Chiff and Fipple Forums

In happier news, at the MSN Gaming Zone, I have 2300 ratings in both Spades and Hearts.

Talk about burying the lede ...

He stole a clarinet! In his pants!

Shoplifter Betrayed by Hot Peppers

Spanish fresco restoration ...



"The once-dignified portrait now resembles a crayon sketch of a very hairy monkey in an ill-fitting tunic."

Oh good ... They fixed it.

Mexico scrambles to cope with egg shortage

(AP) MEXICO CITY - The Mexican government is battling an egg shortage and hoarding that have caused prices to spike in a country with the highest per-capita egg consumption on Earth.

A summer epidemic of bird flu in the heart of Mexico's egg industry has doubled the cost of a kilo (2.2 pounds), or about 13 eggs, to more than 40 pesos ($3), a major blow to working- and middle-class consumers in a country that consumes more than 350 eggs per person each year. That's 100 more eggs per person than in the United States.

"Drugstore Cowboy" author dies in Wash. prison

(AP) SEATTLE - James Fogle, who wrote "Drugstore Cowboy," an autobiographical crime novel that led to an acclaimed 1989 film starring Matt Dillon, has died. He was 75.

Fogle died Thursday at a prison in Monroe, Wash., about 30 miles from Seattle, said Selena Davis, a state corrections spokeswoman. A judge had sentenced him to almost 16 years in prison for holding up a pharmacy in a Seattle suburb in 2010, the last in a string of crimes that put him behind bars for most of his adult life.

That dark cloud pouring from a smokestack at the Northern State Hospital site isn't smoke — it's birds.

Vaux's Swifts, a small species of bird, gather in the 120-foot smokestack every year around September on their way south for the winter. More than 200,000 of them were counted there last year.

This means the former mental-hospital campus could be the most significant roost site in the birds' entire 2011 migration, according to Vaux Happening, an Audubon Society and community science project that tries to find Vaux's Swift roosts in North America.]Thousands of birds stop in Northern State smokestack on migration

Comet May Have Exploded Over Canada 12,900 Years Ago After All

ScienceDaily (Sep. 18, 2012) — Did a massive comet explode over Canada 12,900 years ago, wiping out both beast and man in North America and propelling Earth back into an ice age?

Music Underlies Language Acquisition, Theorists Propose

ScienceDaily (Sep. 18, 2012) — Contrary to the prevailing theories that music and language are cognitively separate or that music is a byproduct of language, theorists at Rice University's Shepherd School of Music and the University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP) advocate that music underlies the ability to acquire language.

Guess we can stop trying to teach deaf children ASL.

just start with throat singing

I can see the bumper stickers now.

"If you can read this sentence, thank sheet music."

gonna have ta be a pretty big bumper

Genetic Mutation May Have Allowed Early Humans to Migrate Throughout Africa

ScienceDaily (Sep. 19, 2012) — A genetic mutation that occurred thousands of years ago might be the answer to how early humans were able to move from central Africa and across the continent in what has been called "the great expansion," according to new research from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center.

Denny wrote:Genetic Mutation May Have Allowed Early Humans to Migrate Throughout Africa

Something to do with big feet, I'd assume.