All I Eat is Squid

Thurston Moore on Mike Watt

Another brilliant turn from Mr. Armisen…

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BBC NEWS

Intelligent ‘have better sperm’

Men of higher intelligence tend to produce better quality sperm, UK research suggests.

A team from the Institute of Psychiatry analysed data from former US soldiers who served during the Vietnam war era.

They found that those who performed better on intelligence tests tended to have more – and more mobile – sperm.

The study, which appears in the journal Intelligence, appears to support the idea that genes underlying intelligence may have other biological effects too.

Therefore, if tiny mutations impair intelligence, they might also harm other characteristics, such as sperm quality.

Conversely, people with robust genes might be blessed with a biological “fitness factor” making them fit, healthy and smart.

Previously, scientists tended to assume that lifestyle factors were more likely to underlie any relationship between intelligence and health.

For instance, brighter people may be less likely to smoke, and more likely to take exercise, both of which are known to impact on mental performance.

Different characteristics

The latest study tested the gene theory by taking two characteristics that seemed unlikely to be associated with each other – intelligence and sperm quality.

They found a small, but statistically significant link, and were able to show that this could not be explained by unhealthy habits, such as smoking or drinking alcohol.

The study was based on 425 men who undertook several intelligence tests and provided semen samples.

The researchers found that independently of age and lifestyle, intelligence was correlated with all three measures of sperm quality – numbers, concentration, and ability to move.

Lead researcher Dr Rosalind Arden said: “This does not mean that men who prefer Play-Doh to Plato always have poor sperm: the relationship we found was marginal.

“But our results do support the theoretically important ‘fitness factor’ idea.

“We look forward to seeing if the results can be replicated in other data sets, with other measures of intelligence and other measures of physical health that are also strongly related to evolutionary fitness.”

Dr Allan Pacey is an expert in fertility at the University of Sheffield.

He said: “The fact that it’s possible to detect a statistical relationship between intelligence and semen quality in adult men probably says more about the co-development of brain and testicles when the man was in his mother’s womb, and therefore how well they both function in adult life, rather than suggesting that playing Sudoku can somehow stimulate more sperm to be produced.

“The improvement in semen quality with intelligence observed in this paper is small and therefore it is unlikely to have a big impact on the ability of men of different intelligences to conceive.”

The semen samples were collected in 1985 by the US Centers for Disease Control as part of a large-scale study into the health of US soldiers who served during the Vietnam Era. Some of the men in the sample had served in Vietnam, some had served in Germany, Korea and the USA.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/health/7767877.stm

Published: 2008/12/05 16:37:57 GMT

Technorati Tags: Sperm, Men’s Health, BBC, Science, Sex

LOS ANGELES (AP) – Beverly Garland, the B-movie actress who starred in 1950s’ cult hits like “Swamp Women” and “Not of This Earth” and who went on to play Fred MacMurray’s TV wife on “My Three Sons,” has died. She was 82.

Garland died Friday at her Hollywood Hills home after a lengthy illness, her son-in-law Packy Smith told the Los Angeles Times.

Garland made her film debut in the 1950 noir classic “D.O.A.,” launching a 50-year career that included 40 movies and dozens of television shows.

She gained cult status for playing gutsy women in low-budget exploitation films such as “The Alligator People” and a number of Roger Corman movies including “Gunslinger,””It Conquered the World” and “Naked Paradise.”

“I never considered myself very much of a passive kind of actress,” she said in a 1985 interview with Fangoria magazine. “I was never very comfortable in love scenes, never comfortable playing a sweet, lovable lady.”

Garland showed her comedic chops as Bing Crosby’s wife in the short-lived sitcom “The Bing Crosby Show” in the mid-’60s.

She went on to be cast in “My Three Sons” as the second wife of MacMurray’s widower Steve Douglas during the last three seasons of the popular series that aired from 1960 to 1972.

Her television credits also include “Remington Steele,””Scarecrow and Mrs. King,””Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman,””Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman” and “7th Heaven.”

Garland was born Beverly Fessenden in Santa Cruz, Calif., in 1926, and grew up in Glendale. She became Beverly Garland when she married actor Richard Garland. They were divorced in 1953 after less than four years of marriage.

In 1960, she married real estate developer Fillmore Crank, and the couple built a mission-style hotel in North Hollywood, now called Beverly Garland’s Holiday Inn. Garland, whose husband died in 1999, remained involved in running the North Hollywood hotel.

She was the honorary mayor of North Hollywood and served on the boards of the California Tourism Corp. and the Greater Los Angeles Visitors and Convention Bureau.

Technorati Tags: Beverly Garland, Fred MacMurray, My Three Sons,

With its heyday long past, the horse racing track in Inglewood might close amid dwindling crowds.

December 7, 2008

About 10 minutes before post time at the Hollywood Park racetrack this month, Paul Bélanger recalled how he first fell for horse racing about 30 years ago.

Fascinated by the “numbers puzzle,” he would sort through each horse’s performance statistics, pick his favorites and place his bets.

“Unfortunately, I won a lot of money the first time I went to the track,” Bélanger joked. “The first time you pick a 10-to-1 shot, you’re never going” to forget that feeling, he said.

Decades later, the grandstands at Hollywood Park in Inglewood are seldom packed and there’s always ample parking. But Bélanger is among the few thousand who still enjoy a day at the races, even though the landmark track is in its waning days.

“Come on two!” Bélanger yelled from his seat at the bar, clenching the Daily Racing Form in his right hand as he watched the third race on a television. He had his money on Aitcho, a 3-year-old from Kentucky who was supposed to run well late in the race. He didn’t.

If Hollywood Park closes, the 50-year-old landscape designer from West Los Angeles said, he’ll have to place his bets at Santa Anita or Del Mar. But he vows to study and watch the horses as long as they are running.

The track’s days are numbered, with a commitment from the park to have races at least though summer 2009.

In 2005, Bay Meadows Land Co. bought Hollywood Park from the Churchill Downs owners. The new owners plan to demolish the park, once known as the “Track of the Lakes and Flowers” because of its six lakes, a waterfall and sprawling greens.

In its place, a mixed-use commercial development is envisioned, said Inglewood Councilman Daniel Tabor. The proposal includes 600,000 square feet of commercial space, up to 27 acres of parkland, a refurbished casino and about 4,000 homes.

Tabor said Bay Meadows is in the initial stages of planning and recently submitted its environmental impact report. The city has not yet approved the project. He said he knows the plans don’t sit well with the bettors, but the new development would be more profitable for its owners and help revitalize Inglewood.

“The reality is this,” Tabor said. “Horse racing in California doesn’t make money like it did when there wasn’t competition for entertainment dollars. . . . From a business standpoint, it’s clear that they need to do something with the land that will be profitable.”

Competition among card clubs, Indian casinos and Internet betting on horse races has contributed to dwindling crowds at racetracks, including Hollywood Park and Santa Anita. Going to the races is not the spectator event it once was.

The heyday of horse racing, however, brought glamour and large crowds to Inglewood.

Old black-and-white photographs hanging outside the Longshots bar show cars packed like sardines in the parking lots in 1940. Other photos are of celebrities, including author Erich Remarque in 1939 and actors Norma Shearer and George Raft.

“You saw families, you saw the movie stars out here. You used to have wealthy people mixing with poor people,” said Jeanne Noice, a bartender at the track who said she has been working there for 30 years and “been betting here for 50.”

Years ago, she said, it would not have been so easy to talk to her. There would have been too many customers at the bar, trying to squeeze in a drink between races.

The park first opened in 1938, and a grandstand and clubhouse fire closed the track in 1949. It reopened the next summer.

In 1951, the horse Citation became the first million-dollar earner in the nation after winning the Hollywood Gold Cup, according to the park’s website. In 1971, the track was one of the first to use the “exacta” in betting — meaning a winning bettor picks the first two winners in the correct order — and in 1973, the park began holding races on Sundays.

In 1977, Hollywood Park averaged more than $4 million in daily bets, the first track in the country to do so, and in May 1980, attendance at the park hit a new record, with 80,348 people in the crowd on a single day.

Mike Mooney, the track’s director of publicity, said the park is now averaging about 4,500 people a day. On Friday nights, when there are specials, attendance is closer to 6,300.

Tyson Gill, 31, a drug counselor from South Gate, is a regular and has been coming nearly every day for two years.

“You got houses all over the place,” Gill said, adding that he liked coming to Hollywood Park because it was close to home and he could bring his family. “I don’t think they should close it,” he said.

There are some informal movements to save the park, including the website “Save Hollywood Park,” which asks readers: “Do we want to be singing that familiar tune . . . ‘You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone?’ ”

Yet, the park mainly attracts older men. Noice said the young people seem to come only when there are special attractions or on nights when beers cost a dollar.

“How you doing, Paulie?” Noice asked Bélanger at the bar. She calls many of her customers by their first name, asks about their children and helps ponder bets.

“I need a winner, Jeanne,” another man said.

“Well, this is it,” she said. “We need the one horse.”

Bloomekatz is a Times staff writer.

ari.bloomekatz@latimes.com

Hollywood Park, Los Angeles, Horse Racing, Inglewood, Forum, Churchill Downs

Weather Report – Birdland

Filthy!

Wilco – Jesus, Etc. at Lollapalooza 2008

Nice one….

Back In The High Life Again

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