Is Chia Obama a tribute, satire or just really freakin’ weird?

What better way to mark our new president’s inauguration than to mush some plant seeds into a terra cotta bust that resembles him — sort of, but not really? Yes, thanks to the invisible hand of the market place we now have CHIA OBAMA. You can choose whether to mush those seeds into a Mr. Obama who looks either

HAPPY

or

DETERMINED

I want a version that shows the look on the president’s face when he finds out he’s tried to hire yet another rich white person who can’t figure out how to pay their taxes.

And if the Obama versions don’t sell — the company can always rebrand them as Chia Malcolm Gladwell:

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“Cows point north” not the oddest science story of the week

The winner is: Growing new ear hairs that can boost hearing

“Scientists have used gene therapy on mouse embryos to grow hair cells with the potential to reduce hearing loss in adult animals”

This is breakthrough news for those of us with hairy ears and lousy hearing. Now I’ll know when people say my unkempt ears look disgusting!

However the potential development of a bovine GPS is certainly my nominee for “Study Guaranteed to Win an Ig Nobel Prize.”

Somehow, cattle seem to know how to find north and south, say researchers who studied satellite photos of thousands of cows around the world. Most cattle that were grazing or resting tended to align their bodies in a north-south direction, a team of German and Czech researchers reports in Tuesday’s issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. And the finding held true regardless of what continent the cattle were on, according to the study led by Hynek Burda and Sabine Begall of the faculty of biology at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany.

Clearly we need to send three cattle into space and see if two of them still point north.

What with the recent advances in cattle miniaturization (NOT MAKING THIS UP), it seems quite possible that the big threat to TomTom could go Moo Moo.

Why do I think the people behind the cow study came up with the idea after a day of smoking pot and reading Gary Larson?

Chickens becoming threat to national security?

Two headlines from the always excellent Obscure Store & Reading Room:

• McDonald’s employees finally nab chicken that wouldn’t leave
• Road closed after pipe bomb found inside roaster chicken “The chicken had an improvised explosive device where the fowl’s innards should have been.”

Coincidence? I think not. Memo to self: Be more specific when ordering steak bomb at sandwich shop.

Image via mellow creme pets