Don't Waste Your Waste

Ever just feel the need to tell someone to "eat s***"? Well, now you can do that and it's actually a possibility for them, thanks to some Japanese scientists who "...have actually discovered a way to create edible steaks from human feces." Oh, Japan. Is there anything that you can't do?

According to an article over at Yahoo! News, a one "Mitsuyuki Ikeda, a researcher from the Okayama Laboratory, has developed steaks based on proteins from human excrement." That's right. There are proteins in your poop. It's really not so much "Who knew?" as much as it is "Who cares? But I'll tell you who cared. Tokyo Sewage, that's who. Well, they might not have cared about the protein part, but they were concerned about the poop part. They had too much sewage mud. So they went to a wacky Japanese scientist and asked him what he could do with it. I don't know that they were expecting to get lunch out of the deal, but that seems to be what has happened.

I'm going to just interject a thought right here. What's wrong with fertilizer? Isn't poop good fertilizer? Don't they have crops that need...boosting or whatever you want to call it? Why wasn't fertilizer this scientist's first thought? How come he went right to"I wonder if we could eat it?"

I guess the poop, er, sewage had a lot of bacteria in it because there was a lot of protein in it. That's when they "... extracted those proteins, combined them with a reaction enhancer and put it in an exploder which created the artificial steak." OK, I think that someone is taking their liberties just a bit too far to start describing this stuff as "steak". Seriously? I'm thinking that if you're going to go with anything other than poo, you really can't just jump to "steak". They claim that "The “meat” is 63% proteins, 25% carbohydrates, 3% lipids and 9% minerals." Hmm. Now, if I read that right, the sewage is where the protein was. So that means that almost two-thirds of this little treat comes from waste. I don't even want to KNOW where the carbohydrates come from, so don't bother asking. I am NOT researching THAT.

And get this: "The scientists hope to price it the same as actual meat, but at the moment the excrement steaks are ten to twenty times the price they should be thanks to the cost of research." Ten to TWENTY times MORE than REAL meat?! No thanks! I don't care how many greenhouse gases this would eliminate! I'm not paying twenty times more than I need to in order to eat a burger made out of poo! What say I pay twenty times less than that and get a meal with NO POO in it? OK?

This scientist claims to understand "...the psychological barriers that need to be surmounted knowing that your food is made from human feces." Wow. Psychological barriers. That might be the understatement of my lifetime. But do you know what they're hoping will persuade people to dive right in? They're hoping that "...people will be able to overlook that ugly detail in favor of perks like environmental responsibility, cost and the fact that the meat will have fewer calories."

Environmental responsibility? I recycle, for cryin' out loud! I feel as if I'm doing my part. I am not going above and beyond sorting out my cans and bottles by eating a s*** sandwich! Al Gore weighs four hundred pounds and I'll bet that he wouldn't eat one of those things either. And are they really going to throw the "fewer calories" at us? Seriously, this thing could make me drop twenty pounds each time I ate it and I still wouldn't touch it. You know why? Because it's made of human excrement, that is correct! And do you know what has even fewer calories than eating the Japanese s*** sandwich? NOT eating the Japanese s*** sandwich.

This is a terrible idea that needs to be filed away in the "They Mean Well" category. There are plenty of other examples out there of things that were made, but they just didn't turn out so well. The Yugo. A McPizza. Geometry. All had humble beginnings but just never really panned out. This needs to go in that category. Immediately.

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That's Not What It Is

Over there at Live Science, we learn that there was a little bit of excavating going on the other day in Sweden. I don't usually think of Sweden as a place that needs to be excavated, but I guess it does. Anyway, all of their excavating "...turned up an object that bears the unmistakable look of a penis carved out of antler bone." Of course. No, wait. What now?

Sometimes, I think of scientists as just like you and I (we would be the non-scientists). But when I read that sentence and learn that there IS an unmistakable look to an antler bone carved like a schlong that I realize that scientists see things in a whole different way than you and I. What was that? Oh, the bone? Heh-heh. (Pun totally intended.) Sure. Behold!

Well, they have a point. That's definitely penile look, I'll give them that. And according to a one Gšran Gruber (you pronounce that any way you want to), a archaeologist of the National Heritage Board in Sweden, "Your mind and my mind wanders away to make this interpretation about what it looks like – for you and me, it signals this erected-penis-like shape...But if that's the way the Stone Age people thought about it, I can't say." Oh, please.

Look, if there's one thing that has been an unfortunate constant through time and all eternity, it has been the penis. We all know what it looks like and we all laugh when we see it. (Seriously, I do not know how you guys walk around with those things down there.) And I'm sure the Stone Age people did the same thing. Either way, that's not a very scientific way of explaining this thing. Anyone could do that. ("Uh, it kind of looks like this, but I dunno.")

Contributing to quotes without a lot of scientific mojo to them would be a one Swedish archaeologist Martin Rundkvist, who says that "Without doubt anyone alive at the time of its making would have seen the penile similarities just as easily as we do today." You don't say. So, people thousands of years ago would have recognized a penis if they saw one? Really? Fascinating. Or not.

They don't know whether it was a dildo or not. It doesn't take a scientist with a fancy Swedish name to figure that out. That Gruber guy said, "Perhaps instead of, or in addition to, its sexual purpose, the object may have been used as a tool, such as to chip flakes of flint". What? I understand the part about "instead of", but I became a bit confused with the infusion of "in addition to". Are they saying that ancient dildos also doubled as some sort of a chisel? That doesn't seem like a very good idea at all. (First of all, you really need to hold that chisel steady to get the most effective cut. It can't be slipping and sliding all over the place, you know.)

They also don't know what it was for even if it was a dildo, as the article states, "It's not immediately clear whether the tool would have been one most likely to be used by men or women or both." Now, when they say "tool", are they referring to a tool like a hammer or are they referring to a tool like something that gets the job done? Hard to say. Not sure I want to know, either. Wait a minute. It says that the thing "...is about 4 inches (10.5 cm) long and 0.8 inches (2 cm) in diameter." Four inches long? Not even an inch in diameter? It's not a dildo. Trust me. It's not a dildo.

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A Stint With Some Lint

I need to spend some time on oddities in other countries because quite frankly, if I keep focusing on the blatant idiocy over here in the US, I'm going to lose what small shred of hope that I have left. And there are odd individuals in other countries. Hoo-boy, are there ever! Let's go to Vienna to learn about one of them.

Meet Dr. Georg Steinhauser. Dr. Steinhauser is a researcher at the Vienna University of Technology, located appropriately in Vienna. Vienna is a good place to be for Dr. Steinhauser. After all, Freud was from Vienna. It's like the birthplace of psychoanalysis. I imagine the place is just swimming with psychoanalysts. And I'd like a team of those very psychoanalysts to tell me why it is that Dr. Steinhauser has spent the last three years researching what type of body hair it is that traps pieces of lint in one's navel, aka the belly button. Wait. What?

Three years. Three years studying and researching belly button lint. What the hell is wrong this man? He's a scientist, he's a DOCTOR for cryin' out loud! (Even though he looks like he's 12.) It's not easy to become any sort of doctor and being a scientist is no exception. Why on earth would you spend the time that it takes to become a doctor and then use the knowledge that you've gained and the training that you've had and spend your time pulling out belly button fluff? It seems odd, as I can pull out belly button lint without being a doctor! So I don't know why someone would, but I do know that he did.

According to the folks over there at The Telegraph (who have just been putting out fascinating stories lately, so thanks, Telegraph guys!), Dr. Steinhauser, "...made his discovery after studying 503 pieces of fluff from his own belly button." He also asked his friends, family and co-workers about their own belly button lint. (I imagine that's the sort of thing you only get to do once, as once you've asked anyone about their belly button lint, it's highly probable that they're not going to want to talk to you ever again.) OK, I really hate to ask this, but what constitutes "a piece" of fluff? I mean, if there are two pieces in there and they're pulled out and meld into one, is that still two? Or what if there is only one in there and it breaks on the way out, then what? One or two? I imagine it's questions like these that keep Dr. Steinhauser awake at night. (Me, not so much.)

He did a chemical analysis on the fluff (because that's what scientists are supposed to do! Chemical analysis! But not on belly button lint!) and what he found will shock you. Or it won't. (You could still be in awe that someone has actually taken time to do this. I'm still a bit stunned myself.) He found that the lint wasn't just "...made up of only cotton from clothing." ::::gasp!:::: That's right! He found that there "...were also flecks of dead skin, fat, sweat and dust." (Was this news to the man? Was he thinking, "If it only were not for the lint, it would just be PRISTINE in there! Damn the lint! Damn ALL the lint to hell!")

His findings were published in the Medical Hypotheses journal. How this qualifies as a "medical" anything is beyond me. He wrote that it's the "...scaly structure of the hair" which "enhances the 'abrasion of minuscule fibres from the shirt' and directs the lint towards the belly button." Basically, the hair acts like velcro. He also said he learned that "Abdominal hair often seems to grow in concentric circles around the navel." Concentric circles. Uh-huh. OK, well, good to know. That will help me...when? In case I'm ever on Jeopardy! one day? ("I'll take things only I know for $1000, please, Alex.)

So if you have a concentrically hairy stomach, you're going to have a linty navel. Sure you can shave your abdomen hair if you're really shooting for a "fluff-free navel", but that will only work until the hair grows back. (Again, something that I probably could have told you through casual reasoning and without a Ph.D.) He also mentioned that new clothes "can shed up to one thousandth of their weight to the belly button every year."So if your favorite sweatshirt seems to be getting smaller over the years, it might not be because you're getting fatter! It might be because it has just shed itself off and into your belly button, making the shirt seem smaller and you seem larger. So check there first before heading off to Jenny Craig or over to Kirstie Alley's house.

And although Dr. Steinhauser is a scientist, there are (sadly) apparently others who may not be scientists (and who could tell in this instance?) but who are also fascinated by the lint within one's navel. Take a one Australian bloke Graham Barker for instance. His belly button lint is usually red even though he rarely wears red clothing. (EWW! Do I have to guess why it's red?! I'm not gonna!) Graham is so fascinated with the fluffy stuff within his navel that he "...has been collecting his own navel fluff in jars every day since 1984." Um...1984? WTF? "The achievement has won him a place in the Guinness Book of Records for the world's largest collection of navel lint."

Was there a big field of competitors for that distinction? I don't think there was. And I don't know that I consider something a "world record" when it's extremely likely that you're the only one in the world who does that particular something on purpose! That doesn't necessarily mean that you're worthy of holding a "world record" as much as you are worthy of earning the distinction of someone who clearly needs therapy.

This isn't the only research project that Dr. Steinhauser has immersed himself in. Yes, there are others. Others that are equally fascinating! He did a year long study on how the abrasion of wedding rings causes trace particles of the gold to flake off. He conducted that study by weighing his own wedding ring once a week during the first year of his marriage. He now weighs the ring once every six months and says that he will publish a life long study at the end of his scientific career which he will call "the work of his married lifetime." (By the way, over that year, his ring became 6.15mg lighter than it was when he first started weighing it. He used that figure and applied it to the number of married couples in Vienna and calculated that "2.2 kg of 18-carat gold" were lost every year to abrasion. Ok then.)

He has also studied the amounts of barium and strontium in the snow before and after fireworks were set off and determined that since the barium levels were almost 500 times higher after the fireworks than before the fireworks and that high barium levels can really aggravate a person's asthma, that those with asthma should stay away from fireworks celebrations.

Dr. Steinhauser seems like a smart guy, but I fear he's just a bit too eccentric to be able to put his brilliant mind toward some sort of really important research. What's next for this guy? Which mushroom variety is toenail fungus the most similar to? How often to humans grow new nose hair? Is there a constant butt-crack length to butt-cheek width ratio? You never know. And you don't need to know! But if you ever do need to know, Dr. Steinhauser is your go-to guy for sure.

(Final Side Note: Good Lord, yes, there's more. :::sigh::: While scouring the Internet for pictures for this post, I ran across documentation of the pastime of the one aforementioned Graham Barker, collector of the navel lint. And I thought it just wouldn't be right to leave that stuff out, so here you go. Graham had a blog called My Navel. The site is still up, but it appears he has stopped updating it. There are several close up pictures of the lint he has removed from his navel. There is even a ruler in the photos so you can have some sort of a scale in your head as to the lint's actual size.

There is also the almost obligatory GrahamParker.com. There you can find links to other webpages of his as well as download his CV.

And Graham seems to have another site/blog entitled "Graham's Paddock". This has several subsections, not all of which are about the lint. It also seems to be current and up-to-date. There is more belly button lint documentation there, including photos of the lint stored in jars and separated by decade. There are also recipes for his favorite salads and soups. Go figure.)

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For That, I'll Skip Breakfast

I'm happy to announce that I'll be able to squeeze in one more "scientific study" before the year is over. Yipee! (Does the fact that I have "scientific study" in quotes give you any idea as to how scientific I deem it to be? Not very, that is correct.)

Perhaps the folks over there at Reuters actually found this "study" and it's "findings" to be newsworthy. Or maybe it was a slow news day. This is going to be one of the few, very few, times that I'm really hoping it was due to a slow news day. Otherwise, look forward to similar "studies" in the future with similar interpretations. (Translation: Crap.)

What we have from a government-backed Japanese medical researcher is that "Teens who skip breakfast as middle school students tend to have sex at an earlier age than those who start the day with a proper meal." Sooooooo.....yeah. We're blaming it on breakfast now? I've blamed having sex on a lot of things before. Alcohol, stupidity (usually induced by alcohol), loneliness (usually induced by alcohol), extreme horniness (usually induced by alcohol). So, basically, just alcohol. (OK, so my list isn't vast. It's a list!) But I've never blamed having sex on not having breakfast when I was in 8th grade. Or 7th. Or any grade, really. That's because it sounds ridiculous! (I prefer to blame having sex on things that make more sense. Like the alcohol reasoning. Now that's a sound excuse for just about anything right there.)

According to the study, "The average age of first-time sex for those who said they ate breakfast every day as a middle school student was 19.4, while for those who skipped breakfast, the average age was 17.5." Aw, this gets worse as I go along. 17.5?? Years old? Now they're blaming not having breakfast 4 to 5 years before someone managed to get someone else in the sack for all of the sack getting in the first place? Am I the only one who thinks they're stretching it just a tad here? I didn't think so.

"The fact that people can't eat breakfast may show something about their family environment," said a Japanese scientist who could not be any more vague with that statement. "Before blaming individuals for having sex at an early age, it may be necessary to look into the sort of homes they are from." Right. The sort of homes. OK. So, we're looking for what? Breakfast-less-ness? And lots of sex? (Alright, this is starting to get silly.)

I could see it maybe if they wanted to draw the conclusion that people were having sex for the first time at a younger age because they were doing that instead of having breakfast. I could buy that explanation. Barely. But I'd still buy it. (I'd skip a meal for sex. Hell, I'd fast on every day that ends in "y" for sex.) But this is saying that they're still not having sex until years after they've missed breakfast and quite frankly, if you're hanging onto this "not getting breakfast" thing for years, you should probably stop having sex and go find yourself a good therapist or a mental institution to check yourself into.

The survey "...also showed the average age of first-time sex was lower for those who found their mother annoying." Now there you go! That's some science I get fully back! Doing anything in spite of an annoying mother? SURE! I'm not saying that I believe people are thinking, "Man! I can't believe she grounded me for that! It was nothing! What a bitch! I'm going to show her! In a few years, I'm going to have sex! Just wait! You'll SEE!" No, that's not it. I'm just all for blaming mothers for anything. It's easier and believable in a lot of cases. (Disclaimer: There are a couple of exceptions to the blanket statement I just made about mothers. You guys know who you are. And one of them is not my mother.)

The scientist who, in the future, may be looking for different sources for research funds, said that, “Those unhappy with their parents — such as for not preparing breakfast — may tend to find a way to release their frustration by having sex." Again, I ask the question, "YEARS later?" You know what I do when I don't have breakfast prepared for me? I don't wait 4-5 years and then have sex with someone for the first time. No, I make my own damn breakfast!

Also noted was that, "If children don’t feel comfortable in their family environment, they tend to go out.” Go out...and....have sex? Well, yes! I don't know that the "family environment" is really the most "comfortable" place for anyone to be having sex! I'm glad they DO leave! I would hope that they would want to! And if they didn't, I sure as hell would ask them to!

If it wasn't for the delayed reaction time between not having breakfast and having sex for the first time, I might buy into the notion that there is something that is missing in the home environment that manifests itself without a morning Pop-Tart and leads to trampiness. But that 4-5 year window really isn't bolstering that theory very much. And actually, I'm a little surprised that they're complaining (if they are actually "complaining". It's kind of hard to tell what they're doing; other than just making stuff up) that the average age that someone first has sex over there is 17.5 years old. Seventeen and a half? I can't imagine that in the US it would be higher than that. (Have you seen how girls are dressing in the US? It's like the entire population of Whorevania exploded and made its way across the country.) Back to the survey questions, Japanese scientist guys! You have to come up with something else that you've derived from your data because this missing-breakfast-makes-you-have-sex-thing isn't quite cutting it. (Hey....does skipping breakfast make you have sex? If that's the case, I'm denouncing breakfast forever! Bring on the sex!)

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Montauk Monster Mayhem

OK, what the hell? I like the Internet and all, but sometimes, all of those tubes and pipes and wires and strings that connect everything together can just end up to serve the purpose of pointing out either a) how gullible people are, b) how ridiculous people are or c) a little bit of both. (On occasion, it can also be used to point out d) how hot some people are. But when they're d) hot with a little bit of b) ridiculous thrown in, they end up just e) annoying the hell out of me.)

So, this "creature" thing "washes up" on the shores on Montauk. Well,actually, it was photographed lying on the shores of Montauk. (Hmm...the key word there might actually be "lying'. Interesting.) How it got there is debatable. Who saw it is debatable. What happened to it is also debatable. And what's really debatable is what in the hell it is! Seriously, look at this thing:

Whatever it is, it's disgusting. It's like they took a bit too long digging the fire pit at the luau and the thing just languished in the sun for far too long. I don't get it. But I do get this: Weird-ass animal things that look like old, bald, dead dogs don't "wash up" on the shores of a beach on Montauk. They also don't go to the shores of Montauk to die a la some elephant graveyard legend. (I'm pretty sure there was a Scooby Doo episode that exposed that whole farce.) And three fairly hot chicks like that (who may or may not have a cumulative IQ of 100) don't have the stomach to belly on up to the creature and take it's picture. No way. So what gives?

Well, Nick Leighton from Plum TV tried to get to the bottom of it. And I'm sure that he was as forceful as he possibly could be (which is to say, not very. He's a rather effeminate chap, don't you know? But I liked him. He asked good questions.), just short of smacking the chicks with his feather boa.

During his interview with Rachel Goldberg, Jenna Hewitt and Courtney Fruin, Nick said, "Four scientists say that it does not exist. They all say you're drunk and that you Photoshop really well." That was met with the response, "The animal exists." OK, see, a response like that which alludes to something, but could also allude to something else points one in the direction of concluding that it's a real fake creature. She might just as well have said, "Oh, it's something, all right." Well, we know it's something, sweetheart. Same principle. Any ideas as to what? "A mutant." Of course! How could I have overlooked the possibility of "a mutant". Oh, for cryin' out loud, a mutant what?! But sadly (or thankfully) that question wasn't answered because another one volunteered her theory of, "It's a cross breed. I think it came out of the ocean from Plum Island." So, it's a plum? I don't think so.

But I loved it when Nick asked, "Where is the animal now? Because apparently it got dragged off into someone's home. In Montauk. And it's been mounted on someone's wall." That's pretty funny. Even funnier is when one of the girls said, "No. It decomposed in someone's backyard." And Nick, who is very sharp and catches on to details like this really fast, jumps in with, "Oh, so you're friends? So we could go to this backyard?" Good job, Nick! Way to get the scoop! And? "It's been since...removed." What? "By whom?" You get 'em, Nick! Let's see them get out of that! "Friends of ours." Darn! I did not see that coming. Apparently, neither did Nick because he told them, "You're a little shady with the details." And here's where what little, if any, credibility these three chickies had goes right out the window. "Well, it's very mysterious. We're not just giving up all the information." Um, what?

First of all, the only time I've ever heard someone say, "Well, it's very mysterious" was on Scooby Doo. Usually it was Velma stating the obvious there. And when something is "very mysterious" you don't have any information to give up because it's mysterious. Hence the term, mysterious!

But Nick soldiers on (don't ask, don't tell, don't you know?) with, "So it's been carted off to somewhere that you know but you won't tell us?" "Our friends have it. We're hoping to have scientists contact us and then we can find out what it is. That's really ...the goal." Is it now? I don't think that's your main goal. And what do you mean your "friends have it?" Right! Look, I really like the friends that I have, but if any of them came to me and said, "Hey, we found this crazy looking, dead mutant on the beach. Mind if I keep it at your place for a while?" Yeah, see, I'm not going to do that. If it was just crazy looking or just a mutant, I might consider it. But dead is out of the question. If you start hanging on to your friend's dead carcasses, pretty soon, all of your friends are bringing over their dead carcasses as well. It's just more trouble than it's worth is all I'm saying. But I digress.

"It's in a box. The bones are boxed." Now it's just bones? How long does it take for fake, mysterious creatures to decompose? That thing looked pretty meaty. It wouldn't be overnight. So Nick tries to pin them down with specifics. "How do we know it's not a raccoon, a turtle without it's shell, or a dog?" (OK, that's quite the variety there, Nick. Perhaps next time, what say you narrow the field down a bit.) "What we've heard from a scientist at Stonybrook University is it's not a raccoon because the legs and arms are not in proportion with the body." Wait a minute. Weren't they waiting for hear from the scientists to tell them what it was? What happened to this Stonybrook Farm guy? He wasn't good enough or what?

Come on, Nick. Do your thing. "OK, proportions. Dog?" "It's not a dog because of, um, the feet." Because of the feet? All dogs that I've had AND seen in my lifetime have, surprisingly enough, HAD feet. What kind of mutant dogs does that chick keep for pets anyway? WTF? One more, Nick. "The feet. OK." But before Nick could get to his final question, one of the chicks piped up, "And a turtle doesn't have teeth." At that point, I expected them to stand up, spread their collective arms and shout, "Ta-da!" But they didn't. It was a little anticlimactic.

Well, whatever it is, I'm sure that we'll find out about it in a couple of days. The story is starting to fall apart here and there and it's looking more and more like it might be part of some Internet marketing campaign for some show that's going to be airing on Cartoon Network called Cryptids Are Real. Nice. I hate that crap. Hey, but if it is just a promo, then what's the creature?

Jeff Corwin of Animal Planet says that what we have here is a very rare.....raccoon. Wait. What?

Hey, does this look like a raccoon to you?

I've seen raccoons before. They look like this:

They do not look like this:

Now, I'm not saying that he's wrong. After all, he does work for the Animal Planet. But maybe his Animal Planet doesn't have animals like this planet because that is not a freaking raccoon. Just to be clear again, this is a raccoon. Please note the difference between the real raccoon and the pictures above that crazy people are saying is a raccoon.

We'll see how this turns out. (I still don't think it's going to be a raccoon, but that doesn't mean I think it's going to be an ocean mutant either.) Stay tuned, won't ye?

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Easier Inebriation

See, while here in the US, if a city has a problem with drunks in public, they usually deal with the drunks. Oh, but that's the US. See, over there in the UK in Cardiff (that's in the UK), they decided that they should deal with the public instead. Literally. That's why the scientists there have come up with the notion that redesigning the streets to make them more "user friendly" for the drunks would be a good step toward reducing the conflict and violence. Wait. What?

Apparently, they used some computer simulations to recreate the movements of people who were staggering home after a night on the town. (They could have saved themselves all that trouble and just followed Amy Winehouse around for a few hours.) And when they looked at the results of the simulations they were shocked, just shocked, to find out that drunk people trip over things! Imagine!

So then, being the good little scientists that they were, decided they needed some hand on information and went out into the streets to find real drunks and analyze real behavior by giving breathalyzer tests to people who appeared intoxicated. They found that 25% of the individuals were so drunk that they couldn't walk straight. (Otherwise known as Wednesday in my world.) Then it starts to get weird.

According to the article from those good chaps over there at The Metro, "Simulations were then run showing crowds in various states of inebriation trying to pass through a narrow alleyway to three different destinations." Why are crowds of drunk people all going through an alley? Why are crowds of drunk people only going to THREE different locations? Are these locations BARS? I don't understand. At all. It continues confusing me when it says, "When a fifth of the people were staggering, progress was reduced by 9%, while a whole crowd of drunks led to a 38% reduction in movement." OK, so if you have one in five people drunk, you're going to slow things up 9%, but if you have a whole gaggle of drunks, then you're going to slow things up 38%. Well, if you do the math (and I know you don't, so I will), that gaggle of drunks is adapting better to their situation than the 1 in 5, because if all 5 of the 5 were drunk, you'd slow things up 45%. So I guess I'm supposed to come to the conclusion that if I'm going to get drunk and walk home through an alleyway, I should make sure that everyone around me is plastered also? Notice taken. Will do!

Now, it may surprise you that what the scientists concluded from all of this was not what I concluded from all of this. I concluded that people that are drunk experience the natural consequences of being drunk. Things take longer to do. You get lost. You fall down. You fall down and decide that would be a great place to spend the night. All natural consequences. But that's just me. And I'm no scientist. But those who ARE scientists concluded that because the drunks are so much slower at doing things (you know, because they're drunk) that they irritate those who are not drunk and, therefore, are the targets of violence. Wait. What?

I guess in the UK, if you have a slow moving drunk in front of you going through that alleyway, you just whack him and then step over the groaning, writhing body that just fell to the ground. (One quick blow to the kneecaps is all it takes!) Violence toward drunks. Interesting concept, but so what? Well, now that they've identified the problem, it must be fixed! "We must fix it so that the drunks are not so slow! And when I say "not so slow" I mean to make it so that it's easier for them to get around. You know, like relocating benches and other things they might trip over or become confused about how to navigate around." Wait. What?

Correct. According to The Metro,"The researchers plan to investigate how moving street obstacles or increasing pedestrianisation might ease congestion around nightspot." So they want to move things that could get in the way of someone who is unable to walk around the thing. How does that make sense? You're going to try to de-obstacle-ize your city so it's easier to walk through without bumping into anything?? Are you kidding me? Wow. And I thought the US pandered to the chronically inebriated.

The article also says that the scientists "hope to come up with street designs that direct late-night revellers safely home to their beds instead of into the path of trouble." Now how in the hell are they going to do that? I am envisioning many, many directional arrows all over town reading similarly to, 'Bill - Home Is This Way" "Jane - Home Is This Way" "Fred - If You See This Sign, Turn Around! Home Is The Other Way!" "Susan - Drunk Again? Keep Going, You're Not Home Yet." "Tom -Watch Out For That Curb!" Oh, what could possibly go wrong?

I don't think I'm the only one who thinks that this idea might be a little bit off center. The Metro folks went with the headline, "Boffins to redesign streets for drunks." Since I am so not British, I had to look up what a "boffin" was. And I learned that a boffin is a scientist or an engineer or someone who engages in technical and/or scientific research. A boffin is usually portrayed as someone who displays both eccentric genius and a naive ineptitude in social situations or with social interactions. Ah. Thus, the headline, "Boffins To Redesign Streets For Drunks." And another piece of the puzzle falls into place.

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Forecast For Argentina: Wind

Good Lord, where to start this one?

From our brave friends across the pond at the Telegraph.uk, I bring you this headline, the wording of which I had absolutely NOTHING to do with! Ahem.....

Cow farts collected in plastic tank for global warming study

I'm sorry, they f-ing did WHAT?!?

Cow farts collected in pla....

Oh, knock it off! It was a rhetorical question, for cryin' out loud!

Apparently, a cow has a slow digestive system. A really slow digestive system. That makes the cow one of the key producers of methane. Methane is one of your more potent greenhouse gases. You don't hear about it all that often because people are usually too busy harping about carbon dioxide and the carbon footprint. These scientists are getting busy harping about methane and the methane fartprint. (I'm sorry. I couldn't resist.) And they probably should because methane can trap the heat in the atmosphere about 23 times more effectively than carbon dioxide. (But, as I'm sure you are aware, it's much more important, with more complex issues such as the global warming, that the focus be directed squarely in the middle of that which is not of the most importance. I don't know why that is, but I think it has something to do with idiots.)

So it would seem that the cow's slow digestive system causes it to, um, break wind. A lot. And that, in turn, produces a lot of methane. But the scientists want to know what the impact of the methane is on global warming (which may or may not be happening, depending on whom you ask and whether or not you're wearing a parka right now).

In order to determine the effect of the methane, they need to figure out how much methane they're dealing with. In order to do that, they have to figure out a way to capture it so that it can be measured. (If you're still with me after reading that sentence, you'll know what's next. Not really. There's no way you'll see this coming.) They have decided that this would best be accomplished by running a tube from a plastic tank attached to the back of a cow into one of their four stomachs where the methane originates. When the methane is expelled (ie, flatulated), instead of going into the air, it will be captured in the tank for the scientists to later do something very scientific-y to in order to calculate the amount of methane and what to do about it. Behold! A methane producing bovine with a plastic tank strapped to it's back in Argentina:


Ah, geez. Look at him. On behalf of all non-bovine methane emitters, we're sorry.

So far, researchers (I use the term loosely, for cryin' out loud, and they should too) in Argentina have learned that the methane produced by the cows accounted for more than 30 percent of all of the Argentinian greenhouse emissions. If that seems like a lot, it's because it is, especially when you consider that Argentina has approximately 55 million cows grazing about there. (The cows are especially fond of the "famed Pampas grasslands". Note to self: Avoid famed Pampas grasslands when visiting Argentina.)

According to Guillermo Berra, who is a researcher at the NIAT (National Institute of Agricultural Technology), each cow produces between 800 and 1,000 liters of "emissions" every day. (That's a lot of Mexican food.) Guillermo and his cohorts are working in tandem with some folks over at the NCSTI (National Council of Scientific and Technical Investigations), presumedly also in Argentina. The NCSTI guys are trying out new diets for the cows. They're trying to improve their digestion, I guess by speeding it up? It's not really all that clear, and I'm not feeling like I need to ask anyone either.

Silvia Valtorta of the NCSTI, says that if a cow has a diet which consists of clover and alfalfa instead of grain that the "methane emissions are reduced by 25 percent." So instead of emitting between 800 to 1,000 liters of, um, cow-wind per day, they're only going to emit between 600 and 750 liters of, um, cow-wind per day. Doesn't seem like a lot, does it? Ah, well, at least it's something. It had better be at least something if they're going to make the cows look like bovine booster rockets.

Even though there are over 55 million cows in Argentina, they're only strapping the plastic tanks onto about 10 of them. And although that's a really small sample number, it's somewhat comforting to know that only 10 will be sporting the bovine backpack. Oh, and some of those cows are in a corral and their methane is collected in yellow balloons that hang from the roof. Of course it is.

Where, oh where is Gary Larson when we need him?

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