Life out there

Feeling hot and humid and there’s no water from your faucet?

Here’s the solution: Go get a spacesuit and zoom to Mars!

This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image shows Mars in 2005.

Scientists reported on Monday, May 22, that the Mars rover Spirit has uncovered the strongest evidence yet that ancient Mars was wetter than previously thought.

The robot analyzed a patch of soil in Gusev Crater and found it was unusually rich in silica. Scientists said the presence of water was necessary to produce such a large silica deposit.

“This is a remarkable discovery,” principal investigator Steve Squyres of Cornell University said in a statement. “It makes you wonder what else is still out there.”

The latest find is compelling because of the high silica content, researchers said, raising the possibility that conditions may have been favorable for the emergence of primitive life.

See? There’s even the chance of a life, even primitive, in Mars. Here in our un-primitive planet, living life is like being inside a microwave oven – we’re toasting ourselves to death, no thanks to global warming!

Better primitive life than a toasted one. So, wanna join in my Mars expedition?

The author in spacesuit, ready for Mars trip!

Chinky-eyed ‘rabbits’ in China

The Chinese can’t take it anymore! They want more, more, more! No, not more jobs, or more wealth.

No, not that. In a country already bursting to the seams with more than a billion people, the Chinese just want … MORE BABIES!

Pursuant to a directive from the People’s Ministry for Fetal Records, Chinese hospitals now mark pregnant women to indicate whether they are carrying a baby duck, rabbit, house, seal, or “other.” Actually, these preggies show color paintings on their bellies during a body painting contest held for pregnant women at a hospital in Haikou, south China’s Hainan province on Aug.7, 2006.

On Monday, police clashed violently with protesters in southern China as thousands of angry farmers rioted over the nation’s controversial “one-child” family planning policies.

Angry farmers attacked four township governments in Guangxi province on Friday and Saturday, with police and protesters clashing in at least one demonstration, they said.

The demonstrations occurred after local governments this month dispatched “family planning work teams” to levy fines on families that were violating government population control policies, they said.

One woman in Shapi township, speaking on condition of anonymity, said up to 20,000 people had gathered and rioted there on Saturday, hurling rocks, breaking windows and torching public property.

“The farmers were really angry because the family planning team was going around to homes and making farmers pay fines if they had too many kids,” the woman said.

“If the farmers had no money they took things from them. Property with value they confiscated, things with no value they destroyed.”

The work teams confiscated everything from livestock, to electronic goods and household items such as pots and pans and teapots, according to the woman and other accounts by locals posted on the Internet.

The Chinese women must be the world’s hottest lovers! They must be like rabbits! They love to procreate so much that their government even had to enact a draconian law to stop them from raising more than one child per family.

Caption:

Pursuant to a directive from the People’s Ministry for Fetal Records, Chinese hospitals now mark pregnant women to indicate whether they are carrying a baby duck, rabbit, house, seal, or “other.” Actually, these preggies show color paintings on their bellies during a body painting contest held for pregnant women at a hospital in Haikou, south China’s Hainan province on Aug.7, 2006.

Armored flies, but dying nevertheless

They’re dying like flies out there — despite their armor, their weapons and their being the warriors from the world’s only superpower.

As of Monday, May 21, 2007, at least 3,422 members of the U.S. military have already died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes seven military civilians.

At least 2,780 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military’s numbers.

The figure is more than those who died in September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon. And 9/11 was the primary reason why the US went to war in Iraq.

It just doesn’t make sense – sacrificing so many precious young lives, for what? For democracy in Iraq? Bullsweat! There can never be democracy in that blighted land where people massacre each other almost every day.

The most advanced, the most powerful country in the world – and all it got to show is sheer stupidity!

One billion suicide bombers!

They’re not much different from the suicide bombers in Iraq – pea-brained paranoids inflicting harm to themselves and others — and they’re millions of them! In fact the world has about a billion of them – SMOKERS!

A study published last Friday in the British medical journal The Lancet said approximately 25 percent of the world’s adults — one billion people — are tobacco users.

In the study, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said reducing the ranks of the world’s smokers by a fifth before 2020 could save up to 100 million lives.

Reaching this target — by boosting taxes, banning tobacco advertising, expanding smoke-free zones, and helping people quit — could also spare another 50 million people born over the next two decades, the study said.

Bloomberg, an ex-smoker who used 125 million dollars of his own money to launch a Worldwide Stop Smoking Initiative last August, cited studies calculating that one billion people will go to their graves early due to tobacco before the end of the century.

“For the first time ever, the world’s leading agent of death is a man-made substance — tobacco,” he said.

If you’re a smoker and you’re reading this article, better do something about your addiction. You know it’s bad for you, no need for further explanation.

If you insist on doing something which you know will eventually kill you — dragging along some innocent people who accidentally develop health problems by being tortured with your second-hand smoke – why not do it the explosive way? Go wear a vest or a belt packed with bombs and go blast yourself to kingdomcome! The effect is the same. And you’ll be leaving this world in a blaze of gory! Isn’t that great?

The tigers’ mom is a dog!

The world is really going to the dogs! In China, three newborn tiger triplets are getting their milk from a bitch!

In this photo released by China’s Xinhua News Agency, a dog feeds tiger triplets and her own puppy, right, at the Paomaling Zoo in Jinan, capital of east China’s Shandong Province, on May 16, 2007.

The cubs, according to officials at the Jinan Paomaling Wild Animal World in Shandong province, have been nursed by a dog since they were rejected by their tiger mother shortly after birth, said Paomaling manager Chen Yucai.

The trio’s adoptive mother, a mixed breed farm dog called “Huani,” is expected to nurse them for about a month or until their appetites outpace her supply, Chen said.

Chen said it is common for Chinese zoos to use surrogate dog mothers to nurse rejected tiger cubs and that Huani has nursed tigers before.

In the past, Paomaling put dog urine on their rejected cub’s fur to make the surrogate think she was nursing one of her own puppies but the zoo didn’t bother with Huani because she seemed not to mind nursing the tigers, he said.

“The family is getting along well and seems to enjoy each other,” Chen said.

It’s good that for humans, “dog-style” does not refer to doggie-feeding the babies, only to a sexual position!

Blair out … Bush next?

Tony Blair has announced that he would step down on June 27 after a decade as prime minister, and told Britons disillusioned by the war in Iraq that he had always done what he believed was right – even if Britons think what he did was wrong, terribly wrong.

Blair’s popularity has suffered since he sent British forces to join the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq. A Labor Party rebellion in September forced him to say he would quit within a year, opening the way for Gordon Brown to take over.

“Hand on heart, I did what I thought was right,” Blair told Labor Party members in his constituency in northern England. “I may have been wrong, that’s your call. But believe one thing, if nothing else: I did what I thought was right for our country.”

US President George W. Bush, who developed a remarkably close relationship with Blair, said the prime minister was a long-term thinker and a man who kept his word.

“When Tony Blair tells you something, as we say in Texas, you can take it to the bank. We’ve got a relationship such that we can have really good discussions — so I’ll miss him, he’s a remarkable person and I consider him a good friend,” he said.

Don’t worry too much, Mr. President. In November next year, you could leave the Iraqi quagmire and join your buddy Tony in the dustbin of history!

Brazilians show Pope ‘art’ of kissing … and groping

Pope Benedict told young Brazilians to avoid sex before marriage and say no to drugs at a huge rally on Thursday in Brazil, a South American country renowned for its lusty attitude toward sex.

Young men and women should build their lives around their families and stay faithful to their spouses once married, the Pope told more than 30,000 excited youths packed into a soccer stadium in Sao Paulo.

It turned out that so many youths attended the gathering because they thought the Pope would give them free condoms!

And as the Pope was speaking about celibacy and the dangers of premarital sex, many teenage couples in the crowd were seen kissing and groping each other!

Brazilian gays express their sentiments to Pope Benedict in Sao Paolo.