FVriday News Roundup -- Pee-Powered Generator, Breastfeeding Doll

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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Weird stugff on the internet new this morning:

1.) African girls’ pee-powered generator raises questions – A group of 14-year-old girls showed off a generator at a Science Fair in Lagos, Nigeria that runs off pee. Well, it runs off hydrogen extracted from urine, using a process devised by a chemical engineer at Ohio University for urea electrolysis. The problem is that the process ought to be a net energy drain, since your body has already been using up a lot of the energy from that hydrogen in the first place that resultred in the formation of all that urea. On the other hand, if the result is that you have electricty and you don’t have a big pool of urine dumped on the griound, it might be worth using up some energy. Think of it as a urine disposal system instead of an electricity-generating system, and you’re ahead in the deal. Good news – the project team is all-female, as was the Ohio University inventor. African girls’ pee-powered generator raises questions

2.) Breastfeeding baby doll: creepy or groundbreaking? – Berjuan Toys, a Spanish company of which I have never heard, have come up with a doll that makes sucking sounds when you hold it to the nipple-located appoliques on a special shirt girls are supposed to wear. This is either a charming imitation of motherhood or a really creepy toy idea, with all sorts of perverse possibilities. People seem to go to extremes one way or the other about this. http://news.yahoo.com/breastfeeding-baby-doll-creepy-groundbreaking-183301828.html

3.) World’s third-oldest well found – with two murder-victim bodies in it. An 8000 year old well was discovered in the Jezreel Valley in Israel, with the skeletons of two circa 20 year olds in it. They may hsve fallen in, or they may have been pushed. Apparently the bodies stopped the well from being used. Apparently saying it was murder makes for better headlines – it drew me in. The well is nicely finished at the top, and there are lots of other artifacts in it – blades, farm equipment, arrowheads, animal bones, indicating that people were extremely clumsy, or maybre that a condemned well made a great garbage dump. Ancient Murder Mystery? Stone Age Bodies Discovered in Well

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In case you (like me) thought you were either going crazy or having deja vu, don’t worry, you have heard of this before. The latest uproar is because the company is trying yet again to break into the US market after failing a year or so ago.

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I think it’s a measure of how deeply instilled anti-breastfeeding values are in our culture that even I, an actual militant breastfeeding advocate, take pause when I hear about this doll.

And then I shake my head and tell myself to get the fuck over it, and if there are dolls out there that make sucky noises when you shove a bottle in their mouth, and there are dolls out there that make poop noises and dolls out there that make crying noises and there are little kids of both genders who hold dolls to their chests to mimic breastfeeding, then why the hell shouldn’t there be a doll that makes nursing noises?

And the next thing I notice is that I can’t find anywhere online to actually purchase the doll, should I want to.