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January 12, 2006

Fluorescent Glowin' Pigs

Scientists in Taiwan say they have bred three pigs that glow in the dark.
They claim that while other researchers have bred partly fluorescent pigs, theirs are the only pigs in the world which are green through and through.

The pigs are transgenic, created by adding genetic material from jellyfish into a normal pig embryo.

The researchers hope the pigs will boost the island's stem cell research, as well as helping with the study of human disease.

But the glowing has nothing to do with that. They just thought it "looked kinda freaky."

Fluorescent. Glowin'. Pigs.

Thanks to Dave and Hubris (whose blog address I can't seem to find on Google).

posted by Ace at 02:39 PM

Comments

Hubris retired, dude.

Posted by: TallDave on January 12, 2006 02:41 PM

Talk about Green Ham and Eggs.

Hmm...flourescent bacon.....aggggghgg

Posted by: Iblis on January 12, 2006 02:41 PM

I for one welcome our new luminescent porcine overlords.

Seriously though, don't you think Roger Waters is reading this right now and thinking "Hey, we could probably do ONE MORE tour"?

Posted by: Russ from Winterset on January 12, 2006 02:44 PM

New hotness: Glowsticks that poo.

Posted by: on January 12, 2006 02:50 PM

Wan't that green eggs and ham? Oh well, we now have the advantage of seeing all the NARAL girls in the dark. Why would I want that?

That a terrible thought.

Posted by: Ron LaCanne on January 12, 2006 02:50 PM

So, when the pigs are not just green and glowing but also winged and flying will that be proof the Singularity has arrived?

Posted by: TallDave on January 12, 2006 02:51 PM

that was the joke Ron...grumble....

Posted by: Iblis on January 12, 2006 02:53 PM

Don't worry, Iblis - we got it. But I'm really waiting for Spurwing's take on this.

Posted by: geoff on January 12, 2006 02:55 PM

Great, glow in the dark pigs. Meanwhile, we are subject to illegal wiretaps and our murderous bigoted troops are dying in an unjust war based on lies for oil.

Posted by: tubiknow on January 12, 2006 03:05 PM

Well, this just made certain nocturnal activities a whole lot easier.

Thanks, scientists!

Posted by: Bill Clinton on January 12, 2006 03:13 PM

Glow in the dark piggies i,ll bet the idiots at PETA will be whining about it they will claim they fed them on phosphorus

Posted by: spurwing plover on January 12, 2006 03:20 PM

geoff-ask and you shall receive.

Posted by: harrison on January 12, 2006 03:24 PM

And if you follow the link you'll learn that this story was reported by one Chris Hogg.

Posted by: BLS on January 12, 2006 03:35 PM

Absolutely fantastic.

Now I want to see some glowing squirrels that shoot laser beams from their eyes.

Posted by: Log Cabin on January 12, 2006 03:46 PM

It's a little known fact that Dick Cheney's junk glows in the dark. Christ, Lynn was bug-eyed when she saw that thing coming at her.

Posted by: CT on January 12, 2006 03:51 PM

I think these genes should be spliced into wild boars and little speedy pigs with cameras on their heads.

These should be deployed against the jihadis in Iraq and Afghanistan immediately. The captured video should be used as intelligence and sold on Google Video (with profits being fed back into the program).

Sooouuuuiiiiiieeeeee!!!

Posted by: IreneFingIrene on January 12, 2006 04:25 PM

I'm glad to see scientists hard at work at serious research that will better mankind.

Meanwhile, we have the nightlite for sleep and breakfast when we wake up!

Posted by: Rightwingsparkle on January 12, 2006 04:30 PM

I'm no Luddite, but that ain't right, man.

Posted by: sandy burger on January 12, 2006 05:36 PM

Glowing pigs?

I wanted some freakin sharks with freakin lasers on their heads!

Posted by: Dr. Evil on January 12, 2006 05:42 PM

Ya know, apply that to cattle, and you'll have a lot of farmers interested. Nothing more annoying than trying to find -- in the dark -- a herd that found a gap in the fence.

Posted by: Robert Crawford on January 12, 2006 05:44 PM

Ace,

Flourescent.Glowin'.Pigs.

!!!

Really, now that's something!

I'm not sure what, exactly.

But it's something, that's for sure.

...

Log Cabin and Dr. Evil,

LOL.

Really.

Posted by: MTT on January 12, 2006 06:01 PM

Someone's tax dollars at work!

Maybe these pigs will audition for "Pearls Before Swine"?

Posted by: Ron on January 12, 2006 08:22 PM

Pork: The other whi.. eh... green glowing meat.

Posted by: Xoxotl on January 12, 2006 09:29 PM

So this is where we get GREEN EGGS AND HAM from? i guess SAM I AM is working in a science lab

Posted by: spurwing plover on January 12, 2006 09:30 PM

If nuclear waste could have gotten me high, I'd glow in the dark today!

Posted by: Dennis on January 12, 2006 09:32 PM

Maybe we could send this things to Iran. They would make a great target identifier.

Posted by: olddawg on January 12, 2006 10:57 PM

I'd like to see a cage match between the glowing pigs and the Glue Sniffing Monkey Bandits.

(Found at Tim Blair)

Posted by: File Closer on January 13, 2006 09:50 AM

LOL Spurwing!

Posted by: Sue Dohnim on January 13, 2006 10:48 AM

It's been done with rabbits,also.Prety freaky seeing those long ears lighting upAnd Ace?M B-B is suffering from a serious Bo-tox deficiency.Twenty five years ago is not now.

Posted by: corwin on January 13, 2006 11:52 AM

Let me get this straight: they made Fluorescent. Glowin'. Pigs. for no good reason, just to prove that it could be done?

Why do I think that Jesse James or the Teutl family is behind this somehow?

Posted by: Russ from Winterset on January 13, 2006 07:09 PM

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What? Skeleton of the most famous Musketeer, D'Artagnan, possibly discovered in Dutch church closet.
Dumas picked four names of real musketeers out of a history book, D'Artagnan, Athos, Aramis, and Porthos. So there was an actual D'Artagnan, though he made most of the story up. (Or, you know, all of it.)*

Charles de Batz de Castelmore, known as d'Artagnan, the famous musketeer of Kings Louis XIII and Louis XIV, spent his life in the service of the French crown.
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A lot of Dumas's stories are based on bits of real history. The plot of the >Three Musketeers, about trying to recover lost diamonds from the queen's necklace, was cribbed from the then-almost-contemporaneous Affair of the Queen's Necklace. And the Man in the Iron Mask is based on real accounts of a prisoner forced to wear a mask (though I think it was a velvet mask).
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Fun fact: You know the beginning of A Fistful of Dollars where the local gunslingers make fun of Clint Eastwood's donkey and Eastwood demands they apologize to the donkey? That's lifted from The Three Musketeers. Rochefort mocks D'Artagnan's old, brokedown farm horse and D'Artagnan is incensed.

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The Hobbit Challenge: Read two more chapters. I didn't have much time. Bilbo got the ring.
I noticed a continuity problem. Maybe. Now, as of the time of The Hobbit, it was unknown that this magic ring was in fact a Ring of Power, and it was doubly unknown that it was the Ring of Power, the Master Ring that controlled the others.
But the narrator -- who we will learn in LOTR was none of than Bilbo himself, who wrote the book as "There and Back Again" -- says this about Gollum's ring:
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In another passage, the ring is identified as a "ring of power."
I don't know, I always thought there was a distinction between mere magic rings and the Rings of Power created by Sauron. But this suggests that Bilbo knew this was a ring of power created by Sauron.
Now I don't remember when Bilbo wrote the Hobbit. In the movie, he shows Frodo the book in Rivendell, and I guess he wrote it after he left the Shire. I guess he might have added in the part about the ring being a ring of power created by "the Master" after Gandalf appraised him of his research into the ring.
I never noticed this before. I know Tolkien re-wrote this chapter while he was writing LOTR to make the ring important from the start. And also to make Gollum more sinister and evil, and also to remove the part where Gollum actually offers Bilbo the ring as a "present" -- Bilbo had already found it on his own, but Gollum was wiling to give it away, which obviously is not something the rewritten Gollum would ever do.
But I had no memory of the ring being suggested to be The Ring so early in the tale.

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