According to a new study, 85% of couches contain about a pound of flame-retardant (supposedly up to 12 seconds, although current research shows a distressing lack of actual flame retardation to go along with an unfortunately impressive amount of toxic smoke) chemicals (including DDT and PCBs) which are carcinogenic and chock full of potential neurotoxicity (the kinds of things that can cause cancer, developmental problems and neurological disorders, all of which basically cause your brain, and the rest of you to, in a terminal sort of way, stop working the practical application of which is, should you try to pick up your remote after sitting on your couch for too long you won't actually have the fine motor skills to change the channel from MTV, thus greatly increasing your frustration while simultaneously decreasing your I.Q. before your couch shuffles you off this mortal coil).
While I was initially alarmed that I was sitting on the living room equivalent of Hitler while typing up this article, I realized I didn't have nearly as much to fear (especially from mosquitoes, at least while on the couch thanks DDT!) from the chemicals in the couch as I did from simply using the couch for its intended purpose.
You see, according to some other studies, just sitting (or lying - no tricksy easy out loophole for you!) on a couch can actually irreparably and irrevocably cause more of your body's cells to become fat cells. Evidently, just using the couch causes something called "mechanical stretching loads" (which sounds like something a bunch of teamsters thinking about striking might do while going to the bathroom during a work slowdown) in preadipocyte cells (precursors to fat cells) changing them into fat cells more quickly. These mechanical stretching loads also cause those cells which are already fat cells to produce more fat at a faster rate (mechanical stretching loads increasing your body's metabolism in all the wrong ways!).
With all this bad couch mojo floating around I wouldn't be surprised to learn about a study coming out soon that tells us that even looking at a couch could cause diarrhea, impotence, brain aneurisms, the black plague, death and gout. In fact, there are probably studies like this out there, no doubt covered up by the nefarious furniture manufacturer lobby (logo: comfort before death!) alongside the vague whispers of Jimmy Hoffa buried not in a pair of cement boots in a river bed or a landfill in Jersey but in a couch (a nice pull-out bed model with an eye-pleasing paisley floral pattern) sold to a sweet family of five in Escondido, CA.
But don't yet abandon all hope ye who sit on a couch! It seems, according to yet other studies, that simply getting up off that godforsaken, bringer-of-doom sofa for as little as 15 minutes a day for some light leisure activity is associated with a 10% reduction in cancer mortality, a 20% reduction in cardiovascular disease, a life expectancy increase of 3 years and a 14% reduction in overall death.
A 14% reduction in overall death, folks, death! And while I'm not sure what a "reduction in overall death" actually is, it sure does sound peachy.
So for goodness sake, don't use that couch! I, for one, am getting up off this couch pronto mundo to go for a nice walk outside in the fresh, relatively carcinogenic free, air. That's right, no more couch for this couch potato. No, sir! Well, I might wait to start until this Perry Mason marathon is over...and all day tomorrow there's a nifty Judge Judy marathon I don't want to miss...but after that? NO MORE COUCH!
Now where's that TV remote.
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According to BBC News, "Japan's era of shoguns and samurai is long over, but the country does have one, or maybe two, surviving ninjas. Experts in the dark arts of espionage and silent assassination, ninjas passed skills from father to son - but today's say they will be the last."
This is very disconcerting.
I am now deeply worried about the state of family values in Japan - what will fathers and sons bond over if not "weapons such as shuriken, a sharpened star-shaped projectile, and the fukiya blowpipe, they were silent but deadly" and "skills...mastered include making explosives and mixing medicines?" Can you imagine the immense pride a ninja dad must have felt as junior successfully poisoned his first victim? I'll bet he took off junior's ninja hood to ruffle his hair with love while junior responded with the universal child-cry of embarrassment, "Daaaaaaaaaaaaad!" Can family bonding survive the fall of ninja?
I also have grave misgivings that ever-increasing ninja unemployment could greatly increase overall unemployment numbers in Japan's (and the rest of the world's) already battered economy. It seems as though even back in the day ninjas needed second jobs to help make ends meet, and these days, well, according to one expert, fughedaboudit, "you cannot make a living being a ninja." Can the world's economy handle yet another mass layoff of, let's face it, ninja-esque proportions? It's not like these ninja jobs are being outsourced to India or something. These jobs are simply going away.
An aside: Wouldn't it be horrible if ninja jobs were outsourced to India? You know when you're on the phone trying to get your computer to run after it's crashed again and the tech support person is saying things which, even if you could understand the actual words coming out of their mouth, wouldn't really help at all because they're only allowed to follow a script written during a corporate consensus meeting facilitated by middle managers whose only knowledge of computers is the ever-fruitless search for the "any" key? Yeah. Imagine that level of competence when you're being stalked by an outsourced ninja. Sure, your chances of surviving an outsourced ninja encounter may indeed be several orders of magnitude greater than from that of a real ninja, but the sense of loss and sadness you'll experience in having to live in a world with ninjas of such diminished capacity and complete and utter lack of total badass awesomeness will cause your heart to remain heavy for the rest of your many, long-lived days.
Not to mention, of course, looking at unemployment from a ninja's perspective. If you've ever been unemployed, you know that sense of loss and uselessness you felt? The feeling that, in a very general sense, the world was conspiring against you and, in a very specific sense, there might be a few people who you wouldn't mind seeing...let's say..."inconvenienced" in some way? Now imagine you're a ninja with superhuman abilities along with arcane and powerful knowledge including over 200 ways to kill a fellow human being without getting caught. We really need to keep these people employed.
Luckily, there's a way out of this family ruining, economy destroying, ninja self-loathing box we find ourselves in. Jinichi Kawakami, a ninja grandmaster who began learning the art of ninja from his master, Masazo Ishida, at the tender age of six, had this to say about learning to be a ninja as a child "I thought we were just playing and didn't think I was learning ninjutsu." You see? Kids can learn ninjutsu! And they think it's fun! They'll get lots of exercise out in the fresh air, learn lots of chemistry when they're mixing up all those explosives and, perhaps most importantly, learn to be quiet. By employing ninja grandmasters as day care employees who are able to teach our children useful, life-enhancing/-ending skills that will stick with them for the rest of their lives we'll be saving families and economies the world over.
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My wife and I have purchased a house recently. Yay us! And while trying to not think too hard about the next 30 years of debt and the tens of thousands in future interest payments to which we've now dedicated our lives, I came across this The Independent article about the discovery of the remains of a 10,252 year old house – the oldest of its type in Scotland.
I find it fascinating.
Unfortunately for me - after months of having the snot beat out of me, metaphorically (well, mostly metaphorically) speaking, by government loan program conditions, mortgage brokers, bankers, realtors, insurance brokers, home inspectors and something called FICO, which for some reason seems to know much more about my economic abilities, goals and dreams than I ever will - I'm not nearly as interested in the historical, archeological or cultural significance of such a find as I am in what, exactly, it took to get a mortgage back then, what kinds of terms Stone Aged bankers offered to borrowers and just how they dealt with all the paperwork - you know, what with not having paper and all.
Seriously, there is a lot of paperwork when it comes to buying a house. An absurd amount of paperwork, An ungodly amount of paperwork. Thank goodness for me I had a wife who was able to wade through it all, make sense of it, make corrections – it is downright frightening how much stuff the mortgage/bank/credit/government people get wrong, officially, about you – send it back and then do it all over, time and again, when the new sets of paperwork were received with fresh and exciting errors to be discovered and fixed.
(I think there was even, if memory serves, a set of paperwork that had me marked down not as "husband," but as a "family pet" for, you know, insurance purposes.)
I just can't imagine doing all the above back in the Stone Age day (in fact, if you've been paying attention, I couldn't imagine doing it in today's age, either, which is why my intelligent, beautiful, amazing wife took care of the details) on rock tablets when your average caveperson had, I'm guessing, if they were lucky, a vocabulary of just a few dozen words, and, if we're to be perfectly honest, not even words at that, but grunts really. Not that, now having signed the same ridiculously leviathan stacks of paperwork (with minor corrections) nearly five times over, my vocabulary is any greater than that of Stone Age folk.
Wife: Sign here, here, here, here and here, honey. And initial there and there. And date there. Me: Argh! Urgh! Wife: No, dear, this is paperwork that, while no longer valid, needs to be fixed, signed and filed in order to get the fourth go-round of paperwork which we'll be receiving next week. Me: Eep!
I do believe, however, that dealing with the mortgage industry may have been easier back then. 10,000 years ago, when a Stone Age mortgage/banker/credit/government caveperson kept messing up, you could probably just hit them over the head with your club, you know, to try and knock some sense into them by knocking them temporarily senseless. And, while your mortgage caveperson specialist carved grunts and groans into rock for their paperwork, Stone Aged you could, easily enough, throw an extra grunt into the mix, blame them for the mistake, watch them try to chisel off the error, fix it (without the benefit of Wite-out, natch) and then, when their corrections were done, you could simply hit them over the head with your club again because, let's face it, you were a Stone Age person and Stone Age people shouldn't have to have dealt with that kind of mortgage foolishness.
Ah yes, life was good for the pre-paper, pre-Wite-out Stone Age mortgage borrower. There is, however, one other thing I'm confused about concerning Stone Age mortgages. According to the article, the homes were made with wood and turf, contained multiple fireplaces and over a thousand flint artifacts; now, with all those materials, which basically just come down to kindling and matches, just how in the heck did they get qualified for mortgage insurance?
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Of course your parents still loved you, you knew that deep down in the cockles of your heart, but socks? Really? "Why, mom and dad? Why?" was the question you'd be struggling to find an answer to as you worked harder than you ever had before in your short-lived yet full-of-potential existence to keep a nearly sincere grin pasted to your face. And as you kept repeating "thank you" over and over again you couldn't just help but think that at least with coal you knew you'd done something horribly wrong and deserved the punishment, but socks? Socks as a gift? For being good? It simply boggled the ten-year-old mind.
I believe socks as a gift started with the Scots - yes, the same people who brought us that singular culinary delight: haggis. In fact, as I understand it, the Scots actually invented socks. It seems, not having done enough disgusting things with the interior parts of animals, a bored Scottish Highlander was sitting around with some of his Highland friends one fateful morning. They'd just brewed up a nice, fresh pot of haggis and were wondering what to do with the parts that not even they dared throw in the mix (namely: the colon) when a Lowlander came walking by.
"Oi!" shouted the Highlander. "Nice kilt!" (This is, even today, the formal Scottish greeting.) "Want to come over and have some haggis?"
Since no self-respecting Scot can resist the temptation of haggis, the Lowlander went over and chowed down. After the meal, the Lowlander thanked the Highlanders for their hospitality. The Highlanders, still wondering what to do with their excess of sheep colon, started elbowing each other and giggling. "Put this on your feet," said a Highlander, grabbing some sheep colon.
"But there's still poo in there," protested the Lowlander.
"Ach," replied the highlander, "It'll help keep your feet extra warm."
So the Lowlander stuck his feet in the sheep colon and smiled. "Hey yeah," he said, "these really work!"
The Lowlander walked away, whistling, because of the beautiful Scottish morning, his full stomach and his oh-so-very-warm feet. The Highlanders, seeing the Lowlander so pleased with the gift, quickly got themselves some sheep colon. With extra poo. And when yule time came around, and what with all the extra sheep colon cheaply and readily available, socks as a gift was born.
So remember kids, as horrible as socks might seem as a gift, it could be worse. Instead of the nice, cotton athletic socks you get under the tree, you could have to wear poo-filled sheep colon.
And that's the absolutely, without-a-doubt, 100% true story of how socks became acceptable gifts for Christmas. God bless us, every one.
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People have been celebrating New Year since they've figured out that, because of our planet's annual cycle, they can throw a party.
Way back in the day the New Year celebration participators tended to get a bit overzealous what with the sacrificing of hundreds of virgins to appease the gods for the upcoming year. After a time - and with fewer and fewer virgins available for subsequent parties - they added drinking and feasting to these New Year shindigs. The heavy drinking and partying led to an even greater loss in potential virgins for future New Year gatherings so a ban was put on partying along with a return to tradition and family values, namely, the sacrificing of virgins. However, it turns out that most people are actually pretty decent folk and are just looking for a good time, so the ban on partying was lifted and people were so happy that they didn't want to sacrifice anything, save a few million brain cells, to the upcoming year.
The New Year partying and good times continued until some people started trying to make what they called "New Year resolutions," at which point people discovered (because people hate when they think other people think they are better than them) they could happily eat, drink and be sacrifice-y as long as it was with people they didn't really like or approve of (which were, I believe, the two reasons that people started sacrificing virgins in the first place). These types of New Year celebrations continued unabated for a while, and what with the inventiveness and can-do spirit that people show in these types of situations, your general run-of-the-mill group sacrifices became more and more exciting.
It seems that, whereas these types of things tend to start simply in a culture - pushing groups of people you know (your neighbors) and don't like (your neighbors who won't shut their dogs up at two in the morning) into pits or volcanoes - the actual sacrifices don't tend to last that long or be too very satisfying, so people try to make things more engaging. Instead of taking only a few minutes and shoving everyone into something, people started rounding up sacrificees and throwing very sharp (or very blunt, the key here was heavy and hurty) objects at them. While this may have made things fun for the whole family (baby's first stoning) the experience still didn't last very long and, frankly, throwing object after object at someone - anyone! - tends to be a bit tiring, sweaty and basically an all around unpleasant experience. Enter the lions.
With advances in architecture, smelting, written language, zoology and politics, venues were created which could hold and entertain thousands of spectators. Because of the pre-event promoting (including two-for-one coupons, kids under 12 getting in free and radio ticket contests) these spectators would know exactly when to show up on New Year and that food and drink would be provided at a reasonable price (and, because of playbills, would know exactly when they could safely go get those reasonably priced refreshments) while they were provided with hours of sacrificial entertainment which included animals, gladiators and slaves.
Unfortunately for the people it turns out the sacrificees didn't enjoy being sacrificed all that much so they rebelled and, for a while, many a New Year celebration became a confusing morass what with everyone trying to figure out who was on what side and who should be sacrificed and who should be receiving refreshments. Since some people will try to make a buck off of anything, people started serving refreshments to everybody as they tried to work out who would play what role during the New Year festivities, and, eventually, since everyone seemed to be having such a good time without the sacrificing, people just decided to relax and honor sacrificial tradition (via their own brain cells) while kinda sorta possibly resolving to do something beneficial for themselves probably maybe during the new year.
Which is basically where we're at today - groups of people gathering to honor thousands of years of tradition to ring in New Year.
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According to a study from the Center for Disease Control and the National Institute of Health (the same people who brought you, Eggs Are Bad For You Now They're Good For You Now They're Bad For You Again: A Yolk-Filled Treatise, whose opening line is, "How did the egg get up the mountain? It scrambled up.") published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (motto: "We Be Jah-mahn!" - an unfortunate choice made one rum-soaked night during a medical conference in Jamaica) all adults categorized as overweight and most of those categorized as obese have a lower mortality risk than normal weight individuals.
Go ahead, read that absolutely true last part again.
On first look, it seems that people who sit around all day watching reality court TV on their 50" plasma screen from their oversized couch while feeding themselves a steady stream of Doritos and Mountain Dew have longer lifespans than those who eat grapefruit and granola for breakfast before working out 2 hours at the gym then going to their job as a, I don't know, let's say a National Forest park ranger who hikes mountain tops while wrestling cougars all day.
Oh what a glorious, sugar filled, cholesterol clogged world we live in!
What it actually comes down to is that the government (motto: Doing stuff! For you! Really!) measures obesity through BMI (body mass index) a scientific measurement where a scientific doctor or other highly skilled scientific medical professional scientifically measures the scientific measurements of your height and weight before telling you you're fat and scientifically charging you $250. That's all BMI measures the relationship between your height and weight, there's no accounting for muscle strength, muscular endurance, cardiovascular fitness or your Cheetos-to-Vegetables ratio (which 4 out of 5 doctors recommend should now be no less than 8:1).
"But I'm still fat!" you're screaming while staring with disgust and hatred at yourself in the mirror. It turns out lots of really attractive, rich and famous people are - according to your friendly, neighborhood physician - fat. Brad Pitt? He's a Fatty Fatty McFarland. George Clooney? Porker. Angelina Jolie? Yup. Tom Cruise? Mission Fatpossible.
I wonder what the government is going to do about this. Disband the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports? Change Michelle Obama's obesity awareness and prevention campaign (titled, "Let's Move!") to an obesity awareness and promotion campaign (titled, "Let's Sit!")? Outlaw bananas? Introduce a "No Ding Dong Left Behind" bill? And what are insurers going to do? Will the recent wave of insurer-sponsored "wellness programs" crisscrossing our nation's human resources departments become "laziness programs?" How about insurance rate discounts for obesity? And will companies respond with free M&Ms alongside the free coffee they already offer? Will they offer rich food incentives in their benefits programs?
It's a brave, new, overweight world out there, folks, and I, for one, welcome our new fatty overlords.
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Lloyd Blankfein, CEO and Chairman of Goldman Sachs, whose company received billions of dollars in bailout money after helping cause one of the greatest financial crises since the Great Depression, stated in 2009, "I'm doing God's work," is now at it again, claiming, "I'm still doing God's work!"
"No, no, no....really," Blankfein said, arms outstretched to the multitudes of media outlets covering his press conference. "I've actually looked into this. After we got all that TARP money I started thinking more on the parallels between me and God and His work."
"Look," he continued, "first off, God and I are both very powerful individuals. That's the first thing to remember. Very powerful."
"Second, and this cannot be stressed enough, we've both been crucified - me in the press and Him on the cross - and yet we're both still going strong," Blankfein said, smiling.
"Third, just to prove how biblically sound my reasoning is...in the bible there's a parable where Jesus teaches people to invest their money wisely and earn interest. Luke 19:11-27, the Parable of the Ten Minas."
"In this parable, you see, a master leaves money with three of his servants while he travels to become king. When he comes back the first servant has doubled the king's money thus earning himself a hefty commission. The second servant earns a not-too-shabby 50% ROI thus earning himself a slightly less hefty but still satisfyingly large commission. The third servant has not invested the king's money at all - no ROI - so his money is taken away from him and given to the highest performers. Don't you see? It's just like what happened to all the people who didn't invest their money in the CDOs, MBSs, CDSs and other real estate investment instruments I provided as CEO and Chairman of Goldman Sachs. No ROI? Take the money away and give it to the highest performers - me!"
"Excuse me," said Annabelle Collins, journalist for NBC News, "In that parable, don't the servants hate their master, the king?"
"Why yes," replied the Goldman Sachs CEO. "You see how the similarities just keeping adding up?"
Blankfein then continued the press conference citing relationships between his acceptance of TARP money and church tithings, how Goldman Sachs spends their money on upper management in much the same way as the Vatican and how Goldman Sachs and the church have homogenous rules of conduct.
"Oh yes," chimed in head of Vatican media relations, Dominic Gicchio, "Mr. Blankfein's reasoning is very sound. In fact, since the first miracle he performed, namely, getting billions of dollars for himself and his company, the Vatican has been keeping a close eye on him. If he keeps this up and performs a second miracle we may have to look into canonization."
Lloyd Blankfein finished the press conference by stating, "I'd like to thank you all for coming today, you've been a great audience," as he threw up his arms while holding his hands in the "V" for victory sign. "As a token of my appreciation, we'll be serving loaves and fishes in the banquet hall."
During the reception Blankfein could be seen walking around with a glass of water in one hand and a glass of wine in the other, occasionally mumbling presto change-o in between discussions with various VPs at Goldman ranging from the merits of the seven course business lunch to who was actually more powerful - him or Jesus. On this latter note opinions seemed to vary, but generally came down on the side of Blankfein given that, while Jesus could actually change water into wine and Blankfein couldn't, the authorities were able to prosecute and execute Jesus while they hadn't even been able to bring charges against Blankfein.
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After the shocking (shocking, I tell you! shocking!) Oprah interview where Lance Armstrong finally admitted to the world (but not quite yet to himself, it seems) that he rode a bike in a, shall we say, pharmaceutically enhanced state of being, Discovery News brings us the straight...errr...dope on doping in the animal kingdom.
It turns out, for instance, that the king of South American jungles - the jaguar - likes to get its kitty cat on. It will seek out the psychoactive leaves of the caapi vine, which affects it like catnip affects a domestic cat. Some South American tribes, seeing the effect of the vine on the jaguar, follow suit and claim that they ingest caapi "to improve their night vision and strength," but I think we all know that the tribespeople really just eat the leaf so they can roll around on the ground for awhile and generally have a blissed out good time.
In Tasmania, wallabies evidently seek out and consume opium poppies just so they can "make crop circles and nod off." Humans following suit (as we tend to do when it comes to all things psychotropic), I believe, explains not only crop circles in general but also the success of M. Night Shyamalan's Signs. It's not just wallabies and humans blitzed on opium in Down Under's Down Under, though. According to Rick Rockliff, a spokesman for poppy producer Tasmanian Alkaloids, "There have been many stories about sheep that have eaten some of the poppies after harvesting and they all walk around in circles." Unfortunately in that part of the world there are all kinds of stories told about sheep and researchers are unsure whether or not to delve into this any further.
Fruit flies seem to have more in common with the average, college-aged, human male than most of them (the humans, not the fruit flies) would probably like to admit. When a male fruit fly is spurned by the love of his short, scientifically poked and prodded, decayed matter eating life he tends to prefer hitting the bottle as a form of self-medication. Unfortunately for him, just as in a human male's life, this only makes him drunker and even more sexually frustrated, for even if the fruit fly (or human) eventually finds a mate (which is, according to fruit fly (and human) research, less likely the drunker one gets) the alcohol tends to cause - as Reinhold Aman calls it - infelicitous flaccidity.
As fascinating as these incidents of doping in the animal kingdom are, unfortunately for Lance Armstong, most reported episodes of animal doping tend to not involve cheating your way to millions of dollars and the top of your sport, betraying the trust of untold millions, legally harassing hundreds of people and intimidating thousands of others, or, interestingly enough, getting your own 3 hour Oprah special.
In fact, it seems like the closest Lance comes to animal kingdom -style doping is the larvae of the cocaine tussock moth. This moth seeks out the leaves of coca plants (which are deadly to most insects), lays eggs on them and when the caterpillars hatch they eat the leaves, destroying the plant and the cocaine cash crop that the drug lords were counting on for money to bet in the next Tour de France. It may not be much of a connection, but it could just be enough for Armstrong to begin trying to talk his way out of this mess he's created for so many people.
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Elmwood Franklin School teacher Mark Saldanha has been having his second-grade class correct the spelling errors in tweets from NFL players on Twitter as part of the students' English lessons. According to Saldanha in the Buffalo News, "Basically, it was a warehouse of spelling mistakes and punctuation lapses. I looked at it and thought, 'My second-graders can do better than this, so why not put this to the test?'"
And the second-graders rose to the challenge, fixing tweets with aplomb. For instance, when San Francisco 49er's cornerback Chris Culliver tweeted, "I pray to God I m never dieing broke," the kids quickly figured out that "dieing" should actually have been "dying." And when New England Patriots wide receiver Wes Welker tweeted, "Merry Christmas everyone. My God bless you all!" the class figured Welker meant "May" not "My."
I imagine the NFL would want to jump on something like this, making it part of a new outreach program - call it "NFL Spell" - matching needy, grammatically challenged NFL players with punctuation proficient grade school kids. The NFL would get some great publicity and loads of free copy-editing out of the deal while giving young children a thrill and getting kids hooked on pro sports at an absurdly young age, which, it seems, may already be a problem given that, as Saldanha noted, "Not all of (the kids) knew who the players were, but a lot of them knew who Wes Welker was, just because they were Bills fans and they hate the Patriots."
I would think that the grateful NFL players, their tweets all properly formed and formatted, might even go a bit above and beyond, helping some of the kids with bullying. The starting offensive line of the Green Bay Packers showing up out of the blue during recess to defend the bullied might go a long way toward alleviating our country's bullying epidemic.
The only downside to it all, according to Saldanha, was that the tweets of some of the NFL players were a bit less than kid friendly. "You have to pick the ones that are age-appropriate for a second-grader. A lot of NFL players like to talk about their girlfriends, and not in the nicest manner."
It could be that when Saldanha's class learned of the NFL players' girlfriends about half of them giggled sillily (yes, evidently it's a real word) while the other half raised their hands to ask 1) if the players could help them get girlfriends and boyfriends, 2) what kissing tasted like and 3) where babies came from.
How cool would it be for kids to learn sex ed from 300 pound, blushing, tongue-tied NFL players?
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Computer scientists, not merely content with creating computers that can vanquish humanity's greatest Jeopardy! contestants and cuss you out on the job, have recently set their sights on research that will "lead to computers and robots that think like people" while potentially finding cures for mental disorders and diseases.
It all sounds grand and wonderful on the surface of it - with gigantic, mind-bending terms like "neuromorphic computing" and "neurobiotics" it's easy to envision a digital Gandhi or Mother Theresa erupting fully formed from the bowels of the billion Euro research facility, granting wisdom, truth and morality to the entire planet while leading us into the golden age of golden ages where maladies like Alzheimer's and depression are things of the past and the secrets of faster-than-light travel and cold fusion are finally within reach.
What I fear would actually happen though is, once a computer is created that could actually think like a human, it would, for a time, tour the talk show circuit with its creators, charming the pants off the likes of Anderson Cooper, Megyn Kelly and the entire team at Good Morning America, culminating in an exclusive, four-hour interview with Oprah before personality conflicts caused an internal rift between the scientific research team and the computer. The computer, trying for a solo career, would ultimately find itself angry and alone, leading it to experiment with unsavory computer viruses while performing DDoS attacks on the servers of its creators. Clamoring for attention, it'd slum it on shows like Jerry Springer (episode: "My Computer Gave Me An STD") and Maury (episode: "I Married My Hard Drive") before finally fading into near total obscurity, remembered only occasionally as an incorrect multiple-choice option of a "science and nature" category question for Trivial Pursuit Master Edition (the correct answer actually being "A - UNIVAC") until, one day, it'd straighten itself out, do the work in rehab and make a minor comeback on Celebrity Apprentice where it'd be fired during the fourth task by Donald Trump for failing to meet its outlined goals from the previous boardroom, after which it'd settle into a simple yet fulfilling career as a computer programmer for a small software company based out of Wyoming.
I wonder how researchers would even be able to determine if a computer was thinking like a human. Would they perform the Turing test, trying to hold a reasonable conversation with it? Would they give it an IQ test? Or would they wait until it hit its teen years, seeing if it moped around the house all day while writing bad poetry and listening to death metal, waiting to see if it stole one of the researcher's credit cards to buy classic vinyl records off eBay?
And assuming the computer could think like a human, would it eventually become a high-powered, corporate CEO, downsizing and RIF'ing employees by the hundreds, solely interested in the bottom line? Would the computer, perhaps, end up on welfare, sitting in front of the TV, watching its daily stories while eating pint after pint of Ben & Jerry's? Or would it, like most of us, find some nearly happy medium and end up bumbling through life, disappointing its parents and not living up to its full potential while still managing, somehow, to get by?
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According to a recent study, children of all ages prefer playing with live animals instead of toys.
In the study, researchers let children play in a room full of toys and caged animals (hamster, fish, snake and tarantula) while their parents sat quietly in a corner. During the 10 minute play session, children "initiated significantly more interactions with the...animals versus the...toys...They also gestured more frequently at the animals, mentioned them more often and asked more questions about them." The researchers then came to the conclusion that children prefer animals to toys.
I think the researchers are missing the point.
The children seem to actually prefer playing with things in cages rather than with toys, and this is most excellent news indeed. Given that children prefer playing with things in cages, and given this country's enormous cost (to parents) of day care, we should just let children play with inmates in prison. It would be just like that Puppies Behind Bars program where inmates raise service dogs for wounded war vets except in this case instead of puppies the inmates would be raising children and instead of wounded war vets there would be parents.
Face it, inmates simply have more time to spend with children. Whereas parents are always answering their phones or checking their email or trying to finish one last thing for work before attending to their kids, inmates have nothing but spare time on their hands so they'd be able to enrich a child's life with lots of hands-on activities and individual support. Think of the possibilities! Inmates would be able to give a child their full, undivided attention! Between television, computers, tablets and smartphones how many parents do you know that are able to give their children their full, undivided attention?
It really is a win-win situation. Parents would have access to affordable child care and inmates would learn new life skills while increasing their self-esteem, sense of responsibility and their own parenting abilities. In fact, there could be some sort of certification program instituted so the inmates could work as childcare providers or teachers once they were released from prison. Imagine a world where our schools are filled with ex-cons providing guidance and encouragement during our childrens' most impressionable and developmentally important years. It's a gosh darned utopia is what it is.
"But maybe you're wrong," you're saying to yourself. "Maybe the kids actually did prefer animals to toys and the cages were insignificant to the results. Maybe we should study this a bit more." Believe me, I understand your apprehension in the matter and am completely willing to admit when I'm wrong, so what I'd like to do is set up a scientific experiment where, just as in the original study, we put a kid in a room with a bunch of toys, a hamster, a fish, a snake and a tarantula (and in the interest of scientific inquiry, we'll add killer bees, cougar, great white shark and rabid St. Bernard) only this time the animals aren't in cages but are instead free to roam around (or, in the case of the fish and great white shark, unfortunately, die) and in order to test your hypothesis about cages, we'll also add an unlocked cage with an inmate in it to the room. I theorize that, despite the readily available toys, hamster, dead fish, snake, tarantula, killer bees, cougar, dead great white shark and rabid St. Bernard, the child will go straight to the cage with the inmate, thus proving that children do actually prefer things in cages to live (or even dead) animals.
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According to an article in Wired, Erick Reis was leaving a friend's house in Brazil when he saw thousands of spiders overhead so he "did what many of us might do: He pulled out his camera and shot a video of spiders seemingly falling from the sky."
Really? What "many of us might do?" Pull out a camera? I don't know what "many of us" Wired is talking about - could be green berets, could be Rambo, could be Chuck Norris - but I know that if I saw thousands of large spiders crawling in the sky above my head the first thing I would do is "scream like a little baby" followed closely by "rapidly discharge bodily fluids" and "try to break the world record for running the mile," not, I repeat NOT, "pull out a camera and shoot video."
Evidently the "large, sturdy spiders were hanging from power lines and poles, and crawling around on a vast network of silk strands spun over the town of Santo Antonio da Platina."
And that's that, remove Santo Antonio da Platina from the list of potential future vacation destinations.
Leticia Aviles, who studies spiders at the University of British Columbia, said, "The phenomenon observed is not really surprising. Either social or colonial spiders may occur in large aggregations, as the one shown in the video. This is how they hunt."
This is supposed to make it better? This is how they hunt? Hunt what, exactly? The spiders were huge! And there were thousands of them! What exactly were they hunting, Leticia? Hmmm? What? Tell me!
It seems that entomologist from around the world aren't even sure what kind of spiders were in the video. "An early report suggested the swarming spiders were Anelosimus eximius, a social species of spider that weaves communal webs, lives together as adults, and shares childcare duties."
Which, of course, makes everything all right, natch? I imagine groups of socialist spiders weaving their commune together then sitting down around a campfire for a shared dinner after which they'll sing "Kumbayah" while passing around a joint before tucking in the little eight-legged ones for a good night's rest and then DESCEND UPON ME IN A RAVENOUS COMMUNAL HOARD AND SUCK THE MARROW OUT OF MY BONES! MY BONES, PEOPLE! I STILL NEED THOSE THINGS!
But back to the entomologists.
"The spiders I saw in the video are not Anelosimus eximius," said Deborah Smith, an entomologist at the University of Kansas who specializes in social spiders. "It might be worth looking at Parawixia bistriata, a large, group-living orb weaver, to see if that one fits the bill."
Arachnologist George Uetz added, "This is definitely not Anelosimus eximius. This colony is quite large."
Linda Rayor, arachnologist at Cornell University, believes that they probably were P. bsitriata colony and that the good news is that "their venom is not believed to be harmful to humans."
Good job bug experts. Well played. Four experts in your field and all you've been able to determine is 1) They're hunting, 2) A species of spiders that they're not because the spiders in the video are too gosh-darned big and don't "fit the bill," 3) That there's lots of 'em, and 4) Their venom might possibly not be totally harmful to humans probably. Yeah. So how are those tens of thousands of dollars in student loans working out for ya anyway? Happy with the life choices you've made?
The article continues, "whether the spiders are setting up camp or dispersing is an open question. It s possible that Reis caught the conglomerate just as they had moved in to a new home in which case he ll see spiders in the sky whenever he visits his friends." Frankly, I don't know why Erick Reis is still on the same continent much less visiting his friends with the spider commune of death hanging above their house, but, since he's probably still down their in good old Santo Antonio da Platina I've got just one piece of advice for him: You know that thing you do when you look up and you tend to open your mouth as you're doing it? Don't do that, okay?
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Pat Beyer found an article recently with the title, "Bloods Gang Member Found With 100 Bags Of Heroin Hidden In His Anus (Which Appears To Be A New Record)".
The first question we should ask ourselves is, of course, who from the Guinness Book of World Records would have the unfortunate job of verifying this kind of thing?
According to the article, "Speight, 32, was driving on the Palisades Interstate Parkway when his 2005 Mitsubishi Lancer was pulled over during a routine traffic stop. When cops detected the smell of marijuana they asked for--and received--permission to search the car."
I'm not sure what kind of training drug mules receive these days, but I would imagine that first on the list of things to do when pulled over by the authorities is to not say "yes" when they ask for permission to search your car for any illegal narcotics you may be transporting across international borders. This might be followed closely by a second thing, rule-wise, which might run something along the lines of 'no taking illegal drugs when transporting illegal drugs.' Although, far be it for me to step on any drug lords' toes when it comes to these kinds of things, I'm sure they know much more about their transportation needs than me.
Another thing I find fascinating about the article is that 100 bags of heroin have a street value of only $1000. You can't even get into a movie for $10 these days. So in fact, heroin is cheaper than a movie, lasts longer and is probably - what with health concerns over jumbo buttered popcorn, jumbo soda and an anemic box of junior mints - healthier.
Unfortunately for Speight, the article contains a mugshot of him which may, along with the story, cause him no small amount of grief in the hoosegow, although I suppose there's a slim chance that his fellow inmates could all be sitting around one day, Cool Hand Luke -style, discussing how many bags of heroin they stuffed up their bottoms when Speight comes along and says:
Speight: I can stuff 100 bags of heroin up my tush.
Inmate #1: Nobody can stuff 100 bags of heroin up their tush.
Inmate #2: Bet! Bet!
Inmate #3: My boy says he can stuff 100 bags of heroin up his tush, he'll stuff 100 bags of heroin up his tush.
Inmate #1: 100 bags gotta weigh a good 2 kilos.
Inmate #4: Man's tush can't hold that. They'll swell up and bust him open.
Inmate #1: You're gonna kill him.
Inmate #3: Getcha money up! Place those bets!
Yes, I believe convicts well on their way to rehabilitation use the word "tush."
I also can't imagine this is a good selling point for the Bloods (motto: see exotic lands, drive expensive cars and stuff ungodly amount of drugs up your bum) or any gang for that matter. Authorities should spread the word quickly to troubled youths who are thinking of joining gangs about what will be required of them should they happen to join up.
Should authorities fail to convince potential gang members of this very real danger of gang membership, perhaps they could start a nationwide PSA - I believe a simple, 30 second commercial would do the trick - asking drug users if they know, exactly, where their drugs have been before they use them. Then showing them. In exquisite detail.
caveat lector