Been
fairly busy and still am, which means that I’ve only got a bunch of left-over links I ran into the last couple weeks:
The June 2009 SA has a story about the evolution of the Housecattus Domesticus Abnormalis, or rather, the common house cat. The cat as we know it in Western Europe, did indeed originate from the Middle East. Additionally it appears that the cats/human bond started about 10,000 years ago, when humans started to establish themselves in homes, which attracted the cute little mice your cat will throw up in front of your shoes. Or in scientific lingo (if you’re religious, you may want to close your eyes):
Both these food sources [houses and trash heaps] would have encouraged cats to adapt to living with people: natural selection favored those cats that were able to cohabitate with humans and thereby gain access to the trash and mice.
Silly Europeans, the moment they start banning stuff, Canada gets in an uproar. It’s the seal hunt, again; which is when Canadian seal hunters club seals to death. While I don’t particularly care about the seal hunt, it takes some guts to eat a raw seal heart, that requires guts. Or maybe you need to be out of your mind to do that.
And last and definitely least: The malaria bugs have been slowly getting resistant to artemesinin: researchers in Cambodia have issued warnings that the drugs are taking longer to clear the blood of the parasites, which is an early warning sign of emerging resistance. The irony (a cynical one at that) is that if it wasn’t for our use of medication, there wouldn’t have been this resistance.