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Man-eaters Not So Much
For more than 80 years, the man-eating Tsavo lions have been a fabulous story and crowd-pleaser. The two lions reportedly killed and ate as many as 135 people in the Tsavo River region of Kenya before being shot and killed in 1898. Their skinned and …Read more.
Counting Cardsharps Out
In the 1988 film "Rain Man," the lead characters hope to strike it rich gambling by "counting cards" at blackjack. That is, by precisely remembering which cards have been played, they would have a better of idea of which cards …Read more.
Cleaning Up, Using Ammonia
When Archaea, an ancient line of bacteria, were first discovered 30 years ago, it was thought they existed only in extreme environments like deep-sea hydrothermal vents or hot springs like the Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone National Park (…Read more.
What's it all about, Algae?
The asteroid that struck Earth 65 million years ago notoriously wiped out most of life on the planet, large and small. Even algae in the ocean were affected, though apparently not for long.
New evidence reported by scientists at the Massachusetts …Read more.
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Lessons DrawnThe ancient Nazca of Peru were terrific artists, best remembered now for creating their complex line drawings of animals and geometric objects that can only be fully appreciated from the air. Nazca knowledge of their environment, however, seems to have left something to be desired, and may be the reason the culture disappeared around 1,500 years ago. A huge flood is usually credited with wiping out the Nazca culture around 500 A.D., but new pollen study suggests it was deforestation that cleared the way to their extinction. By cutting down all of the native huarango trees in the region to plant crops of maize, cotton and beans, the Nazca irreparably altered their environment. The trees grow roots that reach as deep as 30 feet and live upward of 1,000 years. By trapping airborne moisture, huarango trees created and anchored oases in the relative desert of southern Peru. With the disappearance of the trees, arid conditions and nutrient-depleted soil pretty quickly marginalized Nazca society. When big floods came, the Nazca were easily washed away, leaving behind only their cryptic art. VERBATIM We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything. — American inventor Thomas Edison (1847-1931) BRAIN SWEAT Can you decipher these rebuses? Hint: A good visual imagination is instrumental. 1. P O 2. BA 3. ECLART QUIRKS OF NATURE Female fiddler crabs mate with their male neighbors in exchange for protection. Both genders are extremely territorial. Researchers had been puzzled why females seemed just as successful at defending their ground as males despite having smaller claws. BRAIN SWEAT ANSWER 1. Piano (P and O) 2. Tuba (Two BA) 3. Clarinet (CLAR in ET) PRIME NUMBERS 600 — Cost estimate, in millions of dollars, by Anatoly Perminov, head of Russia's space agency, to build a nuclear-powered spacecraft capable of reaching Mars Source: New Scientist ANTHROPOLOGY 101 In medieval France, animals judged to be possessed by the devil were hanged. Because their meat was deemed sinful, convicted cows and pigs were burned, not butchered. Hungry peasants watched their farm animals get cooked without benefit. Such things don't happen nowadays, though occasionally an offending animal will find itself on the wrong side of "justice." In 1916, for example, a circus elephant killed three men. The elephant was lynched using a railroad derrick and steel cables. PATENTLY ABSURD Boxing may be known as the "sweet science," but it's also a brutal sport where competitors take too many blows to the head. That's neither smart nor safe. Thus, the "Bubble Head," patented in 1987. It consists of a clear plastic bag filled with a shock-absorbing, translucent fluid and, here's the neat part, a pressure-sensitive reservoir filled with red dye. Each time a Bubble Head-wearing boxer gets smacked in the noggin, a little bit of dye is released into the surrounding fluid. At the end of the fight, if both boxers are still standing, the winner is determined by which fighter has the least red head. To find out more about Scott LaFee and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS.COM
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