Chevy dealer sells car for wrong price, apologizes after having buyer arrested

On By A.P.In Chevrolet, Chevy, Dennis Ellmer, Priority Chevrolet, Stupidity, VirginiaLeave a comment

 

A Virginia man spent four hours in jail after purchasing a Chevrolet Traverse from Priority Chevrolet in Chesapeake, VA. The dealer’s sales staff accidentally sold the SUV to Danny Sawyer for $5,600 less than they should have, and when Sawyer refused to sign a new, more expensive contract for the correct amount, the dealership called the local police alleging the buyer had stolen the vehicle. Law enforcement then picked Sawyer up and held him for four hours before getting the situation straight.

Dennis Ellmer, president of Priority Chevrolet, says he owes Sawyer an apology on behalf of the dealership, and had intended to do right by the buyer by letting him have the vehicle at the agreed-upon price. But Sawyer’s lawyer says it’s a little too late for saying, ‘sorry.’ The briefly-incarcerated owner has filed two lawsuits against the dealer, accusing the business of malicious prosecution, slander, defamation and abuse of process. All told, the suits seek a total of $2.2 million in damages, plus attorney fees.

The lawsuit says Sawyer originally purchased a blue Traverse on May 7, but took the SUV back the next day for a black one. The dealer’s sales manager made the swap, allegedly without saying anything about a price differential between the two. Either way, Sawyer signed a final contract for around $34,000 when the vehicle he took home had an actual price of closer to $39,000. On June 15, Sawyer was taken into custody by police, but the Commonwealth dropped the charges after finding insufficient evidence to pursue the case.

http://www.autoblog.com/2012/10/02/chevy-dealer-sells-car-for-wrong-price-apologizes-after-having/?ncid=txtlnkwbauto00000002

Carlos Romero, Accused Of Donkey Sex, Lambastes Florida’s ‘Backwards’ Attitude Towards Animal Sex

On By A.P.In Carlos Romero, Donkey, Florida, Human Behavior, Marion County, Nature, zoophiliaLeave a comment

Regardless of what you think of Carlos Romero’s penchant for donkey sex, he certainly has courage in his convictions.

Romero, 31, was arrested Monday and charged with misdemeanor sexual activity with an animal, by officials in Ocala, Fla., but believes the real outrage is that the Sunshine State is “backwards” towards zoophilia.

The charges stem from an incident last month where a witness reportedly saw Romero with his pants down “up against the rear of the donkey,” TheSmokingGun.com reported.

Romero reportedly stepped away from the donkey and pulled up his pants when he saw the witness.

However, when Marion County detectives questioned him on Friday, he admitted that when the donkey is in heat, he will stand behind her, scratch her withers, and masturbate. He says he “likes the way her fur feels” on his privates,” according to WSTP-TV.

Romero told detectives he had done this five or six times and added that “Florida is a backwards state and people frown on zoophilia here,” according to the arrest report.

The victimized animal is a 21-month-old miniature donkey named Doodle he purchased two months ago, according to Ocala.com.

The animal has since been removed by animal control, much to Romero’s dismay.

I want my donkey back. There’s got to be due process here. I paid $500 for her,” Romero told a judge at the Marion County Jail Tuesday morning according to Ocala.com.

In a jailhouse interview, Romero told the website that he doesn’t “feel comfortable around people” and has “never been a people person.”

In addition, he says that animals “are usually there for you,” “do not seek other pleasures” and their feelings are “100 percent honest,” compared to humans who “stab you in the back, give you diseases, lie to you” and are “promiscuous.”

Romero told the website he’d been having sex with horses since he was 18, but didn’t feel Doodle was ready since “she’s blooming into maturity.”

At Romero’s first court appearance, Romero entered a plea of not guilty. Bail remained at $2,000, and his next court appearance on Oct. 9.

Bob Nelson, an overseer at the farm, said he has told sheriff’s deputies that he does not want Romero there.
“I don’t want to be associated with anyone like that,” Nelson told the website on Tuesday.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/18/carlos-romero-donkey-sex_n_1894146.html

Pica is highly prevalent among men in Madagascar

On By A.P.In Christopher Golden, Laura Beatriz Lopez, Madagascar, Neuropsychiatric Disease, Pica, Sera Young, Susan AlbersLeave a comment

Turns out pregnant women aren’t the only ones who eat dirt. A new study reveals a surprising incidence of pica—craving and consuming nonfood substances—among men.

Conducted in Madagascar, where pica is common, the research is the first to identify a population where the practice is highly prevalent among men, the scientists say. In fact, the men in the study ate nonfood items at least as much as pregnant women and adolescents, whom previous case studies had shown to be the main pica practitioners.

So why this sudden appearance of pica-practicing men?

“My guess, which is not substantiated, is that prior research study designs may have ignored men in their study samples as an artifact of studying pregnant women,” said study author Christopher Golden, an eco-epidemiologist and National Geographic Society Conservation Trust grantee.

Pica researcher Laura Beatriz López, nutrition director at the University of Buenos Aires, agreed.

“Traditionally studies of geophagy [eating earth] and pica have focused on describing the prevalence in children and pregnant women,” López wrote in an email, which has been translated from Spanish.

“Personally, I think the work is pioneering,” she said, because it reveals “such a high prevalence of pica in men and also found no significant differences with women.”

Golden and colleagues—advised by Cornell nutritional anthropologist Sera Young—surveyed pica behaviors in a random sample of 760 people in 16 villages of Madagascar’s Makira Protected Area in 2009. (See Madagascar pictures from National Geographic magazine.)

The study subjects—male and female—identified eating 13 nonfood substances, including sand, soil, chicken feces, uncooked rice, raw cassava root, charcoal, salt, and ash, according to the new report, which appeared Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE.

More than 53 percent of the survey respondents reported engaging in pica. For adult men alone, that number was 63 percent.

Bucking the stereotype, less than one percent of nonpregnant women said they ate any nonfoods only during pregnancy.

Many people reported eating nonfoods for their healing powers, especially for stomach troubles, Golden said. And many believed that pica would bring good luck for better overall health.

Previously, scientists had suggested people practice pica for two reasons: to fulfill a deficiency of trace minerals in their diet and to cleanse and deworm the intestinal tract.

The nutrition theory would make sense for pregnant women and children, whose dietary needs are greater those of the rest of the population.

Even so, there’s no evidence that the human body can actually absorb trace minerals from soil, said Golden, adding that pica “may not serve any health purpose.”

The University of Buenos Aires’s López added that the cultural norms of Madagascar contribute to the high rate of eating inedible substances. For instance, many Malagasy don’t consider eating raw starches, such as uncooked rice, to be a form of pica.

Pica, study co-author Golden emphasized, “is not exclusive to rural populations in developing countries.”

For example, many Americans do it, Golden said, and he speaks from experience. “A close college friend of mine,” he said, “is a frequent consumer of chalk.

“It is very prevalent, yet stigmatized, and thus underreported.”

Added Cleveland Clinic psychologist Susan Albers by email: “Pica is an eating disorder that gets far less attention and research than other eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia, yet it is important, as it can lead to significant health consequences, due to the possibility of consuming toxic substances.

“We’ve seen more attention on men and eating disorders over the last few years,” Albers said. “This study notes the importance of further research on men and pica and making sure they are adequately represented in the sample.”

Study co-author Golden said he isn’t quite ready to label pica an eating disorder, since it’s not yet clear whether the practice is harmful. But he agreed that more pica research is needed, especially among men.

The new Madagascar study may be a big step in that direction. To Golden, the discovery “opens up this whole field of research, to have fellow researchers acknowledge both men and women in their studies.”

More: “Why People Eat Dirt”—interview with Christopher Golden >>

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/10/121019-pica-food-health-science-madagascar-men-women-pregnant-eat-dirt/

Polish coffin-maker using nude models to sell coffins

On By A.P.In Catholic church, coffin, nude model, PolandLeave a comment

 

A Polish firm that makes coffins has angered the Catholic church by trying to drum up business with a calendar depicting topless models posing next to its caskets.

One image from the 2013 edition of the calendar has a blonde model, wearing only a skimpy thong and with a snake draped around her neck, reclining on a coffin. In another, a woman wearing a crimson corset is depicted pulling out the heart of a man lying on a casket.

“My son had the idea of creating the company’s calendar… so that we could show something half-serious, colourful, beautiful; the beauty of Polish girls and the beauty of our coffins,” said Zbigniew Lindner, the firm’s owner.

“We wanted to show that a coffin isn’t a religious symbol. Its a product,” he said. “Why are people afraid of coffins and not of business suits, cosmetics or jewellery?”

As well as attracting publicity for his firm, the calendar is intended as a source of revenue. It is on sale on the company’s website. Anyone who places an order receives a complementary key ring in the shape of a coffin.

The Catholic church has condemned the calendar as inappropriate. A church spokesman has said that human death should be treated with solemnity and not mixed up with sex.

The church and its teachings have been at the heart of Polish life for generations, but changes in society are challenging the faith. While 93 percent of Poles say they are Catholic, the proportion who attend church regularly is falling. Many people are starting to confront long-standing taboos about sexuality and religion.

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/WeirdNews/2012/11/02/20326901.html

Montana Quietly Passed a Measure That Says Corporations Aren’t Humans

On By A.P.In corporation, Government, Montana, super PAC, Wealth and PowerLeave a comment

 

There’s one big, but overlooked, development from the election last night: In Montana, a referendum to state that corporations don’t have constitutional rights has unofficially passed by a 75 percent to 25 percent margin. Initiative number 166 stated that “corporations are not entitled to constitutional rights because they are not human beings,” and thus is a blow to the Citizen’s United ruling that helped make this presidential election the most expensive one ever.

Montana has been a leader in trying to buck Citizen’s United, the 2010 Supreme Court ruling that equated money with free speech and allowed corporations to contribute unlimited amounts of money to campaigns through super PACs. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a ruling by the Montana Supreme Court that limited political spending in state and local elections. That ruling, which came without a hearing as liberal justices wanted, only strengthened Citizen’s United, but now Montana’s voting populace has fired back.

Montana has long had some of the country’s toughest campaign spending laws, which mostly crumbled under the Supreme Court. According to a nice background piece at CNN, the tradition has its roots in Montana’s mining industry, where copper barons used to buy off politicians in the 1800s. Because the sparsely-populated state is fueled by large mining operations, advocates worry that Citizen’s United will allow mining interests to take control of the state’s legislature yet again.

It’s unclear right now what will happen next. While the initiative states that corporations are not human beings and thus don’t have constitutional rights — Citizen’s United was based on an interpretation of the First Amendment — any changes to spending rules in state and local elections are likely to wind up in the Supreme Court again, which may or may not prompt an actual review of Citizen’s United. (Some folks think that the Supreme Court is finally ready to take another look at what has become one of its most controversial rulings in ages, especially now that the election is over.) But one thing is for sure: In Montana, unlimited corporate spending on elections is resoundingly unpopular.

http://motherboard.vice.com/2012/11/7/montana-quietly-passed-a-measure-that-says-corporations-aren-t-humans–2

Thanks to Kebmodee for bringing this to the attention of the It’s Interesting community.

World’s rarest whale seen for the first time

On By A.P.In A.R., Mesoplodon traversii, Nature, New Zealand, Opape Beach, Rochelle Constantine, spade-toothed beaked whale, University of Auckland, WhalesLeave a comment

The world’s rarest whale, previously only known from a few bones, was seen for the first time on a New Zealand beach, according to a new Current Biology paper.

The elusive marine mammal is the spade-toothed beaked whale (Mesoplodon traversii). The good news is that it was seen at all, revealing that it still exists. The bad news is that the sighting was of a mother and her male calf, both of which became stranded and died on the beach.

NEWS: A Whale with a Human Voice

“This is the first time this species — a whale over five meters (about 16.5 feet) in length — has ever been seen as a complete specimen, and we were lucky enough to find two of them,” Rochelle Constantine of the University of Auckland said in a press release. “Up until now, all we have known about the spade-toothed beaked whale was from three partial skulls collected from New Zealand and Chile over a 140-year period. It is remarkable that we know almost nothing about such a large mammal.”

The discovery actually happened two years ago, when the whales live-stranded and died on Opape Beach, New Zealand. It’s only after DNA analysis that the identification of the rare species was made. At first, they were incorrectly identified as being the much more common Gray’s beaked whales.

“When these specimens came to our lab, we extracted the DNA as we usually do for samples like these, and we were very surprised to find that they were spade-toothed beaked whales,” Constantine said. “We ran the samples a few times to make sure before we told everyone.”

BLOG: What Noise Annoys a Blue Whale Most

Constantine suspects that the whales “are simply an offshore species that lives and dies in the deep ocean waters and only rarely wash ashore. New Zealand is surrounded by massive oceans. There is a lot of marine life that remains unknown to us.”

http://news.discovery.com/animals/worlds-rarest-whale-seen-for-the-first-time-121105.html

 

Thanks to A.R. for bringing this to the attention of the It’s Interesting community.

Humans can learn a new sense: ‘Whisking’

On By A.P.In brain, human whiskers, Journal of Neuroscience, Medicine, Nature, Neuroscience, Rat, Weizmann Institute, whiskingLeave a comment

 

Rats use a sense that humans don’t: whisking. They move their facial whiskers back and forth about eight times a second to locate objects in their environment. Could humans acquire this sense? And if they can, what could understanding the process of adapting to new sensory input tell us about how humans normally sense? At the Weizmann Institute, researchers explored these questions by attaching plastic “whiskers” to the fingers of blindfolded volunteers and asking them to carry out a location task. The findings, which recently appeared in the Journal of Neuroscience, have yielded new insight into the process of sensing, and they may point to new avenues in developing aids for the blind.
The scientific team, including Drs. Avraham Saig and Goren Gordon, and Eldad Assa in the group of Prof. Ehud Ahissar and Dr. Amos Arieli, all of the Neurobiology Department attached a “whisker” – a 30 cm-long elastic “hair” with position and force sensors on its base – to the index finger of each hand of a blindfolded subject. Then two poles were placed at arm’s distance on either side and slightly to the front of the seated subject, with one a bit farther back than the other. Using just their whiskers, the subjects were challenged to figure out which pole – left or right – was the back one. As the experiment continued, the displacement between front and back poles was reduced, up to the point when the subject could no longer distinguish front from back.
On the first day of the experiment, subjects picked up the new sense so well that they could correctly identify a pole that was set back by only eight cm. An analysis of the data revealed that the subjects did this by figuring the spatial information from the sensory timing. That is, moving their bewhiskered hands together, they could determine which pole was the back one because the whisker on that hand made contact earlier.
When they repeated the testing the next day, the researchers discovered that the subjects had improved their whisking skills significantly: The average sensory threshold went down to just three cm, with some being able to sense a displacement of just one cm. Interestingly, the ability of the subjects to sense time differences had not changed over the two days. Rather, they had improved in the motor aspects of their whisking strategies: Slowing down their hand motions – in effect lengthening the delay time – enabled them to sense a smaller spatial difference.
Saig: “We know that our senses are linked to muscles, for example ocular and hand muscles. In order to sense the texture of cloth, for example, we move our fingers across it, and to seeing stationary object, our eyes must be in constant motion. In this research, we see that changing our physical movements alone – without any corresponding change in the sensitivity of our senses – can be sufficient to sharpen our perception.”
Based on the experiments, the scientists created a statistical model to describe how the subjects updated their “world view” as they acquired new sensory information – up to the point at which they were confident enough to rely on that sense. The model, based on principles of information processing, could explain the number of whisking movements needed to arrive at the correct answer, as well as the pattern of scanning the subjects employed – a gradual change from long to short movements. With this strategy, the flow of information remains constant. “The experiment was conducted in a controlled manner, which allowed us direct access to all the relevant variables: hand motion, hand-pole contact and the reports of the subjects themselves,” says Gordon. “Not only was there a good fit between the theory and the experimental data, we obtained some useful quantitative information on the process of active sensing.”
“Both sight and touch are based on arrays of receptors that scan the outside world in an active manner,” says Ahissar, “Our findings reveal some new principles of active sensing, and show us that activating a new artificial sense in a ‘natural’ way can be very efficient.”  Arieli adds: “Our vision for the future is to help blind people ‘see’ with their fingers. Small devices that translate video to mechanical stimulation, based on principles of active sensing that are common to vision and touch, could provide an intuitive, easily used sensory aid.”
 

Methone: Smooth Egg Moon of Saturn

On By A.P.In Kebmodee, MethoneLeave a comment

 

The robotic Cassini spacecraft completed the first flyby ever of Saturn’s small moon Methone in May and discovered that the moon has no obvious craters. Craters, usually caused by impacts, have been seen on every moon, asteroid, and comet nucleus ever imaged in detail — until now. Even the Earth and Titan have craters. The smoothness and egg-like shape of the 3-kilometer diameter moon might be caused by Methone‘s surface being able to shift — something that might occur were the moon coated by a deep pile of sub-visual rubble. If so, the most similar objects in our Solar System would include Saturn’s moons Telesto, Pandora, Calypso, as well as asteroid Itokawa, all of which show sections that are unusually smooth. Methone is not entirely featureless, though, as some surface sections appears darker than others. Although flybys of Methone are difficult, interest in the nature and history of this unusual moon is sure to continue.

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap121106.html

Thanks to Kebmodee for bringing this to the attention of the It’s Interesting community.

First vertical farm opens in Singapore

On By A.P.In Singapore, Sky Green Farms, vertical farmLeave a comment

 

 

The first commercial-scale vertical farm has opened in the tiny, densely populated city of Singapore, with the aim of decreasing dependence on food imports.

Singapore, which lies at the end of the Malay Peninsula, is just 274 square miles, almost all of which is city. That leaves little space to grow vegetables. As a result, the city currently only produces 7 percent of its vegetables locally, forcing it to buy from other countries.

The vertical farm, which has been developed by Sky Green Farms, consists of 120 aluminum towers, each extending up almost 30 feet in height. It can produce over 1,000 pounds of three kinds of vegetables per day, all of which are sold in the local FairPrice Finest supermarkets. However, they do cost a little more than imported vegetables.

That hasn’t stopped them becoming enormously popular with local consumers, and they’re frequently out of stock. As a result, the company is looking for investors to allow it to produce two tons of vegetables per day. As supply ramps up, economies of scale should also be able to cut the price.

“We are always looking at ways to increase our sources of food supply and if we can produce some in Singapore, then that can go some way to meet local demand,” Lee Yi Shyan, Senior Minister of State for National Development and Trade and Industry, told Channel News Asia.

http://www.wired.com/design/2012/10/vertical-farm-in-singapore/

Thank to Kebmodee for bringing this to the attention of the It’s Interesting community.

9 new species of tarantula discovered in Brazil

On By A.P.In Brazil, Nature, Rogerio Bertani, Spiders, Tarantula, ZooKeys1 Comment

Nine new species of colorful, arboreal tarantulas have been discovered in central and eastern Brazil, an area where only seven tarantula species had previously been known. All nine of the newly described species are threatened by habitat loss and potentially by overzealous spider collectors.

As described this week in the open-access journal ZooKeys, the newly discovered species have been named Typhochlaena amma, T. costae, T. curumim, T. paschoali, Pachistopelma bromelicola, Iridopelma katiae, I. marcoi, I. oliveirai and I. vanini. The Typhochlaena genus had last been seen in 1850.

The study of the area’s tarantulas was conducted by Rogério Bertani, a researcher at the Instituto Butantan in Sao Paulo. A previous spider first described by Bertani, Pterinopelma sazimai, was named one of the top 10 new species of 2011. That spider, like many of the new ones he described this week, is also threatened by the exotic pet trade.

As Bertani writes in his 94-page paper, tarantulas—arachnids of the family Theraphosidae—have not been heavily studied to date, “despite their potential importance as top predators in ecological webs, the pet trade and a source of important tools for pharmacological research.” He definitely picked up the slack here, studying specimens from the wild and nine different museums and other institutions in order to measure legs, hairs, eyes, claws and other physical attributes to determine the new species. The analysis also allowed him to re-describe dozens of previously identified tarantula species.

Unfortunately, just about all of the new species Bertani describes appear to be at least threatened, if not endangered. Of the five Typhochlaena species, only 40 specimens have been collected to date. The new Pachistopelma species he describes depend on high-elevation flowering plants called bromeliads, which offer both water and shelter from intense mountain sunlight but are themselves threatened by habitat destruction in some regions. Other species live in the Atlantic rainforest, which has been reduced to just 7 percent of its original size. Most of the species he describes are extremely colorful, and Bertani says this could lead to exploitation by the illegal exotic pet trade.

Bertani says the discovery of these new species shows how little is known about wildlife even in areas like the Brazilian rainforests that have been identified as biodiversity hotspots.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/extinction-countdown/2012/11/01/9-endangered-tarantula-discovered-brazil/