It appears that this koala has learned to fly. But under attack from two crows, angered that the cuddly marsupial was too close to their nest, it was forced into an extra-long leap between trees.
The koala had been sleeping in a eucalyptus tree on the outskirts of Adelaide, South Australia, when the crows swooped.They pecked it hard on the head but it fought back, lashing out with his sharp claws.
Then it launched itself from its perch 80ft above ground, jumping up to 6ft from branch to branch. The crows were nothing if not persistent.Their victim finally beat a retreat, climbing down a tree with the birds in pursuit.
Koala expert Dr Deb Kelly in Adelaide said: ‘Normally a koala can jump about 3ft but it depends on its size, how heavy it is, if it is jumping up or down and how badly it wants to escape.’
Though great climbers, koalas are not usually known for their athletic prowess. They sit motionless in the tree-tops for up to 18 hours a day, sleeping for most of that time.They spend about half of their six active hours eating eucalyptus leaves, usually at night.
They are mostly placid but can be violent when disturbed, with teeth and claws that are capable of inflicting nasty injuries.
This is the summer of the wild animal stories. There have been reports of something that was dubbed the Montauk Monster in New York, there are photos that show what two hunters claims is Bigfoot found dead in Georgia and now there are claims that there is a Lionfish Invasion in the Caribbean prowling the waters and wreaking havoc.Will the real animal story pleasestand up? There is a Bigfoot press conference scheduled for Friday but most serious observers already believe that the wild animal is nothing more than a hoax. The hunters are promising DNA evidence to prove that the dead "thing" really is Bigfoot.See photos linked here. The Montauk Monster was a very odd looking creature and washed ashore in New York and before Bigfoot came along, the little monster was the talk of the World Wide Web. See his photo here. Many have already opined that it is nothing more than a dead dog that washed ashore. The Lionfish is the real story. According to a report from Fox news the red lionfish, a tropical native of the Indian and Pacific oceans is wreaking havoc with its venomous spikes (see photo above and more at the link below) and is even striking human divers as it rapidly multiplies in the warm waters. According to the report the aggressive species is a predator that corners fish and crustaceans up to half its size with its billowy fins and then sucks them down in one violent gulp.
The world's oldest mum, who gave birth to twins at 70 after IVF, proudly showed off her son, then admitted: 'Now I've got another daughter to feed too.' Omkari Panwar, and her husband Charan Singh Panwar, 77, underwent IVF all for the sake of producing a male heir to take over the family's smallholdings.The elderly Indian couple, who already have two daughters in their thirties, and five grandchildren, are near destitute after mortgaging their land, selling their buffalo and taking out a loan for the £4,400 fertility treatment.
Now the pensioner parents will rely on family handouts and the charity of fellow villagers to bring up the little boy they so wanted, and the little girl they didn't.But the Panwars, who live in a tiny community in Uttar Pradesh, North India, were delighted to finally see and hold their two babies, now weighing a healthy 4lbs, six weeks after they were born on June 27.'We have not been able to see or hold them all this time," said frail Omkari. "They had to stay in the hospital because they were so small.'We could not afford to stay there, so we had to leave them.' And she added: 'We paid all this money to the doctors for a son, but now we have the extra burden of another daughter as well.' Boys are cherished in India because daughters are not allowed to inherit property but leave to marry and become part of their new husband's family.The twins were born at 34 weeks by emergency caesarian section at a hospital in the nearest town of Muzaffarnagar.They weighed just 2lbs each and had to be rushed to the Jaswant Roy Speciality Hospital which has a neonatal intensive care unit.
Omkari, who saw her babies just once, a week after their birth, said: 'I could only just touch them lightly with my fingers.'They were so tiny, they would have fit into the palm of my hand.' The Panwars had to scrape together a further £500 to pay for part of their children's medical care and are now almost penniless.Their little boy is now likely to take over a tiny piece of land with a large mortgage still to pay on it.But Charan insists the cost was worthwhile, after he became a laughing stock in his village because he had no son to carry on the family name.'I've finally got what I wanted and I can die a happy man now,' said Charan.'My wife will look after the babies when I am gone, and after she dies my other daughters will care for them.'It will be an honour for them to raise their new brother.'Now my daughters will have a family home to return to on religious days and special occasions.' It is tradition for sons to remain in the parental home with their wives. On festival days the daughters of the family come to visit with their own husbands and children.Villagers welcomed the jubilant pair back to the village, which lies 20km from Muzaffarnagar, with numerous gifts for the new babies.The twins will be named at a special Hindu ceremony next week when the whole community will celebrate their arrival into the world.'It is customary to name the babies after two weeks," said Omkari, who does not have a birth certificate, but insists she is 70-years-old.'We have not seen the babies all this time, so we haven't been able to hold the naming ceremony.'Now, we can arrange one, but cannot reveal their names until that day.' Omkari suffered a personal heartbreak more than 40 years ago as a much younger woman, when she miscarried a baby boy.'For more than 40 years I have thought God did not think I was fit to produce a boy,' she said. 'But fate works in funny ways. It must have been meant to be that I waited all this time.' The couple do not even understand the fertility procedures carried out to allow Omkari to give birth so long after going through the menopause.It is likely donor eggs were used to allow her to carry a child, but the Panwars simply do not know what happened when they went to a fertility clinic in Meerut last year.Omkari, who remembers being nine when India gained independence in 1947, said: 'We saw a doctor at the Baby Shastri Nursing Home and I was given treatment.'Later we were told I was carrying twins, a boy and a girl.' Screening embryos to discover the sex of the baby is illegal in India, following the outlawing of female foeticide - the aborting of girls - more than 10 years ago.The couple do not even know such medical techniques exist and they do not think anything was specifically done to ensure they would have a boy.'We just count ourselves blessed that we have a boy. We prayed for it to happen,' said Charan.'We don't know how. We're just glad the doctor was right, and we do have a son.' The world's previous oldest mothers were Romanian Adriana Iliescu, who gave birth to a daughter, aged 66 and 320 days in May 2005, and Spanish woman Carmela Bousada, who was 66 and 358 days old when her twins were born in December 2006.Omkari does not care that she has broken the world record and said: 'If I am the world's oldest mother it means nothing to me.'I just want to be with my new babies and care for them while I am still able.'
Its lethal effects include burning eyes, streaming nose, uncontrollable hiccups and much, much worse.And it is about to be sold at Tesco.The world's hottest chilli pepper, the Dorset Naga, will be available in 10g sachets containing up to three tiny fruits, at a price of 89p.
‘The Dorset Chilli is something only absolute connoisseurs of very hot food and those with asbestos lined stomachs should even consider trying.‘However, that said, there are an increasing number of chilli heads as they are officially known, that not only savour but endorse these tiny vegetables as being beneficial in helping sweat out the body’s toxins.‘We trialled them in our test kitchens and even the hardest blokes in our team were brought to their knees.‘Anyone brave enough to try the Dorset Chilli will definitely be yelling "Ooh argh".’The tiny ingredient was recently used to make the world’s hottest curry, a Bollywood Burner in a London restaurant.
In the last year, brave Brits have splashed out £9 million on chillies, ranging from the fiery Scotch Bonnet and Bird’s Eye to the milder green, red and Orange Topaz varieties.Mr Corbett added: ‘Chilli pepper culture in the UK has really come on in the last few years and they are no longer thought of as a culinary novelty.‘In the past we used to primarily stock chilli peppers in areas where there was a large Afro-Caribbean or Asian community but nowadays we sell them in stores right across Britain.’ The Dorset Naga will be sold in 10g sachets which contain up to three chillis.They cost 89p per sachet.
For years the Bigfoot has remained an elusive enigma, capturing the imagination in the same way as the Loch Ness Monster or the Yeti.But today, two professional Bigfoot hunters claim to have found the body of the mythical creature - and say they are storing it in their freezer.According to a press release posted online, Matthew Whitton and Rick Dyer claim to have found the animal in the woods of northern Georgia, in the southern United States.The pair say that the male creature is over seven feet tall, weigh more than 35 stone, and has reddish hair and black-grey eyes.
The creature is also said to have flat feet and a footprint that spans over 40cm.However, doubt has been cast on the pair's claims as the body will not be unveiled at the press conference.Instead, a grainy photo has been released which has sparked massive interest - as well a fair amount of scepticism - across the internet.The link to the press release has seen such huge amounts of internet traffic it is no longer accessible.Expert Bigfoot tracker Tom Biscardi has been hunting the creature since 1971 and has told the Sydney Morning Herald that he is convinced the find is genuine.'It's a huge situation for me after 35 years, because I've wanted to bring one back,' Mr Biscardi said.'They showed me the body. They took me to the area where they found it - it took a day and a half to get there.''I got to be honest, when I first saw it I hated to see it in that state it was in. I wanted to capture one so the world could see it walking.'I guess this is the next best thing for the time being,' he said.Mr Biscardi said that a video filmed by the two men the day they found the body showed at least 'three others walking upright like a man'.He is now co-operating with the two men in trying to capture another Bigfoot alive.'We trekked in for a day a half - what kind of lunatic would be out here in a monkey suit? I saw the thing, I touched it,' Mr Biscardi said.'They're fine guys, one works for the police department in Georgia, and the other was a correctional officer. They're pretty credible guys.'The Bigfoot, also known as a Sasquatch, is said to roam the forests of north-west America and some suggest that it may be related to the Asian Yeti, or Abominable Snowman.The Bigfoot first came to prominence in popular culture in 1967 when filmmakers Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin released a video which contained what they claimed was a genuine video of the mythical creature.Since then many have sought to debunk the myth saying the film clip simply shows a man in ape suit.To this day, no Bigfoot , living or dead, has ever been found.
Ask anyone how many arms an octopus has and the usual answer will be eight. But scientists now insist these nautical animals only have six.In a new study they found that the creatures used six of their tentacles as arms and two as legs.Marine experts at 20 Sea Life centres across Europe gathered data from over 2,000 separate observations.They found common octopuses moved over the ground using their back two limbs, leaving the remaining six for eating.
Claire Little, a marine expert from the Weymouth Sea Life Centre in Dorset, said: 'We've found that octopuses effectively have six arms and two legs.'It had been thought they used four tentacles for movement and the other four for feeding and manipulating objects.'But observations showed that they use the rearmost two to get around over rocks and the seabed.'They also use these two legs to push off when they wish to swim, and then other tentacles are used to propel them.'
The results came out of a study designed to show if octopuses favoured one side or the other.The study had involved giving them jam jars and Rubik's Cubes to play with in a bid to see if the creatures favour a particular tentacle for handling objects.While there is no obvious difference between any of the tentacles, experts were surprised to note how often the octopuses' third tentacle from the front was employed for eating.They also concluded the creatures favour no side and are ambidextrous.
Even the most ardent gardener can find trimming the hedge a bit of a chore. But next time you pick up the shears with a heavy heart, count yourself lucky you don't have this giant to contend with.Towering 40ft into the sky, it is the tallest yew hedge in Britain. And however unkempt your borders look, tidying them up is a doddle in comparison with the mammoth job involved in maintaining it.For it takes no less than a pair of workers, a cherry-picker and two days of solid hard work, costing more than £5,000, to give the 300 year old hedge on Lord Allen Apsley's Bathurst Estate in the Cotswolds its annual trim.
All the graft does not just result in an immaculate looking garden, either. The cutting back of six inches of new growth this year produced more than a ton of clippings, which are then used to produce a life-saving cancer drug.Yews produce compounds called taxanes which can stop the creation of new cells, and are thus invaluable to halt the growth of tumours.The Bathurst clippings are collected by an agency which then sells them on to pharmaceutical companies who chemically extract the taxane from the clippings, purify it, and convert it into the chemotherapy drug docetaxel.The drug has helped thousands of women in Britain overcome breast and ovarian cancer, and is also used to treat cancers of the lung and head.
The hedge is 33ft wide and stretches for 150 yards along the side of Lord Apsley's historic mansion near Cirencester.As this year's trim was under way, he said: 'It runs right along the front of the house. You can actually see it from the town as it's taller than the wall.'It's difficult to know exactly how old it is, but we think it was planted in about 1710.' The 47-year-old father-of-two described how the hedge has pride of place in his garden, running in a semi-circle around the house.He said: 'Cutting it isn't too dangerous but you do have to be careful. Luckily a man called Tim Day has been cutting it for 35 years so I think he knows what he's doing.' Before cherry pickers were used in recent years, teams of staff at the estate used to climb up onto rickety ladders leaned together in an A-shape to trim the bush with garden shears.
Lord Apsley said: 'It must have been a very dangerous operation which took many people a long time to complete.' The Apsley family have been on the estate since 1695 and use most of its 14,500 acres to grow crops.According to the Guinness Book of Records, the world's tallest hedge of any type is the beech hedge at Meikleour in Perthshire, which ranges from 80ft to 120ft.
The heaving mass of fox hounds would intimidate even the biggest stag.But tiny orphan deer Bam Bam isn't scared.Like his namesake Bambi the 10-week-old is a friendly creature and trots along with huntsman Adrian Thompson, 42, and his pack of 60 hounds.
The pack immediately accepted the lost fallow deer when they found him shivering by the Thompsons' front gate just an hour after he had been born.Rather than being overwhelmed by the attention of such a large pack of dogs, from the Chiddingfold, Leconfield and Cowdray hunt, the confused little fawn thought he'd found his family.A surprised Mr Thompson said: 'Now Bam Bam thinks he's a Fox Hound because they all treat him like one of their own.'He won't be going on any hunts though - he doesn't have the stamina for it. It's a fantastic sight to see although we know it's a strange one and Bam Bam certainly gets a lot of funny looks from passers-by.'People shake their heads in astonishment when they spot Bam Bam in among all the hounds as if they can't believe what they're seeing.'
The friendly fawn is happiest among his fellow hounds on their daily walk.Mr Thompson's wife, Karen, 41, said: 'Bam Bam seems most content when he's ambling along with the hounds. He's about the same size as them now so he fits in perfectly and walks along with the pack like they're his brothers and sisters.'Although the Fox Hounds have come to accept Bam Bam as one of their own, Mr Thompson's other dogs are rather less tolerant.He said: 'A pack of domestic dogs would most certainly kill a deer that came across it's path - I also have two terriers and they would certainly kill anything that came into the garden. They're only just starting to accept little Bam Bam but I still wouldn't leave them alone with him.
'My Fox Hounds are very different though - the image of them as savage killers is completely wrong. They can be very placid animals and are very accepting of other animals - especially deer.'After Bam Bam was discovered by the dogs earlier this summer he was brought into the family home in Petworth Park, West Sussex by Mr Thompson's 12-year-old son, Tommy.When Karen came down for breakfast that morning she was stunned to see the pair sitting happily on the living room floor.She said: 'It was such a surprise, the deer wasn't afraid at all. He seemed to think that Tommy was his mum because he followed him around the room, and would hide behind the furniture if Tommy ever left.'
It was uncertain whether Bam Bam would survive without the care and attention of his mother who had deserted him just yards from the Thompsons' home, possibly scared off by the dogs.Karen said: 'It was touch and go for the first few days. We had to feed him half an ounce of lamb's milk every hour - this had to be done 24 hours a day and was quite draining.'Bam Bam is now regarded by the Thompsons as a member of the family.Karen said: 'He wanders around the garden and comes to play with us. We've had a few garden parties and he is such a favourite with the guests - he's so friendly and is adored by everyone who meets him.'Bam Bam, who will grow into a 177 pound adult, will stay with the family until they feel he can be safely released into the wild.
Karen said: 'We can't release him into the park here because there are too many people about. Bam Bam is not afraid of humans and we're worried that this may make him dangerous.'He already gives us a nudge when he wants to eat and it's not so bad because he's only little but imagine what a nudge could do when he's got a fine pair of antlers.'The Thompsons will be sad to lose such a treasured member of the family but they know they can't keep him forever and plan to set him free once he's fully grown.Next year they intend to rehome Bam Bam in a private park where he will be able to join a herd and finally learn how to be a deer.Traditionally, deer hunting involves chasing the animal with a pack of dogs until it surrenders to exhaustion and can be shot.This practice was banned under the Hunting Act 2004.Deer stalking, where the hunter is close enough to kill the animal with a clean shot, is still permitted but with no more than two dogs.
Nicole Cooke has won Britain's first gold medal of the Beijing Olympics, cycling to victory in the road race.The 25-year-old Welshwoman was in a group of five that pulled away from the peloton in the 6km uphill climb to the finish through driving rain. She then won a sprint to the line before hoisting her arms in the air in delight.'We did it, it was perfect. It's a dream come true,' said a jubilant Cooke, who finished in 3 hours, 32 minutes and 24 seconds .
'I want to thank all the people who have been there from the start. I have worked so hard, I am so happy.'Cooke came fifth in Athens when a lack of supporting team-mates cost her a medal.But today with Emma Pooley and Sharon Laws she had probably the best British women's team ever assembled.
Simon Clegg, Team GB's chef de mission, said: 'Nicole Cooke has just secured Team GB's first medal - and what a medal. It's not only gold but it's Team GB's 200th gold medal from the modern Olympic Games.'Emma and Sharon did an awesome job in supporting Nicole in her race for gold.'Sweden's Emma Johansson won the silver and Tatiana Guderzo of Italy won the bronze.
Nicole Cooke Factfile:1983 - Born April 13, Swansea, Wales.2000 - Wins gold medals in world championship junior road races in France andSpain.2001 - Continues that success with further wins in junior race and time trialin Portugal. Awarded the Bidlake Memorial Prize, given for outstanding performance orcontribution to the betterment of cycling.2002 - Wins gold medal in women's road race at the Commonwealth Games inManchester.2003 - Wins the women's road race world cup, the youngest to do so and thefirst Briton. Named BBC Wales Sports Personality of the Year.2004 - Becomes the youngest winner of the Giro d'Italia Femminile. August - Finishes fifth in road race in the Athens Olympics.2006 - Wins the bronze medal in the road race at the Commonwealth Games inMelbourne. September 3 - Wins road race world cup for the second time.2008 - August 10 - Wins gold medal in road race at the Beijing Olympics,Britain's first medal of the games.
This is Britain - but not as we know it. These extraordinary satellite images reveal what our nation looks like from the skies.From flight paths and road networks to telephone exchanges across London, the stunning aerial shots paint a striking new perspective on the British Isles.Everything from London taxi journeys to internet activity across the nation are replicated in the breathtaking images.Using the latest satellite technology and innovations in aerial photography, the pictures will be shown for the first time on 'Britain from Above', a new BBC series that starts this Sunday.
Presenter Andrew Marr takes to the skies by plane, helicopter, microlight and even parachute to give viewers a bird's eye view of landmarks across the UK.The programme uses satellite data and the latest computer generated imagery to demonstrate how Britain keeps moving - tracking the planes that enter our airspace, the ships that cross the English Channel and the cars that travel our streets, all in the space of a single day.
Series director Cassian Harrison, said: 'It has been amazing to work with cameras mounted on so many helicopters and planes.'The one disadvantage is that when we film we're contending so much with the weather.'It has been a battle with the elements, but a brilliant one, working out how many different ways it is possible to get up in the sky and look down at the nation.'In a way, though, the biggest privilege is being able to look down on the world you know.'It's like Google Earth, but for real.''Britain From Above' begins on BBC1 on Sunday at 9pm.
Thanks to the foolish antics of a downmarket TV company and a website favoured by self-obsessed teenagers, planet Earth could be in for a nasty shock towards the end of this century.For if, in the decades to come, a fleet of flying saucers arrives with malicious intent, they will be the culprits.This week it was announced that documentary-maker RDF and Bebo, a 'social networking site' for dippy youngsters, are to use a big radio telescope in Ukraine to send a powerful focused beam of information - 500 messages from the public in the form of radiowaves - to a nearby star called Gliese 581. 
A 'mere' 20 light years (120 trillion miles) away, Gliese not only lies in our cosmic backyard but astronomers think it is also home to one or possibly two Earth-like planets which could be home to life.The Gliese 581 solar system is, in other words, probably the likeliest home for our cosmic next-door neighbours.Surely this is a harmless piece of nonsense? What danger could there possibly be from sending a big 'Hello' from Earth to a nearby star system?After all, aliens are probably just a myth and if they are out there they will come in peace. That's the idea anyway. Let's get one thing straight: I am not part of the UFO brigade. I have seen no convincing evidence whatsoever that aliens have yet visited the Earth in person.I know The X Files is a work of fiction, not a documentary, and I accept that those who claim to have seen flying saucers and even to have been abducted by strange little aliens are either sincerely mistaken, mendacious or mad.I have no truck with crop circle mystics and those who believe the pyramids were built by little green men from the Planet Tharg.We have been looking for alien life for several decades now, sending probes to Mars and Venus, and listening out for radio messages from the stars.And, so far, we have found nothing. Not even a microbe.And yet, I also accept that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. We have been looking for extraterrestrials for only a very short time. 
We have really considered the possibility of their existence for a few centuries at most - a tiny proportion of the time that we humans have been around.Most of all, I accept that although we have not found aliens yet, the statistical probability that there are intelligent lifeforms somewhere out there must be very high.There are, after all, a hundred thousand million stars in our galaxy - and more than a hundred billion galaxies besides.Astronomers now think that most of these stars - more stars than there are grains of sand on all the beaches of Earth - have retinues of planets around them.So far, they have discovered only about 250 of these potentially life-bearing worlds or 'exoplanets' but there are many hundreds of thousands of millions more out there.Not all of them will be habitable, but many millions will probably be 'Goldilocks worlds' - not too cold, not too hot, not too big and not too small, but just right, in theory, for life to have evolved.Indeed at least one of the planets orbiting Gliese 581 is maybe such a Goldilocks world.And even if we accept that life will not evolve everywhere it can, we must also accept that on the one world we know life has emerged - our own - it did so with startling rapidity.
Life on Earth is very nearly as old as Earth itself, and this suggests that if conditions are right then biology of some form will come into being.Of course 'life' is not the same as 'intelligent life'. The galaxy could be swarming with microbes and algae, shrubs and lichen, even rabbits, lizards and fish (or their alien equivalents).Discovering that this is so would be interesting and marvellous, but it would not be the same as discovering fellow intelligent beings out there.And even intelligent life does not mean 'spacefaring life'; it took us thousands of years to get from the invention of the wheel to the first space rockets and radio telescopes.But the sheer size and age of our galaxy suggests that at least some other worlds should be inhabited by creatures at least as bright as us - creatures able to build radio telescopes and pick up messages and think about doing something about it when they do.And herein lies the problem. One of the most plausible reasons that we have seen of no signs of aliens may be simply that they haven't found us yet.
Which brings us to the fact that the most likely means of our discovery by alien life is by sending radio waves announcing our presence through space.Indeed, there are those who point out that radio and TV signals from Planet Earth have been leaking inadvertently into space since the dawn of the radio age 86 years ago.Surely intelligent alien lifeforms - if they are out there - would have detected these Earthly signals by now, they argue.After all, the signals travel on through space at the speed of light, so all star systems closer than about 80 light years away could, in theory, have picked up hints of our transmissions by now.But in reality, picking up these signals will be hard, even for the most advanced civilisation.Weak and undirected, ordinary television and radio transmissions become almost undetectable at cosmic distances. Yet powerful, focused signals such as the one to be sent by RDF/Bebo are different - they are far easier to detect.So far, just a handful of such signals have been sent, the first message fired out by the Arecibo radio telescope in 1974. And these have generated immense controversy.Some scientists, notably the physicist and writer David Brin, have pointed out the danger of shouting 'we are here' to a potentially hostile cosmos.The fact is that if a civilisation even a few centuries in advance of ours (in technological terms) were to get wind of our existence then the results could be catastrophic.For what if Gliese is home to a belligerent lifeform with infinitely superior technology to ours? After all, the history of Earth tells us that when advanced civilisations meet technologically backward ones, the results have been, almost without exception, disastrous for the people with bows and arrows.If we are unlucky, the inhabitants of Gliese could send an invasion fleet. Since they are 20 light years away, the signal will not reach them until 2028 and it will be some decades after that before the fleet arrives here.It is important to remember that any aliens capable of flying across the great voids between the stars will be in possession of technology so advanced that fighting them would be like taking on a modern army with spears.We would have no chance. So the best thing may be to keep shtum.Or to hope that the inevitable self-obsessed triviality that is bound to comprise any message sent by the Bebo community will be enough to convince any purple-tentacled aliens who are on Gliese 581 that there is no intelligent life on Earth whatsoever - and to leave us well alone.
No.1 - Age wellSorry ladies, all your creams, moisturizers and youth-in-a-bottle remedies have nothing on us. Our male hormones give us thicker skin, which means we get fewer wrinkles and our skin stays younger longer. While women have Joan Rivers to look forward to, we have Sean Connery. Keith Richards? Well, we’ll just count him as a genetic anomaly.honorable mentionBecome PresidentSure, Hilary Clinton made it close for a while -- a "while" that was much longer in her mind. Her defeat for the Democratic nomination, which in itself is not a guarantee for presidency, makes the odds of having a female president as likely as Axl Rose releasing Chinese Democracy. Whether the next female bid is four years or eight years from now, women will always have Battlestar Galactica and Air Force One and other fictitious film and TV women presidents or vice presidents to inspire them while they wait.
No.2 - F*** thingsYep, we can stick ourselves into the middle of things better than anything else. Of course, some of us can do it better than others, but no amount of plastic pegs, rods or mambas can come close to our natural technique.
No.3 - Pee standing upFull bladder, but there’s a line for the urinal? Just step outside and pee behind a dumpster. On a camping trip? Pee and lean against a tree to steady your flow. While women have to unzip, pull down and crouch before they can go, our process is pretty simple: Find some cover, unzip and go. And if we want to write our name in the snow, we can see exactly what we’re doing.
No.4 - Fertilize eggsCall it mankind, humankind or peoplekind, we have fertilized history. Yes, our swimmers are under siege from early scientific studies that show women can create sperm from their own bone marrow. And of course, studies are also underway to grow babies out of the womb. Are these studies headed by lesbians? Anyway, until our offspring are named 1765A and 1766B, our tadpoles will continue to hit the target.
No.5 - Play real sportsBe honest; which of these would you prefer to watch: WNBA or NBA? NHL or women’s hockey? NFL or women’s rugby? MLB or softball? We understand that women play plenty of sports and, yes, they are good athletes, but their sports are a snoozefest to watch. An example, in the WNBA a slam dunk stops the presses, while in the NBA, unless it’s a back reverse through three defenders, it’s just another two points.
No.6 - Shave our headsSure, Natalie Portman, Sigourney Weaver and Demi Moore all sheared their locks for Hollywood, but as a true lifestyle choice in everyday society, guys have mastered the bald top. From Michael Jordan to David Beckham to Samuel L. Jackson guys wear bald better. Still need more proof? Just look at bald Britney. Result: Shaving our heads is something only men can do.
No.7 - Navigate spatiallyMen are much better at seeing things as they really are -- in 3-D. True, the fact that we can see Spy Kids 3-D in focus is no reward, but our superior ability to see shapes also improves our abilities in geometry and math. This explains why more men are math geniuses than women. Sure, the journal Science declared otherwise in 2008 and we are socialized to believe girls are less competent in this realm, but tradition is a hard thing to beat.
No.8 - ManscapeThe playoff beard, the love canal, the Fu Manchu, and the goatee are strictly male innovations, and growing them are things only men can do. Plus we can wear chest, underarm, leg, ear, and nose hair as proudly and loudly as we like. Women? Sure they can imitate our Sasquatch look, but like the Sasquatch, they might limit their survival to a small band of tree huggers, who also share their “natural” beauty.
No.9 - Hold our liquorSorry ladies, we’re genetically wired to pack it away a lot better than you. Men produce more of the protective enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase, which breaks down alcohol. This ultimately means that while you’re buzzing off one Cosmo and saying “I love this song” for five songs straight, we can enjoy another two whisky sours and continue to debate whether or not the world can be saved from global warming.
No.10 - Go toplessSure, women can go topless on the beach, but we can do it whenever and wherever we please. Walking down the street? Off. Mowing the lawn? Off. Street ball? Skins. Rollerblading -- women can try it, but it might be painful. Still in doubt? What gender do you think is responsible for “No Shirts. No Shoes. No Service.”? Useless nipples and the lack of oversized sweat glands are the reasons for this entry on our list of things only men can do.
Rumblings in the media suggest some intriguing findings from NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander mission that relate to the question of life, specifically whether it could have survived on Mars in the past.The issue bubbled up when it was reported Friday that some interesting results from Phoenix's wet chemistry laboratory, part of the Microscopy, Electrochemistry and Conductivity Analyzer (MECA) suite of instruments, were mentioned in a White House briefing.Not so, says Phoenix principal investigator Peter Smith, of the University of Arizona, who denied that any details of the MECA findings had been shared and called the reports "bogus and damaging information."The Aviation Week & Space Technology report came on the heels of the Thursday NASA announcement that Phoenix had confirmed the presence of water ice at its landing site in Mars' arctic regions, first detected in 2002 by NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter. MECA team members were not present at the press briefing at which the water-ice announcement was made."The goal [of having no MECA team members present] was to prevent them from being asked any questions that could reveal information before NASA is ready to make an announcement, sources say," the Aviation Week article said, adding that, "The Bush Administration's Presidential Science Advisor's office, however, has been briefed on the new information that NASA hopes to release as early as mid August."But Smith told SPACE.com that this was "not true, MECA results have not been discussed at the White House.""There is no one who knows either on the [Phoenix] project in Tucson or at [NASA] HQ who knows where this information came from," Smith said in a subsequent email.Smith also said that the MECA team was not present at the Thursday briefing because "they had nothing new to report, the story was about water ice."When the writer of the Aviation Week story, Craig Covault, was contacted by SPACE.com, he attributed much of the confusion and media hubbub to other news outlets picking up his story and mistakenly reporting that his article said that NASA had discovered life on Mars."Note the [Aviation Week] story said very, very clearly three times or so, NO life on Mars detected and Phoenix can NOT [detect life] in the first place," Covault wrote in an email.Smith added that the results from the analysis of the second soil sample in MECA's wet chemistry lab didn't have any bearing on the question of Mars' past habitability "in any direct way.""We are attempting to assess the chemicals and minerals that make up the soil composition," he explained. "We are now about half way through the process and there are several conflicting points of view. This is not a good time to go public with half the story."Covault said that he stands by his story and noted that his piece mentioned the ongoing review of MECA data.The wet chemistry laboratory has four teacup-sized beakers, each used only once. Samples of the Martian dirt are place in a beaker and mixed with water brought from Earth.Sensors on the inner surface of the beakers act like electronic tongues and "taste" the dirt to detect salts that can dissolve in water. The sensors can also detect the pH of the surface.All of this information gives scientists a picture of what the surface layer of dirt looks like now and whether or not it might have been a habitable area at some point in the planet's past.MECA's first analysis showed that the Martian regolith contained several soluble minerals necessary for life, including potassium, magnesium and chloride. The surface also had an alkaline pH, which on Earth is suitable for growing some plants, such as asparagus. The second sample, currently being analyzed, was delivered to the instrument on July 7.
There is a Cantonese saying that the Chinese eat everything that flies, except aeroplanes; everything with four legs, except tables; and everything that swims, except submarines - and visitors to Beijing's fast-food market during the Olympic Games will be left in no doubt of that.A stroll among the food stalls of Wangfujing Snack Street, not far from Tiananmen Square, reveals delicacies of every conceivable kind. 
Laid out in trays and boiling in cauldrons are everything from goat lungs with red peppers to scorpion brochettes, seahorses on skewers, iguana tails, dung beetles and silk worms on a stick, by way of fried sparrows, grilled snake and turkey vulture schnitzels. The locals insist that Western visitors shouldn't be put off the food on sale on this street - after all, it is mostly 'conventional' Chinese cuisine and great for lunch or dinner.Indeed, even though dog meat is off the menu for competitors during the Games - they'll be filling themselves up with high-protein drinks and masses of carbohydrates - tourists can still sample dog brain soup or dog liver with vegetables. 
As the official Beijing travel guide points out, Westerners should not turn up their noses at these dishes.'While you might consider things eaten in China to be distasteful, you must bridge the cultural gap and look at it with an open mind,' it advises.And an open mouth come to that - for as the guide also points out: 'There have been times of severe famine (in China), even as recently as the late Sixties, when tens of millions died of starvation in the Great Leap Forward. Back then, you would have been glad to have had what's on today's menu.'The half-a-million visitors from around the world who are expected to flood into the Chinese capital over the next three weeks will have the opportunity to try these home-grown specialities - if they have the stomach for it.And many do try, even if they struggle. One U.S. visitor, Jackie Siegel, could not resist starfish fried in shark oil, though the centipedes, worms and scorpions on offer 'kind of bothered me a little'. 
'I'm trying to down the sea urchin, but I don't think I can do it. It doesn't even taste cooked. You know what it looks like? Something really dirty,' she said.It's not a view shared by the Chinese, who take great pride in their cuisine - dog, in particular, which is a speciality in the Korean restaurants of Beijing, where it is known as gou rou (which is pronounced 'go row').But Chinese chefs insist they do not cook pets - they say the dogs are specially raised for cooking, 'just as cow, lamb or chicken would be in the West'.So the visitor must put their ideas of good taste on hold for the duration of their visit and try a freshly fried and seasoned skewer of farmed scorpions, one of the most famous of the delicacies on offer, which costs about 50 yuan (£3.70).At the weekend, one 19-year- old British tourist plucked up the courage to try a seahorse on a stick for 15 yuan (£1.10). 
'It's not too bad,' he said, while biting into the cooked tail. 'It's definitely a different experience.'But the delicacies of Wangfujing Snack Street are not only about taste and appetite.The Chinese also believe that certain animals, or their limbs and organs, have medicinal or lifeenhancing properties, such as deer's antlers boiled as tea or snake pickled in China's popular baijiu alcohol.'Seahorses are good for men's kidneys and their virility,' says Sun Hainan, a young food trader from the Anhui province in the east of the country, who has a stall in the street.'Crustacean are good for girls - they improve their skin and looks - and lizards boost virility.'Scorpions are said to make your blood hotter in cold weather and to cure 'certain conditions', although no one seems sure what grasshoppers on a stick are a remedy for, or mixed cow and horse soup, come to that. 
Ever since the first European merchants and missionaries visited China, Westerners have been appalled by what the Chinese eat.In the late 13th century, Marco Polo noted with distaste that the Chinese liked eating snakes, dogs and, in some places, even human flesh.French Jesuit historian Jean-Baptiste du Halde recorded a Chinese banquet in 1736 in which guests ate: 'Stag pizzles [penises] . . . bears' paws . . . nay, they do not scruple eating cats, rats and such like animals.'As Chinese food expert Fuchsia Dunlop writes in her fascinating book Shark's Fin & Sichuan Pepper, the 19th-century British surgeon C. Toogood Downing described British sailors in the port of Guangzhou picking carefully at their food 'lest they should detect themselves in the act of devouring an earthworm, or picking the delicate bones of a cat'. 
Dunlop describes a Chinese cookbook she came across with full colour photographs in which the heads and feet of various fowl loll over the rims of serving dishes.On one page, 11 lizards have been partially skinned and deep-fried, 'so their bodies, golden and crisp like chicken nuggets, are sandwiched between scaly tails and heads in which the ruined eyeballs have been replaced by fresh green peas'.There is a whippy egg-white pudding decorated with cherries and what look like chocolate sprinkles, but on closer inspection turn out to be dried ants (good for dispelling rheumatism).And then there is the piece de resistance - a whole puppy, roasted crisp, with a garnish of coriander and flowers made from pink radishes.While living in China, Dunlop ate rabbit heads, pig brains, scorpion and preserved duck eggs - known as 1,000-year- old eggs - whose oozy black yolks and 'noxious aroma' caused her flesh to crawl, made her feel sick and left a toxic black slime on her chopsticks.She visited a restaurant in Sichuan that specialised in insect dishes, where she had the expensive delicacies bee pupae, timber grubs and sand-crawling caterpillars, which she pronounced to be delicious. She ate sheep's lungs and even the ovarian fat of a snow frog.'Although a typical Chinese meal consists of grain, pork and vegetables with a bit of fish or seafood thrown in, there is little that can't be considered a potential ingredient,' she says.'Most people eat dog meat and donkey penis rarely, if at all, but there is no taboo in China about the idea of eating them.'Mind you, according to the ancient historian Pliny the Elder, the Romans ate flamingo tongues, while medieval Europeans dined on living geese and 19th-century Americans liked deer testicles, so you can't call one culinary cuisine more cultured than another.On Wangfujing Snack Street, however, the fried silk worms and dung beetles, baby sharks and fried starfish jostle with that most famous, and admired, delicacy - bird's nest soup.It is made from the nest of the swiftlet, a tiny bird that lives in caves in South-East Asia. Instead of twigs and straw, it makes its nest from its own saliva.Harvesting the nests requires great skill: men balance on tall bamboo poles to grab the nests from inside the dark caves. Sadly, bird's nest soup actually has a rather bland taste.But then its recent rise in popularity comes from its growing reputation around the world as a health tonic - and aphrodisiac.So there might just be a point in trying it, along with lizard legs and a couple of seahorses on the side, from that roadside stall in Beijing after all.
