flickering pictures

Just a little one today.
A Scottish study is shedding light on ways to safely manipulate hormone levels in men to decrease — or increase — sperm production. The result could finally lead to a long-elusive birth control pill for men, as well as new fertility-enhancing techniques for men with low sperm counts.
From the Times […]

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Born on January 8, 1935, Elvis Presley would have been 74 years old today. Other notable events on this day:

1835: For the only time in U.S. history, the national debt is exactly zero dollars. Today’s debt is just over $10.6 trillion, or about $35,000 for every man, woman and child in the country.

1867: […]

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Researchers at McGill University in Montreal are hoping that mutant roundworms will help the West win its epic struggle with obesity. Led by researchers Patrick Narbonne and Richard Roy, the team discovered a genetic mutation that makes some C. elegans worms burn off fat extremely quickly, and are hoping to apply their new knowledge […]

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Man, you can’t make this stuff up. From the BBC:

An Asian elephant that became addicted to heroin after being fed bananas spiked with the drug is to return home after undergoing a detox programme.
The four-year-old animal, called Xiguang, received methadone injections for a year at five times the human dosage, state media said.
It was […]

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A new study apparently shows that the birth control pill messes with a woman’s pheromone recognition process, making her more likely to be attracted to men who are genetically similar to her. That’s a bad thing — broad genetic diversity minimizes nature’s “mistakes,” and children resulting from parents with similar genes are more likely […]

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Here’s a story I bookmarked a few months ago and was saving for a rainy day.
On April 17, Pakistan’s Daily Times picked up an Agence France-Presse article about Iran’s experiments with condom and syringe vending machines targeted at drug users.

“Five machines will be installed at Tehran city’s welfare shelters for addicts,” the deputy head of […]

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Someone has dug up a very trippy poem by a 20-year-old Barack Obama, penned back in 1981:

Under water grottos, caverns
Filled with apes
That eat figs
Stepping on the figs
That the apes
Eat, they crunch
The apes howl, bare
Their fangs, dance,
Tumble in the
Rushing water
Musty, wet pelts
Glistening in the blue.

On a perhaps related note, when Obama was asked last year whether […]

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