Animal experimentation on dogs leads to fluorescent puppies

by Jillian @ http://blueshelled.com . June 6, 2009 . 5:50PM

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, there was a Poky Little Puppy. This was a very mischievous puppy and he couldn’t seem to stay in his yard. Every day, his mother would call for him and tell him that dinner was ready and that he needed to come in, and every day, that little puppy would be out wandering the world. He would dawdle into the house whenever his poky little legs felt like it and would be very, very sad that he was so slow to come home because his little tummy would rumble. There’s a moral to that story. But that’s not this story.

In this story, the poky little puppy wandered to another land, far, far away. A place where puppies aren’t safe. A place called South Korea. And in this place, the Poky little puppy had his DNA cloned and merged with genes similar to those of a sea anemone, which is an underwater creature. This was done by a scientist who said that he was was doing it to produce a puppy that, because of a long lifespan, might help cure human illness. However, what this merging did was TURN THE PUPPY INTO A GLOWSTICK!!!!

For comparison: The glowstick

The puppy:

Byeong-Chun Lee, the South Korean researcher, is not the first to make animals glow. The question here is why? What is the purpose of making them light up like a Christmas tree? Besides wasting money and time on other efforts, you know like those pesky things such as cancer and AIDS. Instead, some of our top researchers are focusing on making animals glow. It can’t be good for the animals and I fail to see how it’s worth our time and money.

Please, enlighten me?

Lifegem jewelry: Because your loved ones can still give even when they’re dead

by Jillian @ http://blueshelled.com . June 1, 2009 . 12:13PM

Ok, despite my flippant title, I’m intrigued by the idea I’m about to present to you. Many of my friends and family are aware that I enjoy finding new and different gifts for the various gift-giving occasions. What this means is that I’m always finding websites and resources that I think are worthy of sharing with them. Because of this, I often become overly eager in my sharing and this results in them getting multiple emails about websites that they might not be as eager to peruse.

Recently, there was a fantastic discussion on my blog about what happens to cadavers when they are donated to science. Many ethical questions were explored and I’m still bouncing the final thoughts around in my mind. I enjoy well-presented debates a great deal and have had this one on my mind. Because of it, I was googling around (googling around sounds much naughtier than it is) and found the Lifegem website.

Initially, I was as repelled by the idea brought forth in this website as I would be by the thought of wearing 6 inch heels and running a marathon. My initial take on Lifegem is that it is a website that offers to take the carbon from the cremated ashes of your loved one and make it in to a sparkling diamond that you can then wear in jewelry. This allows you both closure and the ability to wear your loved one and keep them with you until you die and then, HEY! Maybe your next of kin will make you into a sparkler!

Look, I never said my empathy extended into what I consider hairbrained ideas.

And yet, the further I read into the website, the more this seems like a decent, feasible idea to me. When people are grieving, memories are so terribly important and if they can afford this, why should it bother me? As I continued to read, the key aspect that changed my opinion was that, in order to create the diamond, they don’t have to use ashes, rather they can use hair from your loved one. Heck, your loved one doesn’t even have to be dead! If you are a stalker and have your “loved one’s” hairbrush, as long as you have the equivilent of 8oz worth of hair (a typical men’s haircut worth), you’ve got enough to create a piece of jewelry.

Personally, the more I think about this, the more I think that it isn’t any different than getting a tattoo or a painting to memorialize a lost loved one. The ashes part creeped me out because the idea of someone possibly cremating someone they love against that person’s wishes just to create jewelry from their remains is a little abnormal for me, however, I think that is an extreme thought as opposed to the “norm” for this situation.

What do you think? Beautiful memory keeper or creepy sparkly no-no?

Dorothy Parker and her misconception

by Jillian @ http://blueshelled.com . May 30, 2009 . 2:33PM

Dorothy Parker once said, “Men seldom make passes. At girls who wear glasses.”

As a proud glass-wearing member of society, I’m wondering what gives her the idea that men are dissuaded by a good pair of specs? Frankly, I think they provide character and lend intrigue to a woman. Without them, I feel almost naked. My glasses are one more way for me to give myself a little bit of mystery.

And, let’s be honest, without them I have a bit of a moon face. There is the awful truth. It’s out and now I can’t take it back. Moony face moony face.

With my glasses, I feel smarter, more confident and, in some ways, invincible. I certainly can see, and that helps a lot. I didn’t need glasses until I was 21. I was doing support for a well-known blogging site and was spending quite a bit of time on the computer. Things began to go blurry and I started having some severe headaches. When my eyes were tested, they pronounced me with astigmatism and sent me on my way with a pair of retro shaped shades and a comment to come back yearly. And so I have.

I keep trying to make the pictures of me without glasses work, but frankly, they aren’t me and they just don’t. Being myself is sexy. Being myself is real. Besides, without my glasses, I can’t see what’s happening around me anyway, so it wouldn’t matter if someone was “passing” or not. I’d imagine it’s similar to the concept of beer goggles. I like being able to see. I think that’s sexy.

Why a small children’s party is as good, if not better than a large party

by Jillian @ http://blueshelled.com . May 24, 2009 . 4:21PM

Today, I was reading Jen’s blog (which, if you haven’t read it, you should) on her child’s birthday party and the quandary she is in due to the creativity of her son and his having invited most of the school and the neighboring 3 counties (my author liberty) to his birthday party.

When I finished reading I laughed. And laughed and laughed and laughed. Better her than me, I thought to myself. Jen will likely defriend me at this point, and rightfully so, as I should be commiserating with her, but in the age of Chuck-e-Cheese, I’m just thankful I didn’t get roped into this particular dilemna.

AJ has never had a large party. When I go to adult parties, other parents are very quick to judge me when I state this fact. The response is usually a tightening of the lips, a shake of the head and a “but, don’t you think he’s missing out?” or some equally insane statement. If you just relaxed your lips, stopped shaking your head and closed your mouth, then we need to talk in a very serious way.

As a toddler, a big party would have been more for the adults. Consider the statement “Aw, look at all the cute little ones in their cute little pointy hats and their faces all smooshed with cake. Isn’t it precious?” That cute, precious, pointy party would have cost about $200 and he would have ended up with a bunch of presents that would have put people out of grocery money. For the $200, we could buy him presents and those people could buy their groceries. So, we chose to have small parties, spend less than $25 (usually) on a party for him, us, family and close friends and spend a bit on presents (not $200, for the record).

As he gets older, now 8, we still don’t do big parties. This year, we asked what he would like to do on his birthday. He chose to see a movie. That gets expensive with many people, so the compromise was that he could choose ONE friend to take to the movie and then we’d do the bells and whistles for them: ANYTHING they wanted from the snack bar and they got to pick any G rated movie they wanted to see. You would think they died and went to high fructose corn syrup heaven. Before the movie, they went to the McDonald’s and ate dinner and played in the playland for two hours. AJ said it was “the best birthday ever!” and so did his friend.

By keeping his party expectations low, we don’t have to worry about upsets. Sure, he like attending birthday parties, but he also is an introvert who likes a small get together, too. He’d rather have presents and get to do whatever he wants on his day than a 2 hour party.

Another family we know did something similar. They did the big Chuck-e-Cheese party, but they invited family and they allowed their child to choose one kid to come as a guest (AJ) and so they saved money on tokens and all the extras and the child still got the special feeling that a kid gets from doing all the birthday stuff at Chuck-e-Cheese.

To Jen, what about doing a lollipop lottery? Get some dum dums and whoever gets the dum dums with a mark on them gets to come to your 3-4 person party? To everyone else, I’m just glad I’m still worrying about this kind of thing instead of beer parties.

Cell phone carriers restricting customer phone options?

by Jillian @ http://blueshelled.com . May 23, 2009 . 5:56PM

Luckily for T-mobile, I’m not a customer, or I would take the 45 minutes it would likely take me to get through to their customer service and give them an earful after reading an article on consumerist.com. Apparently, as consumers, we are no longer allowed to buy our phones where we choose and we must buy them from the carrier itself or risk some kind of ominous unknown threat. I’m not sure what the threat is, but Meg Marco notes:

When the salesperson was ringing me up, she started trying to set up the phone. I told her not to worry about it because I wasn’t going to be using it as a pre-paid phone, but I was going to put my own SIM card in there. She got really quiet and sad that she would “have to pretend that I didn’t hear that.”

You’re going to pretend you didn’t hear that? Or what? Are you going to terminate your contract with me? At what cost? Unless you find a way to make phones indestructible, phones are going to break and things are going to happen and unless replacement policies get better, people are going to say “screw your new phones, I’m getting a used one until my 2 years is up.”

Recently, I did this when my LG Voyager just wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. There was nothing wrong with it other than I hated the phone. It wasn’t intuitive and the excessive amount of money I would need to pay for each and every application made me realize that it was just another cash cow for my phone carrier. I reluctantly went back to the blackberry, buttcalls and all. Frankly, I’ve never been happier in my life. The little Pink Pearl telephone I got off of craigslist is smaller than most blackberries and I feel bad that I didn’t listen to my friend, Clay, when he told me years ago that the pearl was the way to go. For having large man hands, my palms are surprisingly small and this is a nice fit for me.

However, if Verizon had suddenly made some snide comment that I could not use the pearl, which is one of their recognized phones or that they “hadn’t heard that I got it off of craigslist” I would have been inclined to shoot fire out of my mouth at the rep because a phone carrier may carry my service, but I’m not required to keep the same phone I bought with the plan and, if I were, I’d go elsewhere. If I wanted to buy a pay by the minute phone to stick a Sim card in (for carriers that use them), I should be able to do so with a rep that cheerfully offers to help me because this is like any other business and a paying customer is a paying customer.

Have these people never heard about “giving ‘em the pickle?” Giving ‘em the pickle is a customer service technique which means going above and beyond the call of duty to gain and keep customers. It’s explained on the linked website, but the key is that if you can make your customers happy by giving them pickles for their sandwiches, why would you deny them something so small? T-mobile, you were still making money from this? Why would you deny this person something so small or encourage your reps to make others feel bad based on what they afford to get by? Hopefully, someone out there is rethinking this policy because it seems like losing customers over pre-paid cells is a silly policy.