b00b13z

Dumbest Human Award Nominee

FLORENCE, Italy - A Macau casino mogul bid a record $330,00 at auction Saturday to win a giant white truffle dug up in Tuscany, organizers said.

Billionaire Stanley Ho made the winning bid for the 3.3 pound truffle during an auction staged simultaneously in Florence, London and at Ho's Grand Lisboa hotel in Macau, said auction organizer Giselle Oberti.

The price bested the previous record for a truffle of $212,000, she said.

The unusually heavy truffle was dug up last week by truffle hunter Cristiano Savini, his father Luciano and dog Rocco in Palaia, a town about 25 miles from Pisa. The Savinis said Rocco started sniffing "like crazy" when he zeroed in on the fungus.

Guinness World Records lists a 2.86 pound white truffle found in Croatia in 1999 as the biggest.

Truffles usually weigh from 1 to 2.8 ounces apiece. Slivers of white truffles, with their strong aroma, are prized in Italy to flavor pasta sauces and rice dishes.

Proceeds from the auction were to go to an Italian organization that helps sufferers of genetic diseases, a group that helps street children in London and Catholic charities in Macau.

Calls to Ho weren't immediately returned late Saturday.

Chimp Champ or Chump?

NEW YORK - Never mind that TV show that asks if you're smarter than a fifth-grader. Is your memory better than a young chimp's?


Maybe not.

Japanese researchers pitted young chimps against human adults in two tests of short-term memory, and overall, the chimps won.

That challenges the belief of many people, including many scientists, that "humans are superior to chimpanzees in all cognitive functions," said researcher Tetsuro Matsuzawa of Kyoto University.

"No one can imagine that chimpanzees — young chimpanzees at the age of 5 — have a better performance in a memory task than humans," he said in a statement.

Matsuzawa, a pioneer in studying the mental abilities of chimps, said even he was surprised. He and colleague Sana Inoue report the results in Tuesday's issue of the journal Current Biology.

One memory test included three 5-year-old chimps who'd been taught the order of Arabic numerals 1 through 9, and a dozen human volunteers.

They saw nine numbers displayed on a computer screen. When they touched the first number, the other eight turned into white squares. The test was to touch all these squares in the order of the numbers that used to be there.

Results showed that the chimps, while no more accurate than the people, could do this faster.

One chimp, Ayumu, did the best. Researchers included him and nine college students in a second test.

This time, five numbers flashed on the screen only briefly before they were replaced by white squares. The challenge, again, was to touch these squares in the proper sequence.

When the numbers were displayed for about seven-tenths of a second, Ayumu and the college students were both able to do this correctly about 80 percent of the time.

But when the numbers were displayed for just four-tenths or two-tenths of a second, the chimp was the champ. The briefer of those times is too short to allow a look around the screen, and in those tests Ayumu still scored about 80 percent, while humans plunged to 40 percent.

That indicates Ayumu was better at taking in the whole pattern of numbers at a glance, the researchers wrote.

"It's amazing what this chimpanzee is able to do," said Elizabeth Lonsdorf, director of the Lester E. Fisher Center for the Study and Conservation of Apes at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago. The center studies the mental abilities of apes, but Lonsdorf didn't participate in the new study.

She admired Ayumu's performance when the numbers flashed only briefly on the screen.

"I just watched the video of that and I can tell you right now, there's no way I can do it," she said. "It's unbelievable. I can't even get the first two (squares)."

What's going on here? Even with six months of training, three students failed to catch up to the three young chimps, Matsuzawa said in an e-mail.

He thinks two factors gave his chimps the edge. For one thing, he believes human ancestors gave up much of this skill over evolutionary time to make room in the brain for gaining language abilities.

The other factor is the youth of Ayumu and his peers. The memory for images that's needed for the tests resembles a skill found in children, but which dissipates with age. In fact, the young chimps performed better than older chimps in the new study. (Ayumu's mom did even worse than the college students).

So the next logical step, Lonsdorf said, is to fix up Ayumu with some real competition on these tests: little kids.

god bless rhode island.

NORTH KINGSTOWN, R.I. - It was at the Honey Dew Donut shop that Cyndi LaRose and her honey said, "I do."


LaRose and Joseph David Smith exchanged wedding vows Wednesday at the North Kingstown shop where they had met.

Marjorie Harrison, the baker, made the food. Faraq Mohamed, the shop's owner, greeted customers with a simple question: "Coffee or the wedding?" A former probate judge conducted the ceremony. The shop's regulars served as the witnesses.

"I had the privilege of knowing Joe and Cyndi before they met," Mohamed said. "I watched as they fell in love."

LaRose, 49, a caregiver for Coventry Home Care, has been coming to the shop for years. Smith, 58, who works at Kingstown Mobile Home Park, started coming when his niece worked behind the counter.

"I saw this good-looking guy standing up there," LaRose said. "He was a country-looking guy, the type I look for, the Grizzly Adams type."

But they didn't really fall in love until they helped Mohamed with an errand a few weeks ago. Two days later, Smith asked her to marry him. They picked out rings last week.

They thought about having the ceremony on the beach, but decided it was too cold. The doughnut shop is a casual place where most of their friends hang out anyway, so it was a perfect fit.

"I don't even own a dress," LaRose said.

"You couldn't get me in a tie," Smith said.

The couple planned to spend a Thanksgiving weekend honeymoon at a Connecticut casino.

crazy guy.

Series of videos indicating numerous rapes committed against me as a means of gaining advantage in civil lawsuits. Indicates police corruption, death threats and murder attempts. SOME OF MY EVIDENCE IS POINTED TO BELOW!
Name: Windsor
I've uploaded MP3s to MySpace (myspace.com/windsoralexander) which contain evidence of the murder attempt on me if not the rapes themselves. For clarification please read the message that follows and is part of my MySpace "Away" message: In the backgrounds of these recordings—all recorded on the night of April 13, 2007 in the third floor sleeping dorm of a men's homeless shelter, Pacific Garden Mission, 646 South State Street, Chicago, Illinois 60605 (PGM)—you can hear individuals who had raped me at PGM before that day speaking of a murder attempt which was to be made on my life by members of the Chicago Police Department (CPD). Given that people in PGM had spoken behind me while I recorded myriad times, I had taken to drowning out what was said in my recordings' backgrounds. I was unable to listen to the recordings at issue until sometime on April 15, 2007.
Meanwhile, on the morning of April 14, 2007, about eight (8) CPD officers surrounded me at the corner of State and Congress Streets in downtown Chicago, walked up to where I stood, and created a circle around me no more than twelve (12) inches from my person. This effectively blocked anyone outside the circle from viewing what occurred within the circle, e.g., it precluded those outside from being able to assess whether I was complying with whatever the officers asked me to do and whether I was being aggressive. I, for some reason, immediately raised my hands into the air and very loudly requested to be handcuffed. I was carrying my backpack and laptop bag at the time—as I usually do—but lifted my hands with them still on, because of the officers proximity. Startled, the officers backed away some, handcuffed me and searched me. The intersection is busy and at least twenty (20) cars were around during the incident. The officers explained, when I asked, that I fit the description of a man who had just robbed a bank. This explanation seemed suspect since it was approximately 8:45 AM and April 14, 2007 (the day that this incident took place) was a Saturday.
Chillingly, the background conversations on the April 13, 2007 recordings (made the night before the incident) contain statements that someone would say "I told him to put down his bag." Then someone made sounds like a gun going off "bam bam." Someone said, snidely, "[he wants us to] let him get online." This statement refers to the fact that, prior to April 23, 2007, my laptop was hacked into so much by these rapists and their co-conspirators that I was unable to get and maintain an Internet connection, particularly when I attempted to report the rapes or the computer hacking online. On April 23, 2007—by reinstalling Windows and working offline as long as I could, I recorded a video indicating the rapes and uploaded it to YouTube. The video was deleted by someone and I was not able to re-upload it until May 9, 2007.
I also have evidence in the form of paper towels on which I have blown my nose and spat out the contents of those orifices upon awaking at PGM on scores of mornings. Those towels would contain some of the drugs used to sedate me into a rapeable state as well as DNA from some of the rapists. I have locked those paper towels up in my safety deposit box at the Bank of America branch at Jackson Boulevard and Clark Street in downtown Chicago.
What, you may ask, does any of this have to do with us? Well, I humbly implore you to download these recordings and analyze the conversations taking place behind me. Understand that I recorded these songs at bedtime at PGM, underneath my covers, when no conversation was to take place. I assure you that the conversations were always about me. I have many other recordings (also secured in my safety deposit box) which clearly show this and speak on the rapes and other criminal details. Alas, given the upload constraints placed on me by MySpace I decided that the most effective use of this first set of uploads was to facilitate the prosecution of the crooked cops who attempted to kill me on the morning of April 14, 2007.
Therefore, I ask you to use your technical expertise, enhanced electronic equipment, and fresher ears, to provide a statement indicating what you think is being said behind me in these recordings. Better yet, if you can, attempt to isolate the background conversations so that it can be clearly understood what they consist of. Please submit any findings to me here.
To show that I am an artist and intend to ultimately use this site solely as such, I have uploaded as many of my lyrics as I was able today and will—whether you want me to or not—upload several recordings of some of the songs whose lyrics have been uploaded.
In addition, within the next fourteen days, I shall return to the CPD at 1718 South State Street in Chicago and provide the police with some of the physical evidence that I have identified herein and ask them to allow me to file criminal complaints for all rapes and other crimes committed against me.

Jenkem.

Rob Goulet=Dead.