News updates: world cup and green-purple coalition

Oh, hey, I should watch the news more. Apparently, while I wasn't watching, both of the teams england embarrassingly lost to (USA and Germany) were knocked of the world cup and the final is Netherlands-Spain. I'd assumed one of the regular winners would win, but congratulations to whichever become the new first time winners!

Also, the dutch parliament are officially talking about a green-purple coalition. (That is, including centre-right, centre-left, centre-secular and green/left parties, but excluding far left, far far right, and centre-christian.) But there are almost no other _possible_ coalitions left unnegotiated.

Glow-in-the-dark jingling prosthetic dog testicles

Today I was introduced to the idea of what may be, in a heated competition, THE weirdest idea I've ever heard to date: glow-in-the-dark jingling prosthetic dog testicles. Unfortunately, a quick google only produced other people talking about how weird it was, not a commercial website to confirm that the idea hadn't jumped straight from "drunken brainstorm" to "internet rumour" without passing through the intermediate stages of "commercial enterprise" and "IgNoble Prize".

(Prosthetic dog testicles, for dog shows, or just for aesthetics, are apparently well attested.)

OTOH, in a no-longer-surprising reality-outdoing-fantasy twist, I joked that it would be easier to do this with genetic engineering, and discovered that apparently this has already been tried with mosquitos:

1. splice standard glow-in-the-dark gene into mosquito male chromosome
2. use a laser to sterilise the testicles, release the mosquitos to displace natural males from the breeding population
3. profit!

Which just goes to show, step 2 in a plan is always important! :)