My address is pretty much public knowledge now after all these tape rounds but I've PM'd you anyway.

heeeeeeeey (fonzie style)

hi fellow men

Aww, sick. You don't wipe yr fucking ass?!

Hello Jade. One hesitates to question your wisdom on such matters, but are you absolutely certain that my thirty five million three hundred and twenty three thousand two hundred and fifty - 35,323,250 - isn't just a teensy weensy iddy biddy little bit higher? :p



Cheers. I aim to please. On that note, there's a good one today:

Snake Eats Toxic Toad AND Steals its Poison

The Asian snake Rhabdophis tigrinus is one tough customer. Not only can it swallow toxic toads and live to tell. It also uses the toad’s poison for its own defense, new research shows.

And rather than deploying the toxin, the snake uses it as the biological equivalent of waving a busted gun.

Where other snakes simply tolerate toxins secreted by their prey, “this is the only snake that’s truly known to use dietary toxins in its own defense,” said Deborah Hutchinson of Dominion University, lead author of the study.

The finding came when Hutchinson's colleague Akira Mori noticed that R. tigrinus showed some odd differences in behavior: Snakes that lived on Japanese islands with a plentiful toad population [image] would arch their neck and display their toxic neck glands [image] when a predator loomed nearby, but those on toad-free islands usually fled.

That led Mori to suspect that the snakes took the toxin from the toads they ate for supper instead of manufacturing the toxin themselves.

Toads secrete the toxin from their skin as a thick, white, viscous fluid that Hutchinson described as bitter and painful to predators that come into contact with it. (Because it is a cardiotoxin, in large quantity it can even stop a predator’s heart.)

To test their hypothesis, the researchers collected both the "fight" snakes and the "flight" snakes from the islands in Japan. Analysis of the snakes' neck gland fluids revealed that snakes from toad-free islands lacked the toxic compounds. The team also found that the glands in all the snakes lacked the cell machinery needed for a toxin factory.

As a means of defense, the snake’s toxic glands are mostly all show—it doesn’t actually release the toxin. It only displays the glands.

Toxin-borrowing is common in invertebrates (Monarch butterflies takes up milkweed toxins, for example), but less so among vertebrates, Hutchinson said, though some frogs are known to take up toxins from ants and other insects they eat.

The researchers also experimented with snake hatchlings; when mothers lacked the toxins in their glands, so did their hatchlings.

“The hatchlings lacked these compounds—they only accumulated these toxins when they were fed toads,” Hutchinson told LiveScience.

Mother snakes that do eat the Japanese toads can pass the toxin along to their hatchlings through the egg yolk. In this way, mothers pass on a survival advantage to their young.

“That’s a way to arm their offspring right away,” Hutchinson said.

That is so cool! What I would give for toxic neck glands...

I feel so ill..

something you ate?

Could be.

remember,

eat fresh.

yeah.

sebastian- 35 million? oh snap, i feel dumb now. your comma threw me off there. i was excited, too.

danny- but remember, i never did the mix tape thing :) but i shall write another letter today and hopefully get it out next week. my aunt's pretty nosy (whom i'll be rooming with for a week since mom'll be on a cruise) but i think i can get around that.

what up, my token black friend?

today was a strange day.

yeah, mine was a little out there.

but that's normal, because i'm a strange guy.

You're back cdj! Hello, and hello to Jade too.

hey sebastian

hi seb,
guess you will have to wait a few more days to get rid of me :p

Where are you off to?

off to home, in about 50 min.

Im home from school today. Doctor's appointment at 1

Just a check up or is something wrong joel?

I get off at 5:00pm tonight, like most nights. But friday I get off at 1, and my friend and I are driving up to my friend's to jam and we're bringing everything we need to record, so I can possibly share them on the board soon

We had to turn the lights out today for 5 min to stop global warming...
It was pretty cool actually the whole street was dark.

Hmm, is it 7:55 over there? It's supposed to be at 6:55 europe + asia, and 7:55 for around here :p. I'm glad they're doing this though, I'm going to have to convince my parents to do it too since my stepdad's on the TV all day.

That's weird
I'm ok Rob. Just a sore throat. I got some anti-biotics

Our school is pretty much obsessed with the Algore thingy. I mean I care but all the fucking documentaries and Oprah episodes with gore we have to watch are killing me.

Danny is sick and he is sad. Poor Danny.

I am packing up all of this month's mixtapes right now. I thought I could get all my mailwork done tonight and I did. I even went out and bought some BRAND NEW envelopes. No cheap skating this month, no siree.

did anyone say skate?

Hello.

Hope you get better soon Danny.

I'm not completely convinced by some of these environmentalist issues. I can't help feeling that rather than invest so many billions in preventing climate change, we might be better advised trying to prepare for the inevitability of it. EVen if we slow it down (which, even by the envirinmentalists own figures, we can only do a little bit), places like Bangladesh are going to suffer, and there will be mass movement of people as a result. Have we done anything to prepare for it? Or are we just hoping that the millions of dislaced BAngladeshis will all go to countries like India and Pakistan, where we won't have to worry about them?

Huh?

We discussed these things in class and I suppose that's true but trying to prevent it a little bit wouldn't do no harm. By the way people aren't throwing away billions of dollars but are actually gaining more money by saving energy. Well that's what the "experts" said.

edited
excuse my german accent.

When I was a skater, it was The Stupids who were my skate band of choice:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dr43Qczr3oI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvo4ZMtrf1M

Check them out.

Did you skate with a long board or with one of those pre-historic fishlike decks.

It's not always true though. Take 'energy efficient' light bulbs; they might cost less to use, but they cost more to make, more to dispose of, and they contain mercury. But the environmentalists don't tell people that, and they get rather angry when they come across someone who knows about it. Fantastic.

Fuck global warming let's party!

I was old school, but twenty years ago that was new school, if you see what I mean. It was largely custom, and it was pretty rad, as we used to say.

Think of the good points; nice weather, vineyards all over the place, animal populations get to increase their range, more tourism for cold countries, and the number of deaths from the heat will be massively less than the current number of deaths due to cold.

I do worry about those poor polar bears though.

I'm more worried about venice than about polar bears :(