Didn't I see this in a movie?

Ten thousand years after woolly mammoths vanished from the face of the Earth, scientists are embarking on an ambitious project to bring the beasts back to the Arctic tundra.

The prospect of recreating mammoths and returning them to the wild has been discussed – seriously at times – for more than a decade, but on Monday researchers announced fresh funding they believe could make their dream a reality.

The boost comes in the form of $15m (£11m) raised by the bioscience and genetics company Colossal, co-founded by Ben Lamm, a tech and software entrepreneur, and George Church, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School who has pioneered new approaches to gene editing.

The scientists have set their initial sights on creating an elephant-mammoth hybrid by making embryos in the laboratory that carry mammoth DNA. The starting point for the project involves taking skin cells from Asian elephants, which are threatened with extinction, and reprogramming them into more versatile stem cells that carry mammoth DNA. The particular genes that are responsible for mammoth hair, insulating fat layers and other cold climate adaptions are identified by comparing mammoth genomes extracted from animals recovered from the permafrost with those from the related Asian elephants.

These embryos would then be carried to term in a surrogate mother or potentially in an artificial womb. If all goes to plan – and the hurdles are far from trivial – the researchers hope to have their first set of calves in six years.

“Our goal is to make a cold-resistant elephant, but it is going to look and behave like a mammoth. Not because we are trying to trick anybody, but because we want something that is functionally equivalent to the mammoth, that will enjoy its time at -40C, and do all the things that elephants and mammoths do, in particular knocking down trees,” Church told the Guardian.

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Hiking in Bear Country

You are gonna want to click on and enlarge this to read the sign.

Pandas aren't cute, they're death-loving oxygen-thieves. Let's just eat the idiot-bears

Let me get straight to the point. Pandas are pointless, wasteful and silly. They should die.

Let’s look at the facts here. A lot of conservationists argue that pandas are the victims of man’s actions, that urbanisation and industrialisation is killing the precious bamboo they need to live.

Eh? Bamboo? They are bears, but they eat leaves. Hello, excuse me? Panda bear. Bear. You know, large, aggressive carnivore. Big teeth, claws. Grrrr. You’re supposed to eat meat.

What on earth is with the bamboo thing? A panda’s digestive system is still set up to digest meat. The reason they can only eat only one of the hundreds of different types of bamboo the world has to offer is that their guts aren’t supposed to break down bamboo. It’s elevating fussiness to the level of suicide. It’s like me eating only car tyres and gravel and then asking for sympathy when I starve to death. Idiots.

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RIP: Gus - New York's iconic (and slightly weird) polar bear

There are not a huge number of ways to become famous as a polar bear. Gus somehow managed to do it by behaving like a perfectly ordinary New Yorker: he was neurotic. He became the Neurotic Polar Bear...

...Polar bears are among the most beloved animals, but Gus was something else. In 1994, notice was drawn to his peculiar swimming protocol. He would plop into the pool and swim lap after lap in figure-eight patterns, pawing his way through the water with powerful backstrokes. He did this for as many as 12 hours a day. Every day. Every week. Every month.

Zoo visitors found the repetitive swimming by the 700-pound polar bear mesmerizing. Zoo ticket sales shot up. Tourists and New Yorkers alike flocked to glimpse what had become a novelty act: the endlessly swimming bear.

But zoo officials became increasingly worried. Why was he doing this? Was it something physical? Was it woman problems? Was he having a nervous breakdown?

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13 Wisconsin cops raid animal shelter to kill baby deer named Giggles

Two weeks ago, Ray Schulze was working in a barn at the Society of St. Francis no-kill animal shelter in Kenosha, Wis., when officials swarmed the shelter with a search warrant.

“[There were] nine [Department of Natural Resources] agents and four deputy sheriffs, and they were all armed to the teeth,” Mr. Schulze told WISN 12. “It was like a SWAT team.”

The agents were there to retrieve a baby deer named Giggles that was dropped off by a family worried she had been abandoned by her mother, the station reported. Wisconsin law forbids the possession of wildlife.

“I said the deer is scheduled to go to the wildlife reserve the next day,” Mr. Schulze told the station. “I was thinking in my mind they were going to take the deer and take it to a wildlife shelter, and here they come carrying the baby deer over their shoulder. She was in a body bag. I said, ‘Why did you do that?’ He said, ‘That’s our policy,’ and I said, ‘That’s one hell of a policy.’”

Read the rest here, if you have the stomach.

Places I don't see myself moving to...

Thailand has just been removed from my list of possible expatriation destinations. I couldn't even watch the whole thing. I stopped after they got to the bed.

Is this the worst allergy season ever?

In a trend that may make your eyes water just thinking about it, seasonal allergy experts are confirming that 2013 allergies are going to start sooner -- and last longer -- in most parts of the country. 

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I don't know about ever, but I've been pretty miserable for the last few weeks, and yes, on both coasts. Spring... the birds are chirping, the flowers are blooming the grass is greening... blech. You can have it.

Man vs Nature

Off Topic Rant

OK folks.  I don't usually discuss this sort of thing.  And I don't want to sound insensitive, especially to someone who was just seriously hurt.  But there are people in this world of whom it could only be said that if stupidity were a virtue they would be saints.

Hint: If you are on vacation and arrive at a beach where NOBODY is in the water and there is flag flying WITH A SHARK on it, you might want to pause and consider the possible implications of those two facts before diving in.

Likewise if you are hiking in a tropical jungle and stumble on a snake, which you then correctly identify as venomous, and you take note that you are a mere two feet from it, DON'T MESS WITH IT!

Seriously.  I love nature.  But people need to show a modicum of respect when moving outside of their normal habitat and entering the wild (oceans jungles, woods etc.).  This is not your home.  Wild animals live there.  You are in their home and need to behave accordingly.  Human beings have no natural predators.  There is no living creature that has a natural inclination to eat us.  But yes, there are animals that are quite capable of severely injuring people.  The vast majority of serious injuries or fatalities inflicted on humans by wild animals are the consequence of stupidity or bad luck (like accidentally stepping on a snake).  People who ignore warnings of potentially dangerous wildlife and or go out of their way to provoke them just really tick me off. (I cleaned the language up a bit there.)  I don't want to say I was rooting for the shark or the snake,  But you can put me down as supporting two candidates for Honorable Mention in the Darwin Awards.

Huge twisters slash through Alabama cities

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Tornadoes killed dozens of people in Alabama on Wednesday afternoon and evening, part of a violent storm system that left destruction and death across a large swath of the South.

Two major cities, Tuscaloosa and Birmingham, were hit hard by one huge tornado. President Barack Obama declared an emergency in Alabama, and Gov. Robert Bentley mobilized 1,400 National Guardsmen to help in rescue operations.

The system of heavy winds, rain and tornadoes began late Tuesday and by Wednesday morning had left at least 17 dead in Arkansas, Tennessee, Louisiana and Mississippi.

Then the latest round of storms hit Alabama on Wednesday afternoon and evening, pushing the death toll much higher. The Associated Press said the toll in Alabama was at least 58. A count by msnbc.com that included county-by-county numbers from The Weather Channel and NBC station WAFF of Huntsville showed at least 62 dead.

The storm system was predicted to move on through the Carolinas.

Read the rest here.

The Great Escape: Top tweets from the snake on the run

"On top of the Empire State Building! All the people look like little mice down there. Delicious little mice."

"Dear NYC, Apples and snakes have gone together since the beginning."

"Donald Trump is thinking about running for president?! Don't worry, I'll handle this. Where is Trump Tower exactly?"

"Enjoying a cupcake @magnoliabakery. This is going straight to my hips. Oh, wait. I don't have hips. Yesss! #snakeonthetown"

"Getting my morning coffee at the Mudtruck. Don't even talk to me until I've had my morning coffee. Seriously, don't. I'm venomous,"

Yes. The snake is still on the loose.

Missing N.Y. cobra lives it up on Twitter

An Egyptian Cobra (cute NOT)

A venomous snake who went missing from New York’s Bronx Zoo may be eluding zookeepers, but thousands of fans have found her on Twitter.

The 20-inch Egyptian cobra hasn’t been seen since Friday afternoon, and is believed to be hiding somewhere in her zoo enclosure. However instead of searching crevices of the Reptile House for the pencil-thin snake, zoo workers might have better luck looking online.

“Holding very still in the snake exhibit at the Museum of Natural History. This is gonna be hilarious!” tweeted a spoof account called @BronxZoosCobra on Monday night. “Anyone know of a good vegan restaurant near Union Square?” she tweeted a couple of hours later.

While @BronxZoosCobra’s 30,000-and-growing fans enjoy her musings, ophidiophobics – those with a fear of snakes – may find the tweets funnier once she’s found.

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Why does it always have to be snakes?

As glaciers recede long buried secrets are revealed

LA PAZ, Bolivia — In the haunts of this city where climbers gather over plates of grilled llama and bottles of Paceña beer to swap tales of mountaineering derring-do, they feign boredom when talk turns to the 19,974-foot-high Huayna Potosí, a jagged Andean peak that looms over La Paz.

“A training climb,” scoffs Julio Choque Alaña, 32, who guides foreigners up the mountains of Bolivia, which boasts peaks higher than the Alps and the Rockies.

But such bravado fades when talk shifts to what climbers are discovering on Huayna Potosí’s glacier: crumpled fuselage, decades-old pieces of wings and propellers, and, in November, the frozen body of Rafael Benjamín Pabón, a 27-year-old pilot whose Douglas DC-6 crashed into the mountain’s north face in 1990.

“When I found the pilot, he was still strapped into his seat, crunched over like he was sleeping, some black hair falling from his skull,” said Eulalio González, 49, the climber who carried Mr. Pabón’s mummified body down the mountain. “There are more ice mummies in the peaks above us,” he said. “Melting glaciers will bring them to us.”

The discovery of Mr. Pabón’s partially preserved remains was one of a growing number of finds pulled from the world’s glaciers and snow fields in recent years as warmer temperatures cause the ice and snow to melt, exposing their long-held secrets. The bodies that have emerged were mummified naturally, with extreme cold and dry air performing the work that resins and oils did for ancient Egyptians and other cultures.

Up and down the spine of the Andes, long plagued by airplane crashes and climbing mishaps, the discoveries are helping to solve decades-old mysteries.

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Bad news for California (yes... more)

SACRAMENTO — California faces the risk not just of devastating earthquakes but also of a catastrophic storm that could tear at the coasts, inundate the Central Valley and cause four to five times as much economic damage as a large quake, scientists and emergency planners warn.

The potential for such a storm was described at a conference of federal and California officials that ended Friday. Combining advanced flood mapping and atmospheric projections with data on California’s geologic flood history, over 100 scientists calculated the probable consequences of a “superstorm” carrying tropical moisture from the South Pacific and dropping up to 10 feet of rain across the state.

“Floods are as much a part of our lives in California as earthquakes are,” said Lucy Jones, the chief scientist for the United States Geological Survey’s multi-hazards initiative, adding, “We are probably not going to be able to handle the biggest ones.”

The geological survey estimates that such a storm could cause up to $300 billion in damage. The scientists’ models estimate that almost one-fourth of the houses in California could experience some flood damage from one.

Read the rest here.