Weirdness
pharyngula | February 9, 2007I presume everyone has already had their lunch here in the Americas, so it's safe to mention this: a delectable collection of 10 tasty snacks. Go ahead — you know you want to click on that link.
pharyngula | February 8, 2007Remember that grotty problem of getting dead bat stains off of furniture? Nic McPhee repays all you helpful people with a flickr photo set of a bat corpse. He knows how to win the hearts of the Pharynguloids, doesn't he?
pharyngula | February 6, 2007Sometimes I do get strange requests in email. For instance, I was asked if the claim in this article was true:
When an orgasm has been achieved through sex, you can measure theta waves. These are also said to cause the "running high" feeling of euphoria experienced sometimes by marathon runners. If theta waves are taken as a criterion, the entire brain emits theta waves when women reach an orgasm that are close on 10 times stronger than when men climax. So, if theta waves are an indication of an orgasm's strength, then women experience an orgasm that is physically impossible for men to go…
pharyngula | February 4, 2007Nic McPhee is looking for a solution to an odd problem: a bat died and rotted on some fine furniture, leaving a nasty protein residue. Give him some suggestions on how to clean wing of bat off wooden furniture.
This might call for the expertise of a witch.
pharyngula | February 3, 2007…between one and twenty.
Then go read this article on Cosmic Variance (although I think it was a mistake to reveal the answer in the first paragraph and the title, so I stole my approach from present simple).
pharyngula | January 28, 2007Many people sent me links to this list of bands that will turn you gay, but I held off on posting anything—it was too fishy. David Bowie, Melissa Etheridge, and Ted Nugent, sure…listen to a couple of tracks of those guys and you'll only want to hang out with your fellow man. But Morrissey is listed as "?questionable?" and everyone knows the Grateful Dead make you lose interest in sex altogether, so I had my doubts.
Now Orac outs the author. He's not a formerly gay televangelist; he's a stand-up comedian.
Poor guy. I can sort of understand why he'd prefer to be known as an insane homophobe.
pharyngula | January 28, 2007The Nielsen Haydens filled my morning with horror, so I'm going to make you suffer, too. Behold, a Danish disco band pretending to be Apaches:
It goes on for an interminable 4½ minutes; seriously, you've done your penance if you watch 20 seconds, long enough to spot the sequins and the Groucho mustache on the keyboardist. I recommend you turn it off before the Apache maidens emerge from behind the teepee—that was just too much.
Say, that Making Light thread led me to another cheesy video by Army of Lovers, and since I was soliciting suggestions for a menacing makeover, it gave me an idea:…
pharyngula | January 15, 2007Oh, yeah, baby…that's what I need: a most macho suit of armor. I'm not sure that I believe that a 40 pound shell can stop an elephant gun, though, but it sure looks fierce.
pharyngula | January 13, 2007I could have spent it building a scale model of the Battle of Helms Deep out of candy.
Maybe next year…
pharyngula | January 12, 2007I really don't know whether to believe this story or not. It's a diary of a sailing trip that reports an encounter with a fellow sailor who had experienced serious difficulties.
We reported last time that Shigeo's trip from the Galapagos to the Marquesas had been terrible -- after about 1000 miles his autopilot had failed, something had gone wrong with his steering, his engine water intake had clogged temporarily, blowing his impeller, the intake for one of his heads had clogged, and, most important of all, something had slowed his speed down to 2 knots, even with full sails, a lot of wind,…
pharyngula | January 11, 2007This is hard to do:
Now there are some unanswered questions. Can he scale it? Does it have to be on a vertical surface? Can he find the center? Can he draw a square with the same area?
pharyngula | January 8, 2007This doesn't apply to me, of course, since I get to frolic on the streets of New York and visit Seed and MoMA.
(via Minnesota Stories)
jlynch | January 1, 2007This is almost too funny to be true. From the mind of Michael Westfall:
Today the use of personal computers is one of the fastest growing areas of mass communication. This technology can be used for the good of humanity or in some cases small-minded warped individuals endeavor to use it to debase and alter Judeo-Christian values. There are now multiple radical "Left Be-Hinder" web sites that make a sport of attacking those who take a stand for decency. These sites question traditional Bible based morality as they labor to twist our society towards their own confused
values. They use their web…
pharyngula | December 28, 2006Hank Fox, who assures me that he is ALL MAN (just look at that beard), told me to take this test…and I seem to have a woman's brain.
It's my result from my BBC sex test. I think I confused them, though: I did well on all the spatial reasoning tests and kind of bombed on the empathy stuff (male!), but I also kicked ass on the "spot the difference" test and the ability to recognize emotions from just eyes (female and off the scale!). Being able to spit out 16 and 17 synonyms for a word also makes me more ladylike, I guess.
(When you look at the actual raw scores and the averages, though, my…
pharyngula | December 27, 2006The madmen of the WAAGNFNP have gone too far—now they've put out a warrant for my arrest (scroll down through the comments). Chris Clarke wasn't enough to slake their bloodlust, I guess, so now they've just picked out a random, innocent target.
Watch out, or you'll be next.
pharyngula | December 25, 2006If you had a crummy Christmas morning (I didn't, so I'm just linking these as a public service), here are a few outlets.
Silly Humans finds an Evil Santa Generator — create your own nasty, scabrous, ugly Santa Claus, suitable for framing.
If you really want to know why Santa gave you such a crappy Christmas, read about the legend of El Caganer, and you will understand.
My Santa was a sweet, jolly fellow who got me a stack of books, a pound of smoked salmon, and the first season of Deadwood on DVD, so I'm going to enjoy a profane, cynical, bloody Western after I get the Christmas feast cooking…
pharyngula | December 24, 2006I am horrified. The J Train tries to ruin Christmas Eve with this…abomination. Don't watch it if you value your eyes, ears, sense of equilibrium, and sanity. It's Celine Dion doing AC/DC.
And here I've been using Cthulhu as a signifier for incomprehensibly monstrous alien horrors. There's a new standard.
pharyngula | December 22, 2006Better sit down for this one. Santa Claus is dead.
Children watched in horror as a Santa Claus collapsed and died as he handed out presents at a Christmas party on Sunday.