Do not try this at home! Browsing one of my favourite YouTube channels last night I stumbled across this interesting video. It's a documentary about a guy who has regularly injected himself with highly toxic snake venom for over 20 years. While it seems he's lucky to be alive, he claims that the venom has anti-aging and immunological properties, and gives him a burst of energy that lasts up to four days. He certainly doesn't look or act like a 46 year old, and claims he hasn't even had the flu for the last six or so years.
On initial viewing, it seems an incredibly stupid thing to do - handling the snakes the way he does is unbelievably dangerous (although he seems to know what he's doing) and injecting yourself with venom is even dumber - but I think it's very likely there is something to his claims. If ever there is a strong argument for urgent conservation, inventory, and research into biodiversity then this may be an excellent example of it; there are potentially hundreds of cures for major diseases to be found within nature. This is something impossible to put a dollar value on, and something we should be desperate not to lose. After all, these potentially useful biomedical resources are the result of millions of years of evolution, and once gone, may be lost forever.
The YouTube channel the video is from is really good. It is called VICE, and they produce a huge number of short documentaries on a diverse range of topics, ranging from . Here's a link to their main page if you feel like checking them out - VICE.
Thursday, June 20, 2013
Sunday, June 16, 2013
Sigur Ros in New Orleans
One of my all time favourite bands, Sigur Rós, is coming all the way from Iceland to do a North American tour later this year and will be playing on October 3 in New Orleans. I bought my ticket to go see them today and am excited to finally see them live! They have tons of awesome material and lots of music videos, like the awesome one below for the song Dauðalogn off their 2012 album Valtari.
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