Chocolate Each Day Makes Your Brain Younger

Scientists at Columbia University's Medical Center have just published a report that says eating or drinking a large amount of chocolate (yes, chocolate) can increase your brain's memory capability. The results were published in the journal Nature Neuroscience this past weekend. According to the study, one of the active ingredients in dark chocolate is group of antioxidants called flavanols, and flavanols given daily may give a typical 60-year-old the memory functions of a person twenty to thirty years younger.

A group of 37 volunteers from 50 to 69 years of age were split into two groups; one who drank a cocoa drink with a high dose of flavanols (900 milligrams) and the other the same drink but containing a low dose of just 10 mg.

Then the researchers did some brain imaging on all participants and measured the blood volume in a part of the brain that's age-sensitive and largely responsible for memory formation. According to Scott Small, professor of Columbia's department of neurology, the scientists found that typical 60-year-old participants who drank the high flavanol drinks had the memory of a typical 30- or 40- year old at the end of the study while the group that drank the low flavanol drinks showed no change at all.

The findings parallel those of a study at the University of Nottingham England in 2007 that reported eating chocolate helped sharpen up the mind and gave a short-term boost to cognitive skills. So, enjoy your daily dose of chocolate and you'll think you're a lot younger than you really are.

Google Exec Breaks World Skydiving Record

This is pretty strange. A 57-year-old executive at Google has broken a skydiving record by jumping out of a helium balloon and dropping 25 miles down to land (without breaking any bones) in New Mexico. In the process, Alan Eustace beat the world skydiving record and exceeded the speed of sound as well on his way down.

Mr. Eustace took off in his balloon Friday morning and jumped out from just about the top of the earth's stratosphere at an altitude of 135,890. According to reports, he didn't just get up there and decide to immediately jump, but hung around for half an hour or so admiring the scenery.

On his way down, he went faster than the speed of sound, reaching more than 800 miles per hour, creating a small sonic boom.

Over three years of preparation went into the jump. He wore a space suit specially designed by Paragon Space Development Corporation, a company dedicated to exploring the stratosphere above 100,000 feet.

The previous record was set by Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner who parachuted back in 2012 from a height of 128,000 feet.

Mr. Eustace also broke several other world records including the fastest vertical speed reached during freefall (822 mph) and total freefall distance of 123,414 feet, lasting four minutes and 27 seconds.

Wow, what a ride that must have been!

American's "Sex Toy" Sculpture Vandalized in Paris

There is an art fair going on in Paris at Place Vendome and one of the artists, Paul McCarthy, created a nice sculpture for the event. Paul, who lives and works out of Los Angeles, is rather infamous for creating ususually large objects, usually of a sexual nature, for display to the public. So, he created an 80-foot-tall inflatable sculpture that resembles, many say, a large green butt plug.

The sculpture seems to have caused a bit of controversy among Parisians who walk by. Within two days, the piece was deflated by vandals. McCarthy told the press that he didn't want his masterpiece to be repaired or replaced, that it was only intended as a joke in the first place.

Meanwhile, the French Minister of Culture called the vandalism, "an attack on the principle of artistic freedom," and the art fair said they'd fix the deflated sculpture as soon as it could. McCarthy also told a newspaper that he had been attacked by a man who told him that the sculpture didn't belong on the street.

McCarthy says his work, entitled "Tree," was an "abstract work" based on a joke about a sex toy and that it was also inspired by a Christmas tree.

The mayor of Paris, Ms. Anne Hidalgo, described the attack as "unacceptable," and she also denounced the attack on McCarthy. "Paris will not succumb to the threats of those who, by attacking an artist or a work, are attacking artistic freedom," she said. "Art has its place in our streets and nobody will be able to chase it away."

CDC Screws Up Again with Ebola Virus

This isn't weird, cool or even fun. It's downright awful.

What was it, last month when we read about the CDC transporting Anthrax around in Ziploc bags?

Then a week or two before that, they found some cardboard boxes in an old storage room near Washington that were supposed to have been stored by the CDC that contained some decades-old vials of smallpox packed away that everybody seems to have forgotten about. 

Then another time, the CDC apparently mishandled some Anthrax and had to give their employees tons of antibiotics because they figured they might be infected. Wait a go, guys!

Now it seems they've screwed up again. This time it's with Ebola. This poor guy from Liberia flies to Dallas with Ebola and nurses there treat him. One nurse then comes down with the virus and another is planning to fly out of Dallas and starts to feel sick, so she decides to call the CDC and ask them if it's OK to fly on a plane with dozens of other healthy people. 

What do they say? They tell her YES, it's just fine. Her temperature is only 99.5 degrees so go ahead, you're fine, and it's perfectly OK to take your trip.

This has got to be just about the biggest OOPS! you could possibly find in the annals of human history.

Now they've figured out, finally, that the nurse, Amber Vinson, also has the Ebola virus. Wow, what a coincidence! Of course, she's been isolated, and now they're running all over the place trying to locate all the other 260 or so passengers that were on the Frontier Airlines flights she was allowed to travel in back and forth from Dallas to Cleveland and back after she was told it was OK to fly by the infamous CDC.

Almost 5,000 people have died so far, most in West Africa, during this year's horrific Ebola outbreak. So far, cases in the U.S. and Europe have been limited. The disease was only identified back in 1976, and causes fever, diarrhea and vomiting. It only spreads through bodily contact, they think, but it's highly contagious.

The motto of the CDC (US Government Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) is ...

"Saving Lives, Protecting People, Reducing Health Costs"

Yeah, right.

New Model Tesla P85D goes 0-60 mph in 3.2 Seconds!

He's done it once more. Elon Musk, the inventor of PayPal, SpaceX, Solar City and Tesla, has now come out with another version of his highly rated P85 electric car called the P85D. Not satisfied with a zero to 60 time of a slowish 4.2 seconds? The new model adds a second motor and all-wheel drive, giving it 691 horsepower and a one-second faster 0-60 time of 3.2 seconds, which is pretty darn fast in anybody's book.

The new P85D looks almost exactly like the regular Model S but under the skin it's added a new motor that sits between the front wheels and with four wheel drive it'll be great for people in the northern climates where ice and snow wreak havoc on driving during the winter months.

Musk says the car is "nuts." And he seems to love it. "It's like taking off from a carrier deck," he says. And it will be even more efficient than the current Model S, going about 275 miles on a single charge thanks to a newly designed system that shifts power between the two motors so each one operates at peak efficiency.

Musk also noted at the unveiling of the new model that all Teslas now come with new safety technology that allows them to avoid danger automatically by practically driving themselves. Adaptive cruise control has been added along with the car's capability to understand speed limit signs ahead and stop itself if it determines there will be a crash. 

Musk also said the new cars will include a radar system that can see through snow and fog and spot pedestrians, traffic lights and signs. To top it all off, the cars will be able to park themselves in your garage.

All versions of the Model S will be available as D models. Prices for the Model S with a 60kWh battery will run from $71,070 to $75,070 for the two motor system. The Model S with an 85kWh battery will be priced from $81,070 to $85,070, and the top of the line Performance Model S will sell for between $105,570 to $120,170. Deliveries of the P85D should begin in December 2014 and all other models in February 2015.

1968 Moon Photo Shows 10 Mile Long Spacecraft

OK, hold onto your hats, my friends, there's a photo just released that's supposed to be from 1968 that was taken during a Lunar Orbiter mission to the moon that shows a spacecraft right in the middle of the Moon's crater Manlius. 

As if an alien spacecraft showing up in a moon photo isn't enough, they've measured it and concluded that it's ten miles long. Yes. That's 10 MILES long.

Most of the ship shows up quite well in the photo with the sun brightly illuminating almost all of it. Manlius is 20 miles wide and the ship takes up just about half of the crater, so that's how they figured it must be 10 miles in length.

The photo comes from a YouTube video released on October 4th. According to a blog post from UFO Sightings Daily on October 5th, the ship is a UFO that NASA was studying back then and was the actual target for some of the Apollo moon missions.

The video was taken by Lunar Orbiter III (frame 3073) sent back in 1967 to photograph potential landing sites for future Apollo missions.

For you non-believers, one possible explanation of the ship, er let's say "object" for you, is that it's an optical illusion because of a depression that occurs in the center of the crater. The "object's" contours, however, are outlined quite well by the sun's shadow where it meets the crater's rim, so it really is a spaceship, OK?

There's also a road up there. Yes. The Lunar Orbiter photo also shows even more evidence of something artificial there: a road that looks like it's about 60 miles long right there on the moon’s surface. The road is straight as an arrow and goes from one end to the other of the photo, suggesting that it's even longer than 60 miles.

Musk Plans Mars Colony by 2020 

He's at it again. The fearless inventor of Tesla and SpaceX now has his sights on Mars! It's the only way to save humanity from becoming extinct, says Elon Musk, and he wants to put his money behind his words by ferrying 100 travelers at a time to the red planet. By the end of the 21st Century, Musk says we can have a million people there, all waiting for Earth to extinguish itself either by its own stupidity or by some unknown calamity such as a wayward asteroid smashing into us or perhaps an alien attack.

We must colonize Mars or face extinction, says Musk. All we need to so is shuttle a few humans there at a time, and before you know it, there'll be a million people there, presumably all scurrying around in their electric Teslas that don't need air or gasoline to run around since the atmosphere on Mars is pretty much void of any breathable oxygen that internal combustion engines need to operate.

"Excluding organic growth, if you could take 100 people at a time, you would need 10,000 trips to get to a million people," Musk says in a recent interview with Ross Andersen at digital magazine Aeon. "But you would also need a lot of cargo to support those people," says Musk. "In fact, your cargo to person ratio is going to be quite high."

Musk further says in the interview that since there doesn't appear to be any noticeable life on any of the other planets we've examined, the days of humans continuing to populate the Earth are most likely quite numbered. Mars,  he says, could help mankind survive.

Earlier this year, Musk announced that SpaceX has made 'progress' toward establishing a small colony on Mars by 2020. He previously has said that the reason he created SpaceX in the first place was to develop the rocket technology to be able to eventually send travelers to Mars. The ticket for the one-way only trip is currently estimated to be around $500,000.

Half the World's Wildlife Has Vanished Since 1970

There's a new study out from the World Wildlife Fund that says humans have caused the population of wildlife around the world to decline over 50% between 1970 and 2010. It looks like not only have we screwed up all the oceans and the atmosphere with toxic fumes and pollution, we've killed off half the animals as well.

According to the group's Living Planet Report, the decline in wildlife population has been much greater than anyone ever anticipated. Totals for mammals, fish, reptiles and amphibians in the wild have dropped so much that less than half the wildlife that was living in the world when most of us were born is now gone.

Most of the decline has been due to human activity including climate change, habitat loss, over-fishing and other man-related factors. The study also found that humans consume resources equal to one-and-a-half times the earth's sustainable rate.

The scientists conducted research on 10,380 different populations from 3,038 species to develop the index which measures trends over a specific period of time. Of all the earth's continents, South America had the largest losses where the land-based wildlife population decreased by 83%.

Freshwater species suffered the most decline worldwide, with animals such as geese, ducks, fish, salamanders and frog populations dropped by 76%.

According to the report, there is a distinct possibility that there will be a critical "tipping point" in the not so distant future, for most wildlife species. This would be similar to the well-accepted possibility concerning global warming, where a self-sustaining loss of major ice sheets becomes inevitable and the oceans rise and devastate most major coastal cities.

Calling the report a "wakeup call," WWF Chief Scientist Jon Hockstra says he hopes the decline in wildlife species can be reversed, but that the problems we face today in our environment are far more serious than we have originally thought. "There is a lot of data in this report and it can seem very overwhelming and complex," he says. "What’s not complicated are the clear trends we’re seeing — 39 percent of terrestrial wildlife gone, 39 percent of marine wildlife gone, 76 percent of freshwater wildlife gone – all in the past 40 years."