Brent Kearney

It’s Devil’s Day, and religious nutters around the world are praying that, now that End of Days is imminent, the Devil doesn’t get us. Not to miss the chance to separate a fool from his money, Internet entrepreneurs took advantage of the prophecy by taking bets on whether the Rapture is indeed today. It started at 10-to-1 odds, but has since fallen to 10,000-to-1, with bets closing on Friday. Those who bet that the world will end today must be looking forward to a big pay-off if it does.

The end is near! Repent! Repent! And have a wicked 6-6-6.

Scientists and philosophers have apparently conclusively solved the folk-dilemma of which came first, the chicken, or the egg. It must have been the egg, which was layed by a non-chicken species, but contained a chicken embryo. The reasoning behind this conclusion is that genetic material does not change throughout the life an animal. Therefore the genetic material of the first chicken must have been in the egg from which it came.

Physics Web covers the story, as do many other sources! :-)

News headlines today are burning up with the release of new research from the University of California that shows that capsaicin, the active ingredient in hot peppers, kills human prostate cancer cells. Unfortunately, thats not what the researchers actually said. At least, not according to New Scientist:

But Koeffler says that men concerned about prostate cancer should not interpret these findings as a reason to up their consumption of hot peppers. He stresses that the compound has not been shown to prevent prostate cancer but instead simply slows its growth. And he adds that he hopes to see human trials in the next two years assessing capsaicin’s effect on prostate cancer.

I love spicy food, but on the other hand, even the most extreme hot pepper nuts that I know couldn’t ingest the kind of heat that Koeffler’s mice were subjected to. According to New Scientist, a 200lb person would need to consume ten fresh habañera peppers per week, which is roughly the heat-equivalent of eating eighty jalapeños in order to attain the cancer-slowing effect that was observed by Koeffler and his colleagues. I find that one jalapeño per meal is spicy enough; hard to imagine over eleven per day. Imagine how the mice felt!

Or, how high, is perhaps the better question to ask. A woman from Oshawa, Ontario was shot in the chest while dancing at a nightclub on Friday night. Apparently, she didn’t notice. She claims that later that night she was having troubles sleeping, and noticed that she was bleeding from the chest, then checked herself in to the hospital to have the bullet removed.