternative solution that yields consistently accurate results. If our detection dogs were a machine, there would be huge demand for them.'
Medical Detection Dogs, which is based in Milton Keynes, trains specialist canines to detect the odour of human disease.
They also train Medical Alert Assistance dogs to help people with life-threatening health conditions go about their daily lives.
The research is published in the Journal Of Urology.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3033906/How-DOGS-help-diagnose-prostate-cancer-Canines-SNIFF-disease-98-accuracy.html

How DOGS can help diagnose prostate cancer: Canines SNIFF out disease with 98% accuracy
Study in Milan found two dogs identified 98% of prostate cancer cases
They examined urine samples of 900 men - 360 who had cancer
Medical Detection Dogs charity hailed the study as 'spectacular'
By LIZZIE PARRY FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 18:10 EST, 10 April 2015 | UPDATED: 18:17 EST, 10 April 2015

Era of Man

[From article]
People are changing Earth so much, warming and polluting it, that many scientists are turning to a new way to describe the time we live in. They're calling it the Anthropocene — the age of humans.
Though most non-experts don't realize it, science calls the past 12,000 years the Holocene, Greek for "entirely recent." But the way humans and their industries are altering the planet, especially its climate, has caused an increasing number of scientists to use the word Anthropocene to better describe when and where we are.

http://news.yahoo.com/having-made-mark-earth-humans-may-name-era-071816013.html

With their mark on Earth, humans may name era, too

By SETH BORENSTEIN
October 14, 2014

Implants Coming to Human Consumer Market

If a kidnapper knows the victim has an implant, he can remove it. This was done on a recent episode of the NBC television series The Blacklist. What is to stop criminals from re-implanting the device into another person who pretends to be the victim?

[From article]
You can inject one under your skin and no one will ever notice. Using short-range radio frequency identification (RFID) signals, it can transmit your identity as you pass through a security checkpoint or walk into a football stadium. It can help you buy groceries at Wal-Mart. In a worst-case scenario – if you are kidnapped in a foreign country, for example – it could save your life.
Microchip implants like the ones pet owners use to track their dogs and cats could become commonplace in humans in the next decade. Experts are divided on whether they’re appropriate for people, but the implants could offer several advantages. For soldiers and journalists in war zones, an implant could be the difference between life and death. A tracker could also help law enforcement quickly locate a kidnapped child.

http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2014/08/30/is-there-microchip-implant-in-your-future/

Is there a microchip implant in your future?
By John Brandon

Published August 30, 2014

FoxNews.com

Hawking: Robots Can Outsmart Humans

[From article]
But isn't this the essence of humanity? For all that we believe we know, the one thing we know best -- at least when we're honest with ourselves -- is that we're idiots. What we don't know far exceeds what we do.

http://www.cnet.com/news/stephen-hawking-artificial-intelligence-could-be-a-real-danger/

Stephen Hawking: AI could be a 'real danger'
In a hilarious appearance on John Oliver's HBO show, the famous physicist muses that robots could "outsmart us."
by Chris Matyszczyk 
@ChrisMatyszczyk
June 16, 2014 10:27 AM PDT+

Computers Fool Humans, Passing For Human

[video embedded]
[From article]

A programme that convinced humans that it was a 13-year-old boy has become the first computer ever to pass the Turing Test. The test — which requires that computers are indistinguishable from humans — is considered a landmark in the development of artificial intelligence, but academics have warned that the technology could be used for cybercrime.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/computer-becomes-first-to-pass-turing-test-in-artificial-intelligence-milestone-but-academics-warn-of-dangerous-future-9508370.html

Turing Test breakthrough as super-computer becomes first to convince us it's human
Eugene Goostman, a computer programme pretending to be a young Ukrainian boy, successfully duped enough humans to pass the iconic test
ANDREW GRIFFIN
Sunday 08 June 2014

Humans Will Become Inhuman

Ray Kurzweil - director of engineering at Google - claims that by 2045 humans will be able to upload their entire minds to computers and become digitally immortal - an event called singularity. He made the statement at the Global Futures 2045 International Congress in New York

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2344398/Google-futurist-claims-uploading-entire-MINDS-computers-2045-bodies-replaced-machines-90-years.html

We'll be uploading our entire MINDS to computers by 2045 and our bodies will be replaced by machines within 90 years, Google expert claims
Ray Kurzweil, director of engineering at Google, believes we will be able to upload our entire brains to computers within the next 32 years - an event known as singularity
Our 'fragile' human body parts will be replaced by machines by the turn of the century
And if these predictions comes true, it could make humans immortal
By VICTORIA WOOLLASTON
Daily Mail (UK)
PUBLISHED: 09:22 EST, 19 June 2013 | UPDATED: 09:22 EST, 19 June 2013

Climate Change Beyond Human Control

In recent three part PBS series about Australia: First Billion Years it was reported that the earth always wins no matter what man does to fight climate change. Are there so few scholars at Harvard and at MIT who have a historical perspective longer than ten years? Or see Harvard University astronomer Dimitar Sasselov's 2012 book, Life of Super Earths. He describes a 40,000 year cycle of climate changes on earth. Al Gore made $200 million exploiting human ignorance. Why not try to stop the 100,000 needless deaths each year in hospitals which humans can control.


http://www.wickedlocal.com/cambridge/news/x1039442877/MIT-Harvard-sign-climate-change-compact-with-Cambridge#axzz2TPkclBGz

MIT, Harvard sign climate change compact with Cambridge
By Erin Baldassari/ebaldassari@wickedlocal.com
Cambridge Chronicle
Posted May 16, 2013 @ 05:08 PM


* * *
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2013/5/8/harvard-cambridge-green-compact/

University Signs Sustainability Compact With MIT, City
By SAMUEL Y. WEINSTOCK,
Harvard CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
May 8, 2013

All Human?

“We’re all human beings,” [Cambridge City Manager Robert] Healy said.
(AMANDA E. MCGOWAN, "City Council Preps for Election Day,"
Harvard CRIMSON, November 06, 2012) There he goes again, making
unsubstantiated stereotyping statements about the City. The Manager
provides no evidence of his wide-ranging bizarre claim. As usual the
spineless City Council refuses to demand evidence from the Manager,
and lets him slide his way around his kingdom.

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/11/6/city-council-preps-for-election-day/

City Council Preps for Election Day
By AMANDA E. MCGOWAN,
Harvard CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
Published: Tuesday, November 06, 2012

Man Imitates The Universe

PBS recently broadcast a NOVA episode, "Hunting The Edge of Space - The Ever Expanding Universe." 

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/space/hunting-edge-space.html#hunting-edge-space-1

Information collected by the Hubble Space Telescope verifies that the universe is expanding, more rapidly than previously thought. That easily explains the fast growing number of obese humans in the US. Moreover astronomers found a new influence on the operation of the universe called Dark Energy, which makes up about 60 to 70 percent of the universe. That is about the same percentage of non white humans on earth. Caucasians are about 16 percent of the human population of the world. More evidence is what the scientists call Dark Matter which makes up another 25 percent of the universe. That leaves about 5 percent which they know and can see. It is about what humans know versus what they think they know. Finally they found evidence of the Big Bang which they say occurred about 370 billion years ago. That may be the explanation for the repeated smaller bangs today which continues to increase the population of man on earth. How many humans are aware of what they are doing? Not too many. Just as life imitates art, man imitates nature. The Greek language describes the individual being reflected in the world, and vice versa. 

Bacteria In Humans Studied

http://www.ploscollections.org/article/browseIssue.action?issue=info:doi/10.1371/issue.pcol.v01.i13

The Human Microbiome Project Collection

What's Your Pleasure?

[From Nancy Forton-Pokotilow]

THIS IS HILARIOUS~~
A pig's orgasm lasts 30 minutes. (O.M.G.!!!) A cockroach will live nine days without its head before it starves to death. (Creepy. I'm still not over the pig.) The male praying mantis cannot copulate while its head is attached to its body. The female initiates sex by ripping the male's head off. (Honey, I'm home . What the...?) The flea can jump 350 times its body length. It's like a human jumping the length of a football field. (30 minutes. Lucky pig! Can you imagine?) The catfish has over 27,000 taste buds. (What could be so tasty on the bottom of a pond?) Some lions mate over 50 times a day. (I still can't believe that pig ...quality over quantity.) Butterflies taste with their feet. (Something I always wanted to know.) Elephants are the only animals that cannot jump. (Okay, so that would be a good thing.) A cat's urine glows under a black light. (I wonder how much the government paid to figure that out.) An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain. (I know some people like that.) Starfish have no brains. (I know some people like that, too.) Polar bears are left-handed. (Talk about a southpaw.) Humans and dolphins are the only species that have sex for pleasure. (What about that pig? Do the dolphins know about the pig?) Now that you've smiled at least once, it's your turn to spread these crazy facts. (Jealous of the Pig)

Aliens May Destroy Humans To Save Others

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/aug/18/aliens-destroy-humanity-protect-civilisations

Aliens may destroy humanity to protect other civilisations, say scientists
Rising greenhouse emissions could tip off aliens that we are a rapidly expanding threat, warns a report
Ian Sample, science correspondent
guardian.co.uk
Thursday 18 August 2011 19.04 BST

Humans and Rats Share 90 Percent of Genes

[From article]
"The rat genome project confirmed that we share about 90% of our genetic material with our vermin cousins — and we share all the same brain parts and neurochemicals."

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/books/rats_VUf4Y3b5tf2MfZdar53ljO

Rats!
New Yorkers may hate them, but there’s a reason scientists rely on our rodent friends
By KELLY LAMBERT
New York Post
Last Updated: 12:18 AM, July 10, 2011
Posted: 12:13 AM, July 10, 2011