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Carrie Dashow dropped a large dollop of lemon sorbet into a glass of Guinness, stirred, drank and proclaimed that it tasted like a "chocolate shake". Nearby, Yuka Yoneda tilted her head back as her boyfriend, Albert Yuen, drizzled Tabasco sauce onto her tongue. She swallowed and considered the flavor: "Doughnut glaze, hot doughnut glaze!" They were among 40 or so people who tasted under the influence of a small red berry called miracle fruit. The berry rewires the way the palate perceives sour flavors for an hour or so, rendering lemons as sweet as candy. The miracle fruit, Synsepalum dulcificum,...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — The evolution of human speech was far more complex than is implied by some recent attempts to link it to a specific gene, says Robert Berwick, professor of computational linguistics at MIT. Berwick will describe his ideas about language in a session at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science on Sunday, Feb. 17. The session is called “Mind of a Toolmaker,” and explores the use of evolutionary research in understanding human abilities. Some researchers in recent years have speculated that mutations in a gene called Foxp2 might have played a fundamental...

A human tongue has been served up in a hospital canteen's chicken risotto — and bosses reckon it was accidentally dropped into the food by a doctor.

A human tongue has been served up in a hospital canteen's chicken risotto — and bosses reckon it was accidentally dropped into the food by a doctor. Slovenian officials are investigating after a doctor complained about a strange piece of meat on his plate.

An Israeli woman has accidentally bit off part of her boyfriend's tongue during a heated French kiss. Nahariya Hospital said in a statement the man, injured while "passionately kissing his girlfriend", was discharged after an operation to reattach his tongue and advised to sip iced drinks and "avoid wet kisses" until the stitched wound healed.

Jammu, April 11: A jobless devotee was admitted to hospital after he cut off his tongue and offered it to Goddess Kali, police said on Wednesday. Doctors stitched the wound but said the man, identified as Suresh Kumar, 24, may not be able to speak again. The incident took place on Tuesday evening when Kumar visited a temple dedicated to Hindu goddess Kali on the outskirts of Jammu, the winter capital of Indian Kashmir. Inside the temple, he cut his tongue off with a knife and gave it to the priest to offer it to the deity. He was immediately...

A teacher was sacked in Italy yesterday after cutting a seven-year-old boy's tongue with a pair of scissors to silence him during a lesson.The unnamed 22-year-old substitute teacher was asked to keep control of the class at a school in Milan for a few minutes. She is alleged to have held a pair of scissors in front of Walid Dhaouadi, a Tunisian, and to have said: "Stick your tongue out so I can cut it. That way you will stop talking." Although she later claimed it was a "game" and allegedly asked the pupil not to tell his parents, the...

Southwestern Seminary’s theology dean, David Allen, doesn’t expect any surprises from faculty when he sends them a memo soon about a new trustee statement regarding the neo-charismatic practice of private prayer language. Prospective faculty members have been quizzed on the subject for years, Allen said. If a current faculty member practices “a private prayer language” as one trustee alleges five of them do, then the pertinent question becomes whether that view is advocated in the classroom. “I would not bring that professor in and say, ‘You cannot say that outside of class.’ I’m not going to restrict anyone in that...

Mother tongue may determine maths skills 17:55 27 June 2006 NewScientist.com news service Roxanne Khamsi The native language you speak may determine how your brain solves mathematical puzzles, according to a new study. Brain scans have revealed that Chinese speakers rely more on visual regions than English speakers when comparing numbers and doing sums. Our mother tongue may influence the way problem-solving circuits in our brains develop, suggest the researchers. But they add that different teaching methods across cultures, or genes, may also have primed the brains of Chinese and English speakers to solve equations differently. The findings may help...

Not quite geology, per se, but since glaciers make geology frequently (and slowly), I thought this striking sequence of shots was worthy of presentation. To go to the article about the collision, click the picture; there are links to high-resolution (250m) images of each of the images shown below.

(Note: Some images are graphic. Click 'More photos' to view a slideshow.) A Socastee resident is spreading a safety message after her dog lost part of his tongue in a paper-shredder accident. Sandy Clarke's boxer Cross lost "three or four chunks" of his tongue in late February when he stuck it into a shredder in her home office. "The dog was screaming," said Clarke, who ran out and yelled for her husband after Cross became entangled. "I woke my daughter up screaming. It was very traumatic." The incident lasted 10 to 15 minutes, with Cross finally being freed once the...

NEW YORK (AP) -- Mel Gibson will give audiences a preview of the ancient language spoken in his upcoming movie, "Apocalypto." During a brief appearance on the Academy Awards on Sunday, Gibson will speak Maya, the only language in the film. His last movie, "The Passion of the Christ," was performed in Latin and Aramaic. "I wanted to shake up the stale action-adventure genre," Gibson told Time for a story on the magazine's Web site. "So I think we almost had to come up with something utterly different like this." "Apocalypto" is set in pre-Columbian Mexico and is being shot...

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez (L) greets U.S activist Cindy Sheehan as he arrives at the meeting with World Social Forum Organizations in Caracas, Venezuela January 27, 2006. REUTERS/Jorge Silva

A cat in Dobson, N.C., is believed to be the only cat in the world with two tongues, according to a Local 6 News report. The cat, named Five Toes, was born with two tongues andfive toes on each paw. Owner Bill Whittington told a North Carolina TV stationthat he noticed the cat's second tongue in December.He said he yelled when he saw the tongues flicker. He also said people laugh when he tells them about the cat -- until they see the tongues. Whittington said Ripley's Believe It Or Not will feature Five Toes in its 2006 guide.

A gross creature which gobbles up a fish's tongue and then replaces it with its own body has been found in Britain for the first time. The bug - which has the scientific name cymothoa exigua - was discovered inside the mouth of a red snapper bought from a London fishmonger. The 3.5cm creature had grabbed onto the fish's tongue and slowly ate away at it until only a stub was left. It then latched onto the stub and became the fish's "replacement tongue". Creepy-crawlies Check your bug know-how in our insect quiz Enter Excited Scientists are very excited by...

Jacksonville, Florida - Police say a Jacksonville man woke-up Monday with a serious headache and a bullet lodged in his tongue. Police say 47-year-old Wendell Coleman walked 12 blocks to a hospital after waking up with a very bad headache. His lip was swollen, he appeared to have powder burns and he had trouble speaking. Doctors found a bullet in Coleman's tongue. Coleman told police that a woman stuck a gun barrel in his mouth during a dispute around 2:30 Monday morning. He told police that he heard the gun go off. Police say Coleman then went home to sleep....

DURBIN APOLOGIZES ON SENATE FLOOR FOR GUANTANAMO BAY ANALOGIES Tuesday, June 21, 2005 [WASHINGTON, DC] – U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) today made the following statement on the floor of the United States Senate: “More than most people, a Senator lives by his words, words are the coin of the realm in our profession. Occasionally words will fail us and occasionally we will fail words.” “On June 14, I took the floor of the Senate to speak about genuine heartfelt concerns about the treatment of prisoners and detainees at Guantanamo and other places. I raised legitimate concerns that others have...

Straight talk can often inspire public confidence and cool off the debate over emotional issues. But when the issue is illegal immigration, and the straight talk is a pithy directive, it can have the opposite effect. Case in point: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's remarks to newspaper publishers about how he would tackle the vexing issue of illegal immigration. "It's a federal issue," Schwarzenegger said. "And the only thing that I can say and add to this is really, close the borders. Close the borders in California and all across Mexico and in the United States." Close the borders. Thanks for the...

"Blue Tongue", a bullfighting equivalent to Mad Cow in Canada, has descended, out of the blue on Pamplona, home of the annual Bull Run. In what breeders lament is their worst crisis in a century, some 65 percent of Spain’s bull-breeding farms are affected by the blue tongue virus, which is transmitted by mosquitoes. Looks like Pamplona bulls won’t be standing let alone running by this July’s bull run. The new millennium seems to have ushered in the Century of the Rare Virus. Bypassing acres of swampland, the mosquito-borne West Nile disease showed up in, of all places, New York...

A St. Paul woman who bit off a piece of her boyfriend's tongue after an argument in June was sentenced Tuesday to 90 days in jail and ordered to undergo mental-health and chemical-dependency treatment.

We were watching a recording of Kerry's appearance on Letterman and actually found ourselves distracted by the constant flicking and probing of the senator's red yahzik. We eventually decided to take a few screenshots and post them up. Trying to take screenshots at first was like a game of whack-a-mole. But after a while there was a certain zen to it all -- we could feel when it was going to appear. We were busy. Ninety-four times it popped out! And that's not counting the rebound-wags, tooth-probes, lip-diggers, half-rollers, split-flips, or even any biting-curls! An animated gif would have been...

Ex-president Bill Clinton, who made famous the phrase, "it depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is," is being honored by The American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York City today for his "standard of correct utterance in the use of language." "He was selected because they admired how he was apparently always able to get up before an audience without notes and speak eloquently with full sentences that even had semicolons," the Academy's Virginia Dajani told the New York Sun. The academy last bestowed its "spoken language" award five years ago on former New York...

An Arborg cattle farmer made a horrific discovery Monday when he found the partially skinned carcass of one of his animals that was missing its tongue and apparently drained of its blood. "The whole thing has turned out to be more sinister than I thought," said Yvonne, a neighbour, who examined the mutilated animal. She asked not to have her last name used to protect her family. "What sort of weirdos have we got travelling in our neighbourhood?" Gordon, who would only allow The Sun to print his first name, said he discovered the carcass on his farm Monday afternoon....

The secret language of Chinese women Tongue devised by 'sworn sisters' came down through centuries Edward Cody, Washington Post Sunday, February 29, 2004 Pumei Village, Hunan Province, C -- Nowadays, it would be called empowering women. But back then, centuries ago, it was just a way for the sworn sisters of this rugged and tradition-laden Chinese countryside to share their hopes, their joys and their many sorrows. Only men learned to read and write Chinese, and bound feet and social strictures confined women to their husband's homes. So somehow -- scholars are unsure how, or exactly when -- the women...

Latest Piercing Rage: Tongue Splitting It's called tongue splitting and involves slicing the tongue right down the middle to create a forked look. Those who do it, call it body modification. Many others call it body mutilation. Either way, it's not for the squeamish. Why would anyone split his or her tongue? The Associated Press interviewed several people who did it, and there were three reasons typically cited: The shock value is enormous. Some actually find the experience spiritual. They just like the way it looks and feels. While tongue splitting is edging up in popularity, it's still relatively uncommon....

<p>The first thing you notice, talking on the phone with Shannon Larratt, is that he doesn't have a lisp.</p> <p>You thought he would, as his tongue has been split.</p> <p>Intentionally.</p> <p>By choice.</p> <p>Split.</p> <p>But the man who edits BMEzine online - that's BM as in body modification - says he's never known a splitter to develop a lisp. For that to happen, he says, the cut would have to be extreme.</p>

<p>NEW YORK — Britney Spears (search) and Christina Aguilera (search) aren't exactly in the same Mickey Mouse Club anymore.</p> <p>The pop stars, who both kissed Madonna (search) a few months ago during a performance at the MTV Video Music Awards, are now trading insults about each other's careers and personalities.</p>

A Russian teenager ended up with frostbite after turning to the freezer after burning her mouth on a hot drink. The 13-year-old girl had panicked after scalding her tongue while drinking tea. She opened the freezer and placed her tongue against the interior wall to cool it down. But her hot tongue quickly became stuck fast to the appliance. Because she was alone at her home in Severodvinsk, northwest Russia, she had to wait for her parents to return home to be rescued. She was still face down when they walked through the door some time later. Her frantic parents...

ALWAYS OUR BISHOPS An RCF Pastoral PREFACE The purpose of this pastoral message is to reach to parishioners who are trying to cope with discovery of incompetence, heresy or downright buffoonery on the part of their diocesan bishop. It urges parishioners to draw upon the reservoirs of faith, hope and love as they face uncharted futures and the humiliation of Clown Masses. It asks them to recognize that the Church offers enormous spiritual resources to strengthen and support them at this moment in their family's life and in the days to come. This message draws upon the Catechism of the...

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-briefs22.5jul22,1,5262609.story Cancer Patient Gets a New Tongue From Times Wire Reports Doctors have successfully transplanted a human tongue, Vienna's General Hospital announced.

VIENNA, Austria - Doctors in Vienna have carried out the first successful tongue transplant on a human being, the hospital where the surgery took place said Monday. An unidentified 42-year-old man suffering from a malignant tumor affecting his tongue and jaw underwent a 14-hour operation at Vienna's General Hospital on Saturday in which doctors removed the tumor and attached the new tongue, hospital spokeswoman Karin Fehringer said. The patient is in good condition, Fehringer said. No further details were immediately available, but the hospital said a medical team would provide more information Tuesday.

Lawmakers have been known to split hairs. Splitting tongues, they're not so crazy about. So David Miller, the state representative from Calumet City and a practicing dentist, is serious when he talks about recent legislation he's introduced. Miller, a Democrat, is sponsoring a bill that would all but ban what has become the latest craze in "body modification"--slicing the tongue in half to create a reptilian appearance. It's a practice akin to body piercings and tattoos. But detractors like Miller say it carries risks of infection and even death if not performed by licensed medical people and surgeons. That's why...

 Communion Posture - Denying Communion The egregious practice of denying Holy Communion to Catholics for the manner in which they receive it (kneeling, genuflecting, tongue etc.) continues in some places despite letters such as the following from the Holy See, prohibiting such denials and threatening canonical sanctions against priests who do so.  The following was published in the November/December 2002 issue of Notitiae, the journal of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. The bishop to whom it was addressed was not identified. Prot. n. 1322/02/L  Rome, 1 July 2002  Your Excellency, This Congregation for...

Posted on Mon, Jul. 22, 2002 Key to an ancient tongue Penn archaeologists have puzzled over the cuneiform writings for decades. At last, a Sumerian dictionary may be ready by 2004. By Faye Flam Inquirer Staff Writer Steve Tinney and Tonia Sharlach hold cuneiform tablets from the collection at Penn’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. The two Sumerologists are working on the 30-year dictionary project. The people known as Sumerians are credited with starting the first civilization and building the first settlements worthy of being called cities. They also invented writing, and then they wrote and wrote and wrote, filling...