From Danger Room….

The Pentagon has a new secret weapon to neutralize sites containing chemical or biological weapons: rocket balls. These are hollow spheres, made of rubberized rocket fuel; when ignited, they propel themselves around at random at high speed, bouncing off the walls and breaking through doors, turning the entire building into an inferno. The makers call them “kinetic fireball incendiaries.” The Pentagon doesn’t want to talk about them, but published documents show that the fireballs have undergone tests on underground bunkers.

The ideas that some people come up with up never cease to amaze me. I have wonder how well it would really work in the field though.

From the New York Times…

High school textbooks call it the tongue map — that colorful illustration that neatly divides the human tongue into sections according to taste receptors. There is the tip of the tongue for sweet, the sides for sour and salty, and the back of the tongue for bitter. But recent studies show that while scientists still have much to learn about receptors, the map, at least, is wrong

I had a hard time believing their neat little map in the first place. And I thought it had been disproved some time ago. But the New York Times is making it sound like it is something that they just found out.

I just got done killing and butchering a number of Chickens when I checked my RSS feeder and found that that Gene Logsdon had put up a post on how he does it. I found it interesting to compare how he does it to how we do it.

One things for sure, Gene is faster then we are. He says…

My wife and I can kill, scald, and butcher four chickens in half an hour, if we’re in a hurry.

If he is truly counting all the steps it takes to get them in a freezer and his wife really is as fussy as he says she is, he has got us beat on speed. And to make matters worse, we have a machine to help us with the plucking (ours looks like this, but if I had to get one now I would probably get this).

I suspect that part of the secret to his speed is this…

Theoretically, the water should not be quite boiling—about 180° to 190°F. is just right. But we let the water come to a boil, then let it sit a bit. Our water is usually a bit too hot, and it cooks the skin a wee bit but this is no problem other than the skin might tear in the defeathering process. A bit of torn skin is no catastrophe either, and eventually you will learn to avoid it. I like to start with the water a bit too hot, so that if we are butchering four or more chickens at once, which we usually do, the water will not be too cool by the time we get to the last one. Better too hot than not hot enough.

I find this quick and dirty approach appealing. I am a naturally lazy fellow. But the Troll would kill me if I tried to do my scalding this way. She does not like it when the skin cooks. She says that it affects the taste. Since she can usually tell you all ingredients in a dish just by tasting it I suppose she is probably right. But if you scald the way we do, it takes longer.

We scald the chickens in water that is around 140 degrees. The amount of time we leave the chicken in the water varies with the age of the chicken. But it is generally close to a minute. The skin does not cook and our machine can still pluck the birds clean without breaking the skin. But I think both the scalding and the plucking take longer than if we did it Gene’s way.

Having said that, I suspect that Gene’s real speed advantage lies in the butchering end of things. He saves some internal organs for later eating (which we do not) and he takes the crop out at the front whereas we pull it through. But if anything those differences should make it take longer for Gene to butcher than it does us.

The real trick is the initial cutting to pull the gut sack out. People who don’t have much experience go really slow so as to not cut into the intestine and release all the crap. I imagine Gene can do this part really fast given how many years he has done it.

From National Geographic…

The researchers had expected to find that, the farther away clusters are, the slower they appear to be moving.

Instead, Kashlinsky said, “We found a great surprise.”

The clusters were all moving at the same speed—nearly 2 million miles (3.2 million kilometers) an hour —and in a single direction.

Though this dark flow was detected only in galaxy clusters, it should apply to every structure in the known universe, Kashlinsky said.

From Ali’s African Adventures….

I’m caring for children who have had brain surgery in the midst of a war-torn country in West Africa. And I taught a seven-year old girl how to paint.

It’s enough.

Have you ever heard of the Mercy Ship? It is a ship that provides medical services to poor countries around the world. Over the years I have heard a lot about this ship and its mission. So I Ali’s African Adventures to be an interesting read. Nothing like getting an inside scoop as to how this ships actually operate.

From The Independent….

Scientists prove it really is a thin line between love and hate. The same brain circuitry is involved in both extreme emotions – but hate retains a semblance of rationality.

(h/t Martginal Revoultution) Like Tyler Cowen I am skeptical of these kinds of studies. Still, you almost have to say amen to the headline regardless of the quality of the evidence.

From the Telegraph…

Researchers say stretching, considered an important part of any athlete’s warm-up routine, can actually weaken muscles.

The habit of holding a stretch for 20 to 30 seconds, known as static stretching, has been considered benefitial for priming muscles. However, scientists from the University of Nevada Las Vegas say this should no longer be encouraged.

Their findings highlight that the two common pre-running stretches – for the hamstrings and quadriceps – may actually reduce performance by weakening muscles in the leg.

Kinesiology professor Bill Holcomb, who authored the report, said: “Developing flexibility is important for reducing sports injury, but the time to stretch is after, not before, performance.”

Other studies have found that this stretching decreases muscle strength by as much as 30 per cent. Stretching one leg’s muscles can also reduce strength in the other leg as the central nervous system can rebel against the movements.

The correct warm up, according to experts, should do two things – loosen muscles and tendons to increase the range of motion of various joints, and warm up the body.