Transgenic Spider-Goats

Just imagine the scientific and commercial applications of this:

ON a farm in Wyoming, USA, goats are being milked for their spider webs.

And if that sounds bizarre, molecular biologist Randy Lewis claims that within two years, spider silk milked from goats could replace your body's tired or strained tendons and ligaments - maybe even bones.

Professor Lewis and his team at the University of Wyoming have successfully implanted the silk-making genes from a golden orb spider into a herd of goats and are now, finally, producing one of nature's strongest products in useable quantities.

Here's the longer video explanation:


Science has been lagging a bit in providing me with the self-driving cars and jet-packs I was promised in its fiction as a lad so I always get excited about surreal advances like this one. I can only hope that a genetically-modified, vodka-lactating cow is on the scientific horizon. Think of the steaks...

Smith On Not Making Superman

Anyone who knows me well knows that I am a big Kevin Smith fan, from the time that I first saw his self-financed, indie flick Clerks at my college's Memorial Student Center film series to laughing my ass off at the so incredibly over the top, inside joke laden Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. He's the original independent director that made it big in Hollywood and yet still never lost his call a spade a spade, everyman qualities.

Now many of you may not remember, or have probably never even heard, that he was attached to a Superman vehicle a while back. In this video he talks about the long and arduous journey he took through Hollywood executive groupthink hell to finally not remake Superman in the late-nineties. If you watch this make sure you watch it all the way to the end, you won't be disappointed. And if this is all true (I have no reason to believe that it isn't) I'm really glad that I do not work in that town:

I find it deeply disturbing that the people who are chiefly in charge of bringing some of the greatest comic book characters who have ever existed to life on the big screen are so woefully ignorant of even the most basic details and qualities of said characters. "Wait, who's Kal-El?" Jesus...

(via)

Spiders On Drugs

I have had it with these motherfuckin' arachnids, on this motherfuckin' plane! (if you haven't seen Snakes On A Plane, don't ask; and don't bother, it sucked snake ass):


(hat tip: Anonymous (PK), newly Californio2kX)