Scientific Proof that Rats Can Laugh if You Tickle Them

We often think of rats as sombre characters — victims of poison and carriers of the black plague. For good reason. Wild rats are disgusting. I worked for a kitchen one time that had to close down due to a rat infestation. You'll be spared the grisly details, but my opinion of rats was forever changed after that event.

Despite this, I can't believe rats are pure evil. What animal can be if evil if it laughs when you tickle it? For sure, there is such a thing as evil laughter. But such laughter is not a result of tickling.

With this in mind, perhaps the Middle Ages would have been a lot better if someone sent a stand-up comedian who could communicate with rats through rodent squeaks.

How Many Atoms of Jesus Do You Eat Everyday?

Because I know you're curious, somebody has written a carefully reasoned report on how many atoms the Catholic communion adds to the universe. In case you are curious, the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation states that when a Catholic takes communion, the bread and wine become — physically speaking — the body and blood of Christ. So while you may be continuing to see bread and wine, rest assured, there's more.

Lets assume 2 grams of wafer and 10 grams of wine per communion, a light wafer and a small sip. We'll also assume that upon transubstantiation the wafer and wine don't turn into any specific body part or muscle group, but instead into sort of a uniform Jesus slurry. That is, we're going to assume that the liquid to solid ratio of the human body is the same as the wine to wafer ratio found in communion.

To count the number of atoms in each serving, all we need is some high-school level chemistry. We're first going to find how many grams of each element appear when the serving is transubstantiated, using percentages from delld's writeup under Human Body Composition. For simplicity's sake, the 1% of the human body made up of trace elements will be ignored. Using those figures along with the Periodic Table of the Elements, we'll convert from grams to moles. Since moles count the number of atoms in a given mass, we'll have the total atomic count of each communion after all of this calculation.

How many atoms of Jesus you eat every day@Everything2.com

Now before you jump up and say "Ah ha! This means transubstantiation is physically impossible!" keep in mind the Catholic perspective. Namely, that it is all a miracle, don't attempt to understand it, it's simply the grace of God. So in the end, this report doesn't add anything new to religious debate except as an interesting thought experiment.

What more, I doubt the average Catholic cares about the ins and out of how it all works. It will never make sense, don't try to understand it. Hey, I'm not saying I agree with them. That's just how they view it.

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You are What You Eat

I think Dayalets was a book that was supposed to educate simpletons like you and me about the pitfalls of an unbalanced diet. Burger Bill, the fellow you see above, is supposed to be one such example of someone whose intake consists of nothing but burgers and fries. Note his satisfied expression as he scoops mustard from a jar.

Here, for example, we learn that Hamburger William is devoid of vitamins, because he lives only on mustard. His pickle eyes impart no nutrition; neither his lettuce hair nor his Ripples earlobes or hideous fleshless onion teeth contain sufficient vitamins to keep him hale. But why should he worry? He’s dead. He’s gone to hell. Demons have peeled off his skin and replaced it with the cracked, glazed crust of ancient bread, jammed potato chips into his head and rammed a ketchup bottle up the gaping, bloody hole left when they ripped off his spinal cord.

Run For Your Lives - It's the Undead Vitamin Mascots They Call... Dayalets

And there's many more amusing mascots like these. Let me state, though, that Burger Bill looks like one crazy guy. I mean, you got to be a daredevil if you're eating mustard from a jar! There's nothing that says "life of the party" better than burgers, fries, and just a little bit of hooliganism. Look at Burger Bill. Not only is he all those things, he's made of meat.

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How Would Richard Dawkins Amend the United Nations Constitution?

Well, if this article on Wikipedia is to be believed, Richard Dawkins would confer basic legal rights on non-human great apes. This would mean chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans. Furthermore, every great ape would be given the right to life, the protection of individual liberty, and the prohibition of torture. That means no more zoos, no more medical experiments, and no more euthanasia without the great ape's consent.

I bring this up, of course, because Richard Dawkins is a well respected scientist and is a mascot of sorts to atheists. His opinion matters to many people. In contrast, the Great Ape Project is — to put it bluntly — potentially controversial. For him to lend his name to such a project intrigues me immensely.

I want to invite your opinion. Is Richard Dawkins right? Should there be a Declaration of the Rights of Great Apes? If so, how should humans stand in relation to great apes?

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Beautiful Robotic Insects

I think there is a time when we must move away from the technology of simple "gee whiz" consumerism, and this would be it. There is a time when you must step back and know that what you are viewing is art. What this essentially means is that laboratories are not just built to move along the progress of humanity but to also etch into our psyches some aspect of permanence.

And what better way to create permanence than through the means of antique watch parts? Well, let's walk into the world of Mike Libby.

Insect Lab is an artist operated studio that customizes real insects with antique watch parts and electronic components. Offering a variety of specimens that come in many shapes, sizes and colors; each specimen is individually designed and hand- assembled, each is one of a kind and unique.

Mike Libby - Insect Lab

Mike Libby goes beyond simple construction of insects and you can tell he put a lot of care about the beauty of his works. This isn't about simple modelling. This is about the appreciation of insects as a life form. he does an incredible job of it and each insect in his collection is rendered with as much craftsmanship as the next.

After looking through Mr. Libby's robotic insects, I'm sure you'll fall in love.

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Dinosaurs Used to Eat Biscuits

The above picture is of a Tyrannosaurus Rex and a fig roll. Why a fig roll? I don't know, but apparently T-Rex enjoyed a fig roll every now and then. It is also quite fascinating how fig rolls closely resembled T-Rexes.

I discovered this all tonight upon reading the findings of famed paleontologist Adam Stuard Smith. In fact, Mr. Smith has created a site devoted to dinosaur/biscuit awareness.

Every good vertebrate palaeontologist today knows that dinosaurs had a taste for biscuits. In fact, 100% of the dinosaur diet was biscuits. As a challenge to palaeontological dogma this may at first sound amazing, but the evidence is undeniable as shall soon be revealed. It is also now known that dinosaurs did not eat biscuits randomly, a custard cream here or a hob-nob there. They were picky; if a dinosaur didn't have its preferred teatime snack it would undoubtedly go ape. It is now known throughout the scientific community that there was more to dinosaur-biscuit links than preference, each species of dinosaur became dependent up on a specific biscuit, a factor, which although at first highly advantageous, eventually led to the demise of a large number of dinosaurian groups. Only now in this age of cutting-edge discovery and open-minded enthusiasm are these prehistoric facts coming to light.

Dinosaurus and their Biscuits - Information

This all seemed very cute until I made a stark realization. If dinosaurs ate biscuits and humans also eat biscuits and dinosaurs went extinct, does this logically imply that our own extinction is imminent? I see the pattern. First comes the enjoyment of biscuits, then comes calamity.

The end is nigh, I fear.

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Physicists on Stamps From Around the World

I thought I'd start off with an obvious one. This one is obvious an Einstein stamp made in the British Virgin Islands in 2001. A handsome, younger Einstein was one I decided to showcase rather than the older post-WWII Einstein sometimes writing on chalkboards or sticking out his tongue. Einstein, of course, is one of the more popular physicists shown on stamps. He is shown from such diverse places as Zaire, Monaco, Zaire. The good old USA also throws their hat in the ring.

But what about other physicists? I thought I'd share with you five more of my favourites that have been immortalized through postage.

Nicholas Copernicas (1473-1543), USSR, 1975


Julius Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967), Belgium, 2001


Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), France, 1962


Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922), Israel, 1997


Hideki Yukawa (1907-1981), Japan, 2000

Source: Physicists on Stamps

Neuticles

Neuticles, the invention that won the 2005 Ig Nobel prize for Medicine, is — in my opinion — yet another example of humanity's attempt to anthropomorphize nature. Every year, some fellow is mauled in a zoo trying to get into an animal's cage in the mistaken belief there is some "human" connection to be found. That, of course, is an extreme example.

The desire to add testicular implants to a neutered dog adds a sexualized element to these proceedings. It is not necessarily a direct erotic motive, either. Rather, it is more so a sense of guilt. This is what I ascertain from what Neuticles' customers say about why they decided to purchase silicone-based testicular implants.

"I've put off neutering "Crooked Joe" for months and when I found out about Neuticles and spoke to them it made me feel better about neutering. Joe not only looks the same now- but dosen't know he's missing anything."
Jeff Lane
Oak Park, Ill

What Pet Owners Are Saying About: Neutering With NEUTICLES

Hence, Neuticles seems to traffic in a certain neurosis: the trauma a pet owner feels when he denies his pet the privilege of sexual expression. It is not about the animal losing his testicles; it is about the trauma a pet owner goes through when he gets his dog's testicles removed. How would you feel if you went to the doctor and you unknowingly got castrated?

Of course, the satirical possibilities are endless as shown by this website devoted to dog condoms. Never deny the power of neurotic anthropomorphism. Especially when you throw in sex and guilt into the equation

Scientists Have Resurrected 5 Million-Year-Old Virus

This is kind of like Jurassic Park, only with virii instead of dinosaurs. There are definitely some "What if?" questions circulating around my head right now. For instance, even though this virus may be 1,000 times less infectious than HIV, how infectious would this virus be if it got out of the labs? Certainly, it was infectious enough to have left traces of itself in our genome — despite being "extinct" for thousands of years.

The ancestral virus was able to copy itself and manufacture new virus particles, they found. And these particles could infect fresh cells and copy and paste its genes into these cells' genome.

The study suggests that cells acquired numerous copies of this ancestral retrovirus by the same cyclical process: the retrovirus manufactured new particles that escaped one cell and infected eggs and sperm again and again. This may have still been happening just a few hundred thousand years ago.

news @ nature.com - Ancient human virus resurrected - Virus from distant past may throw light on role of retroviruses in cancer.

Yet there is an obvious benefit towards resurrecting this virus. It may shed light on cancer and how to treat it. If we can understand how the DNA this virus contributed to our genome contributes to cancer, some forms of cancer may soon become treatable. Seeing how one out of every seven people die from cancer, this could be a boon to medical science.

Still, what a bet to make. Create the possibility an obsolete virus could be released out of the lab. Or refuse to research a cancer-causing factor due to the chance the virus could expose itself to the public. For now, I think I'll take the first option.

Vinegar/Baking Soda Grenade

If you are like me, you probably like it when things go boom! But why spend the money on firecrackers when all you need is ingredients in your kitchen? It's quick, affordable, and chances are you will not get your hand blown off. This is what you'll need.

a box of baking soda
a bottle of vinegar
a spoon
a ziploc bag
scissors
a cup of water
an empty film canister

Vinegar/Baking Soda Grenade

Basically, you have all of that. So all it takes is mixing the two main ingredients and then giving it a good throw. Your enemies will never know what his them*, everyone will fear you, and you'll get to see something explode. What can be more fun?

*I do not condone violence of any kind.