I'm not kidding--get those recipes moving now!!!

And Barry--delete this piece of shit. I'm sorry I ever defended you (although mainly I was opposing two bozos who were spamming DKos about you).

The Naked Mole Rat

Typical individuals are 8–10 cm long and weigh 30–35 g. Queens are larger and may weigh well over 50 g, the largest reaching 80 g. They are well-adapted for their underground existence. Their eyes are just narrow slits, and consequently their eyesight is poor. However, they are highly adapted to moving underground, and can move backwards as fast as they move forwards. Their large, protruding teeth are used to dig. Their lips are sealed just behind their teeth while digging to avoid filling their mouths with soil. Their legs are thin and short. They have little hair (hence the common name) and wrinkled pink or yellowish skin.

The naked mole rat is well adapted for the limited availability of oxygen within the tunnels that are its habitat: its lungs are very small and its blood has a very strong affinity for oxygen, increasing the efficiency of oxygen uptake. It has a very low respiration and metabolic rate for an animal of its size, thus using oxygen minimally. In long periods of hunger, such as a drought, its metabolic rate can reduce by up to 25 percent.

The naked mole rat is unique among mammals in that it is virtually cold-blooded; it cannot regulate its body temperature at all and requires an environment with a specific constant temperature in order to survive.

The skin of naked mole rats lacks a key neurotransmitter called Substance P that is responsible in mammals for sending pain signals to the central nervous system. When naked mole rats are exposed to acid or capsaicin, they feel no pain. When injected with Substance P, however, the pain signaling works as it does in other mammals, but only with capsaicin and not with the acids. This is proposed to be adaptation to the animal living in high levels of carbon dioxide due to poorly ventilated living spaces, which would cause acid to build up in their body tissues

The naked mole rat is native to the drier parts of the tropical grasslands of East Africa, predominantly South Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia.

Clusters averaging 75-80 individuals live together in complex systems of burrows in arid African deserts. The tunnel systems built by naked mole rats can stretch up to two or three miles in cumulative length.

The naked mole rat is also of interest because it is extraordinarily long-lived for a rodent of its size. The secret of their longevity is debated, but is thought to be related to the fact that they can shut down their metabolism during hard times, and so prevent oxidative damage. Todd Karhu, an expert on the species, explains this by saying "They're living their life in pulses."

On the internet, you never know who you're talking to or what effects your words might have on that person. A woman named Lori Drew once told a suicidal 13 year old girl, "The world would be a better place without you." and that little girl went up upstairs and hung herself.

The diarist is obviously distraught over the words spoken to him saying that the world would be better off if he died. The diarist is right to be upset. I don't know the history of this diarist. I don't know what conversation went on before the diarist was told the world would be better off without him. But I do know that those kinds of comments should not be tolerated in this community, and when they happen, our support should shift to the victim -- not to a pile on contest against him.

Now he can't leave a tip jar and he looks like a troll who's too much of a chickenshit to leave one!  How unfair is that to Barry, who's just trying to keep us from voting for the guy who OTHER PEOPLE are going to dislike just because he's black.  Not Barry, oh no. OTHER PEOPLE.