The Strange Case of the Woman with a Breast on her Foot

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Stevie C sent along this article on
An unusual presentation of supernumerary breast tissue (just what were you googling for, Stevie?), in which a woman reports an annoying growth on her foot, and when examined, is discovered to have a breast growing there, complete with nipple and fatty tissue (but in this case, no glandular tissue).

It’s in the Dermatology Online Journal, not the Onion.

I hadn’t heard of this before myself, but it’s fascinating. These supernumerary breasts can pop up all over the place, including the face, back, and thigh (and foot, obviously). They can be functionally complete, and can even lactate. The authors report some weak and sometimes contradicted associations with other oddities, but no causal mechanism is known. These cases of autonomous self-organization and recruitment of organs are extremely interesting—it suggests that a breast would be a fairly easy tissue to grow in a dish. I’d love to know what the molecular signal for initiating differentiation—I suspect it’s something simple and common.

You’ve got to respect tradition

In Serbia, vandals broke into Slobodan Milosevic’s tomb and drove a stake through his heart to keep him from “returning from the dead to haunt the country”. I think that’s utterly charming.

When I go, I’d figured the best plan would be to donate my body to science, or to be cremated…but now I’m thinking it would be really cool if crazed folk dug my body up, chopped it to bits, put a stake through it, and maybe paraded the head around town on a pike. I wonder if there is a funeral plan for that?

(via The Pagan Prattle)

The Antarctic octopus gets farked

Fark is having an octopus photoshop contest — most of the entries make me go “eh”, but there are a few nice ones.

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Phil Plait thinks this could be a symbol of rapprochement between the brilliant analysts of the natural world at Pharyngula and those slack-jawed people who stare dully at the sky at Bad Astronomy. (I kid, astronomers probably think a little bit now and then, too.)

The Calamari Wrestler

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A recent article on Deep Sea News mentions the Ritual of 365 Points—since this is such an important reference to cephalophiliacs, I thought I’d repost my summary of a classic movie that hinges on it as a plot point.

I have seen The Calamari Wrestler. It was…indescribable. I won’t even try. The basic idea, though, is that it’s about pro wrestling in Japan, with a dying wrestler who undergoes a magical transformation in Pakistan to keep him alive, which also allows him to become a super-star in the ring. He battles rivals to learn a heartwarming secret at the end.

I’ve put a few frames below the fold. Don’t try to view them as a narrative; this is a surreal movie about wrestling invertebrates.

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Is Sunnydale in San Joaquin County?

Some ditzy entrepreneur in California has a new twist on bottled water:

As the body thirsts, so does the soul. So why drink regular drinking water when you can partake in a more blessed beverage? Bottled Holy drinking water is bottled in Stockton, California and blessed by priests from southern California.

Funny…the advertising doesn’t mention anything about vampires even once, although it does have a warning sticker:

Warning to sinners: If you are a sinner or evil in nature, this product may cause burning, intense heat, sweating, skin irritations, rashes, itchiness, vomiting, bloodshot and watery eyes, pale skin color, and oral irritations.

What about the skeletonization and the poofing into dust?

By the way, if you want the job of blessing the holy water, they are taking applications. They don’t seem to be very picky about who they’ll hire, so if you happen to be a godless atheist, that may not be a problem.

Ban this course!

The indecency in public schools is out of control:

“…during school hours in a classroom with an experienced teacher present, two sixth graders completed the act of intercourse…at least ten students were witnesses. No disciplinary actions were taken against the teacher… All teachers were told to keep quiet.”

The class that incited these students to publicly engage in illicit sex acts? Shop. Those mortise and tenon joints sure are provocative, and I guess the shop teacher wasn’t named Mr Adler.

(Yes, I know this is a serious issue, but I think the school was right to avoid addressing it — although they certainly should discourage and stop such inappropriate distractions — and what they should have done, and I hope they did, was to inform the parents and let them deal with the behavior.)

It’s like learning that the underpants gnomes are actually making money

There’s money to be made in crap. Who would have thought MySpace was so profitable?

Rupert Murdoch has told an industry conference that MySpace make $25 million per month on advertising.”It’s extraordinary, the advertising has gone from basically nothing to, on a net basis, $25 million a month and growing every month — almost 30 per cent every quarter,” he told the Digital Hollywood conference, in New York.

There’s an evolutionary lesson in there, I think. The part of MySpace that represents what people want and value — the social networking, the easy customization — is a tiny fraction of what is displayed on a MySpace page. Most of what I see over there are ads being pushed at me aggressively; simply logging in presents me with half the screen filled with a scantily clad woman promising me a date. Just looking at the ugly, clumsy pages and the hideous, distracting clutter and noise, you’d think that no one in their right mind would want to use the thing—but obviously, it’s thriving.

Too bad it’s throwing more money into the pockets of the wretched Rupert Murdoch.

Of course this is the result I’d get

My score on The Cowboy-Ninja-Pirate-Knight Test:

a Pirate
(You scored 3 Honor, 4 Justice, 4 Adventure, and 13 Individuality!)

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Arr matey. You may believe in honor, and justice, and you certainly have a sense of adventure. But mostly, you play by your own rules. Your code is your own and you are flexible in most situations. Dress flamboyant and look into a parrot. I think you’ll do fine.

Link: The Cowboy-Ninja-Pirate-Knight Test
(OkCupid Free Online Dating)

(via Cowboy Tikistitch)

Lost Tomb of Jesus

Last week, I promised I’d watch this documentary about the “lost tomb of Jesus” because it was being advertised here on Pharyngula. Promise fulfilled, but the ghastly program was two hours long—two hours of nothing but fluff. I’ve put a bit of a summary of the whole show below the fold, but I’m afraid there’s nothing very persuasive about any of it, and it was stretched out to a hopelessly tedious length.

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