The Urban Grind

This article caught my eye, being that I had laser vision correction surgery a few years ago. It’s something I highly recommend. I mean, why put up with constantly having eye glasses sitting on your nose, or with uncomfortable contact lenses? So if any of you need the name of excellent eye surgeon in Manhattan, email me.

But anyway, getting to the article, Doctors in Germany have managed to partially restore eye sight to blind people by grafting microchips with photo cells into the backs of their eyes.

German doctors are restoring partial sight to blind people by grafting microchips covered with photocells onto the backs of their eyes in a major medical breakthrough, news magazine Der Spiegel reported on Saturday.

The medical researchers at the University of Tübingen in the southern State of Baden-Württemberg have managed to help blind patients read printed words and recognise objects using the pioneering technique.

In a preview of its Monday edition, Spiegel quoted the medical team as saying that one patient, a 45-year-old Finnish patient named Miika, had improved to such an extent that he was no longer considered legally blind.

“With Miika, we can show that, with the help of the optical prosthesis, he has crossed the boundary beyond which he is no longer regarded as legally blind,” said the research leader, Eberhart Zrenner.

The technique involves grafting tiny microchips, measuring 3mm by 3mm and housing more than 1500 photo cells, onto the patients’ retinas.

The implantation requires a delicate, four-hour operation.

“The body tolerates the implant well,” said Zrenner. “We haven’t seen any serious problems such as inflammation.”

However the optical chips had to be removed after a few weeks according to the requirements of the university’s medical ethics committee.

What on earth would we do without researchers?

Now they have just releaseda study saying that men are always thinking of sex. Don’t these scientists and researchers have better things to do than to waste time and money on such a widely known fact? I guess not.

Who says that women are the only ones who can get “pregnant?”

This 36 year old man in India was pretty much “pregnant” with his own dead twin. This rare condition is called fetus in fetu.

You’ll notice that there’s link to video on that page. But for those of you with a very strong stomach, here’s a link to another video that actually shows the mutated twin fetus.

Here’s more background information (along with more graphic photos) on fetus in fetu.

It seems like dermatologists have been forever trying to tell people to use sunscreen as a protection against skin cancer (and wrinkles too). And people continue to ignore them. I know because I see them in Central Park and around other pools.

But now along comes a Dr. Michael Holick of Boston University who says that sun exposure is healthy, and that Americans are vitamin D deficient. And for that view, the American Academy of Dermatology pressured Dr. Holick to resign from Boston University’s dermatology department.

?The concern,? argues Dr. Thomas Kupper, a dermatologist at Brigham and Women?s Hospital who speaks for the AAD, is that if ?people hear 10 or 15 minutes is OK, then a little more is better and then 30 to 40 minutes becomes an hour and then an hour-and-a-half.?

While I don’t agree with forcing the doctor to resign, I think they have a point. Personally speaking, I am a sunscreen fanatic. Every day of the year, whether it’s raining, snowing or sunny outsidie, I wear some form of sunscreen on my face and neck. I do it to avoid wrinkles as much as possible. In fact, there have been times when I’ve returned from vacations looking just as pale as before I left. Also, I think any woman who voluntarily tans is a fool. I mean, why make it so that you look like a hag sooner, rather than as late as possible?

Holick?s response: ?They?re promoting abstinence and abstinence campaigns usually don?t work.?

Oh, like teaching teens to not sleep around doesn’t work too?

Baloney! It works for me! If people can shower and brush their teeth every morning, they can surely apply a moisturizer with sunscreen to their faces.

Now in terms of this 15 minutes a day business, who in their busy lives has time to go out in the morning sans protection then return home and apply a sunscreen? And what are the signs of this vitamin D deficiency that this Dr. Holick is convinced that many Americans have? Whatever happened to taking vitamins or cod liver oil?

Looks shouldn’t matter that much. But according to a study recently published in British scienfitif journal, they do. Apparently, women are accurately able to predict good dads and good lovers by looking at mens faces.

For decades the p.c. crowd has tried drilling into people’s heads the notion that men and women (aside from the sex differences) are otherwise completely identical. Any noticeabe differences were always blamed on the “lingering male patriarchy.”

Well it turns out that the p.c. crowd may be wrong after all. Brain scans of men and women show that the emotional wiring of the sexes is completely different.

Sheesh, what would we do without researchers?

If you are one of those people who loves bacon but does not eat if often because of its high fat content, don’t despair. You may be able to have your bacon and eat it too, thanks to research on pig cloning.

Even the dietollahs, who have launched a decades long fatwa on saturated fat now admit that omega-3 fatty acids are good for you.

According to their most recent biodiversity report, human beings are responsible for many of the animal extinctions since the time of dinasours.

Good heavens! It’s bad enough that we have multiculturalism. But now they are making a big deal out of biodiversity? What will they think of next?

Apart from the disappearance of the dinosaurs, the other “Big Five” extinctions were about 205, 250, 375 and 440 million years ago. Scientists suspect that asteroid strikes, volcanic eruptions or sudden climate shifts may explain the five.

A rising human population of 6.5 billion was undermining the environment for animals and plants via pollution, expanding cities, deforestation, introduction of “alien species” and global warming, it said.

Ok, time to go back to living like cavemen. After all the alien species and plants have a right to exist solely for their own sake, but humans do not.
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According to a “Red List” compiled by the World Conservation Union, 844 animals and plants are known to have gone extinct in the last 500 years, ranging from the dodo to the Golden Toad in Costa Rica. It says the figures are probably a big underestimate.

Oh those poor creatures!

Why don’t these Gaia worshipping U.N. people practice what they preach, or advocate for? Let them give up their fancy Manhattan headquarters and set up shop in the Sudan. Better yet, if they feel so strongly that they would pay people to put together a 92 page report, let them give up all their modern comforts.

As I see it though, these enviromental/biodiversity advocates seem to view humans and animals as almost equals. The Ayn Rand Institute sums it up perfectly.

In a nation founded on the pioneer spirit, environmentalists have made “development” an evil word. They inhibit or prohibit the development of Alaskan oil, offshore drilling, nuclear power–and every other practical form of energy. Housing, commerce, and jobs are sacrificed to spotted owls and snail darters. Medical research is sacrificed to the “rights” of mice. Logging is sacrificed to the “rights” of trees. No instance of the progress which brought man out of the cave is safe from the onslaught of those “protecting” the environment from man, whom they consider a rapist and despoiler by his very essence.

Nature, they insist, has “intrinsic value,” to be revered for its own sake, irrespective of any benefit to man. As a consequence, man is to be prohibited from using nature for his own ends. Since nature supposedly has value and goodness in itself, any human action which changes the environment is necessarily immoral. Of course, environmentalists invoke the doctrine of intrinsic value not against wolves that eat sheep or beavers that gnaw trees; but only against man, only when man wants something.

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The expressed goal of environmentalism is to prevent man from changing his environment, from intruding on nature. That is why environmentalism is the enemy of man, the enemy of human life. Intrusion is necessary for human survival. Only by intrusion can man avoid pestilence and famine. Only by intrusion can man control his life and project long-range goals. Intrusion improves the environment, if by “environment” one means the surroundings of man–the external material conditions of human life. In the environmentalists’ paean to “Nature,” human nature is omitted. For the environmentalists, the “natural” world is a world without man. Man has no legitimate needs, but trees, ponds, and bacteria somehow do.

Here’s yet another reason why all this biodiversity is all b.s.

And G-d said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.” And G-d created man in His own image, in the image of G-d created He him; male and female created He them. And G-d blessed them: and G-d said unto them: ‘Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living that creepeth upon the earth.

Genesis Chapter 1, Verses 26 through 28

If it’s a choice between the Useless Nitwits, Ayn Rand and Genesis, the Useless Nitwits will always lose.

Guys, if you take anabolic steroids to bulk up, and also use lubricants like K-Y and Fem Glide, you may be killing and/or immobilizing your sperm.

Regarding women, it’s not just older women whose eggs become damaged. It happens to young women too.

Unfortunately, it’s never seems to be the wackos that have the faulty sperm/eggs. Andrea Yates managed to belt out five babies, whom she ruthlessley drowned. And now we have 23 year old Lashaun Harris who dropped her three young children into the San Francisco Bay. And of course women like this will say, after the fact, that they heard voices in their heads telling them to do it. It’s much more palatable for jurors to hear, than saying “oh I was tired of having them around.”

It looks like there might be a way to make and use stem cells without having to destroy embryos.

First off, a group of scientists found a way to make a mouse stem cell without destroying the mouse embryo. Now whether or not the same technique can be used to make human embryonic stem cells remains to be seen. But so far, this sounds promising.

As it turns out, one doesn’t always need the embryonic stem cells. It looks like a person’s very own bone marrow stem cells can be used to help repair their failing livers.

Sounds like a win win situation to me.