The Atlantic – Each year, half a million horseshoe crabs are captured and bled alive to create an unparalleled biomedical technology.

The thing about the blood that everyone notices first: It’s blue, baby blue.

The marvelous thing about horseshoe crab blood, though, isn’t the color. It’s a chemical found only in the amoebocytes of its blood cells that can detect mere traces of bacterial presence and trap them in inescapable clots.

“This gel immobilized the bacteria but did not kill them,” Bang wrote in the 1956 paper announcing the substance. “The gel or clot was stable and tough and remained so for several weeks at room temperature.”

If there is no bacterial contamination, then the coagulation does not occur, and the solution can be considered free of bacteria. It’s a simple, nearly instantaneous test that goes by the name of the LAL, or Limulus amebocyte lysate, test (after the species name of the crab, Limulus polyphemus).

Man I hope horseshoe crabs don’t watch Fox News. All of our bitching about how we are a socialist country now, how the government takes our hard earned money and redistributes it to the poor? That shit must sound kinda petty to a horseshoe crab. While Tea Party conservatives are railing about Obamaphones, somewhere there is a horseshoe crab screaming…

“Oh you and your money can fuck right off! You pricks are taking our blood. You know, the shit we need to keep our bodies alive? You are taking it from us and redistributing it among yourselves. You have no natural right to have bacteria free drugs. You didn’t EARN the amebocyte lysate that coagulated the contamination making your drugs safe to consume, you took it from us, without compensation!”

How about when we complain that immigrants are all sucking the country dry? How can we give social security benefits to people who just got here, and illegally I might add? Well the horseshoe crab probably doesn’t want to hear it.

“Just got here? Just got here!?!?! You pricks have only been around for a couple of hundred thousand years. We’ve been here for HALF A BILLION! Who are the real “immigrants” here? Yeah you’re getting sucked dry, meanwhile I cut my claw in the wild and sawdust comes out!”

So next time you’re thinking about how bad you have it because of a few taxes and social programs, try to imagine someone sucking the blood out of your body so they can use it for themselves. We’ve got it pretty good compared the real victims of socialist America… the horseshoe crabs.

Free the crabs! Free the crabs!

P.S. Totally kidding, I’d much rather have bacteria free drugs and bloodless horseshoe crabs than die of smallpox. Fuck horseshoe crabs, evolve will ya, you’ve only had 500,000 years.

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Twitter: Hippie - Insane Tony

CapeCodOnine.com – George Brennan – The Zoning Board of Appeals upheld a building permit for an aerial adventure park at Heritage Museums & Gardens.

The unanimous vote took neighbors by surprise; many of them had already cleared out of the meeting room.

“I really wish you had read the materials,” neighbor Judy Stainbrook said after the vote.

Board members said the neighbors failed to make their case, though alternate member David Schrader said he was “a little bothered by the issue of trust.”

But Chairman James Killion said Heritage officials had made the case that the zip lines and rope bridges would be part of an overall educational component.

I love the smell of zip lines in the morning, smells like… victory!

Unfortunately I have a sneaking suspicion we haven’t heard the last of The Fun Police on this one. It’s fairly obvious that their hatred of children runs as deep as a jagged canyon cutting through the cliffs of juvenile joy. They have made it clear that they will stop at nothing to keep the “riff raff” out of the neighborhood that they “pay a fortune” to live in.

The Fun Police will not go gently into that good night until they have convinced us all that zip lines are closely associated with gang activity. That adventure parks are havens for heroin dealers who will jump at the chance to leave the streets and set up shop next to an antique car collection and sprawling gardens.

The Fun Police may have lost this battle, but we must not relax for a moment. The war against this army is like Whack-A-Mole, when you beat one down, there are many more just waiting to pop up. So all of you, the silent majority of rational independent thinkers, have a beer or 17 tonight in victory, but do so knowing that the fight is not over, in fact… it has only just begun.

P.S. T-Minus 11 days until the release of a study linking zip lines to brain tumors.

P.P.S. Just the fact that the headline for this post even makes sense shows how ridiculous the fun police situation is on Cape Cod.

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WL – After hammering hard for weeks on 9th District Congressman William Keating’s performance in office, Republican challenger John Chapman has suddenly been put on the defensive – by a campaign video of his own.

The Chatham attorney’s web site has prominently featured a video in which Plymouth residents say they’re not sure who their congressman is. It’s part of Chapman’s claim that Keating, a two-term Democrat, has been what he calls “ineffective and invisible.”

Now his campaign has taken down the video and Chapman has apologized, after WATD-FM reporter Charles Matthewson told Chapman on the air Monday night that one of the residents interviewed is his stepson, who is disabled with an IQ of 65.

“He could not tell you who the president of the United States is,” Matthewson said, as he questioned Chapman and Keating during a live debate.

“I apologize because that certainly was not the intent of the ad,” Chapman replied.

On WATD Matthewson also said his stepson wasn’t capable of understanding a consent contract for the filming, so he was “disappointed” to see his stepson shown as a typical resident.

Chapman immediately apologized. “I wasn’t there with the filming, but I will tell you that I’m sorry to hear that, and it’s unfortunate,” he told Matthewson. “It was certainly not the intent of the ad to take advantage of anyone. It was meant to point out a sentiment that I had felt throughout the district.”

Total dick move by this reporter to purposely wait until he was on the air to blindside Chapman with this. No need to inject yourself into the story bro, and make no mistake about it, the only reason to handle the situation the way this guy did is to get headlines. Reporters jobs should be to make sure that Politicians stick to issues and don’t get wrapped up in bullshit that doesn’t matter, not to add flames to the fire. This was an honest mistake and should be a non issue politically.

That said, ANYONE who was involved in the making of this video should never work in that industry again. I’m talking camera man, producer, interviewer, production assistant, all of them, they should all be fired. How can you go through the process of interviewing him, having him consent, editing, and airing without noticing he is disabled and has an IQ of 65? Although in all fairness, they must have thought they hit the jackpot with him and been pretty excited, maybe that clouded their judgement.

“Who is your congressman?”

“I love lamp”

“Perfect, sign this and we’ll give you a cookie!”

Do you know what’s even worse than that though? The reporter totally exploiting his stepson. How about him throwing the poor bastard under the bus by saying he wouldn’t even know who the president is? Chill man, we get it, he’s slow, you don’t have to rub it in his face on the friggin’ radio. “LOOK AT HIM! HE’S AN IDIOT! LOOOOOOK AT HIM!!!!”

P.S. Please don’t comment telling me I’m siding with one party or the other, I never have and never will. I dislike democrats and republicans equally, and I only write about them when they do something stupid, which is ALL THE TIME.

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CapeCodOnline.com – Residents addressed several articles at Monday’s special town meeting, but the vote that may be remembered most makes Provincetown the first town on Cape Cod to ban single-use plastic bags.

Falmouth has a similar article on its November special town meeting warrant.

The bags banned are the thin bags, those used by Stop & Shop, the only large grocery store in Provincetown. Thicker, higher-quality plastic bags are still allowed.

The ban, which goes into effect April 15, passed with no debate.

Editor’s note: The following post is from April 7th which is when we first heard about this ban possibly happening. It is just as true now as it was then, if not more…

I have a quick question. Did anyone think about what the hell we are all going to use in our bathroom wastebaskets if they ban the supermarket style plastic bag? Do they even sell plastic bags that size? The plastic bag/bathroom wastebasket relationship is so wonderful and symbiotic, do we really want to mess with it?

I have a feeling GLAD might be behind this legislature. I wouldn’t put it past them to hire lobbyists to get this law passed in towns across America just in time for them to launch their new Double Force Flex Super Drawstring Bathroom Wastebasket Bags. Oh look! We happened to have these ready for the shelves right when supermarket bags became illegal!

This could be the biggest scam on the people of this country since that time they convinced us all that we need to start going to the store to buy water in single serving bottles instead of having it delivered right to our faces from out of our walls.

P.S. Provincetown can kiss the post shopping, 17 bag per arm, one trip from car to kitchen counter with all the groceries technique goodbye as well. I don’t know about you but I think I’d trade a couple of choking sea turtles for not having to buy tiny bags for my bathroom AND making 12 trips to get the groceries in.

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For anyone who ever doubts how much cooler Cape Cod was back in the day. If it were 1979 we could all be in the parking lot of The Cape Cod Coliseum right now pre gaming for a Grateful Dead show.

Oh what I would give to go back in time and get down to this Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo/Franklin’s Tower without a worry in the world except for how good my porn mustache looks with my corduroy bell bottoms, I can almost smell the patchouli…

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Twitter: Hippie - Insane Tony