We got the Covid Dissipation Blues. We got Pooty dropping bombs on Ukraine with little tags which read, “From Russia With Love.” We got Republicans running senatorial candidates who went to school in Kansas. And if you don’t think that’s bad enough, the UN just named Finland the happiest country in the world for the fifth year in a row. FINLAND! Where it’s cold and dark and snows all the time. Where everybody is exactly the same and the populace drinks like pirates to forget they live in Finland (see photo above). Where every word in the language is required to have at least two umlauts, three double letters and at least four ‘k’s and is basically untranslatable. And if you want to leave Finland, which you certainly will, it’s more expensive to fly out of there than any place in Europe. Has a Miss Finland ever won the Miss Universe contest? No. Never? That’s right, never. Matter of fact, even the 2017 Miss Helsinki beauty contest was won by a Nigerian. And the Finns are happier than the rest of us. How bad is that?
Fortunately for you, The Flying Pie is all about good news. In case you haven’t been paying attention, Good News is still available with a little digging and our far-flung corps of reporters, none of them in Finland, is churning up cheery stories daily. Ones like these:
Ya Gotta Have Heart
Now, it’s a well-known fact that the leading cause of death in the civilized world is a broken heart. And no wonder with the multiple forms of abuse they suffer from sausage-eating breakfasters, professional gamblers and intransigent couch potatoes. If you’re lucky enough, you might make it down to Joe’s Cardiac Repair in time to get a new one when the inevitable happens, but alas, there are nowhere near enough replacement hearts to go around.
Into the breach steps a jolly group of scientists from Michigan State and Washington University of St. Louis who have successfully created a miniature human heart in their laboratories. Yep, a mini that beats and contracts just like a normal, full-size human heart. Using a novel imaging device called optical coherence topography (OCT), researchers were able to monitor the heart organoid as it transformed from a small clump of stem cells into a miniature functioning heart in a matter of days. OCT provides scientists with a three-dimensional behind-the-scenes view of an organoid as it grows, insight which may lead to new advances that would further the pursuit of artificial organ development.
The technology still needs to be fine-tuned but before long you, too, may be in line for a second heart. Just send three Cheerios boxtops and cash or check for $1,400,000 to HEART, Post Office Box 12740, East Lansing, Michigan 48825 and wait to hear from our cardiac team. This offer is null and void in Kansas and Finland.
Of Tented Men With Telescopes
Ever since we’ve been wee tads, learned astronomers have been quibbling about the state of the universe. It’s contracting---no, it’s expanding. It’s barely bigger than a breadbox---no, it’s almost as huge as Trump’s behind. All information that falls into black holes is destroyed (Steven Hawking). No, it most certainly is not, you cluck (Leonard Susskind). Leonard wins that one.
Science fiction lives off worm holes, which space travelers can access to jump from Earth to Proxima Centauri in the time it takes a nudist to launder his shorts. How can this be? What’s going on in those wormholes, anyway? A top Fuel NHRA dragster can only cover the strip in 3.7 seconds, thus an approximate speed of 330 miles per hour. Are you going to tell us those wormholes are faster than than Top Fuel dragsters? You must be nuts.
Astronomers tell you a lot of things. Then they put one of those Hubble telescopes out there and they take another look, giggle, put their hands to their mouths and squeak “never mind.” We give weathermen a hard time for having a kajillion dollars worth of equipment and often being wrong. But with meteorologists, the proof is in the pudding. With astronomers, there is no pudding. Who knows whether they’re right or wrong? And even if they are, it’s just “oopsie!”
They laughed when Filipp Romanov sat down to play astronomer. Filipp, 24, a homeless, unemployed native of Moscow who searches the skies as a hobby, came off the bench in February and promptly identified a previously undiscovered supernova in the distant (Shakeyour) Bootes Constellation. Turning up new phenomena is nothing new to Romanov, who has discovered 80 variable stars, 10 planetary nebula candidates, four pairs of binary stars and 8 maids-a-milking.
Maybe it’s time the lug wrenches at the prestigious Pulkovo Observatory took another look and called Filipp up from the minors. He’s ready. He’s hot. He can’t be stopped. And he’s tired of sleeping at the railway station.
Born Too Soon
We like Altos Labs, the quiet little engine that’s trying to pull a heavy train over the hill. Altos has this odd notion that it’s possible for humans to live much longer than they’re holding together these days and they’re spending the money to prove it. And now Altos-recruited Spanish scientist Juan Carlos Izpisua is telling us it may be possible tp prevent aging in humans within the next 20 years. Great. Born too soon again.
Izzie and his team of Nobel laureates are researching a process called cellular rejuvenation in the hopes that the process can be used to reverse illnesses and cell deterioration. They’ve already done it in mice, but you know how that goes. There’s many a slip ‘tween the cup and the lip, or so say the wise guys. Even so, the preliminary results have them beaming at Altos. “I am convinced that within two decades we will have the tools not only to treat symptoms, but also to predict, prevent and treat diseases and aging,” says Juan Carlos.
Izpisua feels it’s morally questionable to increase human lifespan without improving quality of life. “Our main goal,” he explains, “is to enable people to have a healthier life for a longer period of time. All the indications assert this is very possible.” Good news for Mr. McGillicuddy.
“Martha, I”m feeling a little spunkier these days. Let’s put some lights on that shuffleboard court.”
While You Sleep Tonight, The Toad Patrol Serves And Protects
Three cheers for the English, who have closed a stretch of road in London for more than a month to allow toads to cross in safety to ponds where they breed. A 400-meter section of Church Road in Ham, near Richmond, is blocked to motorists until the start of April so the creatures aren’t squished on their annual migration.
Local volunteers who constitute perhaps the only Toad Patrol extant man the barricades and guard the tiny amphibians during the critical days of exodus. The charity Froglife, which is responsible for organizing volunteers, claims the road is only one of many across Britain that take part in the eco-conscious project. Since the effort started years ago, not a single toad is known to have been obliterated. A typically British warning sign reads, “The road closure is intended to allow the toads to cross the carriageway unharmed and to eliminate the risk of accidents if drivers were to be distracted by the presence of these creatures in their path.”
Local resident Robert Brown says “It is a very British thing to do. None of the locals complain. The toads live here, don’t they, so it’s their right of way after all.” Yet another reason why there’ll always be an England.
Where Is Kato When You Really Need Him?
Oh-oh. Asian Giant Hornets, more commonly tagged with the shabby title “murder hornets", are on a rampage across parts of North America and Europe, threatening bee populations along with millions of pounds of crops. Honey bees, among the world’s most important pollinators and already threatened by various other factors, have little defense against the destructive marauders. But since this is Good News week, The Flying Pie has located a few cunning scientists with a plan to map the evildoers’ movements and end the invasion. Let’s hear a big whoop!, ladies and gentlemen.
Professor James Nieh at the University of California, San Diego, claims the major chemicals found in the hornet queen’s sex pheremone---and don’t ask how he knows---have been identified and include hexonic, octanoic and decanoic acids. Captured males’ brain activity and antennae were highly sensitive to the pheremone, as you can well imagine. Compounds found in the queen’s pheremone can easily be purchased and deployed in the field.
Nieh claims “The males are drawn to the odors of the females, which they typically mate with near their nests. In two field seasons, we were able to rapidly collect thousands of males. Because the traps are fairly inexpensive, I think they could be readily deployed across a large geographic range.”
How the Vespa mandarinia first came to this country remains a mystery, but they have been documented in Washington state and could quickly spread across Oregon and points East. If you see them comin’, better step aside; a lot of men didn’t and a lot of men cried.
Quick, Henry---the Flit!
Incident In Istanbul
“How did Constantinople get the works? That’s nobody’s business but the Turks.”---Nat Simon
We don’t hear much from Turkey these days but when we do, it’s interesting. Apparently, while noone’s been looking, those wily Turks went out and constructed Europe’s first large-scale biorefinery for turning algae into fuels on the shores of the Black Sea. Algae! Who knew?
The refinery, powered entirely by wind energy, will turn microalgae and macroalgae species into carbon-negative jet fuel, feedstocks, supplements and fertilizers. Wow! Next time you run out of gas in Daytona, cram a little bit of the stuff in your fuel tank and you’ll be home in no time.
You probably didn’t know this but algae absorbs CO2 as plants do, but far faster and in much greater amounts than woody plants like trees. Once processed into products, more of that carbon pulled from the atmosphere remains imprisoned than is released during production, hence it being carbon negative. The biorefinery can process 1200 tons of algae per year if somebody can find it.
Spokesmen for the refinery claim that the algae-produced jet fuel will power a flight leaving Istanbul by the end of this year. Hopefully, they’ll let us know which one.
Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport
Michigander Sara Greer is not known for flights of fancy. She doesn’t drink, ingest psychedelic mushrooms or try to hold her breath too long. Thus it was odd, indeed, for Sara to look out on her chummy Lapeer County driveway and see what looked a lot like a kangaroo. Kangaroos almost never visit Lapeer and when they do they always bring a gift basket.
“He was just hopping down the driveway,” said Sara. “Looked like he might be eating something, I don’t know what. I didn’t know what to do so I called 911. The woman on the line thought I was a bit dotty. She asks, ‘Ma’am, are you sure it’s a kangaroo?’ Well, I’m no genius, but I think I know what a kangaroo looks like, right? One’s not likely to mix one up with a giraffe or polar bear.”
The dispatcher reported the marsupial doings to Lapeer County Animal Control and an agent was able to soon find the owner. “Turns out the roo’s name is Douglas,” testifies Sara Greer. “He led the posse a merry chase through the cemetery before they cornered him at Mrs. McGinty’s crypt. But he’s back home now and all is well. Funny thing is, every time I go out my door now, I look for the lad. You never forget your first kangaroo.”
So we’ve heard.
Disa And Data
A team from the University of Geneva is investigating a key protein in flies and in mice which plays a protective role against Parkinson’s disease. Spanish scientists have published a convincing study which posits that people who live near a green space of at least 300 meters are at 16% lower risk from a stroke. Male dolphins boost their social lives by whistling to each other from a distance. The high-pitched sound alerts others they are present and looking to get up a game of quoits. The number of healthy years people live is increasing on average. From 1991 to 2011, men gained 4.6 good years and women improved 2.1. The ladies would have done better if they didn’t have to put up with the men. In several regions of the world including Europe, there are more acres of forest now than there have been in the past 100 years. And in Gainesville, Florida, a determined band of reunion promoters is gathering together over 1000 ancient hippies to listen to the old tunes and celebrate the fact they’re still around. What could be better news than that? Nope, you’re dead wrong---lottery winners have a nasty habit of blowing the money and jumping off tall buildings whereas Reunion people turn on, tune in and drop out. Figuratively speaking, of course.
That’s all, folks….
