ZayZayEM - kickin' moron ass since 2002: Everything you have ever been told is a lie

Inquisitor was an awesome game that GW brought out just before I quit the expensive geek-hobby of wargaming. I'm so pissed they went on to the already crowded world of MMORPGs and RTS rather than developing this into a computer game. I was thinking by combining Inquisitor and Necromunda with the game mechanics of Jagged Alliance you could get something really good and addictive.

This week in science we question some well known beliefs:

Study:soap and water work best at ridding hands of disease virus: a mortal blow to my Micro prof, who would berate us that detergent was the only thing worth using (as well as alfoil being superior to toilet paper) - UNC News
Black holes 'do not exist': A Californian physicist amkes the bold claim "It's a near certainty that black holes don't exist". Rightio, we'll just take your word for it, you're the physicist after all. Apparently they are actually "dark energy stars" with "ntriguing gravitational effects" - I get the feeling he's just renamed the phenomena. Apart from sci-fi movies, its well known that black holes aren't actually holes, they don't lead anywhere, they are just massive netherentities of tiny-ness (massive, but very, very small) --- wormholes, such as in Farscape, Star Trek, Sliders and what-have-you were totally different entities last I checked - then again I bombed out at physics big time - n@n
Universe spawned stars at a young age: will this excuse teen pregnancies? Apparently the universe started forming stars a mere 700 million years after the big bang. This information worked out from some new NASA's latest toy in the sky, the Spitzer Space Telescope, capable of analysing distant galaxies with infra-red detection - n@n
Mission to Pluto Update: Apparently NASA is getting in the shit for daring to send radioactive material into space - maybe its just pun-ishment for daring to send plutonium to Pluto (yes I said pun-ishment).The actual problem is fears the rocket will blow up on the launch-pad, which probably won't be too good for Florida - the world does not need mutant alligators, tourists and geriatrics on the warpath. -tertiary source
Nanoswarms set to invade Mars -2034: More NASA getting in the shit. This time with ANTS, or "autonomous nanotechnology swarms", being proposed in the enxt step in exploration and possibly terraforming. The idea, rather than being a wheeled or wlaking rover, these exploratory robots will be able to"alter their shape to flow over rocky terrain or to create useful structures like communications antennae and solar sails" - cool, but is it likely to turn into grey goo? -tertiary source
C hip reads mind of paralysed man: if its not nanobots, its freakin' cyborgs presenting a threat to the sanctity of mankind -- just kidding, I ahve no fascist bone in my body. Cyborgs are cool, just as long as they don't go they way of the Borg, or the Sentinels in X-men, or daleks, and go about trying to turn normal healthy people into half-robots. Boomers are cool, they are your friend. This man, the victim of a knife attack that left him paralysed, can turn the TV on and off with the power of his mind! Slackers wet dream. - The Guardian
Charcoal fuel gets green light: I've never really thought of charcoal as a healthy energy source (I always thought it ranked with ordianry coal) - but apparently its a lot healthier than wood. So in Africa, an effort by health officials is trying its darndest to replace wood with charcoal. Apparently 400,000 premature deaths were caused by wood smoke inhalation in the year 2000, if current trends continue, its estimated to be almost 10,000,000 by 2030. Yikes! - n@n
Air pollution affects crop disease: Its not just people who suffer from airborne waste - sulfur dioxide has been shown to directly affect microbial attacks on staple crops like wheat. -n@n
Cannabis compound benefits blood vessels: happy news for legalisation lobbyist, delta-9-THC helps prevent atherosclerosis. With the rise in fat-induced cardiovascualr disease in the Western world, science is looking for any treatment they can. However, before you McAddicts break out the bong in the name of improving your health, its a THC component that doesnot get you high, and needs to be strictly administered at the correct doses - so any treatment resulting from this study is likely will be coming in a capsule form -n@n

News@Nature makes news of the week - just for making awful puns:

Transgenic cows have udder success
Roxanne Khamsi
Dairy herds with bacterial gene could cream mastitis.

Mastitis, infection of the breast - in a cow, the udder - is rather gross. Even grosser if you are planning on consuming the gunk which is produced in said infected breast. So aything which helps reducing the eugh! factor of drinking the juice from another animals mammaries gets the thumbs up from me.
(Yes, I don't like fresh plain milk - its for cereals only --- I do however like most processed dairy products, like yoghurt, cheese, cream and ice cream etc. I also love lime-flavoured milk - at least until I've finished the bottle).

My Biotechnology has some interesting stuff.

PS - HAPPY TREE FRIENDS (understated warning: VIOLENT)