More Solid When Disturbed

I learned something today about non-Newtonian liquids -- cornstarch and water!! Two different examples!!

Walking on liquid!!




Speaker activated liquid!!



An interesting collection of these on YouTube!!

What's the principle behind this?

Reinventing The Wheel

Ever have trouble tearing open a ketchup packet? Then there's the fact that you have to open about 30 of them to get enough ketchup to dip even a small order of french fries. Well, Heinz has finally listened to the voices of the people and redesigned the ketchup packet. Power to the people!
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=9743988

Iranian Symphony

This article from THE NEW YORK TIMES has this to say about Iran's "Peace and Friendship Symphony:"

And the music? Suffice it to say that some Iranian musicians, not orchestra members, reportedly complained beforehand that the work wasn’t good enough to export. They were right. Scored for orchestra, chorus and male solo singer, with an electric guitar, amplified piano and battalion of harpists thrown in to increase the racket, the symphony approximates brief melodies in between lengthy drum assaults by burgling hints of “Dr. Zhivago” and “Lord of the Rings” along with Vivaldi and “Fiddler on the Roof.” Otherwise, for the better part of 75 minutes, a whole team of percussionists gravely beat the bejesus out of a variety of very loud drums, to unintentionally (and increasingly) comic effect.

Was the reporter exaggerating? Decide for yourself, in 2 parts!

Smart Bacon

Witness the blasphemous abomination that is--VEGAN BACON!!!

Someplace Special For Valentines Day

Mildred's Temple Kitchen, a restaurant in Toronto, has an unusual idea for celebrating Valentines Day. The owner/chef, Donna Dooher, suggests a nice dinner at the restaurant followed by a romantic interlude in one of their 4 unisex bathrooms. Dooher claims trysts have taken place in their restrooms before, but now she's encouraging people to do it. In fact the restaurant will be employing a maid to keep things tidy during the Valentine weekend, February 12-15.
http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2010/02/03/Restaurant-encourages-bathroom-sex/UPI-24781265222264/

New Breast Implants Are The Bomb

Some British trained Muslim doctors are going back to their countries of origin to perform al-Qaida approved breast enhancements. Approved because the implants have explosives instead of silicone in them. Glad to see they are finally starting to give women's rights a chance by allowing women to be suicide bombers too. I wonder if the ladies get 72 virgin fellas in heaven.
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=123758

Weird Science - I Sing The Body Eccentric

President Obama’s recent fall in approval rating may have an unusual cause, he may possibly be too thin. In a recent study by Elizabeth Miller of the University of Missouri, voters prefer their male politicians to be portly, while women representatives should be more wasp-waisted. In an experiment involving 120 volunteers, people were asked to assess fictitious male and female candidates from a brief bio and a picture, crucially two pictures of each candidate were used, a natural one and one manipulated to portray the person as overweight. People shown the heavier male scored him an average 10% higher for reliability, honesty, dependability and inspiration than his thinner doppelganger, but this relationship was reversed in the woman candidate. In the journal Obesity, Miller puts this down to societal expectation and stereotyping (Telegraph).

Social pressure also crops up in explaining another finding this week, this one by Meridith Young of McMaster University in Ontario, that what single women eat depends a lot on whom they are eating with. After covertly monitoring the canteen behaviour of 470 undergraduates, Young found that women significantly lowered their calorie intake when sat with men compared with all women groups. Moreover, the more men a woman sat with, the less on average she consumed. In the journal Appetite, she puts the discrepancy down to women unconsciously advertising themselves to men, adding "the salad leaves are meant to say, I'm pretty, I'm attractive, I take care of myself" (Guardian).

Of course, we all know what men really like in a woman; that she not appear too powerful. Or so says a study by Brian Meier and Sarah Dionne of Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania. In the study, eighty 19 year-olds were asked to rate the attractiveness of a number of images presented in random order, some of which would be repeated. In fact the subjects saw each image twice, once near the top of the screen and once low down. The researchers found that men rated women 1.8% more attractive when observed near the bottom, and women found men 1.5% better looking when higher up. They suggest that their findings might explain why men are taller than their women partners more frequently than would be expected by chance (Times of India).

As to what women really like in men, perhaps not being British should be somewhere on the list. After champagne controversially lost out to an English wine earlier this week, French scientists have hit back at British research that concluded that the mythical “G-spot” did not exist. “Of course it exists,” say French gynaecologists, “you just can’t find it!” The original study by King’s College in London looked at over 900 pairs of identical or non-identical twins in the expectation that the identical siblings should both report having a G-spot more frequently than the others, they did not. The French however claim their cross-channel colleagues have got the wrong end of the speculum, “It is not a question of genetics but of use," said one (Telegraph).

More in extended >>

How to Be Well-Groomed

The birth of the Metro-sexual......

Poor Sue and her stubby hands!

Shaking Hands With Death

Each year the BBC broadcasts the Richard Dimbleby Lecture, a 50 minute speech by a well-known figure on a topical subject they feel strongly about. Previous speakers include Richard Dawkins, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Bill Clinton and the Prince of Wales; this year the lecture was by author Sir Terry Pratchett, and read for him by actor Tony Robinson. Read for him because Pratchett has a rare form of Alzheimer’s disease called PCA, and is facing a future where his mental faculties will desert him piece by piece until all language, memory and reason are gone. Ranged against that ending is Pratchett’s own wish, to die in a chair in his garden, with a brandy in one hand and Thomas Tallis playing on his iPod. Hence his lecture is a frank, powerful and impassioned call that he and others in similar situations be allowed to die their way, and that those who assist them to do so not be prosecuted for their cooperation.



For those not able to sit through all 6 parts, an edited transcript is available here.

Gothic Kittens

Holly Crawford, 35, from Pennsylvania, is set to go on trial today for cruelty to animals because she was trying to sell Gothic Kittens online. It's not the act of selling the kittens that has Holly in trouble, however. It is the fact that the kittens were pierced (as pictured). When humane officers searched her home in December, they found three kittens with ear, neck and tail piercings. Holly's attorney has posed the question “Why is it a crime to pierce a cat’s ears?” and she claims that she had no cruel intentions. Reader comments on the article (which you can read here) range from "punish the freak" to "if you punish this woman you should also punish people who declaw cats". What's your opinion?

All original content in posts is Copyright © 2008 by the author of the post, either Alex Boese ("Alex"), Paul Di Filippo ("Paul"), or Chuck Shepherd ("Chuck"). All rights reserved. The banner illustration at the top of this page is Copyright © 2008 by Rick Altergott.