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!).
-

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.

-

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.

-

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.

-

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.