Quit trying to kill me, virologists

Summer 2009 Fashion

http://www.sciam.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=frightening-brush-with-ebola----a-s-2009-04-03

I'm aware that shark preservationists and Dickinsian workhouses are not yet recognized as the major public health threats they'll turn out to be. However, if you want to be terrified out of your soon-to-be-melted mind about something that is really and truly trying to kill me/you, read the Hot Zone, or allow me to Cliff's Notes it for you below:

A while back, a disease called Ebola started appearing in random African villages and killing 90% of the population faster than you can say "telethon." You may be suffering from Ebola virus if you exhibit the following symptoms: your internal organs melting into a goo, followed by blood leaking out of all your orifices (including your pores!) Hearing rumors of the virus on late-night cable, some helpful white people in spacesuits came for a visit, checked out the scene, and took the Ebola home with them as a nice souvenir. And except for several incidents of secret contamination which scared the living shit out of everyone, there have been no incidents of secret contamination. The end.

But no worries, we now have expensive labs that, although they house the deadliest and most gruesome disease on the planet, are also equipped with the most modern, technologically advanced safety regulations that would never, ever, until three weeks ago, allow some virologist to just up and stab themselves in the arm with a contaminated needle. Seriously? Shouldn't you have been wearing some kind of needle-impenetrable gear or something? Were you sunbathing in there, Unnamed potential destroyer of the human race, who by the way remains unnamed because your fellow researchers, plus anyone who's ever gotten high and read The Hot Zone in 10 increasingly nightmarish hours, would want you incinerated immediately?

Accidental Self-Stabber Doe has apparently caught a lucky break, because 3 weeks later she has no symptoms of Ebola. This is either because she never contracted it, or because the untested vaccine she was injected with a few hours later counteracted the virus. Erring on the side of caution, everyone at the East German Final Solution Center has of course mandated that the virologist in question stay quarantined for at least another- THEY ALREADY RELEASED HER CAUSE SHE SEEMS OKAY??? Did they also send her on a lovely European tour vacation package as a "get well soon" present?? Seriously, they should let her take a few weeks off to recuperate and, you know, swing by every major city in the Western World. And please share your water with her, since hydration is an important component of staying healthy!

Well, as least the Scientific American article, which by the way is posted on a "60 Second Science Blog", since apparently the possibility of all human life on the planet being eradicated deserves one minute of attention, ends on a positive note. It points out that this kind of thing has happened before, in 2004, and look how many Apocolyptic events we had that year: zero. I will take this as a heartening sign that accidental Ebola contamination is just a fact of Ebola research that will continue to occur, and continue to probably not result in Apocolyptic events. Phew.

Quit trying to kill me, people who save money

American woman in perfect psychological health

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/24/science/24tier.html?ref=science
There are crazy people out there in the world. Some of them are schizophrenic, or sociopaths, or people with OCD, or people with OCD, or people with OCD. But no one can top the motherfuckers the nytimes recently unearthed in the name of public safety: people who can't stop not spending their money on crap.

As I need hardly point out, spending all your cash plus some other cash that AIG loaned you signifies to enemy combatants that you are an American with American values, ie. an inherent hatred for budgeting and soccer. But to some crazy people, living among us at this very moment, saving money is a growing, irresistable urge, an urge that can be attributed to nothing but: a psychological condition. Revel in the logic below:

The victims won’t evoke much sympathy — don’t expect any telethons — but their condition is real enough to merit a new label. Consumer psychologists call it hyperopia

Ah, yes. A term has been invented for it, therefore it is in no way completely made up. Sorry, did I say "invented"? The article goes on to explain that hyperopia is "the medical term for farsightedness." So by "new label," clearly they meant "label that already exists to describe a legitimate medical phenomenon and here is being used in a metaphorical and wholly unscientific manner." Got it.

Anyway, the reason these tragic victims suffering from "Farsighted Disease" are having so much trouble spending money like sane human beings is that they are trying to look at the trivial long-term benefits of holding onto a few bucks. You know, stupid shit like being able to send your kids to college eventually, or making sure your home isn't foreclosed on someday, or being able to bargain your way onto a Chinese Rescue Freighter when society collapses in like 6 months-ish.

In, "Oversaving: A Burden for our Times, " which I think might've been more appropriately titled "Oversaving: The Greatest Burden for our, or any Time," we learn that these are the kind of petty concerns you will one day regret as you lie dying,

When you’re on your deathbed, how much time will you spend wistfully thinking, “If only I’d bought the smaller plasma TV. . . .”?

Seriously, what a ridiculous thought. First of all, when I die, I certainly expect it to be on some sort of thatched flooring, since my bed will have been repossessed after my lifetime of glorious, worthwhile spending. Secondly, as I lie on my deathfloor, I will definitely be thinking "I'm so glad I bought a really huge plasma TV!"

Now someone please do the nation a favor and invent some kind of prescription pill, ideally an expensive one, to treat this terrible affliction. I don't want these people out roaming the streets, casually pretending to be Normal Brained, hoping no one notices that they are only window shopping.

Quit trying to kill me, First Lady guns

Michelle Obama threatens to crush a child

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/opinion/08dowd.html?_r=1&scp=8&sq=michelle%20obama&st=cse
Thank you, Maureen Dowd, for shining the light of truth and hysteria on yet another great threat to our nation: Michelle Obama's refusal to wear cardigans. I really thought you were reclaiming your throne as a muckraking journalist with the Arm Expose of the Century until you do that shamefaced back-pedal thing toward the end of your article and are all like "But I mean..... I'm cool with it."

Apparently, according to Maureen, there are quite a few Silly, Prudish Old People on The Hill who, unlike Captain Dowd of Team Cool, who is totally hip to this new "arm-baring" trend, are foaming-at-the-mouth enraged because Michelle keeps parading around sleeveless and distracting the shit out of everyone with her sick arm muscles. People are trying to legislate around here! It is taking way longer to bankrupt everyone than originally expected! At this rate there will still be people eating in restaurants at the end of the year! Restaurants!

Dowd's article begins with a promising thumb of the nose at the so-called "establishment" with a very informative and news-worthy introduction explaining that, even though Good Writers who write the Rules of Good Writing claim you should never ever start an article with a taxi scene, I'M MAUREEN DOWD AND I'M STARTING WITH TAXIS. Basically, she is the mavarick of American journalism and will go down in history for boldly embracing cliches when everyone else said that it was lazy. However, it's all downhill after that because Dowd, intimidated into silence by the huge and murderous biceps of Michelle Obama, just sort of wishy-washes around about how some other people she knew were totally appalled by Michelle and her J. Crew
whoredom.

In the taxi, when I asked David Brooks about her amazing arms, he indicated it was time for her to cover up. “She’s made her point,” he said. “Now she should put away Thunder and Lightning.”
I’d seen the plaint echoed elsewhere. “Someone should tell Michelle to mix up her wardrobe and cover up from time to time,” Sandra McElwaine wrote last week on The Daily Beast.

However, unlike 2 of Maureen's VIP BFFs (who have oh-so-clever nicknames for the Death Appendages, by the way), plus probably like basically everyone else in the entire DC metro area, who quite rightly have their High-waist White Cotton Hanes in a twist about the obscene First Lady Strip Show, Maureen wants us all to know:

Her arms, and her complete confidence in her skin, are a reminder that Americans can do anything if they put their minds to it.

These days it kind of seems like everything remotely Obama-related reminds the press about Americans being able to work and do stuff. Barack attempting to do his job? Inspiring. Sasha and Malia being children? Inspiring. Michelle having arms that connect to her body? Inspiring. I doubt Maureen Dowd is going to find those arms so commendable when they are crushing the Op-Ed staff of the nytimes for publishing another article called "Obama's Complete Failure to Reverse Time and Undo Eight Years of Stuff that Already Happened."

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I'm guessing that, because President Edgy initiated the Slightly Less Overpriced Clothing Revolution by shopping at stores important people nevah evah used to shop at, he and the missus can afford a few blazers. Put those sculpted arm-beasts on lock, Obams, before she demands more education funding.

Quit trying to kill me, fetal shark conservationists

Note to animals that hate going extinct: don't make this face.

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http://www.sciam.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=artificial-uterus-could-save-grey-n-2009-02-18
When Charles Darwin first published his theory of natural selection, public opinion was divided. At first, people were like "hey, so you're saying weaker things die, while stronger things pass on their traits to the generations that follow? Psh, seems kind of obvious." Then some other people got wind of it on perezhilton and were like, "I won't read or attempt to understand that paper but it is definitely wrong." Thus began a dispute that rages to this day between people who have taken high school biology, and people who dropped out of high school to study the biology of their second cousins.

However, whether you're an avid advocate of evolution education or a diehard disciple of divine design, we can all agree that, when a species can no longer hack it survival-wise, nature must take its course and allow some new, better species, like the Secretly Not a Ladybug or the chicken nugget, to take its place in the ecosystem. Now some bleeding heart conservationists, who apparently desire to have literal bleeding hearts, are fucking with the natural order of things by attempting to preserve the Grey Nurse Shark, otherwise known as the Craziest Motherfucking Shark. CMS is having slight population issues because, unlike all other unborn things ever, which concentrate on important shit such as Organ System Development, their delinquent embryos like to kill and eat each other prior to birth. It's basically Survivor: Shark Womb, except that basic cable would never show anything so horrific/entertaining.

Sound like a potential threat to humanity that will totally work itself out? Unfortunately, Deadly Animal Proliferation groups won't let sleeping sharks lie (and be killed minutes later by their siblings). Since the shark bebes refuse to give peace a chance, some dude whose resume presumably includes Executive Director of the Dennis Kucinich Presidential campaign and an internship at High Times, wants to spend a few million constructing artificial shark wombs where a sweet little homicidal shark fetus can grow huge and terrifyingly strong without fear of confrontation with anything as evil as itself. Now, I'm not saying Americans are known for making terrible, terrible investments that ultimately lead to the total collapse of the world economy, but does Project Love the Sharks sound like something that will end up paying off to anyone? Last I heard, there's no bailout package fix for 300 razor sharp teeth in your neckmeat.

Quit trying to kill me, Daylight Saving Time

Confused American, vulnerable to attack

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/10/health/10real.html?em
A few days ago, some friends of mine were discussing the origin of Daylight Saving Time, just after winning a Thick Glasses Competition and directly before penning a letter to the editor of Scientific American about poor grammar choices in the Energy Efficient Seed Distribution Methods article. Some quick googling revealed that DST (as it is termed by experts in the field of knowing what time it is) was first proposed by eminent nerd Benjamin Franklin. As wikipedia so eloquently puts it, Franklin was:

"A noted polymath...a leading author and printer, satirist, political theorist, politician, scientist, inventor, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat. "

I don't know what a "polymath" is, but from the rest of that sentence I'm going to infer that it means "person who needs a lot of goddamn attention plus maybe a nap and should probably calm the fuck down." I read the rest of/part of the rest of the article, and although I'm not a licensed historian yet, but I'm going to go ahead and try to provide a picture of the initial momentous Daylight Saving Time Invention:

BF: Hey! I think I just discovered electricity, using only a kite!
BF: Hey did you know I can play three instruments? Oh, also, I invented bifocals during lunch.
BF: Hey- over here! I just helped found a liberal democratic nation that will someday rise to become the world's only super power!
BF: Um, guys? I think I have another one of my great ideas, it's called Daylight-
Everyone else in the world: Shut the fuck up, Benjamin Franklin. We're not doing that.

So basically, Daylight Saving Time got put on the back burner for a couple hundred years because, seriously, we get it Ben. You're mad important. That doesn't mean the nation's clocks should revolve around some whackjob time travel madness you came up with on your last opium trip.

Following the Great American Shootdown of DST, everything was peachy for a while, until those World Wars happened. With the President distracted by Germany suddenly wanting to be Big Germany, he didn't have time to notice the traitorous introduction of DST, probably by the sneaky interred Japanese-Americans, or maybe the even sneakier non-interred Italian-Americans. Pretty soon the entire country had acquiesced to the demands of DST, winding their clocks forward and back haphazardly as though DeLoreans need not factor into the time travel equation, producing nationwide confusion, lethargy and crankiness. Unfortunately for Hitler and his Honey I Blew Up the Country plan, we still managed to invent nuclear weapons, which more or less counteracted the minus one hour of shut-eye. Good effort, though.

After the war, we were really busy getting crunk and celebrating how we blew up pretty much everyone in Japan, so we had to have the baby boom, and then hippies, and then Wall Street booms, and then a lot of Op Ed pieces about what it means to be the world's only important country and what are our responsibilities to the other, not important countries. So that brings us up to today, when we finally looked around and were like, dude. What's this Daylight Saving thing. I just lost an hour of sleep, and since I already lost my job, house, marriage, and sense of entitlement this week, I am really sensitive about losing shit right now. I mean, I don't know anyone who particularly liked the concept to begin with, but these days even the nytimes wants you to know DST is health hazardous. In their words:

Daylight saving time is associated with sleep disruptions and possibly more serious consequences.

Yeah, if that were an advertisement for Ambien or Valanoz or Somatron or Glazeymax, I'm pretty sure the FDA would slap them with an EXPLAIN YO' SIDE EFFECTS fine faster than you can say "erections lasting 4 hours or longer." Whatever these "more serious consequences" may be, I say we pre-emptively strike the shit out of them, as we Americans so enjoy doing, with a return to sanity, and to one hour ago. Although let's hold out until the weekend. I have a lot of seed distribution methods to try out this Friday night.

Quit trying to kill me, space rocks

DUDE. What part of "the astrophysicists are busy" do you not understand? Please put on a shirt.

http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/06/the-lure-of-rocks-from-outer-space/?ref=science
The New York Times' mission to publish an ever-increasing amount of tasty, delicious filler surged forward today, when our intrepid paper posed the timeless question: why are big rocks in the sky interesting? Exhibiting the kind of efficiency one might expect from an institution on the verge of selling budget advertising space to the New York Post, nyt contacted six astrophysicists, all of whom replied, in various verbose and sciency ways, "cause that shit's scary, man." One went on to elaborate, "Dude, have you seen Armageddon?" Thanks, astrophysicists, for destroying my illusion that the Smartest People in World are protecting us from malicious comet/asteroid attacks, and confirming my fear that you too, are mere Ben Affleck fans.

This bring us to the subject of today's QTTKM: Space Rocks. Now I know there is some kind of difference between asteroids and comets that is supposedly important, just like there is some kind of snout-shape dissimilarity between alligators and crocodiles. However. I am also convinced that, when said crocogator is snapping my ankles off with its all powerful Barrymore freakjaw, I am not going to be concerned with the species issue, nor whipping out my tape measure for snout shape verification. So I'm going to stick with Space Rocks, and all the astrophysicists who read this blog daily between their Pearl Harbor and Jersey Girl fixes can just suck it.

I first became aware of the Space Rocks' desire to kill me (and everyone else, I guess, but let's stay focused) at the tender age of something, when mom took me to the Planetarium to see a movie called "Hey Kids, Science is Fun, and Can Scare the Crap out of you too!" According to Mufasa the narrator, giant rocks are whirling about the universe like they own the place, blatantly refusing to settle into a fixed orbit, contribute productively to spaciety and grow the fuck up. Even worse, sometimes these teenage dirtbags of the solar system take their authority issues out on responsible Earth-type planets full of chocolates and ducks and bubbles and babies, killing EVERYTHING. Like, remember those dino monster dealies from Jurassic Park? Space Rocks wouldn't quit trying to kill them. Now they are dead.

After the Planetarium successfully terrorized me into lobbying my congressman for "more money in the sciences, please", I stayed away for a while, but was finally coerced into a return trip when mom got us tickets to the deceptively titled "Don't Worry, Only About Constellations!" However, as might not be expected from the title, Space Rocks made a pretty sizable cameo in Only About Constellations, because, as it turns out, that is where they hide. Riiiight in the constellations. And apparently there are a lot of those, as evidenced by Mufasa's repeated claims that "we can only monitor .00000000001 percent of the sky with our current lack of funding. Ahem."

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to contact my congressman about the Planetarium Moviemaking Bailout Package, and propose an Astrophysicist Netflix Ban clause.

Quit trying to kill me, commercial lovers

Everybody loves a break from these things

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/03/health/03mind.html?_r=1&ref=science
Everyone has a guilty pleasure- the occasional cigarette, reality TV shows starring the Future Handbag Designers of America, one of those new weird Dorito flavors that are called things like "Bodacious Brackenroot" and "Xtreme Cheese Beef"- that they don't necessarily advertise to the world. We may even do everything in our power to keep our smoking habits and radioactive chip consumption to ourselves. But could it be that, behind closed doors, all of us share one such pleasure in common? We've been too ashamed to admit it, but in our heart of hearts, isn't it a relief to finally come clean: we love commercials, and find our television viewing experience drastically enhanced by their presence?

It seems the nytimes found two whole research studies, conducted by the type of Dr. Venkman-esque pseudo-scientist who'd devote his life's work to the question "Aren't people just pretending to hate commercials?", that unequivically prove our undying, subconscious love for creative catchphrases like "Solid as a rock" and "I'm lovin it." (Sidenote: Seriously McDonalds? You're going to get us to choose you over other, similar products, with the catchphrase "I like this"? Maybe later you can enter an Extremely Vague Guarantee contest and be outdone only by "It's all inside". Great Best Buy. Glad to hear you don't scatter your inventory across the parking lot. You are truly raising the bar for the electronics suppliers of America.)

Anyway. My point is, Rupert Murdoch's Fair and Balanced Research Institute can continue to report similar findings, but you'd have an easier time convincing me the StayPuft Marshmellow Man is descending on Manhattan this very instant than trying to tell me I get more enjoyment from a TV show interrupted by late-90s hair models raving about something called "Jared's", which apparently features expensive baubles designed by the teens who brought you "Claire's," but which always inexplicably results in a lot of implied ass being gotten. Perhaps these girls are secretly 13, a la Tom Hanks in Big, and would also be thrilled to receive a $50 Express gift certificate or an allusion that, given good behavior, there may be PONIES just around the corner. The subtext is hard to suss out.

In any case, I can say with some certainty that my enjoyment of a given TV show is inversely proportional to the number of Silver Foxes lying suggestively in bathtubs in an (ironically) flaccid attempt to push Manhood drugs on me. In fact, the last I checked, commercials like these are doing a lot for sales of another product, Tivo, that device invented for the express purpose of never having to watch Christina Aguilera trying to make us believe she shops at Target while wearing a square hectare of tranny make-up ever again.

Yet the New York Times insists:
“Listening to a song, watching a TV program, having a massage: these all start out very enjoyable, and within a few minutes we get used to it. Interruptions break that up.”

Ah, yes. I remember the last time I popped in the most recent Beyonce CD, I am....having an Identity Crisis, I stopped her mid-Putting a ring on it so I could listen to a man shouting at me about cheap cars. Then I whipped my videophone out of my Dereon jeans and called up my girl B to report how I'd drastically improved her music in five "limited time offers" or less, and wouldn't you know it? The day after she ditched the Tivo, Jay-Z knew what to do.

He went to Jared's.

Quit trying to kill me, giant blue horse at the Denver airport

Yeah, this guy seems pretty chill.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/02/arts/design/02hors.html?em
Listen, giant blue horse at the Denver airport. You are the offensive, unnatural color of a horsezombie. You are outfitted with creepy horse balls, glow-in-the-dark death eyes, and, from what I can see in this picture you are fully twice the size of the entire airport and possibly the entire city of Denver. However, you were not content to merely threaten destruction with your inappropriate anatomy and ungodly mass; instead you went for maximum street cred, crushing and killing your creator with a giant piece of your torso. Seriously??? You think there aren't enough obstacles facing modern-day artists, what with the economy, and the mean landlord from RENT, and Kanye West? You need to add "risk of being brutally murdered by your own evil horse sculpture" to the mix? Also, I don't know if you've been keeping up with the news lately, but murder/suicide in airports is generally frowned upon by the American public these days.

As might be expected, the Sophisticated Almost-European Airport Commission for Extremely High Art and Expensive Wine Appreciation is standing by its controversial decision to install Nightmare Pony smack dab on the landing strip, despite a growing number of travellers totally losing their shit. A spokesperson explains, "We don’t want the work to convey things that would make people uncomfortable about flying.” Well mission accomplished, because although "Cobalt Stallion", or whatever, makes me pretty fucking uncomfortable about ever coming to Denver, I'm still cool with planes, the one place I will be safe when Pony has finished digesting Pony Artist and needs to feed again.

Fortunately for the well-regarded Advocates of Art Murder group, Homocidal Horse's supernatural powers apparently extend to mind control; its most outspoken critic, former Airport Liberation Leader and creator of an anti-horse facebook page (opinions-they're for kids too!), now claims "I’ve shifted gears from, ‘I don’t think it’s appropriate,’ to ‘Let’s try and understand it.'" Um, understand....what it wants to tell us? I'm not a certified body-language expert a la those guy in US Weekly who can always tell Jennifer Aniston is SAD based on her hair-do and hair highlight patterns, but if I had to interpret "Blue Mustang's" general message I'd say it is something along the lines of "I am Shiva, Destroyer of Worlds, do my bidding."

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Two semesters-worth of intro psych: $5,000

Ability to tell when shit's trying to kill you: Priceless

Quit trying to kill me, surgeons

1. Go to Med School

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/20/health/20surgery.html?ref=health
When you undergo surgery, you are permitting a stranger armed with glorified Williams-Sonoma-ware to mess around with your internal setup, either because that setup is malfunctioning in a way that might cause you to die, or because it does not look similar to that of Tom Brady's fiances, past and present. Either of these legitimate concerns may necessitate what, given other circumstances, might sound horrifying, namely, chopping you up a bit.

Fortunately, surgeons have recently come up with a groundbreaking new way of reducing fatalities on the operating table so that everyone has a better chance of combating lethal brain cancer/banging overexposed football playerz. It's called "The Checklist", and it consists of: someone writing down all the important stuff the surgeon should definitely not forget to do! This is method is so effective that a year after introducing a 19-item checklist, fatalities in 8 hospitals were down 40%!

All of this is thanks to one visionary man, Dr. Atul A. Gawande, who challenged the status quo with his suggestion that maybe doctors should spend as much time preparing for surgery as suburban moms spend preparing for a supermarket run. He says it is quote "hard to identify which items on the checklist had proved the most important," and it's easy to see why that might be a problem. From asking if the equipment has been sterilized, to finding out if there's any extra blood lying around (just in case!), everything on the list seems pretty important. Don't forget to figure out which organ you are sposd to remove, and check if a new one is here yet!

Seeing as The Grocery List approach has yet to be implemented in most American hospitals, I will be avoiding surgeons at all costs until someone in the government looks up from Wall Street Armageddon long enough to pass any legislature not related to the un-fucking of our national finances. (You know why the word unfucked doesn't exist? Because it is completely, utterly and totally impossible. But anyway.) In the meantime, I will just have to deal with my current un-Gisellean look, and take comfort in the fact that someday soon, Dr. Gwande will devote another of his Obvious Fact Confirmation studies to the widely-held theory that Tom Brady, football hero, is a giant douche.

Quit trying to kill me, Phuket

MISSING

Last seen with: A tsunami

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/01/11/travel/0111-PHUKET_index.html

Like 14-year-old girls on facebook everywhere, this slideshow of Phuket's sites is doing a great job presenting one side of the story. The side where little Madison/Phuket appears totally cool and attractive. Flipping through it's tagged pictures, we can see that Phuket is the most luxurious, amazing, beautiful place ever, even with that little dash of native culture in there. Unfortunately, due to a rampant national ADD outbreak, everyone in America has apparently blacked out about the horrible, raging tsunami that killed tons of people across South Asia a few years ago, specifically, the entire population of Phuket (white tourists too!).
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With clear knowledge of our weakness for forgetting stuff Anderson Cooper is not currently lecturing us about, Phuket has gotten it's shit together and tricked prominent travel writers into pimping it out, nevermind that lots of people prefer not be swept away by record-breaking tidal waves during their mini-breaks. The slideshow's title, "Paradise in Thailand," might be overselling it even if travellers didn't have to constantly fear a guerrilla attack by massive quantities of batshit H20. Personally my vacation destination list line-up would put Phuket below various parts of Pakistan, a movie theater screening Bride Wars, and Jurassic Park, which when you consider how annoying those goddamn kids were, is impressive.

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Quit trying to kill me, Phuket, or at least be up front about it.

Quit trying to kill me, easily tricked brain

Voles

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/13/science/13tier.html?ref=science
New studies are confirming what everyone not living inside a Meg Ryan movie already knew; love's nothing more than a bunch of random chemicals, hormonal urges, and fucked up head-games (exact scientific findings). But even more groundbreaking (a lot more groundbreaking), the vole-torturing scientists behind this announcement have also raised the possibility of manufacturing a "love potion." They've isolated the chemicals that cause "bonding" with members of the opposite sex, and are now waving them around threateningly at anyone who dares scoff at their jean-on-jean fashion offenses.

From the top: scientists, contemplating the nature of vole relationships the way normal people reflect wistfully on the old-school romance between Prince William and Pretty Girl Who is Way Too Classy to Ever Have a Sex Tape (is that her name?), realized that human relationships are totally similar to vole relationships: we are meant to be monogomous, usually, I guess, or so I've heard from Dr. Phil, and can't communicate with each other for shit. With their vole=human theory in hand, the scientists started injecting chemicals indiscriminately into rodents (for detailed analysis of why this is almost always a terrible idea, see: NIMH, Rats of) and thereby determined that something called "oxytocin" is the reason you act like such a fucking retard every time you get drunk. Basically, Prince Harry and Skanky Girl Who Will Sell the Distribution Rights to Her Sex Tape had it right all along.

The seriously fucked up part in all this (I will tell you so you don't have to guess, then worry that you guessed wrong), is the notion in some not-too-distant Brave New World peppered with flying cars that run on global warming and babies named Barack, people will be able to slip you a love roofie. All those skeezoid perverts you've been taught to watch your drinks around are going to have a field day with the drug that makes you want them while you're still awake. I mean, that sounds like a step up to me.

And there's no one to blame but our own suggestible, dumbass brains, who, if injected with "jump-off-a-bridge" chemicals, would totally jump off a bridge. If it's any consolation, I don't think even the most credulous of brains will be tricked by the NY Times' attempt to appear hip and relevant by referencing Britney Spears in this article. So close and then....Larry King follow-up. Next time, print journalism. You'll get it next time.

Quit trying to kill me, bees on coke

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/06/science/06bees.html?ref=science
Scientists, relative to other professionals, spend lots of time developing new ways to kill everyone. While others merely speculate, gosh, what would it be like if we could genetically modify all our food? Or if we could harness nuclear energy to create the most deadly weapon ever? Or if we could accelerate and collide particles to man-make a BLACK HOLE??, scientists faithfully follow their motto of "ONLY ONE WAY TO FIND OUT."

A relatively new outlet for funding the demise of our own race is the prestigious what-happens-when-bees-do-cocaine research. As it turns out, coked out bees act pretty much like other things on cocaine- they have lots of energy, dance more than usual, get all excited over some shit that's no big fucking deal, borrow your car to drive across state lines, etc. All the people involved in this project, aka the sciencey types who've never been too popular on the party scene and are suddenly being paid in controlled substances, claim it is helping them better understand the nature of addiction. I would recommend that anyone hoping to better understand the nature of addiction rent 28 Days starring Sandra Bullock, rather than provide heavy stimulants to the Assholes of the Animal Kingdom.

Scientists being scientists, I understand that their limitless curiosity may be difficult to contain. Therefore, I have provided a:
Handy List of Animals It's Cool to Give Cocaine to
Sloth
Cow
Housecat (declawed)
Manatee
Notice that none of these animals are aggressive, nor do any of them carry half their mass in stinger form.

The shit-for-brains behind this operation, Andrew B. Barron, is referred to in the NY Times as "a senior lecturer at Macquarie University in Australia and a co-leader in the bees-on-cocaine studies". If anyone is stopping by Australia soon, I'd appreciate if they could verify that Macquarie University is a vast expanse of isolated outback populated by the occasional coked-out kangaroo.

As if the existence of this study weren't enough indication that Americans are way too experiment-happy and should quarantine Bill Nye the Science Guy before our youth insist on dissecting Ole Yeller, the Times goes on to report:

When a coked-up bee has to stop cold turkey, its score on a standard test of bee performance (learning to associate an odor with sugary syrup) plummets.

A standard test of bee performance?? Apparently we have standardized bee-ranking criteria, which is really great, but maybe some of this bee-testing money could be diverted to ensuring the nation's children quit getting outscored by Third World Orphans on international exams that ask difficult questions about where the US is located, what planet they live on, etc.

In an effort to reassure us all that an uprising of delusional, drug-crazed bees is not in the works, Barron states that the cocaine is "in a safe bolted to a concrete floor within a locked cupboard in a locked room in a locked building with a combination code not known even to me." This seems like as good a time as any to mention that their next move, research-wise, is to take away the bees' cocaine.

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Keep in mind, next time you're watching Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, that birds aren't even scary. Imagining thousands of bees in their place, out trolling the streets of every major US city for their next fix, is enough to drive a girl out of the country. And I'm betting Macquarie University is still accepting applications.

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PS: My bee picture won't upload due to "internal errors." Would having a shitload of pissed off bees gnawing on your hard drive do that??

Quit trying to kill me, clone dogs

Regular dogs, complete with disgusting slight dissimilarities.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/01/garden/01clones.html?ref=science
In today's climate of uneasiness about the ongoing financial Armaggedon/upcoming total Armaggedon, most frivolities have fallen by the wayside. Corporations are scaling down their operations; debutante balls are scaling down their existence. But everyone agrees that, no matter how impoverished and hungry and fleabitten and homeless the nation may be, we must maintain our commitment to : CLONING STUFF.

Cloning has come a long way since the days of Dolly the sheep. No longer sheep-specific, the technology can now copy virtually any animal that already looks identical to every other member of its species. That's why an enterprising firm in San Francisco (and South Asia for the illegal parts) now offers pet-cloning to a niche market of aging spinsters, spoiled 10 year olds and Bond villains.

Speaking of spoiled, Mr. Lou Hawthorne, scientist extraordinaire behind Double Dogging (sounds sexual, no?), would like to take this opportunity to thank Billionaire Step-daddy for funding his lifelong dream that he came up with last week.

".... Mr. Hawthorne was at a sort of career crossroads, having worked in the interactive video-production business and just returned from five months riding a motorcycle across India."

Not to nitpick about semantics, but fucking around in India for a half year after my other daddy-funded project got boring isn't what I would call a "career crossroads". I'd go with "time to pick a graduate school."

In addition to Mr. Hawthorne's intense dedication to suckering people out of cash, he's also made some bold staffing choices of late, picking Dr. Hwang to oversee the project, otherwise known as Dr. Ok-I-might've-lied-a-little-bit-about-cloning-those-human-embryos. Hawthorne points out, quite rightly, "Nobody says he lied about cloning animals." Totally logical; just because a guy has no qualms about falsifying research and fabricating results to make highly public, international claims about having cloned babies in no way indicates he will be anything less than saintly when dealing with the much more serious subject of puppy cloning.

But Mr. Hawthorne isn't all douche. As a gift, he cloned his mother Joan's dead dog; her reaction may partially to totally account for Mr. Hawthorne's attention-seeking:

"...she has yet to take a liking to Missy’s progeny, and the dog has lived primarily with paid “handlers” in a Mill Valley pied-à-terre.
'They’re not at all alike,” Ms. Hawthorne said of the old Missy and the new one. “In looks, they are a little bit, of course. But, I mean, the puppy is delicate and aggressive...Missy wouldn’t come through my home and knock over every wineglass.'"

In related news, Joan Hawthorne is this year's recipient of the World's Most Stereotypical Rich Person Award.

Anyway, on the off chance Dr. Hwang isn't just jerking his hwang around this time: are we really cool with this whole commercial cloning thing? I challenge you to come up with a science fiction story that begins with "Billionaire Lou Hawthorne has perfected dog-cloning technology and plans to market it to the public in the coming year," and NOT end it with the sentence "There were no survivors." Tough, right? Let's stick with pound puppies, people. At least those won't knock over every wineglass.