So.. not much happening here. I've just been thoroughly enjoying swimming. There aren't any waves, but the water has been crystal, I mean like, CRYSTAL clear. So absolutely breathtakingly clear. Minus the jellyfish, it's perfect. I just paddle out and swim in the deep. The water's so clear that if you have goggles on, you can see all around as clear you almost as clearly as you can see when you're out of land. I swear, it just makes me drool. When the water is like that, my wishing for a water proof laptop with wifi internet only just gets stronger. :)

Anyhow, so.. we've got some pretty interesting headlines this week:

1. So trees can grow inside your... belly? Nope. Lungs.
2. Susan Boyle, still. I love her voice tho. I'm a big fan of Les Miserables.
3. Mystics? Warriors? It's not too new but it's still good. :)

Stranger saves baby from car bomb

I'd say what an adorable baby!

Iraqi salesman saves baby after bomb kills mother

BAGHDAD – A salesman rescued a baby from a blaze ignited by a car bombing in a Shiite neighborhood Tuesday, reaching through the shattered window and grabbing the boy after the blast killed his mother and eight other people.

The rescue, which witnesses described to an Associated Press reporter at the scene, highlighted the often overlooked role of Iraqi civilians in the aftermath of such bombings. Although violence has tapered off greatly over the past year, deadly attacks still plague the capital.

Iraqis tend to try to help one another after bombings and often drive victims to hospitals because ambulances can be slow in getting to the scene. But salesman Asad Raad's act was particularly notable because a burning car can explode if the fuel tanks are on fire, and bombings are often quickly followed by other attacks intended to kill rescuers.

Raad rushed out of his motorcycle shop after the explosion shook the Kazimiyah area of northwest Baghdad. He plucked the infant from the back seat, where he lay next to his dead mother.

Rescuers pulled a badly burned man, presumed to be the baby's father, from the car and rushed him to the hospital. In the confusion, no one at the scene determined the couple's names.

"The baby suffered light burns in the face," Raad told the AP. "I took the baby to my house and called the police. They told me to keep him for the time being."

Throughout the afternoon, relatives brought Raad milk and diapers for the baby, who was sleeping hours later.

"If nobody comes forward to claim him, my family is thinking of adopting him. To save and care for the baby is the only thing a human being can do in such circumstances," said Raad, a newlywed. "I cannot stand still and watch. I will do everything possible to protect the baby who lost his mother."

Tuesday's blast, nine hours before President Barack Obama touched down in Baghdad for a brief visit, came a day after bombings killed 37 people in Shiite areas of the capital and raised fears of new sectarian fighting.

The Interior Ministry warned of more car bombings in Baghdad and said security was being tightened to prevent them. The announcement followed public criticism of the police and army for failing to prevent Monday's attacks.

"We hold the security forces responsible for what happened," said Mustafa Radhi as he buried his relatives — a young husband and wife killed along with their newborn son Monday. "Innocent people and children died because of their negligence."

No group claimed responsibility for the recent blasts, but the U.S. military said the attacks bore the hallmarks of al-Qaida in Iraq, a Sunni extremist group that has targeted Shiite civilians in the past.

The government blamed supporters of Saddam Hussein in league with al-Qaida and suggested the blasts were timed for Tuesday's anniversary of the founding of his disbanded Baath party. Thursday is also the sixth anniversary of the U.S. capture of Baghdad, which ended Saddam's Sunni-dominated regime.

Also Tuesday, a suicide car bomber killed three policemen and wounded seven people at a police checkpoint in Fallujah, a former insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad.

The bullet-riddled body of a member of a U.S.-allied Sunni paramilitary ground was found Tuesday in Iskandariyah, 30 miles south of the capital, police said. The victim had been kidnapped the day before.

Source

And of course.. Karma kula's 2nd chapter will be out in a day or so. :)

Animal Heroes

There have been so many stories of animal heroes, and again- here's a parrot who saved a baby by yelling, "Mama, baby" and flapping its wings. Then there are those stories of dolphins and porpoises, turtles, etc who took care of people who were shipwrecked or lost in sea.
Sometimes I think animals can be way better than human beings who aren't responsible enough to act like human beings. Generally speaking- animals care for their young. They'll die for their young, and well hey- they do what they can for each other and for other species if needed. They don't ruin the environment or whatever it is... not that I'm advocating people to just become humans or what. I just think people should act as human beings and not animals-gone-wrong so that the world doesn't get so screwed up all the time.

Anyway.. that's my two cents for the day.

Don't forget to watch your Daily Ninjai Chapter

A witch? Burn Her to Death!

Right.. we sure are evolving.

Woman suspected of witchcraft burned alive

A woman in rural Papua New Guinea was bound and gagged, tied to a log and set ablaze on a pile of tires this week, possibly because villagers suspected her of being a witch, police said Thursday.

Her death adds to a growing list of men and women who have been accused of sorcery and then tortured or killed in the South Pacific island nation, where traditional beliefs hold sway in many regions.

The victims are often scapegoats for someone else's unexplained death -- and bands of tribesmen collude to mete out justice to them for their supposed magical powers, police said.

"We have had quite difficulties in a number of previous incidents convincing people to come forward with information," said Simon Kauba, assistant commissioner of police and commander of the Highlands region, where the killing occurred.

"We are trying to persuade them to help. Somebody lost their mother or daughter or sister Tuesday morning."

Early Tuesday morning, a group of people dragged the woman, believed to be in her late teens to early 20s, to a dumping ground outside the city of Mount Hagen. They stripped her naked, bound her hands and legs, stuffed a cloth in her mouth, tied her to a log and set her on fire, Mauba said.

"When the people living nearby went to the dump site to investigate what caused the fire, they found a human being burning in the flames," he said. "It was ugly."

The country's Post-Courier newspaper reported Thursday that more than 50 people were killed in two Highlands provinces last year for allegedly practicing sorcery.

In a well-publicized case last year, a pregnant woman gave birth to a baby girl while struggling to free herself from a tree. Villagers had dragged the woman from her house and hung her from the tree, accusing her of sorcery after her neighbor suddenly died.

She and the baby survived, according to media reports.

Killings of witches, or sangumas, is not a new phenomenon in rural areas of the country.

Emory University anthropology Professor Bruce Knauft, who lived in a village in the western province of Papua New Guinea in the early 1980s, traced family histories for 42 years and found that 1 in 3 adult deaths were homicides -- "the bulk of these being collective killings of suspected sorcerers," he wrote in his book, From Primitive to Postcolonial in Melanesia and Anthropology.

In recent years, as AIDS has taken a toll in the the nation of 6.7 million people, villagers have blamed suspected witches -- and not the virus -- for the deaths.

According to the United Nations, Papua New Guinea accounts for 90 percent of the Pacific region's HIV cases and is one of four Asia-Pacific countries with an epidemic.

"We've had a number of cases where people were killed because they were accused of spreading HIV or AIDS," Mauba said.

While there is plenty of speculation why Tuesday's victim was killed, police said they are focused more on who committed the crime.

"If it is phobias about alleged HIV/AIDS or claims of a sexual affair, we must urge the police and judiciary to throw the book at the offenders," the Post-Courier wrote in an editorial.

"There are remedies far, far better than to torture and immolate a young woman before she can be judged by a lawful system."

CNN World News

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Can't remember...

I'm back home now. I'm just exhausted. zzz..

My puppy's grown heaps tho! Glad to see her as she was glad to see me. :)


I could use this..

Forgetting things? Mnemonics can make them stick

Arriving at your uncle's holiday party in suitable dress and good cheer, you are greeted at the door by an old friend from school whose name, you suddenly realize, you cannot recall.
There are effective word connections you can make to help you remember things.

There are effective word connections you can make to help you remember things.

You've known him for 20 years. You played baseball with him, went on family trips together. You were at his wedding, for goodness' sake.

It's too embarrassing to ask his name, so as he waits awkwardly for an introduction to your significant other, you just stand there dully, waiting for the roof to cave in.

Well the roof did just that at a party in Greece in the fifth century B.C., killing all in attendance except for Simonides of Ceos, who had serendipitously stepped outside at just the right moment.

Simonides, however, had no such problem with names.

He was able to identify the bodies, which had been damaged beyond recognition, simply by recalling where each one sat.

And thus, says Judy Parkinson in a book titled "i before e (except after c)," Simonides begat a system for memorizing and recalling facts, called mnemonics.
Don't Miss

* Boom times for brain training games

Parkinson's book is a gathering of tricks, rhymes and riddles for remembering anything from names to rules of grammar and spelling, to science, math and music.

Can't remember when to use "affect" as opposed to "effect"? Simple says Parkinson: Just remember RAVEN: Remember Affect Verb Effect Noun (This only helps, of course, if you remember how to spell "raven").

After dinner, will you be having dessert or desert? To avoid after-dinner sand, says Parkinson, remember the double s stands for "sweet stuff."

But there's more to mnemonics than tricks and acronyms.

The best kind of mnemonic, says Robert Bjork, distinguished professor of cognitive psychology at UCLA, is one you make up yourself using interactive images.

A common method is to associate locations along a well-traveled path, like a school or work route, with items on a list. The Greeks called this the Method of Loci.

It's not enough, however, to associate a flagpole on your route with a giraffe on your list. To be truly effective, says Bjork, the giraffe must DO something with the flagpole.

"It should be interactive with the location as much as possible. If you imagine a giraffe, you imagine the giraffe climbing the pole rather than just standing there."

Another interactive device, a "peg-word" system, uses a rhyme as a kind of template to associate with items on a list. To use Bjork's example:

"One is a bun

Two is a shoe

Three is a tree ..."

And so on.

An apple on your list goes in the bun, a quart of milk goes in the shoe, a honey-baked ham hangs on the tree. You can reuse the same rhyme for different lists.

Interactive mnemonic devices like these can be very effective, says Bjork.

"In fact it is remarkably long-lived. If I have my students remember 20 items around UCLA campus, they'll remember 19 of them a week later."

The more you use the mnemonic, the better it will work. In fact, says Bjork, recall is one of the best ways to reinforce any kind of memory -- repeated recall leads to easier recall.

Still, with or without mnemonics, we simply forget things more easily as we get older, says Dr. James Lah, associate professor of neurology at Emory University.

It's perfectly natural, says Lah, to start forgetting things that were easy to remember at a younger age -- "senior moments."

But what if you keep forgetting things -- where you put your keys, the name of the person you just met at a party, the names of your co-worker's children -- should this be cause for concern?

"Not necessarily," says Lah.

"What people talk about when they talk about senior moments is really just a commonplace experience that does not necessarily imply something else going on as far as disease."

So how do you know when a memory lapse is a serious problem as opposed to just a nuisance?

"If you meet the new pastor's wife and you immediately forget her name -- [or] you see her the next day and you can't recall her name, that's not necessarily a reflection of a problem," says Lah. "It's a commonplace annoyance that increases with age."

"If you meet the pastor's wife and the next day can't recall having met her, that may be an indication of a more serious problem."

Besides mnemonics, which Lah recommends, there are other things you can do to keep those senior moments to a minimum.

There is evidence to suggest that if you take care of your cardiovascular health by eating right and exercising, your neurological health will also benefit.

"There is a direct correlation between cardiovascular health and neurological health and especially cognitive aging," says Lah.

The reasons are complex, says Lah, but when you have bad cardiovascular health, "the efficiency of communication between brain cells is eroded."

"So that's one of the reasons people in their 30s, 40s and 50s should be paying attention to [cardiovascular] diseases."

How, you may ask, does all this help you at your uncle's party with your old and seemingly nameless friend?

Find out his name from someone else and start working on a mnemonic. For example, if his name is Charlie, remember you deserve a "charlie-horse" for forgetting his name.

Imagine giving the charlie-horse to your significant other for an even more effective, "interactive" memory.

And remember, recall reinforces recall, so the more often you give your significant other a charlie-horse -- real or imagined -- the more likely you are to remember Charlie's name in the future.

CNN Offbeat News

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Why Do the Mentally Ill Die Younger?

I saw this article on CNN today.. does that mean I'm going to die younger? :D

Why Do the Mentally Ill Die Younger?

Cynthia Scott is your average health-conscious 56-year-old. She watches what she eats, drinks lots of water and takes a multivitamin every morning. She goes for frequent walks and visits her doctor regularly for checkups, including cholesterol and diabetes screenings.
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Scott also has schizoaffective bipolar disorder, a mental illness she keeps in check with a low dose of Zyprexa. If you were to ask Scott, she would say she is a healthy person overall. So she was shocked when the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors (NASMHPD) published a study two years ago called Morbidity and Mortality in People with Serious Mental Illness. The report analyzed data from 16 states and found that, on average, people with severe mental illness die 25 years earlier than the general population. "Hearing that made me so sad," says Scott. (See the Year in Health, from A to Z.)

The findings were a bombshell for the rest of the mental-health community. "The study jarred the field," says Dr. Bob Glover, the executive director of NASMHPD. After the 2006 report came out, many mental-health agencies in the U.S. made it an immediate priority to figure out why their patients die sooner and how to improve their longevity. Says Glover: "Mental health has been late to the dance in terms of looking at the connections between mental health and physical health. It may be moot what you're doing for mental-health needs if people are dying so early from physical causes."

Indeed, the causes of physical illness and death among psychiatric patients are much the same as those in other groups — cigarette smoking, obesity, diabetes — and are treatable. The problem is that people with serious mental illness tend to be low on the socioeconomic totem pole and often don't get the best available health care. Frequently, their own doctors pay little heed to their patients' physical health. "Medical doctors think, 'Well, they're crazy,' so they don't take their concerns seriously," says Wendy Brennan, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) in New York City. "Their very real physical symptoms are often dismissed."

One of the most common contributors to early death among mentally ill patients, for instance, is smoking. While about 22% of the general population smokes, more than 75% of people with severe mental illness are tobacco-dependent. According to Glover, a study conducted by NASMHPD after the publication of its mortality study found that 44% of all cigarettes in the United States are consumed by people with psychiatric histories. "I used to run state hospitals, and we'd use cigarettes as reinforcement — 'You did good; you get a cigarette,'" he says. "When people didn't do well, we took away their tobacco privileges. We were part of the problem." The agency is now working to make state mental hospitals smoke-free by 2011.

Obesity is another big risk factor. People with depression or bipolar disorder are about twice as likely to be obese as the general population; in people with schizophrenia, that likelihood is three times greater. This is in part because so many psychotropic medications cause weight gain. At many state hospitals, says Glover, "you'd see a woman be admitted at 120 lb. Three to six months later, she'd weigh 200."

Obesity-related illnesses, like diabetes, are so prevalent among the mentally ill that health officials call them an epidemic within an epidemic. For example, about 13% of schizophrenic adults in their 50s have received a diabetes diagnosis, compared with 8% of the general population of the same age. In October, the NASMHPD released another report, with recommendations for treating the particular problem of obesity, including giving those with severe mental illness better access to dietary consultations and promoting the prescription of low-weight-gain antipsychotics. The agency is currently working on creating a tool kit for federal health-care providers to better inform them on the issue.

At NAMI–New York City, after reading the 2006 mortality report, health workers held focus groups to assess their patients' health concerns. There were many — foremost among them, the simple desire to feel deserving of good health. "The most shocking thing was that people really wanted to be healthy but there was a disconnect," says program associate Katie Linn, who ran the focus groups. "A lot of it came down to self-worth — they didn't feel like they were worthy of taking care of themselves."

Based on the participants' responses, NAMI created a program called Six Weeks to Wellness, a weekly class that teaches everything from proper nutrition to controlling anxiety through yoga and meditation. "It's been wildly popular," says Linn. "It helps to say, 'Your health is important to us.' They've never heard that before."

For the NASMHPD, the next logical step is to educate the doctors who care for the mentally ill. This month, the agency will release guidelines for standardizing the medical tests, assessments and care given to mental-health patients in the public system. The recommendations include taking regular measurements of patients' height and weight, checking their glucose levels and carefully evaluating their medication history. Psychiatrists, likewise, are not exempt. According to Mental Heath America, based in Virginia, a recent survey of people with schizophrenia revealed that they rarely discussed physical health with their psychiatrists. So the organization is working on an initiative with the American Psychological Association to better educate mental-health specialists about the physical concerns facing patients with serious mental illness.

As for Cynthia Scott, over the past two years she has taken her health consciousness to a whole new level, regularly attending NAMI's yoga workshops in New York City. "I'm big on taking care of myself," she says.

Source

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Don't pet panda...

Lol, I think these guys need to learn a few things about wild animals..



those are some mean looking teeth

Panda bites student seeking a hug

BEIJING (AP) -- A college student in southern China was bitten by a panda after he broke into the bear's enclosure hoping to get a hug, state media and a park employee said Saturday.
Don't be deceived. Pandas might look cute, but they're not to be trifled with.

Don't be deceived. Pandas might look cute, but they're not to be trifled with.

The student was visiting Qixing Park with classmates on Friday when he jumped the 6.5-foot (2-meter) high fence around the panda's habitat, said the park employee, who refused to give his name.

The park in Guilin, a popular tourist town in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, houses a small zoo and a panda exhibit. It was virtually deserted when the student scaled the fence surrounding the panda, named Yang Yang, the employee said.

He said the student was bitten on the arms and legs. Two foreign visitors who saw the attack ran to get help from workers at a nearby refreshment stand, who notified park officials, the employee said.

The student was pale as he was taken away by medics but appeared clearheaded, he said.

"Yang Yang was so cute, and I just wanted to cuddle him. I didn't expect he would attack," the 20-year-old student, surnamed Liu, said in a local hospital, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

Liu underwent surgery Friday evening and was out of danger but will remain in the hospital for several days, Xinhua said.

Yang Yang, who was flown to Guilin last year from Sichuan province, was behaving normally on Saturday and did not seem to suffer any negative psychological effects, the park employee said.

He said it was not clear whether the facility would add more signs around the enclosure or put more fences up.

"We cannot make it like a prison. We already have signs up warning people not to climb in," he said. "There are no fences along roads but people know not to cross if there are cars. This is basic knowledge."

Pandas, which generally have a public image as cute, gentle creatures, are nonetheless wild animals that can be violent when provoked or startled.

Last year, a panda at the Beijing Zoo attacked a teenager, ripping chunks out of his legs, when he jumped a barrier while the bear was being fed.

The same panda was in the news in 2006 when he bit a drunk tourist who broke into his enclosure and tried to hug him while he was asleep. The tourist retaliated by biting the bear in the back.

Source

And of course, don't forget to watch your daily Ninjai Chapter

Tiger Blood Transfusion

My faith in human stupidity grows everyday.

Rare blood transfusion attempted on tiger cub
NEW DELHI – Veterinarians carried out a rare blood transfusion in an attempt to save a 7-month-old wild tiger that had been attacked and beaten by angry villagers in central India. The female cub received the emergency treatment late Sunday after blood taken from captive adults was airlifted to the zoo where the cub is being cared for, said Bimal Majumdar, the chief wildlife officer in the region.

He said it was the first time a transfusion had been given to a tiger in India.

The cub, which doctors named Juhi after a fragrant white flower native to India, was still in serious condition Monday at the zoo in the city of Nagpur, some 530 miles southeast of New Delhi, he said.

India's wild tiger population has plummeted to just some 1,500 — down from about 3,600 six years ago and an estimated 100,000 a century ago. Shrinking habitats have brought them into conflict with farmers and poachers have killed them for their pelts and body parts, which are highly prized in traditional Chinese medicine.

Juhi and her sister were rescued two weeks ago from villagers who tried to kill them, fearing they would go after their children and cattle. The cubs also appear to have been abandoned by their mother.

"The cubs were in bad shape at the time they were rescued. They were starving," said Majumdar. "The villagers had also beaten them with sticks so they were injured as well."

While the other cub Jai, or Victory, responded well after being brought to the zoo, Juhi's condition deteriorated.

On Sunday, veterinarians treating the cat discovered that her hemoglobin levels had suddenly dropped to a dangerously low level and decided the only way to save her was to carry out a blood transfusion.

They sent a request to the Sanjay Gandhi National Park in Mumbai, where doctors tranquilized two healthy adult tigers and drew three-fourths of a pint of blood from each of them. Four hours later the blood reached Nagpur, said Vinery Jangle, the park's head veterinarian.

Jangle, who oversaw the transfusion, said she remained uncertain whether it would prove successful because only rudimentary tests were done to determine whether the donor blood matched Juhi's type.

"The blood grouping procedure is critical, but in India there has been no work done on blood groups. There are no studies on blood types and wild tigers," she said, adding that she was unaware of a transfusion being performed on a tiger elsewhere.

Transfusions for rare animals can be difficult because blood types and antibodies vary from species to species, according to the Web site of Brown University's Division of Biology and Medicine.

While rare, transfusions have been done in the past on turtles, pandas and a baby elephant at Western zoos, which sometimes bank an animals own blood in case it needs a transfusion, the Web site said.

Pandurang Munde, the Mumbai park's director, said it was worth the risk.

"We needed to save the young one's life. If the hemoglobin was low, there was only one remedy: blood transfusion," he said.

The cub was on a saline drip and cameras had been installed in her enclosure so they could monitor her around the clock, said Majumdar.

"She is still not in good shape," he said. "So we have our fingers crossed."

Yahoo News

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more animals

Election day

So.. who are you voting for? I voted McCain.

WOohoo! Check this video out: Grandma Shoots Intruder in Crotch

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