samhexum

DEAR ABBY: My brother lives in a different state, and every year he comes “home” for a week. I’m one of six siblings who live in the area, but “Jim” always stays with us. After the first time he stayed here he said, “I’ll just keep your key for next year.” I love my brother, but this means giving him my bedroom for a week or more. We have no other bedrooms, so I have to share with my husband and get no sleep. I’m in my 70s, and after a week with no sleep I feel awful. I have hinted to Jim about him staying with his son, but he says “no.” The other siblings don’t offer because he is so critical. Everything we do has to be his way. I really need to tell him he must stay elsewhere, but I can’t seem to find the right words. My siblings say just tell him. What should I do? — NEEDS MY SLEEP DEAR NEEDS SLEEP: Just tell him! Permit me to suggest a few phrases: “Jim, you will have to make other arrangements when you come to town because you can no longer stay with us. Going without sleep for a week while you use my bed is affecting my health, so please return our house key. We love you and would like to visit with you while you’re here, and we hope you understand.” Do not feel guilty for saying any of it because you have been more than generous to your brother. CHANGE THE @#!*ING LOCKS! Exactly, change the locks, and when he calls again, tell him there is no room at the inn. When people take advantage of other people, they are fully aware of what they are doing. Dear Abby: I have a friend I’ll call Rose who likes to brag about how cheap she is. Sometimes when we’re talking, she will interrupt me and ask, “How do you like my pants? I got them for a dollar at a yard sale.” Or she’ll say, “I got them for free.” Rose likes to draw attention to herself every time she wears something new by asking how I like it. Then she will tell me where she got it and how much it cost. I couldn’t be less interested, and I’m tired of hearing about her tacky, cheap clothes. We go to a water aerobics class together, and she will interrupt the class to ask how they like her “sexy” bathing suit. Abby, Rose is in her 70s and not sexy. I like her as a friend, but I am about ready to tell her to shut up! I don’t want to be mean. How can I get across that I don’t want to hear about her clothes? -- Tired of the Discount Fashion Show Dear Tired: If you say nothing, “Second Hand Rose” will continue her line of chatter. Try this: Say, “Rose, honey, you know how much I like you, but I wish you would stop talking about your wardrobe with me. You are interesting on so many other levels, and I’m just not into fashion.” Then cross your fingers and hope your friend gets the message. Next time she goes into her routine, play along, then when she tells you what the cost was tell her, "You overpaid," and walk away. Good answer!

Zookeepers say a group of chimpanzees used branches weakened by a storm to make a ladder and escape from their enclosure at the Belfast Zoo. Video filmed Saturday by visitors to the Northern Ireland zoo showed several primates scaling a wall and perching atop it, with one walking down a path outside the enclosure. Zookeeper Alyn Cairns said trees in the chimps’ enclosure had been weakened by recent storms, allowing the animals to break them and fashion a ladder to escape. He told the BBC “they’re intelligent primates and know they’re not supposed to be out of their enclosure, so got back in themselves.” Two weeks ago a rare red panda escaped from the same zoo when its electric fences failed. The animal was recaptured in the driveway of a nearby house. https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=144807343196389

A remote Russian region has declared a state of emergency over the appearance of dozens of polar bears in its human settlements, local officials say. Authorities in the Novaya Zemlya islands, home to a few thousand people, said there were cases of bears attacking people and entering residential and public buildings. Polar bears are affected by climate change and are increasingly forced on to land to look for food. Russia classes them as endangered. Hunting the bears is banned, and the federal environment agency has refused to issue licences to shoot them. The bears had lost their fear of police patrols and signals used to warn them off, meaning that more drastic measures were needed, officials said. They say that if other means to scare off the bears fail a cull could be the only answer. The archipelago's main settlement, Belushya Guba, has reported a total of 52 bears in its vicinity, with between six and 10 constantly on its territory. Local administration head Vigansha Musin said more than five bears were on the territory of the local military garrison, where air and air defence forces are based. "I've been on Novaya Zemlya since 1983," he said in an official press release. "There's never been such a mass invasion of polar bears." His deputy said normal life was being disrupted by the threat. "People are scared, afraid to leave their homes, their daily routines are being broken, and parents are unwilling to let their children go to school or kindergarten," the deputy head of the local administration, Alexander Minayev, said. With Arctic sea ice diminishing as a result of climate change, polar bears are forced to change their hunting habits and spend more time on land looking for food - which potentially puts them in conflict with humans. In 2016 five Russian scientists were besieged by polar bears for several weeks at a remote weather station on the island of Troynoy, east of Novaya Zemlya.

I thought INTO THE FOLD was the best episode of season 1.

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Reebok Russia may have taken the phrase “in your face” a little too far, insinuating oral sex in a recent ad. “Sit not on the needle of men’s approval — sit on men’s face,” states a slogan they posted alongside Russian feminist Zalina Marshenkulova — seen in a provocative crouching position. After some social media users decried the ad, Marshenkulova poked fun at them on Facebook,writing, “God, save Russia from me and from cunnilingus.” “We live in a world where advertising is a zone of chauvinism and in every second woman is used as bait,” she added. One Twitter user, @Ales13965094, accused the ad of displaying “sexist propaganda against men.” The ad was part of Reebok’s global “Be More Human” campaign, which the company says is intended to uplift women and features pop singer Ariana Grande, actress Gal Gadot and model Gigi Hadid. Along with Marshenkulova, European grappling champion Anzhelika Pilyaeva and MMA fighter Justyna Graczyk feature in the campaign. “I covered my nipples so that you don’t cut yourself,” reads the slogan next to Graczyk, who is clad in a sports bra and boxing gloves. Reebok Russia initially pulled all its controversial ads amid the backlash. “Reebok gave the floor to girls who have something to say and who are not shy about being themselves,” the company posted on Instagram. “Unfortunately, after the publication of some pictures, it became clear that part of the content cannot be published.” It later re-posted all of the ads except the one of Marshenkulova with the racy “face” message. Marketing director Alexander Golofast resigned over the ad, according to Russia’s TV Rain. “I’m just ashamed that I look so ridiculous,” he was quoted as saying.

Only if you've taken it so far as to train to be a mohel. /moil,ˈmō(h)el/ noun noun: mohel; plural noun: mohels; plural noun: mohelim; plural noun: mohalim a person who performs the Jewish rite of circumcision.

NOT roses on a Steinway! Angry buyers of Steinway pianos say they were duped by salespeople who told them the instruments would increase in value, though they actually plunge in price by 50 percent or more as soon as they leave the showroom floor, according to a report Saturday. Owners of the ultra-expensive instruments, which cost between $70,000 and $150,000 when new, said salespeople lied to them about what their pianos’ worth in the future, the Hatch Institutereported Saturday. Customers said they were shown charts of steadily rising prices for new models and were told that buying a Steinway made a better investment than Wall Street stock, the investigative journalism site said. One Steinway brochure, titled “Your Steinway Investment,” claims that “for more than a century and a half, every handmade Steinway has increased in value,” adding that their pianos were “an investment instrument unique in all the world.” But when owners tried to sell, they learned their Steinways were worth tens of thousands less than what they’d paid, even when the pianos were just months old or had never been played, the site reported. One customer never took home the piano she purchased for $78,000 in 2013 after she agreed to accept an inexpensive upright while paying down a layaway loan that pushed the total cost to $100,000. Kelly Kilrea made $68,000 in payments but when she could no longer afford them, she looked into selling the instrument, only to learn that she wouldn’t get more than about $33,000 from a used-piano dealer, which is what still owes Steinway. “I said, `Are you kidding me? How is that possible when it’s supposed to appreciate.’ It was in showroom condition.” The Steinway Gallery in Virginia, where she bought the piano and where it has remained all these years, then repossessed it. Kilrea is trying work out a deal to complete the sale, but she needs to borrow from a third party to pay off the loan. “They use the word investment,” said Ronen Segev, who owns Park Avenue Pianos, which buys and sells used Steinways. “Steinways go up in value. It’s part of the expectation. Then you look at the secondary market and you see what prices are. It really shocks people.” Company spokesman Anthony Gilroy conceded that Steinways “go down in value significantly right off the bat.” He said claims by salespeople that the pianos increase was “a very rare occurrence.” As for the brochure making that statement, he said he “pulled it months ago from the website.” But Hatch found it was still widely in use. Steinway, a central part of Astoria since 1870, when founder William Steinway set up shop there, is one of the few manufacturing plants still in New York. All new Steinways sold in the U.S. are made at the company’s headquarters. The firm, which also once owned a palatial Victorian mansion with turrets and a tower a block away, is now being shopped by its owner, hedge fund billionaire John Paulson, who is asking $1 billion. He bought it for $513 million in 2013.

Angry buyers of Steinway pianos say they were duped by salespeople who told them the instruments would increase in value, though they actually plunge in price by 50 percent or more as soon as they leave the showroom floor, according to a report Saturday. Owners of the ultra-expensive instruments, which cost between $70,000 and $150,000 when new, said salespeople lied to them about what their pianos’ worth in the future, the Hatch Institutereported Saturday. Customers said they were shown charts of steadily rising prices for new models and were told that buying a Steinway made a better investment than Wall Street stock, the investigative journalism site said. One Steinway brochure, titled “Your Steinway Investment,” claims that “for more than a century and a half, every handmade Steinway has increased in value,” adding that their pianos were “an investment instrument unique in all the world.” But when owners tried to sell, they learned their Steinways were worth tens of thousands less than what they’d paid, even when the pianos were just months old or had never been played, the site reported. One customer never took home the piano she purchased for $78,000 in 2013 after she agreed to accept an inexpensive upright while paying down a layaway loan that pushed the total cost to $100,000. Kelly Kilrea made $68,000 in payments but when she could no longer afford them, she looked into selling the instrument, only to learn that she wouldn’t get more than about $33,000 from a used-piano dealer, which is what still owes Steinway. “I said, `Are you kidding me? How is that possible when it’s supposed to appreciate.’ It was in showroom condition.” The Steinway Gallery in Virginia, where she bought the piano and where it has remained all these years, then repossessed it. Kilrea is trying work out a deal to complete the sale, but she needs to borrow from a third party to pay off the loan. “They use the word investment,” said Ronen Segev, who owns Park Avenue Pianos, which buys and sells used Steinways. “Steinways go up in value. It’s part of the expectation. Then you look at the secondary market and you see what prices are. It really shocks people.” Company spokesman Anthony Gilroy conceded that Steinways “go down in value significantly right off the bat.” He said claims by salespeople that the pianos increase was “a very rare occurrence.” As for the brochure making that statement, he said he “pulled it months ago from the website.” But Hatch found it was still widely in use. Steinway, a central part of Astoria since 1870, when founder William Steinway set up shop there, is one of the few manufacturing plants still in New York. All new Steinways sold in the U.S. are made at the company’s headquarters. The firm, which also once owned a palatial Victorian mansion with turrets and a tower a block away, is now being shopped by its owner, hedge fund billionaire John Paulson, who is asking $1 billion. He bought it for $513 million in 2013.

'50 Shades Of Maple Glen': Pennsylvania Home For Sale Comes Complete With 'Private Adult Sexual Oasis' This is the $750,000 home recently listed for sale on Redfin located at 1612 Norristown Road in Maple Glen, Pennsylvania (15 miles outside Philadelphia) that comes complete with 5 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, a gourmet kitchen, billiard room, exercise room, 3 fireplaces, and, oh yeah, an adult kink room in the basement that includes : Full finished walk-out basement w bilco doors, includes a gym or 5th bedroom and also is a private adult sexual oasis. It can be converted back to a typical suburban basement. Home currently is being offered as an Air B & B rental @maisonxs that gets $750 a night on weekdays & $2000 a night on the weekends for private parties or entertainment.

On Dec. 20, a jittery Wendy Williams appeared on her daytime TV talk show, slurring and repeating words. Later that day, she apologized on Instagram,blaming pain medication for a fractured shoulder and Graves’ disease for her “less than stellar” performance. She promised a “better Wendy in 2019.” She hasn’t been seen on-air since. Sources close to the host tell The Post that Williams has been acting erratically at work for the last few years — with behavior worsening in recent months. A frequent guest told The Post that, while on the show last year, “Producers . . . told me, ‘You carry the segment’ ” — implying that Wendy couldn’t do so on her own. Williams was “a little out of sorts,” said the frequent guest. Last week, Radar Online published photos of the host in South Florida. Her team says, she’s in long-term hospitalization for a fractured shoulder and complications from Graves’ disease, an autoimmune disorder that affects the thyroid. But sources say that the queen of spilling tea has been hiding pitchers’ worth of her own secrets for more than a decade — including emotional and, in the past, even physical abuse by her husband and manager, Kevin Hunter. (A representative for Williams and Hunter declined to respond to requests for comment on the accounts from these sources.) Employees of Williams’ TV show have long worried about their boss and her unusual behavior, which they say began to increase around the 2014/2015 season. One former TV-show producer, who worked on the program at that time and later, said Thursdays were particularly worrisome. “On those days we would tape one show live, and then there’d be a break and we would tape another show to air on Friday,” the former TV producer said. “Sometimes [Wendy] would be in her dressing room, doing whatever she does between shows, and her behavior for the second show would seem erratic. It started happening more and more frequently . . . trailing off mid-sentence, not finishing her thoughts.” Added a longtime staffer: “There were times when you would be briefing her . . . and you would say, ‘What’s going on with her? She’s not present.’ ” Williams raised fans’ eyebrows when she fainted during a 2017 Halloween show, blaming it on dehydration and a hot Statue of Liberty costume. Last February, the host announced she was taking a three-week hiatus from the show due to her Graves’ disease and issues with hyperthyroidism. Not everyone is buying 54-year-old Williams’ excuses, however. The talk-show host has been candid about a decade-long cocaine addiction during her 20s and 30s. In July 2018, Williams told “Entertainment Tonight” that it’s a “miracle” she’s sober now. But demons still seemed to haunt her into her 40s and 50s. “Wendy does everything really hard,” said a former employee of Williams’ national radio show, “The Wendy Williams Experience,” which aired from 2002 to 2009. Referring to Williams’ radio days, the source said, “If she’s drinking, it’s bottles and bottles.” A former intern at “The Wendy Williams Experience” said part of his duties in 2008 included buying the host bottles of Champagne and wine, which he had to sneak into the studio with a corkscrew in his back pocket so that Hunter, 47, wouldn’t know his wife was drinking. According to sources from the radio show, Williams feared her husband’s wrath. “She would hide in the bathroom and tell me to knock on the door when he left the office so she wouldn’t have to see him,” said the intern, who added that it was common for Hunter to pull Williams into a private room and for staff to hear them fighting. “You’d hear slaps or some type of tussling going on,” said the intern. The same source also recalls Hunter blowing up at a group of interns in 2008 for failing to successfully run an errand for him. “[Hunter] started screaming at all the interns and said, ‘Everybody’s fired, everybody go home,’ ” recalled the former intern, who had been promised a job at Williams’ television show. “I [went] to Wendy and I said, ‘Your husband just told me to go home,’ and she said, ‘Well, it is what it is.’ ” The intern said he was offered his job back the next day, but declined. Hunter’s temper, according to sources, could turn violent. One night, around 2007, an associate witnessed Hunter acting aggressively toward Williams at a nightclub. When the couple left the club, Hunter hit Williams in the back seat of the car, according to a former friend who was with them. The blow to Williams’ mouth was so severe, “there was blood everywhere.” When they got to a Midtown parking garage, “Hunter grabbed [Williams] and pulled her into the bathroom,” said the former friend. “The parking attendant called the police.” No charges were filed. Nicole Spence, who worked on “The Wendy Williams Experience” from 2004 to 2008, made allegations of abusive behavior by Hunter in a June 2008 lawsuit against him and Williams. The complaint claimed Hunter sexually harassed Spence and created a “hostile work environment,” and alleged that Spence witnessed Hunter physically assault his wife. “In one instance,” alleged the complaint, “Mr. Hunter stormed into the studio, demanded that other employees leave and openly physically abused Ms. Williams, pinning her against the wall with his hand around her neck, choking her while repeatedly pounding his fist into the wall directly by her head.” The case was apparently settled on Oct. 22, 2008. Spence did not respond to requests for comment. “They’re not your typical couple,” said the former radio employee. “They’re not a couple where you think there is love there. It’s very toxic.” Williams and Hunter met at a skating rink in 1994, married three years later and welcomed their son, Kevin Jr., in 2000. Hunter, who owned a beauty parlor before meeting Williams, became her manager and production partner. “He has no life without her. He didn’t even own a computer when I [worked] for him,” said the former radio employee. Hunter is known for showing up to work in a green Ferrari and wearing fur coats. Multiple sources say he smokes pot in his office at the “Wendy Williams Show” and both the longtime TV show staffer and the former TV producer said he sometimes walked the set with a bottle of tequila in hand. Despite having no previous TV experience, Hunter was made an executive producer of the show. He wasted no time letting the staff know who was in charge. “There was definitely a point when we were scared to go to work,” said a former talent employee at the TV show, who quit a few years ago, largely, the person said, due to Hunter’s verbal abuse. “The screaming got to be too much,” the ex-employee said. While no sources at the “Wendy Williams Show” report having witnessed any physical abuse by Hunter since the show started, former employees say he regularly humiliated Williams. “At one point she became vegan-esque,” said the former TV producer. “Kevin would berate her if she ate something that was not on their eating plan. He’d scream, ‘Don’t be a fat ass!’ “It’s a cycle of abuse,” the ex-producer continued. According to the former TV producer, Hunter tried to keep Williams from fostering close friendships. When she and a show wardrobe stylist developed a rapport, Williams took care to keep it secret, said the ex-TV producer. “Once they went to a designer’s showroom in Manhattan and the stylist drove Wendy back [home] to New Jersey. Wendy asked to be dropped off a block away so Kevin wouldn’t see that she was in the car with the stylist,” said the former TV producer — adding that Hunter eventually found out “and the stylist was let go from her position shortly after.” But Williams has kept the faith, brushing off rumors of Hunter’s alleged mistress, Sharina Hudson, on the air, stating in September 2017: “I stand by my guy.” On Monday’s show, guest host Nick Cannon shared that he had spoken to Williams and that “her, Kevin and Little Kevin . . . are all good. The passion is still there because that’s what you need in times like this.” For now, those close to Williams hope she gets the help she needs. “I don’t f–k with Kevin. I think he’s a terrible human being,” said Charlamagne Tha God, who was a close friend of Williams’ and co-hosted her radio show until he was fired in 2008. “I will just tell you that I hope Wendy Williams wakes up before one day she doesn’t wake up.”

Dear Abby: My wife and I have been married for 36 years and have five adult children. We have a loving, caring and mutually supportive relationship. We recently had dinner at a restaurant, and she became very flirty and familiar with our male server, who was one-third her age and a complete stranger. She complimented him on his handsome looks, his trim waistline and his smooth and reassuring speaking style. I thought she was out of line, and on the ride home, I told her so. She became defensive and angry and said she was only kidding around with him. What’s the best way to avoid this type of dust-up in the future? Jim in Maryland Dear Jim: What your wife did was inappropriate. Could she have had one pre-meal cocktail too many? Because her behavior made you uncomfortable, she owes you an apology. And if this sort of thing happens again, perhaps you should request a female server if possible. How was his ass? Or were his pants not tight enough to tell? If they WERE tight, was there a large bulge visible? (And if so, could this just be the culmination of 36 years of your wife feeling 'short-changed'?)

Because "Jared involved in shocking crime" would've led people to ask "What did Trump's romantic rival do now?"

'50 Shades Of Maple Glen': Pennsylvania Home For Sale Comes Complete With 'Private Adult Sexual Oasis' This is the $750,000 home recently listed for sale on Redfin located at 1612 Norristown Road in Maple Glen, Pennsylvania (15 miles outside Philadelphia) that comes complete with 5 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, a gourmet kitchen, billiard room, exercise room, 3 fireplaces, and, oh yeah, an adult kink room in the basement that includes : Full finished walk-out basement w bilco doors, includes a gym or 5th bedroom and also is a private adult sexual oasis. It can be converted back to a typical suburban basement. Home currently is being offered as an Air B & B rental @maisonxs that gets $750 a night on weekdays & $2000 a night on the weekends for private parties or entertainment.

For ten days, the London Zoo kept its newly arrived male Sumatran tiger Asim in a separate enclosure from Melati, the female tiger who was supposed to become his mate. Zoologists gave them time to get used to each other’s presence and smells, and waited for what they felt would be the right time to let them get together. On Friday, they put the two tigers into the same enclosure — and Asim killed Melati as shocked handlers tried in vain to intervene. It was a tragic end to hopes that the two would eventually breed as part of a Europe-wide tiger conservation program for the endangered Sumatran subspecies. “Everyone here at ZSL London Zoo is devastated by the loss of Melati and we are heartbroken by this turn of events,” the zoo said in a statement. It said the focus now is “caring for Asim as we get through this difficult event.” The zoo said its experts had been carefully monitoring the tigers’ reactions to each other since Asim arrived ten days ago and had seen “positive signs” that indicated the two should be put together. “Their introduction began as predicted, but quickly escalated into a more aggressive interaction,” the zoo said. Contingency plans called for handlers to use loud noises, flares and alarms to try to distract the tigers, but that didn’t work. They did manage to put Asim, 7, back in a separate paddock, but by that time Melati, 10, was already dead. Asim’s arrival at the zoo last week had been trumpeted in a press release showing him on the prowl and describing him as a “strapping Sumatran tiger.” The organization Tigers in Crisis says there are only estimated to be about 500 to 600 Sumatran tigers in the wild. Give your ex a dozen roaches this Valentines Day! The El Paso Zoo in El Paso, Texas, will name a cockroach after your ex and then feed it to meerkat live on camera at its “Quit Bugging me Event” on Feb. 14, the zoo announced this week. “What’s the perfect Valentine’s Day gift? Naming a cockroach after your ex, of course! Message us your ex’s name and we’ll name a cockroach after them! We’ll post names (First and last name initial!) starting February 11 here on Facebook! Watch on Facebook Live or on our website’s Meerkat webcam on Valentine’s Day at 2:15 pm to see them devour these little bugs!” the zoo wrote on its Facebook page on Monday. El Paso Zoo event coordinator, Sarah Borrego, told CBS News she hopes the event will get the local community involved. “The meerkats love to get cockroaches as a snack and what better way to celebrate Valentine’s Day than by feeding them a cockroach named after your ex!” Borrego joked.

Are you referring to the Puppy Bowl or the Kitten Bowl? http://images.performgroup.com/di/library/sporting_news/8b/d8/puppy-bowl020516-animalplanet-ftrjpg_s8jsfiznrgky12zw3wswdc5tr.jpg

Love is a strange thing. Everyone can come up with at least a brief list of things they find attractive in a mate, but sometimes we find ourselves drawn to people for totally unexplainable reasons. But the same isn’t necessarily true for other members of the animal kingdom, and butterflies, for example, seem to have streamlined things quite a bit. Authors of a new research paper published in PLOS took a close look at Colombian butterflies in order to get a better idea of how they choose who to reproduce with. What they found was that when it comes to the search for a mate, butterflies are really just looking for themselves. The scientists observed the courtship rituals of two common species of the same genus of butterfly. The two species have distinct wing patterns but can still mate with each other, creating a hybrid of the two species. However, such a thing is quite rare and now we know why. To determine how the two species interact in terms of mating, the researchers introduced male butterflies to females of both species. They then observed the interactions and scored them based on the amount of interest the males showed in each female. They also introduced hybrid butterflies to the mix to see which species they would be drawn to. What the team discovered was that the butterflies were usually drawn to the potential mates that looked the most like themselves. Whatever markings were present on the male butterflies, it’s those same markings that each individual male ended up being most attracted to. The researchers concluded that the area of the insects’ genome responsible for their own markings also seems to control their sexual preference. “It explains why hybrid butterflies are so rare—there is a strong genetic preference for similar partners which mostly stops inter-species breeding,” Richard Merrill, a co-author of the study, said in a statement. “This genetic structure promotes long-term evolution of new species by reducing intermixing with others.” We often presume that opposites attract, but butterflies clearly don’t feel the same way. Bees apparently have a grasp of basic math, including addition and subtraction, a new study has discovered. The study, published in Science Advances, reveals that bees have incredibly powerful brains for their size and suggests that more animals than we thought can do math. Scientists trained individual honeybees to recognize colors as plus or minus symbols — and armed with this knowledge, they went on to solve basic mathematical problems set by the scientists. The bees completed the tasks with a success rate of up to 75 percent. So what’s the point of this new discovery? Understanding how a tiny bee brain can do arithmetic could lead to better artificial intelligence (AI) systems, according to the Australian and French team. The study’s author, professor Adrian Dyer from RMIT University in Australia, said: “Our findings suggest that advanced numerical cognition may be found much more widely in nature among non-human animals than previously suspected. “If math doesn’t require a massive brain, there might also be new ways for us to incorporate interactions of both long-term rules and working memory into designs to improve rapid AI learning of new problems.” The 14 bees taking part in the study were trained to enter a Y-shaped maze consisting of a tunnel with two exits. At the entrance, the bees were shown various shapes — a square, diamond, circle or triangle — colored either yellow or blue. The number of elements — from one to five — was randomly altered throughout the trials. Each color represented a different mathematical operation — blue for “add one” and yellow for “subtract one.” Once inside the maze, the bees entered a “decision chamber” where they had to choose whether to take the left or right fork of the “Y.” More shapes presented at the mouth of each fork represented the correct and incorrect answer to the problem. If two blue shapes were displayed at the entrance, for instance, the “correct” arm of the “Y” was the one marked by three symbols. In this case, the bees had to work out that two plus one equals three. If the bees were initially greeted by two yellow shapes, it meant they had to fly into the arm marked by one symbol (the correct answer to the sum two minus one). Right answers were rewarded with a tasty drink of sugar water while making a mistake was “punished” with bitter quinine solution. Training took place over 100 trials, during which the bees made random choices until they learned how to crack the problem. It took up to seven hours for them to learn that blue meant “plus one” and yellow meant “minus one.” Each bee was then given four tests involving two addition and two subtraction operations. The bees chose the correct option between 60 percent and 75 percent of the time. They pointed out that solving even basic math problems required the mental ability to understand abstract rules and an efficient short-term working memory. “You need to be able to hold the rules around adding and subtracting in your long-term memory, while mentally manipulating a set of given numbers in your short-term memory,” said Dyer. Scientists report that a fish can pass a standard test of recognizing itself in a mirror — and they raise a question about what that means. Does this decades-old test, designed to show self-awareness in animals, really do that? Since the mirror test was introduced in 1970, scientists have found that relatively few animals can pass it. Most humans can by age 18 to 24 months and so can chimps and orangutans, says the test’s inventor, evolutionary psychologist Gordon Gallup Jr. of Albany College in New York. Outside of ape species, many researchers say there’s also good evidence for passing the test in bottlenose dolphins, Asian elephants and European magpies, although Gallup is skeptical of those results. The test exposes animals to a mirror and looks for reactions that indicate some recognition of themselves. For example, do the animals do unusual things to see if the image copies them? Do they appear to use the mirror to explore their own bodies? And if researchers mark an animal in a place the creature can observe only in the mirror, does the animal try to remove it? Passing the test suggests an animal can “become the object of its own attention,” and if it does, it should be able to use its own experience to infer what others know, want or intend to do, said Gallup, who did not participate in the fish study. The new paper released Thursday by PLOS Biology subjected up to 10 fish to various parts of the test. Alex Jordan, who’s at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Konstanz, Germany, and colleagues observed a reef-dwelling species called the cleaner wrasse doing odd behaviors like swimming upside-down by the mirror. When four fish were injected with a tag that left a visible brown mark under their throats, three scraped that part of their bodies against a rock or the sandy bottom of the tank, as if trying to remove it. In all, the researchers concluded that the fish had passed the test. But Jordan says his fish could have succeeded without possessing true self-awareness. They may have matched the reflection to parts of their own bodies, but he said that less-sophisticated mental talent doesn’t require self-awareness, which includes talents like distinguishing their own bodies from those of other fish or recognizing their own territory or possessions. Nor does it imply self-consciousness, which means thinking about oneself and one’s own behavior in relation to how others act, he said in an email. Gallup said he believes the experimental procedure was flawed, so the fish can’t really be said to have passed the test. Frans de Waal, an expert on ape and monkey behavior at Emory University’s Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta, said he found the fish results to be inconclusive. In a journal commentary, de Waal also said it’s better to think of different animals having varying degrees of self-awareness, rather than considering it an all-or-nothing trait possessed by just a few species. “To explore self-awareness further we should stop looking at responses to the mirror as the litmus test” and turn to other means of evaluation, he said.

Why would you say that? I assure you, this situation has been reported by multiple news outlets... it happened; there was nothing fake about it. What a cynical point of view!

Schmitt came out to his co-workers tonight. BTW, the female doctor who says 'glasses' in the clip is the one he slept with soon after arriving at the hospital.

The Tribeca man who allegedly slit his mom’s throat and dumped her body in New Jersey told his girlfriend in a phone call that the 65-year-old woman “took a while to die,” court papers and sources alleged Thursday. Jared Eng, 22, described the suffering off his mother Paula Chin to Caitlyn O’Rourke, 21, in a speaker-phone conversation after he allegedly killed her in a fight over his dad’s will at their Vestry Street home in January, police sources said. Eng told O’Rourke — whom he had known from college at SUNY New Paltz — that after allegedly causing his mom’s agonizing death, he called in a female friend to help get rid of the body on Jan. 31, O’Rourke told homicide detectives, according to court documents. That friend, Jennifer Lopez, was also in on the phone call and allegedly told O’Rourke that she helped Eng stuff Chin’s body into a duffel bag, hoist it into the back of the victim’s SUV and stash the remains at Chin’s weekend home in Morristown, NJ, the papers show. Lopez, 18, said she scrubbed the blood-strewn Tribeca apartment after the killing — purportedly boasting that it was an easier part of the sick task than parking Chin’s 2004 Toyota Land Cruiser in a space in front of the building’s door. “It’s all clean,” said Lopez, according to the criminal complaint. “The hardest part was backing up the car.” But despite Lopez’s confidence in their clean-up job, investigators allege that she and Eng left behind a mountain of evidence. A surveillance camera across the street from Chin’s building caught Lopez getting into the Toyota around 12:50 a.m. on Jan. 31 — and a person hauling the bag out of the building and into the car’s trunk just after 2:30 a.m., the complaint said. And between the apartment and the back of the car, forensic investigators culled blood, duct tape, rubber gloves and a set of clothes belonging to Chin, according to the documents. Similar clues were found at the grim scene in Chin’s Morristown home, where O’Rourke allegedly joined Lopez and Eng on Feb. 1 to stuff the senior’s remains into a garbage can and do a load of laundry in the washing machine, the complaint said. In addition to Chin’s decomposing body, cops found more duct tape and at least one pair of bloody gloves, the documents show. Eng’s older brother, Brandon, reported their mom missing to the NYPD on Monday, and detectives found her remains the next day, sources told The Post. Eng, Lopez and O’Rourke were arrested Tuesday on charges of tampering with physical evidence and concealment of a human corpse. None have been charged in the murder, but pending the results of Chin’s autopsy, sources say prosecutors are expected to file more serious charges against Eng, who denied the crime as he was walked from a station house on Wednesday. Police sources said that it’s believed Eng flipped out and slashed his mom in an argument over an inheritance from his late father, Philip. Bill O’Rourke on Thursday stood by his college-student daughter and said he hasn’t talked to her in three days as she’s locked up in lieu of $50,000 bond or $25,000 cash bail. “She’s portrayed as being nasty and arrogant and ugly,” said the distraught dad outside the family’s Patterson, NY, home. “If you met her, you’d wish she was your daughter.”

Elderly women brawl as nursing home bingo game takes violent turn Two elderly Canadian women, who have not been identified, got into a row during a bingo game at their Rideau Lakes, Ontario, nursing home Tuesday. The alleged altercation occurred after a 79-year-old woman took an 86-year-old’s woman usual game seat, Constable Sandra Barr, spokesperson for the Leeds County detachment of the Ontario Provincial Police, told CBC. A physical altercation between the two women later involved other residents, escalating into a larger brawl, according to authorities. The seniors settled down after cops arrived and no charges were filed, police said. No one was injured in the melee.